A Gathering of Ghosts

by Karen Maitland

  I glanced up at the sky. The sun had long sunk behind the tor, and the shadows were creeping down the valley. Had Eva collapsed somewhere? Maybe the bleeding had started again. Was that possible? If Morwen had stopped it with a charm, did she have the power to start it again with a curse – revenge for what I’d said and done?

  Todde squeezed past me on the sodden track, and as he did so, he put his hands on my shoulders. ‘At least you’re back without harm. I was starting to fret. You ought not to go wandering on those moors alone, not with the pack of wild dogs that keeps howling and those outlaws. It’s not safe for a lass like you, not safe for anyone.’ He hurried away.

  I didn’t know whether to be glad he was watching out for me or annoyed that he thought I couldn’t take care of myself. I realised he hadn’t asked where I’d been or what I’d been doing, not that he had the right but that wouldn’t stop most men. Todde was a strange one, all right.

  I heard the commotion before I had even clambered up to Eva’s hut. Most of the unmarried tinners and the children had wandered off to try to cadge food at neighbours’ huts or join in the search for Eva. But the few men who still lingered were shouting and arguing with each other, as they stared balefully at the big iron pot of cold pottage. Exasperated, I elbowed them out of the way, got a blaze going, then hefted the pot on top to start cooking.

  It took time to heat, for it was a large cauldron with enough in it to feed a score of men and children. I stirred the pot and blew on the fire, trying to make it boil quicker. All the while men and children kept wandering up, demanding to know if they could eat. I reckon some would have devoured it half cold, dried beans and all, if I hadn’t slapped them away with the ladle.

  I kept glancing up, expecting to see Eva hurrying up the rise. I couldn’t understand what had happened. Even if she’d gone to fetch more peats for the fire or to check her snares, she would have left the pot simmering. She always began to cook long before the horn sounded, for she knew the men would be wanting to eat as soon as they had climbed up the hill. If she had set out on some errand, it must have been much earlier in the day and plainly she had expected to return by mid-afternoon to make ready.

  Darkness filled the valley. It had stopped raining, but sullen clouds still covered the moon and stars, threatening to tip more water upon the sodden earth at any time they pleased. Voices drifted up from below still calling for Eva.

  Was she lying on the moors with a broken leg, having slipped in the treacherous mud? If she’d gone foraging for herbs she could be anywhere in the vastness of that wilderness. She might have stumbled into one of the sucking mires or fallen from the towering rocks, or be lying unconscious with Morwen’s curse upon her, the life-blood seeping out of her. I shivered in the cold wind. If she wasn’t in the valley they’d never find her tonight, not in the dark, and by morning . . .

  Holy Virgin, keep her safe. Let them find her before it’s too late.

  Chapter 27

  Hospitallers’ Priory of St Mary

  This time it was not Sister Fina who discovered it but the pilgrims or, rather, an old woman and her daughter with a tiny, wizened child. They had shuffled into the chapel, and had grudgingly parted with a coin to visit the well. Meggy had recognised the old woman at once. They’d grown up together in the village. As children, they’d played in the woods and streams. As mothers, they’d gossiped as they’d pounded their clothes in the washing pool, while their infants clung to their skirts. As widows to men who had died long before their three score years and ten, they’d helped each other to lay out their husbands’ corpses and lent a comforting hand as the bodies were laid in the earth. But that was a lifetime ago, another age, another place.

  Now the old woman’s cow was ailing, she said, and its milk had dried, as that of so many down in the boggy valleys. She knew she should have driven the beast up to the common pasture on the high moor for the summer, but too many of her neighbours had lost their animals up there these past months, stolen and butchered by the outlaws or driven into such terror by the tinners’ noise and their dogs that they’d run headlong into the mire or broken their legs tumbling over rocks. Her little granddaughter was sick too, wheezing so she could scarcely draw breath. But the old woman was sure Brigid would heal both child and cow, for when times had been better hadn’t she always left a drop of milk or honey by her hearthside for Brigid before she’d blown out the rush lights at night? And she swore to do it again, if Brigid would only draw down the cow’s milk.

