The Gallows Curse (78 page)

    The
only thing that mattered in the world now was finding him. It would be
pointless to ask Gytha where her son was, even if Elena knew where the cunning
woman was living. For unless, miraculously, Osborn had died of his wound, then
she had failed to kill him, and Gytha would never reveal where she had hidden
her son. But Elena had to find him. Gunilda's ancient power lived on in her
granddaughter Gytha. Kill the descendants of Warren or suffer the scream of the
mandrake in this world and the next. Maybe, if Elena took her son far enough
away, the curse would not be able to reach him. Everyone knew that if a cunning
woman sent out her own spirit to harm her victim, that spirit had to return to
her body before daybreak or else she'd die. How far could a spirit travel in
one night?

    Yet,
knowing what she carried in her own soul, how could Elena risk seeking out her
son? She bore an evil sickness, a deadly fever, which even an innocent kiss
might transfer to the child.

    As
she and Ma had walked out of the city through the dawn light, Elena had
confided to Ma all that Raffaele had confessed to her. There was no one else
now that Elena could tell. Ma had listened, her head cocked to one side like a
bright- eyed robin, and she did not once condemn Raffaele.

    'Love
is a greater madness than hate,' she'd said, shaking her head in wonder.

    She
squinted up at Elena. 'I'm not often mistaken about people, but I was wrong
about you, my darling. I thought you were one of those women who couldn't
survive in life without someone to take care of them. But you're not. You and
I, we're more alike than you'd think. I told you a while back that only a woman
who lets a man take her because she is afraid of him or of the world is a slave.
And you are no slave. You don't need Raffe, you don't need anyone to lead you
through this world. Find your son, my darling, and make your own life.'

    'But
Gerard's sin,' Elena said. 'I can't carry that alone. I can't bear it and don't
know how to get rid of it. When the Interdict is over I can seek out a priest,
but who knows when that will be and it may be too late then? I must find my son
before Gytha harms him.'

    Ma
chewed her lip for a while as they walked on in silence, then her face
brightened.

    'We
had this Hebrew man come to us regularly once a week, until the law declared
it's now forbidden for a Christian to lie with a Jew Then the poor man had to
stop visiting us. A physician he was, with a belly as big as a pregnant sow,
though of course the Jews don't eat the flesh of the hog. The girls adored him.
Said he always tried to pleasure them before himself, and there's not many men
who do that even in the marriage bed, let alone if they are paying for their
pleasure. A kindly, gentle man, they said, and he made them laugh. The girls
always love a man who can make them laugh.

    'Anyway,
after he had been coming regularly on the same day for several months, he
missed a week. The next time he came I asked him if he'd been sick, but he said
no. He told me that once a year the Jews set aside eight days they call the
Days of Awe when they reflect on their sins and resolve to sin no more, so for
that week he couldn't come for he was thinking of his sins.

    '
"And how do you rid yourself of your sins?" I asked him, for I know
they don't have the mercy of Christ's death to atone for them.

    'He
said, "In the afternoon of the first day of the New Year we go to the
river with a scrip full of crumbs. We recite our sins over the crumbs, then
sprinkle them on the water, and the fish they come and eat them, then swim away
out to sea, carrying our sins away with them."'

    Ma
smiled up at Elena. 'Maybe, my darling, you should make the fishes your
sin-eaters.'

    Ma
had left her then on a lonely track that led through the forest. To her
surprise, Elena found herself crying as she bent to hug the tiny little woman.
Ma had pushed her away with her usual impatience.

    'Off
with you, my darling, and remember, keep well away from the main highways and
the ports too, for Osborn will have a watch on those.'

    For
the briefest of moments Ma held Elena's hand between her own and pressed it
gently.

    'Remember
one thing, my darling,' Ma said. 'You learn nothing by looking into the future.
If you want to find your way home, if you want to find yourself, you have to
look behind you. Unless you see the way you've come, how will you ever find
your way back?'

    She
turned then, and waddled off along the track back towards Norwich. Elena
watched her go, the ruby pins in her dark glossy hair winking in the morning
sun. Then, just as she reached the bend, Ma turned and flapped her hand.

    'Stop
standing there, gawping like a cod-wit. You think I went to all this effort for
you to get caught? Get going! Satan's arse, I swear you've been nothing but
trouble ever since the day I clapped eyes on you.'

    But
Elena could have sworn those bulging yellow-green eyes were bright with tears.

    The
two children had finished their morning meal and wandered off. The woman was
scraping the remains of her own bowl back into the iron cooking pot and damping
down the fire with turfs to keep the embers hot until they were wanted again.
Elena wiped out her bowl with a handful of grass and returned it to the woman.
She picked up her pack ready to depart, pressing a coin from the purse Ma had
given her into the woman's hand. The woman nodded gravely, but showed no
reaction, neither pleasure nor disappointment. Life gave you what it gave you.
Some days there was a fish on the line, sometimes there wasn't. There was
little point in being happy or angry, it changed nothing.

    Elena
thanked her anyway for the night's lodging and was walking away when she saw
the two children lying on the bank of the river. The boy was throwing small
stones at something in the water and, more from idle curiosity than anything
else, Elena drew closer to see what it was. A crude toy boat was stuck fast in
the reeds just beyond the boy's reach and he was evidently trying to knock it
free so that it could sail on or he could sink it. Either way he would lose it.
The boat was little more than a long curved section of thick bark from a felled
tree. Someone had stuck a twig in it and a scrap of sacking for a sail, and now
it bobbed up and down as if impatient to be free and off.

