"A wyrm," the young man informed her knowingly. "I, too, have heard of such things."
"But that was a long time ago-before my father was born. My grandfather told me. They killed it when he was a boy. He said it stank so bad that three men fell sick and one man died when they tried to bury it. In the end they burnt it where it lay."
"I would like to have seen that," the young man said appreciatively. Smiling suddenly, he said, "My name is Roubert. What is yours?"
"I am Merian," she replied.
"Peace and joy to you, Lady Merian," he said, "this night and all nights."
"And to you, Roubert," she smiled, liking this young man more and more. "Have you ever seen a wyrm?"
"No," he conceded. "But in a village not far from our castle in Normandie, there was a child born with the head of a dog. By this, the father knew his wife was a witch, for she had had unnatural relations with a black hound that had been seen outside the village."
"What happened?"
"The villagers hunted down the dog and killed it. When they returned home, they found the woman and the baby were also dead with the same wounds as those inflicted on the dog."
"Here now!" interrupted a voice next to Merian. She turned to see Baron Neufmarche leaning across the empty place toward her. Glancing down the table, she saw that her father was deep in conversation with the Ffreinc nobleman next to him. "What is this nonsense you are telling our guest?"
"Nothing of importance, sire," answered the young man, retreating rapidly.
"We were speaking of the phantom in the Marches forest," volunteered Merian. "Have you heard of this, sire?"
"Hmph!" puffed the baron. "Phantom or no, it cost me five horses."
"The creature ate your horses?" wondered Merian in amazement.
"I did not say that," replied the baron. Smiling, he slid closer to her on the bench. "I lost the horses, it is true. But I am more inclined to the view that, one way or another, the soldiers were careless."
"What about the missing footman?" asked the young man.
"As to that," replied the baron, "I expect drink or too much sun will account for his tale." He paused to reconsider. "Still, I grant that he was a solid enough fellow. Whatever the explanation, the incident has much altered his mind."
Merian shivered at the thought of something wild and freakish arising in the forest the very forest she and her family had passed through on the way to Hereford.
"But come, my lady," said the baron with a smile, "I see I have upset you. We will not speak of such abhorrent things anymore. Here!" He reached for a bowl containing a pale purple substance. "Have you ever tasted fruinenty?"
"No, never."
"Then you must. I insist," said the baron, handing her his own silver spoon. He pushed the bowl toward her. "I think you will like it."
Merian dipped the tip of the spoon into the mushy substance and touched it to her tongue. The taste was cool and sweet and creamy. "It is very good," she said, handing back the spoon.
"Keep it," said the baron, closing his hand over hers. "A little gift," he said, "for gracing this celebration with your, ah, presence lumineuse- your radiant presence."
Merian, feeling the heat of his touch on her skin, thanked him and tried to withdraw her hand. But he held it more tightly. Leaning closer, he put his mouth to her ear and whispered, "There is so much more I would give you, my lady."
CHAPTER
33
The knight called Guiscard, in command of eight doughty men-at-arms, ordered his troops to follow the tracks made by the missing oxen. Most of the hoofprints, as expected, led back toward the valley in the direction the wagons had come. A few, however, led out from the pen and down the hill to the nearby stream. "Here, men! To me!" shouted Guiscard as soon as he was alerted to this discovery. "We have them!"
When the searchers had assembled once more, they mounted their horses and set off together on the trail of the missing oxen, pursuing the track as it followed the stream, passing down around the foot of the castle work and behind the shoulder of the next hill. Once out of sight of the builders' camp, the trail turned inland, heading straight up over the hill and toward the forest a short distance to the northeast.
The searchers mounted the brow of the hill and started out across the wide grassy hilltop toward the leaf-dark woodland, blue in the distance and shimmering in the heat haze of summer. The tracks were easy to follow, and the soldiers loped easily through the long grass, slowing only as they approached the beeches, elms, and finger-thin fir trees that formed a protective bulwark at the edge of the forest.
