Something Red

by Douglas Nicholas

  The inner gates were open a foot or two. Hob and Hob-the-watcher slipped through the opening and stepped into Osbert’s spacious courtyard, and stopped as though bowshot. The dead had been temporarily laid out on the ground by the villagers, each wrapped in a shroud of coarse white cloth. Hob came back entirely to himself with a rush, his heart pounding; his limbs were chilled, but the blood was hot in his face.

  The shapes, some forty of them, lay like so many bundles on the icy ground, swaddled and anonymous, the white cloth stained in large part with red. They lay stiff and frozen with that utter lack of movement that proclaims the dead, save for one bundle, slighter than most. There the shroud had pulled away, just a bit, just at the very top, and there from a fold of the cloth escaped a lock of curly brown hair, tossing erratically in the bitter breeze. So: either Parnell or Margery. The merest mocking semblance of life. And by its side lay another muffled form, of sisterly size and delicacy. Hob stood and stared, in one wise utterly numb, and yet with a terrible feeling that his chest would soon burst open with the swelling of his pity and his horror.

  Nemain came up behind him. She took his left hand in hers and slipped her right arm about his waist. “Hob,” she said, “come away.”

  In a faint voice he said, “I have hastened back to her. So she bade me.”

  “Come away, a chuisle.” With the gentlest of pressures she turned him from the terrible array, and led him back to the wagons.

  THAT NIGHT HE LAY dry-eyed in the darkened wagon, alone, while Jack prowled about the camp, hammer in hand. The wagons were drawn up about a fire, at a short distance from the inn: none wanted to pass the night within those sad walls except those pilgrims tending to the dying Sawal, and the villagers left on guard, armed with axes and billhooks.

  Hob’s thoughts moved slowly, dismally. He was a traveler tramping down cold and muddy roads, groping through a clammy fog. Everyone at Osbert’s Inn was dead: Margery! Osbert, his sons, his other daughter, what was her— Parnell. The housecarls, the cook, the guests, as well as the mastiffs outside and the deerhounds inside. Tilred the pantler. And that winch-tender and his nephew in the well house.

  Hob sat up suddenly on the blanket-covered chest that was his bed. He was propped on one hand, staring into the darkness. That old winch-tender. Hob had listened as though it were a story, an entertainment around a campfire, and so had the winch-tender’s nephew.

  Father Athelstan had often praised Hob’s ability to remember a phrase, a verse, a passage, in English or in Latin—Father Athelstan had no Greek—and to repeat it almost verbatim. Hob would try to explain: when he called what he had heard to mind, it was much as though he listened to it afresh.

  Now suddenly Hob could hear the old man’s voice again, and the underlying somber music that he had not marked at the time.

  Jesus and Mary with us, Hob thought. Will I one day tell this to some young man and he with his mouth full of almonds, listening just for the tale? “She were a fine-lookin’ woman, too. I fancied her mysel’.”

  Suddenly he burst into a flood of hot tears. He sat up all the way, choking and sobbing, rocking back and forth on the chest in the darkness. The water ran from his eyes and his nose and he reached down his shirt from its peg and buried his face in the cloth.

  The weeping subsided at last, in a series of little gasping breaths. Something came to him, something not clearly defined. He felt it rather than thought it. He felt perhaps he understood something, that puzzle of children: the mysterious elusive grief glimpsed now and then in their elders. The smile that is tinged with melancholy, the glance away in midspeech to the horizon-line, the remark behind which is an untold tale. Someone dead too soon, or traveled away for aye; an old man haunted by the flicker of a memory, some ghost of his young days. She were a fine-lookin’ woman, too. I fancied her mysel’.

  CHAPTER 10

  AT SUNRISE JACK LED THE beasts into the inn, one by one, and fed them from Osbert’s mangers, and watered them from Osbert’s troughs. Now they were hitched again to the wagons, and the little troupe was prepared to leave again, for as Molly had said, there was little they could do to help, and she had no desire to be embroiled in an inquiry by the shire-reeve or, worse, by the knights who had been sent for from the nearest stronghold of the Sieur de Meschines, in whose demesne the inn lay.

  Molly had thrown a hooded cloak of the Scottish blue-gray wool about her shoulders, fastened it with her best ring-and-pin brooch, and gone in to pay her respects to what remained of Osbert and his family. She had come out with a grim and stony face and dry eyes. She went into the large wagon.

