Lady Caroline agreed with me that telling Lord Salisbury he must renounce his wife was not going to be easy. He was an old man with a beautiful young wife. What man would want to give that up? How many men would rather die to have that young wife for even a few weeks, when renouncing her meant a lifetime of celibacy?
As it happened, we did not have to explain any of this to the old man. Lady Salisbury solved our problem for us by running off with a lieutenant in the militia. Scandal and disgrace naturally followed, and Lord Salisbury’s infatuation very quickly turned to anger at the humiliation and betrayal. I suspected he half knew what his wife was, but as with many men in his position, he only allowed himself to know the half he liked. Now he was free to see her in her entirety. Her absence, coinciding as it did with his return to health, worked so on his mind that he began to see her as the metaphorical poison in his life. Neither his sister nor I pointed out the obvious.
Should I have told the authorities of my suspicions about Lady Salisbury (now, I believe, calling herself Mrs. Hannigan and living in cheap lodgings in Yorkshire with her lieutenant)? Perhaps. But I had no proof of my belief that she had murdered her parents and then attempted to murder her husband. My methodology was unusual, and my remedies hinted at black arts. Few men would be willing to have a heathen sweat lodge built in their herb garden or be willing to sweat naked in it with another man whilst eating strange combinations of foods.
Besides, I hardly had time to consider a course of action as regards the delightful Sophie Hannigan. Events happened very swiftly over the next few days, so swiftly that I hardly recall quite how it came about that I agreed to travel to a country I had never heard of to treat another man who might be suffering from Sophie Poisoning, as Lady Caroline now liked to call it.
Lord Salisbury and Lady Caroline had a younger sister who had married very young to a dashing (Lady Caroline’s word) foreigner. She was now living in some state in Hesse-Davia, a small kingdom in northern Europe, the wife of a king’s advisor. King Gregor, however, was believed to be dying. And yes, the symptoms were uncannily similar to those I had recently treated. None of the doctors summoned to treat him had been able to do anything. I wasn’t surprised. Leeches and violent purging rarely did much for cases of poisoning, especially if the root cause of the affliction—someone trying to kill you—was not discovered.
Within a few weeks, therefore, I was crossing the English Channel toward France and a new life, with a letter of introduction in my valise and a desire in my heart to make this new start. I knew, of course, that my demons would follow me wherever I went. It was inevitable. None of us can truly run from the evil we carry in our hearts, but the crossing gave the illusion of escape, and that was enough.
Would I have boarded that ship if I had known what was awaiting me in Hesse-Davia? Of course I would. Despite what happened, all the pain and all the horror, I would not unlive one moment of my time in that terrible place. I would not lose one moment of my time withhim. I cannot claim, as I sat huddled and sick on the deck of that small ship, the wind blowing cold in my face, the salt tempting as sin on my tongue, that I had any kind of premonition that I was traveling toward something that would change me so profoundly. But I did feel as if the tiny strip of water we were crossing was more than just a divide between two bodies of land. It was a separation between my old life and what I yearned for in a new one. I did not even have words for this vague yearning, but it called to me in the cry of the gulls, the roll of deck beneath me, the voices of the sailors, and the cracking of the waves against the old wooden hull.
Perhaps if I had listened more closely, I would have heard them all whispering his name.For it is his name I hear still in my nightmares and in my waking dreams. It is the everyday hum of my new life in this vast country. But it began there, on that ship, in the sense of longing in my heart. Even my heartbeat murmured his name.
I should have listened more closely.
CHAPTER 2
ITRAVELEDfor over three months from the coast where we landed in France to the small distant kingdom of Hesse-Davia. The flat plains of France and the Low Countries had gradually given way to forests—endless green vistas of sweet-smelling conifers—and then to mountains and deep gorges, which were rumored to contain bandits or worse.
Sitting around campfires at night with travelers I met on the road or in inns when the nights turned especially cold, I heard tales of things that lived in the forests and fed on men’s souls. In my view, I saw more horror in the actual world around me, but the storytellers seemed able to overlook the disease, poverty, and degradation that surrounded them in favor of the imagined or mythical, which did not. The farther I traveled, the more desperate became the plight of the poor people I encountered. In the civilized Europe I had left behind, new ideas had begun to permeate everyday life, making a difference to the health and happiness of all. Here it was like entering medieval superstition made manifest. I saw men whose condition appalled me, laboring in the forests. They lived in squalid huts, barely more than hurdles stuck in mud. The women were worse, for they had the added burden of childbirth and rearing in these fetid, awful conditions.
Life seemed little better in the villages and few towns I traveled through. I saw whipping posts and stocks, not wholly unfamiliar in England still, but rarely used and never in the savage way they were employed here. In one village, I was treated to the ghastly sight of a burning. A witch. I could do nothing so chose not to see too much. What I did see looked more like a terrified old woman being burned alive than it did a witch being purified. Given the avid, greedy faces of the crowd, however, I knew I was the only one thinking this.
