Hob shook his head; he wiped his gory hands on a dry section of Sinibaldo’s surcoat, and folded back the lapel to reveal the leather baldric with its loops and their deadly cargo. Hob pulled out three of the Venetian darts, all that were left. He shuffled around, still on his knees, and painfully got to his feet.
With two darts held together in his right hand and one in his left, he advanced on the Amazigh sorcerer. He raised the darts high, and Yattuy became aware of him. The magus half turned, and aimed a forefinger at him, keeping the other hand trained on Molly. A terrible hot tingling began in Hob’s face and swept down his neck to his body, and he felt his vision darkening again, and with a wrenching effort born of desperation he took a step forward and fell toward the wizard, all three darts sinking into the angular hard body, two in Yattuy’s chest and one into his back, high up near the shoulder.
Again Hob collapsed, but his vision cleared almost at once, and so he was able to see the success of his attack: there was a moment when nothing happened, and then the sorcerer’s long body curved backward into a bow, his mouth gave forth a shriek that was muffled at once by a gush of yellow foam, and he crumpled to the floor in a writhing tangle of narrow limbs. He flailed about for endless terrible moments, his shoulders whipping back and forth, his hands striking the floor, the knuckles making a sharp crack over and over; finally Hob could hear the snap snap of the long bones of forearm and shin as Yattuy’s own convulsing muscles broke them like dry branch wood. At last the Marroch conjurer lay motionless.
As soon as Yattuy ceased to move, Molly sprang to Nemain’s side and cradled her; Hob crawled over to them and Molly had him hold her while she rooted in her gown’s pockets. She brought forth a small linen bag with a pungent odor of mint and yarrow, and held it beneath Nemain’s nostrils. Hob settled his wife so that she lay back against his chest, and took to chafing her wrists, repeating her name in a desperate voice.
She was so very still! Was she dead? He had an instant of terrible despair so potent that his vision actually darkened again, and he thought that he might be dying himself, and he thought that perhaps it was of no great moment whether he did or did not.
Just then she gave a barely audible moan, and rolled her head from side to side; her legs moved in random restless movements. He buried his face in her hair, his soul upwelling from the lightless seawater cavern into which it had plunged, and he wept.
But only for a heartbeat or two; he felt Molly’s hand grip his shoulder, and he came back to himself, and looked around the field of battle, that he might see what was still to do. He realized that there was near silence from the hall, save for a rapid rhythmic scraping sound. He glanced behind him. The Beast held the last bouda in the air, the two-hundredweight animal suspended as though from a gallows by the enormous black hands about its neck just behind the jaws, while the life was slowly crushed from it. The scraping sound was made by one hind foot, that just reached the floor, the claws scrabbling at the oak.
The kicking slowed, then stopped, and Jack-the-Beast dropped the bouda like a sack of grain; it landed with a blunt heavy thud and the clack clack of clawed feet limply striking the floor.
Molly was holding a bottle to Nemain’s lips; she coughed and sat up, put a hand to steady the bottle neck, and drank again. She took Hob’s arm where it was draped across her shoulders and drew it tight about her. To Molly she said, looking at Yattuy’s contorted body, a knot of twisted limbs in the center of the room, “Is he dead, then?”
“He is.”
She leaned back against Hob and sighed wearily. “He had horse-strength; wasn’t I feeling his will battering at me, battering at me; ’twas like Jack’s hammer, and then ’twas all red, and then ’twas all black—” She sat up suddenly and took deep rapid breaths, and Molly took her hand, and she calmed down again and fell back against her husband.
A shape loomed in the archway into the hall: Jack-the-Beast. It stood on all fours, blood from its wounds and the blood of the bouda dripping onto the floorboards, surveying the room, then gave an enormous, heart-stunning roar. For a moment everyone froze, white faces turned toward the Beast. Then the monster sat down in the doorway, looked up and off to the side, and slapped at its breast. Its lips writhed back from the appalling menace of its teeth, but closed again. Then it sat back, its short bowed legs out before it, and propped itself to one side on its powerful left arm, for all the world like a workman resting for a moment from his labors. It did not seem hostile; it did not seem in a mood to do anything but sit awhile.
