A Gathering of Ghosts

by Karen Maitland

  ‘Now, when I let you go, you’re going to saddle your fittest and strongest horse for me. And you’ll do it quickly and silently. If you utter any sound or make any attempt to run, you’ll be dead before you reach the courtyard. Do you understand?’

  He loosened his grip a little more and the lad nodded as vigorously as anyone could, with the bulging muscles of a knight’s arm beneath their chin.

  Brengy, when released, worked swiftly, though he was shaking, and as soon as it was done, he thrust the reins of the horse towards Nicholas, plainly anxious to have his attacker gone. But Nicholas had not finished with him yet. Seizing the reins in one hand, he grabbed the lad by the scruff of the neck and dragged both horse and boy into the courtyard. The mud and filth in the yard mercifully helped to muffle the sound of iron shoes striking stone until they reached the gates.

  ‘Hold the horse, boy. You move or utter a sound, I’ll cut your throat.’

  Nicholas had pulled aside the beam that secured the door, and was about to drag the horse and boy through, when Meggy burst out of the gatehouse. Nicholas’s arm locked round Brengy’s throat again.

  ‘Get back into your kennel, woman, and stay there. If you call for help, I swear I’ll snap this lad’s neck.’

  He dragged the boy through and, in a swift movement, swept him up and dumped him face down in front of the saddle before swinging himself up. Brengy lay across the horse, his head and feet dangling helplessly. Nicholas looked down at Meggy in the gateway, both hands pressed tightly to her mouth, as if she couldn’t trust herself not to cry out.

  ‘I’m taking the lad with me, till I’m sure that no one is following. Then I’ll let him go. But if I’m followed, you’ll be fishing his corpse out of the mire. And you can tell those hellcats they needn’t worry. I’ll be back, but when I return I’ll have half the Lord Prior’s knights with me and I’ll see to it that they put every sister and servant in this accursed place in chains and flog the truth out of them if they have to.’

  The moon was baiting Brother Nicholas or perhaps it was the clouds that were bent on mischief. He was attempting to follow the trail along which Hob had led them on the night they had first laid eyes on the malignance they called the Priory of St Mary, a night that he now cursed with all his heart. Even when the moon was shining he could barely distinguish the boggy track from the mire around it, but it seemed that the clouds were watching him, waiting until he came to a bend or a place where the path was washed away. Then they flung themselves across the moon, plunging him instantly into a terrible darkness, so that even the horse faltered and kept trying to turn back.

  ‘I hope you’re praying men, Brothers,’ Hob had said, ‘’cause you’ll need more than a sword to protect you up there.’ Had Hob known more than he’d told them that night? ‘Once you cross into the deadlands,’ he’d said, ‘there’s no coming back.’ The carter had been talking about the tor, but he could as easily have meant the priory.

  Brengy, lying face down over the horse in front of Nicholas, kept whimpering that he was going to be sick and that his ribs were hurting.

  ‘Then I’ll have to give you something to take your mind off it,’ Nicholas said, bringing his riding whip down hard across the lad’s backside with a savagery that was born as much from his own fear and frustration as a desire to silence him.

  Brengy gave a yelp of pain and started to cough and retch. Nicholas was in no mood to have him vomit down his legs. The lad had served his purpose, keeping the gatekeeper quiet at least long enough for him to get out of sight of the priory. Nicholas’s confidence was surging back now that he had escaped. None of the sisters would follow him out here. And if they did, what danger could a woman possibly pose to him out on the moor? Even without his sword, they’d be no match for a trained knight.

  He seized Brengy by the back of the shirt, dragged him backwards off the horse and flung him down. He heard a cry as the boy hit the ground and derived a vicious pleasure from it. He wanted to smash the priory and everyone in it. Besides, the stable boy deserved it. He should be hanged for stealing a knight’s horse and Nicholas would see that he was, just as soon as he returned.

