“Are my friends still alive?”
But they had turned onto a track leading into the forest and Will had slowed to look back. “You startin’ to listen’, Toki?”
“I’m listenin’, Will.”
The donkeys were reined in to a walk so that their hooves trod the ground’s leaf mold almost without sound. An enormous yellow moon shining through branches in dapples obviated the need for a lantern, but Adelia guessed Will wouldn’t have allowed one to be lit in any case; holding on to Toki’s back, she could feel a vibration in his body.
He was afraid, all the men were afraid; they exhaled fear.
There was a clearing ahead with a charcoal burner’s hut in the middle of it—Adelia could smell ashes. She was lifted down. The donkeys were led into the hut and shut in.
“Now we walk,” Will whispered.
They walked. If the men were silent, the forest was not. It rustled with unseen life: A nightjar gave its long churring call; somewhere an animal screamed. A badger lumbered onto the path ahead and disappeared.
At one point, Toki was hoisted to the lower branches of a tree and climbed to its top. Those at the bottom stood completely still until, after several minutes, he came down.
“Sounds like there’s a to-do over to Pennard, Will. I heard screamin’. Reckon as he’s kept his word and we’m clear.”
“Fucking hope so.” Will crossed himself. He was still afraid.
Adelia was afraid with him. She knew little of these men except that they weren’t frightened easily. She didn’t know where they came from; she’d begun to think that probably they’d been dispossessed of their employment by the Glastonbury fire and were surviving however they could, nibbling at the edges of criminality while trying, for the most part, to aspire to normal, law-respecting life—hadn’t they gone to extraordinary lengths to prove Eustace, and therefore themselves, innocent of arson?
But here, in the forest, they were in the kingdom of Wolf, somebody who terrified them, someone who had broken away from society and recognized no law, a wolf’s head, a creature—
Emma, oh, Emma
—who pounced on travelers on the Wells road, taking their goods and lives.
The tithing knew him well enough to be granted this favor, knew him well enough, too, to be scared to death of him.
Chancy,
she thought,
the description of an unstable mind.
The wonder was that in order to keep the bargain they’d made with her, they had actually approached Wolf and were risking this foray into his lair. Thieves they might be, but there was honor here—more honor than in a Christian abbey.
Moonlight took color from foxgloves, bellflowers, and yellow archangel that in daylight would have patched the June forest. The branches of a dying tree threw shadows across the track that resembled stripes on a girl’s back.
Toki stopped again; this time all of them heard a distant howling. Real wolves? Hounds? Maniacs? Whatever it was, Will urged them to a stream and they waded down it so that their scent would be untrackable. The water was cool to Adelia’s tired feet, but she felt none of the joy of avoiding the hunt that she’d experienced on the Tor; that wouldn’t have killed her. Besides, its end had been to prove these men innocent. This time, she knew, she was being taken to see dead bodies.
Little Pippy. How could she bear to look on that small corpse? On Emma’s?
I can’t uncover terrible things. My ears are filled with the cries of the dead.
But she was what she was; she must travel on to face what she had to.
It was in a clearing. Alf’s voice greeted them, shaking with nerves. “You took your bloody time.”
There was a mound of earth beside him, and he stood on the edge of a long and shallow grave. “He threw ’em in the pit all higgledy-piggledy,” he said. “I been straightenin’ ’em out a bit.”
Will lit a lantern. Then, in a move that both touched her and added to her grief, he and the others swept off their caps.
All of them dead weeks ago. Attacked on the road as they went, having been turned away from Wolvercote Manor. Armed, two-legged animals springing at them from the surrounding trees, tearing, bludgeoning. A screaming end for those dear lives.
Will was holding the lantern out to her.
“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t.”
“Better you do,” he told her.
As she took the lantern from him, she realized she was still holding the dead warrior’s sword. She was reluctant to let it go; it provided some comfort in this death-stricken place.
With the lantern in one hand and the sword dragging in the other, she began to walk along a grave that seemed to stretch forever. Alf had laid the bodies side by side, all facing upward, with their hands crossed on their breasts. The earthy mold of the pit into which Wolf had thrown them had preserved some flesh, but insects and mammals had taken their portions, turning the faces into unrecognizable distortions that clamored to her, echoing the shrieks and cries of the skirmish with Wolf and his robbers on the road that had been their last experience.
