The Ravens’ Banquet

by Clifford Beal

  I could feel my grip slipping, his own hand pulling on my wrist. I released his head and smashed my forearm and elbow into his cheek, snapping his head back. Reaching over to double my grasp upon his dagger hand, I leaned into him with all my might and strained to force his hand down. I snorted blood and felt it pouring from me into my mouth.

  He gave a cry and I felt his grip weaken for a moment. I turned his dagger – three hands upon its hilt – and plunged it down into his doublet. Quickly, his sallow skin, blotched with red, drained away to ashen. I felt his grip on the dagger relax. My fingers were wet with his blood. It now ran from his side covering both of us as we embraced, still straining.

  “Well struck, comrade,” he said, half gasping with the effort. “That’s how you repay me for saving you at Münden? Miserable son of a whore!”

  And I, more in surprise than regret, pulled back from him, still on my knees even as he doubled over on his, clutching at the dagger hilt that protruded from his side. A groan issued from him, full of rage, and he shook his head as if to shake off an excess of drink.

  “Christ, look what you’ve done to me, you bastard,” he hissed at me, eyes filling with tears. “You wanted her. Now you can both burn together when they take you back to Goslar!”

  And then he laughed, a cackle that became a retch quick enough. “More devil than gentleman in you, Englishman. I always knew that.”

  “Christoph...” I mumbled, dazed to speak with a man I had just knifed.

  He pounced on me with new strength born of hate. Both his hands squarely about my throat, I was thrown backwards with him over my chest, his blood splattering me as it poured from his mouth and his chest.

  “Witch! You fucking miserable witch!” he cried, throttling me with a strength that I feared was not his alone.

  This dying monster had found a grip of iron and I could not pry his hands from my throat. I flailed about wildly, slapping his head and face. My thumb sought out his eye socket but he tossed his head to frustrate this.

  “Nay, not good enough, comrade,” he wheezed. “No, you won’t burn with the others! I’m going to take you down with me!” And he leaned in all the harder, pressing with all his might.

  My head throbbed, my limbs had become pudding. I could feel my fight sapping away, I was sinking down through the mud and moss. I was dying. And then, his brows furrowed as he looked into my face, and I watched as the life went out of him, like the snuffing of a candle. He fell on me and rolled off, and I coughed and sought to drink in breath at the same time. My arms were shaking as I pushed myself up, retching and looking into his dead eyes, still focused in rage.

  Too late did I notice the figure that darkened my side. And even as I turned to face him, the musket stock struck me full on my head. And all was blackness.

  XVI

  Goslar

  October 1626

  The Tower

  Twenty-first of July 1645

  THE JANGLE OF keys again preceded the arrival of my keeper, but this morning I had a visitor wholly unexpected. As the door creaked open, the gaoler strode in barking at me. “Stand, sirrah! Stand now!”

  I rose up off my cot and looked to the doorway. There stood Colonel Obadiah Wharton dressed in a fine russet suit, his black cloak thrown over his arm.

  “You look surprised to see me, Colonel,” he said. “Will you speak with me, sir?” I nodded, dumbstruck by his arrival, but quickly surmised the worst for the purpose of his visit. He walked into the cell, followed by a red coated trooper, and I watched him as he took in the surroundings of my little place.

  “I’m sorry that I have but one chair to offer you, Colonel,” I said.

  “No matter,” he said, hefting it with one hand and moving it to where I stood next to the cot. He turned to the gaoler. “Leave us.”

  The oaf hesitated a moment, calculating a proper response, but then quickly left without a word, the door loudly rattling on its hinges as he pulled the iron ring behind him. The trooper took up station in front of the latch.

  “Sit, Colonel, please,” said Wharton, gesturing to the cot. And then he pulled in the chair underneath him, scraping it on the stone floor.

  I lowered myself upon my rack, the ropes creaking beneath me, and I placed my arms on my knees wondering what was about to come.

  “How mends your wound, sir?” Wharton asked.

