Fear and Folly

by Maurits Zwankhuizen

  The oracle walked in front of me. I sheathed my sword to avoid unwanted attention and instead drew a dagger. When we stepped outside, I put my arm through his, the dagger turned back in my hand so that the point grazed the old man’s coat at every step but remained invisible to passers-by.

  People in the streets watched us with curiosity as we marched, some gamely hurling bawdy remarks at the old man, wondering why he was out in public so soon after winning the hand of the most beautiful girl in town. He was wise to ignore them.

  Soon we were back by the bonfire. All that remained of the tail was a smouldering oily mass in a bed of embers.

  “Smells like pig to me,” I said and pushed him toward the town gate. I saw the gatekeeper’s head peer from his hovel and vanish again.

  “Open the gates,” I shouted and the gatekeeper reappeared, shuffling over to wind the double portals apart. I shoved the oracle through the breach and handed him the food and cloak.

  “Wise man that you are,” I said, “you will see that my heart is not as cold as the weather. Here’s warmth for your belly and your skin, and enough hours of sunlight remain for the gathering of firewood. So you see, there is nothing to fear. Unless of course there is something to fear.”

  The old man had remained pliant and silent. Until now.

  “Captain, you are allowing your jealousy to override common sense.” The punch of his words could not hide the fear beneath. “I killed the yarthing. You’ve seen the evidence. What you are doing is forcing an old man to suffer through a winter’s night for no purpose.”

  “What I have seen, oracle, is evidence of your trickery.” I pointed to the wilderness beyond the walls. “There are three possibilities. First, you did kill the yarthing, a possibility which I doubt and for which I am willing to risk punishment. A punishment which can be nothing beside how my mind will punish me each and every day for having delivered Ava into your lecherous hands.” I paused to compose myself. “Second, the beast does not exist and never has. It was just a product of your warped imagination. And third – .” I paused again but this time smiled. “I need not say anymore. You killed the thing so you have nothing to fear.” Sunlight clothed a shoulder of hill. “Start walking, old man. You’ll find a suitable camp site about one hundred yards down the road. I’ll be waiting for you here at dawn.”

  The oracle lowered his eyes and ground his teeth.

  “You are a fool, my friend,” he said. His eyes shot up at me but they held no fire, only grey mist. “I shall return with the dawn. Tomorrow will see you screaming for mercy. As for Ava…” He laughed and turned away, shuffling up the road where shadows had already begun to devour the light.

  I watched and waited until he had disappeared over a crest, then ordered the gatekeeper to close the gate. With head bowed and thoughts conflicted, I strode to Kelid’s house. Ava met me at the door.

  “What’s happening?” she asked. “What have you done with the oracle?”

  I stared over her shoulder at the flicker of flames in the hearth.

  “He is facing the truth,” I said. “I must go to my own home now but be prepared to be wedded on the morrow.”

  Her eyes grew large, her lips parted.

  “To you?”

  “That depends on the yarthing,” I said, and left her standing there upon the threshold.

  Dawn bled along the edges of my curtains. I sprang from my bed and made ready for what was to come. There were very few people on the street. I had to hammer hard upon the gatekeeper’s door to rouse him from his slumber.

  “Up, damn you. Make haste to open the gate.”

  While the gatekeeper dressed, I ran up to the ramparts. Once more mist cloaked the view but it was thinning as I watched. Beams of sunlight fought through the shroud but the road once revealed proved empty. Fearing the worst despite hoping for it, I ran back down and out onto the road through the now-open portals. Fingers of ice hung in the air, clawing at my face. I marched with sword drawn towards the camp site. It lay out of sight of the town walls and I slowed my walk, keeping a roving eye on the trees around me. There was a small fireplace giving off a few thin plumes of smoke. The cloak I had passed to the oracle lay across a log. Then I heard it. A sharp cry. It was coming from further along the road. I made my way there and found, lying in a ditch beside the road, with eyes of brightest blue, a child no more than half a year old.

