The Enchanter's Forest

by Alys Clare

  Joanna had developed a great respect for her people and it slowly dawned on her that the predicted outcome of Josse’s visit here was probably this very thing that had in fact just happened. He had seen – been shown – enough for him to go home with a convincing argument. Nobody had underestimated his intelligence by treating him like a gullible yokel chewing on a straw; instead the plan had been formed whereby he was initiated into a piece of knowledge that surely was normally kept within the tribe.

  Which meant that someone – and Joanna suspected that it was the Domina – had considerable respect for old Josse . . .

  She felt a surge of love for him, standing there a stranger and an outsider in this magical, enchanted place, yet straight-backed and courageous. If he was feeling fear at all, which, despite everything, somehow she doubted, then he was not allowing that fear to show.

  Suddenly another thought struck her, one that brought with it a sadness so acute that it was like a knife in her heart. They had now done what they had gone there to do. The mission had been achieved and now they would go home. Josse would return to the Abbey, the Abbess and whatever he did in his ordinary life; she would go back to the hut in the forest. And this, this lovely, happy time of travelling with him, talking to him, eating, sleeping, making love with him, loving him, would recede in her memory until it was just a beautiful dream.

  Josse was talking quietly to Huathe; she was glad, for it gave her a moment to let the tears fall before she wiped them away and prepared to face him.

  Eventually they left the hilltop, Huathe leading with Josse and Joanna following. Josse reached for her hand; gratefully she took it. He looked at her for a long moment. Then he murmured, ‘That was quite a display. Frightening things seem to happen among your people, Joanna. Things that the rest of us don’t even dream of.’

  She did not answer. There was not in truth anything she could say.

  ‘But,’ he added, speaking now out loud and with a dignified authority, ‘say what you will, I don’t believe Merlin the Magician is buried up there.’

  They set out from Folle-Pensée after eating the midday meal. Huathe saw them off, standing by the horses while Josse and Joanna fastened their packs and the bags full of food that the people of the settlement had pressed on them. Then Josse swung up into the saddle, taking Meggie from Joanna’s arms and sitting her down in front of him. Huathe was watching the two of them; he must have realised Josse is her father, Joanna thought, and if the resemblance between them hasn’t struck him before, it will now.

  Then Huathe came over to her, briefly touching her hand and then leaning forward to put a kiss on her forehead. ‘You are strong, Beith, and your way is clearly marked out,’ he said very quietly, right in her ear. ‘But do not shut this good man out of your life, for in so doing you would rob your child of a fine father.’

  ‘I cannot see clearly what will happen,’ she whispered back, and to her distress there was a sob in her voice.

  ‘No, perhaps not,’ he said. Then, a serene smile on his wise old face, he added, ‘But I can.’ Then he gave her a blessing, watched as she mounted the golden mare and then, stepping back, waved as they headed off along the track leading out of the settlement.

  Turning as they rounded a bend, Joanna saw Folle-Pensée disappear from sight.

  Josse, deep in thought, rode along listening to Meggie’s chatter and giving her only cursory replies; not that she seemed to mind. He was relieved to have completed the mission on which he had been sent, even if he still did not fully understand all that had happened. I’ll see the Abbess, he thought, and tell her what I was shown. I’ll be able to say with total honesty that I’ve seen a place called Merlin’s Tomb, that without doubt it’s a place of strange and terrifying power and that it’s believed here in Brittany to be the true resting place of King Arthur’s magician. Will it be enough to persuade Gervase that he must stop Florian of Southfrith’s fraudulent scheme? If it’s not, he realised, then it’s the best I can do.

  I do not believe, he told himself, that Merlin is there beneath that stone slab any more than I believe those are his bones that lie in the tomb from which Florian is making so much money. But then who am I to say?

  With a shrug, he decided to stop worrying about it. Which was easy, when there was a far more pressing problem to be addressed: how was he going to be able to bear to say goodbye to Joanna and Meggie when they all reached home? This dismal prospect had been obsessing him ever since yesterday when, on leaving the fountain on the forest hilltop, it had suddenly occurred to him that, with the job done, it was time to leave.

  Despite Meggie, despite being with Joanna, he had barely smiled since that moment of realisation had come.

