A Gathering of Ghosts

by Karen Maitland

  I gnawed my lip, hesitating. ‘Not the fire this time. It’s not the way for you. I shouldn’t have tried to make . . . You’re afraid of it. And you’ll not find your way to Brigid through the flames, not alone, because fear’ll pull you back. But you’ve a friend who’s travelling the lych-way now and that opens another path for you. And there’s one who journeys between life and death, between the place of the living and the place of the spirits. He walks in the shadow. But if you want his answer, you must walk with him.’

  Chapter 33

  Sorrel

  Morwen did not explain what she would do – perhaps there weren’t names for such things. I watched her groping along a dark, rocky ledge. Her hands closed around a lump on the craggy shelf, as though she was gathering it out of the rock and pressing it in her fingers, like a child moulds a snowball from a drift of snow. As she lifted it, I saw that it was a roughly hewn bowl stuffed with fat-soaked dry moss, fashioned from the same grey stone as the rock on which it had stood.

  She set it down near the cloth-covered ledge at the far end of the cave that I’d noticed when she’d first brought me into Fire Tor. She pulled a burning stick from the fire and lowered it towards the bowl. Tiny scarlet sparks flashed across the moss, like a flock of coloured birds taking flight from the moors, then a flame shot upward growing in strength and height until it was the silky yellow of a buttercup.

  Morwen turned, holding out her hand to me. I stumbled to her side across the uneven floor, sick with apprehension. She pulled me down so I was kneeling beside her. Then, grasping the edge of the white woollen cloth, she tugged it aside. I had to stifle a cry. The light from the bowl of burning moss flickered across the corpse of a man stretched out on the slab, but it could not penetrate the black hole in his throat. In those first few moments, I barely noticed his nakedness, or the blondness of his hair, or the withered lips drawn back over yellowed teeth. It was the wound that held my gaze. It seemed to yawn wider and wider as I stared at it, a gaping mouth stretching to devour me.

  Had the body been lying there last time Morwen had brought me into the cave? Had I been sitting next to a corpse and not known it? I’d realised that something lay beneath the cloth, but I’d never thought . . .

  There was no stench of decay, only of herbs and a bitter-sweet smell lingering about his hair. He was like the dead cat Mam dried in the smoke when I was a bairn and hung from the rafters to keep us all safe from sickness.

  ‘Who is he?’ I whispered.

  Morwen lightly touched a bracelet of thorns that had been bound about his wrist. The nails on his hand were long and smooth, almost as black and shiny as the pebble that lay on his forehead. ‘Ankow – he collects the souls of the dead.’

  I knew what Ankow was condemned to do. But I’d never dreamed I’d see his face, not till he came to take me. Mam used to say his head could turn right round, like an owl’s, so no soul could hide from him. But she said only the dying ever saw his face when he threw back his hood and reached out his hand to seize them.

  Morwen stared down at him, a strange expression in her eyes that was almost pity. ‘Brigid chose him for Death’s bondsman.’

  ‘She killed him?’ My voice sounded tight and high. I could barely squeeze out the words.

  Morwen laughed softly. ‘Not her. Another killed him. She marked him.’

  I must have looked as bewildered as I felt, for she smiled.

  ‘It was two, three summers back. I was late coming home from foraging, near owl-light it was. The sun had already dipped behind the tor. I saw a woman standing near the track, behind a rowan tree. She’d her back to me and was watching the path, so I knew she was waiting for someone, but she was peeping out so cautiously that, at first, I thought she might be afeared someone was following her and that was why she was hiding. So I hid behind a furze bush. Then I saw him leading his horse along the track. The beast was lame, hobbling. The man was hunched against the wind, not paying heed to anything save the track in front of his feet, like some folks do when they’ve fallen into a mire-mood. He passed the woman without seeing her. Then, as soon as his back was to her, she called out. He must have heard her, for he pulled the horse up and started to turn. That was when she hit him a good hard blow to the head with her stave. The crack was so loud a cloud of starlings flew up from a tree close by.

