By Sylvian Hamilton (12 page)

The
sunny cheerfulness and general goodwill cleaned the stink from
Janiva's mind. She shared the ale, enjoyed the mutton, bought a
pretty latten belt buckle and watched a group of gaudy players
perform a short bawdy play about Saint George and the dragon. This
ended amid waves of hilarity as the dragon's component parts--two
men, the front and back ends –collapsed in terror at the sight
of the saint's enormous wooden phallus and fell off the stage
altogether, having imbibed too much of Pog's wife's ale.

When
she felt clean again, right again, she went back to her house. The
sounds of revelry, singing, bagpipes, whistles, recorders and surges
of mirth could be clearly heard, and Straccan had tried to get up and
have a look. His legs were still shamefully wobbly, but he'd pulled
her stool to the open doorway, and was sitting in the sun with a
blanket round him and her kitten in his lap. He looked very tired.

She
set a pot of water on the fire and put greens, carrots, turnips and
dried peas in it. 'I've brought mutton from the feast. I expect
you're hungry, but first take your medicine.' She poured a mugful of
the bitter brown liquid he'd been swallowing obediently for the past
couple of days, and he downed it, making a face.

'What
is that stuff?'

'I
make it from willow bark,' she said. 'It is sovereign for fevers and
the ague. Sir Richard, I must talk to you.' She brought her other
stool out and sat opposite him. 'What did you mean, when you said you
had evil dreams?'

He
looked away from her towards the green and shifted uneasily on his
seat. 'Well, you know, nightmares.'

'Not
just from the fever. You had them before you were ill.'

'Yes.
How do you know? For some weeks. It seems forever.'

'Falling?
Drowning? Monsters chasing you? Rooted to the spot, with danger at
your throat?'

'Nothing
so commonplace.' He coloured and looked embarrassed.

'I
can't describe them. About women, you know? God help me, children,
even. I'm not like that! Lust and torment, night after night, till
I'm afraid to close my eyes! Nastiness.' His eyes, very blue in the
open air and under the bright sky, had a desperate haunted look.

'Yes,'
she said softly. 'Nastiness. That's it.' She felt a cold anger that
this man, her traveller, an ordinary decent man, should have been
poisoned by this thing. 'Sir Richard, I believe you're bespelled.'
They turned out his saddlebags, his purse; examined his clothes, his
boots, even the harness and saddle, all the straps, buckles and
rings. 'There will be something. A charm for ill,' she said. Til know
it when I see it.' From his clothes and belongings she only sensed a
confusion of everyday matters and a strong anxiety shot through with
a vivid anger, nothing else. She handed him his belt satchel. 'What's
in there?' she asked.

'Only
the relic, the finger. Bane put it there before he left. You've seen
that, anyway.'

'No,
not that,' she said. 'Is there anything else in this bag?'

'No.'
He tipped the latten reliquary into his hand and upended the satchel,
tapping its bottom to show its innocent emptiness.

They
both stared at the small bright thing which fell out.

'What's
that?' He reached down, but she put her foot on it swiftly, to stop
him touching it. He looked up in sudden shock at her fierce face. 'Is
that it? What is it? How did you know?' 'It's like a cloak around
you, a smell. I can smell it inside, in my mind. Sorcery has a stink
to it.'

'Sorcery?'
He said it violently, making her jump. 'Sorcery! It's Pluvis –or
was!' He told her about the ring of stones and the decapitated white
hen. 'That was it, wasn't it? Some sort of filthy witchery he used to
call my Gilla to him!'

'I
think so. Who is this Pluvis? Why is he your enemy?'

'He's
the man who was killed here at Shawl. And a week ago I would have
said I had no enemies! I'm a quiet man. I live peacefully. I go about
my business honestly. I don't mess with the supernatural.'

'You
trade in it.'

'What?'

'Of
course you do. Relics. What are they, if not supernatural?'

'They're
not sorcery!'

'They're
power,' she said flatly. 'Power can be used for good or ill.'

