Karolan paced the floor of the laboratorium, his thoughts churning. A search of the house and immediate vicinity had yielded no sign of Garnetta. Romane had organized a group of men to search the forest, but they had returned when the light failed. This was the second night she had been missing.
‘Tell the household that my ward has sunk again into the morbidity of the body which brought her to me for protection and healing,’ he told Romane. ‘Let them think she’s wandering in the forest, out of her wits with a fever.’
‘Very well, my lord,’ Romane said, pursing his thin lips. ‘Might I be permitted to know the real reason for her disappearance?’
‘A man does not wish to speak of how he has been cuckolded by a wronged husband!’ Karolan said, wishing that he did not need to lie to his steward. ‘Suffice it to say that she has gone back to the brute. And after I gave her sanctuary!’
Romane shook his head. ‘Aye, well. Who can understand the ways of women? She seemed like a fine wench too.’ He looked sideways at Karolan. ‘My lord? Nothing . . . untoward has happened to her, has it?’ He did not add, like the others, but the question was there in his eyes.
‘It has not,’ Karolan said, his voice deliberately sharp. ‘Was it not plain that I valued her highly? She came to no harm at my hands.’ At least, he thought, what she has gained is more than equal to what she has lost.
‘Forgive me,’ Romane said. ‘I know you held Garnetta in high regard. I’ll set the men to looking again at first light.’
Karolan nodded absently. He wished now that he had told Garnetta everything and risked having her hate him. He imagined how she must have felt when she looked around the laboratorium and read the ledger. Seen through her innocent eyes, he was damned. He could not deny that many of his actions appeared to be indefensible. Useless to hope she would ever understand. She had not given him the chance to explain, but had fled from him in fear and disgust. He doubted whether she would want to set eyes on him again. He wondered what had shocked her the most, the revelations in the book, the jars with their testaments to his failure to reproduce, or the partially dissected corpse.
He cursed his failure to consign the cadaver to the furnace, but he had been reluctant to destroy it when there were still things to learn from it. What a marvel it was that the world of inner man reflected the greater world of the cosmos. As above, so below. He had hoped that Garnetta would share his fascination. But how could she while she still clung to the remnants of her Christian faith? She believed in a Church which reserved the power of healing for itself, denying physicians their craft, proscribing desecration of the human body – held sacred as the image of Christ. Prayer and fasting were the remedies for illness. Burning or cutting of the living flesh was not permitted. How much more sinful was he, who examined the conformation of the human body for his own ends?
He felt certain that Garnetta would, in time, be capable of radical new thought. To believe, like himself, that the progress of science was hindered by ignorance. But first she had to throw off the baggage of preconceived ideas. The signs that her intellect was sharpening, broadening, were there already. She had coped with the changes brought on by transmutation better than he had himself, but then, he had had no one to watch over him, no one to make the transition easier.
He ran his fingers agitatedly through his hair. Such thoughts were futile now. The fates had conspired against him. Garnetta was wandering the countryside, frightened and alone. In the midst of his fear for her there was a note of anger. Her rejection, understandable though it was, wounded him deeply. He had shown her nothing but kindness, but she had chosen to discard him. Just a little more time and she would have understood that the gift he had given her was priceless.
His straight black brows drew together in a frown. If he could find her, she might yet be persuaded to listen. But how was he to bring her back to the tower when she knew him to be a murderer and believed him to be a myriad of other vile things?
There was one way. As he gathered the things he would need to perform a finding ritual, he smiled bitterly to himself. One might detect the hand of God in the immediate events, except that he did not believe in the God of the Christians. Picking up a bowl formed from a single piece of obsidian he thought about how he had, in the past, cheated the fates, laughing in the face of the deity, whether God was called Jehovah, Yahweh, or any one of the ninety-nine names of Allah.
From a wooden box he took a number of candles, dyed black and scented with a pungent sweet oil. With a piece of chalk he drew a circle on the floor of the laboratorium. He assembled the elements of earth, fire, air, and water within the circle – a set of wind-chimes, the lighted candle, a piece of crystal, and the bowl filled with water. Checking carefully that the five-pointed star he now drew was perfect in every detail, he nodded with satisfaction.
The heavy, sweet scent of the burning candle rose into the air as Karolan stripped off his clothes and washed his body meticulously. When he was satisfied that he had purified his body, he stepped naked into the circle, settling himself in the centre of the star. He sat with a straight back, legs crossed, his hands clasped loosely in his lap. After speaking aloud the words which afforded him protection while travelling in the shadow realms, Karolan emptied his mind of all distractions and put himself into a light trance.
