Company of Liars (34 page)

Osmond dropped his gaze and shook his head.

∗

Cygnus was inside the chantry for a long time. His examination of the chapel had not taken long, but then he called out that he was going down to the lower floor. We heard nothing more. Xanthus shifted restlessly in the shafts, her head down against the pouring rain. Strange how you seem to get wetter in the rain when you are standing than when you are walking, more conscious of the coldness seeping down your neck. Zophiel was impatient to move on, muttering that it would be God's punishment if the boy did meet death in there after what he'd had the audacity to propose. Finally he turned and pulled on Xanthus's bridle.

‘Come,’ he said coldly. ‘We are leaving.’

Narigorm, curled up as usual in the well at the front of the wagon, lifted her head. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘It's not time to leave yet.’

Zophiel, furious now, ignored her and tried to pull the horse forward but Xanthus braced herself and refused to budge. She seemed to know that Cygnus was missing and was not going to take a step without him. Zophiel was reaching from the whip when there was a loud flapping above our heads and several pigeons flew out of the small bell tower. Minutes later, Cygnus's head appeared at one of the small openings in the tower.

‘It's safe,’ he called. ‘There's no one here. I've searched everywhere.’

Zophiel turned and stared hard at Narigorm, but she scrambled from the wagon and in a moment had disappeared though the chapel door.

We followed her cautiously. It was cold and damp inside, colder even than standing outside on the bridge, but it was surprisingly light. On each of the three sides of the chapel were three square-headed windows, with smaller, higher windows on the east side. Niches were hollowed out round
the walls which were intended one day to contain the figures of saints, perhaps of the Virgin Mary herself, but these had not yet been filled. At the east end of the chapel was a raised dais on which stood a stone altar elaborately carved with the five glorious mysteries of the Rosary. Unlike the carving on the outside of the building, these had been painted, the robes of the figures picked out in rich blues, greens, yellows and reds, and touches of gold. Directly behind the altar, wooden scaffolding had been erected against the wall on which the painting of a scene appeared almost complete, but the other walls of the chapel were as yet bare.

To one side of the sanctuary was a door opening on to a narrow spiral staircase leading to the crypt below. It was smaller than the chapel and lit only by two loop windows high up on the wall. In one corner was a small angled recess containing a privy hole which emptied straight out over the river. A heavy door on the north wall led to the outside. When the river was lower there was probably a small island in the middle of the river to which the door gave access, a way into the chantry for people and supplies arriving by boat. But now the steps outside leading up to the door were all but covered by the turbulent water. If the river rose another foot, water would pour in under the door straight into the crypt.

A few planks and trestles were scattered about the chamber, together with some empty flagons, barrels and a brazier with blackened pieces of wood and a few charred bird bones in the bottom. A heap of fine grey wood ash still lay in the pan beneath. Some old fowling nets and tangles of line heaped in the corner suggested that the workmen had supplemented their rations with whatever they could catch in the river. But other than this jetsam, the crypt was empty of furnishing.

Although it was damper and colder than the chapel, we decided to both cook and sleep in the crypt. The brazier had evidently been brought in by boat through the crypt doorway and would not easily be carried up that narrow staircase. Cygnus also pointed out that the windows in the chapel had been designed to allow any light from candles inside to shine out over the approaches to the bridge, and while there was no good reason for travellers not to take shelter in a chantry, we did not want to draw attention to our presence at night, for who knew what vagabonds and cut-throats might be abroad?

Zophiel stated his intention to sleep without a light up in the chapel, for that was where we had stored all his boxes from the wagon. No one was of a mind to lug them all downstairs, and as Rodrigo told Zophiel when he protested, if the river level rose and we had to leave quickly we would not want to have to abandon his precious boxes, now would we? Xanthus and the wagon were concealed among the trees on the far side of the bridge on the opposite side to the town. And so we settled in and prepared to stay until Adela's baby was born.

Osmond knelt in the sanctuary beside the altar grinding a small quantity of
terre verte
in a mortar. I recognized it as the colour the painters use to paint flesh tones. As I watched he carefully added a few drops of oil and continued to grind vigorously with his pestle. He beamed up at me as I moved closer. His eyes were shining in a way I had never seen before.

