[Sir Richard Straccan 01] - The Bone-Pedlar

by Sylvian Hamilton

  ‘I was sore beset with evil dreams.’

  ‘Fever brings bad dreams,’ she said, ‘but that has passed. Are you hungry?’

  Straccan discovered he was famished and made short work of bread and rabbit stew. When he had finished, Janiva pulled a stool to his bedside and sat down. ‘Your man has told me about the relic you seek,’ she said. “Tostig gave it to me but if it is yours, I must restore it to you. Yet any man could say it belonged to him. Can you prove your claim?’

  Straccan smiled. ‘As it happens, I can. In my saddlebag, you’ll find a parchment. A bill of sale from the Archbishop of Canterbury.’

  While she looked for it, he said to Bane, ‘No use you hanging about here too. I’ll be on my feet tomorrow, on my horse the day after. You go ahead to Altarwell and nose around until I come. See if you can spot that bastard and his black horse, or get some news of him and my Gilla. I hope to God she was with him, and not—’

  He swallowed the ugly thought. ‘See if you can learn anything of Gregory.. I’ll find you. What’s today?’

  ‘Tuesday.’

  ‘You’ll get there some time Thursday. I’ll be there Saturday.’

  Chapter 14

  Janiva stirred the water with her fingertips. She signed the cross over it, breathed on its surface and looked. An observant watcher would have seen her sudden pallor when the pictures came. They always came fast upon each other, a new one rising through the old—scattering it—taking its place; clear, small, intensely bright. Often she saw strangers and strange places, but when she had a purpose, seeking a certain face or place, she always saw what she sought. She had seen the pictures since she was a child. Her mother made her swear never to tell anyone, and said her mother, too, had known this power—curse or blessing.

  The moon had waxed and waned and waxed again since she first had seen the traveller, this man, the sick knight, in her bowl. She had seen him several times, so that when Tostig and the man Bane brought him to her door she recognised him at once, although most of the pictures had shown him younger. She had seen him riding a great war stallion, in gashed and bloody chain mail, swinging a mace. She had seen him kneeling among a great press of other kneeling men, on the floor of a church or crypt lit by a thousand candles and lamps; one lamp, hanging from the vaulted ceiling on long chains, was close to the traveller, who raised his head from prayer and stared at it with tears in his eyes. She had seen him thin and ragged, scrambling along the deck of a small boat, all blurred and gone in an instant.

  Now he was here in her house, and when she dipped water from the stream and looked into the bowl she saw him sleeping there, safe, with her own familiar things all about him. But as she watched, some dark foul shadow rose and covered him, sank and lay alongside him, over him. He struggled but his eyes were closed. There was no strength in him. The evil shadow lay thickly upon him, its edges expanded to fill her room and she felt a cold gripping nausea as a vile reek rose from the bowl of water. The stench was in her nostrils, in her throat, choking her. She felt it in her mind, clogging her thoughts with half-seen visions that started fair but ended foul in blood and torment.

  Jerking her head back from the bowl she crossed herself and flung the water on to the ground. An evil taste lingered in her mouth. She blew her nose hard and spat, drank clean water from the stream and splashed it on her face. The sweat on her body stuck the gown to her skin, and turned chill.

  This strangling slime had a name. This clarty reek had a name. It was … it was …

  She had never met this evil before, but something within her, older than Janiva herself, knew it, knew it for the enemy, knew it as a thing to be vanquished and destroyed.

  It had a name. It was a succubus.

  From the sick episode by the stream, Janiva plunged into the village’s May Day celebrations with a fierce hunger for normality and fun. The greensward beside the church was packed with Shawl’s own villagers, and people from neighbouring settlements. A maypole was set up, topped with a green bush and twined with flowers and leaves already wilting in the heat of the fine day. Stalls hemmed the green selling food and drink, secondhand clothes and shoes, pots and pans, knives and spoons, tawdry trinkets and patchily-dyed coarse ribbons. Sir Guy had sent three sheep to be roasted, and these, turning on their spits, scented the air with mutton grease, promising well for growling bellies later on. Sir Guy and Lady Alienor were in the church talking with Father Osric, who was hoping for a money gift to pay for new shutters. The winter blasts through the window-holes were crippling; the old boards were rotten and would never stand another winter. Sir Guy’s little group of family, friends and servants stood in the churchyard waiting for him, talking and laughing, an occasional high-spirited shriek of mirth from one of the women shrilling over all.

