Here be Monsters

CHAPTER 12

“I fear that we must,” Allouette said with gentle sympathy, “for we’ve young men waiting, and we must find them before they wander into trouble.”

“Young men! What do young men know?” The ugly man was right beside her horse somehow; he had moved far more quickly than she had expected. “Age betokens experience! It takes maturity for a man to know how to read a woman’s signs, to recognize her wants and needs and fulfill her wishes.”

“You had best not be speaking of the wishes I think you mean,” Quicksilver warned.

But the ugly fellow paid her no heed; all his attention was focused on Allouette. “Nay, maiden, stay awhile, and I shall show you such delights as never a young man could.”

“I am no maiden,” Allouette answered, beginning to be frightened but striving not to let it show—or to let it make her lash out. “I am no maiden, and my fiancé has already shown me all the delights I can stand.”

Cordelia felt a perverse pride in her brother.

“All the delights you can think of.” The ugly man’s hands rose in supplication. “Nay, tarry with me, and learn far more exquisite notions than youth can know!”

“I wish no greater pleasure than the embrace of my betrothed.” Allouette’s voice hardened. “Foul are you to urge me to betray him! Forfend and farewell!” She turned her horse away.

But the ugly man caught her bridle, beseeching, “Only a little while, only an hour, only half! If I cannot teach you far more of desire than ever you have known in even so little time as that, turn aside from me and leave me evermore!” He reached out to touch her hand.

Allouette recoiled, for his flesh was cold and moist. “Forfend, forgo! I shall indeed leave you, and that without a minute’s more converse!”

“Say congress, rather,” the ugly fellow pleaded, “or even a kiss, only one! If that will not thaw the chill of your heart, then leave me indeed!”

Allouette fought to conceal the revulsion that swept her at the thought of that bristly moustache against her skin and the cold moist flesh of those lips against her own. She let a little anger show. “Must I speak with cruelty, fellow? Loose my mare’s reins and let me go, for I do not wish to visit harm upon you!”

“But your steed does not recoil from me,” the ugly man pointed out. “Indeed, she welcomes my touch.” To prove it, he stroked the animal’s neck; her skin quivered. “See? She trembles with longing!”

“Or shivers with apprehension! Let go and stand off! Will you force me to be cruel?”

“You are so already, merely by denying me! O lady of beauty, O damsel of delight, pay heed! Suffer only one caress, and you shall crave more!”

“I should suffer indeed!” Allouette turned to her companions. “Ladies, will you not help me escape this importunate fellow?”

“He importunes you indeed.” Cordelia studied the scene with brooding attention. “Off with you, old man! Cease your attentions when a lady shows she does not welcome them!”

“Ah, but she will if—”

“Away with you, she said!” Quicksilver sat tense and poised, her hand on her sword hilt. “We have no wish to be hurtful, but we will suffer your attentions no longer!”

“O paragon of loveliness, bid your friends ride on without you!” the ugly man implored.

“Be off!” Quicksilver drew her sword. “Or have you as strong a taste for steel as for women?”

The polished blade flashed sunlight into the ugly man’s eyes. He cried out, covering his eyes in pain, and fell backward into the water.

“No! I will not have him die for dismissal!” Allouette kicked her horse forward toward the stream.

“Wait!” Cordelia seized her arm, pointing with the other hand. “See how he fares!”

The ugly man sank below the water. As the foam and the waves closed over his head, they could see his tunic tighten about him, saw his cross-garters dissolve and his legs fuse together, the fur leggings clinging to the flesh even as his feet broadened into the twin flukes of a tail. His thatch of grizzled hair darkened and seemed to flow downward over a skull that flowed into a powerful neck and shoulders; his mouth and nose bulged outward into a muzzle and the bushy moustache stretched into whiskers; the nubbin of nose turned black, and his arms shrank even as his hands grew and flattened into paddles. The seal shot back to the surface, balancing on its tail and turning to look back at them, calling out in one last mournful series of barks before it turned and plunged back into the roiling water, diving to twist and turn between the boulders as it raced away and shot glistening over a little waterfall, then disappeared in the foam.

“It was no true man,” Cordelia whispered, “but a selkie.”

Allouette began to tremble.

“It was a very handsome seal,” Cordelia said tentatively.

“But a very ugly man,” Quicksilver answered scornfully. “Come, ladies—let us ride.”

• • •

“Surely we should stop to rest soon,” Gregory protested. “Night is not a healthy time for travel when there are so many supernatural creatures about.”

