The Gallows Curse Quotes

“They all wait impatiently for the blessed cloak of darkness to cover their wretched little deeds, but the sun will not be hurried by the whims of men.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“Mortals are strange creatures; they cling to life even when that life is nothing but pain and misery, yet they will throw away their lives for a word, an idea, even a flag. Wolves piss to mark their territory. Smell the stench of another pack and wolves will quietly slink away. Why risk a fight when it might maim or kill you? But humans will slash and slaughter in their thousands to plant their little piece of cloth on a hill or hang it from a battlement.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“Why do mortals think that suffering is a coin with which they can buy justice or salvation? ... life is a steal if you are a talented thief, and if you are not, then you may suffer all you please but if will buy you nothing but pain.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“As she pronounced the last word the corpse shuddered violently; it slumped down to the ground and for a moment Gytha thought it was going to disappear back into the earth. But as she watched, its ashen, waxy skin began to bubble all over, as if maggots were crawling out of it, covering it from its skull to its feet. The skin was erupting into soft white feathers. The child lifted its head, and in the dark empty hollows of its eyes were two black glistening pearls. Two long wings unfurled on either side of its body and as they beat, the pale creature rose silently into the air. The barn owl hovered above them for a moment, its wings outstretched against the moon, then it turned and glided away over the dark mass of the trees.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“He'd had all day to think about how he might manage this escapade without getting caught. The wars had taught him that rash courage was no substitute for a careful plan. But fate does not always cooperate with the plans of men.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“For the fact is when men are hand, innocent or guilty, their semen, that salty white milk, falls onto the Earth and there are on that very spot we spring up... Why men should ejaculate in the throes of death is a mystery even to me. Perhaps death really is the consummation of life, or maybe it's the last act of the body desperate to bequeath a life that will go on even as its own is obliterated. But I like to believe it is a final one-fingered gesture of defiance at their executioners, the only obscene gesture they can make since their hands are tightly bound behind them. Whatever the reason, felons with their dying gasp impregnate our mother and so we, the mandrakes, are conceived.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“King John won't need any persuading that the French have a hand in this. From what I've heard, if a bean gives him a bellyache he swears it was a French one.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“Part of him had dreaded seeing Elena again and yet he couldn't keep away. He hadn't been able to bring himself to look at her at first, because he knew that Raoul had had the pleasure of her. He had wanted to punish her, make her the whore she was, but now that it had happened, he was terrified of seeing that look of hardness in her eyes, that loss of innocence that had still remained even after Athan had bedded her. He wanted to seize her and shake her until she told him every single filthy thing that she and Raoul had done together. He wanted to know in each minute detail how she had looked when Raoul had touched her, what she had said, what she'd thought, what she felt.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“The priest had begun to anoint her son, but would God bless such a sacrament when it had been forced from his servant by threats? Raffe could not be sure that extreme unction had even been completed, for the priest could hardly have been trusted to continue after Raffe had been forced to slam down the lid of the pit. Even if he hadn't fainted straight away, he was more likely to have cursed Gerard than blessed him.
Raffe silently cursed himself. What had he been thinking of? The priest was right, what good would it do anointing a corpse so much decayed? And yet, the bones of the saints still had power to heal, didn't they? Even though the bones were dry and crumbling to dust, people still kissed them and begged them for a blessing.
But Gerard was no saint. No perfume of sanctity wafted from his tomb. A priest would no doubt tell him that the unnaturally rapid decay was proof that he had died in mortal sin. And the rotting remains that lay in that box, the putrid liquid, the foul stench, that was not Gerard; it was not the man he loved and called friend.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“No sense fretting over a fox among the lambs, when there's a wolf on the prowl. And this wolf is a savage one.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“Most spells only have power in this life, but a mandrake's born at the same instant a man dies. That means its curse can follow you through the gates of death itself and into the life beyond. I'd not go against it, not for a whole kingdom and and every lusty man in it.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“I want him to suffer in this life before he suffers in the next. I don't want him to escape that. I need him to know how it feels to have to go on living when the person love with all your soul is suffering the torments of the fires for eternity, and you can do nothing to help them, not even place so much as a single drop of cooling water upon their burning tongues. I wanted him to live with that. I wanted him to know that before he dies, for surely that is the only torment that hell itself cannot inflict upon the damned. ...when you hate that much, it is not hard to kill a man at all.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“The skin on his palm was thicker than the hide on a man's heel, but across it and between the fingers were deep raw cracks from the cold and the salt which would never heal, not until he settled ashore. And that was not likely to be anytime soon, for when a man's got salt water in his blood and a sea wind in his lungs, neither wife nor land can keep him from the waves.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“Raffe lifted the latch on the heavy door and sidled in. As usal, he gagged as he took his first breath in the cloying, fishy stink of the smoke that rose from the burning seabirds, which were skewered on to the wall spikes in place of candles. In the dim oily light, he could make out the vague outlines of men sitting in twos and threes around the tables, heard the muttered conversations, but could no more recognize a face than see his own feet in the shadows.