  Hob’s own eyes were red with last night’s tears. “She is more angry than doleful,” he remarked to Nemain, who had stayed close by his side all day.

  “A queen does not weep,” said Nemain, who had not wept either. Hob was unsure of what she meant, but, gripped by a weary sorrow, did not care enough to ask.

  In a moment Molly swung back down from the wagon. The overcast sun struck a wan gleam from the green enamel and the gold of her brooch; it seemed the only spot of color in that gray day.

  She looked about the little circle, and seemed about to speak, but here came Aylwin, crunching up over the patches of ice and snow with slow tread, staff in hand. Hob was startled at the change in Aylwin’s appearance. His shoulders slumped and he seemed slack within his clothes. His face seemed gaunt; his mouth drooped and his cheeks, so full and ruddy before, seemed wan and hollow.

  “Mistress Molly.” He stood still for a moment, as if this greeting had made off with the last of his strength; then he gave a great sigh. “Sawal ha’ died, as tha kent, in t’ bed, within Master Osbert’s inn. Father Benedict will pray him intae ground, sithee, in t’ wee churchyard here, and we mun stay for that—t’ kind folk hereabout hae offered us lodging ower tae Bywood Old End. But then we mun return tae Carlisle—och, what am I tae tell puir Sawal’s mam?” He leaned close; his voice sank. “I fear Satan be ranging yon woods, seeking wham tae devoor, as t’apostle says. Here is no ordinary pilgrimage t’ noo, and I wi’ my people tae consider, sithee.”

  Hob started, hearing his thoughts about Jack echoed so closely: he thought to find some sign in St. Peter’s verse coming to his attention again, and he turned and looked about at the unreadable trees. Between the closely set trunks narrow aisles led away, quickly coming to darkness and shadow, and there was nothing to be learned.

  “Wilt tha return wi’ us, Mistress Molly? Tisna safe for thee and thine, an’ ye’d all be welcome in Carlisle, sithee. I’m no small man i’ t’ guild.”

  “Let me speak to my granddaughter a short while, friend Aylwin, and then I’ll come tell you what way we will take.”

  “We’ll be within: t’ womenfolk are washing puir Sawal, sithee.” Nodding heavily to the company, he swung about and trudged off.

  The four of them stood near the large wagon and watched him go. The cold made their ears sting, and the wind blew their cloaks about; Molly’s hair streamed sideways, billowing like a silver flag, till she gathered it with both hands and drew her hood up over it.

  Molly said, looking at Aylwin’s retreating back, “Nemain. Is it on or back you would bid me go?”

  Hob was startled by this. The two often consulted, but Molly taught, Nemain learned. Even when they lilted along in Irish you could tell who was guiding whom. Here for a wonder was Molly at a loss, and appealing to her granddaughter, that newest of women.

  “Nay, seanmháthair, I cannot tell. I thought that thing gone ahead, or away, and it here behind us the while.”

  A great crowd of crows and ravens had been gathering since yesterday; they clustered in the nearby trees, on the walls of the dog run and the ridgepoles of the inn buildings. More red kites were arriving now, making wide loops in the air as they descended, looking to find a feeding crow and startle it into flight. There it might be robbed of its portion by the piratical hawks. A particularly bold kite, skimming too low, had to veer suddenly upward to escape the snapping beaks of angr
y crows. The mass of birds was in constant motion, lifting, circling, resettling. The cawing of the crows and the deep cronk of the ravens filled the air. The smell of spilled blood drew them, but the villagers would not let them at the dead, not even at Osbert’s mastiffs, and the crows had nothing for the kites to steal.

  Molly turned and peered intently across the short distance to the inn, her lips moving silently.

  From the roofs of the inn a bunch of crows lifted suddenly and flew a slow circuit before alighting once more. One detached itself from the flock and flew straight toward them. It dropped down toward the large wagon, spread broad black pinions as it braked, and fluttered daintily to a perch on the nearest wagon wheel. It snapped its glossy wings shut. It was a very large crow, almost as big as a raven, and it regarded Molly with head cocked and an eye like a bead of onyx.

