Solomon Kane (24 page)

His voice was so weak that he feared it would not reach her. All the same, she thrust her face against the bars as
if she yearned to force it between them. “Solomon,” she pleaded. It might have been a prayer for him, reduced to its heartfelt essence. A raider scowled towards Kane and struck the bars with his whip. The spectacle enraged Kane, who felt as if his helpless anguish had given him back his voice. “Meredith,” he yelled.

She heard him and responded, even as she was borne out of the square. In a moment the horses passed beyond a blazing cottage, and in a few more the wagon was hidden too. As flames reared up to cut her off from Kane, Meredith cried out his name.

The agony that seized him then was not merely physical; it pierced to the depths of his soul. The vow he had made to her parents felt like a reopened wound more grievous than his crucifixion. He would not forsake her while he was capable of drawing breath. He braced himself against the cross and tensed all the muscles of his right arm, and then he hauled it away from the crossbeam. “God give me strength,” he said through his clenched teeth.

It was both a prayer and a snarl of atrocious pain. Sweat indistinguishable from the downpour streamed over his forehead and stung his eyes. His arm shuddered with the dreadful effort, and he felt the hole in his palm gape wider. The head of the nail was not much broader than the shaft, and he dragged it through his hand, tearing flesh and parting gristle. He felt the nail snag on a tendon before it pulled free. The hand fell away from the cross, throbbing like an injury too huge for definition.

Much of Kane’s weight was on his left hand now. The nail ripped through its palm, grinding against a tendon. The hand jerked free, and for a moment he was supported by the rope around the upright of the cross. It was not meant for such a purpose, and perhaps it was rotten with the constant rain. It snapped like a hawser in a typhoon,
and Kane fell from the cross to sprawl on his side in the mud.

Though he could barely see for pain, he made out half a dozen blurred shapes advancing on him. Perhaps they thought him superhuman to come at him in such numbers, but he was only a man. He managed to struggle onto all fours with an effort that made his head reel and his limbs shake. Even if he could have sprung at the raiders, what would that achieve? He had no weapon, and his hands were useless. He could only raise his head in a final gesture of defiance as a hulking shape tramped forward, raising a massive axe.

The axe came swooping down, and blood spurted high into the downpour. The axe missed Kane by inches and dropped from the raider’s grasp. The blood was not Kane’s. The raider slumped on his face in the mud, to reveal Telford and the sword with which he had dispatched the man. A band of men had entered the square while all attention was on Kane, and now they rushed upon the raiders, running swords through them or chopping them down. Telford almost decapitated a raider before helping Kane to his feet. “Captain Kane,” he murmured and put an arm around his shoulders. But the last effort had proved too much for Kane, who was not even aware of reeling against him. The world went out like a snuffed candle, and then Kane knew nothing at all.

K
ane heard murmuring and could not understand a word. He thought the voice might be praying for him. It was a woman’s voice, and almost as soft as an absence of sensation – the absence that had Kane in its gentle embrace. He was only just awake, and it seemed to him that his body was staying asleep. It must need to sleep in order to recuperate, and he ought not to rouse it until it was healed. If he had been granted peace at last, surely it must come from God, and to reject it would be a sin. “A elfyntodd dwyr sinddyn duw cerrig yr fferllurig nwyn...” The voice beside him was soothing him, and he need not interpret the words.

But there were other voices. Several men were speaking in some enclosed space that surrounded them with stony echoes. “We need him whatever his past sins were.” Did Kane recognise that voice? “To swap one evil for another seems like folly,” came a response, and a different speaker remarked “Set a devil to fight a devil.” Kane was attempting to regain the blessed state of unawareness when a man protested “He killed his own brother.”

They were discussing Kane – judging his life. Only God could do that, and he was not ready to be judged. “Os syriaeth ech saffaer tu fewr echlyn mor, necrombor llun...” The woman’s voice seemed to be seeking to lull him, but he would not be sent back to oblivion. Was she
trying to cast a spell over him? His soul revolted at the thought, and in a moment he was fully awake.

He was lying on a makeshift bed against the wall of a cave. The mattress and the pillow were rougher than he had imagined, though any bed would have been a comfort. Bandages held objects that felt cool and moist against his palms and the backs of his hands, where he detected no other sensation. A rush-light stood on a shelf of rock next to the bed, showing Kane the woman who was seated beside him, leaning close to him. A canvas cap and a few straggling locks of grey hair framed her wrinkled face. A lifetime’s worth of lines had gathered at the corners of her lips, but her greenish eyes were more ancient still, or some aspect of them was. As Kane fixed his gaze on her, she began to speak in English. “Earth and fire, stone and water...”

If this was meant to reassure him about the nature of her incantations, it merely enraged him. “Keep your filthy pagan magic away from me,” Kane snarled and would have clenched his fists except for fear of injuring them afresh.

The sound of his voice silenced the men in the outer cave. The old woman gripped her stick with fingers as knurled as the wood and sat haughtily upright like a sceptred queen. “It is my pagan magic that has healed you,” she declared.

Kane dragged out his hands from beneath the coarse blankets. Even when he turned them palms upward, no blood was visible on the bandages. “This is God’s work alone,” he said.

“There’s more power here than your Christian god.” The old woman’s gaze strayed around the cave as though she might be speaking of the prehistoric stone. “You would do well to remember that,” she told Kane.

“It is evil,” Kane said doggedly. “Christ came to earth to drive it out and all the other Devil’s works.”

“Some would name you as evil, Captain Kane.”

Not just the form of address but the memories of wickedness that it revived left Kane unwilling to respond. “You,” the old woman persisted, “who came down from the cross and returned from the dead.”

Anger at the suggestion almost robbed Kane of speech. “What do you say of me, witch?” he muttered.