  Meggy had wanted to keep her old neighbour talking, learn all the news and gossip from the village, but the old woman had been chary, ill-at-ease, eyeing Meggy’s black gown as if her friend had been replaced by a changeling. She wouldn’t even meet Meggy’s gaze. When the gatekeeper talked of the times when they had first been kissed at the harvest feast or when the boys had stolen their clothes as they bathed naked in the stream, she had shaken her head and muttered that she didn’t remember.

  Meggy, wounded, had reluctantly sent them into the chapel, but had warned them to tell Sister Fina they’d come to ask the blessing of St Lucia for the ailing child. They had done as they were bade, reciting the words as carefully as a charm, if unconvincingly. But they could have told Fina they were coming to buy a curse from St Lucifer, for their words fell like sand thrown at a closed door.

  Fina had caught a flash of movement outside in the courtyard and had already turned from the two women before they’d finished speaking, fearful that Sister Basilia was bringing the boy back. She had not made another attempt to bathe his eyes, but Fina had hardly dared to set foot outside the chapel, not even to relieve herself, for fear they’d slip in. She had started to close the well earlier each day, relieved when she could put the key through the wood and feel the bolt slide into place, knowing it was safe again until morning.

  Like a fly trapped in a jar, the image of the boy staring at Nicholas as if he was cursing him buzzed ceaselessly round her head, Nicholas backing away from him, the horror unfolding in his face. What kind of power did that child possess to terrify a battle-hardened knight? Sister Basilia must not bring Cosmas back to the well. If the boy ever set foot in the holy cave, he would destroy it, just as the old priest had prophesied.

  It was all she could do to stop herself running to the chapel door and slamming it shut. Bolt it. Keep him out. Keep them all out, Brother Nicholas too, especially Brother Nicholas. For days, she had been picking over his questions and her answers, telling herself what she should have said, what he would have replied, until she could no longer distinguish memory from imagination. He had been trying to catch her out, trick her, like Prioress Johanne had warned her he would, but what had she told him? He should not have been standing so close. He should not have touched her. She couldn’t think, couldn’t remember. It wasn’t her fault.

  Their offerings of coin and jewels are worth the trouble of collecting. That was what he’d said. Jewels and coin . . . jewels and . . . He was accusing her of stealing. The merchants were paying twice over. He’d said that too. Once to the priory and again to her: that was what he’d meant. He was calling her thief. But she’d never seen any jewels. So, someone was sneaking in here, to her well, and stealing.

  A shriek made Fina jerk upright. Then she heard the sound of worn shoes slip-slapping on stone. The young woman with the grizzling child on her hip rushed up the steps from the well. The older woman followed more slowly, panting hard. Her daughter flung open the pilgrims’ door and hurried out of the chapel into the cold, watery light.

  The older woman took a few paces, then staggered back, leaning heavily against the chapel wall, her hand clutched to her chest. ‘Spring’s running blood – blood!’

  Fina shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. ‘No . . . No. I’ve seen the walls turn red once before, but it’s the light. Prioress Johanne said it was a trick of the light. If you go right down to the bottom it vanishes. There’s nothing red in the spring.’

  ‘I have been right down and I tell you
it’s blood, not water, in that spring.’ The old woman peeled herself from the wall and tottered towards Fina. ‘Give me back my coin,’ she demanded, holding out a cupped hand.

  Fina gaped at her. ‘But it was an offering to God. You can’t take it back.’

  Many villagers and pilgrims grumbled at being asked for an offering, but none had ever asked for its return. Even if the cure they sought did not seem forthcoming, they left their coin in hope, in faith.

  ‘What can’t this woman take back?’ a voice thundered behind them. Brother Nicholas strode into the chapel.

  Chapter 28

  Hospitallers’ Priory of St Mary

  Startled by the sudden appearance of the black-robed knight, the old crone who was arguing with Sister Fina staggered a few paces backwards until she collided with one of the pillars. She gripped it hard on either side as if she intended to uproot it and hurl it over her head towards Nicholas if he came any closer.

