[Sir Richard Straccan 01] - The Bone-Pedlar

by Sylvian Hamilton

  ‘In the wash-house,’ said the cook. ‘There’s roast duck for dinner, if you’re not too tired to eat it.’

  Magnus waved a scornful hand. ‘See you later,’ he said to Bane.

  ‘I’m leaving at first light. You can get a mattress in the hall and have your dinner there.’ He made off across the yard to one of the buildings.

  ‘Who’s Marget?’ Bane asked the scullion.

  ‘His sweetheart,’ the man said. ‘His sister.’ Jerking his head towards the cook.

  ‘What time’s dinner?’

  ‘Dusk. Will you help me carry it up?’

  ‘I might. How many feeders?’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘That’s not the full garrison, is it?’

  ‘Ach, no. The lord’s away, he’s no been here since Yule, and the young lord’s gone off and took twenty with him. So there’s just us,’ gesturing round the kitchen, ‘and Marget, and the young lord’s friend in the gatehouse, the lady of course, them upstairs, and the infidel.’ He spat and crossed himself.

  ‘No children?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Told you, I feed them. Twenty mouths.’

  ‘Who’s the lady?’

  ‘The old lord’s wife. Puir thing, she’s away with the fairies.’ He made a gesture universally understood, twirling a finger beside his ear.

  ‘What’s this infidel, then?’

  The scullion looked uneasy. ‘Ach, he’s an auld body, belongs to the lord. Ah’ve niwer seen him. He keeps his room.’

  Bane found a barrel of wizened but still-sweet apples, pocketed half a dozen and helped himself to a chunk of cheese. He made his way across the yard and up the outside stair to the door of the hall. Standing in the doorway, he looked into the cavernous smoky room. Rows of straw pallets lay alongside the walls, several of them occupied by sleepers. A roaring fire burned at one end of the hall and beside it lay two huge boar hounds, one asleep, the other scratching with mindless persistence. A few stools and a bench were grouped at a comfortable distance from the fire around a board resting on trestles and half a dozen unshaven unbuttoned men were playing without enthusiasm a game involving dice and small stones.

  The stair continued in a spiral inside, its uneven steps curling out of sight.

  Bane walked over to the table watched by six pairs of unfriendly eyes.

  As Straccan—a stranger and therefore dangerous—rode up from the river, the watchman atop the donjon had a crossbow bolt aimed at him and the two guards at the gate held their pikes ready to rip his guts out if required. He reined in at a suitable distance. ‘Sir Richard Straccan, to see Lord de Soulis.’

  The guards stared at him and glanced at one another. One shook his head. ‘The lord’s away,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  Before the man could reply, a voice from above drawled, ‘Well, God-a-mercy! Someone from civilisation has found this godforsaken place!’

  Straccan looked up at the small window above the gate. A pale but cheerful face peered down at him. ‘A knight, are ye? And seeking Lord Rainard?’

  ‘I have something to deliver to him,’ Straccan said. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Turlo FitzCarne of Dun Carne. Oh, let him in. Let him come up,’ he cried to the guards who still stood at the ready, looking uncertain. ‘He’s alone; are you afraid of one man? They probably are, you know,’ he added to Straccan. ‘Couldn’t fight their way out of a haystack!’

  The pikemen let him pass. His heart hammered hard and fast beneath his ribs. Somewhere in this place he might find Gilla. If she was here, he’d find her, and God help anyone who tried to stop him.

  ‘Up here!’ The voice from above again. A wooden stair led up to the door of the room over the gate and, in the doorway, leaning on rough crutches, was Sir Turlo FitzCarne.

  ‘FitzCarne,’ said Straccan, as he mounted the stair. ‘Haven’t I heard of you?’

  ‘Lord, I should hope so,’ said Sir Turlo, crutching rapidly over to a fleece-heaped chair by the window.

  ‘Tourneys,’ said Straccan. ‘That’s what you do. The circuit! You were champion at Chester and Windsor. What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘You may well ask,’ said the champion morosely, pouring wine into two horn cups. ‘Sit down and have a drink. I’m here because of this blasted broken leg. What brings you to the back of beyond?’

