Copyright © 2014 Karen Maitland

The right of Karen Maitland to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This Ebook edition first published by Headline Publishing Group in 2014

All characters – apart from the obvious historical ones – in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978 1 4722 2289 3

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

About Karen Maitland

Praise

About the Book

Also By

LIARS AND THIEVES

Sampler of  THE VANISHING WITCH

Footnote

About Karen Maitland

© John C. Gibson.

Karen Maitland travelled and worked in many parts of the United Kingdom before settling for many years in the beautiful medieval city of Lincoln, an inspiration for her writing. She is the author of The White Room, Company of Liars, The Owl Killers, The Gallows Curse and The Falcons of Fire and Ice. She has recently relocated to a life of rural bliss in Devon.

Praise for Karen Maitland

‘Combines the storytelling traditions of The Canterbury Tales with the supernatural suspense of Mosse’s Sepulchre in this atmospheric tale of treachery and magic’ Marie Claire on Company of Liars

‘Passion and peril. A compelling blend of historical grit and supernatural twists’ Daily Mail on The Falcons of Fire and Ice

‘Glorious  . . . a thrillingly horrible vision of the Dark Ages’ Metro on The Owl Killers

‘Bawdy and brutal’ Simon Mayo on The Gallows Curse

‘Scarily good. Imagine The Wicker Man crossed with The Birds’ Marie Claire on The Owl Killers

About the Book

Camelot and Narigorm the rune reader return to delight fans of Karen Maitland’s classic novel as the company – in their desperate bid to outrun the plague – encounter a band of outlaws, who are making the most of the breakdown in law and order to steal from the weak  . . . and kill at leisure.

But in the child Narigorm they might just have met their match – for plague is the lesser of those two evils.

By Karen Maitland

The White Room

Company of Liars

The Owl Killers

The Gallows Curse

The Falcons of Fire and Ice

Anno Domini 1348

Rockingham Forest, Northamptonshire

There are many tales told about the year the Great Pestilence first swept across our land, of rivers turned to blood, fire falling from the sky, earthquakes swallowing churches and dragons fighting in the clouds. But the tales I know were of a strange, ragged company of travellers who together wandered the desolate roads, trying to stay one pace ahead of death.

The townsfolk and villagers slammed their gates against strangers and huddled behind their doors, but we had no homes to hide in. For until the Great Mortality infected our shores we’d each earned our living on the road, coaxing a coin here or a loaf there from the crowds at markets and fairs the length and breadth of England. There was Zophiel, a magician who performed conjuring tricks; Rodrigo and his apprentice, Jofre, musicians from Venice; Cygnus, a storyteller, who’d been born with only one arm; Osmond, an artist travelling with his gentle wife, Adela; and Narigorm, a white-haired child who told fortunes with her runes. Then there was me, a camelot, a pedlar of relics and amulets, a seller of hope in a terrified world that was sorely in need of it.

I was the oldest of our company, ancient some might say, missing one eye and with a great scar covering half my face. I was the creature that mothers threatened would snatch naughty children from their cottages if they did not lie quietly in their beds. But there is much truth spoken in lies, for there was a monster that was coming for them, a monster without a face or form that crept silently through the streets, devouring animals in their byres, children in their cots and parents in the taverns, and no one, neither noble knight nor holy bishop, could vanquish that dragon which would lay waste to all England.

It was the winter of 1348, not that the season brought any great change in the weather for it had rained every day since the midsummer of that year. Xanthus, the mare who pulled Zophiel’s wagon, which carried all of our meagre possessions, had cast a shoe some time on the previous day; but the road had been so muddy, none of us had seen it fall. Missing a shoe, Xanthus couldn’t drag the wagon over the sodden ground without risking permanent lameness or worse, so there was no help for it but to hide the wagon under swathes of old bracken and branches while Zophiel led his horse through the forest to the next village in the hope of finding a blacksmith there.

Adela and I had elected to go with him to try to buy flour or dried beans if the villagers had any they could spare, while Rodrigo, Jofre, Osmond and Narigorm would make good use of the time gathering kindling to burn and hunting for whatever birds or animals they could catch for the pot, for our supplies of food were exhausted and we had eaten nothing that morning. Cygnus was to remain with the wagon to guard it, though Zophiel protested that allowing a one-armed man to guard anything was like putting a leash on a rabbit and expecting it to hunt boar.