The Owl Killers (60 page)

“Here’s the brat, Father.”

“Did you have to bring her like that? You’ve frightened her half to death.”

I heard a man laugh, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “Doesn’t the Church teach that fear is the beginning of wisdom? Just make sure she does the wise thing, Father. Otherwise, I’ll be having that little chat with the Commissarius about a certain pretty lad of your acquaintance.”

I heard scuffling in the rushes and Father Ulfrid yelped as if someone was hurting him.

“Make no mistake, Father—one way or the other the Aodh is determined to finish that foreign woman tonight, her and her whole house of witches. You will bring her to him, or you will be pleading for death yourself before dawn breaks.”

A door banged with a great hollow echo.

I shrank as I felt fingers tugging the sack off my head.

Father Ulfrid was bending over me. He pulled me to my feet. We were standing inside the church.

“Are you hurt, child?”

I shook my head, my heart pounding in my throat, glancing round to see if the Owl Master was still here, but he wasn’t. I tried to edge towards the door, but Father Ulfrid caught my arm.

“There is nothing to be afraid of, child.” Father Ulfrid knelt down so his face was close to mine. He was sweating, even though it was very cold in the church. “Listen carefully, child. There is something you must do for me. It is very important. Do you know the foreign women that live outside the village?”

I shook my head.

Father Ulfrid frowned impatiently. “Yes, you do. You were taken there when you were ill, remember? The women in grey.”

“I never talked to them,
ever.”

“I need you to talk to them now. I want you to go there and ask the woman on the gate if you may speak to the leader, the one they call the Servant Martha. Can you remember that?”

“Mam says I mustn’t go near them, ’cause they take little girls and sell them as slaves across the sea.”

“But you were in their house and they didn’t sell you, did they?”

“Only ’cause Lettice came and rescued me afore they could.”

“Enough of this nonsense.” Father Ulfrid struggled up from his
knees and stood over me. I backed away, but he held my shoulders. His hands pinched.

“You were seen talking to the women before you were ill. You took food from them. You know what happens to little girls who tell lies, don’t you?”

He pulled me round and pointed at the wall where demons with bird heads on their chests were poking the screaming sinners into the flames of Hell.

“Now, child, you are to go to the house of women and ask for Servant Martha. When she comes, you are to give her these.”

He pulled something out of his pocket. “Hold out your hands, child.”

I shoved my hands behind my back, scared he was going to hit me with a switch, but he grabbed my wrist and pushed something into it. It was soft, and when I looked down, I saw it was only a lock of curly brown hair, tied up with a piece of torn grey cloth.

Then he took my other hand and pushed a single long feather into it.

“You are to give these to Servant Martha, but you must put one in each of her hands, like I have done to you. Then you must say just one word—
choose.”

“Choose what?”

Father Ulfrid shook his head. “Pray you never need to know that, child. Now you go and do exactly what I’ve told you. And if she asks you who sent you, you must say the Owl Masters. You must not mention me, do you understand?”

I didn’t understand. Why did I have to take a stupid feather to that woman? What if she asked me who gave it to me? Father Ulfrid had just said I’d go to Hell if I told lies. The grey woman would get angry if I wouldn’t tell her. I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t.

I dropped the feather and the hair and ran towards the door, but it was too heavy. I couldn’t wrench it open before Father Ulfrid caught me. He dragged me back and spun me round to face him.

“If you don’t do exactly what I tell you, the Owl Masters will take you to the top of the church tower and leave you up there alone in the dark for the Owlman. Are you going to do it? Or shall I call them? They’re waiting—”

i
F I HAVE NOT RETURNED
by midnight, Merchant Martha, gather the other Marthas, and act as God directs your spirits this night. I know you will do what is right for the women.”

Merchant Martha held the candle higher and peered up into my face, frowning as she sought to read what was written there. “You are going to see Osmanna? To try to persuade her to recant?”

I couldn’t answer her. “If I do not return, don’t search for me. Promise me you will not do that or allow anyone else to do it. Your duty is to the women.”

