Read Online Hugh Corbett 14 - The Magician's Death by Paul Doherty - Free Book Online Page B

marshes and other treacherous places. The girls talked about the sprites and goblins who lived beneath the leaves or sheltered in the cracks of ancient oak trees, of strange sounds and sights, of will-o-the-wisps, really ghosts of the dead, which hovered over the marshes.
    Alusia stared round the sombre churchyard; a mist was creeping in now, even so early in the day, its cold fingers stretching out from the sea. She hitched the cloak she had borrowed from her father close about her, a soldier’s cloak of pure wool and lined with flock, with a deep cowl to go over her head. She wondered whether Father Matthew was in the church, and if he would come out. She would pretend she was searching for herbs, but of course, the real herbs didn’t bloom until May, and spring seemed an eternity away.
    Alusia was looking for a grave, Marion’s tumulus, that small mound of black earth which marked her close friend’s last resting place. Marion, bright of eye, always laughing, whose corpse had been found beneath the slime of the rubbish in the outer ward of the castle. She had been the first to be killed, a crossbow bolt, shot so close Alusia’s father said it almost pierced poor Marion’s entire body. The castle leech, together with Father Matthew and old Father Andrew, assisted by Mistress Feyner, had dressed the body for burial. Alusia and the rest of the girls were excluded, but she had stolen up that afternoon and slipped through the door. Now she wished she hadn’t. Marion’s face had been a gruesome white, dark rings around those staring eyes, from which the coins had slipped. Flecks of blood still marked her mouth, whilst so many cloths had been wrapped around the wound her chest appeared to have swollen.
    Alusia found the grave, marked by a simple cross, with Marion, Requiescat in Pace burnt in by the castle smith. She knelt down and, from beneath her cloak, took a piece of holly she had cut, the leaves sparkling green, the berries bright. She placed this near the cross. She would have liked to have brought flowers, but it was the dead of winter. Didn’t Father Matthew say the holly represented Christ, the evergreen, ever-present Lord, whilst the berries represented his sacred blood? Alusia scratched her nose and tried to recall a prayer. Father Matthew had taught them the Our Father in Latin. She tried to say this. Latin was more powerful, it was God’s language. She stumbled over the words Qui est in caelo , ‘Who art in heaven’, and gave up, simply satisfying herself with the sign of the cross. Then she sat back on her heels. Why would someone kill poor Marion, and the others? One by one, in the same manner, a crossbow bolt through the heart, or in Sybil’s case through her throat, ripping the flesh on either side. Who was responsible? What had the victims been guilty of? The castle girls, in their innocence, were full of gossip about young men, eagerly looking forward to this feast or that holy day, be it Christmas when the huge Yule log crackled in the castle hearth, or May Day when the maypole was erected under the sheer blue skies of an early summer. Yet what crime in that?
    Alusia lifted her head, staring back towards the lych gate. For a moment she thought she had seen someone. The church bell began to toll, the sign for midday prayer; not that many people listened. Alusia made the sign of the cross again and got to her feet. The other girls were buried nearby. Why had they died? The gossip said they hadn’t been ravished, so what was the purpose? Poor girls with nothing in their wallets, not even a cheap ring on their finger.
    Alusia walked slowly to the lych gate and on to the narrow trackway leading up to the castle. The trees thronged in on either side, and the mist had grown thicker. Alusia walked briskly, then paused at a noise behind her. She turned swiftly, but there was no one. She walked on until she noticed a flash of colour on the verge beside the track. Intrigued, she hurried over. It was a