The Plague Charmer

by Karen Maitland

  Janiveer took a step towards Sara and Will, who both lay winded, still tangled around each other. She tried to grab the hand, which Sara was still clutching, but Harold caught a fistful of her hair, jerking her back. Janiveer turned on him, her face contorted with fury. She seized him by his shirt, lifting him off his feet as if she meant to hurl him from the cliff. But before she could move, the earth beneath them gave a violent shudder.

  Sara stared down at a long crack racing across the parched ground. She realised what was happening faster than Will. Grasping his arm, she heaved herself backwards, yelling out an incoherent warning to Harold.

  With a rumble louder even than the roar of sea and waves, the edge of the cliff fell away. Rock and earth, grass and stones hurtled down, splashing into the thundering waves below. Sara, still lying on the ground, felt the rush of air and empty space beneath her feet. The full weight of the dwarf was suddenly dangling from her arm. For a sickening moment, they were both sliding into nothing, then Will twisted his body as only a jester could, and flung himself back on to the solid land, pulling her with him.

  When they shakily staggered to their feet, still clutching each other, they saw that, except for the wailing baby, they were alone on the cliff top in the darkness. Harold and Janiveer were gone.

  Something smashed furiously into the back of Brother Praeco’s legs.

  ‘Leave him alone!’ it yelled.

  The Prophet’s knees buckled and he pitched forward, sprawling across Luke, but the knife was still gripped tightly in his hand. He whirled around, but the small figure had already scuttled back into the darkness, though Luke could hear stones rolling as he ran across the rubble. Relief and terror seized Luke in equal measure.

  ‘Get out, Hob. Run!’ he screamed.

  ‘Silence!’ Brother Praeco clamped his hand across Luke’s mouth.

  Luke tried to bite him, but the Prophet squeezed his jaws together so hard, Luke thought his teeth would splinter.

  ‘David, keep a tight hold on the sacrifice.’ Brother Praeco leaned towards Noll, lowering his voice: ‘Fetch the boy. He’s still in here. I can hear him moving.’

  As soon as his feet were released, Luke struggled and thrashed with all the strength he could summon, but David pressed his full weight down on Luke’s chest and arms till he could barely breathe. He could hear Noll stumbling around, cursing as he banged into fallen stones. Somewhere another great beam crashed to the floor.

  ‘Master,’ David said urgently, ‘we must finish this now. The wind is building behind that wall. If it collapses . . .’

  ‘It will not,’ the Prophet growled. ‘God has instructed His angels to hold back the winds until the Chosen are sealed. But we must hurry. The trumpets will sound with the coming of dawn. The blood must be daubed on the door and the lamb consumed before the first blast sounds.’

  Luke heard someone blundering about in the church, louder this time, clumsier. The men heard it, too, and lifted their heads. Was it Hob? Was he hurt? Was he trying to get back to the altar? The Prophet turned his attention back to the boy lying on the slab. He slid his sweating fingers over Luke’s face to his forehead, pressing his head backwards to expose the throat.

  Luke tried desperately to wrench himself free. Mam, don’t let him kill me! Make him stop! Help me, Mam!

  There was a roar, which came not from the wind but from somewhere inside the church. Luke glimpsed a shape blacker even than the night, lurching towards the altar. It reared up, filling the space behind Brother Praeco. David must have seen it too, for he suddenly released Luke, hurling himself away from the monstrous demon. The shadow swelled, uncoiling itself until it towered above the Prophet. Sensing the movement behind him, Brother Praeco half turned, staring upwards into the face of the thing looming over him. He shrieked.

  Luke, feeling the hands lift from him, flung himself towards the edge of the altar. He glimpsed the flash of eyes, a scarlet mouth and teeth like daggers. The Prophet tried to run as the demon embraced him from behind, clasping its great paws around him, crushing him. One of the Prophet’s arms was trapped at his side, but he lashed out wildly with the other, striking with his dagger, stabbing as hard as he could into the huge paw. The creature roared in pain and, loosening its grip, slashed at Brother Praeco’s face with its huge curved claws. Bone, brains and scalding blood splattered across Luke’s head and neck as he threw himself on to the floor.

