by Cleo Cordell
Deciding to risk Karolan’s displeasure, she pushed aside the carpet which masked the trapdoor and uncovered the staircase leading down to the workroom. She had discovered the opening for herself by accident when she renewed the stale rushes which covered the rest of the floor. There must be another entrance to the laboratorium, perhaps underground, leading directly out into the forest. For Karolan had not come back into the bedchamber before he left the tower.
The stone steps did not feel cold to her feet as she descended. The staircase was steep and she realized that she was going down deep into the earth. The sturdy door at the bottom of the stairs was unlocked. She pushed it open to reveal a vaulted room which blazed with candlelight. Immediately her nostrils were assaulted by a mixture of smells. She almost gagged. Overlaying the scent of herbs, unguents, the stink of sulphur, was something foul – bitter and meaty but with an odd sweetness. Garnetta recognized it at once as the stench of decay. She would never forget the pungent breath of the death-smell. The spectre of the death pit loomed out at her, leaving her shaking and nauseous. The feeling passed almost instantly and she took a few halting steps across the room. At first she could see nothing from which that smell might come.
This was not at all as she had imagined it would be. She had expected to find book shelves, but so many of them? There were books enough here to have been collected in ten lifetimes. Covering part of one wall was a chart depicting the earth and heavens, ringed around with astrological figures. Jars of dried herbs and coloured oils were ranged along the tops of chests of drawers. On the surface of a wooden table were a set of scales, a globe, and a ledger.
To one side of the room there was a furnace, the red glow of a charcoal fire seeping out around the edges of its door. A collection of strange apparatus was ranged around the furnace. There were metal tubes and glass containers, some of them bubbling and hissing. She walked to the back of the room, to the part in deepest shadow. Here the vaulted ceiling dipped low, spreading like the ribs of some great monster over the covered table in front of her. The smell was stronger here, coming from something under the sheet. She wrinkled her nose against the heavy odour of stale faeces. Whatever was on the table had been dead some time. It was a large animal, a wolf perhaps.
Reaching out she took a corner of the sheet and pulled. It slid to the floor, revealing the mess of blood, bone, and ragged tissue. The noxious smell rose in a wave, choking her and making her eyes water. ‘Oh, dear God!’ she cried, pressing her hand to her mouth and staggering backwards, at the same time overturning a rack of instruments. Sharp metal knives clattered on the stone.
The thing on the table had once been a man, but was now hardly recognizable as such. The skin was missing from the skull. The features, covered by raw muscle, glistened wetly. The eye sockets were empty and weeping a thin fluid. The teeth showed through the place where the lips had been. Garnetta gave a strangled sob and took a step backwards. She screwed her eyes shut, but could not rid herself of the image of the stripped limbs, the gaping ribcage, which was empty of all viscera, the glint of bone showing at spine and hip. Curls of skin were scattered on the table, which was stained with dried blood and scraps of blackened tissue.
As she staggered backwards, her stomach lurching, she swept out her arm, seeking blindly for a hand-hold on reality. This could not be real. If she accepted the evidence of her eyes then Karolan was a depraved monster, possibly a murderer. There must be some other explanation. Her heel connected with the base of some shelves which had been fitted into an alcove. Slamming to a halt, she drew in deep breaths, struggling to collect her thoughts. Turning her head, she froze. There was a glass jar at eye-level on the shelf she was leaning against. Something inside the jar was moving.
Whirling around she peered into the gloom. The thing that bobbed against the greenish glass, suspended in murky liquid was not alive; any movement was only in reaction to the fact that she had jarred the shelf. That did not help the horror or the ball of sickness in her stomach. She found herself staring into the lifeless face of an unborn child. Its skin was grey and bloated. Its eyelids bulged grotesquely out of its misshapen skull and its jaws jutted forward into a reptilian point. A long tongue, the end bitten and ragged, lolled out of its mouth.
Garnetta gagged. Bending forward she vomited onto the floor. The acrid smell clogged her nostrils, but it was better than that other smell. After a moment or two she recovered enough to straighten up. The thing in the bottle stared dispassionately at her. Moving slowly, bound by a morbid curiosity, she looked at the other shelves. There were many jars of all sizes, each of them filled with cloudy fluid and each holding a deformed child in all stages from embryo to full-term. Some of the bottled contents were so old that they had partly disintegrated into a pale spongy mass. Bits of tissue floated in the jars, suspended like pig meat in brawn jelly. At this thought her stomach heaved again. She swallowed hard, pushing down the nausea. One of the sad little corpses looked as if it had only just been put into the preserving fluid.
Garnetta’s heart moved with pity. She was stunned by what she had seen and was hardly able to encompass the enormity of it. How? Why? Had Karolan collected all these things? What purpose could there be in desecrating the dead? She knew now that he was much more than a heretic, but she was not yet ready to condemn him. Had he not saved her life? There must be some explanation, however unlikely. She wanted so much to believe well of him. The future, which had stretched ahead full of hope and possibilities, could not just evaporate.
