A Gathering of Ghosts

by Karen Maitland

  Now that he was safely inside, in the light and heat of the blowing-house, the very notion that he had seen two vengeful ghosts seemed risible and he could hardly believe that he had allowed it to take such a hold of him. His anger at his own foolishness turned in a flash on those around him, as he gradually became aware that inside the blowing-house one sound should have been louder even than that of the raging storm, but it wasn’t. The great waterwheel was silent, as were the huge bellows it pumped.

  ‘Who gave orders for that wheel to be shut down?’ he demanded.

  The men glanced at each other. Then the stoker raised his head. ‘Reckon it were me. Water’s coming down at such a lick that if we hadn’t disconnected the wheel it would’ve broken its shaft and been smashed to pieces.’

  Gleedy wasn’t stupid. He knew the stoker had done the right thing. Truth be told, he’d probably saved Gleedy’s hide for, as he’d had cause to remind the tinners often enough, Master Odo had paid a fortune to build the blowing-house. If the wheel had been destroyed it would not only have cost a tidy sum to replace, but smelting would have been halted for weeks. Nevertheless, Gleedy was not in a mood to show gratitude, not when he’d seen them laughing at him.

  ‘So, you think that if the wheel isn’t running, you can sit on your backsides for days till the furnace heats up again? And I suppose you imagine Master Odo is going to pay you for doing nothing. There’s an assay meeting in Tavistock in less than a month and if we don’t have a full load for the assay master to test, then Master Odo’ll not be a happy man, not if he’s made to look a fool in front of the other tin owners. If he doesn’t get his money, you’ll not get yours. That I can promise you. So, if you can’t use the wheel, you’d best pump the bellows by your own muscle, for if that smelting is ruined by the furnace cooling, it’ll be your wives and young ’uns that’ll go hungry and all those men out there too. And I reckon that if the tinners learn you’ve lost all they sweated to dig up, you’ll find yourselves caged in that wheel, being forced to turn it by crawling.’

  An angry muttering broke out. One man faced Gleedy, his face contorted in fury and his great fists clenched. ‘Takes two men to pump those bellows. How are we supposed to stoke the fuel, load the heads and pour out the tin too? I’ve not hands enough, nor strength neither.’

  Gleedy flicked his fingers towards the other four men in the blowing-house. ‘No sense in them sitting idle watching.’

  ‘We’ve been breaking our backs all day graffing. You can’t expect us to work all night too. We’re meant to be sleeping. Only came in here to get warm and dry ’cause our huts are so deep in water only the fish could sleep easy in there. Rain’s flooding down that hillside. I reckon most of them will have collapsed by morning.’

  As if to prove his words, another long growl of thunder rumbled round the valley and the rain redoubled its efforts to pound through the roof, drowning the tinner’s words, so that he was forced to bellow. ‘Every tinner and his brat in this camp will be making their way up here afore long. There’ll not be room to hang a man then, much less keep that furnace burning. We’ll have to bed down in the storehouse. That and this blowing-house are the only dry places left.’

  Gleedy made a noise somewhere between a strangled croak and a screech, as he was suddenly brought back to the reason he had made his way to the blowing-house. The very idea of the tinners and their families wandering unchecked around his storehouse in the middle of the night was enough to cause an iron band to squeeze so tightly around his chest that he could barely breathe. His jaw throbbed with pain. He wouldn’t have a bean or a pot left to cook it in by morning, if that thieving rabble got in.

  ‘You and you.’ He pointed at two of the more burly and skilful men. ‘I need you to fix the hinges of the storehouse door. They’ve been torn away and it won’t close. If a strong blast of wind gets in and under that roof, it’ll lift it right off.’

  Gleedy was infuriated to catch the half-concealed grins that darted between the tinners. Anyone would think they were amused by the thought of the storehouse being destroyed. They wouldn’t be laughing if there was no food for them to buy next week, or a new pick head, when their old one snapped or was stolen. See if they found starving to death a cause for mirth. But even he knew that that argument wouldn’t persuade them to help him tonight.

