By Sylvian Hamilton (27 page)

'In
the villages they are a tale to frighten bairns, and so it's gone on
for years because no one believed it.'

'If
you want it to talk,' Larktwist said diffidently, 'I think I know a
way.'

There
had been two hares in his traps that morning, a welcome change from
fish and dried meat. When he bled them, he noticed the riveted
attention of the prisoner, its slobbering lust for the blood. He held
the basin under its nose, and it writhed and plunged and whined,
begging.

'Clever,'
said Blaise admiringly. 'The blood craving! I'd not have thought of
it.'

Bane
was on his feet again and able to ride, when the savage led them to
its tribe's hiding place. It was wild country, with desolate hills
and deep gorges where the sunlight never reached bottom, and streams
gurgled in darkness.

'Watch
out for the Elven-Queen,' said Blaise, teasing Miles.

'What
do you mean, Sir?'

'This
is faery country, boy. Didn't you know?'

Miles
crossed himself. 'No!'

'Here
in these hills, the elves dwell, so it's said.' Blaise smiled. 'On
these very paths, the fair folk ride at night, gleaming and deadly,
to meet with their kin, wage their wars, seduce Christian men and
women from their homes and change their own soulless birthlings for
human babies, when and wherever they can. In olden times this was the
very heart of their realm. These hills are supposed to be full of
their gold.'

'Why
do they want human children?'

'Because
they can go about by daylight, among Christian folk, to work ill, and
because they can handle iron; elves can't abide it.'

Now
they were in a scrub-choked rocky valley. They had followed a
deep-cut stream for some time through gorse and quickthorn, and when
Blaise, hearing the rustle of a small animal, prodded at the bushes
with his gaveloc, the prisoner yelped and jumped up and down waving
his hands, jabbering and making strange buzzing noises.

They
realised why when a cloud of wasps rose and hummed angrily about
them. Before they could win clear Straccan had been stung twice on
the hand, and Larktwist on the neck. Now, too late, they saw the oval
whitish nests, like huge corrugated eggs, in the thorns.

'Bloody
nests,' said Larktwist. 'Let's get out of here! My neck don't half
hurt!'

Their
guide led them, at last, in a difficult scramble up the side of the
valley. No wonder the lair had never been found: it was no more than
a horrid hole in the ground among tumbled boulders which screened it
from anyone passing below. And even when they had clambered up they
would not have noticed it, for it lay under an overhang of rock, in
perpetual shadow.

Having
found it, they descended as quietly as they could back to where
they'd left the horses tethered. It was late evening now, and they
made a cold meal of bread and cheese while discussing what to do
next.

'We
could only get down there one at a time, so that's no good, and we
can't smoke them out,' said Straccan. He itched to be on the way to
Skelrig, to confront Soulis, but at least this was action, which his
body craved. 'If we dropped fire down there they could easily beat it
out.' He sucked the swollen wasps stings and then paused, looking at
his hand. He laughed.

'What
is it?' Miles asked. 'Have you had an idea?'

'Yes!
I know what'll do the trick!'

'What?'

'Wasps!'

'You
clever devil, you,' said Miles, grinning.

'How
do we handle them?'

'There
were ... what? Half a dozen nests back there? So we need as many
lidded baskets, that's all. Clip the nests off gently tonight and let
them drop into the baskets ..,'

'And
chuck them down the hole,' finished Miles. 'It's splendid!' 'Wait and
see if it works,' said Straccan. 'If it does, you can sing my praises
then, and I'll bask in the glory.'

'I
bet he will,' whispered Larktwist to Bane. 'Want to wager on who'll
be the poor sod that gets to collect the nests?'

'I
hate to throw cold water on your bright idea,' said Bane sourly, 'but
we don't have any baskets.'

'Then
we'll get some,' Straccan said, 'at the nearest will.' God alone knew
what it was like down there when the enraged wasps came boiling out
of their shattered nests. The screams began almost at once, and when
the savages tried to get out they were driven back by blades.

It
seemed a long wait as the morning sun rose and beat down hot on their
backs, but eventually the screaming subsided. When nothing had tried
to escape for some time, they judged it safe to go down. What they
saw would haunt them for ever.

Cavern
led into cavern, and the damp and foetid murk was ill-lit by a few
rag wicks in bowls of stinking fat. There were pieces of meat
hanging, like any housewife's store of bacons and hams, but these
were the quartered flesh of men and women. The place was full of the
droning of huge blue flies which clustered on the rock walls and on
the ripe meat, and lit on the searchers' faces and hands.

A
few wasps still buzzed angrily, but most had found their way out
again through various crevices in the rock, through which came narrow
shafts of light. Five of the beast-folk, three of them children, were
dead, stung on lips and tongues and eyes, swollen, blue and
asphyxiated. The rest were alive, but of those, four were so badly
stung that they could not walk. Straccan and his companions fetched
up the dead and the living, the dead dragged by their feet, the
stumbling sting-blinded living fast bound.

Coin
the creatures had kept--it was found scattered all through the
caverns--for their brats had played with it, as they had with human
bones and skulls. Savages they were, but they had the cunning to
realise that jewellery might be recognised if they tried to sell or
barter with it; so that too, they had kept. It was trumpery stuff,
for they were clever enough not to attack the better-off travellers,
anyone for whom search might be made. Their tawdry treasure was piled
here and there in pathetic heaps--a little silver but mostly brass or
latten, with glass gems--buckles and brooches, rings and pendants,
amulets and pilgrim badges.

'So
much for faery gold,' said Miles bitterly, stirring one of the piles
with the tip of his sword.

