[Sir Richard Straccan 01] - The Bone-Pedlar

by Sylvian Hamilton

  ‘I bet he will,’ whispered Larktwist to Bane. ‘Want to wager on who’ll be the poor sod that gets to collect the nests?’

  ‘I hate to throw cold water on your bright idea,’ said Bane sourly, ‘but we don’t have any baskets.’

  ‘Then we’ll get some,’ Straccan said, ‘at the nearest will.’

  God alone knew what it was like down there when the enraged wasps came boiling out of their shattered nests. The screams began almost at once, and when the savages tried to get out they were driven back by blades.

  It seemed a long wait as the morning sun rose and beat down hot on their backs, but eventually the screaming subsided. When nothing had tried to escape for some time, they judged it safe to go down. What they saw would haunt them for ever.

  Cavern led into cavern, and the damp and foetid murk was ill-lit by a few rag wicks in bowls of stinking fat. There were pieces of meat hanging, like any housewife’s store of bacons and hams, but these were the quartered flesh of men and women. The place was full of the droning of huge blue flies which clustered on the rock walls and on the ripe meat, and lit on the searchers’ faces and hands.

  A few wasps still buzzed angrily, but most had found their way out again through various crevices in the rock, through which came narrow shafts of light. Five of the beast-folk, three of them children, were dead, stung on lips and tongues and eyes, swollen, blue and asphyxiated. The rest were alive, but of those, four were so badly stung that they could not walk. Straccan and his companions fetched up the dead and the living, the dead dragged by their feet, the stumbling sting-blinded living fast bound.

  Coin the creatures had kept—it was found scattered all through the caverns—for their brats had played with it, as they had with human bones and skulls. Savages they were, but they had the cunning to realise that jewellery might be recognised if they tried to sell or barter with it; so that too, they had kept. It was trumpery stuff, for they were clever enough not to attack the better-off travellers, anyone for whom search might be made. Their tawdry treasure was piled here and there in pathetic heaps—a little silver but mostly brass or latten, with glass gems—buckles and brooches, rings and pendants, amulets and pilgrim badges.

  ‘So much for faery gold,’ said Miles bitterly, stirring one of the piles with the tip of his sword.

  ‘Eh? Oh, aye,’ said Blaise. ‘The people under the hill, the fair folk!’

  They gathered it all to take to Jedburgh, where perhaps someone would recognise this buckle or that ring, and learn at last what had become of their missing kin.

  Their captive guide, whimpering and cringing, led them to the far end of a low tunnel, where a charnel reek came from a dreadful natural oubliette. With gestures and jabbering—Straccan thought that whatever their language was, it sounded like nothing but a fit of coughing—it made them understand that the victims’ remains, and their clothes and possessions, had been flung down there. Miles dropped a stone to test the depth, and they listened long before they heard it strike bottom.

  They felt they would never be free of the stink; their hair and clothes were befouled, it penetrated their flesh and filled their lungs. Later they burned their clothes and sat in the stream, scrubbing their hair and skin until numbed and sore. Even then, the smell still seemed to be with them, and it was some days before they no longer complained of it.

  ‘We will take them to the abbey at Holywood,’ said Blaise. ‘It lies less than a league away. The abbot is my cousin.’

  ‘What then?’ asked Straccan. ‘I must get to Skelrig. God only knows what’s happening there. These beasts have cost us time enough already.’

  ‘You and Bane must ride on. There’s no need for you to tarry for this. The lad and his servant can help me take the savages to Holywood. My cousin has the right of High and Low Justice,’ said Blaise with grim satisfaction. ‘Pit and gallows, life and death in his domain. We will leave them in his hands to be justified, and catch you up on the morrow.’

  The creatures were put to death a week later, after a dreadful interval of torture and confession that exhausted even the hardest of the servants of justice, innured to anguish and depravity though they were. Under torture, several of the condemned told of the fair man who rode a black horse and paid them with meat and sugar to kill travellers of his own choosing.

