A Gathering of Ghosts

by Karen Maitland

  The face of the corpse who lay inside Fire Tor kept rearing up in the darkness, the gaping wound in his throat stretching wider and deeper. I didn’t fear to be alone with it, but I could not forget the terrible anguish in the spirit’s voice, his pitiful pleading to be set free. Kendra had preserved his body and kept his soul prisoner. The old woman might reckon to make another corpse to lie with the first and trap another spirit in that cave to be her servant, especially if it was someone she wanted to punish. The thought of what she could do to torture a soul she held in her power made the torments of Purgatory sound like Paradise.

  I crept instead towards Morwen’s cottage, but all was in darkness. Still, I was careful to keep my distance for fear that Kendra or Ryana might be watching for me, if the old woman had seen my coming in her smoke. But if Morwen had seen me in the flames, she would try to slip outside alone and come to me, as she had before. She’d surely know of a place I could take shelter, where no one, not Gleedy, Kendra or any outlaw, would find me. Morwen knew every rock and bush in these parts and who else could I turn to? I could never go back to the tinners’ valley, that much was certain.

  I huddled beneath a rowan tree to keep watch. But though I stared at the cottage for what seemed hours, no one slipped out through the leather curtain. The clouds surged across the moon. A wave of darkness broke over the cottage, then receded, exposing the tiny dwelling again, like a silver-grey rock in an inky sea.

  I was exhausted. Cold burrowed deep into my bones. Every muscle stiffened. How could I tell Morwen that I was close by? We hadn’t thought to invent a signal.

  Will worth! Will her to come out. Charm her to come.

  I’d no worts I could use, or any fire, but I plucked up grass in front of me until I’d cleared a small patch of earth. Then I drew three circles in it with a twig, as Morwen had shown me by the black pool. I unbound my head clumsily with my one hand, which in the cold had become almost as numb and dead as the other. My hair whirled about in the wind, as if each lock was a tongue darting out to taste the air. I tore a few strands from my scalp and, clamping a small stone between my knees, wound the hairs about it. I held up the stone to the darkness.

  ‘Morwen, hear me. Morwen, come to me.’

  Over and over I said the words, trying to pour all of my body and mind into them. But my strength was failing. I could scarcely keep upright. All I wanted to do was sleep, and still no one stirred from the cottage. I forced myself to sit up and try once more, daring this time to call upon Brigid to help me, as Morwen had done.

  I’m kneeling by the edge of a deep lake. A horned moon is reflected on the water, the stars flash in it, so that for a moment I think I am looking up into the sky. A line of rocks, made silver in the moonlight, stretches out into the water, flat and just wide enough to walk upon. And I do walk on them, towards the centre of the lake. The water on either side of this causeway is getting deeper. If I slip, if I fall, I will plunge into its depths. But now the causeway begins to slope down into the lake. The rocks on which I’m treading lie just below the surface. My feet splash through water, soft as raw wool against my skin. The path slopes deeper. The water splashes my thighs and I stop. My feet will not stay down on the stone. I’m floating. I’ll be swept off it.

  I start to turn, trying to retrace my steps. But now I see where the causeway is leading. A narrow rock juts out of the lake. I think it is all rock, but now I see that a living woman crouches on the pinnacle. She’s bound hand and foot. I can’t see her face, but I know it’s Morwen. If she moves, if she falls, she will sink, she will drown.

  Kendra has put her there. Kendra will keep her there as she keeps Ankow bound to the paths of the dead.

  Mother Brigid, help her! Help her to fight. Help her to break free.

  The throb of a horn carried towards me on the wind. It sounded again, like the one that was blown in the tinners’ valley, except this was coming from somewhere much closer than the camp. The tinners’ horn wouldn’t carry so far and it wouldn’t be blown at this hour. I dropped the stone, ran towards a small clump of willow scrub and crouched there, straining to peer through the darkness. I could see shapes moving, but it was impossible to tell if they were wind-whipped bushes or men. Then I saw the flames of three torches, coming over the rise across the valley, heard the excited yelping of hounds. Gleedy and his two henchmen were tracking me with the pair of guard dogs he kept chained by the storehouse. The dogs had already caught my scent as Gleedy dragged me there – they’d easily find my trail.

