Solomon Kane (9 page)

“Let us find a sheltered place to take our repast, Edward,” William called from pacing behind the wagon, “and then Solomon may don his new attire.”

“We are coming to a river,” Edward said.

Kane saw only a line of trees in the distance ahead. Edward had the better vantage, and Kane had to hope that he was vigilant – surely he would be alert for danger when he had lost two people dear to him. Nevertheless Kane redoubled his watchfulness as the landscape grew less open. Snow had begun to fly across the fields, but not so thickly that it interfered with his view. Soon he saw water glinting between the trees. He strode ahead of the wagon, and the river seemed to raise its breathless voice to greet him.

Both banks were thinly forested, and he made sure they were deserted. As soon as the wagon trundled to a halt beside the water Katherine and her younger son climbed down from the back. “Here is your dressing-chamber, Master Kane,” Katherine said.

Kane hoisted himself into the wagon as Meredith and Edward left it. He dragged his torn shirt over his head with scarcely a twinge from his bruises. The one that had empurpled his chest was barely visible now among the symbols that covered his skin. He took a moment to imagine that eventually those might fade too, if there came a time when he no longer needed their protection, but he could not afford to feel safe. However comforting it was to be surrounded by the family, he had to remember that he might bring peril upon them. He dressed quickly and stepped down from the wagon.

Meredith smiled at him, but mostly to herself. “Now there’s a fine figure of a man,” Katherine said. “Don’t you think so, William?”

“Better than those rags you were wearing, Master Kane. There’s no doubt of that.”

Kane saw Meredith permit herself another smile and knew that William had conveyed more praise than his words seemed to contain. “So I meet with your approval?” Kane said.

“Finally you are respectable,” Katherine told him.

Kane did his best to match her humour, but his words defeated him. “It has been a long time since anyone said that of me.”

He bowed his gratitude to Meredith and for the first time heard her laugh. The sound was as liquid and spontaneous as the ripples of the water. He was bowing again to revive it when Edward intervened. “Enough of this vanity,” he said. “Let us eat and press on. We still have far to go.”

Snow had begun to sift between the trees on a rising wind. Kane joined the family as they gathered in the shelter of the wagon while Katherine handed out portions of bread and cheese. As soon as all were served William said “Edward, grace if you will.”

“Please, allow me.” Besides his need for prayer, Kane’s sense of belonging among the family prompted him to speak. William extended a hand in agreement, but when Edward said nothing Kane spoke only to him. “With your permission?”

“As you will,” Edward said.

Kane seemed to have won his approval, however grudging and conditional, and Samuel appeared to be content for Kane to lead the prayer. Perhaps he was secretly glad that Kane was ousting his brother. Kane
bowed his head and put his hands together, gestures that brought many words to the brink of his lips. He had undertaken to pray, not to confess or to petition for his soul, and so he uttered the simplest prayer he could. “Lord,” he said, “we offer thanks for the blessing you give us in these ill-favoured times. And I offer you my thanks for delivering me from my own darkness and into the arms of this family. Amen.”

“Amen,” the family responded, and everyone looked up. Meredith’s and Katherine’s eyes were moist, and there was puzzlement in Samuel’s. William’s had grown sombre with sympathy, but it was impossible to tell what thoughts had darkened Edward’s. “Thank you, Master Kane,” William said.

The wind dropped as they finished the simple meal. A few unhurried snowflakes met Kane as he made his way back to the road, followed by the wagon. A crow that he had failed to notice in the trees gave a harsh cry that he could have taken for a signal, but there was no audible response. His having overlooked the presence of the crow made Kane glad to return to the open, even beneath the sunless sky. The sun seemed no more than a memory, and he could have thought the land was in the grip of some force more deathly than winter.

Edward was driving the wagon, but the rest of the family had elected to walk. William and Katherine followed the wagon while Samuel and Meredith stayed close to Kane. He heard the boy murmuring to his sister before Samuel caught up with him. For some paces they walked in silence, and then Samuel said “Are you going to come to America with us?”

“I’m not sure, Samuel.”

The boy almost managed to hide his disappointment. “Why?” he said.

“Because you and your family are beginning a new life,” said Kane, “and I need to undo my old one.”

“You could be captain of the ship we sail on,” Samuel urged him. “You voyaged with Admiral Drake.”

“I am sure it will already have a captain, Samuel.”

“You could give him your advice,” Samuel said stubbornly. “He may not have been at sea as long as you have.”

“I am certain he will deliver all of you safely to your destination.” As the boy seemed about to protest afresh Kane said “Just as you are guided by your family, Samuel.”

For whatever reason, this silenced the boy. The only sounds were hoofbeats on the packed earth of the road and the creaks of the axles and the constant muffled rumble of the wheels. As Kane glimpsed a thin dark cloud beyond the frostbound fields, Samuel rediscovered his voice. “Those men who hurt you...”

“What of them, Samuel?”

“You could have killed them if you wanted, couldn’t you?”

“If I had wanted.” Kane might have let Samuel believe that, but the truth would not be quelled. “There was a time,” he said, “when I would have cut their hearts out of their chests while they still beat with life.”

This was plainly more than the boy had expected to hear, and he fell back a pace. Kane hoped he had conveyed a lesson, but he was glad that most of the family had been out of earshot. Having regained his pluck, Samuel overtook him once more. “Would you fight me?” he said.

“If you persist in your questions I might,” Kane replied with a laugh.

He was striding onwards towards the dark cloud, which
he thought he had identified as smoke from a chimney, when the boy dodged to the hedgerow alongside a field and disentangled a stick from the twigs. “Fight me now,” he said, poking Kane with the stick.

It found the bruise on Kane’s chest, but the ache no longer troubled him. “I have no reason to fight you, young man,” he said.

