A Gathering of Ghosts

by Karen Maitland

  He already had a shrewd suspicion of what he might uncover. Farmers and millers always tried to hide the true worth of their land and stock, so they could pay less rent and hand over fewer beasts and sacks of flour. It was the same the world over – Cyprus, Rhodes, England: the local people tried to cheat the order if they could. But a seemingly casual gossip with a long-serving parish priest might enable Nicholas to discover a little more about the true value of the lands, properties and livestock in those parts and the real wealth of the priory’s tenants. Old men were always willing to talk for hours if they could find someone interested enough to listen, and Nicholas was interested.

  Women were easily gulled and too soft-hearted. He’d wager his own horse that the farmers were handing their coins to Sister Clarice and rubbing their hands in glee that she was fool enough to charge them a fraction of what they should have paid. Little wonder she found it easy to collect the rents. Well, the tenants’ days of ease were over. A seasoned knight was in charge now, and those thieving hands were about to be chopped off.

  Nicholas plucked his hose from the crumpled heap of clothes and, with a shudder, tried to pull them on. They were still wet and stinking from the journey. He badly needed a fresh pair, but he couldn’t see where his clothes chest had been put. Hob had plainly not troubled to unload the cart, and Alban had lacked the wit to retrieve his personal possessions from among the provisions.

  It had been the journey from Hell. It had rained without ceasing, numbing limbs and faces, while the wind, slashing through their sodden clothes, had stung like salt on a flayed back. The loaded wagon had repeatedly become mired in the twisting ribbon of calf-deep mud that Hob had called a road. Both Nicholas and Alban had been obliged to dismount to help free it and they’d no sooner have it rolling forward again than it would start sliding back down the hillside or a wheel would become wedged behind a stone buried in the ooze.

  Once they were up on the moors, they’d no longer been able to make night-camp for fear that the light from the fire would bring every outlaw in those parts swarming to them, like flies to a corpse. This shire was reputed to be one of the most lawless in England. Its inhabitants thought themselves so far from the sheriff’s men in Exeter that they could rob and murder as they pleased and never be caught. Even the white cross formée on the breast of a knight’s black cloak was no protection, these days. All the Hospitallers’ garb meant to any man in England now was rich pickings.

  Then, finally, as they had breasted a rise, Hob had stopped the wagon and pointed through the driving rain to where three or four tiny red dots hung somewhere in the darkness, suspended between Heaven and Hell. ‘That,’ he had announced, with grim satisfaction, ‘is your new home, Masters, and may God have mercy on your souls.’ He’d crossed himself. ‘I hope you’re praying men, Brothers, ’cause you’ll need more than a sword to protect you up there. Other side of that priory stands the most accursed hill on the whole moor. Old ’uns called it Fire Tor, but some call it Ghost Tor. You can hear the dead whispering among those rocks. Hungry ghosts, they are. There’s many has heard them talking, and some even followed the voices into the caves up there. Followed them in, Brothers, but never came out, for once you cross into the deadlands, there’s no coming back.’

  Nicholas shivered as he dragged his damp, mud-caked shirt over his head and struggled to thrust his arms through the clinging sleeves. He was still wrestling with his jerkin when Alban sauntered in, dragging a blast of cold air with him.

  ‘It’s well you’re dressed,’ the groom observed.

  Nicholas grunted. ‘In sodden clothes! Where’s my chest? Hasn’t that idle carter and his frog-witted son unloaded it yet? Go and chase them, and while you’re about it, tell one of those servants to fetch me some breakfast, a good one too, seeing that I didn’t get any supper.’ He glowered at Alban.

  The groom was leaning against the door, scraping mud from under his nails with the point of his knife. He was a scrawny, ferret-faced man, indifferent to people, but there wasn’t a horse he couldn’t calm and control in spite of having lost, as a lad, his left forefinger and half of the middle one to a badger cub. He didn’t bother to look up until Nicholas drew breath.

  ‘Be lucky to get anything to eat this side of noon,’ he said morosely. ‘All the servants and sisters are outside, chattering like a flock of starlings. There’ll not be a peck of work done this day by my reckoning.’