  A relic-pedlar-cum-quack-doctor had set up shop against the churchyard wall beside the gate, offering unguents to heal the bone-ache, powders to sprinkle into husbands’ ale to increase potency and potions to cure everything else. He also offered salt from the pillar that was Lot’s quondam wife, fingernail clippings from Saint Peter and some of the clay from which God had made Adam. A small crowd stood staring, unimpressed and ready to jeer. ‘Put er in yer stewpot,’ shouted one, of Lot’s wife. The pedlar glared, but just then the lord and lady came out of the church; he redoubled his enthusiasm but the fine folk jostled by laughing and chattering, and took no notice.

  The locals, who took great interest in such matters, noticed that Sir Guy wore his old red hat but had a new blue cloak with fur trimmings. Lady Alienor was wearing her second-best blue gown but with a new girdle. There were little bells on the girdle’s ends, which chimed and tinkled as she walked. Shawl folk grinned, nudging one another, and pointed to make sure no one missed this novelty. Pog’s wife, who was selling ale, poured a brimming beaker for Sir Guy who downed it in three heroic gulps then rocked back on his heels looking surprised—Pog’s wife’s brew was particularly potent this year. Sir Guy braced himself and beamed in all directions before plunging on. Miller gave him a sausage, Blacksmith’s wife gave him a pickled onion. Tanner’s little girl, scowling ferociously, thrust a bunch of drooping flowers into the lady’s hands. Lady Alienor patted the child’s cheek kindly, looked with resignation at her bouquet, and yawned, longing to go home and get her shoes off. Her husband had bought them for her in York; they were too narrow but she didn’t want to disappoint him by admitting it. Her face brightened when she caught sight of Janiva, and she sent a servant to fetch her.

  ‘God save you, My Lady,’ said Janiva. ‘I thought you were still away, following the bridal pair.’

  ‘We got back last night,’ said Alienor. ‘My lord would have us back for May Day! Thinks nothing can happen without him. Let’s sit down in the shade for a little while. My feet are killing me!’

  ‘How is Sir Roger?’ Janiva asked. ‘And how do you like your daughter-in-law?’

  ‘The boy does well,’ his mother said, ‘and the girl will do, though he’d sooner have had you, as well you know.’

  ‘Ah, but I am dowerless.’ Janiva laughed. ‘A poor match for a knight! Besides, I think of Roger as my brother. There is no blood bond, I know, but nothing can make me think of him in any other way. And truly, Lady, I don’t want to marry! Not just Roger, I don’t want to marry at all! You know how I feel.’

  ‘It’s against nature.’ Lady Alienor sniffed. ‘I don’t hold with female education! It overheats the brain.’ She looked round quickly to see if her husband was near. He wasn’t, his red hat showed at a safe distance over the heads of the mud-coloured crowd, like an exotic poppy. She slipped her shoes off and tenderly massaged her toes. ‘Look, there’s a blister already! And I haven’t had them on any time at all. You always were an ungovernable creature, Janiva, and my lord indulges you sinfully, letting you be taught to read and write. But he’d find a good match for you, if you’d let him.’

  ‘Sir Guy has always been like a father to me; and you, My Lady, kindness itself. But I’m a free woman. I
have my bovate of land, my house and the allowance my lord settled on me when Mother died. There’s no one to bid me or forbid me. Not many women can say as much.’

  Alienor looked hard at her, then patted her hand. ‘Wilful,’ she said. ‘Not that there isn’t some sense in what you say, and your mother was no fool; I liked her. But for her milk and her care, my son would have died a baby. Now, God willing, he’ll be fathering his own sons. That plump little fig he’s married should have no trouble feeding them—breasts like bolsters!’ She wrestled her shoes on again, grimacing, and held out her hands for a servant to pull her up. ‘I must catch up with my lord,’ she said, ‘before he eats anything else. He’ll be groaning and farting all night! God be with you, Janiva.’