The barbarism and ferocity increased as the terrain became more inhospitable. Villages cut off from one another by mountains and barely passable tracks followed their own insular customs. Guidance from higher authority was neither sought nor accepted when it was offered. I could have done much for the sickness I encountered, but my help was not wanted. The farther I traveled, the more my language skills became inadequate. I did not speak the local dialect, and they could not understand either my broken French or German.
Dominating everything was the church, the Great Oppressor. My parents had left England to escape from religious persecution. I had taken their beliefs one step further. I had abandoned any pretense of religion at all during my time with the Powponi, unless worship of sunlight, trees, good earth, and love can be considered a religion. My return to England had been made relatively easy by the way most Englishmen practice their religion: privately and quietly. I was left alone tonotpractice, and that suited everyone.
Here in these vast mountains, life was ruled by fear and superstition stirred in a cauldron of mysticism parading itself as devotion. Each tiny village had a church. Shrines pockmarked the pathways. Indeed, I was grateful for them, for if I saw a well-tended shrine, I knew I was close to my night’s lodgings. The influence of priests was evident everywhere, their black robes flitting like shadows between peasant rags. Occasionally I was reduced to seeking one out. With Latin in common, I was able to seek direction and ask other important questions about my journey. Armed as I was with my letters of introduction, I was always treated courteously when I encountered priests who could read. That some could not boded ill; ignorance and power are bad bedfellows in my opinion.
I was proved right in the worst possible way some days later. I followed, as was my custom, the evidence of a shrine and took the left-hand track when I came to an unexpected divide in my route. If I was wrong, then I could correct myself at the village and return after a night’s rest to take the right track. I was not unduly worried. I was surprised at the sense of dread, therefore, that came over me as I approached the huddle of huts in the valley. Truly, it was not an auspicious sight. It was the most miserable place I had yet visited. In low ground, it was fetid and damp, with a central street almost impassable for mud. The houses were nothing more than hovels, and the mountains towered so high over the valley that sun did not penetrate for more than a few hours a day. I shivered and tried to shake off this uncharacteristic sense of foreboding. I was glad to see that there was some kind of fair in the village. I could hear music and see some dancing toward the muddy patch that served as a village square. I rode toward the festivities. I was hungry and tired, and more importantly, my horse was hungry and tired. Xavier came first. He always did.
I dismounted and led him into a stable alongside the inn. No stableboy was in sight, so I placed him in a stall myself and fed him some treats whilst removing his saddle and checking him over. Assured he was in good health, I made my way out into the squalid yard and back to the muddy street. Everyone appeared to be at the celebration, so I followed the sound of laughter to find a small crowd milling around. Most of the men were drinking, and when I came to look closer, most of the women too. They were standing around what appeared to be some kind of ornament or statue. It was mounted on a small plinth and looked rather like a miniature version of an obelisk I had once seen drawn on a manuscript by a man who had returned from Egypt. This one was not hundreds of feet tall and guarding a temple, however. It was about three feet high and six inches or so at its base, tapering to a couple of inches at the sharpened pinnacle. I wondered if it was a harvest offering of some sort. I could not speak with anyone, for no one understood my accent or words, but I was offered a mug of beer and accepted, soon becoming quite friendly with everyone.
Eventually a commotion at the end of the street near the church drew my attention. The revelers around me cheered and peered excitedly toward a new group who were approaching with some pomp and ceremony. They were possibly the village elders, for they were better dressed and seemed to have a sense of authority. I took another long swallow of the remarkably strong beer and watched with interest. I felt the first stirring of disquiet when I saw what was in the middle of the group: a naked man. He was bound at the wrists and was being dragged along by a very large man dressed in black walking beside a priest. This last figure was similarly dressed in black, of course, but he was much smaller, and sickly looking to my experienced eye. The crowd around me parted as the group escorting the poor unfortunate arrived. They were now oddly silent. All revelry had ceased, another thing that made the hair on the back of my neck rise and prick. The cheerful celebration had given way to an unpleasant stillness of expectation. When the new group arrived in the square, the young man fell to the ground, clearly in a very poor state: beaten severely, naked, and very cold. There was blood trickling out of one ear, which was not good at all and indicated he’d been hit hard on the head at some time.
The priest began to speak, but as he spoke in the local language with only the occasional word of pure German, I understood little. I did get, however, that it was a punishment—the beaten state of the man already made this rather evident. I reasoned now that the obelisk was a stake and that it was going to act like the village stocks; he was going to be tied to it and humiliated for his crime. Quite what his crime was I could not make out.
I determined to ask and made my way across the back of the crowd to the group of men who had accompanied him on his punishment walk. I introduced myself to a man who I thought by his superior dress might be the most likely to speak German. He replied in very understandable words, and I proceeded to ask him about the poor prisoner. Before he could reply, the huge man in black lifted the criminal to his feet and dragged him over to the plinth. I heard a collective intake of breath, ominous in the still night air. For one moment it felt as if the earth itself were taking a breath of expectation. Before I could protest the man’s rough treatment, he was placed standing over the obelisk. I was intrigued.
