IMAGE BY VICTORIA FRANCES
CHAPTER 14
ENGLAND, 1417.
As far as the lady was concerned, peasants were worth no more than the animals which they raised.
After her husband had fought bravely in the invasion of France and recovered so remarkably from the wounds which he had suffered at Agincourt, King Harry had decided that he was favoured by God and had chosen to knight him. So on the following Michael Mass John Harvey had become Sir Harvey, and she had become his Lady, a Lady with noticeable influence in court.
She was a Lady, and she was something else too, something different and superior to the common herd of mankind.
That was why she cared nothing for the lives of the peasants which she took.
A year ago, a year after Agincourt, she had hunted with her husband. That was after he was fully healed, and after he had found that he could see better in the night than the day, and after the thirst had begun. That was when she and Lady Marion had revealed their true natures to their husbands. That was a golden age, when they were heroes of the King’s Court by day and predatory monsters by night.
John had enjoyed it at first, when he and his wife and his friend and his friend’s lady had hunted together. He had enjoyed the freedom, and the power, and the joy of satisfying the thirst- the lust- for blood.
Then he had noticed how the sun had begun to hurt his eyes, and he had begun to fear for his soul. He had hunted less and less often, and he had considered embarking on a pilgrimage, but had settled for a large donation to The Church. Then he hunted only once or twice a year, and alone, because he did want others to see the things which he did in the dark night, or to witness the things which his beloved lady did.
Lloyd and Marion also began to disapprove of the way the lady hunted, of her zeal and excess.
So she hunted alone.
It was a warm night in the end of summer. Crickets sang in the fields as pheasants slept deeply after a long day of toiling at the harvest. A crescent moon shone down on her as she tethered her horse to a tree at the edge of a forest where bracken and wild flowers grew tall between the trees.
Her horse nuzzled her shoulder, and she patted its head until it was quiet, then she set off into the trees. She could see every branch and root and flower in the dark forest, so she stalked silently from tree to tree. Badgers scurried back into their dens when they saw her, and deer continued to sleep as she passed by their graceful forms.
The nights target lay two hundred yards further ahead. A solitary cottage in a small glade. Already, she could smell the remains of a cooking fire, and the filth of animals and men.
The watchman saw her horse as he strolled down the road. He leaned his staff against the tree and raised his lantern to inspect the horse. A horse tied up alone at that time would have been suspicious enough, but on close inspection the horse resembled one which had been seen near the sight of many murders, and which the watchman had seen himself galloping away from a nearby village weeks ago where a young man had been drained of his life’s blood.
‘White Death’, the pheasants called that horse, when they spoke of it to scare their children. They believed that it was the mount of Satan, or the horse of Death himself.
After only a moments hesitation- in which duty over came superstitious fear- he grabbed his staff and ran for the nearest village to raise the alarm.
The cottage had walls made of uncut stone, a single window covered by sacking, a door of roughly cut wood and a roof of turf. Chickens slept in their pen near by, and a small stream ran beside it.
She pushed open the wooden door, which creaked more than she would have liked it to have done. She knew that there would be no dog to wake them, because she had killed it the night before. As she had expected, she found a young couple sleeping in a bed of bracken and woollen blankets, and their baby sleeping at their feet.
She crept up to the bed, and took her dagger from inside her cloak.
With one blow she cut the man’s throat. As he choked on his blood, his wife woke and the baby began to cry. The peasant girl sat bolt upright and screamed for a moment before she was knocked back, held down by her flaxen hair and stabbed to death. Not quickly, but one wound after another, the first few to paralyse her, then inhuman teeth ripped open her sun burnt neck, then more cuts aimed to draw as much blood as possible.
After that, the lady turned to the man’s body, and began to drink the hot blood that flowed from his neck. The baby’s screaming distracted her from the ecstasy of the feed. She reluctantly pulled away, licked her lips, then turned her knife on the child.
That was how they found her.
She was wet with baby’s blood as the watchman, and the local men armed with staffs and sickles dragged her away.
Had she not been recognised as a Lady, they would have lynched her on the spot. As it was she was locked in a barn with some cows, until the morning when men at arms where summoned. Then her hands and feet were forced into chains, and she was roughly placed in the back of a horse drawn wagon, and escorted to Lancaster Castle. Once there she dragged to a dark, stinking cell in the dungeons, and left with only the distant cries of witches, murderers and thieves to keep her company.
That evening Sir Harvey read the letter which a page had delivered to him with shacking hands. A letter bearing the stamp of The Duke of Lancaster, which told him that his wife was incarcerated in his castle, and would stand trial for murder and witchcraft at the end of the month.
He read it again. The words could not sink in. It had to be some nightmare. He read it a third time, screwed it up, threw into the fireplace, and poured himself a glass of ale.
The lady sat in a corner of her cell. Waiting for news. Waiting for the visit from her husband which did not come.
The rats had learnt to keep away from her, but the place was foul with lice and flees. The straw which made her bed was half rotten, and there was no other furniture.
Thrice a day a glass of water and a plate of bread and cheese were pushed through an opening in her door. She had pleaded with the unseen figure who performed this task, but it would not speak to her, would not tell her what lay ahead. She knew there should be some sort of trial, and that her husband’s influence, maybe even the King’s influence, might save her from death, but she began to fear that the trial would never come, and she would simply be left to rot in that hole.
