The Song of the Nightingale (10 page)

Josse nodded. Then he said very gently, ‘Sister Estella, you've been most helpful and I'm very grateful. Now, a few moments ago you wanted to tell us something, but you weren't sure quite how to. Can you now say what it was?'

She looked as if she was plucking up her courage. Then she said, ‘I had the feeling that he was a man who would do what he felt he had to. He'd come seeking a priest, and that made me think he knew very well that what he intended to do was wrong. But I reckoned that, even if he didn't find a priest, he'd go ahead anyway. He was . . .' She paused, clearly searching for the right word. ‘Driven.'

Abbess Caliste caught Josse's eye. ‘A man who would perhaps carry out his intended task and afterwards pray for forgiveness,' she murmured.

‘Aye.' Josse sighed. What a pity, he reflected, the confessional was sacrosanct; even if this dark stranger had managed to find some priest to hear his confession for murder, nobody was ever going to know.

Both women, he noticed, were watching him; Sister Estella looked apprehensive. ‘My lady abbess, Sister Estella, thank you for your time,' he said with a bow. ‘I shall go now and seek out Gervase de Gifford. It may be that others have come across your brown stranger, Sister—' he turned to the novice with a smile – ‘and perhaps one of Gervase's men will know where he is.'

He turned to go, but there was a quick movement, and suddenly Sister Estella was right beside him, a hand on his arm. ‘Sir Josse?'

‘What is it, child?' he asked kindly.

She seemed to struggle for words. ‘He's – oh, I know I said he was handsome, and went on about how he looked as I've no right to do, but it's not his looks that were important, not really. He—'

‘Go on.'

‘He was a
good
man!' she burst out. ‘Yes, he said he needed forgiveness for a bad deed, but I reckon it was something bad done for a good cause, and that's not really terrible, is it?' She turned to the abbess and then rapidly back to Josse. ‘
Is
it?' she demanded.

Josse sighed. He knew what she meant and, if indeed it had been this mysterious stranger who killed the three brigands, and the deed was done in vengeance, then it was exactly as Estella had said:
something bad done for a good cause
.

Quite how he was going to persuade Gervase of that, if and when they ever caught this man, he didn't know.

As the day drew on, Meggie grew increasingly desperate to evade the company of Helewise and her granddaughter, not because she did not enjoy being with them but because the compulsion to get away to her mother's little hut was becoming unendurable.

The intensity of her need to escape made her feel guilty because the three of them had spent such a happy day together. Little Helewise seemed quite different from the pale, hollow-eyed, sorrowful and anxious young woman who had arrived at the House in the Woods with her father the previous day. Now she had colour in her cheeks and her ready smile had frequently turned to laughter. Having feared at first that Little Helewise might have been sick, Meggie had been watching her closely. She had concluded that, whatever had ailed the girl, a day of very hard work, largely spent in the invigorating open air, had put it right. Perhaps it had been no more than a sudden intolerance of the endless weeks shut up inside the walls of her father's house. Plus, of course, pining for Ninian.

Perhaps, though, it was something else entirely . . .

Now, as Meggie sat with Helewise and her granddaughter beside the fire – set in a small circle of hearthstones inside the cell that was to be their home – she cast a surreptitious glance at the young woman.

She thought hard for a few moments.

Then she smiled.

The three women ate their simple supper, and as the other two cleared up, Meggie got to her feet.

‘I'd better go and see if our two guardian angels are all right,' she said, heading for the door. ‘They were having a job getting their fire going, and it'll be cold out there tonight.'

Helewise looked up with a smile. ‘They'll be used to cold nights,' she said. ‘Their usual accommodation down in the vale is very basic, you know. But it's a kind thought,' she added.

Meggie returned the smile. ‘I thought, since they're out there for our sake, it would be nice to show we appreciate it.'

She slipped outside. Her face felt red-hot; guilt was flowing through her again. It was very hard, she was discovering, not to be truthful with someone who trusted you implicitly. It was so easy to fool them that it hurt.

