Company of Liars (49 page)

In the silence that followed, no one moved. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the high-pitched keening of the wind as it funnelled between the stones.

Finally it was Rodrigo who broke the silence. ‘Who are these warnings for, Narigorm? Do you know that?’

She reached down and picked something else from the ground in front of her and held it up in the firelight. It was not a rune this time, but a tiny ball of black marble.

‘Whoever dropped this,’ she said.

We looked from one to the other, perplexed, then Adela blurted out, ‘Zophiel, isn't that the ball you used in the cup trick on Christ…?’

She broke off. Zophiel was standing pressed flat against one of the stones, his eyes wide and horrified. Even in the dim light of the fire we could see he was trembling violently. He drew his hands up over his face and slowly, like a man who has been stabbed, he slid down the stone until he was crouching on the ground.

‘You have to help me… you have to stop him… you can't let him kill me…’

No one moved. We were all too stunned. We had seen Zophiel scared before, but then he had been angry, bellowing orders. To see him reduced to a quivering wreck was far more horrifying. I crossed over to him and laid my hand on his arm. He flinched, but didn't shake it off.

‘Zophiel,’ I said as gently as I could, ‘who are you talking about? Who's going to kill you?’

‘The wolf,’ he whispered.

‘Come on now, Zophiel, this howling night after night is tormenting all of us. I know it is not natural for a wolf to be following us like this, but these are strange times; men and beasts alike are hungry. But if you're thinking of what happened to Jofre, he was alone, and anyway it's far more likely he was killed by a pack of dogs deliberately set on him. As long as we stay close together a lone wolf will not attack us.’

Zophiel moaned, his face still buried in his hands.

‘Have you been attacked by a wolf before, is that why you've always…?’

He shook his head, but still did not raise it to look at me.

Then a sudden thought struck me. ‘Zophiel, when we were in the cave, the night we first heard a wolf howl, you said that if the wolf was a beast, the fire would frighten it off, but if it was a human wolf then the fire would attract it.
Is that what you think is out there, some kind of human wolf?’

He flinched.

‘Zophiel,’ I said urgently, ‘if you know what this creature is you have to tell us. We have to be aware of what we're up against.’

There was a hiss as Osmond thrust a glowing stick into a beaker. He walked across to where Zophiel crouched.

‘Hot wine,’ he said awkwardly, thrusting the beaker at Zophiel. His face wore an expression of both embarrassment and pity.

Zophiel took the beaker, though his hands were shaking so much I finally had to help him hold it. He winced as the warm wine made contact with his cut lip, but he gulped the contents of the beaker down greedily.

I handed the empty beaker back to Osmond. He stood looking down at the trembling figure hunched against the stone.

‘Camelot's right. You must tell us. We need to be prepared.’

Zophiel pressed his hand over his swollen lip and stared at the ground, then finally he nodded.

‘A wolf story,’ he said with a shaky laugh. ‘We've heard Camelot's and Pleasance's, now you want mine. Why not? If the runes are to be believed, you'll find out soon enough. At least if I tell you, it will be the truth, not the lies others will tell of me.’

For a long time Zophiel remained silent, then he began, his voice still trembling, but gradually regaining its usual control.

‘There once was a boy from a poor family, isn't that how you begin a story, Cygnus? He was one of five brothers, but this boy was different from his brothers, quick to learn and
clever. He was pious too and his brothers hated him for that. They teased and bullied him, but that only made him more devout. The local priest urged his father to enter the boy into minor orders at just seven years old, so that he could attend a school for charity boys. His education there was sound and hard. They taught them thoroughly and they beat them thoroughly too, never letting them forget they were there on charity. But discipline strengthens the resolve and purifies the soul. The boy rose to acolyte and emerged from his education knowing that he was fit to serve God and naively believing that God would see the earnestness of his heart and reward him for that faithful service.

‘He entered major orders as a sub-deacon, rising eventually to priest, but it is not easy for a young man with no wealthy patron to find a benefice. He served rectors who were illiterate fools and whose knowledge of Latin was so poor that they gabbled the mass by rote, not knowing what they were saying. Often they didn't bother to turn up for services for months at a time, leaving the young priest to the care of the souls.