  The earl was present when I strode back through the gates. I shot the gatekeeper a venomous glance before approaching my mounted liege.

  “Good morning, captain,” the earl said. “I have been informed that you forced the oracle out beyond the gates last night. Is this true?”

  “It is true, my liege.”

  The earl nodded and his gaze moved to the portals, which stood slightly open still. “Is there any news?”

  “None as yet,” I said. It seemed to satisfy him. For now.

  “When you’ve found him,” he said, “both of you shall come to me, and I shall decide what punishment to mete out.”

  As he rode away, I adjusted the fur-lined cloak in my arms. A soft noise came from it. Then a sharp cry. The earl turned his horse around and reined it in so close to me that its clouds of breath were like bellows on my face. I had no choice. I pushed aside the folds of the cloak to reveal the tiny creature wrapped within.

  The earl was not a man to betray emotion but his silence spoke volumes.

  “Is it?” he asked finally, gesturing at the child.

  I nodded. “Unfortunately it is so.”

  “Indeed,” he said. “For some. But fortunate for others.”

  I couldn’t hide my shock.

  “My liege? You mean …?”

  “Yes, I know about you and Ava. As earl I need to know everything.” He looked around briefly but there was no one within earshot. “Well, in these strange circumstances, let me provide you with some valuable advice. It would be very prudent for you to pledge your troth to Ava as soon as possible.” He gazed earnestly at the wriggling form in my arms. “We wouldn’t want this child to be considered a bastard.”

  So saying, he swung his horse around and trotted away. Before I had time to grasp the full impact of his statement, Ava was at my side, out of breath but full of questions.

  “I couldn’t wait,” she said. “I saw the earl and had to know what was happening. What did he want? And where is the oracle?” She saw the bundle in my arms move. “What … what is this? Whose child is this?”

  “This is our child,” I said, despite everything I thought. I’m not sure if she heard me as I passed the swaddled form into her arms.

  Ava looked down at him in wonder.

  “He’s beautiful. His eyes are so blue.”

  The baby gurgled happily and lifted a pudgy little hand up toward her bosom.

  MY PROVIDER & I

  He was my provider.

  Name. Age. Occupation. I knew none of these things about him. I didn’t even know why he provided for me. It was just the way things had always been. We never question the regularity of life, do we? Just the exceptions, the random out of the ordinary occurrences, no matter how minor they might be.

  All I knew was that he was and always had been there for me. I’d hate to think where I’d be without him.

  Each morning when I woke, we would exchange silent greetings in our ritualistic manner, a short once-over stare, sometimes a slight acknowledging nod. Then he would leave and I would fall back to sleep, a deep lifeless sleep.

  I have no idea where he went or what he did. I didn’t really care. I’d stay home. I didn’t do much, just hang around and wait. I had my own room adjacent to his, connected by a doorway which he would open whenever he came home.

  I’d wait for those moments. They were all I had.

  That particular morning was no different. The same masculine greeting punctuated by a grunt.

  Sometime later I met him at the open doorway, a towel bound about his waist.

  He looked at me despondently, glassy-eyed.


  “Man, I need a fuck”, he said, frowning.

  I mouthed the words. Anticipated them. I knew exactly how he felt. It had been too long for both of us.

  Then he vanished again, off to wherever it was he went. I was alone. The day passed in a flash.

  He returned I don’t know how much later. The words he’d mouthed to me that morning had translated into action. There was a girl by his side. I stepped forward to meet him but stopped in surprise.

  ‘Where’s my girl?’ I asked, but he ignored me, looked into her eyes, speaking sweet nothings.

  It was a shock, not just his neglect but also his indifference. Never before had he brought home a girl and not provided one for me. I stuck out my tongue in a childish rebuke but he was lost in her face, lost between her gorgeous full lips.

  He was ignoring me but I could hardly blame him. I looked her over slowly. She was beautiful, dark and sultry, wickedly curvaceous. Maybe I should forgive him this one indiscretion. Why shouldn’t he enjoy her? He’d always been faithful to me. He had always shared everything with me. Still, it was difficult for me to watch as their hands played across their bodies, as their intensity rose and their clothes fell.

