Throne of Darkness: A Novel

by Douglas Nicholas

  “These leaders of the squads, they are not common bouda. Yattuy, he has captains, they are more trusted, they can control themselves, they control the bouda when they change to the hyenas, but they themselves do not always change. They have brought over some of their horses, and the leaders, the captains, ride them, so they may keep up with the other bouda when they are on four legs. When they are hyenas, they do not think so well; the captain tells them what to do, and when to change back. Then, after a bit, they are men again, they can think. They change back and forth easily, I think. But they need ashes from their forges to begin the change.”

  He had been speaking in a rush and now he had to pause for breath, and then he drank more beer.

  “This Yattuy, is he ever changing to a hyena himself?” asked Molly.

  Ugwistan looked at her for a moment as if she had asked the difference between the sun and the moon.

  “No, no—Yattuy is not bouda.” He spoke slowly and distinctly, tapping his forefinger on the table with each word: “He is a man who can control tenscore bouda with a word, with his eyes; he is like the centurion in the Gospels, he says to this one ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to that one ‘Come,’ and he comes—this is why I fear him even more than these terrible beast-men.”

  Hob asked him, “These horses of theirs—do they have tassels on their saddlecloths?”

  “Yes, yes, in Marroch horse trappings are very beautiful; many ornaments, many. Tassels, yes.”

  “And ’twas only the one group the wizard sent after us?” asked Molly.

  “One group, yes. And when I have heard all this, I haste to my meeting with Monsignor, and we come here.”

  “And we must go, now, all of us,” said da Panzano in a grating voice.

  “We must go soon, but ’twill be a day or two before they can get another . . . squad . . . after us.”

  Da Panzano said through gritted teeth, “They are already after— Excuse me, is it that my so-poor English has made me misunderstand you? Are you . . . did you say ‘another’? Another squad? Another?”

  “Sure I’ve destroyed the first one, so I have,” said Molly, and Hob felt his face go stiff with the effort not to laugh. She is quite enjoying herself, he thought.

  “Christ save us!” cried da Panzano. “Destroyed!” Father Ugwistan was gaping at Molly, and even Sinibaldo glanced at her before resuming his vigilant survey of the common room, the archway to the kitchen, the door to the outside, and around again.

  “But how?” asked the Berber priest.

  “I drowned them,” said Molly quietly. The two men sat back a bit, as though to put some slightest distance between them and this woman; only now were they beginning to realize how dangerous she was, and they were beginning to be somewhat frightened of her. Sinibaldo did not move. It was hard to know what Sinibaldo would be afraid of, thought Hob.

  “Then you can destroy the others?” the papal agent said eagerly.

  “I can,” said Molly as though it were a thing done every day. “But in a different way, and I’ll be needing some help. Not much—a few horses, a place to put our beasts and wagons while we’re about your task, a refuge afterward. But I can destroy the others.”

  Hob was trying to emulate Sinibaldo, and let nothing show on his face, certainly not amusement. He was thinking that it was only the other day Molly was in despair at what to do. And then if not for that skirmish at the cottage, and Milo acting so strangely, and that poor jest of his, she would still be at a loss, and without a proper answer to da Panzano, and perhaps of no further use to him, and perhaps again in peril from the Church. A string of good fortune, letting her stumble onto the answer.

  And suddenly it all turned over in Hob’s mind, and he saw it differently: they had stopped at the cottage to interfere, because Molly was a good woman, and would not skulk past, and then Milo’s odd courage, and Hob’s own jest, not typical with him—one could as easily say that the Mόrrígan had guided them in each step, had impelled Molly to rescue the cottagers, Hob to fly into a righteous rage, Milo to save his Hob, Nemain to defend Milo, Hob to begin teasing. He stopped himself—he was drifting into . . . apostasy? Was he losing his faith?

  I will be as Jack, and not trouble myself any more with this, he said firmly to himself, and resolutely rejoined the conversation, which had turned to specifics—Ugwistan had found the location where the hyenas were to gather on the eve of the attack, and Molly and the papal legate were deep into the planning of all that must be done that night.

