The Plague Charmer

by Karen Maitland

  The lad found the priest lying twisted on the ground, staring up at him. A pool of dark, warm blood was soaking into the earth floor below.

  As he later told his pop-eyed companions, with not a little exaggeration, a knife had sliced so deep into the priest’s belly that only the very end of the handle was sticking out.

  ‘If I’d been able to get to him sooner, I might have stopped the bleeding,’ the maid tearfully told Master Wallace, as she sipped a steaming beaker of mulled ale in the great hall. ‘What possessed him to brace the door?’

  ‘May as well ask what kind of fool carries an unsheathed knife inside his shirt,’ a groom muttered. ‘My father always used to say, the only reason men go into the Church is that they haven’t the wits to survive outside.’

  ‘That’ll do,’ Master Wallace snapped. ‘Man’s dead. Show some respect. Though I can’t pretend he’ll be much mourned,’ he added. ‘All the same, it doesn’t seem right, him being a priest and shriving others, that there was no one to say the words of consolation as he passed over.’ He crossed himself. ‘St Barbara keep us all from a sudden death.’

  But Master Wallace was wrong in that, as in much else. Father Cuthbert did not die alone. The words of consolation he heard were carried to him from the sea and borne to him on the wind, but they did not bring him peace.

  I will return the knife to you, when you return to me what you have taken. I always keep my promises, priest, always.

  Sara could feel Harold’s fear pulsing in her own throat as they stared up at Janiveer, but she dared not take her eyes from the sea-witch.

  ‘You found the hand. That was clever.’ Janiveer spat the word at them like a curse.

  Sara’s chin jerked up. ‘Harold is a clever lad, brave too,’ she added, hoping that the boy would believe it. ‘He knew Matilda always kept that skull goblet of hers in the pouch at her waist. He’d seen her take it out when she thought she was alone in the chapel. But he remembered her bag was still on her belt when we buried her and there must have been summat inside from the way it flopped heavy when we moved her. Only it couldn’t have been the goblet ’cause we’d already found that in her cottage, so he got to wondering what else she might have put in that pouch that she wanted to keep safe even more than the goblet.’

  ‘Well reasoned,’ Janiveer said. ‘And now you will give it to me.’

  ‘You want it, you’d best come and take it,’ Sara said. She was willing Harold to begin, but she could see from the corner of her eye that he couldn’t move.

  ‘Oh, I will take it. You can be certain of that. But first I will take the soul I demanded. My forefather, the greatest warrior of all my people, was betrayed by your kin, not once but daily for hundreds of years. It was not enough that they killed him. They stole his bones and, without them, his spirit could not leave this place and journey to Tir na Marbh, the Land of the Dead. His spirit remained alone, separated from his ancestors and brothers, and now one of your kin will take his place, as he is called back across the seas.

  ‘You, Sara, you have sons. At this moment, they both hang between life and death. You reminded me that you once saved my life. So I will make a bargain with you. I will take the soul of one of your sons, but the other I shall return to you alive. I will bring him back from under the earth and restore him to you and he shall live. You may choose, Sara. Which of your sons shall I keep and which shall I return to you?’

  Janiveer drew the bear tooth amulet from beneath her gown and pulled it over her head, dangling it in the guttering firelight. The silver tip of the bear’s tooth glittered as it swung wildly in the wind. She crouched and pulled a burning stick from the fire. The gale snuffed out the flame the moment it left the safety of the pit. Janiveer, digging the stick into the dry ground, scratched the outlines of two figures standing side by side, one taller than the other. Kneeling in the lee of the cairn, she dangled the bear’s tooth between the two figures. It began to move, swinging in small circles, widdershins, against the sun. As if her hand had turned to stone, her fingers never moved, yet the circle grew ever bigger as the tooth spun faster and faster from its cord until a ring of silver hung in the air.

  ‘Choose, Sara! Whose soul shall I take? Will it be Luke’s or will it be Hob’s? Which of your sons shall pay the price? Who shall descend into the realm of darkness? Choose, Sara, or I swear you will lose them both.’

  ‘Stop!’ Sara begged, unable to tear her gaze from the silver circle. ‘You can’t ask me to choose. How can I?’