‘I hope this will work,’ he gabbled excitedly. ‘I've always used eggs to bind the colour before, but at this time of year, even if we could find a hen or a goose that has not been eaten, they will not be in lay. I found some old pigeon's
eggs in the bell tower, but they were so raddled, they were useless. Rodrigo says some painters in Venice use oil to bind the pigment. I've never heard of it myself, but he's usually right about these things. He's given me a little of the oil he uses to keep his lute and pipes from drying out and cracking. I didn't want to take it in case he can't get more, for his instruments are his life, but he insisted.’

I could not help smiling at his earnestness. ‘Rodrigo is a generous man, especially to a fellow artist. So what do you intend to paint?’

By way of an answer he nodded at the eastern wall of the chapel which was covered in scaffolding. ‘I shall finish that. Whoever began this was a good painter. I hope I may do it justice.’

I moved nearer to examine the painting. It was of the Virgin Mary. She wore a stiff blue and gold mantle which she held open, and beneath the mantle, as if they were sheltering in a cave, a crowd of diminutive figures knelt serenely in prayer, like dwarfs beneath the giant queen. Two figures in the foreground were painted larger than the rest, a bejewelled merchant and his wife. The other figures appeared to depict the merchant's family, his children, parents and siblings. Also protected under Mary's cloak were several tiny houses, two ships and a cluster of warehouses, all the property belonging to the merchant.

Outside of the shelter of Mary's mantle there were other figures, but they were not praying. They were fleeing in panic, for above Mary sat Christ on his throne, surrounded by angels and demons who were firing arrows and spears down on to the world below. The missiles bounced harmlessly off Mary's cloak, but those outside of her protection cringed in terror as the spears and arrows rained down upon them, piercing them through torsos, limbs and eyes.

Most of the painting had been completed except for Mary's face and hands, which were sketched in red on the white wall.

Osmond came across and stood beside me.

‘Mary Misericordia,’ he explained ‘Our Lady of Mercy who protects those who pray to her. And these,’ he gestured to the merchant and his wife, who knelt in the foreground, ‘must be the benefactors who commissioned this chantry, so that the priests could pray for their souls. They must have great wealth to build such a chapel. I can't understand why it has been abandoned when they were so near to finishing it, and at a time when you'd think they would need the masses of the priests more than ever.’

‘Maybe the merchant and his family have already fallen to the pestilence or he has lost his fortune and can no longer pay the workmen. Whatever the reason, if the craftsmen didn't receive their money when it was due, they wouldn't stay and work for nothing. I suspect this will not be the last building to be abandoned before it is completed.’

‘I thought nothing could touch the wealth of the merchants. These last few years as the harvests failed, they seem to have grown even richer. They grew fatter as the poor grew thinner. I know my father did.’

‘Your father was a merchant?’

He nodded, frowning, and turned his face away. I waited, but he did not say more. I didn't press him. A man's history is his own business.

‘Then I pity him. This pestilence will bring a change in many fortunes, for better or worse.’ I glanced at the paint and brushes in his hand. ‘So, I fear you can't hope to be commissioned to finish this painting, not while the pestilence rages, anyway.’

He smiled, his dark mood vanishing in a trice. ‘But I don't
want to be paid. I'll finish this painting as an offering, so that the Virgin will smile down on us and Adela will be safely delivered of a healthy child.’

He swung himself up on to the wooden scaffolding and eyed the space where the Virgin's face should have been, first from one angle and then from another.

I stood and watched him for a while, but Osmond was already absorbed in the first tentative brush strokes and seemed to have forgotten I was there. I walked to the door and looked back at him. His brow was furrowed in concentration, yet the expression of his face was one of utter contentment as the rapid strokes of the brush grew more confident in his hands.

‘You realize that if the craftsmen ever return here after we are gone, they will think the face of the Virgin has miraculously appeared on the wall. The chantry will grow rich from all the pilgrims coming here to see the miracle.’

He laughed without taking his eyes from the wall. ‘Then I must paint the most perfect face in England to be worthy of such a miracle.’

