playing catch-me-if-you-can in the warm sunlight.
I heard my men and their big horses crashing through the greenery behind me, then Thomas was at my shoulder, his own sword drawn, staring agog at the scene before our eyes. These are the outcasts, I thought, these are the runaways, rejects and outlaws of the kind who had once flocked to Robin for protection. And they are all women.
Apart from their sex, there were other characteristics that united these people: they were all ugly, some spectacularly hideous; deformed, crippled, lacking limbs or digits or ears; leprous, blind or ancient or just drooling mad. Only the babies, wrapped in filthy rags, appeared to be whole. I absorbed all of this in a few heart-beats, and while I was staring in amazement at the hidden village, the women in turn noticed me. A crone at the far side of the clearing, seated by the entrance to a sagging turf hut, gave a gibbering screech, pointed a bony finger at me, and fled into her hovel. The whole village immediately erupted in a chittering, babbling roar, and the placid, happy scene disintegrated into movement. Old women with flapping empty dugs scrambled to scoop up suddenly screaming babies and darted away into the forest; emaciated girls with filth-matted hair wailed and cowered behind the nearest trees. One lumpen woman, broad-shouldered but with an enormous purple goitre swelling from her neck, grasped a thick branch from the wood pile and, growling, took a pace towards us and shook it in our direction in a distinctly threatening manner. Everywhere were women scurrying and rushing; calling out in alarm and anger. The occupants of the sturdier hovels bustled inside and slammed their doors, throwing wooden locking bolts across with a thump.
But one door opened.
The door of the largest hut, almost a house in fact, burst open and a figure strode into the centre of the clearing. She threw back her head and howled like a vixen in mortal agony, a long, booming shriek of limitless rage and pain. It was Nur, witch-chieftain of this women’s village, the queen of the damned, in all her ragged majesty.
Her hair, long since turned ash-grey, had been shorn and spiked with dried mud so that it stood proud of her head and resembled the spines of a hedge-pig; her skeletal body was draped in a filthy, ripped grey chemise that fell only to her thighs and exposed round swollen knee joints above spindly shanks; the nails on the ends of her long, knuckly fingers were overgrown and twisted into yellow curls; she held a tall polished staff in her right hand, its head a knot of roots encasing a rounded piece of granite in which thin seams of sparkling quartz glinted and shone; a necklace of tiny animal skulls bounced on her bony chest — weasel, shrew and mice heads, painted a rusty brown and strangely marked in black and white with chalk and charcoal; around her waist was a belt of half-cured snakeskin supporting a big furry pouch, the papery heads of two serpents, dangling from the knot in the front where it was secured; her mottled yellowing skin, wherever it showed, was crisscrossed with fresh tiny red scratches and older healed and half-healed scars as if she rolled in a bed of thorns each night… But it was her face, her poor mutilated face that drew the eye. When I had first known and loved Nur, she had been a shining beauty to shame the sun and the moon — but my enemies had taken her and had cut that transcendent loveliness from her, slicing off her nose, her lips and her ears. Her once wondrous face now resembled a living skull, the dark-burning eyes the only hint of humanity above the gaping red holes of her nose and the eternally grinning teeth. A smear of charcoal beneath each eye socket and along the cheekbone gave her an unearthly look, while the chalk paste that covered her lower jaw enhanced the skull-like illusion. In truth, she was terrifying to behold, and I heard the men-at-arms behind me curse and gasp, and begin to make the sign of the cross and mumble desperate prayers for their Salvation.
Nur advanced across the clearing towards me, leaning on her staff, one clawed hand held up in front of her, a hailing gesture, or a benediction, or a curse. I could hear that she was muttering words under her breath in a chanting rhythm, in a language that I recognized as Arabic; but my slight knowledge of that tongue had faded with time. I knew, though, that it was not a blessing. She stopped less than two paces from me, and said, in English: ‘Alan, my love, the light of my life, my darling man; welcome to Al Mara Madina. You have come at last to fulfil your promise, that can be the only reason for this intrusion.’
I stared at her, speechless with mingled apprehension and disgust; her lipless mouth opened and I realized that she was trying to smile coquettishly at me. I finally managed to stammer: ‘Wh-what promise?’ But I knew how she would reply.