Passing between the trunks of two large elms, the trail of the missing oxen entered the wood as through a timber gate. The light was somewhat poorer inside, but the beasts left good, well-shaped prints in the soft earth-and, occasionally, soft splats of droppings-which allowed the knight and his men to proceed without difficulty. A few hundred paces inside the wood, the ox trail joined a deer run, and the hoofprints of the four heavy-footed beasts mingled with those of their swift-running cousins.
The path traced the undulating hillside, rising and falling with the rock escarpment beneath it, until it descended into a deep-riven glen with a brook at the bottom. Here the trail turned to follow the trickle of water as it flowed out from the forest interior, eventually joining the stream that passed by the foot of the castle. They pushed on, and after a time, the banks became steeper and rock lined as the brook sank lower into the folded earth, dwindling to little more than a blue-black rivulet at the bottom of a ravine of shattered grey shale.
The searchers moved deeper into the forest, where the trees were older and bigger and the undergrowth denser. Sunlight came in dappled fits and starts, striking green glints from every leafy surface. When the search party came to the top of a ridge, Guiscard halted his men and paused a moment to survey the path ahead. The air was still and humid, the trail dark and close grown. The knight ordered his companions to dismount and proceed on foot. "The thieves cannot have gone much farther," Guiscard told his men. "The only grazing is behind us now. They will not want to stray too far from it."
"Who says the thieves intend to graze them?" wondered one of the men-at-arms.
"Valuable beasts like those?" scoffed the knight. "What else would they do with them?"
The man shrugged, then spat. "Eat them."
Guiscard glowered at the soldier and said, "Move on."
The trail pursued its way down the slope of the ridge beneath trees of ever-increasing size and age. The upper branches grew higher from the ground, lifting the roof of foliage and dimming the sunlight with a heavy canopy of glowing green leaves. On and on they went, and when the knight stopped again, the wood had become dark and silent as an empty church. The only sound to be heard was the rustling and chirping of small birds, unseen in the upper branches high above.
Thorny shrubs-blackberry and bilberry-grew man high on each hand; a few hundred paces farther along, the trail pinched down to a constricted corridor before disappearing into a tangled and impenetrable bank of brambles. As they neared the wall of thorns, they saw that the narrow trail turned sharply to the left. The oxen had passed between two overlapping hedges; the animals had been led single file in order to squeeze through, and there were tufts of tawny hair caught on some of the lower thorns. The silence of the forest had given way to the noisy chafe and chatter of crows emanating from the other side of the bramble bank. Easing cautiously through the thorny hedge, the searchers entered a clearing. The racket of the birds had risen to a piercing cacophony.
Gripping their lances, the soldiers crept out from the thorn hedge and into a small, sunlit meadow ringed about with birch and rowan trees. In the centre of the clearing was a roiling, boiling black mound of birds: hundreds of them. Crows, ravens, choughs, jays, and others were fighting over something on the ground, and still more were circling and diving in the air above this squirming, living heap of feathers, wings, and beaks.
The air was loud with their shrieks and
heavy with a sweet, turgid stink.
"Drive them off," Guiscard ordered, and four of the men-at-arms rushed the mound of birds, swinging their lances before them and yelling as they ran.
The birds took flight at the sudden appearance of the men and fled squawking and screeching into the sky; most settled again in the branches of the surrounding trees, where they continued to shriek their outrage at being driven from their repast.
The birds gone for the moment, the knight and the rest of the men approached the mound where their four comrades were now standing still as stones, enthralled by the heap before them.
"Out of the way," ordered Guiscard, striding up. The footman stepped aside, and the knight took one look at the mound before him and almost vomited.
Before him were what appeared to be the entrails and viscera of the missing oxen-artfully heaped into a single, glistening purple mound of rotting slime. Rising from the centre of this putrefying mass was a long wooden stake, and on the stake was the severed head of an ox. The skin and most of the flesh had been ripped from the skull to reveal the bloody bone beneath. Two of the hapless animal's hooves were stuffed in its hanging mouth, and its tail protruded absurdly from one of its ears, and jutting from the naked eyeballs of the freshly flensed skull were four long, black raven feathers.
