The Gallows Curse - By Karen Maitland Page 0,1

arms, two legs and a face as wrinkled as time itself. A mandrake! A genuine mandrake and here in her own hands. He was right; it was a creature beyond price.

'How did you come by this?'

'I... acquired it in the Holy Land, when I fought for the Cross.'

Gunilda knew that some blood-soaked tale must lurk behind that careful word acquired, but she didn't press him. There are some answers no one wants to utter or hear.

The stranger was watching her intently. 'So you will give me the poison . . . for the mandrake?'

Gunilda hesitated. It wouldn't be the first time she'd helped a man to die, though mostly it was some poor soul who, racked with pain or misery beyond enduring, begged her to help them speed their passing. They all came to her, those who could not afford the exorbitant fees of the apothecaries and physicians. She was well loved for her cures, and feared for her curses. But, though the physicians ranted against her, she did only good to the innocent and harm to the evil, so she was mostly left in peace.

Finally she rose. What he's done to your daughter he'll doubtless do to others. For their sakes — to prevent a greater evil — I'll give you what you need.'

Before the Nocturn bell had finished sounding from the priory, the stranger had slipped out into the stinking alley, a phial of poison safely lodged in his scrip where the mandrake had nestled.

Gunilda sat in front of the fire cradling the tiny creature in her hands, feeling the flutter of life beneath her fingers, the throbbing power rising up through her hands.

'What did he give you?' A sleepy little face appeared at her side.

Gunilda hugged her daughter tightly to her, thinking of another child. Then she held up the mandrake. 'It's something I've only ever dreamed of possessing. It has the power to cure every ill if used well, even to turn back curses upon the sender.'

'Can I hold it?' her daughter asked.

Gunilda shook her head. 'It's too dangerous; first you must learn how to use it well. Used wrongly, it can bring death and worse. I'll teach you all its secrets one day, but there is plenty of time for that. Go back to sleep now.'

Gunilda wrapped the mandrake carefully again and hid it in the darkest corner of the cottage, in the hollow under a stone in the floor where they kept their coins, on the rare occasions they were ever paid with money. She lay down beside her daughter, smoothing her hair and singing softly until she felt the child relax and heard the rhythmic breathing which signified sleep. Then she closed her own eyes. She slept without guilt for the nobleman whose death sentence she had signed. One tyrant less in the world was a blessing.

At dawn, nearly two weeks later, Gunilda was again awakened by a knocking at her door, but this time the visitors did not wait for her to answer it. Before she had even struggled upright, the door was kicked in and soldiers were pouring into the tiny cottage. Her daughter screamed and fought the men as they dragged Gunilda from her hearth, but they pushed the child to the ground, kicking her until she curled up into a ball and lay sobbing. The soldiers lashed Gunilda's wrists to a horse's tail and ran her up the great hill to the cathedral. She could hear her little daughter crying and calling out to her as, bruised and battered, she toiled up Steep Hill behind her mother.

Gunilda recognized only one man in the crowd who awaited her outside the cathedral, the stranger who had come in the night to her cottage. But he was not clad in a poor man's garb any more. And now it seemed he had a name, a name she would remember to her grave and beyond — Sir Warren. With trembling hand Warren pointed to Gunilda and feigned to weep as he betrayed her.

It took a while for Gunilda to understand the charge which had been brought against her, but eventually they told her that Sir Warren's wife was dead. The death had not been marked as suspicious at first. The deceased had been placed in her coffin while messengers went out to recall her poor grieving husband from London and to summon her brother from Winchester for her funeral, which, given her wealth, was to be a lavish affair.

But when Warren installed his