Underbelly (22 page)

“
NO!” Acca screamed, too late for the poor girl whose heart had already been torn out. She would not be too late for the remaining four. She stood up and ran to the four women, shielding them with her own body. Wykeham looked upwards incredulously, shaking his head at her foolishness.

“
You’re emotional,” he said, gripping her shoulders, covering her in blood. “Have a seat, relax, and enjoy the show,” he said softly, seemingly genuinely concerned about her welfare. She knew Wykeham well, she liked him and believed that he did truly care for her, but she could not allow this to pass.

“
Acca, I know it’s a little unsavoury, but it goes back to what I said earlier. You have to look at the big picture,” Aolfa said, trying to get through to her.

“
Ioshua would want this,” Alice said.

“
I have my own voice,” Acca said, her voice wavering as she made a stand against them.

“
Move aside,” Alice ordered. Acca shook her head silently and Wykeham forced his way past her and dragged the next girl by her hair onto the table. Acca wrest the knife from his hand, causing his face to grimace, the girl trying her best to erase his tender feelings towards her, his temper sated by his wife throwing a knife for him to catch which he thrust into his victim’s neck. Blood poured from the Beguine’s mouth as she slowly died and Acca reacted furiously, putting both hands around Wykeham’s head and uttering a few words that Aolfa taught her. Wykeham collapsed to the floor in a deep slumber and Alice ran around the table to Acca as Mildburgh cradled Wykeham on the floor, licking the blood of his victims from him.

“
You had no right to do that,” Alice said, her eyes aflame as she stood up to her.

“
He’s only asleep. You had no right to do this. They’re not the enemy,” Acca said, turning to look at Aolfa, the one person she thought she might be able to reason with.

“
We won’t win by sending them letters asking them to leave us alone,” Aolfa said. “Making them fear us is the best way.”

“
That’s more likely to make them hunt us. This ends now – I didn’t come here for this,” Acca said, deeply distressed, tears streaming down her cheeks at what she’d become a party to.

“
How dare you tell us what to do,” Alice said, punching her nose, sending her staggering backwards. Acca had the power to beat Alice but did nothing, looking to Aolfa.

Aolfa stood up and went to Wykeham, rubbing his skull until he awoke. He was furious and Aolfa told him to calm down, telling him that they were going to leave three survivors to report what happened, to ensure that it was understood that the massacre was conducted by witches, rather than by ordinary criminals.

“
The ritual nature of the sacrifices will confirm that,” Wykeham said, keen to finish his task.

“
Besides, some escaped before who will spread the word,” Alice said.

“
You two talked me into this, and I feel it’s been successful. Let’s stop now and return back to our quarters to plan further. As you say, some escaped and they may have gone to find help,” Aolfa said. The Turners begrudgingly agreed to leave three survivors, though their high opinion of Acca was irrevocably shattered.

As they prepared to leave, Acca remained with the three women, Beatrice and two of the older women, who she had untied and was assisting in clothing.

“
It’s time to leave, Acca,” Aolfa said.

Acca looked at the three Beguines sorrowfully before leaving with her friends, their haunted expressions something that would remain with her until her dying day, if that ever came, though the way she felt at that moment she prayed it would, her guilt hard to live with.

The fact that there were any survivors (for which Wykeham and Alice blamed Acca and Darlynn equally, both women too withdrawn to pay much attention to anything said against them) meant that they had to retreat to a safe distance for fear of arrest. The atmosphere between them all was strained and Aolfa decided to see Ioshua again to give herself a boost, going back to town on her own. Ioshua looked in a terrible state when she saw him, his defiant spirit broken, his face crumpled. She had considered him good-looking and now he was wan, washed out and old before his time. His hands were heavily bandaged up, his torturers healing as well as harming him.

“
How’d you get in?” he said timidly.

“
I bribed a guard,” Aolfa replied. It took another century before she learnt how to part walls, a trick learned through necessity when she was entombed behind a wall in a cathedral. “How are you faring?”

“
I don’t know. I might be undergoing the most important and most privileged part of my life,” he said sincerely.

“
The strappado and scourge are that much fun?” she joked.

He shook his head vigorously, frowning at her irreverent tone. “The first couple of days I mocked it too. Not anymore.”

“
I’m disappointed, Ioshua. I thought it would take them at least a month to beat the devil out of you,” she said disparagingly. The thought of his blasphemous and outrageous responses to the severe questioning amused her and she felt let down as she realised that she had overestimated him.

“
This isn’t about the devil. It’s about me. I revelled in denigrating Christ so much that I barely felt the pain when you put the nails through me. Even eight hours later when I was still hanging there I was able to laugh when they found me and the state their church was in. They were kind to me until they realised from my stained hands that it was I who befouled their altar with my waste and seed.”

“
So what brought about this epiphany? A vision through suffering? Ideas planted in your hands by those zealots? Boredom?” she said, ridiculing the changed man she saw in front of her, a man she now deemed unworthy of the risks she took to visit him.

“
It’s easy for you. You’ve never believed in Him. I rejected Him so absolutely because I believed in Him completely. You can only rebel against real authority,”

“
Preposterous. What is ‘real’ authority? The truth is that you do not have the backbone to see out your vision. At least your Messiah never reneged on the deal and completed the spectacle.”

