My attack drew the attention of the men watching the bard, and he was not slow to seize advantage of the opportunity. With the gazes of the two men pulled forward, he dipped the torch in his left hand and shoved it into the face of the man on his left. The man screamed and dropped his weapon, stepping back with both hands clutched to his eyes. That startled Shakespeare’s horse and it shied and whinnied, ripping out of the grip of the rogue on Shakespeare’s right. He began shouting, “Oi! Hey!” and then, seeing that his companions were all wounded or down and he wasn’t either quite yet, he muttered, “To hell with this,” and scarpered off whence he came, into the dark wet sludge of Finsbury Fields. The leader was discovering how difficult it was to get up with a couple of broken collarbones and called for help. Cheek Boil, who’d not been seriously hurt, recovered and moved to help him, not seeing me.
Fire Face, meanwhile, had morphed from mean to murderous. Nothing would do for him now but to bury his knife in Shakespeare’s guts. Growling, he searched for the knife he’d dropped in the dark. I scrambled in front of Will’s horse, dropping my camouflage as I did so, and drew Fragarach, slipping between Will and Fire Face just as he found his knife and reared up in triumph.
“Think carefully, Englishman,” I said, doing my best to emphasize that I was very French and not an Irish lad.
Fire Face was not a spectacular thinker. He was a ginger like me, perhaps prone to impetuousness, and he bellowed to intimidate me and charged. Maybe his plan was to wait for me to swing or stab and then try to duck or dodge, get in close, and shove that dagger into my guts. Perhaps it would have worked against someone with normal reflexes. I slashed him across the chest, drawing a red line across his torso, and he dropped to the ground and screamed all out of proportion to the wound, “O! O! I am slain!”
“Oh, shut up,” I spat. “You are not. You’re just stupid, that’s all.” Turning to Will, I said, “Ride ahead a short distance, Master Shakespeare. I will be close behind.” I slapped the rump of his horse, and it surged forward despite the protests of its rider. I kept Fragarach out and stepped around my horse to check on Cheek Boil and the leader. Cheek Boil was trying to help the leader to his feet but was having trouble without an arm to pull on. The pigeon-livered one who ran away could be neither seen nor heard.
“I’m leaving you alive, monsieurs,” I said, as I sheathed my sword and mounted my horse. “A favor that you would not likely have extended to me. Think kinder of the French from now on, yes?”
A torrent of fairly creative profanity and the continued wailing of Fire Face trailed me as I goaded the horse to catch up to Will, but I was glad I didn’t have to kill any of them. William Shakespeare would probably exaggerate the encounter as it was, and I didn’t need a reputation as a duelist or fighter of any kind.
The bard was jubilant when I caught up to him. “Excellent fighting, Marquis! You moved so quickly I lost track of you for a moment!”
Ignoring that reference to my brief time in camouflage, I said, “You were quite skilled with the torch.”
Shakespeare grinned at it, jiggling it a little in his fist. “And it’s still aflame! Finest torch I’ve ever carried.”
“Shall we return to London, then?”
“What, already? Fie! That passing distraction is no matter. We have hags to find.”
“I doubt we will find them in these fields. They seem to be populated by villains and pale vegetables, and fortune may not favor us a second time.”
“Tush! Think no more on it! You are more than a match for any bandits, M’sieur Lefebvre.”
“I may not be a match for one with a bow.”
“Anyone skilled with a bow would be patrolling a richer stretch of road than a wagon trail in this mildewed fen, m’sieur.”
He had a point, damn him. Using one of my charms—newly completed at that time—I cast night vision as a precaution and didn’t look toward the torch anymore. If another set of bandits wished to ambush us, I would see them coming. I was so intent on scanning the area on the right side of the road that Shakespeare startled me after a half mile by saying, “There.” He pointed off to his left, and I had to lean forward and crane my neck to see what he was looking at. It was a faint white glow on the horizon, a nimbus of weak light in the darkness near the ground. It flickered as if something passed in front of it and kept moving. “What could that be?” he asked. “?’Tis the wrong color of light for a campfire, wouldn’t you say?”
I grunted noncommittally but could think of no good reason to ignore it. I followed Shakespeare’s horse once we came to a track that appeared to lead directly to the light.
As we drew closer we could hear chanting floating over the fen, and I realized that we might have actually found the witches Shakespeare was hoping to find and I was hoping to not. There would be no telling him to turn back while I investigated on my own—and I did need to investigate, in case their ritual proved to be an attempt to usurp some measure of the earth’s magic. But I couldn’t risk revealing myself as a Druid to him if I was forced to act. I would be every bit as damned in his eyes as the witches if he discovered my pagan origins.
We dismounted to creep forward on foot. I doubted the horses would still be there when we returned, but we couldn’t take them with us; even though they were quieter than usual in the soft earth, they weren’t stealthy creatures. One impatient snort could give us away.
Keeping my voice low, I said, “Conceal the torch behind my body,” and watching him step uncertainly in the mud, still quite drunk, I added, “preferably without setting me aflame. It will allow us to see while hopefully preventing our detection.”
“I approve of this plan,” he said, enunciating carefully, and we stepped forward into the mud. The macabre sounds of muted chanting pounded nails of dread into our hearts. With every step nearer, I grew more certain that we had, in fact, discovered a small coven of witches. The light was indeed from some kind of fire, but the wood wasn’t burning orange and yellow as it should. It was silvery, like moonlight. Perhaps there was phosphorus at work. Or something arcane.
I began to worry about Shakespeare’s safety. I had my cold iron amulet tucked underneath my tunic to protect me against magic, but the bard had nothing. I wanted to tell him I had protection but couldn’t tell him I had bound the cold iron to my aura. I had to craft a lie that he would accept. “Master Shakespeare, should we be discovered, let me go ahead. I have a blessed talisman that may shield me against their, uh, infernal practices.” I wasn’t sure where he stood on the Holy Roman Church, so I settled for the generic blessed rather than Pope-licked or Cardinal-kissed or any number of other vaguely holy-sounding phrases. I drew Fragarach from its scabbard. “I also have this, should it be necessary.”
Shakespeare’s breathing was coming quicker and his eyes had widened. “Your plans continue to be well conceived, Marquis.”
We crept closer still, the voices growing louder, and a faint rumble and hiss could be heard, which I imagined to be something boiling in the cauldron. It was a large black iron affair, the sort one uses to feed armies and that’s usually transported in a wagon, and I could only imagine how they had lugged it out there and what might be boiling inside it. Perhaps the darkness concealed an ox and cart nearby. The unnatural white flames glowed underneath the cauldron and licked at its sides, consuming what appeared to be normal firewood.