Scarry screamed at her like a man at the ending of his world. “Do something.”
Adelia heard her foster father’s voice as he’d bent over a man stabbed in a Salerno brawl whose chest was making the same sucking noise, “If we could open the thorax and sew up the ripped lung… but we cannot… He will die in minutes.”
Already Wolf’s eyes were glazing over. Beneath the mask of leaves, his face was changing color.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m so sorry. There’s nothing to be done.”
“Bloody is,” a voice above her head said earnestly. Will was trying to get her to her feet. “We run.”
Scarry was kissing the dying face, begging. “Te amo. Don’t leave me, my Lupus. Te amo, te amo.”
“Run,” Will said again. He’d taken the sword from her, pointing it at the sobbing Scarry. “And quick. He ain’t going to take this kindly.”
She was pulled up. Toki and Ollie had a stumbling Alf by the arms. “Run,” Will was shouting now. “He’ll fuckin’ kill us.”
What had happened, what was happening, the horror of this place … She let herself be dragged into a run.
Out of the glade, through trees.
Behind them rose a screamed lament that ruffled the leaves. “Come back, my Lupus! Te amo! Te amo!”
She was leaping over fallen branches, along a stream, breath coming short; whether woodland hurtled by her or she was hurtled past it was impossible to know.
The charcoal burner’s hut. They stopped, panting.
Will found his voice. “Is he after us, Toki?”
Adelia could hear nothing except the pounding in her own ears.
“He’s after us,” Toki said.
She was put up on a donkey; they were all on donkeys and galloping. When they reached the road, knowledge came to her. “Dear God, I killed him.”
The tithing took no notice. It just galloped faster.
THEY TOOK HER to the cave on the Tor and sat her down by the spring. It was quiet there.
The night was still dark, though. Being so near to the summer solstice, the sky had never been completely black and, even with the sun still below the horizon, was lightening as if filters were being removed from it one by one. Bats flittered against it.
“Toki?” asked Will.
A blackbird emitted its first song of the day, an isolated sound.
Toki nodded his head and puffed out his cheeks in relief. “We lost him.”
“Then you get back down the hill an’ wipe out our tracks. He can sniff a footprint in the dark, can Scarry.”
Adelia looked up at them. “I killed him,” she said.
“Pity you di’n’t do Scarry while you was about it,” Will told her. “He ain’t a-going to like losing Wolf.”
Ollie spoke for the first time. “But he don’t know where she lives, Will, does he?”
“No, he don’t,” Will said with satisfaction. “I told Wolf as she come from Wells.”
“I killed him.” She, whose oath was to preserve life, had taken life. Didn’t they realize it?
“You saved Alf,” Will pointed out. “He was a-goin’ to do Alf.”
Alf.
Here, at least, was somebody she could help. They’d laid him down on the grass. The skin of his throat was raw and swollen where the stake had been struck against it. She tore a strip off the hem of her green tunic, soaked it in the cold water of the spring, and applied it to the bruising. She tried to get him to drink some water, but swallowing was too painful for more than a few sips.
“Can you talk, Alf?” she asked with tenderness.
He huffed a response.
“Is he going to be all right?” Will asked her.
“I think so. His voice should come back when the swelling goes down.”
“Pity,” Will said savagely. “He talks us into more fuckin’ trouble than he’s worth… . Him an’ his bloody truth. Everyone got to keep their word… . Pain in the arse, Alf is.”
Adelia looked up, angry. Then she saw that Will was ashamed of his and the others’ cowardice in the glade, humiliated that it had been Alf, not him, who’d come to her aid.
“He can’t help it, Will,” Ollie said.
That’s the extraordinary thing, she thought. He can’t.
Smoothing the greasy hair back from Alf’s young, pockmarked face, she thought what a jewel was here. The Lord only knew how, petty thief that he was, the truth flamed bright in Alf’s soul—not honesty, not regard for other people’s deer, but the truth. It had dragged him, unwilling, moaning with fear, back to her side in the glade from outrage that Wolf had broken his oath to the tithing. He’d tried to save her life and, if she had then saved his, it was something to set against the fact that she’d had to kill to do it.
