The Gallows Curse (14 page)

    Besides,
even if Raffe could identify the man, what could he do without proof? All he
had was the word of a villein, and if the traitor, whoever he was, discovered
that Elena had overheard him, he would find her and kill her without a moment's
hesitation. No, there was only one thing to be done, he had to catch the
traitor in the act of meeting these Frenchmen — that way he could bear witness
himself and Elena need never be mentioned. There was just one man who might be
persuaded to help him in this. He owed his life to Raffe, and Talbot was a man
who did not forget a debt, especially one owed in blood.

    But
there was nothing that could be done tonight. Raffe tried to push the problem
from his mind. The ship was not due until Spring. They would have to be patient
and watch. In the meantime Elena was safe, that was the only thing that
mattered. If the traitor was searching for her, it would be among the servants,
not in the village, and if Raffe waited, as wait he must, then as time passed,
the man would come to believe that whoever the girl was outside the door, she
had heard nothing and was no threat to him.

    As
the icy air tore painfully at his lungs, Raffe realized that he had been
striding away from the village at a furious pace. He stopped to catch his
breath. The marsh pool at the edge of the track was frozen over. Frosted brown
bulrushes bowed in permanent obeisance, their heads caught fast in the pond.
The torch flames glittered in the ice. He caught sight of his reflection as he
peered down, the sagging flesh around his jowls, the grotesque body. He had
rotted from youth to old age without even fleetingly enjoying the body of a man
in his prime, and his flesh would only become frailer and more repulsive as the
days hurtled by.

    Even
at this moment, that fragile, flame-haired girl lay in the arms of a strapping
young lad with all his life before him, a man who could give her the gift of a
child. Life as a freed woman, money, even love itself, nothing that Raffe could
have offered Elena was more than a stinking heap of dung, compared to one thing
he could never give her — a child of her own. His own mother had once told him
that was what every woman wanted more than anything else. She said, every woman
longs to hold her infant in her arms and cannot feel complete without one. But
when the next baby comes along, when her first-born is too big to be carried,
what does a mother feel for her child then?

    Somehow
he had never really blamed his father for what they did to him. His father had
paid the money. How much he never knew, but it wasn't a small sum, as his
mother constantly reminded him when she told him how grateful he should be for
the sacrifices they had made for him. His father had laboured night and day on
the farm and at his pots, but he had done it without complaining. It was an
investment not just for the boy, but for the whole family, that much Raffe
understood. All their futures were pinned on Raffe, and he had betrayed their
hopes. But his father alone had been the only one not to fling those words in
his face, though Raffe could see them written in his eyes each time he looked
at his useless son.

    Men
are forced to see their sons suffer much. Their boys are sent to mortify their
flesh in cold cloisters of the monasteries, or to suffer the rope's lash on
ships that lurch from danger to peril and back again. Young lads are killed in
battle or plunge from cathedral towers, their mason's chisels still grasped
tightly in their hands. Men and boys, fathers and sons, suffer and die side by
side, but are not mothers supposed to plead and beg and try in every way to
soften those blows?

    His
mother hadn't. She'd taken him to his executioner herself when he was just
eight years old. He remembered as if it was yesterday the searing heat of that
afternoon and twin puff balls of dust around his ankles as he scuffed his bare
feet in the white grit of the path, dragging on his mother's hand, reluctant to
be pulled away from a game of football with his friends. His mother tried to
hurry him through the drowsy village, putting her finger to her lips as he
whined to know where they were going. Flies crawled in the sweat on his upper
lip. He was thirsty from playing football and the long hot walk. He remembered
that vividly, a raging thirst, and when he saw the cold bath, that had been his
first thought. He simply wanted to put his head down and drink the water.

    They'd
given him something to drink in the end, but it was not water. It was bitter,
but he'd gulped it down so fast that he swallowed it before he had tasted it
and it was too late to spit it out. His mother had been forced to help him
undress, though she had not done so for years. He'd been mortified by that. She
scolded him sharply as he fumbled with the strings of his breeches, slapping
his hands away and undoing the knots herself, grumbling that he was keeping the
good gentleman waiting. But he couldn't hurry, because his hands seemed to be
floating away from the rest of his body, as if they had turned into
butterflies. He staggered sideways. The floor was tipping. An earthquake! He
must run outside. That's what his father had always drilled him to do, but he
found he couldn't make his legs move and no one else seemed to feel the room
spinning.

    He
couldn't remember if his mother had stayed to watch what the man did to him,
but he relived it a thousand times in his head. Someone had picked him up and
dumped him into the icy water. His teeth chattered in the sudden shock. Too
late he'd seen the knife, felt the searing pain in his groin as it cut him.
Fingers probed into him through the bleeding cuts, then the unimaginable fire
of something being ripped out of his insides, once . . . then twice.