  He glanced from her to the equally alarmed Fina, trying to decide which of the two he was likely to get more sense from, not that sense was something he expected from any female.

  Fina found her voice first and an ugly flush, like a rash, spread from her neck to her face as she stammered some kind of explanation, but it made no sense to Nicholas. The old crone, sensing her chance to retrieve her money slipping away, loudly repeated her demand. Nicholas’s jaw tightened. He wasted no words on either of them. Seizing the old woman by the arm, he thrust her out of the pilgrims’ door, slamming it so hard behind her that the saint in the stained-glass window trembled.

  Fina was now standing in front of the doorway to the stairs, with her back to them as if she intended to prevent him from going down. That made Nicholas all the more determined to do so. Evidently, there was something down there that the sisters were again trying to conceal. He gripped Fina by the shoulders and dragged her aside. With a silent prayer that it wasn’t another swarm of flies or some equally foul creature, he began to edge down the stairs.

  Above him he could hear Fina babbling about a trick of the light and a red glow, but as far as he could see the walls glistened with their customary luminous greenish-gold. It was unnatural and a little unnerving, but he supposed it was all to the good that pilgrims should be awestruck upon entering the place, without the need for artful displays of silver and jewels that other shrines had to install in order to strike wonder into their visitors.

  Nicholas ran his hand down the oozing wet moss on the wall, pressing against the stone in an attempt to keep his balance on the uneven steps. The stairs seemed even narrower than he remembered. It felt as if the walls were squeezing together, crushing his broad shoulders. Some might say it was to his credit that he ventured down at all, for he still expected to hear the dreadful buzzing of those flies. His skin crawled at the thought of them and several times he scrubbed at his face, sure he could feel them alighting on him. But there were no sounds except for those of his boots grinding grit against the stone steps and the water splashing far below.

  As he emerged in the cave at the bottom, he found himself sweating in spite of the chill, damp air. And then he saw it. A thick, deep-red liquid was running out between the three rocks and splashing into a scarlet pool.

  Each time Nicholas watched a brother priest say mass, the cleric would raise the goblet of wine and proclaim that it had turned to blood, the sweet, precious Blood of Christ. Some priests in the order seemed convinced that what they drank was His Blood. Some saints had even declared they had knelt at Christ’s feet and suckled it as it gushed from his side. The idea revolted Nicholas. He could only assume that those men had never seen battle, had never seen a man hacked to death. He had watched gore pour from the terrible wounds of friends and enemies alike, tried to hold men’s guts inside bellies slashed wide open, and pinched tight the wounds in men’s gurgling throats as the blood scalded his hand. Nicholas could attend mass only because what was in the chalice looked and smelt like wine and, though he could never admit as much even to his confessor, he was certain it remained wine.

  But when holy water in a well turned to blood surely not even the most pious priest in their order would regard it as a blessing.

  Take thy rod; and stretch forth thy hand upon the waters of Egypt, and upon their rivers, and streams and pools, and all the ponds of waters, that they may be turned into blood: and let blood be in all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood and of stone.

  For a moment, Nicholas felt a tingle of exaltation, the kind that an inquisitor feels when he sees the first flame running up the robe of the heretic on the pyre. The wicked are punished. These obstinate women are chastised. God has vindicated the righteous.

  But the full import of the words of Holy Scripture, which had bubbled into his head at the sight of the bloody spring, suddenly punched him hard. All the ponds, all the streams, all the vessels of water! It was one thing for God to have cursed this well as a sign to the women, but suppose He had indeed cursed all the water in the priory, all the water on the moor. Suppose, as in Egypt, it had all turned to blood. When a man has known the desperate agony of thirst, while roasting in heavy armour in the heat of a battle as the sun beats mercilessly down, he might be forgiven for fearing that particular curse more than most.

