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Authors: Karen Maitland

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BOOK: Company of Liars
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And something else was spurring me on, though I did not confide it to any of them. Once I had led our little company to North Marston, I would be able to leave them there. They'd be safe. No more acting nursemaid or having to put up with Zophiel's tongue or Jofre's sulks. I'd only have myself to worry about. At North Marston they'd be able to fend for themselves and I could leave them behind with a clear conscience.

The need to reach the shrine was becoming more urgent by the day. Fear was creeping across the land. It rose silently, like the tide in a creek, a cold, grey fear that was seeping into everything. The country was full of the news that the pestilence had reached London. That shook even the most optimistic souls. True, London was a port; it was bound to succumb sooner or later, but it was not a southern port, it was not even a western port. It was on the east coast. The pestilence had crept up on three sides of the land and now it was reaching in to grasp the heart of England.

No one here had actually seen anyone sick with the pestilence; most people knew little of what it did to a man, but that only made them more fearful, for every headache, every cough, every touch of fever might be the beginning. How could you tell? To make matters worse, rumours were spreading that it wasn't just humans who fell to the pestilence; it was animals and birds too. Herds of pigs, sheep, cattle, even horses had sickened and died in the south. Stockmen left their animals at night well and hearty, and by morning when they woke there would not be a beast left standing in the flock.

‘Maybe the flagellants will come,’ said Rodrigo. ‘I saw them once in Venice, marching from church to church. Men
and women, naked to the waist save for their white hoods, flogging themselves bloody with metal-tipped whips. Now I hear there are whole armies of them right across Europe, screaming to one another to whip harder and pray louder.’

‘And if they do come to England, will you join them?’ I asked.

Rodrigo grimaced and bent his head in mock shame. ‘You see before you an abject coward, Camelot. I do not relish pain, either giving or receiving it, even for the good of my soul. And you, Camelot? Will you don the white hood?’

My hand darted over the puckered surface of my scar. ‘It seems to me that if God wants to punish his children, he is more than capable of wielding his own whip.’

The flagellants didn't come. The English are different. We don't have the passion of the other lands. It's not blood that runs in our veins, but rain. But though the English didn't throw themselves into an orgy of scourging, they found other ways to appease heaven and divert the wrath of God, and who's to say that the pain of that was not worse than a flogging for those who found themselves the victims of it?

It was not good weather for a wedding, not what a bride dreams of, but then nothing about this wedding was the stuff of romantic dreams. The day was bitterly cold as well as wet. A snide wind whipped through the streets, but the villagers of Woolstone were determined to throw themselves into the celebrations just the same and had dressed in their finery, which for the young girls meant their flimsiest and most revealing garments. Their mothers were rushing around arguing about where the garlands should be hung and how the food should be cooked, while their menfolk set up canopies, benches and trestles amongst the tombs and rolled barrels of ale across the graveyard, trampling even
the new graves underfoot. It seemed that everyone had become so absorbed in the preparations they had entirely forgotten the reason for this collective madness. But if everyone around you is mad, then that becomes the new sanity, and who were we to complain? For where there is a wedding there is good food and drink, and plenty of it.

I'd heard of the custom of the cripples' wedding many years ago. Some say it dates back to the time before men were Christian. It is said that if you marry two cripples together in the graveyard at the community's expense it will turn away divine wrath and protect the village from whatever pestilence or sickness rages around it. For the charm to work, everyone in the village has to contribute something to the wedding. And in this village, everyone had been coerced into helping with the preparations whether they wanted to or not, for though Woolstone nestles beneath the hill of the White Horse, the villagers knew in their bones that their ancient nag could offer little protection against this new curse.

And when they discovered Rodrigo and Jofre in our company, they had taken it as a sign that this charade was already blessed by God, for had he not sent them two fine musicians just when they were needed? God's hand can be seen in any occurrence for those who are determined to find it there, but then again, so can the devil's.

