Liars and Thieves (A Company of Liars short story) (7 page)

As Weasel’s body turned in the water, the peeling arm of the naked corpse beneath him drifted across Pecker’s face, the cold white fingers caressing him like a lover. Pecker gave a shriek of horror and, throwing both hands up to fight it off, he sank beneath the grey-green water. Weasel’s corpse, freed now from the bloated body beneath it, sank down on top of Pecker and both men vanished from our sight.

We left Dye sitting in the ruins, Holy Jack beside her, his arm about her shoulders. This time, they did not try to stop us leaving. Dye was staring fixedly into the flames of the fire. She’d shed not one tear and, in truth, I wouldn’t have expected any woman to weep over a man like Pecker, but I’d seen her frantic attempts to save him, and I knew in her own way she’d loved him.

Then again, perhaps she was right not to judge him as harshly as some might have done. He’d been shown no mercy by men, and they’d taught him to give none. I touched my own puckered scar. A blade only cuts the flesh, but words that wound the mind leave a far more twisted scar. I hoped that Holy Jack would be kinder to Dye, though I had little conviction such kindness would extend to any travellers unfortunate enough pass their way. I had the feeling that the water in the gullet might rise still further and not just because of the rain.

Jack was adamant Weasel had stolen the salamander stone. Afraid that Pecker might attempt to kill him while he slept, Jack had kept himself awake and he’d seen Weasel sneak back to the camp. Weasel had wrapped himself in Jack’s own cloak, doubtless to disguise himself in case anyone stirred, then crept across to Pecker’s bothy. If anyone could have removed a stone without waking a man, it was Weasel, and Jack was certain he’d done just that.

‘You don’t steal from your own, that’s the rules,’ Holy Jack said. ‘We made a bargain and Weasel broke it. “He who breaks the covenant shall be put to death.”’

Jack had followed Weasel as he slipped back into the forest and stabbed him. But when he searched Weasel’s body he could find no trace of the stone. He was certain Weasel must have dropped it when he was stabbed or as he ran from the camp. Jack had spent the rest of the night and morning hunting for it, finally returning to the gullet, thinking it might have fallen out as he’d carried the body to the pit. But he hadn’t given up hope. He was determined to keep searching until he found it.

I felt Zophiel’s eyes upon me as we led Xanthus limping back through the forest to where we’d hidden the wagon.

‘You see, Camelot,’ he said. ‘That is what hope does to you. Jack and that woman will spend the rest of their pathetic lives hunting for one stone among thousands, certain it will make their fortune. Sooner or later, one of the victims they attack will be carrying the Great Pestilence and they will die in agony, on their hands and knees, still searching for the cure. Hope, Camelot, is a floating corpse. Cling to it and it will pull you down to hell.’

I glanced at him.

‘Was there ever really a salamander stone?’ I asked.

He raised his eyebrows, an amused glint in his eyes. ‘Surely not even you believe that tale. Offer any man a way of cheating death and he will kill for it. That is one of the few certainties of life, my friend.’

But even as he spoke, I saw Zophiel’s hand stray to his leather scrip as if he was reassuring himself that something of great value still lay safe inside.

A killing ointment made of arsenic, vitriol, baby’s fat, bat’s blood and hemlock may be spread on the latches, gates and doorposts of houses in the dark of night. Thus can death run swiftly through a town.

‘Help me! I beg you, help me!’

The cry was muffled in the dense, freezing mist that swirled over the black river. As his punt edged upstream, Gunter caught the distant wail and dug his pole into the river bottom trying to hold his boat steady against the swift current. The shout seemed to have come from the bank somewhere ahead, but Gunter could barely see the flame of his lantern in the bow, much less who might be calling.

The cry came again. ‘In your mercy, for the sake of Jesus Christ, help me!’

The mist distorted the sound so Gunter couldn’t be sure if it was coming from right or left. He struggled to hold the punt in the centre of the river and cursed himself. He should have hauled up somewhere for the night long before this, but it had taken four days to move the cargo downriver to Boston and return this far. He was desperate to reach home and reassure himself that his wife and children were safe.

Yesterday he’d seen the body of a boatman fished out of the river. The poor bastard had been beaten bloody, robbed and stabbed. Whoever had murdered him had not even left him the dignity of his breeches. And he wasn’t the first boatman in past weeks to be found floating face down with stab wounds in his back.

‘Is anyone there?’ the man called again, uncertainly this time, as if he feared he might be speaking to a ghost or water sprite.

Such a thought had also crossed Gunter’s mind. Two children had drowned not far from here and it was said their ghosts prowled the bank luring others to their deaths in the icy river.

‘What are you?’ Gunter yelled back. ‘Name yourself.’

‘A humble Friar of the Sack, a Brother of Penitence.’ The voice was deep and rasping, as if it had rusted over the years from lack of use. ‘The mist  . . . I stumbled into the bog and almost drowned in the mud. I’m afraid to move, in case I sink into the mire or fall into the river.’

Now Gunter could make out dark shapes through the billows of mist, but the glimpses were so fleeting he couldn’t tell if they were men or trees. Every instinct told him to ignore the stranger and push on up the river. This was exactly the kind of trick the river-rats used to lure craft to the bank so that they could rob the boatmen. The man they’d found in the water had been a strapping lad, with two sound legs. Gunter had only one  . . . His left leg had been severed at the knee and replaced by a wooden stump with a foot in the form of an upturned mushroom, not unlike the end of one of his own punt poles. Although he could walk as fast as any man, if it came to a fight, he could easily be knocked off balance.