In the center of the room, just behind Yattuy’s corpse, lay the little amulet bag Molly had prepared for Jack; now she got up from Nemain’s side, went and picked up the amulet, and retied it about the Beast’s short thick neck. She murmured prayers in Irish and gave the Beast a sip from a small flask produced from the recesses of her gown.
The Beast moved its legs a bit; were they somewhat longer? Hob could not tell. He had seen Jack-the-Beast transform once before, both to and from the Beast state, and the onset had been sudden and the recovery gradual, and so it proved now. Silence held in the room, da Panzano watching in horrified fascination, standing pressed back against the wall, his right hand holding the crude cross that he wore about his neck on an iron chain, his lips moving silently.
Hob, cradling his wife, felt curiously calm after the paroxysms of the last hour. He was content to watch Molly, with her murmured spells and endearments, administer who-knew-what potion to the Beast, which all the while grew slimmer, and longer, and less hirsute, until it was no longer the Beast, or Jack-the-Beast, but Jack: weak, naked, wounded, and a bit dazed, but recognizably Jack.
From where he stood, frozen, watching Molly with Jack, da Panzano said in a small dusty voice, “You are far more enmeshed in Satan’s snares than even I had thought, madam.” Molly ignored him.
In one corner of the room was a handsome cabinet of dark wood, a cross carved into the doors. Da Panzano pushed himself away from the wall and walked stiffly over to the cabinet; he withdrew a small vial of oil and went back to where Sinibaldo’s ruined body lay. The papal legate knelt and began to administer the last rites.
Hob stroked Nemain’s hair; she seemed almost asleep. He watched the priest attending to Sinibaldo with the same bemused detachment with which he had observed Molly attending to Jack. There was a certain similarity in the two activities.
Da Panzano finished. He looked up and his eyes met Hob’s. “He was a ragazzo, a street urchin, and he grows up, he is leading a gang of young thieves and brawlers, and one day I catch him breaking in to steal from the rectory. He was a duro, a street tough, but I see something in him, I see something in him. I say come with me, I make you something more than this street garbage.”
Molly had run out to the wagons and returned with bandages, ointments, and a little jar of pain’s-ease. Now she was administering to Jack, cleaning and wrapping his wounds, and Nemain was nearly asleep. It was as though da Panzano and Hob were the only ones in the room: he held Hob’s eyes and he spoke quietly, though his voice was shaking a little, and his English was slipping.
“I take him in, I show him how to dress, to behave. He is already a brawler; I get him men who are deadly, who train him to kill with weapons and without weapons. He is flourish in my service: he is happy—he tell me he is happy, though he is not a man to smile; and he is save me many times.”
To his surprise Hob realized that the dark eyes, normally keen as a hawk’s and just as pitiless, were shining with tears. Da Panzano patted Sinibaldo’s chest. His hand came away reddened, but the legate did not seem to notice.
“Sinibaldo, my son: there was no dog on earth so faithful as he.”
CHAPTER 35
AFTER A WHILE NEMAIN SAT up and put her clothing and hair in order, and Molly took one of the hooded cloaks that the bouda had worn and got it around Jack. The dark man, drained from the rapid and unanticipated change into Beast form, the forced return to himself, and the bites and bruises inflicted by the bouda, sat qu
ietly on the floor, propped against the wall. His wounds did not seem serious, although he was plainly very weary. Hob stood and stretched. He was very tired himself, but happy to see Nemain feeling well enough to go to Molly and to help with Jack.
Da Panzano roused himself—he had been sitting and staring at Sinibaldo—and began walking about the room, which, like any battlefield, was drenched in blood and strewn with corpses. And now Hob, really looking around for the first time, realized that the hyenas had reverted in death to their human form, with all the wounds and broken bones that Jack-the-Beast had inflicted. The papal agent walked about among them, his lips moving; occasionally, with a richly made shoe, he would shift a tangle of limbs to show each individual more clearly.
