My Swordhand is Singing Page 7

  Agnes and Peter waited. Peter had explained to Agnes what he wanted her to do. She wasn’t happy, though eventually she had agreed. They waited, and though Peter had often longed to be alone with Agnes, now that it was happening he didn’t know what to say or do. Surely there were a thousand things he wanted to ask her? Surely she wanted to talk and talk to him, to hold him and maybe kiss him? But somehow they sat next to each other as mute as stone. Peter wondered if it was because they were both scared out of their wits, but he began to suspect there was another reason. A reason that shocked him at first, but once he had picked it up and looked at it and turned it over in his mind, a reason that he calmly accepted as something approaching the truth.

  The truth. That maybe he didn’t love her.

  For much of the time they sat in silence on the bed, in reach of each other, but miles apart. After a while Peter found his mind playing tricks on him. He saw tiny pinpricks of light but decided it was his imagination. Nevertheless he felt he could have been anywhere; his enforced blindness seemed to remove the walls from the hut, and even the presence of the forest itself receded until he felt utterly alone.

  Hours passed, and Peter was just about to ask Agnes if she had any food, when he heard a noise outside. It was clear from the way Agnes shifted next to him that she had heard it too.

  Silence for a moment, then: “Agnes? Agnes? Are you there, pretty one?”

  Peter’s heart pounded. He reached across and nudged Agnes, wordlessly urging her to answer.

  “Yes,” called Agnes up to the window. “Yes, I’m here.”

  Her voice was frail and nervous, and Peter thought it was too obvious, but whoever was outside didn’t seem to have noticed.

  “Let me in, pretty Agnes!” came the voice.

  “Who is it?” Agnes replied.

  “It’s me,” the voice said. “Peter.”

  Agnes sat dumbly next to Peter, the sheer terror of the moment paralyzing her, but Peter nudged her again, willing her to go over to the window. He strained to see in the blackness, all his senses going wild but telling him nothing.

  Still she refused to move. He pushed her to her feet, shoving the end of the spun wool into her fingers as she went. He squeezed her hand.

  “I can’t let you in, Peter. You know that.”

  “Let me in, pretty one. I’m so cold!”

  “I can’t let you in.”

  “I’m so cold. Feel my hand. Open the shutter and feel my hand.”

  There was silence, and Peter could imagine Agnes rooted to the spot from terror. In his mind he tried to force her to move, to stick to his plan.

  “Open the shutter, Agnes, pretty one. You felt my hand last night.”

  After a long, long pause, Peter heard Agnes move up to the window and unbolt the shutter.

  “Here,” she said bravely.

  “See how cold I am?” said the voice. Peter marveled at it. It didn’t sound like him, but it was so quiet that he couldn’t have said that it wasn’t his own voice either.

  “Touch me,” said the voice. “Let me in.”

  “I won’t let you in, Peter.”

  “Then kiss me.”

  There was another terrible pause, as Agnes steeled herself, trying to be calm enough to go through with what she and Peter had agreed.

  “Very well,” she said finally, in a tiny voice. “I will kiss you. Wait a moment.”

  Agnes moved and found the small stool she sat on to work. She pulled it to the window.

  Peter waited in an agony of fear, paralyzed by inaction. All he could do was pray to the Forest to protect her, if that was who he should be praying to.

  He heard Agnes climb onto the stool. Then she leant through the window. He heard the faint noise of the thread starting to slip out from the huge winding of wool on the floor, and silently he prayed that his idea would work.

  There was a moment of total silence, and Peter tried not to think of what was happening. He couldn’t hear the kiss.

  Then Agnes shrieked.

  “You’re so cold!”

  “Come here!” said the voice, suddenly loud, angry and vicious. “Let me in, pretty bitch!”

  There was the sound of a struggle and thuds fell against the wall outside. Agnes screamed and fell back into the hut. Peter now dared to stand and pull the shutter back into place.

  “I’ll be back,” said the voice, shrieking in rage. “I’ll be back tomorrow night!”

  Silence.

  22

  Calling

  For a long time, neither Agnes nor Peter dared move. Eventually Peter crawled over and found her huddled on the floor. He held her gently and then realized he could hear something.

  The wool was being pulled out slowly from the winding.

  “You did it!” Peter cried. “Well done!”

  Agnes was silent.

  “You did it.”

  Peter went over to the shutter, and felt the wool paying out through the gap between the shutter and frame. It was not moving fast, or even that steadily, but it was moving.

  Being careful not to snag the wool, he opened the shutter again, and saw that the snow had stopped. The sky had cleared and there was enough starlight to see the outlines of the trees. He spent a long time looking for the terrible visitor, but could see no sign.

  Faint light was spilling onto the floor of the hut now and he checked the pile of wool. Agnes had been busy; there was enough wool to stretch to Turkey, as far as he could tell. Making sure it could move freely from the skein that Agnes had coiled from her spinning, he turned to her.

  “Agnes. It’s time for me to go. Stay here. I’ll be back soon.”

  He lifted Agnes up and placed her on the bed again, pulling the blanket up to her neck.

  She turned to face him.

  “Don’t go,” she said, her voice small and still.

