The Gallows Curse

by Karen Maitland

  To take, unbidden, the last piece of bread from a platter will bring misfortune, but to eat the last slice if it is offered will bring wealth or a spouse to the one who receives it.

  At the harvest of the grain, the spirit of the corn resides in the last sheaf cut. From this sheaf a loaf is baked in the form of a human figure or sheaf of wheat and borne to the harvest-home feast with great reverence. All who have taken part in the harvest will together break and eat of this loaf which is the body of the corn spirit, and so ensure that the spirit of the field is not lost and will return to bring a good harvest in the years that follow. For the spirits must always find a home in which to reside and if they are not welcomed in, they will enter at will and possess any creature they choose.

  The Mandrake's Herbal

  Yadua

  The harsh honking of a flock of wild geese woke Elena with a start. She couldn't remember where she was at first. Wisps of the straw she was lying on were sticking to her face and arms. Her back felt unpleasantly damp and cold. She was lying on a narrow wooden hayloft looking down into the tiny room of a cottage. Stacked about her were fishing and fowling nets, wooden tools and sacks of beans, nuts and bulrush roots, with just a small space left on the boards where the children could sleep.

  A cold light, pale as whey, was flowing in through the open door below her, and the smell of peat smoke and boiled fish told her that someone was already outside, cooking. She turned her head to see a little tow-headed boy of about three years asleep beside her, his thumb in his mouth, his pale eyelids trembling as he dreamed. Elena's back did feel very wet. She touched the damp place with her fingers and smelled them. The little boy had evidently peed on her in the night. But Elena only smiled fondly and eased herself gently from the straw, trying not to wake the child.

  She pulled her kirtle on over her wet shift and, still plucking the straw from her hair, clambered down the few rungs of the wooden ladder and wandered outside. The river glittered in the pale morning sun, grumbling to itself like an elderly maid as it combed the dark green water weeds beneath into a fan of rippling hair.

  A woman squatted on the ground, slicing through the fat black body of an eel and throwing the pieces into the simmering pot. She nodded at Elena, but didn't smile. Her two older children, who sat huddled together on the ground, regarded Elena with wide green eyes, but, just like their mother, their faces registered no expression. It was a chill morning. The blue smoke of the peat fire rose vertically into the primrose light and a white mist hovered over the bend in the river.

  The woman handed Elena a steaming wooden bowl of eel meat and a piece of flat ravel bread, baked over the embers of the fire. Both were offered without comment. Finding nothing else to sit on, Elena knelt on the damp ground.

  The woman and her children ate in silence. They drank the liquid from their bowls and used their fingers to scoop the lumps of eel and herbs into their mouths. Elena smiled as she saw the little girl surreptitiously slide the bitter stewed herbs on to the grass and only pop the pieces of eel into her mouth. The boy in contrast shovelled everything into his mouth with a ravenous appetite. Elena wondered how her own son fed. Was his belly filled this morning or was he crying with hunger?

  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 s
craping 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.'

  Mary stands reluctantly, watching her mother walking up the neighbour's path. The child doesn't want to go inside yet, but she dare not disobey. Her mother keeps a switch behind the door. Mary is about to do as she has been told, when in the last rays of the sun, something catches her eye. It is floating towards her down the river. It looks like a little boat. She quickly casts around her, trying to find some way of snaring it before the river carries it away again. She finds a stick, and by lying full stretch on the bank, she just manages to hook the tip of the stick over the edge of the curved bark. The boat is light. It comes towards her easily, eagerly, you might say.

  Fearing her mother's return, Mary scurries inside her cottage and sets the dripping boat down on the beaten earth floor. With a grin of delight that almost splits her little face in two she lifts out a tiny, wizened figure.

  'A doll!' she exclaims, dancing round the room. 'I can play babi
es with it.'

  It's an ugly little thing. But she doesn't care. To her it is the best toy she's ever had, a little doll all of her own. She already imagines dressing it in scraps of cloth, making it a cradle and feeding it on stolen milk.

  A sudden squeal makes her look down. A little boy crawls towards the boat. Mary kneels on the floor and shows her new treasure to him.

  'Look, look, it's a dolly.'

  Although Mary sometimes becomes impatient, as all little girls do, when she is forced to mind him, she is fond of the child, even though he's not her real brother. Gytha, the cunning woman, brought him for her mother to nurse. There were other nurslings before this one, and Mary supposes there will be others after him. Some day someone will come for him and take him away, as they took away other nurslings when they were old enough to walk and talk. But they won't come yet. He's too little.

  The baby grins as she dances the doll in front of him. He reaches out a fat sticky paw, but she pulls the doll back. 'No it's not for you. It's mine!'

  The infant crumples up his face as if he is about to cry. Her mother mustn't find him crying or she will tell Mary to give him the doll to quieten him. She will tell Mary that she is too old to play games now and should be minding the bairn if she wants something to nurse. Her mother won't understand how much Mary already loves the doll.