A Gathering of Ghosts Read online

  I fought back an answering smile. It wouldn’t do to let Clarice know how secretly delighted I was, for I shouldn’t be condoning such devious behaviour. But I was all too well aware that the moment Brother Nicholas had the rents in his possession he would have financial control of the priory. We would be forced to beg him for every farthing, like a servant asking their master for coin to pay the butcher. I could picture the smug satisfaction on his face as he debated whether or not to grant us a pittance, and the delight he would take in his power to refuse. He could and, I had little doubt, would make our work impossible and our lives unbearable. But so long as the coins remained in our chests and the keys on my chain . . .

  ‘Thank you for your . . . efficiency, Sister Clarice. If I can deliver the responsions to Clerkenwell in full, using our own messenger, it may convince the Lord Prior that we can manage our affairs perfectly well and should be left here to do so.’

  I found my gaze straying to where my bed stood against the wall, guilt welling in me again. Was I breaking my vow of obedience or merely being a wise and prudent servant of God? It was a question I had wrestled with ever since I had become prioress, but not one on which I could seek guidance from any in our order or even from gentle, bumbling Father Guthlac. He had been a godly man of simple faith and I doubted such dilemmas had ever troubled his sleep.

  Clarice crossed to the small fire and stood with her back to it, warming herself. With the flames flickering behind her steaming skirts, I saw again, for one terrible moment, the Templars burning on the heretics’ pyres, heard the echo of those screams, smelt the stench of burning flesh. Brother Nicholas might have heard of the torments that had befallen them. But I had witnessed them. I had seen with my own eyes – would to God I had not – the once noble warriors blinking in the harsh light of day as they were dragged naked from their dark dungeons, seen the crowd spit at them, hurling insults and dung, where once they had thrown flowers. Sometimes I think it is a blessing to be blind, for then you cannot see those horrors again and again as if they were burned into your own eyes.

  I knew far better than Brother Nicholas how quickly kings and crowds could turn. The Templars had lent money to finance half the wars and buildings in Christendom. They had fought and defended nobles and kingdoms. They had seemed as invincible as the Holy See itself. But how swiftly the hands of sovereigns that once had proffered coins and jewels could wield axes, ropes and flaming brands.

  And the spinning of the stars in the heavens had brought us into a far more treacherous time than ever the Templars had known. When the populace starves and grows desperate, kings and bishops alike look for some way to turn aside the people’s anger. Tether a bear for the hounds to rip to pieces, and the brutes will not turn on their masters. I shuddered, as if the dead had walked over my own grave. How could I protect my sisters from those flames if the Hospitallers were next to fall?

  Chapter 11

  Sorrel

  The steep-sided valley was as raw as an open wound in a man’s belly. The land had been stripped bare of grass, the earth and stones that had been torn from it lying heaped in great barren wedges of black and rust-coloured rubble at either side of a broad trench. A lake had been gouged out at the head of the valley, the water held back by a great wall of earth and stone into which a sluice gate had been set. Wooden channels ran from it in zigzags down the hillside towards the ditch at the bottom in which a line of men were digging. As I watched, a man standing by a sluice gate put a ram’s horn to his lips and blew a single deep, mournful note across the valley. At once the tinners threw their shovels on to the bank and clambered out of the trench, only just in time before the man dragged on a rope to heave up the gate and a great gush of water flooded down the wooden leats into the ditch, pushing a tide of mud and gravel out into an old riverbed below.

  At the top of the valley, directly below the lake, there was a large, square building, with roughly hewn granite walls and a slate roof from which a fat plume of tar-black smoke was rising into the grey sky. But Gleedy was pointing towards the lower end, where a score of tiny black huts were clustered.

  ‘There now, that’s where you’ll be living, cosy as a flea in a king’s bed. See how close to the digging it is? There’s some workings on these moors where you’d have to trudge miles before you could start, but here it’s just a lamb’s skip and you’re there, fresh as a skylark in spring, and no time wasted.’

