by Vicki Grove
And if the sky and the waters grew fearsome, the woods grew more so. For the oaks had begun to thrash from side to side, as if they meant to pull their gnarled roots from the ground and stride away. Lights danced amongst the leaves as well, the same phosphorescence to be seen upon the waters, purplish and sizzling. Rhia’d seen this before in other storms, though it was rare. The sailors hereabouts talked of such light playing about their masts in especially murderous weathers.
But though the howling wind and thrashing, loose-rooted trees were disturbing, the small lulls when the wind died down were truly terrifying, for then could be heard the clickety-clack that had so concerned Granna the day they’d gone down this trail to lay hands upon the corpse. The lepers within the trees had ganged in a chorus it sounded, intent on climbing along with these midnight travelers and harrying them in this way.
“What is that?” Roderick finally demanded, pushing his hands against his ears. “It sounds like the devil himself, playing upon the rib bones of the damned!”
“Doodle do, doodle dooo!” Thaddeus crowed from the rear. “The devil plays upon the rib bones of those left to die within the woods, - doodle-doodle- doooo!”
Roderick whirled angrily to Rhia. “Stop the mouth of that idiot right now!” he demanded, unsheathing his sword. “Another word and I run my blade through his and his brainless friend’s worthless hearts and shove their stinking hides into the sea!”
Rhiannon froze with horror. Then she stepped back, shaking her head, her arms spread wide, as though she could protect Thaddeus and Silas with that limp gesture.
Roderick meanwhile took a step toward her with his eyes wide and frenzied. A small, hard smile now played upon his lip. “Stop his babbling, lady,” he said quietly, slowly placing the tip of his sword right against Rhia’s throat. “See, I find that I care not how I skewer them. Whether I slice them each alone, or the two together, or reach through you to skewer three upon my sword. No, it simply, alas, matters not to me one whit how many meet their doom.”
“Roderick, leave it!” Leonard called with a nervous-sounding laugh. “It’s of no importance. We must beat this storm and claim our rewards for this fraught hike!”
Lightning gave Rhia a look at Leo’s face, and from his expression she suspected that Roderick was bullying by nature, and that though he was too lazy for swordplay, he might savor just this chance to feel mighty by “skewering” those who had no way to fend. He might be quite daft, in fact. Who would dare tell the earl’s son so?
Leonard and the others were grouped and watching from ahead on the trail. The two girls looked about to swoon, and even Frederique seemed alarmed. “Er, Roderick? Best bear in mind there will be witnesses to this thing you contemplate,” he warned.
Rhiannon was suddenly shoved off her feet and into the writhing trees. She looked up to see Thaddeus advancing upon Roderick, swinging Silas’s bagpipe above his head! He managed to bring the thing down so as to knock Roderick’s sword from his hand. It went spinning into the air and over the side of the bluff.
Roderick lunged for the spinning blade and found himself treading thin air. Thaddeus grabbed his cloak and held on tight as Leonard and Frederique rushed over. With lots of hefting and grunting from all three, the earl’s son was finally pulled up and drug back from the edge to sit shaking and sputtering upon the solid ground of the path.
He scrambled clumsily to his feet, put out a quavering hand, and howled, “Your sword, Leo! Give it to me this instant, for mine is gone and I needs must kill this idiot with the rooster crow who parted me from it!”
Rhiannon saw Leonard and Frederique exchange a hooded look. Then Leonard sighed and moved close to throw a comradely arm around Roderick’s shoulders.
“Well, here’s the thing, good friend. We stand in a small calm before a storm, and we’re close to adventure with three good-looking maids inside a tight-roofed chapel bound to hold some pretty thrills. Let’s get where we’re going without further ado and have our fun, then afterward I will lend my sword for this killing. Your revenge will be a capstone to the evening’s promised entertainment. How’s that sound?”
No one will ever know how that sounded to the earl’s son, because the storm right then gave up its ample warnings and dropped down upon them with a banshee screech. Everything in all directions became a swirl of wind and water and biting sleet that knocked the torchlight out and took all thought from their heads except to somehow keep from being blown to kingdom come. They each of them clawed their way and slip-slid, partly on two feet and partly on all fours, sometimes sliding downward but gradually moving upward until they’d finally managed to travel the last quarter mile of the path.