By the time Toki came back, dawn had broken. They gave Adelia some dried meat that she chewed on without identifying it, and she accepted a harsh but invigorating drink out of a filthy bottle. But when, having cleaned it, Will threw the sword down beside her, she saw only the image of Wolf’s lung and the rupture this blade’s tip had made in it so that air had escaped into the pleural cavity.
“I don’t want it,” she said.
“You bloody keep it,” Will told her. “And pray God as you won’t need it.”
This was such unusual piety for Will that she asked, “Who is Scarry?”
Will shrugged. “Don’t rightly know. Wolf, now, he come from the Quantocks, always mad, he was. Strangled his mother when he were still a lad, so the story goes, and lived wild in the forest ever after. Chancy, Wolf was, and no loss, so don’t you go frettin’. World’s a better place with that bastard gone.”
Perhaps it was, but remembering that it was she who’d sent him out of it put a weight on her that would never be lifted. She shivered. “And Scarry? He could speak Latin.”
Will nodded, and Adelia noticed that he, too, had a momentary coldness and drew his cloak around him. “Educated, Scarry is. Nobody don’t know for sure where he come from, up north as like as not. I heard his name was Scarlett or Scathelock, summat like that. Some say he was a priest and done wicked things so’s the Church chucked him out. Or he was a noble and done wicked things so’s he was outlawed. Joined up with Wolf, what, three, four year ago. Fish divin’ into water that was for Scarry. Loved it, liked the killing. Don’t know which of ’em was chancier, him or Wolf.”
“He cried for love of Wolf.” That dreadful scream: Te amo, te amo.
“Yeah, well.” Will shifted uncomfortably. “The pair of ’em was funny like that. What?” Alf was tugging at his elbow and croaking.
“He wants as you should tell her the rest of it, Will,” Toki explained.
Will spat. “Gor bugger, Alf, you want me to lose me best customer?”
It appeared from an indistinct whisper that Alf did.
Again, Toki translated. “Alf says as you’m a prize baker and don’t need to work for that old bitch.” He paused. “Maybe as we owe it to the missus, Will. She ought to know.”
“What old bitch?” asked Adelia.
“All right, all right.” Will sat down beside her, pulled up a piece of grass, and chewed savagely on it. “ ’S like this. See, Wolf knew as your lady’d be on that road. He was a-waiting for her, like.”
“How did he know?” God, it was becoming hot; the air was accumulating weight and making her gasp for breath.
Will sucked on his grass. “See, the big manors round here, they used to suffer something terrible from Wolf. He raided their beeves, sheep, barns, nothing safe from Wolf. And that weedy old sheriff not doin’ anything proper to stop un, nor Glastonbury, nor Wells.”
“So?”
“Well, so the lords and ladies as was suffering, they came to an arrangement, like. With Wolf. Payin’ him to stay off their land, see?”
Danegeld. The manors had paid Wolf to procure their peace and safety. At this moment, a disgraceful history seemed irrelevant, but Alf, in whom truth spouted like clear water from a fountain, thought it neces
sary that she should know it. “I see,” she said.
“So that night, the night as your friend was turned away from Wolvercote …” Will paused.
The air became heavier, suffocating.
“Well, that night Wolf got a message from there a-saying as there’d be a rich lady and party a-leavin’ of Wolvercote. Nice pickings for him, it said. They’d be taking his road, it said.”
“A message?” Adelia said stupidly. Alf was nodding. Then it came to her. “She sold them? She sold them?”
“Don’t know about that,” Will said, getting up. “I’m just saying as what happened.”
She’d sold them. The mistress of Wolvercote Manor had looked on Emma and the child, seeing only a threat to her position. And wanted them dead. And set the wolves on them.
“No need to worry about Eustace,” Will said, looking down at her. “He’s a-laying in Street Church and, when we’re off the hook for the fire, we’ll bury the poor bastard, with his fingers, the which is still by the abbey bloody wall.”
