Hill of Bones (24 page)

One woman prodded the child. ‘Get one of the lads to carry her to my cottage, Joan. I’ve a good strong purge ready.’

As people bent to lift her, Margaret fought and screamed. ‘I won’t drink any purge. It makes it hurt more.’

Joan folded her lips grimly. ‘Now you know fine rightly Martha’s treated every man, woman and child in this village since afore you were born, and her mam afore that. If she’s says a purge is the cure, then it is.’

But Margaret stubbornly resisted every attempt to lift her.

William pushed his way through the crowd. ‘Let me examine the child.’

‘Are you a physician?’ Father Jerome asked.

But William ignored him and, kneeling, took Margaret’s hot little hands in his, stroking them until her fists unclenched. ‘Now look at me, child.’

Reluctantly she opened her eyes and looked into his startlingly green ones. He did not blink and after a few moments, neither did she. He was muttering, softly at first, in a language she did not understand, full of strange guttural noises that seemed more like the warning growl of some wild beast. As his voice grew louder and deeper, his hand pressed down upon her belly. She screamed, arching her back, trying to squirm away. Joan and the priest started forward in alarm, but William waved them back.

In that touch, he had felt all he needed to know. His former master, a physician and alchemist, had taught him well. William had paid scant attention to his books and dusty phials, finding girls and cockfighting far more to his taste; nevertheless, he learned easily, though more by absorption than conscious study, and had acquired a knowledge that sometimes even surprised him. Purges would not cure the child, nor indeed would any physic. She would recover for a while, but the pain would return and one day kill her. There was no cure.

But why tell these simple people that? She might have days, months or, with luck, even longer. Why should the child and her grandmother live in fear and dread of something they could not prevent? And at least he could stop them adding to her misery with these purges that would only hasten her death. Besides, they believed he was a saint, didn’t they? They were expecting a miracle. He could not disappoint them.

He looked round at the anxious faces. ‘The child is possessed. A demon dwells in her belly. It bites and torments her. I must expel it.’

Father Jerome grabbed his arm. ‘I cannot allow this. Only those who are in holy orders—’

William rose and stood towering over the little priest. ‘Have you forgotten the miracle of my saving, on this day of all days? Why do you think I was delivered to your shore? I told you I am the prophet. I have the gift of sight beyond the powers of mortal men and I tell you that if this poor child is not released, the demon will grow inside, tormenting her with pain beyond imagining, feeding on her and growing ever stronger, until it bursts forth to devour the souls of every man, woman and child in this village. Is that what you want, Father? Would you have me abandon her to this foul fiend?’

Margaret was sobbing, trying to crawl across the floor as if she could get away from the creature inside her. Joan was wailing and even Father Jerome was trembling.

‘I must send word at once to the bishop for him to dispatch his exorcist to us.’

Martin, the sexton’s youngest son, elbowed his way through the crowd. ‘And how long will it be afore he comes, Father? Weeks, maybe – that’s if he bothers to come at all. Besides, old Joan can’t afford what the likes of them would charge. Let William try. I reckon that’s why God sent him here.’

The sexton grabbed his son by the arm, cuffing him vigorously several times around the head. ‘How dare you gainsay the priest? Think you know better than your elders and betters, do you?’ He struck the cowering lad again, and would have gone on doing so, had William not caught the sexton’s arm to prevent him.

Father Jerome held up his hands in a gesture of peace. ‘Leave the boy. He means well.’

Joan could bear it no longer. She fell at William’s feet, clutching at his knees and begging him to save her grandchild. Many in the crowd nodded eagerly, and when William turned an enquiring look upon Father Jerome, the little priest gave a resigned shrug. He’d lived long enough in this parish to know that even if he forbade it, the villagers would do it anyway behind his back, just as they stole holy water from the church for their heathen spells however often he denounced such things from the pulpit.

William helped Joan to her feet and calmly bade the crowd to close the shutters of the church. He sent Martin to fetch a lighted candle, which he placed behind the child’s head. Then William commanded all to kneel. He crouched beside little Margaret and ordered her once more to look into his eyes.

