Company of Liars

by Karen Maitland

  Zophiel sat upright against his boxes, his head lolling uncomfortably on his chest. He’d pay for that in the morning with a stiff neck, but I wasn’t too sorry. Rodrigo lay stretched out, snoring, sleeping the untroubled sleep of the just. Adela and Osmond nestled against the wall of the cave, Adela’s head snuggled against Osmond’s shoulder as his arms cradled her.

  Jofre was curled up in the back of the cave as he had been all evening, but he was not asleep. The firelight glittered in his open eyes. He was watching Osmond and Adela. He couldn’t take his eyes off them. And suddenly it dawned on me why he’d been so quiet all evening. It was not just the fear that Zophiel might mention the wager; the poor boy was in love. Why do the young have to fall in love at first sight and fall so hard? Adela and Osmond were newly married; what did Jofre think could possibly come of it? But the eternal triangle is as old as man himself. You might even say that Adam, Eve and God were the first, and look where that led. And in all those centuries of lovers’ knots, no good ever came of it. But it was useless to warn him that it would only lead to pain. The young can believe in werewolves and mermaids, but not that the old have ever been in love.

  As I watched the still bodies of Adela and Osmond, Rodrigo and Jofre bathed in the soft red glow from the fire, I realized with a sudden rush of emptiness that I belonged to no one, and for the first time in many years, I felt terribly alone. I had thought that I wasn’t afraid of death. I was old and I knew it was inevitable, but I had never given it a shape before. Now, as this terrible sickness rolled inexorably towards us, I glimpsed for the first time the form death might assume and felt the panic rising in my throat.

  Zophiel was anxious to be off at first light. The gorge made him nervous; being away from his wagon made him nervous; we made him nervous. I think he hoped that as soon as he was clear of the gorge, he could rid himself of all of us, especially Adela.

  Adela seemed stronger after a night’s sleep, but she was still pale and didn’t look as if her new-found strength would hold out for long. But after Zophiel’s jibes of the night before, she was determined to show that she could walk as well as the rest of us, and even Osmond seemed to want to prove his wife’s stamina to Zophiel. But Rodrigo, gallant as ever, was having none of it. He insisted that if we were to pull and push the wagon filled with Zophiel’s boxes out of every water-filled rut on the track, Zophiel should at least assist by leading his horse on foot and Adela should be allowed to ride and save her strength.

  Zophiel, seeing no way out of the gorge without our help, acquiesced with ill grace, venting his spleen for the next mile or so by tormenting the morose Jofre. Having realized that Jofre had kept the wager from his master, Zophiel was amusing himself by constantly turning the conversation back to the point where he seemed about to reveal the secret, before deftly turning aside from it. Zophiel enjoyed the game of cat and mouse and he was a skilled practitioner.

  But this time it was Rodrigo himself who created the diversion. He suddenly clapped his hand to his forehead.

  ‘Camelot, I meant to tell you that a friend of yours, a child, was asking for you at the fair yesterday. I should have told you before, but all the commotion when we had to leave drove it from my head.’

  I frowned. ‘I don’t know any children.’

  ‘She said she knew you. She was a pretty child, unusual. Her hair, it was… like frost.’

  I felt a chill as if cold, wet rags had been drawn over my skin. So Narigorm had been at the fair. I didn’t know whether I was relieved or disturbed. I had begun to think that I had imagined seeing her. Then a thought struck me.

  ‘Rodrigo, there were hundreds of people at the fair, how did she know that you knew me? Did you tell her?’

  He shook his head, then shrugged. ‘Maybe she saw us together. But she asked me to tell you she will be with you soon. That is good news, yes?’

  ‘You didn’t tell her where we were going, did you?’ I said, struggling to keep the note of alarm out of my voice.

  Again he shook his head. ‘No, she did not ask.’

