The Raven's Head (39 page)

Then the utter relief as the stairs lifted and the precious grey light washed in. One of the White Canons had come pounding down the staircase. He’d heaved the stone lid wider and dragged Sylvain out, his wet body flopping heavily onto the earth floor. The light filtering down the spiral staircase was not enough to see much, save that Sylvain’s eyes were wide open as if he was staring at some great horror above. Gisa had glanced up, fearing the hanged man was still dangling above her.

The canon had curtly demanded she hand him Sylvain’s robe, which he had tied hastily about the man’s loins, but not before Gisa had glimpsed . . . It had been covered so fast she must surely have been mistaken . . . Even now, as she buries her face in her knees, she is fighting to make sense of what her eyes saw, or what she thinks they saw, in that dangerous and deceptive half-light, yet at the same time trying to banish the image from her head.

And the blood in the water . . . Was it Sylvain’s? Somehow in her head it merges with the blood on the face of the little boy trapped beneath the stone wall. Is she remembering him? Maybe spending so long in the red light of those candles has confused her eyes into seeing a film of blood covering everything.

Laurent touches her again on the back of her bent neck and her head jerks up. He looks contrite at having startled her. Awkwardly he extends his hand and she allows him to pull her up. Then, though she is grateful for the touch of his warm hand enveloping hers, though she wants to cling to him and blurt out the whole nightmare, she immediately pulls her hand free. She stares at a small frog that sits camouflaged against the mottled grass, only the flick of a tongue betraying it as it catches a mayfly. It gulps, but the hair-thin legs of the fly still thrash between its lips.

The door opens and Odo comes striding across the garden. He looks anxious, then relieved to see them standing there. Holding one of the massive keys on his chain straight ahead of him, as if he was charging into battle with a pike, he hurries past them and, with evident relief, slams the door of the tower shut and locks it. He ambles back.

‘Will he live?’ Laurent asks.

Odo nods. ‘Already sitting up. Father Arthmael’s tending him.’

‘Am I . . .’ Gisa stammers. ‘Did he say if I was to go?’

In her mind it is not a question, but a desperate prayer for release. She cannot return to the tower, not today, please not today.

Odo looks at her with the same expression of contempt at her stupidity he always wears, if ever he is forced to speak to her. ‘Didn’t you see me lock the tower? But I’ll ask if he has any orders for you before you go. Wait here.’

They watch him saunter back towards the door to the hall. Gisa glances up at Laurent, then quickly looks away before he notices.

‘You’ve been staying here—’

‘What happened in there—’

They both speak at the same time, then, with embarrassed smiles, both gesture for the other to continue.

‘I thought you only came to deliver a message and you had a ship waiting in port,’ Gisa says.

Laurent looks bemused, then seems to remember. ‘That’s right, but I had an accident . . . in the Great Hall. Sylvain . . . I slipped, broke my arm and injured my eyes. Didn’t Sylvain mention it? Been lying up there these many weeks while my arm mended.’ He gestures vaguely in the direction of the windowless room. ‘My ship will have long sailed by now, so Sylvain has asked me to stay on to help him with some documents.’

‘Weeks?’ It’s Gisa who frowns now. ‘I only spoke to you a few days ago, on the road outside the gate . . . when you asked me to persuade my master to see you.’

But after all that her eyes and ears have been tricked into seeing and hearing today, she cannot be certain of anything. She’s heard stories of demons disguising themselves as young men to trick maidens into selling their souls to the devil. Is he the seventh magpie? No, he is all too human, a man who is mocking her, trying to make her look foolish. Yet when she glances up at him, it is not ridicule she sees in his face but confusion.

He stares down at his right arm, pressing it with his left hand, feeling the bones. ‘It must be far longer than that. I admit I was sleeping much of the time, but my arm was set in a cast, couldn’t move it. Broken bones don’t knit in days, do they? Unless there’s a miracle. I mean, the abbot said he’d pray for me, but I didn’t actually believe . . . Are you quite sure it was only a few days ago? Easy to forget when you last saw someone.’

Someone, yes, Gisa thinks, a customer coming into the shop, a beggar in the marketplace, but not you. Not you. I’ve looked for you every morning and evening since you vanished. But she doesn’t say any of this. She casts around, trying to think.