  And now Father Ugwistan had produced a rough map showing an obscure valley, awkwardly placed between encircling and very steep ridges, thickly wooded; part of the king’s forests, and yet not so very far from the Thames-side meadow where the proposed meeting between king and barons would be.

  “This map nearly cost me my life, madam,” said the Amazigh. “Three of the Cousins were discussing it, and I nearby; by the grace of God the Angelus had just rung, and I sank down on my knees and pretended to say my Aves, while—God forgive me—I am straining my ears to hear. They are of Yattuy’s inner guard: chieftains of the bouda, and they are bending over a map that he has drawn in the dirt with a stick. The map shows where they meet, and they are speaking of when, and when they must leave Chester to arrive there, and the like.

  “Yattuy has been there earlier, but is gone by now—I have told you, I dare not go near him! So: they are on the other side of the . . . anvil, yes, the anvil, and I am on this side, with my ear straining to hear, and there is a cry from inside the tent, they need help with the barrel in which is the water to quench the steel—that much water becomes very heavy, and—”

  “Yes, yes, Father, please do come to the point,” snapped da Panzano, a man not fond of distractions from the business at hand.

  “Your pardon, Monsignor,” said Father Ugwistan, his good nature quite undaunted by the rebuke. “The bell has ended, and I stand up and pretend to stagger a little, from kneeling, and I take a step behind the anvil and put a hand on the anvil to steady myself and bend to take a long look at the map; I tell myself, ‘Ugwistan, seize this map with your eyes and forget nothing,’ although I am terrified that they will return, and then I step back to the other side of the anvil—I am still holding my beads, you understand, and at that moment they step back out from the tent.

  “There is an angel that must be guarding me, for another moment and I would be found; I am sure they would have dragged me into the tent and killed me on the instant. But now they see me, I hold my beads, I am where they last saw me, and I am looking off at nothing. Then I wander away. But I am not certain that some other bouda, in one of the other tents, has not seen me, and so I come away the next morning, and seek out Monsignor da Panzano.”

  “And when will this all come to pass?” asked Molly.

  “A little more than a fortnight and a half from now, madam, a day past the full moon,” said the Berber.

  Molly turned to da Panzano. “I’m after mentioning that we’ll need a refuge: Is there a place near this valley that you know, where we can meet with you, and where we can leave our wagons, and our beasts, in safety?”

  “There is a Benedictine monastery a few miles away; I will arrange that the guesthouse is empty, and I will be there myself.” He spoke to Father Ugwistan. “As for you, Father, I am concerned to have you return to the South—I would not have you taken at this hour, and the plan forced from you; you are to journey to Durham, and remain there, unseen for the moment.”

  “We will need four horses to ride,” said Molly.

  “I will have them ready for you at the monastery,” said da Panzano. Drawing a stick of fine charcoal from his pouch, he took Father Ugwistan’s map and added the direction and distance to the monastery. He looked up when he had finished and asked bluntly, “But how will you destroy these so-many evil ones?”

  “Nay, I’ll not be telling you that, for I’d not be wanting to trouble your sleep, nor do I want you to interfere in any way. Do what you must do, make ready what you must mak
e ready.” She raised her mug to da Panzano: “ ’Tis what you said to me the day we met: ‘Listen for a short hour. Learn to trust me.’ ”

  CHAPTER 24

  A DAY LATER THEY WERE on the road north, for most of the wild cattle were in the north of England and the south of Scotland, and while Molly did not feel they need venture so far, she also felt that it did no harm to get somewhat closer before making her summons, and at any rate she had the very place in mind.

  The wagons descended a gentle grade, and the road leveled out. Here it went between two low hills, green with long grass, bright with pink lady’s smock, said to be sacred to the fairies; close by the road were meadowsweet and the white flowers of cow parsley. Hob could see bees moving from blossom to blossom, and there was a perceptible buzz that hung in the air. The road curved around the hill to the right; the buzzing increased in volume.