  ‘It breaks my heart to think of those poor little children and their mothers, soaked to the very marrow, toiling up here only to find that there’s nowhere to shelter from the storm,’ Gleedy said dolefully. ‘It’ll be the death of some of them, I shouldn’t wonder, if they should find themselves out in this bitter wind and rain all night.’

  Morwen and Sorrel steadied each other against the buffeting of the wind and gazed down into the valley, watching the glimmers of silvery white that marked the lines of the foaming river and the ditch. Streams of water ran down the raw hillsides, like blood from a flayed back. Waves whipped up by the wind and the tumbling waterfalls raced across the black lake at their feet, crashing against boulders and splashing over the dam wall and sluice gate.

  The feeble red and yellow pinpricks from the tinners’ fires at the far end of the valley had been snuffed out by wind and rain. All the valley had been plunged into darkness, except for the plume of smoke that gusted from the blowing-house, lit from below by an unearthly red glow, as if it was rising from the fires of Hell.

  It is time!

  The heads of the two women turned as one, strands of wet hair writhing into the dark sky. Rain ran from their clothes, their skin, their fingers, their bare feet, gushing like twin springs into the lake. On the other side of the water, the blind boy stood so still that it seemed even the wind was afraid to come near him. Morwen began to sing, her voice rising into the storm above the roar. Other voices, unseen, joined hers, as if a thousand curlews had taken wing.

  The boy crouched on the bare, bleeding hillside. He bowed his head and Sorrel held out her arm across the raging water. Slowly, like a new leaf unfurling, he rose, but he was growing taller, broader, his fingers thick and strong, his muscles swelling, his legs lengthening. Great beetle brows hung over dark eyes, craggy cheeks and a sharp, angular nose. Like an old tree awakening from the depths of a winter’s sleep, the boy, an old man now, an ancient man, aged as the tor on which he stood, stretched his gnarled fingers across the lake. His voice boomed, like a thunderclap.

  My land, this is my land!

  Old Crockern’s eyes were open and the lightning that flashed blue from them shot like an arrow across the water to the very edge of the lake. It struck the wooden sluice gate, shattering it into a thousand burning fragments. With a roar almost louder than Crockern’s, the water of the lake surged over the edge, sweeping rocks and boulders and all before it, down, down into the deep valley below.

  Gleedy watched the two sullen tinners struggling to hold the door of the blowing-house. He barged out in front of them, leaving them to follow. But the moment the three were outside, the wind charged into them, knocking them hard against the wooden door, as if it was trying to punch them back in through the cracks. The men stood for a moment in the lee of the wall trying to regain their balance. They wiped the lashing rain from their eyes and braced themselves to step out into the full force of the storm.

  Gleedy, his arms wrapped tightly but uselessly around himself, shuffled from foot to foot, yelling at them to hurry. The tinners scowled and swore, not troubling to lower their voices, knowing the weasel would never hear them over the wind.

  ‘When we get in there, I’ll keep him occupied. You grab any food you find. Split it with you after.’

  Gleedy was staring down the valley. He was sure he could hear men shouting, struggling to make themselves heard above the pounding rain and water surging through the wooden leats. He thought he could glimpse people moving along the valley below. If he didn’t get that door back in place before that rabble got up here . . .

  All three men glanced up as a great boom echoed across the lake above, and they were still s
taring as the lightning bolt sizzled through the blackness and the sluice gate burst apart. Burning fragments of wood arced scarlet through the black sky. The tinners dived for the shelter of the wall, covering their heads as burning wood showered down. But Gleedy, standing further out, seemed rooted to the spot. He stared as a plank somersaulted in the air, showering red and yellow sparks as it fell straight towards him. Only at the very last moment did his legs stir into life and he tried to run, but it was too late. The fiery wood struck him on the back, knocking him face down into the mud. Gleedy lay pinned beneath the burning plank. The flames blazed up into the darkness.