The strange words poured out of him again, rising in a crescendo so that his voice reverberated from the walls of the church. He laid his hands on Margaret’s belly, his eyes closed, his head thrown back and sweat bursting from his forehead as if he was wrestling with a ferocious monster. A shriek of unearthly laughter echoed through the church, like the cry of a thousand gulls. At that instant the candle blew out and the church was plunged into darkness.

Father Jerome blundered to the door and, with trembling hands, flung it wide. Most of the villagers, dragging their children, charged out after him as if the devil himself was at their heels. But once safely out in the daylight their panic subsided. They huddled together, clutching their little ones and staring back at the church.

Inside Joan was sobbing and hugging her granddaughter to her, but the child, though pale as the moon, was not crying any more.

‘It’s gone . . . it doesn’t hurt now,’ she whispered.

William strolled to the church door and, calmly surveying the little crowd, announced, ‘All is well. I have expelled the demon from the child.’

He held out something in his palm. There were gasps of wonder as everyone pressed forward. The creature was tiny to be sure, but they later learned this was because it was a mere infant, a baby demon that would have grown into a monster were it not for William’s skill. For there was no mistaking it was the most unearthly and satanic-looking beast they had ever seen in the flesh, and very like the demons painted on the wall of their own little church. It was grey and wizened. It had no discernible body, only a broad triangular head that tapered into a long arrow-shaped tail, two bulging black eyes and a wide curved mouth full of black needle-sharp teeth.

When the tale was later told, as it was to be many times throughout the long winters in those parts, some of the villagers swore they had seen the demon twitching, others said that it was lashing in fury. But the truth was they barely had time to glimpse anything at all for just as deftly as William revealed it, so he slid it into a small stone flask and rammed the stopper home.

‘I will bury the demon in the bed of the next river I come to,’ William declared. ‘Evil spirits cannot escape from running water.’

The villagers were no fools. They were as sharp as scythe blades when bargaining in the market place and were not the sort to waste their precious coins on betting which cup the pea was under, or buying elixirs from passing pedlars who promised immortality. But even the oldest among them had never heard tell of a man so strangely saved from a storm, and now they had seen with their own eyes one of their own children delivered from a demon, and by this same stranger.

So William ate his fill that night, for the good people of Brean were determined to lavish whatever they had on this man from the sea. And as he ate, he talked. He was good at talking.

The following morning William was rudely torn from his sleep by a malicious cockerel, which had perched itself right outside the small window above his bed, and was announcing the coming dawn with such raucous insistence that even a deaf man would have felt the vibration of it. William peered blearily over at Joan and her grandchildren who lay, wrapped together under the same blanket, by the embers of the fire, but none of them stirred. Thoroughly awake now, William pulled on his clothes and slipped from the cottage to relieve himself outside. If he could catch that wretched bird, he’d wring its scrawny neck, or at least drive it off where a fox might take it.

Outside the tiny cottage it was as yet barely light enough to see where he was walking. If the sun had indeed struggled over the horizon, it was well concealed beneath a thick fleece of grey clouds scudding across the sky. The wind had a raw damp edge to it, as if rain were not far off. William shivered, suddenly grateful for a warm bed and stout walls.

He hurried round to the midden heap, anxious to get back inside to the fire as quickly as he could. As he reached the back of the cottage, the cockerel, which seemed to sense William’s murderous intent, hopped onto the low thatched roof. William tried to grab the bird, but it fluttered sideways, stabbing at his hand with a beak as sharp as a dagger, before swaggering up to the top of the roof. William cursed soundly and sucked at a bleeding hole in his finger, but the bird was well out of reach and no amount of threatening had the slightest effect on it.

With his bladder now empty, William was making his way back to the cottage again when he noticed something pinned to the door, flapping in the wind. He hadn’t seen it as he came out, if indeed it had been there then. As he came closer he saw that it was a small square of sailcloth. He reached up and held it flat against the door. Someone had used a piece of charcoal to fashion a careful little drawing on the cloth. The picture was simple enough, just a stick with a serpent twined around the length, its mouth wide open revealing sharp fangs and a long tongue.

