Power of Darkness

by Doris Sutcliffe Adams

  'Hélie, Hélie!' Hermeline sobbed, and turned blindly away, her hand groping pitifully for aid. Oliver de Collingford took the slender fingers and drew her reverently towards the stair. His sire, privileged by his years, laid a paternal arm over her shaking shoulders and tried to comfort her with a series of scriptural maxims designed to prove that such a reprobate was unworthy of her tears. Sir Ranulf, dangerously purple with the internal pressure of unexpressed wrath, violently swung an arm to scatter the household like leaves before a gale, and followed his mistress up the steps. Hélie kept firm hold of the red-headed girl's hand, and as the throng broke into individuals, was unpleasantly startled to recognize one of them as Thomas de Trevaine, his own marshal's son and his kinsman, regarding him with scandalized disfavour.

  Sir Ranulf waited only to kick a kitchen-knave out of the door and slam it on his tunic-skirts. 'I have told you already,' he declared ominously, 'that Lord Hélie was taken by illness, and courteously quitted the hunt lest he mar any other's sport!'

  'Illness!' exclaimed Oliver de Collingford, furiously gesturing at Hélie's vigorous height and darkly-tanned face, his own the image of unbelief.

  'I suffered a grievous headache,' Hélie said flatly, angrily aware how lamely the explanation halted. He persisted for the girl's sake; for his own he would have stalked from the hall and out of Warby for ever. 'In charity and innocence the lady sought to tend me. She found me asleep, and stayed until I woke.'

  'The whole forenoon?' Oliver de Collingford spat.

  'The heart of man is desperately wicked,' his sire intoned. 'An imprudent maid's folly, and a man hot from the lusts and luxuries of accursed Toulouse—'

  'My lords, you have my knightly oath that your kinswoman is a virtuous maiden, and I have done her no wrong,' Hélie said grimly.

  Death's shadow stood among them and hushed them to clammy silence. Fulbert of Falaise, devoid of the delicacy that had held more gently-bred folk outside the hall door, chuckled appreciatively. 'Who takes up the challenge? Edged your sword for mortal combat, my Lord Oliver?'

  Oliver glared impartially at him and Hélie, but he had recoiled a step, and the angry colour had faded from his face. 'None the less, my cousin's fair name has suffered grievous hurt!'

  'And whose is the fault but those who cried it for all the world to know?' Hélie retorted, staring round the full circle. His eyes accused Hermeline, who lifted her hands to her face and wailed again.

  'Hélie, how could you? That one!'

  'But you have told me so often that I am no temptation to any man,' Durande de Vallaroy gravely assured her.

  'Men,' cried Hermeline, wildly illogical, 'need no tempting!' She burst into tears and retired worsted from the contest.

  'As a man of honour,' Eustace de Collingford stated heavily, 'there is only one reparation you may make, my lord.'

  'Very true!' his son agreed, his face lighting with eagerness. He glanced anxiously at Hermeline, who uttered a fresh wail, and then at Hélie's dangerous face. 'But—but we cannot constrain Lord Hélie, nor cast such doubt on his knightly oath!'

  Hélie choked on outrage, as much at the son's defence as at the sire's demands, and the tranquil charms of celibacy suddenly acquired a powerful appeal. 'Constrain us to marry as if we were guilty serfs?' he demanded fiercely.

  'What worthy lord will marry a maid whose fair name has been blown upon?' Eustace answered portentously.

  The maid in question snorted in a most unbecoming fashion. 'Comfort yourself, my lord. There will be no lack of suitors to swallow my fame while I remain heiress of Vallaroy.'

  'And if their stomachs prove too dainty, demoiselle, call on me,' Fulbert of Falaise offered cheerfully, flashing an impudent grin at her speechless kinsmen.

  'Most courteously offered, sir,' she said gravely, and the tiny dimple quivered at her mouth's corner.

  'Shameless—a base-born knave—disparagement—' spluttered Eustace.

  Fulbert's lean dark face lighted with mirth that must have wrought havoc among the wenches. 'It needs a base-born knave to value truly so rare an asset as a noble wife, demoiselle,' he declared with a gravity to match hers. 'Consider it.'

  'It deserves considering, my lord.'