  “I have to. This is what we agreed. You’ve done your part. Now I must do mine.”

  He took her chin in his hands and tilted her face up to his.

  Agnes shivered.

  “I kissed him, Peter.”

  “You did what you had to. You fixed the wool. That’s all that matters.”

  “He was so…cold. So…”

  But she couldn’t explain what she had felt.

  “Stay here,” Peter said, and leant down, kissing her forehead. “It’ll be light soon. That will make you feel better. Close the shutter when I’ve gone.”

  He got up and, without another word, set the stool upright by the window once more and climbed out, slightly more easily than when he had entered, earlier in the night.

  Once outside, it was easy to tell that dawn was still far off, and it was hard to see clearly. But Peter smiled to himself. He didn’t need to see, he just had to follow. Agnes had done her job well. The distaff that she had been spinning with had a metal clip on it. They’d broken the clip off and tied the wool to it. In that awful moment as she leant out of the window, she had fixed the clip onto the back of the jacket of her nocturnal visitor.

  Now all Peter had to do was follow the wool, and he would find the culprit. He tried to tell himself it was probably just some young fool from the village who had a desire for Agnes, but nonetheless he wished he had his axe with him.

  Peter followed the wool, threading his way through the trees.

  Agnes lay on the bed in the hut, unable to move. Overwhelmed by fear, she blinked in the gloom for a long time, powerless to get up and close the shutter as Peter had told her to. Her mind was occupied with a single thought: she had kissed the thing at the window. She could still taste something on her lips, something foul. At last she made a small movement and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. It felt no better, so she did it again. And again, and again, and then frantically she began to scratch at her face, desperate to rid herself of whatever disgusting coldness it was that clung to her.

  She rolled onto the floor and crawled to find her jug of water, wasting it all trying to wash the taste from her lips. Then she hear
d a noise at the window.

  She lifted her head as she knelt on all fours, like a dog getting a scent.

  “Peter?” she called. And then panicked. It had to be Peter. Who else could it be?

  “Peter! Come in and help me! Come in!”

  23

  Things to Cover Our Dead

  Peter stopped, to check the wool. It lay slack.

  So. Whoever it was, was back home, and Peter knew that every step he took now was a step nearer the mysterious visitor.

  He checked the sky. If only dawn were closer. The promise of light struck at his heart. He longed to see the sun, for what evil can occur by daylight?

  Nonetheless, by starlight he could see the village in front of him, and now he could even see the wool stretching away toward the village. His breath quickened. It would be soon.

  Picking up the pace once again, he hurried on, letting the wool run freely through his hand.

  He came to the first houses and saw that the wool ran away up a small alley that he had never noticed before. He must never have made a delivery there, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t need to know where he was going, he just needed to follow the wool. Once again he praised himself for his quick thinking in the hut, and thought of Agnes. At least she would be safe for the time being. Her assailant was somewhere out there ahead of him, presumably climbing angrily back into bed. Well, he would be angrier still when Peter had finished with him.

  He followed the wool up the alley, moving more slowly than before, taking care not to make a sound. He was in luck. The snow that had been falling through the night had been gentle but persistent, and enough had fallen to recarpet the streets with a blanket that hid any noise he might have made.

  Something bothered him as he padded through the snow, but he couldn’t place it. A few more steps and he turned around. Behind him he could see his footsteps in the fresh snow. He looked forward again, and there was the wool running in front of him.

  So why couldn’t he see any footsteps from the man he was following?

  The wool turned a corner into a wider street that he knew well. He’d been convinced that it was going to lead to one of the houses he’d already passed, but the trail showed no sign of ending. Ahead lay the back of the priest’s house, but the wool ran on beyond that, and around another corner.

  He hurried up the street, glancing at the tarred windows of Daniel’s house as he did so, then turned the corner.

  He stopped dead.

  The wool led away. There were no houses left. There was only the church before him, but that was not where the wool was taking him.

  In the half-light he could now see the grayish line snake out across the purer whiteness of the snow. The wool caught on a stone here, and on a fence there, but it was unbroken as it led the way, surely and utterly, straight into the graveyard.

  Now, moving as if in a nightmare, Peter’s feet stepped unwillingly forward. The wool felt like wire in his hands. Maybe it was just that it had been frozen in the snow, but it seemed to cut into his skin like metal.

  He came to the gate of the graveyard. There could be no doubt. The wool ran over the fence next to the gate, as if his quarry had sailed clean over it. Dumbly, he gripped it, as if it were a lifeline leading him to safety, when in reality it was leading him toward death itself.

  The wool wound its way between this grave and that, snagging on crosses, trailing on the ground. At last, his eyes wide open in horror, Peter saw its destination.

  There, no more than five feet away, was Stefan’s grave. The wool not only went right up to the grave, but disappeared into the soil itself. Then Peter saw that though there was snow all over the graveyard, and on the other graves, Stefan’s was, for some reason, free of it.

  An awful self-destructive curiosity pulled Peter closer. Unable to stop himself, he got down on hands and knees and crawled the final few inches toward the grave. As he approached, something else caught his attention. There was a hole in the soil at the head of the grave, near the cross. The hole was about the size of a small fist, and it was perfectly circular, like a rat hole in a riverbank.