To my shame, my curiosity as a man of science overcame my natural instinct, which had been screaming alarm at me since that fateful decision left or right at the crossroads. Before I could process what was happening, before my drink-addled body could react, the big man withdrew a cudgel from his clothing and brought it down viciously upon the kneecap of the injured man balanced precariously over the obelisk.
My choked cry was not heard over the sigh of pleasure from the crowd. Or perhaps it was drowned out byhisscream as his leg gave way and he jerked down, falling upon the point of the obelisk. It pierced his body. He was still able to keep himself up on his one good leg, but the unnatural penetration was enough to make any man scream. He began to cry and hop slightly on his strong leg, trying to lever himself up and off the painful spike. This engendered laughter and much ribald comment from the watching crowd.
I pushed my way forward and reached him, the alcohol previously slowing my brain now completely gone with the shock and a desperate desire to intervene. I began to remonstrate with the large man whilst at the same time offering my arm to the frantic prisoner. The next thing I knew, I felt a shattering blow to my knuckles and hands on my body, dragging me away. The pain was immense. The cudgel had hit me across the back of my hand; it was swelling as I looked. I struggled to get free, but many hands were holding me. Up close, the smell of these peasants was horrific, but any protest I made at my treatment was swallowed up by another scream. I felt vomit rise in my throat, tried to warn the men holding me, but doubled over and vomited on some shoes.
The young man’s second leg had been broken just as mercilessly as his first. He had no way to keep himself from the stake then. His choices were limited: stand on broken legs or be slowly and agonizingly impaled. He tried. He tried to keep himself from sliding farther down onto the increasingly widening stone pillar, and perhaps he would have managed. Perhaps he would have survived long enough to be lifted off alive. I would have reached him and done so, despite my injury. But as I was pushing toward him, determined to put up a better fight, the first of the missiles flew from the crowd.
A stone hit his nose. He jerked back, lost his balance on his poor legs, and slipped a little farther, his own body weight his enemy now, inexorably impaling him further at each movement. Another missile flew from the delighted, energized crowd. This was clearly a much awaited, relished sport, and they were not to be denied their fun. The rock caught him on the shoulder, and he slumped, his weight wholly supported now on the obscene object in his body. It was over four inches wide, maybe more at the last place I could see. I could not comprehend how he could endure it. I made a second attempt to intervene. I could not use my hand, which was now black and badly swollen, so I approached the priest and began to reason with him in Latin. He looked at me blankly and crossed himself. Rummaging in his filthy robes, he produced a withered apple, which he then threw at the agonized man. The hit barely registered, but even a slight wince jolted him farther down. I heard him groan and whimper. Making those pitiful noises only moved his body more.
I resolved to do something, anything. I looked around wildly to see if I could gain any support. I will never forget the look upon the faces of the men and women who watched this slow torture. They appeared greedy for the man’s pain, as if his agony would relieve theirs, as if his death staved off theirs. I knew I would receive no support. I approached the obscene spectacle again, wary of the big man in black. He was now eating a pie, watching the entertainment like everyone else. He had dropped his cudgel and had a large pint pot in his other hand, his arm slung around the neck of a filthy-looking woman. He did not look at all bothered by my approach. I went behind the young man and felt his neck. He was still alive, and his eyes fluttered open as I touched him. I began to lift him off. There were some murmurings in the crowd, but the man in black mumbled something around a mouthful of pie, and they went quiet with a horrid air of expectation. The young man was stuck. I felt vomit rise in my throat again when I thought too much about what this meant buttook a firmer grasp under his arms and eased him as gently as I could up toward release.
I did not allow for the presence of genuine evil in the village that day. I thought that once their thirst for pain and punishment was slaked they would relent. I was wrong. This young man’s crime had apparently been so horrific that he was to be given no mercy, and I, ironically, came to be the instrument of his death. As I was about to free him, I saw the big man nod to someone—someone behind me. I felt a blow to the side of my knee. It buckled. My grip on the man’s slick skin faltered, and I let him drop.
He revived, therefore, to a last unbearable agony and screamed as the full weight of his body impaled him completely upon the instrument of his torture. Totally weakened, he could do nothing to save himself, and it went high, too high for his frail body to survive. As I fell to the ground, believing my knee to be shattered, I saw him die. I was glad. They had taken their fun with him, but now he was released. Sometimes my lack of faith in God disturbed me. Sometimes it did not. This was one of the latter times.
I do not remember much about being carried back to the inn. Sometimes I wonder why I did not end up on that stake. I was a foreigner, someone who had tried to intervene and save a condemned prisoner. I was fortunate. The man I had addressed was the de facto mayor of the village, and knowing of my destination, he had insisted that I be dispatched on my way with no further hindrance. My knee was not broken, only badly bruised and swollen, as was my hand. As I mounted Xavier—I could not stay in that accursed place a single night—I repeated my inquiry as to the man’s crime. The mayor said something I did not understand at first: the punishment fit the crime. When he saw my baffled expression, he added that the man had been the author of his own fate, that by his actions in life he had forged his own path to a spike. I frowned again, still not understanding. He then shrugged and said, “He liked it well enough fornicating upon another man’s cock.”