But upon the blufftop’s slippery rock floor, there was small relief awaiting them, for they staggered in murky darkness, unsteady on their feet, their outer garments so caked and heavy with mud that they all matched the slimed pair Thaddeus and Silas had presented before. Indeed, it seemed that by some outrageous fluke of fashion, those two had recruited the others to their way of dress.
Rhiannon pushed her hair from her face and stood with her teeth achatter, straining to see through the downpour. She was hoping with all her heart to perceive a tiny spot of light glowing in the direction of her well-loved settlement of cottages. Any small glowing ember or candleflame would be so welcome to her eyes, as it would show where Mam and the others waited and watched, ready to rush from hiding at any signal from her or Jonah or Thaddeus. She needed such assurance!
But there was not so much as a spark atop the bluff that night, as Mam and Granna were supposed to be at Roodmas. This afternoon, all had agreed that candles in the cots and even the large flame in their firepit had to be extinguished to make the ruse work, as such an extinguishing would normally be in order when an entire family had ventured from a forested place for the evening, leaving no one behind to tend the fires.
Rhia knew this, and yet she hadn’t been prepared for how dark darkness truly is when all we love is hidden within its black grip. For death is darkness, and darkness death.
“I have never seen all lights gone from atop this bluff,” she whispered, then shivered.
At that moment came an unequaled collision of fire and sound that brought light aplenty, though for but a moment. The storm extended one finger of lightning to mockingly flick the iron cross affixed to the tip-top of the chapel steeple! A nerve-shattering crash arrived with that and shook the ground beneath their feet.
“Lord preserve us!” Beornia exclaimed, dropping to her knees.
Mayhaps only Rhia noted the frowsy and feathered guard that took off squawking from that place to seek better shelter.
“A fortunate target for lightning, as we would not have easily located the church upon this blasted dark rock had it not been so illuminated,” Leonard observed. He added with a laugh, “Indeed, it looks like it may hold haunts aplenty, as you’ve promised, ladies!”
“But wait!” Beornia insisted. “Just look at the place, will you?”
Rhia had been trying to follow Gramp’s dark flight with her eyes, but at Beornia’s insistent words she turned again to the chapel. Indeed, it was strangely changed. Fire the color of lavender flower now crept along the roofline, sizzling and popping, though if it were real flames it would have set the wooden shingles ablaze by now. It had not, which showed this to be the same eery phosphorescence that danced elsewhere this night, now traveled on a lightning bolt to embellish this highest of places in all the countryside.
Those false flames jumped down to the windowsills even while she watched, lining the stone archways with that phantasmagorial light, a glow which gave but little illumination.
“I’ve seen that stuff at sea,” Frederique murmured in a bored way, pulling Maddy closer against his side. “Get too close and it makes your hair stand on end.”
“The sailors hereabouts say it’s the souls of saints, giving protection,” Rhia said quietly. “There is a saint buried within this stone church. He may . . . show himself on such a
fraught night, demanding confession of all sinners.”
Thump, thump, thump! Rhiannon’s heart took note of her outrageous move.
“Well, apart from these two witless, surely damned by God, there are no sinners here, so we’re well come,” Roderick said with a snide guffaw. “There are only we three of God’s obedient knights and three innocent maids under our protection.” He looked slantwise at Beornia and asked in a sarcastic voice, “You are innocent, are you not, saucy wench?”
Beornia stood from her kneel and looked at him as though she desired to melt him with her gaze. “Sir, you forget that I’ve told you I’m a widow, and devout in all my practices.” With that she threw back her hair and flounced toward the church.
The three squires shared a smile and a whispered comment or two about that, then all proceeded to the church as well, though Rhiannon tarried.
“You two idiots run along to your cottage now!” she called back to Thaddeus and Silas, hoping her voice did not give away her nerves. “Go straightaway to your pallets and then to sleep, and my mother will bring you gruel in the morning, when she’s returned from Roodmas.”