  He stared out over the black sea of the moor. The wind was gaining strength, peeling his cloak back, creeping in under it, like a woman seeking warmth. The horse had stopped again and was trying to turn, as if it was determined to go back to its stable. It was much smaller and lighter than his own rouncy and, like all the horses in the priory, was suffering from the meagre diet of mouldy hay it had been forced to endure these past months. Nicholas could feel it wheezing and heaving beneath him. He wasn’t convinced it would have the stamina to carry him as far as Buckland, but as long as the beast got him off the moor and safely to an inn or monastery, where he could eat and sleep without fear of a knife being plunged into his back, that was all he asked of it. He could find a stronger mount to carry him on from there. But even the fleeting thought of food reminded him of how ravenous he was. He tugged on the reins and wrenched the horse round, kicking its sides to urge it on, though he couldn’t even see the track.

  But they had barely moved a few paces before the horse stopped again, lifting its head, ears laid back. Nicholas caught the faint sound of iron shoes hitting stone, the squelch of hoofs plodding through mud. Another rider was behind him. He was being followed! His right hand went unbidden to his side, the fingers expecting to close over the familiar hilt of his sword, as they had done a thousand times before whenever danger threatened. But they touched only the cloth of his cloak. After several moments of shocked disbelief, he remembered that his sword had been stolen from his chamber and whoever was riding down on him might well be grasping his own deadly blade in their fist.

  Nicholas was as much unnerved by his own reaction as by the danger behind him. He had faced hails of flaming arrows, men brandishing glittering scimitars, howling for his blood. His heart had pounded in those battles, but his mind had, if anything, become sharper and clearer: he had been able to decide instantly where to hack through a line of warriors or to spot in a flash a man who had left himself unguarded and thrust death home. But now he was gripped with blind panic.

  He slashed his whip against the horse’s flank, trying to urge it forward. But the beast wasn’t accustomed to such treatment and, already unsettled by the darkness and slippery track, reared and tossed its head, trying once more to turn towards the safety of its stables. Nicholas fought to bring it around. Not daring to risk the whip again, he kicked with his heels urging the horse on.

  The sound of a hunting horn reverberated in the air. Short notes answered by the deep-throated baying of hounds. In daylight and in another place, Nicholas’s blood would have pumped hot and full to the thrill of a chase, but in the darkness, he felt beads of cold sweat chilling his back. He hesitated, craning round to determine where the sound was coming from, but howls were bouncing from hill to hill until they seemed to be all around him. He tried to tell himself it was only a nobleman out for a night’s sport. He could confront the man, even seek his aid. But the image of Alban’s corpse reared up before his eyes. The face torn off by merciless teeth, the guts and liver ripped from the belly by slavering jaws that could crack open a cow’s thigh bone. A pack of hounds could rip a man apart like a hare, and if these were the same beasts, they had already tasted human blood.

  As the horn sounded once more, Nicholas’s horse seemed to make up its mind that the dogs were behind it on the track. It veered sideways and scrambled the foot or so up on to the bank that edged the path. Before Nicholas could force it back on to the track, it was plunging down the hillside and across the open moor.

  Nicholas had always prided himself on being able to master any warhorse, even the mighty destriers, capable of carrying a man in full armour, but he was used to horses that responded to commands of the legs, for a knight must have his hands free to kill and defend himself. Instinctively, he found himself using his thighs and knees to try to steady and turn the frightened creature, but that seemed
only to madden and confuse it.

  It careered across the dark hillside, splashing through pools and streams, stumbling as its shoes caught in heather and lurching violently as its hind hoofs slipped on mud. One moment it seemed as if it would plunge forward and snap its neck, the next fall sideways and break a leg. Nothing Nicholas could do calmed it, and he could only pray that exhaustion would bring it to a halt.

  Somewhere the horn sounded again, a dark, deep throbbing that boomed back at him from every hill, and the baying of the dogs grew more excited and ferocious. Even as the horse ploughed on, Nicholas could not resist glancing behind him. A dense black tide was rolling down the slope, moving swifter than the horse. At first he thought a torrent of water had burst from some lake or dam, but as one, then another leaped high and bounded over a rock or mound of grass, he realised they were hounds streaming down the hillside, their glowing red eyes flashing out of the darkness, like a forest fire running straight towards him.