  ‘And the prioress allows this?’ Nicholas said incredulously. If this was how the priory was run, then Johanne would find herself in a cloister in Buckland before the month was out.

  ‘I reckon she’s more to fret over than the servants just now. There’s been a death, one of the patients in the infirmary.’

  ‘So? That can hardly be anything unusual. Does work cease every time someone dies?’

  ‘Aye, well, if the gossip in the courtyard is to be believed, it’s not death that’s unusual but the manner of it. There’s some out there whispering sorcery.’ A sly grin crept across Alban’s face. It was not often he could render the knight speechless and he was evidently relishing the moment.

  In spite of his thumping headache, chilled body, raging thirst and general ill-humour, a prickle of excitement and fear coursed down Nicholas’s spine. He’d been sent to uncover financial mismanagement, but now it seemed there might be a whole mess of corruption to be exposed. He grabbed his still-damp cloak and hurried out into the courtyard.

  It was easy to guess which door led into the infirmary from the gaggle of people clustered around it. He forced his way through them and flung open the door. Prioress Johanne spun round, surprise and anger darkening her face as she saw who had entered.

  The room was long and plain, save for a wall painting of the Blessed Virgin over the doorway, staring down with a dispassionate gaze. A fire blazed in the hearth in the centre of the floor. The reeds of the thatch above were blackened with smoke, which drifted among the rafters in sluggish grey clouds until it found its own way out. A row of narrow, but high beds were ranged down the length of one wall, each divided from its neighbour by a wooden partition to keep out the draughts. A scrubbed table and benches stood on the opposite side of the hearth, while an assortment of rough wooden stools, copper lavers and small iron-banded chests crowded together in the corners of the room. A screen woven from rushes had been set in front of a bed in the far corner. Nicholas could hear faint moans and whimpers coming from behind it. Evidently one patient was too ill to be moved, unlike the others: the rest of the beds were empty, the covers thrown back in disarray as if the occupants had been dragged out in haste.

  Nicholas was puzzled. Many came to the infirmaries of St John in the hope of making a good death, and life carried on around them as they died. Indeed, it was right and fitting that it should, for it helped others prepare their souls for what must come to every man and to search their consciences for the answers to questions that would be asked of them in their final confessions. Why had these patients been removed?

  Prioress Johanne and two more sisters of the order were standing close to the only other bed that appeared to be occupied, though Nicholas could not immediately see who was lying there. The plumper of the two sisters took a step towards him, as if she intended to shoo him out, but the prioress caught her sleeve and gave a slight shake of her head.

  Nicholas strode towards them. ‘I understand that one of your patients has died, Sisters. Brother Alban said . . .’ He hesitated. Remembering the grin on Alban’s face, he was suddenly afraid of sounding foolish. Suppose the groom had been joking. It wasn’t something any normal man would find funny, but Alban had a twisted sense of humour.

  Johanne moved, blocking Nicholas’s path. ‘There is no need for you to trouble yourself. As you say, the man is dead. The sisters will prepare the body for burial. Brengy, the stable boy, has been sent to the village to warn the sexton and Deacon Wybert to prepare for burial. All is in hand,’ she said briskly. She gave a cold smile and took another pace forward, as if tryi
ng to ease Nicholas out of the door. But he stepped around her and, in a few strides, was at the bed.

  The linen sheet had been drawn up to cover the face of the body lying beneath. After a lifetime of war, Nicholas was hardly a man to shrink from the sight of a corpse. He whisked back the sheet, exposing the gaunt face. An elderly man was lying on his back, his clawed hands raised to either side of his face, as if he had been trying desperately to push something or someone away. His milky eyes were wide open and his neck arched. His mouth gaped in a silent scream and his wrinkled face was contorted in an expression Nicholas could only describe as pure terror. He had seen such horror frozen on the faces of women and men who had been shrieking for mercy even as the fatal blow descended, from a knight’s sword or a Turks’ scimitar, but never on an old man who had died peacefully in his bed.

