by Grace Ingram
"Save you!’ She nodded peremptorily at the Slut. ‘Has your bitch a nose?’
‘A wolf’s,’ he answered, responding to her urgency that laid enmity aside. ‘What’s amiss?’
‘A three-year-old child astray.’
He swung down, and the Slut pushed her nose under his hand, her lips lifting from her teeth as the crowd pressed closer. ‘Some clothing to give her the scent,’ he ordered sharply, and a girl dived into a cottage. She came running with a small garment and presented it snivelling, tears streaking her dirty face.
‘He’s venturesome—I swears I hardly turned me back—’
‘Gossiping instead o’ minding your brother!’ cried the weeping woman, fetching her a clout that knocked her spinning. ‘We’ve searched gardens and barns and everywhere—Edmund, Edmund!’
Guy proffered the filthy smock to the Slut, who wrinkled her nose at it, as well she might; he could smell it himself. He dropped it and mounted, and she looked up at him for orders, while the woman sobbed and the peasants muttered. ‘Stand away, all of you, and give her room,’ he commanded, and as they pressed back, eyeing her doubtfully, he led her towards the cottage and gave the word. ‘Seek!’
She nosed about, inside the door and then down the garden, trotting between the cabbage-rows, past the humming hives and the pigsty, and through a gap in the spindly hedge. She turned towards the river, and someone groaned; then she veered slantwise for a corner of woodland that came down to the edge of the plough. Clear of distracting trails, she stretched into a wolf’s lope, and Guy urged on his tiring horse to keep up. Crossing the freshly-harrowed field he called out and pointed. Plain in the soft earth were the prints of small bare feet.
The Trevaine girl pounded after, and the groom behind her. The peasants were left behind. Under the trees the light was already failing, the level sunbeams unable to penetrate, and this was open woodland, kept clear of undergrowth by foraging villagers and their swine. It was still easy riding if a man kept an eye lifted for low branches. The Slut ran mute, a dozen yards ahead, working out the trace that meandered in and out between the trees.
The girl ranged up beside Guy. ‘We must find him before dark!’
He nodded grimly. Wolves, that had subsisted through the summer on mice and voles and rabbits, were now hunting in family parties, the parents teaching that year’s half-grown cubs to pull down deer. Big packs only formed in the worst months of a hard winter; the family packs were not yet famished enough to tackle a man, but they were unlikely to disdain a small child.
The light dimmed fast, and dusk rose from the ground to take all colour out of the woods; only the sky was bright between the half-bare branches. The forest thickened, saplings and undergrowth crowding under the trees to cut off light. They had come well over a mile, and surely three-year-old legs could not have carried the most venturesome of brats much further.
The girl raised her voice. ‘Edmund! Edmund! Where are you?’
The Slut barked, and they strained to hear above the rustle of their horses’ hooves in the drifted leaves, but no sound answered but the clatter of disturbed pigeons and an owl’s hoot. Bats twirled in the pale-green sky.
They all called again and again. The woods muffled sound. Darkness closed down on them. They could hardly see the Slut, still threading out the child’s wanderings.
‘Lady Helvie, you’d best turn back,’ said the groom anxiously. ‘No place for you to be, after dark wi’ Warby by-blow.’
‘Holy Saints, what kind of ravisher d’you take me for?’ Guy exclaimed.
‘A very desperate one,’ the girl answered, chuckling.
‘I’ll consider you after we’ve found the brat,’ he promised, and heard her laugh. He warmed to her; no one laughed in Warby.
‘I still says—’ the groom persisted, and then checked. ‘What was that?’
The Slut shot from sight, and a moment later Guy too heard a distant whimper. Then the bitch bayed triumph, and mingled with her uproar came a healthy wailing.
‘God be praised!’ Guy cried, and crashed recklessly through bracken and bushes, following the Slut’s barking. He found her under a great oak, standing over the screaming child who was trying to beat her off with fists and feet. She backed away with a final bark as he slid from the saddle, rose on her hind legs and set a forepaw on either shoulder, wiping her tongue over his cheek.