'Eh?
Oh, aye,' said Blaise. 'The people under the hill, the fair folk!'

They
gathered it all to take to Jedburgh, where perhaps someone would
recognise this buckle or that ring, and learn at last what had become
of their missing kin.

Their
captive guide, whimpering and cringing, led them to the far end of a
low tunnel, where a charnel reek came from a dreadful natural
oubliette. With gestures and jabbering--Straccan thought that
whatever their language was, it sounded like nothing but a fit of
coughing--it made them understand that the victims' remains, and
their clothes and possessions, had been flung down there. Miles
dropped a stone to test the depth, and they listened long before they
heard it strike bottom.

They
felt they would never be free of the stink; their hair and clothes
were befouled, it penetrated their flesh and filled their lungs.
Later they burned their clothes and sat in the stream, scrubbing
their hair and skin until numbed and sore. Even then, the smell still
seemed to be with them, and it was some days before they no longer
complained of it.

'We
will take them to the abbey at Holywood,' said Blaise. 'It lies less
than a league away. The abbot is my cousin.'

'What
then?' asked Straccan. 'I must get to Skelrig. God only knows what's
happening there. These beasts have cost us time enough already.'

'You
and Bane must ride on. There's no need for you to tarry for this. The
lad and his servant can help me take the savages to Holywood. My
cousin has the right of High and Low Justice,' said Blaise with grim
satisfaction. 'Pit and gallows, life and death in his domain. We will
leave them in his hands to be justified, and catch you up on the
morrow.'

The
creatures were put to death a week later, after a dreadful interval
of torture and confession that exhausted even the hardest of the
servants of justice, innured to anguish and depravity though they
were. Under torture, several of the condemned told of the fair man
who rode a black horse and paid them with meat and sugar to kill
travellers of his own choosing.

Because
of the nature of their crimes, they were regarded as beasts, not as
human beings with immortal souls. No priests attended them, no
prayers were said for them, and the day of their execution was a
local holiday, the event itself a piece of theatre, a Roman circus,
amusement and entertainment on a grand scale, a huge release of
public hatred. Had they not been guarded as they were dragged to
their deaths, they would have been torn apart by the baying
multitude. But men with pikes kept the crowd back, and on the
scaffold, built unusually high so all could see, the survivors of
Sawney's family were butchered, gralloched and dismembered, as they
had used their victims.

Sawney
was kept until last, and baited like a bear before the executioner
got his turn. With its bowels heaped between its feet, and first one
arm, then the other, and one leg, then the other, struck off, the
huge heaving carcass clung to life longer than any of the others,
howling and blaspheming while its guts were burned before its eyes,
until the final shuddering agony at last silenced its tongue.

The
remains were pitchforked into a blazing fire and consumed, the ashes
and calcined fragments raked up, pounded to powder and thrown into
the river, where children threw stones at the greasy clots until all
were swept away.

Chapter
32

The
dumb boy, Hob, was sitting on an arrow chest in the window alcove
just outside the garderobe room where Gilla was imprisoned. When he
heard footsteps ascending, he swung round and slipped down behind the
chest, where he crouched and made himself as small as he could,
holding his breath, sure that the loud beating of his heart must be
heard and he would be dragged out. But nothing happened. The lord,
and Lady Julitta went on up to the top floor, talking quietly
together.

Something
was going on in the upper chamber. They had put that horrible old man
in there who had turned up yesterday. One look at the Arab had
frightened Hob half to death. Nothing as old and desiccated as that
should be walking around alive.

What
was going on? De Brasy had ridden out this morning leading a pack
pony laden with brazier, charcoals and torches; he had returned
without the burden. The kitchen was in a state of chaos, for a feast
had been ordered for Lord Robert's men and the servants who had come
with the Lady Julitta and the shuddersome new lord.

Above,
the door closed behind them. Hob let his breath out and felt the
sweat chilling on his skin. Tears leaked from his eyes; he wiped them
and his nose with a dirty hand. Lord Robert was dead. Hob had seen
his poor body and the blood, mute witness of murder.

Hob,
dumb from birth but neither deaf nor stupid, was accustomed to the
casual unkindness and deliberate cruelty with which dumb creatures
are used. He had loved his master, Lord Robert, who always treated
him kindly, but, above all, talked to him. Hob was proud of that. He
did not realise that the terrified man had only been talking to
himself, never dreaming the boy listened and learned. He had learned
a great deal. He could understand the everyday Scots tongue used in
the will and the tower, and also some of the Norman French which the
great folk sometimes spoke.

He
knew the lady was wicked. She had forbidden Hob to look after Lord
Robert and was guilty of his death. True, he had hanged himself, God
shrive him, but it was her doing. The dead man's blood was proof. She
and the new lord meant to bring the devil here. Hob knew all about
the devil, whom Lord Robert feared, hiding in his magic circle. He
knew all about the green metal case with a picture inside, too, which
Crimmon had taken to England, wherever that was. Lord Robert had sent
it to the lady his sister, to give to a great warlock who would come
and destroy the devil, so that Lord Robert could leave his magic
circle, ride his horses again, fly his hawks, and laugh and sing as
he used to before he made the devil angry with him. But the lady had
betrayed her brother, and his blood had cried out against her.

And
there was the little girl. Hob had seen her slapped and shaken, heard
her crying shut in that cold little room. The lady had even taken
away her dress and shoes and the silver medallion she wore, and left
just her shift and a blanket. Hob carried her food and knew she did
not eat it. What would happen to her? She was so pretty, and small.