But Adelia wasn’t worrying for Eustace. It was the betrayal of Emma that had wiped everything else from her mind. And the bodies in their shallow grave in a lawless forest, killed twice—once by a woman who’d turned them from her door with murderous intent, and once by an animal. And who was the guiltier? The animal? Or the lady in her velvet manor?
Adelia’s mouth moved. “She sold them.”
Emma, Roetger, and Pippy. The souls of the dowager’s victims called out to her. Where were they?
She looked out toward the blue-and-green pattern of the marshes to clear her mind—an anatomist’s mind so clinical that it could not bear untidiness, whatever jumble of monstrosity had been fed into it.
Surely they are dead, she thought. They sustained wounds in the battle with Wolf and died of them. But Lord in heaven, did all bodies vanish in this godforsaken country? Was there some hole that sucked people into it without a trace?
Clear as clear, over and over, she watched Emma on the cart lash its horses into a gallop, saw Roetger flailing at their pursuers, heard Little Pippy screaming … a pack mule cantering behind them.
And then nothing. They vanished. She couldn’t see them anymore.
She raised her head. “Glastonbury, Alf? You said they were last seen galloping in the direction of Glastonbury. My friend and the cart.”
Alf huffed his assent.
“They didn’t get there.”
Will said, “Horses veered, maybe. Crashed ’em somewhere ’mongst the trees. Killed ’em.”
Yes, that might be the explanation: three more corpses rotting in that hellish forest, noticed only by the wildlife feeding on them.
Gently, because it was unbearable to envisage otherwise, Adelia’s mind gathered the bodies up and laid them in the trench that held their companions, folding their poor hands, pleading for rest to their souls… .
SHE COULDN’T SEE their faces, just their shapes—one large, one shorter and slim, one very little.
Shapes.
“You all right, missus?” Toki asked anxiously, offering the disgusting bottle. “Have another swig, you’re a-breathin’ horrible strong.”
“No.”
Dimensions. Shapes. One large, one shorter, one tiny. A foreigner, a woman, and her baby. Messages, messages. Shapes.
“Oh my God,” she said aloud.
“What’s up now?”
“I’ve got to get back to the Pilgrim.” She was on her feet.
“Better wait. Toki, you get down there. Make sure all’s quiet.”
She couldn’t wait; she began to run down the hill, the tithing following her. All she could see was the door of the inn and three shapes standing in front of it, one big, one middle-sized, one very small, urging it to open for them.
Now she knew why the landlord of the Pilgrim had fainted.
ELEVEN
AS SHE REACHED the shadow of the abbey wall, Adelia slowed down. The agitation that gripped her had to be controlled; she must plan.
When the tithing caught up with her, she was rubbing her forehead with one finger, thinking hard.
She looked from one face to another. “I’m in sore need of one more favor from you,” she said.
“What now?” Will snapped. He was tired; they were all tired.
She spoke slowly and clearly. “I want you to get my people out of the Pilgrim and take them to Wells. All of them, the lord Mansur, my daughter, my companion, and the Welshman. I want you to take them to the Bishop’s Palace and put them in the care of the bishop of Saint Albans, who is staying there.”
“What for?”
Ollie, youngest and most taciturn of the tithing, was surprised into asking, “Gor-dang, old Godwyn’s cookin’ ain’t that bad, be it?”
Adelia smiled at him. “No, but it’s time we moved on.” She turned to Will. “Is it safe to take them along the road?”
Will looked at Toki. “What do your ears tell ee, Toki?”
“Nothin’. ’S all quiet.”
Will considered. “Reckon as now they’re all upsy-downy over Wolf bein’ dead, getting theyselves a new leader. Might be all right then.” He looked at Adelia with suspicion. “You and the darky doin’ a moonlight flit? Leavin’ poor old Godwyn without his dues?”
“Something like that,” Adelia told him, “but I’ll pay you when I can get to my purse.”
“Come on, Will,” Toki said. “ ’Tain’t as if that old Hilda ever did you a good turn.”
“That’s for sure,” Will said. “All right, then, the palace it is, but the mokes’ll need a bit of a rest and waterin’ afore we set off.”