“I know my duty, Servant Martha,” she answered gruffly. “I pray you remember yours.”

As I walked away from her room, I heard her call softly behind me, “God go with you, Servant Martha, and keep you safe.” I was grateful for those words.

I swung myself up onto my horse and urged him forward. The night was still and oddly quiet. I had grown accustomed to the roar of the wind in the trees and the rattling of doors and shutters, but now that the wind had died away the silence was unnerving. Sounds which had been masked before were now magnified—the boom of a bittern crouching somewhere in the reeds, the rustle of the grass as some unseen creature wriggled through it, and the clatter of my horse’s hoofs on the loose stones, a sound which I was sure must have been heard for miles. A sea mist had rolled in across the marshes. A great white curtain hung over the dark fields. Wisps of fog were edging towards me, curling around the horse’s flanks.

At the fork I stopped; the right track led to the village and Osmanna, the left to the forest. I reached into my scrip for two small scraps—a strand of hair and a single feather. I held one in each hand, just as the child had given them to me. “Choose,” she’d said, as if it was a game.

Right hand or left, how could I choose between what I held? They were both as soft and unsubstantial as air. Surely such ethereal fragments could not carry the vastness of eternity upon them? But they
did. They say the Archangel Michael, when he holds our souls in his scales balanced between salvation and damnation, weighs our deeds against a single feather. Now those scales were in my hands, swinging between life and death, Heaven and Hell, but for which of us? The choice had been given into my hands. Three of us watched through this night—Osmanna and the Owlman and me. By this time tomorrow, one of us would be dead and one of us would be in Hell in this world or the next. But would any of us be left alive in this cursed valley?

I had failed all the women. I had failed myself.
Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatae Mariae semper Virgini
. But what could I confess? To say
mea culpa
was not enough. I had failed, yes, but how, how had I failed? What had old Gwenith said?
Not names enough for all my sins
. And a sin must have a name or it can neither be confessed nor absolved. Merchant Martha was wrong; it was not pride that kept me from returning to Bruges, it was fear that I had committed the greatest sin of all, the one that God will not name and will never forgive.

I would have changed places with Osmanna if I could. I would have faced death for Christ. I would even have embraced it. I was not afraid of losing my life. I was not afraid of pain or disfigurement. My sin was that I was not willing to sacrifice my mind and my reason for my Lord. “Go and look at Healing Martha,” Merchant Martha had said. “Ask yourself if you are really willing to risk
that.”
God had called Healing Martha to fight for Him that night, for she was willing to surrender everything and I was not, because I could not be certain that sacrifice would not be in vain. To give all and discover you had given it for nothing. To climb the holy mountain and find no God there—that is both the unforgivable sin and the eternal punishment.

I pulled on the reins and turned my horse onto the left-hand road. Not until that moment did I know for certain which I would choose—the hair or the feather, Osmanna or the demon.

The mist was rolling in behind me and by the time I came to the edge of the forest, it was already slinking in among the trees. I dismounted and tethered my horse to the branch of a tree, where I could be sure to find it again. I patted the leather scrip tied about my waist, where I had placed a crucifix and Andrew’s Host in a small wooden box. Then I lifted the lantern and cast about me into the trees.

I knew the Owlman was here. I could feel it. On that first night in May I had seen the Beltane fire glowing above the trees in the forest. Whatever evil had been hatched in the fire that night was the beginning of all this, and this is where I was determined it would end. There were no fires burning tonight and the forest was vast, but the demon had sent me his sign. He would find me as surely as he had found us that night in the storm and if he did not, I would call him forth.

I strode into the trees. The mist rubbed around the trunks and curled over the boulders. The feeble candle flame couldn’t penetrate the dense fog, and white trunks loomed out of it inches from my face. All the time I was listening, conscious of the snapping of twigs and crunching of dead leaves under my feet, wondering what hidden creatures in the forest were even now tracking my footfalls. The damp mist clung to my clothes and skin in tiny beads, soaking them faster than rain. Nothing was stirring. It seemed that I was the only thing moving out there in the darkness. All the beasts were still, listening and waiting.

