The Song of the Nightingale (7 page)

This man, too, had died from a single stab through the heart.

Whoever killed them, Josse thought, assuming they had died by the same hand, had known exactly what he was doing. To kill one man thus could have been a lucky thrust that just happened to reach into the body and stop the heart; to dispatch three in the same way suggested a killer with a rare skill.

Which was, he acknowledged, a frightening thought.

He drew up the covering sheet, and he and Abbess Caliste stood either side of the third body. Neither spoke. He thought she was probably praying. After a short time, Sister Liese reappeared, carrying a small, rough-edged piece of parchment, a long, graceful quill, carefully sharpened, and a horn of ink.

‘Shall I copy the marks?' the abbess asked Josse, taking the quill in her hand and dipping the tip into the ink.

‘Aye, my lady, if you will,' Josse replied.

Sister Liese turned and bent over slightly, offering her back as a writing slope, and the abbess spread out the parchment. She leaned over the body on the central table, studying the symbols, and then, very carefully, she reproduced them. ‘Thank you, Sister,' she murmured when she had finished, and the infirmarer straightened up. The abbess waved the parchment around to dry the ink, then handed it to Josse. ‘What do you think, Sir Josse? Have I made an accurate enough copy?'

He studied her work, looking repeatedly from it to the wounds on the chest and back again. As far as he could see, her reproduction was perfect. ‘A fine job, my lady,' he said with a smile. He rolled up the parchment and tucked it away.

She nodded. ‘Have you any further need of the bodies?' she asked. ‘Only, they had been properly buried and now have been exhumed; I think we should rebury them as soon as we can.'

‘I agree, my lady. I would ask only that we wait until Sir Gervase de Gifford has had a chance to view the dead men, but, since he said he would try to meet me here this morning, that should not mean too much delay.'

The abbess nodded again. ‘Very well. I will send word to Father Sebastian and ask if the burial may be performed as soon as he can spare the time.'

Josse was impatient to leave, for he had already decided to whom he would show the strange symbols. He touched a hand to the breast of his tunic, where the rolled-up piece of parchment crackled softly. But Abbess Caliste had offered to send for refreshments for him and, since he had undertaken to see Gervase this morning, there was little option but to accept.

They sat together in the abbess's little room where, presently, Gervase joined them. Josse took him down to the room in the undercroft, where he viewed each body in turn, listening without response, other than the occasional nod, while Josse related his findings and conclusions. Back up in the abbess's room, he and Josse downed mugs of spiced wine – very thin, quite acid wine, light on the honey and the spices, but then times were hard – and Gervase then turned to Josse.

‘Were the men buried immediately after they were killed?' he demanded.

‘Aye, I'd say so, although it's more difficult to be certain in winter, when there are no egg-laying insects around. But there was no sign of animal predation.'

Gervase gave a wry smile. ‘You mean, they'd probably been put in the ground before any hungry badger, fox or wolf had a chance to gnaw at them?' As if belatedly remembering the abbess's presence, he turned to her with a courteous bow and said, ‘I am sorry, my lady. I did not mean to be flippant.'

‘I know, Sir Gervase,' she replied calmly.

He bowed again, then turned back to Josse. ‘And can you say how long they'd been in the ground?'

Josse knotted his brows in an intense frown. ‘There was some putrefaction, but not as much as I had expected. It's been cold, of course, and that appears to slow the process down.' He came to a decision. ‘The really harsh weather began after Christmas, and, had the men been killed and buried before that, the decomposition would be further advanced. I cannot be sure, Gervase, but my guess is that they were murdered and buried no more than a month or six weeks ago.'

‘We are now in mid-February,' Gervase muttered, ‘so six weeks takes us back to the start of January.' He was silent for a moment, clearly thinking.

‘Has that date some meaning for you, Sir Gervase?' asked the abbess as the silence continued.

