Hill of Bones (26 page)

He felt his blood throbbing through his body with a thrill that was almost like bedding a beautiful woman. He understood now what it felt like to be a great minstrel. There was the trepidation that tonight you might not be able to deliver, that this time your talents might fail you, but stronger by far was the thrill of anticipation, knowing that success would bring adulation.

It was as if at first he had been only a player in costume, an actor in one of the great Mystery Play tableaux such as they had at York. But now he was becoming that very person. He no longer had to pretend to sense the demons in the bodies of those that came to him, he could feel them. In his dreams he really saw the visions of which he spoke, and almost . . . almost he was beginning to believe that all the events in his life had been leading to this. He had, after all, been saved from the raging sea; surely that meant that he had been chosen for some great task.

He had not set out to attract a following. Nothing had been further from his mind. His only intention had been to get away from Brean as quickly as possible. But with no money to buy decent lodgings, one night he and Martin had found themselves camping on the heath with a band of holy beggars who tramped from town to town begging for themselves and the poor, with their cry of, ‘Bread, for God’s sake.’ The beggars had generously shared their food with the pair, and it was rich pickings too, for townsfolk feared the beggars’ curses as much as they desired a blessing from them that would bring them luck.

Talk had naturally turned to where William was bound and, before he could prevent it, Martin had launched into an account of his master’s miraculous deliverance and his exorcism of the girl, both of which lost nothing in the telling. There were, of course, jeers from the more cynical beggars; after all, these men spent their lives persuading the gullible that miracles would follow if they gave generously. But others in the band, who genuinely believed in their own holy calling, were more willing to accept that William too had seen visions. And it wasn’t long therefore before William was challenged to demonstrate his powers. He obliged: plucking a stone from the head of one man who suffered headaches; convincing another that his falling sickness was caused by the menstrual blood of the Lilith, queen of demons, falling into a well from which he had drunk. And the beggar was full of gratitude when William carved on a piece of wood the names of the three angels that would henceforth protect him.

By the time they parted company the next day, three of the holy beggars had become William’s new disciples. One was a devout young man, who might have made a good life for himself in a monastery were it not for a restlessness that always drove him onwards. The second, an old man called Alfred, claimed to be a soldier who’d lost his right hand in battle, though since both his ears had been severed too, William rather suspected he’d been mutilated for some crime. The third was Letice, a crone so filthy and bedraggled it was hard to tell her age. Like a craggy outcrop of rock, it seemed as if she had looked that way for countless generations and would remain so for countless more to come.

Letice was something of an irritation. She would stare fixedly at you for hours at a time, but never meet your gaze. She talked constantly to herself about the people around her as if they couldn’t hear her, and saw doom-laden omens in everything, from the number of birds in a flock to the way twigs burned on the fire. But even William had to admit she was useful. As soon as they entered a town or village, she would stand on the street corner and shout about the new prophet come among them, with a boldness that not even the ardent Martin could muster.

It was Letice who had revealed that William’s holy name was Serkan. The voices in her head had told her this. Martin had sulked for days that he had not been the one to discover the master’s hidden name, but he used it along with the others. And William couldn’t deny it had a certain grandeur to it.

He gazed around at the motley group of followers he had assembled in the last few months. Most were hunched around the campfires, ravenously devouring the spit-roasted birds and rabbits they had caught, and hiding any food that remained. They’d no wish to be forced to share with those townsfolk who were making their way here. There were a few more women among them now, mostly those that other men had no use for: the maimed and disfigured; the ex-whore too old and scarred by pox to earn a living on her back now; the bruised and battered scrap of a girl on the run from her master. They were grateful for the company and protection, and threw themselves willingly into cooking and mending, glad for any kind word and gentle touch he might offer them.

But why were there no voluptuous beauties among his disciples, no fallen angels, no flame-haired Mary Magdalenes to whom he could offer intimate consolation? He groaned. It had been months since he’d bedded a woman, and he ached for it so much that sometimes he could hardly concentrate on anything else.