  Terror flooded through my body, and my legs, which had been aching with cold and weariness, suddenly found a new heat and strength. I fled, stumbling and tripping over the tussocks of grass. Ignoring the bushes that grabbed at my skirts and tore my skin, I ran without any idea of where I was going.

  The clouds peeled away from the moon, and all at once the moor was bathed in a cold white glow. I glanced back over my shoulder. I could see the men now, the two dogs straining and panting on long leashes in front. They were making straight for the rowan tree where I had been watching the cottage. But, once there, they would quickly pick up my scent leading away. With the moon shining so brightly, they had only to look in my direction and they’d see me as plainly as I could see them. If the dogs had been off the leash and far away from the men, I could have whistled to drive them off, but now it would draw Gleedy and his men straight to me.

  I dropped to my knees and found myself staring into two glowing green eyes. The creature was standing sideways, gazing right at me. For a moment, I thought it was one of the hounds, and then I saw it was a fox, a black fox, just like the one I had seen watching me back in the village when the river had turned to blood.

  The beast ran a few yards away from me, then stopped again, turning its elegant head to look at me. I knew it was waiting for me. I scrambled to my feet and followed. It quickened its pace and I ran. Behind me, I could hear the voices of the men swooping towards me on the wind. The moon vanished behind the clouds. Dertemora was plunged into darkness. I couldn’t see the fox and, for a moment, I thought it had gone, but it turned its head and the shining green eyes shone like lanterns in the night, drawing me on.

  The fox was running towards a dark smudge of trees, tucked down in the fold of the hill. I tried to keep pace, but several times I slipped on the mud or caught my foot in the tangled stems of heather. But fear always dragged me up again, until finally I reached the trees and stumbled into the grove.

  Twisted roots snaked over and around waist-high boulders, each covered with a shaggy coat of moss. It was impossible to run inside the wood, almost impossible to walk. The rocks were so closely packed together on the forest floor that I couldn’t step between them, but had to clamber over. My feet constantly slipped off the wet moss into the deep, treacherous gaps between the boulders, which threatened to trap my ankles or break my toes. All the time I was scrambling deeper among the trees, the fox was bounding ahead. Every time I thought I had lost sight of it, the creature stopped and turned its blazing eyes upon me. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished. I frantically searched this way and that, trying to glimpse a movement or a flash of shining green. But it was gone.

  My leg plunged into a deep hollow between two rocks and I realised that the space was just wide enough for me to squeeze in and sink down between them. I hunkered there, listening. From somewhere close by came a gushing and gurgling of water as it rumbled the stones on the bed of a stream. I could still hear men shouting and the excited barking of the dogs, but unless they were muffled by the trees, the sounds seemed to be growing more distant, as if the hounds had turned and were following another scent. The scent of a fox?

  Chapter 41

  Morwen

  ‘You awake, Mazy-wen?’ Taegan whispered.

  ‘Course I am. Could you sleep in here?’ I dragged myself up, groaning as my back scraped against the rock. It was as black as a bog pool outside, and I guessed that if Taegan had crept home, the night was half over.

  Ma
and Ryana had tethered me in the stone dog pen. My granddam had kept a watchdog in there years ago, afore it was killed by the King’s men for they said it was a hunting hound. Ma had chained me with the old hound’s iron collar round my neck, like a beast, so I couldn’t lie down properly or stand up. The chain went through a hole in the rock and ended in a bar on the other side, which caught against the stone if you pulled it. Only if someone twisted the bar flat to the chain and pushed it back through the hole could you get free, but Ma was in no hurry to do that. And I couldn’t reach it.

  Taegan glanced towards the cottage, then squeezed her fat udders through the opening and dragged her arse in behind them. She squatted on the wet earth and pulled out something wrapped in a bit of old sacking from between her dugs. ‘Here, Daveth give me this. I reckon you must be fair starved by now.’ She shoved a small hunk of what felt like cold meat into my hand. I was dumbstruck. Taegan never shared what Daveth and his brother stole for her. I sniffed it, sure she must be tormenting me with something putrid, but it didn’t smell rotten.