  ‘And you, My Lady.’

  The sunny cheerfulness and general goodwill cleaned the stink from Janiva’s mind. She shared the ale, enjoyed the mutton, bought a pretty latten belt buckle and watched a group of gaudy players perform a short bawdy play about Saint George and the dragon. This ended amid waves of hilarity as the dragon’s component parts—two men, the front and back ends—collapsed in terror at the sight of the saint’s enormous wooden phallus and fell off the stage altogether, having imbibed too much of Pog’s wife’s ale.

  When she felt clean again, right again, she went back to her house. The sounds of revelry, singing, bagpipes, whistles, recorders and surges of mirth could be clearly heard, and Straccan had tried to get up and have a look. His legs were still shamefully wobbly, but he’d pulled her stool to the open doorway, and was sitting in the sun with a blanket round him and her kitten in his lap. He looked very tired.

  She set a pot of water on the fire and put greens, carrots, turnips and dried peas in it. ‘I’ve brought mutton from the feast. I expect you’re hungry, but first take your medicine.’ She poured a mugful of the bitter brown liquid he’d been swallowing obediently for the past couple of days, and he downed it, making a face.

  ‘What is that stuff?’

  ‘I make it from willow bark,’ she said. ‘It is sovereign for fevers and the ague. Sir Richard, I must talk to you.’ She brought her other stool out and sat opposite him. ‘What did you mean, when you said you had evil dreams?’

  He looked away from her towards the green and shifted uneasily on his seat. ‘Well, you know, nightmares.’

  ‘Not just from the fever. You had them before you were ill.’

  ‘Yes. How do you know? For some weeks. It seems forever.’

  ‘Falling? Drowning? Monsters chasing you? Rooted to the spot, with danger at your throat?’

  ‘Nothing so commonplace.’ He coloured and looked embarrassed.

  ‘I can’t describe them. About women, you know? God help me, children, even. I’m not like that! Lust and torment, night after night, till I’m afraid to close my eyes! Nastiness.’ His eyes, very blue in the open air and under the bright sky, had a desperate haunted look.

  ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘Nastiness. That’s it.’ She felt a cold anger that this man, her traveller, an ordinary decent man, should have been poisoned by this thing. ‘Sir Richard, I believe you’re bespelled.’ They turned out his saddlebags, his purse; examined his clothes, his boots, even the harness and saddle, all the straps, buckles and rings. ‘There will be something. A charm for ill,’ she said. ‘I’ll know it when I see it.’ From his clothes and belongings she only sensed a confusion of everyday matters and a strong anxiety shot through with a vivid anger, nothing else. She handed him his belt satchel. ‘What’s in there?’ she asked.

  ‘Only the relic, the finger. Bane put it there before he left. You’ve seen that, anyway.’

  ‘No, not that,’ she said. ‘Is there anything else in this bag?’

  ‘No.’ He tipped the latten reliquary into his hand and upended the satchel, tapping its bottom to show its innocent emptiness.

  They both stared at the small bright thing which fell out.

  ‘What’s that?’ He reached down, but she put her foot on it swiftly, to stop him touching it. He looked up in sudden shock at her fierce face. ‘Is that it? What is it? How did you know?’

  ‘It’s like a cloak around you, a smell. I can smell it inside, in my mind. Sorcery has a stink to it.’

  ‘Sorcery?’ He said it violently, making her jump. ‘Sorcery! It’s Pluvis—or was!’ He told her about the ring of stones and the decapitated white hen. ‘That was it, wasn’t it? Some sort of filthy witchery he used to call my Gilla to him!’

  ‘I think so. Who is this Pluvis? Why is he your enemy?’

  ‘He’s the man who was killed here at Shawl. And a week ago I would have said I had no enemies! I’m a quiet man. I live peacefully. I go about my business honestly. I don’t mess with the supernatural.’

  ‘You trade in it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Of course you do. Relics. What are they, if not supernatural?’

  ‘They’re not sorcery!’

  ‘They’re power,’ she said flatly. ‘Power can be used for good or ill.’

  ‘Relics are good,’ he said angrily. ‘They heal.’

