The Enchanter's Forest

by Alys Clare

  ‘Oh, how terrible! He was cruel to you, this Thorald?’

  ‘Yes.’ She was not going to elaborate. ‘And Césaire – he’s the brother, the one who thought I’d killed Thorald – is right at this moment eating his supper in the tavern.’

  Sabin rushed to her side. ‘Has he seen you?’

  Joanna’s terror broke out of her control and flooded through her; dropping her face into her hands, she whispered, ‘Yes.’ She removed her hands and stared at Sabin. ‘He won’t let me go again. He’ll have me arrested and they’ll probably hang me.’

  Sabin put her arms around Joanna. ‘No they won’t,’ she said bracingly. She gave her a little shake. Then, after a moment’s swift thought, she said, ‘Listen. I’ve got an idea.’

  Chapter 7

  Josse watched Joanna return to the dining room. She edged her way through the jostling crowds of people, the folds of her veil falling gracefully and concealing her face. She reached the table and took her place beside Josse. Leaning towards her, peering around her veil to look into her face, he was about to tell her what there was to eat when suddenly he stopped, his mouth opening in surprise as an involuntary exclamation rose to his lips. She shook her head, a minute gesture that only he could see; puzzled, eyeing her warily, he subsided. Gervase, busy trying to get a singularly dim-looking lad to understand what he was trying to order for the party to eat and drink, had greeted Joanna’s arrival with no more than a vague nod.

  Josse clutched Meggie closer and tried to keep her attention on the little stick man that he had made from a piece of the straw that was strewn on the floor. Obliging child that she was, she studied the little figure to the exclusion of everything else; praying that whatever crisis was currently being enacted would not last too long, Josse risked a quick glance around the room.

  A man was pushing his way towards their table. Of medium height and running to fat, he had long, lank dark hair surrounding a bald crown and his thin face was set in an expression that was an unpleasant mixture of disgust, hatred and triumph.

  Gervase had seen him too. It was apparent that whatever had aroused the man’s fury had to do with their own party, for now he was standing beside their table and his hand was on the handle of a long knife in a scabbard hanging from his belt.

  Gervase half rose. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

  The man did not look at him. ‘Her,’ he said tersely. ‘Come along quietly, Joanna; best in the long run if you don’t make a fuss.’ He fingered the knife. ‘We don’t want people getting hurt, do we?’

  Josse grasped her arm as if to keep her from the stranger by force; she shook him off. She sat with her head lowered, the concealing veil falling forward.

  ‘Joanna!’ the man hissed. ‘I don’t know why you’ve come back but, by God, I’m glad you have! It’s too many years that my poor brother has gone unavenged but at last the day of reckoning has come. Stand up, woman, and come with me, or must I call someone who will force you?’

  At last she raised her head. Staring the man full in the face, she said haughtily, ‘I do not know who you think I am but let me tell you that you are mistaken. I am not this Joanna, whoever she is, and you will kindly go away and leave us alone.’

  And Sabin de Retz, anger in her bright blue eyes, fixed the stranger with such a fierce glare that his own eyes fell. But, apparently unable to accept defeat, he raised his head again and gave Sabin another long, hard stare. ‘You were her,’ he murmured, a bewildered frown creasing his sallow face. ‘How did you . . . ?’ Fear twisting his expression, he hissed, ‘It’s witchcraft. It must be, for how else was I deceived into seeing a woman who now turns before my very eyes into another?’

  Josse, deeply alarmed by the mention of the word witchcraft, was about to do what he could to prevent the situation getting even worse but Gervase got in first. Standing up and straightening his shoulders, he said quietly to the man, ‘This lady is Sabin de Retz and she is a native of Nantes. She is a renowned apothecary in her home town, where she has in the past numbered the great and the good among her patients. She is under the protection of myself and of this knight’ – he indicated Josse, who had also risen to his feet – ‘and she is to be my wife.’ In case the stranger had missed the point, Gervase added, ‘Do not further insult her by your unwelcome attention, for it is displeasing to all of us.’