‘Look. You remember you gave me a ball of cowslips. See there, by the strawberries, the cowslips are still in bloom and the strawberries are only just beginning to flower. If weeks had passed the flowers on both would be over by now.’

‘But I don’t understand . . . how . . .’

She glances to where he is looking and sees the great hulk of Odo lumbering towards them.

‘Odo, how long—’ Laurent begins.

Suddenly she is afraid for him. This is a question that must not be asked.

‘How long will it be before the master is fit to work again?’ she interrupts quickly.

Odo does not appear to notice the startled look Laurent gives her.

‘I’m his steward, not his physician. Master pleases himself when he works.’ Odo stares morosely at Laurent. ‘He says you’re to return to your chamber – he’s too tired to have you join him for supper tonight. He’ll have meat sent up. As for you, girl, you’re to come tomorrow same as usual. Father Arthmael has a task for you. The abbot’ll be here to instruct you himself in the morning.’

Limp with relief, Gisa stumbles towards the gate in the wall. Only her trembling legs prevent her running to it and pounding on it to be let out. Even though they are in the garden, she feels that the walls are closing in. But as she turns, Odo shoots out a massive hand and grips her arm, his fingers and thumb completely encircling the slender limb. ‘Master says I’m to give you this, a gift for your services today.’ Odo’s mouth curls in a sneer as if he is picturing exactly what kind of services a young girl might perform for an old man. ‘Says I’m to tell you to take heed of its meaning,
girl
.’

Odo thrusts a small package at her, wrapped in a woollen cloth. It is heavy, too heavy to be another brooch. Gisa wants to throw it to the ground and run, but the manservant stands in front of her. Plainly, he has no intention of opening the gate to the world beyond until she has unwrapped it and he is satisfied she has understood. Reluctantly Gisa peels back the cloth with thumb and forefinger to reveal a finely carved and painted wooden sculpture of a delicate white rose lying across a plump peach, which bears a single green leaf. Both Gisa and Laurent stare down at it.

‘A peach and a leaf, the heart and the tongue,’ Laurent whispers.

‘Truth and silence,’ Gisa finishes. ‘And the white rose for secrecy.’

‘Take that as a warning, girl,’ Odo says. ‘A warning to both of you.’

Albedo: the Whitening – The unclean body must be burned in water and washed in fire . . . kill the living and resuscitate the dead.

Regulus lowers his head as close as he can to the table, glancing sideways at Father John from under his mop of red hair. The priest eats slowly, lifting the slivers of meat to his mouth, while all the time his gaze marches up and down the double row of boys. But they are all quiet today, subdued, minding their manners. For there is an empty place on the bench, a boy who is not eating his supper, a boy who is locked in the carcer, and no one wants to give Father John the slightest excuse for sending him to join the miscreant.

As it is, two boys stand at the end of the room taking it in turns to read. Usually the boy reading has his dinner or supper saved for him, but these boys gaze with hungry eyes and rumbling bellies at the food on the table and know they will go to bed hungry for their crimes, but at least they will go to bed. Felix will not. It is their fault. They neglected to sweep the room properly, left crumbs under the table, which attracted the mice. But Felix is held most to blame. It is he who should have made them do it.

Father John is in a worse humour than usual, has been ever since the morning the boys woke up and discovered that, like Mighel, little Peter was also missing from his bed. But Peter’s parents had not come for him, death had. An inflammation of the bowel, Father John told them, though Peter had not seemed sick when he lay down to sleep. But, like Father John, God strikes swiftly and without warning.

‘
Noctem quietam et finem perfectum concedat nobis Dominus omnipotens,
’
Father Arthmael had intoned into the dark shadows at Compline that night, as he did every night.
May Almighty God grant a peaceful night and a perfect death.
But Peter had not had a peaceful night. He’d been taken. He’d walked out of the door with Death’s hand on his shoulder.

Father Madron had buried Peter’s corpse in the far corner of the orchard before dawn, and after Prime the boys were made to march in solemn procession to the place, holding candles, and watch as Father Arthmael sprinkled the raw mound of soil with holy water. Regulus wondered if the dead crept close together under the earth, holding each other, afraid of the dark. Once there was a boy called Wilky who used to snuggle close to his brothers under the blankets, pressing into their bodies to get warm.