  Not that he listened. He was an addict deprived of his drug talk—and once started, it seemed nothing could stop his flow. He had broken his leg in a fall three months before at an unimportant little tourney in Carlisle. Not his sort of thing at all—a piddling little local affair, not even licensed—but seeing he was there and it was going on, well, he entered, just to keep his hand in. His girth broke and down he went just after unhorsing and vanquishing Bertran de Soulis, son of Lord Rainard. Sir Bertran had chivalrously insisted Sir Turlo be his guest until he was fit again, when he could collect his ransom and rejoin the tourney circuit at his pleasure.

  ‘It’s taken much longer than I expected,’ said the champion. ‘But I think it’s really on the mend now. Another two or three weeks, and with the blessing, I’ll be on my way at last.’ He had missed the great tourney at Edinburgh, alas, which was just a few days ago. That was where Sir Bertran had gone, leaving him bored and kicking his heels. ‘Well, not actually kicking them, do you see, in the circumstances, but I can’t sit a horse yet, and there’s nothing to do here, and no one to talk to.’

  In a corner, Sir Bertran’s hawk, loaned to his guest, glowered on its perch and loosed a dropping which splattered on the floor. ‘Let her hobble about a bit outside and fly her at ducks and pigeons, but it’s clumsy like this, and she resents me, the creature!’ He had moved to the gatehouse when his friend departed. ‘It’s quieter. The men make more row day and night than pigs at trough! And there’s that creepy little fellow upstairs. I’d rather be as far as I can get from him.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Some old madman Lord Rainard looks after. An Arab, for God’s sake! A scholar, they tell me. Bertran wouldn’t go anywhere near him, and I’ve never even clapped eyes on him. He lives in the top chamber in the tower. I couldn’t get up all those steps even if I wanted to, which I don’t, and anyway, he’s an infidel, so he is.’

  ‘They told me below that Soulis is not here.’

  ‘Lord Rainard’s with the king.’

  ‘In Edinburgh?’

  ‘Wherever the king is—Edinburgh, Dunfermline, Roxburgh, Stirling—and he has his demesne, Soulistoun, but I’ve no idea where he is right now.’’

  ‘Then I must go on,’ said Straccan, putting his cup down. ‘Unless you can put me up for the night?’

  ‘Ah, sure, you’ll not be leaving now, not with night coming and the fairies about! Stay the night and go on in the morning,’ cried the hospitable invalid. ‘There’s been no human being to talk to since Bertran left.’ He crutched to the door where an iron triangle hung and rattled at it with a short iron bar. The clanging resulted in the emergence from the main hall on to the outside stair opposite, of the garrison captain, a burly sloven holding aloft a torch.

  ‘What d’ye lack?’ he bellowed.

  ‘Sir Richard will stay the night,’ FitzCarne bawled back across the yard. ‘Bring another mattress over, and blankets. And supper for two.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Straccan. Now he would have time to search.

  ‘Is there no one here but yourself then, and the garrison, and the old heathen?’

  ‘Well, there’s the lady; she never leaves her room either. There’s a fat slut that serves her, serves the garrison too, all corners. But they’re all scared spitless of the old man! It’s my belief he’s a sorcerer, I sign myself to the Trinity every time he comes to my mind.’ Suiting action to word, he crossed himself and devoutly kissed the crucifix he wore on a silver chain. ‘God and Mary and Patrick protect us from all evil,’ he said.

  ‘Amen,’ said Straccan. It was almost dark now and he wo
ndered where Miles and Larktwist were waiting. At least Bane was here, ready if needed.

  Bane was settled comfortably in the hall, throwing dice. He had brought his own—or, rather, a pair borrowed from Larktwist guaranteed to give him an edge. He’d lost a sum sufficient to endear him to his companions and was now teaching them ‘the latest game from France’, at which he intended to lose yet more, before eventually winning a respectable amount; not so much as to arouse undue suspicion, but enough to show a profit. The others crowded round the flat stone slab on which Bane had chalked the game’s ground, a square divided into smaller squares decorated with serpents, dragons and siege-ladders. A little pile of ragged half-and quarter-pennies went back and forth among them. The carter was in the stable with his doxy, and Bane had supped on scorched mutton wondering who got the ducks. (The cook, his sister and Magnus.)

  ‘What this game needs,’ said Bane, casually, ‘is a drink to wash the dust off my luck.’