His body felt weightless, his senses drugged by the sickly sweetness of the burning oil, but his mind was knife-edge sharp. The scene around him began to change. The air trembled and the light failed. Within the circle the candle flickered. A cold breeze stirred the long tresses of his black hair. It seemed that the walls of the laboratorium moved outwards, receding farther away until he was sitting in a pool of darkness. The inky blackness of the space-between was without confines. It pressed against his skin like warm wool, muffling his ears against all sound. Only the circle held back the abyss from swallowing him whole. He banished from his mind the thought that he was alone in the Nothing, an insubstantial human form seated on a circle of light.
Gradually the black faded to grey. Dappled light licked at the edges of his vision. He was sitting under a canopy of trees. The sound of birdsong was sweet in his ears. The sharp odour of green things filled his nostrils. There were no landmarks. He could not tell how deep he was in the forest. Karolan looked around, using all his preternatural senses to try and detect a trace of Garnetta’s life signs. There was nothing. He frowned, his concentration wavering for a moment. Instantly the forest grew dim. The blackness began flowing towards him like an ink stain on the grass. With a great effort of will he locked himself more firmly into the trance, beads of sweat breaking out on his brow. The forest scene wavered, grew sharp again. Still he could detect nothing.
Impossible. He had not developed masking skills for many months after his change, needing them rarely in any case. Only those of unusually keen intellect perceived his unnatural glamour and those were easily charmed or confused. It amazed him that Garnetta had become so adept. Refusing to admit defeat, he focused every last measure of concentration on probing for her mind-trail. There ought to be a scent left on the ether, like a slick of thin oil on water.
Back in the laboratorium Karolan’s face took on a greenish tinge. Lines of strain appeared around his mouth. Sweat snaked down his face in rivulets, trickling from the point of his chin, dropping onto his clasped hands. His black hair was plastered to his skull, but still he held the trance.
It was no use. He could not feel her. She was completely closed to him. The dismay he felt was almost his undoing. Emotion was a distraction he could not afford while engaged in a ritual. He began to shake. His body sagged, hunching protectively over his solar plexus. His clasped hands tightened until the knuckles showed through the skin. The energy began to flow out of him in ripples of light. The waiting darkness absorbed it greedily. A bone-deep coldness crept over him. In the mortal world he was not troubled by cold, but this was a coldness of the ether, a draining of all life-force. This had never happened to him before. He had travelled the shadow realm many times, breaking through to other planes at will, but he had never been fearful in any way – until now.
Facing up to the fear, pushing it down and out through the soles of his feet, he gathered his will. With almost his last measure of strength he straightened his back and felt a flicker of the inner fire within him. He concentrated on that one point of heat until it grew stronger, spreading upwards until it centred in the space between his eyebrows. The cold began to recede. The ripples of light reversed, beginning to flow back into him. Seven points on his body began to glow with a pale-rose light. He visualized himself as a white form, seven jewels – each a different colour – set at the convergence of energy channels. The area between his eyes felt hot, solid.
It was tempting to end the ritual at once, but he knew that the formalities must be observed. There would be a heavy price to pay if a ritual was abandoned. Even he might not survive the damage to mind and body. Somehow he found the energy to retrace his steps and face the Nothing. The darkness was like a great maw, waiting to destroy him. In its suffocating embrace it would have been easy to lose his way. He had the sensation of spinning, then tumbling over and over, although he knew that he had not changed position. Grimly he held on, ignoring the illusion, willing himself to pass through the space-between, to enter the light.
The place in the centre of his forehead pulsed, radiating a life-giving heat, but he was barely conscious by the time the laboratorium resolved itself into matter around him. With a cry of agony he fell sideways and lay curled into a ball. After a while the pain receded to a bearable ache. He flexed his limbs, wincing at the tingling, but found that he could move his arms and legs. Coughing and retching, his lungs working like bellows, he raised his head to see the form of the Fetch at the edge of the circle. Unable to enter, it was flitting back and forth, its ragged shadow form undulating with colours of distress. The spirit’s attenuated limbs stuck out at angles. Its movements were disjointed, unarticulated.
