The Plague Charmer

by Karen Maitland

  Chapter 25

  And he shall gather them together into a place which is called Armageddon.

  The Apocalypse of St John

  Luke jerked awake in the darkness and, for one terrible moment, thought he was still in the suffocating cottage, hearing those shrieks that went on and on, like a knife slashing in his head. Make them stop! Make them . . . Gasping and choking on his own panic, he flung out his arms and felt the crunch of dried leaves beneath his hands. He lay still, panting, drenched in sweat. Somewhere a vixen was screaming, then fell silent, and there was only the rustling of the trees around him.

  The boy sat up, banging his head on the dead branches that held up the low roof of his shelter. It was a poxy den. Last summer, he, Col and Hob had collected these branches and lashed them together to build a hideout in the forest. Luke had told them they ought to make it bigger, higher, but the only really long branches they found on the ground were rotten and crumbled as soon as they started dragging them out from the undergrowth.

  It was Col’s lame idea, anyway. They’d only come to the forest ’cause he wanted to go hunting with the spear he’d made from a broken fishing pole. Even though it wouldn’t fly straight enough to hit the trunk of a hollow oak, he’d still reckoned he could kill a deer or a hare and cook a feast for them. Hob had started whining that he was hungry as soon as they’d got there, but when they’d told him to run home to his mam, he wouldn’t go, because Col had shown him a paw print and told him it was a wolf’s, so he’d not walk back through the forest alone.

  Now Col . . . Col was dead. Luke knew he was. He’d seen his body lying by the door, yet he’d still half expected to find him here peering out from the den, pulling his mouth into a gormless grin to look like Crabfish. And Hob . . . Luke had been so sure Hob would be waiting here. Where else would he have gone? It was the place they always came to when they wanted to hide. Why wasn’t he here?

  Luke felt his eyes welling again and rubbed them savagely. Stupid little nisseler! Well, Hob needn’t think his brother was going to waste any more time looking for him. Why should Luke give a beggar’s arse-rag if the idiot had got himself lost? He had enough to do taking care of himself now, without looking after some snotty-nosed babby.

  Luke lifted his head and sniffed. Smoke! He could smell wood-smoke and something else, something that drew him like a wolf to blood: the sweet smell of roasting meat. His stomach growled with hunger. But he didn’t move. Suppose Cador and the villagers had discovered he’d escaped and come hunting for him. They might be sweeping the forest under cover of darkness. He shrank down on his belly, straining to listen for voices or footsteps in the dry leaves. But he could hear nothing except the hiss of the breeze in the branches above.

  He wriggled forward, straining to catch a glimmer of movement between black trunks or the flames of lanterns and torches in the darkness. But the breeze was teasing him with the aroma of roasting meat, drawing across his nose, till he thought his stomach would burst from his belly and chase after it. Was that chicken he could smell? Hunger overcame fear. He no longer cared if they did catch him just so long as he could stuff his mouth with that meat.

  Luke crawled out of the shelter, scrambled to his feet and darted towards the cover of the nearest trunk. He ran as lightly as he could from tree to tree, pausing each time to sniff the air and peering into the blackness to find the source of the luscious smell.

  In the end, he almost fell on top of it before he spotted where it was coming from. Only a curl of smoke, glowing red in the darkness, betrayed the fire burning beneath which had been lit in a shallow pit, hidden behind the massive trunk of a fallen tree.

  Luke crouched. Edging towards the end of the trunk, he peeped between the torn-up roots. An old man, his face as wrinkled as the tree bark, squatted on a low stone, warming his knobbly hands over the small fire pit. A great pack rested against his thigh as if he was afraid to move so much as an inch from it in case it should be snatched. Luke had no doubt that he had found the place his belly was seeking: suspended above the glowing wood, a row of plucked pigeons was skewered on a long stick, balanced between the forks of two branches thrust into the ground on either side. The birds’ skins sizzled and bubbled.

  The man reached out and snapped off one of the pigeon’s legs. He chewed it thoughtfully, before spitting out a bone. ‘’Bout done, I reckon. Hungry, are you, boy?’

  Luke ducked down behind the trunk, sure he’d been seen, but someone else answered the old man.

