The Blood List Read online

  Henry swallowed then muttered, ‘Do as I say, Frances, please.’

  His blue eyes stared and sweat had plastered his blond curls to his temples.

  ‘Do not let their words poison your heart,’ she whispered. ‘Please, Henry. Please.’ Tears spilled over her cheeks and the room swam into a blur of shadow and firelight. She batted blindly at the pale figure of her handsome husband but he did not take her hand.

  ‘I won’t, Fan,’ he said, moving aside to let her pass. ‘I promise.’

  She managed to get up the last few steps up to their room before a crushing exhaustion fell on her like an anvil. Pressing Barnaby to her chest she crawled to the bed, but she did not have the strength to climb up onto it. The floorboards were refreshingly cold after the heat of the room downstairs. She was sweating heavily and the cut between her legs seethed like a lime burn.

  Manoeuvring herself awkwardly onto her back she sank down, tucking Barnaby into her nightdress to prevent him tumbling onto the hard floor. He was still crying, but without conviction now that he was nestled in her familiar warmth. She patted his back a few times and sighed words of comfort, but then her arm slipped off and her eyelids began to sink. She let her head fall to the side. The shadow of the cradle fell across the floor, crisp in the moonlight. Around it glimmered sticky patches where the urine had been splashed by Agnes, who had informed Frances confidently that this was extremely offensive to fairies and would repel their attacks.

  Stupid Agnes.

  Stupid Henry for believing her nonsense.

  And stupid her for marrying him.

  Frances’s eyelids grew heavier but she forced them open.

  The window that looked out on the forest began to rattle softly and as she watched, wisps of light crept in around the edges of the frame. They drifted towards the cot and gathered above it until the whole room was illuminated with ghostly light. A whispering began: the same sound the trees made in the dead of night when the wind was high. It pulsed to the rhythm of the light. She knew she was dreaming but forced her lips to move and the breath to rise up from her lungs: ‘Our Father,’ she began, ‘Which art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come . . .’

  But before she could finish she was asleep.

  Fairies plagued her dreams. Sometimes they would be no more substantial than dandelion seeds floating around the empty cot: sometimes they would gather round her bed, child-sized but wizened and sharp-toothed, stretching their claws towards Barnaby. She would hiss and spit at them and then sometimes they would grow and become Henry and his parents, or Father Nicholas, or her own mother, though she knew they were not real and would crook her fingers at them to make the sign that wards off the evil eye. Sometimes Barnaby would wake and look up at her and smile and say, ‘Don’t be afraid, Mama, you and I will never be parted,’ and his voice was velvet, like the wing of a moth.

  ‘I’m not afraid,’ she would try and say but her mouth was filled with hard lumps, knobbled and papery like ancient fingers. She imagined they were Agnes’s fingers, probing her gums, trying to pull out her teeth, and she bit down hard. They released a pungent juice that burned her tongue. Ginger.

  She was sick, then.

  She opened her eyes and squinted at the brightness of the room. A blur of colour to her left resolved itself into a vase of flowers. Henry had not given her flowers since they were courting. There was also a glass of water and a plate of dried fruit and sweetmeats.

  Her heart leaped. Agnes would not tend her so well: she must have been sent away.

  Candles were lit in the sconces beside the bed and the fire burned in the grate: with logs of applewood judging by the fragrance. Its leaping flames made the shadow of the cradle move as if it were rocking. But the cradle was still. And the sweet soft weight of her son was gone.

  Her chest had deflated and no longer ached. There was no tenderness between her legs and swinging her legs over the bed did not produce a crackle of dried blood or a tug from the stitches.

  How long had she been sick?

  She padded across the floor and opened the door. As she passed the window she saw that the sky above the forest was lightening. It was dawn: surely too early even for the servants to be up, and yet their truckles were empty.

  She peered into the hallway. All was quiet.

  ‘Henry?’ she called, suddenly afraid.

  There was a rustle and a creak.

