Power of Darkness

by Doris Sutcliffe Adams

  The fire winked a dim red eye, the cauldron chuckled, and the nameless things hanging from the rafters brushed harshly against his hair. He kicked away the sods so that flame sprang startling-bright, and all the stooping shadows quavered and flinched from it. He lighted the taper and set it on its pricket.

  ‘Search this serpent's den with me, Gino!'

  Gino hesitated long enough to cross himself, and as Hélie garnered an armful of dangling objects from the rafter-pegs he went to it like a destructive monkey. Half a smoke-blackened ham, a part-side of bacon and an oak-hard slab of beef-flank, homely strings of onions, roots and herbs hung alongside toadstools and mandrakes, a cluster of mummified bats with brittle wings, shrivelled lizards, dried toads, and grisly parts and entrails that Hélie flung shuddering into the fire without further inspection. The flames seized avidly on the unaccustomed fuel, flaring greasily, and nauseous smoke swirled among the low rafters, loath to leave the witch's lair by the roof-vent for the heavy dusk. The thunder threatened, the flickers of lightning competed palely with the flames that lit the darkest corners.

  Hélie cleared a shelf of salt-jar, spits, cooking vessels, distaff, spindles, hanks of wool and flax and sewing-box. Gino delved into a meal-tub, paddled his hand in a water-bucket, overset milk-bowl, egg-basket and stacked cheeses, tore apart a frowsty bed and disembowelled its rancid straw pallet, to no purpose. Hélie flung open the wooden chest and tossed musty clothing upon the wreckage. Under the clothing were packets of dried leaves, pots and jars covered with stretched bladder, and phials sealed with wax, but no evidence of witchcraft practised with malice against any person. The jars' contents could be tested, and a dead dog or two would be proof of a sort, but he would need better than that to convince the King’s Justices.

  He straightened, wiped his grimed and sweating hands on his tunic and glanced about the ruined room before his eyes met Gino’s. Something he had missed, and still she thwarted him, so that he seemed again to hear her thin laughter mocking him. The fire was dying again, and Gino bent to fuel it with more of her revolting ingredients of enchantment. The flames spluttered, and he averted his gaze.

  For the first time he observed that the witch’s seat was not a stool, but a solid section sawn from a broad tree-stump, an old anvil-block at a guess. No lesser stool could have borne her vast carcase. Then his vague glance quickened to awareness. The stump was sunk in the deep layer of rushes that covered the earthen floor, but he could see its lower edge among them. The accumulation had not piled round it; the stump rested on top.

  He shouldered past Gino and tipped it, smooth-worn and greasy to his hands. It moved more easily than he had expected, and he trundled it aside like an ale-barrel, crouched down and swept the flattened rushes from a foot-wide hole. Its earthen edges were hard almost as stone, no new digging. A bundle wrapped in cloth lay before him. He turned it to the fire and unrolled the clout.

  He uncovered three grotesque little figures, crudely modelled from grimy wax and shreds of cloth and hair. Two were male, in peasant garb. The third mammet was gowned in brown home-spun, and its head stuck with a scrap of rusty-red fox’s brush twined into two plaits. Long thorns had been thrust into its eyes and belly. Gooseflesh prickled Hélie’s skin, even as he sternly told himself that here was malice but no power. Gino crossed himself and gabbled some counter-charm in his own tongue.

  ‘This will fit the halter to her neck,’ Hélie said bleakly.

  ‘More in this hole than you have brought out,’ said Gino, crouching to scrabble like a dog at a cony's burrow. He pried up two pieces of flat board laid across, and then heaved out a stout little chest and dumped it at Hélie's feet with an unmistakable musical jingle that surprised him, who had expected only material for witchcraft. It was padlocked, but Gino made short work of the padlock's pretensions with a spit. It was half-full of silver pennies mingled with cheap trinkets, garnered through fifty years' battening on sin and sickness and misery. Hélie stared speechlessly and slammed down the lid on it.

  ‘There is a flat stone in the bottom,' his pertinacious servant informed him in a muffled voice, his head in the hole and his hindquarters upraised.

  ‘To keep the damp from rising, most likely.'