  The fall knocked the breath from Luke’s body and sent a flash of white-hot pain ripping through his shoulder. But as he lay, fighting to draw the breath back into his lungs, he felt a shaggy pelt brush his skin as the beast plunged down on all fours, lumbered across the church and out into the night.

  There, among the ruins of Kitnor, the great bear reared up once more, raking its claws across the bark of the newly fallen tree. Then, with a final roar, it vanished into the chaos of wind and darkness. Luke felt something wet fall on his face. He couldn’t understand what it was at first. Another drop fell, and then another. Rain began to patter down on to the parched forest. The drought was finally ended.

  Chapter 68

  Sara

  On the last day of Lent a red herring is carved to resemble a man on horseback riding away. The herring is eaten to say farewell to forty days of fish, bid welcome to meat.

  Something icy touched my foot in the darkness. Wet fingers, cold as death, closed around my ankle. Her face stared up at me from the darkness below. She was clawing her way back up the cliff face. I tried to shake her off, but her grip was too strong. Her long hair whipped around her head in the wind. Choose! Choose! The locks of her hair were snaking about my legs, binding them so that I couldn’t move.

  The cry woke me with a start and I was half on my feet, moving towards the child, before I’d even opened my eyes. A babby’s wail will always wake a woman who’s once been a mother, however far she’s travelled into the land of dreams and nightmares. But I was so exhausted, it took me a moment to realise it was Goda’s little ’un who was wailing, not my own chillern, not my Luke and Hob.

  I sank back on the floor of the chapel, shivering. Choose, she had said. How could any mother choose? But if I’d chosen maybe . . . maybe one of my boys would be safe, one would have survived. I had failed them. After all I had done I hadn’t been able to save my sons. I couldn’t think about it now. I didn’t want to think or feel ever again.

  My limbs ached and my head was pounding, but I was too afeared of the dream to try to sleep again. Besides, the women curled asleep around me were already beginning to stir. Most of us in the village had taken refuge from the storm in the chapel during the night, for no one dared to stay in the cottages down by the shore and I could not return to my house for it was still a burned-out shell. Last night’s wind had torn part of the thatch from the chapel roof and puddles of rain had gathered on the floor at one end, but the rest was dry enough.

  Sybil lumbered to her feet. Raking the dirt and mouse droppings from her long grey hair with her fingers, she bound it up in a length of cloth. She strode to the door and flung it open, peering out. A chill breeze rushed in. Swollen clouds, the colour of lead, were rolling in from the sea.

  ‘Wind’s died down and it’s stopped raining for now,’ she announced. ‘But not for long by the look of that sky. We’d best get moving. I reckon most of us’ll be living in here for a few days yet, till we can put our own cottages right. We’ll need to patch the hole in that roof. I’ll go and see if there’s anything we can use to keep the rain out. Some of you had best get down to the shore and pick any fish that got tossed up last night.’

  Several groans went up.

  ‘Aye, but fish is still better than an empty belly. And I’ve been thinking, if we fill a good few panniers we can take them to the manor, as long as we can round up any of the widgebeasts to carry them. I know we’ve had our fill of fish, but I reckon they’ll not have tasted any these past months, so they might be willing to barter for some with a bag or two of grain or meat, if there’s any to be had
.’

  Katharine was already blowing on the embers of the fire that the villagers had built close by the altar. She glanced up. ‘We need to fetch wood too, if there’s cooking to be done.’

  ‘There’ll not be much dry kindling to be found after that land-lash,’ Meryn said, using the corner of the altar to drag himself up on to his crutches.

  Sybil gave a snort of laughter, shaking her head. ‘For months we’ve had any amount of good dry wood to heat our pots, but no water to boil in them. Now we’ve water aplenty to boil and no dry wood to heat it.’ She gestured at the painting on the chapel wall of Christ on His throne staring down at us all. ‘Sometimes I reckon it’s Him that’s the jester.’

