The Ravens’ Banquet (32 page)

There were but seven of them. Whatever words the fat gaoler had used, they had convinced these members of the guard that I spoke the truth. That Fortuna in Her wisdom had seen fit for me to be beaten senseless on my journey
out
of the forest was what had saved me from torture and death. They needed me to find the silver mine and I could not reveal it to them, torture or no torture, without first being placed in the witches’ encampment to orientate myself.

My gold coins had purchased me one last throw. My price for giving them the silver horde was cheap: a sword, a horse, my freedom, and Rosemunde. At this last request, the hulking sergeant that led the gang had laughed and struck me with the back of his hand. But I held out. They could knock me until my brains rattled, but they still needed me alive.

“You’re a fool,” said the sergeant. “The whore is as good as burned. You think that I would risk my own life to free a witch?” And he had struck me again for good measure. “Consider yourself lucky that I honour the rest of the bargain!”

But I dug in my heels and he finally relented, consenting to an attempt to free her but only
after
our return.

A cockerel in the yard of the
Zwinger
sang out as if to give us away. But the soldiers paid no heed, only swearing at the fat gaoler and Lothar to hurry and mount up lest they be left behind. And so our little troop set out for the Kroeteberg, every man now under pain of death for defying the law of Goslar and the Emperor.

The road led us south through a hamlet of thatched houses, quiet in the chill of the dawn. We were welcomed by two silent curs that decided they would join our expedition, falling in behind us, tongues lolling. Ahead of us, I could see the ground rising up already as we entered the foothills. Still higher up, the Rammelsberg looked down upon all, shrouded in a heavy mist whose milky tendrils twisted and floated across the dark trees, spilling down the slope. Before an hour had run out its sands, the road we plodded up had disappeared and we found ourselves instead on a woodsman’s path both narrow and rock strewn.

Up ahead, I could hear the sergeant arguing with one of his companions over which way they had come up before when Christoph had led them back to the Kroeteberg. Behind me a soldier coughed and spat, the ground fog catching in his throat as it did to all of us. I shifted my weight in the saddle and hunched my shoulders, taking some comfort as we disappeared into the forest and left the open hillside. Like Cain, I wished to hide myself from my God after my sin of betrayal. At least under the canopy of green I could delude myself that I was hidden from sight and from shame. I glanced behind, past the bored guardsman who brought up the rear and spied the two dogs again. They hesitated at the forest’s edge, barking their protest, and then turned tail to return from whence they had come.

We climbed for hours, stopping from time to time to water the horses and ourselves and to piss. It was cold within the trees and the sun barely penetrated the leafy boughs to burn off the damp. None of my sullen captors spoke a word to me, even when I asked them to untie me that I might take my easement. They held me of value for only one purpose and the time for that had yet to come.

After a while we found ourselves descending along the path as we passed over and down one of the hills. We crossed a fast-moving stream at the bottom, the water frothing and bubbling as the horses skittishly made their way through, slipping on the green rocks within and neighing their displeasure. We set up the new slope rising before us, the cleft of the trail barely glimpsed through the nodding and shivering bracken that covered the earth all around.

I don’t know how long after that we rode, but the day around us grew darker. And as the weak sunlight faded in cloud, the distant rumble of the heavens came to our ears. Soon the rain would begin to make the journey even more miserable than the burning of my chafed wrists. The land about us rose up and down like an overstuffed coverlet, though now more gentle than it had been up until that point. It was a landscape I remembered. We had reached the Kroeteberg.

The trees thinned, revealing a leaf-covered ground and everywhere fallen branches that lay as skeletons. The soldiers spread out near abreast as the sergeant and his comrade led on. The patter of fine rain came and droplets covered me despite the canopy above, coursing down my bare head and over my face like so many tears. I said nothing to the others. Let them find the place we sought. But they did remember and at last we entered the clearing that I remembered all too well.

The hovels remained. But no fire burned to welcome us. A cold shiver ran down my back and I could not help but feel that many eyes were on me. The sergeant raised his arm and we made a halt. Not a sound could be heard except for the stamp of a hoof and the breathing of the horses, their exhalations billowing out in white clouds. An iron cauldron lay on its side filled with rainwater in the black embers of the cooking fire. I looked about the encampment. There was nothing here but ghosts and the scent of death.