  I followed Gleedy and Todde down the sodden track into the valley. Everything was stained with black and red mud, from the faces and clothes of the men, women and children, who toiled with their shovels filling buckets, to the packhorses that stood, heads drooping, in the mizzle. The water in the river downstream of the ditch was so thick with it that it looked as if it was running with cow-dung instead of water. The mud had even hunted down the dandelions and the few blades of grass hiding among the cracks in the rocks to suffocate them too.

  The tinners turned their heads to watch us as we picked our way round the spoil heaps, sidestepping the women with yokes on their necks who were heaving buckets of stones over to the granite blocks where the men were pounding them with iron hammers. A few muttered to each other, but I couldn’t catch the words. A couple offered me weary smiles in exchange for my own, but mostly their faces were blank, indifferent.

  The ‘cottage’ Gleedy led us towards turned out to be no more than a crude bothy on the edge of a group of others like it. The one he pointed to was lowest down the hillside and I knew at once that all the rain and piss from the neighbours’ huts would run straight down into it. The walls were made from grass sods laid flat atop one another. But at least the cold earth floor was sloped, which was a mercy, for all the water had run into one corner, where it lay stagnant and black, like the rest of the valley.

  ‘There’s not even a shelf or bed boards,’ Todde grumbled. ‘You expect us to sleep on the wet earth?’

  We’d been sleeping on nothing but mud for days, but I guessed that Todde was trying to cling to the one remaining snippet of dignity that had not been stripped from him by the outlaws.

  Gleedy gave a high-pitched giggle. ‘What would you want with a shelf? Those outlaws took all you had to put on it.’ He tried to pull his features into a serious expression. ‘You spread a good thick layer of bracken on the floor and you’ll sleep like a babe at the breast.’ He grasped Todde’s shoulder. ‘But, seeing as you’ve had a bad time of it, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Master Odo keeps some stores ’case any should need them. I’ll go there now and take a squint.’ He laughed again and pulled down the bottom lid of his cross-eye in case we’d missed the joke. ‘See if I can’t find you a couple of snug sheepskins to rest your weary bones on.’

  Todde ambled down to watch the streaming while I went to hunt for bracken and kindling to build a fire. I might as well have saved my aching legs. All the bracken had been stripped bare near the camp, and I was too afraid of stumbling into a sucking mire to wander far with the light fading. I found a few twigs but I knew they’d be too wet to burn unless I could borrow the heat of a neighbour’s fire to dry them.

  I heard the horn sound again, two notes this time, and by the time I found my way back, the mud-soaked women were trudging up to their huts, where they knelt to blow on the embers of glowing peats and coax them into a blaze. Their menfolk squatted by the filthy stream, splashing water on their hands and heads. Dirt and sweat ran down their faces, leaving black trails on their skin, as if the devil’s slugs had crawled there.

  Gleedy had returned and was pushing a bundle of moulting sheepskins into Todde’s arms. He caught sight of me, and beamed, his forest of teeth glinting in the darkness of the doorway. ‘I’ve not forgotten you, Mistress. You’ll be glad of this, I’m thinking.’ He held out a rusty iron cooking pot almost burned through. ‘I’ve slipped a parcel of dried mutton in there and an onion or two. Now, don’t you be thanking me. Master Odo would never forgive me if your man was too weak from hunger to work come morning. Sleep sound.’


  ‘He is not my man!’ I blurted indignantly, and instantly regretted it when I saw Todde flinch. I’d not meant to hurt him – he had suffered enough blows to his pride that day. But, all the same, it was as well that it had been said. I had no illusions that any man would want a creature like me in his bed, but I’d not suffer myself to be in bondage to anyone again, as I had been to my father and brother. Todde had wanted to be his own master: couldn’t he understand that a woman might want that too?

  Gleedy grinned, gave a little bow and ambled away through the smoke of the cooking fires, swallowed by the thick grey sludge of evening.

  ‘You want to watch what you take from Gleedy,’ someone muttered behind me.

  I turned to see a tall, handsome woman leaning on the corner of a hut.

  ‘He’ll not give you so much as a cat’s turd for nothing. Deeper you climb into his purse, harder it’ll be to pull yourself out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, but as she spoke, one of the tinners slouched past. She caught my eye, giving a warning shake of her head.

  The tinner scowled at her. ‘Supper ready, Eva? My belly’s roaring louder than a rutting stag.’