It was a moment before Karolan had himself completely under control. Slowly he stood up, said the words of completion, and left the chalk circle. Instantly, with horrible glee, the Fetch loomed close, unable to resist the opportunity to bathe in the emanations of his distress. Yet, as if it sensed that there was something different about him, it held off from actually coming into contact with his aura.
Shivering Karolan pulled on tunic and hosen, then sat on the stool next to his workbench. He ran his fingers through his drenched hair, smoothing it back from his pale forehead. His hands were still trembling. The Fetch hovered nearby, whispering and bleating in consternation.
‘I fear, Master. You taste weak,’ it said. ‘Bitter is your scent to me. Why so?’
‘You may well feel fear,’ Karolan said dryly. ‘I almost destroyed us both. I was nearly lost in the space-between.’
‘Must not risk yourself, Master,’ the spirit whimpered, the violet-brown streaks within its form fading to a more subdued rose. ‘Precious you are to me.’
Karolan managed a grin at this declaration. The Fetch cared only for its own survival, but this was the nearest it had ever come to showing him true affection. Despite the fact that its words were redolent with self-absorption he felt an unwilling surge of warmth for it. It could not help its nature, any more than he could help being what he was.
‘We’ve lost Garnetta,’ Karolan said tiredly. ‘I can feel no trace of her. She could be anywhere by now. I have no fear for her safety. Indeed I pity anyone who tries to do her ill, but it might be weeks before I find her.’
‘Lost? Cannot be! I have not tasted, smelt, enjoyed her.’ The spirit made a sound between a sob and a groan. ‘Oh, too, too bad. I yearn. Hunger do I.’
Karolan raised his head, ignoring the Fetch’s distracted mutterings. At least Garnetta was spared its incessant attentions. He had done right to keep the spirit from manifesting itself to her. ‘The fault is mine,’ he said. ‘I ought to have foreseen something like this, but I was seduced by her innocence and beauty.’
Having once lain with her, he had become a prisoner of his own senses. Ah, that at least, he could never regret. A thought came to him. Of course. It was the only way. He would have seen the solution at once if he had not been so exhausted by the ritual.
‘You must find her,’ he said to the hovering spirit. ‘I release you from the binding spell. Go after her. She does not know of your existence, so is not armed against you. Keep your distance then she may not detect your presence. Find her, establish where she is going, and report back to me. But I charge you to hold off with your tricks. If you terrify her out of her wits with your promises and demands you may tip her over the edge of sanity. And then! . . . I don’t know if even I could bring her back.’
A soft golden light began to glow within the stretchy fibres of the Fetch’s form. The momentary terror of sensing its master’s weakness faded. It pulsed with eagerness, consumed by the desire to seek and find the female which it desired with a rampant lust. The infusion of womanly energy which it had taken from Garnetta during the transmutation had given it a new focus for its greed and certain strengths. Strengths which Karolan had so far underestimated.
Where before it had been bound solely by its master’s demands, now it had a limited capacity for independent action. It stretched out its thin limbs as if luxuriating in the sulphur-tainted air of the laboratorium. The fabric of its spirit-form oozed, spreading on the air. For a moment only it formed itself into the remembered shape of the female.
Garnetta. How beautiful, how desirable, was she. In contrast to his handsome master, she was soft and rounded of limb. Her perfume was sublime – her skin like milk-of-almonds, her hair like warm hay. The shadowed recesses of her body were rich with a world of tastes and scents – musk, blood, the meat-rich smell of her body’s wastes. It wanted to bathe in them all. Nothing was abhorrent to it. Its greed for sensation, for a fleeting experience of consciousness inside a female form, was all-encompassing.
The memory of being inside Garnetta’s body was exquisite. Squeezed and confined inside the envelope of skin, subsumed beneath the pulsing life of her tissue, it had known the ecstasy of the living flesh. For an instant it had looked out through the eyes and seen another world. A world of depth, colour, possibilities. And it wanted more, more. It ached to become human – even for a few minutes. For that, it would dare anything, even the wrath of its master. The vague shadow-form undulated, seething with excitement. The representation of Garnetta’s face and slender body hovered in the air before dissolving back into the amorphous mass of shadows and light, which was the spirit’s shape in the physical world.
‘It shall be as you order, Master,’ the Fetch said. ‘Find her will I.’ And its voice was sibilant with hidden promise and self-serving need.
Clem struggled against the men who held him, but he was no match for them. He was barely ten years old and they were hardened fighting men, mercenaries who, like so many others, had turned to brigandage when the warlord who had engaged them could no longer pay them for their services.
