The Raven's Head (15 page)

She nodded eagerly.

‘Why don’t you hide here, while I find another place? Do you know another good place to hide?’

The child sucked a grubby finger thoughtfully. She flopped onto her stomach and pointed between the wheels to a small yard squeezed between two houses.

‘I hide in there when Mam’s angry, under the stairs.’

Though I desperately wanted to run, I knew that would only draw attention to me, so I willed myself to stand up and saunter casually across. With every painful step I took I expected to hear a cry, but I reached the yard without anyone stopping me and slipped through the open gate. Fortunately, the yard and the house appeared empty. Nothing stirred, save the family’s washing, which flapped lethargically in the breeze.

From the stacks of casks and barrels in various states of completion, the yard belonged to a cooper and I saw at once what the child had meant. An open rickety staircase led up the outside of the workshop to the sleeping quarters above. The cooper had stacked his timber at the foot of the stairs and, in the space beneath the steps, you could crouch out of sight behind the pile of wood, though you’d be visible to anyone using the staircase. It was hardly much of a hiding place for a man, though it would indeed seem secure to a small child.

I was just deciding whether or not to try to creep away when I heard the Watchman blowing his horn for attention on the other side of the market and the hubbub of the marketplace quietened, though only slightly. Some announcement was being made, though most of the traders did not interrupt their business to listen. Any news would drift their way soon enough, if it was worth hearing. But I had a pretty good idea what that announcement might have been.

I snatched a woman’s gown from a tree in the yard where it was drying and, for good measure, a length of linen cloth flapping beside it. Retreating behind the stairs, I began stripping off my clothes. I removed the bag containing the raven’s head. For a moment, I was on the verge of hurling the cursed thing as far as I could throw it. But what good would that do? Whether I was taken with or without it, I’d still be branded a thief.

Very well: if they were going to hang that name around my neck, I’d live up to it. I’d take the raven’s head, and Philippe would have only himself to blame. If they were going to force me to make my own way in the world, I’d need all the valuables I could lay my hands on. Besides, I reckoned I’d earned it, all those years scribbling away as Gaspard’s slave, keeping their secrets and covering their lies. And what recompense had I ever had for all my labours? Clothes so threadbare that even a beggar would scorn to wear them and food the pigs would have curled their lips at.

I fastened the leather straps of the bag around my waist and pulled the stolen kirtle over the top. You could have fitted me and a fat twin together into it but that was all to the good: it would conceal both the wooden box and my masculine shape. I wound the cloth around my head, and as I did so my arm brushed the stubble on my chin. Some might have called it little more than arse-fluff, especially since, like my hair, it was blond. But it would be enough to give me away, so I wound the tail of the cloth round my face, pulling it up over my chin, like a gentlewoman’s wimple. Finally I tied my own clothes round my waist under the gown, which I hoped would conceal the hardness of the box if anyone brushed against me. So clad, I stumbled from my hiding place and edged out into the marketplace again.

Across the far side of the square, a group of men were fanning out and starting to search every wagon and booth, sweeping under carts with pikes and staves. With my head down, I sidled along the length of the square, keeping close to the buildings, and turned into the first street I came to.

It is an amazement to me that women can walk in skirts, never mind work in them. I couldn’t seem to take two paces without the cloth wrapping itself around my legs. I was beginning to realise that they take tiny steps because a longer stride would have them sprawled face down on the cobbles in no time. I couldn’t keep this up for long. As soon as I was clear of the town, I’d change back into my own clothes or it would take me all day to walk a mile.

As I minced round the corner, I saw ahead of me one of the town gates. For a moment I was elated. Freedom lay just yards away. But almost at once despair crashed in again for I saw that the carts, horses and men on foot were not passing through but slowing to a halt in front of the gates, forming an ever-lengthening line. The guard were searching everyone leaving the town and inspecting all the carts and wagons in which a fugitive might be concealed, even kneeling down to peer beneath them, in case anyone was hanging underneath. I’d little doubt they were doing the same at all the other gates. There was no way out except through those guards. I was trapped.

He should reside in an isolated house in an isolated position.