Geoffrey was nodding in his saddle, but at his brother’s protest he shook himself back to some semblance of wakefulness. “Come, brother, what have we to fear? Whatever comes against us, surely Alain and I can hold it at bay while you disassemble it.”

“Not if it is as tightly counterspelled as that last,” Gregory said darkly.

“We have ridden the clock around,” Alain reminded Geoffrey, “and we always pitch camp before dark. Why do we push ahead after sunset now?”

“After sunset? Well after sunset! In pitch darkness!” Gregory exclaimed. “What need?”

“Our encounters have made me wary of the darkness,” Geoffrey confessed. “I wish stout walls about me this night, though I cannot say why. Only a little farther, gentlemen, and surely we shall come to a village!”

Ahead of them, a roar shook the night.

“I think a campfire would do well enough,” Gregory said nervously.

“We must face our fears!” Geoffrey was fully alert now. “Onward! We must see what made that bellow!” He kicked his horse to gallop; the exhausted beast managed a valiant trot.

Gregory sighed as he and Alain picked up their own paces, clucking to their mounts as they tried to catch up with Geoffrey. They came abreast with him only because he paused at the top of a rise as another bellow shook the ground. “Yonder!” He pointed at the dots of light that made a semicircle ahead and below.

“What manner of sight is this?” Gregory wondered.

“It is the village your brother hoped for.” Alain pointed at a tall shape glowing faintly in the moonlight. “That is a church, or I miss my guess.”

“Aye, and there are cottages around a common,” Gregory added.

Geoffrey frowned. “I see it now—and those little lights curve along one side of that circle.”

The roar shook the trees about them; several dead branches fell.

“Curiosity consumes me,” Alain confessed.

“And that roar has the sound of a monster seeking battle.” Geoffrey grinned with anticipation. “Let us ride in and discover what it is.”

They found a pathway and started down the slope. “Slowly,” Alain cautioned. “There is no need to rush into danger.”

Geoffrey’s mouth tightened; he would have loved to do just that, but he held his peace, silently acknowledging that Alain had common sense on his side.

“Do my eyes deceive me, or has that half-circle of lights grown smaller?” Gregory asked.

Geoffrey studied the scene for a second, then nodded. “Your eyes show truly, brother. If there are people holding those lights, they are moving closer together.”

“Ho! What have we here?” The prince drew his horse up.

Looking down, the brothers saw a man and a woman crouched by the roadside, one arm wrapped about each other, the others encircling a little boy and a little girl.

The roar sounded again. One of the children gave a cry of fear and the mother spoke soothing words, though her own voice trembled as twigs fell on her shoulders.

“Why hide you so far from your cottage?” Alain asked. “Be sure that if you fear for your safety, there are three swords here to guard you!”

“Swords will do little good against that monster,” the woman moaned.

“What manner of monster is this?” Gregory said with keen interest.

“It is a ghost, Sir Knight,” the man answered, “but it has taken the form of a bull.”

Gregory stared. “Why would a human ghost so disguise itself?”

“In life, Bayurg was a most wicked man,” the woman explained, and shuddered at the memory.

“He was a bully and a miser,” the husband said bitterly, “who only did two good deeds in all his life, and many, many evil ones.”

“He cozened the lord into giving him parts of the fields of each of his neighbors,” said the wife, “and traded shoddy cloth for grain.”

“And spoiled grain for good stout cloth,” the man said darkly.

“He promised marriage to six different lasses,” the woman said, “and when he had tasted their delights, he scorned each one. Four he got with child but would not give anything to their keeping. At last no woman would listen to his suit, so he went to take a seventh by force, but all the folk were watching him shrewdly by then and drove him away.”

“He lied, he cheated, he swindled,” the man said. “He stole tools and food and furniture and beat their owners if they sought to regain their goods.”

“A most evil man indeed,” Alain said, affronted. “What were the two good deeds he did?”

“He did give a worn-out cloak to a poor man,” the wife said reluctantly, “and once, in a moment of weakness, gave a bit of bread and cheese to one of his children, for the boy was very hungry.”

“But that was not enough to win him a place in Heaven,” the husband said, “nor even in Purgatory, I suspect. He fell down dead in his forty-ninth year and the parson buried him, but none mourned him.”

“So his two good deeds were enough to delay his exile to Hell,” Gregory mused. “Why, though, do you think he could not gain Heaven or Purgatory?”

“Because his ghost came back,” the wife said, and shuddered.

