‘But why—’
He pressed his fingers gently to her soft hot lips. He had to get rid of her, and quickly.
‘Listen to me, Ursula. I am Serkan the prophet and God has chosen you to be my consort. No power on earth will be able to separate us. He will watch over you until I am at your side once more.’ He took both her hands in his and lifted them to his chest. ‘You believe in me, Ursula, don’t you? You have faith in me? I need to know you do not doubt me or my powers. I must know that you believe!’
‘I do! I swear I do.’ Her eyes once more took on that shine of adoration.
He bent and kissed her chastely on the forehead, laying his hand on her head. ‘Bless you, Ursula, bless you, my beloved. Now go and do as I command. Have faith and I will come to you.’
He watched as she led her horse down the steep hillside. She turned once and he held up his hand as if in benediction. He sighed. She was a beautiful creature, a man could be very happy with her for a few months at least. Though he hadn’t intended to do so, now he rather thought he might go and find her once he had the mirror safely in his possession. Sea voyages could be long and exceedingly dull without a woman to while away the hours.
Having dispatched Martin on his errand to Ursula’s house, William devoted his attention to the preparations for that night. He had constructed a fire pit close to the northern lip of the hill. The pit was shallow, and the kindling dry and thin. He wanted the fire to give off more flame than heat, at least to begin with. Just behind it, he carefully cut a sod from the soil, and excavated a shallow hole beneath it. Then he filled the hole with a small leafy branch cut from a bush and replaced the sod. The branch held the sod at ground level, disguising the hole beneath. As long as no one trod on it, no casual glance would reveal it and William intended he should be the only one standing behind the fire. He checked that all the things he would need lay ready beside the pit – an earthenware jar of water, a fire pot in which charcoal burned, and the fumigant. All was ready, there was nothing more he could do now but wait.
Twilight crept in even before the sun had set. Deep purple and slate-coloured clouds had been rising all afternoon and now they towered like great battlements around the hill, plunging it into premature darkness. The wind was gathering strength; dry and hot as the blast from an oven, it dashed dust into stinging eyes and whipped limbs with fragments of broken twigs.
William stared anxiously down at the valley. There was no procession of torches winding its way towards the hill. The people of Bath had evidently decided to stay safely in their homes on a night like this. But what about the man with the mirror – was he desperate enough to make the journey? On the hillside the bushes swayed in the darkness so that it looked as if they were creeping up towards him. On such a night an assassin might easily steal up the hill and not even the sharpest lookout would see him. William found himself frantically praying for the man with the mirror to come. He could not bear another night of terror waiting for a dagger to be plunged in his back, or a blade to be drawn across his throat. He had to get away. He had to get that mirror tonight.
He was so consumed with fear that he didn’t even notice the pinprick of lantern-light coming along the track from Bath, until the two riders had almost reached the base of the hill. When he finally glimpsed them, he had to stop himself running down the hill to meet them. Instead he forced himself to concentrate on the task of lighting the fire. His fear and the gusting wind made him fumble, but finally, after blowing out several times, the dried kindling took hold and the wind whipped up the blaze, sending the flames whirling around the pit like witches at the Devil’s Sabbat.
As he looked up again he saw the two men advancing and his stomach gave a lurch of relief. But William could afford to waste no time in greetings. With an imperious wave of his hand he summoned his disciples who had been watching and waiting, knowing that something was afoot.
William motioned his two visitors to sit on the ground a little way from the fire and his followers sat themselves down behind them. An expectant hush fell upon the crowd as they waited to see what he would do. William could feel their mounting anticipation. They were expecting something special tonight. And he was determined they would not be disappointed.
He took a long stick and charred the end in the fire, then solemnly drew three wide concentric circles around the fire. No one moved or spoke. He could feel the gaze of every man and woman fixed intently upon him.
Charring the stick anew each time, he wrote signs and symbols in each of the circles in turn, calling out the names of what he wrote in a deep booming voice that rose above the roar of the wind. First, ‘Armatus’, the name of the summer moon, though there was not a glimpse of a moon to be seen tonight beneath the deep clouds. Next he wrote the names of the angels of summer – ‘Gargatel’, ‘Tariel’ and ‘Gaviel’. Then he called out the names of all the angels of the air and the four names of God. Finally, in the outer circle, with a great flourish he inscribed four pentagrams, pointing towards the north, east, south and west of the hill. He had just drawn the last stroke when a long rumble of thunder echoed round the valley. William raised his stick as if he was commanding the thunder and the disciples huddled closer together, staring up in awe.
William dipped a bunch of broom fronds into the jar of water and flung drops around the circles and over the small crowd, who flinched and gasped as the water touched them as if the drops were gold coins thrown by a king.
Then he strode into the circles and stood before the fire in silence, his arms folded. His disciples held their breath in expectation.
‘Bring the cursed mirror to me,’ he commanded.
But the man did not move and, for a few sickening moments, William thought he was going to refuse. Finally his servant scrambled to his feet and, wrenching the mirror from his master’s trembling fingers, he marched towards William and placed it in his hands, before retreating to stand in the shadows behind the group of disciples.
