Paul Doherty - The Magician

Horehound moved on. Now and again the trees gave way to some dripping glade or treacherous morass. As usual, he circled these and continued his journey. The trees thinned. Horehound was now out in the open, climbing the slight escarpment from which the castle reared up into the sky. This was a favourite place for rabbits. Corfe had its own warren and some of the rabbits bred there often escaped to begin colonies of their own. The previous night Horehound had set traps very near the moat. He hoped the bitter cold and darkness would blunt the sentries’ vigilance. As he approached, he could smell the rank stale water, and grateful for the mist now beginning to boil, he searched out where he had laid his traps and was delighted at the soft plump corpses waiting for him.

He’d almost filled his sack when he came across the corpse. The young woman lay sprawled on the edge of the moat, hidden beneath some gorse, opposite a narrow postern gate to the castle. Horehound almost screamed with fright. Edging closer, he felt the girl’s face and her long hair, and touching her neck, he felt the coldness of death as well as the feathered quarrel embedded deep in her chest. He glanced up at the pinpricks of light along the battlements. There was nothing he could do, and retreating into the night, he returned to the forest by a different route, skirting the nearby village.

He reached the cemetery of the church of St Peter’s in the Wood and stopped before the lych gate. Should he go in and seek Father Matthew, a kindly, honest-faced priest? Surely he too must be concerned about the stories. How many now? Two or three young women, and tonight’s victim made possibly four, all brutally murdered. Two of the corpses had been found in the castle itself, and the third, like tonight’s, on the approaches to it. Horehound was deeply troubled. He did not want to think of the other nightmare, which he called ‘the horror of the forest’, that lonely glade, the sombre oak tree and that corpse hanging like the victim of some barbaric sacrifice. The outlaw stared across the cemetery. He could glimpse no light from the priest’s house, whilst the church was a sombre mass of stone, black against the night. Such matters would have to wait. Horehound loped on.

Inside the church, Father Matthew knelt, enveloped by the darkness. He was crouching just within the sanctuary, his back against the communion rail, staring at the small lantern which hung next to the pyx above the high altar. He crossed himself once again and quietly murmured the Confiteor, the ‘I Confess’, reciting his sins and begging pardon and penance for them. It was the same every night. Whenever he could, Father Matthew doused the lights of his house and came to pray in the cold darkness, an act of reparation, allying himself with Christ’s agony in Gethsemane. He recalled the words of Psalm 50: ‘A pure heart create for me, oh God, put a steadfast spirit within me.’ His dry lips and tongue stumbled over the word ‘steadfast’.

Father Matthew laughed bitterly to himself; he could pray no more. The cold darkness also reminded him of that cell, and above all of that voice whispering its secrets through the darkness. Such memories provoked tears, reminding Father Matthew of his mysterious past. Putting his face in his hands, he wept bitterly for what he had done, as well as what he should have done but had failed to do.

Horehound, with his companion Milkwort, hid amongst brambles and undergrowth, quiet as dappled roe deer. They crouched as if carved out of stone, watching the trackway which wound out of the forest to climb the chalky downs to Corfe Castle. Six weeks had passed since Horehound had found the murdered girl out near the castle. Since then there had been another one, Gunhilda, her battered corpse discovered amongst the rubbish heaps on a piece of wasteland within the castle itself. Father Matthew had preached vehemently against these gruesome murders both in his pulpit and again at the market cross. Yet what good would that do? Killing was part of life. A reward had been posted on Horehound’s head because he and Milkwort had to hunt to live, poaching Lord Edmund’s deer and filching whatever they could. They had spent November hunting, trapping deer and rabbit, drying the flesh and salting it in vats of brine deep in the forest. The Ancient One, a member of their group, had advised them to fill their larder against the winter; he had prophesied how the snows would come and how life, once again, for Horehound and his band would balance on a knife edge.

Advent had arrived, and the church was preparing for the birth of the infant Christ. Father Matthew had already decked the nave of St Peter’s with evergreen, whilst his parishioners were collecting wood in the cemetery and common land to build a crib. All this had been swept aside by fresh news and busy rumour; everyone was agog with excitement. Strangers were moving into the area! Corfe Castle was to be the meeting place for a council between the clerks of France and England. Horehound did not know who the King of France was. The Ancient One had told him that the Kingdom of France lay across the Narrow Seas and had once been ruled by the kings of England. Horehound had listened to the gossip. He’d acted suitably impressed as he squatted amongst the trees at the rear of the Tavern in the Forest, sharing gossip with the pot boys from the tap room who could so easily be bribed for local news and information in return for a basket of succulent fresh rabbit meat. He depended on such news, ever vigilant lest the Sheriff of Dorset move into the area with his comitatus, ready to hunt the likes of Horehound down. He’d questioned the pot boys closely. At first they teased him as he sat between Milkwort and Angelica, Milkwort’s woman. The pot boys claimed royal justices were coming, their execution cart trundling behind them surmounted by stocks, gibbets and whips, to punish Horehound and his coven. One boy, more insolent than the rest, even hinted that Horehound was responsible for the death of the local maids. The outlaw had yelped his innocence until the others laughed and reassured him. ‘One-ear’, so called because a dog had bitten off the other one, claimed it was because of ‘Ham’, which provoked more laughter, until he correctly recalled the details he had learnt from a sottish man-at-arms: how the Council was to discuss a Franciscan called Roger Bacon, a local man, born at Ilchester, just over the Somerset border. Horehound listened round-eyed. Even he had heard stories about the magical friar who’d travelled far to the east to study in some great city.

‘Why would they want to talk about him?’ he had asked. The boys had simply shaken their heads and returned to discussing the gruesome murders.

The finger of suspicion for the deaths pointed directly at someone in the castle rather than anyone from the forest or one of the local villagers. After all, as One-ear pointed out, and he was regarded as wiser than the rest because he could count to ten and knew his letters, the corpses of the poor maidens had been found either in the grounds of the castle itself or near its gateway. Horehound wasn’t concerned about such murders, as long as he and his ilk weren’t blamed. Yet the presence of King’s men in the area alerted him to danger, whilst the ‘horror of the forest’ still cast a deep shadow over both himself and his group. Horehound wished he could be free of all that, as well as gossip about what might be glimpsed in the forest.

Last night rumour, like a mist, had swirled up the secret forest paths. The King’s men were on their way. So Horehound and Milkwort were ready. They had to make sure about these strangers, and what better opportunity than a mist-strewn morning at the beginning of December when the light was poor and the forest dripped with damp, whilst their bellies were warmed with viper broth and chunks of steaming rabbit meat?