Few people passed over the bridge in the next few days. It was winter, and a wet winter at that, not a time for travelling unless you had to. Those families displaced by the flooding or fleeing the pestilence had not made it this far, preferring to take shelter in the towns which were still open. There was more hope of finding work and cheap lodging in a town, or if they could not find work, there would be a greater chance of receiving alms in the crowded streets than on a lonely road. Those travellers who did cross over the bridge were on urgent business and most scarcely gave the unfinished chantry a second glance, except occasionally to cross themselves and mutter a prayer for a safe journey from
horseback as they passed. It was obvious that the chapel was unfinished and unconsecrated, so no one bothered to stop to light a candle in it. And we were careful to show no lights at night in case we attracted those whose business was not so honest.

Then it was Christmas morning. We heard the church bells ringing in the town for the Angels' Mass at midnight and again for the Shepherds' Mass at dawn, but we didn't answer the call. As for so many throughout the land, for us this Christmas would not be as any Christmas before. In many churches, the bells would not ring and the candles would not be lit, for there would be no one left to light them.

They say that at midnight on Christmas Eve the bees in the hives sing a psalm, all the cows in the byres kneel down and all the sheep turn to the east. They say too that every wild beast falls silent at that hour. If they are right, then what we heard after the chimes of the midnight bell died away was, as Osmond said, nothing more than the baying of a town dog provoked by the bells. But though he said it soothingly as Adela clung to him, I don't think even he believed that. We'd heard that same cry too often before to mistake it now. It was the howl of a lone wolf.

Osmond held Adela tightly in his arms. ‘Even if it was a wolf, we have thick stone walls and a new stout door to protect us. Not even a mouse could get in here.’

‘But it must be ravenous to come so close to a town.’

‘Even if there's a whole pack of them, we are safe in here. Now, go to sleep, Adela.’

But even if Adela could sleep, I could not. I could not get that howl out of my head. There were wolves in the forests, but with a bounty on every wolf's head, they had been driven into the remote places far from highways, farms
and towns. It was true that in recent years hunger had brought some packs close to crofts and isolated villages in the dead of winter, but we had kept to the main highways, we were forced to with the wagon. So why had we heard a wolf so many times on our journey, and why only ever one, unless there was only one – the same one – following us? It wasn't possible, it didn't make sense, and yet still I shuddered.

The crypt remained cold and damp; the heat from the brazier barely penetrated the room. The sound of rushing water, which was not so noticeable during the day, grew louder in the silence of the night and several times I woke from a fitful doze, sure that the river was in flood and pouring into the chamber.

Cygnus, who had been muttering in his sleep for several nights, also suddenly woke with an anguished cry and sat up trembling in the dim light cast by the brazier.

Narigorm was watching him. She was sitting upright, hunched against the wall, wrapped in a blanket. Something small fell from her hand with a faint clack on to the stone flags. She swiftly retrieved it. Pulling the blanket more tightly about her, she rested her chin on her knees, then turned her head to stare into the firelight. I wondered if she had slept at all. This biting cold was hard on all of us, even the young.

Cygnus rose and tiptoed up the stairs. He did not return.

‘Osmond, are you awake?’ Adela whispered. ‘I think Cygnus might be ill. Did you hear him cry out? Should we go after him?’

‘He's not ill,’ Osmond muttered sleepily. ‘When a man screams like that in his sleep it means he has a guilty conscience. I don't want you to be alone with him. He's dangerous. Who knows what goes on in the head of a creature like that?’

‘But you can't still think he murdered –’

‘Will you both shut up and go to sleep,’ Jofre snapped irritably from the corner.

We must have finally slept, for when we all woke again daylight had penetrated the gloom of the crypt. The damp seeping up from the cold stone floor had turned my bones to ice and it took several minutes of standing in front of the glowing brazier before my stiff and aching back was ready to move. But Osmond, despite the disturbances in the night, had woken in a remarkably cheerful mood. He was determined that something should be done to celebrate Christmas Day and had soon persuaded Jofre and Rodrigo to help him net some ducks on the river, while Zophiel rather more grudgingly agreed to turn his hand to trying to catch some fish.