The newly-weds sat under a canopy dressed simply in clean and serviceable clothes, but done up with chaplets of evergreens and garlanded with grain stalks, fruit and ribbons as if the villagers had been unable to make up their minds if this was a wedding or a harvest home. The wedding ring was fashioned from a scrap of tin, the loving cup was borrowed and the bride was barefoot, but many a young couple have started married life with less and thought it the
most perfect wedding on earth, but then they were in love. This pair were not.

The bridegroom was probably no more than twenty, but his body was wasted away down one side. His left arm swung from the socket like a dead hare and his leg dragged uselessly behind him, so that he moved in a series of shuffling hops, leaning on a single crutch. His head was oversized like the head of a giant baby and though he tried to talk, twisting his mouth into contorted shapes, he could not make himself understood. He seemed bemused that everyone was smiling at him and shaking him by the hand. It must have been a bewildering change from the kicks and curses he normally received. He was stuffing food into his mouth and guzzling his ale as fast as he could, spilling it from the sides of his mouth in his haste as if he had never been offered so much food before and feared he never would be again.

The bride was not smiling. She sat motionless where she had been placed, her sightless eyes rolling from side to side. It was hard to tell her age. Years of near starvation had shrivelled her flesh and though some attempt had been made to comb out what remained of her hair, this did not conceal the crusted yellow sores on her scalp and face. The knuckles of her hands were shiny and swollen, the thin fingers twisted together against her palms, so that it would have been impossible to separate them.

She had quickly been abandoned by the village girls who had stood in as her attendants and now, their duty done, they had gone off to kiss and be kissed by their sweethearts. And, although she was surrounded by food, she made no attempt to eat or drink, as if she was well used to smelling the savour of food that was not hers to eat and ale that she could not afford to buy. I slid on to the bench beside the
bride, tore a roasted goose leg from the carcass on the table and pressed the woman's cold, waxy hands to it. She half-turned her face towards me and nodded her thanks. At least the blind don't recoil at the sight of my scar. Pressing the goose leg between the knuckles of both hands, she slowly lifted it to her mouth, sniffing at it before biting into it. Unlike her new husband, she ate slowly, as if she had to make this pleasure last.

‘You want to be careful, Camelot,’ Zophiel drawled in my ear. ‘They might choose you as the next groom.’

‘Camelot is no cripple,’ Rodrigo blazed angrily.

‘You think not?’ Zophiel reached over my shoulder to spear a succulent spicy mutton olive with the point of his knife. ‘He's already carelessly mislaid one eye and doesn't appear to remember where. If he loses the other, he'll make a fine candidate, and with the pestilence spreading as fast as it is, they'll need every cripple they can find.’

‘I'm counting on it, Zophiel,’ I said quickly, seeing Rodrigo's fists clench. ‘How else are old dotards like me going to grease their pikes?’

Zophiel laughed and wandered off in search of more food. I'd discovered that the best way to handle him was not to rise to his taunts. I wished Rodrigo would also realize that. I had an uneasy feeling there was going to be trouble between those two. The sooner we reached the shrine and we could all go our separate ways the better.

As the afternoon darkened into evening, the rain eased and the lanterns and torches were lit. Trestles and benches were moved aside for dancing. Rodrigo and Jofre played, joined by a handful of villagers on drums, whistles, reed-pipes, pots and pans. Jofre had been drinking steadily all evening, but if he played a few bad notes, they were buried under the screeches of the villagers' whistles and pipes.
Rodrigo was not used to having cooking pots thumped in time with his music, but he accepted it with good grace and tried to match his rhythm to their beat, which was rewarded with grins and cries of ‘That's better, lad, you're getting it now.’

It was not easy dancing in the graveyard. The dancers tripped over humps and banged into wooden crosses and stone markers, but by now everyone was so merry on the free ale, cider and mead that they roared with laughter every time someone fell over. In the dark corners under the graveyard walls, couples made love, giggling and groaning, pumping up and down, only to roll exhausted off each other and fall asleep where they lay on the ground. Children created their own chaos. As drunk as their parents, they played mad games of chase, threw stones at swinging garlands or ganged up to torment some other poor child.