  ‘I’m here, my love,’ he called softly from downstairs.

  ‘Where are the servants?’ she said, stepping onto the first stair.

  ‘I sent them away for a while.’

  ‘And Agnes?’

  ‘She’s gone.’

  As she descended the room opened up before her. Henry was sitting by the fire. She covered her mouth to muffle a gasp. His face was grey, his hair dishevelled, his clothes awry.

  Her knees buckled and she collapsed onto the stair.

  ‘Where’s Barnaby?’ she croaked.

  Henry lowered his hand over the arm of the chair and swung it around, presumably in search of the bottle of wine that stood there. He knocked it over and it glugged a crimson pool onto the floorboards.

  ‘Where is he?’ she said again. ‘Did you let Agnes take him?’

  ‘I took him myself,’ he said.

  Pulling herself up on the banister she climbed down the last stairs.

  ‘Where?’

  He leaned forwards and pressed his head into his hands.

  ‘It was agreed by the aldermen,’ he said. ‘Once Father Nicholas had got involved there was nothing I could do to stop it.’

  She walked across the cold flagstones and stood in front of him, her breath coming in snatches.

  ‘What have you done with my child?’ she said.

  He raised his head and looked at her. All his beauty had drained away and weakness and folly were written into every line of his drawn face.

  ‘I did not let them hurt him,’ he said. ‘They wanted to use fire but I said no. It was Father Nicholas that suggested the midden heap, not me.’

  He started to cry. Mucus drooled from his nose and he wiped it away with a grubby sleeve.

  ‘The midden heap?’ she said. ‘In the forest?’

  ‘That’s what you have to do with changelings,’ he said. ‘You leave them on the midden heap overnight and the fairies take them back and leave your own child in their place.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘You left my baby on a pile of shit and bones in the middle of winter?’

  Henry nodded. Now he was crying properly, ugly bestial sobs that shook his whole body.

  ‘I . . . I didn’t put him there.’

  ‘Who did?’ she said.

  ‘One of the other men, I c . . . can’t remember . . .’

  ‘There were others there?’

  He nodded: ‘The whole village.’

  ‘The whole village?’ Her voice rose in pitch. ‘And no-one tried to stop it?

  ‘Only the furrier and his wife. She tried to pull the . . . to pull him off but we . . . they stopped her.’

  Frances dropped to her knees in the ashes of the fire. Her son was dead.

  She did not know how long she sat like that listening to Henry’s grunting sobs. Eventually the fire died, its warm light replaced by the cold glare of dawn. Outside the birds chattered and laughed. She raised her head.

  ‘Is he buried yet,’ she said, ‘or can I see him?’

  Henry had fallen asleep. Black dribble seeped from the corner of his mouth to stain the seat cover. It would never come out. It would always be there, like a bloodstain, to remind her what he had done.

  She knelt up and slapped his face. His skin was clammy and reptilian.

  Henry awoke with a cry and blinked his crusty eyes.

  ‘Is he buried yet or can I see his body?’ she said again.

  ‘No . . . no,’ he mumbled. ‘He is not buried.’

  ‘Where is he? I want to go now.’

  He stared at her stupidly. Now she coul
d hear voices outside. Many voices. They were approaching the front door.

  ‘We only left him last night,’ Henry said.

  Father Nicholas led the procession. It would not be far. Only the hunters went deep into the forest, laying their offerings to the fairy folk, to whom the place belonged, as they went.

  Henry and Frances went behind him. Their parents next. Her mother and father were pale but they stood tall and unashamed. Even they had not stopped this. As she walked out of the front door, with as much dignity as her anguish allowed, her mother had whispered: ‘We all knew there was something wrong with him, darling, in time you will see this was the right thing . . .’

  The smell of the midden heap began to reach them. It was the stench of human and animal excrement, rotting bones and oyster shells, vegetable peelings, the stinking waste from the furrier and the tanner and the dyer. And laid on top of it all, like an offering to the god of foulness and disease: her darling child.