  Peter leant over it.

  He looked in.

  There was just enough light to see inside the hole.

  At the bottom he saw an eye.

  It was open, seemingly lifeless, though looking straight at him.

  Then it blinked.

  Peter screamed and ran as if the Devil himself were chasing him.

  24

  The Hut

  At first he ran blindly, not thinking where he was going. Not thinking at all. He blundered out of the graveyard to the edge of the village once more, and then he knew where he had to go.

  Only once did he stop and look behind, but he couldn’t see anything, and neither could he hear anything. And that was some comfort. But what comfort could there be for what he had seen at the bottom of the dreadful hole? That cold, dead eye.

  Was that Stefan in there? Dead? Or, even worse, maybe, alive?

  Agnes! He had to get to Agnes and warn her. Get her to leave the hut.

  It didn’t take long for him to stumble through the trees, retracing his steps around the edge of the forest and to the hut.

  He ran straight to the window.

  Silly girl, he thought, seeing the shutter hanging open. But then a worse thought pushed into his mind.

  He jumped up at the window, once again landing uncomfortably halfway over the sill.

  “Agnes! Agnes!”

  But already he knew she had gone.

  “No!” he shouted. “Agnes, where are you?”

  He dropped inside the hut, frantic, praying that she lay horror-struck in a corner; but she was not there.

  Overwhelmed by fear, and tired, he suddenly felt utterly powerless. He forced himself to stay calm. He had to find her. She had gone. Or maybe she had been taken….

  Whatever had happened, he had to find her.

  Yet again he made ready to climb from the window of the hut, and then he saw something that froze his blood.

  No more than twenty feet from the hut, and heading straight toward it, was the figure of someone he knew to be dead. Radu, the woodcutter. So it was not just Stefan who was out there. How many were there?

  Peter gasped, and dropped back into the hut, terrified.

  There were noises on the roof. It took him a moment to realize the thumps were footsteps. There was another of them on the roof too!

  He looked to the shutter. Getting to his feet, he waded clear of his terror and made it to the window. He saw Radu nearly at the hut. Suddenly a face appeared, upside down, in front of him.

  “Help me!”

  It was a face he was glad to see. Sofia, the Gypsy.

  He put his arms out and pulled her, dragging her through the window. They collapsed in a heap.

  “Quick,” Peter shouted, “the shutter!”

  “Wait,” Sofia cried, and before Peter could do anything, she snatched something from a bag around her waist and flung it out of the window. Only then did she tug the shutter closed and bolt it tight.

  “All right,” she said. “I hope.”

  Once again it was dark in the hut, and Peter had no idea what she was talking about, or even what she was doing here.

  “I made a circle of it. Right around the hut.”

  “Of what?” said Peter, at a loss.

  “Millet seed,” said Sofia simply. “We’ll be safe for a while. Just pray the sun gets here soon.”

  “It’s at least two hours till sunrise,” Peter said, “and I don’t see that millet will save us from anyone.”

  “Really?” Sofia said. “So have a look for yourself.”

  Peter didn’t move.

  “Go on, have a look!”

  Peter crept to the window and peered through a crack in the shutter. Whether it was starlight, or the moon showing at last, he didn’t know, but there was enough of a silver-gray light outside to illuminate a mysterious scene. There, on the snow-covered ground, he could se
e thousands of millet seeds, forming a circle around the hut, just as she had said.

  Sofia talked to him as he peered through the crack.

  “One of them’s been in here once already tonight, I think. That’s why I used the seed.”

  “But what are you doing here?”

  “Looking after you,” Sofia said.

  “What?”

  “I saw you coming up from the village, and then I saw him.” She nodded toward the window. “I climbed a tree, dropped onto the roof, and got as much of the stuff around the hut as I could before he got here.”

  Through his spy hole Peter watched, wide-eyed in horror, as Radu knelt in the snow, picking the seeds up, one by one, placing them in his pockets. Every now and then he glanced up in Peter’s direction, and although Peter knew Radu probably couldn’t see him, the look of malevolence on his pale face terrified Peter even more.

  Sofia, in contrast, seemed calm.

  “He can’t come in till he’s picked them all up.”

  “And what if he does?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “And what if he does?” Peter cried, turning away from the crack.

  Radu was out of sight somewhere, randomly working his way round the hut. It was even more frightening to Peter to know he was out there but not be able to see him, and he could bear it no more.

  “He’s dead, Sofia! That man is dead. I went to his funeral!”

  “I know,” she said, frankly but gently.

  “That’s no answer! I don’t understand. How can he be out there when he’s dead?”

  “I don’t know either. But he is. We call people like him ‘hostages.’ He is dead and he is out there. And he is trying to get in here.”

  “But it’s not possible.”

  “Did you not see him with your own eyes?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then, Peter, you must understand that it is possible.”

  Peter turned back to the window, to the crack.

  Radu was in sight again, still slowly working his way through the seed. His fingers were swollen and clumsy, and he was making heavy going of it. His skin was blue, in places almost black.