  Sir Ranulf took two hasty steps into their midst, his grey eyes sparking wrath. 'Enough!' he rasped. 'Bridle your tongues before you do worse harm! My lords, you have Lord Hélie's word he and your kinswoman are guiltless. That suffices. My lady, would you drive him from your hold?' Hermeline emerged from behind her hands pitifully tear-streaked. 'Then bury this dispute here and now and forbear to disturb the grave. There will be no scandal if we preserve amity and silence.' They nodded like chidden brats. He grunted in relief. 'Then in God's Name, my lady, have the horn blown and keep hungry men no longer from their dinner!'

  Hermeline called upon Saint Anne and fled incontinently to the bower to repair her appearance. Durande de Vallaroy hesitated and then followed. Hélie caught her eye and lifted his brows in a wordless question. She smiled slightly and shook her head.

  He had no desire to eat a mouthful under that roof and in that company, but he owed it both to the red-headed girl and to himself to remain and outface the scandal-mongers. It would be an admission of guilt or cowardice to depart, and desertion of that imperturbable girl who deserved better of him. She seemed to have no more use for him than she had for any other man, but in his present humour he reckoned that a welcome change. He thrust both hands through his disordered hair, and wished with all his heart that he had never let himself be seduced by sentimental memories and his mother's importunities into crossing Warby's boundary.

  At dinner his rank set him at Hermeline's right hand, a privilege that speedily destroyed what little appetite he brought to it. By some feminine art all traces of her tears had been erased. She made much of him, at first prettily apologetic, then as prettily forgiving. He had expected coldness demanding long and attentive court for its softening, but instead received favour so marked that apprehension warred in him with bitter amusement. She had taken fright from even his accidental entanglement with another, and would run no further risk of losing him. She was his for the asking.

  All the company knew it. Eustace de Collingford tried to conceal dismay, his son agonized despair. Durande had a grim little smile on her mouth. Fulbert was frankly amused. Thomas de Trevaine, Hélie's second cousin, watched with grave approval. Hélie played with food that gagged him like dry ashes, and strained at courtesy to answer interminable questions about love and ladies in the far south. What did she know of sin's sweetness; welcoming arms and eager bodies in the secret darkness, whispers and kisses in still hot dawns, bitter anguish of grief and betrayal? What did any of these know of that passionate land, its warfare and wine and music, its lust and luxury and strange austere heresies, who had never smelt its dust nor heard the cicadas' shrill song?

  They lingered over the wine and sweetmeats while Hermeline drew from Hélie an account of a court of love he had attended. He chafed as he piled detail on detail to satisfy her insatiable demands, savagely marvelling that once he had delighted in this unreal and tedious convention. His temples were throbbing in new warning, and his courtesy wore thin. At last he drained his cup and said as lightly as he could, 'Enough, my lady. Your other guests weary of my voice.'

  'I have been wearied over-long by the Normandy campaign,' she answered petulantly.

  He fixed his gaze on the empty cup he twisted idly in his hand. The dark lees swirled in a red film over the polished silver. The squire behind him leaned forward with tilted pitcher, but he put up his left hand in refusal. The ring on his little finger sparkled purple, its gold band glittering against his brown skin. A slim white finger touched it lightly.

  'Your tale was incomplete, Hélie,' Hermeline softly teased him. 'What fair lady loved you too dearly to be discreet?'

  'Not one failed in discretion,' he answered, trying to speak lightly, and resisting the impulse to jerk his hand under the table.

  She lowered
her lashes as though abashed by her own daring, and then smiled up. 'Hélie, for very shame! When you boast your conquest by wearing her jewel!'

  'No conquest, and no boast,' he said levelly, holding fast to his temper. He was acutely conscious of all attention centred on them in an eager hush as everyone realized at what she aimed. Oliver de Collingford drew breath audibly, and he glanced at him and away again. He did not like the man, but it was indecent to gaze upon his naked anguish. He could not draw his hand free without unseemly force, and hunted speech through thickets of anger and embarrassment.

  ‘It is too fair a jewel to adorn a man’s great hand,' Hermeline declared with pretty imperiousness. ‘Is not its proper place a lady’s finger?’ She extended her slender hand invitingly, laughing softly in sure expectation.

  Sweat broke coldly over Hélie in the anticipatory silence. She was insisting on her own humiliation, but he hesitated to put that affront on his hostess at her own table. Yet there was no other way, and his lips parted to deny her.

  An appalling scream pierced through the windows and jerked everyone erect. A stool clattered over, a wine-cup shot a crimson pool across the cloth, a woman squeaked. Sir Ranulf was off the dais and half-way down the hall before the cup stopped rolling, with Hélie two paces behind him. They went through a palsied throng of servants like a hot blade through tallow, took the steps in two jumps and halted to seek the scream’s source. It was repeated from the direction of the gateway, and they started into a run.

