Company of Liars Read online

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Karen Maitland travelled and worked in many parts of the United Kingdom before finally settling in the beautiful medieval city of Lincoln. Her debut novel, The White Room, was shortlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award.

  KAREN MAITLAND

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Published in 2008

  1

  Copyright © Karen Maitland, 2008

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright

  reserved above, no part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,

  or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

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  978-0-14-190001-8

  The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression.

  It is possible to lie, and even to murder, for the truth.

  Alfred Adler, psychiatrist

  Wir haben die Lüge nötig… um zu leben.

  We need lies… in order to live.

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher

  Prologue

  ‘So that’s settled then, we bury her alive in the iron bridle. That’ll keep her tongue still.’ The innkeeper folded his arms, relieved that they had finally agreed on that much at least. ‘Iron’ll counter any curses she makes. Stop anything, iron will. One of the most powerful things you can get to work against evil, saving the host and holy water. ’Course, it’d be better if we had some of that and all, but we don’t, not with things being the way they are. But iron’ll do just as well.’

  His wife snorted. ‘Tell that to our neighbours. There’s not a door or shutter in the village that’s not covered with iron horseshoes, but we might as well have hung chicken feathers on doors for all the protection they’ve given us.’

  Her husband glared at her. ‘But if the bridle gags her then she’ll not be able to utter any curses, will she? So, iron or not, it’ll still work.’

  ‘But suppose she doesn’t die?’ the potboy wailed. ‘Suppose she claws her way out through the earth and comes for us in the dead of night?’ He stared round nervously at the door as if he could already hear her scratching at it. ‘Couldn’t we drive an elder stake through her heart afore we bury her? Then we’d know for sure she’s dead.’

  ‘God’s bones, boy! Are you going to volunteer to drive a stake into her while she sits there watching you? Because I’m certainly not.’

  The potboy shook his head vehemently and shrank lower on his stool, as if terrified someone was going to thrust a stake into his hands and make him do it.

  With an exasperated sigh, the innkeeper surveyed the dozen or so men and women slumped on the benches of his gloomy ale room. Though it was still daylight outside, the shutters were fastened tight and the door bolted. Not that the bolts were necessary, force of habit really. It just felt safer to draw a bolt. But bolts would not stop her finding out what was being planned, and as for passing strangers bursting in, no one, unless he had a death wish, would approach within ten yards of a building whose doors and shutters were closed, however desperate they were for a drink or a bite to eat.

  The innkeeper had every reason to be impatient. If they didn’t get the matter settled soon, it would be too late to act before dark. To face her in daylight was bad enough, to try to kill her at night, with only a candle standing between you and her powers, was enough to turn the bravest man’s bowels to water, and after twenty-three years of marriage the innkeeper had no illusions that he was a brave man.

  The blacksmith’s voice boomed out deep and resonant from the alcove where he squatted in his favourite seat, his broad buttocks spilling over the well-worn bench. ‘Bridle her and bind her tight, cover her in a foot or so of earth, then once she’s smothered to death, I’ll drive an iron stake into her through the soil. That ought to do it.’ He rubbed an itching flea bite on his back against the rough wall. ‘I’ll do it just as the moon rises; it’ll impale her spirit in the grave. She’ll not rise then.’

  The tanner took a gulp of ale and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘But I’ve heard tell, the only sure way is to slice the head off with a gravedigger’s spade – once she’s good and dead, of course.’

  ‘That’s the way to kill a vampire, but she’s not one of them, leastways, there’s been no talk of that.’ This from the old woman at the back. Old and frail now, she’d birthed most of the people in the village and seen them buried too.

  ‘Who knows what she is or what she could turn into once she’s dead? She’s not natural, that’s for sure.’

  Several heads nodded in agreement with the tanner. That was about the only thing they were agreed upon. In all the hours of discussion no one had uttered her name, not even the potboy. Even he knew there are some things it is wiser not to name aloud.

  ‘I’m still of a mind we should burn her,’ the old woman said. ‘There’d be no chance of her rising then.’

  ‘But she’s not a heretic,’ the innkeeper protested. ‘It would be better for all of us if she was. Heretics’ souls fly straight to hell. God alone knows where her soul would fly, into the nearest living thing, I wouldn’t wonder, be it man or beast, and then we’d be left with a monster ten times worse.’

  ‘Father Talbot would know the words to send her soul to hell,’ the old woman persisted stubbornly.

  ‘Aye, he would, but he’s dead, don’t you remember? As is half the village and we’ll all be joining them if we don’t find a way to kill her first. And since there’s not a single priest left within four days’ ride of here, we must make shift to do it ourselves. We can’t go on arguing how it’s to be done. We must finish her today, before the sun goes down. We daren’t risk leaving her alive another night.’

  The blacksmith nodded. ‘He’s right. Every hour she’s alive she grows stronger.’