    'May
I have the boat?' Elena said.

    The
two children turned and stared at her, unblinking.

    'If I
fetch it may I take it?' Elena persisted.

    'S'mine!'
the boy said, his eyes narrowing.

    'But
you're going to let it drift away down the river and then it'll be gone
anyway.'

    Elena
could see from the way he thrust out his lower lip that because the child now
knew she wanted it, he was determined not to let her have it. She was reluctant
to part with any more of the precious coins from the purse Ma had slipped into
her hand; besides, the crude boat was worth nothing. But she fumbled in her
scrip and found a piece of dried mutton that Ma had placed there along with
some bread and cheese.

    She
pulled off a long strip and held it out to the boy. 'For the boat?'

    He
grabbed it from her hand and ran off with it, trying to stuff the tough chewy
strip into his mouth before his sister, who was clamouring for her share, could
catch up with him.

    Elena
took off her shoes and hose and waded into the reeds. The water near the bank
was not deep, mostly mud and weed, and she easily retrieved the fragile craft.
Hastily drying her feet on her kirtle, she struggled back into her hose and
shoes, and walked away, the cries of the quarrelling children fading behind
her.

    When
she was out of sight of the cottage she stopped. She opened her pack and
carefully unwrapped the mandrake. It lay there on its cloth, shrivelled and
black, like the wizened hand of a saint that had once been brought to their
village by the monks collecting alms. For a while she was afraid to touch it
with her bare hand, in case she saw something more — another corpse, another
nightmare, her own child dead. But she knew she must hold it for one last time.
Touch it and give all Gerard's dreams back to it.

    There
would be no white milk this time, only red. She took her knife and sliced it
across her finger, letting three drops fall on the mandrake's head. She didn't
remember the words you were supposed to say to the priest when you asked for
your sins to be taken from you. It had been too long since she had said them.
But if blood could wash sins away, then her blood must do it now.

    In
the little boat she placed a piece of bread. That was right, wasn't it? That
was what cleansed you of all sins, the body and blood, bread and wine, except
her blood would be better than wine. Her sins were in her blood, and her
spilled blood would carry them away.

    She
grasped the mandrake, feeling beneath her fingers the flutter of a heartbeat
like a little sparrow, but as she held it, the flutter grew to a throb and she
could feel its heart beating louder and stronger, its black blood running
through its veins.

    'Eat
them. Drink them. Take them back!' she cried. 'Take all the dreams back from
me. Carry them far out to sea and drown them in the waves. Let them lie at the
bottom of the ocean for ever.'

    She
laid the mandrake in the little bark boat beside the bread. Then she set it on
the river, pushing it out with a twig until the current caught it. It spun
round and round three times, then it straightened out, and the river carried it
rapidly downstream, the mandrake lying as stiff as a corpse, and the little
sacking sail streaming out behind like the banner of a knight.

    It
was finally over. The mandrake was gone, carried far out to sea, where it could
do no more harm. Elena was rid of it for ever. As if she had suddenly been
released from a dungeon, she wanted to run and leap and dance like a child.

    The
air was scrubbed clean like freshly washed linen, perfumed with the rich plum
scents of wet earth and crushed grass. The river was gurgling contentedly like
a baby, and for the first time Elena noticed that the autumn leaves on the
trees were ablaze with scarlet and cherry, amber and topaz, cinnamon and gold. A
breeze caught the branches and they shivered with delight, sending a shower of
jewelled leaves tumbling through the bright sunlight.

    It
was like being in love for the very first time. Elena swung her pack over her
shoulder and set off. She had no idea where to start looking, but she was sure
that her mother's instinct would guide her. She was going to find her son and
this time, even if there wasn't a priest left in the world to bless him, she
would take him in her arms herself and give her child a name. Raffaele,
perhaps, yes, that was a good name for a man.

    She
was so full of her plans that she didn't notice the small red fox standing at a
distance among the trees. It blended into the autumn bracken so perfectly that
no mortal eyes would have seen it. But it saw her. It pricked its ears and
regarded her for a moment with eyes as dark as a mandrake's skin. Then it
turned away as silently as it had appeared and vanished into the undergrowth.

    It is
late, the sun is sinking in the sky and a cold wind is blowing off the river. A
woman steps out of her own cottage door and walks towards her neighbour's
croft, carrying a small covered cooking pot. Her neighbour, an elderly woman,
slipped over at the village well and broke her leg. She was frail even before
her fall, and her bones will never heal, not now, not at her age. She won't
last the winter. Still, the neighbours do what they can, bringing her a little
pottage from their own dinner, and a few turfs from their own meagre stack to
burn on her fire. They can't heal her, can't take away her pain, but they can
keep her from hunger and cold till death in his mercy comes for her. They know
that one day, if please God they live to make old bones, they will be glad of
someone to do the same for them. 'Sow as you would reap. Do as you would be
done by,' that's the commandment they live by in that village.

    The
woman pauses as she crosses her garden, calling out to a little girl who squats
on the river bank building mice- sized cottages out of pebbles and mud.

    'Mary,
how many times have I told you not to play so close to the river? Remember what
happened to poor little Allan. He played too close to the water and the
monstrous mermaid snatched him and took him down to the bottom of the river and
gobbled him up with her long sharp teeth. Do you want the mermaids to take you?
Inside with you now, keep an eye on the bairn. See he doesn't get into the
flour barrel again.'