In a daze and shaking with reaction she walked back towards the wooden table and sat down in front of the open ledger. She intended to wait until Karolan returned and then challenge him. Trying not to think of the horror that lay on the table at the back of the room, she looked down at the open ledger. She began to read, slowly at first, then with mounting disbelief.
‘It cannot be true . . .’ she murmured as she flipped back the pages and read the entries concerning herself.
She felt chilled to the bone. Something terrible had been done to her. She did not understand the rows of calculations, the chemical symbols, but she could read the list of items used in Karolan’s Godless experiments. He had bought and killed a child, then subjected the corpse to all manner of indignities. From the text she learned that she had undergone some kind of a process. There was mention of a spirit, a being, which had played some part in a ritual called – transmutation. Karolan wrote that this ‘being’ had tricked her into agreeing to some kind of unholy union with it. It appeared that this ‘thing’ had turned itself into an angel. She remembered the vision of a shining being. How joyful she had felt that God had sent his messenger to forgive her sins and to save her. But that had been an illusion, a device to gain her compliance.
Dear Lord, what had she agreed to? What had she become? She began to sob as she read the reports on her progress. The tears stung her eyes. Her throat ached with the force of her distress. Here was the evidence which she could not deny. Karolan wrote that he had great hopes for them both. He intended to tell her the things she needed to know before much more time had elapsed.
Garnetta pushed the book away violently. ‘No!’ she screamed. ‘No!’ She did not want to know anything more. She was terrified, filled with self-loathing. Karolan had damned her immortal soul to Hell! The thought of all the sweetness they had shared crumbled to dust. He had saved her for his own ends and had only been using her, observing her like that poor wretch lying on the table. She was trembling badly now, sick inside at the thought of his hands on her, his mouth on hers. Those same hands which had, mere hours ago, stripped the skin and removed the inner organs from a corpse.
‘I even thought I loved him,’ she whispered brokenly. Oh, what a fool she had been. The signs had been there, but she had refused to recognize them. His devilish glamour had blinded her, the force of his personality had seduced her. Her whole body felt hot with shame. He had woven a spell over her senses, made her a wanton and gloried in his triumph as her body wept for
love of sensual pleasure. Well no more. She had to get away, now, before he returned. She had no idea where she would go and she did not care. Her only thought was to get as far away from Karolan as possible.
Outside the tower Garnetta moved swiftly, silently through the garden, passing the neatly trimmed box hedges and patches of vegetables. Karolan might return at any time and she wanted to be long gone by then. The garden was dark under the spreading branches of mulberry and apple trees, but her night-sight was as keen as that of a cat. The hens in a wicker coop, detecting her presence, set up an alarmed clucking. She silenced them with a thought, hardly registering the action.
At the far end of the garden there was a bower, planted with lilies, roses, and briars of sweet eglantine. The plants were only just bursting into leaf, but she had an image of how it would look. Karolan had told her how pleasant it was to sit here in the shade of high summer. Consumed by sadness, she allowed herself to linger for just a moment. It was likely she would never see this place again, never again set eyes on Karolan. Even knowing what he was, she felt torn by mixed emotions. Part of her wanted to go back and pretend that nothing had changed. She wanted so badly to recapture their intimacy, to feel again the first rapture of physical love. But everything was different, all of it tainted by the poison of the black arts he had used upon her.
She must fight the hunger for him which, even now, churned and roiled within her. It was part of the spell he had cast. She felt him as keenly as if he was part of her own body. Perhaps with distance her blood would no longer call out to him, her dreams would not be clouded with images of his past deeds. For now she knew that the ‘dream’ had indeed been a vision. Karolan was capable of anything. As she turned she caught sight of a movement. Instantly alert, she spun around, but it was only her reflection in the pool set beside a grass bank. She drew closer and stood staring down into the water. The moonlight pouring between the trees turned the water’s surface into a mirror. The face of a stranger looked out at her.
Slowly Garnetta raised her hands and touched her shorn head. She stared at herself in utter astonishment. Instead of a blonde fuzz, the hair re-growth was black as pitch, clinging to her skull like a velvet cap. Her skin, which had been cream-toned, touched with pink at the cheekbones, was dead-white. It glowed softly against the darkness. She bent close to the water, hardly able to believe the other physical changes. Her eyes were no longer blue, but a reflective grey – like metal. There were specks of silvery light in their depths. They looked strange, disquieting – like Karolan’s eyes. Exactly like Karolan’s eyes. And her lips were full and red, she had the mouth of a wanton, or a fallen angel.
How was it possible that he had changed her so much? Small wonder that his household had accepted that she might be his niece. The dream made perfect sense. It had been Harun who taught Karolan the dark arts. Like herself Karolan had once been blond and blue-eyed. The process, whatever it entailed, had stolen his golden beauty and made him into night’s creature. Harun had tricked Karolan into taking part in some filthy heathen ritual.
He has made me like him. I am his creature. But what manner of thing had she become? What was Karolan? The only way to find out was to go back and ask him, but everything within her recoiled at the thought of facing him. She stroked her white face with awful fascination. No one who had known her previously would recognize her. Garnetta Mercer no longer existed. He saved my life. Perhaps this was the only way he could do that. She thrust the thought away. If she was to weaken and feel gratitude, she would go back. Already she had wasted enough time. What might he do if he caught her? Kill her? Cut up her body? For he could not wish to draw attention to himself. She realized that her very existence put him in danger. He was not the sort of man to let a threat go unchallenged. Having once preserved her life, he might now seek to destroy it.