‘You have doubtless abandoned your milky whore and come to me to beg my forgiveness — and to make good your promise to love me for ever and never leave me. The spirits of the wildwood have at last granted my request.’
The poor, deformed, broken women of the camp were creeping out of their hovels by now, curiosity overcoming their fear, and groups of them were hovering, half-visible, at the tree line, reassured by Nur’s calm conversation with me and my men. I was unmanned by the mutilated witch’s words, and for a brief moment I remembered the beauty she had once been and the passion of our lovemaking, the wonder and the joy that we had made between ourselves; I had indeed promised many things in the first flush of young love that Mediterranean summer, foolish things, the poured-out promises of a pleasure-drunk boy, and I had indeed broken my word. Looking at her now, I understood the pity that Goody said she felt for her; this monstrous creature before me, daubed with chalk and coal-black, gathering her half-baked, childish pretence of magic around her like an invisible cloak: substanceless and pathetic, with only the power to cause a little nervousness in the feeble-minded; this was a poor woman made miserable by a cruel fate and unlucky circumstances, she was no enchantress, she was no true witch. She had no power beyond that of any ordinary human soul to hurt with words or deeds.
Staring at her in bright daylight, examining her tawdry rags and emaciated, crudely painted face, I found my courage returning like a river in spate, a rushing of hot blood through my arms and legs.
‘Come now, Nur,’ I said briskly, ‘you know very well that I have not come here for that. Let us put aside these foolish games. I came here because you have trespassed into my home and hearth, and have frightened the good woman that I love with your silly tricks and ugly threats. And I tell you now that you must stop this attempt at intimidation. I will not allow you to continue to harass my wife-to-be. Do you understand? This foolishness must stop. Now. Else I shall be very angry.’
For a moment Nur looked at me in stony silence. Then she said quietly: ‘You have become cruel, Alan. You were never like that before. A demon is gnawing on your soul. I can see it. Your heart is now a shard of ice. And you are forsworn; a liar like all your sex; a wretched, lying, worthless man.’ And she turned her back on me and walked to the centre of the clearing, by the pit-fire. She turned again to face me, thrust a hand into the hairy pouch at her waist, and pulled out a handful of dried herbs. Sprinkling them on the fire with her left hand, and holding up the staff in her right, she said: ‘One year, one day, after you wed, you pay.’ The herbs had caught fire and a thick, pungent, blue-greenish smoke was rising from the pit and enveloping her frail, raggedy body. The smoke seemed to cling to her skeletal frame as she repeated: ‘One year, one day, after you wed, you pay.’ But this time I could hear the murmurs of the other women repeating the refrain. It began low, but with each repetition the chant became louder. ‘One year, one day, after you wed, you pay.’ The women were swaying slightly with the rhythm of the chant, and I noticed that they seemed to be, almost imperceptibly, coming closer to the centre of the clearing, moving towards me and my men with shuffling steps, quiet but purposeful.
I took a pace forward, Fidelity, still sticky with tree sap, naked in my hand, and I said loudly, clearly above the lapping waves of the baleful rhythmical chorus: ‘Nur, stop this now, I will not stand for this-’
Nur gave a high, clear scream, and pointed the heavy granite end of the staff directly at me. Her body was by now entirely wreathed in smoke. ‘He threatens me; he threatens a woman of the sanctuary! A man, a lying man, a forsworn man — he threatens me, he threatens all women!’
I glanced down at the bright blade of Fidelity in my fist. ‘No, Nur, I do not mean-’
A stone sailed out of the crowd of advancing women and smashed into my chest, cutting off my words abruptly.
I looked beyond the smoke-wrapped form of Nur, pointing her staff, like a lance at my head. A wall of raggedy women, scores of them — old, young, maidens, matrons, crones, goodwives, whores; all hideous in one way or another, all broken or deformed, and all chanting those hateful words: ‘One year, one day, after you wed, you pay’ — was now moving across the clearing towards me. Another stone flew past my head, and another cracked painfully into my shin. Nur gave a long yelping cry, and gestured at me again with her staff. Then Thomas was at my side: ‘We cannot fight them all, Sir Alan, we must retreat,’ he said, his voice steady and calm.
And we ran.
I scrambled up on to Shaitan just as the first woman reached me. She was elderly, one-eyed, toothless and