‘Good girl! Clever lass!’ he praised her, clapping her flanks, and as she dropped to four feet he scooped up the child. ‘All’s well, Edmund. You’re safe now. That’s my dog who found you—good dog!’ The brat wound his arms about Guy’s neck and sobbed against his shoulder, and the Slut’s tail threshed the bracken. ‘See, there’s nothing to fear now. Only my good dog.’
The child slackened his clutch a little, lifted his face and snuffled, ‘Dog?’
‘She found you. We’ll take you home to your mother.’
In the dim light he could just see the howl that swallowed up most of the child’s face. ‘I want my mammy!’
Guy turned to his horse, which snorted and shied. Lady Helvie and her groom had found them, and were sitting their mounts in silence; the darkness concealed their expressions, and no speech could compete with Edmund’s lamentations. Guy caught the reins and hauled down the stallion’s head, gripped the urchin in his right arm, found his stirrup and swung astride, settling his burden comfortably against his shoulder. He howled lustily for about twenty paces, hiccoughed a little and fell asleep.
‘Thank God!’ said Guy devoutly.
The girl laughed. ‘Shall I take him?’ Her voice was unsteady with relief.
‘He’ll do well enough as he is. Also he’s verminous.’
‘And his lice have already accepted your hospitality?’
‘With enthusiasm.’ He squirmed inside his fine linen shirt, he who had once regarded that state as normal. ‘Moreover, while I hold him your groom cannot entertain his suspicions.’
‘You underrate Sweyn’s suspicions.’
‘They must make him a very suitable escort for a young demoiselle.’
‘That’s precisely why my father appointed him.’
‘And he’ll not be pleased to learn o’ this meeting,’ growled Sweyn. They were all speaking English. ‘What’s this knave doing on Trevaine land—spying?’
‘Seeking what I may devour, like Satan,’ Guy said flippantly, and was rewarded again with the girl’s chuckle.
‘When my father found out who you were, I thought he’d have an apoplexy.’
‘Since my begetting was my misfortune rather than my fault, why should I hang for it?’
‘You’ve an argument there.’
‘The errand was his, and the hauberk.’
‘That added to his rancour.’
Guy laughed, the groom growled, and they pushed on faster, trusting to the horses’ senses rather than their own, for now full night had come down. Then they heard a distressful crying in the darkness ahead, and Guy shouted through the woods.
‘He’s safe! We’ve found him!’
They pushed out from the last thickets into the tamed glades. The mother stumbled to meet them, sobbing and gasping thanks to God and His Mother and all the Saints. Guy hastened to hand down her son. She clutched him to her breast, and he woke squalling.
‘Mother Mary bless you, young master! Praise God—-Edmund!’
‘Mammy —’
A man reached them and put his arms about both. ‘Before God, we’re mighty thankful, Master Guy,’ he declared, and other voices echoed his thanks as folk gathered about them, a score or more of men, with a few women and a skirmish of older children. Guy flushed.
‘My good bitch found him,’ he disclaimed. ‘But tether the imp to a doorpost until he learns sense.’
The crowd parted to let the horses through; behind them the mother was mingling endearments with scolding.
‘First she’ll kiss his face flat, and then smack his bottom flatter,’ said Guy. On his last word came the unmistakeable crack
of a palm on bare flesh, and a howl. The girl laughed.
‘How did you know?’
‘I have a mother. Lady Helvie, since night has overtaken you so far from home, may I escort you there?’
‘I thank you, but I’ll remain until morning.’
‘Here, my lady?’
‘I too have a mother, Master Guy, and she lives in Thorgastone. Sweyn, you may return with the horses and come back for me tomorrow.’
‘But, Lady Helvie—’ he began to object, dancing his mount sideways to keep Guy in view,
‘Since you don’t need me, my lady,’ Guy forestalled him, ‘I’ll take my leave. God keep you.’
‘God go with you, Master Guy.’
Guy watched them go between the lighted cottages, their horses moving delicately among the ruts and churned hoof-prints set like stone after a dry week. ‘Now who’d have guessed,’ he enquired of the surrounding air, ‘that the only woman I’ve met who could match jests with me would be that great surly wench?’ Immediately he amended that epithet; this night she had not been surly. She had asked and accepted his aid as frankly as a man, and she had laughed with him.
