The Gallows Curse (22 page)

    Then
he bolted for the door, shoving through the servants clustered around it, and
fled out into the sunlight.

    Osborn
raised his eyebrows. 'I think we can take that as a
no.
So we'd better
proceed to sentence.'

    'But
surely,' Raffaele protested, 'Elena should have the chance to prove her
innocence?'

    'How
exactly do you propose she does that, Master Raffaele? She cannot produce the
living child, nor the woman to whom she says she entrusted him.'

    'We
could wait and question Gytha when she returns.'

    Elena
felt a surge of hope leap up in her, and she fixed her eyes on Osborn's face,
praying that he would agree.

    Osborn
snorted. 'You should pay more attention to your own eloquent testimony, Master
Raffaele. Was it not you who told us that this cunning woman had taken her
infirm mother and all her possessions with her? Plainly she has no intention of
returning to Gastmere, which leaves us with the problem of what do with the
girl. If this land were not under the Pope's Interdict, then she could be tried
by the ordeal of water or fire and I would not have had to waste a good day's
hunting over this matter. But since, thanks to the Pope, there is not a priest
left to administer the oath, I must be the judge of her innocence or guilt. By
order of our beloved sovereign King John, I am commanded to keep the king's
peace in these parts and see that those who break it are justly punished. The
girl will hang at first light tomorrow.'

    He
delivered the last sentence in such a matter of fact tone, as if he was giving
orders for his horse to be groomed, that Elena couldn't grasp what he had said.

    'Wait!'
A voice rang out from the minstrels' gallery at the far end of the hall.
Everyone turned and stared upwards. Lady Anne was gripping the gallery rail.

    'It
is the Church's teaching, is it not, that an infant who dies before baptism is
not counted a human creature for he has no soul? Therefore a woman who does
away with her newborn child before baptism is not guilty of murder.'

    Osborn
smiled the smile of a torturer who revels in his work.

    'How
gracious of you to take an interest, Lady Anne. But as I was just explaining to
my steward here, who like you seems to be woefully ignorant of such matters, we
are suffering under an Interdict. Who knows how long it will be before children
may be baptized again? Why, these babes may be men themselves by then, and are
we to say that if they are then murdered their killers should go unpunished?

    'And
please, mistress, do not waste my time in pleading that the girl was acting in
a fit of melancholy and did not know what she did. On her own admission she had
been dreaming about committing this crime for months, even torturing her poor
mother-in-law by openly threatening it. But even if that was not the case, I am
not punishing her for murder alone.'

    Osborn
turned a faintly amused glance on Raffaele, as if he was deriving a great deal
of pleasure from Lady Anne's challenge. 'I take it neither this girl nor her
husband were born freemen. They both are villeins?'

    Raffe
nodded dejectedly.

    'Then
the dead child was a villein also and as such belonged to the manor. This girl
has not only deliberately murdered her own baby, but in doing so has destroyed
manor property,
my
property, mistress. The death of a midden brat does
not concern me overmuch, but the loss of a future workman does, not to mention
the generations of villeins he might have fathered. By rights I should hang her
twice, once for murder and again for theft. But I am inclined to show mercy. I
will merely hang her once. That will suffice. Take the girl away and lock her
up till morning.'

    Someone
was screaming. Elena didn't know if it was herself or her mother who was
shrieking, for her legs buckled under her and she crumpled senseless to the
ground.

    
Bluebells
— Some call them
Deadmen's bells
, for a mortal who hears a bluebell ring
is listening to his own death knell.

    A
bluebell wood is the most enchanted place on earth and mortals should never
venture there alone for it is full of faerie spells. A child who picks
bluebells alone will vanish, never to be seen again. An adult will be pixie-led
and wander round and round in circles, unable to escape the wood, until he dies
of exhaustion, unless someone should find him and lead him safely home.

    There
is a game that mortal children play in innocence, laughing as they weave
through each other.
In and out the dusty bluebells
. . . they sing ...
I am your master.
They should not play such dangerous games so lightly or
wantonly, for the master they name is none other than the Faerie King himself
who will lead them on a merry dance from which there is no return to this life.

    The
Mandrake's Herbal

    Raffaele
grasped Elena's arm so hard she thought he would snap the bone. He tugged her
towards the open metal grill in the floor of the undercroft beneath the Great
Hall.

    'Down
there,' he ordered, indicating the rickety wooden ladder which plunged into the
dark pit below. Raffaele held up his lantern to illuminate the first rungs.
Although the sun had not yet set, in the far corner of the undercroft behind
the kegs and barrels it was already dark. Elena peered down. The pit was twice
as deep as a man's height. The bailiff stood at the bottom, staring up at her,
holding up a short iron chain which was fastened at one end to the wall, while
from the other end of the chain dangled an open iron collar. The flame from his
lantern flickered across the beaten earth floor covered with dirty straw, and
over the stone walls green and slimy from the damp. A stench of decay rose up
on the cold, wet air that seemed to come from an open grave. Elena shuddered,
trying to pull away.

    'No,
please don't put me down there, please, I beg you.' She turned desperately to
Raffaele. 'You could chain me up here in the cellar.'