William almost howled in delight as he finally felt the weight of the silver mirror in his hands. He stared down into it. His face was reflected back up at him, framed by a halo of glistening pearls, and rubies that drew the very flames of the fire into their blood-red hearts.
He was close now, so close. He scooped up a handful of sulphur from the fumigant jar. With the other hand he held the mirror high aloft in the raven-black sky. There was another great rumble of thunder, louder than before. William felt the power surge through him as if he could command the whole universe.
‘By the thrones of Beralans, Baldachis, Paumachia and Apologia, by their kings and proud powers and powerful princes, by the attendant spirits of Liachis, the servant of the throne of hell, I invoke you. I conjure you. I command you in the three secret names – Agla, On and Tetragrammaton – foul fiend come forth from this mirror!’
William threw the handful of sulphur onto the flames and a dense cloud of stinking yellow smoke exploded upwards, swallowing him and the mirror. All he had to do now was lift the turf off the hole he had prepared behind the fire and drop the mirror into it, but he never got the chance.
Just as he threw the sulphur there was a great roar and something huge and shaggy rose up the hill and burst out of the darkness behind him. William shrieked and stumbled backwards, stepping onto the hole; the twigs supporting the turf broke under his weight and he was pitched forward. The mirror flew out of his hand and fell into the dense smoke and flames of the fire.
With a clanking of iron chains and maniacal howls, the creature skirted around the prone figure of William and bounded towards the crowd. At the sight of the wild man cavorting towards them out of the dense yellow smoke, the disciples tried to scramble up, but they had huddled together so tightly that they were pushing each other back down in their struggle.
Godfrey had eyes for only one man. The king, sitting slightly forward of the disciples, had scrambled to his feet as soon as he caught sight of the figure. Now he was backing away to the edge of the hill, his arms held pr
otectively across his face. He seemed to be praying or whimpering, Godfrey didn’t know which, and wasn’t going to wait to find out. His dagger was already in his hand as he crept around to the edge of the hill, and crouched, waiting for Henry to back just a little further away from the glow of the fire.
One swift thrust of the dagger, a hard shove over the edge, was all it would take to change the fate of England. And when the crumpled body was found tomorrow at the bottom of the hill, why, who would be blamed but the vagabond prophet who had stolen the valuable mirror?
‘Come to me, my liege,’ Godfrey whispered into the roaring wind. ‘Just a little further, just a few more steps and it will all be over.’
A crack of blue lightning split the sky, and at once rain began to pour down in fat heavy drops. Godfrey was distracted for only a moment, but for Henry this new omen from the sky was more than his battered mind could cope with. He threw himself, face down, on the ground, his arms stretched out in the form of a cross, as if he was a monk doing penance before the altar.
Godfrey dashed the water from his eyes and swiftly glanced around. The disciples were fleeing in all directions. The wild man had slipped on the wet grass and was floundering around trying to regain his footing under the cumbersome costume, and Serkan seemed to have vanished. Henry lay motionless on the ground, as if waiting for the mercy of the executioner’s knife that would put an end to his nightmare.
Godfrey crept forward as silently as he could, not that any stealth was needed, for the beating of the rain and crash of thunder would have masked the sound of an army. As he reached the King’s feet he hesitated. It is much easier to stab a standing man in the back than one who is prone. He’d have to kneel and strike in one fluid movement before Henry could sense the presence of someone beside him and turn his head.
He braced himself, choosing the spot, raising the dagger in both fists ready to plunge it in. If he hadn’t been so intent on his mark, he might have seen the wild man throw up his hands in horror. He might have heard the actor cry out a warning, but he didn’t.
He had taken but a single step towards the prone body of the King when he heard the savage roar behind him; he half turned to glimpse something huge and dark rearing up behind him, the red mouth open in a snarl, the long white fangs bared. As another crack of lightning illuminated the full savagery of the great beast towering over him, Godfrey tried to strike out with the dagger he held, but he was too late, far too late. A huge paw struck him on the side of his head. The curved claws tore the flesh from his face, and with a single agonised scream, Godfrey tumbled over the side of the hill and vanished into the darkness below.
The bear flopped heavily down onto all four paws. As the rain pounded down, he sniffed at the prone body of the King, then turned away. For a long moment, the bear stood alone on the top of Solsbury Hill, its great head lifted as if it was looking out over the darkened valley, out over England, out over time itself.
As the thunder rumbled once more around the hill, more distant now, Henry finally came to and began to stir. The great bear looked down at him one last time before it turned and lumbered off down the hill, vanishing into the cavernous night.
A pale primrose light was creeping into the sky. The air had the sharp, fresh scent of wet earth and grass. It had rained all night, washing stones down the hillside in muddy torrents, but with the coming of dawn the clouds had finally rolled away. William, resting heavily on his staff, limped painfully across the sodden grass, his progress made even slower by his soaking robe, which twisted itself around his legs. His ankle had swollen to twice its size from his wrenching it in the hole. It was going to be agony getting down that hill, with the grass so slippery after the storm. But it had to be done; up here alone and injured he may as well have been staked out like a lamb for a wolf.