  I breathed out heavily. I could see by the perplexed expression on Rodrigo’s face that my reaction had not been what he expected and I couldn’t explain my disquiet, not even to myself. Why would she send me such a message? Was she following me? No, that was a foolish thought. Now I really was imagining things; why on earth would a child want to follow an old man she’d barely met?

  ‘Camelot, this child, is she –’ Rodrigo began.

  But his question was cut off by a sudden shriek which echoed through the gorge, freezing us in our tracks. There was no mistaking this sound; it was human and the human was in desperate trouble. The sound came from a little way ahead of us round the curve of the track, but our view was blocked by an outcrop of rock. As the shrieks continued, Rodrigo and Osmond pulled out their knives and sprinted down the track in the direction of the cries, closely followed by Jofre. But even as they ran, the screams stopped abruptly as if severed with an axe. Zophiel, Adela and I followed more slowly with the wagon, but as we cautiously rounded the bend we saw the others standing in the track, staring at something beyond.

  Two men, their hoods drawn low over their heads, were bending over a third man lying in the mud. One of the hooded men was dragging a leather pack away from the prone body, the other rummaging clumsily through the dead man’s clothes. The murder had not been subtle. The victim’s head was a bloody mangle of hair, brain and bone. His face would have been unrecognizable even to his own mother. The blows had doubtless been inflicted by the heavy wooden clubs which still dangled on leather straps from the murderers’ wrists. The robbers had not even troubled to drag him off the track into the undergrowth to do their work and now, far from running off in fear when they saw us approach, they continued to work over their prey, like feral dogs who cannot be scared away from their kill.

  Osmond was the first to break the stunned silence; yelling, he started towards the men, waving his arms as if to drive off animals. The two robbers raised their heads. They threw back their hoods, but remained crouched over the bloody corpse.

  ‘Going to stop us, young master?’

  It was Osmond who stopped. The faces that leered up at him appeared at first to be grinning. But those were not smiles on their faces. Their lips, like their noses, were being eaten away. Patches of grey dead flesh covered their faces, like mould on rotting fruit. They were lepers.

  They stood up and began to limp towards us, spinning the cudgels on their wrists as they no doubt had done before they struck the unfortunate wretch on the track.

  ‘Going to lay hands on us, young master? Going to take us? I’ve got an idea – why don’t you give us that fine wagon of yours? I’m tired of walking. I could do with a wagon to carry me. I’ll bet you’ve some good food on that wagon, wine too. Come on then, hand it over, or do you want us to give you a great big kiss for it?’

  They had nothing to lose. The Church had already declared them dead to the world. What could the law do to them that was worse? Hang them? In their condition hanging might have been a blessing, if any man had dared, but they were right, who was going to lay hold of them to bring them to justice? Who would have the courage to seize those fingerless hands and bind them tight or put a noose round those scabby necks? Can you execute a dead man? We steal relics from the dead and now it seemed the dead were going to steal from us.

  It was Rodrigo who threw the knife. It was a powerful throw from a muscular arm. The blade sank deep into the leper’s chest. He screamed, staggering backwards from the impact, trying to wrench the knife out with the stumps of his fingerless hands. Then he tottered towards us, mouth open, arms stretched wide as if he would gather us all to the grave with him, before he crumpled lifeless into the mud. His companion had already turned tail and was scuttling into the trees. He did not look back to see his friend fall.

  5. The Cripples’ Wedding

  The six of us were obliged to spend many more nights sleeping outdoors in the cold and wet. The encoun
ter with the lepers in the gorge seemed to have convinced Zophiel that it was not safe to travel alone, especially with the roads and tracks as waterlogged as they were. And although I now know that Zophiel had a more pressing reason for travelling in our company, at the time I believed that, despite his contempt for St John and his miracles, even he could see the sense in making for his shrine and settling there until the worst was over and the ports were open again. I, for one, was thankful for that, for we needed his wagon for Adela. She was in no condition to trudge through the mud, wind and rain, mile after mile.

  It had rained every day for the past three months and though summers had been bad these last few years, none of us could remember any as bad this.