  He screamed as fire danced up his back and down his thighs. Had his shirt and breeches not been sodden, his whole body would have been instantly engulfed in flames, but even so the heat was so fierce that his skin was bubbling, blistering, like that of a roasting piglet. But even as he struggled in vain to free himself, his cries were lost beneath a deafening roar.

  A flood of water and boulders crashed down upon the blowing-house and the storehouse. It swept around the stone walls. The blowing-house stood its ground for a few moments, but even it could not withstand the force bearing down. Water, rocks and now the entire contents of the storehouse were hurled against its walls, with all the force of a siege engine, and the blowing-house, though sturdy, was no castle. A corner shuddered and collapsed. The flood poured in and hit the red-hot furnace, which burst wide open, spewing steam, burning wood and molten tin into the maelstrom. The remainder of the blowing-house toppled sideways and caved in, severing the cries of the men trapped inside.

  Below in the valley, the tinners stared up at the great wall of water sweeping down towards them out of the darkness, dragging men and rocks with it. Their minds were unable to grasp what was roaring towards them until the moment that the freezing tide hit them. Then the shrieks and screams of the men, women and children were drowned in the skull-splitting howl of that flood.

  Gleedy knew only a moment of relief from pain as the icy water doused the burning beam, before he, too, was swept gasping and choking into the valley below, his helpless body battered and thrashed by the barrels, ladders, spades and iron pots all churning in the raging surge.

  Chapter 58

  Prioress Johanne

  I hear the door of the chapel open and close, but I do not look round. I know who it is and why they’ve come. It is the darkest hour of the night, when all of the candles and torches are burned away and when the embers of the fires are buried so deep beneath their snowfall of ashes you think they can never be revived. Only the oil lamp hanging in the sanctuary still flickers, spilling a pool of blood-red light on the altar to trickle down on to the floor.

  The priory has been at peace for more than three months, the kind of peace that steals over a dying man in the hour before his death, a calmness and resignation, when the fight to stay alive has finally been surrendered. And we, too, have surrendered to death.

  In the cave below where I kneel, the waters have finally subsided. The night of the storm, when the well overflowed, the spring ran, like blood pumping from a wounded heart. Water rose up the steps and streamed out beneath the door, flowing across the chapel floor. We didn’t discover it until the evening of the next day, for that night it rained so hard that the courtyard itself was turned into a lake, water pouring in under the doors of all the chambers, cascading down the steps into the kitchen and extinguishing every fire.

  It was a month, maybe more, before the waters in the cave finally seeped away and the holy spring retreated to its bounds within the trough, flowing gently as it had before the boy came. It was only when the waters had retreated that I found the statue of St Lucia, which I had placed above the well to sanctify it and cleanse it of the old goddess. It must have been washed off the shelf in the flood. It lay in two pieces on the floor of the cave, the head snapped off as if the ancient goddess herself had hurled it down in a fit of rage. Blind and dumb now, St Lucia’s painted eyes and lips had been washed away by the battering and rolling of the water. Her dagger was smashed.

  The ancient stone face that gazes out beneath the veil of the spring is unmarked, unchanged, but our saint is broken, defeated, destroyed. The old goddess has won and we are forced to retreat, for the flood has weakened the foundations of the chapel. Great cracks have appeared in the walls. It is only a matter of time before it collapses. It will not survive another winter. We cannot survive another winter.

  And now the day has come, the Day of Judgment, of reckoning. I have spent these past nights in prayer and repentance, but I do not know if I shall ever be forgiven. For I have stolen a man’s life, killed him. Snatched a heretic from the Church before he could be brought to repentance and absolution. Sentenced him to everlasting Hell.

  Know this, that it was my hand who stole the dwale from Sister Basilia’s stores. It was my hand that poured the syrup into the Holy Blood of Christ taken from the tabernacle high in the wall of the chapel, for it was the only wine left in the priory that by some miracle the flood had not spoiled. It must serve as his viaticum to strengthen his soul for his journey into the next world, for there was no priest to anoint him with chrism or pronounce the final absolution. It was my hand that held the cup of wine mingled with dwale, not water, to his lips. My arms that cradled him and my lips that murmured soothing words to him as he slipped gently into the sleep from which he would never wake.

