Something Red

by Douglas Nicholas

  After a bit he realized he was staring at the keys but seeing the forest path. He wrung his hands, forcing the tension from his fingers; he drew in a sharp breath. He began again, essaying “Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight,” singing along a little as Molly had taught him, and the sound of the grimly triumphant old ballad drifted out the window: If seven king’s-daughters here ye hae slain, the melody rising, falling, its sinuous curves echoing faintly from the monastery walls, filling the darkening bailey.

  He thought of leaving this refuge for the ice-clad road, the drifting snow, the unknown thing that ranged the woods. He sang the old song of evil overthrown, and his fingers danced over the keys, though his hands were cold, and his heart was chilled.

  If seven king’s-daughters here ye hae slain,

  Lye ye here, a husband to them a’.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE NEXT DAY, A REQUIEM Mass for Brother Athanasius was said, and then he was interred in the brotherhood’s crypt. During Mass Hob stood again in the back of the chapel. Afterward the covered litter was borne from the chapel, the monks pacing behind, save for one who went before the bearers with an iron truncheon in each hand. He struck these together with a ringing clank, keeping a grave slow time, one stroke for each step. Hob followed them out, to stand watching them cross the frozen ground toward a small archway in the farther reaches of the bailey. All who were about other business paused to cross themselves and stand in prayer a moment. The archway, so Molly had told them, led to the crypt itself, far down a side tunnel, in a shadowy silent chamber hollowed from the mountain, where past members rested in niches in the rough-hewn gray rock. Here the still, cool air never grew warm, never grew cold, and the monks’ footfalls were muted by rock dust from long-dead predecessors’ picks. In accordance with the brotherhood’s rules, no one save the officiating priest and the brothers themselves had been allowed to attend that interment.

  Out in the cold, in the sun-bright bailey, all was commotion and hurry, the jingle of harness and clatter of hooves. Molly’s troupe was preparing to resume their journey, and the party of pilgrims had elected to accompany them, for a little way at least. The pilgrims now stood waiting in a cluster near the open smithy door to take advantage of the heat from the forge. Their staves were leaned against the smithy wall. They drew woolen and sheepskin cloaks closer, they clapped mittened hands together. Their scrips were slung around their shoulders, and each of these satchels was bulging with fare from the monastery kitchens. The monks never asked for recompense for board or lodging, but any pilgrim of substance left a donation behind, and the largely self-sufficient monastery had never lacked.

  There were a score or so of the peregrines, come from Carlisle, most of them burghers, guild-brothers in the tanners’ guild. Their leader, Aylwin, a thickset man in middle age with a slab-cheeked cheery face, had come with his brother and one of his sons, and their three wives. A fairly prosperous free farmer from just outside Carlisle had also joined their party.

  Now the wagons were ready to roll, and each pilgrim took staff in hand and trudged forward through the opened inner gate. Molly’s troupe began in their usual order: Molly in the ox wagon with Hob at the ox’s bridle to help guide the great beast, then Nemain, then Jack with the mare bringing up the rear. Molly brought the ox through the capacious doors to the outer ward. Hob had to keep hauling on the cheek strap of Milo’s bridle, the ox repeatedly turning its head in wistful attempts to begin a turn back to the stable.

  Molly halted the ox just short of the portcullis, and the pilgrims came crowding up to either side. The double escort of eight monks took their stations around the company.

  Hob heard the gates close behind them, and a moment later the clack, clack of the pawls: just ahead, the portcullis slid sideways into the rock. Soon there was before him only the open cleft in the rock, the road that ran past the monastery, and the sheer drop beyond into the gorge. There was a moment’s reluctance to step through those gates into the endless unprotected world, and then Molly clucked to the ox, and Hob grabbed the bridle rope and urged Milo forward.

  They turned left, and immediately the road began to climb, winding up the side of Monastery Mount. The advance party of monks walked easily up the incline, springing on sturdy legs over rock and rut. They had brought tight-woven linen bags filled with ash from the fire trenches, and now with a motion as though sowing seed scattered ash and bits of burnt wood in handfuls on the trail ahead of the oncoming party, to assist foot and hoof and wheel in the struggle to secure purchase on the frozen ground.

