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XVIII. Of Gaols & Cells



Little John sat bent over a neck-, hand-, and leg-cuff bar that kept him from standing or even sitting upright in the small cell. The straw he sat in smelled as if twenty men had pissed in it. If they’d been trussed like him, likely they had. He’d been left hunched over, trying to work his wrists free for so long that he’d have gladly made his bed in that straw and gone to sleep if they’d just unlocked the neck cuff. Hand and leg restrictions he could live with.

Although the Norman sheriff was to all appearances human, John had his doubts. For one thing, the sheriff talked and talked about the little objects John stole—how rare they were, how important. He called them dights, and as soon as John heard the term he knew those little triangular pieces were what the sheriff meant. Dights. Somehow the word sounded like them—like dice split in half maybe. Either the sheriff was working with those demons, or he was one, maybe like that bishop on the road.

He’d expected worse torture than this hobbling, a whipping at the very least, given that the dunking pond was still covered with a small bridge. Funny how he’d gone from the champion on that bridge to the demon sheriff’s captive in such short order. Hardly seemed fair. Least he could have done was let John drink a celebratory ale first.

The Norman sheriff had something else in mind.

One of the guards pulled back John’s head, choking him in the neck strap, then prised open his mouth, the long fingers gripping like iron, so painful he thought they would puncture his cheeks and crush his teeth. He tried to bite them and was slapped and slapped until his head throbbed. While the bearded guard held his mouth wide, something wet and alive was all but poured in. He thought he’d swallowed a wriggling eel, sensed it sliding down his gullet.

Almost immediately it seemed that the thing reached into his brain, and the pain of that intrusion proved worse than anything he’d ever known—worse than the fire into which he’d once thrust a hand; worse than the crossbow bolt that had pierced his side; worse than the worst ague that had ever tormented his joints and sweated his body. How long it lasted, he had no idea. Hours. Days. Blinding, like a blade cutting deep into his soul, erasing even the passage of time. Voices interrogated—not him but the thing inside him. It wasn’t just the demon sheriff, but someone else in his head. Was it a woman? He couldn’t tell, lacking any connection to his own body. He couldn’t open his eyes, couldn’t look, couldn’t listen to what was said.

Finally, the thing, whatever it was, seemed to let go and dissolve, with a squeal that grated through his bones.

Slowly, tremblingly, he returned to himself, now beyond exhausted. He’d fallen onto his side, neck, wrists and ankles still locked to the straight bar. This must be what it was like being on the far side of dead.

He had no idea what information he might have given up, but he suspected that he’d given up everything.


The Saxon gaol on Chandler’s Lane was a rectangular building of mortar and small stones, with a projecting entryway barely a dozen yards from the Market Square. It might have been any nondescript Romanesque civic building with high arch windows, but for the door in that entryway, which was thick and studded with knob-headed bolts and hung on three huge hinge straps. A metal window in the center was barred by a grate, identical to the doors of the three cells to be found within, and providing some ominous sense that this was not so communal a structure.

The crowds had mostly dispersed in the time Thomas had spent in The Pilgrim. Hardly anyone walked along by the Market wall.

Approaching the gaol, he, Scathelock, and Geoffrey encountered Isabella Birkin and the swarthy brown-haired Keeper from The Pilgrim, Maurin Payne, coming from Halifax Lane near St. Mary’s Church. Will sidled over to join his two colleagues, a move that covered how Thomas averted his eyes upon seeing her. The illusion of their coupling was all too fresh and expressed something perhaps too close to the truth of him—a truth he wasn’t at all ready to acknowledge. He instinctively slowed and let the others press ahead. The cluster of five arrived at the gaol at the same time.

Geoffrey pushed open the heavy door, leading the way into the large main room, itself subdivided by six square columns. Elias had commented last night that the roof was strong enough to support a row of gallows, not yet constructed but planned.

Near the door was a stand of pole arms used by the Waits—a variety of axes and fauchards. A long trestle table occupied the middle, with stools clustered around it. The back wall contained another door like the one they’d just opened, which led to the three cells, and to pallets for use by members of the Waits. Thomas had slept on one after his rounds with Little John.

At the precise moment that they filed in, one of the Norman sheriff’s guardsmen, having emerged from that door, was engaged in a heated exchange with Warin, who’d stood up from his seat at the end of the table. The Saxon sheriff, Orrels, looked on from where he still sat. His expression indicated he disliked the guardsman, or maybe just his answers to Warin.

The guard wore mail beneath the cinquefoil surcoat of Passelewe’s force. His mail-framed face was wide with a powerful jaw and chin and a thick auburn mustache. He was carrying Thomas’s masonry-tools bag slung over one shoulder. Seeing it, Thomas slid a hand into the quiver on his hip.

Warin was saying, “I tell ye, tha cannot remove possessions belonging to our—” He turned his head, saw who was arriving, and faced the guardsman again. “Well, here’s the man himself, ye care to explain it to him.”

Instead of explaining anything, the guard took a step back and drew his sword. It shone like a rainbow. Seeing it, recalling Hodde’s description of the swords the Yvags on the road had carried, Thomas cried out, “Warin, get back from him!”

Even as he shouted the words, the guard thrust his sword arm forward and the sword stretched from its hilt, aimed right for Thomas, who flung himself to the side. The blade bit into the nearest column, then snapped back to its original size; but on the way it had passed straight through Warin. The blade withdrawn, Thomas rocked on his feet, stumbled up against a column and made to lunge at the guard, who casually batted him aside. The sheriff had tipped back his stool and tumbled away to scramble to his feet, dagger drawn.

