The Raven's Head (41 page)

This time it was me who shrieked at the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

Gisa thrust her head through the trapdoor, beckoning urgently. ‘Quickly, Laurent, the master is coming across the grass. Go down. Hide at the bottom behind the stacks of wood till he’s come upstairs, then you can slip out of the door. Hurry. If you are caught . . .’

The fear in her voice was contagious. Any defiance I’d felt instantly evaporated. I bounded down the flights of stairs and I’d only just reached the bottom when I saw the iron ring begin to turn in the door. I vaulted over the barrels and threw myself to the floor behind them. The door opened and I heard the slow, measured steps creaking up the staircase. I’d no idea if Sylvain could see behind the barrels as he ascended, but I prayed he wouldn’t look down. It was only as I heard his footfalls on the boards in the chamber above that I permitted myself to draw breath, and became aware that my face was pressed against a sack of fresh, steaming dung.

The summons to dine with Sylvain came that night. It was the very last thing I wanted to do. In fact, I’d spent the hours since I’d fled the tower wondering how best to make my excuses and go. With Odo guarding the gate, there wasn’t much chance that I could slip out with Gisa. There was nothing for it. I’d have to tell Sylvain that I hadn’t thought of a story, couldn’t begin to think of one, so I’d trouble him no further and take my leave. If I admitted I couldn’t do the work he couldn’t force me to stay, could he? No purse, however fat, was worth getting mixed up in whatever Sylvain and the girl were plotting.

When I entered the hall that night, Sylvain was already seated in a great chair set on the raised dais. Before him a table was spread with a crisp white linen cloth and set with silver and pewter vessels. I’d expected to see some sign of illness in him, since only the day before he’d been dragged unconscious from the tower, but if anything he looked fitter than he had on the day I’d arrived and there was a wild energy in his eyes, as if something had greatly excited him.

Below the dais, logs blazed in the round hearth at the centre of the floor, and beyond that, running down the middle of the hall was the long table used for guests and servants, but that was bare. Even the dish of rotting fruit had at last been removed, but no cloth, bread or dishes had been laid in its stead. Clearly, the servants would not be eating with us.

The baron gestured at a chair placed to his right on the dais. On the very rare occasions I’d eaten in Philippe’s hall I’d been languishing at the very bottom of the lower table, so far from the count and Amée that I could barely distinguish father from daughter. Here, I was seated as an honoured guest. Although, in truth, since I was the
only
guest, he could hardly have banished me to the other end of the hall.

Pipkin and Odo, between them, carried in the dishes and served the wine. They were assisted by a gangling, slack-jawed youth who shuffled behind them to collect the empty platters and gravy-sodden bread trenchers. He gazed curiously at me, but when I attempted to smile he looked alarmed and swiftly dropped his gaze. It appeared he couldn’t speak, or had been instructed not to, for he made signs to Odo and Pipkin, such as monks use in their periods of silence when they wish to ask for salt or ale.

I’d expected Sylvain to ask me how the story was coming on, and that was going to be my cue to tell him I was leaving. But instead he spoke only of the dishes that were spread before us, asking my opinion, as if I was in the habit of employing cooks.
Was there enough saffron in the partridge in councy? Did I think the dish of songbirds sweet enough?
I could see that Pipkin had his large bat-like ears pricked for my answer, so I praised fulsomely every dish as
perfect
,
magnificent
,
never tasted better
.

When the last dishes had been cleared, and we had washed our hands in the rose-scented water in the laver, the servants finally withdrew. Sylvain’s manner changed the instant the door closed behind them. He leaned towards me, his expression darkening.

‘So, you entered my tower uninvited.’ He held up a swift hand. ‘No, don’t trouble to deny it. And, no, it was not the girl who told me this time. She doubtless thought she was protecting you, as girls often do when they develop what they imagine is fondness for a young man. You look surprised, but don’t flatter yourself. She’s had little attention from men thus far in her life, so if a cross-eyed hunchback had given her flowers she would mistake her gratitude for affection.’

Had she told him about the cowslips? She plainly acted as his spy. One thing I was certain about: if she had a fondness for anyone, it certainly wasn’t me.