Father Septimus, his gnawed hands laid on the wooden cross that hung from his neck.
Emma’s two grooms, so kind to Allie—it seemed terrible to Adelia that at this moment she couldn’t remember their names—both had been stripped down to their hose, their leather jerkins too valuable to be left to rot. Impossible now to tell which was which.
Master Roetger’s squire, Alberic, far from his native Swabia, another whose jerkin had been taken, leaving his bones to display the hacking to his rib cage.
Adelia stopped for a moment; it was unbearable to go on. Will gave her a small push. “We ain’t got all night, missus.”
She was approaching the women—oh, God, the women. The one with fair hair would be Alys, Emma’s maid. She was naked.
The thought of what might have been done to the girl before she died made Adelia shut her eyes tight.
“Get on, missus.”
Next to Alys was Mary, young Pippy’s elderly nurse, the half-chewed
face showing none of the patience and kindness it had borne in life. Her corpse, too, was naked.
“Did he rape them?” Adelia kept her voice low and steady.
Nobody answered her—an answer in itself.
She took another reluctant pace. Her lantern shone on an edge in the earth that rose like a step and led to a continuance of the twigs and weeds that made up the forest floor. She’d come to the end of the grave.
She turned on Will. “Is this all of them?”
He nodded.
“There are only six here.” Her voice yelled shockingly through the silence, and she lowered it. “There were nine. Where’s Emma? Where’s her child? Where’s her knight?” She let the lantern and sword drop so that she could grab the man’s tunic and shake him. “You devil, what’s he done with them?”
There was an exhalation of relief from the men around her. “We did wonder,” Alf said.
She wheeled round to face him. “Wonder what?”
“As maybe it was your friend got away. She might’ve been one of these deaders, for all we knew.”
“Got away? Emma got away?”
“It was like this, see.” Will sat her down on a fallen tree trunk, picked up her sword, and gave it back to her like a mother restoring a toy to a baby to calm it. He squatted beside her while Alf started shoveling earth back over the bodies. “What Wolf says was there was a big fella with ’em as had his foot in a sort of basket.”
“A basket,” echoed Alf, pausing in his spadework.
“Roetger.” Adelia was having trouble moving her lips.
“Foreign, was he?” Will asked, interested.
She managed to say, “A champion swordsman. German.”
“What’s a German?” Alf asked.
“You get on and cover them poor buggers up, Alf,” Will told him. “We wants to get away afore we join ’em.” He turned back to Adelia. “Champion, was he? Fought like one, seemingly. Held Wolf’s lads off from the back of the cart, got one of ’em in the eye, sliced another’s bloody hand off, stuck one more.”
“Lost four of his lads that night, Wolf did,” Alf said, pausing again. “Wasn’t best pleased, Wolf wasn’t.”
“But Emma, what happened to Lady Emma and her little boy?”
“Youngster, was there?” Will asked. “Wolf says as how he thought he heard a kid crying. That’d explain it, then, ’cos she fought an’ all. That’s one lady as Wolf didn’t get to… . She had a dagger on her and stuck it in one of Wolf’s lad’s throat when he was clam-berin’ up on the front of the cart—the which is another as Wolf had to bury.”
Adelia nodded. Emma would have fought. Her servants dying around her, Pippy behind her in the cart—she’d have fought to kill.
“Well, Wolf was surprised like. An’ while he was surprised, the lady whips up the horses an’ has that cart gallopin’ off down the road. Wolf, he chases after it, but that big German bugger’s in the back and he’s still flailin’ his sword about so’s Wolf can’t get near. He had to let it go, see.”
“Let the cart go?”
Will nodded. “Lady, German, cart, and what-all as was in it. Oh, an’ a pack mule as went canterin’ after it—Wolf lost that an’ all.”
They got away.
Then she had Will by the shoulders and was shaking him again. “Where did they go?”
“I don’t bloody know, do I?” Will brushed her hands off and settled his tunic.
“What do you mean you don’t know? What happened to them?”
Will shrugged.
Alf said, “How’d we know?” Toki and Ollie chimed their ignorance. There was an air of disappointment. They’d taken all this trouble, put their lives within the grasp of the chancy Wolf, gained her information—and still she wasn’t satisfied.