  ‘Who else should choose except the woman who bore them in pain and blood? Who else but a mother should decide which of her children lives or dies? They are her flesh, her blood, her bone.’

  ‘Bone, Janiveer?’ Will’s voice rang out. ‘You are almost as fond of those as the Holy Hag.’

  Will was standing just inside the fringe of the trees, cradling a bundle wrapped in sheepskin in his arms.

  ‘It took me a long time to realise who had left those symbols in my cave, Janiveer. She sent me a bird without any bone. She sent me a cherry without any stone. She sent me a briar without any rind. Except the bird you put there was nothing but bones and the cherry was a stone. So how does the last line go – She bade me love a leman without any love. It was the riddle of the faithless lover you set out for me. Why, Janiveer? Was it just to torment me?’

  ‘You plucked me from the sea, Will, and I always repay my debts. If you really had the wisdom of the fool you would have understood that Christina was faithless, and when you’d learned that she was at the manor, as you were bound to do, you would not have gone looking for her, or discovered you had a child. I was trying to spare you pain, dwarf. But men seek out pain, as a dog goes running to dung.’

  ‘But I know another ending,’ Will said. ‘She bade me love my leman without any longing.’

  ‘Only the dead in the Blessed Isles have no more desire, as Cadeyrn shall know.’

  She looked down at the two figures she’d gouged into the earth, and the bear’s tooth once more began to circle above them.

  ‘This child was birthed here in this village,’ Will shouted, thrusting out the bundle he was carrying. ‘You want a soul, take his!’

  Will darted forward and pushed the baby, wrapped in skins, into Janiveer’s lap. She was thrown off balance by the sudden weight of the child, and as she reached out to steady herself and the squirming baby, Will snatched the bear amulet from her hand and darted around the back of the cairn, teetering between the stones and the cliff edge as the gale raged about him.

  ‘Now, Harold!’ he urged. ‘Say it now. She is powerless without this.’

  Harold stared at the glittering amulet in Will’s hand. Then he clambered to his feet, trying to stand firm against the battering storm. He pulled a wooden crucifix from inside his shirt and thrust it high into the dark sky, but the wind almost ripped it from his grasp. He pressed it hard to his chest.

  ‘Crux sacra sit . . .’ his voice trembled ‘. . . mihi lux.’

  Janiveer threw back her head and began to laugh.

  ‘Go on, Harold,’ Sara urged.

  He swallowed hard. ‘Non draco sit mihi dux.’ The firelight guttered wildly across his chest and face, as if he was being attacked by a thousand scarlet vipers.

  On the other side of the cairn, Janiveer rose. Clutching the newborn baby in one arm, she pointed up into the starless sky. Her finger drew three circles. Then she snatched a handful of the smoke billowing up from the fire and tossed it towards the sea, like a fisherman casting a net.

  For a moment, nothing changed, though Will, Sara and Harold all stared wildly about them, sure that something was about to happen, though they could not tell what.

  Clinging so hard to the crucifix that his knuckles gleamed white in the firelight, Harold struggled to continue: ‘Vade retro—’

  He broke off with a startled cry, gaping at the raging black sea below. The tide was running in fast. The great waves reared up as they galloped towards the shore. They crashed over the skelet
al timbers of the burned ship in the bay below. The tips still jabbed out above the sea, like the fingers of a drowning man stretching frantically towards the air. But now each of the blackened tips of those timbers that was visible above the waves was burning, like a candle, with a crackling purple-blue flame. Even as they watched they saw the same unearthly fire begin to dance along the top of each wave, so that the whole bay was ablaze with cold blue flame, which raced towards the cottages on the shore.

  David gripped Luke’s arm, dragging him from the ruins of the church out into the storm. Luke thought he heard Raguel screaming behind him, but her cries were either silenced by her husband or drowned beneath the shrieking wind and thrashing branches. He twisted his head searching for Hob, but every bush and branch was writhing around him, as if they had been transformed into a pit of serpents.

  Run, Hob, run, Luke willed him.

  Leaves and dirt, stones and twigs flayed his skin and made his eyes stream. From somewhere in the darkness came a huge crash. The ground shook. Luke glimpsed a vague outline of a fallen tree, as he was dragged past it. The roots, torn from the earth, clawed up at the sky. The trunk had fallen on to one of the stone huts, smashing it like an eggshell.

