The Raven's Head (11 page)

‘Am I to take a horse from the stables?’ I asked hopefully.

The town had to be at least ten miles away, maybe more, and on the few occasions I’d been there to buy new parchments and other supplies for Gaspard, I’d travelled with other servants in the back of a wagon.
I didn’t fancy walking that distance and back.

‘Can you ride a horse?’ Philippe asked.

He knew I couldn’t. What chance did an apprentice librarian ever have to learn to ride?

‘Can’t be that hard,’ I mumbled.

Philippe’s face wore an indulgent smile, like the one men adopt when dealing with a small child who thinks he has said something clever but has merely shown his naïvety. ‘When you return, I will see to it that you are taught the skills of horsemanship. In the meantime, Vincent, I have no wish to see you break your neck or, more importantly, damage the package. Besides, you are less likely to draw attention to yourself on foot. No one will suspect you of carrying anything of value, whereas mounted on one of the fine beasts I keep in my stables you would instantly be marked out as wealthy. But don’t look so dismayed. I wouldn’t expect you to walk there and back in a day. Take this.’ He handed me a soft leather purse, which I could feel contained a few small coins. ‘That should be more than sufficient to buy a comfortable night’s lodging in the town before your return.’

Although I was still a little irked by having to walk, I could see the sense in what he said. To be honest, part of me was relieved he didn’t want me to ride – the horses Philippe kept in his stable were huge, powerful brutes that even his knights found hard to control. But he could have sent a servant to drive me in a cart, at least as far as the town. Set against that, though, was the prospect of a night spent away from the château. All those inns and taverns, cockpits and girls! Actually, the more I thought about it, the more I realised Philippe was doing me the most enormous favour by making me walk. Otherwise I’d have missed what promised to be the wildest night of my life. After spending every night for the past seven years with Gaspard, even a sedate game of Nine Men’s Morris with an elderly nun would have seemed thoroughly debauched, and I intended to do a great deal more with my freedom than play board games.

I heard the iron ring in the door turn and glanced round to see Amée entering, a small sack swinging from her hand of the kind that a farmer might sling over his shoulder when setting off for a day’s haymaking. My heart began to pound at the sight of her. She always looked adorable, but today, in a sky-blue kirtle, her flaxen hair draped with a fine white veil, she was as beautiful and pure as the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation.

She crossed to her father and, stretching up on tiptoe, planted a sweet kiss on his cheek. I wondered how it would feel to have that soft mouth pressed against mine. I might never kiss her, but if I impressed her father, I would surely see her every day . . . and who knew?

Amée turned, with a dazzling smile. ‘My father tells me you have a long walk today. I didn’t want you to be hungry, Vincent, so I packed some food for your journey.’ She held out the sack. ‘I hope you will enjoy it. I chose everything myself.’

I didn’t know what was in the bag and I didn’t care. If she’d filled it with mouldy bread, I’d have thought it the finest food I’d ever tasted because she had picked it up with her own hands and put it in the bag for
me
. I could hardly have been more ecstatic if she had popped the food into my mouth with her own dear little fingers. Amée cared about me being hungry! She had risen at dawn to pack food for me . . . herself . . . with her own hands! I thought my heart was going to float out of my mouth. She had spoken my name. She had
remembered
my name! I was so stunned that it was several moments before I could stop gazing at her long enough to bow and thank her.

She nodded and, with another dimpled smile, slipped away through the door. I couldn’t stop smiling. I bet she’d never got up at dawn to pack food for Charles.

Philippe coughed pointedly and I flushed as I realised I’d been standing there like the village idiot, grinning at a closed door. I straightened my face and scooped up the leather bag that I was to deliver, fumbling with the long strings with which I intended to tie it around my waist, concealing it beneath my cloak.

‘Don’t you want to know what you are carrying?’ Philippe asked.

‘I wouldn’t dream of prying, my lord,’ I said respectfully.

Philippe laughed. ‘Yes, you would. Curiosity will get the better of you before you’ve gone a mile down the road. So, you’d better satisfy yourself now. It’s safer that you do it here than examine it on the open road where others might see you. You have my permission to open it.’