'Relics
are good,' he said angrily. 'They heal.'

'They
can harm, too. I've heard of relics that struck down thieves,
paralysed evildoers and smote blasphemers dumb, liars blind,
oath-breakers dead. Power works both ways. You trade in the uncanny,
Sir Richard, and you deal with powerful folk. Among them is one at
least who seeks your harm. Think!'

She
fetched the tongs from the hearth and picked up the charm. It was a
bright tangle –a few strands of hair, a bit of red thread
–twisted and stuck together with some sort of gummy stuff in a
ring-shape, its sole intent to do him hurt. Looking at it with
loathing, he felt the fear coiling coldly in his belly swiftly
replaced by a burning fury.

He
followed her into the house, wishing the enemy was there to strike
through and through, slash, hack and destroy. The lack of a foe to
strike was almost more than he could bear. He watched as Janiva
snatched her pot from the fire and threw the charm into the flames.
The kitten swore and streaked out of a window, tail a-bristle like a
small comet. The thing burned quickly, a flare that died to a ring of
ash which she scattered with the poker; but the stink of it grew and
became enormous, a gorge-heaving reek of corruption.

'Oh
Christ,' he gasped, swallowing hard as the willow-bark medicine
strove to rise again. He fought it back. Janiva's face was white and
sick. He saw the convulsive movement of her throat, snatched her hand
and ran lurching through the doorway into daylight, where he gulped
the clean air until his mind felt scoured. In place of the sick
obsessions, bright clean anger burned, at whoever sought to mire him
in such filth.

When
they went back inside the choking stench had gone but something still
smelled rotten. Janiva looked about, sniffing, and came to the
covered clay pot which she had carried back from the fair. She lifted
the lid, cried out, clapped it down again and hurled the pot outside
as far as her arm could send it.

"What
is it? What's the matter?'

'It
was the meat,' she said miserably. 'Cut fresh from the roasting. Oh
Richard, it was full of maggots!' She sobbed suddenly and leaned
against the doorpost. He tipped her face up with a hand under her
chin and kissed her. She clung to him. There were tears on her lips.

Chapter
15

Bane
had spent a comfortable night, warm and dry, in a barn away from the
high road. He was about five miles from Altarwell where he was to
wait for Straccan. There was a famous shrine to Saint Felicity there,
and yesterday the road had been busy with pilgrims coming and going.
It was a fair fresh morning. Bane ate his breakfast and made his way
to the river, which he could hear in the trees not far off, to have a
wash and water his horse. Then he heard the noise.

He
listened. There it was again. Pigs, he thought. As it was much too
early, only just dawn, for domestic pigs to be out and about, these
must be wild pigs. Perhaps there was a piglet among them to which he
could help himself without anyone being the wiser. He tied the grey
to a tree, took his small bow and a couple of arrows, and cautiously
slipped through the trees and undergrowth in the direction of the
sound.

He
found himself on the edge of an open space: not a clearing, an
ancient place ringed with low grey irregular stones, a broken ring
with several stones missing. Within the circle on the trampled grass,
lay a clutter of ragged folk and a no less ragged little monk, all of
them equally thin and dirty, huddled asleep. They lay, snoring and
wuffling, in various abandoned positions, as if God had shaken them
out of a great bag in the sky and left them as they dropped.

Puzzled,
Bane saw that several of the sleepers had ropes tied round their
middles leading to latches on a stout leather belt round the monk's
waist. Three of the sleepers were thus attached, and six others lay a
bit apart with no bonds. Under the monk's outflung right arm lay his
hooked pilgrim staff, and fastened to it a worn obviously empty
provender bag. Some of the sleepers, Bane now saw, were women.
Although their shapelessly-bundled bodies gave no clue, the rest were
all to some degree bearded.