“But … they’ve disappeared,” she said. “There’s been no sign of them since. If my friend was alive, she’d have contacted me. I know she would.” She was near crying.
“Ain’t our fault.” The tithing had told her as much as it knew. It had done its bit.
“Dear heaven.” It was bitter; it was cruel. All this and she was no nearer to finding Emma than she had been.
“Last seen gallopin’ toward Glastonbury, wasn’t they, Will?” Alf said helpfully.
“So Wolf said.” Will stood up. Adelia’s ingratitude had rendered him churlish once more. “Could’ve made Street the rate they was going, or fallen in the fucking Brue for all I care. Finished with them bodies, Alf?”
“Nearly, Will.”
“Let’s get off, then. We only got til dawn, and I got my bloody baking to do.”
His bloody baking could wait; Adelia wasn’t leaving the dead like this.
She went to the neat strip of turned earth that now covered them, knelt down, and prayed. “Eternal rest grant unto these dear men and women, O Lord, and let perpetual Light shine upon them. May their souls rest in peace. Amen.”
Silently, she promised the corpses that they would not be left forgotten in this forest. Whoever Wolf was, he was an outrage. England prided itself on being a civilized country—well, it wasn’t civilized here. If the warring churchmen of Glastonbury and Wells
couldn’t keep safe the road and forest that stretched between them, there was one man who could. King Henry would see to it; she’d demand that he did.
When she looked up she saw that the men around her had taken off their caps again. She had been unkind to them, so she added, “And bless these friends who did not count the cost in bringing me to this place. I am grateful to them.”
There was some embarrassed shuffling. Alf began patting the earth down with his spade. Then stopped.
The tithing jerked to attention. She heard the hiss of Will’s breath.
A breeze had rustled the trees where there was no breeze.
Wearily, she looked toward the spot on the edge of the glade that was commanding the men’s horrified attention.
A distorted bush, a green thing, which spoke. “Greetings, lads.”
“We thought … we thought as you was over … over Pennard way tonight, Wolf.” Will was panting.
“Some of me is, Will. The rest of me’s here.”
The voice had the crackle of dry leaves, as if a tree were talking.
Whether it was naked or not—and perhaps some of it was—the whorls pricked into its body and the wreath round its head—or it might have been bushy hair—made it more vegetation than animal, a thing that had lurched through primeval forest before humanity began. Even the weapon it carried was of wood—a stake ending in a pale, newly sharpened point.
Will was backing away from it. “You said … three hours, Wolf… as we could bring her …”
“Course I did. Course I did, Will. You was offering me a tidbit.” Teeth gleamed among the foliage. “We likes tidbits, don’t us, Scarry?”
The tithing gave a soft, concerted moan; another creature had come, dancing, to join the first.
It gave a shriek of joy.
“Puellae.”
“Only one this time, Scarry, only one. But she’ll do for us. First me, then you, eh?”
“You and me, Wolf, you and me.” More greenery decorated this taller, slimmer, swaying figure.
Will was arguing. “No need for this, Wolf… no need …” Yet as he spoke, he was walking backward. Adelia became aware that the others were melting away from her. Alf was protesting. “You promised, Wolf, you said …” But his shaking hands had dropped the spade, and he, too, was retreating like a cowering dog.
It was a dream. This was no longer the present; she’d been transported to a darkness where there were only trees and predators.
“Time you was going, lads,” Wolf said softly to men who were already going. “Leave the lady. Me first, Scarry next. Eh, Scarry?”
There was a response of joy.
“Mirabile visu.
Let ’em stay, oh, Wolf, Lupus of mine. You first, then me. Let ’em watch.”
They were half goats. They would perform a rite on her, here in their glade; she would be torn to pieces to satisfy a pagan god. They had no need for weapons; they were terror itself, the mere stink of it scattering normal men like panicked birds. She was so frightened she couldn’t move, as if the ground had sprouted roots into her body.
The one called Wolf padded daintily forward until he stood opposite her with only the grave between them. Bright eyes held hers through the mask of leaves. “I’m owed,” he said. “The one as got away, she robbed me of me entertainment. I likes me entertainment, and I were promised her, weren’t I, Scarry?”