  The man closed his mouth with a snap. Pointing a shaking finger at Sabin, who was staring at him as if he were a rat, he muttered, ‘You’ve done magic. It’s enchantment. I—’

  ‘You,’ Josse said loudly, squeezing past Sabin and grabbing the man by the arm, ‘have taken too much ale and it has addled your wits. It is high time you went home.’

  ‘But—’ the man protested.

  Josse ignored him. To the amusement of several bystanders, he grasped the man by his upper arms and, lifting him off his feet, carried him to the door and, once out in the street, promptly dropped him and shoved him on his way. The man took a couple of steps, stumbled and collapsed on to the ground, where he sat looking bemused and shaking his head in disbelief.

  ‘Go home and sleep it off,’ Josse advised. ‘We won’t make any complaint against you if you do. But if you return to bother the lady again . . .’ Josse left the remark unfinished; somehow it sounded more threatening that way.

  The man stared up at Josse’s tall, broad body filling the doorway. Then he got slowly to his feet and staggered away.

  Josse returned to the table at the far side of the dining area to find Gervase sitting next to Sabin, Meggie beside them chewing on a piece of bread and eyeing with evident glee the steaming dish that had been set before them: the food had arrived. Gervase was holding Sabin very closely and from the frown on his face, it appeared he had just been remonstrating with her. Sabin glanced up at Josse with a faint smile.

  ‘Joanna saw someone she did not wish to meet,’ she said quietly. ‘She seemed in fear of him and so I suggested we exchanged clothes. I came back in here, hoping that the man would make his approach, as indeed he did. Seeing that I was not Joanna, with luck he will believe he was mistaken and leave us – her – alone.’

  Josse squeezed her shoulder. ‘You think quickly, Sabin,’ he remarked. He was about to express his profound thanks for the resourcefulness that had saved Joanna but remembered in time that she did not know – or at least he didn’t think she knew – about what lay between him and Joanna. Collecting himself, he said decisively, ‘We’ll take our supper along to your room, Sabin, with your permission. That way, Joanna will get her meal without having to risk showing her face out here again.’

  ‘That’s sensible,’ Gervase commented, helping Sabin to gather up the trenchers, bread basket and serving dish. ‘Come on, Meggie – you’ll have your supper soon, I promise.’

  Later that night, when Josse and Gervase had gone off to find what comfort they could in the communal sleeping accommodation and Meggie was fast asleep, Sabin propped herself up on one elbow and, looking down at Joanna lying beside her, said, ‘Now it’s time to tell. Since I saved your skin earlier this evening, I think, don’t you, that I have a right to know what all the fuss was about?’

  Joanna, who had been prepared for such a demand, smiled to herself in the faint light of the nightlight candle that they had left burning beside the bed. She turned on to her back, made herself comfortable and, supporting her head on her crossed arms, said, ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘For a start,’ Sabin said, ‘what happened to your son?’

  Joanna sighed. She had not been in Ninian’s happy company for three years now, although not a day went by that she did not think of him and send her love and her blessing to him. He would be nine years old this year. He was turning into a fine-looking boy; tall and with the promise of breadth and strength in his chest and shoulders, with his father’s brilliant blue eyes and penetrating, discomfiting stare. His hair, glossy and grown almost to his shoulders, had the colour and sheen of a ripe chestnut.

  Joanna knew what her
son looked like for she used her scrying bowl regularly, enduring the terrible, nauseous headache that always followed because it was worth the pain to watch her son growing up.

  ‘I gave my son into the care of strangers,’ she said baldly. ‘A place was found for him in the household of a good man, a knight to whom Ninian is page until the time comes for him to begin training as a squire.’

  ‘Why did you give him up?’ Sabin asked. ‘I know it’s quite customary for well-born boys to be raised in other men’s households, and I only ask because it’s quite clear how much you love your daughter. Loving your son equally, how could you bear to part with him?’

  ‘I had no choice!’ In her fervour Joanna spoke too loudly and Meggie stirred in her sleep. Reaching out to stroke the child’s forehead with a gentle hand, Joanna went on more quietly, ‘When I fled from Brittany I went to England, to seek out my – to find a woman who had looked after me when I was little, a servant in the house of my kin in England. She took me in and cared for me and taught me to live as she did.’