  She waited until he had trudged further up the rise, then moved a pace closer to me. ‘Just remember what I said, but don’t speak of Gleedy or the master to any folk here. Those two have ears and eyes everywhere.’ She gave a grim smile. ‘Cheer up. You’ll soon get the lie of this place.’ She reached out to give my arm a squeeze, but it was my withered arm she grasped. She jerked at the feel of it, staring down at my flopping hand, and bit her lip. ‘Ah, you poor creature.’

  If any other soul had said it I’d have snapped at them, like a baited dog, but the haunted expression in the woman’s eyes told me she’d scars aplenty of her own.

  Eva’s gaze darted to the twigs I was clutching. ‘That won’t warm a spoonful of water.’ She jerked her head towards the huts higher up the slope. ‘I cook for some of the men and chillern that has no women to tend them. My fire’s up there by that old tumbled wall. If you bring along some of that mutton to add to the pot, you’re welcome to join us, just for tonight, mind.’

  Half a dozen men, three young boys and a girl, no more than seven or eight summers old, were already gathering around a bubbling cauldron, when Todde and I slipped among them. Eva had lit the fire close to an ancient stone wall that had half tumbled down, but was still high enough to give shelter from the wind, and she’d built two short, low walls out of the fallen stones to shield the fire-pit on either side. The great iron pot was balanced on top of them so it straddled the flames, but did not burn.

  After several minutes of stirring, and calls from the men to hurry, Eva doled out the pottage into old wooden bowls. Some of the men had brought their own spoons made from mutton bones, the rest lifted the bowls to their lips and slurped, scraping the shreds of meat that were caught on rough wood into their mouths with black-rimmed fingernails.

  It was hard to say what the pottage had been made from, for the fragments of meat, bone and herbs in it had plainly been reboiled so many times they’d no taste left in them. Most likely the cooking pot was never emptied. Eva just added whatever the day brought her, a bit of fat bacon, a handful of herbs, a lump of dried fish or whatever bird could be snared. But I would have gobbled a bowl of boiled mice that night. My belly ached for hot food. And everyone sitting around that fire likely felt the same for no one spoke: they were too busy eating.

  As soon as the bowls were empty, most of the men handed them back to Eva and silently slunk away, too bone-weary to do anything but sleep. A few others sat on, talking to Todde, asking him where he’d come from and if he’d ever been streaming before. To hear him crowing you’d think he knew as much about tin as a master potter knows about clay. A flame of excitement flared in his eyes, as he boasted of the money he’d made in times past. He seemed more cheerful now that he’d a bellyful of hot food, as if he’d forgotten he’d had a knife held to his throat just hours before. But the tinners were grinning at each other behind Todde’s back. They could tell he was talking through the seat of his breeches.

  I gazed up at the moors. I’d thought I knew just how dark a night could be. Back home, when the moon was hidden by clouds and there was no light to be seen, save for the glow of a stockman’s fire across the fields or a sliver of candlelight beneath a shutter, I had called that darkness. But it was only dark because the sun had gone. Here in this valley it wasn’t simply that the light had vanished from the sky, the darkness there was alive, a great black river of malice that swept down the hillsides and filled the valleys, a chill, choking tide that could drag you down and drown you in despair.

  I lifted my head and stared up at the top of the hill. She had called me to these moors, but not to this valley surely. This was not the place. It couldn’t be. But where was I to go? What was I to do?

  Why have you brought me here? Speak to me, I begged.

  But only the wind answered and if it had words for me I couldn’t understand them.

  I shivered. Pulling my cloak tighter about my shoulders, I forced myself to turn my back on that desolate valley. But as I stared into the flames and smoke of Eva’s fire, I glimpsed movement: something was glittering and swaying in the old stone wall behind the fire. I screwed up my eyes, trying to make out what it was. It must be the wind stirring clumps of grass or herbs growing between the stones.

  Then the breath caught in my throat. Those were not grasses. They were the heads of vipers, their eyes gleaming in the firelight, their forked tongues flickering as they tasted the air. From every crevice and hole in the wall more heads were emerging, swaying back and forth, dozens of them. I scrambled to my feet, backing away in alarm.

