The Ravens’ Banquet

by Clifford Beal

  “Nor are we!” she shot back. “How could you have thought us so? Fraw Holt looks after children as she does the soldier. She is Holda, Goddess of life and abundance. Not of death and malice.”

  Whether it was my hurt at her revelations or something else entirely, I told her the secret that I had held from her for days.

  “Has She looked after you and yours as well as you believe? Don’t speak of the cruelty of my God. Your husband is not coming back with the Emperor’s army. He perished along with the other miners of the Harz at the siege of Göttingen. I know this, for my army was there.”

  Her face fell and her eyes became filled with tears. She nodded hesitantly.

  “I too, know this thing. I have seen it in my dreams.”

  I quickly regretted my wounding words and stepped forward again to take her hands, roughened and scarred. And she let me, her fingers entwining mine.

  “Forgive me my hard news. But what have you here in this wild place? And what of your babe? Who cares for it now? You remain exiled to the world when surely you can go home again.”

  Rosemunde looked up into my face. Although the tears welled, shining in her eyes, they refused to drop down upon her cheeks. Soon, they had receded and once again she had mastered her weaker nature.

  “My daughter is safe with my sister. But I can never go back to the village,” she said.

  “But why?” I asked. “Is it the silver? Surely that cannot be.”

  She shook her head slowly. “Nay, it is because of what I have seen and what I know. These secrets tie me to this place and to the others and here must I stay.”

  I wanted to tell her that she had been bewitched by the old crone and that life apart from the company of other folk had done her great harm. That I would take her away from this place and restore her to her family. But I held back, not knowing even my own nature anymore. I was as lost as she.

  "Sweet Jesus!” I muttered, releasing her. I ran my hands through my tangled locks as if to rip them from my head. “I’m so full of confusion that I shall explode! How did I come to be here? Why in God’s name have I remained?”

  She raised her hand to my shoulder but I drew away.

  “I have seen enough. I’m going back to the camp.”

  She nodded, disappointment plain on her face. She had not reckoned on my anger at what she had just shared with me.

  But I took a half step toward her again. "You have given me shelter and kindness and I would repay this to you,” I said. “I won’t give you up nor shall I speak a word of your secret. But I beg you not to give your confidence to Christoph. He will ruin you all, of that I am certain. Do you understand me?”

  She looked at me not unkindly but, when she spoke, it was like that of a mother to an unappreciative child.

  “Come, I will take you back now. It is near time for the evening meal and the Oma will be looking for us.”

  XIII

  The Green King

  October 1626

  The Tower

  Fifteenth of July, 1645

  AS I WAS pushed into the council chamber at the Lodgings House, my eyes only but slowly adjusted so that I could discern the surroundings in which I was to be tried for my life.

  When the door clanged shut behind me, the only light that entered the main room was from a three-paneled leaded window off to the west side of the house. The sudden blindness in a moment or two gave way to objects dimly perceived. Those sun rays that did manage to fall into the room spread thinly across the long table at the far end. My sight, not yet fully restored, gave hazy form to several gentlemen sitting behind the table, all silent as I made my entry with two gaolers at my back.

  One dark figure stood off to the side. It was William.

  “Colonel, if you please, be seated here,” he said quietly, motioning to a chair that stood a few paces from the front of the table. There was nothing else in the whole of the room.

  I took my place as directed and faced my accusers. There were six gentlemen before me, half in near-darkness and all sadly attired in black. All that lay behind them was black and thus the stark white linen of their laced bands made their heads look suspended on the very air.

  And even at this distance of several paces, I could smell the cheese, onion and beer of their midday repast wafting across the table. The air was muggy and stale, far worse than outside but my eyes leastways finally became adjusted to the gloom.

  I knew three of the men in front of me. Sir Thomas Pinchon, who sat in the centre, was a member of the House and an infamous Puritan. As mad as he was in youth, he had become madder still after five years in Massachusetts with others of his kind. And such a sharp existence among the Savages predisposed him to be of little mercy (though to my mind Redman and Puritan were cut of the same rough cloth).