  They made good time for the rest of that day, stopping in the early evening and making camp in a circle of pine trees whose needles made a dry, comfortable bed. The next day they had an early start, which proved just as well since a summer storm blew up in the middle of the afternoon, so severe that there was no question of going any further. Joanna located a reasonably adequate shelter for them in a place where a stand of beech trees grew out of a rocky shelf. The ground around the trees’ thick roots was hollowed out into a small cave and there was enough room for the three of them to crawl inside out of the rain. While Joanna rubbed Meggie’s hair dry with a piece of linen and set about spreading out blankets and preparing food, Josse removed the horses’ saddles and bridles, hobbling them to prevent them straying too far, and then came to join them in the little cave. Joanna cut some fronds of bracken and by arranging them across the cave mouth, managed to keep out the rain. It was so heavy that, fortuitously, it was falling straight down.

  They sat huddled together watching the storm. The heavy black clouds were massing right above and the flashing lightning was coming almost simultaneously with the crashing sounds of the thunder. Putting his arm round Joanna and pulling both her and Meggie close – the child, to his relief, seemed more fascinated by than afraid of the raw force of the violent storm – Josse reflected that he didn’t envy anyone unlucky enough to be caught out in the open.

  Someone else shared his thought, someone who was suffering from those very conditions that made Josse so glad of the meagre shelter.

  The tall man pulled his soaked garments closer around him – not that it did any good – and leaned closer into the trunk of the yew tree beneath which he had hastened to hide when the storm broke. He must be thankful for the weather that had caused his quarry to halt the day’s journey early, he told himself, for he had all but lost the trail.

  Those he pursued rode on horses; he was on foot. He was lean, fit and strong and he could keep up his economical, loping trot for hours on end if he had to, and indeed for most of the journey there had been no problem. The few times when they had increased their pace and left him behind, he had always managed to pick up the signs of their passing and follow them. He had hidden just short of the settlement they had visited and, when they were taken up to that strange fountain on the hilltop that exuded such a powerfully strong force, he had observed without being seen.

  Or so he thought.

  His orders had been to follow them, watch where they went and what they did there. He had been told what to look out for. Those whose work he did had explained how he should set about making the ultimate decision. It was good that they trusted his judgement. The thought gave him a sensation of pride that was quite novel, for normally his duties were clear-cut and simple, so that their commission was in the nature of a trained animal going through a routine task, so familiar that neither thought or discretion were required.

  He had observed closely, thought about what he had seen and, after long and careful consideration, reached his decision. They must die; he had heard enough to convince himself of that. And they must both die, for if one were left alive they would shout the tale of the slaying of the other to all prepared to listen. And that must not be allowed to happen. It had been impressed upon him that this business must be concluded with the
utmost secrecy, with not even the slightest footprint left that might lead anyone who came asking awkward questions back to the man who had carried out the slaying and, even more crucially, to those who had sent him.

  He baulked at the idea of killing the child. There was surely no need for that; she was small and would be incapable of describing what she had seen. She he would bundle up, her eyes bound so that she could not see his face, and he would take her to some village on the edge of the forest and leave her on a doorstep.

  Yes. That was the plan.

  He slid his back down the trunk of the yew tree until his buttocks rested on the ground. Then, eyes intent on the hollow beneath the beech trees, he waited. Sooner or later the right opportunity would present itself and he would carry out his ultimate orders.

  It was merely a matter of time.

  Chapter 11

  The body was brought to Hawkenlye Abbey because those who found it – three days after the murder and stinking to high heaven – did not know what else to do with it. The men whose unpleasant lot it had been to smell out the corpse were merchants; a trio of Essex men on their way back to the markets of London after a visit to northern France. They had heard of the new attraction in the forest close to Hadfeld and taken a brief detour to go and see it for themselves. People back home loved to hear tales of faraway places and the three men had congratulated themselves on their foresight in making sure that, this time, they would be returning armed with a story good enough to ensure that they would be stood drinks in the tavern on the day they reached home.

  And that had been before they found the body.

  The tomb they had found in a state of some confusion: queues of men, women and children of all ages and in all conditions stood in a line patiently waiting to be admitted through the gap in the fence, yet as the merchants’ turn approached they detected unease among the stoutly built and mean-looking men who guarded the place. And when the youngest of the merchants ventured a question concerning the discovery of those impressively large bones, one of the guards had shot a nervous glance at his companion and said not to ask him, he wasn’t the one with all the clever answers, to which the other guard had muttered something about their job being to safeguard the tomb, wait to be told what else to do and then collect their wages, and God alone knew when that was going to happen.

  The three merchants had dutifully waited their turn and crept forward to look at the giant’s bones in their stony grave, each of them feeling the same sense of shock and, as one of them put it, ‘a sort of trembling on the skin’. All three of them were far from being cowards, each having had his share of the sort of dangers common to the life of a travelling man, yet to a man they were glad to walk away from the tomb and its silent, inert occupant, who somehow managed to emanate a sense of threat, of menace.