‘We’ve come to see our lad,’ Hudde says.

He shuffles awkwardly in front of the huge wooden gate, trying to peer in through the iron grid at the man standing behind it. He hastily removes his hood as if he is in church or in the presence of his master, then just as quickly replaces it, in case he should seem too servile. His wife, Meggy, is watching him from across the other side of the track and she’s told him to stand his ground.

‘The brothers see no one at this hour,’ the gatekeeper mutters. ‘You got a message for one of them? Been a death in the family, has there?’

He, too, cranes his neck, trying to look over Hudde’s shoulder to see who else might be with him. Caution and curiosity are both the vices and the virtues of a gatekeeper.

Uncertain how to reply, Hudde turns away to seek an answer from Meggy. She’s balancing a small child astride her hip, while a little girl clings to her skirts. Her other three children are engaged in a noisy and boisterous game of tag, charging up and down the track. Meggy is too far away to hear the gatekeeper’s words, but she sees the uncertainty on her husband’s face and gestures at him to insist on seeing the boy.

‘Well?’ the gatekeeper demands. ‘Do you want me to deliver a message or not? I’ve got better things to do than stand here talking to you all day.’ If challenged, he would be hard put to name anything else he actually has to do, but he can tell Hudde is not the man to challenge him.

Hudde jerks his head in the direction of his wife. ‘We buried our youngest a week or so back. She’s grieving for him something terrible. Now she’s taken it into her head there’s summat amiss with our Wilky. Has these nightmares that he’s in danger and is crying for her. I tried to tell her no bairn could be in a safer place. But she won’t rest till she’s seen for herself he’s thriving. It’s only the grief as has her fretting, but you know what women are when they get a notion into their heads.’

The gatekeeper does not know. Though he’s only a lay brother, he’s been an abbey servant for years, but even before he entered the cloisters, he’d never felt the slightest desire to have any dealings with those screeching creatures they call
women
. But he is beginning to grasp something of what this ignorant lump of a woodsman is trying to tell him.

‘A boy – you mean a child, not one of the brothers?’

Hudde nods eagerly. ‘That’s it. Wilky, he’s our boy. Came here a few months back.’

‘No boy here of that name.’

Hudde’s brow wrinkles. ‘’Bout this high,’ he says, holding his hand flat as if he was touching the boy’s head. Then he realises the gatekeeper can’t see his hand. ‘Just five summers, he is. His hair’s the colour of . . .’ he hesitates. He’s not often called upon to describe such things. ‘. . . a ladybird, that’s what it always put me in mind of. Course, without the spots.’

He laughs nervously for the gatekeeper is staring at him as if he is making no more sense than a chattering squirrel. The lay brother wouldn’t know a ladybird from a dragonfly and cares even less.

Hudde turns around and beckons to one of his sons. ‘Jankin, come here, lad!’

The boy breaks off his game and comes running up. ‘Our Wilky’s almost the twin of his brother here, except Wilky’s shorter and his hair’s a mite redder.’ He fondles the boy’s rusty curls.

Before the gatekeeper can reply, a hand appears on his shoulder and pulls him aside.

‘What is amiss here?’ the white-robed figure demands.

They both stand away from the gate, deep in a whispered conversation. Hudde feels his spirits rise a little. He was beginning to fear the gatekeeper was half-witted, but here is the man who took his son from the cottage. He’ll soon have things sorted.

Father John’s face appears in the grille. ‘Your son is well, Master Hudde, and making good progress with his lessons. If he was dead, you would have been informed at once. But I’ll tell the boy you were asking after him.’

He raises his hand to close the shutter over the grille, but Hudde grasps the bars in both hands. ‘We just want to see the lad, only for a moment or two. It’s my Meggy . . . she’s that upset about losing the babe. It would comfort her so to see Wilky.’

‘I’m afraid that will not be possible,’ Father John says. ‘Many in the town have the bloody flux. We are permitting the boys to see no one from outside these walls for fear of the contagion. I’m sure you would wish us to keep your son safe and ensure that he’s not exposed to any danger.’

‘But Meggy and me aren’t sick, nor the bairns. Look at them.’

