A Gathering of Ghosts

by Karen Maitland

  Ma jabbed me in the ribs with her stick. ‘Move yer arse, Morwen. Get yourself out there and see who’s coming.’

  ‘It’ll be Meggy, I’m telling you,’ Ryana said, but Ma ignored her.

  I slipped through the door and crouched behind the great rock that formed the corner of our house where I could watch without being seen. The clouds were lifting as a chill wind gathered strength. A flock of starlings took flight, weaving and twisting, like a giant puff of smoke. I gazed up at them, trying to read the shapes they made – a spiral with three twists, a hound’s head black against the darkening sky, and then they were snaking down towards the valley. A black hound, a wisht hound, in the sky over the Fire Tor! Should I warn Ma? I could already hear Ryana sneering, Mazy-wen can’t even read the signs of rain when it’s falling. I felt myself shrinking. Say naught. That was safest.

  Someone was coming, but it wasn’t Meggy. The dregs of light had almost gone and I couldn’t see her clearly, but I knew the old woman’s shape and the way she moved. This one seemed younger, a thin whip of a creature. She was trying to cross the stream using the stepping-stones, but she was slipping and wobbling, like a duck on ice, as if she was unused to balancing on such things.

  I darted back inside to warn Ma. ‘It’s not Meggy,’ I said, grinning at the sulky scowl on Ryana’s face. ‘Must be a blow-in, I reckon. She’s not from the moor for she doesn’t know where to put her feet.’

  I darted outside again. The stranger was standing afore our threshold, staring at the cottage, her face half hidden under a bit of old cloth she’d wrapped about her head against the wind and wet.

  ‘Is it Kendra you’re seeking?’ I asked, gently as I could.

  ‘Is she the blood charmer?’

  ‘Best on the whole moor,’ I said, though for all I knew, Ma was the only blood charmer – I’d not heard tell of another.

  Kendra had already taken up her place on the low stool behind the fire and had veiled herself in the smoke by the time I coaxed the stranger in.

  The woman huddled just inside the doorway. Her eyes, blue as speedwell flowers, darted round as she stared at each of us in turn. She looked as frightened as a mouse dropped into a box of cats. Her face was gaunt and her homespun clothes worn and caked with mud. They were heaped in layers over her thin body, as if she was wearing everything she owned, though if she was, how would she warm herself come winter?

  Ma studied her curiously, then beckoned to her with a crooked finger. ‘Come closer, Mistress. Old Kendra’ll do you no harm, less ye mean harm to her.’

  The stranger took a pace or two towards the fire. She ignored the stool and squatted on her haunches. As she moved, I saw that her left arm was dangling, like a broken wing, the skin on the limp hand mottled and waxy.

  Ma noticed it too. She gestured to it. ‘Can’t do nothing about that. If you’d been brought to me as a babe, maybe . . . but it’s too late now.’

  The woman started to say something, but she spoke so low I couldn’t make it out.

  Ma leaned forward. ‘Speak bold, Mistress. There’s none here to hear your secrets save us and the spirits.’

  The woman’s eyes widened and she glanced around as if she thought she might see imps hanging from the beams or peeping at her from under Ma’s bed.

  ‘I’m living at the tinners’ camp. A woman there . . . a friend. She took a fall and lost the bairn she was carrying, three days since. The bleeding won’t stop. She said you once charmed a clootie for a tinner at the camp who’d been stabbed and his wound stopped bleeding.’

  I could see Ma preening herself. It always put her in a good humour to hear her charms had worked.

  ‘Eva said you might . . . I don’t know what to do, how to help her. I’m so afraid she might die.’

  ‘And what do they call you, Mistress? Have a name, do you? Everything must have a name.’

  ‘Sorrel.’

  Ma licked her lips, as if she was tasting the sound of it. ‘A healing wort, sorrel is, and one old Brigid marked for her own. Well, now, Sorrel, you brought a clootie from this friend of yours?’

  Silently the woman held out a rag rusty with drying blood. Her fingers were smeared with crimson. She passed the clootie over the flames of the hearth fire to Ma.