  ‘He lost his hold on the horse and collapsed on all fours. He was trying to get up again, but he was too dazed to stand. She grabbed his hair then, dragged his head back and cut his throat. He was on the ground, gurgling and grasping his neck. Blood was spurting out through the fingers of his gloves. I ran for Ma, but by the time we got back he was dead and there was no sign of the woman. But the corpse wasn’t alone: there was a white cow with a red blaze between its horns shaped like a snake. It was standing over the body, guarding it.

  ‘Ma knew it was Brigid’s cow, for there’s no cattle with those markings in these parts. Brigid had chosen the man as Ankow, so we brought him up here and the cow followed and lay in front of the cave for three days and three nights while Ma prepared the body with honey and herbs, so she could smoke it.’

  ‘You told no one about the murder? Did no one come searching for him?’

  Morwen’s brow creased in puzzlement, as if the idea had never occurred to her. ‘Who would we tell? Brigid gave us Ankow to care for. That’s Ma’s business, that is, like her worts and charms.’

  She reached out and grasped my good hand. ‘Makes no odds who killed him. He’s Ankow now. As long as his corpse stays whole, his spirit can come and go between this world and the deadlands, so he can help the newly dead find their way to the lych-ways across the moors that’ll lead them safe to Blessed Isles. But if his body rots and vanishes back into the earth, he can’t return here. That’s why Ma has to keep it safe.’

  Before I realised what she was doing, she’d pressed my hand on to the corpse’s chest. It was cold and leathery. I tried not to pull away. I didn’t want to see the scorn in Morwen’s eyes if I flinched from a dead man. This time I had to follow. There might not be another chance. A corpse could do me no harm.

  ‘He’s Ankow,’ she repeated. ‘Walk with him.’

  I tried not to look at the gaping black hole and the bared mustard teeth. ‘How can I?’

  I saw a flash as the yellow flame in the bowl glinted on a blade that had suddenly appeared in Morwen’s hand. I almost sprang to my feet, but I knew, though I had no words to explain it, that she would never hurt me. I let her take my good hand and turn it palm up. Morwen lightly pierced the tip of my forefinger with the point of the knife, but it was done so swiftly I felt nothing, or maybe she could charm away pain. As if I was a doll made of rags, my hand lay limp in hers as she held my finger over the corpse and squeezed so that three drops of my blood fell into its mouth. They ran down one of its teeth outlining it in crimson.

  ‘He must taste the blood that your spirit lives in,’ Morwen said. ‘Then he will know and remember.’

  Afterwards, in my dreams, I would see a blackened tongue slide out between those teeth and lick them, savouring my blood.

  Again Morwen pressed my hand to the cold chest. ‘Now say the will worth, like I taught you when we spoke to the spirits. Ask Ankow what Brigid wants of you. You must want to hear the answer. But don’t ask her, unless you swear to do what she commands.’

  ‘But how do I know if I can until I know what she wants of me?’

  ‘You listened to her voice before. You came ’cause you couldn’t find peace until you did. You can go, if you want, leave now and never ask, though you’ll never rest easy. But don’t ask unless you swear to do her bidding,’ Morwen repeated, ‘else she’ll take your life and your soul.’

  I knew she was right. I had come all this way, drawn by a voice that dragged my spirit behind it as if it was in irons. She would chain me to her echo for ever and without mercy, until I stood and faced her. I closed my eyes and spoke the words, trying not to flinch from the cold, dead flesh beneath my fingers. I wa
ited. I felt . . . I thought I felt . . . a throbbing against my palm, as if the dead man’s heart was flickering into life, beating faintly then thumping hard, drumming against my fingers, but perhaps it was only the blood pounding through my own body.

  My hand is sinking through that cold leathery skin, pulling me down behind it. I am dragged through white bone and scarlet flesh, where blood runs like purple fire through great pulsating veins, pulled through the heart’s fleshy walls, thick as granite rocks, into a great dark cavern thronged with people, but they do not look at me. They do not even lift their eyes to look at each other. Each is the only creature walled inside their misery. They walk in single file through the cave, coming in from the darkness behind me, going out into the darkness in front of me; their faces swim at me like pale moons in a black lake. Some are as gaunt as skulls, others battered and bruised. There are ancient ones, wrinkled as the bark of trees, and those so young they have not known even a single day of life, a single hour. On and on they come and vanish, a great army of the dead.