  ‘You going to eat it?’ she whispered.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘What do you care? It’ll fill your belly, won’t it? Ma’ll not give you so much as a bulrush root, till you cry and beg for it.’

  My belly was so empty that I’d been pressing stones against it as hard as I could to stop the pains, but I snorted. ‘I’ll not be doing any begging if that’s what she’s waiting for.’

  I could only make out the whites of Taegan’s eyes, but I heard her laugh.

  ‘I reckoned as much,’ she said. ‘Twin yolks in an egg you are, both as contrary as each other.’

  I split the meat in two, wrapped one piece in the sacking and shoved it down the front of my own kirtle, then tore a strip off the other with my teeth. It was tough and stringy, horse probably, stolen definitely. Daveth and his brother could pinch an egg from under the backside of a goose without it giving so much as a squawk. But food was, mostly, all they thieved.

  ‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, as I chewed the last mouthful.

  ‘Aye, well, you’ve covered for me plenty of times with Ma.’

  ‘That she has!’ a voice growled from outside the pen. Before Taegan had time to turn, a hand grabbed a fistful of her thick hair and jerked her backwards out of the entrance.

  There came a slap loud enough to scatter crows, and a yelp of pain from Taegan.

  ‘Seems to me you need a taste of what she’s getting,’ Ma yelled. ‘Only got one loyal daughter and that’s my Ryana. She told me you’d sneaked out again. Planning to let the little traitor loose, were you? Is that what you were doing skulking round here?’ From Taegan’s squeals, I guessed Ma was yanking her hair or twisting her arm. ‘Answer me, you idle trapes.’

  I heard the sound of wood hitting flesh and Taegan’s squeals became shrieks.

  ‘Stop that!’ I yelled. ‘You let her be! I won’t let you beat her.’

  Somewhere outside Ryana laughed. ‘And how are you going to stop her, Mazy-wen? You’re all chained up like the mangy little cur you are.’

  I might have guessed Sheep-face wouldn’t be far away, taking a malicious delight in any punishment the old hag meted out to Taegan or me.

  Rage boiled up in me. I yanked violently at the iron chain, trying to smash it through the granite so I could get to her. I wanted Kendra’s bones to turn to ice, her skin to itch without mercy as if a thousand gnats were biting her, her guts to sear in agony as if foxes were gnawing at her belly with their sharp fangs. I had never wanted anything so badly.

  Brigid, Mother Brigid, help me!

  Someone was shrieking outside, but it wasn’t Taegan now. Ma was howling louder than the wind in a winter storm. ‘Be gone! Be gone! Stop them, Ryana, help me. Drive them off!’

  ‘What, Ma? What is it? There’s nothing there, Ma.’

  Ma screamed again and tottered in front of the opening where I was chained. She was lashing out wildly with her staff and flailing, all the while trying to cover her head with her free arm. Then I saw them. They were slithering out of the mire towards her, swooping down from the night sky, creatures with sharp leather wings and clawed talons flashing in the moonlight. They were fastening on her scraggy face, her scrawny arms, her wrinkled neck, her balding scalp. As soon as she dashed one away, it would haul itself back up her body, its claws clamped in her flesh, squealing in rage.

  ‘It’s her! It’s Morwen! She’s calling them!’ Ma yelled.

  She was howling every hex she could at me, but in that moment, I knew I was stronger.

  ‘Stop her, Ryana, make her stop.’

  But Ryana was staring fearfully at Ma, as if she thought she’d run mad. She couldn’t see those creatures. She’d never been able to see the spirits or demons. I knew that. I’d always known that. And I laughed.

  I felt the chain rattle and slither down my back. Taegan must have scrambled to the other side of the rock and released the bar. I tore it from my neck and crawled out. My legs were so cold and stiff I could barely stand, but I knew I had to run. Ryana was scuttling back to the safety of the cottage. Taegan had wisely vanished, leaving Ma leaping wildly about, as if she was dancing in red-hot shoes, beating and clawing at her own skin, and screeching every curse she knew at me. A great bubble of triumph shot up inside me. I had beaten her. Ma knew now that the gift was mine, not Ryana’s. It had never been Ryana’s. And it was stronger in me than it had ever been in Kendra. I was the keeper now.