She hurried across to the crude but sturdy shelter that the lay brothers had put up and pushed aside the heavy piece of leather which served for a door. The two young men lay either side of the fire, which was now burning brightly. They were wrapped snugly in sheepskins, their eyes shining with excitement.

‘I'm sorry to disturb you,' Meggie said. ‘I just wanted to check that you were all right.'

The elder of the two laughed. ‘Reckon that's our job, miss,' he said. He glanced at his companion. ‘We were about to come to make sure you and the others were tucked up snug for the night.'

‘We are,' Meggie assured him. ‘We'll be settling down to sleep soon, so you can too.'

The younger monk gave a huge yawn. ‘Sorry,' he said with a grin. ‘S'been a busy day.'

‘Sleep well,' Meggie said.

She stayed outside for a while longer. Then she went back to the cell and closed the door.

She did not have long to wait. She lay on her back, warm under the covers and not bothered by the hardness of the plank bed. She strained to hear her companions' breathing:
slow, steady
, she said silently to them,
yes, that's the way. Sleep. Sleep.

When she was sure both women were asleep, she got out of bed, took her heavy cloak off her bed and, making barely a sound, quietly left the hut. She tiptoed past the lay brothers' shelter – she could see the glow of the fire but there was no sound other than the soft, rhythmic snoring of one of them – and hurried off across the clearing and into the forest.

There were a few clouds in the sky, occasionally covering the waxing moon, but Meggie knew her way so well that she could have done the journey with no light at all. The sky, however, had all but cleared by the time she reached the hut, and the moonlight enabled her to see that the rope knot with which door was secured had been retied.

Someone had been inside.

Not one of the family; she was sure of that. Only Ninian and Josse ever came to the hut. Ninian was far away, and Meggie knew that her father never came from choice. She was almost certain, moreover, that he would not go inside the hut without an invitation. He never spoke of it, but Meggie knew without being told that his memories of Joanna's hut were bitter-sweet.

So, a stranger had used the place. Meggie walked slowly all around the hut and its surrounding clearing, stopping to inspect the herb garden and going down to the stream, behind which the tall, ancient trees of the forest stood in silent protection. Eventually, she went back to the hut and, unfastening the rope, went inside.

She got up on to the sleeping platform and wrapped herself in her cloak, unfolding the heavy wool blankets and draping them over the top. She was warm from walking and wanted to preserve her body's heat. She thought about what she had just seen.

There were signs that a horse had been tethered under the shelter of the skeletal willows down by the little stream. She had noticed some droppings, covered with a scrape of earth. She had fetched a spade and removed the dung to the herb bed, bare in that end of winter season. The unknown visitor, she realized, had covered his – or her – tracks pretty well, considering what an out-of-the-way spot it was, but Meggie's thorough search had uncovered some hoof prints and a scatter of oat husks. The visitor had clearly taken good care of the horse; Meggie had found a wisp of horse hair from where the animal had been groomed. The hair was reddish-brown. Now she held it in her fingers, absently plaiting it into a neat braid.

She raised herself on one elbow, looking around the hut. She had left the door open, and the blueish moonlight streamed in. The interior of the hut looked almost exactly as she had left it, and anyone but Meggie would not have noticed the tiny differences. Whoever had used the hut – and she knew without a doubt someone had – had been careful and respectful.

It was just as she had thought. She gave a small private smile of satisfaction, pleased that again she had trusted her instincts and again they hadn't let her down. She'd known even before she saw the retied knot that someone had been there. She had tested her reaction to this alien presence and, as extra protection, sent up a swift thought to Joanna's guardian spirit. Her mother's and her own response had been the same: there was no danger.

She settled back on the platform. Her mother felt very close. Whoever had been inside the hut had not disturbed the sense of Joanna's presence; this in itself told Meggie that the visitor meant no harm.

She felt herself relax. Soon, oh, soon, she would sink down into the light trance state in which she so urgently needed to be. There, with any luck, she might begin to understand why she kept having the strong sense that her mother was calling out to her.
I'm here
, she said silently to Joanna.
Tell me what it is you want me to do
.