    There
had been others in the room, he was dimly aware of that even through his
terror. But he knew for certain that his mother was not there when he woke up
in the dark and found himself alone in an unfamiliar bed with his legs
stretched wide apart, tied to the bed so that he couldn't move them. His wrists
had also been tied so that he couldn't touch himself, couldn't feel with his
fingers what they had done to him, what they'd taken from him, how they had
mutilated him. He lay there alone in the darkness in the worst pain he had ever
known in his short life, screaming and sobbing, not even able to wipe the snot
from his own nose. And somehow, that seemed like the greatest betrayal of them
all, that his mother had not been there to comfort him and soothe away his
tears. Would Elena walk away from her crying child? Was that what all mothers did
in the end?

    The
moon hung below the ice in the small bog pool, swelling up even as he stared
down at her, as if she would burst open and thousands of baby stars would come
tumbling out and wriggle away like tiny silver fishes into the black waters. Was
Athan wriggling his way into Elena even now in the darkness, his sweat running
over her pale skin, his hands on her breasts, making her giggle, making her
moan and beg? Her lace floated in front of him. He could see her naked body
thrusting up towards Athan.

    In a
fury Raffe raised the torch and smashed it down on the moon in the water. The
ice splintered and stinking muddy water splashed up his legs and on to his
face. The flames were doused and he shivered in the cold hard silver of the
starlight.

    But
like a good sharp slap, the cold water had done its work; it had brought Raffe
to his senses. Elena was gone now and that was for the good. He might glimpse
her from time to time in the village, but she would not be living under his
nose, for ever reminding him of what he couldn't possess; and in a few years,
after she'd borne more brats, when her figure had thickened and the children
and her husband had cut wrinkles into her face, why, he'd probably not even
recognize her, much less want her.

    Trying
in vain to convince himself that he no longer cared, Raffe strode fiercely back
towards the manor, the moon obstinately keeping pace above him, lighting his
path and mocking his attempts to smash her. With every stride Raffe took away
from Elena, he tried to make the picture of her in his head more bloated, aged
and unlovely. He painted her red hair grey. He gave her sagging breasts and a
huge mole, and then pulled out even her grey hair, making her as bald as an
egg, but still he couldn't wipe the girl from his mind.

    Mortals
are fools to a man: they believe that if only they can convince themselves of
anything they will make it so, but they can never quite convince themselves
enough.

    
Yew
- Mortals do not sit in its shade, nor place their beehives near it, lest the
bees make poisoned honey. Nor do they drink from a bowl of its wood.

    For
those who would use a yew sprig in magic, the sprig must be not owned, bought
or begged, but stolen in secret from a graveyard. If a maid would dream of her
future husband, she must sleep with the stolen sprig under her pillow. If a
mortal loses anything which is dear to him, he must hold a branch of yew before
him as he walks and the yew will lead him to that which he seeks. When it is
close upon the thing that is lost, the yew branch will wriggle in his hand as
if he held a serpent.

    For
in the wood of the yew the spirits of the earth, both malicious and benevolent,
may be bound fast and imprisoned for a hundred years.

    The
Mandrake's Herbal

    
The
tiny room is crowded with pots, baskets and dyed linen strips hanging from the
rafters. She impatiently tears down the cloth and kicks the boxes aside. She is
looking for a cradle, but there isn't one. She is determined to find the child.
How dare they try to keep it hidden from her? The wail grows louder. The source
is only inches away, but still she can't see it, nothing but a stack of baskets
covered with cloths like those hanging all around. As she stares, one of the
baskets trembles. Did they really think such a foolish hiding place would
conceal the brat? She jerks the cloth from the basket.

    She
stands quite still, watching the great splash of scarlet blood running down the
white wall. The baby hangs limply from her hands, its eyes and mouth wide open,
frozen. Then she notices for the first time that the baby's eyes are blue, deep
and lucent as the waters of the ocean. They are the eyes of an angel
.

    Elena
arched her back, trying to ease the ache of it, but her belly was so heavy she
almost toppled backwards off the keg on which she squatted and had to press her
hand on the wall of the dairy to steady herself.

    The
land was too wet from a week of heavy rain for any good to come from working in
the fields, so Marion had rounded up some of the women to help with the work in
the dairy. For most of the year the three dairymaids could milk the cows, feed
the calves and piglets, and make butter and cheese. But now, with all the calves
being weaned and the cows in full milk, extra hands were sorely needed.

    Elena's
belly was too big even to allow her to grasp the paddle of the butter churn at
the right angle, and her ankles were too swollen for her to stand on them all
day, so she was left to sit and fill the stomach bag of a newly killed
bull-calf with water infused with boiled blackthorn and herbs to produce the
rennet needed for cheese-making. It was greasy, messy work and her skirts were
already soaked, but she made no complaint.