Abomination (8 page)

Wulfric thought carefully about his answer before speaking. “I’ve never seen any evidence of it.”

“You’ve seen no evidence of God, either,” Alfred replied, as though anticipating the answer. “And yet you believe.”

“God was with us at Ethandun,” said Wulfric. “We could not have turned the tide of battle otherwise. I remember you said so yourself.”

“
Direct
evidence,” the King retorted. “Something before your very eyes that defies all nature, and science, and reason. Something that cannot be explained.”

“Then no. But faith is the evidence of things not seen, is it not?”

For a long moment, Alfred did not speak. He simply fingered the stem of his goblet and stared into the blood-red surface of the wine within, lost in some dark thought.

“I have seen things,” he said at last, his voice not much above a whisper. “Things that have led me to question my own faith. And may cause you to question yours.”

A gust of wind howled against the window. Wulfric could not tell if the room had suddenly grown colder or if it was his imagination. Either way, Alfred’s demeanor troubled him. These were not the words of a rational man, and Wulfric had never known his King to be anything but.

“Why am I here?” he asked, finally.

“In the morning, I will show you,” said Alfred as he rose from his chair, prompting Wulfric to do the same.

“I am not tired,” said Wulfric, determined to get to the source of whatever was causing this uncharacteristic behavior. “I came a
long way. If this is why I am here, if you have something to show me, show me now.”

“In the morning,” said Alfred. “The things I speak of should not be seen so late before sleep.”

Wulfric did not sleep. Instead, he tossed and turned restlessly through the night, partly because the bed, though far more comfortable and spacious than his own, was not his own. He had rarely spent a night away from home since making his new life there, and when he did, sleep did not come easily. He missed the feel of his own pillow, lumpy as it was. He missed the smell of whatever Cwen had been baking, left out to cool overnight. And most of all, he missed Cwen, the warmth of her back as he nestled himself against her, his hand on her firm, round belly, feeling the gentle stirring of his unborn child within. All the luxuries and appointments of Alfred’s castle only reminded him how far he was from them.

But mostly he did not sleep out of concern for his friend. He had seen Alfred drawn and wan before—many times while on campaign—but never like this. Wulfric knew better than most the strength of the man, knew that it would take the gravest of matters, more grave even than war, to weigh so heavily upon him. Alfred’s words repeated incessantly in Wulfric’s head as he shifted uncomfortably beneath the bedsheets.
I have seen things that have led me to question my own faith
. Wulfric knew that Alfred’s faith in God went to the very core of his being. It made him the man he was, had given him the strength to drive back the Norse even when all seemed lost. If all the horrors of battle, of seeing comrades bloodied and cleaved all around him, could not shake this man’s belief, then what in God’s name could? It was a question Wulfric could not solve, though he racked his brain, and it haunted him still
when the first cock crowed and one of Alfred’s pages arrived to fetch him.

Alfred was waiting for Wulfric in the Great Hall. He made no offer of breakfast, nor did he enquire how Wulfric had slept; it was plain enough to see. While the King last night had seemed determined to delay the matter at hand, this morning he was equally determined not to tarry. He escorted Wulfric from the hall and through the castle’s winding hallways until they arrived at a door with which Wulfric was not familiar; he thought he had seen all of the castle in his time here, but this was new to him.

The door was constructed of the heaviest oak and barred by an iron gate that appeared to have been added recently. Two guards stood watch by the entrance. Wulfric did not like it here. He had never much cared for small spaces. Looking back now, he realized that the walls and ceiling had been gradually contracting as they progressed along the hallway, so that now they stood at the end of what felt more like a tunnel. He was already beginning to feel distinctly uneasy.

“What is this?” he asked.

“The dungeon,” Alfred replied. He nodded to one of the guards, who unlocked the iron gate and swung it open, then did the same with the door behind it.

“Here,” said Alfred. He produced an embroidered cloth and offered it to Wulfric. It was damp, and there was an almost overpowering, but not unpleasant, odor from whatever the material had been soaked in. Wulfric was no herbalist, but his friend Aedan, who owned the field neighboring his, grew many types of fragrant plants, and so he recognized the smell—a concoction of lavender and mint. It was not unlike the perfume Cwen had made for herself from the bushel of herbs Aedan brought them as a welcoming
gift when they first set up house, and for a moment Wulfric found it comforting; it smelled to him of home.

Then the dungeon door opened with a creak and something else rose up out of the dank, musty air within. Wulfric could not identify it—he had never before smelled anything quite like it—but it was foul. He immediately pressed the cloth against his nose and mouth, but even the strong aroma of the perfume only partially blocked out the stench. Wulfric looked at Alfred and noticed that he had no such cloth of his own. “Where is yours?” he enquired.

“It pains me to say that I have grown accustomed to the smell,” Alfred replied. He lifted a flaming torch from its cradle on the nearby wall and they began their descent.

Wulfric followed the King down the winding stairs, the two of them led by one of Alfred’s guards while the other remained above, locking and barring the door behind them. All trod warily as they descended, Wulfric most of all; the dank stone steps felt slippery underfoot, and his mind was racing with thoughts of what might await them at the bottom. Winchester’s dungeon was reserved not for deserters or common criminals, who typically languished in the stockade, and not for high-ranking enemies of the crown, who were sent to the tower, but for the worst and most despicable of those who sought to harm Alfred’s kingdom. Who was down here? A captured Danish spy with tidings of a fresh plot? A foiled assassin? Or something beyond even his busy imagination? Wulfric did not know whether to feel relief or dread in the knowledge that he would find out soon enough.