  Chapter 53

  Sorrel

  A glowing green mist spiralled out of the rock tomb and wove through the branches of the oak above, where long fronds of grey lichen hung like the rags of a winding sheet. Morwen’s song was drawing the mist upwards. It was taking shape, like the birds and beasts in the fire in the tor, but this was no animal. It was a woman, hooded, draped head to toe in robes that billowed out from her as if they were caught in a wind I couldn’t feel. The creature lifted her head. Her face was dead, a mask, a skull without flesh, as solid as moonlight. But peering out through holes in the cavernous eye sockets a pair of living eyes were trapped behind the bone, as if she was a prisoner, staring out through the bars of a cage. The eyes shone with a fierce, angry knowledge, a burning fury that the dust of a thousand years could not smother.

  She turned those blazing eyes and looked at us, but though I knew her power, I was not afraid. She did not mean us harm.

  Call them. Call them.

  The words flew through the trees between us, but I couldn’t tell if I had willed it, or Morwen or the spirit, for the words were living now, darting around the grove like a flock of starlings, and we all willed them. I could feel the heat from Morwen’s hand pulsing through the rock, as if her blood was pounding through the veins of the stone.

  Summon them. They will obey.

  Somewhere beyond the woods, the wind was gathering strength, wailing across the sucking bog pools, shrieking above the thundering river, howling through the crevices in the tors, but inside the forest of oaks all was still. A cold white mist hung between the distant trees, shrouding the clearing, shielding the living and the dead.

  Call them!

  I didn’t turn my head, but I could feel the others drawing near in their long robes, their eyes peering out from inside their bones. They inhabited their skulls like the weasels staring out from their dark tunnels, watching, willing, waiting. The spirits drew close, tangled in the gnarled branches, their hair the silver-grey locks of lichen, their fingers the clawed twigs. Others slithered between the arching roots, and crawled towards us over the mossy rocks. And still I was not afraid.

  A shudder ran through the wood, a rumbling of stones and trembling of trees. There was a great fluttering of tiny wings as, from holes and crevices too small even to admit a mouse, a huge flock of wrens flew up into the oaks, melting once more into craggy branches in their stillness.

  Someone has entered the wood. Someone has violated the sacred place. He is unclean.

  Chapter 54

  Dertemora

  The horse was tiring badly now, and it might even have allowed Brother Nicholas to bring it to a halt, if he had tried, but with the hounds baying ever closer behind him, he urged the sweating beast on, willing it to keep moving. They were teetering down the side of a V-shaped valley, and Nicholas’s only thought was to reach the bottom where surely there must be a track or at least a level way, so that he could spur the horse on and find rocks or trees in which he could take shelter. If he could just climb up into the branches or scramble on to a steep-sided rock, armed with his knife, he might at least be able to defend himself from the hounds.

  But, as if it had been hiding, waiting to pounce, the babble and thrashing of water burst without warning on Nicholas’s ears. He heard grinding and scraping as the swollen river dragged gravel over stones, and stones over rocks. Like a drunkard weaving down a street, water crashed against one boulder, only to fall back on to another and trip over the next. The horse veered away. Herded by the roar of the river on one side and the yelping of the hounds on the other, it struck out along the side of the steep hill struggling to keep its footing in the mud and sodden grass.

  The poor creature’s breathing was so laboured it seemed its lungs would burst with the effort, but fear drove the horse on, slipping and stumbling, long after its strength had been exhausted. Even in his own panic, Nicholas knew it was a miracle the horse hadn’t fallen already, and if it did and rolled on him . . . The image of himself lying there helpless with a crushed leg and that pack of dogs snarling over him finally goaded him into action. If he tried to rein the beast to a halt and the animal resisted, he’d surely cause it to come crashing down. He couldn’t take that chance. In the dark, he couldn’t distinguish anything on the ground, but he knew these hillsides were littered with rocks and boulders lying in wait to crack a man’s skull, and found himself praying that he’d land in soft, thick mud . . . But what good would prayer do now? Nicholas swung his leg over the horse’s back and hurled himself into the darkness.