  Wild sobbing came through the open doorway of the hut by the gatehouse, and rose to a wail. ‘Roger! Roger!’ They plunged within, and checked in the dimness of the windowless room to peer about them. The woman’s white kerchief guided them; she crouched in a corner over something that threshed and gabbled shrilly, and the sour stench of vomit filled their nostrils.

  ‘What’s amiss?’ Ranulf demanded harshly.

  She swung round on her haunches, lifting a distorted face drained of all colour. Hélie’s eyes had adjusted themselves to the smoky gloom, and horror took him by the throat. The child of the ruin was writhing in his own vomit on the small straw pallet, his face bright crimson and his mouth open on senseless ravings. Ranulf halted as though he had run upon a wall, his breath issuing in a grunt of dismay.

  ‘Witchcraft!’ shrieked the woman. ‘The witch has cursed him! She has killed Lord Robert, and now my son!’

  Ranulf crossed himself automatically. ‘Saints defend us! What madness is this? The brat is sick—’

  ‘The same spell—the very same! So my lord died, and she has bewitched my son! Roger, my son, my babe—Roger!’ She caught him up, lifting him across her lap, and he flung his arms and legs abroad in blind struggle. She clutched him to her breast, and he stilled for a moment.

  ‘The cherries—the witch’s cherries!’ he said, very fast but quite clearly. ‘The man swived her in the ruins and I will make them sorry—if my father was alive he would kill him—’ His voice trailed into incoherent mutterings, and then he heaved in another spasm of nausea. The mother cried out. The hut’s door was darkened by a chattering, peering, avid throng, and Sir Ranulf turned and scattered them with one furious burst of invective. Hélie stood rooted by the smouldering hearth, rigid with hideous comprehension.

  The child had stilled, and the woman gripped him to her breast and sobbed violently. Then she laid him down and mopped at him with one of the soiled blankets while he gasped and twitched, his eyes wide open and their blue turned all to black.

  The hut’s shadows swooped down again and lifted as someone entered, and skirts rustled behind Hélie. Ranulf swung round again, his mouth opening for another furnace-blast of wrath, that changed to a growl of welcome. The mother looked about and screamed, thrusting out her hand to avert the Evil Eye. The child began to thresh again, gabbling in a shrill unearthly voice.

  ‘The witch!’ cried the woman, and flung herself forward between Durande de Vallaroy and the child. ‘No! No! Do not overlook him!’

  ‘He is fevered, and perhaps I can aid,’ Durande answered calmly, approaching the pallet. The child struggled half up, flung out his arms convulsively and fell back. She stiffened, and her hand lifted to her breast. ‘Robert’s eyes!’ she whispered.

  ‘Take off your spell! Take back your curse!’ the woman wailed, rising to her knees with her hands clasped in supplication. Durande recoiled a pace, and the woman jerked after her on her knees, tears streaming down her distorted face. ‘Leave me my son! Noble lady, I beg you—I will confess all my fault— your witchcraft is the stronger—only spare me my son! Take off your spell!’ She clawed desperately at Durande’s rough gown.

  ‘Mabille, I know no spell,’ Durande said steadily, her voice’s flatness betraying her shock and horror. ‘This is the sickness that took Lord Robert.'

  Hélie said hoarsely, 'He has eaten dwale.'

  They all stared uncomprehendingly in tense silence, broken by the boy's renewed struggles and his distraught mother's half-stifled whimpering. Durande's eyes widened to wells of darkness, and the colour drained from her lips.

  ‘Dwale?’ repeated Ranulf impatiently. 'What in the Devil's name is that?'

  'Sweet Saviour!' Durande exclaimed. 'The pitiful little fool!'

  'We can soon be sure,' Hélie said briskly, the paralysis of horror relaxing its hold as action offered. He was outside the door on the last word. The gaping throng wavered back at sight of him, big and purposeful and very grim in the face. Three strides took him to an owl-eyed urchin, and before he could so much as squeak a large hand had him by the tunic neck.

  'The boy who went with Roger—where is he?'

  His captive knuckled his eyes, screwed up his face and began to blubber. A sharp jerk that almost detached his head from its neck restored his senses. He pointed with a dirty paw, and was loosed so suddenly that he sat down. Men and women scrambled out of Hélie's way as he made for the porter's hut on the other side of the gateway. The girl followed swiftly.