Tears pricked his eyes. Snot ran down into his mouth. Iron hard fingers dug into his thin limbs. Clem screamed again, weeping with fear and pain as they dragged him through the trees towards the blazing fire. His screams sounded small, lost in the great forest. That frightened him most of all. No one could hear him. No one would know when he died. The smell of his soiled hosen rose up pungently around him. The shame curdled in his belly. But the shame was not for the fact that his bowels had loosened with his terror, it was because he knew that he would tell them what they wanted to know.
The bigger of the two men gave his arm a vicious twist. Clem’s scream dissolved into a kind of yelp. Bile rushed into his throat. He thought he might faint. He prayed that he would do so, hoping for a mercifully painless end, but he remained stubbornly conscious.
‘Bring the scrap here. The iron, she is ready,’ said Gille de Peyrac, his speech accented by his Norman roots.
He was the acknowledged leader of the band. A man of middle height, he wore a rusty iron breast-plate over a tunic so encrusted with dirt that no trace of the original colour remained. His face was small featured, pleasant, except for his eyes which were as expressionless as light-green stones.
The man holding Clem’s arm chuckled. ‘Won’t need more’n a touch of heat to this tender young porker before he’ll squeal, eh, Edwin?’
His companion nodded, concentrating on keeping their wriggling captive on his feet. A rugged-featured man, Edwin had been a farmer who had become a mercenary when his farm was razed by bandits and his wife and children killed. He took no pleasure in killing, merely doing whatever was necessary to get a job done. It seemed to Edwin that it would not be necessary to torture the boy who looked half-dead from fright and willing to tell them everything they wanted to know. But he knew that Barnabas and Gille would not deny themselves the pleasure of a blood-letting; it had been too long since they fought in battle. Of all the ragged band, those two most missed the sport of killing.
The other men lay around the fire chatting companionably or cleaning weapons. Later, when the boy had told them where his village was, they would rouse themselves to the attack. Then there would be sport enough for everyone.
‘Don’t ’urt me, sires. I beg you!’ Clem sobbed, his voice breaking on a high note.
‘Oh, we won’t hurt you, child,’ Gille said, his sculpted lips curving in a smile that did not reach his eyes. ‘Just tell us all that we wish to know. Then you will be free to go.’ The tone of his voice belied his words.
‘Oh, aye! Of a surety you will,’ Barnabas sneered, giving the boy a shake and kicking out at the embers with a nailed boot so that a shower of sparks rose up into the air.
Clem, dumped on the ground, fell awkwardly onto his hipbone. The pain lanced through him, but he had no breath left to cry out. The one who was the leader, the pretty one wearing armour, knelt beside him.
Reaching out he ruffled Clem’s dirty hair, took hold of his ear. ‘So, what have we here? It looks like a dirty little animal, no? Might it taste good roasted? What say you brethren?’
Clem held his breath, not daring to look into the cold green eyes as Gille’s fingers tightened like a vice, pinching the flesh of his earlobe until his eyes watered. Barnabas picked up the sword which had been resting in the flames. The big man advanced towards him, holding the sword outstretched. The white-hot tip glowed like a beacon, a deadly fire-fly against the background of the night. Clem watched it in horrified fascination, so enthralled by disbelief that he did not scream until the metal was held against his exposed calf. He heard the hiss, saw smoke rising, but at first it felt as if ice had been held to his leg. Then the pain swallowed his soul. His cry of agony rang out clear and true, wavering only as he choked on his vomit. The smell of scorched flesh tainted the air.
Gille de Peyrac watched the boy writhe, his blood drumming in his temples. There was a satisfying weight at his groin, the heat of excitement in his belly. Cries of pain were music to his ears. He smiled again, his handsome face as pleasant as if he was rubbing down his beloved destrier with a bunch of straw. Ah, poor Valoure. The war horse had taken a lance in the chest and died in agony. It had been an unlucky blow. A peasant – ignorant filth like this boy – had blocked his vision for valuable seconds and the lancer had slipped in beneath his guard.
Ah, well. The Lord giveth . . . Taking out his knife he cut off a piece of the boy’s ear and popped it into his mouth. Clem convulsed with shock. A string of gluey spittle hung from his parted lips. His eyes were as wide and dark as a frightened hare’s. Gille grinned. They had the whole night to play with the boy and they had only just begun.