‘Master, they are here.’ Martin pointed to where the torches were appearing over the edge of the hill. Sighing, William rose and prepared for his performance.

Ursula positioned herself a little way from the crowd, who sat or kneeled on the short springy turf before the fire. She had deliberately selected a gown of white, impractical for riding, but she knew it would make her stand out in the dark, and she wanted to be noticed.

Her parents were away for the night at the house of an old friend of her father, a wealthy farmer, and would not return until midday tomorrow, after her father’s business was concluded. Normally she would have welcomed any chance to get out of Bath. The farmer and his stolid daughters were as dull as her own parents, but there were usually some farmhands to flirt with when her father’s back was turned. But now that she’d seen Serkan, these farmhands seemed nothing more than clumsy little boys.

So she had feigned a sick stomach and her parents had reluctantly left her at home under the care of her childhood nurse. But the old woman was now as deaf as a blacksmith’s dog, and could be relied upon to fall asleep straight after supper, especially if she was helped to a more than generous measure of her favourite wine. The groom had travelled with Ursula’s parents, but the stable boy, who constantly followed her around like an unweaned calf, was easily persuaded to saddle up her palfrey and lead it up the hill, if it meant he could spend the evening gazing at her. Even now she supposed he was somewhere in the shadows watching her, but she didn’t look. Her gaze never left Serkan’s face.

He stood behind the fire, so that it looked as if he was speaking out of it. His white robe took on a rich ruby glow in the light of the flames and the twin fires burned deep in those emerald-green eyes. His voice rang out with thunder, and his words cascaded over the lip of the hill like some great waterfall.

‘. . . the city of sin and corruption, of squalor and filth, that city you call Bath, which now lies under the power of darkness, shall be changed, transformed into a city of light, it shall be filled with sweet perfumes and the song of angels. Great men shall flock to it.’

A few of the crowd who had come out from Bath jeered in disbelief, but his disciples fervently shouted ‘Praise be’ and ‘Amen’ to the night sky.

A woman who seemed to be one of Serkan’s disciples tottered out from the crowd. She stood in front of the fire and began to turn, her arms flung out, singing some wordless ditty in a cracked voice, punctuated with sudden whoops and barks. Her dance became wilder and more abandoned. Then, as if she had been struck down, she fell onto the ground. Her body arched, shaking violently, and her heels drummed against the turf. A cry of alarm went up from the visitors, but Serkan, raising his hand for silence, stepped swiftly between her and the crowd.

‘Bring me water and a scrap of leather or parchment.’

The ape-boy ran off and just as swiftly returned with a pot of water and a torn piece of parchment. Serkan pulled a stick from the fire, extinguished the burned end, then using the charred stick as a quill, he drew something upon the parchment and held it up to the crowd. Ursula vaguely recognised the two letters – alpha and omega – like the ones over the altar of the church she attended. Serkan stretched out his arms over the prone woman and began to speak fervently in a strange, guttural language. The orange glow of the fire haloed Serkan’s head and the very darkness seemed to vibrate with those unearthly sounds that were pouring from his lips. The hairs on the back of Ursula’s neck prickled.

As the words died away, he dropped the parchment into the jar of water. Then, dipping his fingers in the jar, he flung water at the woman’s face. She stopped jerking and lay still. He kneeled and, cradling her head in the crook of his arm, helped her to drink. Then he laid the jar aside and extended his hand. ‘Rise now.’

The crowd uttered soft little sighs as Serkan pulled the woman to her feet. She stood there in the firelight, swaying a little as if she was half asleep, but her face had a calmness about it that was almost beautiful.

Ursula found that she was trembling with excitement and some strange stirring in her body that she could not immediately identify. She pressed her hands together beneath her chin, her fingertips tingling as she imagined that strong firm hand clasping hers. As if he felt it too, Serkan’s gaze suddenly turned in her direction and as their eyes met, he smiled at her – and only at her. She was quite certain of that.

