Blood Ties (50 page)

The arm that went around her neck choked off any hope of sound, the weight of the body that pushed her to the earth knocking all air from her lungs.

The arm withdrew, a hand returned, forcing her head into the earth. Her mouth, open and desperate for breath, sucked in mud. Another hand reached round inside her dress, grabbing at her breasts, twisting and pulling.

She got some air, whimpered in pain. The man on her back laughed.

‘I knew I would take you, White Cedar. I did not think it would be so soon. And so easy.’

Black Snake rolled her over, so she could see his tattooed face, his hand covering her mouth, his weight still crushing her. She tried to bite, caught a little flesh between her teeth. He took the hand away and, as she took in air to scream, struck her hard across the face. Her cry choked, she tasted blood.

He flipped her again so her front was once more pressed into the earth. She could barely breathe let alone cry out. Both his hands were now free to run over her body. She felt him pull her dress up, past her thighs, up further, then felt him fiddling at his breech cloth. He pulled her up off the ground so her hands were free again, but she had to brace herself to prevent falling back to the earth where he crushed her, where she knew she would faint.

‘I know what you want, White Cedar,’ he grunted. ‘I saw the way you looked at Tagay. I will give you now what he never would. And, since he is dead, he will not be able to, ever again.’ He levered himself backwards, his hand reaching up between her legs.

She let her left hand go, so that they both slipped. Her bruised face banged into the ground. Her right hand reached sideways, into flame, a different pain that she pulled to her. Cursing, he jerked her up again, banging her thighs hard into his. For a moment he had to take his own weight to steady them both. That was when she brought her right hand straight up off the ground, past her own face, over her shoulder. The burning end of the stake she clutched caught the side of his head, skittered past his eye, embedded in his nose.

The blow could only be delivered contorted, lacking a fuller force. But he reeled back with a howl, clutching at his face, and his weight shifted off her. In a moment, she was up and stumbling along the beach.

A hand wrapped around her ankle. She slipped onto her hands, kicked back with the other leg. She heard another grunt of pain and then she was running, trying to summon enough air to scream. The best she seemed to be able to manage was a whisper, as if she was held in a nightmare.

‘Help! Help me!’

The beach lay just below the village but out of sight, beyond a series of huge boulders. If she could round them, she would be in sight of the guards at the palisade gates and she would not need to scream.

He was coming after her. She could hear his footfalls on the path, getting closer and closer. She didn’t look back. Just as she passed the boulders, suddenly she was no longer running but flying, tumbling, rolling along the path. He was on top of her again, a blackness was filling her eyes. Then she heard another voice, different from the harsh croak of Black Snake.

‘What happens here? Speak, or I will shoot you down.’

She was looking up into light, into torches held aloft.

‘Help me!’ she wheezed, and there was someone there, dragging her to her feet, a gate guard, and she pressed against him, while his fellow took a step toward the still prone Black Snake, raising his torch above him.

The warrior was hunched over, his face to the earth. When he raised his head, Anne could see the damage she had done. Blood ran down the side of his face, as if it dripped from the fangs of the snake. Black ash mixed with the red.

As his eyes met hers, he began to howl, an animal scream. She heard noise, then became aware there were words within it, a word she’d never heard and one she had – their word for the magic spirit that lived in all things.

‘Oki!’ yelled Black Snake, again and again, pointing at Anne, as more people ran from the gates, clutching weapons, more torches. Soon a crowd had gathered in the suddenly bright night, forming a semi-circle around the howling man and the woman still slumped against the guard.

The line of people opened and Chief Tangled emerged. At the sight of him, Black Snake fell to his side, and began to jerk and toss on the ground.

‘What does this mean, Tawane? What of the hunt? Where are the others?’

The jerking stopped long enough for one tattooed arm to be raised. It pointed straight at Anne. Then the man spoke the word that Anne had not understood, that he had been alternating with ‘Oki’.

‘Ontatekiahta,’ he said and fell back to the earth to shake.

Immediately, the guard who was supporting Anne against himself pushed her away. She fell toward the line of villagers who gave ground before her.

‘What does he say?’ She looked from one face to the next. Getting no response, she shouted, ‘He … attacked me. I … I do not know your word for it. He wanted to take me, as a man takes a woman, but I did not want it. I had to fight.’

