The Vanishing Witch (63 page)

It hung above Godwin for a moment, suspended, then sprang at him, striking him in the stomach and knocking him to the ground. He screamed and threw himself sideways. Its talons raked his back, tearing the skin. Its four long fangs bit into his flesh. He tried to crawl out, but the twigs
of the bushes had turned into vipers, twisting and slithering up in a great swarm towards him. He scuttled backwards into the cave, trying to wedge himself into the rock, but there was no rock. There was nothing but emptiness, a void that went deeper and deeper into the black heart of the world.

The demon bounded across the floor after him, its claws rasping on the stone. Its sinuous body flattened
itself, and as Godwin shrieked and fought to push it away, it crawled on top of him. Its oily black fur brushed over his skin. It pressed its ever-increasing weight down on his chest until he was fighting for breath. It fastened itself on his face, the wet snout pressing against his nose, as its four long canine teeth flashed like daggers. Its hot, purple tongue flicked over Godwin’s lips,
pushing between them, filling his mouth. Its foul breath seared his lungs. He tried to scream one last time, but the only sound that emerged was the strangled gurgle of his final breath.

Leonia slipped the little golden boar’s head back into her purse and, turning her head, gazed out over the valley below. One by one the tiny ruby and gold lights of cottage fires and candles were going out and
darkness was flowing in like the drowning tide.

It would be three days before an urchin, hiding from his tormenters, found Godwin’s body in the cave. The discovery of a corpse, he knew, would transform his position in the gang from runt to hero. Gleefully he called them to come and look. They scrambled over the edge, threatening to throw him off the cliff if this was another of his hoaxes. But
their sneers and jeers died away as they caught sight of the man lying on the floor of the cave. Four neat holes had been punched through the coarse cloth of his robe, from which four streams of blackened blood had run to pool beneath him, staining red the fragments of bone on which he lay. The man’s twisted mouth was wide open, as if his life had been severed in a scream and in his staring eyes
was an expression of pure terror. That look so unnerved the boys that not even a double-dare would induce any of the little gang to touch the corpse, in case the stump of his arm should come to life and strike them dead.

For the adults, however, the death of a nameless vagabond in a stinking cave was hardly worth investigating. The deputy sheriff, to whom the matter was reported, summoned the
coroner, as he was legally obliged to do. A dozen sullen citizens were rounded up and coerced into acting as jury, but all were anxious to get the whole matter over as quickly as possible and cursed the corpse for putting them to such trouble.

The four puncture wounds in the chest of the cadaver stirred a vague memory in the coroner’s mind. He was sure he’d seen something like it on another corpse,
but since he was forced to examine bodies all over the county, he couldn’t remember where he’d seen that pattern before.

The deputy sheriff was absolutely certain where he’d seen similar marks.

‘Remember that merchant’s son,’ he murmured, sidling up to the coroner, ‘the one they fished out of the Braytheforde? You reckoned his wounds to have been made by a quant or an anchor. But it looks like
you was wrong about that, wasn’t you, Master Coroner?’ he added, with malicious glee. ‘This couldn’t be a ship’s anchor, could it, not on dry land and way up here?’

The coroner swore under his breath. He did recall the other corpse now, but the deaths of a merchant’s drunken son and a begging friar could hardly be connected, especially after all these months, and he had no intention of being
made to look an incompetent fool. Discreetly he opened the purse hanging from his belt. Gold has many great attributes, not least the power to miraculously erase a man’s memory.

‘It would appear,’ the coroner said loudly, addressing the jury men, ‘that someone repeatedly stabbed this unfortunate man or he stabbed himself in a frenzy and flung the weapon over the edge of the cliff.’

The deputy-sheriff
gave him a conspiratorial wink and fingered the coins in his palm.

