Liars and Thieves (A Company of Liars short story)

by Karen Maitland

  ‘What’s it mean?’ Jack repeated.

  Zophiel hesitated, then gave a convulsive jerk as Dye pressed her blade harder.

  ‘It is a salamander . . . a fire-lizard. The creature’s born of fire, yet it’s cold and it can extinguish the fire with the milk from its skin. It’s venomous. If it wraps itself around a tree, all the fruit on that tree will become deadly poisonous, and if it falls into water, anyone who drinks from the water will die.’

  Pecker frowned. ‘The mark’s some kind of talisman, is it? For protection?’

  Weasel sniggered. ‘Didn’t protect him any, did it? He’s worm meat, same as the other one.’

  Jack looked hard at Zophiel.

  ‘Nay, there’s more to this mark than that, else you wouldn’t be so interested. It’s a sign of some kind. What?’

  Zophiel flinched again, as the dagger pricked.

  ‘If you must know, it’s a sign the bearer carries the stone. It’s said that as the salamander lives in fire, so does the stone. The art of drawing the stone from the fire is known only to a few. It’s passed down in secret. Men who’ve mastered the art are branded with the salamander’s mark as a sign of their initiation.’

  ‘Stone?’ Pecker repeated. ‘What is this stone? What do they want with it?’

  Zophiel gave a mirthless laugh.

  ‘You said it yourself – protection. But it’s not the mark of the salamander that protects, it’s the possession of the stone, for that, my friends, is said to cure any sickness that can befall a man, even if he be within death’s touch. A man who possesses that stone need never fear the Great Pestilence.’

  Dye lowered her dagger.

  ‘It can cure anyone?’ she asked, in an awed tone.

  ‘Anyone who has the money to pay for the cure,’ Pecker said, a grin spreading across his face. ‘And I reckon there’s not a man or woman in this land wouldn’t give all they owned and more for a touch of it if they was mortally sick. For gold’s no use if you’re dead . . . And if that monk was carrying the stone, it must be . . .’

  Pecker dropped to his knees, feverishly rummaging through the possessions they’d taken from the two bodies. He stopped as his fingers encountered the empty woollen cloth. He held it up. All eyes slowly turned to Weasel.

  ‘Those stones you threw at the dogs, tell me one of them wasn’t the stone that was wrapped in this.’

  ‘Might have been,’ Weasel said, backing away. His frightened gaze darted from one face to another. ‘How was I to know? He said it was penance and Holy Jack said someone switched it for a treasure. Said it was worthless. You all did. It’s not my fault.’

  Pecker made a lunge for him, grabbing him by his scrawny neck and shaking him.

  ‘We didn’t tell you to chuck it away. Where did you throw it? What did it look like?’

  ‘A stone . . . a stone, that’s what it looked like. You all saw it.’ Weasel flapped his withered hand, sweeping it across the vast darkness of the forest. ‘Out there . . . somewhere.’

  Pecker dropped Weasel, who scuttled back behind the wall, and returned to Zophiel, peering up at him. Zophiel turned away from Pecker’s foul breath, his long nose wrinkled in disgust.

  ‘Salamander’s stone – what’s it look like?’

  ‘I don’t recall,’ Zophiel said.

  Pecker thrust his face closer into Zophiel’s.

  ‘You’d better start recalling or I’ll let Holy Jack here cut you into so many pieces, a whole mountain of stones won’t be able to cure you.’

  Zophiel treated Pecker to one of his most contemptuous looks.

  ‘I’ve never seen one, but I’m told that when it’s in the fire it glows red. Out of the fire, it’s dull, almost black. As your friend so rightly says, it appears worthless. That’s how the masters describe it. Something no one would look at twice. But what does it matter now? It’s gone. Look, you told us this was a quarry. How many stones do you imagine lie out there? Probably more than the stars in the sky and you have as much chance of seeing one of those under these clouds as you have of finding that stone your friend so carelessly cast away.’

  ‘We’ll find it,’ Pecker said grimly. ‘And you’re going to help us. But first we’d best make sure you can’t go wandering off in that big, bad forest.’

  Weasel, anxious to redeem himself in Pecker’s eyes, tied Zophiel’s hands behind him, winding the rope round and round his chest until he resembled a fly wrapped by a spider. He left a short length of rope by which Zophiel could be led.

