The Scar-Crow Men

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO




‘SOMETHING FOLLOWS US STILL. DO YOU SEE?’ SILVANUS POINTED down the rolling Staffordshire uplands to where the lush meadows fell against a dense strip of shadowy woodland. Will followed the line of the gypsy’s finger. Squinting, he could glimpse a grey shape flitting among the trees, though under the slate-grey skies at the end of the day he could not be sure it was not a trick of the light.

‘The same thing you have seen for the last three nights?’ the spy asked.

The man bobbed his ochre turban in a grave nod. His face was painted scarlet from the festivities in the village they had just left, where the gypsies had played their roles as fortune-tellers, magicians and performers. They had been given enough scraps of food to last them three days. ‘It draws closer with each day, sometimes appearing from the east, sometimes the west, searching for a break in our defences. It plans to attack if it can find a way in, or it would have left us alone long ago.’

The spy looked back at the children chasing each other alongside the laden horses of the caravan. What kind of man was he to show such callous disregard for the lives of the people who had protected him? Meg appeared to care little about the harsh decision they had taken for the greater good, but Will felt it weigh heavily on him every moment of the day.

The Moon-Man returned to his wife Sabina, who rode a horse with baskets hanging down its flanks. Their two boys, Goliath and Samuel, had taken a liking to Will, enjoying his tales of adventure. He felt another pang of self-loathing at their warm glances.

He looked back down the slope, but the shadow was gone. Whatever was out there would be back soon, though, he was sure of it.

He strode back to the slow-moving column where Red Meg played with the gypsy children. She had warmed to the Egyptians during the seven days the two spies had accompanied the caravan, sharing the travellers’ food round their fires under starry skies, and listening to the lilting poetry of their strange, secret language. On their journey across the flat Midlands plain, Will had seen his Irish companion peel away layers of deception to reveal what he believed were her genuine feelings. At times, he had almost grown to trust her.

The sun broke through the clouds as the caravan made its way steadily upwards. It was hot and muggy with the threat of rain. The dusty air of the track across the lowlands gave way to the scent of fern and cool, damp vegetation. As a dark band of forest loomed ahead of them, Silvanus made his way back. He wore a relieved smile.

‘We are nearing a safe place,’ he said, dabbing at the sweat on his brow with a red kerchief. ‘We have made camp here many times before. The tracks through these hills are always dangerous, with footpads and rogues roaming constantly. But there are many places nearby that the Good Neighbours call their own. When we move so close to their realm, we always take more care.’

Meg looked at the hillside and then down into the lowlands where the shadows of clouds scudded across the woods and meadows. ‘This reminds me of home,’ she said with a note of yearning. ‘Where are we?’

The Egyptian pointed from the shimmering line of the River Dane in the green valley towards the nearest heavily wooded mountain beyond the hillside. ‘That is the White Peak and this wood ahead is Back Forest. In there is our destination. Lud’s Church.’

‘A church?’ Meg asked. ‘You are God-fearing men, then?’

Silvanus grinned. ‘This church has been here much longer than the ones you know. It was old before the Bible was written.’

‘And who worships in that house of God?’ Will enquired.

The Moon-Man only smiled.

When the caravan wound its way under the cool canopy of Back Forest, the singing of the Egyptians grew quieter. The children kept closer to their mothers, wide, bright eyes searching the shadows among the trees. They could hear birdsong and the movement of small woodland creatures in the verdant undergrowth, but they all felt an odd weight upon them, as if the forest was holding its breath, watching the strange beings wandering into its midst. Will found the sensation unsettling, but not threatening.

The two boys, Goliath and Samuel, stepped in close to the spy, taking his hands. ‘Tell us a story, master,’ Samuel, the older boy, whispered, trying to be brave. ‘Tell us again how you fought the bear with your bare hands.’

Picking up Goliath, Will continued to hold the other boy’s hand as he spoke again about his exploits. Meg rolled her eyes at her companion’s heroic exaggerations and the weakness of his jokes, but she stayed by his side nonetheless, head down as she listened to his words. Glancing down at Samuel, Will had the strange feeling that he was looking at himself, on his way to hunt for birds’ eggs with his friends in the Forest of Arden. He was surprised by a brief but powerful pang of loss.

The caravan wound through the ancient greenwood, the track wide enough only for one person at a time. Their low, rhythmic singing rolled out among the gnarled trees. Although the Moon-Men were moving up into the highlands, Will noticed the front of the column had started to dip down. Eventually he came to a set of uneven steps cut into the grey bedrock, so old and worn by generations of feet they might have been formed by nature. The steps led into a chasm that had been created by a great landslip, as wide as the height of two men, the bottom lost to the dark. The singing stopped as each man, woman and child began their descent. Shafts of evening sunlight slashed through the jumble of overhanging trees, illuminating areas of moss-covered sandstone on the sheer walls.

The chasm was even cooler than the dense wood. As his eyes adjusted to the half-light, Will saw it was thickly overgrown with fern, bracken and long grass. When they reached the gulley’s stony foot, Meg looked up in awe at the patchwork of green leaf and blue sky as high overhead as the top of a steeple. ‘It is indeed a church,’ she whispered.