  ‘She was a wise woman?’ Sabin breathed.

  ‘Yes. That was the name given to her by those who live in the outside world. She was one of the forest people; as I have since learned, one of their Great Ones.’

  Sabin was nodding her understanding. ‘And you became one of these Forest Folk too; that is why you look and seem so strange. Oh! I am sorry! That was very rude.’

  Joanna was chuckling. ‘Rude but true,’ she acknowledged. ‘I had discovered what my destiny was; I think I had always known, although I did not set my foot on the path that was meant for me until I had lived for more than twenty years in another life, a very different one. But the life of a forest dweller was not right for my son, in whose veins flows royal blood.’

  ‘Whose?’ whispered Sabin.

  Putting her lips right up against Sabin’s ear, Joanna told her and watched with amusement as her eyes widened. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. Then: ‘Does Ninian know?’

  ‘No, and nor will he, for almost all of the people who know the secret are dead.’ She shot Sabin a quick look. ‘You and I know, of course . . .’

  ‘I won’t tell!’ Sabin shook her head vigorously.

  ‘I know,’ Joanna replied serenely. ‘That’s why I told you.’

  ‘In time, then, your son will grow up and become a knight,’ Sabin went on, apparently unaware of how great a compliment Joanna had just paid her, ‘and – will you know how he turns out and what he does when he’s a man? Have you – can you see him?’

  So Joanna explained about scrying. Again, Sabin’s astonishment was wonderful to watch. ‘I have heard tell of such things,’ she said wonderingly, ‘but never thought to meet and share my bed with one who can actually do them.’

  Joanna knew what Sabin would say next before the words were uttered.

  ‘Can you do some magic now?’ she asked in an excited whisper.

  ‘What shall I do?’ Joanna whispered back. ‘Conjure a spirit? Turn you into a badger? Make a flying potion so that you and I can fly high over Dinan and watch the good people settle down in their beds for the night?’

  ‘You can do these things?’

  Joanna laughed, and the tension broke. ‘No. Well, I could make you believe that I was doing them, but that is not quite the same thing. They’re just tricks, Sabin. The true power is saved for when it is really needed and it comes at a heavy price.’

  ‘You saved the Abbess!’ Sabin exclaimed. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? There was a lot of talk about this mystery woman who came in the night and brought Abbess Helewise back from the dead.’

  ‘She wasn’t actually dead,’ Joanna murmured.

  Sabin was looking at her with deep admiration. ‘I’m honoured to be with you,’ she said simply.

  Joanna, embarrassed as she always was when the subject of her strange powers was discussed, paused for a steadying breath and then said, ‘Sabin, the honour is mine. Your quick thinking and your courage saved my life this evening. If ever you are in need, remember that you have a friend out in the forest. You’ll be living quite close once you are settled in Tonbridge and all you will have to do is go to the Abbey and ask for me; there are those in the community who know how to get in touch with me.’

  ‘I shall not forget.’ Sabin’s voice was husky with emotion. After a pause – it was as if both of them needed a moment – she said, ‘Meggie must have been born after you began your life in the forest.’

  ‘Yes. She was born in the little hut deep within the shelter of the trees where I live.’

  ‘You bore her alone?’ Sabin sounded horrified. ‘Weren’t you very scared?’

  Joanna smiled. ‘I was scared, yes, as I believe all women are in childbed. But I had good friends with me and they reassured me and braced me when the pain seemed too much to bear and my courage was low.’

  ‘Women of the forest?’

  ‘One was an elder of our people; the other was a nun.’

  ‘From Hawkenlye?’

  Joanna chuckled. ‘Of course.’

  They had been hedging round the question that Joanna knew Sabin burned to ask. But when it came, it was not in the form that Joanna had expected. Perhaps it was the intimacy of lying in the half-darkness together; perhaps – and this, Joanna thought, was the more likely – it was just that Sabin was a woman who spoke her mind.

  She said, ‘Meggie is Josse’s child, isn’t she?’

