The Raven's Head (6 page)

‘So have you given up the search, then?’ I’d asked him, the first time I’d caught him scribbling.

‘Certainly not,’ he’d snapped. ‘I’m not like you young ones, abandoning a task because it’s too difficult. If something is lost, I keep searching until it is found. Though how I am expected to find anything in this mess is beyond me. Look at it! Books and papers thrown around as if you were scattering manure on a field. It’s a disgrace.’

‘It was you who dragged everything out,’ I’d protested, then wished I’d held my tongue as his staff cracked across my ear.

‘I wouldn’t have to tear the place apart looking for things if you’d put them in the right order in the first place. You’re useless,
bâtard
, useless. I should have taken a pig as my apprentice. You don’t realise how grateful you should be . . .’

It was a speech I’d heard many times before – the bastard child of an English nun should consider himself the luckiest soul alive to have been taken into a noble French household and accorded the singular honour of becoming a scribe’s apprentice. Most nuns’ brats were buried alive in the nunnery crypt within the hour of their birth or else raised on scraps until they were old enough to tread dog shit in a tanner’s yard.

Of course, I had only Gaspard’s word that I was the child of a nun for I don’t remember ever having had a mother. My earliest memories were of crawling through straw to nestle among the puppies of a wolfhound and snuggling into the warm hairy belly of the dog as it lay in the corner of the stables. I remember sucking the ear of one of the puppies while another licked my toes. Maybe I was suckled by the wolfhound or even a wolf, like one of those wild children they sometimes found in the forest.

I’d been born far away from France, across the sea, in an English city called Winchester. I’d pretty much fended for myself for as far back as I could remember, stealing food or begging for it, always hungry, until the day the French army marched on Winchester when Prince Louis came to seize the English throne. I must have been eight or nine years old then. I saw my chance and made myself useful fetching and carrying for the French, for which they paid me by sharing their food and giving me a place at their fire. Gaspard made the most use of me, for Philippe had brought him as his scribe and the old man needed an agile boy to climb the trees and gather oak apples for ink or find fresh feathers for quills. I made sure he always had plenty of both.

But the good times lasted barely a year. Then the French were driven out and sailed home. I didn’t want to go back to my old life sleeping rough and stealing scraps from the midden heaps. At least the French fed me well. No one noticed I’d crept on board with them until we were well out at sea and by then it was too late to send me back.

I was too small and skinny to be of much use in Philippe’s kitchens or stables, but by then I could speak French as fluently as my mother’s tongue. Gaspard persuaded Philippe I’d learn Latin and my letters just as quickly, so I was hauled up to the turret to become the old man’s slave. But if I’d known I was going to spend the rest of my life caged up with that raddled crow I’d have stayed in England and starved.

I watched Gaspard for a few minutes, just to make sure he really was asleep. Then I edged over to the desk and quietly opened the book I’d seen him writing in, taking care to support the heavy cover, so that it wouldn’t thud against the desk. Not that the old man would have heard it if it had: he was so exhausted the turret could have collapsed and he’d still have been found sleeping peacefully in the rubble.

I was certain that this book must contain some great secret, if Gaspard had tried so hard to conceal the contents from me. But it seemed nothing more inflammatory than the mundane records of the Church of St Luke’s written in several different hands. Judging by the dates, the entries had been made around a century before. There were lists of candles, vestments, chalices and other costly objects given to the church by Philippe’s ancestors as penance for sins or as thank offerings for members of the family returned safely from war. There were colourful accounts of storms, droughts, fires, fevers and famines that God in His mercy had sent to ravage the countryside and chastise the sinful parishioners. And between them were the tedious life stories of virtuous priests or faithful deacons deemed worthy of being remembered after their deaths.

Occasionally notes, written in a different hand, had been added in the margins, a pernickety correction of some minor error in the record or a detail the scribe must have thought a glaring omission from his predecessor’s account. But the ink of the additions was as faded as that of the original entries.

Yet I was sure that this was the book I’d seen Gaspard writing in, and not just once but many times. Glancing down at the slumbering old man, I continued turning page after page, looking for anything he might have added, but could see nothing. Finally I came to the last entry in the book. It was written in smaller letters than the rest and little wonder: there was much to cram into the few pages remaining, as if the scribe had been determined not to begin on a new book until the very bottom of the very last page had been used up.

A Faithful Account of the Great Virtue of Hélène and of the Wickedness of Her Sister, Lisette.

I had half closed the book, intending to search among the other papers on Gaspard’s desk, but I found myself opening it again. The ink of this last entry was just as old and faded as it was in all the others, but the title piqued my curiosity. Just what mischief had this wicked sister got up to? It sounded a great deal more interesting than the pious acts of some village priest.

Estienne, Le Comte de Lingones, was a virtuous and well-favoured man.

The opening line was not promising, yet another tediously worthy saint, but I read on, hoping the juicy scandal of the naughty sister would quickly emerge.

He was betrothed from infancy to Lisette, the eldest daughter of Le Marquis des Roches, though as is the custom, the pair had not laid eyes upon one another since they were children. But when Estienne had returned from the wars, having proved his valour on the battlefield, it was thought high time the couple should wed.

So our saint was to marry the wicked sister. What dreadful sin had she committed? Adultery, was that it? Did she prove to be a whore? I hoped there’d be plenty of detail.

Estienne was invited to des Roches’s château to spend the weeks there in preparation for his nuptial feast. He rode in at the head of a fine procession, bringing gifts for his bride, including a dainty honey-coloured palfrey decked out in the finest scarlet bridle and saddle. On the afternoon he was to arrive, the marquis’s daughters were up in the solar dressing in their finest clothes. Lisette and her sisters tried on jewel after jewel and had their maids bind their hair first one way then another to make art endow them with what nature had failed to bestow.