William stifled a cry of fear. For a moment he could do nothing except stare, his limbs frozen in shock. Then he forced himself to move. He tore the sailcloth from the door and whipped round, glancing fearfully up and down the length of the lane, but it was deserted. The shutters and doors of all the cottages were still firmly fastened. None of the villagers was yet stirring, but someone was abroad, he was certain of that.

His legs trembling, William staggered backwards, leaning on the wall of the cottage for support. He looked down again at the scrap of sail he was clutching. The snake’s forked tongue seemed to vibrate in William’s shaking hand as if it was scenting its prey and as he stared at it, three fat drops of scarlet blood from the wound on his finger fell onto the cloth and trickled into the serpent’s open mouth.

The morning was already half done before William was finally on the track and striding out of the village. His first instinct had been to flee immediately, but once he had stopped shaking he was forced to see the sense in at least waiting to eat breakfast before he left. As Joan anxiously reminded him, he was already weak from the shipwreck; if he tried to walk for miles on an empty stomach he would more than likely faint on the road, and that was the last thing William could afford to do. The thought of lying helpless and unable to defend himself was too terrifying to contemplate.

If that serpent was a sign, a sign that Edgar was still alive, then he needed to put as much distance between himself and this village as he could. Edgar had already been injured before the storm. Surely it would take a week or two before the man was fit enough to travel any great distance, and William intended to make good use of that time to cover as much ground as possible. If he got far enough ahead, Edgar would not be able to track him. But if Edgar found him again . . . William tried to fight off the icy flood of fear that engulfed him. That monster must not find him!

Naturally, William had said nothing to Joan about the piece of sailcloth. She had been only too willing to accept his explanation that he had received a vision in the night telling him to set out at once for a place he would be led to, a place where the demons and angels fought each other for the souls of men. Joan had hurried out to beg bread and dried mutton from her neighbours, for she would not have it said that she sent a holy prophet out on the road without a bite of food in his scrip. Why, God would never forgive such an uncharitable act. She was gone so long that several times William nearly gave up waiting, for he was desperate to be miles away from Brean by nightfall. But Joan had finally returned with cheese and salt fish as well as bread and mutton. In addition she’d brought a battered old leather scrip to carry them in and a good stout staff, for which William was more grateful than he dared express.

He struck out at first on the track that led around the bay to the south, as if he were making for the village of Berrow, but as soon as he thought he was not observed he turned off on a rough track heading inland towards the river Axe. The path wound its way along the edge of rough pasture and through a coppice where the villagers cut their wood.

Though the trees were not yet in bud, they still afforded too much cover for William’s comfort. If Edgar had pinned the sign to the cottage door, then he had to be holed up somewhere nearby, perhaps in a seldom-used barn or byre, or even in a place like this. William took a firmer grip of the staff and glanced nervously around him, searching every shadow for signs of movement; in consequence he repeatedly stumbled over tree roots and only just managed to stop himself sprawling headlong. He paused to steady himself and catch his breath. When he was glancing once more over his shoulder, a movement caught his eye. He whirled round, the staff gripped tightly between both fists, but saw only some saplings whipping back and forth. Was it the wind that had sent them rocking, or something else?

Even as he stood there, William heard the unmistakable crunch of boots on dried leaves. He slipped behind the trunk of a stout oak and waited as the footsteps came closer. He was gripping his upraised staff so tightly that his arms ached. The footsteps faltered, then stopped. He held his breath as he heard them start up again and come towards him. From his hiding place William glimpsed a hooded figure as it passed the oak tree.

William sprang out, swinging the staff in both hands, aiming for the back of the hooded head. At the same instant the man in front of him heard William’s movement and twisted aside with a cry of shock and fear. Trying to avoid the blow, the man stumbled backwards and fell just as William brought his staff crashing down. It missed the man’s head by an inch. He lay, sprawled on his back, staring up in wide-eyed fear, and William found himself looking down, not into the face of Edgar, but of the sexton’s youngest son, Martin.