  Ma held it in both hands, inscribing a circle with it in the smoke of the fire. Her eyes half closed, she began to chant:

  ‘Stone woman sits over a spring and water stands still as ice.

  Earth dries up, skies dry up.

  Veins dry up and all that is full of blood dries up.’

  She raised the rag. ‘It shall be so, till milk flows from a rock.’ She held the clootie out to Sorrel. ‘Go home now. Tell her to press this to the flow of blood and it’ll stop.’

  But I knew it wouldn’t. Something had gone amiss. There was no power in the charm – I could feel it.

  Sorrel rose, holding the bloodstained rag carefully, as if it was as fragile as a blown egg. She looked at me, afraid to speak directly to Ma. ‘I’ve no coin, not till . . .’ She trailed off, her face racked with misery.

  ‘Can’t pay in coin for a blood charming,’ Ma said. ‘Silver works against it, see. But food I’ll take,’ she added hopefully.

  Sorrel gave a helpless shrug. ‘I’ve none of that either.’ She flinched as if she thought Ma might curse her or snatch the rag away.

  Ma hesitated, but we could all see the woman was not lying. She’d known more hunger than we had, by the look of her.

  Finally, Ma grunted. ‘See you bring me summat when you have it, else my curse’ll follow.’ She fixed the woman with a gimlet eye. ‘But don’t you go telling anyone, else half the moor folk’ll be looking to me to give them charms for naught.’

  Sorrel nodded and gave her a grateful smile, then ducked out of the doorway and into the night. I followed, and as soon as we were a few paces from the cottage, I hurried to catch up with her, but she had already broken into an ungainly, lopsided run, plainly anxious to take the charm back to her ailing friend. But it wouldn’t work, I knew it, though I couldn’t tell her.

  ‘You’re newly come to Dertemora?’ I called after her. It was a foolish question and had tumbled from me before I even knew what I was saying.

  But she stopped. No, more than that. She jerked as if something had struck her violently from behind. She walked back to me. Her eyes searching my face as if I was someone she had once known, but had only just recognised.

  ‘What did you say? What did you call this place?’

  ‘Dertemora. That’s the name for these parts.’

  The clootie fell from her hand. She stared around her into the darkness, as if she’d been asleep and had just woken and was trying to remember where she was.

  The wind bowled the rag across the ground. I ran after it and snatched it up. I cupped it between my palms, silently repeating the charm. I saw blood running down flesh and willed it to stop. I watched it dry and felt the cloth grow hot, then icy cold in my fingers. Eva’s flow would stop now, I was certain, though I could never tell Ma what I’d done.

  But when I pressed the clootie back into Sorrel’s hand, I almost dropped it again as a great flash of heat and pain coursed up my arm. For a moment, as we both held the rag, it was as if the moors had vanished and the two of us were alone inside the darkness of the tor cave. I could see Ankow’s corpse lying on the slab, could hear the dead prowling around us, their high-pitched keening circling me and this woman, binding us together with a rope of fire. But Sorrel was not alone: a great dark shadow was hovering behind her, a giant bird, its wings spread wide, as if they were hers.

  The rag was jerked from my fingers and the two of us were standing once more on the wild moor. Sorrel’s eyes flashed wide in wonder, staring into mine. ‘You,’ she breathed, so softly I half thought it was the sigh of the wind. ‘You hear her voice too. But who is she?’

  ‘I know you . . .’ I began. ‘I saw you before in the smoke.’

  She half opened her mouth to speak, but a shout rang
out from the doorway behind us.

  ‘Morwen, get you back in here. Ma wants some worts fetching.’

  I turned to Sorrel, but she was already hurrying away, only glancing round once to look at me. But once was enough. I knew she had felt the heat flash between us too, though plainly she had not understood it. Had she seen what I had? No . . . No, she had sensed something, but she hadn’t seen it. She couldn’t. Not yet. She didn’t know how to see. There was a power in her that was not yet awakened and she didn’t know it. But I did. And in that moment, I realised I’d been waiting all my life for her to come and find me.

