Ruth Downie - Tabula Rasa

“I thought . . . one of our men.”

“Moonlight,” said Daminius, as if that explained everything. “But I wouldn’t put it past the natives to creep around in the dark. Keep your eyes open.”

Mallius hissed, “Look again, sir.” He had his spear raised now. Tilla hoped he was not going to fling it to see if the ghost was solid.

Daminius turned to Tilla. “Can you see anything, miss?”

“I see the road,” she said. “And the trees, and the moon.”

Mallius looked from one to other of them, then back at the statuelike figure on the road. His voice had an oddly strangled quality, as if all the muscles in his throat had tightened up. “There’s nothing there, is there?”

“I can see there’s nothing there,” Daminius retorted. “You’re worse than a bloody native. Sorry, miss. No offense. How far now?”

“The next turn on the left.” Tilla tried to signal Go away behind her back. The ghost had done his job. She wanted to get back to the warmth and safety of Ria’s.

“Isn’t this where the missing boy lives?” Now Daminius was sounding nervous too.

“We are going to their neighbors,” said Tilla. Branan’s household was the last one she would want to disturb tonight. “It is about a hundred paces,” she said, taking the left fork onto the track and stepping into an empty blackness where the overhanging trees blocked out the moonlight and it was impossible to see their footing. She remembered to add, for the sake of the pretense, “I thought they would send someone to meet us at the corner.”

“Should have brought a torch and a flint,” Daminius muttered. “I’ll go in front. Miss, you walk behind me. Watch the rear, mate. Don’t talk to any ghosts.”

The trees bent and shuffled above them. Tilla stumbled forward, keen not to lose touch with her escort in the dark. She had chosen somewhere she would be recognized: They were on the way to the house of Inam, the boy who had last seen Branan, but she had never been down this track at night. She flinched as something snatched at her skirts and was glad to feel the scrape of a bramble as she brushed it away. “I am glad I have you with me,” she said truthfully.

There was an orange glow ahead. As they drew closer she could make out a gate silhouetted against a small bonfire in the paddock by the house. The flames had died to embers, and nobody seemed to be around to tend it. Tilla pursed her lips. This was going to be awkward. She had not expected the family to be in bed.

Behind her, Daminius muttered, “I thought this was party night?”

“They are showing respect for their neighbors and the missing boy,” Tilla guessed. She was going to have to disturb them now; she could hardly to admit to her escort that she had invented this call to lure one of them out at night. “Hello!” she cried in British, realizing she would have to go through the whole pretense in case Mallius understood. “It is the Daughter of Lugh, the healer!”

When there was no other response, Daminius said, “Is this the right house, miss?”

Since she was not expected anywhere, it was as right as any other. “Hello?” she cried again. “It is the healer!”

A voice she recognized as Inam’s father shouted, “The fire is raked and there is no water in the house! There is nothing for you here! Go away!”

Daminius said, “What’s he saying?”

She could have translated the words, but he would never have understood about the creatures who came out of the burial mounds searching for homes where there was warmth and something to drink.

“It is not a spirit!” she cried, not wanting to leave the family in a state of fear. “It is me, Daughter of Lugh, friend of your neighbors. You son Inam helped me to look for Branan. I will come to the house so you can see it is me!”

She left the soldiers at the gate and carried on the rest of the conversation through the closed door, sheltering under the dark of the porch and explaining that she had been sent an urgent plea to call here. She could hear a whispered argument going on inside the house, but still there was no welcome. Finally she suggested that somebody must have played a joke on her, and they sounded relieved when she said she was sorry to disturb them and would go away.

She picked her way back across the yard to the gate, wondering if she would have a chance to explain in daylight, or whether this time next year people would be telling a fresh story of a family who had barred the door against a ghost that was trying to trick its way into the house using a false voice. Perhaps she would keep quiet. Otherwise the family would have to admit that they had sent away a lone woman in the dark after she had come to help them.

Her escort had moved away from the gate, perhaps suspecting the sight of them would frighten the family even more. Unable to see them in the inky blackness under the trees, she said softly in Latin, “I am very sorry. This was a wasted journey. Somebody got the message wrong.”

Nobody answered. A fresh gust of wind sent the trees dancing and whispering. Tilla felt her stomach muscles tighten. She pushed her hood back and something brushed against her face. Only a falling leaf, surely. She drew her knife. “Daminius?” she called. “Mallius? Where are you?”

Was that a muffled cry? Then movement in the woods that was not the wind: another cry and the sound of clumsy creatures crashing through undergrowth. She tried to go toward it, but the brambles clawed her back and the sounds were getting fainter. “Daminius!”

She dragged herself out of the thorns and retreated to the gate. Clutching her bag with one hand and the knife with the other, straining to see around her in the dark, she shouted, “Daminius, where are you? It is time to leave! Come back!”

But nobody came.

Tilla crept back along the track toward the road, her mind racing to make some sense of what was happening. Perhaps Mallius had panicked and run away, and Daminius had given chase. If only one of them had at least shouted back. They must have heard her: The movement in the woods had sounded close by. Now she was alone here with the echoes of the old stories: the hanged man who came to life and killed the family who gave him water, the women and cattle who were stolen away into the burial mounds, and those captured alive who were sent back with impossible gifts from the rulers of the dead-buttercups and primroses in November-along with warnings of bad things to come.

She pushed the Samain tales away and moved on, reminding herself that morning was drawing closer. Something good might be revealed by the rising sun. With luck, Mallius would be caught and confess, and Albanus would find out the truth about his nephew, and all this would have been-

She stifled a scream.

“Umph!” gasped the thing she had walked into. Then it stepped back and demanded, “Who goes there?”

“Albanus!” She put away the knife and groped for an arm to cling to. Judging by the way he returned her grasp, he was as relieved as she was.

“It worked!” she whispered. “I think he has run away in fright. He will never be at peace now.”

But Albanus was too agitated to listen. He was pulling her along, gabbling about getting help. “Please hurry, madam! We must get to the fort!”

She wished he would slow down. This was a bumpy farm track, not an army road, and besides, who was he to drag her about in the dark? She wrenched her arm out of his grip and stopped, her own fears fading now that she was with somebody more nervous than herself. “There is nothing we can do now,” she told him. “The soldiers will find him and-”

“Madam, they are captured!”

“Captured?” She could barely see him, but she had the impression that Albanus was hopping from foot to foot in agitation.