Hob wondered at the legate’s odd behavior: Was he praying for these demons? But da Panzano seemed to say only a word or so at each corpse. The twisted, foam-smeared body of the sorcerer, frozen in a silent eyes-wide gape-mouthed scream, a sight to engender nightmares, he avoided completely. Now the legate went through them all again, going out into the hall where there were more bodies, and back in again. He poured wine into a goblet, and sat, and sipped at the wine, his gaze far away.
At last he seemed to remember something. He said to Molly, “Madam, I have made you the promise, no? You will have our support, and when I reach Durham I will send a good amount of silver to Castle Chantemerle; Sir Odinell can keep it safe for you. Then I must leave this country for a little, or this king, he may find me, and be unpleasant to me. But I have also prepared a letter for you; it is with the papal seal, and when you are need the help, you show this to a bishop, an abbot, a prior—not some country priest, he is not understanding what to do—and they will give you the help. It is for the unusual difficulty, vero? And when you are ready to go to your home in Ireland, we will speak together; we will decide what help of ours will be best for you.”
He spoke to Hob. “Squire Robert, perhaps you can do me a service—I am fatigue’, and you are young, and strong. . . . Go into that hallway, go all the way to the end—it runs the length of this house and down to the monastery. There is a door to the monastery to the left, but it is locked; go into the room at the very end, to the right. The letter of assistance, he is there, on the table, in a little packet with the papal seal; like so.” He showed Hob his ring, with the crossed-key seal prominent.
Hob looked a question at Nemain; she just nodded, and indeed she seemed quite herself, if a bit subdued.
He stepped out into the hallway. He found himself in a long narrow corridor, flagged with close-fitted stones and paneled in dark wood. It went on for quite a long way, leaving the guest house; at one point, through windows in the side wall, he could see that the corridor ran along one side of the cloister; beyond the cloister columns he could see the garth, the grassy open area in the center of the cloister. Then he was past, into a windowless section of the hallway. He thought that he must be alongside the monastery itself now, although the one doorway opening into that building was closed and locked.
At last he came to the archway on the right, just before the corridor ended in a blank wall. He stepped through into what must be a study: rolls of parchment were thrust into pigeonholes; two writing desks stood along one wall; there were pots of ink and quill pens in holders, and oil lamps, unlit, in brackets on the walls. The only light in the study came from the fireplace, the fire burning low and filling the space with moving shadows. Someone had laid and lit the fire against the night damps of England, but at the moment the room was deserted.
Much of the room was dominated by a long trestle table, the surface the usual planed-smooth oak, rubbed with beeswax cloths. Hob could just detect the faint scent of the wax: an earthy musk, a suggestion of honey. He looked about for the packet. But the table was empty save for two large silver candlesticks, the candles unlit.
Hob stood a moment, idly running a palm over the table, resting. He was weary unto death, swaying as he stood. But clearly this was a cul-de-sac; he must retrace his steps down the corridor and ask da Panzano if the priest was sure of his directions, or perhaps determine that Hob himself had made some misstep, and taken a wrong corridor.
Even as he thought this, a sound came to his ears, stopped, began again. What was— It was an irregular tick, tick, a pause, then tick tick tick. Claws, claws on stone! Hob snatched his dagger from its sheath and shrank back against the table, his heart pounding. His fatigue dropped from him like a discarded cloak.
The archway that led back into the corridor showed an impenetrable black. The ticking footsteps resumed, then paused. With hideous slowness, the misshapen mask of a hyena peered around the jamb of the arch. Black lips drew back from a jumble of huge teeth, and round mad eyes glared in at him. From the creature’s lips broke an eerie titter, followed by a bass snarl. A moment later it loped around the corner and sprang at him.
Hob dropped at the last instant beneath the table, and the beast, missing its target, crashed into the table edge. It sprawled awkwardly for a moment, claws scrabbling on the stone floor, and Hob plunged the dagger into its neck.