  ‘How’ll you know when you’ve found it?’ Dye asked. ‘There’s none of us who’s fallen sick to try it on.’

  Jack grunted. ‘We’ll just have to saw off his Highness’s hand and see which stone makes it grow back.’

  Weasel and Pecker chuckled.

  ‘And you know how to use this stone if you find it, do you?’ Zophiel asked, his jaw clenched.

  ‘I reckon you’ll tell us fast enough, when you’re lying there bleeding to death,’ Jack said. He bent to light a crude torch in the flames of the fire, then tugged on Zophiel’s rope. ‘Start over here, shall we?’

  They tied Adela and me up again, pulling the stinking sacks back over our heads and leaving us sitting with our backs to the ruined wall close to the fire. I could hear Adela’s breathing coming in short shallow gasps and was afraid that her birth pains had started. The child was not yet due, but women can be frightened into labour before their time.

  I could just make out the glow of the fire through the weave and it occurred to me that if we were left for long enough, I might be able to twist myself round and burn through the rope, if I could steel myself against both the pain of moving my injured shoulder and the heat of the fire. But as if she could hear my thoughts, Dye leaned down and growled that if either of us attempted to escape, they would cut Zophiel’s throat. And I was certain she meant it.

  Although there’d been times on the journey when I would gladly have cut Zophiel’s throat myself, I couldn’t bring myself to leave him to their mercy. Besides, how far would a pregnant woman and wounded old camelot get, especially when the outlaws probably knew the forest better than the owls calling from the trees? Our best hope was that the rest of our company would find us.

  We could hear the voices of the outlaws, the clatter of stones being picked up and tossed impatiently aside. Then the howling began again, closer this time.

  Adela whimpered. ‘Those poor monks . . . their bodies . . . Can the dogs smell them?’

  The corpses lay abandoned just yards from us. The stench of their blood would carry far on this wind.

  ‘The dogs will only be interested in the dead,’ I assured her. ‘They won’t harm us.’

  It wasn’t true. I’d once seen a pack of feral dogs snarling and fighting over the fresh carcass of a sheep. In their blood frenzy they’d turned on a passing woman and child, and mauled them as savagely as the dead sheep. And if the howls were coming not from dogs, but wolves . . .

  I stiffened. Something was creeping towards us. I could hear the soft squelch in the mud, the faint rattle as it crept over the rubble, the hard breathing of a beast panting. My throat tightened as I realised it was not just the bodies of the dead monks that smelled of blood. My own cloak and shirt were soaked in the blood from the wound in my shoulder.

  ‘Adela,’ I whispered urgently, ‘draw your knees up and turn to the wall, press your face and belly hard against it, if you can.’

  She was still wrapped in Dye’s sheepskin cloak, which I hoped might protect her back a little. I heard her struggling as she tried to move her swollen belly, but with her arms bound behind her, I knew it wouldn’t be easy. I too tried to turn my head towards the stones, wincing against the pain in my shoulder, anything to protect my face and throat, not that it would save me for long. My heart pounding, I braced myself against the first savage bite that I knew was coming.

  I drew a deep breath and yelled, ‘Pecker, Dye—’

  Something clamped itself to the outside of the sack, p
ressing against my mouth and nose so hard I couldn’t draw breath. I’d been so sure that I was about to feel teeth tearing at my flesh, it took me a moment to register that a human voice was whispering urgently close to my ear.

  ‘Make no sound, Camelot.’

  The next moment, the sack was pulled off. I was staring up into the anxious face of the musician, Rodrigo.

  Crouching down, he gripped my shoulder, trying to help me turn. I yelped and he snatched his hand away in surprise, then looked down at his wet fingers glistening in the firelight.

  ‘Sangue! You are hurt, Camelot.’

  ‘It’s nothing. But Adela—’

  ‘Osmond helps her. Where . . .’

  Rodrigo broke off with a gasp of horror as he caught sight of the two bloody corpses on the ground, the shadows and firelight running over their naked flesh like an army of mice.

  With a frightened glance around him, he knelt clumsily and began to saw through the rope that bound my wrists with his knife.

  ‘Zophiel, he is dead?’ he whispered.