  Chapter 19

  Prioress Johanne

  The knock on my door was timid and Sister Fina’s entrance into my chamber more so. She edged through the door, still limping, and stood more hunched than usual, cradling her bandaged arm. She stared at the corner of the table, but said nothing. She was always ungainly, but that morning she seemed more awkward than ever, like a broken statue, repaired with parts from a different figure. I urged her to sit, not from kindness but irritation at her shuffling.

  Fina winced as she perched on the edge of a stool.

  ‘I’m glad that you are recovered enough to leave your bed,’ I said. ‘Are your injuries mending?’

  Fina nodded unconvincingly, but still didn’t look at me.

  ‘Sister Basilia says she urged you to rest in bed for another day or two at least for you’ve eaten almost nothing. Are you sure you are well enough to be up? You look pale.’

  It would have been nearer the truth to say she looked hag-ridden, with circles under her eyes and a dark stain on her lip where it appeared she had been biting the skin.

  ‘I . . . The day is long when I am alone in the dorter and all the other sisters are working. I’d rather be busy.’

  ‘Reading, contemplation and prayer are our work too, Sister Fina, and even the most infirm of sisters can do that from her bed.’ I felt a pang of unease as I said it. If my sisters were forced into the cloister at Minchin Buckland, reading and contemplation would be all the work they were permitted to do. I shuddered as I imagined the endless years stretching ahead, filled with nothing but attending services and praying for the souls of our brother knights, one day the same as the next, each year identical to the one before and the one to come. Yet if I could not convince the Lord Prior to let us remain, I might well find myself trying to persuade my sisters of the glories of just such an existence. Could I really bring myself to urge them to submit to that? I’d have no choice. The Pope would never release us from our vows, and even if His Holiness could be persuaded to allow us to join another order, there were none we could enter that would allow us to escape the prison of the cloister.

  But if Brother Nicholas uncovered the truth, I would not be granted even the small mercy of the cloister. Maybe none of us would live to see Minchin Buckland. What had he said the night he came? The Lord Prior has eyes everywhere, searching for the smallest spark of corruption or sorcery in his order, and if he suspects so much as a glimmer of it, he’ll grind the guilty beneath his boot.

  And if that boot descended, what would become of those we cared for? Where would they draw their last terrified breath?

  Sister Fina shifted on the stool. Even that small movement made her wince.

  ‘Sister Basilia also tells me you have refused to take the syrup of poppy she prepared to ease your pain.’

  ‘It makes me drowsy . . .’

  ‘So, you’d rather bear the pain. That is to your credit, Sister Fina. Fortitude is a virtue we should all endeavour to acquire, and when you reach my great age, your back aches and your bones creak, believe me, you will have need of it.’

  I laughed, expecting Fina to smile at the joke or assure me that I was not old. But Fina did neither. She probably saw a decrepit old woman when she looked at me, and on days like this, I felt it.

  ‘Even if you were fit to work, Sister Fina, we have been obliged to close the holy well, as you must know, and I cannot tell you when we will reopen it to the pilgrims. That matter rests in God’s hands.’

  For the first time since I’d entered the room Fina’s head snapped up and she looked at me directly. ‘The frogs are still there?’

  ‘They were this morning when I inspected it.’

  ‘It’s the boy . . . The boy has brought a curse on the well, hasn’t he?’ Fina demanded fiercely. ‘Father Guthlac said he would destroy us.’

  ‘The boy has not been near the well, Sister Fina. How could a mere child conjure such a plague when he cannot even dress himself?’

  ‘Then why have they come?’ she wailed.

  God knew I had prayed for an answer to that question for many hours, but I had received none, unless I had closed my ears to His voice. Was this a punishment for my disobedience?

  Fina was watching me, her thin fingers plucking restlessly at the folds of her black gown.

  ‘If it is any comfort, Sister Fina, I observed several dead frogs among the living this morning. It may be that the rest will also die, since there can be little for them to eat down there. But, for now, all we can do is wait and pray.’