  I turned away and fell onto my bed as they dropped as one onto his, undressing each other with eager fingers.

  Soon they were making lustful love, limbs, fingers and tongues entwined, while I writhed on my own bed, trying to ignore their ecstasy, trying to suppress my hurt and jealousy.

  Suddenly, I sprang up. Something had stung my neck. At the same time I heard him scream from atop her. No hot scream of climax but a yell of pain and anger.

  I rolled over to watch, intrigued. She was pushing him off her, stepping from the bed. She was walking towards the doorway between our two rooms. I stared, mesmerised, breathless with excitement, as she strode towards me. Her lips gleamed with forbidden lust and speckled blood.

  I gasped with the acute delight of a desire which had been too long unsatisfied.

  My provider shouted something but I was not going to let him spoil this moment. He’d had his fun. Now it was my turn.

  I rose to meet her, selfishly intent on her body. She lifted a pale arm, formed her hand into a fist and punched out at me.

  I saw my life smash into a thousand shards in her dark soulless eyes.

  FOLLY

  “I heard a wolf howl last night.”

  The old man’s words stopped me in my tracks. He was standing at the bar, speaking to another greyhair. I got close up behind him, ordered a pint and waited.

  “Dog most likely.”

  “No, ’twas a wolf.”

  “Bill. There ain’t been no wolves around here since the 1400s. Since you were a boy.”

  Laughter.

  “Right enough. Still, I know what I heard and it was a wolf.”

  My pint arrived and I had my own conversation to run.

  Next thing, I heard the first man – Bill – again.

  “Is that him?”

  The two of them were pointing at someone. I turned to look through the open door at a stencil of sunlit street. A youth with long, lank hair and a wild beard was wandering past the pub. I’d seen him around. Would do, in a small town like mine.

  “Aye, that’s him. Full moon woulda been what did it.”

  The two old men laughed again and took to their pints.

  Having had a few myself, I made myself known.

  “Sorry, gentlemen. I couldn’t help overhearing. You say you heard a wolf howl?”

  Rheumy eyes fell on me. I saw agile minds in failing bodies.

  “Aye, that I did,” said Bill.

  Then the other chimed in with, “Did you hear it, too, or were you not drunk last night like Bill here?”

  “I didn’t hear it. But I’m interested to learn more. Like where you heard it?”

  Bill gazed at me for a moment, then slowly brought one arm around in a full circle, index finger extended. It stopped next to his left ear.

  “Right there’s where I heard it. In me ear.”

  His friend laughed.

  “Don’t be messin’ with him, Bill.”

  Bill nodded slightly.

  “If you must know, I live up north end of town. On road to Long Chilton. That’s where the howl came from. From up near Deeble Tor.”

  His rheumy eyes stayed on me for longer than was comfortable.

  “Have you been up Deeble Tor?”

  I nodded.

  “Sure have. Used to run up there as a kid. It’s got that old ruin. Used to be a tower of some sort.” The images were faint in my memory but I remembered how steep the walk up had been for my short young legs. “I haven’t been up there in years. Maybe I should revisit it some time.” I looked at the pint in my hand and the paunch in my shirt. “Maybe even today. It’s great weather for it.”

  “Folly.”

  One of Bill’s old eyes was filmed over with a cataract.

  “Sorry?”

  “Folly,” he repeated cryptically and turned back to his pint.

  “Don’t mind him,” said his friend. “He likes to play at being mysterious. He just means the tower is a folly. Y’know. Some country squire with more money than sense decides he’s an architect and orders a building erected for his own self-importance. Follies don’t mean nothing. Us normal folk don’t understand them, so we concoct myths around them. Give them a meaning when they haven’t none.”

  I nodded but was having trouble taking it all in, especially with a pint to my lips and a couple stowed below.

  “Does the folly have a name?”

