Alys Clare: The Paths of the Air

Far from being able to ignore the presence of a stranger in their midst, then, Josse — and, he was quite sure, Ella and Will and everyone else at New Winnowlands — found that John Damianos was perpetually on his mind.

It was odd.

Days passed. Soon the stranger had been at New Winnowlands for a week, then ten days. Ella continued to provide him with large amounts of food and drink. Will had approached Josse bashfully one morning and asked if it would be all right to broach the new barrel of small beer, only the previous one had gone down so fast, what with one thing and another. Josse had noticed that the amount he had to fork out for flour had gone up considerably; Ella seemed to be constantly baking…

It was time to go and see for himself.

Early the next morning he went to the outbuilding. He tapped on the door — it was closed and latched — but there was no answer from within. Josse was about to tiptoe away but then a flash of anger got the better of him. Rapping smartly on the wooden door panel, he said loudly, ‘Are you awake in there?’

There was a snort, as if someone were being roused from deep sleep, then sounds of rustling straw. ‘A moment,’ said a sleep-dazed voice.

After quite a long time the door opened and John Damianos stood in the doorway. He was fully dressed in his tunic and the concealing headdress. Behind him, the straw mattress had been shaken up and the blankets neatly folded on top of it.

The stranger made his hand-to-heart bow, bending low so that Josse could not look into his face. ‘Master,’ he murmured. ‘You wish to speak?’

‘Er — aye, I do,’ Josse replied. ‘I wanted to ask you — to see if you-’ His momentary anger had vanished and now, put in the position of a host who had revealed all too clearly that he wished his visitor to depart, he felt nothing but embarrassment. ‘How is your health?’ he rapped out, his tone made brusque by his unease. ‘Are you feeling stronger?’

The man bowed again, but not before Josse had glimpsed the brief, sudden smile that creased up his eyes. ‘Master, I offer honour and respect to your esteemed household, for I, a stranger, have been treated like a prince.’

Josse waited, not speaking, and the man straightened up and for an instant met his eyes.

John Damianos looked exhausted.

Fear slid down Josse’s back. Dear God, the man’s sick of some dread disease, he thought wildly, and I’ve let him into my household so that I and all my people are endangered! But then common sense returned: sick men did not eat like healthy horses.

Dumbly he stared into the stranger’s eyes. His puzzlement must have been easy to read; after a moment, John Damianos said, ‘I am stronger than before, master, but still I need to rest. If I may beg your indulgence a little longer…’ He left the sentence unfinished.

Josse waved a hand. ‘Of course!’ he heard himself saying. ‘Stay as long as you like! I am sorry to have disturbed you.’

Then, cross with himself for his cowardice and for lacking the good sense to have seized the chance to ask a few questions — as well he might have done, given all that he and his people were doing for the stranger — he backed away, turned round and hurried back to the house.

Josse was not to know but others burned with curiosity about the foreigner in their midst even more than he did. Ella in particular, cooking for him, spent rather more time than was good for her in dreaming about him. She did not tell Will, but in the privacy of her own thoughts she made up a long, romantic and highly unlikely story. Fed by the tales and legends told to her when she was a child, her account of how the stranger had ended up begging at the gates of New Winnowlands involved frost giants, flying horses and a bridge the colours of the rainbow. Her fascination had an edge of fear for, as Will had remarked, it ‘ain’t natural for a flesh-and-blood man to eat like what he does and sleep both the night and the day away like a new-born babe’.

Ella thought that John Damianos might be under an enchantment. According to Will, the foreigner kept the door fast shut and it could not be opened from the outside. It surely followed — or at least it did according to Ella’s fairly limited powers of logic — that the stranger locked himself inside the outbuilding because he had something terrible to hide.

What could it be?

Ella took to pondering this fascinating question as she peeled vegetables and drew the guts out of chickens. Was the stranger really a man or was he an animal spirit who took on a different form in the night hours and went out hunting as an owl, or a wolf? Was this why he had to sleep through the day, out of sheer exhaustion? Was he cursed because he had done something very, very wrong, something that had aroused the fury of some dark spirit of the deep forest? Was he under a spell that meant he ate and ate and still did not grow strong?

Shivering with delicious fear, Ella let her mind run free.

And presently just thinking was not enough.

She waited for a clear sky and a generous moon. She lay beside Will until he was asleep, then she got out of bed, wrapped her cloak around her, picked up her wooden shoes and silently let herself out of the warm little room off the kitchen where she and Will slept.

She crept across the stone floor, lit only by the remnants of the fire in the hearth, and opened the door. Putting on her shoes, she scurried across the courtyard towards the outbuildings, her heart beating fast. She was amazed at her own courage. What was she doing out there, all by herself in the still, cold night? For a moment fear gripped her and stopped her in her tracks. She ought to go straight back to her cosy bed and forget all about this mission…

Slowly she walked on.

As she approached the outbuilding, it seemed that the door was not as tightly fastened as usual. Was there a tiny gap between door and lintel? Or was it just her imagination?

She had to look; she had to.

She crept nearer.

The door was closed but it was not fastened from the inside. Instead, a loop of twine held it shut. She untied the twine and opened the door.

The fire had been banked down but it gave enough light for her to see by. The straw mattress was puffed up and the blankets lay draped across the foot of the bed.

Of John Damianos there was no sign.

Fear raced through Ella like fire through a bunch of dry kindling. The atavistic, unspoken, unacknowledged terror of the weird and the unknown that lay deep in her countrywoman’s soul took her over completely and her simple mind translated an empty bed into a savage and bloody tale of shape-shifting werewolves, malevolent spirits, cruel creatures of the night that soared up into the black starry sky to descend on their helpless prey to tear out their throats and suck their blood.

He’s not here, she kept thinking, over and over again. He’s not here.

Hand to her mouth to suppress her scream of horror, Ella backed out of the outbuilding. Terror made her clumsy; she tripped and fell. As she hastened to stand up again, a sob broke out of her. Then, with a wail, she flew back across the yard and in through the kitchen door, recovering sufficient presence of mind to stop her noise as she entered the house and to make sure she closed and fastened the door without a sound. Then, trembling violently and longing only for the blessed safety of her bed and Will’s snoring presence beside her, she took off her shoes and her cloak and crept into the little room off the kitchen.

She would have tried to bar the door, only Will would have noticed in the morning and been suspicious.

She scolded herself. She had been unbelievably foolish and look where it had got her. Why, the foreigner was as much of a mystery as ever!