  But Gino reversed himself and probed industriously with the spit and then an iron-shod spade, until he could find purchase under the slab's edge and wrench it from its bed. They worried it out of its ancient setting. A dank earthy odour oozed coldly into the warm room, and a louder rattle of thunder made both start. Gino leaned again. ‘An earthen jar,' he reported. ‘Something inside it, but I cannot see.' He inserted a hand as if he expected teeth to take his fingers off. ‘Something round and hard.' He drew it out into the firelight, and dropped it as if it had burned him. It rolled a little on the rushes and mutely reproached them with empty eye-sockets.

  Neither spoke for a very long moment. Hélie was first to recover. ‘A baby—a very young baby,' he whispered, crouching to take up the tiny frail thing, with its scarcely-joined seams, toothless jaws and the gap over its brow. There were other little bones in the wide-mouthed jar, twig-thin and brittle to his flinching fingers.

  The door opened noiselessly, and a gust of colder air swirled the rushes and flattened the bright flames. Smoke swooped bitterly about them. ‘They have shot a fire-arrow from the ruin,' Durande's calm voice reported. She drew breath sharply as her gaze leaped from their strained faces to the skull in Hélie's hand. She did not shriek or flinch, but the flaring fire and wild taper lighted the hurt and sorrow on her face. 'God have pity on His innocents,’she murmured, crossing herself as she stood aside to let them reach the door. They were in time to see another streak of fire plunging meteor-like from the sullen clouds, and as it fell a third soared high.

  'The signal for Gytha,’ said Hélie, and gazed long and soberly at the little skull before he gently restored it to the jar. Without a word spoken Gino tipped back the slab and trod it firmly into its violated bed, and started to replace all else as they had found it for the Sheriff.

  'A woman once told me,’ said Durande in harsh disgust, 'that long ago the Devil begot a child on Rohese and snatched it back to Hell at its birth, for though she waxed great-bellied no child was ever heard to cry.’

  'We have learned this night how that may come to pass,’ Hélie answered grimly, and wondered how many men had worn the goat-mask during Rohese’s life-time. He bundled up the horrid mammets, saw his wife’s mouth twist in contempt, and wished she had not seen that hideous simulation of herself pierced by thorns. He trundled back the stump and kicked loose rushes about it. Then he scowled at the dying fire. Prudence bade him remain here and seize Rohese on her return, but prudence was no predominant component of his nature, and all else urged him to the ruin to witness what took place and testify afterwards.

  Durande was watching his face in the erratic light. 'Go up and watch, that true testimony be made,’ she answered his thought as though he had uttered it aloud.

  He started sharply. 'How—?’

  She smiled. 'Do what you think right, Hélie.’

  'I will not risk you up there—or leave you—’

  ‘I have yet five arrows to guard your back,’ She touched his hand lightly, opened the door and glanced back over her shoulder. 'God forbid I should lessen you, Hélie.’

  He stared at the shut door, a tumult of conflicting emotions rioting within him, torn between protective concern for his love and his hard resolve to tear out every least creeping root of this perverted faith that was devouring the community’s health like mistletoe destroying a sound tree. Durande had thrust him to his duty, knowing before he did that he could not turn aside from the task he had taken up and live his lifetime at peace with shame. He nodded acceptance, and Gino resignedly crossed himself and moved to his side.

  Durande's head thrust round the door again, aureoled by a flash of lightning, and the ill-used taper guttered out. ‘Two women are coming up the path,’ she announced.

  ‘Coming here?’
>
  ‘And one I think is Hermeline,’ she added, a sudden grin breaking her sternness. Thunder roared, and she vanished.

  Hélie and Gino regarded each other with mingled consternation and amusement, and moved one to each side of the door. They had encountered similar situations together too often to need words. Presently their straining ears discerned the rustle of movement on the overgrown path, a squeak as lightning blazed again, an expostulating murmur, a high clear voice petulantly raised.

  ‘And why should she not be there? Must she gather her simples under darkness, or weave magic out of the storm?'

  ‘Those are her secrets, my lady,’ another voice answered sullenly. ‘It is wise—’

  ‘Tell me again I should not come, and I will have you whipped! If she is not here I wait until she returns!'

  ‘My lady, you will displease her—'

  ‘And does she bear rule in Warby, to be pleased or displeased? I will have what I came for before I leave this hovel!'