‘Put out his eyes, shall I?’ Barnabas said helpfully. ‘Send them boiling down his dirty cheeks?’
Gille made a sound of impatience, his gesture of dismissal almost effeminate in its delicacy. He had small hands, which were clean compared to the rest of his person, ‘No, no, you buffoon. Later. I want to watch his fear. Begin by burning off his hair. It is riddled with lice and I do not favour adding to the number I foster.’
Clem gibbered, almost incoherent with mortal terror. Until that moment he had hoped against hope that they would free him. Now he knew that he was surely lost. Barnabas put a meaty hand on his throat to steady him, brought the hot iron close to his head. He felt the heat of it against his skull as his hair began to singe.
The other soldiers looked across with mounting interest. One or two of them rose to their feet. Clem closed his eyes tight shut and began to pray. A thin keening noise came from deep within his chest. He was powerless to stop it.
And then the woman burst from the trees, wailing like a harpy and laying about her with a wooden cudgel. For a few seconds the soldiers did not move.
‘God save us it’s a witch!’ called out one.
‘Nay, it’s but a mad woman,’ said another.
Some of them crossed themselves, others rushed for their weapons. To their eyes Garnetta moved so fast that she seemed to be everywhere at once. The flame-red cloak whipped out behind her as she swung the tree branch back and forth.
Barnabas cursed and clapped his hands to his arm, where a heavy blow from her club had numbed it. Taken by surprise Gille whirled to face his would-be assailant, a curse on his lips. Before he could draw his sword, he took a blow full in the face.
‘Christ and all his saints!’ he burbled through a split lip. His nose, which had taken the force of the cudgel, began to throb and swell. Blood poured down his chin. He ran his tongue over his front teeth. At least four of them had been loosened. Bloody hell and damnation, the wench had spoiled his looks.
‘Run away,’ Garnetta hissed through bared teeth to Clem. ‘Go on. Run!’
Clem needed no second bidding. Despite having to drag his injured leg, he scuttled for the trees. Terror lent him wings. He wove back and forth, avoiding the hands which reached out to grab at his ragged tunic.
‘Come then, you brave men who make war on children! Fight me!’ Garnetta called out, spinning in a circle and brandishing the club. She was so fired up with anger that she felt as if she was St George facing the dragon. Even now she did not consider the rashness of her actions. There was a red mist before her eyes, a core of molten heat somewhere in the region of her solar plexus. She did not know where her strength came from, but it felt good. She was powerful, an avenging spirit. There was a point of pressure between her eyebrows. It felt as if light was pouring into her.
The soldiers held off, watching warily. The glow in her strange eyes, her abnormal strength, alarmed and disconcerted them. How could she, a mere woman, strike terror into their hearts? She must be accursed or perhaps she was an angel sent to punish them for their many sins. One of the men sank to his knees, his hands held out before him in supplication. Crossing his hands on his breast he murmured, ‘Forgive me, Lady of the Rowan. For I have sinned grievously.’
Gille de Peyrac kicked the man in the side of the head. ‘A pox on your pagan Goddess! There’s your forgiveness! Get up you stupid bastard! Can’t you see that she’s naught but a skinny wench. She might be worth a ransom. That’s no pauper’s cloak she’s sporting. She has probably been found swyving a priest and is fleeing from a nearby nunnery.’
The other men seemed to come to their senses. They tittered at the picture portrayed by his words. Ashamed of their superstitious fear they moved towards Garnetta. Two of them – small dark men, comrades of the man who had called on the ancient Goddess – held back, their hands held up before them, the middle fingers bent over their palms to form the ancient horned shape which would avert the evil eye.
‘Sweet Jesu!’ Gille roared. ‘Take her! Or must I do every task myself?’
As the soldiers rushed towards her Garnetta felt the first flicker of fear. Instantly her belief in her own infallibility wavered, then died. In her belly the core of heat blinked out. The arm wielding the club suddenly began to ache. Her muscles protested and her arm fell to her side, but she kicked out anyway, screaming and struggling as they fell on her, their faces alight with the prospect of besting her. Garnetta scratched and bit at the grasping hands, but there were too many of them for her to make any impact. The man she had hit in the face barked out another order. A heavy blow landed on her temple. Stunned, only half conscious, she felt a nailed boot connect with the small of her back. The sharp ache pierced her through. Moaning with pain, she rolled onto her side, putting up her hands to protect her head. Fists rained down blows on her, punishing her for her arrogance in challenging the might of men. She bit back her screams, expecting at any moment to feel the cold metal of a knife or sword.
