Kill the Dead(26)

“This morning,” she said, “awhile before sunrise, I saw a girl go up the street. There was no one else about. She went right by under my window. I didn’t recognise her, but it was dark still. Then I saw something shining. She was leaving wet footprints on the street. She went toward the priests’ hostelry. When she got close to the wall of the compound, the first light started to come, and I could see the brickwork right through her back.” The woman stood looking at the rain.

Presently he spoke.

“Maybe you should alter your trade.”

“Maybe I have. I played the riddle-blocks later. I cast the King of Swords, that’s you. And in the Zodiac, the water sign of the Two Fish, and the air sign of the Harp–that’d be your sick friend, probably–the sign of the weakling and the genius. She was there, too. The Virgin, riding on the unicorn, gripping the chain around his neck. Watch out, handsome hero.”

“All right,” he said. “Thanks for the warning.”

“If you want me,” she said, “for anything, it’s the house behind the potter’s shop. I’m called Cinnabar.”

“I’ll remember.”

“See you do.”

During the afternoon, when smooth rain shadows slicked the hostel, Myal’s fever had lifted him on firework wings. He had chattered at great length, and one by one the priests had stolen in to listen. They heard quite a few unusual things as, under the pretence of stoking the brazier, bringing fresh coals, blankets, aromatics and wet cloths to moisten the storyteller’s burning lips, they clustered at the bedside.

They heard of strange predilections of the Cold Earl’s, of moonlight falling on naked maidens astride the backs of stallions. They learned of the Gray Duke’s daughter, and a certain sequence in a wood. They learned of court orgies and romps. And sad seasons when leaves ran yellow in the streams and money came in the shape of other men’s pockets. They learned of Myal’s drunken father, bloody-eyed and strap in fist, and of all the bullies who had assumed that father’s shape in later years, dukes, innkeepers, stewards and jailers. The priests clotted close to Myal as ants on honey. They gaped and gasped, and held their breaths and squeaked. As they were thrashed with Myal, and seduced with Myal, and chased with Myal. As they cowered and thieved and played music and made love and lay in the corners of prisons with Myal.

As the dark day thickened and declined, they sagged feebly all about the sick bed, almost dead of second-hand living.

Then a break came in the western overcast, and a ray of low amber sun sheered through a window. Exactly on this cue, Myal’s tidal fever smashed itself to pieces on some high and fiery shore. With a sudden sigh, he dropped still and dumb on the mattress, every muscle relaxed, his breathing soft and rhythmic as a low quiet song. A song without words.

The brothers shook themselves dolefully. They praised a higher authority, in disappointed voices, for the traveller’s cure. All but one, duty-bound to remain, hurried away.

The last priest dozed, dreaming of dinner, which gradually became dinner in the Cold Earl’s hall. A naughty girl on a black horse cantered up the room, throwing flowers and fruits to the diners. When she reached the priest, she threw a furious jailer, brandishing a leather belt, into his lap.

The priest woke with a start.

It was dark, the sun down and the windows deep blue. He was about to rise and light the candles when he felt again the extraordinary sensation of a separate live entity on his knee. Not a brutish jailer, certainly, it was too light. He chuckled to himself, thinking one of the puppies had strayed into the hostel. He put out his hand gently to pat the beast–and encountered a cool scaly flapping.

With a yelp, the priest started up, overturning his chair. As he did so, a beam of light, falling across the room from the half-open door and the refectory beyond the compound, caught a vague pale swirling in the area of the traveller’s bed. It was rather like smoke, more like water, and in the midst of it something slowly turned and floated.

The priest felt a horrible drawing sensation like faintness, and he became icy cold.

Somehow he tottered to the door and out of it. He had no thought for his patient, indeed few thoughts at all until he staggered into the lamp-lit refectory.

The inn was filling up with evening trade. The Ghost-Killer was seated on a bench in a corner. He had eaten frugally half an hour before sunset. The flask of wine was two-thirds full and stoppered. He was drinking water when the two priests hurried in.

Everyone looked. Though all the priests drank heartily, they did not do it in the sinful public house.