Company of Liars (48 page)

There was still no smoke rising from the healer's hearth by mid-morning when we were packing up to leave the camp. I was becoming increasingly concerned, but the others were too preoccupied by the argument between Rodrigo and Zophiel to notice.

As they went about their tasks, the tension between Zophiel and Rodrigo was palpable. Osmond was keeping an anxious eye on both of them in case tempers flared again and he had to leap in to separate them. It was like watching a pair of growling dogs, knowing it is just a matter of time before they savage each other. Cygnus, on the other hand, was so sunk in misery and humiliation that he hardly seemed aware of his surroundings. He shook off Rodrigo's hand when he tried to help him to his feet, snatched the blanket and took himself off to dress alone. Dry, but with his teeth chattering uncontrollably, he returned to the camp. He wouldn't look at any of us. When Adela tried to get him to drink some hot broth to warm himself, he pushed it away without a word and went to prepare Xanthus for the wagon. But not even Xanthus's nuzzling drew a response from him.

As we packed, I kept glancing up at the healer's cottage. I had vowed never to go back there, but I knew I couldn't
leave without finding out if something was wrong. Once again I felt responsible. If I had taken the roasted meat and wine to her the day before and not Zophiel, he wouldn't have had the chance to threaten her. What if he had gone beyond threats? What if he had pushed her, as he had Cygnus, and she was lying injured or worse?

It's madness in these times to approach a dwelling where no hearth fire burns. I knew that, yet still I climbed the path to the healer's cottage. I called out as I reached the gate, but there was no reply. The garden was as I'd seen it the day before, the hens still clucking and scolding among the herbs. I walked cautiously up the path. The strange fruit on the rowan tree hung heavy with frost. The tiny bodies sparkled as they slowly revolved in the light breeze.

When I reached the cottage and still got no reply to my calls, I pushed aside the heavy leather curtain and held it up so that the weak winter sunshine would illuminate the dark interior. Rocks which were part of the hillside jutted into the room, forming natural ledges and shelves on which were stacked pots and clay jars. Bunches of dried herbs hung from the roof timbers. The black iron pot suspended over the fire in the centre of the room was empty and the fire below was banked down so that hardly a whisper of smoke escaped. Only a few blood-red lines in the grey ash, like tiny veins, showed that beneath, the fire still glowed. The furnishings in the room were simple: a wooden clothes chest, two low stools and a narrow bed raised only a few inches above the beaten earth floor. The bed was occupied by a lanky grey cat which was curled up in the centre, regarding me impassively with big green eyes.

‘Where's your mistress then?’

The cat blinked and licked a paw.

I backed out and looked around the garden, peering
behind bushes to see if the healer was lying unconscious somewhere, but there was no trace of her. Perhaps she had been so frightened by Zophiel that she had fled. I scanned the gully and the hill above, but there was no sign of anyone. The waterfall roared down over the rocks into the dark pool below. If she had fallen in there and been dragged down by the force of the water I had no hope of seeing her beneath the churning foam.

I turned to go, pausing only to leave a small flagon of Zophiel's wine by the door. Zophiel didn't know he had made her the gift, but I thought it was the least he could do.

I'd closed the gate and was on the path down, when the voice called out behind me, ‘If that is wine you left at my door, I thank you.’

I turned. The gate was open and the healer was standing with one hand on it, but whether she had opened it from the inside or the outside, I couldn't tell.

I walked a few paces back up the path, near enough to speak without shouting, but not so close that she could touch me.

‘I came to apologize for Zophiel, the man who came to you last night… and to assure you that whatever he said, we will not let him carry out his threats.’

‘Your friend is a terrified man and with good cause judging by the howls I heard last night. I pity him. That's why I gave him what he wanted, not because he threatened me.’

‘You heard the wolf then.’

‘I heard it. Your friend did not succeed in killing it.’

This was a statement not a question. I wondered just how sharp her hearing was. ‘It didn't take the bait. But we're leaving. I think it will follow us, so you don't need to fear it.’

‘I fear priests and others who believe the Christ of compassion is best worshipped with bone-fires and racks, but not that wolf. I know I am not its quarry.’