‘Finally the young man did at last succeed in gaining a living in the city of Lincoln, but though that great city is wealthy, his parish was not. It lay in the poorest part of the town. No wealthy guilds endowed the church with chantries or silver chalices or even enough to mend the leaking roof. The church didn't lie on the pilgrims’ route to the shrines of St Hugh or Little Hugh in the great Cathedral. It lay at the bottom of the hill by the stinking quayside. Only the poorest people, dock rats, drunks, whores and common sailors, came there. The rich merchants and ships' captains worshipped in the more prestigious churches.

‘Still, the priest worked hard and went daily to the Cathedral to get himself noticed, hoping for a better
procurement. He ceaselessly rooted out sin wherever he found it, ministering to the stinking poor on their deathbeds and remonstrating with drunks and whores, without thought to his own health. He still had faith then, our young priest, faith that if he was zealous in his duties, God and the Bishop would reward him with a parish where his learning and talents could be better appreciated.’

Zophiel started as if he had heard something. He stared out into the darkness, pressing his back into the hard granite of the stone, drawing the shadow of it over him like a blanket as if he could disappear into it, vanish, like a ball in one of his own conjuring tricks. But however dark a place a man finds to hide, the smallest glimmer of light will pick out the whites of his eyes, and we saw them now, wide with fear, gleaming like bleached bones in the moonlight.

Osmond fetched him another beaker of wine and he took a large gulp before resuming his tale.

‘Then one day a miracle happened. It was the middle of winter, there had been a heavy fall of snow, and the boats had to break a channel through the ice as they came to the quayside. The priest was saying the third office of the day. There was a handful of people in church, mostly the old or beggars come in to keep out of the cold, not that the church was much warmer than the street. Suddenly the door burst open and a woman came staggering in, carrying a little boy who lay limp and still in her arms. He'd been playing on the ice and slipped through. They'd fished him out, but it was too late, the boy was dead. The mother begged the priest to pray for him. There was nothing that could be done, but the woman was so distressed that the priest took the boy from her and carried him through into the sacristy, but in his haste he stumbled and fell on top of the child. The jolt of the fall or the weight of the priest must have pushed the
water out of the boy's lungs, for when the priest stooped to pick him up, the child coughed and began to draw breath. He carried the child back out into the church and his mother was overjoyed to discover the boy was alive. No one had seen the priest drop him, and before he had a chance to explain, everyone was talking about how the priest had prayed over a dead child and brought him back to life.

‘News of the miracle spread and people began to flock to the priest for help, the poor at first, but then the wealthy who left money and fine gifts at the church. They sent for him to come to their homes to lay hands on their sick and they were generous in their gratitude.’

‘The priest cured others?’ Adela interrupted.

Zophiel laughed bitterly. ‘Miracles are like murders; after the first one, each becomes easier than the last for, with each success, the miracle-worker's certainty in himself becomes stronger. But curing the sick and raising the dead is not enough. People want drama. They want the grand gesture, just as at the mass the ignorant populace must have the pageant and the spectacle to appreciate the power and the glory of God. Offer them a quiet prayer and a simple laying-on of hands and they think nothing important has happened. So they must be given sweat and blood. Pass your hands over a man's head, wrestle and groan and pull out a stone and tell him this is what has been causing his headache. Cry aloud in an agony of words, let them see the effort it costs, then hold up a bloody lump of gristle saying, “This I wrested from your belly.”’

Rodrigo shook his head disgustedly. ‘You called Camelot a liar for selling people relics and now you tell us this.’

‘I was not selling them the fake bones of saints and telling them to put their faith in lies. Don't you understand? I was actually curing them. I only showed them the stones to make
them appreciate what I was doing for them, but it was my hands that were healing them. I had the power to heal. God was working through me. He showed me that when I brought that child back from the dead. He chose me because my soul was pure, because I had worked to make it so.’ Zophiel was breathing hard, trying to regain control of himself.

‘So what went wrong, Zophiel?’ I asked quietly.

