Company of Liars (27 page)

‘Come now, Pleasance,’ said Zophiel. ‘Don't be modest,
midwife to a wolf, that's hardly nothing. Now that we know this much, you must satisfy our curiosity. Besides, it would be ungracious to our hostess not to repay her exceptional hospitality with a story. Camelot has already favoured us with his wolf story; yours can hardly be more fanciful.’

His tone was again cold and calm as if nothing had happened, but he remained standing, his head inclined to the door, listening to the distant barking of the dogs.

‘Please, Pleasance,’ Adela begged. ‘We won't let you rest until you do.’

Pleasance gave a wan smile and with obvious reluctance began her tale.

‘Once, many years ago, I served my neighbours as a midwife, delivering their little ones and helping the mothers through their time of travail. One day a neighbour of mine was nearing her time and I went to fetch some herbs to brew a draught that would ease her birth pangs.’

Adela reached out and squeezed Pleasance's hand, smiling warmly. ‘I am so thankful you will deliver my baby. I was so frightened thinking of it before. I am such a coward when it comes to pain, but now that I know you will be there to help –’

‘It is against God's will that the pain of birth should be eased,’ Zophiel broke in coldly. ‘Birth pain is woman's punishment for succumbing to temptation. God ordains that she should suffer pain for the good of her soul.’ He glared at Adela as if hoping that she would suffer all the torments of hell during her labour.

‘You'd soon change your tune if you had to give birth,’ I told him. ‘Now, let Pleasance tell her story in peace; you were the one who asked to hear it.’

I thought of Jofre lying in the barn and wondered if pain would indeed redeem his soul. Pain certainly changes the
sufferer, but I'd never seen anyone change for the better because of it.

Pleasance hesitated, glancing at Zophiel.

‘Get on with it, woman,’ he snapped, turning his head once more towards the door, listening to the sounds outside.

Nervously Pleasance resumed her tale. ‘It had been a long winter and when I went to my stores I found that my stock of pennyroyal was exhausted. It was not yet sprouting in my herb garden for I lived high up on a hill where spring comes late. So I went down into the valley where the plants have more shelter and leaves come earlier. Pennyroyal grows best along the banks of streams and rivers, so I found a stream and followed its course into the forest. But no matter how hard I looked, I could not find a single sprig of that plant.

‘I grew hungry and settled down in a sheltered spot to eat a hunk of bread, but as I ate I felt a prickling on the back of my neck and knew that I was not alone. Looking up, I saw a huge she-wolf drinking at the stream not a few feet away from me. Her belly was swollen with cubs. She was a beautiful creature, with a thick glossy pelt and powerful shoulders. At first I was terrified, and then she lifted her head and looked at me with big amber eyes, like flame, and as I looked into those eyes the fear left me and I saw she was just a mother, hungry and thirsty. I threw her the remains of my bread and she caught it deftly in her sharp white teeth. I stayed motionless until she had disappeared, then I stood up. That's when I saw it, right where the wolf had been standing, a thick clump of pennyroyal in full leaf.

‘A week passed and then one night there was a knocking at my door. At first I thought it was my neighbour's husband come to tell me her pains had started, but when I opened the door I found a stranger standing there. He was a tall man, wild of hair and eye, but not unhandsome.

‘ “Goodwife, bring your herbs and come quickly,” he said. “The birth pains are upon my wife and there is no one who can help her.”

‘It was a bitterly cold night, frost already sparkled on the ground in the moonlight, not the night you want to leave your warm fireside, but when a child comes, he comes. So I gathered those herbs and ointments I thought I might need and followed the man out into the night. Soon we had walked past all the cottages and out of the village into the valley beyond. The man led and I followed, tracking the tall dark figure by the light of the moon. It was then, as moonlight flooded the path, I noticed that he left no footprints in the frost, nor shadow on the ground. I was afraid, but I said nothing.

‘Finally we came to a narrow gap between two rocks. The man motioned me to enter, but I hesitated for the gap looked little more than a crevice in the rock. And as I stood there I heard a loud, booming voice call out from inside, “Enter, goodwife, and do your work.”

