Lord of Slaughter (35 page)

‘No. I believe in Christ, who died for our sins but I know God cannot be limited to one form or one expression. So I know too he walks with the moon as his lamp in the form of Hecate, goddess of the gateways, lighting the way to the lands of the dead, lighting the way from the lands of the dead.’

Beatrice made to get up but Styliane stopped her with a gesture.

‘Remember my warning, Lady Beatrice. It was not a joke. This sky, these deaths, are nothing to do with me. I only foresaw calamity. Your father’s court must have had fortune tellers and seers visit for your amusement. Think of me, then, as like them. I saw this fellow who comes to you before he arrived. I had him captured and interrogated and I visited him. I tried a rite of divination but I could not go through with it. I saw only death around him and, like you, I was terrified.’

‘So why did you not kill him?’

‘Because he has the protection of a mighty god, or a demon. He cannot be trifled with without extreme peril to those who move against him. It was not clear, the vision was not clear. I put him into a dungeon so I could have time to think. Your husband released him. This only confirms what I thought. Something is protecting him.’

‘What?’

‘We could find out. Or endeavour to.’

‘How?’

‘Let me perform the rite with you. Let us both explore your dreams. I will go with you there. I will see what you see.’

‘That is sorcery.’

‘Think of it as prayer. I will not ask you to pray to any devil or goddess. Pray to Christ. Ask him for his guidance. Do so with me, tonight, when the hidden moon is full and the labyrinth that leads us to truth is bathed in a light no cloud can obscure. There are paths we can walk that may lead to an understanding of this man of dread. We can go together to the gardens of heaven where Christ walks in his many forms.’

‘It will imperil my soul.’

‘No. Could you go there unless Christ wished it? Could you stand before the face of the creator if he didn’t wish you to? Come, my dear, have more faith in God.’

Beatrice thought of the man in her chambers. Her husband had called him friend, but she remembered the carnivorous smile that lay upon his face as he slept, the horrific dreams that had consumed her in her fever, that strange shape that seemed to writhe and slink and howl in her heart.

‘I will go with you,’ she said.

‘Then follow.’

The lady extended her hand to help Beatrice to her feet and led her out of the little chapel, down a corridor. They turned left past another guard and walked through more corridors decorated with forest scenes. They were empty of people. Everywhere else in the palace eyes followed you. Here, in Styliane’s quarters, they did not.

Eventually they came to a plainer corridor and then to a door where a guard stood. Styliane simply lifted her finger and pointed to the door. He went through it and closed it behind him. The draught of cold air told Beatrice it led outside. On pegs on the wall hung three dark cloaks. Styliane passed Beatrice one and put another on herself, pulling up the hood.

‘We wait for a while,’ said Styliane.

‘Gladly.’ Beatrice leaned against the wall, trying to get her breath. ‘What are we waiting for?’ she said.

‘Transport,’ said Styliane.

‘I cannot ride a horse.’

‘A boat, not a horse.’

The women stood silently in the corridor. Shortly, the door opened again and the guard came back through, saying nothing, just resuming his post. Styliane stepped through the door followed by Beatrice.

A long damp jetty ran down to a gate. The night was dark and they had only the light of a small lamp to guide them. Beatrice’s ears and her nose, though, told her where she was – by the sea. They went down through the cold air to the gate. The bolt was stiff and Styliane struggled to pull it back. Beatrice could not think what secret would make a great lady of the court struggle at a gate like a common guard.

When the gate was open, Styliane pointed away from the palace. Beatrice peered into the night. Two lights hung in space. The smaller light moved. It took a while for her eyes to work out what she was seeing, but then Beatrice realised it belonged to the promised boat. They went down to a small beach, Styliane bowing three times as she passed through the gate.

Beatrice found the gesture very disquieting, with its pagan overtones, but she had made up her mind – she would not turn back. If Styliane wished her harm or wanted her dead then she had no need to go to such elaborate lengths. She felt the baby inside her, kicking. She put her hand to her belly.

‘Not yet, child. You must wait until we’ve done what we need to do.’

The boat was small – no more than a fishing vessel, though well built and sturdy. A middle-aged man and a youth, slaves by their dress, waited beside it.

‘We can cross?’ Styliane spoke to the older man.

‘The lighthouse is visible from here and the palace has enough lights to guide us on the return. We can cross.’

The boy helped both women in, the man climbing in to sit at the oars.

‘Strange times, lady,’ said the oarsman.

‘Indeed,’ said Styliane.

‘Should she be here in that condition?’

‘It’s a needful time.’

Beatrice was struck by the familiarity with which Styliane treated these people, allowing their questions without reminding them of their place. There was no distance between them; she adopted no superior air. Beatrice’s father would have warned her such an attitude would lead to trouble with the servants. Her father, Rouen and the court. That life seemed so far behind her.

They went on through the water, the lights of the palace fading behind them, their own lamp and the bigger light in front of them the only breaks in the darkness.

‘I’m like Charon,’ said the oarsman. ‘Do I get a coin?’

‘What?’ said Beatrice.

‘The boatman on the river of the dead,’ said Styliane. ‘The old Greeks said that we cross from this life to the next across a river and Charon rows.’

Beatrice could not appreciate the humour and kept her eyes on the growing light in front of her.

‘What is that?’

‘Leander’s Tower,’ said Styliane. ‘A lighthouse.’

‘Why are we going there?’

‘For light,’ said Styliane.

Beatrice was cold and huddled into her cloak. Soon a large tower with a burning beacon loomed from the fog. The tower was a straightforward round structure in stone with an open roof for the fire platform. A large sheet of polished metal had been positioned behind it to improve its effectiveness as a beacon.