The weird sight caused these battle-hardened men to blanch and brought the gorge rising to their throats. One of the soldiers cursed, and two others crossed themselves, glancing around the clearing nervously. "Sacre bleu!" grunted a soldier, prodding a lopped-off hoof with the blade of his lance. "This is the work of witches."
"What?" said the knight, recovering some of his nerve. "Have you never seen a slaughtered beast?"
"Slaughtered," muttered one of the men scornfully. "If they were slaughtered, where are the carcasses?" Another said, "Aye, and where's the blood and hide and bones?"
"Carried away by them that slaughtered the beasts," replied another of the soldiers, growing angry. "It's just a pile of guts." With that, he shoved his spear into the curdling bulk, striking an unseen bladder, which erupted with a long, low hiss and released a noxious stench into the already fetid air.
"Stop that!" shouted the man beside him, shoving the offender, who pushed back.
"Enough!" shouted the knight. Quickly scanning the surrounding trees for any sign that they were being watched, he said, "The thieves may still be close by. Make a circuit of the clearing, and give a shout when you find their trail."
Only too glad to turn away from the grisly mound in the centre of the glade, the soldiers walked to different parts of the perimeter and, bending low, began to look for the footprints of the thieves. One complete circuit failed to turn up anything resembling a human footprint, so the knight ordered them to do it again, more slowly this time and with better care and attention.
They were all working their way around the circle when a strange sound halted them in midstep. It started as an agonised cry-as if someone, or something, was in mortal anguish-and then rose steadily in pitch and volume to a wild ululation that raised the short hairs on the napes of the warriors' necks.
The crows in the treetops stopped their chatter, and a dread hush descended over the clearing. The unnatural calm seemed to spread into the surrounding forest like tendrils of a stealthy vine, like a fog when it searches along the ground, coiling, moving, flowing amongst the hidden pathways until all is shrouded with its vapours.
The searchers waited, hardly daring to breathe. After a moment, the eerie sound rose again, closer this time, growing in force, rising and rising-and then suddenly trailing away as if stifled by its own strength.
The carrion birds in the high branches took flight all at once.
The soldiers, holding tight to their weapons, gazed fearfully at the sky and at the wood around them. The trees seemed to have moved closer, squeezing the ring tighter, forming a sinister circle around them.
"Christ have mercy!" cried a footman. He flung out a hand and pointed across the clearing.
The soldiers turned as one to see an indistinct shape moving in the shadows beneath the trees at the edge of the glade. Straining into the darkness, they saw a form emerge from the forest gloom-as if the shadow itself was thickening, gathering darkness and congealing into the shape of a monstrous creature: big as a man, but with the head and wings of a bird, and a round skull-like face that ended in an extravagantly long, pointed black beak.
Like a fallen angel risen from the pit, this baleful presence stood watching them from across the clearing.
"Steady, men," said the knight, holding his sword before him. "Close ranks."
No one moved.
"Close ranks!" shouted Guiscard. "Now!"
The soldiers, shaken to action, moved to obey. They drew together, shoulder to shoulder, weapons ready. Even as they formed the battle line, the phantom melted away, disappearing before their eyes as the shadows reclaimed it.
The soldiers waited, bloodless hands gripping their weapons, staring fearfully at the place where they had last seen the creature. When a cloud passed over the sun, leeching warmth from the air, the terrified men bolted and ran.
"Stand!" cried the knight, to no avail. He watched his men deserting him, thrashing through the brush in their blind haste to escape the horror encircling them. With a last glance around the tainted meadow, brave Guiscard joined his men in flight.
Back at the builders' camp, the breathless searchers told what they had found in the forest and how they had been attacked by the forest phantom-a creature so hideous as to defy description-and only narrowly escaped with their lives. As for the missing oxen, they had been completely devoured by the creature.