All that is, except little Hélène, youngest and fairest of des Roches’s daughters. She had been quickly elbowed out of the way and had had her own jewels snatched from her neck by one of the sisters who fancied they would suit her far better. But Hélène made no complaint. She was a gentle, innocent girl, but her elder sisters were jealous of her, for when Hélène came into the hall, their charms paled in the eyes of all those around them, as the light of the moon fades in the brilliance of the sun.

Hélène saw no reason to primp and preen, for she modestly believed that no one would even glance her way. Besides, she thought it much more pleasant to be out in the warm sunshine than trapped in a dark room with her squabbling sisters. She threw on a simple gown and ran outside to gather flowers instead.

So it was that when Estienne’s procession galloped into the château grounds, the first woman he saw was Hélène, her soft cheeks flushed as pink as the roses in her arms, the sunlight glinting from her flaxen hair and her warm, welcoming smile. It did not occur to Estienne that this was any other than his betrothed, and without even asking her name, he dismounted, swept her up in his arms and, seating her on the palfrey, led her into her father’s courtyard with his own hand.

When Lisette, his bride-to-be, heard the clatter of the hoofs below she scurried excitedly to the casement. But her joy turned to rage when she saw her youngest sister seated upon the bridal horse and Estienne smiling at her as he reached up to grasp her waist and swing her down.

As soon as the marquis hurried out to meet his future son-in-law and present his daughters, Estienne realised his mistake. But it was too late. The damage was done. He had fallen hopelessly in love with Hélène and, by comparison, Lisette seemed insipid. She was rendered all the plainer by the furious scowls she was directing at her youngest sister.

Over the weeks that followed, Estienne gallantly paid court to his betrothed, but neither she nor anyone at the château could fail to notice that his gaze strayed constantly towards Hélène whenever she was nearby, and his eyes searched for her when she was absent. And they also observed how Hélène repeatedly turned towards the sound of Estienne’s voice, as if she could not help herself. It was plain she, too, was in love.

When Estienne pleaded with the marquis to grant him his youngest daughter’s hand in marriage instead of the elder’s, the marquis not unnaturally refused. But finally after both Hélène and Estienne entreated him on their knees, he could see that if he was not to lose this wealthy suitor entirely, he had no choice but to agree. But he declared that Hélène could not marry until her elder sister was safely wed to another for fear of shaming Lisette, and further that the youngest daughter would come with but half the dowry of the elder, for the marquis was a shrewd man and realised that, if Estienne was so determined to have the girl, he would not be obliged to part with nearly as much to sweeten the bargain.

A match was quickly arranged for Lisette with an old widower who was far wealthier even than Estienne. But her new husband’s riches did nothing to assuage Lisette’s fury and bitterness. She brooded constantly about what her sister had stolen from her and was determined to have her revenge. On the night before Hélène’s marriage, she covered herself with a cloak belonging to one of her maids and stole away to consult the wise woman who lived on an island in the lake. Lisette sought death for her sister, but the woman refused to grant her wish, fearing that she would be accused of the murder.

Instead she persuaded Lisette that revenge would taste far sweeter if she watched her sister’s marriage grow sour, and what better way to turn a man against his wife than if she failed to bear him heirs? The wise woman gave Lisette a charm to hide in the marriage bed to curse it, so that any child conceived in that bed would be stillborn. And so it came to pass that Hélène bore three sons, but not one drew breath.

Hélène, fearing that her husband would indeed try to put her away and take another to his bed, summoned a wise woman who lived on the edge of the forest to help her. This woman was cousin to the one Lisette had consulted and the forest woman recognised the evidence of her cousin’s handiwork. She knew at once how Hélène had been cursed.

She told Hélène that she must never again lie in her husband’s bed. Instead she must persuade her husband to lie with her in secret, deep in the forest beneath a cleaved oak that bore mistletoe, and when the child was born she must give birth beneath that same tree, for only that could protect the babe from the curse. She warned Hélène that on no account must she tell anyone of this for fear that word would reach Lisette, who would do the child harm. Then she gave Hélène a tame white dove, telling her to release it if she needed to summon her.

Each day Hélène rode out of the château alone on her palfrey, searching the forest until at length she found the oak the old woman had described. With her own hands she built a little bower beneath it. When all was ready, she persuaded her husband to come to meet her alone, telling him she had a great treasure to show him. She led him to the bower decorated with flowers and laid ready with wine, fruit and meat. Soothed by the wine and intoxicated by the perfume of the flowers, Estienne succumbed to his wife’s tender words and gentle caresses and made love to her. At once Hélène felt her womb quicken with child.

But as the weeks passed and the maids noticed their mistress’s swelling belly, rumours began to fly about the château that the babe was none of her husband’s getting, for both maids and manservants knew she had not been once to his bed these many months. They remembered seeing her repeatedly slipping out alone to the forest around the time the child had been conceived and concluded that she had gone to meet her lover. They laughed and whispered in corners, wondering how Estienne could be so blind as not to realise he had been cuckolded.

When Hélène felt the birth pangs coming upon her, she again slipped out alone and went to the little bower beneath the oak. She released the dove, which flew straight to the wise woman, and she hastened to help Hélène in her travail. When the babe was born the wise woman bit through the cord with her teeth for she would not use iron to sever the bond between infant and mother. Hélène was too afraid even to look at the child, fearing that, like her other sons before, this boy would not draw breath. But the wise woman rubbed his little chest and chafed his tiny hands and feet, and soon Hélène heard the sweetest sound in the whole world, the cry of her own living child.