  As he had done many times for his brothers slain on the battlefield, Nicholas grasped the wrists, intending to pull the arms down and cross them as a Christian should lie in death, but they were rigid, unyielding as stone, the flesh so cold it made his fingers sting to touch it. He snatched his hands away with a gasp. ‘He’s been dead for hours. Why was he left like this? Surely you know that a body stiffens and then it is impossible to straighten it. Who was watching these patients through the night?’

  ‘That is the puzzle,’ Johanne said softly. ‘Father Guthlac has not been dead for hours.’

  Nicholas stared at her. ‘This is the parish priest? But I wanted to talk to him. You didn’t tell me last evening that he was dying.’

  ‘I had no reason to think that he was,’ Johanne said. ‘He was restless throughout the night, unusually so. Sister Basilia and Sister Melisene both went to comfort and calm him at different times, not least because the other patients in the hospital were distressed by his cries. Father Guthlac fell quiet in the darkest hour before dawn, and it was thought he was sleeping, but when dawn broke, he was discovered . . .’

  ‘I found him like this, Brother,’ Basilia said. Her plump hands were trembling and her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying. ‘He was having terrible nightmares, but he had no fever or sickness, did he?’ She turned in appeal to Melisene, who nodded silently.

  ‘I tried to straighten his body. I made to close his mouth and cross his arms, but he was as stiff then as he is now, and cold as iron. There is no explaining it. The fire’s been burning all night and his is one of the closest beds to it, in consideration of his age, and he’d good thick coverings.’

  ‘There’s one explanation,’ Melisene muttered.

  ‘And one I do not wish to hear repeated, Sister Melisene,’ Johanne snapped.

  ‘What’s this?’ Nicholas demanded. ‘If the sister knows what has caused this unnatural death, I insist on hearing it.’

  ‘Father Guthlac was old, blind and frail. There is nothing unnatural—’

  Nicholas pointedly turned his back to the prioress, raising his voice above hers. ‘Come, Sister, what is it you wish to tell us?’ He laid his hand on Melisene’s shoulder in what he imagined to be a reassuring and encouraging gesture. She backed away in alarm, gazing in mute appeal at Johanne.

  ‘Very well,’ Johanne said. ‘I dare say you will hear the rumours, anyway. Last evening a blind child was found abandoned in the chapel. When he was brought into the infirmary Father Guthlac became upset. As I said, he was an elderly man, and the old often become agitated by the slightest change around them. He was given a sleeping draught to soothe him.’

  ‘Am I to understand he was poisoned with the sleeping draught, given too much or the wrong herb was administered?’

  ‘I gave it to him and I’ve never made a mistake with my simples,’ Basilia protested indignantly.

  ‘It was the boy who did this,’ Melisene blurted out. ‘Father Guthlac said if we let him stay under our roof, he’d destroy us. Destroy us all! Those were his very words. And that boy was tormenting the poor old priest all night long. Punishing that sweet, holy man for speaking out God’s truth.’

  Nicholas stared down at the priest’s corpse, the face still contorted in terror. ‘So, Alban was right,’ he breathed. ‘It was sorcery!’

  ‘It was no such thing,’ Johanne said firmly, glaring at Melisene. ‘Brother, you are a learned man and you surely cannot believe that a frightened blind child, who cannot utter so much as a single word, much less a curse, would have the power to murder a priest when he wasn’t even in the same room. The child is helpless. He cannot even find his bed unaided or feed himself without his hands being guided to the dish. Father Guthlac had become agitated, a state well known to bring about convulsions in those who are frail. Look at the way his neck is arched. That is doubtless why the body is so rigid.’

  Nicholas eyed the corpse doubtfully. ‘If this priest was indeed seized by a convulsion that is yet further evidence that maleficia is at work. The innocent are often thrown to the ground in such fits by evil spirits conjured by a sorcerer or a witch in order to prevent them from speaking the truth. I must examine the boy for myself.’

  ‘I forbid you to do any such thing, Brother Nicholas.’ The prioress’s voice reverberated through the silent hall, like a watchman’s horn. ‘The child has been abandoned and appears to have only recently lost his sight. He is terrified. Interrogating him over matters of which he can know nothing will only frighten him still further. Besides,’ she said, lowering her voice, ‘any attempt to question him would be useless. As I have told you, he cannot speak.’