  The men’s heads jerked up and one by one they followed my gaze, trying to see what I was staring at. Then a ripple of raucous laughter ran through them, and they nudged each other in the ribs, pointing at the wall and at my face.

  ‘They’s only long-cripples,’ one man chortled. ‘Nest in the wall, they do, and the heat of the fire makes them poke out their heads. They’ll not come out to harm thee in this weather. Too cold and wet.’

  ‘But on warm days you need to watch where you’re treading,’ another added, ‘especially if you go barefoot. Moors are swarming with those creatures.’

  ‘And you wants to give your bedding a good shake too, afore you lie down, creep in under the bracken, long-cripples do, looking for a warm place. Old Will got bit right on his cods one night. They swelled up and turned black as the devil’s toenails. Could hear his screams all the way to Widecombe.’

  The men, still chuckling, fell to telling tales about those they had known who had been bitten by vipers, blithely ignoring the dozens of glinting black eyes watching them unblinking from the wall.

  But somewhere in the distance, a hound began to bay, another joined in, then another, their calls echoing across the moors, as if a pack of dogs were running after their prey. One by one, the tinners fell silent, tense, listening, straining to peer out into the darkness, and this time, I saw fear on every face.

  Chapter 12

  Morwen

  My sister Taegan lay curled up asleep on a heap of old skins in front of the banked-down fire. Ma gave her a sharp poke in the ribs with her stick. She groaned and rolled on to her belly. Ma raised her stick again and cracked it down across Taegan’s broad backside. She let out a yelp and scrambled to her feet, rubbing her eyes.

  ‘Up, you idle trapes,’ Ma said. ‘We’ve work to do on Fire Tor.’

  Taegan hadn’t been asleep for longer than a cow’s tail, having wobbled in after dark, her breath stinking of sour mead. She’d collapsed on to her sleeping place without bothering to drag off her gown, and was snoring before her face hit the skins. She scowled at Ma, rubbing her bruises. ‘So, what did you wake me fer? I’m not Ryana, you blind old gammer.’

  ‘’Cause I’ll be needing all three of you tonight. Ryana’s already out fetching my tools. Morwen, you pick all the worts I ba
de you fetch?’

  I patted the sack that was already slung over my shoulder. I’d been searching for two days and nights, because some of the herbs could only be picked at dawn and others by moonlight if they were to be in their full power. And I remembered to give the earth some honey to make amends when I plucked the vervain, for that’s a holy herb. Ryana never did.

  Ma grunted. ‘Bring water too, Morwen. Tae, you carry wood for the fire, and mind you bring enough to bait it till dawn this time, else you’ll find yourself walking back to fetch more. Stir yourself, girl. Sun’s not going stay abed for you.’

  The wind was raw and chafing, driving the clouds across a waxing moon. A duru moon, Ma called it, when it was more than half full, for it opened the doorway into the kingdoms of beasts and spirits. It gave us little light that night, but such things never mattered to Ma. She always counted the nights of the moon, whether she could see it or not, notching them off with an iron blade on a gnarled branch she’d cut from the twisted oaks in the valley. She said you might as well try to empty a river with an acorn cup as make a charm or a curse on a night when the moon wasn’t in the right phase to give it power. Some charms needed a waxing moon, others a waning, a full or horned moon. I tried as hard as I could to learn the ways, but some secrets Ma would only whisper to Ryana, not that she ever paid any heed.

  We made a slow procession, winding up the slope to the rocks at the top of the tor. By day, there was barely a track to be seen, nothing that would lead a stranger up to that place, but at night the path shone out as clear as the streams that ran down the side of the hill. Ryana walked first and most easily for Ma’s tools were light. Ma followed and, for all that she dug her staff into the ground to lean on, she was as sure-footed as the sheep that grazed the moor. I walked behind her with the wort sack over one shoulder, the heavy skin of water over the other and the bundle of kindling sticks in my arms, which Taegan had thrust at me behind Ma’s crooked old back. Taegan trailed behind, hefting a faggot of wood on her back, supported by a broad strap across her forehead. She’d heeded Ma’s warning and was carrying as large a load as she could manage, though she whined like a chained dog all the way up.