  “Well enough, I hope,” I answered.

  Wharton nodded. “We’ve both suffered worse blows over the years, have we not? Do you remember the cannonading we took at Stralsund alongside the Scots? I’m lucky that I’ve still got all my limbs after that one.”

  “But that was a long time ago and we were both younger men.”

  “Aye, the summer of twenty and eight. Not so long ago really.” He smiled at me. “I convinced you then to come over with me from the Danes and sign up with the Swedes. Got you a captaincy besides, didn’t I?”

  “That you did,” I replied, a small smile coming to my lips as well. And the memory of those times rose up again. I recalled the years among the Swedish army, of serving Gustavus Adolphus, of advancing through the German lands and finally of gaining rank and fortune. It was a time when Wharton and I called each other friend.

  “I come to you again…” he said, leaning in close to me. “and again, I offer you the chance to follow me. Follow me back to Fortuna’s bounty, as it was before. You may still do so. Just tell me you will take up the chance when I offer it to you in the presence of the Committee. Take a commission from Parliament, man! The offer will be made.”

  I looked into his face. He was, it seemed to me, unchanged in aspect even after all these years, the same brave cavalier who had ridden alongside me into battle. But it was I who no longer was the same.

  “Fortuna dwells not in England anymore,” I told him softly, “and this war is not like any other. Old friend, your offer is a generous one, but one that I cannot accept with either heart or head.”

  He pursed his lips. “You’re a stubborn fellow indeed, Treadwell. But think well upon this offer, for time is running short. You know full well this judicial duel that you crave is madness. Even if it is granted, what chance is there that you’ll come out alive?”

  “God has already decided my Fate,” I replied, “and I must meet it, come what may.”

  Wharton slowly straightened up, placing his hands on his thighs, hips loudly cracking. “Then I pray that He is kinder to you then you are to yourself, my friend.”

  A GENTLE BREATH blew upon my face, soft like a playful lover puffs on the eyelids of her sleeping beloved. To my ears came the short insistent whistle of a sparrow, so close by my head that surely it spoke to me alone. My nostrils were filled with the scent of freshly cut straw, pungent and comforting to the soul. Surely I was at the back of the kitchen garden, beyond the hedge and lying on the grass, hidden from my father's mistrustful eye. Blissfully shirking my work, flat on my back on a warm summer’s afternoon.

  I opened my eyes. Though my other senses were deluded, my sight restored to me the true knowledge of my situation. From where I lay, my head rested not a foot from the narrow slit of a pane-less window, an arrow loop that funneled in a faint breeze on me. And on its tiny ledge a sparrow was indeed perched, cocking its head as it eyed me, blinking. And the straw that I had smelled, even as I slumbered, was but a thin bed upon a harsher stone floor. My head still ached from the blow of the musket stock and my probing hand found a lump like an egg at the top of my head, the latest for my sorry skull. Though I remembered my duel with Christoph, and then the shock and flash of being clubbed by a soldier, I could not recall anything afterwards. Now, I found myself in surroundings wholly new.

  I rolled over and surveyed my prison. I was in a gigantic stone keep, the circumference of which was greater than any I had beheld before. The walls were fully seven feet thick and indeed it was this very space between window and inner wall that formed my cell. I lay in this vee-shaped window ledge, my ankle shackled by a chain no more than a few fee
t in length and fastened to a ring and pin in the stone.

  My eyes looked over to the other window ledges yet they held no other prisoners. The vast wooden floor of the keep was bare except for two things: the columns that supported the floor above and some machines that caused me worry. Dead centre of the room, like some horrid serpent, a rope stretched up to the ceiling and through a block and down again to coil upon the floor. My mind was filled instantly with visions of the fat merchant we fine fellows had strung up strappado fashion months ago. It would be God’s justice if I was to suffer the same fate and I grew cold at the prospect. And though I had never seen one before, I was sure the wooden contraption with windlass near to the block and tackle must surely be a rack for the stretching. I stirred myself, now in full awareness of the place I was in, and hauled myself up painfully, leaning on the cool stone.