  Because of the nature of their crimes, they were regarded as beasts, not as human beings with immortal souls. No priests attended them, no prayers were said for them, and the day of their execution was a local holiday, the event itself a piece of theatre, a Roman circus, amusement and entertainment on a grand scale, a huge release of public hatred. Had they not been guarded as they were dragged to their deaths, they would have been torn apart by the baying multitude. But men with pikes kept the crowd back, and on the scaffold, built unusually high so all could see, the survivors of Sawney’s family were butchered, gralloched and dismembered, as they had used their victims.

  Sawney was kept until last, and baited like a bear before the executioner got his turn. With its bowels heaped between its feet, and first one arm, then the other, and one leg, then the other, struck off, the huge heaving carcass clung to life longer than any of the others, howling and blaspheming while its guts were burned before its eyes, until the final shuddering agony at last silenced its tongue.

  The remains were pitchforked into a blazing fire and consumed, the ashes and calcined fragments raked up, pounded to powder and thrown into the river, where children threw stones at the greasy clots until all were swept away.

  Chapter 32

  The dumb boy, Hob, was sitting on an arrow chest in the window alcove just outside the garderobe room where Gilla was imprisoned. When he heard footsteps ascending, he swung round and slipped down behind the chest, where he crouched and made himself as small as he could, holding his breath, sure that the loud beating of his heart must be heard and he would be dragged out. But nothing happened. The lord, and Lady Julitta went on up to the top floor, talking quietly together.

  Something was going on in the upper chamber. They had put that horrible old man in there who had turned up yesterday. One look at the Arab had frightened Hob half to death. Nothing as old and desiccated as that should be walking around alive.

  What was going on? De Brasy had ridden out this morning leading a pack pony laden with brazier, charcoals and torches; he had returned without the burden. The kitchen was in a state of chaos, for a feast had been ordered for Lord Robert’s men and the servants who had come with the Lady Julitta and the shuddersome new lord.

  Above, the door closed behind them. Hob let his breath out and felt the sweat chilling on his skin. Tears leaked from his eyes; he wiped them and his nose with a dirty hand. Lord Robert was dead. Hob had seen his poor body and the blood, mute witness of murder.

  Hob, dumb from birth but neither deaf nor stupid, was accustomed to the casual unkindness and deliberate cruelty with which dumb creatures are used. He had loved his master, Lord Robert, who always treated him kindly, but, above all, talked to him. Hob was proud of that. He did not realise that the terrified man had only been talking to himself, never dreaming the boy listened and learned. He had learned a great deal. He could understand the everyday Scots tongue used in the will and the tower, and also some of the Norman French which the great folk sometimes spoke.

  He knew the lady was wicked. She had forbidden Hob to look after Lord Robert and was guilty of his death. True, he had hanged himself, God shrive him, but it was her doing. The dead man’s blood was proof. She and the new lord meant to bring the devil here. Hob knew all about the devil, whom Lord Robert feared, hiding in his magic circle. He knew all about the green metal case with a picture inside, too, which Crimmon had taken to England, wherever that was. Lord Robert had sent it to the lady his sister, to give to a great warlock who would come and destroy the devil, so that Lord Robert could leave his magic circle, ride his horses again, fly his hawks, and laugh and sing as he used to before he made the devil angry with him. But the lady had
betrayed her brother, and his blood had cried out against her.

  And there was the little girl. Hob had seen her slapped and shaken, heard her crying shut in that cold little room. The lady had even taken away her dress and shoes and the silver medallion she wore, and left just her shift and a blanket. Hob carried her food and knew she did not eat it. What would happen to her? She was so pretty, and small.

  Hugging himself, trying to ease the misery of loss and fright, Hob huddled in the alcove wondering what to do. He wanted to go home; his grandfather would be glad to see him, and he’d be safe there; hungry and cold, but safe. The devil wasn’t after him. But what about the girl? Suppose he let her out of her prison? What could she do, where could she hide? Suppose … suppose Hob took her with him?

  There was a new bright bolt, fitted by the lady’s orders to the garderobe door, but Hob could reach it. He touched the child’s hand. She was asleep, poor wee cold thing, and didn’t move. He squeezed the small hand and touched her gently on the cheek. Still no reaction. He saw the bruises and welts on her thin arms and on her soft throat, and made a little shocked pitying sound. He watched the rise and fall of her breathing, wondering how to wake her.