  Molly pushed the hood back off her mane, gray as rainwater, thick as a river in flood. She reached beneath the cloak and from her belt drew a slim ring-pommel dagger. She stepped close to the big wooden wheel. She looked once up to the sky, her expression baleful, and then she spoke to the bird, something in Irish, and the crow shifted its position a bit, wings flickering open a moment for balance, a flash of shadow; yet it remained, awaiting her.

  Molly held the dagger point to the thumb on her left hand and pricked deep. A fat drop of blood welled up. She held her hand out to the crow.

  It moved its side-tilted head down and up several times, lizard-quick, eyeing the outstretched thumb, looking back up to her face. Then it leaned forward and captured the bead of blood, an action like biting a berry from a twig. The crow tilted its head upward, its horn-yellow beak scissoring rapidly as it sent the blood down its throat.

  Hob, a scant three paces away, watched in fascination. He had never observed a crow so closely; at this distance he could see the bluish-purple cast to the black feathers on its upstretched throat as it drank, and when it lowered its head, the greenish sheen to the black feathers on its nape.

  Molly sheathed the dagger and then pressed her thumb with her right hand, and offered another drop of blood to the crow; and then a third.

  After the last drop the crow stood still a moment, looking for all the world like Father Athelstan pondering what penance to give a sinner; then it shook its lustrous feathers, gave a loud creaking caw, and leaped into the air. It wheeled around them once and flew toward the southeast. They watched as it dwindled to a small black fluttering rag, to a dot, and vanished over the trees.

  “That is settled, then,” said Molly. “It’s back to the ford for us, and on, perhaps even to Durham.”

  “But how—” Hob began, but then he felt Jack’s hand on his upper arm. The big hand covered most of it. He looked back at Jack. Jack just shook his head ever so slightly. The dark man slowly pulled him away and pointed toward the ox, and then went back toward his own place with the last wagon. Hob went and lifted Milo’s lead rope from its notch in the footboard. Molly disappeared into the little wagon, then came out with one of her endless clay jars, full of a breath-easing potion for Haunild; off she went to find the black-haired mother, and to tell Aylwin her decision. She was back almost immediately. A few moments later Molly and Nemain took their places on the wagon seats and gathered up the reins.

  But Molly gave no signal to start. A man was approaching from the inn with a long loping stride, a wiry ginger-haired man, lean, energetic: Hodard Squint, one of the shire-reeve’s men and another of Molly’s partisans.

  “God and Mary wi’ thee, Mistress.”

  “And you, Hodard.”

  He looked up at her, his eyes screwed up into slits against the cold, as was his habit. His expression was keen and intelligent. Hob saw a long-chinned face, framed in a hood of green wool; about his shoulders a scalloped half-cape of the same color flapped in the wind.

  “Mistress . . . ” He seemed uncertain how to proceed. His clever narrowed eyes searched her face a moment. “Mistress, tha mun hear summat. Master Osbert’s storehouse has been brast open, and the gowd an’ siller taken, sithee. An’ Father Benedict gaes aboot, askin’ what is a beast but needs gowd and siller as well; an’ askin’ about yon woman an’ her wagons an’ her strange ways, sithee, and they’m sent for knights fra the castle. If tha’rt t’ gae hence, gae the noo nor tarry at all, an’ gae far, lest Father Benedict wi’ his waggin’ tongue do thee a mischief. Sithee, ’twill be three days before yon knights come, Mistress, but when they come ’twill all be oot o’ my hands.”

  Molly sat a moment. “My thanks for this, Hodard.” She sighed, wrapped the reins twice about the brake, and swung down from the wagon seat, agile as a young maiden. “Come with me and look through my wagons.”

  “Nay, Mistress, tha needna show me . . . ”

  But she took him by the hand—it was as though the shire-reeve’s deputy were a boy, Hob thought; but it was affectionate as well. She led Hodard Squint back to the door of the first wagon, and unlatched it, and climbed in, beckoning him to follow. She did the same with the remaining wagons, and when they emerged she said, “Now you can tell all that I was not weighed down with poor Osbert’s gold and silver when I left here, and you the reeve’s man; and before that I was with yon pilgrims, and Aylwin a respected man in the tanners’ guild up to Carlisle.”

  “Naetheless, Mistress, tha’d best not tarry.”

  “Naetheless, friend Hodard, I will not be tarrying.”