  Two men sat at a table near the stairway and railing at one side of the room. They were playing at cards, a large jug placed between them, and they laughed and swore as the hand was played out. I called out to them, my voice as ragged as a beggar’s.

  “You two, there! What place is this?”

  They both looked to me and commenced laughing anew.

  “Why friend, you be in the Zwinger, the warmest hostelry in Goslar,” said one, shouting across the huge room. “We’re here to wait on you and to see that you come to no harm. Is your accommodation to your liking?”

  He didn’t wait for my answer but burst into such guffaws with his companion that he nearly fell off his stool. I walked forward until I felt the chain about my leg go taut, which put me not a pace beyond the stone cell.

  “Tell me what has become of the others that were with me. The women. Where are they?”

  At this, the two of them pushed back their benches, got up, and walked slowly over, their hobnailed boots tramping on the wooden floor like the tattoo at an execution. They neared me, smiling, tankards in hand.

  “Oh, aye, the women. They were taken too, at least those that were taken alive,” said the pot-bellied gaoler who had answered me before, one hand tucked into the belt of his greasy buff jerkin. “The town guard that brought them in says that they all be witches.”

  “And what would you venture to say about that?” asked his companion, a lanky assfaced Hector who wore an overly large and torn doublet of grey silk that had obviously been the suit of someone else, some unlucky miscreant in circumstances much similar to my own.

  “I know not of what you speak,” I replied. And I shuffled backwards into my cell to lean against a wall. I had been too sheepish in my entreaties to Rosemunde to leave the forest. Now the coven was destroyed and I knew not who lived and who did not. If I had only dragged her out alone – she, me and but one bag of silver – then even now we might be away north, safe from the enemy. But the harsh music of my leg irons mocked me for the bufflehead that I was.

  The gaoler with the bursting paunch chuckled. “My comrade here… Lothar,” at which the other gave a nod with a pull of his crumpled felt hat, “he says he reckons you were with them just for the rutting. And good sport by the looks of the ones I have seen kept below. The only cock among all those Devil’s hens.” And they both laughed again.

  “But as for me,” continued the fat one, “I reckon you is one too. Be you a witch, arschloch?”

  “I am no witch,” I said quietly.

  “And you’re not from hereabouts either, are you, arschloch?”

  At his taunt I said nothing. He grinned and then tossed the contents of his tankard into my face.

  “When the magistrates are finished with you my friend, you’ll be anything they want you to be.”

  He shook his head in disgust. He was right to. I was in that moment a most wretched creature: dirty, unshaven and now dripping with stale ale.

  “I think that you’re mistaken,” said Lothar. “He’s no Hexer. He’s hardly even a man.”

  And then they left me to return to their little table and their gaming and toping. They paid me no further heed and as the hours passed I grew a terrible thirst and begged them for a drink. They mocked me again but, after a time, the fat one brought over two buckets, one empty and one half filled with brackish water.

  “One be for shitting and pissing, the other for drinking. Have a care lest you mix them up.” And this set the skinny one off again with laughter from across the room.

  The day rolled on and as night came down, I grew chilled laying on the stones. My gaolers came and went, ignoring me in the main, and I suffered through the long night sleeping only for what seemed a few fitful moments before gasping into wakefulness again.

  The next morning, my gaolers brought me a bowl of cold cabbage soup and half a loaf of dry bread. I set upon it as if it were the Lord Mayor’s table, consuming all to the last drop and crumb. Seated on the stones, palms on my knees, I thought about Rosemunde. I feared whether she was still alive, whether she might be tied on some machine of torture down below, whether I was in her thoughts as she was in mine. Why had she not listened to my counsel when time was with us?