The
little monk suddenly woke himself with a prodigiously raucous snore
and sat up staring about, patting the ropes on his belt and
swivelling round on his bottom to count his companions. '... five,
six, seven, eight, nine, thank God and his Blessed Mother ...' All in
a hasty soft babble. Then he scrambled to his knees, clasped his
hands together and had a quick pray, before rummaging in the breast
of his gown for a small bundle which he undid to reveal a brass bell.
This he rang very gently. The musical jingle at once woke the others,
and one of the women, sitting up, looked straight into the
surrounding trees, saw Bane, and screamed like a trapped rabbit.

'What?
Where?' The monk leaped to his feet, seizing his staff and staring
fiercely into the trees in the wrong direction. The others set up a
dreadful din of howls and screeches. One began tearing at his hair,
actual strands coming out in his fingers, while another rolled
himself into a ball of arms and legs, rocking on the ground like a
huge baby, and yet another turned and bent over, raising his rags to
expose his bare backside.

Bane
stepped out of the trees. 'I didn't mean to scare you,' he said.
'When I saw you lying there, I thought you'd been hurt.' The monk
glowered at him and shook his staff threateningly. 'Don't you come
nigh, you go your way! Don't bother my loonies, and they won't bother
you.' Noticing the bare bum, 'William! Stop it! Don't be rude!' And
to the rest, 'Quiet, now! Quiet! The stranger's going. Shut up!' At
which, bit by bit and rather reluctantly, the odd group stopped its
caterwauling and capering, and William stood straight, grinning
gummily. 'Clear off,' said the monk to Bane, 'before they gets
troublesome.' There was a sudden burst of noise on the far side of
the ring, bushes shaking, voices raised in jeers and whoops. A shower
of stones flew into the small company, striking heads and bodies,
making them scream and hurl themselves to the ground in terror.

Louts
throwing stones! Bane's instinctive reaction was to loose his two
arrows, which struck tree trunks just above the bullies' heads, and
to leap across the ring at them, drawing his backsword as he ran.
Flushing them out, three big hulking boys, he whacked at their heads
and shoulders with the flat of the blade, driving them squealing down
the bank into the river where they slipped and stumbled on the slimy
stones and fell, cursing and crying. 'Why'd you do that?' shouted the
monk.

'I
don't like sods who throw stones,' snarled Bane, rubbing the knotty
scar beside his eye.

One
of the roped men gave a braying laugh and wiped his nose with his
fingers, saying fervently, 'Thass right, thass right!' One of the
females had pulled her ragged skirt right over her head, revealing
all else but hiding her fear from her tormentors. The little monk
gently tugged the fabric from her white-knuckled grasp and patted the
garment down over her body.

'There,
Alice, they've gone. Don't cry, now. This gemman drove em all away,
see?' He pointed across the river where the dripping stone-throwers
sloshed up the farther bank. 'Ere,' he said suddenly to Bane, 'they
mighta drowned.'

'No
loss,' said Bane.

'Souls'
loss,' said the monk. 'You meant it kind, but they could ave drowned
and gone to ell.'

'Well,
they didn't, did they,' said Bane, exasperated. 'Who are you? Who
are these people?' 'My loonies? Poor buggers, they're just my
loonies. I looks after em.

Bane
shared the remainder of his food with them. He had some very dry
bread and cheese, some cold bacon and a handful of raisins. It only
made a mouthful apiece, but they sat companionably chewing while
Brother Celestius talked.

His
own priory, far away in Dorset, was very old, very small, very poor
and down to half a dozen elderly monks and just one weakly
twelve-year-old novice. No relics, other than a disputed toe of Saint
Jerome. No shrine. Nothing to attract moneyed visitors. Nonetheless
the monks were obliged and happy to give hospitality to guests, and
refuge and help to the sick. Brother Mark, infirmarian, himself
feeble, could potter about dosing the ordinary sick with potions but
was quite unable to care for the lunatics, dumped at the priory by
their families when they'd had enough of them. There was no secure
ward for them, and no hope of cure. 'So we all put our eads together
and prior decided, and I got the job of lookin after em, being I'm
the youngest. It's all right and proper, we got our dispensation to
leave ome. Ave to ave permission, see?'