  A flash of lightning split the sky and Luke thought he saw a man standing in the shelter of a tree, his ragged clothes and hair whipping in the wind. The flash of light only lasted a moment, but the image was seared on to the boy’s eyes long after the darkness closed in again. For though the man was standing, he had no face, no eyes, only a grimacing skull with shreds of dried tattered flesh still clinging to it. His body dangled from two iron spikes impaled through his shoulders.

  David pressed his mouth close to Luke’s face, bellowing into his ear. ‘See him, did you? That’s what happens to those who desert the Prophet. Alfred hangs there as a warning to all traitors.’

  Luke gagged. When Brother Praeco said Alfred had been cast out, he’d thought he’d been sent away. He’d never imagined they had killed him.

  Luke’s legs were shaking so much he could barely move them. He stumbled and fell painfully on to one knee as a bramble wrapped itself around his ankle, but David didn’t stop long enough to allow him to get to his feet. He dragged him forward like a sack, scraping him over rubble and thorns and pulling him into the shelter of a ruined wall. There David dropped him, planting his boot on Luke’s back, pinning him to the ground.

  An icy fear drenched him. They would punish him. There was no doubting that. Would he be left out here to face alone the terrors the seven angels would unleash? For a moment, he found himself praying for that – he might survive the anger of angels – but if he was taken back down there to face the wrath of the Prophet, he knew for certain they would kill him, as surely as they had murdered the man crucified on the tree.

  He yelped as a sharp stone hit his cheek, but the wind snatched away any sound. He felt the boot lift from his back. David hauled him to his knees. His hand grasped Luke’s chin, jerking his head backwards until he was choking. Luke grabbed David’s wrist, trying to drag his arm away, but he was no match for the burly disciple.

  The wild-bearded face of the Prophet loomed over him, his long hair whirling about his head. Brother Praeco slowly raised his hand and Luke, fearing the blow he knew was coming, tried to duck, but David held him too tightly. But the hand, when it finally descended, caressed Luke’s face almost tenderly.

  ‘My son, my poor son.’ He fondled the boy’s hair. ‘You should not have disobeyed me. You should have had faith in me, your father, to protect your brother. Haven’t I always protected you both? Instead, you dragged him out here undefended, into the Great Desolation, into the terrible darkness of God’s judgment. And God’s anger cannot be tempered once it is unleashed. Your brother was struck down. A tree crashed down on the hut where he was hiding. See, over there . . . Hob is dead, Luke. Though God was merciful and he died instantly. Before this terrible Day of Wrath is ended, every man and woman left in the world will be begging God to slay them as swiftly.’

  ‘No!’ Luke could scarcely croak out the words. ‘I’ll not believe it. I won’t! Hob’s alive, I know he is. I just know!’

  The Prophet patted his head, as if he were a small child to be appeased. ‘You will know the truth of it soon, Luke. For God has called upon me to make a sacrifice. I must slaughter a lamb and smear the blood upon the lintels of God’s house, so that the Angel of Death will pass over His Chosen Ones.’

  He glanced up at David. ‘The night you brought them to the cave I believed it was the younger brother God had delivered into our hands who was intended for the sacrifice, but the Lord showed me I was mistaken. That is why He allowed the she-devil to enter the boy and stayed my hand so that I could not cast her out. The lamb must be without blemish.’

  He looked down at Luke again, running his finger tenderly across the boy’s cheek and down the soft skin of his throat. ‘It was the elder brother, the firstborn, whom God always intended I should offer to Him. I should have known. You who have become my beloved son, Luke, you are the precious lamb I must sacrifice to prove my faith.’

  The Prophet’s tone changed abruptly. ‘Bind him!’

  Luke struggled desperately, but even as he did so, he sensed Noll coming up beside him. David gripped him, almost snapping the bones in his arms, as Noll wound the rope about them, pinning them to his body. Noll grabbed his ankles, bringing him crashing to the ground and the two men lifted him, as if he was already a corpse. Luke wriggled and thrashed, but he could not break free.