‘A girl. A stupid little whore and her mother. She was the youngest daughter of wealthy parents, a girl of about fourteen. She was overindulged and spoilt. She wouldn't eat and when she was coaxed to, she would make herself vomit what she had eaten. She would lie for days sometimes, not speaking, just staring up at the ceiling. There were fits too, convulsions, not frequent, but enough to make her parents worry for her marriage prospects. The physicians couldn't help her so they summoned me, as so many did in those days. I laid hands on her and pronounced her cured, but that very night she had another convulsion, worse this time than before.

‘Since she refused to accept that she was cured I knew that she was persisting in some grievous sin. I examined her alone and finally she admitted that she was touching herself in her private places, arousing herself. I ordered her to stop, but though she swore that she had, I knew she had not, for her sickness continued. After that I saw her alone daily to hear her confession. I gave her penances, but still she persisted in her sickness. I stripped her and whipped her with a birch to help her cast out her lust. But she was so steeped in depravity that her wanton lust reached out to me. I began to dream of her naked body. When I tried to say mass she invaded my prayers. I knew she was trying to bewitch me. I whipped her harder and I whipped myself harder still. I
whipped myself until I was bloody. I punished my own flesh in every way imaginable, by fasting, by denying myself sleep, by wearing iron spikes on a belt which dug into my flesh, but nothing prevailed against her.

‘As her sickness persisted, rumours began to creep round the town that I had lost my healing powers. Other clergy who were jealous of my miracles said that I had lost my power to heal because of some grievous sin. And then the girl's mother came to my church. She flew at me, accusing me of having lain with her daughter, said her daughter had told her as much. Said she was going to tell her husband.’

Zophiel's hand, the knuckles gleaming white in the moonlight, emerged from the darkness of his cloak and in the moonlight I saw the glint of silver from the knife he gripped.

‘I swear by God's holy blood I did not have carnal knowledge of the girl. However much she had tempted me, I was true to my vows. I had kept myself pure. But that day as her mother stood screaming at me in my own church, I knew God had abandoned me and I could not defend myself against her lies. I knew what would happen. There would be the humiliation of an arrest, and even though I could claim trial in an ecclesiastical court, a charge of raping the young daughter of a wealthy and powerful man would not be treated lightly. It was my word against the girl's and the punishment would be severe. I cursed myself for ever being alone with her.

‘Even if I were found innocent, even if that wretched girl could be made to confess her lies, I knew no one would believe in my miracles again, no one would come to me for healing. I would lose everything I had worked for, the money, the respect. All my efforts would have been for nothing, I would be back in the sewer that I had struggled
so hard to escape from. After all I had done for God, I did not deserve that.

‘I could not sit there and wait for them to come for me. So I cast off my priest's robes, packed what I could and by nightfall I was on the road.’

There was a long silence when Zophiel finished his tale. He sat with his head once more in his hands as if trying to blot out the memory of that day. Sadness welled up inside me, not for the man crouching by the stone, but for the youth, long gone, who once had tried so hard, had so much faith.

Finally the silence was broken by Adela. She stared at him incredulously. ‘You were a priest?’ she said, as if she had only just taken in what he had told her. ‘But how could you be? You're a magician, a conjuror.’

Zophiel raised his head and laughed bitterly. ‘You think they are different? When a conjuror performs, people see what they want to see. The conjuror holds up his cup, says his abracadabra, and behold, a white ball turns black; a toad becomes a dove; lead transforms into gold. When a priest holds up his cup and incants his Latin chant, the people say, behold, wine has become blood, bread is become flesh.’

‘That is blasphemy!’ Osmond sounded more shocked than I'd ever heard him. ‘Rodrigo is right, you are a hypocrite. You accused Cygnus of sacrilege when he suggested Adela could give birth in the chapel. And for you, a priest, to say –’

‘Do you know what blasphemy really is, Osmond? Blasphemy is a woman. That is the thing which is an abomination before God. They are the succubi that leech upon the soul of man. They tear down all he has built and bring him to nothing. They lead him from God into the snares of the devil, no man is safe from them, for even if he resists their
seductions, they will find a way to bring him down. And one day you will discover that for yourself, Osmond. One day she will do to you what women always do to men; she will damn your soul.’