Then, after several long and miserable days, the heavy iron door of her cell flew open. The light of a torch burned her eyes, and she huddled in the corner like a startled animal. Two men at arms with drawn swords flanked the door, and the jailer strode up. He put a bowl of water, a wooden comb and a paper rapped parcel down on the floor.
“Trial at noon, m’lady,” he said. “Tidy thy self.”
Then she was left alone, and the door was slammed shut.
She opened the parcel to find one of her dresses, a plain one, but far better than the rags she wore. She knew then that her status still carried some benefit, and wondered if her husband had sent it for her. She dressed, and washed as best she could with the cold water, and tried to brush the tangles out of her hair.
Soon after she had finished the door opened again and the jailor and a man at arms stepped in, whilst a third man guarded the door. They put chains on her unresisting hands and feet without a word and pulled her to her feet. Blinking against the torch light, she was half led, half carried up cold, damp stone steps to a corridor where the daylight from the windows blinded her.
Two more men at arms waited there, and they replaced the jailor and led her to the castle’s courtroom. She was placed in the docks in the middle of a crowded, round room with coats of arms on the walls and more men at arms at the doors.
She had to shut her eyes tight against the sun. Desperate to understand what was happening, she blinked a few times and looked at the room briefly. To her eyes there were only blurred shades of red and orange. She could just make out the judge who sat in the middle of the room, the Witchfinder who would be the prosecutor sitting opposite her, and the huge audience around her. She could not see John Harvey, nor hear his voice.
A man joined her, standing just outside the docks, and told her that he had been sent by the King to defend her in court. She asked him what she had been charged with, and he told her that it was thirty two counts of murder, and Witchcraft. She asked if Sir Harvey was present, and he could only shake his head.
The trial flew by like a nightmare for her.
The Judge read out the charges, and she knew that she was being tried for every person who she had killed in two years, and one or two whom she had not.
Then the Witchfinder made his case, saying that she had been found at the sight of the murder, in the act of killing a baby, beside two other corpses. He pointed out the similarities between that killing and the twenty nine others, namely wounds to the neck and the draining of blood. With regards to witchcraft, he stated that she had been found with blood on her lips, and that the dead had been drained of blood, and that The Bible forbade the drinking of blood. In addition, he pointed out to the Judge that she could not see in the daylight, and killed at night: she was a creature of darkness and evil.
Witnesses were called. First the Watchman, who spoke calmly and confidently about the horror he had seen, and the other murders over the last two years, and the sightings of her horse at most of these murders. Secondly the farmers who had aided in her arrest were paraded in, and each one muttered that he had seen her with blood on her lips as she killed a baby. Thirdly, a physician was called, who had investigated the corpses and found that they had all died of stab wounds, and that the man and the woman had been drained of blood. He had also investigated the bodies of two other victims, two months ago and one year ago; both had been drained of blood, and one had bite marks about the neck.
Her defendant told the Judge that she was a Lady of high status and flawless reputation, and that that should be taken into account.
Then the Judge asked her if she pleaded guilty or not guilty, and she pleaded guilty, because she knew that to plead not guilty would lead to torturous trials to prove her guilt.
The Judge pronounced that she was to be burnt until she was dead, then he said a few words about a good woman being dragged low by sin. Then the Witchfinder said a few words about the constant threat of The Devil’s temptation, then she was led down steep wooden steps from the dock to a tiny cell.
She could not sleep that night in the cell.
She did not fear death, was she remembered enough to know that she would come back. But she feared the pain of the fire, and she wanted her husband by her side.
At dawn a priest came to see her, and she sent him away. She was given a meal of ale, bread, cheese and ham. She drank the ale, but could not eat.
Then men at arms came for her and took her to the court yard, where she was chained in place on the back of a wagon. Then she was driven out of the castle’s menacing gates, down a cobbled road, through the streets of the city, to the hill where they killed people.
If she had been able to see, she would have seen the massive pyre that stood beside an empty gallows on the top of the hill. She could had seen the city below her, and the slow, wide river that flowed through it, into gently rolling hills, and out to the distant sea. She could have seen the lines of men at arms and the huge crowd who had come to watch her die. But she could only hear the braying mob and feel the sun burning her eyes.
A man shouted for silences, then read out the many charges against her. The mob booed and spat and crossed themselves as they listened.
She was carried from the wagon, and up to the great wooden pyre where she was chained to a stake amongst the timbers and branches.
A priest began to read Mass, and a man in a black mask stepped forward with a burning torch.
The faggots at the foot of the fire caught quickly. The flames licked up at her feet, and the braches around her legs caught fire.
She opened her eyes against the pain and tried to look around her. She could not see her man.
John pushed his way to the front of the crowd, where two men at arms in polished armour with swords in their belts and halberds in hand caught him, and held him respectfully but firmly by the shoulders.
“Steady, Sir Harvey,” the larger of the two men at arms grunted.
He stared up at his lady, fastened to the pyre, her face so pale and blank that it looked like she was already dead. More men at arms moved towards him.
“My lady!” he shouted, but he was drowned out by the crowd.
The flames leapt higher.
“My Lady!” he shouted again, and caught her eye.
He gazed up at her, and she stared down. A single tear marked the only emotion on her deathly face.
“Do not remember me this way John…” she said. “Do not remember what I have become… Do not remember me at all.”
“I will not forget thee, Alice.”
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