By the time we set out, his cheeks were flushed and he was a far cry from sober, but neither was he so impaired that he could not stay in the saddle—writers and their livers.
The smoke and fog and sewer stench of London followed us out of the city proper to Finsbury Fields, which are simply suburbs, a park, and St. Luke’s church now but were liberally fertilized with all manner of excrescence back then, and some had been gamely sown with attempted crops. Muddy wagon trails divided the fields, and it was Shakespeare’s idea that we would find the hags at some crossroads out there, if the rumors of witchcraft were true.
“On the continent, one can still find offerings left at crossroads on the new moon for Hecate, or Trivia,” he said, and I feigned ignorance of the custom.
“Is that so? I have never heard the like.”
“Oh, aye. It is always at three roads, however, not four; Hecate has a triple aspect.”
“So we are looking for worshippers of Hecate, then?”
“The proceedings being held on the new moon would be consistent with her cult. It is a slightly different devilry from dealing with powers of hell but no less damned.”
I suppressed a smile at that. The worship of Hecate had taken many forms throughout the centuries—her conception and manifestation was especially fluid compared with that of most other deities. Even today she is the patron goddess of some Wiccans, who look at her as embodying the maiden-mother-crone tradition, a gentler conception than the sometimes fierce and bloodthirsty manifestations she took on in earlier days.
Shakespeare, of course, looked upon all witches, regardless of type, through the Christian filter—evil by default and allied with hell to destroy Christendom. I looked at them through the Druidic filter: Plenty of witches were fine in my book until they tried to twist nature’s powers for their own purposes. If they wanted to curse someone with bad luck or sacrifice a goat with a knife to summon a demon, that was their business and frankly not my fight. I was also grateful for those who tried to heal others or craft wards against malevolent spirits. But moon magic could be dangerous, and attempts to bind weather or possess people or animals would draw my annoyed attention rather quickly. The elementals would let me know what was up and I would come running.
It was because of this that I tended not to notice the benevolent witches or even meet them very often; they did their thing in secret and harmed no one. All I ever saw were the bad apples, and it probably prejudiced me against witches in general over time.
The dirt tracks cutting swaths through Finsbury Fields were not precisely dry, but neither were they muddy bogs. They’d be dry in another day or so, and the horses left only soft depressions in the mud, chopping up the ruts somewhat and moving quietly at a slow walk. The rustle of our clothes and our conversation made more noise than the horses’ hooves.
That noise, however, was enough to attract four figures out of the darkness—that and Shakespeare’s torch, no doubt.
“Please, good sir, could you give me directions?” a voice said in the night. We reined in—a terrible decision—and four unshaven and aggressively unwashed men with atrocious dentition approached from either side of our horses, taking reins with one hand and pointing daggers at us with the other. A very smooth and practiced waylay, and they knew it. We could not move without being cut, and they smiled up at us with blackened, ravaged teeth, enjoying our expressions of surprise and dismay.
The leader was on my right and spoke again. “More specifically, can you direct me to your purse? Hand it over now and we’ll let you be on your way; there’s a good lad.”
If it had been only coins in my purse, I would have happily obliged. Coins are easy to come by. But the piece of cold iron resting in the bottom was rare, and I didn’t wish to part with it.
Shakespeare, who was not only deep in his cups but thrashing about deeply in them, began hurling insults at the leader, who found them rather amusing and smiled indulgently at the angry sot while never taking his eyes off me.
“You raw and chap-blistered rhinoceros tit!” Shakespeare roared. “You onion-fed pustule of a snarling badger quim! How dare you accost the Marquis de Crèvecoeur!”
The bandit laughed, polluting the air with his halitosis. Drawing on the stored energy in my bear charm to increase my strength and speed, I began to mutter bindings in Old Irish, which they would probably interpret as nervous French. “Visiting from the continent, are we? Well, me chapped tits and snarling quim would welcome some French coin as well as English.”
His companions chuckled at his lame riposte, confident that they had the better of us, and the one on my left, with a broken nose and a boil on his cheek, gestured with his dagger. “Let’s begin with you getting off that high horse, Marquis.”
Shakespeare wouldn’t let that pass without loud comment, still directing his remarks at the man on my right. “Cease and begone, villain! You have all the dignity of a flea-poxed cur’s crusty pizzle! You dry, pinched anus of a Puritan preacher!”
Their gap-toothed smiles instantly transformed into scowls, and all eyes swung to the bard. “What!” The leader barked. “Did he just call me a bloody Puritan?”
“Not exactly,” Cheek Boil said. “I think he called you a Puritan’s bunghole.”
While keeping his hand on my horse’s bridle, the leader swung his dagger away from my thigh to point at Will, behind me. “Listen, you shite, I may be a bunghole,” he cried, brown phlegmy spittle flying from his maw, “but I’m a proper God-fearing one, not some frothy Puritan baggage!”
While they were all looking at Will, I triggered my camouflage charm, taking on the pigments of my surroundings and effectively disappearing in the dim torchlight. Using the boosted strength and speed I’d drawn, I slipped my left foot out of the stirrup and kicked Cheek Boil in the chest before falling to the right and landing chops on either end of the leader’s collarbones. They broke, he dropped both his knife and my horse’s reins, and I gave him a head butt in the face to make sure he fell backward and stayed there.