‘I stooped down and squeezed through the gap and all at once found myself standing in a huge cavern. Then I saw a sight which made my heart stop. For the cavern was full of
sheidim
dancing and laughing and howling like wolves around a huge fire whose flames leaped up red and blue.’

‘What are
sheidim
?’ Adela asked.

For a moment Pleasance seemed startled by the question and hesitated, then her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘They are demons.’

‘I've never heard that word before.’

Rodrigo broke in quickly, ‘Maybe it is not used where you come from. I have found every village has a different word for such things. Is that not so, Pleasance?’

He was staring at her with a curiously troubled expression
on his face. His gaze momentarily darted to Zophiel, but he was still apparently intent on the sounds outside. An odd look passed between Rodrigo and Pleasance which I could not interpret and she suddenly looked scared.

Rodrigo squeezed her hand and smiled reassuringly. ‘Go on with the story. The
demon
…’

I noticed that Pleasance's hands were trembling as she took up the tale again.

‘The… the demon who had called out to me spoke again. “Goodwife, do your work. If you bring forth a boy, you may ask for anything you want, but if you bring forth a girl, you will wish that you had never been born.”

‘At his words the
sheid
… the demons howled with laughter and I shook so much I could hardly hold my pack. The demons pulled aside a curtain and there in the corner I saw the she-wolf that I had fed at the stream. She was snarling, but when I looked into her amber eyes I saw a woman suffering in labour.

‘She spoke, a low, throaty sound which I had to strain to hear. “Goodwife, you gave me food, so I shall give you this – take care not to eat or drink anything in this place, however hungry or thirsty you become, for if you do you will become one of us.”

‘I did what I could for her, but the labour was long. I do not know how many hours I was in the cavern, but I worked and said nothing. From time to time one of the demons would bring plates of food and goblets of blood-red wine to sustain me, but I remembered the warning and ate and drank nothing though I was faint with hunger and my throat was parched from the stifling heat of the fire.

‘Finally, the she-wolf gave birth to a single cub, a male, and the demons howled with delight. Shimmering flames of black and silver shot up from the fire and the ground
trembled under the stamping feet of the demons as they linked arms and danced round it. The demon who had called out to me called for me again and asked me what I wanted as payment for my work. I refused to take anything, saying that to deliver a child is a blessing, no matter what that child may turn out to be. The Holy One himself blesses those who perform a blessing; no other payment is needed.

‘But the demon said that I must take something, else they would be in debt to a human and that could never be, for then they would be bound to the human until the debt was paid. I in turn had no wish to be bound to a demon, so I looked around for the thing of least value I could take. The floor of the cavern was covered with stones, so I picked up a stone and said I would take this as payment for the debt. No sooner had I said those words than I found myself outside the cave and standing alone on the edge of my village, staring up into the frosty night sky. It was as if no time at all had passed, yet I felt as though I had been in the cave for days.

‘As I turned for home I felt something hard in my hand. It was the stone I had picked up. I was about to toss it away when the moonlight fell on it and I saw that it was shining. I took it home to examine it more closely. I swear that when I picked it up it was just an ordinary stone, but when I looked at it again I saw this.’

Pleasance reached inside her kirtle and pulled out a thick leather thong which hung about her neck, on the end of which was a large round piece of amber, fiery as a wolf's eye.

‘So you see,’ she said, ‘the wolves will not harm me. It is their sign.’

Zophiel, from the door, began a slow mocking clap.
Pleasance flushed and quickly dropped the amber back inside her kirtle.

‘I confess, my dear Pleasance, I was wrong. I thought the camelot's tale was far-fetched, but I have to say you have outdone even Camelot. Tell us, my dear Pleasance, do you honestly imagine that God would bless a woman who brings a demon into the world? To give succour to a demon is damnation to your soul.’

‘I think what Pleasance meant,’ I said, ‘was that it is a good deed which is blessed regardless of the merit of the person for whom the deed is performed. There'd be no good deeds performed in this world at all if they were only performed for the sinless, isn't that so, Pleasance?’

She raised her head just briefly enough to give me a weak smile and then lowered it again, as if she would have gladly crawled back into the cave of demons again rather than answer Zophiel.