“One more thing,” Adelia said. “I shan’t be coming with you. I want you to tell my people that I’m already at the Bishop’s Palace, waiting for them.”
Running away without paying they understood; this they did not.
“You staying, then?”
“Yes. If they know that, they won’t come with you.” Gyltha wouldn’t allow herself, and certainly would not allow Allie, to accompany a collection of men as disreputable-looking as these on just their say-so—at least not without a fight.
A singed apple tree leaning over the wall still had a living branch on it. She went to it and came back with a twig. She handed it to Will. “Give this to my companion; her name’s Gyltha. It’s a token that she and the lord Mansur are to do what you tell them. And when you get to the palace, you must inform the bishop of Saint Albans that he’s to make sure he keeps my people there and that I want him to come to the Pilgrim. I’ll be waiting for him.”
“Oh, yes.” Will raised his eyes to the heavens. “Bishops allus do what we tell ’another token would beem. Hobnob with bishops every bloody day, don’t we, lads?”
It was a good point; another token would be necessary. “Tell him …” She tried to think of what would convince Rowley that she was well but in need. “Tell him … tell him Ariadne waits for him.” It had been his name for her when they’d been lovers.
She made Will repeat it several times until he’d got his tongue round the unfamiliar syllables.
The tithing didn’t want to leave her alone, Alf especially. “He’s scared as Scarry’ll come after you,” Toki explained.
Adelia was impatient with them. She had things to do. Out here, in the early sunlight, with the abbey and its monks just over the road, was another world from the forest of last night that was already assuming the unreality of nightmare. It was the Pilgrim that was now the focus of a more pressing danger. “Will, you said yourself the man has no idea where I am.”
“So he ain’t, but Alf’s maybe right. Scarry set a lot of store by Wolf; he’ll want his revenge on us all, ’specially you, missus. You was the one who done for Wolf.”
Had she? It still seemed something she’d watched rather than experienced. Well, she’d face that later, pay whatever she had to pay later; now was not the time. “He has to find me first.”
“Maybe.” Will thought it over. “He’s got Wolf to bury. An’ h
e’ll be busy for a bit, seein’ as if all those other bastards’ll follow him now as Wolf’s dead.” He glared at her. “You sure the bishop’ll come if so be we ask him?”
“I know he will.”
There was a huff from Alf.
Toki said, “Alf says as he’s going to stay.”
“No.” She took in a breath and tried again. “I want my people safe in Wells. It’ll need all of you to get them there.” Allie, Gyltha, Rhys, and Mansur would need as large an escort as possible to travel the forest road; as it was, even four men were too few.
“Maybe she’s right.” Infuriatingly painstakingly, Will ticked over the reasoning on his fingers. “One, Scarry thinks as she lives over Wells way, ’cos that’s what I told Wolf. Two, he’ll be busy for a bit, a-buryin’ of Wolf and seein’ as if all the other bastards’ll follow him now as Wolf’s dead. Three, if we gets the bishop here today, he’ll keep her safer’n what we can.” Head on one side, he studied his splayed hand. “Yep, reckon as she’ll be safe enough for a bit.”
Quietly, they all crossed the road. The courtyard was deserted and silent, the overlooking shutters barred; it was still too early even for Millie to be up.
Adelia slipped into the stables as Will began hammering on the back door.
It took time for him to be answered, and it was Gyltha who appeared at a window.
The exchange between the two was lengthy and, on Gyltha’s part, bad-tempered with anxiety, but Will, waving the twig, played his part surprisingly well, eventually convincing her that Adelia was at Wells and wanted her family to join her.
The door was unbolted, again by Gyltha. “What’s she doin’ sending messages by the likes of you? Well, you bloody got to wait while I pack our traps. What for’s she gone to the palace? Suppose you’d better come in—you can help carry. And wipe your boots.”
Adelia couldn’t hear the rest because the tithing, meekly stamping their feet and brushing the dust off their clothes, went inside.
After a while, Toki came out. He’d been deputed to fetch the donkeys and was sipping a tankard of ale. “Your Gyltha drew it,” he told her, entering the stables. “Godwyn and Hilda, they ain’t there.”