pole of the butter churn up and down, up and down.
Although he did his best to hide it, Thomas was utterly delighted by the prospect of going off to France in my stead. When I gave him his instructions, and told him to report to Robin when he got to the army, he said: ‘As you wish, Sir Alan,’ and bowed formally. But he could not help a sparkle of joy lighting his eye and a grin stretching his mouth. I tried to dig up some special words of wisdom for him to take with him and, as usual, came up woefully short.
‘Keep Alfred close during the journey to France, and obey Lord Locksley in all things when you get there. Do not try to be a hero on the battlefield — nobody expects that of you; obey orders, and keep your head down and your shield up. And, uh, stay away from the local women, they may harbour, uh, diseases. If you must indulge yourself, ask Little John’s advice on which are the cleanest whores.’
After that last gem, we both stood looking at each other in embarrassed silence. Until Thomas said, quietly and sincerely: ‘Thank you, sir, for this opportunity. I will try to be a credit to the proud name of Westbury.’
And I suddenly felt a great lump in my throat.
We spent the afternoon outfitting Thomas and his men with hauberks, aketons, helmets, new swords and shields — and I gave them the pick of the best equipment in the armoury; also warm cloaks and cooking kit, horse gear, spare clothing and bedding. The next morning Goody provided each man with a cheese, a bag of onions, and several loaves of twice-baked bread that would keep for weeks. I gave Thomas a small purse of silver and a few final words: ‘Tell Robin that I shall come as soon as I have dealt with Nur and her women and made Westbury safe; and, Thomas…’
I paused and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Be careful, Thomas, and for God’s sake don’t get yourself killed!’
My squire saluted, smiled, climbed on to his horse and, followed closely by his three men-at-arms, he clattered out of the big gate and embarked on the long road to war.
I was sad to see him go, but at the same time I could not deny a surge of pride. He was not my son, it was true, but Goody and I were both very fond of him; he was a fine young man — a man, I realized, no longer a boy.
I had cause to regret the loss of four of my fighting men not two days later.
It was the night of the full moon, and our rest was interrupted by the sound of drums. I had been sleeping, unusually for me at that time, and awoke with a sense of irritation and grievance rather than fear. I knew that it was Nur before I stepped out of the hall with Fidelity in my hand and crossed the courtyard to climb up to the walkway that ran around the inside of the palisade. I saw Goody emerging from her guest house, tousled, rubbing her eyes and wrapped in a woollen shawl, as I hurried up the steps to the cloaked figure of the man-at-arms, a young fellow called Kit, waiting at the top.
Kit pointed, wordlessly and unnecessarily, at a pin-prick of light about three hundred yards away to the west, a fire. It burned in front of a copse that stood beside the stream that ran through my lands. At that very stream, a mere quarter of a mile from the hall, Goody and the village women did their weekly washing, beating the cloth against the rocks and spreading it to dry on the sheep-cropped grass. In choosing that place for their midnight gathering, I felt that Nur was deliberately desecrating my lands, befouling them with her presence. I felt as insulted and perturbed as I might if she had emptied her bowels in the well in my courtyard. The drums beat a simple rhythm — and I realized that it was the rhythm of the curse: one-two, one-two, one-two-three, one-two — or one year, one day, after you wed, you pay.
I called loudly for Thomas, then realized stupidly that he was no longer with me, and sent Kit down the steps to rouse the manor; I wanted all the men arrayed for battle, armed and mounted as soon as possible. This was a gross provocation, an insult — one I could not ignore.
The courtyard, below and behind me, flared to light as torches were lit and soon began to echo with the shouts of men and the protesting whinnies of tired horses woken from sleep and hastily saddled. As I looked out over the palisade, I saw the distant fire leap higher and I could make out what appeared to be two posts planted either side of the blaze, and slim figures dancing wildly through the firelight. The drumming continued and I heard snatches of song and shrieks and cries either of pain or ecstasy. Then a number of the figures lifted a pole, with a large lumpen shape in the centre of it and set it horizontally across the two vertical poles above the fire. Something was tied to the pole, a sheep, perhaps, or a pig for roasting — These god-damned witches are having a full-moon feast from one of my slaughtered beasts, I thought with a spurt of savage anger. I would not stand still and let it pass.