  The other two that I recognised at this table were military men both. Major Nichols I knew not too well but he was a Scot and a good soldier. The other, Obadiah Wharton, was like me a Colonel of Horse who had seen service in the German lands. We had once served together under the flag of the Swedes and I had even given him a mount when he had a horse shot out from under him at Nordlingen. But those times were long past now.

  It was just as well that my memory served me, for I never was that day introduced to my Inquisitors. Pinchon went straight to the business at hand.

  “This commission has been assembled to examine you, Richard Treadwell, late in command of those forces in rebellion to King and Parliament. Will you confirm you are the said Richard Treadwell?”

  “I am he,” I replied.

  “Then let it be recorded so,” said Pinchon, motioning to one of the others serving as secretary.

  He crossed his arms and leaned forward.

  “Sir, you are accused of high treason. Namely that you did willfully give aid and succour to those who would invite foreign armies to make war upon this Kingdom. How do you answer this charge?”

  “I am not aware that this is a lawful trial,” I replied calmly.

  “This is a Commission of Examination, lawfully convened under the authority of the Committee of the Two Kingdoms,” shot back Pinchon, much annoyed. “Though this is not a trial it will serve as such since this Commission will recommend judgement to the full Committee. I would bear this in mind if I were you.”

  “I find this difficult to accept, sir,” I said, “since it is well known that the King's Parliament has lawfully sat at Oxford these last few years and not at West Minster.”

  “Richard! For pity's sake,” said my brother from his chair off to the side.

  But Pinchon raised his hand not so much as to stay my brother’s outburst but to demonstrate his lack of concern with mine.

  “Whether you agree or not to this convocation is your own affair. When it is over your fate shall be judged regardless of your sympathies.”

  Obadiah Wharton leaned forward to speak, offering an open palm in almost a gesture of conciliation.

  “Colonel Treadwell, you have the advice of counsel in the course of this meeting and also the good fortune that it is in the form of your own kin, Sir William. I urge you to pay heed to his words so that you may defend your honour without recourse to obfuscation. Sir William has intimated that your acts may not have been committed entirely of your own volition. This Board would hear all evidence.”

  Pinchon grunted in agreement then turned his gaze back to me.

  “Now then, sir, what say you to the Charge?”

  I looked to my brother. He wordlessly urged me to answer as he had earlier instructed. To tell all, to name those that had led me astray. To denounce the Cause. To lie.

  I turned my head back to the table of the shadow men.

  “I am guilty of nothing,” I said.

  ROSEMUNDE AND I returned to the camp. My eye hurriedly sought out Christoph for I feared greatly that he may have spied upon our tryst in the deep wood and so learned of Rosemunde's secret. I found him near the fire and supping greedily of the evening fare.

  I on the ot
her hand had no appetite and could barely force down a few mouthfuls of the stew. And all the while, I could see Christoph eyeing me from across the fire. Not spiteful, for I had seen him often enough of that mind, but rather, as if he was weighing up some little thing that preyed on his thoughts. I worried all the more that he had followed us into the grove only to slip back to the camp before we ourselves had returned. He had these past few nights taken to sleeping at the fire, rolled up in the woolen cloaks that the women had given over to us. The wicker hovel he had abandoned to me.

  He was hatching a stratagem, I knew. It only remained to be seen if he would share it with me. And I dreaded the moment when I would have to decide whether to join him and thus betray those who had saved our lives. The growing chill of the night air made apparent the summer's impending demise. And with its passing, so too my days of innocence.

  “What say you, Richard?” he said to me quietly after we had finished our meal. He squatted down next to me, his back to a log and his boots resting upon the rocks of the fire. “How long must we labour to gain one chest of silver? Do you reckon that we two can do it the quicker?”