  One face looms out of the rest, a face I know and do not know, for her face is like a mask, a carving of a face I once knew. Only the eyes are alive, glittering like white flames.

  Eva? Eva!

  The twin eyes flicker towards me, the hands stretch out, as if begging me to catch hold of her and pull her from the line. As she lifts her head, I see her neck, see the marks.

  Eva?

  I stretch towards her, trying to touch her fingers, trying to snatch her back. But the eyes blink as if they know they are seeing something that isn’t really there, a shade, a wraith, a ghost that might have been me. The face turns away and she is gone.

  A voice cries behind me in the darkness, torn and rent by anguish, till it is but the ragged tatter of a human sound.

  Let me go! Release me from this torment.

  I half turn, though I am mortally afraid of what I will see. A grey shadow hangs in the darkness, the shape of a man, but constantly swirling and re-forming, as if it is a creature so racked with pain it cannot keep still. Its flesh is despair, and only its eyes burn. The mouth opens, dark and deep, like a wound in a throat.

  I beg you, set me free!

  I felt two arms tighten around me and realised I was leaning back against Morwen and tears were running down my cheeks. I pulled away and scrubbed at them with my sleeve, trying to control my trembling.

  Morwen was watching me, shaking her head in bewilderment. ‘You didn’t walk. You didn’t find her, did you? But you were crying like a babe.’

  ‘Eva, I saw Eva, she looked so lost, her face, I thought . . . I thought she’d be whole again after . . .’

  ‘In the Blessed Isles, she will be, but she’s not reached them yet. She still walks the paths of the newly dead. But you knew she was gone. There’s summat else,’ Morwen said.

  ‘When she turned, I saw her neck, the marks on her throat. She’d not been hunted down by the hounds. She’d been strangled. She was dead long before the dogs got to her. The serf-hunters wouldn’t have throttled her. If they’d caught her, they’d want to take her alive to claim the reward.’

  Morwen shrugged. I could see the death of a tinner’s woman meant no more to her than the death of this corpse in the tor. She was not cruel: she merely accepted that that was the way of things. Extinguishing the bowl of blazing moss, she sprinkled a pinch of the charred fronds on to the man’s chest. As I stared at the gaping black hole in his throat, I knew it was him who had pleaded with me.

  I grasped Morwen’s arm. ‘He’s in pain, in torment. He begged for release. How can we help him? We must.’

  Her eyes softened, turning to the colour of fresh spring grass in the firelight. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But Ma’ll not let him go. Brigid chose him, he must serve until—’ She turned her head away from me, as if someone else was talking to her. ‘The spirits are gathering, waiting for us. Brigid is calling them. Soon, it will be soon . . . I can feel it.’

  ‘But what do the spirits say?’ I demanded, almost shouting at her in frustration. ‘Do they know why I was brought here?’

  ‘Do the spirits know, Mazy-wen?’

  I jerked around. Ryana was standing just inside the entrance, a look of malice and triumph on her long sheep-face.

  ‘So, our little Mazy-wen has been telling you she can speak to the spirits, has she? She couldn’t even charm a wart away. The gift only passes to the eldest and that’s me.’ Her mouth twisted into a sneer. ‘Mazy-wen, Mazy-wen, doesn’t have the wits of a squawking hen.’

  Morwen stood up, facing her sister, her fists clenched. ‘And you haven’t even the wits to invent a new rhyme. You made that up when you had milk-teeth, and you still couldn’t think it up without Taegan helping you.’

  Ryana’s grin vanished, and she slowly paced forward, pushing her face close to Morwen’s. ‘You won’t think yourself so clever when I tell Ma you brought a blow-in to Fire Tor, one that’s a tinner’s bitch ’n’ all. You wait, Ma’ll thrash you till she breaks every bone in your body and she’ll bring down such a curse on your head, you’ll be tormented night and day until you drown yourself in the mire just to escape her. You’re a traitor, Mazy-wen. You’ve betrayed Ma and all our kin. The spirits will never forgive you for what you’ve done. Never!’