I looked down at the camp. I could see Cygnus backing Xanthus between the wagon shafts. ‘I must go, but many thanks for your help. The woman and child are already improving.’

‘I'm glad.’

I turned away and took a couple of paces down the path before turning back; the healer was still standing there, one hand on the gate, as if she expected me to say something else.

‘Forgive me, but I'm curious. Where were you, just now? I couldn't see you anywhere. Did you hear me calling out to you?’

She smiled. ‘I heard you. I was there.’

An image of grey fur and green eyes flashed into my head and before I could stop myself I blurted out, ‘The cat?’

She laughed. ‘You also think I am a witch? No, not the cat, the waterfall. Water is transparent, yet it can conceal better than a solid door. There's a cave behind it. I discovered it long ago and my mother knew it before that. If people looked they would see it, but they don't. If you want to conceal yourself, the best place is often in plain view. But then I think you have already discovered that.’

The journey that day was more fraught than usual. The ground was frozen hard, which made Xanthus's job easier and the going quicker, but despite the winter sunshine, a storm cloud had settled over the company. Adela tried to keep up a bright stream of chatter, but it had no effect. Zophiel's swollen and evidently painful lip was a constant reminder of the humiliation he'd suffered and he was never
one to bear such humiliations in silence. Only Narigorm was spared Zophiel's taunts. He had been wary of her ever since that night in the chantry crypt when she had spoken of wolves guarding the paths of the dead, but his unwillingness to challenge her did not extend to the rest of us. He vented his spleen first on Rodrigo, then Cygnus and finally on Adela, goading them at every opportunity until Osmond came close to giving him a black eye to match his lip. Rodrigo, ignoring Zophiel, tried desperately to engage Cygnus in conversation, but Cygnus, answering only in monosyllables, made it plain he wanted to be left alone.

To make matters worse, the track now began to skirt the edge of an ancient forest. Though the sun sparkled from the frost on the bare black branches of the trees, the forest made everyone uneasy. There were no leaves on the trees or bushes, but the thick trunks and tangle of last year's brambles made it hard to see far into the woods. After the fears of the night before, we were all on edge. Anything might be keeping pace with us in the shadows, slinking behind the trees. And it was not just beasts we had to worry about, there are human predators too. A band of cut-throats might easily be concealed around the next bend and every bird call, every rustle might be their signal.

As the afternoon wore on and there seemed no end to the forest, we quickened our pace, not even stopping to eat, until we came to a fork in the road. The main track ran on through the trees, but a smaller, rougher one appeared to lead away from them into open country once more. None of us wanted to spend the night sleeping near that forest, so by common consent we turned Xanthus on to the rougher track.

The sun was low and the cold chill of night was already rolling in. Apart from the dark line of forest at our backs,
the only thing to be seen in any direction was a distant ring of standing stones. The dark stones stood out starkly against the vast expanse of pinking sky. It was a bleak and barren place. I shuddered to think of the nature of the gods they might once have worshipped here.

It soon became apparent that the track led to the stones and nowhere else. After all that effort we had been following a dead end, but it was too late to turn back before nightfall so we continued pushing the wagon towards the ring of stones.

The stones in the circle were about the height of a man and twelve in number. A taller rock, like an ancient warrior queen, stood a little way outside the ring and, between this and the circle, several smaller stones lay fallen in two rows as if prostrating themselves before her. Even close up it was an eerie place, but there was comfort in it too for the stones had withstood centuries of storms, invasions and disasters and had survived unchanged and unchanging.

At the base of the queen rock we found a deep, curved stone basin, like an oyster shell, but large enough for a man to sit in. It was placed so that any rain which fell on the rock would trickle down its surface and drip into the basin beneath. The stone surface of the basin was green with slime, but once we had broken through the thin layer of ice, the water beneath was clean and clear. At least we had water enough for Xanthus to drink and for us to cook with.