  Clarice, in whom I had confided, had suggested several remedies, each more drastic than the last. She seemed to imagine we were defending our priory from the Saracens, for boiling oil and fire had been among those she most enthusiastically advocated, even capturing a few herons and letting them loose down there to eat the frogs. But most of her suggestions seemed likely to inflict as much damage on the holy spring as the animals. If we’d been suffering a plague of mice, we could have laid poison, but who knew what might poison a frog? I suspected few people had ever had cause to wonder.

  ‘But you have to drive the frogs out,’ Fina insisted. ‘You can’t just wait.’

  I was losing my patience with the young woman. Only that she appeared to be in so much pain prevented me from taking her to task as thoroughly as she deserved. ‘Sister Fina, kindly remember that I am the prioress, and it is not for you to question me! But I will endeavour to believe that your intemperate words arise from a deep concern for the pilgrims who have undertaken long journeys to reach us. Therefore, to ease your mind, I will tell you that Sister Clarice has been kind enough to sit in the chapel and receive the villagers and pilgrims. If they should ask why the cave is closed, she tells them rocks have fallen and are being cleared. Thanks to the protection of the blessed St Lucia, not a soul was hurt. If they have brought an offering or some token to leave at the well, she takes it and assures them that it will be placed by the well as soon as it is safe to do so. In the meantime, she offers them ampullae of holy water, if they wish to buy them. So, you see, they are not sent away disappointed.’

  ‘But how can she get to the spring to fill them? The frogs . . .’

  ‘She does not need to go down there. They have already been filled,’ I assured her.

  ‘But how?’

  I sighed in exasperation. ‘The water in them has been blessed in the chapel, which is directly above the well. St Lucia will hear the prayers of the pilgrims if they are made in faith, so we must ensure they have no cause to doubt, Sister Fina.’ I stressed ‘doubt’, trying to make her understand that the precise origin of the water need not be discussed with outsiders.

  ‘So, you have made Sister Clarice the well-keeper now!’ Her hands were balled in her lap so tightly the knuckles were white.

  Given her wild outbursts since she’d entered my chamber, I was sorely tempted to say yes. But I reminded myself of why I had given the duty to her in the first place. I did not want her to sink back into the strange melancholy and wildness that had afflicted her before. The well had healed her then. At least standing guard over it might help her again.

  ‘Sister Clarice is the priory’s steward.’ I was determined that whatever orders he had received, Brother Nicholas would claim that title only when I was in my grave. ‘As such, she has work enough for three sisters and needs no more added to her burden. Just as soon as you are recovered, I will as
k you to resume your duties as keeper of the well. For you are sorely needed.’

  ‘I am recovered now,’ she blurted out eagerly, and her eyes suddenly looked alive again. ‘I can sit in the chapel and receive the pilgrims and villagers much better than she can. Many of the villagers recognise me now and they know they can trust me with their offerings.’

  ‘Are you sure you are strong enough?’

  She nodded earnestly, in the manner of an over-eager child trying to convince their mother they can be trusted with an errand. It only increased my doubts.

  ‘You will remember what to tell the pilgrims and villagers. Mention only the fall of rocks. No talk of the frogs or curses must escape the priory.’

  She was already limping to the door, moving hastily but so clumsily I was afraid she’d take another fall.

  ‘Sister Fina.’

  She turned and regarded me warily as if she thought I was about to snatch her treasure from her.

  ‘I would remind you again to be guarded in what you say to the two brothers. If Brother Nicholas finds you alone in the chapel, he may wish to speak to you.’

  She flushed. Then her chin jerked up defiantly. ‘I kept him from seeing the frogs. I wouldn’t let him down there and I locked the door.’ She gnawed the raw patch on her lip. ‘But I don’t understand why the brothers are here. And why shouldn’t we talk to them? We’ve nothing to hide. We’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘In spite of your good efforts, Brother Nicholas has discovered our troubles with the well.’ I did not tell her that I had neglected to bolt the door behind me. ‘But it is . . .’ I hesitated. How could I make her understand the danger we were in?

  ‘The Lord Prior has sent the brothers here because he is anxious about all of his priories in England. I am sure you will not have ever encountered any men or women of the Order of the Knights Templar, for it has been seven years since any dared wear the red cross in England, and you cannot have been more than ten years old then and even younger when the order was attacked in France.’