A square, brawny woman deposited a flagon and two leather beakers on a table before waddling across to Raffe. Pulling his head down towards hers, she planted a generous

kiss on his smooth cheek. Thought you'd left us,' she said reprovingly. You grown tired of my eel pic?'

How could anyone grow tired of a taste of heaven?' Raffe said, throwing his arm around her plump shoulders and squeezing her.

The woman laughed, a deep, honest belly chuckle that set

her pendulous breasts quivering. Raffe loved her for that. 'He's over there, your friend,' she murmured. 'Been wait ing a good long while.'

Raffe nodded his thanks and crossed to the table set into a
dark alcove, sliding on to the narrow bench. Even in the dirty mustard light he could recognize Talbot's broken nose and thickened ears.

Talbot looked up from the rim of his beaker and grunted. By way of greeting he pushed the half-empty flagon of ale towards Raffe. Raffe waited until the serving woman had set a large portion of eel pie in front of him and retreated out of earshot. He hadn't asked for food, no one ever needed to here. In the Fisher's Inn you ate and drank whatever was put in front of you and you paid for it too. The marsh and river were far too close for arguments, and the innkeeper was a burly man who had beaten his own father to death when he was only fourteen, so rumour had it, for taking a whip to him once too often. Opinion was divided on whether the boy or the father deserved what they suffered at each other's hands, but still no one in those parts would have dreamed of report ing the killing. And since the innkeeper's father lay rotting somewhere at the bottom of the deep, sucking bog, he wasn't in a position to complain.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“[The] chanting died away and silence flooded back the moonlit grove, a silence as solid and lucent as glass. A cloud drew across the moon, plunging the clearing into into darkness. The forest held its breath.

Then the ground around them began to tremble, shaking as if a thousand horses were charging by. As the cloud peeled back from the moon, Gytha could see something rising in front of them just beyond the circle. A wisp of mist was uncurling from the ground, pushing up the earth around it, like the first shoot of a plant. Then the column of mist burst out of the black earth with a thin wail like a newborn baby's cry. It whirled around and around, and as it turned there came a low moaning in the forest as if an icy winter wind was wandering among the branches of the trees, but the trees were quite still. The moaning grew into a shriek, rising higher and higher till the very darkness was vibrating with the pain of it. Then, just as suddenly, the shrieking stopped.

A naked infant stood in front of them, its body so thin the ribs stood out like the timbers of a wrecked ship. The lips were drawn back to reveal the toothless bones of its jaws, its empty eye sockets were as dark as black fire.

Madron turned her sightless eyes towards her daughter. 'Has he come? Do you see him?'

Gytha could not wrench her gaze from the little corpse in front of her. 'He is here, Madron, the babe is here,' she whispered.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“The old woman cocked her head on one side. 'You wouldn't let me starve.'

'Wouldn't I?'