He looked at her. ‘Perhaps, my lady.' He hesitated, then went on: ‘For some weeks in the final quarter of last year, there had been reports of a series of robberies and assaults on isolated houses. It seemed that whoever was perpetrating the crimes had been steadily moving southwards, reaching the area around Tonbridge – my jurisdiction – some time in December.' He paused, frowning. ‘The assaults were all too often brutal, I am afraid to say. Old people attacked, battered and beaten, to persuade them to reveal where they had hidden their money and their valuables. One elderly widow, living alone, was forced to see her guard dog killed before her eyes, and then she was hit over the head repeatedly, until she was blinded in one eye. And all she had hidden away was half a mouldy cheese and a clipped penny.'

There was silence in the room. Then Josse said, ‘The assaults have now stopped?'

Gervase sighed. ‘No reports have reached me of anything since January. Either the perpetrators have moved on, or else—'

‘Or else they now lie dead in our undercroft,' the abbess finished for him. Abruptly, she stood up, and Josse, noticing how the power in the room shifted as she did so from the sheriff to her, thought anew what a quietly strong and authoritative woman she had become . . .

But she was speaking, and he made himself listen.

‘. . . any real likelihood we shall discover the identities of the three men, Sir Gervase?' she was asking.

‘Very little, my lady, if they are indeed who we believe them to be, for they are not local,' he said. ‘You wish, of course, to have them taken away for burial, I know, and—'

‘They can be buried in the Hawkenlye graveyard,' she interrupted. ‘Sir Gervase,' she went on, her tone softening, ‘in the absence of certainty in this matter, we should leave judgement to a higher authority. I will ensure that such details of the men that we have are recorded, in case anyone should ever come looking for them. Then our priest will bury them, and we shall all pray that the Lord has mercy on them.'

‘It is highly likely that they are all three guilty of grave crimes, my lady abbess,' Gervase said, his face stiff.

‘If so, then they have already paid by their deaths,' she replied implacably. ‘If they are innocent, then they deserve our compassion and our prayers.'

She appeared, Josse reflected, to have covered either possibility more than adequately. Amused, despite himself, at Gervase's obvious discomfiture, he suppressed a smile.

The sheriff was bowing again to the abbess, taking his leave. ‘If there is anything further I can do for you in this matter, my lady, or, indeed, in any other, you have only to summon me,' he said.

She bowed in return. ‘Thank you, Sir Gervase.'

He nodded briefly to Josse, muttered his thanks, and then swept out of the room. Josse could hear his footsteps pacing quickly away.

‘Have I offended him, Sir Josse?' the abbess asked softly. ‘Would he have had me judge and condemn those three men, refusing them Christian burial and the hope of resurrection, even though we cannot be certain they are guilty of the crimes Sir Gervase described?'

‘If he is offended, then the fault is his and not yours,' Josse replied. He went over to her and took her cold hands in his; he had known Caliste a long time, and he hoped she would not mind the small intimacy. ‘You are quite right, my lady—' he let go of her hands – ‘and it is not for us to judge.'

She nodded, her expression relieved. ‘Thank you,' she said simply. ‘What a friend you are.' Then she stood on tiptoe and placed a soft kiss on his cheek.

Riding back up to St Edmund's Chapel on its rise above the abbey, Josse could still feel the imprint of that kiss. Reflecting how nice – how unusual – it was to have a woman be tender to him, resolutely he put Abbess Caliste out of his mind and turned his attention to what lay ahead.

He tethered Alfred to a tree and strode over to the little cell. The low door had been propped open and a thorough wash-down of the ceiling, walls and floor had obviously been carried out. Now, Gus was busy erecting three simple, narrow cots against the far wall of the cell, while Helewise, her granddaughter and Meggie, sleeves rolled up and their gowns covered by voluminous white aprons, busied themselves organizing the stores they had brought on to the set of shelves inside the door. Three neat piles of bedding sat on a mat on the grass, waiting until Gus had finished.

All four greeted Josse with happy faces. He noticed that Little Helewise already had more colour in her cheeks and, for the first time since she had arrived at the House in the Woods, she was smiling.

He decided it was time to swallow his hurt and resentment, and wish them well. ‘The weather looks set to improve,' he said, standing back to observe their handiwork, ‘which must surely indicate that your endeavours are blessed.'