  Chapter 34

  Hospitallers’ Priory of St Mary

  Meggy was jerked from her doze by the fire as something struck her on the knee and slithered to the floor. Claws scrambled over her head in the thatch and before she was even fully awake, she was already batting at her skirts. Mice again! There were always a few scurrying about, but these past days they’d been swarming in from the moors and fields, driven from their flooded holes and starving. Gnawing at everything, they were, from leather to candles. The cooks were at their wit’s end trying to keep them from spoiling every keg and sack in their stores.

  The rush lights in Meggy’s little hut had burned away and the glow of the embers of her hearth fire in the centre of the floor barely illuminated the stones that encircled it. Meggy winced at the pain of her stiff legs as she hauled herself to her feet to light some more rushes, not that they did much to keep the mice from running over her, cheeky little beggars. She took a pace and almost fell headlong as she stumbled over something lying on the floor. The room was so dark she couldn’t make out what it was. She stooped awkwardly to pick it up. It crackled beneath her fingers. She lit a rush candle in the embers of the fire and held the flame close to examine what she held.

  ‘Bless my soul, a brideog.’

  She sank back in her chair, cradling the little object. It was a doll made of rushes, which had been soft and green when it was fashioned but were now dry and brittle. It was clad in a crudely made gown, stitched from a scrap of white woollen cloth, now almost black with dust, smoke and cobwebs. A white hag-stone was strung about the doll’s neck to prevent thieves and evil spirits from entering the home. The head had been gnawed. The mouse must have knocked it off the beam above her. She’d forgotten it was even up there. Dimly now, she recalled hiding the doll somewhere in the shadows of the thatch when she’d first moved into the gatekeeper’s hut, along with a crumbling sprig of rosemary from her wedding day, an eel skin to ward off stiff joints, and even a torn scrap inscribed with words she couldn’t read, but words once written could charm or curse and, whatever they were, it was bad luck to destroy them.

  She knew the prioress didn’t hold with such things, but she’d always kept a brideog in her cottage, as her ma and granddam had done before her. Brigid blessed the hearth and kept the family safe, the goats in milk and the chickens in lay.

  As she fingered the little doll, a smile softened her lips, though she didn’t know it. It had been on Bryde’s Day when her husband, Arthur, had asked her to be his wife. She’d been no more than fourteen or fifteen summers then. All the unwed girls had gathered, as they did every Brigid’s Eve, to sit with the new brideog doll they’d made until the fire died down. Then they’d raked out the ashes and laid
their shifts in front of it. The next morning, they’d raced to see whose shift Brigid had walked over, leaving her ashy footprints on the bleached linen. Meggy had been delighted when she’d found her shift marked. She had been wed within the year, just as Brigid had foretold. It wasn’t till long after her son was born that Arthur confessed he might have given old Brigid a helping hand: he’d crept into the livier that night and smeared ash on Meggy’s shift so she would be persuaded to accept him.

  Meggy chuckled to herself. Arthur had been well named for he truly was a bear of a man but soft as butter. She still missed him and she missed her lad. If only she knew what had become of her son. How could you mourn for him, how could you let him go, if you didn’t know whether he was alive or dead? Hope was a cruel tormentor.

  The old gatekeeper stared up at the low rafters, from which dangled sacks, lengths of cord, rusty cooking pots, a pair of deer antlers, a couple of broken snares. It was all that she’d managed to salvage from the house she’d once shared with Arthur. His blacksmith’s tools and their few sticks of furniture had been sold long ago. She would have sold these bits, too, except they were so worn out no one would buy them. She scarcely knew why she’d kept them. Always banging her head on them, she was. But she couldn’t bring herself to toss them on the midden.

  Meggy had never been one to throw anything away, however worn or broken, for she knew only too well that tomorrow it might be all you had to call your own. It wasn’t much to show for a lifetime of toil, but she’d a roof to shelter her, a fire to comfort her aching bones and food to put in her belly. At this moment, that was worth a king’s ransom to her. There were many who didn’t have a mite of what she had, the poor villager who’d tottered past her gate earlier that day for one.