The Raven's Head (19 page)

A rush of cold air and the sound of running water burst in my ears. I glimpsed flashes of white and black shapes. I could make no sense of it, until it dawned on me that I was staring out through the branches of a wind-whipped bush into the moonlit river beyond.

There was a yell and curse behind me. I guessed whoever was following me had just tripped over the lantern I’d abandoned. I darted forward, searching for somewhere to hide. It was too dark to see exactly where I’d emerged. I stepped forward expecting to feel solid ground, but the bank fell away sharply beneath me. My shoes were caked in the wet, slimy mud from the tunnel and could get no purchase on the grass. I seized a low branch to steady myself, but it broke off in my hand. One foot slid out from under me. I crashed to the ground and slipped straight down the muddy bank. Before I could grab at anything to stop myself, I plunged into the river. The icy water closed over my head. The shock drove the remaining breath from my body and, choking and gasping, I was swept away.

His father took him to his heart and swallowed him out of joy and that with his own mouth.

Regulus is dreaming, dreaming of a little boy he once knew called Wilky. Wilky is running for his life through the forest, trying to reach the safety of his little cottage before the lantern-man catches up with him. He can hear the lantern-man coming closer, the crackle of the twigs beneath his feet, his rasping breath. He daren’t turn and look at him, but he knows he is there.

The boy can see his brothers and sisters playing outside, see his mother sitting in the doorway, plucking pigeons. He tries to scream for them to save him. But no sound comes from his mouth. He waves frantically, but his family ignore him. His legs won’t move. They’re stuck fast in the earth. His bare feet are burrowing down into the ground, his toes are growing long and thin, wriggling out like white roots. And he can hear the clanking of the chains. The lantern-man is almost upon him!

Somewhere, far above him, the abbey bell is tolling. Regulus jerks awake, drenched in sweat, trembling. All around him, the shock-headed boys are trying to rouse themselves from their beds, feeling for their cold leather sandals with sleep-warmed toes, their eyes still closed. Not one wants to rise, but they fear the punishment that will fall upon them all if they are not dressed and ready to be marched to the chapel for Prime when Father John appears.

‘Where’s Mig?’ little Peter whispers.

He kneels by the straw-filled pallet next to his own, tugs back the blanket in case Mighel might somehow be concealed beneath it, though not even the shadow of his friend could be hiding beneath that thin crumpled cover.

Felix takes charge. ‘Anyone seen Mighel? Has he gone out already?’

He enunciates the name firmly, though still in a whisper. Father John does not approve of the shortening of any saint’s name that has been bestowed on a boy. It is disrespectful to the saint, whom they should bless each time they have cause to use his name.

One of the boys runs to the door and tries it, but it is still locked from the outside, as it always is at night, for boys, as Father John well knows, will get up to all kinds of mischief or worse if allowed to roam the abbey unsupervised.

Peter still kneels disconsolately beside the empty bed. ‘He hasn’t come back,’ he says, staring miserably at the hollow in the pallet that still bears the outline of the boy, curled up like a woodlouse. ‘Father John chose him last night, I heard him, but he didn’t bring him back.’

The boys freeze. Tiny threads of fear snake from one to another.

‘Did anyone see Mighel come back?’ Felix demands.

They shake their heads. They heard the door open. They heard Father John’s heavy breathing as he padded on almost silent feet across the room. They heard the rustling as he shook someone, the slap-slap of the chosen boy’s sandals crossing to the door. But they had their eyes shut tight, pretending to be asleep. They fell asleep for real only when the selection had been made, only when the door had closed and they were still lying in their beds. They were safe then, at least for that night.

But Peter knows where Father John stopped. He hangs his head, awash with misery. It is his fault Mighel is gone. He’d made it happen. He’d wished that Father John would choose Mighel instead of him. Father John knew what he’d wished for, he always knew.

Felix sees the anxious faces of the younger boys and knows they are waiting for him to tell them what to do, what to think. ‘Get dressed quickly, all of you, before Father John arrives, and no one say a word about Mighel . . . I’ll try . . .’ he adds uncertainly.