Meggie came up to him and linked her arm through his. ‘We'll set the hearth stones back in place as soon as the floor's dry,' she said, ‘and I've already collected kindling and firewood enough for today. We'll be snug as fleas in a blanket by nightfall!'

He laughed. Then, anxiously, he said, ‘What of the lay brothers who will watch over you? Will they be—?'

‘Don't worry, Father,' she said, squeezing his arm. ‘There are two of them, both strong, brave young men, and even as we speak they are in the forest, foraging for dead wood to build their shelter. We really will be quite all right,' she added in a whisper.

He prayed, silently and intently, that she was right.

Then, deliberately turning his thoughts away from his fears, he said, ‘Meggie, I have something here I'd like you to look at, if you are willing.' He withdrew his arm from hers and reached inside his tunic, bringing out the parchment. He unrolled it and handed it to her.

She studied it in silence for some time. Then she said, ‘Where did you get this?'

He hesitated, then said, ‘It is a copy of the symbols that were scratched on to the chest of a dead man.'
Scratched
did not really describe the manner in which the symbols had been etched, but any more accurate word would sound too brutal.

She nodded. There was another period of silence – he sensed she was deep in thought – and finally she said, ‘This is, I think, what is called a bind rune. It's a combination of three runes blended together, so that the meaning of all three merges together to make an ultimate message.'

‘Runes . . .?' He was familiar with the word, but was not sure if his scant knowledge was enough.

She smiled. ‘They are ancient symbols, Father, used in magic writing for spells and talismans. They can form charms for protection and defence – warding off evil – and, in addition, those who have studied them are able to use them as an aid to prediction. Or so it's said,' she added hastily.

He smiled to himself. Did his beloved daughter still think he was unaware of her strange powers and her wide knowledge of the secret world she had shared with her mother? ‘Can you interpret what this symbol means?' he asked.

She frowned. ‘Yes, I
think
so . . .' She hesitated, and he could tell that she was still thinking even as she spoke. ‘It's – you have to sort of hold the three individual meanings in your mind and let them mix together, so that each one contributes to a bigger meaning . . .' She fell silent again, her frown deepening, her lips moving as she muttered under her breath.

Then, abruptly, she turned to him, her face shining with triumph. ‘I've got it!' He returned her grin. ‘This man, was he a bad man? Had he done something wrong?'

‘Er – he might have done, aye.'

She was nodding again. ‘He did. Or, at least, whoever carved this symbol in his chest believed he did, and he – or someone – killed the man because of what he'd done.' Holding the parchment in one hand, she pointed with the forefinger of the other. ‘This rune is Haegl—' she outlined the letter Josse had thought was H, two uprights with a connecting bar that sloped down from left to right – ‘and it means disruption, or hurting, bad damage. This one is Eoh—' her finger drew over the right-hand upright of the H, which had a mark from the top end sloping down to the right and one going up from the bottom and to the left – ‘and it means prevention, or a weapon – maybe deflecting harm. Then finally this one is Tir—' her finger moved to the left-hand upright, which terminated in two downward-pointing lines forming an arrow head – ‘and it stands for battle. Taken together, you have Tir-Eoh-Haegl, which has so many meanings and levels of meaning that I can't begin to explain them all, but the overriding one is a battle to prevent damaging forces; against evil, if you like.' Her eyes turned to him, wide with awe. ‘Father, this is a very powerful bind rune.' He noticed that her hands holding the parchment were shaking. ‘Whoever cast it, whoever cut it into that man, he was telling the spirits that the man had been killed in order to exact vengeance.'

I
n the isolated village high up in the Pyrenees that had become his home, Ninian had thrown himself so wholeheartedly into life with his new friends that at times he almost forgot he did not belong there. The winter was harsh, with snow so deep around the village that getting in or out was all but impossible. Food was scant, and apparently nobody was tempted to relieve their hunger by slaughtering a sheep and tucking in to a good meat meal. There wasn't much to do, but there was lots of praying. Despite all this, the overall impression Ninian received was that everyone was happy and would not have exchanged their lot even for a king's palace.