  Bill was still looking away from me. His friend shook his head.

  “No official name, as far as I know.”

  He also turned to his beer, so I thanked them and left. As I moved back to my table, I heard a loud voice call out. Bill’s.

  “The Devil’s Tower,” he said.

  Swinging around, I caught Bill getting shoved in the arm by his friend. Bill couldn’t help himself and peeked at me over his shoulder, mouthing the words again, slowly and seriously:

  “The Devil’s Tower.”

  The sun feels harsher after a few pints. I stood outside the pub for a while, regathering my senses. Strange how our actions can seem preordained in hindsight. If I’d left sooner, I wouldn’t have seen the wild-looking lad come by again. I had an hour to kill and a couple of pints to walk off, so I followed him at a distance. He kept up a determined stride that I found difficult to match, but it was best anyway that I kept a reasonable gap between us to avoid suspicion.

  The lad walked on and on, and I began to doubt the wisdom of my idea. We passed the outskirts of town – including the last public toilet for miles around, as my beer-battered bladder suddenly reminded me. Now we were on the B road out of town. There was nothing else along this route until Long Chilton in about five miles. Nothing, that is, except Deeble Tor with its old ruin.

  The road straightened out beneath the tor and I stopped behind a tree. Glancing out again a minute later, I couldn’t see hide nor hair of the lad. An appetite for adventure fuelled by several pints saw me take the old path up Deeble Tor. I found a faded thread in autumn’s carpet where feet had passed before me.

  As I climbed, I was really only thinking of the lad I was following. Who was he? How long had he been in town and why was he so interested in this hill? The folly was at the back of my mind. That was until I came up through a channel between two huge boulders and there it was.

  It looked like it had been hewn out of a boulder itself, a massive boulder, for the folly rose close to fifty feet into the air. It may have once stood taller but the brickwork now bit the sky like a broken-toothed smile.

  I had come upon it quickly from out of the rockscape and it seemed to be surrounding me, to be toppling in on me. There was no sign of the lad. Perhaps he had ventured within. I couldn’t see an entrance from where I stood but there was a window higher up and through it the sun spat a few rays across a series of steps.

  T
he scene was thick with nostalgia. I hadn’t been here in many years. But I couldn’t fully enjoy the memories which played around me like birdsong. There was the lad to consider.

  Nostalgia can be all-consuming. All one’s senses warp and weave through the loom of the past. With its power diminished, I realised how dead quiet it was. There was no real birdsong. No wind. Not even the sound of cars passing along the road only a couple of hundred yards below.

  I shivered.

  I moved away from the folly and found a nook in the cleft between two boulders higher up the hill. Through it I could see the ground around the folly. A minute or so later sound returned. The longhair appeared from behind the tower, crunching his way over fallen leaves, oblivious to my presence.

  He stopped suddenly as if he’d heard something. I held my breath. I felt the urge to move to a more comfortable position but my feet were ankle-deep in autumn’s brittle harvest.

  There I waited. The lad was going through some elaborate ritual. His arms were moving. His eyes were closed. His lips muttered words too softly for my ears. They sounded like incantations. This man was a witch. A pagan warlock.

  My legs were aching but he soon tired of his spells. He opened his eyes and looked about as if the world was new to him. A thin smile brightened his features. With that, he took off down the hill with invigorated steps. When I could no longer hear the orchestra of leaves playing at his feet, I slipped out of my hiding place and walked around the folly. There was no entrance. Not at ground height anyway. Not till at least twenty feet up. Had he climbed up there? He didn’t look like a climber. More like a skulker.

  I hung around for a little while but nothing struck me as interesting. Just the folly itself. It was smaller than I remembered it but it still had that air of mystery that it had held for me when I was younger.

  I shivered again. Then there was a loud sound which roared up from between the boulders, up from the foot of the hill. It was like a howl. A wolf’s howl. I half-expected to see one standing on the highest boulder, mane raised, muzzle pointing to the sky. But there was nothing there.