As if to prove their father’s words, the three children raced past the gate in pursuit of each other, yelping like a pack of overexcited hounds.

‘But you told the gatekeeper that one of your children died only a week ago. We cannot be sure you do not carry the contagion. We will pray for the soul of the dead infant, but now you must return home. You may come again at Easter. He will be permitted to see you then. And I advise you not to enter the town or talk to any of the townspeople for fear you endanger your other children.’

The shutter is slammed so decisively that Hudde knows no amount of ringing the bell or begging for admittance will cause it to be opened again. He remembers the stories his grandmother used to tell, of children who were lured away by the faerie folk and led through a door in the hillside to a land beyond, but when their parents hurried after them to bring them back they found the door vanished and they were left pounding on solid rock.

Hudde paces slowly back towards his wife. The anguish on her face cuts him like a knife slash. She has cried enough these past days and he knows he has failed her. He tries to sound cheerful, to explain that the holy brothers are keeping Wilky safe. If a fever takes hold in such closed places it runs through them like a fire in a forest.

‘But why couldn’t they bring him to the grille in the gate? I wouldn’t have touched him,’ she sobs. ‘I only wanted to look at him.’

Her husband doesn’t know what to say to comfort her. ‘Suppose women aren’t allowed to look in,’ he says, ‘case the monks see them.’

It’s all he can think of to console her, but they both know it’s a lie. Monks see women all the time in the towns and villages. And many do far more than look.

Hudde plucks his little daughter from his wife’s skirts and swings her up onto his shoulders. They trudge back along the muddy road. The children creep up behind one another and tickle each other’s necks with dried reeds or shove each other into puddles. But for once neither Meggy nor Hudde has the heart to scold them and in the end, disconcerted, the children, too, fall silent.

They see a woman they recognise walking towards them, leading a milch cow by a rope halter, with a pail and stool slung either side of its back. She and Meggy have known each other since they were giggling girls for she lives in the very centre of the town where Meggy grew up. Fearfully, Meggy calls the children to her, forcing them to walk at the very edge of the track on the opposite side to the woman, as if she is a leper.

The woman is taken aback as she sees fear on the face of her friend. Alarmed herself now, she glances behind her, assuming danger must be following, but the track is empty, innocent of harm. She begins to tug the cow across the road, intending to offer the little ones some milk, warm and foaming, straight from the cow’s udders, for they look tired and hungry, but stops, bewildered, when Hudde hastily steps in front of his family, holding out a hand, warning her to step no closer.

‘Whatever’s amiss?’ she calls, really frightened now.

‘I hear tell there’s bloody flux in the town. We’ve been warned to stay away. Don’t want the little ’uns getting sick. We buried our youngest just a week back. Meggy can’t bear more grief.’

The woman’s face crumples in sympathy. ‘I’m right sorry to hear that, Meggy, God rest his little soul.’ She crosses herself and hastily spits three times on the back of her fingers to ward off any curse that might pass from Meggy’s family to hers.

‘But what’s this about the flux? Whoever was it told you such a thing? Why, thanks be to the Blessed Virgin, there’s been no sickness in the town since the summer fever last year. You’ve no need to fret for your cletch, Meggy. I swear on my life, there’s no flux in these parts.’

If an emerald is set before a toad’s eye either the stone, if of weak virtue, will be broken by the toad’s gaze, else the toad will burst if the stone is possessed of natural vigour.

‘Stand aside, woman.’ A guard pushed past me so violently that I staggered into the wall. For a moment I could do nothing but crouch there, gasping and hugging my sore ribs.

‘Mind who you’re shoving, you clumsy great ox,’ a woman yelled at the man who’d knocked into me.

But he didn’t bother even to turn as he elbowed his way through the crowd at the gate who were waiting to be searched before they’d be allowed to squeeze out of the town.

Two arms encircled me, helping me to stand. ‘The guard think they can do what they like. Don’t care who they trample underfoot.’

I was sprayed with spittle as my rescuer spoke, for her mouth was crammed full of teeth that jutted out at odd angles, like a rockfall, between her lips.