  ‘I could eat six pigeons all to myself – no . . . a dozen.’

  The old man chuckled. ‘I can see I’ll have to teach you to count, boy. There’s only five birds a-roasting. I’ll be having one of them and I reckon that lad hiding behind the tree trunk has his eye on another, so how many will that leave you, eh?’

  He raised his voice. ‘As for you, my young spy, you’d best show yourself if you want a bite before all this meat vanishes. This little ’un may be no bigger than a robin, but he’s got the belly of a gannet.’

  Luke cautiously straightened up and peered over the fallen tree, just as another boy raised his head on the other side. For a moment they stared at each other in disbelief. Then Luke was knocked flat on his back as Hob flung himself over the trunk, with a shriek of delight, and clung to Luke, hugging and pummelling him in equal measure.

  ‘Where’ve you been, Luke? I waited and waited, but the dwarf didn’t come like he promised and then I waited for you and you didn’t come neither. Where were you?’

  ‘Get off me, you stupid luggins.’ His older brother finally succeeded in prising the little boy’s arms from around his neck and tumbled him over into a heap of dried leaves.

  Luke sat up, raking the dirt and twigs from his hair. ‘Where have I been? Me? Where’ve you been, Nug-head? Why didn’t you stay put in the den? You knew I’d come looking for you there.’

  ‘Nug-head yourself,’ Hob retorted, but he was beaming so broadly he looked as if his face might split in two.

  He threw himself once more at Luke, giving him another hug, before darting out of reach of the cuff his exasperated brother aimed at him, chuckling as he ran. Luke followed him cautiously round the end of the fallen tree and edged towards the fire.

  The old man was still squatting on his stone seat by the roasting birds. ‘So you must be this Luke the boy’s always chattering about. Way he’s been talking these past weeks, I expected a giant with strength enough to carry a horse on his shoulders.’

  Luke stared at his brother, but Hob wasn’t listening. He was peering anxiously around him into the dark tangle of trees beyond the firelight. ‘Where’s Mam and Father? Are they here too, Luke? Can we go home now?’

  Luke said nothing, but he was aware the old man was watching him intently and turned away, hiding his face.

  ‘Best you two put something in your bellies first ’fore you think about going anywhere,’ the old man said briskly. ‘Don’t want these plump birds to burn to cinders now, do we?’ He wrapped a filthy rag about his hand, then slid one of the carcasses off the stick.

  He held the roasted pigeon up towards Hob. ‘Mind! It’s hot. Blow on it good and hard.’

  Hob, all other concerns evidently forgotten, ran over and, puffing up his cheeks, blew wetly on the bird, before he snatched it and scurried back to the shelter of the tree-trunk to eat.

  But Luke, ravenous though he was, hung back. What if the old man expected money for the food? The pie-sellers who came to Porlock Weir always did. And they were quick to turn nasty if a boy bit into one before confessing he’d no money to pay for it, as he and Col had discovered more than once.

  But the old man had already pulled another bird from the stick and waved it in Luke’s direction. ‘Here, take it. I’d not see any lad go hungry when there’s food enough to share. Not afraid of an old pedlar, are you? Never so much as hurt a flea, I haven’t, save for the odd pigeon, of course.’ He chuckled, waving the carcass in his grimy paw. ‘There’s plen—’

  Lu
ke heard the swoosh and then the sickening thud. The pedlar arched backwards, eyes bulging. As his jaw dropped open a thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. For a moment, he sat bolt upright, a look of agony and shock on his face. Then, with a terrible gurgle, he pitched face forward into the fire pit. Only then did Luke see the shaft of the arrow sticking out from between his shoulder blades.

  Before Luke could move, a man with a bow still grasped in his hand, leaped from between the trees and kicked the body. It rolled away from the fire into the darkness. Luke had taken only a single step, before he felt a brawny arm lock around his waist from behind. He was lifted off his feet and carried fighting and yelling to be dumped on the ground next to the fallen tree.

  ‘No cause for you to go screeching, like a ruffled hen. We mean you no harm, lad.’

  His captor vaulted on to the trunk above him, and sat down. His heavy legs dangled down over Luke’s shoulders pinning him back against the rough bark.