Silvanus turned back to Will and said, ‘Only on the day of midsummer does the sun reach to the very bottom of this sacred place. They say that, in the time before the church-people came to England, men and women ventured here to bow their heads to old gods.’

‘A good choice,’ Will replied with a nod. ‘It would not be difficult to defend this place against brigands.’

‘There is more to this sanctuary than that,’ the gypsy said, looking along the chasm to where his people were already pulling their bundles off the horses. ‘Some places even the Good Neighbours must walk with care.’

Silvanus went to help his wife erect their shelter. Along the soaring sandstone walls, the men unfurled brightly coloured squares of linen, draping them over arrangements of poles, while the women folded sheets for bedding. When they were done, fires were lit in the gathering gloom, the sparks swirling upwards towards the slash of cerulean sky. Huddled around the flames, the garishly painted women prepared the stolen poultry and trapped rabbits for the evening meal, their faces even more grotesque in the red light.

Meg called Will over and they sat under a shelter, watching the flickering light throw looming shadows across the wall of the chasm. ‘How does it feel – a tool of the English state, now on the run and allied with the very outsiders your government and people have hounded?’ the Irish woman teased.

‘Life surprises us with different roles when we least expect it.’

With a wistful expression, Meg watched the children at play.

‘I hear there is little love for Englishmen in your homeland,’ Will enquired from beneath the wide brim of his felt hat.

‘Would you expect any different after the massacres your Earl of Essex inflicted on my people?’ There was a crack of restrained anger in her voice. ‘Our lands sold off so that wealthy Englishmen can settle their plantations in Munster? Our women raped by your adventurers? The Irish have long memories, Master Swyfte.’

‘Yet here you are, helping the long-hated enemy. Apparently, life surprises us all with improbable roles.’ Will pushed his hat back, letting the flickering flames illuminate his features. ‘I wonder, do you truly help Henri of Navarre? Or do you aid Hugh O’Neill, with his ambitions to rule Ulster without interference? Or do you stand with the Gaels who just want blood for blood?’

Meg jumped to her feet. ‘You have been a spy so long that all you see is politics,’ she snapped. ‘There is more to life than that.’ She marched off among the flapping shelters and disappeared into the dark at the end of the chasm.

Will was baffled by the woman’s reaction. But when he made to follow her, he noticed an old gypsy staring at him. The man’s long white beard had been stained green at the tip, and there were bells in his snowy hair. He pointed a wavering finger. ‘There is a shadow with you,’ the Moon-Man said in faltering English. ‘It eats its way into your heart. If you do not rid yourself of it soon, you will die.’

‘We all die, sooner or later,’ Will retorted. But he was stung by the Egyptian’s words, for they echoed his own fears that his devil was drawing closer. As if Mephistophilis sensed his thoughts, the spy heard a faint laugh close to his ear.

His mood now dark, Will made his way through the camp to where the elders prepared the nightly defences. Chanting quietly, one of the gypsies sprinkled salt and herbs at the foot of the stone steps. Silvanus was looking up to where a patch of night sky was visible among the overhanging trees. He appeared to be unnerved by a rustling in the undergrowth near the lip of the chasm.

‘We will be safe?’ Will enquired.

‘As ever.’

‘But you are worried.’

‘I have never known the Good Neighbours to be so persistent. They like their mischief, but are easily bored and usually seek out other sport.’ Silvanus watched the trembling in the undergrowth subside, then shook his head and turned to the spy. ‘I fear something terrible is about to happen. It is in the cards that the women read every night. In the visions the old men have.’ He kneaded his hands together, glancing back up to the top of the chasm. ‘This devil-haunted land … What is happening? Are any of us safe?’

Returning to the shelter, Will accepted chicken and a knob of stolen bread from Sabina, which he gnawed on deep in thought, his mood growing more unsettled by the moment. Silvanus could sense it; they all could. England was slipping back into the hands of the Unseelie Court.

After the food, amid the crackle of the fire and the contented chatter of those around him, his eyelids fluttered. In the centre of the camp someone was playing a fiddle. The women would be dancing, their coloured calico scarves flying around their bare shoulders, their black hair lashing the air, the bells at their ankles jangling in a frenzy.

As he slipped towards sleep, an odd thought struck him. The Egyptians had the same word for life and death: merripen. What did it mean?

Through the dark of his head, Mephistophilis drew closer, whispering truths that he didn’t want to hear.

Will was roughly shaken from his deep slumber. The fires had died down to red ashes and a strong wind blustered with a hint of rain upon it.

‘You must help us.’ Silvanus’ frightened face filled the whole of Will’s vision. When the gypsy pulled back, the spy saw many others standing nearby, watching him uneasily. ‘Samuel is missing, his bed empty. We have searched all of Lud’s Church, but he is not here.’ The Moon-Man glanced fearfully in the direction of the stone steps.

Clambering to his feet, Will shook the last of the wool from his head. Meg was away to one side, comforting the boy’s mother. ‘He is a clever lad. He knows better than to wander off, especially at night, and in this place.’

Silvanus bowed his head, his voice falling to a whisper. ‘Yet my son is not here.’