With each step, the fetor wafting from the darkness below grew more powerful. Wulfric twisted the cloth Alfred had given him to wring out more of its perfumed scent, but it was no use. Even with the cloth pressed firmly against his face, the stink was so strong by the time they reached the bottom of the steps that Wulfric could barely keep himself from retching. What the hell was it? Sulfur, perhaps? Similar, but worse.

Even in the bright light of their torches, the narrow corridor at which they arrived gave up little. The stone walls on either side extended for only a few feet before disappearing into the deepest, most impenetrable blackness Wulfric had ever seen. This was no ordinary darkness, not simply the absence of light; it was as though something down here was
radiating
darkness, filling every corner of this dungeon with it. Wulfric was not a man easily unnerved, but at this moment he was gripped by a powerful desire to retreat up the steps, to be away from this place. Still, he stood firm.

The guard, his torch lighting the way, led Alfred and Wulfric down the narrow corridor, passing cell after empty cell. Though the flame burned brightly, it stubbornly refused to reveal anything more than a few feet ahead. It should have cast at least a dim light down the tunnel’s entire length. Here, it shrank to an isolated sliver of light in a sea of unyielding black.

Wulfric began to hear something. A scratching sound in the dark up ahead. Snorting and snarling. Some kind of animal. It sounded to him sickly, or wounded, but not in any way that he had ever heard, and he had tended many an animal on his farm. He shivered as his suspicion grew that whatever was being held down here fell into that last dreaded category—the thing beyond his imagining.

The guard came to a halt. “Go no farther,” he warned. Before them a line had been daubed across the floor in woad, and a few feet beyond, the iron bars of the final cell at the hallway’s end could be dimly seen in the flickering dark. This cell looked different from the others. The lower half of the bars were ridden with rust and a strange, greenish corrosion; they were pitted and scarred as though something had been chewing at them, and some were still dripping with a wet, viscous saliva.

Something behind those bars was moving, something primal and ugly, scratching and snorting around the floor of the cell. Whatever it was, it lived low to the ground. But Wulfric caught only brief, partial glimpses of it in the dim light. For a moment, he
thought he could discern a clawed foot, like that of an oversized cat. But then the torchlight reflected a glimmer of reptilian scale. Was his mind playing tricks with him, down here in the darkness?

The guard used his torch to light another that hung from the wall. He waited for its flame to bloom fully and then tossed it low against the foot of the iron bars. Wulfric jolted back in alarm as the creature within let out a shriek, amplified by the close stone walls, that set the hairs along his arms and neck on end. The creature retreated from the flames, into a dark corner of its cell, but then it slowly came forward again, into the light, and Wulfric at last saw the full nature of it.

It moved across the rotten straw lining the cell floor on six squat, lizard-like legs, each webbed foot bearing several large, horned claws. Its body was scaled but shaped like a potbellied hog, and it had the snout and tusks of one, too, although its lidless eyes were distinctly reptilian, bright red with slitted yellow irises. The unnameable thing approached the fallen torch, sniffing at the burning embers through the bars. And then the thing reached through and snatched the torch with its mouth, wrestling with it for a moment as it tried to pull it through the bars. Finally it dropped the torch, then grabbed it again by its tapered end, pulling it through the bars longwise. Wulfric watched in morbid fascination as the beast opened its jaws wide, revealing rows of slavering, needle-like fangs, bit down on the torch with a loud crunch, then shredded it to splinters in a frenzy before swallowing it down, flames and all.

The guardsman took a step back, ushering Alfred and Wulfric with a raised arm as he did so. A moment later, after swallowing the last of the torch, the beast belched out a hot burst of bright orange flame. In the brief eruption of light, Wulfric saw that much of the cell’s walls had been charred black by fire.

Against his better judgment, Wulfric found himself moving closer, unthinkingly stepping across the line on the floor. Alarmed, the guard reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder, but it was
too late. The beast caught sight of Wulfric and went wild. Slavering like a rabid dog, it threw itself hard against the bars, screeching as it clawed at the air. As the guard tried to pull Wulfric back, an impossibly long tongue uncoiled from the creature’s mouth and snapped around Wulfric’s wrist. He cried out and tried to pull free, but the beast was stronger. It scuttled backward, toward the rear of the cell, dragging Wulfric with it.

Alfred grabbed Wulfric’s free arm and dug in his heels. But even their combined strength was not enough. As the two of them were dragged closer to the beast, the guard drew his sword and began hacking frantically at its tongue, severing it only on the third strike. Finally free, Wulfric and Alfred fell backward onto the floor. The wounded beast rolled onto its back as well, howling and kicking its feet hysterically.

Moving quickly, the guard drew a dagger from his belt and slid the blade under the piece of severed tongue that was still constricted around Wulfric’s wrist. With a hard jerk upward, he cut the tongue free, and it fell to the floor, still writhing like a fish flapping on a riverbank. Alfred stood ready with a skin of water, spilling it onto Wulfric’s wrist the moment the thing was removed. His flesh sizzled, wisps of smoke rising, and Wulfric saw a bright red welt encircling his wrist where the tongue had taken hold of him. The top layer of skin had been burned away by the beast’s saliva.