The Gallows Curse (9 page)

    Elena
bit her lip and nodded. 'But no else knows in case word gets back to the manor.
Don't want to leave afore I have to; we'll need all the money we can get when
the baby's born.'

    Gytha
looked down at her, her already hard eyes narrowing. 'So you've not come to me
to get rid of the cub?'

    'No!'
Elena stumbled backwards in horror. 'No, I'd never want rid of Athan's baby. I
love him. He's so proud that he's to be a father. He says he'll love me all the
more for giving him a child and I want to make him glad he chose me. I want his
child more than I've ever wanted anything, that's why . . .' she gazed wildly
round, as if the words that eluded her were hiding somewhere among the crocks
and bunches of herbs, '... that's why the dreams frighten me. The same one
night after night, it must be an omen. Something must be wrong. . . the baby
might be in danger.'

    Gytha
pulled a stained and patched old cloak from her mother's bed and laid it on the
floor. 'Lie down and I'll see what I can see.'

    She
took a shallow bowl carved from yew wood from the shelf, poured water into it
and, motioning for Elena to pull up her skirts, laid the bowl on her bare
belly. Gytha's fingers briefly touched the silver rose scar on Elena's thigh.

    'You
still have the scar from when I tended you as a bairn. So many moons ago that
was, yet gone in an owl's blink.' She glanced over at her mother, and the old
woman's fingers quickened as they scurried among her bones.

    'Hold
the bowl still, lass.' Gytha broke an egg into the bowl and then, pulling down
the front of her kirtle, took her knife and slashed a small cut in her left
breast, letting a few drops of blood fall into the water.

    She
swirled the mixture with an ash twig and stared down into the bowl. Elena
watched the furrows between Gytha's eyes deepen.

    'No,
that can't be . . . the spirits must be wrong,' she murmured softly to herself.
'Rowan will speak the truth.' She rose and fetched another twig from the shelf.
Then she bent over the bowl again, squeezing the cut on her breast so that more
drops of blood fell into the mixture as she stirred with the new twig. Finally,
she rose and took the bowl from Elena's hands, pouring the contents - water,
egg and blood — into the supper pot of woodcock and beans bubbling over the
fire.

    'Did you
see anything?' Elena asked fearfully, pulling her skirts down.

    'You'll
be safely brought to bed, you and the child. You've no need to fret on that
score. You can tell your Athan that he'll have a fine son to his name,' she
said, still with her back to Elena. She turned, scrubbing her hands briskly on
the coarse homespun of her kirtle, as if she was trying to rid herself of a
stain. 'I'll take the dried apricots in payment, and you'd best get yourself
back to the manor now, afore it gets too dark to find the track.'

    'No .
. . you saw something else, I know you did. I can see it in your face. Tell me
what else you saw, I have to know.'

    Gytha
glanced over at her mother in the bed. She had turned her sightless eyes in
their direction and seemed to be aware for the first time of their presence.

    'Madron,
have the spirits spoken to you?' Gytha asked.

    The
old crone extended a trembling hand towards them. On her palm was a bleached
white vertebra bone. It might have been the remains of the old woman's supper,
except that it was stained with a wine-red mark, a single letter it looked
like, though Elena, unable to read, could not make it out.

    Gytha
groaned and spat three times on the back of her two fingers. 'Three times —
ash, rowan, bone — and each time the same. It is sealed. No power on earth can
change it.'

    'But
what is sealed?' Elena demanded.

    'There's
a shadow on the heels of the boy.'

    'Everyone
has a shadow.'

    'Not
like this. Not a human shadow, the shadow of a fox. It's a portent of deception
... a thing to be feared. The fox is the Devil's sign.'

    Elena
gave a little wail and crossed herself. 'My baby ... what. . . what's going to
happen to him?'

    Gytha
shook her head. 'The portent may not be about the bairn, but what will follow
in his wake. The dream, you say you have it every night, and it's always the
same?'

    Elena
nodded dumbly.

    'Then
you must finish it — see what happens to the child in your dream, then you'll
know.'

    Elena
rocked back and forth where she sat, her face buried in her hands. 'But I can't
finish it; I always wake up as I pick up the child. You can see the future. You
have to look in the bowl again, please —'

    'Wouldn't
do any good, the spirits'll tell me no more. It's your dream, only you can see
the way it ends.' Gytha crossed back to the fire, stirring the iron pot so that
a rich aroma of woodcock and thyme rose from it in a cloud of steam. 'But I
might be able to help you stay longer in the night-hag's world to see what you
must see more clearly.'

    Again
she looked across at her mother as if silently asking her something. The old
woman was leaning forward in her bed. She licked her lips like a hungry animal,
and there was such an expression of greed on her withered old face that if
she'd been younger you might have called it lust.

    Gytha
crossed to the end of her mother's bed and reached into the narrow space
between the foot of the bed and the wattle wall. She seemed to be groping for
something, and finally pulled out a small wooden box. She opened it and held up
a shrivelled black root, roughly formed into the shape of two legs, two arms
and a body, with a head made by the withered knot where leaves had once grown.

    Yadua.
Some call them mandrakes. The male is white, but this is the woman, black and
precious as sable. Comes all the way from the hot lands across the sea.'

    Gytha
was honest about that much at least. It was the genuine article. There are many
bilge-spewers and piss-filchers who, through ignorance or greed, will try to
pass off bryony root as mandrakes. Any fool holding them in his hands can feel
they are as lifeless as drowned kittens and about as much use. But that cunning
woman was no fool and she had enough respect for what we could do to give us
our proper name, for an immortal deserves a godlike appellation.