  Wake up, he called desperately inside his head. Wake up! Wake up!

  Gilla opened her eyes on Hob’s anxious tear-smeared face. A boy. The boy who brought her food and peats for the fire. She didn’t know his name.

  ‘Who are you?’

  He touched his lips, shook his head and made his sound, a soft grunt.

  ‘Are you dumb?’

  He nodded vigorously and smiled.

  ‘Have you come to take me home?’

  He nodded again, thinking he’d sort ‘home’ out later. Getting her out of here was enough to be going on with.

  ‘Be off with ye. Go on, get oot!’ The harassed cook, furious at this invasion of his steamy domain, laid about him with a heavy ladle, clouting heads, shoulders and elbows indiscriminately. Damn the beggar-brats; they were supposed to wait at the gate until the cook sent a scullion with yesterday’s trenchers and any other leftovers. For some reason, today they had taken it into their stupid heads to run in through the gate and across the bailey to the kitchen door, half-terrified at their own daring.

  ‘Ye wee skemps, I’ll skelp ye! I’ll set the hounds on ye! Oot! Oot! Oot!’

  Yelping, they ran like a pack of grey and brown rats in their dirty sacking hoods and ragged shirts towards the gate, dodging the laughing guards who pretended to chase them. But one man, sharper of eyes and wits than the rest, noticed that while eight had run in, ten were running out.

  ‘Shut the bloody gate!’

  Hob’s hideout, his secret refuge from the fears and torments of his silent childhood, was about three miles from Skelrig amid the small clustering braes, where rocky outcrops and deep narrow burns broke the bare hills. He had spent much time there in his short life.

  Hob was seven years old when his father died, and his uncle, a tavern keeper in Dalkeith, claimed him for an unpaid slave. Hob’s grandfather, his mother’s father, objected strongly, but Uncle Willie bore him down, wore him down—the old man was frightened of the bellowing giant—and one morning Hob was put up behind his uncle on a tall bony horse, silently weeping. His uncle was a bully who, by noon, had earned the boy’s hatred. He slapped him till his head rang and shouted at him as if, being dumb, the boy must be deaf as well. Mid-morning, the fat man dismounted, pissed noisily against a rock and ate an excellent packed meal by himself, giving the child nothing. Mid-afternoon, when he stopped again and disappeared behind a tree, Hob took to his heels.

  His hidden place was a small cave in the rock wall above a deep-cut burn, only gained by a desperate scramble upwards after following the stream bed for some way. It could not be seen from above at all and was well off any beaten track. He stayed there a full week while his furious uncle raged and searched, and finally gave up, riding back to his tavern alone.

  Hob had meant to bring Gilla here. They’d have been safe, at least for a while.

  He believed in the elven-folk, but he also believed firmly in the power of iron which they dreaded. In the past couple of days he had brought as much small scrap iron, stolen from the smithy, as he could carry, his chief pride and defence being a rusty length of chain which, like Lord Robert, he laid out in a protective circle. Several horseshoes and little heaps of nails reinforced his defences, and he had built a small stone hearth, now crowned with an old iron pot lacking its handle, likewise pilfered from Skelrig. He had also fetched a great heap of bracken and grass for some warmth and comfort.

  Now he burrrowed into it alone, a small animal crying quietly as he made his nest. He’d failed her. He’d done his best and he’d failed. The gates had slammed shut before they could get through, and the man who had shouted had picked Gilla up by her hair and carried her, screaming, back into the tower. Hob and the rest had been knocked about a bit but there were no orders to hold on to them.

  This place was safer than his grandfather’s hut in the will. If the bad people realised what he’d done, they would look for him there. Food was the first necessity, but Hob had been catching fish by hand in the burns since he was three years old and he was a dead shot with sling and stones, able to knock a squirrel out of a tree and even bring down a bird on the wing. Flint and steel he had. He would not starve.