Since he was ordering me to look, I could hardly refuse, so I loosened the drawstring and pulled out a small wooden box. It was a plain-looking object, not gilded or jewelled, not even painted, and decorated only by a carving of an ouroboros on the lid, the same sign that he had told me I would find on the wall of Albertus’s house. I opened the lid and tipped out an object wrapped in a piece of soft white woollen cloth. Unrolling it, I found myself holding a heavy silver flask in the form of a bird’s head with a thick curved beak and eyes inlaid with beads of polished black onyx. Every feather on the bird’s head was so delicately engraved that each barbule could be distinguished, their lines no thicker than a human hair.

‘The raven’s head,’ Philippe said, gazing at it with an expression of near rapture. ‘Exquisite, is it not? A fitting gift for my friend, I think.’

I wondered what service Albertus had performed for Philippe to warrant such a present, for I could tell, just from the weight, that the silver alone was worth a fortune, even without the fine workmanship of the piece.

Philippe took it from my hand and with his fingertip caressed the smooth polished silver of the beak. ‘You see what faith I am placing in you, Vincent. There aren’t many men to whom I would entrust such a costly and rare object. Do not betray that trust.’ His voice was suddenly as cold and sharp as a sword thrust. ‘I do not forgive betrayal.’

The spirit which is extracted from metals is the urine of children and of the sages, for it is the seed and primal matter of metals. Without this seed there is no consummation in our art.

The chapel is in darkness, save the candle flames trembling on the altar. The great pillars supporting the arches stretch up like petrified tree trunks, the tops vanishing into the shadows above. The breath of the little huddle of boys escapes as white mist from their mouths, as if their spirits are leaving their bodies. Somewhere, overhead, a great bell tolls.

Regulus is shivering in spite of the warm cloak they have given him. He pulls it up over his mouth and nose, trying to breathe through the wool, for the air is as cold and damp as if he was leaning over a deep well. Mighel, the boy with the amulet, is coughing and wheezing. He scratches frantically at the raw red patches on his arms. Father John frowns at him. He desists until he thinks Father John isn’t looking, then surreptitiously rubs his arm against the wall, like a pig with an itch.

There is a sound at the great door behind them. Some of the boys crane their necks, but Father John clicks his fingers and they spin their heads back to face the altar as he motions to them to kneel on the hard stone flags.

The great door opens, but though Regulus turns, he can see no one, for a broad panel of wood at the end of the aisle shields the doorway, and it is as well it does for the candles on the altar gutter wildly as if the flames are trying to tear themselves loose and fly up into the air.

Ten white-robed men emerge from behind the panel and process up the centre of the church two by two, their hoods pulled low over their faces. They are singing a psalm in Latin, though to Regulus, who has seldom been inside a church, it means less than the twittering of birds. He is unnerved by these faceless men. He had not realised there were so many men like Father John in this place. They have multiplied like maggots on a dead rabbit.

But by the time the incomprehensible service finally crawls to the end, Regulus has had to be shaken awake twice by Felix. The child is so sleepy, he can barely put one foot in front of the other. Felix propels him back to the chamber in which they ate, and pulls a straw pallet from the stack for him. He lays it neatly beside the row of others and tosses a blanket from the pile on top.

‘I’m only doing this once, mind,’ Felix warns. ‘Tomorrow you fetch your own bed, else you’ll sleep on the hard stones.’

Regulus isn’t listening. He is desperate to lie down. Felix drags him over to the corner. ‘That’s the pot you piss in. That’s the one you shit in. Don’t forget. We’ll all get punished if you get it wrong.’

Even half asleep, Regulus knows he has heard this warning before and panic wells in him again. What will the punishment be if he makes a mistake? Is it as bad a crime as poaching deer? He once saw a boy sewn into the hide of the deer he’d killed and sent running through the forest to be hunted down by the pack of hounds. He can still remember the baying of the excited dogs and the screams of the boy as their snapping jaws brought him crashing to the ground. Regulus shudders.

Father John glides silently in, and when all the boys are lying on their pallets, he blows out the candle. They hear the door close behind him. Regulus, exhausted, falls asleep as quickly as a new-born puppy, but not so the other children. They lie tense, waiting.