  As they came around the hill the view widened; the road ran away to the horizon. To the left forestland came up to the very edge of the trail. To the right was a meadow, in which clouds of flies rose and fell, rose and fell, about the remnants of bodies: both men and horses. There had been a small vicious battle here: perhaps twelve dead men and half as many horses lay amid the grasses and the wildflowers, but it was hard to tell. None of them was whole; animals had been at them. Bones, most of them crushed to the point of splintering, and pieces of meat and bits of offal lay everywhere, covered with flies. Blood soaked the grass. Scattered here and there were discarded weapons; an untouched hoof and another that had been shattered between monstrous jaws; a mailed glove, a hand still within.

  The knights had been despoiled of their armor, their weapons, even their clothes, save for those pieces of steel that were too mangled to be of use, those bits of clothing too torn and bloodied. Even the horses had been stripped of saddles, bridles, saddlecloths.

  Hob drew a fold of his shirt across his nose, and began to pull strongly on the guide rope, urging Milo to greater speed, for the odor of corruption now struck them with brutal intensity. For once the ox needed no urging: his large and handsome eyes rolled from side to side in fear; he snorted his alarm at the scent of death; he quickened his pace.

  “Hob, ’ware the road!” cried Molly sharply, and Hob tore his eyes from the carnage in the meadow to the path ahead. Metal glinted here and there in the beaten dirt of the road. He halted Milo with some difficulty, and Molly set the brake.

  Hob went a few paces ahead, and bent to retrieve a curious piece of iron. It was twisted into a tangle by the smith, a knot that sprouted four sharpened spikes, so cunningly arranged that however it was thrown to the ground, one spike always pointed upward.

  Hob made to throw it aside, but Molly said, “Nay, a rún, bring it here.” He handed it up, and she turned it over and over in her strong white hands. She looked away, her eyes unseeing, but her hands feeling over each twist and branch and point of the iron.

  “But what is it, Mistress?”

  “ ’Tis a caltrop, a cruel way to stop a horse and its rider, the poor beast stepping on the spike and falling crippled to the ground.”

  And still her hands went on tracing its convolutions. By now Nemain and Jack had set their brakes and come forward to see why the caravan had stopped.

  “Should I clear the road, Mistress?” asked Hob, but almost at the same time, Nemain asked, “What is it you’re seeing, seanmháthair?”

  “There’s something—’tis faint, ’tis faint—but I’m thinking that we’ll have need of these one day. It’s a sense that they have some place in our lives, and though that’s all I can tell, I’m loath to pass them by, as one would not walk past a gold coin and leave it in the dust. Nemain, give your man here one of those stout sacks from Jack’s wagon, and Hob, do you gather every one, and we’ll be bringing them with us.”

  Nemain trotted back along the line of wagons, and Molly reached down to hand Hob the caltrop. Hob went ahead down the road, gathering the vicious things, walking from one side of the road to the other. There were many more than he had at first thought, and in the end he had to tie off the bag and jog back for another one from Nemain, and he filled that one too.

  He was walking back with the second one when Molly stopped him. “Would you ever let us hold it a moment?” she asked. He handed it up. She placed the bag on her lap and closed her eyes. Nemain came up beside him. He looked a question at her. She whispered in his ear, “She’s having more of the second sight than anyone I’ve even heard tell of; far more than myself.”

  Hob did not know what to say to that, so he just nodded.

  Molly opened her eyes. “Sure it’s holding that great lot of them that’s making it clearer. They’re to be important to us.”

  “In what way, Mistress?” asked Hob.

  “At this moment I know not, but they’ll be, in some way, the tipping of the balance of life and death to one or more of us, lad; the balance of life and death.”

  CHAPTER 25

  ON A ROADSIDE BOULDER, MOSS-COVERED, set amid gorse bushes and backed by an old oak, sat a red squirrel, nibbling at something held between its delicate hands. When Hob and Milo came up the road, the ox’s hooves thudding on the packed dirt, the wagons creaking and rumbling behind, the squirrel put its meal in its mouth, turned, and sprang to the trunk of the oak. It ran lightly up the wood to its drey; the twig-built nest was snug in the angle where the first thick branch left the trunk. It disappeared into the dome-shaped structure, then reappeared in the drey’s round portal, emitting a series of scratchy barks: it was scolding them.