Zophiel was not dancing. He was still seated on the bench with his arm about the waist of a buxom village girl dressed in a bright yellow kirtle which was too light for the chill of the day. She shivered and, giggling, tried to wriggle under the folds of his cloak. She had that unsteady, bright-eyed look of someone not yet drunk, but well on the way to it. I'd never seen Zophiel with a woman before. I thought he despised them all, but it appeared he did have a use for some of them at least. I hoped for his sake that the girl was not betrothed or wed. Husbands and lovers don't appreciate their goods being pawed, especially by strangers and by travellers least of all.

Suddenly the girl yelped in pain and sprang away from him. A pinch too hard perhaps or a lock of her hair caught on the fastening of his cloak? She swore at him and, tossing her hair, flounced off to join friends on the other side of the graveyard, from where she threw furious glances back in his
direction. Zophiel seemed quite unconcerned and made no attempt to go after her. He sat picking at the remains of a duck carcass and when he saw her looking across at him, he raised his tankard in a mocking salute.

The music stopped. A groan went up, but was quickly hushed as the miller clambered unsteadily up on to one of the benches.

‘Good sirs.’ He hiccuped, tried to bow and nearly toppled headfirst from the bench. Several men standing below pushed him back upright again. ‘Good sirs 'n' ladies, the time has come to bed the happy couple, for as we all know, it is no true marriage until it's consum… consum… nimated… until the groom's given her one.’ The crowd roared with laughter. ‘So let's not keep the happy pair waiting. Lead the bashful bridegroom to his lovely bride.’

‘At your command, my lord,’ sang out a voice from behind him, and a figure, nimble as a cat, sprang out from the shadows, wrapped in a dark hooded cloak. He bowed low, then threw off his cloak. Several people screamed as the flickering torchlight revealed that under the hood was not a man's face but a grinning white skull.

‘Death at your service, good sirs.’

The figure capered before the crowd and the gasps gave way to drunken laughter. The dancing man was naked save for his skull mask. His body had been covered from head to toe in a thick black paste, over which someone had crudely painted white bones so that in the darkness he appeared as a living, cavorting skeleton. All at once the villagers struck up their instruments again, banging on pots and pans, blowing their whistles and pipes, and soon those who could still stand fell into step behind the prancing skeleton who began to lead them widdershins around the edge of the graveyard.

At the centre of this macabre procession was the groom, carried shoulder-high by a group of sturdy lads. He had been half stripped and was now dressed only in a shirt, his bare arse gleaming under the torchlight. The grey wrinkled skin of his withered leg contrasted oddly with the firm muscles of his sound leg, as if the limb of an ancient old man had been sewn on to the body of the youth. He was still grinning, but nervously now, as if he thought that the crowd might turn on him at any moment. I couldn't see the bride in the procession and I assumed that she had already been taken from the graveyard to some cottage where, in due course, the groom would also be carried to spend his wedding night, but there was to be no privacy for this consummation.

After circling the walls three times, the groom was carried back to the centre of the graveyard where they set him down on the ground on all fours like a dog. A straw-filled pallet had been set on top of a grave, pushed hard against the cross at one end which stood as the headboard for this bridal bed. The bride, dressed only in a long white shift, had already been laid on top of it, as if she was a corpse stretched out on her deathbed. Her sightless eyes were wide open and she was moving her head from side to side as if trying to hear what was afoot.

She didn't see the silvery clouds streaming like flood waters across the face of the moon or the flickering torches casting giant shadows on the graveyard walls, or the white glittering eyes of the circle of villagers looking down on her. She didn't see the figure of death lean over her, flicking water from his hyssop twigs as he parodied the blessing of the marriage bed. But she felt the drops fall on her naked face and feet and winced as if they were drops of boiling oil.

The groom, encouraged by playful kicks to his bare backside, crawled towards the prone woman until he was straddling her. Feeling him above her, she raised her hands to try to push him off, but the gesture was useless. Even a woman sound in limb would have been hard put to push his weight off her. She, with her twisted hands and wasted body, stood no chance.

BOOK: Company of Liars
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