But there was still the mystery of the noose found lying beside the corpse. Had someone tried to throttle him, or had he come to the cliff-face with every intention of hanging himself and failed to find a suitable tree? Either way, there was little point in anyone wasting any more time or money pursuing the matter. The most pressing
problem now was what to do with the body, for if there was any chance it was self-murder, it could not be accorded a burial on consecrated ground. They debated the matter earnestly and concluded that since the deceased was found, hermit-like, in a cave, dressed as a Friar of the Sack, whom everyone knew took religious zeal to the point of madness, the safest course was simply to wall him up
in the cave in which he’d died and leave God and the devil to fight it out over his soul.

If a skull be removed from the place where it rests, death and disaster shall follow till it be restored.

Welcome to the kingdom of the dead, Godwin, welcome to my kingdom.

They say the spirit of the last man to be buried in a patch of ground is doomed to guard it until another can be found to take his place, so if I were you, my darlings, I wouldn’t open any caves on that
cliff in Lincoln, unless you want to stay there until the great wolf Fenris breaks the chain that fetters it and the stars fall from the sky. Godwin is going to have a long, lonely wait all alone in the dark, but before you start feeling sorry for him, my darlings, remember he would have murdered an innocent little girl. And surely child-murderers deserve the worst of fates, don’t they?

But we
must return to the living. We’re not quite finished with them yet.

It was late in the afternoon when Robert finally left the castle. The heat was unremitting, and every inch of his body felt wet and sticky. The high collar of his woollen houppelande chafed his neck. Flies crawled everywhere, generated from the slime-green mud that suppurated in the ditches and streams. Even the water in the Witham
was unusually low and choked with weed. The flat-bottomed punts could still make the journey between Boston and Lincoln, but keeled craft lay beached along the banks, unable to move until the next rains.

The latest news from London was that so many rebels’ bodies hung in gibbet cages about the town, or had been quartered and nailed to doors, that the stench was making people ill. Markets had
had to be abandoned, for stallholders and customers alike were vomiting and fainting, not just from the sight of the bloated green corpses, but from the smell, which even tainted the bread and meat. Townspeople had started tearing the bodies down and burying them, but the boy-king was having none of that. He’d ordered them dug up and gibbeted again. He was determined this was a lesson no one would
forget.

Robert felt no pang of guilt for adding Martin and his son to the list of rebels. He owed Gunter his life and prided himself on always paying his debts. He believed that neither Gunter nor his son had had any hand in the killings. But two names were needed to fill the gap in the list. Martin and his son would have hanged anyway, if it could have been proved that they’d stolen from the
merchants. So justice would be served. Besides, if witnesses could be found to prove their innocence, no harm would come to them, except for a few weeks spent chained up in the castle, which they richly deserved.

Robert pushed his way through the throng in the castle courtyard towards the great doors that opened out into the city at the top of the hill. He was in two minds whether to go to the
warehouse or make straight for home and a large goblet of hippocras. His back was aching and he couldn’t even summon enough energy to worry about the latest folly Edward might have committed at the warehouse.

Yet he found himself reluctant to return home. Catlin’s tongue was growing more savage by the day and she always found some reason to push him away if he attempted to touch her. He tried
to tell himself that the relentless heat was to blame. All the men were complaining it made their wives irritable. But often when he woke in the night, her part of the bed would be empty. Edith may have endured rather than enjoyed love-making, but she had never forsaken his bed, even in anger. She’d been brought up to be a dutiful wife.

Something caught the edge of Robert’s vision and he turned
his head. On the far side of the thronged courtyard, a familiar figure was urging her palfrey forward in the direction of the gate that led to the road and fields beyond the city. For a moment, Robert felt relieved. At least he would have some peace at home for an hour or two. He was just about to walk on, when he saw another figure he knew enter through the city gate. The man was looking ahead
of him as if he were searching for someone. Then he saw the man’s gaze fix on Catlin. As if she knew he was behind her, she turned in the saddle. It was only a small gesture, a beckon of the fingers, answered by the briefest of nods from the man, but it was enough. In that instant, the suspicions that had been hovering unformed, like a dark miasma, at the back of Robert’s mind suddenly gathered into
a solid, menacing shape.