  The second boy sprawled by the hearth in a welter of overset blackberries, weeping desperately. For a moment, as he blinked into the gloom, Hélie's entrails were weighted with dread, and then he strode forward, his feet squelching on ripe fruit, and picked him up. The face that peered fearfully up at him was swollen with crying and grotesquely smeared with grime, tears and blackberry juice, but there was nothing abnormal in it, and Helie drew relieved breath. He set the urchin on his feet and laid firm hands on his shoulders. The boy glimpsed Durande in the doorway and shrank from her, and Hélie's mouth hardened.

  Between his fear of Durande and of long-dead Lord Reginald's malignant ghost, with either of whom, as far as he knew, might lie the responsibility for Roger's state, it was not easy to extract any coherent response from him. He stood sobbing and shivering in blank terror. Hélie, restraining his own impatience, persisted steadily, and at last his calm kindness won. He gulped and nodded.

  'He—he did, m-my lord. T-to show the witch he wasn't b-bid by her, he said.'

  Durande drew breath in a little hiss. Hélie shot a quick glance of compunction over his shoulder, and saw the horror in her white face.

  ‘How many?' he continued the inquisition.

  ‘I d-dunno, my lord. More’n a handful. Please, my lord, ’twasn’t my fault! I telled him they was bad cherries, but he said he weren’t feared o’ her spells!’

  ‘Did you eat any?’

  ‘I—I—just one, my lord! It tasted nasty—I spit it out! Made my mouth all dry and nasty, my lord. He would eat them! Have they a spell? W-will I die too, my lord?’ He clutched frantically at Hélie’s arm, staring with terrified eyes, bloodshot and swollen from crying, but clear grey about the black pupil. Hélie put a reassuring arm about his unsavoury little body, reckless of the numerous vermin that would doubtless avail themselves of the fresher pastures he offered.

  ‘No spell, child. The lady is good and kind, no witch. The berries are poison, and she forbade him to eat them. That he defied her was his own most grievous folly.
’

  The boy screwed his doubled fists into his eyes and sobbed afresh. ‘I never—wanted—to—to go! I telled him it were a bad place! And he said—Lord Reginald would not—harm his own kinsman!’

  Over his head Hélie’s eyes encountered Durande’s, and her mouth twisted in a wry, horrified grimace for that oddly erroneous assumption. Then she came close and laid a hand on the child’s shoulder.

  ‘Henry, where is your mother?’

  He gulped down his blubbering to answer. ‘Down—down in the village wi’ my married sister, lady.’

  ‘Go to her and stay beside her.’

  He gaped at her, hiccuped, nodded and scuttled out. The man and girl gazed unmoving at each other for a few moments. Then Hélie kicked aside the overturned basket and turned to the door.

  ‘No doubt of it,’ he stated grimly. ‘The wretched brat is dying of dwale poison.’

  She shivered. Her face was entirely colourless, her brown eyes enormous. She spoke in a whisper. ‘But how then did Robert die of it?’

  Shocked comprehension froze him, and a chill tingled along his spine. Then he reached out his hand. She swung violently away as though his touch were fire, and was outside the hut while he gaped witlessly at her back. Then he was thrusting through the crowd behind her, wild speculations whirling through his head.

  A mob of women and household officials surrounded Mabille's doorway, among them Hélie's cousin Thomas, bearing an expression of mingled curiosity and distaste. He moved to intercept his lord, but Hélie brushed past with scant courtesy, in no humour for his questioning. The woman's wild sobs pierced all the throng's muttering, and as he forced through the doorway he could hear the child moaning pitifully and another woman crying quietly.

  The little hut was darkened and crowded by a half-dozen bulky bodies, and the stench took him by the throat. Hermeline huddled on the incongruous carved bed with its handsome scarlet coverlid lined with otter fur, more appropriate to Robert's lady than to his paramour. Her hands were over her face, and her slender body shook to her weeping. One of her maidens had an arm about her and was distractedly trying to comfort her. The marshal's dumpy middle-aged wife bent over the mother, on her knees by the child's pallet. He was quieter now, but the dusky colour had deepened to purple, he breathed with difficulty, and his half-open eyes were quite black. To one side, as though withdrawing from women's business as far as the confined space allowed, the Lollingford father and son muttered uneasily. The marshal's lady swung impatiently round as they entered, and her lined brown face lighted a little at sight of Durande.