    'And
have you rescued?' Raffaele said harshly. 'You choose, you can either climb
down that ladder yourself or I'll throw you down, and I can promise you lying
there with broken bones will be a thousand times worse.'

    Raffaele
was holding her so close to the edge that she knew the slightest flexing of his
arm would send her crashing down. The violent way he had dragged her from the
Great Hall left her in no doubt that he was angry enough to do it. In the Hall
he had seemed to be on her side, the only one who believed her. She couldn't
understand why he had turned against her. Did he too now believe what Joan had
said?

    Shakily
Elena climbed down the ladder and offered no resistance when the bailiff pushed
her against the wall and bolted the iron collar around her neck.

    'You'll
be in good company down here.' The bailiff inclined his head towards a rough
stone wall on one side of the cell. 'Sir Gerard's mouldering behind there.
You'd best make friends with his corpse; you'll soon be one yourself.'

    He
tugged hard on the chain, to test the fastening, jerking the collar so that it
bruised her throat, almost choking her. 'Not that you'll be resting in some
fancy leaded coffin. Osborn'll have your body hanged in a gibbet cage till
you've rotted away to bones, then they'll pound them to pieces and toss them in
the marsh. And good riddance too, that's what I say. Nowt more evil creature on
this earth than a woman who murders her own innocent bairn; 'gainst all nature,
that is.'

    Satisfied
the chain was secure, he picked up his lantern and started up the ladder.

    As
the shadows rose up from the floor around her, Elena cried out, 'Leave me the
light, for pity's sake.'

    The
bailiff paused at the top of the ladder and laughed. 'What do you need a light
for, girl, there's nowt to see, save the rats and old Gerard's ghost when he
comes for you.'

    Raffaele's
fist struck as swiftly as a viper's fangs, catching the bailiff on the side of
the head and almost sending him crashing back into the pit.

    
'Sir
Gerard to you, you son of a whore. And don't ever let me hear you speak of his
ghost in front of her ladyship.'

    But
the next minute Raffaele was reaching out his hand and hauling the stunned
bailiff up on to the floor of the cellar as if he was his closest friend.

    'Come
on, man, there's a flagon of wine waiting for us in the Hall. Leave this
murdering witch to the rats. With any luck, they'll finish her and spare us the
trouble of a hanging'

    The
two men hauled the ladder up through the hatch. The iron grill slammed shut and
Elena saw the glow of their lantern light grow fainter as they walked away. At
least they hadn't closed the wooden trapdoor on top of it; she couldn't bear to
think of being sealed in as if she was in ... a coffin.

    She
was to die. She knew it and yet such a thing didn't seem possible. She couldn't
make herself grasp the reality of it. In a few brief hours she would be dead,
sent to the next world, and then what? Torment and torture without any end,
like those pictures on the church wall of men and women being forced into the
flames, boiling helplessly in cauldrons, their limbs hacked off or pierced with
knives. She found herself retching in fear. No, no, she couldn't think of it,
she mustn't think.

    She
crouched on the damp, mouldy straw in the corner of the tiny cell. Even had she
not been chained to the wall, she would have crouched against it, too terrified
to let go of the solidness of it and drown in the nothingness beyond. She had
never known darkness so thick, so complete, as if she had been blinded.

    She
strained, trying to hear any rustling in the straw, but she could hear nothing
except her own heart pounding. She tried desperately not to think of the corpse
lying no more than a foot away, behind the loose rocks. Would she hear the
coffin lid grate open?

    Only
yesterday she was stirring Athan's supper over their fire and now she was here,
and they meant to hang her. They couldn't. It wasn't possible. She was
innocent. Didn't they understand she'd given her child away to keep him safe?
They must believe her. Gytha would return before morning. She'd tell them the
baby was alive. Gytha must come back and tell them. She must.

    Elena
drew her legs up to her chin, wrapping her arms tightly about them and resting
her head on the wall behind. Suddenly aware of the burning throbbing of her
breasts, bursting with the milk her son would never drink, she tried to ease
them, but they hurt so much she could hardly bear to touch them. She was so
tired. She had not slept at all last night and all she wanted to do now was to
sink into the oblivion of sleep, but if she did, then her last few hours of
life would be gone and the morning would come instantly before she had time to
prepare herself. If she could stay awake she could somehow stretch out those
hours and give Gytha time to return.

    She
must pray. She must say the words that would save her from the fires of hell.
But she couldn't remember what the dying were supposed to say. Maybe she'd
never known. It had been three years since the churches had been open for
services and she couldn't recall any of the words the priests had recited. She
always said her prayers, of course, for things that no priest would ever pray —
Make Athan love me.
But those were her words, not the right words, not the
Latin words, and she knew only the magic words of the priests had the power to
save a person from hell.

    
Holy
Virgin, Holy Mother, save me.
But Mary was a mother, a good mother. She
hadn't dreamt of killing her son. Was the Holy Virgin as disgusted with her as
her own mam was? Would she refuse to listen because Elena was in her heart a
murderer? To think about doing something, the village priest had once told her,
was as wicked as actually doing it. It was the same sin. She had murdered her
baby, because she had thought about murdering him, over and over again. She was
guilty.