The boy ran to Meredith and grabbed her around the waist, flourishing his stick. “Stop it, Samuel,” she said, but with an indulgent smile.

“Now you have a reason, Solomon,” the boy called. “You must help save this beautiful maiden from me.”

“Help, Solomon,” Meredith cried. “Save me or I shall be lost forever.”

A horse snorted and whinnied. “Don’t scare the horses,” Edward objected.

It was only play, thought Kane, and strode ahead to find a stick on the verge of the road. He lifted it with the toe of his boot and kicked it deftly into his hand, spinning it several times before he turned to Samuel and parried his thrust. He could have snatched the stick from the boy’s grasp with a flick of the wrist, but he was careful just to deflect Samuel’s attempts to prod him. “I knew you’d fight if you had to,” Samuel told him.

Meredith clapped her hands at the spectacle, and her parents watched in amusement. Even Edward seemed to find no cause for disapproval. He leaned forward in his seat, and then his gaze rose beyond the combatants. “Dear Lord,” he said, and “Father.”

He reined the horses to a stop as Crowthorn hurried past them to stare ahead. “Samuel, get back to the cart,” he said. “Go on.” The boy retreated unwillingly to the wagon, and Kane saw a black shape flutter up above the road. The way led to a village, where the shape swooped
purposefully down and was lost to sight. Kane preferred not to speculate on its purpose. The cloud he had seen was indeed smoke, but not from any chimney. Even at that distance he could see that the village was a blackened shell.

A
s the men came abreast of the outermost cottages a fragment of oily blackness rose into the air as though to greet them. It drifted towards the wagon, which was halted several hundred yards beyond the remains of the village. Samuel waited beside the horses, murmuring to them as one gave an uneasy snort and pawed the bare earth of the road. His mother and Meredith stood together in front of him, and Kane thought they hoped to block his view. He would have liked to think they saw as little as Samuel did.

The village had consisted of a handful of buildings gathered around a green, but every one had been destroyed. Nothing remained on either side of the uneven road except blackened skeletons of cottages – timber remnants gnawed by flames and scaly with charring. Even the earth around the ruins had been seared black. Might the village have been plundered and then burned to the ground? Kane had heard no rumours of marauders, but he was about to question his companions when he saw an object in the remains of a doorway. It had been a villager, and the sight filled Kane’s mouth with a sour taste of evil. Far worse had befallen the village than a raid.

The man was sprawled across the threshold with his legs still in the road. The heat that seized him had been so fierce that it was impossible to distinguish his peeling
skin from the shreds of his garments. Kane wondered if the corpse had been distorted by the heat, given the awkwardness of its position, but then he saw that the man had twisted his torso around in a desperate attempt to fend off whatever was pursuing him. The arms were still outstretched, and the fingers were charred to the bone. Might an agonised spasm have contorted the body as well? The mouth was gaping in a grimace, however nearly lipless, and the eyes must have expressed outrage too. But the eyes had been seared from the head.

Now that Kane had noticed one corpse he saw them everywhere. Some of the villagers had sought refuge in their cottages, where they were almost indistinguishable from the rubble. Some had died in the street as they fled. One man’s hands had gouged furrows in the hard earth before his fingers were reduced to blackened bones. Another had perished clutching at his face, with which the heat had melded the remains of his hands as his body clenched itself. Kane could identify the bodies of women only by the children they had died trying to protect, because the women’s skulls were charred as bald as any man’s. The children were the worst, their small shrivelled bodies not merely clasped in their mothers’ arms but literally inseparable from them. Every child was eyeless. “Who could have done this?” Edward muttered almost too low to be heard.

The question seemed to release the men from a silence that the devastation had imposed on them. “The Devil has been here,” William said in a voice quiet enough for church.

Kane thought it did indeed resemble a vision of Hell: the tortured bodies, the stenches of charred wood and rubble and worse, the heat that still lurked on every side, parching his breaths and turning his throat raw.
William’s remark sent Edward to his knees in the road, to raise his voice in prayer. “Holy Father...”

As though in response to his entreaty, a crow flapped up from the heart of the village. Kane preferred not to wonder how it might have been busy until it had been disturbed. He heard more wings fluttering ahead, and strode towards them, only to halt. “No,” he said, “not the Devil.”

In the middle of the green, surrounded by a patch of blackened grass, a stake protruded from the top of a pyre. While the lower section of the heap of fuel had been partly consumed, the stake was undamaged. “There was a witch,” Kane said.

William advanced to stand by him. Not for the first time since entering the village, he made a sign of the cross. “There was a burning,” Kane told him, “but the creature must have broken loose.”

A dull glint drew his attention to the top of the pyre. A heavy chain was coiled like a serpent around the foot of the stake. So the intended victim’s bonds had not burned through. “We should leave,” said Kane.

Edward abandoned his prayer and stumbled to his feet, hurrying to join his father. “We cannot leave these people to the crows,” he protested.

Kane disliked the prospect, but had Edward forgotten his young brother and the women? “We can do nothing for them, Edward,” Kane said. “The witch may still be here.”

Edward folded his arms and faced him. “They must be given a Christian burial,” he said, and his mouth had grown firm.

“My son,” William said, “you are a constant reminder of our duties.”

“It must be done by nightfall,” said Kane. Given the
state of the bodies, it seemed a daunting task. He was staring about at the ruins, to make sure if he could that the creature responsible was not concealed among them, when Meredith called “Is someone there?”

Her voice was closer than it ought to be. Kane turned to find that she had ventured as far as the edge of the village while Samuel and their mother lingered near the wagon. Meredith was peering into the remains of one of the outermost cottages. As Kane and his companions hurried to her, she stepped through the charred doorframe and picked her way across the rubble. “What is it, Meredith?” said Edward.