“It was doubtless to give him a chance to make amends for all the wrongs he had done,” the husband said, “but he has only gone on as he did when alive. A bully he was, and as a bull he has returned, a giant bull who appears on the common in the dead of night. For weeks he will not come, and we will begin to relax when the sun sets—whereupon he will descend on us again, frightening any who dare walk abroad after dark, chasing them into rivers or mires, and bellowing so loudly on the common that he shakes the thatch off our roofs and makes the shutters bang so hard that they break.”

The roar came again and a huge dead branch came crashing down a yard from Alain’s horse. The stallion surged against the bit, but Alain held him and asked, “Have you not sent to your lord for help?”

“He would not believe his old flatterer would do ill,” the man said bitterly, “and our friar sought to exorcise the monster, but the bull was too strong for him. It roared to drown out his words, then chased him into the church.”

“We have had enough,” the woman said, “more than enough, all we can take. We would flee the village outright, but Brother Anselm persuaded us to try one last measure.”

“We have asked friars from eleven other villages to come and help put down the ghost for good.” The husband nodded toward the lights below. “There they walk, each carrying a lighted candle, and we can hear their chorus of prayers in spite of all the bull’s roaring.”

“A most worthy undertaking!” Alain exchanged glances with Geoffrey, who grinned back and said, “And a most courageous! I would see the outcome.”

“I too,” Gregory agreed. “If there is anything I do not know about laying to rest a ghost, I will most eagerly learn it—and who knows? The dozen friars may yet need our aid.”

“Thanks for the warning, good people,” Alain said to the family, “but I believe we will ride into this danger nonetheless.”

They could still hear the family groaning with fear when they were twenty feet away and picking up speed.

As they rode into the common, they saw that the half-circle had tightened, managing to ring the bull completely on three sides—and behind it rose the church. The bull towered over them, ten feet tall at least, bellowing and roaring and pawing the earth. Now and again it charged a friar, but all held their places in the circle with dogged determination, candles high as they chanted their prayers loudly and stepped forward, slowly but with great resolution. The bull turned from one to another, about and about, still making its hideous noise, confused and enraged as the circle tightened around him.

“They push him toward the graveyard!” Geoffrey said.

“Of course—it is the place of the dead!” Gregory cried. “But surely so wicked a spirit may not step on consecrated ground without pain or danger of destruction!”

Nonetheless, the bull turned toward the cemetery—but froze as it saw the dim, translucent forms rising from the ground and gathering shoulder to shoulder to form a wall.

“The ghosts of those he cheated and despoiled!” Gregory breathed. “It is ghost against ghost now, and they have the strength of Right to brace them.”

“And of numbers,” Geoffrey agreed. “Surely the bull cannot venture into the graveyard now.”

“True,” Alain said, puzzled. “It cannot go backward, and it cannot go forward for fear of the prayers and the blessed light of the candles. How then do they mean to chase it away?”

“I do not think they do,” said Geoffrey grimly. “I think they mean to lay it to rest once and for all.”

“To force it to lie in its coffin and never come out?” Alain asked, amazed.

“Something of the sort,” Gregory said, studying the friars and their roaring foe. “Let us see what they do.”

Tighter and tighter the circle became, surrounding the bull in a corral of lights. Its bellows stormed and threatened, but still the ring closed in on it. At last, with an earthshaking roar, the bull bolted toward the church door.

“It cannot go in!” Alain protested. “Not into a consecrated place!”

“It is the church, or the ghosts whose yearning for revenge burns white-hot,” Gregory explained. “Which will hurt it more?”

“The frying pan or the fire?” Geoffrey muttered.

The church shook with the bull’s shout of agony, a long roll of sound that combined anger and pain so deeply that all three men shuddered. Even Geoffrey felt fear of that horrendous creature, but the friars strode with determination into the chapel.

“I must be there!” Gregory cried. “Who knows what the beast will do when it is cornered?”

“Nay,” Geoffrey cried, “that is why you must not—”

Gregory disappeared with a small thundercrack.

“Oh, blast! What peril has he sent himself into this time?” Geoffrey turned to Alain. “Follow when you can!” And with another thundercrack he, too, disappeared, leaving Alain to decorate the evening air with some curses that any well-bred prince should not have known.