  The man with the bow had grabbed Hob with his free arm and pushed him down to sit on the ground. He hardly needed to restrain him, for Hob was rigid with shock and sat where he’d been put, gasping for breath like a beached fish.

  The man gestured with his bow towards the dim outline of the corpse beyond the fire’s glow. ‘That old rogue was one of the most evil cutthroats ever to breathe God’s good air.’

  ‘Cutthroat?’ The single word pierced the fog of fear and panic in Luke’s brain.

  ‘Aye, if we hadn’t smelt the smoke and come to investigate that would be you, my lad, lying there instead of him, with your throat slit so wide you could have stuffed a whole chicken in it, feathers an’ all.’

  In case Luke hadn’t understood, the man sitting above him leaned down and made a slicing movement with his forefinger around Luke’s throat from ear to ear.

  The first man laid down his bow and crossed to where the pedlar’s pack lay abandoned. He crouched and untied the top, peering inside, though he took nothing from it.

  He glanced up at his companion and nodded. ‘He’ll have stolen that from some poor traveller and left them dead in a ditch somewhere. Same as he would you.’

  ‘But I’ve got nothing to steal,’ Luke protested, struggling to make sense of what had just happened.

  The old man had seemed kindly enough, not like some of those scar-faced seamen with their long knives who put in at Porlock Weir. Luke couldn’t believe he was a robber and murderer.

  ‘He’s . . . been taking care of my brother . . . feeding him. That’s right, isn’t it, Hob?’

  But the boy just stared blankly into mid-air, his thin chest heaving.

  The two men exchanged knowing glances. ‘Favourite trick of that evil old butcher, wasn’t it, Brother David?’ the man on the tree trunk above him said. ‘See, he knew if he had a child with him people would let down their guard around him, specially a boy with the face of a cherub, like young Hob here. Draws others in like a tethered bird calls wild birds to the net.’

  ‘“The devil walks abroad in innocent guise,”’ Brother David said. ‘The Prophet warns us to beware his cunning ways.’

  ‘See, that old butcher killed most men just to rob them, but when he found any pretty-looking lads like you two . . .’ Luke felt a hand patting his hair. ‘Well, let’s just say he did things to them that made them want to cut their own throats from the shame of it. Then he’d sell the boys on to the stew-houses in the towns for other fornicators and sodomites to commit their foul sins with.’

  David nodded grimly, and tugged at the eelskin cap he wore, settling it more tightly over his head. ‘God and the Prophet were watching over you, lads. God sent Brother Noll and me to save you. And that means you’ve been chosen.’

  Lifting the stick of roasted pigeons from the ground, where it had been knocked as the old pedlar fell, he brushed the leaf mould from the carcasses. Pulling the remaining birds off the stick, he tossed one each to Luke and Noll before sinking his teeth into the third. Hob was still clutching his meat, staring sightlessly at the stone where the old pedlar had been sitting.

  Luke’s mind would not make sense of anything the men were saying. Even the death of the old man didn’t seem real to him. It was like the strange, nonsensical things you see somewhere between sleeping and waking. All he knew was how hungry he was and how good that pigeon smelt. He couldn’t think. He had to eat. He tore off a leg and bit into it. Never had anything in his life tasted so good, but his belly was roaring to be filled. He could barely chew it before his stomach demanded that he swallow.

  None of them spoke again until the meat had been pulled from the birds. Even Hob ate his pigeon in the end. When they had stripped most of the flesh from theirs, David and Noll tossed the skeletons on to the fire, but Luke clung to his, gnawing and sucking each bone until it was nothing but a splinter.

  David wiped greasy fingers on his jerkin. ‘So, lad, what you doing out here in the forest? Have you kin in these parts?’

  Luke hesitated. He kept his face turned away from the old man’s body, trying not to see other corpses lying on the floor of a cottage in the fire’s glow. Yet even when he closed his eyes, he could not stop seeing those. If these two men discovered what he and Hob had escaped from, they’d likely kill them both. And he knew he couldn’t run faster than the arrow that had come singing out of the darkness.

  ‘Got no kin,’ he muttered.