“
If I have to die I want to die as a redeemed Christian, not as one of Satan’s martyrs,” he said with tears welling in his eyes.

“
You won’t die as either, just as an impressionable man who believed whatever ideas those with the loudest voices pedalled. Is this a joke?” she said, expecting him to break into a laugh.

“
I’m the joke. God gave me more than most and I wasn’t thankful. If I survive this I am going to make amends and my penance will last the rest of my life. I want to take the cross and march to Jerusalem.”

“
You want me to crucify you there too?” she said, tempted to do it for him.

“
AOLFA!” he shouted in agitation as she ridiculed his beliefs. “He died for me – I thought He died for the world but He died for me and I belittled Him,” he said as the tears flowed down his cheeks.

“
There’s the arrogance I know and used to admire. I hope they burn you,” she said in pique as she rose to her feet and flounced out of the room.

“
There’s hope for you too. He’ll take you back too,” he shouted after her.

Eventually he gave them up and search parties hunted them with vigour. Acca had already abandoned the group, leaving silently in the night without a word to anyone, never to be seen or heard of again. They had believed that they had travelled far enough away from the centre of their exploits only for their lodgings to be raided in the dead of night and they were beaten with sticks and burned by torches as they slept. While the others were subdued in this manner Aolfa managed to force her attackers back with her powers and fled, pursued for two miles by her attackers before she finally lost them. She heard of their deaths later, talking to an old woman who’d witnessed it, careful to make sure her interest came across as casual. Wykeham and Alice went to the stake calling on their demon lords and cursing the townsfolk to hell. Mildburgh broke down in tears, protesting that she was an unwilling thrall, to no avail, while Darlynn thought that the crowd was gathered to celebrate her nobility, at giving away her child for the good of the world, calling herself the Madonna. Aolfa’s mission, possibly the first incarnation of the Pagan Resistance, was a failure and she looked forward to returning to England. Before she returned she paid a former friend a quick visit, mindful of her enemies. Ioshua had been released after his co-conspirators were caught and she tracked him down as he made his way to join in fighting in the Albigensian Crusade and told him what she thought of him.

“
That tactic worked well. Alice and Wykeham and Darlynn and Mildburgh are dead, while you are untouched,” she said bitterly. “Well done.”

“
My soul is damaged and my body is certainly not unscathed. All that they did to me was less than I deserved, but I have not come out of this untouched. I’m a new man now.”

“
Aren’t you? You led Darlynn here, the baby’s death is on your head as much as hers, and now that can be forgotten while Ilsegarde, who was only ever interested in writing about practices rather than partaking, was killed as a heretic. Where’s the justice?”

“
I deserve your condemnation. Sackcloth and ashes are all I shall ever wear till my dying day for all that I’ve done.”

“
So you say, but I have no doubt that you’ll shed this skin soon enough too.”

“
Look to yourself, Aolfa,” he said, turning away from her and returning to march with his new found friends.

Laura stayed in Boston despite the surveillance, intending to stay for one more week to gain a potentially useful document from Farid before leaving. She decided to confuse her watchers with her activities, attending church daily, visiting the sick in hospital, applying for a job as a typist and accepting the position, a job she would never show up for, helping out in a soup kitchen. Her aim was to confound their expectations by acting in ways they wouldn’t expect. She felt it wouldn’t work, their vision of her as a monster likely too ingrained, but she tried regardless, partly for her own amusement.

She could imagine what preconceptions they held; no doubt dismissive of any of the benevolent spells she performed over the years, of which there was legion. She charged less for healing and fertility services than for her lethal spells, her price much higher for morally dubious spells, which she felt proved that she took such matters very seriously. If she was really as evil as they believed she would have killed frenziedly for satisfaction when the truth was that it was only ever about the money. While she had acceded to around 700 paid requests for death by imprecation she had turned down over 10,000 because they couldn’t pay her and she wouldn’t do it for free. She was never one for making her victims suffer, making it a swift (and, crucially, public) demise with no suspicious circumstances. She was fabled and viewed by some as a liberating angel, a righter of wrongs, though she never viewed herself as such. She offered a service, pure and simple. Eventually the monotony of it bored her, causing the deaths hardly a stretch to her and the justifications from those who employed her became increasingly tiresome, but manna won out over any other factors for a long time.

“
So you do do…you know?” a typical Anglo-Norman woman said, indistinguishable from so many who’d preceded her.

“
You’ll have to be more specific. I can do a lot of things.”

“
Do you kill?”

“
Not physically. With spells I can and I can guarantee that it will not appear suspicious.”

“
That’s what I want. My husband isn’t any good. He’s lazy. I want to marry the butcher. Once he…”

“
Your domestic arrangements are not my concern. Whether your husband sleeps with half the town and beats you or whether he helps lepers and orphans, I don’t care. All I want is the money. You’re trying to arrange a death and that is the most expensive feat.”

“
I’ve heard your prices and they’re too much for me. I can pay you half of it now, it’s here,” she said, delving into her pocket.