  The aches in Hob’s legs, which had begun to fade in the last few days, now were reawakened. The ox toiled upward, planting its vast hooves stolidly in the mix of snow and dirt and ash. The pilgrims were digging into the trail with their staves, breathing heavily, and one woman, thin, black-haired, unremarkable in appearance but with bitter beautiful eyes, racked by a near-continuous cough, was supported on either side by her two sons.

  Molly called to her, offering a place on the wagon seat, but she signed a refusal. One of her sons said, in shy courteous tones, “The mam’s made a vow to walk the whole distance to the shrine, that mayhap the saint will grant a cure. She’s afflicted sore with a theft of the breath.”

  The slope steepened. Molly got down from the wagon and walked by the ox, gripping the bridle by the cheek strap. She had a rope that went back to the wooden brake bar; if the wagon started to slip back down the slope she could pull it taut and set the brake. She sent Hob back to hold the ass’s bridle, while Nemain drove; together the two youngsters would be sufficient to control the smallest of their beasts on this difficult track. Hob could see Jack, a few yards behind the small wagon, ambling along beside the mare, a hand against her neck. Jack with his powerful body seemed untroubled by the struggle against the increasing incline, though his limp grew more evident.

  To their right the view opened up as the gorge widened. They were far above the tree line and the air was bitingly cold, the constant mountain wind whipping the hoods the travelers wore about their faces and making robes and cloaks stream sideways.

  The snow that draped about Old Catherine’s shoulders like a shawl began to glow as the sun climbed and Catherine came out from the shadow of Monastery Mount. The golden flush of the sun-bathed snowcap was shot through with glints of light from the rivers of ice winding down Old Catherine’s eastern face; farther down a blanket of evergreens darkened the spreading flanks of the mountain. Hob had the new experience of watching two hawks from above rather than below. The birds, their broad flat wings spread like sails to catch the sun-warmed updrafts, moved in slow expansive circles through the gulf of air, peering down with grim intent at the rabbit-haunted forest glades.

  The travelers toiled upward without major incident. At one point some rocks had evidently fallen from above onto the trail. Hob had to push the ass to the right to prevent the wheels’ trundling over a rock the size of his head. He had steered too far, however, and a moment later the forward wheel screeched against the monk-built parapet bordering the trail, and despite Nemain’s hauling on the reins to turn Mavourneen, the small wagon shuddered to a stop.

  There was a general halt of the party. Jack and two of the monks heaved back on the wagon while Hob tried to get the ass to walk in reverse, straining backward with his arms thrown around its neck. Mavourneen looked back in puzzlement, and an inquisitive velvet nose left a chill moist print on his cheek. He scrubbed at his face with his sleeve and tried again. This time he got the little beast to step back; the wheels were freed and they came forward again. Nemain, up on the wagon seat, looked once over the parapet and then at Hob, her eyebrows raised. Hob smiled sheepishly and turned upslope again, pulling at the bridle rope, his face hot.

  Up and up, and soon there came in sight a rock formation with a jagged semicircular cavity in its side: the famed Thonarberg Bite. Fireside tales insisted the opening was ripped in the rock by a flying serpent, always well before the tale-teller’s grandfather’s time. This marked the
highest reach of the pass. Part of the Bite overarched the trail, and as they trundled under this overhang, relief from toil was immediate as the slope reversed from steeply upward to gently downward.

  Once past the rock jut, Hob saw the valley beyond sprawl out before him. This flank of Monastery Mount spread southward at a gentle grade, and the track could be followed with the eye, spacious and welcoming, down to the tree line, where it plunged into the forest. About two furlongs past the Thonarberg Bite was a boundary stone set up by the monks. The land here was clear to all sides; the caves and ravines that provided such excellent retreats for outlaws and bandits were all on the other side of the Thonarberg; escort was deemed unnecessary from here to the forest. In the forest lay other dangers, but the hand of St. Germaine did not stretch so far.