But the stranger on the bank would not give up. ‘I beg you, in God’s mercy, help me. I’m wet and starving. I fear dawn will see me a frozen corpse if I stay out here all night.’

The rasping tone of the man’s voice made it sound more like a threat than a plea, but Gunter had been cold and hungry often enough in his life to know the misery those twin demons could inflict and the night was turning bitter. There’d be a hard frost come morning. He knew he’d never forgive himself if he left a man out here to die. ‘Call again, and keep calling till I can see you,’ he instructed.

He listened to the voice and propelled his punt towards the left bank, eventually drawing close enough to make out the shape of a hooded figure in a long robe standing close by the water’s edge. Gunter tightened his hold on the quant: with its metal foot, the long pole could be turned into a useful weapon if the man tried to seize the boat.

The friar’s breath hung white in the chill air, mingling with the icy vapour of the river. As soon as the prow of the punt came close, he bent as if he meant to grab it. But Gunter was ready for that. He whisked the quant over to the other side of the punt and pushed away from the bank, calculating that the man would not risk jumping in that robe.

‘By the blood of Christ, I swear I mean you no harm.’ But the man’s voice sounded even more menacing now that Gunter was close. The friar stretched out his right arm into the pool of light cast by the lantern. The folds of his sleeve hung down, thick and heavy with mud. Slowly, with the other hand, he peeled back the sodden sleeve to reveal an arm that ended at the wrist. ‘I am hardly a threat to any man.’

Gunter felt an instant flush of shame. He resented any man’s pity for his own missing limb and was offering none to the friar, but he despised himself for his distrust and cowardice. It couldn’t have been easy for the friar to pull himself free of the mire that had swallowed many an unwary traveller.

Gunter had always believed that priests and friars were weaklings who’d chosen the Church to avoid blistering their hands in honest toil and sweat. But this man was no minnow and he was plainly determined not to meet his Creator yet, for all that he was in Holy Orders.

Gunter brought the punt close to the bank, and held it steady in the current for the friar to climb in and settle himself on one of the cross planks. His coarse, shapeless robe clung wetly to his body, plastered with mud and slime. He sat shivering, his hood pulled so low over his head that Gunter could see nothing of his face.

‘I’ll take you as far as High Bridge in Lincoln,’ Gunter said. ‘There are several priories just outside the city, south of the river. You’ll find a bed and a warm meal in one, especially with you being in Holy Orders.’

‘It’s close then, the city?’ the friar rasped. ‘I’ve been walking for days to reach it.’

‘If it weren’t for this fret, you’d be able to see the torches blazing on the city walls and even the candles in the windows of the cathedral.’

Gunter pushed the punt steadily upstream trying to peer through the mist at the water in front. He knew every twist and turn of the river as well as he knew the face of his own beloved wife. He didn’t expect other craft to be abroad at this late hour, but there was always the danger of branches or barrels being swept downstream and crashing into his craft.

‘So what brings you to Lincoln?’ he asked, without taking his gaze from the water. ‘You’ll not find any of your order here. I heard tell there was once a house belonging to Friars of the Sack in Lincoln, but that was before the Great Pestilence. House is still there, but none of your brothers has lived in it for years.’

‘It not my brethren I seek,’ the friar said.

They were passing between the miserable hovels that lined the banks on the far outskirts of the city and the mist was less dense. Gunter was anxious to drop off his passenger as soon as he could: he was impatient to get home, but there was something in the man’s voice that unnerved him. There was a bitter edge to it that made everything he said sound like a challenge, however innocuous the words. Still, that was friars for you, whatever order they came from. When they weren’t shrieking about the torments of Hell, they were demanding alms and threatening you with eternal damnation if you didn’t pay up.

‘So,’ Gunter said, ‘why have you come? I warn you, Lincoln’s going through hard times. You’ll not find many with money to spare for beggars, even holy ones. You’d have done better to make for Boston. That’s where all the money’s gone since we lost the wool staple to it.’

The friar gave a low, mirthless laugh. ‘Do you think I walked all these miles for a handful of pennies? Do you see this?’

Using his teeth and left hand, he unlaced the neck of his robe and pulled it down. Then he lifted the lantern from the prow of the punt, letting the light from the candle shine full upon his chest. What Gunter saw caused him to jerk so violently that he missed his stroke and almost fell into the river. He could only stare in horror, until the man dragged his robe into place again.

‘You ask what I seek, my friend,’ the friar growled. ‘I seek justice. I seek retribution. I seek vengeance.’

To guard against witches, draw the guts and organs from a dove while it still lives and hang them over the door of your house. Then neither witch nor spell can enter.

While I lived I was never one of those who could see ghosts. I thought those who claimed they did were either moon-touched or liars. But when you’re dead, my darlings, you find yourself amazed at what you didn’t see when you were alive. I exist now in a strange half-light. I see the trees and cottages, byres and windmills, but not as they once were to me. They’re pale, with only hints of colour, like unripe fruit. They’re new to this world. But I see other cottages too, those that had crumbled to dust long before I was born. They’re still there, crowded into the villages, snuggled tight between the hills, old and ripe, rich with hues of yellow and brown, red clay and white limewash. They’re brighter, but less solid than the new ones, like reflections in the still waters of a lake, seeming so vibrant, yet the first breeze will riffle them into nothing.