There was a muttering, then, the eyes shifting back to the prone man. His jerking suddenly stopped and he sat up, his eyes rolling around before settling again on Anne.

‘Yes, I attacked her. But not because I wanted her like a man. I attacked her because she has cursed me. She cursed our hunt. She brought disaster to it. All the hunters are dead. All! Because of her curse.’ At this, cries burst from the people, of anger, of dismay. Someone began to wail. Raising his hand again, he pointed to Anne but away from her face, to her side. ‘She has an Oki there, in her pouch. It is the remains of an Ontatekiahta from her land across the Great Water. She has used it to bring her evil to us.’

Anne suddenly realized the only thing the word could mean. She screamed out, ‘It’s not true!’ but her cry was lost in the shouts of the people. Most of them backed away still further but the two guards, on an order from Chief Tangled, grabbed her. Rough hands tore the deer skin bag from her belt, fingers fumbled for the drawstring. It was inverted and shaken upside down.

The hand fell onto the earth. It landed palm down. All could see its six skeletal fingers.

A woman, one who had been wailing loudly, ran forward and struck Anne hard across the face, another woman followed, and soon blows were falling from every side. She went to her knees, where kicks were aimed at her. So many came, she was unable to do much to protect herself.

Then, as suddenly as the attack began, it stopped. Tangled had given a command, and the women fell back. The two gate guards bent, lifted her up.

‘This is not the time for justice. This is not how we judge,’ he thundered, staring down any who looked back at him. ‘Tomorrow all the wise men of our tribe will be gathered. We will decide this matter then. I will take her Oki for I do not fear any Ontatekiahta of the Pale Thieves. She will have no power here.’

He picked up the skeletal hand. Groans issued from all around him.

‘Now, put her in the cage where the dogs for eating are kept. Watch her. Even without her Oki she may be dangerous. Do not talk to her or breathe near her. If she speaks, beat her. Otherwise, leave her alone.’ He glowered at the faces around him. ‘I have spoken.’

As she was picked up under her arms and dragged away, Anne caught sight of Gaka standing amongst the rest, saw the old woman shake her head and put a finger to her lips. As she went, the people followed her through the village gates, chanting the word she had not known before, that she knew, only too well, the meaning of now.

‘Ontatekiahta! Ontatekiahta! Ontatekiahta!’ they chanted.

‘Witch! Witch! Witch!’

He had built the fire in the lee of a huge, overhanging rock, a small shelter from the rain. The worst of the sudden summer storm had passed over them, thunder rumbling away to the east now. But it had hit while he was still on the water, wrestling with the unstable craft, great spears of lightning arcing into the landfall he sought. One bolt had struck a tree, transforming it into an instant inferno, a beacon on the shore. He accepted this sign from God, turned the canoe toward its safety, for it was known that lightning did not strike the same spot twice. Also, the man he’d pulled from the river was blue-cold and since he had neither flints nor one of the native fire starters, a tree in flames seemed a good place to seek warmth.

Now Thomas stared at the youth, whose knees were drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped round them, lying under the deerskin Thomas had snatched from the village. Redness had displaced the icy blue of his cheek. The shuddering breaths had stopped. He had even begun to mumble a little, his head moving back and forth, driven by some dream; perhaps there was a fever building. But Thomas preferred that to the frozen stillness he had thought meant he had arrived too late.

‘God’s will,’ he muttered, shrugging deeper into his heavy black cloak, as another cascade of thunder ran down the heavens. He saw more lightning strike the opposite shore, probably close to the village he’d come from. Maybe the rain was keeping them inside their lodges. Perhaps he hadn’t been missed yet. They seemed to pay him little attention, while they had taken Gianni Rombaud to their warrior hearts.

The mumbling of the man across the fire grew louder. Words that Thomas could not understand but recognized as the native tongue came pouring out, interspersed with words in French, words that chilled as much as the rain. Shivering, Thomas tossed another log onto the flame.