  Farewells were said, and they moved past the eight monks, who stood quietly to watch them from sight. Molly remounted the wagon seat. Nemain plied the brake on the little wagon, and Hob, one hand to the ass’s bridle, leaned back somewhat against the gentle slope, but the going was clearly easier and, were it not for the biting cold, would have been pleasant walking.

  Molly, her hood pushed back, her cheeks glowing pink with the sting of the wind, leaned out from her seat on the ox wagon ahead and beckoned Hob forward. He trotted up to her.

  “Lead on a bit, child. It’s safe enough Nemain will be on this slope, so douce and gentle it is.” Molly waited till he had hold of the bridle, and then disappeared into the wagon through the hatch behind the seat. He heard her open the rear door and swing down behind. He looked back and saw her climbing into Nemain’s wagon, where she kept most of the herbs and powders she used for her remedies. In short order she returned, a clay jar in her hand, striding past him to the two young men and their dark-haired mother. Hob watched with interest as Molly walked along beside the little group, by the look of things explaining, cajoling, although he could not hear what was said.

  Now the little group of four had stopped by the roadside, and as Hob and the ox came up to them, he saw Molly hold the jar to the woman’s lips. Then he was past, too polite to look back but hearing a gagging cough, and the sound of someone spitting, and then spitting again. Milo decided at this moment to veer from the path, perhaps intending a subtle slow turn that surely would go unnoticed by Hob, and that would bring them around to a stableward direction. Hob whistled sharply between his teeth and gave a brisk tug on the bridle, and the ox slewed back to the center of the track, snorting in mild annoyance.

  A moment later the woman and her two sons passed Hob, the woman now walking much more easily, the strain gone from her face and only one hand laid lightly on a son’s arm. The three pilgrims drew ahead of Milo’s slow plod. Soon thereafter Molly swung up into the driver’s seat, moving with a surprising nimbleness for so queenly a woman.

  Hob heard coming up behind him the chunk, chunk of a staff, thrust into the path to slow the bearer’s descent. Aylwin, the jovial leader of the little pilgrim band, appeared at Hob’s left hand, striding along, sniffing appreciatively at the keen air, his head turning from side to side as if eager to miss nothing of the barren snowfields and sterile rock ridges that lay to either hand. The long liripipe that adorned his hood twitched back and forth with his abrupt movements; Hob thought of a horse’s tail lashing at flies.

  “God save us, what a day tae be up and moving!” He grinned at Hob; he touched his forehead to Molly. He swung his staff forward with a flourish, striking it into the trail with a little skritching crunch; leaned on it as he walked forward; whisked it up and swung it forward again jauntily.

  “We’re doon fra Carlisle,” he said, beaming at first one of them and then the other. Hob, struggling to hold the ox steady as it shied from the shadow of the palmer’s darting staff, only managed to grunt politely. Aylwin, undaunted by this lack of encouragement, launched into an involved tale of the organization of the pilgrimage and the funding thereof; the selection by the guild of those to go and those to stay; the Carlisle Tanners’ Guild, their current guild quarters and their hope for a new guild lodge; Aylwin’s own enterprise as a whittawer; the distinction between tanning and tawing, the tawers or whittawers belonging nonetheless to the tanners’ guild; his training of his sons and daughters and his son-in-law in the craft, and their various aptitudes, and the processes of tawing, all in a dense North Country speech that Hob found hard to follow.

  They were coming down to the tree line, and Hob, looking at the advancing wall of trees, found himself sinking into apprehension: the fell thing that had driven them in haste up Monastery Mount had moved among the trees, and might it not have gone ahead? Might it not even now be waiting for them to enter the narrow track walled by tree trunks, shadowed by pine and fir branches? He felt his breath coming short as Aylwin chattered gaily about his art, having found in Molly, who always wanted to know everything, an attentive listener.

  “First tha mun take t’ hair fra yon hide, that’s wi’ lime, but leaves lime on, sithee, so theer’s a bran drench, that’ll take lime off again, and then tha’s just begun, Queen of Heaven help us . . . ”

  Now they were moving in among the first trees of the wood. The snow was less here, but the sunlight was dimmed, cut into shafts and bars that lay across the path. Hob looked back. Jack was just entering the forest, and behind him the open slope of the mountain already looked beyond reach, as lost to him as last summer’s bright afternoons.