My captors cared little for my guilty reverie.

“Get the
Auslander
forward!” barked the sergeant, suddenly jerking the reins of his mount and facing the rest of us. He fixed me with his sharp black eyes and pointed a gloved finger at me. “Now it’s time for you to keep your part of the bargain,” he said. “Show us the mine.” And the rest looked at me, some nodding, their faces like wolves in anticipation of a kill.

I had no trouble in finding my way. How many times had I walked it with the Sisters, day upon day, a willing slave to greed?

“How much farther?” complained the fat gaoler, cursing and kicking at his mount as we crossed broken ground to the north of the camp. One of the soldiers told him to shut his hole and Lothar laughed to see his comrade silenced so. We were nearly at the place and I could already see the top of the great gaunt carcass of the oak, straight ahead of us.

I called out for them to stop. “We’ll have to go forth on foot from here!”

The sergeant nodded and motioned for one of the others to help me dismount. The soldier hauled me down by the back of my jerkin and pushed me forward.

I looked again to the sergeant and raised my bound hands. “Untie me.”

He smiled a little and I could see him thinking whether or not I would run for it. But he gestured silently to his companion and the soldier drew a dagger and cut my bonds.

As I rubbed the feeling back into my arms, the sergeant drew his hangar from his belt and held it lightly at his thigh.

“The silver,” he hissed. Behind me, a hand jabbed the small of my back, shoving me forward a step.

I walked up the slope before us, the strong scent of wet moss in my nostrils, and they followed. The ancient dead oak stood bent before me, sad and burdened by what lay underneath its tangled roots. I was young, but so too had learned much in the year gone by. Once the trove was revealed, then my value was at an end. And the promise of a soldier is as thin as a pane of glass. I expected to be run through the moment my finger pointed to the hole in the earth. I clutched at my talisman and whispered a prayer to Jesus. And then I was peering downwards into that black maw once again, the smell of decay and metal mixed, wafting upwards.

The sergeant pushed forward, elbowing me aside and falling to his knees before the entrance. His head swivelled around and he knocked off his hat with the back of his hand.

“You two!” he cried out to the fat man and Lothar. “Fetch the torches and be quick about it!”

I stood, shivering in the falling rain, and watched as they fashioned the rag-andtallow torches and set about sparking a light with their tinderboxes. Their hands shook as they worked, their eyes wide in eagerness of the treasure that awaited them below. They struggled, but avarice has a way of conquering all obstacles and the torches finally sputtered into life. The sergeant held one aloft and motioned for me to be the first to enter the bowels of the mine. I crawled down on my backside and lowered myself into the darkness. The sergeant was close behind, his boots into my back and the torch singeing my hair and burning my neck. I dropped the last few feet to the bottom, bits of shale crashing and breaking about my feet. And the sergeant stood next to me, wiping his wet face with his greasy sleeve before he looked up to see what his torch illuminated.

The silver danced on the grey wall of the cave as stars do dance in the heavens, twinkling like gemstones. And though I had seen this sight seven score times, still it possessed me in its spell. I watched the sergeant as he stood transfixed; his black beard waggled upon his chin as he silently mouthed an oath. His eyes drank in the vision before him and I saw in this man all that I had seen in myself and in Christoph fortnights ago.

The shattering of slates broke the silence again as two more soldiers came falling into the cave. The others came down too and soon all were jabbering like children, laughing, and pawing at the glistening wall of silver. As I had done.

I had fallen back now to the opposite wall, the stink of the tallow torches now replacing the scent of silver. My eyes moved from one man to the next. And there were seven,
all
seven within the cave. I blinked a few times and moved slowly towards the ledge that led to the way out. My boots scraped the cavern floor and set the slates to cracking such that I thought my captors would turn on me. But they were all drunk with the wonder of Fortuna’s bounty now bestowed upon them. They shouted to each other what they would buy with their wealth, the women they would possess, that Goslar itself could burn to the ground for all they cared now that they were rich men.