Tagay was fighting demons in his dreams. They weighted his chest down with giant rocks, forcing the air from his body. They burned him with hot irons, slashed him with rusted swords. Then, suddenly, hands were upon him, tattooed, iron-strong, unbreakable. He was stripped, turned over, his legs were forced apart …

‘Anne-edda,’ he screamed, leaping back from the flames that burned him, from the hands that reached for him, crashing into hard rock walls. A shape rose from the other side of the fire, spreading huge black wings.

‘Demon!’ Tagay cried, trying to burrow back into unyielding stone, his legs scrabbling in the shale. Then, they gave way and he fell, covering his face with his arms, awaiting the touch of this Devil who had dragged him to hell.

‘Tagay.’ The voice that reached him was gentle, spoke in French. ‘That is your name, isn’t it?’

Through the crossbars of his arms, Tagay looked out at the shape that folded its wings now and sank back to the ground. The demon had a human face, with grey streaked through the black hair and beard.

‘What Devil are you?’ His voice quavered.

‘Thomas Lawley is my name.’

‘A fallen angel?’

A smile came. ‘All too human. Otherwise I could raise a mightier fire than this.’ He gestured to the flames before him. ‘Nonetheless, it is all we have and you look cold. Come closer, friend.’

Tagay had begun to shake again, and not just with fear. But he did not move. ‘Is this not hell, then? Am I not drowned?’

‘It is not and you were not. Come to the warmth and I will explain.’

Tagay, shaking badly now, stumbled forward, fell. In an instant, Thomas had plucked the cloak from his own shoulders, draped it over the younger man’s.

‘Calm, my friend. And drink this.’ He handed over a flask. Tagay took a sip, spluttered. ‘Brandy? How do you have it here?’

‘It is the last from the ship, the one that followed you from St Malo.’

Tagay took another gulp, a fire he craved spreading down his chest. ‘How …?’ he began.

Thomas explained as simply as he could, Tagay listening in amazed silence, his eyes widening as he heard of the pursuit across the ocean, their capture by the tattooed warriors, Gianni’s part in the hunt ambush, Thomas’s concern about Gianni’s plans. How Thomas had followed the war party, watched the empty canoe float past, then the two bearing pursuing warriors. How he had started to paddle the other way, in hope.

Tagay took another sip from the flask. ‘And how did I not drown? The stag drove me to the depths, I could not get back up.’

‘It was the stag that led me to you. Otherwise I wouldn’t have seen you in the water. You came to the surface and somehow I pulled you in without capsizing the boat. I thought you were dead. But I once ministered to fishermen in Portugal and knew a little of what to do. Once you had thrown up the water, you fainted. I still thought you would die from the cold.’

‘But I am alive.’ Tagay held up a shaking hand, looked at it in wonder. ‘The gods have spared me.’

‘God has,’ Thomas corrected. ‘And the love of Jesus Christ. He is not called Saviour for nothing. For did not He walk upon the waves? In emulation of His love, He brought me to this place. Perhaps that’s why – to save you.’

‘Is that why you came, Thomas Lawley? Was it not to take back the Oki of the queen?’

Suddenly, in the simplicity of the question, Thomas knew. It was like the world lit, but for a moment, by lightning, then staying on in the solid flame before him, just as this fire had. It wasn’t the Jesuit cause, Christ’s work, his master’s desire for the weapon of Anne Boleyn’s hand. All those were simply excuses to obscure, even from himself, the true reason he was there.

‘In truth – I came for Anne Rombaud.’

And saying it, he knew, as if a veil had been ripped away. There it was – clear, pristine, made up of every moment he’d seen her. From the very first, when she’d floated by him, loosely tethered to a cart leaving conquered Siena; when she’d run forward to stop her brother burning heretics on Tower Green; her interrogation in that same Tower, when she’d laid healing hands upon his agony; the greater agony of watching her sail past the harbour mouth of St Malo and he thought he’d never see her again.

So few moments, such little time to effect a conversion.

But wasn’t St Paul converted in one moment, in a lightning stroke, heading to Damascus?

Lightning sought land across the river and Thomas saw, in the forked flame, the truth of his confession.

The man on the other side of the fire heard the words, that truth in them. Something surged within him, similar to the surge he’d felt lying under a canoe, hearing Black Snake’s plans for Anne. In these two men’s utterly different desires for her, he suddenly and completely remembered his own.