There was no sign of any of his disciples, not even Martin. The traitors had fled, leaving him completely alone and unprotected. He had lain all night, curled tightly in a ball against the pounding rain, his limbs numb with cold and his brain frozen with fear that the devil he had conjured would return.
He had not for one moment believed that the spell would really bring forth a demon, but when that monster had lumbered towards him, rattling the chains of hell, he had thought that Satan himself had risen out of the earth to take him. He had, he supposed, fainted, for when he came to he could see nothing in the blinding rain, hear nothing except the wind raging. He’d crawled away and hidden in a clump of bushes, reciting every prayer and charm he’d ever learned or even half learned, until it was light enough for him to dare to move.
Now the only thought in his head was to get off this accursed hill as quickly as possible. Nothing would induce him to spend another night here. But first there was something he had to retrieve. It was his only hope of getting so far away from here that he’d never have to lay eyes on England again.
He limped painfully towards the fire pit. The pots and the jar of sulphur still lay where he had left them. The pit had filled with black water on which the dust and ashes of last night’s fire floated. He struggled down onto his knees, and began frantically groping around until his fingers touched the edge of a heavy disc. Almost sobbing with relief, he pulled the mirror out and carefully wiped it on the hem of his sodden robe. The silver was blackened and fragments of the red enamel on the back had cracked and fallen off.
For a moment he felt the crushing weight of disappointment, but he consoled himself. Had the rain not extinguished the fire so quickly, the damage could have been far worse. Besides, he would not have been able to sell it as a mirror, for it would be far too easily identified, and who in these parts could possibly afford to pay the kind of sum that the complete mirror was worth? No, far better to break it apart, sell a ruby here, some pearls there and melt the silver down into smaller pieces.
Hastily he drew his knife, and set about prising a single ruby from its setting. He must have something ready to barter with at the first village he came to, for he was in desperate need of food, new clothes and, most importantly, a strong horse. He wouldn’t get very far on foot with his injured ankle.
Without warning he felt a sharp pain stabbing into his back. He jerked upwards, dropping the mirror for the second time into the black puddle of the fire pit.
‘Throw your knife away,’ a voice growled behind him, ‘or I’ll push this dagger so far into you it’ll cut your navel out.’
Sick with fear, William did as he was bid and heard his staff being kicked out of his reach.
‘Don’t stand up. Just turn around, nice and slowly. I want to see your face, you bastard.’
William couldn’t have stood, even if he’d tried. Wincing in pain he twisted around and looked up into the face of the one man he prayed he’d never see again.
‘So, William, or should I call you Serkan? Oh, where are my manners? I should address you as “Master” now, shouldn’t I?’
The man, towering over him, was smiling coldly. His dark hair was streaked with grey. His scarred face was gaunt and as tanned as old leather, and several of his teeth were missing. But his eyes were the same emerald green as William’s own.
William tried to force his mouth into a smile, but failed miserably. ‘Edgar. Thank God, you . . . you live. I was so afraid you’d perished in the wreck.’
Edgar gave a bitter laugh. ‘So afraid I’d survived, you mean. But you knew I was still alive, didn’t you? You got the little message I pinned to the cottage door. I thought you’d recognise the sign – the staff of Asclepius with a serpent entwined about it – the emblem of a physician. But then the serpent has another meaning too, doesn’t it, William? One you’d know all about – treachery.’
‘And you left another of your little marks too, didn’t you?’ William said. ‘On the body of that poor woman you murdered.’
‘Only sporting to give you fair warning I was here. I’ve followed you every sorry step of the way from Brean, biding my time. But you’d surrounded yourself with followers, hiding behin
d women’s skirts as usual. I suppose I could have picked them off one at a time, but that would have attracted attention. I was trying to figure out how to get you alone when, by good fortune, I met a servant in an inn who told me about his master’s valuable mirror. As soon as I heard about that mirror I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to steal it. So I persuaded the servant to bring his master here, because I knew your greed would get the better of you, and it has. Why didn’t you flee last night when you had the chance? You could have been well away by now. But I know you too well, William. I knew you would come back for the mirror and here you are, snouting around in the mud for it, like the swine you are.’
Despite the chill of his wet robes, William’s face was flushed. ‘What . . . what do you want of me?’
Edgar fingered the blade of his dagger. ‘I want you, dear brother. I want your death. I want revenge.’
‘But after all these years, you can’t still—’
‘Fifteen years and three months, to be exact, and I should know; I counted every rotten, stinking back-breaking day of it. And now you are going to pay. I’m only sorry I can’t make you suffer as long as I did, but I can ensure you do suffer. The question is, how? Staking you to the ground and roasting your feet in a fire – how would that be to begin with? What a pity all your followers have deserted you. There’ll be no one to hear your screams up here.’
‘Except me!’ a voice yelled out behind him. Martin launched himself at Edgar, knocking him to the ground and pinning his arms behind him. ‘Quick, Master, give me your girdle.’
He held the struggling man until William had managed to unfasten the blue cord he wore about his waist and had crawled on his hands and knees over to bind Edgar’s arms behind him. Martin used his own belt to lash Edgar’s ankles. Once the prisoner was firmly secured, Martin hauled him into a sitting position.
Hill of Bones Page 23