  And Christoph. By Christ’s Blood, our little partnership had unraveled fully and in so doing had sealed both our fates. But his before mine, it did seem. That he would have betrayed all – and his share of the treasure – out of blind jealousy for me and Rosemunde, confounded me. He was bad to the bone, but he had been no fool in the long year that we had soldiered as comrades. He had saved my life from Samuel’s mad hand and in the end I had taken his. Maybe Christoph would yet have the last laugh. Already my thoughts had turned to what would befall me, accused of witchcraft in this place. Sweet Jesus, when I was a boy at home they had hanged some poor goodwife in Somerset for casting spells and abusing townfolk with her shrewish tongue. Here, in the German lands, I would face the stake and the fire.

  My thoughts for Rosemunde quickly changed instead to thoughts of my own fate as my mind played more and more on what the future held for me. And the fear ate away at me, a ravenous beast that I could no more hold at bay than the coming of night.

  Some time about midmorning, they took me away. They said nothing to me, only unshackling my leg and taking me down the spiraling steps and out of the tower. There was a party of Goslar’s town guard awaiting to escort me. My heart pounded so hard in my chest I thought it would leap from my mouth. The fat gaoler put my hands in irons and off I was led, a partizan blade at the small of my back and half a dozen more at either side.

  Goslar was but a dream as it passed by me on either side. The tall walls that girded this old Free City of the Empire, reminded me of Münden, as did the great houses. But all of this was but little taken in by my senses so sad broken was my condition. It took all my strength to refrain from shaking. We came to a waterwheel and mill, churning madly at a swift white bubbling stream, and then over a stone bridge where we entered the heart of the town. Burghers stopped and watched as our sad procession came through. Some shouted and taunted, some whispered, others scurried away as we marched up the High Street and into the marketplace. And suddenly the street opened wide, and we were in the square, a mass of shouting people, braying animals, and cartmen. But even they gave way as we came through, parting like water before the prow of a ship. All their eyes were upon me, the prisoner. My ears heard “Hexer!” out in the crowd whereupon the Guard closed in about me and redoubled their pace, the point of the partizan pricking my backside as I stumbled upon the cobbles.

  A tall, red-stone, double-towered church rose up before me, the guardian of the market, and ringing the square stood bright whitewashed houses and shops, shutters cast open wide for business. The great turret and clock on the guildhall belted out the quarter hour, its little dancing mechanical figures of silver miners high above us paying no heed to my spectacle. We headed straight for a long porticoed building at the foot of the great church and entered it upon the square, climbing its steep steps to the double oaken doors.

  The guards shoved the slower townsfolk from our path with a few deft flicks from the h
afts of their halberds, and we entered into the Town Hall of Goslar. The sergeant banged thrice on the heavily carved black door of the inner chamber. And we waited. The door slowly opened inwards and I and my escort entered.

  In spite of my agitation, I know my mouth gaped and my eyes widened as I entered the council chamber for I found myself in the presence of Jesus Christ and all the Saints. Every wall, yea the ceiling too, came alive with splendour. There before me were the Three Holy Prophets, the Magi, and the Evangelists, and in front of me the Saviour Himself at the Temple. Above me, a heavenly host of angels blew their horns from billowing clouds. All the scenes of the Good Book played out there for the beholder to see and wonder.

  Here was I to be judged for consorting with the Devil and his unholy agents of the Harz. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes at my confusion, my fear, and my shame.

  Against the far wall a long table blocked entrance to the Holy Temple of Jerusalem painted on the wall behind. A dozen burghers sat in array, all attired in black. Some wore skullcaps, others more conventional black broad-brimmers, but all were long-bearded, hard of face, and grim. Other burghers stood or sat at either side of the chamber: guildmen, aldermen, or judges I knew not. But they stopped their chattering as I was led in and turned their eyes to my pathetic form.

  The Town Guard remained, flanking me, while others took up stations near to the high table.

  The chief magistrate (for that is who I assumed him to be) waited until all footfalls had ceased and only a few scattered coughs could be heard from the assembly. Then he spoke.