Catlin, with a nod to the guards, trotted through the gate out of the city. Minutes later, the man followed. Robert forced himself to wait for them to get well clear of the castle wall before he limped through the gate. He walked down the rise and edged along the bottom of the castle mound, until he had a clear view of the track beyond, prepared at any moment to step
behind the trees if either of them should turn. But they did not, which only added to his fury, that both should be so arrogant as to feel themselves safe from discovery.

He watched them enter the small grove of trees around St Margaret’s pool. Catlin waited on her palfrey for the man to take the bridle and tether the beast. She swung her leg across the horse’s back and he grasped her slender
waist to lift her down. Robert saw the fierce embrace, the lingering kiss, watched Catlin pulling him down onto the tinder-dry grass.

Swiping furiously at the flies that buzzed around his face, Robert limped as fast as his sore back would allow down the track and across the sun-scorched meadow. Catlin was lying on top of the man, her skirts raised, her mouth working hungrily on his. He was running
his hands over her bare thighs. But as Robert stumbled towards them it was the man who saw him first. His eyes widened in alarm, and he struggled up, tipping Catlin onto the hard ground. She screeched in annoyance as she was flung aside. The man scrambled to his feet as Robert advanced towards them. He stumbled backwards, the white streak of hair falling across his face.

Robert ignored him and,
seizing his wife’s arm, dragged her to her feet. ‘You filthy whore! You could be put to death for this – both of you. This is a crime against God and nature. Edward is your son, your own son! How could you fornicate with him?

‘As for you,’ he spat at Edward, almost purple in the face with rage and disgust, ‘to lust after your own mother – the woman who gave birth to you! They will cut off your
balls and that will only be the start!’

Edward had turned very pale and had backed so far away from Robert’s fist that he was teetering on the edge of the stream.

‘She’s not my mother, you slug-wit! Do you honestly think I would bed my own mother?’

Robert’s jaw hung slack. ‘Then I don’t . . .’ He stared at them in bewilderment.

Catlin gave a mirthless laugh. ‘He’s my lover, not my son, you
fool.’

Edward slid to her side and took her hand. They stood facing him.

‘I don’t believe . . . Not your son? But you said . . .’ Robert was struggling to take it in. Then the full implication hit him like a fist in his belly. ‘You brought your lover to live in
my
house! You gave him my wine to drink, my food to eat, installed him as my steward?’

Catlin shrugged. ‘I hardly think you can complain.
You brought me into your house while your wife was still alive and you’d have eagerly climbed into my bed then, if I’d let you. Why should it be different for a woman?’

Robert’s face had turned dangerously pale. ‘How long . . . how long have you been
lovers
?’

‘Since Leonia was an infant. She believes Edward to be her brother. The world thinks nothing of a mother and son living together, but
a woman and her lover . . . And you certainly wouldn’t have married me, if you’d known who he was, would you?’

Robert felt as if the ground had fallen away beneath him. ‘I treated you with respect, devotion, even. I loved you. You made me fall in love with you. And you . . . all that time . . . all the time we were together . . . you were betraying me!’

Catlin’s lips curled in a faint smile,
as if she was the tutor of a particularly stupid child who had just managed to solve a simple sum. ‘Women have only two means of making their way in this world. You can make men lust after you, but what kind of life is that, spreading your legs for them, letting them wither your face and your heart until no man desires you? Better by far to make men fall in love with you so that they spread all they
own at your feet. If my weakness is that I was born a woman, you cannot blame me for using it to trap men, for men are quick enough to use their strength against us. It is a game of chess and it amuses me to watch the pieces fall, knowing I control the board.’

Robert’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. ‘I hope you still enjoy that game, mistress, when I have you charged with adultery and—’

‘But you won’t, Robert. You were a fool, a vain, self-important donkey. I only used the weapons you fashioned yourself and placed in my hands. And it’s that same self-importance that will stop you bringing a charge of adultery against me, for you will not want the whole of Lincoln to learn that the master of the Merchants Guild was such a fool that he could be duped into taking his new bride’s
lover into his house and employing him as his steward.’