The Gallows Curse (2 page)

    'What
did he give you?' A sleepy little face appeared at her side.

    Gunilda
hugged her daughter tightly to her, thinking of another child. Then she held up
the mandrake. 'It's something I've only ever dreamed of possessing. It has the
power to cure every ill if used well, even to turn back curses upon the
sender.'

    'Can
I hold it?' her daughter asked.

    Gunilda
shook her head. 'It's too dangerous; first you must learn how to use it well.
Used wrongly, it can bring death and worse. I'll teach you all its secrets one
day, but there is plenty of time for that. Go back to sleep now.'

    Gunilda
wrapped the mandrake carefully again and hid it in the darkest corner of the
cottage, in the hollow under a stone in the floor where they kept their coins,
on the rare occasions they were ever paid with money. She lay down beside her
daughter, smoothing her hair and singing softly until she felt the child relax
and heard the rhythmic breathing which signified sleep. Then she closed her own
eyes. She slept without guilt for the nobleman whose death sentence she had
signed. One tyrant less in the world was a blessing.

    At
dawn, nearly two weeks later, Gunilda was again awakened by a knocking at her
door, but this time the visitors did not wait for her to answer it. Before she
had even struggled upright, the door was kicked in and soldiers were pouring
into the tiny cottage. Her daughter screamed and fought the men as they dragged
Gunilda from her hearth, but they pushed the child to the ground, kicking her
until she curled up into a ball and lay sobbing. The soldiers lashed Gunilda's
wrists to a horse's tail and ran her up the great hill to the cathedral. She
could hear her little daughter crying and calling out to her as, bruised and
battered, she toiled up Steep Hill behind her mother.

    Gunilda
recognized only one man in the crowd who awaited her outside the cathedral, the
stranger who had come in the night to her cottage. But he was not clad in a
poor man's garb any more. And now it seemed he had a name, a name she would
remember to her grave and beyond — Sir Warren. With trembling hand Warren
pointed to Gunilda and feigned to weep as he betrayed her.

    It
took a while for Gunilda to understand the charge which had been brought
against her, but eventually they told her that Sir Warren's wife was dead. The
death had not been marked as suspicious at first. The deceased had been placed
in her coffin while messengers went out to recall her poor grieving husband
from London and to summon her brother from Winchester for her funeral, which,
given her wealth, was to be a lavish affair.

    But
when Warren installed his comely, and obviously pregnant, young mistress in the
house before his wife's coffin was even laid in the tomb, his brother-in-law
began to suspect foul play. He insisted on the coffin being opened in the
presence of witnesses. Despite the outraged protests from Warren and the parish
priest, he commanded the tiring maids to lift the dead woman's clothes as he
searched the body for the marks of violence he was certain he would find. He
looked for stab wounds, bruises from strangulation, bumps on the head, but
there was nothing.

    He
was about reluctantly to admit he had been mistaken, when a clerk pointed to
the heap of maggots that had fallen to the bottom of the coffin as the clothes
were disturbed. The woman had been dead a few days, so at first none but the
clerk could see anything amiss in discovering maggots feasting on the corpse.
Until, that is, the clerk pointed out that the maggots
were no longer
feasting; they were as dead as their dinner. And the unfortunate pig which was
fed a morsel of the corpse's liver, the hounds having refused it, likewise
sickened and died the next day. There could be no doubt; Warren's wife had been
poisoned.

    Although
the brother now had evidence of his sister's murder, proving that his
brother-in-law was the murderer was not so easy. Warren had been engaged on
urgent business in London when his wife had died, and furthermore he swore that
before he left, his wife told him she was intending to send for Gunilda to cure
her of some woman's malady. No husband in the land could be expected to define
precisely what a woman's problem might be. So no one questioned him further on
this point.

    A
quaking servant in turn swore that he'd seen Gunilda visiting his mistress the
very day she died. Gunilda denied it, of course, but who could she call upon to
confirm her story that Warren had visited her? A nobleman, a Norman, creeping
to her hovel in the night — it was a preposterous idea.

    Gunilda
was tried by ordeal of fire. She was forced, in front of the clergy, to carry a
red-hot iron bar for ten paces. Afterwards her hand was bound and a seal put
upon the wrappings and she was left to lie in the Bishop's dungeon for three
days. Her daughter was permitted to stay with her, and for those three days,
despite her mother's agony, they whispered and talked and slept little. There
were so many secrets Gunilda had to entrust to her daughter, so much knowledge
and so little time left. Just a few hours before, Gunilda believed she had
years left to pass on all her skills to her child, now she knew she had only three
days and three nights.

    For
Gunilda was certain of what they would discover beneath the bandages on the
third day. There was no use hoping for a miracle. If she'd had time, a warning
before the ordeal, she could have protected herself. She'd saved many others
from the gallows over the years, for she could make unguents, almost invisible
to the eye, which, painted on to the hand, would protect it from serious burns
and help the skin to heal rapidly. But there had been no time to anoint
herself.