Then I heard it, a deep echoing
oohu-oohu-oohu
, the call of the eagle owl hunting. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I glanced fearfully upwards but the mist was pawing around the branches, blocking out even the dark sky above. Perhaps it was only a harmless owl. I stood listening, trying to remember which direction the sound had come from. For a few minutes, I could hear nothing except the rasp of my own breathing.

Oohu-oohu-oohu
. The call came again. This time I knew it was no ordinary bird. It was too strong, too deep, like a pack of bloodhounds baying across the sky. The cry was coming from ahead and to the left. I touched the leather scrip again to reassure myself and stumbled towards the cry.

Several times I crashed into trees or tripped over rocks and brambles, but I pushed on. Whenever I stopped to look around, the cry would echo again, as if it knew exactly where I was. It was leading me deeper and deeper into the forest. I was aware that I was climbing; the ground was sloping upwards and boulders became more numerous. To the left of me was the sound of crashing water. I must be somewhere near the river. I turned away from the water’s roar, afraid that in the dark and mist I might walk straight into it.

Suddenly a huge dark shape lumbered out of the mist towards me. I had just time to throw my arm up before my face was smothered in something wet which wrapped itself around me, clinging to my face. I screamed and fought out of its slimy grasp, crashing backwards onto the ground, and the lantern rolled out of my hand. I covered my face, certain the thing would pounce again, but nothing happened. Slowly, I edged my hand towards the lantern. It had fallen onto a great heap of old leaves, and thanks be to God had not smashed or extinguished. I pulled it towards me, tilting it upwards.

I was lying beneath a great oak, its hollow large enough for half a dozen men to stand inside. A tattered length of cloth dangled from one of the low bare branches. That must have been what I had walked into. Feeling foolish, I scrambled to my feet and reached to touch it. But it wasn’t cloth: It was a kind of leather, pale and soft, but as thin as parchment. The mist had wetted it, making it slimy. There were markings on it, crude symbols drawn in red. I held the lantern closer. Two long vertical lines with smaller horizontal lines bisecting them. Other symbols too, a spiral and—

“The flayed hide of a child, Mistress,” a voice rang out behind me. “An ancient spell to summon the gods.” Before I could turn, I felt the prick of a sword in my back.

“Hang the lantern from that branch and walk into the oak.”

My heart thumping, I did as I was told, careful not to make any sudden movements which might cause my captor to drive that blade home.

“Turn around.”

A burly man filled the gap in the entrance to the hollow oak, holding the sword ready to strike if I should attempt to push past him. In the pearly mist, the light of the lantern hanging from the branch behind him made a shimmering halo of his outline. At first I thought he was hooded, for I couldn’t make out his face; then, as he turned his head to the side, I saw his head was covered by a mask of the great horned eagle owl. The candlelight glinted on a hooked bronze beak.

“I knew you’d come to me.” The speaker’s voice was deep and distorted inside the mask. “Phillip was certain you’d choose to save the girl, but he always underestimates women, a foolish thing to do.”

“Phillip D’Acaster? Is he your leader?”

The man laughed. “You think a strutting cock like him would have the knowledge to bring the Owlman forth? No, Mistress, I am the Aodh. I am the fire.”

From somewhere deep inside my terror, I heard myself say, “Then it was you who unleashed that demon upon the village. And you who was responsible for the vicious attack on Healing Martha. She was an old woman and a skilled physician who had done nothing but good all her life. Your demon left her a cripple without speech or reason and now she is dead. God will punish you for that. But you failed miserably if you thought your demon would take her soul. All the demons of Hell cannot prevail against such faith as hers.”

Outside the hollow of the oak the mist prowled round the trees, stirring softly as if it breathed in the candlelight. But inside the hollow of the trunk, there was no mist at all, almost as if there was an invisible door keeping it out. It was very dark and still inside the tree.

“Poor foolish Aldith was sent to draw you out, but we did not expect the old one to come with you.” The man lowered his sword, but kept a firm grip on it. I knew it could flash upwards again faster than I could reach the entrance.