  Hob slept briefly, twitching and whimpering in his sleep like a puppy, but when he woke he knew what he was going to do. His stomach twisted with fear when he thought of returning to the tower but the bad people were up to something and, whatever it was, it would be done soon; no one would leave a brazier and coals lying about outside for long. It would be very soon, perhaps even tonight.

  The lass was wee but brave. He could be no less brave. He must go back. If he got the chance, he would slip inside. If not, he would wait and watch until he could.

  ‘How far now to Skelrig?’ Straccan asked.

  ‘Eight leagues or so,’ said Blaise.

  ‘Then what?’ Miles asked. ‘We five can neither siege the place, nor storm it.’

  ‘I hope it will be a simple matter of exchange,’ said Straccan. ‘I have his relic. It is his, bought and paid for. He has my daughter. One for the other.’

  The old knight’s expression was bleak. ‘When you have her, what then?’

  ‘I will kill him.’

  Chapter 33

  Unlike Lord Robert, whose sleeping conscience had been inconveniently jolted awake by murder, de Brasy didn’t care who suffered, as long as it wasn’t him. While still with Soulis he must obey, and if that meant more killing, what the hell. It would make no difference, anyway. He didn’t expect Al-Hazred’s filthy ritual to have any more effect now than before; for all the old devil swore he could draw upon the power in the Nine Stane Rig to ensure success this time.

  That was the trouble with the Arab. He had promised success this time both times, and had explanations for each failure. The stars were against them, other influences opposed them, the place was wrong, the time was not right, even the bloody wind had changed!

  How the master could still believe in the old fraud was beyond de Brasy’s understanding. They had tried his great ritual at Soulistoun—that’s where the stars were against them—and at Crawgard—that was the wrong place—but never mind, third time lucky. They would try again, this time in the Nine Stane Rig. Soulis had read in some old book that power was often concentrated in ancient stone circles. He bought old books, manuscripts, letters and documents from all over the world. Agents in Bristol, Paris and Marseilles, Rome and Nuremberg, Valencia, Athens, Egypt and Jerusalem, sent him antique parchments, papyri, clay tablets and linen scrolls. He and the Arab pored over them. Most were rejected as rubbish, but now and then some scrap of ancient lore was discovered that promised to be useful.

  Al-Hazred found the summoning ritual in a crate of crumbling clay tablets from Outremer, and at Soulistoun they tried, and failed of course, to tempt a demon with new-spilled blo
od—the blood of hens and lambs—for the ritual demanded blood without saying what kind. But the blood of birds and beasts did not coax a demon into the lead and silver cage prepared for it. And then, for the first time, the master turned upon Al-Hazred and struck him in his rage and disappointment. De Brasy saw the Arab’s face slack with astonishment and sudden fear, and the quickly-veiled glare of hatred in his lightless black eyes. If looks could kill …

  De Brasy would never have drunk anything offered by anyone who looked at him like that, but once again the master allowed himself to be placated, and swallowed the Arab’s prescribed potion ‘to restore My Lord’s spirits, to comfort My Lord in his disappointment’.

  To polish My Lord off more like, thought de Brasy, awaiting developments with interest. But he was wrong, this time. Restored and comforted, Soulis listened, nodding dreamily as Al-Hazred poured the soothing oil of his plausible explanations. What they had offered, he said, was not precious enough. The demon scorned the blood of soulless creatures.

  So next time, at the winter solstice at Crawgard, they offered blood and souls.

  There were a few nasty moments when, in the disorienting haze of incense and smoke from the powders and herbs the Arab burned, de Brasy actually thought there was something there, shadowy hints of a dreadful ever-changing shape, trying to form. Urged on by Al-Hazred, they tried to capture it with an orgy of slaughter, but to no avail. It faded away, leaving them with nothing but the stink and what was left of the bodies. But this Nine Stane Rig was a place of power, of ancient sacrifice, where blood had been offered to the old dark gods; and the master was all the more determined to go ahead tonight, since the special child who was to be their offering had almost got away.

  ‘Such purity. An innocent soul, a fledgeling seer. The perfect offering,’ Soulis gloated.