Silas bowed and scampered into the darkness, but Thaddeus grinned wide and came trotting up to her! Nay, with only a glance and a wink he went right past her, straight toward Leonard, who waited some ways closer along the path to the church.
“I am to be killed later by Sir Leonard’s sword, do you not remember?” the young monk called out gaily as he twirled and spun his way past Leonard and the others and then arrived to stand upon the threshold of the chapel door. “I must come with you, as I provide the capstone entertainment to an evening of frights and Beltane revelries, cock-a-doodle-dooo! Cock-a-doodle-doodle-doooo!” He pushed open the door a little way, bowed comically, and disappeared inside before the vicious wind slammed it shut again.
Well, if he hadn’t been on the menu for killing, right then Rhia would have killed him herself! Such an easy out she’d provided, with no one showing a sign of stopping his exit to safety! And now this, as if Thaddeus desired to die, longed for such an end!
She was so furious with him that she burned all over as she stomped along the dark and stony pathway to the chapel herself. Leonard caught her arm as she neared him.
“You are so changeably mooded,” he mused. “This idiot has angered you, I see that in your movements. Would his early and bloody killing win your favor for me tonight?”
She jerked her eyes up to his, but managed to stifle the hot words on her tongue. “I . . . I am not angered, but afeared. Much afeared, sir, of the hermit entombed within this place. He . . . he may well require confession from all of us, and woe to any who withhold it! Oh, I wish we’d never come here on such a night as Beltane, but as we have, we must do as he bids . . . or . . . or else! Please, sir, search your heart and prepare to tell all, else you’re sure to be sent to hell tonight! Prepare, and I’ll do the same!”
She threw her arms about his neck and wept upon his bosom, or pretended to. She was learning it was easy to fool a boy who wished to be fooled. She only wished she might live to practice this knowledge some other time, and that Thaddeus might live, too.
“I knew the other girls would think this place was haunted, and that it would add to the thrill of the thing,” he murmured, stroking her back. “But I confess, I’m surprised to find you similarly superstitious, Rhiannon, as you’ve seemed so cool upon the trail.”
With that, he gave the heavy door a shove with his bootheel and it crashed wide open.
Rhia had but time to glance over her shoulder as she was led inside, brought along helplessly by Leonard’s embrace, just as a hen is brought beneath a farmer’s arm to the chopping block that precedes the stew-pot. Indeed, she felt she was climbing Gallux Hump, approaching the hangman’s loop which swung in the breeze.
And so over her shoulder she grabbed a last look at the blufftop, though little could be seen in the swirling rain and darkness. No cottages, no orchard trees nor hives.
Just the eery, bedraggled shadow of a lone night flyer against the forest’s edge, and the plaintive note of his solitary call—: “Crrrrawwwwwk!”
Chapter 28
When all were inside the chapel, the thick oaken door slammed closed, as though some ghostly porter had held it. The storm still raged without, but within there was a silence that rivaled the tomb. The mists slowly rose straight up from the floor stones, though a mere fog should certainly have been wafted about by the draft that blew across the place, window to window. Mayhaps those mists were spirits, Rhia thought.
Two beeswax candles burned upon the altar, and Leonard strode over and snatched them up. “How considerate of your family to leave us light for our revels,” he quipped to Rhiannon, handing off a candle to Roderick.
Frederique and Maddy strolled to the deeper shadows in the nether corner.
Roderick held his light aloft and traveled it along the dampish stones of the wall nearby him, wrinkling his nose. “What an ancient place this truly is, and a shabby one at that.” He turned to Beornia and clutched a handful of her cloak, making to pull it from her shoulders. “This will serve us as a cushion. These floorstones are rough, and surely dampish as well.”
Beornia stepped back, yanking her cloak from his grip. “I’ll keep it, sir, if it please you,” she snapped. Rhia heard her add, in a mutter, “Or even if it does not.”
Leonard handed his flame to Rhia, and sat upon the floor to pull off his boots.