  ‘Not yet. But we were taken by some outlaws. Four of them. He’s with them and they have him bound. They’re searching for something out there among the trees.’

  Osmond was untying his wife, a process which was hampered by him repeatedly kissing and hugging her and by her trying to press against his shoulder. He helped her up and they stumbled towards us.

  ‘Hurry,’ Osmond whispered urgently. ‘We have to get out of here before the outlaws return.’

  ‘We can’t leave without Zophiel,’ I said. ‘They’ll kill him.’

  ‘That won’t be any great loss,’ Osmond said, sourly. ‘Anyway, he can take care of himself. I have to get Adela away now!’

  Adela shook her head. ‘You don’t know what they could do to him. They said . . . said there was a quarry filled with rotting corpses. Some aren’t even dead when they throw them in. We must help him.’

  ‘This one of yours too, is it?’ a voice sang out in the darkness behind us.

  We all whipped round. The four outlaws stood on the other side of the clearing, Zophiel still bound between them. They had extinguished their torches, but the wind gusted the flames in the fire, so that their faces were for a moment illuminated like ghostly skulls and then they vanished back into the darkness. As the red glow lit them up once more, I saw there was another figure with them. Rodrigo recognised him at the same instant I did and gave a cry as he saw his young apprentice, Jofre, held fast in the grip of Dye and Weasel, Dye’s knife at his throat.

  ‘Let them go!’ The child’s voice was shrill enough to pierce even the shrieking wind.

  The outlaws stared around, as did we all, for it was impossible to say where it had come from.

  ‘That’s Narigorm,’ I whispered to Rodrigo. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She should be hidden with the wagon,’ Rodrigo muttered angrily. ‘I told Cygnus to keep her there.’

  ‘If you don’t let them go, I’ll throw the stone in the water with all those dead bodies,’ Narigorm sang out.

  We were all peering into the thick darkness, but we couldn’t even glimpse her. Pecker and Weasel were beginning to look unnerved, as if they feared the voice might be that of a wood sprite or wraith.

  ‘What stone?’ Pecker called, turning his head this way and that, like an agitated squirrel.

  ‘The one you’ve been looking for. I found it.’

  The outlaws glanced uneasily at each other. Jack muttered something to Pecker, who shook his head vehemently.

  With a cry, Dye pointed upwards and fear spread across the faces of the outlaws as they saw what she was staring it. On top of the tallest part of the ruined wall was the disembodied head of a girl. The long hair writhing around her face was ghost-white against the black sky. Weasel gave a shriek, let go of Jofre and fled into the trees. Holy Jack dropped to his knees, crossing himself repeatedly. Dye and Pecker simply stared.

  Rodrigo didn’t hesitate. With a bull’s roar, he charged across towards the little group, his knife upraised like a sword. He was a weighty man, and as he hurtled into Pecker, they both crashed to the ground. Dye leaped onto Rodrigo’s back. I saw the flash of a blade in her hand, and yelled a warning, cringing as I saw her strike down, for I could do nothing. But Jofre had seen it too. He caught Dye by her hair, jerking her backwards, and dragged her, shrieking, off his master. Osmond had also reached the outlaws and was wrestling on the ground with Holy Jack, both of them cursing and swearing at each other. Zophiel, still trussed up like stuffed meat, was knocked to the ground, but managed to roll away and vanish into the night.

  They fought themselves into exhaustion, while Adela cried out in alarm, terrified that one of the blades would find its mark in Osmond. Eventually her pleas must have penetrated his ears, for he called a halt and Dye wisely backed him.

  Osmond and Rodrigo, his arm clapped around Jofre’s shoulder, limped back towards us. All three were smeared with mud and blood from grazes and cuts, but mercifully none seemed to be seriously wounded. Dye, Holy Jack and Pecker had clambered to their feet and were staring up again at the top of the wall, but there was nothing to be seen. They too edged back towards the fire, but halfway across the clearing they jerked to a stop.

  Narigorm was crouching by the fire pit. Her wind-blown hair had turned from white to scarlet, as if flames were leaping from her head. She had lifted the iron pot of pottage back onto the tripod over the fire and was digging into it with her knife, spearing pieces of meat which she devoured as rapidly as a dog stealing from his master’s dish. I felt a shiver of unease as I always did when I saw her. She appeared completely indifferent to the outcome of the fight, and yet she had tried to save Jofre and Zophiel. Why?