William yawned and stretched. He stood for a moment, breathing in the cool morning air. He felt more relaxed than he had done in months. He hadn’t realised how much tension there had been in his body until now. Only yesterday he had desired a beautiful girl to come to him and that very night his wish had been granted. He felt as if he only had to stretch out his hand for whatever he wanted to appear in it.

He had known from the moment he saw her standing there in her virginal white dress, like one of those martyred saints, that she had been given to him. When the visitors from Bath had begun to depart, she had lingered and when he’d beckoned her to approach she had come joyously. Her wide fawn-eyes looked up at him from under those dark lashes, with an expression of what you might call adoration, though definitely not submissiveness; he liked that, and he was captivated by that little habit she had of tossing her head like a spirited horse.

When he finally led her down the hill she ran laughing ahead of him, unafraid of the perilous slope or the darkness. In a hollow near the bottom, screened by gorse and birch, she turned to face him, her hands clasped behind her back in the semblance of a demure child. But in the moonlight he could see she was trying to suppress a grin, and her eyes were dancing under the stars. And it was under the stars they lay together, naked as Adam and Eve before the fall.

He did not force her. He did not have to; she gave herself to him. Suddenly shy and hesitant, she lay quite still on top of his robe which he had spread on the ground for her. She made no move to touch him, but offered no resistance. Then as he gently caressed her, a passion seized her and she dug her fingers into his bare back, thrusting up at him, her head thrown back and her slender white throat arched like a bow.

Three times he had taken her, before rolling into an exhausted sleep in her arms. When he had awoken sometime before dawn she was gone. He had climbed back up the hill and lain down among his snoring disciples, and sunk once more into sleep.

William smiled to himself. Would she come again? He hoped she would. No, he
knew
she would.

He was startled by a sudden tugging on his sleeve.

‘Master, Master. You must come with me.’

He turned to see Martin standing behind him, panting and sweating as if he had been running.

‘Come where?’ William asked. Then seeing the fearful expression on the lad’s face, he added, ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

Martin’s gaze darted nervously around at the other disciples, but all were occupied with the morning’s tasks of stoking the fires and preparing breakfast. Martin leaned in towards William, his voice low. ‘You must come. She’s . . . she’s dead.’

William felt an icy hand gripping his insides. ‘Who? Who’s dead?’ He made a grab for the lad, determined to shake the answer out of him, but Martin was already bounding over the lip of the hill and scrambling down the other side. William followed.

It was a miracle neither of them broke his neck in his haste to get down the hill. Martin reached the bottom first and stood aside, pointing towards a clump of bushes.

‘She’s behind there . . . I was going to fetch water from the river, when . . . I trod on something soft and when I looked down I saw . . .’

William swallowed hard, then, bracing himself, he strode towards the bushes. The body of a woman lay on the ground. He couldn’t see her face for a sack had been pulled over her head. But she lay as if she was already in a coffin, her legs neatly stretched out and her hands crossed over her chest.

William’s first emotion was one of profound relief, for even though he couldn’t see her face he could tell at once that this was not Ursula. The woman’s robe was old and torn. Her fingernails were broken and grimed with dirt, but beneath the dirt the fingertips were blue. William lightly touched her leg, hoping that there was still life in her, but the moment he felt the skin he knew there was not. Bracing himself, he kneeled behind the woman’s head and, grasping the corners of the sack, pulled it off. The jerk sent the woman’s head lolling sideways. William gave a stifled cry, scrambling away from the body in horror.

There was no mistaking who it was beneath the sack. Poor Letice lay there, her face frozen in a distorted mask of pain, her mouth open wide as if she had been gasping for breath. It wasn’t the sight of her face, though, that made William cry out, but what lay upon her throat. An adder was wound around her neck, with its head inside her open mouth. And the snake was as dead as the woman.

William’s legs gave way and he sank onto the grass. He knew exactly who had done this. Edgar had been here last night! That fiend, that devil, had finally caught up with him and this was his warning. William stared wildly about him. Had Edgar been hiding down here in the dark, or had he been standing up there on the hill among the people from Bath? William would surely have recognised him in the crowd . . . but he hadn’t last time, had he, not until it was too late?