‘Enough! I want the bawd alive! Get her up.’
Rough hands grabbed her, pulled her to her feet. She would have fallen but for the hands which held her upright. Her cloak lay at her feet, pulled off in the scuffle. The fine linen shift was torn and muddied, the neckline pulled down over one shoulder. Panting and spitting blood, she glared defiance at the man who came to look her over.
‘Cursed, hell-cat,’ Gille grated, sweeping her with a look that took in her slender form and ended at her bare feet and ankles. ‘Where did you learn to fight like that, eh?’
She lifted her chin, biting back tears of pain, and saw with satisfaction that both of his eyes were fast blackening. The bridge of his nose was flattened and turning an ominous shade of purple. He grinned without humour, noting her appraisal. Deliberately he trod on her foot, mashing it into the carpet of leaves. The pain was sickening. She blanched, chewing at her bottom lip until she tasted blood. Her whole body ached and throbbed. There was a sharp pain in her back, another in her side. Every breath was an agony. She thought she might have cracked a rib.
Gille looked around at the other soldiers who wore various expressions of disbelief. ‘Well? Why are you all standing there fly-catching?’
‘There’s just the one of ’er,’ Barnabas, said stating the obvious. ‘Who does she thinks she is, eh? You ought to be holding a distaff woman, not that bloody tooth-pick!’
‘She was handy enough with that tooth-pick a few seconds hence,’ Edwin said, smirking. He glanced at Gille’s swollen face without the leader seeing. ‘Mayhap we should ask her to join us!’ The others laughed. Edwin clapped his big friend on the back. ‘What’s amiss, Barny? You ain’t crackin’ your face. You still favouring a sore arm?’
Barnabas sniggered nastily. ‘It ain’t my arm, I’m thinkin’ of right now,’ he said scratching at his groin. ‘De Peyrac’s thinkin’ same as me, ain’t you sire? Ain’t much to go round though. She’s lean as a skinned hare. A man could bruise himself on those hip bones.’
‘There’s enough for me and thee,’ Gille said, attempting to smile and wincing instead. He dabbed at his ruined face with the hem of his filthy tunic. ‘Christ’s bones, she’s given me a better wound than I’ve had in many a battle. For that she will pay. Strip her and bring her over here. I’ll deal with this upstart wench first, then the rest of you can have her.’
‘No!’ Garnetta kicked and screamed, every nerve in her body jangling with terror. The spectre of Bunner and Rufus rose up before her. Karolan’s touch had washed her clean of the bearers’ foulness. Their joining in the tower had been a thing of wonder and sweetness. She tried desperately to hold on to that memory as a talisman against what was to happen. The soldiers would take it in turns to rape her.
At the thought of being violated for a second time, soiled and used like a privy pot, a cold hand gripped her heart. She could not bear it – but bear it she must. Would it help if she stopped struggling, offered to pleasure each of them in turn, begged for mercy? No. They would laugh in her face. Nothing would help her. The man called Gille took pleasure in torture. She had seen him cut off the boy’s earlobe and put the bloody scrap of flesh into his mouth. There would be no mercy from him. Already he had unlaced the front of his hosen. His dangling penis was stiffening, standing up as he caught the acrid smell of her fear, saw the wildness of her eyes.
Her shift parted with a ripping sound. Willing hands dragged it from her, shoving and pulling her towards a fallen tree. Garnetta tried to focus her thoughts, to call up the strength which had come to her aid earlier, but she was made weak by her all consuming terror. Had she really fought all of them? Surely not. Her bladder relaxed and a stream of urine trickled down one leg. Seeing it, the soldiers laughed coarsely.
I won’t cry out. I won’t . . . She screwed her eyes shut as they forced her to lie belly down over a fallen log. The rough bark scraped against her tender skin as she struggled. She could not see their avid, cruel faces, but she could hear their coarse voices and smell their unwashed bodies. Her gorge rose. Bile and water rose up from her empty stomach, bursting from her mouth and trickling down her chin. She moaned with pain as two men took hold of her arms, pulling them out to the sides. Another two took hold of her legs and pulled them apart. Her hip and shoulder joints protested. She thought she might be pulled into four quarters.
‘You take her mouth, Barnabas. I’m for the tight nether portal,’ Gille said, stepping between Garnetta’s wide-spread thighs.