Guy turned his mount towards the waste, marvelling at that laughter. He had encountered few who could understand his straight-faced humour, and had never thought to meet a woman who could match it. There was no laughter in Warby. Agnes had proved a perfect bedmate, but outside his chamber shunned his company so plainly that his pleasure in her was rapidly failing. She made it insultingly obvious that she lay with him only because Lord Reynald commanded it and she dared not disobey. He pushed aside the reflection that he was to blame for accepting an unwilling girl. She was no innocent, but an expert between the sheets. He watched until Helvie de Trevaine had vanished behind the furthest houses, and thought that he would probably exercise his horse again in the direction of Thorgastone.
On the track’s hard surface he at once noticed an irregularity in his horse’s hoofbeats. A shoe was loose. He halted, looked back at the cottages straggling along the street, and picked out the forge, set apart from the others to reduce the danger of sparks near thatch. He dismounted and led the stallion towards its open front.
The cottage door opened smartly, and candlelight outlined a man’s square-shouldered bulk, ‘What’s amiss?’
‘A loose shoe.’
‘Fire’s banked for night.”
‘You can clinch it on cold.’
‘Light’s gone. I’ll do no more this day.’
‘D’you think I’ll lame a good horse for your idleness?’ Guy flared, moved purposefully into the blackness and clattered among tools on the bench for hammer and pincers. ‘Fetch a candle and I’ll see to it myself!’
‘I’ll hold a candle to light you into Hell, and all Warby with you!’ growled the smith, starting forward. The Slut was at once in his path, poised to leap, her teeth bared in menace.
‘I gather you’re not mad, but at feud with Warby,’ Guy commented.
‘No whelp o’ that devil need look for help in Thorgastone!’ the smith declared thickly. ‘Raped my wife and killed her mother, burned half village—’
‘What had I to do with that?’
‘Eh—?’
‘And as this night I’ve done Thorgastone some service, you can at least hold the candle.’
The smith grunted. ‘I’ll do it to be rid o’ you. Call off your bitch. What kind o’ man-killer is she for a Christian?’
‘A useful one.’ He snapped his fingers, and she backed to his side, her attention steady on the smith.
He spat, and bawled to someone in the house behind him to fetch a candle. A lanky stripling with the first down smudging his jaws came out bearing a rushlight, and held it over the box of oddments while his father scrabbled for nails. He found what he needed, clouted the lad for dripping hot tallow on his fingers, and took up the hammer, as Guy had expected. No self-respecting craftsman permitted any stranger to make free with his tools.
Another shadow interrupted the shaft of light from the open door, and Guy glanced up. White hair caught the candleshine, and straggles of white beard; a tall thin figure stooped over a staff, and put out a hand with the unmistakeable groping of the blind.
‘Come you inside and bar the door, son,’ he croaked urgently. ‘This night honest men should be safe at their firesides.’
‘Presently,’ the smith grunted, feeling round the stallion’s near fore hoof for missing nails. Guy held the beast’s head and stroked his nose, and he stood quiet, nuzzling Guy’s breast. ‘Hold that light steady, boy!’
‘There’s evil abroad,’ the blind man muttered. ‘The Devil rides this night.’ The rushlight jumped, sending shadows spinning, and the smith swore. As the little flame steadied again he drove the nail and clinched it.
‘Go in, feyther, or you’ll take cold,’ he said over his shoulder.
‘The graves open and the ghosts pass,’ the cracked voice went on. ‘Don’t ye hear ’em go by? Feet in the dark—voices in the night—’
‘Holy Saints guard us from all harm!’ muttered the smith, crossing himself, and then whacked home and made fast the second nail faster than Guy had ever seen it done by daylight. The boy retreated, but the man, with the peasant’s grip on essentials, stood holding out his hand. Guy groped in his purse and grudgingly passed him half a penny, gross overpayment. He had laboured too many years for a pittance ever to acquire a knight’s lavishness with unearned silver. The smith snorted contempt, tried the money with his teeth, and as Guy mounted, hurried to the blind man and set an arm about him to urge him indoors.