In the darkness, with sleep-dogged men and horses, it took an age to get ready to ride out and challenge the revelling madwomen. But finally we were prepared and, wrapped in righteous fury, I trotted out of the gates of Westbury at the head of six mounted men. Two of them bore burning torches, but the other four, and myself, carried twelve-foot man-killing lances. We had been openly challenged by Nur, and our response would be swift and deadly. I anticipated punching the steel point of my lance into Nur’s belly, and imagined her expression of shock and surprise as the spear-head went home, and she writhed around the shaft in her final agony.
But the women did not wait to receive our charge; they fled the very moment they saw our cantering horses approach. And I did not catch even the merest glimpse of my former lover. The women melted silently into the copse at our advance and, when we arrived at the fire, there was not a living thing to be seen.
There was however a sight that chilled our very souls. The lumpen shape that had been roasting over the fire, while these women cavorted about it, was no pig, nor sheep: it was the naked body of one of the men-at-arms who had ridden with me in the disastrous foray against the women’s woodland village the previous week. I could see by his tortured frozen expression that he had been alive when he was lowered over the flames and that he had subsequently died, slowly, in screaming, unquenchable agony.
And there was worse: some parts of his half-cooked body had been cut away by sharp knives, several strips from the brown, crisped buttocks, arms and thighs. Until we interrupted them, the witches had been gorging on his poor roasted flesh.
My head reeled, and I had difficulty keeping my supper where it belonged. This was a monstrous, demonic, almost unbelievable act. I ordered two men to cut down the body and wrap it in cloaks, so that we could bear it back to Westbury for a decent Christian burial. One of the men I detailed to cut our comrade free suddenly bent double and vomited copiously bedside the dying fire, and I had to fight the urge to do the same myself. I was helped in my task by a distraction.
‘Sir Alan, sir,’ cried Kit, perhaps the sharpest-witted of my men. ‘The manor, the manor — it’s burning,’ he said, pointing away behind us towards Westbury, where the first yellow flames were licking the black night sky.
Three days later I went to Nottingham Castle, a notional begging bowl in my hands, and a very real and heavy purse of silver in my saddlebag.
We had vanquished the fire after a long, long night of brutal hard work by every living soul in Westbury who could hold a water bucket. The guest house was utterly destroyed, as was a storeroom next to it, and the stables were also badly burned, but by dawn it had been completely quenched and one quarter of the Westbury compound was a charred mess of burnt beams and soggy cinders. Goody was not harmed, thank God. Rather than going back to bed, when we rode out for the courtyard so boldly, Goody had decided to go into the hall and find something to eat from the sideboard there. She was eating by the light of a single candle at the long table when the fire broke out in her guest house. Nobody had seen any strange folk around, but we all assumed that one of Nur’s madwomen had crept into Westbury and set the fire in Goody’s apartments while all the fighting men were busy charging out to challenge the witches at their awful feast.
I had not credited Nur with such cunning, and I had made a bad mistake. Now it was time to end this deadly game before my beloved was seriously hurt.
I presented myself to the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Sir William Brewer, in his private chambers in the Great Tower of Nottingham Castle. I did not know the man, except by reputation: he came from a family of hereditary foresters in Devon, and was said to be vigorous, ambitious — and utterly venal. He greeted me graciously, insisted on feasting me in the big hall in the Middle Bailey — which I knew of old — and for a consideration of five pounds in silver, he lent me a conroi of twenty of his best cavalry for a month.
For two weeks, aided by a man from Alfreton, who knew the land well, we scoured the woods in search of Nur and her gaggle of God-cursed wretches. In vain. We swiftly found the clearing and its circle of mean huts and hovels, and burnt everything in it to the ground — but the only soul we found there was an aged woman, blind, and