Gregory appeared inside the church with a thundercrack that was drowned out by the bull’s most agonized roar. There were no pews, as in most medieval churches, so the floor was one wide expanse of flagstone with the bull in its center and two lines of friars striding with determination along the walls toward the altar, to protect the side and rear walls while a third spread out to block the doorway. They held their candles high and filled the church with the sound of prayer, somehow louder even than the bull’s cries of pain and fury. It turned about and about, charging first one friar, then another, always repelled by the prayers. Finally it realized they were about to close the circle around it and charged the eastern wall, head down, horns stabbing out. It slammed headlong into the stone, rebounded, and wobbled back to the center, reeling and dizzy.

“It has cracked solid granite!”

Gregory looked up to see his brother beside him, pointing. His arrival, too, had been drowned out by the chanting and the bellowing. “Cracked, but not broken,” he said. “This is a hallowed building, after all. It may hurt the bull sorely, but its wall is proof against the strength of his wickedness.”

“And is stronger than he, it seems!” Geoffrey pointed. “See! It shrinks!”

Gregory looked, and sure enough, the bull was growing smaller. It must have realized its peril, though, for it sucked in a huge quantity of air, puffing itself up as well as it could.

Suddenly Gregory realized the bull’s intent. “Beware!” he called to the friars. “The ghost means to—”

The bull let out all the air in one vast bellow, spinning as it did to sweep its breath over every single candle. The wave of frigid air snuffed out each one of the little lights. In the darkness, the friars cried out in consternation and the bull bellowed in triumph.

“Excite molecules!” Gregory snapped at his brother and stared into the darkness, visualizing tiny lights piercing its gloom.

“The very thing!” Geoffrey cried, and did the same.

One by one, the tiny flames rekindled, casting their glows over the faces of the friars. With joy, the clergymen began to chant again, and the bull bellowed in outrage—but his bellow slid up the scale, higher and higher as the friars stepped closer and closer. They were near enough now so that their candles illuminated the bull from every side, showing his shrinking; their horseshoe had finally become a ring, tightening around the monster as it grew smaller and smaller. The hymn rose up in joy and triumph as the creature dwindled, its baffled bellowing becoming a bleating, then a trilling, and finally a squeaking.

“Now, Brother Hendrik!” a friar cried, and one of his fellows stepped forward with a tinder box. He scooped up the tiny creature and snapped the lid shut.

Gregory and Geoffrey shouted with triumph. Another voice joined them; turning in surprise, they saw Alain standing near the door, cheering as lustily as they.

But the friars did not cheer, only sang a hymn of thanks to the Deity who had vanquished their enemy. Their song soared and ended, and the church lay silent a moment, its stone walls gilded by the light of the candle flames.

Then a squeaking came from the tinder box, a cricket chirp that formed itself into words: “What will you do with me? Have mercy, I pray!”

“What mercy did you show to those who came within your power?” a friar demanded.

“You shall be served even as you served your fellows,” another friar agreed.

“Do me this much, at least!” the tiny voice implored. “Bury this box under the bridge across the village stream, that I may be not completely alone!”

“Nay, fellow,” the oldest friar said sternly. “We know the malice in your heart.”

“And the powers even a tiny ghost may have,” another graying friar agreed. “Most likely you would make every pregnant woman who crossed that bridge miscarry.”

“Aye, and every cow and ewe, too,” a third friar added.

The tinder box issued a frenzy of chirping that modulated into words. “A curse upon you for your suspicious minds!”

“If he would curse us, then we were right in our guessing his mischief,” the oldest friar said with a grim smile. “Nay, villain, we shall wrap this box in lead and send it to the seacoast for a fisherman to take and sink as many fathoms deep as he can.”

“Think of charity!” the box squeaked. “Would you doom me to eternity within this cramped and lightless space?”

“If it is not to your liking, you may go to the Afterworld and the reward your cruelty has earned you.”

“Cruel as you, if you would doom me to damnation! You know that hellfire awaits me!”

“It is the fate you have chosen for yourself,” the friar said severely, “by your mistreatment of your fellows while you lived.”

Gregory stepped forward, one hand raised. “If I may intrude, holy brothers?”

The friars look up, startled. Then the oldest friar said slowly, “I wondered how our candles relit themselves. Well, if it is you who made them glow to life again, speak, for you have earned some voice in this matter, stranger or not.”

“I thank you, men of grace.” Gregory stared at the box, fascinated. “Might you not sing the bull down smaller still, say to the size of a gnat, so that to him, his chamber is as spacious as a palace?”

The friars exchanged a look of surprise. “Aye,” the eldest said slowly, “in charity’s name, we might do that much.”