But Regulus is not thinking of Wilky or Peter now. He is listening hard to the reading, waiting for the reader to stumble. He will, sooner or later, he must. Regulus is willing him to falter. The boy’s tongue trips over a word. Father John turns his head in irritation, slaps his birch rod down upon the table to bring the reader to a halt. He orders him to repeat the whole page again, pronouncing the Latin correctly, unless he wants the rod to fall on him.

Regulus is ready the moment Father John’s attention is diverted. He flips his meat down onto a rag he has laid on his lap. The rag is not clean, indeed some might consider it only fit for an arse-wipe, but Regulus doesn’t notice such things. Besides, it was all he could find. The reader’s next mistakes sees first bread and then cheese join the meat in Regulus’s lap, before he makes a clumsy knot and stuffs it inside his robe.

If the others notice, they say nothing. As long as Regulus takes only his own share, what does it matter to them? Besides, Father John is apt to punish both the talebearer and the sinner in equal measure.
Let him who is without sin . . .
he sternly reminds them. Father John himself must be entirely spotless for he casts many a stone.

Regulus wedges the parcel between his stomach and the edge of the table during grace, so he can fold his hands in the manner on which Father John insists.

They have an hour, the canon reminds them, an hour to walk quietly in the fresh air without disturbing the sleeping brothers. Then he expects to return and find them hard at work at their copy tablets by the last chime of the bell. He withdraws and the boys peer through the door until they see the skirts of his robe whisk round the corner. Heaving a collective sigh of relief, they run out into the sunshine with the ball they have woven out of willow sticks, but Regulus does not join them.

He waits until they are pushing and shoving to get possession of the ball, then slips away, following the line of the building round the side. He jerks back as he almost trips over a canon who is kneeling on the flags, peering into one of the drainage holes. The canon pulls back his sleeve and thrusts his arm deep into the drain as if he is searching for something he has lost. As he straightens up, wiping his hand on the grass, Regulus sees it is Father Madron. But he does not pause to wonder what the young canon is searching for, only silently begs him to move on, which, to Regulus’s abject relief, he does, vanishing around the corner.

Swiftly, knowing Father Madron might return without warning, Regulus edges along the building until he finds the long narrow iron grille set near the base of the wall. He kneels down. Felix is sitting at the bottom of the hole, his arms wrapped around his legs, his face buried in his knees. He is naked. Even from the top, where Regulus kneels above the hole, the place feels damp and chill, for it lies in perpetual shadow. It will be colder tonight, much colder.

‘Felix, Felix,’ Regulus whispers. The older boy looks up, his face is smeared with dirt and what look like tears, but they cannot be. Felix never cries.

‘Go away. Leave me alone,’ Felix says fiercely. ‘If they catch you speaking to me they’ll put you down here too.’

‘Don’t care,’ Regulus says, and he doesn’t. He’d rather be with Felix than sleeping unprotected in that dorter.

‘Well, I do,’ Felix whispers. ‘I’m squashed enough as it is. Don’t want you in here too, pissing all over me. And they’ll keep me down here even longer, ’cause if you talk to me that’ll be my fault too.’

Regulus hadn’t thought of that. ‘I’ll go, but I brought you some food,’ he says hastily.

He pushes and squeezes the bulging rag through the bars and Felix catches it. He deftly unwraps it, as indifferent as Regulus to the state of the rag. His face breaks into a grin.

‘How did you get this?’ He frowns slightly. ‘Not your dinner, is it? Don’t want you going hungry for me.’

‘Course it isn’t,’ Regulus says. ‘I’m full to bursting.’ But even as he says it, he hears his belly rumbling. ‘I stole it,’ he adds proudly.

‘Ought to call you the fox, not the wren. Now get out of here.’ Felix crams a slice of meat into his mouth. ‘And don’t come back, you hear me?’ he says thickly, through the mouthful. ‘I don’t want to see your daft face again.’

Crestfallen, Regulus flattens himself against the wall, and starts to edge back along it.

‘You’re a good ’un,’ Felix whispers, and Regulus beams.

Citrinitas: the Yellow Death – Here Sol is buried and ferments and is overflowed with mercurius philosophorum.