  ‘Mine too. Will, run down and tell Sandy we need another jug of ale!’

  ‘Ale?’ said Bane, with a slight sneer. ‘I was thinking of this.’ He produced the carter’s reserve bottle, stolen and hidden in his capacious pocket. ‘Whisky.’

  Good fellowship and a hefty swig from Bane’s bottle compelled the captain to produce a similar bottle of his own, and the new game proceeded, noisily enough for Straccan to hear it in the gatehouse where FitzCarne was at last snoring on his pallet. From the window, which looked out for miles over the dale, not a light could be seen. Crawgard felt like the only human habitation left in all the world.

  Out there, according to his sleeping host, the Queen of Faerie and her Court would be riding even now, passing like a mist of stars threaded with music, unseen by Christians, bent on their cold, malicious sport. Elf-archers would shoot the farm dogs that gave warning of their coming. Nimble elf-maids would steal sleeping babies, as yet unbaptised, leaving in their place in the cradles bundles of rags, roots and dead leaves, casting their callous glamour on the substitutes so that for days after, poor bereaved mothers would nurse and rock and sing to the things, while husbands, families and neighbours feared them mad. Elves it was who called up the marshlights to lead night travellers to swampy death, and blighted the barley as it grew, and charmed axe-blades to turn on woodcutters. They soured and clotted the milk in cows’ udders in the byre, and laid tanglefoot spells on the paths and trackways, so that horses stumbled, and people afoot fell in the mud. Their hatred of humankind was very great, and only the cross of Christ could baffle their tricks. FitzCarne, a mine of faerie lore and an unstoppable story-teller, had kept going until, in desperation, Straccan feigned sleep, fearing he would otherwise talk all night.

  As silently as possible, boots in hand, Straccan tiptoed to the door and down the steps, praying they wouldn’t creak. At the foot of the stair he sat and put his boots on. He crossed the yard, pausing by the open stable door when he heard a woman laugh inside. A man’s voice mumbled something in reply, and Straccan could hear hay rustling. Moonlight through the door silvered limbs in a flurry of amorous activity. He glided past and climbed the donjon stair.

  Just before he reached the main door, there came a sound from above. He couldn’t make out any words, but after a deep-voiced cry there was a pause and then a strange droning chant accompanied by piping—an extraordinarily disquieting sound that stopped him in his tracks. It came from a narrow window on the top floor.

  There was nothing to see. Nothing moved in the moonlit night. There seemed no reason for the hairs to prickle and lift at the back of his neck and the sweat to run cold down his sides. For a moment, impossibly, he thought he smelled snow coming, and sensed air shifting, not behind or before him, but above. It was cold, so cold that the breath crackled in his nostrils as if it was midwinter.

  Then, as suddenly as it began, it was gone. The chanting and piping stopped. The June night was warm but Straccan was shivering. He crossed himself. Damn that garrulous idiot, FitzCarne, with his spooks, he thought angrily. What in the name of hell just happened? His heart was thudding, and it was some minutes before he could move on up the steps and peer in through the half-open door of the hall.

  There was a small group of men, Bane among them, clustered round the table over some sort of game. The stair continued, spiralling inside the wall now, to the chambers above. If Gilla was here, that’s where he would find her. Ghost-like, he faded in through the door on to the inner stair, swiftly up, round the curve, out of sight of the hall.

  At the first door he paused. No sound. He eased it open and was greeted by the smells of stale sweat, urine and sickness. He was in a large bedchamber, stone-chill and fireless, its windows shuttered but with enough moonlight filtering through cracks and round edges of the shutters to show the towering mass of the curtained bed.

  A woman’s voice from the bed said, ‘Marget?’

  ‘No, Madame.’

  The voice, now shrill with terror, began babbling prayers in a mixture of bad Latin and Norman French. Straccan shut the door and moved to the bedside, his eyes searching the darkness for the shape within the curtains.

  ‘Madame, I mean no harm! I’ll not hurt you.’

  The babbling stopped on a catch of breath, and a thin strong hand clamped on his arm, making him jump.

  ‘You’re real,’ she said. ‘I can touch you! You’re a man!’

  ‘Of course I’m real,’ he said, puzzled. ‘Did you think I was a ghost?’