  “Stop a moment, Hob,” called Molly, and Hob pulled Milo to a halt, and down along the line the other wagons came to a stop as well. Molly was looking around her.

  “Sure, there was a squirrel the last time I passed yon stone,” said Molly, “years ago, and this one—perhaps a descendant!—reminding me of it, so that I’m looking at it, and seeing that familiar boulder, and that oak behind it. . . . There should be a branching road just ahead, around that stand of beech, and down that road. . . . Well, let us see.”

  They set forth again, and it was as Molly remembered: a road led off to the east, a smaller, rougher road, but wide enough for the wagons.

  “Turn off on this path, Hob a rún,” said Molly, “and we’ll see if my memory’s not gone amiss, and then we’ll see . . . what we’ll see.”

  Hob was swinging along at his usual pace, just the right speed to match Milo’s steady but not overswift plodding, when without warning he stopped. Milo went on a pace or two before he stopped as well, the big head swinging around to see what Hob was about.

  Hob was looking at a configuration of three birches in an otherwise grassy field; they looked familiar. And that low rock outcrop: surely he had seen that before. A flood of memories poured through him, things he had long forgotten—a group of boys up on that outcrop, struggling to push one another off onto the grass a few feet below, the winner to be the last boy on the rock.

  And over that next hill should be St. Edmund, the village where, from the age of four to the age of eleven, he had been raised by old Father Athelstan. He turned and looked at Molly but could not speak for the moment, overwhelmed with a tide of conflicting emotions.

  “Father Ugwistan’s telling us that the meeting with the barons, ’twill not be so soon as we’d thought,” she said. “And then I’m realizing where our footsteps have brought us, and thinking ’tis a visit you should have made before this, and—well, ’tis hard not to feel one’s meant to go to see Father Athelstan again.”

  They went on, and in the distance, Hob could see a boy running down a hill toward the village, and soon thereafter the church bell began to toll. They passed fields planted by the villagers; wood-rail fences began; and a young man with a hoe, already looking along the road at the sound of the bell, came walking briskly over to the fence. He put a hand on the top rail, nodding in greeting. Hob looked at him closely: this sturdy young farmer, could it be—

  “Dickon!” exclaimed Hob, halting Milo and g
oing to the fence. Here was one of his playmates, one of the very boys whom he had striven to push from the top of the rock, as they had striven to throw him down.

  “Hob? Is it ye, i’ truth?”

  “Yes, we’ve come back to see Father Athelstan, and, well, everyone! Is, um, is Father well?”

  “He’s well, he is, but verra old. We heard you were away to do grand things, ’tis what Father said, any road, and then we thought ye might be dead. And we’ve had a bit o’ trouble here as well, that’s why Sexton is ringing the bell: we’ve a boy on watch, and he’s announced ye ahead of time. But come and see everyone. . . .” His face fell a bit. “Well, owd Wybert has died, as well as Gammer Madge, but I’m thinking most o’ the others ye knew are still on live.”

  He propped the hoe against the fence, and clambered over. He embraced Hob and clapped him on the back a few times, and was introduced to Molly, who immediately brought out a streak of shyness in Dickon, which only increased when he was introduced to Hob’s lovely wife. He shook Jack’s hand, the dark man reaching down from the wagon, and the whole group set off for the village, perhaps a quarter mile down the road.

  As they came into the tiny main street, with its few wattle-and-daub houses, and the little rectangular church of St. Edmund, built of stones dug from the fields so long ago, the bell ceased ringing in the squat church tower. Folk were coming out from their houses and in from the fields, at first fearful and then delighted at this harmless relief from the sameness of village life.

  “Eadward! Margaret! Beatrix! And here’s Michael!” The young men and women crowding around Hob were reaching out to touch him, to shake his hand, to pat his back: his former playmates. And somewhat more restrained, standing back a bit, were those who had been older when he left. Seven or so years had wrought some changes. Those who had been unmarried men and women were now young fathers and mothers; those who had been middle-aged were now becoming elderly, and those who had been quite old were now frail and ancient, or had been carried through the lych-gate into the little churchyard.