    When
the seal was broken and the priest removed the bandages, the raw, festering
wound proclaimed her guilt. The sentence was death by burning with the mercy of
strangulation before the flames reached her, if she confessed.

    She
did confess. The falsehood made no difference now; she couldn't save her life,
so why die in agony? She didn't fear going to the life beyond with a lie
weighing down her immortal soul, for neither she nor her sobbing daughter
believed in the merciful God in whose name these men were murdering her.
Gunilda trusted in the old ways, the old goddesses of earth and water, fire and
blood, and it was in their name that, with her dying breath, she cursed Warren
and the unborn child his mistress carried, cursed every child that would ever spring
from his loins.

    Her
daughter, alone now, quite alone, watched the body of her mother fired to ashes
and smelt the stench of her mother's roasting flesh. No longer weeping now, she
stood, aflame with hatred, as the white dust of her mother was carried up by
the wind and fell soft as snowflakes upon her own dark hair.

    
Periwinkle
— This herb mortals call also
Devil's eye
and
Sorcerer's violet
for it is much used in spells and enchantments. Felons are crowned with a
garland of this herb on their way to the gallows for it signifies death. If a
mortal plucks it from a grave, the spirit of the corpse who is buried beneath
that sod shall haunt him to his own death.

    The
leaves laid upon a boil will draw its venom. The green stems bound about the
leg shall relieve the cramp and chewed shall ease the aching of a tooth or stop
the bleeding of the mouth or nose.

    But
the plant is also much used in love potions. If man and woman eat periwinkle,
houseleek and powdered worms together at a meal it shall kindle the love
between them.

    The
Mandrake's Herbal

    You've
no doubt been told that mandrakes scream when they are dragged from the earth.
That's not entirely true. There is a scream certainly, long and agonizing,
which can drive a human to self-murder just to escape the pain of it. But it is
not we, the mandrakes, who cry out; it is our mother, the earth. Every woman
moans and shrieks in childbirth when her baby is torn from her womb, so why
should our mother not scream in pain when we are dragged squirming from the
warmth and darkness of her belly into the bitter light? As they writhe in
labour, mortal women curse the men who got them with child, but the curse of
our mother is the most terrible of them all, for her curse lasts a hundred
generations.

    Our
fathers never witness our births for their eyes have long since been plucked
out by the ravens. Our fathers were a bad lot — murderers, traitors, forgers,
warlocks, rich men, poor men, beggar men, thieves. Each of them danced on the
gallows to pay for the pleasures they took in this world. You will no doubt
tell me that innocent men too are hanged. But I will ask you this — is there
any man alive or dead without guilty secrets? And as for those who condemn a
man to be hanged, are they not the worst villains of them all?

    But
you must be the judge of guilt and innocence, sin and sinner. We mandrakes make
no judgment for those you pronounce guilty are, after all, our own dear
fathers. For the fact is when men are hanged, innocent or guilty, their semen,
that salty white milk, falls on to the earth and there on that very spot we
spring up, white and black, male and female, the monstrous offspring of the
dead, the familial image of their dark souls. Yes, if you could only glimpse
those wizened and twisted souls, you'd see there's no mistaking I am my
father's daughter.

    Why
men should ejaculate in the throes of death is a mystery even to me. Perhaps
death really is the consummation of life, or maybe it's the last act of the
body desperate to bequeath a life that will go on even as its own is
obliterated. But I like to believe it is a final one-fingered gesture of
defiance at their executioners, the only obscene gesture they can make since
their hands are tightly bound behind them. Whatever the reason, felons with
their dying gasp impregnate our mother and so we, the mandrakes, are conceived.

    Semi-human,
demi-gods, they call us. Demi-gods?
Semi, demi, less than, partial, almost
— that, if you ask me, is a hemi- insult. We are gods, totally, fully complete.
How could it be otherwise, when we are fathered by eternal sin and born of
Mother Earth who was old when time began? We are the immortals and the mortal
men who tear us up are mere midwives to our quickening.

    You've
heard of our powers, I've no doubt. How we can bestow children on the barren
and make a man besotted with a maid. Ask that Jewess, Leah, if we did not bring
Jacob to her bed and that very night get her with child? But remember this — we
can also strike a woman barren and tear apart the most faithful of lovers. We
can soothe the cruellest pain. We can conjure demons straight from hell. We can
raise a woman to great wealth and cast a rich man into beggary. We can prolong
the agony of those who beg to die, and snuff out the breath of those who plead
to live. We can do all this for you. You think you can use us to gain whatever
you yearn for, and you can. We don't judge if what you desire is good or evil.
But never forget that we are gods. So have a care for what you wish — we might
just grant it.

    But
there is one wish all men want us to grant them. It is the desire to know their
own destiny. Men and women are so desperate for a glimpse into their futures,
they will squander a kingdom for the knowledge - 'What will I become?' 'What
will become of me?' — that we have the power to show them.

    But
knowledge always comes at a price, knowledge changes you, perhaps it can even
change your destiny too.

    You
don't believe me? Let me show you. I have a tale for you, one that concerns me
intimately. Hear it out and then you shall judge, for as I told you, we never
do.