‘But, Master Laurent, since you are so curious about what I do here, tonight you will join me in my work and I will show you. I think you will find it most instructive.’ His tone was cold enough to freeze the flames in his furnace.

I won’t deny that I’m possessed of more curiosity than most men. Even as a child, I’d stick my head down badgers’ dens or over privy walls, desperate to know what was down there or behind that or being whispered in dark corners, but for the first time in my life, I had not the slightest desire to find out what
work
he was engaged in, much less join him in it. That was one secret I was in no hurry to uncover.

I yawned. ‘Most kind of you to invite me, my lord, but I’m so weary and stuffed with good food, I’d fall asleep before I’d begun. I’ve still not recovered my strength from the accident.’

‘On the contrary, it would appear, from the way you so speedily descended those stairs in my tower, you have recovered most admirably. And I assure you that even if you are feeling drowsy now, what you are about to witness will banish sleep entirely from your mind.’

That was exactly what I was afraid of.

He strode to the door in the panelling that led to the garden. I thought he was making for the tower. If I followed him out into the dark I could slip away and hide. Maybe find a way to scramble over that wall. But Sylvain did not open the door. Before I fully realised what he was doing, he had locked it.

‘We don’t want the servants bursting in at the wrong moment, do we?’

We did – God’s bones, we did! Wrong moment, right moment, I wasn’t fussy, just so long as they didn’t leave me alone with him.

I found myself edging away, but he gestured to the long table at the opposite end of the hall from the dais.

‘Take that end and help me to drag it aside.’

It was every bit as heavy as it looked, but we scraped it over the yellow and brown tiled floor, then dragged the benches aside too. It was only once the table and benches had been moved that I saw they hid tiles of a different pattern in the floor. These tiles formed a black and white twin spiral, broad on the outer edge and narrowing in like the coils of a snail’s shell towards the centre.

Sylvain crouched on the floor a little way from the spiral, muttering away to himself. Using red powder from a pot and a long white swan’s feather, he drew three concentric circles and inside them a five-pointed star, its points touching the inner circle.

He lifted one of the bird cages from its hook on the beam. I dimly recalled seeing gaudily coloured songbirds in those cages on the afternoon I’d first entered the hall, but now they were empty. Placing the cage on the floor over the very heart of the spiral, he slid something out from the breast of his robe. It was the bag Gisa had been sewing with my intimate hair. I was sorely tempted to demand he hand it over. But suppose he stabbed the thing before I could reach it, like a witch’s poppet, and the wound appeared on my body? Something told me now was not a good time to challenge him. He laid the bag inside the cage and placed on top a gold ring, surmounted by a square stone of yellow amber. Then he locked the cage door.

Finally, he set a clay pot on the tiles in front of it. He touched the burning wick of a candle to the pot and a mass of flames leaped up. As the flames died away, a dense, bitter-smelling smoke billowed out. It was as well the roof was so high else we would have been suffocated.

Rubbing his hands clean, Sylvain gave a grunt of satisfaction and moved into the centre of the pentacle he’d drawn on the floor. ‘Come, Master Laurent, step in here, but be careful not to disturb the lines I’ve drawn.’

I shook my head. ‘I can see very well from here. I wouldn’t want to get in the way.’

‘It is your choice. But I must warn you that you will have no protection from whatever enters this hall tonight if you are outside these rings. Demons always seek human bodies to inhabit. I would hate them to choose yours.’

‘Demons!’ I shrieked. ‘Tell me, you’re not planning to summon—’

‘What did you imagine this is for?’ He gestured towards the smoke billowing from the pot in front of him. ‘A game of blind-man-catch?’

Have you ever found yourself standing at the top of a sheer cliff, staring down into a deep ravine strewn with razor-sharp rocks, while a pack of slavering wolves runs towards you? Probably not, and neither have I, but if you can imagine the abject fear and indecision you might experience in those circumstances, you will have some inkling of the terror that paralysed me at that moment. Should I stay where I was and face whatever Sylvain was about to conjure up, or step into the circle with him and risk being caught up in whatever dark magic he was using?