  The innkeeper heaved himself up off the bench in an attempt to put paid to any further discussion. ‘So then, we’re all resolved,’ he said firmly. ‘She’s to be buried alive in the bridle. Then once she’s dead, William’ll fix her in her grave with the iron stake. The only thing left to decide now is who’s going to put the bridle on her.’

  He looked hopefully around the room, but no one met his eyes.

  1. The Midsummer Fair

  They say that if you suddenly wake with a shudder, a ghost has walked o
ver your grave. I woke with a shudder on that Midsummer’s Day. And although I had no way of foreseeing the evil that day would bring to all of us, it was as if in that waking moment I felt the chill of it, glimpsed the shadow of it, as if something malevolent was hovering just out of sight.

  It was dark when I woke, that blackest of hours before dawn when the candles have burnt out and the first rays of sun have not yet pierced the chinks in the shutters. But it wasn’t the coldness of the hour that made me shiver. We were packed into the sleeping barn too snugly for anyone to feel a draught.

  Every bed and every inch of floor was occupied by those who had poured into Kilmington for the Midsummer Fair. The air was fetid with sweat and the belches, farts and stinks from stomachs made sour by too much ale. Men and women grunted and snored on the creaking boards, groaning as here and there a restless sleeper, in the grip of a bad dream, elbowed his neighbours in the ribs.

  I seldom dream, but that night I had dreamt and the dream was still with me when I woke. I had dreamt of the bleak Lowland hills they call the Cheviots, where England and Scotland crouch, battle-ready, staring each other down. I saw them as plainly as if I had been standing there, the rounded peaks and turbulent streams, the wild goats and the wind-tossed rooks, the Pele towers and the squat Bastle farmhouses. I knew them well. I had known that place from the day I first drew breath; it was the place I had once called home.

  I had not dreamt of it for many years. I had never returned to it. I could never return. I knew that much on the day I walked away from it. And through all the years I have tried to put it from my mind and, mostly, I have succeeded. There’s no point in hankering for a place where you cannot be. Anyway, what is home? The place where you were born? The place where you are still remembered? The memory of me will have long since rotted away. And even if there were any left alive who still remember, they would never forgive me, could never absolve me for what I have done. And on that Midsummer’s Day, when I dreamt of those hills, I was about as far from home as it is possible to be.

  I’ve travelled for many years, so many that I have long since ceased to count them. Besides, it’s of no consequence. The sun rises in the east and sinks in the west and we told ourselves it always would. I should have known better than to believe that. I am, after all, a camelot, a peddler, a hawker of hopes and crossed fingers, of piecrust promises and gilded stories. And believe me, there are plenty who will buy such things. I sell faith in a bottle: the water of the Jordan drawn from the very spot where the dove descended, the bones of the innocents slaughtered in Bethlehem and the shards of the lamps carried by the wise virgins. I offer them skeins of Mary Magdalene’s hair, redder than a young boy’s blushes, and the white milk of the Virgin Mary in tiny ampoules no bigger than her nipples. I show them blackened fingers of St Joseph, palm leaves from the Promised Land and hair from the very ass that bore our blessed Lord into Jerusalem. And they believe me, they believe it all, for haven’t I the scar to prove I’ve been all the way to the Holy Land to fight the heathen for these scraps?

  You can’t avoid my scar, purple and puckered as a hag’s arsehole, spreading my nose half across my cheek. They sewed up the hole where my eye should have been and over the years the lid has shrunk and shrivelled into the socket, like the skin on a cold milk pudding. But I don’t attempt to hide my face, for what better provenance can you want, what greater proof that every bone I sell is genuine, that every drop of blood splashed down upon the very stones of the Holy City itself? And I can tell them such stories – how I severed a Saracen’s hand to wrest the strips of our Lord’s swaddling clothes from his profaning grasp; how I had to slaughter five, nay a dozen, men, just to dip my flask in the Jordan. I charge extra for the stories, of course. I always charge.

  We all have to make a living in this world and there are as many ways of getting by in this life as there are people in it. Compared to some, my trade might be considered respectable and it does no harm. You might say it even does good, for I sell hope and that’s the most precious treasure of them all. Hope may be an illusion, but it’s what keeps you from jumping in the river or swallowing hemlock. Hope is a beautiful lie and it requires talent to create it for others. And back then on that day when they say it first began, I truly believed that the creation of hope was the greatest of all the arts, the noblest of all the lies. I was wrong.

  That day was counted a day of ill fortune by those who believe in such things. They like to have a day to fix it on, as if death can have an hour of birth or destruction a moment of conception. So they pinned it upon Midsummer’s Day 1348; a date that everyone can remember. That was the day on which humans and beasts alike became the wager in a divine game. That was the cusp upon which the scales of heaven and hell swung free.