  She took a deep breath, as if she was trying to hold her anger in check. ‘You told me last night that the Lord Prior is anxious that nothing is spread abroad which could be used by those who seek to destroy the Knights of St John. The parish priest, Father Guthlac, was a good man, but the old often lapse into strange fancies. I’ve known some who thought their own children were trying to murder them or that their wife was their mother. When men are dying their wits may flee their heads long before their souls depart their bodies. But I fear that if Father Guthlac’s words were repeated outside this priory by one of the servants or travellers’ – she glared pointedly at Melisene – ‘there are some simple and unlettered folk who would believe them. The villagers still remember Father Guthlac as he used to be and they would be only too eager to see malicious witchcraft in his death. I am sure you would agree, Brother Nicholas, it would not be in the interest of any in our order to have the name of the Hospitallers coupled with that.’

  She fixed him with a stare that had been known to stay the hand of even the most drunken or violent of men. And, to his surprise, Nicholas heard himself telling the prioress he would make it known that he had examined the body, and could assure the servants Father Guthlac had died in his sleep of nothing more sinister than plain old age.

  Afterwards he convinced himself he had done it for the sake of the order. Neither Commander John nor the Lord Prior would thank him if tales of murder by sorcery at a Hospitallers’ priory were spread abroad. A scandal such as that could be used to bring down the Knights of St John, as it had the powerful and wealthy Templars.

  On the other hand, if a private report about the true manner of the old man’s death were to reach the Lord Prior at Clerkenwell, it might prove the very weapon Lord William needed to force these obdurate women into Minchin Buckland and keep them safely cloistered there till they withered and died.

  What better way to prove himself worthy of returning to Rhodes as Commander Nicholas than to save the Hospitallers from disgrace and deliver the sisters to Buckland at one stroke? It would give him great pleasure to see the prioress stripped of her rank and forced to bend the knee, very great pleasure indeed.

  Chapter 7

  Sorrel

  Todde was walking ahead of me on the narrow moorland track, dragging his donkey through the mire and deep icy puddles, while the poor beast tried repeatedly to jerk his head rope from his master’s frozen fingers and snatch at a few blades of coarse muddy grass. The teetering stack of Todde’s tools and Mam’s cooking pot tied to his back cl
inked and clanked with every step.

  I stumbled after them, gazing up at the iron-dark clouds swirling around the towering rocks, the black bog pools quivering under the lash of rain, the withered, stunted trees hunched and bent like aged men against the wind. I began to wonder if the sun had ever shone on these moors or ever would. Why had I been led to such desolation? Why had I ever listened to a voice in my head? I plodded on, my mind as numb as my face and feet, no longer bothering to pick my way around the deep ruts. My shoes were already so sodden and heavy with mud that another puddle would make no difference. Besides, the moor was as wet as the track – there was no avoiding the mire wherever you trod. My flesh had turned into cold earth. My bones had become gnarled roots. I was a corpse melting back into the soil of the grave.

  Somewhere overhead a buzzard screamed, like a cat in pain, but almost at once there was another cry, this time human. Three men were running down the hillside towards Todde and the donkey, long knives flashing in their hands. Before he’d a chance to draw his own blade they were upon him. One held him from behind with a knife at his throat, as the second grabbed the leading rope of the donkey, while the third straddled the path, staring towards me and tossing his knife from hand to hand.

  ‘Take one step closer, woman, and we’ll slice his throat from ear to ear. Then we’ll come for you.’

  Chapter 8

  Morwen

  ‘It won’t do no good,’ my eldest sister, Ryana, grumbled, but she might as well have saved her breath.

  When Ma had been journeying in the spirit lands she’d have to do whatever the magpie or the other creatures told her, else we’d all suffer. Leastways, that was what she said. Taegan, the middle one of us three, reckoned Ma only did what she’d already made up her mind to do, and we suffered anyway. Once, when Taegan was only ten summers old, she’d dared come right out with it and say as much. Ma thrashed her for those words till she howled worse than the ghosts on Fire Tor. The beating didn’t stop her thinking it, but it taught her to keep her thoughts from Ma’s sharp ears, most of the time anyway.