    Gytha
cradled the mandrake in the palm of her hand as if it was a baby. 'You must
take a drop of your blood drawn from your tongue and a drop of white milk from
a man, smear them on the head of the creature, then hide her beneath the place
where you sleep. She'll strengthen your dreams so that you will hear the
spirits speaking to you and see the shadows more clearly.'

    Elena
scrambled up, holding out her hands for the mandrake, but Gytha swept it away
from her reach.

    'I
told you, they grow only in the hot lands. Men risk madness and death to
capture them, for they scream as they are dragged from the earth, a sound so
dreadful that it shatters a man's reason. Yadua is costly, worth far more than
a few dried apricots.'

    'But
I only want to borrow it for a night, if it shows me what —'

    Gytha
laughed. 'She can't be lent or borrowed. A fetch will only bring visions to the
one who owns it. You must buy her from me and once she is bought, you can only
rid yourself of her by selling her in kind, for the same price at which she was
bought.'

    'I
have money. Lady Anne gives me coins and clothes, ones that she has finished
with, and pretty silver pins too.'

    Gytha
shook her head. 'You think I bought Yadua with money or jewels? Where would I
get such things? No, you may take her now and one day in the months or years to
come, I'll ask you to perform some small service for me. That will be the
payment. Are we agreed?'

    Elena
hesitated, as well she might. It's foolish to strike a bargain when you don't
know the price. And everyone knows you must never fail to pay a cunning woman,
unless you have grown weary of living. It's as dangerous as swimming in the
mill race or killing the king's venison; worse, for even a slow hanging is
quicker and less painful than the death that a cunning woman will send you. But,
so Elena reasoned, Gytha had refused payment.

    'Swear
on the bones.' The voice from the bed was cracked and shrill.

    Elena
jumped. She couldn't remember ever having heard the old woman speak before.

    The
old lady was leaning, forward, her white, sightless eyes fixed on Elena's own
as if she could see right through to her soul. 'Unless you see where the shadow
of the devil fox is running, you'll not be able to protect yourself or the
bairn. You need Yadua. Swear you will do what my daughter says.'

    Both
women were watching her intently. Elena found herself nodding, and the old
woman relaxed against the bed as though she could sense the movement of assent.
Gytha took her wrist and led her, stumbling, to her mother's bed. The old woman
fumbled for Elena's free hand and pushed it down upon the heap of bones so hard
that it felt as if she was trying to impress her skin with the seal of them.
Elena winced, but the old woman's hand held her fast like an iron shackle. 'Say
it.'

    'I sw
. . . swear.'

    They
released her. Gytha wrapped the mandrake in a piece of rag and thrust it into
her hands.

    'Remember
first you must feed her — a drop of his seed, a drop of your blood.' As Elena
walked away, Gytha called after her, Yadua has other powers, great powers which
she can turn against those who do not pay the price for her. I warn you, do not
betray her.'

    Gytha
leaned against the door post of her little hut, watching the twilight gather up
Elena's slender figure as she disappeared into the shadows. Then the cunning
woman dragged herself upright and wandered over to the fire. She stood warming
her hands over the flames.

    'Have
I chosen right, Madron?'

    'The
choice was never yours to make,' Madron spat. You think you have that power?
The day Yadua healed her, Yadua marked her.'

    Madron
heaved herself upright in the bed. From under the filthy covers she pulled a
small wizen apple dried to the lightness of a feather over the smoke of the
fire. A scrap of bloodstained cloth torn from a child's shift was tied about
it. The wizened fruit was pierced with eleven black thorns. The twelfth thorn
was now ash blowing about the land wherever the wind would drive it.

    Madron
held out the dried fruit in her wrinkled palm. 'Her apple. She was the one who came
when you burned the thorns. Of all those girls you made apples for, she was the
only one to come when you summoned her and on the very day the spirits warned
us. She must be the one Yadua has chosen.'

    Gytha
took the pierced apple and rolled it in her hands, pressing the thorns deeper
and deeper into the dried withered flesh. 'I can summon any living creature to
me, be it man or beast, but getting them to act against their nature is not so
easy.'

    'You
must make it her nature. She has Yadua now. So you must make her do what we
need. Yadua will not let us rest in this world or the next till she does. It's
not just Yadua's screams that send men mad, as well you know.'

    'But
how am I to make her, Madron? She's not —'

    'That's
your trouble, lass, always wanting to know how and why and when. Too impatient
to let anything brew to its full strength. What have I always told you? You
have to raise a skeleton one bone at a time afore you can set it dancing. We've
waited many years, but now at last we've proof that the spirits are stirring.
The first bone has come to us already, the next is yours to summon. Trust the
spirits, they'll show you how.'

    Gytha
dropped the wizened thorn apple with its scrap of blood-soaked cloth into the
ancient scrip hanging from her waist. She scowled. Madron still treated her as
a child, even though Gytha was the one who had to nurse her now. But in their
own way mother and daughter did have a fondness for each other, for who else
did they have to cling to in life? And there were other ties that bound them
too. Some bonds are much stronger even than love or death. For words are not
the only gifts the dead bequeath to the living. Madron had suckled Gytha on the
rich milk of hatred and now it ran like poison through both their veins.

    The
old woman turned her head, trying to sense what her daughter was doing. 'My
supper? You fetching my supper? You've been at it long enough.'

    'Patience,
Madron, you'll just have to wait for it to brew, isn't that what you always
taught me?'