Garnetta was held fast, unable to do more than twitch a muscle, and forced to endure Gille’s cruel, pinching fingers. He took pleasure in pushing his fingers into her dry passages, tugging on the sensitive lips of her sex. Tears ran down her cheeks as those holding her arms pulled and slapped at her breasts, but she did not cry out. Not until Gille spread her buttocks apart and rammed his cock hard into her anus. The pain was terrible. She sobbed and rose up against her captors, feeling delicate membranes tear and warm blood run down her thighs. Gille ripped into her, scoring her soft skin with his manicured nails, timing his thrusts to match her screams. Something gave in one of her arms, the hot ache of it almost lost in the torrent of other sensation. Despite her valiant efforts to hold herself apart from what was happening to her, Garnetta began to beg for mercy.
Then her mouth was stopped by Barnabas’s onslaught. She gagged again at the smell of his unwashed parts. Stale urine warred with the cheesy smell of his member. Overlaying everything was the sour taint of his sweat. Holding the shaft of his cock, he stuffed it into her mouth, splitting and bruising her lips. He tasted like rotten meat. Gasping for breath, retching as the foul organ butted against the back of her throat, she writhed and twisted in an access of distress. The violation was both physical and mental. She strove to free her mind, to give it wings to fly, but the pain kept her earth-bound and she was spared nothing.
Gille made certain that she suffered as much as possible, using his maleness as a weapon. Each of his thrusts bruised something inside her. Her whole world narrowed to pain. It was raw-edged, gnawing at her vitals. Blackness hovered at the edge of her vision, but she remained conscious. It seemed an age before Gille mashed his belly against her buttocks one final time and spilt his seed into her bowels. At almost the same instant, Barnabas gave a great shout of triumph. His thick fluid filled her mouth. When he pulled away she choked out the semen on another gush of her blood and vomit.
Held in a space between agony and abject shame, Garnetta did not at first register the change in the men around her. Someone was screaming, a hoarse sound that held terror and surprise. Her ears still rang with the echoes of her own distress, so it was a moment before she realized that it was not herself but Gille and Barnabas who were making the sounds.
‘God! Oh, God! Look at it! Look what the whore’s done to me!’ Gille screeched, his voice almost a falsetto. ‘Help me someone. Oh, Christ! Oh, Sweet Jesu, it hurts!’
Barnabas bellowed and capered in front of her, his hands clasped to his groin. His lips were pulled back in a rictus of agony, showing dirty stained teeth. Garnetta lifted her head to see that thick, dark blood was trickling from between his fingers. Ropy trails of it were dropping to the forest floor. The men holding her limbs let go. She straightened slowly, painfully and looked at the two screeching men in confusion. Gille’s eyes rolled back in agony. He fell to the ground, hunching over and jerking spasmodically. A litany of curses poured from between his lips.
Edwin hurried over to his friend and tried to prise Barnabas’s hands away from his groin. His craggy face wore an expression of shock. A survivor of many campaigns, Edwin had seen men blown apart by culverins, men with torn and splintered limbs protruding from gashes in armour, but he had never seen anything like Barnabas’s privy parts. ‘Christ in Heaven, the fucking bawd’s done for him!’ He called out. ‘Barny, lie still. I’ll get the bag of sulphur powder from my pack.’ Desperately he mouthed the invocation to stop the flow of blood. ‘Sanguis Christi Maneat in te sicut Christus fecit in se! Sanguis Christi Maneat in te sicut Christus fecit in se!’ He had recited it a hundred times over men in battle, but had never thought to say it over a comrade slain by a wench. No one moved to help him. Edwin looked around at the others, taking in their looks of superstitious horror and confusion.
Gille still writhed in agony on the ground, his lower belly and hosen stained crimson. He lay in a spreading pool of blood. Edwin’s lips thinned. He took charge. ‘Someone get over here! You take Barny’s hands. I can’t see what’s amiss for all the blood. Keep a hold on that bitch-witch. She’ll pay for this pretty mess when I’ve tended to Barny and de Peyrac.’
Garnetta sagged against the fallen tree, feeling the weight of the branch against the small of her back. She felt light-headed, her senses dulled by pain and terror. It occurred to her that she could try to run away while they were all concentrating on the injured men, but her legs would not bear her weight. She hurt all over and could no longer distinguish what pained her the most. The stickiness of blood and semen cleaved her buttocks together. Her own blood slid on her tongue.