  She thrust open the door with an imperious hand, took two swift paces into the hut and halted as the darkness and stench gripped her. Hélie, standing with his back to the wall beside the door, could have reached a long arm and seized her, but did not stir. The wench Mabille trailed sulkily at her heels, and as soon as she was inside Gino, covered by the opening door, pushed it shut and stood against it. Hélie gripped her wrists and expertly jerked them behind her, and she shrieked with shock and fright, wrenching at his hold.

  Hermeline whirled, her hand lifting to her mouth. The firelight flickered in her wide scared eyes, lit her pale skin and quenched itself in the blackness of gown and hooded cloak. ‘Hélie!' she choked, recoiling against the heavy stump so that she almost fell.

  Mabille plunged and jerked and twisted, her breath whimpering in her throat. She screwed her head round to glare at him in such frantic terror that in any other it would have moved him to pity, but he could have none for this creature set to corrupt her mistress. Hermeline crouched against the stump, half-paralysed. Hélie nodded to Gino, who leaped to the tumbled garments and ripped a kerchief into strips. Hélie propelled Mabille towards the bed. Hermeline, with one strangled sob, bolted for the unguarded door, wrenched it open and recoiled at sight of Durande waiting beyond. She stepped in, shut the door and set her back to it, regarding the elder girl with grim disfavour as she stiffened rigidly and parted her lips to scream.

  'Any vapours will be doused with a bucketful of water, Hermeline,’ she promised brutally, and Hermeline backed away, changing the threatened scream for an angry sob. Hélie, controlling with difficulty the maddened animal he held, spared his wife a tight smile of thanks so oddly eloquent that Hermeline gaped from one to the other, her eyes widening incredulously, and then shed tears of purest fury. Hélie had no time to heed her. He manhandled Mabille to the bed and threw her down, pinned her while Gino mastered her kicking feet and tied her ankles, and then bound her wrists. Once trussed, she cursed them in a throttled whisper, spewing such unutterable filth that Gino, after one stricken glance at the two girls, rammed the remains of the kerchief between her jaws and silenced her.

  Hermeline found speech. 'What do you—you have no right! I rule here! Loose her instantly! Take your whore beyond my boundaries!'

  'Be quiet!' Hélie commanded very softly, and she cringed from the white wrath in his face. He regarded her with as little sympathy as he had felt for Mabille; it was outraged vanity and not blighted love that afflicted her, and she turned his stomach. 'You are meddling in evil fouler than you guess,' he told her grimly. 'You came to procure a spell to harm my wife—'

  'You betrayed me!'

  'There was no pledge to betray. Rohese is in the ruin with all her black company sacrificing to the Devil, and this witch was set to seduce you to that worship! And they poisoned your brother because he uncovered their vileness.'

  ‘You lie!' she screeched. 'Your red-haired whore murdered him as I pray God she murders you! It was she—'

  Durande caught up the wooden bucket and hurled its contents in one magnificent glittering arc to shatter in her face.

  Hermeline stood snorting and blind, utterly silenced, her garments plastered to her rigid body and streaming into the sodden rushes. She lifted her hands and pawed futilely at her face, crowing for breath. Hélie held his own, aching to laugh, and Durande, swinging the empty bucket, waited grimly until Hermeline blinked her eyes open.

  ‘No man was ever charmed by screeching,’ she commented dispassionately.

  Gasping, Hermeline dabbed at her saturated gown, her shocked tongue stuttering on words she could not frame, so lividly malevolent that Hélie, sharply reminded of her kinswoman Rohese, lost all desire to laugh.

  ‘Go home,’ he bade her harshly, ‘and thank God you are delivered from damnation.’

  ‘I pray for your damnation,’ she whispered viciously, and stumbled whimpering to the door.

  Durande let her go, sternly impassive. Then she set down the bucket and smiled at Hélie. ‘I should call a truce to vindictiveness, since I have won what she most desired,’ she observed, and suddenly moved to him, pulled his head down to hers and kissed him on the mouth. His arms closed on her, warm and generous and steadfast, in a kind of hungry yearning, reaction from the strain and horror of the past half hour. ‘Do as seems right in your eyes,’ she said firmly, pulling back from his hold. ‘I am at your back.’

  ‘Dear love, I thank God for you. First, see Hermeline on her way.’ He would not set it beyond her, in her fury, to bear warning to the witches' convocation of evil in the ruin. A brisk nod showed that Durande took his point, and in the doorway she smiled over her shoulder and then vanished into a blinding sheet of blue-white light—his wife who would be beautiful when Hermeline had withered into a querulous shrew.