  Chapter 42

  Prioress Johanne

  Sister Clarice squinted anxiously down the hill towards the pinfold, but there was still no sign of our herd of goats the shepherd lads were supposed to be driving into it. The two of us had taken a walk outside the priory gates ostensibly to select those beasts to be slaughtered and salted for winter. Only outside the priory walls could I be sure that we could safely talk without being overheard.

  I glanced at my steward. ‘Brother Nicholas is no fool, Sister Clarice. I take it he has examined the accounts relating to our own beasts and the offerings left at the well?’

  ‘He’s raked every column, like a virgin maid combing her hair for fleas – only the copies of the ones we sent to Clerkenwell, of course. But he’s seen our bee skeps and our cattle, so he knows – or our little ferret thinks he does – that they’re not a true record. I’ve had the man pestering me from morn to night, insisting that there must be other ledgers. Sister Melisene says she saw him slipping out of our dorter when we were all at supper, and I’m sure my chest and bed have been searched, though I can’t prove as much. But just let me catch him with his hand in my boxes again and I’ll chop it off, knight or no knight,’ she added, in a tone of such grim determination that I was convinced she would carry out her threat if he provoked her much more.

  I was always careful to lock the door of my own chamber, but I reminded myself that I must make doubly sure to do so, even if I was called away in a hurry to tend Sebastian.

  I had never intended to deceive the Lord Prior over the money we obtained from our livestock and the well. When I had become prioress eight years ago, the income from these sources had indeed been meagre, and for the first few years, Clarice had sent faithful and accurate accounts to Clerkenwell, delivering a third of all we received to the Lord Prior as every priory was commanded to do.

  But these last few years, as the farmers’ cattle and bees in the lower valleys had sickened and died in the perpetual wet and cold, ours had fared somewhat better up on the high pasture. As meat, honey and wax had grown scarce, so the price they fetched in the markets and fairs of the towns had risen, which was a blessing, at least for those who had such goods to sell. And since I had dedicated the holy spring to St Lucia, the fame of the healing well had spread far beyond the moor, carried by those making their way to and from the ports. The pilgrims had come in ever-increasing numbers, and while few left the gold and jewels that the holy relics of the famous saints could attract, nevertheless their offerings amounted to substantial
ly more than they had been in the beginning.

  But I had begun to wonder if it was judicious to record the full amount of the priory’s improved income in the accounts we dispatched to Clerkenwell. The Lord Prior and his stewards would see only that the priory’s wealth was increasing and the responsions would likewise rise, which would naturally gratify them at a time when most other priories were failing to deliver: Rhodes was like a dog with worms, voraciously gobbling ever increasing sums of money to support the growing fleet.

  But if the seasons changed again or cattle murrain struck, our remote priory would not be able to spare the third of what little income we might receive. The Lord Prior was not a man to take such misfortunes into account. I doubted he even knew, much less cared, that bees must have flowers or that cattle sicken. He would see only that we had failed – that I had failed. So, like the wise virgins, whose example Christ commanded His disciples to follow, Clarice and I had, so to speak, been setting aside a little of the oil that might be needed for our lamps in the future, so that, should disaster strike, the priory could survive while the sum we had always delivered could continue to be sent to Clerkenwell.

  I had not kept back the money like some crooked tax collector or coroner, creaming off coins owed to my master so that I might live in luxury. It was simply prudence, good housekeeping. I had husbanded our money, so that we could shield ourselves and those defenceless ones we cared for. But I knew those at Clerkenwell would never understand that. They would regard it as nothing less than theft, and for such sums as were involved, Clarice and I could expect no mercy. The Lord Prior would make certain that we were stripped of our right to be tried in an ecclesiastical court, and if we were tried before the King’s courts we would not escape with our lives. I might deserve such punishment, but not Clarice. I couldn’t bear to see such a loyal friend end her days on the gallows in front of a jeering mob and know that I had brought her to it. Brother Nicholas had to be stopped.