  I cradled him against my breast as his heartbeat retreated into the far distance, as his breathing faded to the whisper of a babe. Held him as once, long ago, I had hugged him when the night terrors had woken him as a child. Had the boy glimpsed the torments that lay in wait for the man? Had he, even then, seen visions of the terrors the future held for him?

  I know what foul things they had said of the Templars. Every vile act that the holy and righteous men of the Inquisition could imagine they had accused those knights of committing. Every foul demon the Inquisitors could name they had charged the knights with worshipping in ceremonies so depraved that even the devil himself would have blushed to witness them. They had tried to force Sebastian to confess that he had worshipped the head of a devil or a golden image of a dog-headed god. They had tortured him until he could not stand, then tormented him still more until his mind was smashed into shards that could never be repaired, leaving only the terrible memories that flayed him afresh every time he closed his eyes.

  I had watched the Inquisition burn those Templars who would not confess. Every day I wake with the burning stench of their flesh in my nostrils and their shrieks in my ears. They say the men died bravely. They say they died as courageously as the noble knights they were, singing praises to God. But no mortal man, no man made of flesh and blood and pain, no man condemned to those cruel flames dies like a knight in battle. They perish writhing and screaming until their throats are seared and their shrieks are silenced, but even that does not bring the mercy of death.

  Sebastian did not burn. He confessed and was released, if you can call it release to send him out caged in such a twisted carcass of pain. But the confession was false. I knew my brother could never be guilty of any of those foul deeds. I was his sister, his twin. I had known him and loved him since the day our mother had birthed us. I did not need him to tell me he was innocent.

  Our father had played a game of cross and pile, flipped a coin, one of us to be given to the Templars, the other to the Hospitallers. If the coin had fallen the other way, as I’d prayed as a child it would, Sebastian would have been safe. And I thought God had answered his prayers. I thought God had chosen my brother, blessed him, not me. A coin, just a coin on which our whole lives were to spin for ever.

  Sebastian never knew an hour’s peace after the Inquisitors let him go. He wept daily because he had confessed. He cursed himself for his weakness, because braver men had gone gladly to their deaths singing psalms. I tried to tell him that the crackle of the flames had not been drowned by their singing, as the legends say. I knew the truth of it. I’d tried to co
nvince him that he had endured far more than many who had died. What good would his denial have done? The Inquisition, the kings and the bishops would never have believed him. They did not want to believe him. What would his death have accomplished?

  But he knew only guilt that his brother knights were dead and he still lived. Could that pitiful existence be called life? And I knew that next time they questioned him he would recant that confession. He would be presented as a gift from the Knights of St John to their masters, a burnt-offering, proof of their loyalty to Pope and Crown. But I have watched a thousand men burn nightly in my dreams, each with my brother’s face. I could not let them take him. Can you understand that? Can you forgive me? Will he?

  Holy Virgin, let me take his place in Hell. Let me suffer while he is finally at peace. And if Heaven will not open its gates to him, then let him be granted sweet oblivion.

  Chapter 59

  Hospitallers’ Priory of St Mary

  The knights from Clerkenwell arrived just as Brother Nicholas and Brother Alban had done, after nightfall, muddy, cold and hungry. Six of them. No carter this time, for though the frosts came and went, the ice had never lingered long enough to freeze the deep mud, and more rain had fallen, widening the already flooded rivers and deepening the puddles.

  It was only when they were slumped in the refectory, devouring slices of cold goat’s brawn, that their leader, Brother Roul, had insisted Brother Nicholas and Brother Alban should be asked to join them.

  ‘Brother Nicholas left us three months ago,’ Prioress Johanne told them. ‘Our stable boy informed me that he set out in the middle of the night, taking one of our horses, since his own had cast a shoe. I imagine you will find him at Buckland.’