The hyena wrestled itself up to a standing position and backed away a few paces, shaking its head. The dagger, which for a moment had seemed so strongly embedded in its neck, began to loosen. A few drops of blood came out around the steel, but not the throbbing gout that might be expected from a wound in the throat, with its great blood vessels.
The dagger slid from the wound, which was hardly bleeding at all—even as Hob stared in dismay it seemed to be closing—and fell with a dull clatter to the floor. Hob rolled to the other side of the table, and stood, unarmed, defenseless. The hulking beast began to move toward him again, shoulders high, demon-mask head slung low on a long neck. There was nothing between Hob and this monstrosity but the table, empty but for its two candlesticks—no weapons on the walls, no window behind him to escape through. Hob looked about the room and back to the slowly approaching shapeshifter, and again back to the room, trying to search for something to aid him but also anxious to keep an eye on the death advancing upon him.
He moved sideways a bit, down toward the end of the great table, and the beast paused, perhaps assessing the best way to come at him. Its gaze seemed to display—afterward Hob could never fully explain how, even to himself—a more than bestial, but less than human, intelligence. Tick. Certainly it seemed in no hurry to spring: it took a step or two, paused, then took another two steps, all the while staring into his face, its lips writhing back from its fangs. Tick, tick. Tick. A continuous low rumble issued from its chest. It plays with me, thought Hob, and the voice of Monsignor da Panzano came to him again: “With perhaps a bit of the cat as well, no?”
Hob looked about him in a frenzy: He must act, but what was there to do? He had no weapon, and bare hands against two hundredweight of dagger-toothed demon would never prevail. Then tick, the beast took another step, and Hob shuffled sideways, his mind blank.
• • •
DESPERATION, FEAR, perhaps even the faint scent of beeswax from the candles and the table’s surface: through Hob’s mind ran a bolt of memory, swift as summer lightning, of a lesson from Sir Balthasar. The grim castellan would set Hob problems to solve, at all hours and in all places. On this day, months ago, they were on their way to a practice session with wooden knives, to be held in the castle’s herb garden, when Sir Balthasar stepped into the castle’s small chapel, redolent of incense and beeswax, a little room set aside for private prayer, as opposed to the larger chapel where Father Baudoin said Mass.
They knelt, prayed a moment, and then Sir Balthasar stood, put one of the wooden knives aside and gave Hob the other.
“Were a knife to come at you, and you unarmed, what would you do?” he asked.
“I, uh . . .”
The knight spread his arms wide. “Here, come at me, come kill me.”
Hob was used to this sort of thing from the knight, and he knew that it was almost impossible to get the better of Sir Balthasar, and at any rate t
he knives were blunt, and wooden, and so without hesitation or warning he lunged at his mentor.
Sir Balthasar sprang backward, close to the wall behind the little altar. With his back to the wall he leaped straight up and seized the crucifix fastened there and dropped lightly back. He held the cross by the bottom and swung it like a hammer; Hob threw up the wooden knife to block the blow, and Sir Balthasar, by some cunning twist, snagged the wooden knife blade in the angle between the upright and the crossbar, wrenched, and sent the knife flying into a corner. The huge knight swung the cross up and over, a tremendous overhand blow aimed at Hob’s forehead and stopping a few fingers’ breadth from its target.
Hob, caught on the wrong foot, off balance, astonished at the loss of his dagger, would have been stunned like a steer at the harvest slaughter, had the castellan not stopped with such perfect control.
“You must make shift with what is around you,” said Sir Balthasar. He kissed the crucifix and set it on a nearby bench.
“But—but, my lord,” began Hob, concerned about sacrilege, “to use a cross . . .”
“Nonsense,” said Sir Balthasar. “Do you think the Sieur Jesus wants to see you gutted like a fish?”
The knight was as devout as the next man—Hob had often seen him at Mass—but he was not a fussily pious sort.
At this moment a castle servant came into the chapel, bearing a broom and a basketful of fresh rushes; seeing the two standing there, he bowed and prepared to withdraw.
“Stay you,” said Sir Balthasar, and he pointed to the cross. “See that that’s put back up.”
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