The boat bumped against a rough quay. Two men from the shore helped moor the boat but then disappeared back inside the building.

The youth helped Styliane and Beatrice ashore and then passed Styliane the lamp. She took it and went inside the tower, Beatrice close behind.

A crude ladder led up to an internal platform. Again, Styliane led the way. Beatrice was convinced she couldn’t climb the ladder but found a way, turned half sideways. Desperation overcame her exhaustion and caution. From the platform another ladder went up onto the roof. Could she make it? She had to. She climbed.

She reached the top and looked out over the sea. Even with the light of the brazier she could see hardly anything beyond the roof itself. The fog was thick. Beatrice glanced behind her and gasped. An old slave woman, dressed all in black, turned around and it was as if she was appearing from nothing, her dark features shining in the light of the beacon.

‘This is Arrudiya,’ said Styliane. ‘She raised me.’

The woman cast down her eyes but not with deference, Beatrice thought. There was defiance or truculence in her expression.

The brazier was very hot and Beatrice moved away from it.

‘Now?’ said Styliane.

‘When the fire has died a little,’ said Arrudiya. ‘The moon is still climbing.’

‘How does she know that?’ said Beatrice.

‘I can feel it,’ said Arrudiya.

‘Why is she here?’ said Beatrice.

‘Because God sees things in threes,’ said Styliane, ‘and God is three.’

‘Moon, earth and underworld,’ said Arrudiya, ‘past, present, future. Father, son, spirit; virgin, mother, crone.’

Beatrice didn’t want to hear any more. She sat, waiting for the brazier’s light to weaken. It didn’t take long, and soon it was reduced to glowing coals, a tight cluster of light buried in the great darkness.

Eventually the old woman came to her. She poured something from a flask onto her hands and anointed Beatrice’s eyes.

‘Water from a shipwreck,’ she said.

She took out another flask and put it to Beatrice’s lips.

‘Drink,’ she said.

Beatrice did as she was asked. The drink was honey water but with a bitter musty taste behind it.

‘What is this?’

‘Kykeon, as our forebears drank,’ said the woman, ‘made with Syrian rue.’

Then the two other women sat down around the fire, equidistant from each other and Beatrice, and intoned in a low drone:

‘Wherefore they call you Hecate, many-named, air-cleaving, night-shining, triple-sounding, triple-headed, triple-voiced, triple-faced, triple-necked, and goddess of the three ways, who holds untiring flaming fire in baskets three, you who protect the spacious world at night, before whom demons quake in fear and the gods immortal tremble. Subduer and subdued, mankind’s subduer, and force-subduer; chaos, too. Hail, Goddess.’

Beatrice hated the invocation. She concentrated on prayer, on calling Christ to protect her, to save her soul. But she did not move; she wanted revelation.

The old woman threw a handful of something onto the coals and they flared. ‘I burn for you this spice, goddess of harbours, who roams the mountains, goddess of crossroads, nether and nocturnal, and infernal goddess of dark, quiet and frightful one.’

Beatrice found she was repeatedly crossing herself.

‘You who have your meal amid graves, night, darkness, chaos deep and wide, hard to escape are you. You are torment, justice and destroyer. Serpent-girded, who drinks blood, who brings death; destructor, who feasts on hearts.’

Beatrice coughed and fell forward on to her hands. Her nose was streaming and her throat was dry.

‘Flesh eater, who devours those dead untimely, and you who make grief resound and spread madness, come to my sacrifices, and now for me do you fulfil this matter. Shall we speak about the things not to be spoken of? Shall we divulge the things not to be divulged? Shall we pronounce the things not to be pronounced?’

The fire was suddenly bright again and Beatrice tried to get up, but her body seemed fixed to the floor.

‘Grant us revelation,’ continued the chant, ‘open our eyes and chase away the night, wandering lady, bright Selene.’

The moon had come out from behind a cloud, full and bright – much brighter than it had ever been, she thought – as if it resented its long time cloaked in black and was redoubling its light in joy at its release.

When she looked back down again, she was no longer on the rooftop. She was in the place by the river she went to in her dreams but not on the path by the wall; she was in the deep wood beside it. Styliane and Arrudiya sat on the ground next to her, each holding a small candle. Something crashed and bumped in the woods. A creature, she thought. A weird sense between hearing and touch, not quite either, had sprung up in her and the presence of the creature seemed hot and snuffling, as if hot and snuffling were the same thing.

‘How do I find my answer? How do I find his purpose?’

Styliane and Arrudiya gave no reply, just sat staring ahead.

Beatrice had a very strong urge to get out of those woods. The blundering thing wasn’t the only presence in there. She stood. She saw nothing but trees and darkness; the moon was caught in the branches, her own hands glowing pale in its light. She walked forward, pushing away branches and briars. Something was behind her. She turned. Nothing. She wanted to get onto the path, to go to those little candles in the wall and see they still burned. That was unaccountably very important to her.

Ahead the river shone like a silver road. She headed for it, her clothes tearing on the brambles, her skin scratched and cut by thorns.

She heard rustling in the woods behind her. She pulled and tugged her way forward, the baby heavy inside her even in the dreamworld.

You are going to the well
. The voice was in her ear, more a whisper of the trees than anything human.

‘I will resist my fate.’

You are fate. Say your name, Verthani
.

‘I do not know that name.’

Three wise girls come from the hall beneath the tree
.

One is called Urdr, Fated so men call her;

Another Becoming, Verthani is her name;

Skuld – Must Be – is the third. Together

They carve on tablets of wood the fate of men
.