'I could put a hex on you that you'd never undo,' the old woman raged. I could bring a cooked fish alive in your throat even as you swallow it to choke you to death. You still don't know the half of what I know, girl, and you never will. You don't have the skill or patience to master it. Haven't had to learn it to survive, not like me, and that's your trouble.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“[He] bowed his head, crossing himself, and so fervently

did he pray that he almost missed the sound of the footsteps crossing the courtyard. But a man who has watched through many a long night waiting for that slight intake of breath that in the assassin makes before he sticks the dagger your back or slices his knife across your throat, can never again give himself over to prayer or sleep or even love-making without his sixth sense remaining ever watchful.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“The marsh-boy had borrowed a longer craft than his own light coracle, and despite the chill night his fingers were sweaty as he passed Raffe the rope. His evidently not helped him to scull the boat. But as Raffe passenger had grasped the priest's cold hand to pull him ashore, he realized that he would have been more a hindrance than help, for such soft delicate little fingers as these would have blistered before he'd made half a dozen strokes.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“The bushes parted and a man stepped out. Gytha could see at once this was no charcoal burner. His fine red leather gloves and boots were not fashioned by any cordwainer in these parts. Nor was he a man who needed to hunt to fill his family's hungry bellies, for the flash from the gold thread on the trim of his tunic was enough to alert any quarry for miles around.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“I would not betray a priest, but if you will not act as a priest should, if your miserable little skin is worth more to you than another man's immortal soul, then you have aban doned your vows and you are no priest”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“For the passage time cannot undo the crime of murder, since the victim is gone of from mortal reach and has no tongue or sign to forgive the one who wronged him.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“Gytha knew that affair was as doomed as a salmon and the swallow who fell in love”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“Peace seemed to roll in through the open door in the wake of Joan's departure. Elena took her son in her arms and gently kissed his face. His eyes were heavy with sleep, but the lids were almost transparent so that the blue of his eyes glowed through them like a jewel through gauze. She stroked the soft apricot down on his warm head and slid her finger into the tiny fist, feeling the fingers curl tightly round her own as if he knew without looking that it was his mother's hand.

The bairn, that's what they all called him. Athan said he had chosen a name, but Joan declared it was bad luck to say it out loud before the baptism in case a stranger or the faerie folk should learn it and use it to witch the child before his name was sanctified by the Church. At his baptism Athan would whisper it to the priest at the font, but only when the priest proclaimed it to the congregation would Elena knew what they were going to call her baby.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“For the fact is when men are hanged, innocent or guilty, their semen, that salty white milk, falls onto the Earth and there on that very spot we spring up... Why men should ejaculate in the throes of death is a mystery even to me. Perhaps death really is the consummation of life, or maybe it's the last act of the body desperate to bequeath a life that will go on even as its own is obliterated. But I like to believe it is a final one-fingered gesture of defiance at their executioners, the only obscene gesture they can make since their hands are tightly bound behind them. Whatever the reason, felons with their dying gasp impregnate our mother and so we, the mandrakes, are conceived.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“Some call its twins berries the testicles of Uranus”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“mortals who wish to gather it must first release a black hen which the Devil will not be able to resist chasing,”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“[You're] Too impatient to let anything brew to its full strength. What have I always told you? You have to raise a skeleton one bone at a time afore you can set it dancing,”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“...the howling began as first one starving dog threw back its head, then another and an other until the whole valley was echoing with the raw, wretched grief of them. It was as if every poor beast in the world was screaming out against what they had witnessed that day.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“Did that bastard, Osborn, relive it night after night in his sleep? Raffe knew he did not. Even when Lord Osborn had issued those orders which other men were forced to carry out, he had given less thought to them than a boy snapping the neck of a snared bird. He knew Gerard would have to carry out those commands. Osborn was Gerard's liege lord and Gerard was bound by the oath of fealty to serve him. To refuse to obey his command on the field of battle was unthinkable. Any man who did as much would be branded a coward and a traitor.

That night, after it was all over, Raffe had watched Osborn with his younger brother, Hugh, tossing down a flagon of sweet cypress wine, already planning the next day's sport, and it was plain he had already forgotten the whole incident. But then it is easy to forget if you only have to say the words and don't have to look into terrified faces or hear the screams echoing again and again through all the long dark nights.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse