The Penwyth Curse (Medieval Song 6)

“Both one and the same,” said Lord Vellan. “Both a mystery to man. Call it what you will.”

Merryn said, “Did my grandmother scare you to the roots of your hair?”

“She confused me more than scared me,” he said, knowing he wasn’t telling the exact truth. “She did not make a great deal of sense.”

“You just don’t know how to listen to her properly. She tells me her brain is seasoned from so many years dealing with this earth. A seasoned brain, she tells me, is a brain that can comprehend the meaning of a leaf that lies atop a rock.”

Bishop rolled his eyes. “I am tired of this.” He turned to Lord Vellan. “My lord, I wish to hear what you think about the Penwyth curse. If there is really no curse, then mayhap you will tell me that it is poison, that you have saved Penwyth and your granddaughter by poisoning the men who have forced their way in here. It is one or the other, my lord. It is time you told me which it is.”

The great hall fell quiet for the second time. More old faces than he could count, all seamed from years in the sun, were alert, their eyes fastened on the lord’s table.

Lord Vellan cleared his throat, drank more ale, then said in a voice that carried to the blackened beams overhead, “I did not poison any of the four husbands. Even though I struck my wife once, I more than paid for it. I am guilty of nothing else.”

Lady de Gay called out as she floated across the vast stone floor toward them, “I will tell you, Sir Bishop, all about the curse. It came from the spirit of an ancient Druid priest, B’Eall was his name. He was bloated with the blood of many sacrifices. He had held scores of dripping hearts in his hands, caressed them, squeezed them, the blood flowing through his fingers, until there was no more blood in them. B’Eall said he knew when he stood on this land, looking over the rocks and the hills and beyond to the sea, that it was his duty to proclaim this land sacred. He buried many bloodless hearts in this earth to make it so. And so it happened.”

Lord Vellan shrugged. “Who knows?”

“It is deep and complex, this curse,” Merryn said, and sneered at him. “Beyond a mortal man’s brain.”

Lady Madelyn’s tale was meant to paralyze a man with fright. It was enough. It was too much. He realized they were playing with him. No one could be as artfully mad, as artfully perverse, as these people. It was all a ruse to frighten him, to make him ride as fast as he could away from Penwyth.

Bishop rose slowly from his chair. He looked from the old woman, gowned so beautifully this evening in a long-ago style, to her husband, to their granddaughter, with her pretty feet and small ears. He wiped Beelzebub’s cheese off his knife and eased it back into its sheath strapped to his forearm, inside his tunic sleeve.

He looked yet again from Lord Vellan to Lady de Gay and said, “My craw is full to overflowing with all your crazed words meant to terrify a man. They do not terrify me. They enrage me. I have had enough of it.”

No one said a word. No one’s attention faltered, except for two of the wolfhounds, who began to snore. “Listen, all of you. I have told you all that I am a wizard. I have told you all that it will rain, that the drought will cease. I have told Lady de Gay that she birthed five children. I have told you that I understand otherworldly spirits and their ways, that I can hear ancient voices and understand them. I will not tolerate any more of these mad, mad puzzles, your ill-disguised threats cloaked in mystical trappings.” He looked at Merryn. “I will not tolerate your secrets and your lies.” He paused, then spoke louder, reaching every ear in the great hall. “I will now give you my own curse.”

The two snoring wolfhounds stirred, then looked up at him. Bishop stood tall. He raised both arms above his head, his palms out, stretched to the beamed ceiling. He closed his eyes. His voice boomed out deep, thunderous as a prophet foretelling doom on the heads of the people. “I pronounce that this spot of earth upon which I stand will flow with endless rain until all my inquiries are answered clearly and truthfully.”

“Endless rain would be a pleasant thing, Sir Bishop,” Merryn said, not a whit moved, not even mildly alarmed. “It is not our fault that you are too dimwitted to understand words spoken to you.”

“And those words not spoken to me? Am I too dim-witted to understand them as well?”

She crossed her legs and kicked her foot up and down. There was that damned sneer on her mouth again. He was so mad he wanted to spit, to hurl her into the moat once it was full again.

Then he looked around the great hall. The servants and the soldiers were all of them frozen in place, their faces showing their fear. That pleased him. He looked at Lord and Lady de Gay. They were calmly chewing on bread and cheese, acting as if they hadn’t heard him. But the wolfhounds, all six of them, were alert now, all eyes on him, standing tall like soldiers ready for battle. Or waiting for more white bones.

“We have answered you as clearly as we can,” Lord Vellan said, and just maybe he looked a bit apprehensive, the old fraud. Good.

It hit him then that he’d just up and announced a flood. He’d done himself in with a curse—he who knew nothing of curses or their origins, he who had no power at all. A flood. He couldn’t believe his own stupidity.

But maybe his curse had come from somewhere deep within him. After all, he’d known about Lady de Gay’s five children. He was a blockhead.

It had been happenstance, it meant nothing at all. He was a fool and a blockhead. He could but hope that it would rain at least two days. Were two days of hard rain enough to fulfill the curse?

There was no hope for it. He had to do something dramatic, something so shocking that it would shake them to their very core. He was smiling as he turned to Merryn, grabbed her arm, and jerked her to her feet. Her mouth opened to yell at him, but he slammed down his palm, and she couldn’t even squeak. “No. You will be quiet.” He tightened his grip, knowing he was hurting her but not caring at the moment.

He leaned down until his mouth was an inch from hers and said, his voice just as loud, just as carrying, “You will come with me, Merryn de Gay. You will remain on one of the parched hillocks until the rain comes. You will feel the rain strike your flesh, fill your mouth, blind your eyes. I will keep you away from Penwyth until you tell me the truth of the curse.”

She kicked him in the shin.

His blood throbbed wildly with rage, coursing through him like madness itself, ready to overflow into violence. He jerked her off her feet and threw her over his shoulder. He saw Lord

Vellan’s master-at-arms, Crispin, raise his sword. “No, Crispin, be seated. None of you will interfere. I am here to remove the Penwyth curse, and that is what I will do. I will tolerate no more lies and evasions, no more attempts to drive me to madness.”

She was struggling, trying to rear up, pounding his back with her fists. Bishop smiled as he slammed his palm against her bottom.

She yelled, reared up again, and tried to bite him. He loosed his hold on her and she fell, head down, toward the stone floor. She screamed. He tightened his hold, looked over his shoulder and said, “You will be quiet and hold still or I will drop you and your head will crack open like a ripe melon.”