  ‘They can harm, too. I’ve heard of relics that struck down thieves, paralysed evildoers and smote blasphemers dumb, liars blind, oath-breakers dead. Power works both ways. You trade in the uncanny, Sir Richard, and you deal with powerful folk. Among them is one at least who seeks your harm. Think!’

  She fetched the tongs from the hearth and picked up the charm. It was a bright tangle—a few strands of hair, a bit of red thread-twisted and stuck together with some sort of gummy stuff in a ring-shape, its sole intent to do him hurt. Looking at it with loathing, he felt the fear coiling coldly in his belly swiftly replaced by a burning fury.

  He followed her into the house, wishing the enemy was there to strike through and through, slash, hack and destroy. The lack of a foe to strike was almost more than he could bear. He watched as Janiva snatched her pot from the fire and threw the charm into the flames. The kitten swore and streaked out of a window, tail a-bristle like a small comet. The thing burned quickly, a flare that died to a ring of ash which she scattered with the poker; but the stink of it grew and became enormous, a gorge-heaving reek of corruption.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ he gasped, swallowing hard as the willow-bark medicine strove to rise again. He fought it back. Janiva’s face was white and sick. He saw the convulsive movement of her throat, snatched her hand and ran lurching through the doorway into daylight, where he gulped the clean air until his mind felt scoured. In place of the sick obsessions, bright clean anger burned, at whoever sought to mire him in such filth.

  When they went back inside the choking stench had gone but something still smelled rotten. Janiva looked about, sniffing, and came to the covered clay pot which she had carried back from the fair. She lifted the lid, cried out, clapped it down again and hurled the pot outside as far as her arm could send it.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?’

  ‘It was the meat,’ she said miserably. ‘Cut fresh from the roasting. Oh Richard, it was full of maggots!’ She sobbed suddenly and leaned against the doorpost. He tipped her face up with a hand under her chin and kissed her. She clung to him. There were tears on her lips.

  Chapter 15

  Bane had spent a comfortable night, warm and dry, in a barn away from the high road. He was about five miles from Altarwell where he was to wait for Straccan. There was a famous shrine to Saint Felicity there, and yesterday the road had been busy with pilgrims coming and going. It was a fair fresh morning. Bane ate his breakfast and made his way to the river, which he could hear in the trees not far off, to have a wash and water his horse. Then he heard the noise.

  He listened. There it was again. Pigs, he thought. As it was much too early, only just dawn, for domestic pigs to be out and about, these must be wild pigs. Perhaps there was a piglet among them to which he could help himself without anyone being the wiser. He tied the grey to a tree, took his small bow and a couple of arrows, and cautiously slipped through the trees a
nd undergrowth in the direction of the sound.

  He found himself on the edge of an open space: not a clearing, an ancient place ringed with low grey irregular stones, a broken ring with several stones missing. Within the circle on the trampled grass, lay a clutter of ragged folk and a no less ragged little monk, all of them equally thin and dirty, huddled asleep. They lay, snoring and wuffling, in various abandoned positions, as if God had shaken them out of a great bag in the sky and left them as they dropped.

  Puzzled, Bane saw that several of the sleepers had ropes tied round their middles leading to latches on a stout leather belt round the monk’s waist. Three of the sleepers were thus attached, and six others lay a bit apart with no bonds. Under the monk’s outflung right arm lay his hooked pilgrim staff, and fastened to it a worn obviously empty provender bag. Some of the sleepers, Bane now saw, were women. Although their shapelessly-bundled bodies gave no clue, the rest were all to some degree bearded.

  The little monk suddenly woke himself with a prodigiously raucous snore and sat up staring about, patting the ropes on his belt and swivelling round on his bottom to count his companions. ‘… five, six, seven, eight, nine, thank God and his Blessed Mother …’ All in a hasty soft babble. Then he scrambled to his knees, clasped his hands together and had a quick pray, before rummaging in the breast of his gown for a small bundle which he undid to reveal a brass bell. This he rang very gently. The musical jingle at once woke the others, and one of the women, sitting up, looked straight into the surrounding trees, saw Bane, and screamed like a trapped rabbit.