The bell tolls, echoing through the silent passages, like a stone dropped down a great well shaft. Huddled beneath the thin blankets, the boys silently count –
eight, nine, ten
. Still they lie awake. It is not safe to sleep yet.

As the air trembles with the last chime, the door swings open. Half roused by the bell, the sudden gust of chill air on his cheek makes Regulus open his eyes. A monstrous white bird hovers in the doorway. The boy tries to scream, but no sound escapes him. He pulls the blanket over his head, holding his breath, but the dust and fear make him choke and he stifles a cough. Has it heard him? Is it the lantern-man come to carry him off?

He hears a faint scraping, like a bird’s claws, across the stone flags. The scaly feet are pattering nearer and nearer. He can hear them. Almost rigid with terror he presses himself down into the straw of his pallet, but that makes the straw rustle. There is a tiny shriek, like the cry of a mouse when the silent owl pounces, but Regulus is not the boy who cries out.

He pulls the blanket down just enough to peep out with one eye. A figure is bending over one boy’s pallet, holding a guttering candle over the bed. Regulus sees it is not a bird at all, but a man dressed in white robes, his hood drawn low over his face. He drags the boy up from his pallet by his arm, and silently waits while the boy wrestles his shirt over his pale, skinny chest and gropes his feet into sandals, which he fumbles to fasten.

The robed man grows impatient. He seizes the boy by the shoulder, and propels him towards the door before his shoe is secure. The boy walks with a lopsided shuffle trying to keep a grip on his sandal, but on the steps leading up to the door, he loses it and it bounces back down, as if trying to flee back to the safety of the pallet. The boy turns, trying to retrieve it, but the robed man pushes him towards the door. As he lifts the candle to illuminate the iron ring, the light catches the boy’s face. His cheeks are wet with tears, his face contorted, but he makes no sound as he is led out into the bitter night. The great door closes behind him.

Regulus dreams he is pissing into a giant pot, but it’s running out through a hole and he can’t stop it. Felix is shouting at him,
Fill it up! Fill it up!
But it’s all running out. Beneath the blanket, something hot trickles down the sleeping boy’s leg. The little king has wet his bed.

Saturn is the planet of death: look, this one has brought the black mantle of the raven’s head.

There were two tracks that wound through the river valley to Ricey-Bas. The broader one was favoured by soldiers on the march and by men driving carts or women herding squawking geese or plodding cows. This track followed every twist and turn of the River Laigne, skirting fields of grain and vineyards, and marked by numerous wayside chapels where men might light a candle to their favourite saint to pray for a safe journey and a good day’s trading in the market.

The higher track, on the opposite side of the river, was much straighter, though steep, rough and narrow. It was fit only for single riders and foot travellers. I agonised over which would be the better route. If I took the broader track there was a chance I could beg a lift on a cart, which was certainly tempting. But the ground was sodden after the rain and there was a risk of carts and wagons getting stuck in water-filled ruts, with any passing man being pressed into pushing it out. I’d no wish to spend my day with my shoulder to a cartwheel, being splattered with mud and dung for my pains.

I made for the river and parted with one of the precious coins Philippe had given me to pay the ferryman to row me across. At the start of the forest path, where the track parted company from the river, there was a small shrine to the patron saint of travellers, St Julian the Hospitaller, who had accidentally slain his own mother and father and spent his life running a pilgrim’s inn as penance. But I passed without stopping. I didn’t intend to waste a single coin or prayer on the fellow. I was only going out for a day’s stroll after all, and when you have a man as powerful as Philippe as your patron and protector, you’re hardly in need of the favours of a dead innkeeper, who was so witless he mistook his own parents for his wife and her lover.

The autumn leaves on the trees had turned every hue between buttercup yellow and ruby red, and as the wind rattled the branches, they spiralled up the hillside. Winter was not far off, but at least this year I’d be sleeping in the great hall before the huge fire, not in that draughty turret with the wind shrieking through the shutters and Gaspard’s dry old bones lying between me and the miserly heat from the brazier.