The old woman gave him a pitying look. “Did you not know that you were dead?”

“Those are the Devil’s words. They cannot trick me.” More fiercely still Kane said “I am no Christ. I am but God’s avenger on earth.”

“Did your father not send you forth?” The old woman gazed into his eyes as if she was searching his soul. “Did your life not change when you were taken to a high place and shown all that could have been yours?” she said. “Have you not made a pilgrimage through the wilderness? Did you not mean to atone for the actions of others by your crucifixion? Do you not seek to cast out a demon and perform a miracle?”

“Your casuistry will not sway me, witch. There is one Christ and one alone,” Kane said. “He has always been and always shall be.”

“Your Christ was not the first to rise from the dead when it was time. This land has its own ancient ways.” The old woman grasped her stick and rose effortfully to her feet. “Draw on what powers you must,” she said and left Kane with a look of renewed pity. “You need not know them.”

Kane watched her trudge out of the cave, leaning on the stick. She passed from sight beyond an array of swords in sheaths that were propped against the wall, and then
he heard her in the outer cavern. “I have done what you asked,” she said without pride. “His body is healed.”

It was plain that she was making no claims for his soul. “What do you see of our future?” a voice said, and Kane recognised Telford’s.

“Your champion will lead you into blood and darkness,” the old woman said. “Are you ready for that?”

Telford had no audible response. Fortune-telling was the Devil’s snare, forbidden by the Bible. Kane heard the hollow plodding of the stick recede and emerge into the open. Telford and his men had resumed their discussion, too low for Kane to hear. Kane brought up his hands to examine them afresh and saw his own breath in the chill air. It might have been a sign of his return to life. He had experienced no pain in his hands since regaining consciousness, and so he risked flexing the fingers. Except for the dragging of the bandages against whatever substance they contained, there seemed to be no hindrance at all.

He picked at the knot on his left wrist with his fingernails and uncovered the hand. A lump of some unfamiliar herb or root had been pressed against each side. When he removed them he saw that the hole through the hand had entirely closed up, leaving only scars. The same was the case with his right hand. He clenched them and then opened the fists wide. They were as supple as they had ever been, but the action emphasised the marks like stigmata, so that for a moment he felt at the mercy of the old woman’s impious comparison. He had to believe the healing came from God, whoever God might have employed as His instrument. Meredith had used herbs to heal Kane, after all. The thought of her made Kane sit up, careless of his state.

He was naked to the waist. His body did not waver,
and his dizziness quickly passed. He pushed away the blanket and lowered his legs to the stone floor. He stood up without faltering and found the bag of his provisions in a corner of the cave. He was pulling on his shirt when Telford called “Captain Kane?”

Kane advanced to the mouth of the cave. Beyond it was a cavern several times the size. Telford and a handful of his followers were gathered near a fire over which a cooking pot dangled from a stand, and dozens of men were scattered through the cavern. Telford saw Kane and hurried to him. “What are you doing?” he protested. “You need to rest.”

“It is not over.” Kane clenched his fists, which felt like strength revived. “She is not dead.”

“But you are barely healed.” When Kane ignored this Telford said “We are too few to fight Malachi’s men.”

“Then remain where you are safe,” Kane told him. “For myself I cannot.”

“Just wait a little,” Telford said and caught him by an arm.

Kane closed a hand around Telford’s throat and shoved him against the cave wall. “I do not ask you to come with me,” he growled. “Nor do I want you to.”

Several men started forward and hesitated, apparently uncertain how to defend their leader. In Kane’s days of privateering, his men would have cut down anyone who threatened him. Then a stocky bearded man advanced to stand next to Telford. “You may not want it,” he said, “but we will.”

He bore scars of battle, and met Kane’s gaze without aggressiveness but equally without fear. “This lad has promised us you will destroy the evil,” he said, “and we’re here to fight with you.”

His companions murmured in agreement, and Kane
saw their eyes gleaming with resolve that began to match his own. He slackened his grip on Telford’s neck but kept his hand there. “Promised,” he enquired, “have you?”

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” Telford lifted his right shoulder in a shrug and smiled with that half of his mouth. “To end this?”

Kane wanted nothing else. “Yes,” he vowed.

“Then let us help you.”

Kane demurred for a moment and then let go of him. If the men were set on battling Malachi, they would at least be no hindrance – they might well help clear the way for Kane to reach his foe. He inclined his head and stepped back, sensing relief on every side of him. “If you will not rest you should eat,” Telford said.

Kane was troubled by a question that he should already have asked. “How long have I been here?”

“Some days,” Telford told him, but would not be drawn further on the subject. “Come, we shall talk as we eat. Let me introduce you to our company.”

He handed Kane a metal plate as the men gathered near the fire. The bearded man was named Mcness, and Telford identified others as Kane broke bread with them. The revival of his strength had brought hunger with it, and he wolfed down a portion of the stew from the pot and did not refuse a second. Many of the men were younger than Mcness – even than Telford. Kane read courage in every youthful face, and a necessary apprehension too, but neither quality seemed to have been tempered by experience. His reflections prompted him to ask “What do you know of Malachi?”

“He was a priest,” Telford said. “A priest and a healer.”

“He grew weary of healing his flock,” said Mcness, “and even of saving their souls.”

“It’s said he looked too long into the mirror,” Telford said.

“We should have no truck with mirrors.” This came from Caldicott, one of the youngest of the men. “They do not show the soul,” he declared.

“If you look into a glass at midnight,” Mcness said, “they say it will be the Devil that looks back.”

As several men crossed themselves Telford said “It was so with Malachi. Some of his flock saw him at the glass when God-fearing men should be sleeping God’s sleep. They heard him speaking to the mirror, and they say the mirror spoke to him.”