Her breathing slowed and deepened as the trance took her.

Within Hawkenlye Abbey, the three dead men lay like statues on the trestles in the undercroft beneath the nuns' dormitories. Sister Liese had left incense burning, and the air within the stone-walled crypt was very cold, but still the stench of death was slowly and steadily permeating the room. It was rumoured that the men were to be buried within the next couple of days, and many among the Hawkenlye community considered that it would not be a moment too soon.

No priest was meant to bury the dead. Under the pope's interdict, funerals were not permitted. Abbess Caliste and her priest did not believe that a king's quarrel with a pope should mean men went to their graves with nobody to pray for their souls, and the abbess had murmured to Father Sebastian that such prayers were even more vital when the bodies in question belonged to men who had in all probability been violent criminals.

Not that the indistinct figure creeping along in the deep shadow of the dormitory walls was aware of any of that. He was there to do one task only, and all his thoughts were bent towards its completion.

He reached the low door that led to the undercroft. It was locked, but locks did not present a problem. Reaching into a pouch that hung from his belt, he extracted a set of narrow, delicate tools fixed on to a ring, careful not to let the pieces of metal clink together. With a quick look around him – there was nobody in sight; the abbey seemed to be fast asleep behind the security of its stout gates – he put the first of the tools into the lock. He used two more in swift succession, then the lock gave and, opening the door a crack, he went inside. He took a candle stub from a fold of his tunic, striking his flint to light it. Then, unhurriedly, he went on down the passage.

The door to the room where the three men lay was not locked. He raised the latch and went inside. He stood for a moment looking down at the corpses, the light held up over each in turn as he folded back the covering sheets.

He saw what he was looking for. He reached out his free hand, muttering a prayer as he did so. He replaced the covers and then, without another look at the dead men, he spun round, left the room and paced swiftly back up the passage. Outside, he locked the door again – if those within the abbey chose to lock up the dead at night, he would not argue with it – and then he slipped back into the shadows.

A few moments later, anyone watching the section of wall behind the herb garden would have seen a dark shape quickly climb over and disappear into the night.

J
osse had been persuaded by Sabine de Gifford to stay the night at the sheriff's house. By the time he had finished explaining to Gervase about the implications of the strange marks on the dead man's chest, it was late. Having experienced before the delights of Sabine's cooking – even in straitened times, her flair meant that her family still enjoyed variety in their meals – Josse had readily accepted the invitation. Gervase had provided wine, of so good a quality that it too was a treat.

Josse took breakfast with the family the next morning. Gervase and Sabine's two sons were big boys now – too grown-up to be petted – and both they and their parents tended to spoil the eight-year-old Alazaïs. The cheerful meal was disturbed by the arrival of one of Gervase's deputies, urgently demanding his attention. With a muttered curse, Gervase got up from the table and went outside. There was murmuring – a quick question from the sheriff and a quiet reply – and more conversation, then the sound of footsteps hurrying away.

Gervase stood in the doorway and beckoned to Josse; whatever he had to say, clearly he did not want his daughter to overhear. Josse got up and followed him back outside into the courtyard.

‘One of the king's agents has been attacked,' Gervase said. He frowned. ‘He's a—' But whatever he had been about to say concerning the man was bitten back; to judge by Gervase's expression, it had been derogatory. ‘His name's Matthew and he works for Benedict de Vitré.' Josse raised his eyebrows at the name, and Gervase nodded. ‘I see you know of Lord Benedict,' he murmured.

‘Who doesn't?' Josse replied. Lord Benedict de Vitré was said to be a very close friend of the king, a position he chose to interpret as meaning he could do exactly what he liked as long as he did his job. Since his job was extracting money from everyone in his manor and forwarding it to the king, he was universally loathed. His habits of callous ruthlessness had been adopted by his underlings, and Josse had heard rumours that Lord Benedict turned a willingly blind eye to assault and rape.