“But to never again see light!” the box squeaked.

“Do not believe him,” Gregory advised. “He is a ghost, after all, and can lighten his palace with his own glow.”

“Curse you for knowing that!” the box squeaked.

“What,” the friar cried, scandalized, “would you curse him who even now spoke up for you, who thought to make you so small that your chamber would seem a cavern? Nay, you are not worthy of such kindness after all!”

“No, no!” the bull squeaked. “I spoke rashly, I spoke in error! Nay, I revoke all curses I have laid! Only sing me smaller, men of virtue!”

“Would it were something other than force that could induce his remorse,” the friar sighed, “but we can afford a morsel of charity after all. Brothers, let us sing.”

Alain, Geoffrey, and Gregory left the church as they began. They paused a moment on the common to look back at the chapel, listening to the harmonies rising within.

“To look at it now, one would think only of peace and calm,” Alain marveled.

“Aye,” Geoffrey agreed. “Who could know of the cruelty and depth of malice of the creature, or the determination and courage it took to quell it?”

“It is enough that we know, and that harmony is restored to this village.” Gregory looked up at the sky in wonder. “This has taken far longer than it seemed, friends. Dawn lightens the sky.”

“Why, so it does,” Alain said, astonished, then turned to mount his horse. “Somehow I have no great desire to sleep in this village, day or night. Since there will be light to show us our way, let us ride on a few miles more and pitch camp in some meadow.”

“A good thought.” Geoffrey swung up astride his stallion. “Still, I cannot be sorry that we pressed on through darkness last night.”

“Nor I,” Gregory admitted. He set his foot in the stirrup and mounted. “Come, gentlemen, let us ride, for we can surely find a more secure place of rest than this.”

Nonetheless, as they rode over the log bridge toward the forest, Geoffrey turned to his brother with a frown. “What are you smiling about now, Watchman?”

“Only thinking that word travels, and the friars have no reason to keep the events of this night secret,” Gregory answered. “I doubt not that the folk of this village will be very cautious about crossing this bridge for some years to come.”

“Have you any biscuit left, Cordelia?” Quicksilver asked. “Mine is gone, and I’ve only a few strips of jerky left.”

“I’ve four biscuits but no dried beef.” Cordelia handed hardtack to each of the women. “We shall keep one in reserve.”

Hunger gnawed at Allouette’s stomach—indeed, it growled at her in anger as she passed the biscuit back to Cordelia. “I thank you, damsel, but I can last some while longer. Perchance we shall find some nuts or berries.”

“Or a rabbit who has tired of life?” Quicksilver asked. “Perhaps I shall hunt when we pitch camp, but skinning and roasting will delay us too long for the sharpness of my hunger.”

“I shall subsist on the beauty that surrounds us.” Allouette looked around at the trees to either side of the trail. “Surely these are old and venerable trunks! So tall, so massive!”

“I see some that are neither.” Cordelia nodded toward a coppice, a patch of several dozen oak trees only a little more than a foot across. Then she looked down at the roots. “Why, they are growing from the stumps of trees fallen before them!”

They looked and saw that each of the young trees had a flat plane of wood beneath it, some only a foot high, some two feet—but eighteen inches wide or more, and each grew from the center of a three-foot-wide stump. Almost every one had another, smaller stump that had grown out of the side.

“Why, the oaks of this coppice have been cut three times!” Cordelia exclaimed. “These trees are the fourth generation!”

Allouette shivered. “There is something uncanny about this place, something weird, as though it waits to trap the unwary.”

“Well might it hold a grudge against humankind, if each of its oaks has been chopped down three times!” Cordelia said with a laugh. “Nonetheless, you cannot deny that it is a pretty place.”

“Oh yes, it is lovely,” Allouette agreed, “perhaps because these trees spread so much smaller a canopy than the hoary old giants about them. They let more sunlight in—and look! The coppice is filled with bluebells!”

The small blue flowers did indeed fill the little grove so densely that they almost seemed to be a carpet. Among them the red tops of toadstools thrust up.

“How strange to see toadstools among flowers,” Cordelia marveled, “and such large ones, too!”

“They seem almost jolly, almost festive,” Allouette agreed.

“I wonder if they are good to eat?” Quicksilver pressed a hand over her rumbling stomach.

As if in answer, one of the toadstools rose upward. The three women gasped as they saw beneath it a gnarled and wrinkled face with a long red nose. Then the toadstool began to walk toward them.