‘I will begin,’ Sylvain said quietly.

He lifted his hand and a great gust of wind swept across the hall. The candles guttered wildly and blew out. The hall was lit only by the glow of the fire in the hearth and the flames in the pot, which made the billowing smoke glow red, as if a fountain of blood was welling up from inside it.

Sylvain’s voice rose to fill the hall as he called out an invocation, and I heard a whirring as if a great flock of birds was flying over our heads, their wings fanning the air, driving the glowing red smoke downwards till it filled the room. My nerve had held until then, but when I saw the ragged black shapes circling above my head, I crossed that room in three strides and leaped into the circle, crouching behind Sylvain.

I could hardly breathe for the acrid smoke, but Sylvain’s voice was as sure and strong as he spat out the final words: ‘I conjure thee, Astaroth, Gressil and Balberith, by the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, by the Virgin Mary and by all the saints to appear in our presence and carry out our wishes.’

There was a sound as if a great piece of cloth was being ripped apart. Sylvain was peering through the smoke towards the cage.

‘Look,’ he breathed, ‘he comes.’

The smoke was curling up from the pot, undulating, twisting, turning from blood-red to yellow in the light from the flames. It was so dense I could barely make out the cage, which kept appearing and disappearing through it, but I could have sworn something was forming beside it. Although the figure was dark and indistinct, it was a man, a young man, my own height, my own shape . . . my own shadow. He raised his head and looked straight towards us. His eyes, if you can call them that, were twin blue-white flames, burning with an intensity so fierce it blinded me. I was forced to look away, but still I could see the blue flames dancing in front of my eyes as if the image had been seared onto my eyeballs. Tears streamed down my face. I was blinking hard, trying to recover my sight, and only dimly aware that the smoke was beginning to clear. I felt the flick of Sylvain’s robe against me as he brushed past me and stepped out of the circle.

By the time my sight had cleared, the fire in the pot had burned away, and the remaining smoke was drifting leisurely around the roof beams. Sylvain was re-lighting a candle at the hearth.

‘It is safe to leave the circle now. Come, let us see if the demons have indeed done our bidding.’

He crossed to the birdcage and I followed, keeping at a safe distance. The bag and the ring were still inside where Sylvain had placed them, except they had changed. The threads of hair – my hair – on the bag had turned from red-gold to black. The stitches still held. They were not charred or shrivelled, but now they glistened like wet tar. The amber in the ring was no longer pale yellow. It, too, had turned a gleaming jet black and was cracked in two, the crack glowing red against the black stone, as if blood was oozing from its heart.

Sylvain clutched at the bars of the cage, rocking backwards and forwards in delight.

‘The demon has heard me. He has accepted the sacrifice. He has given me what I need. Now we require only one thing more and then she will rise. She will rise from death at last.’

Best of all is matter which comes from living creatures, such as blood and egg and hairs, and especially human parts . . . to these quicksilver is added after it has been put through the death-process.

Father John has hung bunches of water mint, willowherb and fleabane in the windows, and below them set little dishes of milk laced with hare’s gall to stop the flies and gnats entering: now that the weather is growing warmer, they are swarming above the ditches and moats around the abbey. But even such precautions don’t deter the bluebottles, which have somehow found their way in through the herbs and are buzzing lazily around the dorter.

The boys are easily distracted by them, and even Father John’s repeated threats cannot control their urge to swat at them. It is at such a moment of distraction when the door to the courtyard swings open. The boys raise their heads at the sudden flood of sunshine that washes into the room, all except one who is completely absorbed in stalking the fly that has alighted for the third time on his writing tablet, purely to taunt him. The instant the boys see who has entered, their gazes drop to the table as if not even the appearance of Beelzebub himself could tear them from their letters. Father John, frowning at the interruption, turns his head towards the door, then scrambles to his feet, inclining his head respectfully and gesturing for the boys to rise.

‘Father Arthmael!’

His superior returns the nod, but his deep-set eyes are fixed on the boy who was endeavouring to kill the fly and now he extends a bony finger and wordlessly beckons to him.