They dress in silence, rolling away their blankets, stacking their own pallets in a neat pile in the far corner, as they have been taught. Mighel’s pallet alone remains on the floor. They stare at it, unwilling to touch it, in case it might be cursed, in case they, too, vanish. Felix no more wants to move it than the younger boys, but he knows as the leader he cannot show fear. Besides, he will get the worst of it if Father John discovers the room unprepared. He takes a deep breath and heaves the pallet on top of the others. Now it is as if Mighel was never here, never one of them. Even the hollow where he lay has been shaken away, his shape erased. He is expunged.

The door opens and Father John stands at the top of the small flight of stairs. His white robes billow in the cold draught that enters with him. With the pale dawn light behind him, he is faceless, as if a hooded robe has reared up in the doorway without anyone inside.

The boys line up hastily as he closes the door and glides down the centre of the room, jerking up chins to see if faces have been washed, grabbing wrists and checking for dirty fingernails. All the time, his grey eyes dart back and forth, his gaze quartering the room, hunting for anything that might be out of place.

As Father John passes each boy and moves on down the line, Felix sees that boy’s eyes swivel towards him, waiting. A row of anxious faces stare at him, willing him to ask what they are all desperate to know. He is afraid. Loose tongues are punished, he knows that only too well. But is it forbidden to ask a question? He is the leader. The boys look up to him. Their respect is all he possesses. His mouth has gone as dry as a cinder.

‘Please, Father John. Mighel is missing . . . absent. Is he . . .’ Felix tries to think of a reason to offer Father John that will cause no offence. ‘Is Mighel sick, Father? Should we pray for him?’

Father John pauses in his slow perambulation and turns towards him. Felix is greatly relieved to see there is no anger in his face.

‘You should pray for every boy and man in this abbey, Felix, sick or not. Pray for their souls day and night.’ A smile twitches at the corner of his mouth. ‘But since you are concerned about the welfare of your fellow pupil, which is to be commended, I can set your fears at rest. God be praised, Mighel enjoys good health. But his parents came for him. They wished for him to return home and help in the family business. We are sorry to lose him but, naturally, if the parents ask for their son, we must let him go.’

Felix sees relief spreading across the faces of Peter and the younger boys. More than relief, a brilliant flash of hope that one day soon their families will come for them. They are grinning, almost bubbling over with delight, after their fear. If Mighel can go home to his family, then it could happen to any of them.

Little Regulus is hugging himself as if he already feels his mother’s arms clasping him to her. His parents promised they would come to visit him. They have not come yet. But now that Mighel’s family have taken him home, his own parents will come soon, he knows it. Maybe they will even come today.

Only Felix does not smile. He feels a cold, painful lump in his gullet. For he alone remembers that Mighel is an orphan, with neither kith nor kin to care for him. His father’s ship was lost at sea, his mother dead of a fever. Felix is certain that wherever Mighel is now, he is not safe in his mother’s arms – at least, not in this world, he isn’t.

I am light and I am dark; I am born of earth and of heaven; I am known and I do not exist.

If you can imagine squelching through a forest in the middle of the night, sopping wet and chilled to the marrow, teeth chattering and ribs screaming in pain, you’d think that you’d be feeling utterly wretched. At the very least, you’d think you were having a bad day. But when the alternative is certain death, even these dire miseries seem little more than trifling inconveniences compared to the exhilaration of finding yourself alive and free. And I found myself in just that crazed, euphoric state, to the point that, had I not been so weak, I might have started leaping about like a lunatic and baying at the moon. Not even the rain dampened my spirits, for when a man has been half drowned in a river, how much wetter can he get?

I stumbled on for as long as I could, putting as much distance as I was able between myself and the town. Only relief and elation drove me on, for my body could barely keep itself upright, but eventually not even the fear of pursuit could force it to take another step. I collapsed into the nearest hollow, made a feeble attempt to cover myself with dried leaves and shivered into an exhausted sleep.