  Joanna hesitated only for an instant. Then she said quietly, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yet you do not make your lives together and, when in each other’s company in public, you behave civilly but distantly towards each other as if you were mere acquaintances.’

  ‘It is because . . .’ Joanna paused to think. Then: ‘Josse and I lead such different lives. We could not make one another happy, for to live together one of us would have to give up the life they have chosen.’

  ‘Is there no compromise?’ Sabin asked.

  ‘There’s— No.’ Joanna spoke with finality.

  ‘Does he know that she’s his child?’ Sabin’s voice had dropped as if she feared the sleeping Meggie might overhear.

  ‘Yes. He found out last year, when the sickness came.’ Turning to look at Sabin, she said, ‘How did you find out?’

  Now it was Sabin who laughed. ‘It’s obvious, for they are so alike. Not that I realised immediately – for a long time I was in awe of you and did not like to stare at either you or your child, enchanting though she is. I suspected one day on the Goddess of the Dawn when I heard Meggie laugh, because she sounded like a treble version of Josse. Then tonight, when she sat on his lap and he made that little stick man for her, they had their heads close together and they were both intent on the plaything. I saw that their eyes are the same shape and colour – that particular sort of brown with golden lights in it, like sunshine on peaty water. Then I knew for sure.’

  Joanna thought about that for some time. Then she said, ‘Does Gervase know?’

  ‘I have no idea. I have not asked him and I certainly haven’t told him of my observations.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘For what? For not gossiping and spreading unsubstantiated rumours like a fat goodwife in the market?’

  Joanna grinned. ‘For precisely that.’

  There was silence between them for some time, broken by the sound of Meggie’s deep, steady breathing. Then Sabin said, ‘I’m going to marry Gervase.’

  ‘I know. He’s a fine man. He has a true heart.’

  ‘You know him?’ Sabin sounded surprised.

  ‘No, Sabin. I met him for the first time when we embarked upon this journey.’

  ‘Then how can you say with such certainty what sort of a man he is?’

  ‘I’m doing one of my magic tricks,’ Joanna said ironically.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘No. Sorry, Sabin – I really shouldn’t make jokes about it. No, magic has nothing to do with it. I’ve been trained to study people and to look beneath the façade that they pres
ent to the outside world. They – the people who taught me – explained to me that—’

  ‘How do you do that?’ Sabin demanded eagerly. ‘Can you teach me? I’d love to be able to see right into people!’

  ‘I could teach you, yes, but it would take months.’ Ruefully Joanna thought back over the hours and hours of instruction that she had received. But then, thinking that her reply had sounded a little dismissive, she added, ‘You can make a start by watching how people look when they speak. For example, a man who either stares fixedly and intently into your eyes or keeps evading your glance is probably lying. You could also study what they say; someone who talks incessantly about themselves and never asks about you is likely to be self-centred and selfish. Watch how others are in their company. Someone with whom little children and animals are instantly at ease is usually trustworthy, for creatures and the young of our own species use all their senses and see with clear eyes.’

  Sabin was slowly shaking her head. ‘It’s logical, isn’t it, once it’s explained?’

  ‘Yes,’ Joanna agreed. Then, for she found herself liking the outspoken young woman beside her more and more, ‘We’ll meet again, Sabin. Be sure of that. Then, if you wish, I’ll teach you some more.’

  Sabin gave a satisfied sigh. ‘I’d like that.’ Then she yawned, turned on her side and said, ‘Goodnight, Joanna. I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ Joanna returned. ‘Sleep well.’

  But presently Sabin whispered, ‘Did you really kill him?’

  ‘Thorald?’ Joanna felt herself stiffen at the very name. ‘He was a bully who beat my son and repeatedly raped me. But I did not exactly kill him.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Why not tell her? Joanna thought.

  So she did.

  ‘I put a stone in his horse’s shoe in the hope that the horse would stumble and throw him. Then I sat in a darkened room and, with my eyes closed, visualised over and over again the same scene, in which the horse pulled up very suddenly and Thorald flew straight over its head, landed hard and broke his neck.’