  They carried him across the rough ground back to the church, jolting him as they stumbled over stones in the darkness. For one wild moment, Luke thought they were taking him back down into the crypt. They couldn’t really mean to kill him. The master spoke in stories, in wild images and strange words that were not really true, just a way of talking. Luke caught a glimpse of a dark, huddled shape lying close to the thin crack of red light on the ground.

  ‘Raguel!’ he screamed. ‘Raguel, help me!’

  But if she heard him, she didn’t move.

  David and Noll swung him upwards and brought him down with a thump on to the cold, hard stone. He could just make out the outline of a window above him and knew he was lying on the altar. The moment they released him he kicked out, flipping his body like a stranded fish. He rolled sideways, trying to fling himself off. But Noll seized his feet again and David’s great hands gripped his shoulders, pressing him hard against the stone.

  Luke saw the massive bulk of the Prophet, in his cloak of pelts, pacing towards them, the badger’s head snarling on his shoulder. He caught the glint of a steel blade in his hand. Then Brother Praeco seized his hair and jerked his head down, so that the back of Luke’s neck was stretched over the edge of the altar.

  The Prophet roared up into the great black void above. ‘“And they shall sacrifice the lamb in the evening and take of the blood and pour it upon both the side posts, and on the upper door posts of the houses wherein they shall eat of the flesh of the lamb that night. And when I see the blood I will pass over them and the plague shall not fall upon them when I smite the land.”’

  He raised the knife high in both hands. Luke saw the blade flash above him and screamed.

  ‘The sea is afire!’ Harold wailed. ‘The witch is burning the sea.’

  ‘No, Harold,’ Will shouted. ‘It is St Elmo’s fire, nothing more. It’s a good omen, a blessed omen. It means you will succeed. Finish the words, Harold, you must finish them.’

  But the boy couldn’t tear his eyes from the cold blue flames crackling far below.

  ‘Look at me, Harold,’ Will yelled. ‘I have the amulet. Without this, she is powerless.’

  Janiveer laughed. ‘I do not need that. You can throw it off the cliff, if you wish, little man. You think that will quench those flames? Look, they are racing towards the shore. Soon those burning waves will destroy every man, woman and child left in that village. There will be nothing left, Harold, nothing! You will have failed. Bu
t I can stop this. Sara, give me the soul of your son, and I will still this storm and spare those lives. Just say it, Sara, just speak the name. One name is all I ask!’

  Sara stared down at the sea, then across at the storm-savaged village. Without warning, she leaped to her feet. Snatching up the hand of Cadeyrn, she stumbled the few paces to the cliff edge and held it out over the raging sea.

  ‘That amulet might mean nothing to you, but I reckon this does. You’d not have your precious forefather going into the Blessed Isles without his axe hand.’

  Sara cried out as a gust of wind punched her so hard she almost fell over the edge. Will grabbed the skirt of her gown, hauling her towards him. But, fighting down her terror, she defiantly flung out her arm again, holding the hand into the maw of the gale.

  ‘It’s my betting,’ she shouted, ‘that so long as his hand remains here under the sea, his spirit’ll be trapped here too, just like the old hag’s in that box down there below those burning waves.’

  Janiveer, still clutching the baby, bounded forward, like a great cat, stretching out to grab the hand from Sara. The two women struggled on the very edge of the cliff. Suddenly, Janiveer let go of her and thrust the baby out into the wind, so that it dangled over the cliff.

  ‘Would you kill another mother’s son, Sara? Give me the hand, the hand for this child.’

  Sara hesitated. Her face full of despair, she glanced helplessly at Will. Slowly her arm moved towards Janiveer, holding out the blackened hand towards her.

  ‘No!’ Harold yelled. He bounded across the stones, and darting between them, caught hold of the baby, jerking the child backwards and almost knocking Sara over the cliff. For a moment she teetered on the very edge then flung herself sideways, falling on top of Will and knocking him to the ground.

  The underside of the old sheepskin in which the child was bundled was slippery with age and grease. The howling infant slid back down the dry grassy slope, crashing into the cairn. A weighty stone, balanced preciously on the others, rocked wildly and, as a violent gust caught it, the stone toppled off, smashing down on to the child’s leg, pinning him to the ground. The baby shrieked in pain.