  She embraced him warmly; then she turned and clambered swiftly up to the seat. Hob thought that the long lean face was somewhat reddened, but it may have been an effect of the same biting wind that toyed with Hodard’s half-cape.

  Molly nodded to Hob and he turned and led Milo around in a semicircle till the ox was once again pointed toward the road that led toward Bywood Old End, and to the juncture with the track that led down to Dickon’s Ford on the Dawlish.

  CHAPTER 11

  BACK AGAIN TO THE TURNING before Bywood Old End, back past the peasants’ furrows, through the forest to Dickon’s Ford, a dash across. Once again they did not stop to build a fire as they had the first time they crossed, but turned into the southward path and hurried on into the forest.

  When they came to the place where they had been ambushed, they found stiffened bodies by the road. The bandits had not even stayed to claim their dead, and the birds, mostly crows, were already busy at them, a grim sight. Hob’s heart had felt hollow in his chest since the inn, and neither the slain men nor the fear of attack could lower his spirits any further. Still, he was resilient as only someone of thirteen summers is resilient, and he had known Margery but a few days, and he did not want to walk into a sleet of arrows in another ambush. He dropped back to walk beside Molly.

  “Will they come at us again, Mistress?”

  She waved him on briskly. “There’s nothing here now, and no mistake. They dare not linger, even to bury their dead, for fear the reeve’s men will come along and take them. Away on.”

  He moved ahead of Milo once more—the ox had begun to turn its head, wondering why Hob was behind it—and quickly led the way past the rigid corpses, with their rustling, croaking, shifting blanket of attendant birds.

  Soon they were past the signs of the battle—the trampled bushes, the bodies, the splash of blood here and there on a tree trunk, patches of flattened and crimsoned snow. The track they were on grew broader and a bit more comfortable to travel: the forest stepped back a few paces from the roadside, and the roots of the ancient trees no longer crept onto the snow-packed road, and the wheels need not bump over them, or snag upon them.

  The wagons were actually moving into a broad wooded valley, and though their sight was hindered by the thick wooden palisades about them, the surrounding crags of the mountains were farther away. The little troupe traveled quickly down this valley, and met with no hindrance.

  Soon the mountain walls began to converge again, and the road rose slowly toward a notch in the hills: Odo’s Pass, sometimes called the Fellsgate. Once past this notch the road
wound down toward the high fells eastward, and eventually toward the coast towns. There was a very slight grade, and some slipping of the wheels, and some strewing of ash by Hob, but generally the faring here was not onerous, and soon they dipped into a hollow and then began to rise again toward the brink of the pass.

  As he topped the rim of the hollow and once again had a clear view of the road ahead, Hob slowed his pace, and slowed it more, at the sight of the pass; his lips parted; finally he came to a dead halt, and behind him the rumble of wheels ran down into silence, and brakes were set all along the tiny caravan.

  * * *

  A PORTION OF THE MOUNTAINSIDE had given way, and huge blocks and slabs of stone, looking as if they had been hurled by giants, had carried down with them earth and snow and whole trees. Odo’s Pass was completely blocked, and there was no way ahead.

  Jack and Nemain tied off their animals and came forward. Everyone looked at the tremendous mass of material blocking the notch; there was an air of general bemusement. No one moved or spoke for a moment.

  Then Molly released the brake. “Turn the wagon, Hob a rún,” she said. “It’s back to the ford, and onto the eastern road. There’s nothing for us here, and the day darkening as we sit.” Jack and Nemain returned to their wagons, and Hob tore his gaze from the destruction before him.

  They had had eyes only for the rock slide, perhaps a quarter of a mile ahead: the tangle of boulder and pine trunk and tumbled-down earth. But as Hob turned, heaving at the lead rope to get Milo to swing around and go back, his eye struck some way into the gloom beneath the trees. “Uh!” he said, the sound jolted out of him by surprise. He pointed to a spot about ten paces into the forest. This was well clear of the rock slide, and the ground here was unscarred by any upheaval.

  There, embedded in the side of a snowbank, gray with rock dust, scarred by chisels, lay a hand, spread as in warning: Go back. It ended in a torn ragged stump of wrist, as though bitten through by monstrous jaws. The snow below the stump bore a stain like a sash trailing earthward, widening as it fell, fading as it widened, diluted with snow-water, red to pink.