  He shivered even as he said it, frightened that his denial had made the words come true. His mam might be lying back there in agony, crying for him, for anyone to help her. Cador had threatened they would bring no more food if any of them tried to break out. What if the bailiff let his mam starve to death to punish her because her son had escaped? The hard ball of meat churned in his stomach and he had to clench his jaw and dig his nails into his arm to keep from vomiting. He hadn’t meant . . . He wished he’d told her . . .

  David stood up. Pulling out his cock, he pissed copiously on the embers of the dying fire, sending up a hiss of steam. He stamped on the wood, scattering the damp ashes.

  ‘There’s a deep hollow over yonder. We’ll throw that stinking wretch into it. No one’ll spot him, unless they fall into it themselves. Beasts’ll soon pick him clean.’

  He bent down, patting over the corpse until he found a small leather money bag concealed beneath the shirt. He cut the strings, stuffing it beneath his own tunic.

  He peered upwards into the starry sky. ‘If we keep up a good pace we’ll be home before dawn.’ He jerked his chin towards the pedlar’s pack. ‘God has blessed our work, Brother Noll. Brother Praeco’s prayers have been answered again.’

  Noll grinned. ‘And the lads? You reckon the Prophet will want them?’

  David put his head on one side and studied Hob. ‘He’ll want this one right enough.’ He laughed. ‘As the Lord said, “Suffer the little children.”’

  Chapter 26

  Matilda

  Shake her, good Devil, shake her once well. Then shake her no more till you shake her in hell.

  A local charm to cure St Vitus’s Dance

  Another died yesterday. A fisherman, a strapping young man, went out to tend his nets at low tide, stretched forward over his mud-horse, pushing himself across the wet sand, until he was far out in the bay. It was such a familiar sight that no one gave him a second glance until they saw the sea flowing back and him still out there, in the middle of the bay, bent over the mud-horse, his legs trailing limp, lifting like seaweed on the tide. No one went out to fetch him.

  We stood on the shore watching the tide rise higher and higher, until eventually it lifted his body off the wooden frame. He floated, in and out, in and out. Then the corpse turned over in the water as if it wanted one last look at the sky before the sea closed over it and it was gone. At the next low tide his mud-horse was revealed, still standing where he’d left it, garlanded with strands of broken seaweed, but of the man there was no sign. He was fortunate to be taken so swiftly. It took some many days to die, writhing in a
gony.

  There were no cats left in Porlock Weir. Every single one had been caught in snares, poisoned or hanged. Some of their little bodies were dried in the smoke of fires, then hidden among the rafters. Cats bring the pestilence so their corpses will ward it off, or so the villagers believe. Gatty was the first. I thought that evil little dwarf had done it, except he was locked in the beacon tower. But when I saw other cats hanging, I knew it must have been Katharine.

  She’d told no one that her husband was ill, though I’d suspected, for not even Skiener could be drunk for a week. Afterwards, she swore my poor Gatty had cursed him for she’d seen the cat rubbing herself against his nets. That’s why I’m certain it was her who hanged Gatty, thinking that if the cat was dead it would lift the curse and her husband would live. But Skiener died anyway.

  Even then she would not admit the pestilence was in her home, tried to bury the body herself at night, but she was seen. Some of the women wanted her walled up in her cottage – I would have seen her locked up without food or water for what she’d done to Gatty – but Cador refused to do anything, for he said it was already too late. By the time Skiener, Daveth, Elis and Col had been buried, a half-dozen more in the village were already groaning in their beds.

  The bell tolled in St Olaf’s chapel. Father Cuthbert had arrived for Mass. These past weeks since the pestilence struck he could no longer be relied upon to appear on a Sunday, but came on any day when he was not detained elsewhere. I hastened out at once and laboured up the hill. A scatter of women hurried up the path ahead of me. Just a few weeks ago, they would have been walking in groups, gossiping and prattling their nonsense, but now they were each walking alone, giving only furtive glances at the others as if they feared there was poison or worse in the others’ eyes. Katharine was not among them. She daren’t venture out for fear of being spat at or having backs turned upon her. The women would not forgive or forget in a hurry, and no more would I.