“Did Michel not come here?” Isabel persisted. A sudden thought occurred to her. “Was it he who shed blood before the altar?”
The priest looked at her helplessly, tears rising in his eyes. “The Black Knight,” he said softly, as if fearful that the very walls might hear and seek revenge. “It was the Black Knight.”
“What? No…” Before she could say more, a terrible racket broke out from outside, people banging on the bell and pounding on the gate.
“Father Colin!” a rough voice cried out. “For God’s pity, let us in!”
“No,” the priest murmured, clutching Isabel’s arm. “Not again.” He looked at her, his face going pale. “Not now, while you are here.”
“That is Raymond’s voice, Father,” Tom said. “Raymond, who works our fields. He and his wife, Mary, were coming to the village today to visit his kin.”
“Raymond,” the priest repeated. “Yes… yes, of course.” He gave Isabel’s arm a final squeeze before he let her go. “You stay here, my lady. Come with me, boy.”
“Wait,” Isabel called, chasing after them. Father Colin opened the gate just as she reached them, and there was Raymond with another burly man who looked very like him—his cousin from the village, she realized, recognizing him from the last harvest. They were carrying something between them, something wrapped in a cloth. Something that looked like a person.
“What have you done?” Father Colin demanded. “What foulness have you brought to the house of the Lord?”
“She isn’t foul,” Raymond said, pale beneath his farmer’s tan. “Or she doesn’t seem to have been back when she was alive.”
They carried the body inside to the priest’s private quarters and laid it on the table. Isabel pressed a fist to her mouth as Raymond’s cousin pulled back the cloth, stopping herself from screaming. This woman was not just dead.
She looked to be about Isabel’s own age; certainly no older. Her throat had been ripped out—the very bone was exposed. Her clothes were torn to shreds all down her front as well as the flesh underneath; from across the room Isabel could make out the shadow of a rough, gaping wound in her breast. But there seemed to be very little blood.
“It must have been a wolf, we think,” Raymond said, sounding shaky and near tears. “But none of us have ever heard tell of a wolf devouring a woman’s heart straight from her breast.”
“And the rest of the flesh has not been eaten,” his cousin added. “Only the blood is gone—she hasn’t bled a drop since she was found.”
“Where?” Father Colin said, his voice sounding hollow and flat. “Where did you find her?”
“On the king’s road, Father,” Raymond answered. “Right between the ruts just outside the village, in plain sight of anyone who passed.”
“Dear God,” Tom said, crossing himself. “If I had ridden another mile, I might have found her myself this morning.”
“Mary and I found her,” Raymond said. “Poor Mary may never get over it—she’s with my mother now, and it will be more than I can do to get her to come home with me to the woods.” In truth, he looked as though he might not want to go himself. “None in the village seem to know her, Father, though from her clothes she seems a common lass. That’s why we’ve brought her here to you, in hopes that you might recognize her.”
“She was here,” the old man answered. He moved closer to the body, his hands reaching out as if to touch it, hovering in the air. “I found her yesterday morning sleeping in the garden inside the broken gate. She did not even know how she had come to be there, poor child.” He did touch the woman’s face, closing her staring eyes. “I tried to convince her to stay here with me, but she would not. She said she had to go home to her parents—some village called Kitley, near the sea, she told me was her home. She had money, a purse full of gold.” He looked up from the dead girl to the living men. “Perhaps she was robbed.”
“No thief did this, Father,” Raymond’s cousin said. “Look at the marks on her throat. ’Twas some sort of beast that attacked her.”
“A dog?” Isabel said, finding her voice at last. She thought of the dog she had seen the night before, the knowing look in its eyes as it stared at the castle Charmot. “I saw a dog last night beside the lake, a big, black dog I had never seen before.”
“A grim,” Raymond muttered. He was of old Celtic stock that still spoke of such things, spirits and demons that haunted the druids’ old wood.
“My la
dy, what are you doing here?” the priest demanded, appalled. “I told you to wait in the chapel— boy, take your lady out of here at once.”
“No,” Isabel protested. “I want to help—”
“There’s naught to be done for her now, my lady,” Tom said, taking her arm. “Please, come away. Such evil is not for your eyes.”
“But…” But what could she say? He was right; this woman was past all help.
“We will pray for her,” he suggested, steering her to the door.
He led her out of the church to the garden, and Isabel allowed it, barely noticing when he finally let her go. So much was happening so quickly, and none of it made any sense. “That poor woman,” she murmured to herself, pacing under the trees that lined the garden wall. She had seen the dead many times before, of course, but never any horror such as that. Just remembering, she felt sick, her hand going back to her mouth. And Father Colin—what could have happened to him? Even before Raymond and his cousin had turned up with the girl, the priest had sounded half out of his wits. He seemed to not remember coming to Charmot at all—he had thought he must have come to see her father. The old and the innocent forget evil, the peasant woman had said. But what evil had the good father forgotten? He spoke of the Black Knight, but that was madness, too. Father Colin knew as well as she did that the Black Knight was no one but Brautus in a devil’s armor.
But you prayed for another one, a voice whispered inside her head. Don’t you remember?