Tasters 28

Fidelma gazed at him thoughtfully. 'Tell your story, Becc, and we will see how best we may help you.'

'The first killing was two months ago,' Becc began without preamble. The victim was Beccnat, the daughter of Lesren who is our tanner and leather worker. She had just reached her seventeenth summer. A young, innocent girl.'

He fell silent, apparently meditating on the event.

'In what manner was she killed?' prompted Fidelma, after a few moments.

'Brutally,' returned Becc at once. 'Brutally.' His voice was suddenly sharp. Her body was found one morning in the woods not far from my fortress. She had been stabbed many times, almost as if the flesh was ripped apart in some unspeakable ritual way.'

'You said that this was the first killing, so I deduce that there have been others?'

'A month ago, another young girl was slain. This time it was Escrach, the daughter of our miller. She was found in a similar manner. She too was no more than seventeen or eighteen years of age.'

'Was she found in the same woods?'

Becc nodded. 'And not far from where the first body was found. Then a few nights ago the third girl was found. Her name was Ballgel. She was of the same age as the others. She worked in the kitchens at my fortress. She, too, was slaughtered in an unspeakable manner.'

'Unspeakable?' Fidelma grimaced dourly. 'When things are unspeakable I often find that they are best described in words.'

Becc sighed and gave a shake of his head.

'I do not choose my words lightly,' he said reprovingly. 'Have you ever seen the results when a butcher has slaughtered a hog?'

After the sergeant had left, Judge Dee reflected that he ought to go too and change from his ceremonial robe of of stiff green brocade into a comfortable house-gown. But he felt loath to leave the quiet atmosphere of the now empty hall and thought he might as well have one more cup of tea. In the park outside it had grown quiet too; people had gone home for the evening rice. Later they would swarm out into the street again, to admire the display of lanterns and have drinking bouts in the roadside wine-houses. Putting his cup down, Judge Dee reflected that perhaps he shouldn't have given Ma Joong and his two other lieutenants the night off, for later in the evening there might be brawls in the brothel district. He must remember to tell the headman of the constables to double the night watch.

He stretched his hand out again for his teacup. Suddenly he checked himself. He stared fixedly at the shadows at the back of the hall. A tall old man had come in. He seemed to be clad in a tattered robe, his head with the long flowing hair was bare. Silently he limped across the hall. Supporting himself on a crooked staff. He didn't seem to notice the judge, but went straight past with bent head.

Judge Dee was going to shout and ask what he meant by coming in unannounced, but the words were never spoken. The judge froze in sudden horror

I imagine a door surrounded by roses, but it becomes one of a series of doors in a plastered wall. I do not like it. Then I see the tunnel I used before.

I wait.

She said we would go to Montfaucon together, travelling outside time - by which I suppose she meant the journey would take no time. We shall be both here and there simultaneously. She will then appear to her brother. "And me?" I am simply to watch. Then when the men die, we shall seize their souls.

I don't quite like the sound of this. My uncle Rabbi Yacoub ben Amar, would not approve at all.

[...]

She is there, at the mouth of the tunnel. Reaching for me. She must have come along it.

I take her hand, step out into darkness - and see lights, hear voices ahead, and noise and music. Montfaucon. Row upon row of gibbets, of bodies slowly twirling. Around and among them, men and women drinking, dancing, laughing in groups, musicians and jugglers; people with trays of pies and sweets, and the occasional burst of light as a fire-eater passes by.

But the music seems strangely muted. I can hardly hear the voices, the laughter, the cries of the food and drink-vendors. I am invisible, too. And people not only look through me, they pass through me where I walk hand in hand with Niniane, as though I do not exist.

Niniane understands. For her, too, she says, everything is muted and unreal. She can make herself visible, but she is not really there: people walk round her, she says, 'but if anyone bumps into me they will pass through me as they pass through you. But look. Over there.'

A group of men in a tumbril. The prisoners. More men, standing around the tumbril. The guards - the Albanian's men. And the Albanian himself, with le Grec and some of his henchmen, standing nearby, talking quietly.

'Choose your man,' she says.

'I have.'

'Go to him. Be with him when he dies. Then take him back to the house, to Lule and Natalie. Wait for me there.'

'But what if he doesn't want to? What if -?'