"Except for the vitals," one of the men-at-arms explained to his astonished audience. "The devil thing devoured everything but the guts," he said. The soldier next to him took up the tale. "The bowels it vomited in the meadow. We must have startled it at its feeding," he surmised. Another soldier nodded, adding, "Cest vrai. No doubt that was why it attacked us."
But the soldiers were wrong. It was not the phantom that fed on the stolen oxen. That very evening, in British huts and holdings all along the valley, a score of hungry families dined on unexpected gifts of good fresh meat that had been discovered lying on the stone threshold of the house. Each gift had been delivered the same way: wrapped in green oak leaves, one of which was pinned to the parcel by a long, black wing feather of a raven.
CHAPTER
34
)Brother Aethelfrith paused on the road to drag a damp sleeve across his sweating face. The Norman merchants with whom he had been travelling had long since outpaced him; his short legs were no match for their mules and high-wheeled carts, and none of the four traders or their retainers had consented to allow him to ride in back of one of the wagons. To a man, all had made obscene gestures and pinched their nostrils at him.
"Stink? Stink, do I?" muttered the mendicant under his breath. He was a most fragrant friar, to be sure, but the day was sweltering, and sweat was honest reward for labours spent. "Normans," he grumbled, mopping his face, "God rot them all!"
What a peculiar people they were: big, lumpy lunks with faces like horses and feet like boats. Vain and arrogant, untroubled by any notions so basic as tolerance, fairness, equality. Always wanting everything their own way, never giving in, they reckoned any disagreement as disloyal, dishonest, or deceitful, while judging their own actions, however outrageously unfair, as lawful God-given rights. Did the Ruler of heaven really intend for such a greedy, grasping, gluttonous race of knaves and rascals to supplant Good King Harold?
"Blessed Jesus," he muttered, watching the last of the wagons recede into the distance, "give the whole filthy lot flaming carbuncles to remind them how fortunate they are."
Then, chuckling to himself over the image of the entire occupying population hopping around clutching painfully swollen backsides, he moved on. Upon cresting the next hill, he saw a stream and a fording place where the road met the valley. Several of th
e carts had paused to allow the animals to drink. "God be praised!" he cried and hurried to join them. Perhaps they would take pity on him yet.
Arriving at the ford, he called a polite greeting, but the merchants roundly ignored him, so he walked a little way upstream until he came to a shady place, where, drawing his long brown robe between his legs, he tucked the ends into his belt and waded out into the stream. "Ahh," he sighed, luxuriating in the cool water, "a very blessing on a hot summer day. Thank you, Jesus. Much obliged."
When the merchants moved off a short while later, he remained behind, content to dabble in the stream a little longer. By all accounts, Llanelli was a mere quarter day's walk from the ford. No one was expecting him, so he could take all the time he needed; and if he reached the monastery by nightfall, he would count himself fortunate.
The fat friar padded in the stream, watching the small, darting fish. He hummed to himself, enjoying the day as if it were a meal of meat and ale spread before him with lavish abundance. Upon reflection, he had no right to be so happy. His errand, God knew, was sin itself.
How he had come to the idea, he still could not say. An overheard conversation-a marketplace rumour, an errant word, perhaps, spoken by a stranger in passing-had worked away in him, sending its black roots deep, growing unseen until it burst forth like a noxious flower in full bloom. One moment, he had been standing before the butcher's stall, haggling over the price of a rind of bacon, and the next his bandy legs were scuttling him back to his oratory to pray forgiveness for the thoroughly immoral idea that had so forcefully awakened in his everscheming brain.
"Oh my soul," he sighed, shaking his head at the mystery of it. "The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?"
Although he had spent the night on his knees, begging both forgiveness and direction, as dawn came up bright in the east, that heavenly guidance was no more in evidence than the pope's pardon. "If you have qualms, Lord," he sighed, "stop me now. Otherwise, I go."
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