I woke in damp clothes to an even colder dawn. Then, and only then, the reality of my situation dropped on me, like a great boulder. I couldn’t return to the only home I’d ever known. I was a wolf’s head, a fugitive, an outlaw. If any man, rich or poor, beggar or priest, discovered who I was and hacked me to pieces on the spot, the law would reward him for doing it. If I was captured alive and taken for trial, I would certainly be executed, if not for the theft then for the murder of the girl, if she was dead. I felt a pang of guilt about that, but reminded myself that Barbot would willingly have helped her aunt to cut my throat if I’d given her the chance.

I had no friends or kin, no work or shelter, and all I possessed were a few paltry coins. Not that the size of my emaciated purse mattered, for even had it been stuffed full, I couldn’t risk spending a single denier. It was plain from the reaction of the roasted-pigeon seller that the coins Philippe had given me were marked and I’d no doubt word would spread quickly to all the neighbouring towns and villages. Even if a lonely cottager innocently accepted one in payment for food or lodging, it would be like leaving a trail of blood across the countryside for Philippe’s hounds to follow.

It wasn’t quite true that all I possessed were the marked coins. I still had the silver raven nestling against my thigh in its little box, and some might have considered that made me a wealthy man indeed. But, like the coins, it might as well have been a box of cow shit for all the use it was to me. I certainly couldn’t sell it anywhere in those parts.

I drew the box from the leather pouch. I hadn’t looked at it since the morning Philippe had made me unwrap it in front of him. That had been only two days ago, but it seemed like two years, for so much had happened in those few hours. Everyone I had trusted had deceived me, and I wondered if the silver flask, too, had been a trick. Perhaps it was only made of base metal, or maybe Philippe, by some sleight of hand, had substituted a stone for the flask before returning it to me.

But in the cold, grey haze of the breaking dawn, the head was more wondrous even than I remembered. The light, flickering through the branches of the swaying trees, glinted from the silver feathers so that they looked as if they were being ruffled in the breeze. I turned the flask upside down so that the raven’s head was upright. The polished black-onyx eyes had a gleam in them that almost made me believe they were staring back at me. I ran my finger down the long, sharp curve of the beak.

The harsh cry of a bird shattered my contemplation. It came again, the rapid
pruk-pruk-pruk
of a raven, so close to me that for a moment I thought it had come from the silver bird in my hand. The alarm call sounded again, and I glanced up to see a black raven sitting in the branches of the tree above me, its gaze fixed on the forest slope below.

Then came the creaking of leather and the jangle of harness. Three or four men-at-arms on horseback were winding their way through the trees below. I recognised Philippe’s livery at once. Two men on foot ran in front of the riders, each holding a pair of hounds on long leashes that were quartering back and forth, sniffing the ground.

My heart galloping like a charging warhorse, I shoved the raven’s head back into its box and slipped it into my leather pouch. Rocking myself forward into a crouching position, I watched the progress of the riders, unable to decide whether to make a run for it or to try to hide. Either way the limiers would surely pick up my scent and drag their handlers straight towards me. I had climbed up to this vantage-point in the dark and I couldn’t remember which route I’d taken up the hillside, but I was sure any moment the limiers straining on their leashes would find it and follow.

The flapping of wings above my head made me glance up. The raven launched itself off the branch, flying straight down towards the first of the riders. Startled by the raucous cry and closeness of the large bird, the horse shied and reared. The bird circled the beast, repeatedly clawing at its head as if it meant to scratch out its eyes. The rider fought to drive it off with one arm and regain control of his mount with the other, but it was no use. The terrified horse plunged down the side of the hill and thundered away through the trees towards the river, the rider clinging to its mane.

The other horses, seeing their companion galloping away, bolted after it. The limiers, convinced that the hunt was in full spate, began barking and straining so fiercely on the leashes that one broke free and rushed after the horses. The handlers slithered and tumbled down the slope, trying desperately to regain control of their dogs. Whether they did manage to retrieve them I never knew – I certainly wasn’t going to hang around to find out. I fled.