  Though there was silence at the head of the group, those villagers bringing up the rear whispered to one another and occasionally there was a stifled laugh.

  Father Nicholas began to chant.

  ‘Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, yet will I fear no ill. For Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me . . .’

  The trees murmured and bent their heads to another as they passed.

  A knot of starlings burst, jeering, from a nearby tree.

  The priest raised his voice:

  ‘Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies . . .’

  A squirrel ran onto the path, rose up onto its hind legs and regarded them with sparkling eyes, before darting away.

  ‘Thou anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth—’

  And then something flew into his mouth. He stopped abruptly and began coughing and spitting onto the path.

  There were concerned pats on the back from those up front and titters from the back. But Frances stood apart from them all, listening.

  The breeze died a moment and even the birds grew hushed.

  There.

  The priest still hacked away behind her but in the pauses between his coughs she heard it.

  She walked forwards then stopped. If she was wrong; if it had been the chirrup of a bird or the cry of a fawn, her heart would not stand it.

  It came again. Strong. Lusty.

  Now they all heard it and a hush descended on the entire party. The forest fell still as every creature from the tiniest wood grub to the noblest stag listened.

  With a strangled cry she ran forwards, crashing through the trees, the branches tearing out clumps of her hair and sharp twigs cutting her face.

  It was the healthiest, strongest, most furious cry she had ever heard. She tore leaves and branches aside, stumbling and sliding on wet leaves. Now she could see the midden heap: a black mound in the trees ahead.

  The cries grew louder, as if the child knew salvation was at hand.

  How had he survived the night? Had it been especially mild? Had the stink of dung masked his own scent while predators prowled around the foothills of the pile? Had the fairies protected him?

  Bursting through the final line of trees she began scrambling up the heap, her arms sinking into ordure, shards of pottery and jagged bones tearing at her clothes.

  ‘Barnaby!’ she shrieked.

  She climbed higher and a fat arm came into view, the angry fingers clutching at air.

  ‘I am here!’

  Now she could hear the rest of them behind her crying out in wonder, God be praised! It’s a miracle! And her husband calling her name, half laughing, half crying.

  Now she could see the perfect hemisphere of his round belly above a tangle of blue cloth – naked: they had not even swaddled him properly – now his fat legs kicking. Fatter legs than she remembered. Now the top of his head.

  She stopped.

  She stared at him.

  Her limbs turned to ice.

  The morning sun broke through the canopy above and shone a single beam of sunlight onto his body, making his hair flash. Like a halo.

  Henry scrambled past her, stopped and gave a hoarse cry.

  The child stopped crying.

  Very slowly, like a fox approaching a hen house, Henry crawled to the top of the midden. Then he stopped and his beautiful lips parted. The child reached out its fat arms to him. Henry threw back his head.

  ‘God be praised!’ he bellowed and the trees shook with his cry. ‘My son! My own true son is returned to me!’

  He scooped the child up in his arms and held it aloft. Below her Frances heard gasps and cries of shock as the villagers of Beltane Ridge took in the sight: of the handsome young merchant with the rich wife holding up, like an offering to God, his fine, bonny, pink-skinned, blond-haired son.

  Frances felt herself falling backwards. The sky wheeled over her head and the trees lunged at her, and the last thing she saw was the bright yellow head of the boy that was not her son, glinting like a brass nail in the sunlight.

  1

  The Black Dog

  The coney was plump and beautiful, with a peppery coat that glistened in the sunlight and eyes like pools of tar. Barnaby watched it from behind the trunk of the plane tree, waiting for the right moment.

  At present the animal was too near a tangle of brambles and would bolt to safety if it caught the movement of the bow. He needed it to come further out into the open, but so far it had ignored the trail of grain he had left.

  He was pleased with the bow. Since his and Abel’s tutor had been dismissed the previous year he’d had far more time to concentrate on the things he actually enjoyed. He’d chosen yew because that was the wood Cromwell’s army used for their longbows. It was incredibly strong and even when the string was fully extended retained its perfect arc. Too good for coneys. He would get his father to ask the baron’s steward if he could hunt hares in the forest.