  Nicholas almost fled straight back up the stairs in his desperation to find out how far the scourge had spread. But something penetrated his brain and stopped him. He stared at the sluggish stream of blood gurgling out of the cave wall. Another image floated into his head, of crossing the courtyard at Buckland when the servants were slaughtering the pigs, sheep and geese for the great Christmas feast . . . the sharp frost sparkling on the thatch in the winter’s sunshine, the white breath of the sweating men, the squeals and shrieks of the beasts, steam rising from the eviscerated carcasses of the pigs as they were hauled up on chains to drip from the beams, then the rivers of blood running between the cobbles to freeze in great scarlet puddles. And with that sight came the stench of dung, guts, singed bristles and, above all, blood, the unmistakable sweet-metallic smell of fresh blood.

  This cave, like any battlefield, should be reeking of it, but it wasn’t. The only thing he could smell was damp and the tang of a creek when the tide has gone out. He took a pace towards the narrow coffin-like trough, and scooped up a handful of the red liquid. He sniffed it. Not blood, but mud. Stinking red mud.

  Chapter 29

  Sorrel

  I shivered, trying to burrow deeper into my cloak though it offered precious little warmth against the clinging drizzle. Below me, in the darkness of the tinners’ valley, a single line of guttering torches flickered past the ditch and climbed towards our huts. The shadows of the men splintered into tiny fragments against the hillside, so that a swarm of rats seemed to scurry alongside the tinners.

  One of the boys had been dispatched to the camp with the news that a body had been found. You could see he was not best pleased at being sent home before he’d had a chance to take a squint at the corpse, but he cheered a little when he found himself the centre of a crowd who were, for once, desperate to hear what he had to say. All the womenfolk had gathered around Eva’s fire to wait for the men to return. And waiting was all we could do.

  ‘Looks like they’ve got a body slung over that pack beast,’ someone murmured.

  ‘Holy Virgin, let it not be Eva,’ I said. ‘The boy said it was so dark out there they couldn’t be certain till they turned the corpse.’

  ‘Could be a beggar starved to death out there. More dying every day.’

  ‘They’d not be troubling to fetch a dead’un back here, if it wasn’t one of us,’ another said grimly.

  One by one the women who had been squatting on the ground clambered to their feet, standing still and silent as owls, watching the procession of scarlet flames crawling towards us. They stepped aside to make a space as the man leading the horse drew level and tethered the beast to a post near the old wall. Those men who followed him said nothing and looked at no one, not even t
heir own wives. They blew on numbed fingers with lips that were pinched and almost rigid from cold. Strands of hair snaked down beneath hoods and wriggled across foreheads glistening with rain and black sweat. Crouching at the fire, they stretched out their hands towards the flames, begging for warmth. Todde was hunkered down among the other men, his shoulders hunched, his hands clenched under his armpits. I could see he was exhausted – they all were.

  The bundle dangling over the horse’s back was shrouded in the patched cloaks of several men, and bound with straw ropes, but no one made a move to cut it loose and lay it down. Whoever it was, we couldn’t leave them hanging there, like a sack of grain. If no one else would do it, I’d have to. I drew my knife and began to saw at the rope. But a hand on my shoulder tugged me back.

  ‘Leave it be. That’s no sight for women or chillern,’ a gravelly voice told me. ‘It’s Eva, as far as we can tell. No sense in taking her down, when we’ll only have to lift her back up for the horse to carry her to her grave.’

  My heart seemed to shrivel in my chest. Eva – dead! I fought against the tears that threatened to choke me.

  ‘But she should be washed . . . shrouded, made decent,’ I protested. ‘She doesn’t deserve to be carted about slung over a horse, like carrion.’

  ‘Carrion’s about the right word for what’s left of her. Foxes and birds have been at her. Nothing left of her belly. Chewed off her hands and feet too, and . . .’ He swallowed hard and didn’t finish.

  ‘But how could she be dead? Foxes couldn’t have killed her.’

  The old tinner flapped his hand at me as if I was a squawking hen. ‘Hush, woman. When the fire’s out, there’s no point asking if it was wind or rain that did for it. Eva’s gone and there’s no more to be said.’