“Roderick, have patience, friend,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “Can’t you see these girls are worn-out from the long hike? Let’s all get comfortable, then Rhia can tell us the story of the dead hermit that haunts this place. We’ll play a game, shall we? As she tells the story, at each fearsome part we boys shall be your protectors, girls. You may seek your safety within our arms. That should revive you quickly enough.”
Rhiannon saw her chance and moved quickly to light the window candle.
“Is there no wine kept in this place?” Roderick inquired. “None for the sacraments?”
Rhia found herself mute, but she shook her head as she walked reluctantly back to Leonard.
“Barbarous,” he pronounced, sulking. “No wine, and damp floors.”
Leonard ignored his friend and pulled Rhia by the wrist to sit beside him. After a few moments, Beornia sat down near them, yanking her cloak string tight at the throat and pulling her woolen wrap close as a bundling blanket about her. Roderick presently sidled over and carefully eased down next to Beornia, watching her sidelong, as one watches a snake in the nearby grass. She, meanwhile, kept her face turned away.
“Now, isn’t this cozy?” Leonard asked.
Where was Thaddeus? Rhia roamed her eyes across the shadowy nooks of the place, trying to be casual about it. The others had luckily not noted his absence yet, but why would he not show himself? What was up his sleeve?
Then suddenly, she spotted him, crouched in perfect camouflage behind the small bench and nearby the window where he’d stood so fascinated by the painting of the Devil Dogs the other day. When she widened her eyes, he put one finger to his lips.
And then, well, he reached to pull at some invisible thing, a thread or somesuch, and a cloth drifted silently to the floor. The painted Devil Dogs had been covered by that black cloth, and now that they were freed from behind it, Rhia drew in a breath, so near to screaming that Leonard turned to her in amused puzzlement.
“You’ve not started your grisly tale as yet, Rhiannon, but it must be good if mere contemplation of it makes you look so pale and frighted! Tell us it!”
Rhia closed her eyes, swallowed hard, and nodded, willing herself to speak.
“In truth, sir, I know little about the hermit, just that he arrived upon the bluff when there were no folk here and it was tangled with birdy nests and the habitat of deer.” Her voice was a quavery whisper, weak as the candleflame in the damp hall. “The hermit built this church, but not the cottages that ring it round. They were already he
re when he came, and it is the tragic tale of their builders I’d tell of, if it please.”
Roderick nodded brusquely. “Tell on.”
Rhia focused her eyes on the candleflame as Granna would have while storying.
“My tale is set in the winter when King Arthur was killed by Sir Mordred’s evil treachery. That ancient winter drug on for three years, so hopeless and sad a time it was. Arthur’s knights scattered, assuming their separate griefs like heavy loads to carry throughout the world. And then two of them rejoined by chance upon the road one day and somehow ended up upon this blufftop. It was they who built the cots. I suppose they found this place good respite and hoped their brother knights might someday join them here. In Clodaghcombe Forest you’ll see ancient trees with the mark of the Holy Rood upon their highest branches. Sir Gawaine and Sir Gareth slashed those marks with their noble swords when those trees were but frozen saplings. I expect they marked them thus for protection against the enchantments known to hide hereabouts, but alas, those holy markings were in vain. On some dark night, or mayhaps in the gloom of an icy day, those two good knights were torn limb from limb by the Devil Dogs of Clodagh. Their bodies were discovered by a woodsman in the spring, and they are buried beneath this church, within the circle of cottages they built with their grief for their king that winter.”
“Arthur Pendragon’s knights buried upon this soil?” Roderick whispered, impressed in spite of himself. He recovered his scorn. “It can’t be. Not her—e—we’re nowhere!”
At that moment, Thaddeus came charging toward them, waving his arms and screaming, “Don’t let them get me! Please, the Devil Dogs of Clodagh are come alive! Don’t let them drag me down to hell, there to gnaw eternally upon my nitwit spleen!”
Rhia jumped to her feet. “Look!” She pointed. “The ancient painting, there above the window! It . . . it burns as though with hellfire! I have never seen it thus! I fear the story I’ve told has . . . has somehow summoned the demonic spirits of those ancient beasts!”