  That particular Midsummer’s Day was born shivering and sickly, wrapped in a dense mist of fine rain. Ghosts of cottages, trees and byres hovered in the frail grey light, as if at cockcrow they’d vanish. But the cock did not crow. It did not recognize that dawn. The birds were silent. All who met as they hurried to milking and tending of livestock called out cheerfully that the rain would not last long and then it would be as fine a Midsummer’s Day as any yet seen, but you could see they were not convinced. The silence of the birds unnerved them. They knew that silence was a bad omen on this day of all days, though none dared say so.

  But, as they predicted, the drizzle did finally dry up. A sliver of sun, wan and weak, shone fitfully between the heavy clouds. It had no warmth in it, but the villagers of Kilmington were not to be downcast by that small matter. Waves of laughter rolled across the Green. Bad omen or not, this was their holiday and even in the teeth of a gale they would have sworn they were enjoying themselves. Outlanders had poured in from neighbouring villages to sell and to buy, barter and haggle, settle old quarrels and start new ones. There were servants looking for masters, girls looking for husbands, widowers looking for good strong wives and thieves looking for any purse they could cut.

  Beside the pond, a gutted pig turned on a great spit and the smoke of sweet roasting meat hung in the damp air, making the mouth water. A small boy cranked the spit slowly, kicking at the dogs that jumped and snapped at the carcass, but the poor brutes were driven to near frenzy by the smell and not even the spitting fire or the blows from a stout staff deterred them. The villagers cut juicy chunks from the sizzling loins, tearing at them with their teeth and licking the fat from greasy fingers. Even those whose teeth were long worn down to blackened stumps sucked greedily at wedges of fat and pork crackling as the juices ran down their chins. Such a rare extravagance of fresh meat was to be savoured down to the last succulent bone.

  Small gangs of barefoot boys rushed through the gossiping adults, trying to distract the scarlet-clad jugglers and bring their clubs crashing to the ground. Lads and lasses made free, oblivious of the damp grass and the disapproving frowns of priest and clerk. Peddlers shouted their wares. Minstrels played upon fife and drum, and youngsters shouted loud enough to wake the demons in hell. It was the same every year. They made the most of their fair, for there was precious little else to make merry with for the rest of the year.

  But even in the jostling, noisy crowd you could not fail to notice the child. It was her hair, not blonde but pure white, a silk-fine tumble of it like an old man’s beard run wild, and beneath this snowcap, a face paler than a nun’s thighs, white eyebrows, white lashes framing eyes translucent as a dawn sky. The fragile skin of her bony limbs glowed ice-blue against the nut-brown hides of the other market brats. But it wasn’t just the absence of colour in her that drew my attention; it was the beating.

  Nothing unusual in a child getting a thrashing; I’d probably seen half a dozen already that day – a switch across bare legs for a carelessly dropped basket of eggs, a tanned backside for running off without leave, a cuff around the ear for no good reason except that the brat was in the way. All of the young sinners trying to dodge the blows and yell loudly enough to satisfy the chastisers that the punishment ha
d been fully appreciated, all, that is, except her. She didn’t yell or struggle, but was as silent as if the blows to her back were inflicted with a feather instead of a belt, and this only seemed to infuriate the beater more. I thought he’d whip her senseless, but finally, defeated, he let her go. She stumbled a few yards away from him, unsteady but with her chin held high, though her legs almost gave way beneath her. Then she turned her head and looked at me as if she sensed me watching. Her pale blue eyes were as dry and clear as a summer’s day, and around her mouth was the merest trace of a smile.

  The beater was not the only one who’d been enraged by her silence. A fat, beringed merchant was shaking his fist at him, demanding recompense, almost purple in the face with rage. I couldn’t hear what passed between them for the shouts and chatter of the small crowd that had gathered around them, but at last some deal seemed to be struck and the merchant allowed himself to be led off in the direction of the tavern, with the onlookers bringing up the rear. The beater doubtless intended to pacify the outraged man with a soporific quantity of strong wine. Clutching him ingratiatingly by the elbow with one hand, he didn’t waste the opportunity to cuff the girl with the other as he passed her, a practised blow, delivered without apparently glancing in her direction. It sent her sprawling face down on the ground and wisely, this time, she stayed there until he was safely inside the tavern. Then she crawled into a narrow gap between a tree trunk and the wheels of a wagon and crouched there, arms wrapped around her knees, staring at me with wide, expressionless eyes like a cat watching from the hearth.

  She looked about twelve years old, barefoot and dressed in a grubby white woollen shift, with a blood-red band about the neck that intensified the whiteness of her hair. She continued to stare, but not at my scar, at my good eye, with an intensity that was more imperious than curious. I turned away. Whatever had transpired had nothing to do with me. The girl had been punished for some crime, thieving probably, and doubtless deserved what she got, though she was obviously well hardened to it, since it had had so little effect on her. So there was no reason for me to say anything to her.