  Katharine stared anxiously around the chapel. ‘Where is Will?’

  Others peered round, too, as if he might be lurking in a corner, but there was no sign of him and nowhere that even a dwarf could hide. I’d thought he’d followed me to the chapel last night, the howling babby wrapped tight in his arms. But the night had been so dark, and with the rain dashing into my eyes, I’d barely found the way myself. I’d no notion where or when I’d lost him. I prayed that he was safe, that little ’un too, for I guessed his poor little leg had been broken by that stone. So much pain and him barely come into this world.

  The chatter of the women was growing ever louder, as they all began to discuss what needed doing and who would do it. It was like being trapped in a byre with a flock of gulls. I dragged my damp shawl around me and picked my way over those still sitting, towards the open door.

  ‘I’ll go up to the forest,’ I said to Sybil. ‘That wind will have brought some branches down. Trees might have kept the worst of the rain off them where they grow close.’

  Truth was, I needed to get away for a little, try to untangle the wool inside my head.

  I found myself on the path leading towards the forest, the same one we’d taken to Kitnor. But that seemed another lifetime ago. The track that had been so dry then was a river of mud and rain now, strewn with twigs and leaves. I gave up trying to clamber up the slippery grass banks to avoid the deep puddles and splashed through them, my skirts already wet and caked with filth after struggling down from the cliff top.

  I stared down at the waves surging far out at sea, grey-blue now and cold, the colour of her eyes. Was she dead? Was she really dead? Unless I saw a corpse, I dared not believe it. But I had seen her corpse once before, lying on my table, with Elis and Daveth, Col and Hob and Luke watching her – all gone now. All gone. We’d thought her dead then, but she had lived and they had died. She had come from the sea, the ninth wave, and taken everything I loved.

  The high-pitched mew of a red kite made me look up. It was flying towards Kitnor. A narrow shaft of sunlight had broken through the heavy clouds, making the wet trees glisten. Someone was standing at the edge of the forest gazing down towards the village and the sea beyond. The sunlight was dazzling and I couldn’t see him clearly for the lower half of his body was hidden behind the rise of the path.

  ‘Will?’

  The figure turned his head and retreated back into the shadow of the tree.

  ‘Will? Is that you? Wait!’

  Picking up my sodden skirts, I hurried up the rise . . . then stopped. Two boys stood under the tree, thin, ragged boys, one taller than the other. Their huge hollow eyes stared out from masks of dirt and dried blood, like the ghosts of men slain in battle. We gaped at each other. Their faces were so familiar, yet so strange. They didn’t move and, for a moment, I was afraid that if I spoke or took a single step they would vanish like wraiths back into the forest.

  ‘Mam?’ The dull, feeble cry was so faint I could barely recognise it, but it was enough.

  Tears blinded my eyes as I stumbled towards them, holding out my arms. They had come home. My sons were alive and they had come home to me!

  Epilogue

  Will

  Riddle me this: What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon and three legs in the evening?

  ‘Father, tell me a story.’

  Young Adam sits on a low stool by the hearth, his hair gleaming copper in the firelight. He is supposed to be mending the fowling nets but, like most boys, he spends more time dreaming than working.

  Though only ten summers have passed since he was born, he is already slightly taller than me, but he doesn’t seem to notice. There are few at Kitnor to remind him of what a man should be, and the boy himself walks with a bad limp. His thigh was broken the night of the storm when the stone from the Holy Hag’s cairn fell on it. The leg mended crooked, shorter than the other. So, like me, he rocks from side to side as he walks. Fate fashioned him into his father’s son, or maybe it was Janiveer. I will never know the truth of it. But we have little use for truth here. Truth is only one story among many.

  Most of us creatures and outlaws who, over the years since the pestilence, have settled in Kitnor are not what passes for human in the world beyond. Some are wanting a limb or an eye, a nose or a tongue, while others have more than they should. There is a man with a bulging blind eye in the centre of his forehead and a woman with two good arms and two withered ones that hang from her back like featherless wings. Some came into this world already malformed in their mothers’ wombs; others, like me, had deformity thrust upon them for money, for crimes or simply for the amusement of others.