The sun was sinking rapidly and almost before it was gone, the first stars appeared, bringing with them an ice-sharp edge to the wind. We finished preparing the supper. Zophiel had laid out the poisoned bait again, some distance from our camp, but I don't think any of the rest of us believed it would work. Perhaps he didn't either. It was an amulet, a talisman, something to ward off disaster when you are
powerless to prevent it. Despite what he said, Zophiel needed hope as much as the rest of us. As the skies darkened, he began pacing restlessly, peering out from between the stones in all directions, but he did not step outside their protective circle.

‘Don't you want to eat, Narigorm?’ Adela called over her shoulder, as she ladled mutton into my bowl.

Narigorm crouched in the shadow of one of the stones. She was hunched over, peering at something on the ground in front of her which lay within the light cast by the fire. My chest tightened into a dull ache as I watched her hands hovering in that familiar way over the ground.

‘Narigorm, did you hear what Adela said? Come and eat now!’

Adela looked round in surprise at the sharpness in my voice, but Narigorm didn't move.

‘I didn't realize,’ Adela said in an anxious voice. ‘It's best not to disturb her, Camelot, not when she's reading runes. It might… bring bad luck. I'll save her supper for her.’

The ancient stones loomed taller in the darkness. Strange shapes danced across them in the light cast by the flames, as if a host of people circled us just beyond our sight and we glimpsed only their shadows.

I took a bowl of mutton and walked across to Narigorm, deliberately standing between her and the fire to block the light. I held out the bowl, hoping the rich, hot steam rising from it would make her realize she was hungry.

‘Please, Narigorm,’ I said weakly, ‘why don't you leave that and come and eat? No runes tonight, there's a good girl, not in this place.’

‘What harm can it do?’ Osmond said. ‘Maybe she'll be able to tell us how to get rid of this wolf. If we even knew why it's following us, I'd feel better.’

What harm can it do? I'd never told him or any of the company what Narigorm had read in the runes the night Carwyn was born and Jofre died. I had tried to convince myself that her words had meant nothing. We'd all been worried for Adela and the baby that night. Narigorm had only said aloud what we all privately feared. The death of Jofre had been a coincidence, nothing more. You can read anything into a fortune-teller's predictions; they deliberately make them vague enough so they always seem to come true. Perhaps she'd not really learnt of Pleasance's death in the runes either. She could have followed her and seen her hanging. Nothing mystical about that, at least that's what I tried to tell myself.

Narigorm picked up a rune and held it up in the firelight. The symbol on it resembled a pot on its side.

‘Peorth
reversed.’

Osmond glanced at the symbol, then quickly averted his eyes. ‘Is that to do with the wolf?’

‘Peorth
means a secret someone has not told.’

He laughed uneasily. ‘We all have those. Let me think. When I was a boy I was madly in love with my mother's serving maid, but I was too shy ever to tell her. There, is that the secret?’

Narigorm shook her head. ‘When
peorth
is reversed it means a dark secret, a dark secret that will soon be exposed.’

I heard a sharp intake of breath from somewhere behind me, then Osmond said quietly, ‘Camelot is right. You should eat now.’

But Narigorm held up a second rune inscribed with two V shapes carved into it, interlocking and opposite.

‘Jara.
The time of harvest. The time to reap.’ In the firelight her white hair writhed with red and orange flames. She gazed up at Osmond. ‘When
jara
lies with
peorth
, it
means someone will reap the punishment for their dark secret soon.’

A look of utter panic crossed Osmond's face and he glanced at Adela who was staring equally wide-eyed, her ladle arrested in mid-air, spilling its contents on to the grass.

‘That's enough now, Narigorm,’ I said sharply.

I intended to say more, but Zophiel spoke from the shadows.

His voice sounded curiously strained, almost pleading. ‘The runes only show what might be. We have the power to change the outcome. The runes are only a warning about what will happen if we do nothing to prevent it.’

Narigorm lifted her head and stared at him. The light from the flames twisted across her pale face, as if vipers writhed across her skin. Then, without answering, she picked up a third rune and held it up. This one was like an angled cross.

‘Nyd
,’ she said. ‘It's the fate rune. It means there's nothing that can be done to change the other two. The fate written in them cannot be changed. The dark secret will be revealed and it will be punished.’