  The coney made a single, slow hop away from the brambles. Then another. Towards the grain trail.

  He slid an arrow from the quiver on his back and the barely audible rasp was enough to make the creature’s ears prick. At this point, if Griff were here, the coney would be off; spooked by Barnaby’s friend’s noisy breaths and inability to keep his clumsy limbs still. Hunting alone had its advantages, although mostly it was deathly boring. He’d have to get used to it, however, because come harvest season all his friends would be busy on their parents’ farms.

  Slipping the fletch beneath the string he slowly drew the arrow back. The shaft didn’t even tremble. He’d paid good money for these arrows and was glad he had done so. If he managed to make a clean hole through the back of the animal’s neck he could make the fur into a hood for their housemaid Juliet. Thanks to his hunting skill Juliet was easily the best-dressed maid in Beltane Ridge. Although now that the furrier was dead he’d have to cure the pelt himself, which wasn’t much fun.

  The coney had found the grain trail, and now moved with the heedless abandon of greed, pale paws kicking up, pale tail flashing an invitation to any passing hawk.

  Barnaby was about to release the arrow when a flash of white to his left caught his attention.

  The other end of the trail he’d laid had been discovered too, but this animal was unlike any coney he’d seen before: it was pure white, with scarlet eyes and ears of the softest pink. The sun shone through them, making them glow. It must be young because it was still plump, its coat flawless and glossy. Invisible whiskers twitched as it nibbled the grain.

  Very slowly he revolved on his heels until the arrow was trained on the back of the creature’s plump neck.

  Now this would be a gift for Juliet. Everyone would think it was ermine. He would have to keep the feet as proof she was not breaking the sumptuary laws: he was pretty sure servants were only allowed to wear rabbit fur.

  The white coney dipped its head for another helping of grain and he waited for it to raise it again.

  The black shap
e came out of nowhere, startling him so much that he dropped the bow. The white coney’s shrill scream, like a child’s, was drowned out by guttural snarling, then finally cut off altogether. Blood arced up into the blue sky and spattered down on the grass beneath the tree he was standing under.

  Barnaby almost pissed his breeches. It was an alaunt. Most likely from the baron’s own dog pack. Only last year one of these vicious hunting dogs had got loose and torn apart a shepherd as he tried to protect his flock. The man’s family had received generous compensation but the baron refused to have the dog destroyed, despite the fact that it now had a taste for human flesh.

  As the dog snorted and grunted its way through the coney’s innards Barnaby did not dare move a muscle. In the height of summer his hair merged with the golden corn, but it was late spring and the corn was still green. Any movement would make him stand out against it as clearly as the rabbit. The dog threw its head back to swallow a chunk of meat and then, to Barnaby’s shrinking horror, its black eyes fell upon him.

  For what must only have been a few seconds they stared at one other, then Barnaby risked moving his eyes to see if the tree was climbable. The first decent branch was over six feet up. The beast would be on him before he could even hook a leg over. He wouldn’t even have the chance to pick up the bow. He flicked his eyes back to the dog.

  It was still looking at him.

  A breeze stirred the leaves above him and whispered in the leaves of corn. It was an eerie sound and the dog’s ears twitched nervously. The seed balls of the plane tree danced in Barnaby’s line of vision. If he snatched one down and threw it the dog might take fright; only for a second, but perhaps long enough for him to snatch up the bow. Slowly he reached up and plucked one of them. But it was too ripe. It crumbled in his hand, the seeds drifting off on their parachutes of fluff. One sailed gently towards the alaunt, and to Barnaby’s surprise the dog skittered back.

  The wind blew stronger, and the seed pods danced more frantically.

  He plucked another and crumbled it in his hand, then let the wind take it. This time the wisps of fluff flew quickly, forming themselves into a single waving line, like a trail of smoke or a marching army.