  ‘If rain on Midsummer’s Day should fall, it will rain for seven weeks more,’ Adela had recited cheerily at first, much to Zophiel’s intense irritation.

  But seven weeks had come and gone. St Swithin’s Day and his forty days and forty nights of rain had also come and gone. And still it rained. Not even Adela had faith in her rhymes any more. There was nothing natural about this rain.

  And with each day’s downfall the mud grew deeper, the walking harder, our bellies emptier. The truth was, though none of us admitted as much, we had begun to depend on one another to survive. We shared all our food and ale which we bought with the little each of us earned from the villages we trundled through. We made makeshift shelters when we couldn’t find an inn or a barn, and helped to gather fodder for the horse.

  The mare, as we soon discovered, had been well named. Her coat had a fiery red-gold sheen to it and for that she had been named Xanthus, after the immortal talking horse given to Achilles. But in temperament she took after that more infamous beast of the same name, the man-eating mare of King Diomedes, except that our Xanthus was an even greater misanthrope, for unlike the king’s horse who only devoured his enemies, she took delight in savaging friend as well as foe. She had a nasty habit of biting, without warning, anyone who got within range of her teeth, and for no good cause except that it amused her. So we quickly learned to judge the reach of her neck and to keep a safe distance, unless we had a firm grip on her bridle.

  But Xanthus and the wagon she pulled became our ark, our covenant, the standard around which we rallied. We pulled them both out of ruts during the day and kept watch over them at night. The wagon carried our packs, our food, our ale; it even gave us shelter if we could find no other. All six of us now were headed towards the safety of St John’s shrine to sit out the weather and the pestilence, and the thought of the dry beds that awaited us there, the easy money, the hot food and no more trudging in the mud and rain, was what kept us going when our bellies were aching and our feet so wet and numb we could have broken our toes off and sold them as relics.

  And something else was spurring me on, though I did not confide it to any of them. Once I had led our little company to North Marston, I would be able to leave them there. They’d be safe. No more acting nursemaid or having to put up with Zophiel’s tongue or Jofre’s sulks. I’d only have myself to worry about. At North Marston they’d be able to fend for themselves and I could leave them behind with a clear conscience.

  The need to reach the shrine was becoming more urgent by the day. Fear was creeping across the land. It rose silently, like the tide in a creek, a cold, grey fear that was seeping into everything. The country was full of the news that the pestilence had reached London. That shook even the most optimistic souls. True, London was a port; it was bound to succumb sooner or later, but it was not a southern port, it was not even a western port. It was on the east coast. The pestilence had crept up on three sides of the land and now it was reaching in to grasp the heart of England.

  No one here had actually seen anyone sick with the pestilence; most people knew little of what it did to a man, but that only made them more fearful, for every headache, every cough, every touch of fever might be the beginning. How could you tell? To make matters worse, rumours were spreading that it wasn’t just humans who fell to the pestilence; it was animals and birds too. Herds of pigs, sheep, cattle, even horses had sickened and died in the south. Stockmen left their animals at night well and hearty, and by morning when they woke there would not be a beast left standing in the flock.

  ‘Maybe the flagellants will come,’ said Rodrigo. ‘I saw them once in Venice, marching from church to church. Men and women, naked to the waist save for their white hoods, flogging themselves bloody with metal-tipped whips. Now I hear there are whole armies of them right across Europe, screaming to one another to whip harder and pray louder.’

  ‘And if they do come to England, will you join them?’ I asked.

  Rodrigo grimaced and bent his head in mock shame. ‘You see before you an abject coward, Camelot. I do not relish pain, either giving or receiving it, even for the good of my soul. And you, Camelot? Will you don the white hood?’

  My hand darted over the puckered surface of my scar. ‘It seems to me that if God wants to punish his children, he is more than capable of wielding his own whip.’