  As if she could sense what I was thinking, she lifted her head and met my gaze. As the wind twisted the firelight and shadows on her skin, her face suddenly looked a thousand years old.

  Jack glanced at us and back at her. Then, evidently deciding that if we were not afraid of her she must be human, he gestured towards her.

  ‘That child with you?’

  I nodded reluctantly. I knew we had reason to be grateful to her for what she’d just done, but somehow that only made me more wary of her.

  Jack edged round the clearing towards one of the small bothies and squatted in front of it, picking the mud from under his nails with the point of his knife, never once taking his eyes off Narigorm.

  Pecker sidled closer, taking care to keep the fire between himself and the child.

  ‘Said you had the stone. That true?’

  Narigorm bestowed one of her innocent, wide-eyed expressions on him. ‘I always tell the truth.’

  ‘Let’s see it.’

  The child reached down the front of the white shift she always wore and pulled something out. She held it up. It was a dull black, about the same size and shape as a hen’s egg. It looked to be the same stone I’d seen Weasel playing with earlier, but I couldn’t be sure and evidently neither could Pecker.

  ‘How do I know it’s the right one?’ He squatted down, his body tense as if he was ready to spring away at the first sign of danger.

  Dye peered over his shoulder.

  ‘Could be. His Highness said it was black and there’s not many stones like that in these parts. Weasel would know.’

  ‘He’s legged it and so’s his Highness.’

  ‘He said stone turns red in fire,’ Jack growled.

  ‘Aye, he did right enough,’ Pecker said.

  ‘This stone, it is valuable?’ Rodrigo asked.

  ‘One of the dead monks was carrying it,’ I told him. ‘Zophiel says it’s a salamander stone. It cures anything . . . if you know how to use it.’

  I didn’t know if Zophiel really believed what he’d told the outlaws. He was as sharp as death’s scythe. As a magician, he was used to thinking quickly and silencing any sceptics in a crowd. He could easily have invented the whole tale to distract the outlaws, in the hope of getting away. But now was not the time to me
ntion that.

  Pecker seemed to make up his mind. He sprang up and bounded round the fire towards Narigorm. Osmond saw what was about to happen. He stepped swiftly between the outlaw and the child.

  ‘It’s mine,’ Pecker said. ‘Spoils it is, taken fair and square. I earned it.’

  ‘Stole it,’ Osmond said, glancing across at the monks’ corpses.

  ‘“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart,”’ Holy Jack intoned.

  ‘Hear that?’ Pecker said, triumphantly. ‘The dead own nothing. So it’s not thieving to take what they don’t own.’

  ‘But you murdered them to get it,’ Osmond said, indignantly.

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ Pecker said. ‘But that’s killing, not thieving. Isn’t that right, Jack?’

  Narigorm stood up, slipped around Osmond and before anyone realised what she intended, she had tossed the black stone into the centre of the fire.

  Pecker howled. He tried to snatch it out with his bare hand, but the fire burned too fiercely.

  ‘I’ll kill you, you filthy little brat,’ he yelled, making a grab for Narigorm.

  If Osmond hadn’t pulled her away, I am sure Pecker would have thrown her onto the fire.

  ‘But you said you wanted to know if it was the real stone,’ Narigorm said, sweetly. ‘Now you’ll be able to see if it turns red.’

  Pecker peered into the pit. ‘Can’t see it at all in those hot embers.

  ‘Then it must have gone red, mustn’t it?’ Narigorm said.

  Pecker frowned suspiciously, staring down into the fire, his eyes watering from the smoke.

  Narigorm turned back to me. ‘We must leave now,’ she said firmly, as if it was her decision to make.

  Pecker glanced up sharply.

  ‘Is this a trick? Maybe she didn’t throw it in the fire at all. She’s got a cutpurse’s fingers, like Weasel, can make things vanish. No, brat, you’re staying right here till that stone’s in my hand. ’Sides, we need his Highness to tell us how it works. So we’ll just keep all of you here, nice and safe, till he gets bored of hiding in the forest and comes to find you.’

  Rodrigo’s knife was in his hand again. ‘You are fools if you think you can keep us here. Maybe you could hold an old man and a pregnant woman, but not all of us together.’