  “. . . theer’s t’ scudding as takes off all t’ rest o’ t’ hair and t’ color as thy lime has left, then it’s intae yon tubs, thy well-made tub being a thing of wondrous clever fashioning, Master Hunferth’s oor cooper, a fine auld man, tha wilna find anither cooper t’ like in t’ North Country, auld Hunferth makks a tub looks like it’s grown fra t’ one tree . . . ”

  Hob heard Aylwin’s voice, but faintly; the pounding of his own heart was hammering in his ears and he found it hard to catch his breath. He peered left and right down the forest corridors. The wood stretched away, silent; it seemed to harbor no living thing that was not rooted in the earth. Hob was not reassured.

  “. . . then tha mun mix t’ alum, t’ salt, t’ flooer, t’ yolk of eggs, but hoo much tha wonders, ah theer’s mony would like tae ken, that’s anither guild secret, and noo tha hast a mort of stirring and paddling wi’ t’ poles, great long wooden things and soon wearisome, and theer’s days o’ this, stirring like a cook . . . ”

  Down and down, the evergreens giving way to leafless oak and alder, beech and yew, but the path lightening only a little, for the forest was old and the limbs that closed from either side over the path were substantial enough to block most of the blue sky from view.

  “. . . then tha hast, after all is done, tae hang un up tae dry, hard as a board it comes, then ye put un aside and do nowt tae un for near a month, it lets t’ alum set, sithee, then tae t’ sawdust, t’ which tha wets just a wee bit, and then tae t’ stake, a sort of knife on a wooden horse it is, but not a sharp knife, sithee, more dull or blunt-like . . . ”

  Behind the cheery voice was the creak of the wheels, the clop of hooves. Hob listened for rustling behind the trees, for the click of claws, for that cry that had caused his heart to check in his breast. Yet there was nothing. He glanced back at Molly. She leaned a bit to hear Aylwin’s instruction, and she seemed calm enough, but her eyes roved the corridors of the forest as did Hob’s. Hob wondered at the sanguine nature of the pilgrim, as he strode along, carefree, absorbed in his topic. Surely all at the monastery had heard that there was some unknown danger abroad.

  “. . . and tha mun work thy hide this way and that ower t’ knife, ower and ower, swinking and toiling a long weary time till t’ stiffness come out and then yon hide, ’tis like butter, like summer butter, sithee, and then it’s for my goodwife and her sister and their cousin, and they t’ three finest glovers in Carlisle.”

  “And what is it ye dye it with—oak bark, say, or elderberry juice?” asked Molly. The reins were in her right hand and she braced herself wit
h her left as she leaned toward him, swaying a bit with the bumping of the wagon over the rutted path, but every so often she would straighten and sweep her glance over the woods to the right of the path. She always watched everything and at times it had been what kept them all alive.

  “Oak bark, t’ juice of t’ elderberry, logwood; then theer’s thy sumac, fustic, or cochineal, and what we call Persian berries, but beforehand tha mun give yon hide a piss-wash, t’ piss being stale, sithee, fresh is no good, and then tha’rt ready for thy dye-dip or brushing on, ower and ower . . . ”

  Hob found he was clinging so tightly to the ox’s bridle rope that he was causing it to veer from the path. His breath came short and fast, and he looked from side to side faster and faster. When he looked left, his skin crawled with fear that when he turned back to the right he would see . . . he knew not what.

  “Hob.”

  “. . . and if tha dip it in t’ dye tha mun egg t’ hide again, and dry and stake it again . . . ”

  “Hob, a chuisle, come back here a moment.”

  He became aware that Molly was summoning him to her side. He paid out some slack on the rope and dropped back between Molly and Aylwin, who had paused from politeness while Molly spoke, or perhaps to regain some breath.

  Molly put a firm hand on his shoulder and pulled him a little toward her. She leaned farther down to her left so she could speak quietly in his ear. “There is nothing,” she said. “I’d be knowing by now and no mistake. Now be of good cheer and enjoy your walk.”