  ‘No. I know all the ghosts here,’ she said. ‘They do no harm. Poor lost things. When I die, shall I join them, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, disconcerted. ‘Are you the Lady de Soulis, wife of Lord Rainard?’

  ‘Oh, hush,’ she said sharply. ‘Don’t speak his name! He’ll find us, if you speak his name. Naming calls, has no one told you that?’

  ‘No, Lady. I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘That’s why I lie here in the dark. I could have lights, you know. I could have hundreds of candles if I wished; he is rich enough. But even he can’t see in the dark, he can’t see me here.’

  FitzCarne was right, he thought, the poor woman was wood-mad. Gently he patted the hand that quite painfully gripped his wrist. ‘Madame, I am looking for my daughter, Gilla. Is there a child here at Crawgard?’

  ‘Your daughter? No, no child here. Why should she be here?’

  ‘I think Lord Rai—your husband, I think he has her.’

  ‘Not here. Perhaps at Soulistoun. Is she young? That creature of his, Pluvis, he’s the one who steals children. Ugh! He used to bring them here, but I forbade it. That was long ago. Is it spring?’

  ‘It’s June, Madame.’

  ‘Summer already? I’ve not seen a summer day for seven years.’

  ‘Are you too ill to leave this room?’

  ‘I’m afraid, afraid to be out there, under the sky. It isn’t heaven, you know.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘The sky! It’s hell. Holy Church teaches that the devil and his realm are under the earth, but that’s wrong. Hell is in the sky, among the stars.’ Her free hand began patting about on the smelly quilts. ‘Where is it? Have you taken my charm?” She began to cry, a thin weak sobbing.

  ‘What charm, Madame? Let me strike a light, then you may find it.’

  ‘No! No light! I told you! Here, here it is!’ She clutched something and touched his hand with it—it felt like a warm stone.

  ‘Yes, you’re just a man. I thought you were, but I have to be sure.’

  ‘Madame, are you certain there is no child here?’

  ‘No child, no. My son was here a while ago, but he’s no child, and he’s gone away again. He came to say goodbye to me. He begged me to have candles, you know. But he has never seen the devils. I’ve seen them. They come down from hell, when that infidel wizard summons them. I heard him a little while ago. I felt their bitter breath.’

  ‘Madame, I must leave now,’ Straccan said, gently trying to prise her grip loose
. She resisted.

  ‘I can’t let you have my charm,’ she said distractedly. ‘It’s the only one I’ve got.’

  ‘I don’t want it, Madame.’

  ‘Don’t you? Are you another of his creatures, then?’ She snatched her hand away. ‘Flesh and blood, no demon, but you’re one of his people! I should have known! He sent you here!’

  Straccan stood up and backed away from the bed. ‘No, Madame, I’m not one of his people. I am sorry to have disturbed you. God be with you.’ He shut the door behind him, glad of its thickness, for even if the mad woman cried out, no one would hear, not with the racket downstairs. So that was Soulis’s wife, poor lady. And she was sure Gilla was not here. But she might not know. How could she know, shut in that room in the dark? A hundred children might be brought and slaughtered here without her knowing.

  Up the stair again. Another door opening into another bedchamber. No one there. Two small rooms in the thickness of the walls full of chests and boxes, some roped, others standing open, books and clothes inside, the dry smells of fleabane and lavender. He reached the top floor. The door opened silently on to a muffled darkness. Straccan tugged the heavy curtain aside. A reek of spices overlay a smell of rottenness. The room was high, narrow and hot—two glowing braziers accounted for that. At one end of the room was a low bed, a tumble of soiled cushions and grubby blankets. At the other end, a table was littered with parchments and books, and a small shrivelled man sat in a big painted chair. He held a pen in one hand; the other rested on the open pages of a massive volume. He wore the robe and corded headdress of a desert Arab, and with revulsion Straccan saw that although the hand wrote steadily, the man’s eyeballs were rolled back and only the blind whites showed.

  There was no one else in that foetid place, and certainly Gilla was not here.

  Straccan’s boots made no sound on the rugs, nor did the old man look up to see who had come in; he went on writing. When Straccan drew his dagger and laid its point to the writer’s scrawny neck, the scribbling hand did not cease and the blind eyes did not flicker.