  The flagellants didn’t come. The English are different. We don’t have the passion of the other lands. It’s not blood that runs in our veins, but rain. But though the English didn’t throw themselves into an orgy of scourging, they found other ways to appease heaven and divert the wrath of God, and who’s to say that the pain of that was not worse than a flogging for those who found themselves the victims of it?

  It was not good weather for a wedding, not what a bride dreams of, but then nothing about this wedding was the stuff of romantic dreams. The day was bitterly cold as well as wet. A snide wind whipped through the streets, but the villagers of Woolstone were determined to throw themselves into the celebrations just the same and had dressed in their finery, which for the young girls meant their flimsiest and most revealing garments. Their mothers were rushing around arguing about where the garlands should be hung and how the food should be cooked, while their menfolk set up canopies, benches and trestles amongst the tombs and rolled barrels of ale across the graveyard, trampling even the new graves underfoot. It seemed that everyone had become so absorbed in the preparations they had entirely forgotten the reason for this collective madness. But if everyone around you is mad, then that becomes the new sanity, and who were we to complain? For where there is a wedding there is good food and drink, and plenty of it.

  I’d heard of the custom of the cripples’ wedding many years ago. Some say it dates back to the time before men were Christian. It is said that if you marry two cripples together in the graveyard at the community’s expense it will turn away divine wrath and protect the village from whatever pestilence or sickness rages around it. For the charm to work, everyone in the village has to contribute something to the wedding. And in this village, everyone had been coerced into helping with the preparations whether they wanted to or not, for though Woolstone nestles beneath the hill of the White Horse, the villagers knew in their bones that their ancient nag could offer little protection against this new curse.

  And when they discovered Rodrigo and Jofre in our company, they had taken it as a sign that this charade was already blessed by God, for had he not sent them two fine musicians just when they were needed? God’s hand can be seen in any occurrence for those who are determined to find it there, but then again, so can the devil’s.

  The newly-weds sat under a canopy dressed simply in clean and serviceable clothes, but done up with chaplets of evergreens and garlanded with grain stalks, fruit and ribbons as if the villagers had been unable to make up their minds if this was a wedding or a harvest home. The wedding ring was fashioned from a scrap of tin, the loving cup was borrowed and the bride was barefoot, but many a young couple have started married life with less and thought it the most perfect wedding on earth, but then they were in love. This pair were not.

  The bridegroom was probably no more than twenty, but his body was wasted away down one side. His left arm swung from the socket like a dead hare and his leg dragged uselessly
behind him, so that he moved in a series of shuffling hops, leaning on a single crutch. His head was oversized like the head of a giant baby and though he tried to talk, twisting his mouth into contorted shapes, he could not make himself understood. He seemed bemused that everyone was smiling at him and shaking him by the hand. It must have been a bewildering change from the kicks and curses he normally received. He was stuffing food into his mouth and guzzling his ale as fast as he could, spilling it from the sides of his mouth in his haste as if he had never been offered so much food before and feared he never would be again.

  The bride was not smiling. She sat motionless where she had been placed, her sightless eyes rolling from side to side. It was hard to tell her age. Years of near starvation had shrivelled her flesh and though some attempt had been made to comb out what remained of her hair, this did not conceal the crusted yellow sores on her scalp and face. The knuckles of her hands were shiny and swollen, the thin fingers twisted together against her palms, so that it would have been impossible to separate them.

  She had quickly been abandoned by the village girls who had stood in as her attendants and now, their duty done, they had gone off to kiss and be kissed by their sweethearts. And, although she was surrounded by food, she made no attempt to eat or drink, as if she was well used to smelling the savour of food that was not hers to eat and ale that she could not afford to buy. I slid on to the bench beside the bride, tore a roasted goose leg from the carcass on the table and pressed the woman’s cold, waxy hands to it. She half-turned her face towards me and nodded her thanks. At least the blind don’t recoil at the sight of my scar. Pressing the goose leg between the knuckles of both hands, she slowly lifted it to her mouth, sniffing at it before biting into it. Unlike her new husband, she ate slowly, as if she had to make this pleasure last.