Thomas rolled, came up running to dodge left around the scarred column. Orrels, on the right, presented the foremost threat, the obvious target, and the guard pivoted to confront him. Thomas sprang then, kicking off the column to tackle the guardsman from his blind side before he could bring that deadly sword to bear upon the sheriff. They both fell sideways. Thomas rolled away. The guard climbed to his feet, but almost immediately staggered. The sword fell from his grip. He glanced down at himself. Thomas’s black barbed dagger had sliced all the way up his side from belly to armpit, through surcoat and armor. Viscous black blood flowed from the wound. The guard wheezed, sputtered, and the same black oil spilled from between lips that even then were transforming, as was everything about it, from human to Yvag. Its prominent chin grew longer, spiked, its skin a sickly green as if the creature were long dead and rotting. No mustache graced its thin lip now. The mail it wore shrank to a shiny and fibrous black with flexible joints, some of them in the wrong places as though its limbs had been broken, dislocated. Its thighs thickened and projected off its hips as a grasshopper’s might. Only the torn red-and-yellow surcoat remained the same.

The Yvag bared its sharp teeth. Ringed golden eyes seethed with hatred, focusing upon Thomas. “You’ll pay dearly for this,” it gurgled.

“I already have,” Thomas answered, “and for more to come.” He watched without mercy.

Along its side, the Yvag’s gills sprayed dark blood with every breath. As if only now understanding its situation, it looked suddenly terrified, gold eyes seeking some escape. “I can’t die!” it insisted. Its ungoverned fear, like a scream, roared through his head. Beside him, the sheriff cringed and pressed fingertips to his temples. More fearfully still, the Yvag begged, “Don’t let me die.” But after three more exhalations it lay still.

For a moment no one moved. Then the sheriff crossed to Warin, but the kindest of the Waits had been punctured through by that wicked sword, dead when he hit the floor.

Thomas knelt beside the Yvag. First he hauled his mason’s bag away from it and looked inside. Little John’s three dights lay in the bottom. He set the bag down, grabbed and tugged at the Yvag’s mail coif as he knew to do. The head covering abruptly withdrew, spilling out the strange silver-white hair of the Yvags. He reached in beneath the twisted surcoat, felt for and found the seam in the armor, then parted it enough to probe until he’d collected an ördstone from an inner pocket that he’d guessed would be there. The stone made a chittering noise audible to him. It produced a pressure in his head, one he could ignore, probably not enough that anyone else sensed it. He dropped the ördstone into his quiver, which he noted did not go unobserved by Orrels. No dagger graced this armor, but then the creature had its diabolical sword instead, a far more treacherous weapon. Thomas turned to reach for it, found a booted foot just behind him, and looked up.

Isabella had come close to see. “This is no thing of natural magic,” she said, “It’s a conjured demon out of hell. How can you even touch it?”

The sheriff looked queasily as if he agreed with her, although he bent down and collected the weird sword. A bemused look overcame him. “Why, this hardly weighs anything. What is it made from?” He showed it to Geoffrey and Will, but looked to Thomas for some sort of explanation.

Then, across the room the gaol door opened, and Elias entered, accompanied by Osbert and another member of the Waits whom Thomas didn’t know. The moment Elias saw them all he hurried over. “What has happened here? Oh, God’s love, Warin.” The Waits pressed in behind him. Geoffrey pointed at the creature. “This is what we heard of on the King’s Way, innit?” he said. “What people described roaming across Sherwood in the night.”

Sheriff Orrels kicked at the Yvag’s torso, but looked to him for some explanation. “Master Hoode?”

Thomas climbed to his feet. Passelewe’s colors in that surcoat meant that Little John had given up the location of the dights. The Yvags would have pried open his mind and gotten everything they wanted from him. Lucky they didn’t have possession of these or John would even now be lost to them, and might still be. For all Thomas knew, they’d slain him the moment he’d told them everything.

How much did he want to tell these people? How much would suffice? If they were going to take on the Norman sheriff beneath the castle, they were going to have to know more than they did right now. Not only know but believe. He supposed the “demon” on the floor was proof enough for whatever version of the facts he wished to spin for them. The world here preferred its demons, and perhaps that was the best way of explaining. It saved him trying to describe Ailfion or to express all he’d been through from the moment they took his brother Onchu. Mason, archer, mercenary, husband, hermit, all stretched over more than a century—who would understand or believe that story? Not these good people. Witchcraft and devilry versus a dependable Church sufficed for them. No doubt that accounted for why so many men of the cloth were turned. In a world of clear antipodes, simply control or replace as many of the “good” men as you can, and you’re certain to win.

Orrels repeated, “Master Hoode?” inviting an answer, but still Thomas had none to offer. He refused to relive the loss of Janet and Morven again. He’d been mired in those memories for seventy years already, broken down, isolated, and benumbed. What good could come of further revisiting the time before he recognized that he no longer aged like everyone else, that he had become maybe as long-lived as the Yvags themselves? Hiding in the woods prolonged his life. Coming out into the world again risked him putting an end to an existence he’d railed against and now was not so sure of. More to the point, who in this room would believe any of his story?

At least he must reply to Orrels, whether he mentioned any of that or not. He said, “Outlaws will be the least of your worries hereafter, Sheriff.”


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Framed