And slowly, heart in my mouth, I crawled upwards and out of that serpents’ den, half in terror that a hand would seize my ankle and drag me back down. I came out from that hellish crack like a babe pulled from an unthankful whore and thrown to the ground. Rain now poured down from the sky, soaking me as I tumbled over the gnarled roots of the oak to land at the base of the mound. I struggled to find my feet again, and doing so, heard the shouts of the soldiers as my escape was discovered.

No longer a soldier, I ran like a frightened beast, panting for my breath and tearing past trees and vines, bracken and stones. I ran to where the horses had been tied. I fumbled with the reins of the first one I reached, my ears ringing so loudly that should I have cried out I scarce would have heard myself. They would be on me in moments. The reins slipped free and I threw them up over the animal’s head, striking its eyes and causing it to rear. I grasped the saddle bow and managed to get a toe into the stirrup before the creature shot off. It took me straight back to the encampment, now lit fantastically by flashes of lighting as the storm raged over my head. How I regained my mettle, I know not. But I reasoned that to flee the way we had come would be my undoing. They would catch me. The horse was nearly wild with fear and it took all my strength to bend the beast to my will. I pleaded with it to obey me like some schoolboy, leaning over its neck and whispering loudly, all the while it pranced angrily in a circle.

But we found a different way. My mount calmed and then went forward, my chest pressed to his withers. The mountain laurel grasped at us as we plunged, the low-hanging beeches striking as we ripped past. The beast stumbled, caught itself, and trotted on. I know not how long we plunged through the darkness, crashing through leaf and branch. It was impossible to tell if my pursuers were at my back or not, such was the din. We half slid down an embankment, the horse’s arse sliding out to the side and it was all I could do to hold on. We reached the bottom and I looked to see where I was.

Before me lay the Sacred Place, the witches’ tabernacle. The wind had died a little now and my ears caught the gentle tinkling of the bells of silver. The great double oak that bore them rose up, its uppermost boughs dancing with the storm. My mount had stopped, snorting and tossing its head. It now walked, unbidden, to the base of the tree. There standing in its cleft, the alabaster goddess looked up at me, her arms held low and wide, palms outwards. She demanded abasement.

I fell from out of the saddle, clinging to the beast’s neck, my face pressed against its flesh. It stood there, suddenly calm and quiet, in spite of the flashes of light that illuminated the clearing. My legs shook with fear and fatigue. But I stumbled to the great oak, grasped its rough hide, and slid to the ground. From out my left eye I could see an alabaster arm in a flowing sleeve. I half-imagined it reaching over to touch my face as I lay there. I clung to the tree, my mind disordered until the rain stopped and the wind ceased to stir the forest. The soldiers had not discovered me nor had I heard the voice of any living thing save the easy breaths of my horse and the chattering of squirrels high above. The soldiers seemed then to be very far away, and I closed my eyes.

I awoke with a start, instantly fearing my captors might be closing in. But there was still no sound of pursuit and the only thing I could hear were the raindrops falling from the trees onto the blanket of rotting vegetation on the forest floor. Had they given up? I began to shiver, soaked through as I was, and scrabbling with my hands on the oak I managed to stand up. It was still day, just. The thunderstorm had passed fully and sunbeams, very low in the sky, made their way across the clearing.

My horse nosed about in the leaves near where I had fallen from him. Another spasm of shivers went through my body. I hobbled over to the horse, stiff. A cloak lay rolled up behind the saddle and also a sword in scabbard and a simple hunting pistol below the saddlebow. I dragged out the cloak, unfurled it and wrapped it about myself.

It is said that in the last rays of fading daylight, just as the sun sets, one can glimpse the doorway into the realm of faerie. To be alone in a wood as the day dies is to risk stumbling into what should not be seen by men. And I remembered what Rosemunde had revealed to me. I moved back to the red-ribboned oak, the music of its silver bells silent. I studied the ground at its base, stepping over its claw-like roots as I searched out a clue. There, behind the tree, at the back of the icon of the goddess, the ground had been disturbed.