When two of the soldiers grasped her arms, half dragging, half carrying her to where Gille lay, she had no strength left to resist them. Moaning weakly, she sank onto her knees and found herself looking into the face of her tormentor. Gille’s eyes were open and unfocused. He shuddered, his body arching into a final bow of agony. A dry rattle came from his wide-open mouth. He twitched once more and then lay still.
A moment later Edwin let out a great cry of rage and sorrow. He grabbed his friend’s shoulders and shook him hard. ‘No! Don’t die on me, Barny! Ah, no. Oh, dear God!’
The silence was absolute. No one spoke. No one moved. Slowly Edwin leaned over and closed his comrade’s eyes. He was pale under the weathering of his cheeks. After a moment he rose and walked over to Garnetta. Ignoring her he reached down to Gille, removing the hands which were still clutched to his groin. He held away the hands which seemed to be wearing wet, red gauntlets.
‘See what the witch has done?’ Edwin said through gritted teeth. ‘Look well, all of you.’
There were gasps of horror as the damage was revealed. What had been Gille’s penis was now a scrap of raw flesh. What skin was left on it was black and charred. There was a raw hole where his scrotal sac had been. His thighs and lower stomach looked as if they had been flayed. Strips of muscle glistened wetly in the wounds. He lay in so much blood that it was difficult to believe that there was a drop left in his body.
‘But I did nothing . . .’ Garnetta managed to choke, as horrified by the sight as those around her. ‘It was they who hurt me . . .’
‘Aye, and they’ve paid dearly for it.’ Edwin’s face hardened. He grasped Garnetta’s chin, forcing her to look at him. ‘You’re no fallen nun, nor yet are you as innocent as you look. It is unnatural for a woman to have the strength of three warriors. What in God’s name are you?’
Garnetta whimpered, near to collapse. ‘I don’t know . . . Mother of Christ, help me.’
The soldiers closed in on her. Three small, dark men, their swarthy skins denoting their Celtic heritage, arranged their hands in the ancient sign of warding.
‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’ one of them muttered.
‘What about the ransom? Someone will pay well to get her back,’ another man said.
‘Aye. The lass will bring in a pretty price. Edwin you lead us now. Gille and Barny would want that. What say you?’
‘I say, fuck the ransom,’ said Edwin. ‘She’s done for Barny. That’s more’n enough for me.’ So saying he unsheathed the skinning knife which hung at his waist. With swift economy of movement he slipped the blade in between Garnetta’s ribs and angled it upwards to pierce her heart. Then, just to make certain, he forced her head upwards so that her throat was stretched taut and drew the blade in a wide sweep from ear to ear.
A torrent of blood frothed over his hand. Garnetta collapsed with hardly a sigh. ‘Fashion some bunches of twigs into flambeaux, then kick some earth onto the embers,’ he said flatly. ‘We leave at once. This place is cursed.’
‘Should we not give our brethren a Christian burial?’ someone asked.
‘Nay, leave the bodies for the crows,’ Edwin said, his eyes flickering around the undergrowth. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He imagined that the shadows were moving towards him. ‘You bury them if you feel the need. I’ll not stay a minute longer in the witch’s company.’
Stripping the weapons from Gille and Barnabas, Edwin stuck them into his pack. Without a backward glance, he strode towards Garnetta’s discarded cloak. It was a fine garment. Edwin hated wastage. Settling it around his shoulders he fastened the clasp. He would find a priest when they next paused in a village and have him say a prayer to St Ninian – patron of those who performed the work of cleansing evil spirits.
Crossing themselves and muttering prayers for protection, the band of soldiers began picking their way through the trees.
Hidden deep within the tangle of undergrowth, Clem watched them go. He shivered with pain and reaction, having watched all that transpired. His teeth chattered so much that he was forced to clamp them down onto a fold of his dirty tunic, lest the noise attract the soldiers’ attention.
He did not dare let out his breath until the last glimmer of flame faded in the distance, then he hunched over and began to rock back and forth, moaning softly in his distress. Tears made tracks down his grubby cheeks. His burnt leg and notched ear throbbed unmercifully. The deep scratches from wild briars bled into his clothes, but he did not dare move. He remained in his cramped position for the rest of the long night, his fitful sleep haunted by visions of the brave woman who had rescued him and who now lay dead next to the blood-soaked soldiers.