  He landed momentarily on his feet, but the slope was too steep and slippery for him to keep his balance and he found himself tumbling backwards, rolling and bouncing towards the torrent of water. He flung out his arms wildly, trying to grab anything that might stop him plunging into the river, but it was the very rocks he’d feared that saved him. His back smashed into a boulder, and he lay still, fighting to suck the air back into his lungs. But as he gasped, a savage pain stabbed through his side. He’d broken ribs often enough in the joust and on the battlefield to know exactly what had happened. It would be agony to move, but at least he could walk. He tried to tell himself he’d been lucky – better his ribs than a shattered leg or spine.

  Water was roaring inches from his head, drowning all other sounds, but he knew the hounds were still out there somewhere. Would they follow the horse or pick up his own scent? Though his body pleaded not to move, he could not indulge it. He was defenceless, lying there in the open. He dragged himself up against the boulder and stood for a moment, listening, until the wave of pain ebbed a little. Somewhere above the thrashing of the water came the throb of a hunting horn, but it was not calling the dogs back, it was driving them on to search and kill.

  He rocked forward, trying to hear where the sound was coming from. He was sure the track he needed lay somewhere to his right, but the baying seemed to be on that side of him too. He turned away from it, and with his arm wrapped tightly about his ribs, he stumbled on, following the course of the river. It was in full spate and he knew he’d be swept off his feet in an instant if he tried to cross it, but if the hounds did attack, it might be his only chance.

  The clouds peeled away from the moon and for a breath the valley was lit by a ghost light. Frost-white foam spun across the seething river and ahead lay a dark mass of grotesquely twisted trees, their branches black against the moonlight, writhing like the Gorgon’s hair from the scalp of the earth. The sight made him shudder, but from the tail of his eye, he caught a glimpse of movement. Silhouetted on the rise above him stood a great black hound staring down fixedly into the valley. Three or four others breasted the hill and paused, scenting the air. Almost before his mind could comprehend what he was staring at, darkness had flooded over him again. He stumbled forward. He had to reach those trees. That was his only hope.

  But the whole valley seemed to be conspiring to keep him from reaching them, as if a charm had been put on the wood to stop anyone approaching it. His legs were sucked back by the deep mud. B
rambles sank their claws into his cloak and tried to fetter him. Rocks reared up in front of him, barring his way, and stones rolled treacherously from beneath his feet, bringing him crashing to his knees and driving waves of white-hot pain through his ribs. The roar of the water grew ever louder but each time he paused he heard – he thought he heard – the baying of the hounds. Was it simply the wind? He no longer knew. Pain and hunger were making him dizzy, but he forced himself on, clinging to the one thought that if he could reach those trees he would be able to defend himself.

  As he struggled towards them, he could see the smudges of the stunted trunks that stood sentinel on the edge. Just a few more yards, he urged himself. He turned his head as he caught the howling of the hounds again. They were closer now, much closer.

  A harsh kaah made him whip round. Something was bobbing on one of the upper branches of the closest tree. A rook, a crow? He’d disturbed a roosting bird – that was all. He ducked under the branches, and heard another loud kaah, this time from the tree beyond. Both birds were screeching, irritated at being roused.

  The sudden flapping of wings made him glance up and he fell heavily over a moss-covered rock, banging his cheek on another. The moss cushioned the blow to his face, but he yelped from the agonising jarring of his chest. He struggled to stand upright, unable to find a place to set his feet. The forest floor around him was covered with massive boulders, so tightly rolled together or heaped on top of each other that there was hardly a gap between them, except where the trees had forced their way through.

  Kaah! Kaah! More birds were appearing in the trees around him. He could hear the furious flapping of their wings. The branches were so low that their thick beaks were clattering inches from his face. This wood must be their roost. But the yelping of dogs dragged his attention from the birds. They were close now, so close he could hear the snapping of gorse and the rattle of stones as they streamed towards him. He scrambled desperately over the boulders, cursing as his feet repeatedly slipped into the deep narrow cracks between them, constantly hitting stone with knees or elbows, each time jerking his broken ribs till he could hardly bear to breathe. It was madness to try to move quickly – he could trap a leg or even snap it.