  Gino checked Mabille's bonds and humanely made sure that the gag was not likely to asphyxiate her. ‘Need the wench alive to testify,’ he remarked as he shut the door on her. ‘Against a noble lord, the more witnesses the better chance of justice. Justice in this case being a stretched neck.’

  There would be stretched necks enough, including Mabille's, when all was done, Hélie reflected. Distastefully he saw what would follow his rounding-up; the Sheriff and his officers, the King's Justices and the lawyers, Bishop and clergy all prying and questioning; the interrogations and informing, and at the last penalties and penances, an over-burdened gallows and a scandal to stink the length of England. His doing, and no other's. He had meddled and brought it about. He could not have done otherwise, but the heavy responsibility was his to bear.

  13

  THE storm had swung away again. Though the lurid flashes came fast on each other's heels, and the thunder rolled with scarcely a break, they had circled westward over Trevaine, and the rain still held off. A cool gusty wind was noisy in the tree-tops, bowing down the bracken, tugging at their clothing. They hurried up the slope with no attempt at stealth. Full darkness was on them, but the receding storm showed them their way. Over Trevaine the sky flared pallid every few moments, and the thunder-growls dragged several breaths behind the flashes. Then the broken walls loomed black before them, with the weighted clouds hanging upon the snag-teeth of ruined ramparts.

  They moved more cautiously now, dodging from one claw-set bramble-patch to the next as they made for the paved space where the altar of sacrifice stood. A sudden flaw of wind bore to Hélie's nostrils the resinous scent of torch-smoke, a pungency of burned flesh and feather, and an incongruously homely kitchen-fragrance of cookery. Then they rounded the keep's corner and looked into the sudden glare of several torches wedged into crannies of the crumbling walls. They crouched behind the stones.

  A sharp fire crackled on the altar. Behind it stood the masked Master, aloof and menacing in the flames' fluttering light, the blind yellow eyes glowing with their pulsing reflection as if they lived. Before the altar crouched a dark ring of witches, and Rohese held up a tiny black mammet with a head of tow, pronouncing in her high clear voice some for
mula of invocation. When she paused they chanted a response, their bodies swaying like storm-blown trees. Her voice lifted to a screech, and she lifted her arm high and plunged something into the mammet's body. The witches shrilled exultantly. Gino gripped Hélie's arm, shaking through all his flesh. Hélie put his other hand over the tight one.

  ‘I feel no pang,’ he murmured dryly.

  The malediction ended. The company broke into another pattern of action. A man and two women stacked brushwood and logs on the blackened patch where other fires had burned. Rohese bulked, a black monument of evil, by the altar. Lightning spurted above her; the storm was circling back. The masked man, at once priest and incarnate god of this dark faith, stepped round the altar as the last wood was heaped on the fire.

  The elder-shoot pipe twittered and skirled into the thin little tune Hélie had heard before. The witches swung into a circle about the goat-man and the unlit fire. The altar-blaze touched them with its orange glow, lighting here and there a sweat-greased nightmare face, a hand or bare leg, the yellow horn eyes in the mask, between the flashes that exposed them motionless in hard white brilliance, intolerable to gloom-accustomed eyeballs. Thunder cracked and rattled, but the shrill pipe knifed through the din. The witches moved into a slow, swaying dance, holding hands and facing outwards as they circled.

  The goat-man danced in their midst, mincing on his high cloven hooves, his pale fingers skipping in time upon the pipe. The music quickened, and the circling figures danced faster. Skirts flew, bare legs flashed, faces lifted into the light and sank back into the chaos of flickering shadows and wild movement. The linked hands broke apart; men and women kicked and leaped, twirled and capered and screeched, flung off garments in shameless abandon, while the pipe twittered on and heaven's own wrath raged above them, dry and impotent.

  Someone broke from the dance, snatched a torch and came prancing back to the unlit fire, capering about it with sparks spitting and flame streaking. The dancers swirled closer, and neither they nor the two engrossed watchers had any eyes for an interrupter until she thrust fiercely, sobbing and distraught, through their ring to the goat-man and broke his tune and the dance with a screech of warning. The torchlight flared over her face. Hélie, in unbelieving consternation, recognized Mabille, who should have been securely trussed in Rohese's hut, rousing Hell's furies upon them.