Guy clopped back along the deserted street and up the track to the waste. His horse was tired, and the moon not yet risen, so he went slowly, trusting to his mount’s sight on the rough way rather than his own, and pulled to a walk when the track failed and he had to pick his path among rocks and bushes. The sky was clear, pricked with stars. The air held sufficient hint of frost for him to pull his old cloak across his chest and wish he had a pair of gloves.
This was the Eve of All Hallows, an unchancy night to be abroad. Fears of ghosts and evil demons had less impact in a town, snug among streets and houses with folk all about, than out here under the high stars that ruled men’s destiny. Alone in this waste where every thicket and crooked tree might conceal some presence, Guy muttered an Ave and a Paternoster under his breath, commended himself to the Saints, and was glad of the silver talisman that guarded him from harm.
Owls called back and forth, but Guy knew their voices, and even when one sailed soundlessly before him, its round head and broad wings sharp against the stars, he was not startled. There were other noises about him, furtive squeaks, rustling and scurrying, the death-squeals of small creatures seized by stoat or owl, a distant clash of antlers and a stag’s roar, the far-off howl of a wolf. The horse plodded on. The Slut, long past her puppy days of forays after every scent, paced alongside.
He was more than half-way back to Warby when a scarlet glow of fire on his right hand jerked his misgivings alert. He remembered the circle of stones that Helvie de Trevaine had called the Devil’s Ring. He reined in, turned half-about in the saddle, and watched the glow strengthen and white smoke tower, reflecting the blaze that produced it. Then he turned his horse towards it, up the slope.
Some force fiercer than curiosity urged him forward, to see for himself. Half-way there he tethered his horse to a hawthorn, remembering how Dusty and the packhorse had panicked as they came near it. The Slut stayed beside him. What little wind there was blew the smoke towards him, sparks dancing in its coils. He threaded cautiously between gorse-patches and thorn-scrub, and voices came to him, first a confused murmur and then sudden clamour. A beast bleated. He reached the thorny barrier which shut off all sight of the circle; only the inner faces of the great stones reflected the firelight. He cast about, vainly seeking the gap that eluded him in the dark, squeezed and wriggled past obstacles, any sound he made smothered by the babble of an excited throng, until he stood behind on
e of the stones and could peer round it. As he did so the crowd fell silent.
On the altar-stone, his coat reddened by the glare, his horns and eyes reflecting it, stood a he-goat, surely the patriarch of the mill flock. He tossed his head uneasily, ears flicking and eyes rolling, and strained against tethers that held his forehooves to the stone. The assembly, thirty or forty men and women, were shuffling into a half-circle about the fire, facing the altar. The flaring light made demons of them, and Guy crossed himself.
Another goat’s head appeared beside the stone, horned and bearded, ears drooping stiffly, taller than any goat should be unless it reared upright on its hind legs. Then Guy pulled his cloak across his mouth and bit into the cloth to stifle a cry, for it sprang up on to the stone and stood with a man’s body mincing on cloven hooves, swinging a tufted tail. It thumped the rock with a three-pointed spear, and the crowd stooped in obeisance.
The earth and sky reeled round Guy, and he leaned against the stone, his legs shaking under him, pressed the silver talisman against his hammering heart and muttered prayers under his breath, expecting the night to erupt about him with smoke of brimstone and bear all here down to Hell’s fire. The Devil in his proper person walked abroad and made himself known to his worshippers, and God’s earth would surely never abide his presence. But nothing happened. The Slut pushed against him, warm and alive. She was real, and so was this. His heart quieted, his wits steadied.
A tall crone stood before the stone, her arms uplifted. Guy had to look twice before he recognized Wulfrune. He had never before seen her without her staff and black kerchief, her white hair straggling over her shoulders. Her harsh voice slashed the silence in a chant of which he could scarcely make out a word, an invocation addressed not to any unseen Deity but to the visible Fiend posturing above her. Guy shuddered, and the Slut pressed to his side, an uneasy growl vibrating through her throat. The voice ceased, and the company bayed a response. The Devil lifted the trident and extended it over Wulfrune’s head.
