The Fabulous Beast (22 page)

So, a powerful desire had overcome me, while I slept.

I turned to Daegal lying next to me, hoping to surprise her with midnight love. This time I would satisfy her beyond all her expectations. She would needed no dull, dense warriors. I took her in my arms and began caressing her breasts, kissing her lips with great fervour, stroking her, wanting to rouse her from her dreams and make warm silky love, something she liked to do.

Her kiss was cold and clammy.

Other parts of her body felt strangely unyielding.

Horrified, I leapt up.

Rushing out of the hut I fetched a brand from one of the night fires and returned to view her.

There in the lit interior the horror increased. Daegal had returned to clay. The top half of her was still damp and yielding, and bore the imprints of my midnight attentions. Other parts were dry and beginning to crack with shrinkage. The lips which I had kissed had still been soft and moist and were now spread over her chin and under her nose. The nose itself was bent and flattened. Her distorted features were ghastly. Two of her fingers had become detached and lay in the bed-straw. Her long, lovely hair was turning to ribbons of red dust.

I took one of my smithy hammers and before anyone could come and discover this figure of dried mud in my bed I smashed it to pieces, crushing every last toe, every recognisable body part, until it was indeed in small fragments. Then I swept up the pieces and scattered them down by the river, while it was still dark, before anyone was about.

The next day, while I worked at shoeing a horse, Scowyrhta passed by outside and sang a song to the rhythm of my ringing hammer.

‘
Oh how the fertile earth receives my gift of love
,’ he crooned softly, so that only I should hear, ‘
deep in the night when all are sleeping with the moon above
 . . .’

It was Scowyrhta.

Scowyrhta! He had done this to me. He had sucked the spirit of Daegal from her body, no doubt with the help of the shaman. I guessed she was now back in the land of the dead. My best friend had become my worst enemy. He had drugged me in the evening, with some potion which aroused my carnal desires. It was he who had schemed against me and spent all his energy visiting revenge for ignoring him. For choosing the love of a woman over the friendship of a clansman.

~

Scowyrhta was trampled to death two weeks later by Wulfgar’s big chestnut mare, who bolted from its owner in the marketplace. The warhorse was apparently incensed by the startling hue of Scowyrhta’s bright red cloak, a gift to the sandal-maker from an ‘unknown’ admirer.

I expected to feel triumphant on the death of this man who had betrayed me, but to my shock and surprise I felt nothing but sorrow. In the past Scowyrhta had been a friend, a
good
friend. We had grown up together and had seen each other through various troubles. Yes, he
had
done me a wrong in the end, but what was one slight against the many times he had supported me?

It was sadness, not elation, that filled my breast – along with the guilt and regret.

~

One raw night, deep in a winterland bound by cold iron hoops, when heavy snow was forcing tree-boughs to touch earth and thick ice bridged the opposite banks of the river, I felt someone warm and smelling of desire crawl into my bed.

‘Make love to me, Aiken, as you used to do? I have missed your muscled, wiry arms around my body.’

I did as I was bid though terrified that this woman was the wife of some great warrior or even a king.

In the morning, finding no one there, I wondered if the event had actually occurred – or was the result of one of those charcoal-fired dreams that are occasionally burned into me from the heart of the forge, an affliction common to farriers and blacksmiths alike.