  “Perhaps,” I replied, carefully choosing my words. “We have yet three baskets of ore awaiting the fire. But I know not how much that will yield us of the pure metal.”

  He seemed to ponder this, nodding slowly as he stared into the flames. He said nothing at first; the only sound around us that of a mournful cuckoo that perched high above.

  At last, having mulled my words, he replied, still gazing into the sputtering fire.

  “Then we must find out on the morrow.” He gave a quick shiver of his shoulders. “This place make me unnatural cold and I have no wish to stay any longer than I need to. We can’t trust these creatures, remember that.”

  “Aye, but rashness doesn’t serve us well either,” I told him, my voice low.

  But he said not a word more.

  I lay in the hovel that night, fitfully passing in and out of wakefulness, the damp chill finding my bones despite my wrappings. I was near to sleep, suspended between the two worlds, when I became aware of a shape entering the hovel. I reacted slowly, halfasleep as I was and not sure whether I dreamt or not. Yet as this shape came to me, my heart near upon leapt out of my chest and I reached out for my blade that lay next to me. Fool that I was, I could not find it, my hand scratching about the ground desperate to clasp it and smite that which was coming for me.

  And as I sat up, pulling my knees to my chest and still flailing about for the sword, I saw the silhouette of a woman, framed in the moonlight that spilled into the doorway. She said not a word, but as she knelt down before me, I knew that it was Rosemunde. She opened her cloak and clothed as she was, lay upon the blanket that was my bed. I moved not a muscle, confounded, but she reached across my form and pulled the woolens over us both.

  I sat there for a moment and then slowly lay down again by her side. Rosemunde grasped my arm and gently pulled it around her waist, her back to me and her hair in my face. I could smell her and feel her body move with steady breaths, but still no words came from out her lips.

  And though I had not had the pleasure of a woman since the fall of Münden, my baser nature stayed buried inside me. I grew still and held her to me. And no words passed my lips either. My mind played with the queerness of the situation, but only briefly. Soon, with the scent of her hair under my nose, I had fallen into a heavy sleep, a sleep born of worry and fatigue.

  I dreamt of Death. I was again in the barn near Celle. All the old comrades again together as we tortured the fat merchant. Rosemunde stood by too, as did the Green Man. But he lurked away in a corner, as if fearful of our work or of us. And as the merchant cried out in his agonies, so the cries became multiplied until it was not one but a hundred. And then I was in battle, hundreds yelling and cursing around me. Horses bolted past with flailing riders and smoke billowed around me in choking clouds. But I was looking for Samuel and did not stop to fight. Rosemunde appeared before me to say that Anya had bid me to return. I turned to find Balthazar at my back, his head cleaved to the nose.

  “Deserter!” he railed, reaching out to seize me. Even as he did, ivy sprang from out of his wound and spilled forth from his lips until he was consumed by vibrant green.

  “You should not have left me. You should not have left your comrades. Look upon me! See what you have wrought!”

  I took pity on him and reached out my hand. Quick as a Serpent, an ivy tendril wrapped about my arm and bound it fast. And this instantly sprouted others that climbed further until I was ensnared completely.

  I awoke chilled and awash in sweat. Rosemunde was no longer at my side. I ran my hand over my face to wipe away the nightmares that still danced before me. I threw my doublet on hastily, grimacing at its cold and damp embrace. It seemed as if I had not slumbered at all for my heated brain had worked itself fully even as my body took repose. I was sore tired still. Out in the clearing and under a grim grey sky, the others were already about the day's business.

  Christoph sat near the fire, indeed as I had left him the previous night, wrapped in his blanket and looking disinterested in his surroundings. As I took in his frightful appearance – dirty, bearded, and hair like a scarecrow – I only then comprehended that I must look his very twin.