Moving away from the bower she left the garden by the wicker gate and made her way towards the hedge of pleached limes which gave onto the open fields. From there her view was unobstructed. In the far distance, she could just see the dark smudge that was Chatesbrook and the three spires of St Ralphite’s, St Bertrina’s and St Kate’s-in-the-Meadow. Some distance from the town walls was the greater mass of Holy Penitence monastery, a regular configuration of dark shapes against the night sky.
She thought of going into the town, but knew that the gates had been locked against travellers since the pestilence gained a hold. It seemed that she must set her foot on the open road and rely, like so many others, on charity for her food and clothing.
She could detect traces of Karolan still. The vaporous mind-trail of his intellect was all around her, spreading a mist inside her head and throbbing in her blood like the fading echo of a great bell. It was going to be difficult to hide from him, for they were linked in some way. And if she, so newly made and ignorant of what had happened to her, was aware of him, then he, with all his honed and masterly talents, must be able to follow her every movement. Perhaps he knew already that she had left the tower. She turned her sights inwards, examining that place which had not been there before, and felt something like a shutter close in her mind. Karolan’s presence receded. Ah, there was a way to shield herself from him. But the severing of that special connection brought with it a sense of loss. She felt a coldness within her as if an icy seed had taken root in her belly. This, then, was something else she must learn to live with.
Keeping to the shelter of the hedgerows she struck out for the forest. She felt a pang of regret at the thought that she must forgo the task of lighting a candle in St Bertrina’s for her family, but shrugged off the feeling at once. The fact that she could do so with only a flicker of conscience was a mark of how far from grace she had fallen. Once her faith had been her strength, her belief in the mercy of God all encompassing. But God had not listened to her pleas for help. He had not come to her aid when Karolan and the unclean spirit had done their worst.
Now she was an abomination in the eyes of the church, unshriven, denied the comfort of her lost faith – set apart from others by the malady which had been visited upon her. What had Karolan said? We are one. We belong together. The words seemed sinister now. Her eyes glittered with tears, but she blinked them away. This was the last time she would allow herself to feel weakness. She was alone now and must make a way for herself.
It was very dark within the forest, the moonlight blocked by the dense canopy of trees. There were deer trails winding through the undergrowth of bracken which, so early in the year had reached knee-height. The new green growth, like bishops’ crosiers, brushed against her bare feet as she passed them.
After a number of hours at a steady, running pace Garnetta still felt fresh and was hardly breathing fast. As she pushed more deeply into the forest, brambles tore at her clothes and skin. She hardly noticed them and did not feel the chill of the wet grass. The sky had lightened and the moon was low in the sky before she began to tire. Stopping for a moment she looked around. On all sides trees and undergrowth pressed in on her. She was completely lost. There was no sign of a path or a clearing, no smell of a dung heap or noise of animals, which would have indicated that habitation was near by. She concentrated hard, but could detect no life signs of any predators. If wolves were there, they were hunting elsewhere.
Weariness overcame her. She sank down beneath the spreading branches of an elm. Leaf litter formed a deep drift. She snuggled into it, scooping the dried leaves to cover her body. She slept immediately and did not dream.
All the next day she travelled at speed, stopping only to drink water from a stream. She found edible leaves and dug into the soft forest floor for pignuts. If she was to spend long in the forest she would have to hunt, but she had not even a knife or twine to set a snare. She could sell the cloak, it was made of good cloth, the clasp of silver set with precious stones. With the money she would buy food, a pack to hold the few things she needed, a tunic of homespun wool to cover her shift. The rest of the coins she would sew into the hem of the tunic. For the presen
t, roots and leaves kept hunger pains at bay. She concentrated on keeping moving. The day passed swiftly. Except for birdsong and the rustling of small creatures in the undergrowth it was quiet. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, speckling the forest floor with coins of gold.
Despite her efforts to avoid thinking of Karolan, his face haunted her thoughts. She would never forget his arrogant beauty, neither would she forget the pleasure she had experienced in his arms. Even now her body awoke, burning and tingling at the memory of his flesh within hers, then she saw again the image of the flayed corpse. Her desire died as quickly as it was born.
As dusk fell she looked for a safe place to sleep. She was debating whether to climb a tree for safety, when she saw the glow of a fire through the trees. Her spirits rose at the prospect of food and company. Probably she had stumbled upon a company of charcoal burners or botchers. Such men lived deep within the forest, with their families, spending the warmer months accumulating wares which they sold at the glove and goose fairs of Michaelmas. They would have little enough to spare, living as they did from hand to mouth, but she might be allowed to spend the night by the fire in return for collecting firewood or helping the women with the children.
She began moving through the trees, the glow of the fire becoming brighter as she focused her attention upon it. Her mouth watered in anticipation of food. The smell of roasting meat wafted towards her on the breeze.