Zophiel turned on me as I hoped he would. ‘A fascinating idea, Camelot. So, if a demon appeared to you and –’

He broke off as for the third time the wolf's howl rang through the inn. It was closer this time, still a way off, but much closer. We fell silent, listening for another howl, aware of the crackling of the fire and the rasping breathing of the old widow. Outside the wind dashed rain against the walls, whining like a dog pleading to come in. The fire burned low and the rushes burned still lower, finally sputtering out in a thin, stinking trail of smoke, but no one stirred themselves to light new ones. We sat stupefied in the hot, stuffy room, staring into the embers of the fire. Zophiel alone was alert, his head bent close to the door, waiting for another howl. He was tense and agitated, much as he had been that night in the cave. I wondered if he too had his own wolf story. If
he did, it was one that had unnerved him far more than those we had told.

It was only when we heard the dogs scratching and barking at the door that the rest of us stirred out of our lethargy. Zophiel made no move to open the door, but the widow pushed him aside and unfastened it. Her boys bounded in, pausing only to shake themselves vigorously in the centre of the room, liberally spraying us all with mud, water and blood. The widow wailed, clapping her hand to her gummy mouth, until she realized that the blood was not that of the dogs. Though they were both soaked and covered in mud, there was no sign of any wounds on them. But they both held something furry and bleeding in their mouths which they laid happily in the old woman's lap, clearly expecting praise. Adela covered her eyes and shuddered.

‘What is it? Is it the wolf?’

The old widow laughed, the first time she had done so since we arrived.

‘Saints preserve us. It'd be a pretty miserable runt of a wolf if it were. It's a hare. My boys have been hunting and caught me a hare for my breakfast. There's my clever boys!’

She held aloft the two ripped halves of hare in triumph, like an executioner displaying a severed head for the crowd, while the dogs leaped up at her to catch the drops of blood that dripped from the gory remains.

We left the old woman to the skinning of her hare and made our way back to the barn. She hardly seemed to notice us leaving. She was too busy rubbing the dogs dry and telling them over and over what good boys they were.

Rain was lashing down outside and though we hurried to the barn, we still got thoroughly drenched. There was no sign of Jofre when we entered and I saw an expression of panic cross Rodrigo's face as he caught sight of the empty
bed. Looking around, I noticed that the ladder to the hayloft was not where I had left it, and glancing up, I saw it had been pulled up into the loft. I tugged his sleeve and silently pointed. As he directed the light of the lantern upwards I could just make out Jofre's form curled up on the pile of hay that I had earlier earmarked for myself. He was asleep or pretending to be. Perhaps he too had heard the wolf and had climbed up into the loft just in case it found its way in or, more likely, he wanted to make sure he spent the night alone where he could nurse his stripes unobserved. I didn't grudge him the hay. His need was greater than mine for a soft place to lie that night, and even with the hay under him I doubted he was going to get a comfortable night's sleep.

Zophiel rushed to check his boxes as soon as the barn door was safely barred behind us. Thankfully, for all our sakes, they were intact and undisturbed, or so we concluded from his relieved expression, for he said nothing. He stripped off his wet clothes as rapidly as he could, slipping naked and shivering under his blanket on the bed-boards closest to his boxes, but I noticed that for all his haste, he did not neglect to slide his long knife under the covers where it would lie ready if it should be needed.

Narigorm sat in the corner of one of the beds, her knees pulled up to her chin and her skinny white arms wrapped tightly around her legs. In the dim light from the lantern, her hair glowed like a fall of new snow. She was watching Cygnus as he struggled with one hand to peel the wet hose from his goose-pimpled legs. Her doll lay beside her.

Cygnus caught sight of it and chuckled. ‘What have you done to your poor baby, Narigorm? I hope you don't intend to treat your children that way when you become a mother.’

I followed his gaze. Narigorm had swaddled her doll in
strips of cloth, as Adela had taught her, except that the swaddling bands had been wound not only the length of the doll's body, but up over the face, so it now looked more like a corpse prepared for burial than a swaddled baby. The same thought seemed to have struck Cygnus for he suddenly looked serious and lowered his voice.