  We even have our own holy man. Friar Tom, we call him. His wits are all but fled for he thinks we few are the only survivors of a world that the angels destroyed. He occupies himself with preaching sermons to the trees and holding Mass in the ruined church, which none but the goats attend, for men taught us all long ago that we are not made in God’s image. But Friar Tom takes the goats’ bleats as amens, and they gobble up the holy bread he solemnly offers them, so he is content.

  We repaired the round stone huts, and mine is certainly drier and warmer than the sea cave, though not as spacious. The valley is sheltered and the crops grow well here. I cleared a patch for a garden to grow worts and herbs. And, like the others, I rear our chickens and goats, and fatten our pigs on the mast in the forest – I always had a hankering for sweet roasted pork. Did I ever mention that? Though I will admit it took a few years before even I could bring myself to cook it again.

  What makes a happy man sad, and a sad man happy?

  Why, time, of course, for all things pass. Just as the time of happiness passes, so does the time of sadness.

  And in time saplings sprang up to hide the scars in the earth where the old trees were torn from it. Few outsiders ever stumble on this valley, save for the kites that wheel overhead. Villagers round about warn travellers that Kitnor is haunted by hungry ghosts and shrieking demons, and we are glad of it, for they leave us in peace.

  ‘Father, the story!’ Adam demands impatiently.

  ‘Let me see,’ I say. ‘Did I ever tell you about the plague charmer who once came to a village far away?’

  His eyes sparkle in the firelight. ‘Never, Father, never. Tell me that one.’

  We laugh. We both know I have told that story more times than he has eaten pigs’ trotters, but still he never tires of it, and maybe the tale has changed a little over the years. Like children, once born, stories have a way of growing by themselves.

  ‘Once upon a time, in a land far away, a village was suffering from a terrible plague. Many were dying and there was despair among the living for no one knew how to stop it. Then one night, when the moon was full, a strange woman walked out of the sea and into the heart of that village.’

  ‘Maybe she was a selkie or a mermaid,’ Adam interrupts.

  ‘She was not of this land, that was certain, for the very tides of the ocean ebbed and flowed in her eyes. And this woman said she could charm the plague away from the village for a price. The villagers promised to pay her what she asked, if only she would stop the plague. So she cast a spell and the plague was swept up from the land, like dust in the wind, and carried far away. Those who were sick recovered and no o
ne else fell ill. Then she returned to the villagers and reminded them of their promise, but they said, “How do we know you charmed away the plague? It would have burned out whatever you did.” And they would not pay her. The woman was angry and she cast a spell to charm their children away from them.

  ‘Only one tried to stop her, a man called Harold, who was scarcely more than a boy himself, but in her rage the plague charmer cast a spell to drive him off the cliff into the sea, hoping to drown him. But so brave was he and so pure was his heart that as he fell he was changed into a magnificent kite, and before the waves could claim him, he spread his great wings and soared up into the sky where he could for ever watch over that village.

  ‘The plague charmer led the village children to a steep hillside. The kite saw where she was taking them and he tried to warn the villagers, but they could not understand his mewing cries and, thinking he was trying to steal their food, they drove him away. The plague charmer led the children through a door in the rock on the side of the hill into another world, a place of water and fire, where they saw and heard many strange and wondrous things. And the creatures who lived in the world offered them food and drink, and they ate and drank. And no sooner did the food touch their lips than they forgot their homes and their mothers. It seemed to them that only a day had passed when a hundred years had gone by.’

  My son wriggles in horrified delight. ‘You should never eat faery food, should you, Father?’

  ‘And you remember that next time you go foraging. Toadstools are faery food and they make you very sick, don’t they?’ I say. I try to look stern, but it’s hard when your mouth is always grinning.

  He grins back. He knows exactly how to divert me from a scolding. ‘And how did the children escape, Father?’