  I walked to where Rosemunde stood alone, off away from the other women. As I came alongside her, she turned to me. Those eyes of green looked at me, but they held not the joy of a woman beholding her Love. I looked into the face of a woman who carried sorrow like a sling of firewood upon her back and who bore the weight in silence. She, who dwelt in the wild like Diana’s handmaiden, who hunted by moonlight among ancient trees and who shunned the company of men, she was a creature fast becoming old before her time. The lines that could be painted away by a lady of higher station stood proudly on Rosemunde’s brow. Though her cheeks and lips yet held their bloom and hue, her eyes had begun to hollow and her neck to roughen. Her mouth found no smile for me as I held her in my gaze. But even so, my Heart was hers. Widow or witch, I could not leave her and my conscience tore me deep.

  “Why,” I asked her, my voice ragged, “Why have you lain by my side like a wife to a husband? What would you have of me, Rosemunde?”

  Her hand barely touched my arm but lingered over it. She half turned away, showing me her profile, and filling me with a desire to stroke her face.

  “It was… what needed to be done,” she replied, voice barely above a whisper. “I do in this place what I want to do, as do all who share this life with me. And last night I wished the companionship of a man.”

  I grew angry at her words. “The companionship of any man or the companionship of me? Tell me what your heart says because you have confounded my head and my own heart lies heavy in its fullness!”

  She turned to me again and her face became less harsh for a moment at hearing my words. “Rikard let the White Lady unfold what must be. Let it be Her time that governs us and not mine or yours. We shall all see what comes of it as each day passes.”

  “I think you speak not of the will of the White Lady but of the will of the Oma,” I replied.

  “They are one in the same, don’t you see that?”

  My frustration grew stronger with her words.

  “Then it is time we had an audience with the Oma once again,” I told her sharply. “I will work in the mine today, but this eve, by God, I shall have news of what lies ahead for us.”

  But my words did not seem to frighten her.

  “Your companion has already made the same demand. I will tell the Oma and we shall meet if she so wishes it. There is no deceit here, that you should have realised by now.”

  Her attitude enflamed me with anger and desire both. I would have seized her then and there in my arms had not Christoph been a stone's throw away. Yet I held my passions and turned from her.

  “Come, Englishman!” cried Christoph rising from his place. “It’s time for us to go to work and play the badgers two. The s
ilver won't fill our baskets while we scratch our arses here.”

  And so we rigged ourselves for the damp walk to the mine. I was sullen as he prattled and taunted me, as usual. That day I hacked and hewed at the ore, pouring out my anger at the cold wet wall of glittering grey. And so the hours passed as I worked and waited for the afternoon's gloom to descend. Christoph blustered that he would throttle the crone unless he got the truth out of her – and his share of the silver. And so our day passed until both of us were topped to the brim with impatience.

  The rain had mercifully held off all the day, and we arrived back at the encampment dry and to find all the Sisters thereabouts, some busy about the fire cooking the evening fare. I searched out for Rosemunde, but could spy her nowhere. I supped like a wolf, famished as I was, and awaited her arrival and that of the Oma. Christoph had just tossed his wooden bowl to the ground and wiped his mouth when Rosemunde appeared.

  “If it is still your wish to speak with the Oma, then come with me. She has told me that she will tell you what you wish to know.”

  Again, we trod along that twisting path up the hillside, though this time not in torchlight but rather in the failing daylight. Summer was already fleeing the world; the chill came quickly as the sun fell low among the tree trunks. This day, overcast as it had been, had already killed the warmth of the Earth. I shivered as Rosemunde led Christoph and me up the slope.

  Rosemunde held aside the mud-encrusted red cloth that served as the Oma's door and we three entered the hovel. The unpleasant smell struck my nostrils straight away like the stink of some serpent’s den and the Oma’s ancient yet steely voice called out to us.

  “Come, Rosemunde! My good daughter! Bring to me the soldiers who have helped us in our time of need.”

  I could only just discern her form on the floor of the place, the lamps casting an orange glow and throwing a hundred shadows across the room. Indeed, the arching roof of her house, made as it was of woven boughs, looked alive and ready to close upon us.