  The men purchased bread, cheese and mugs of some reasonably tasty small beer. Then, as they finally set off, they decided that the weird things they had experienced might be exaggerated a little when the tale was told; with any luck, they might get their beer bought for them for more than one evening . . .

  Their noses had led them to the putrefying body quite soon after leaving the tomb. They had hacked their way into the huge clump of brambles and, not without damage to their hands, wrists and clothing, managed to extract it.

  One of the merchants had unfolded a blanket out of his pack, which he had nobly sacrificed (nobody, not even a man without a sense of smell, would want to use that blanket again, with all those stains from where the dead flesh was seeping foul liquids) for the purpose of wrapping up the body. They slung the noisome parcel over the man’s horse – he opted for riding pillion behind one of his companions, close proximity to the corpse being best avoided as far as possible – and quickly got on the road. The three knew of Hawkenlye Abbey and, being God-fearing men, decided that it was the obvious place to deposit their unwelcome burden. One of the men half-heartedly suggested returning to the Tomb of Merlin that they had recently left – it was certainly closer – but the others were of the opinion that Hawkenlye was altogether a holier and therefore more honest and trustworthy place. The three men had each gained the impression that there was something distinctly odd about Merlin’s Tomb.

  The merchants reached Hawkenlye in the mid-afternoon. The man who had wrapped the body slid down from his friend’s horse and, approaching the nun on duty beside the gate, asked to speak to the abbot.

  ‘You’re strangers,’ the old nun said, fixing him with sharp eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘We know of Hawkenlye Abbey, Sister, but not a lot about it.’

  ‘Then,’ the porteress said grandly, ‘I shall excuse your ignorance and inform you that the person in charge here is the Abbess Helewise.’

  The man made a graceful bow. ‘My apologies.’

  ‘No need for that,’ the nun replied. Eyeing the other two merchants and the blanket-wrapped body, she sniffed and added, ‘Follow me.’

  Helewise, her work interrupted by Sister Ursel’s knock, listened to the merchant’s tale as she strode beside him back to the gate. Standing beside him, eyes on the body on the horse, she said quietly, ‘You found him on the southern fringes of the forest?’

  ‘Yes, my lady Abbess, in the middle of a bramble thicket. It was only the smell that gave him away.’

  Helewise was thinking it was quite likely that other passers-by had smelt the corpse but, less Christian than these three merchants, had, in St Luke’s words, passed by on the other side. Turning to the man standing beside her, she said, ‘You could have left the body where it lay and avoided both the unpleasant task of bringing him here and also the delay it has afforded you.’

  The merchant looked quite shocked. ‘But, my lady, he might have died unprepared! We could not have left him there to rot in unhallowed ground with his sins heavy on him.’

  ‘You have done well,’ she said. ‘I will summon some of the lay brethren to transport the body to the infirmary, where the poor soul will be prepared for burial. As for yourselves’ – she glanced at the man’s scratched hands – ‘I will ask my infirmarer to arrange for your wounds to be treated. And will you take refreshment with us before you go on your way?’

  The merchant glanced at his companions, then said, ‘Thank you, my lady, but, as you imply, we have already lost time. With your leave, we’ll have our hands bathed and then we will depart as soon as we can.’

  ‘Of course.’ Helewise caught Sister Ursel’s eye and, as the nun hurried to her superior’s side, quickly gave orders that Brother Saul and two or three of the others be summoned. Then, beckoning to the three merchants and leading them over to the infirmary, Helewise forced herself to gather her thoughts.

  She was trying to work out what Josse would have done under the circumstances. A body had been found, on which there might or might not be means of identification. It had been concealed, which in all likelihood meant that the dead man had not met his end by natural means. Unless, of course, he had felt unwell and slipped unconscious from his horse . . . But then he would hardly have crawled into a bramble thicket to die, now would he? she reminded herself crossly. The deep scratches on the hands of the merchants who had extracted him bore witness to how dense that thicket had been and, by a natural progression, to the unlikelihood of the body having been in there for any purpose other than concealment. Which meant that the poor soul had probably been murdered and that his killer had hidden the body.

  Josse, she decided, would extract every scrap of information that he could from those who found the body. Especially since, in the case of these three merchants, it was likely that they would not be available for further questioning once they had proceeded on their way.

  Entering the infirmary, she briefly told Sister Euphemia what had happened, alerting her to the fact that she was just about to have a very smelly dead body to deal with. She added that the three merchants required treatment for cuts to their hands and the infirmarer summoned one of her nursing nuns, who quickly fetched hot wate
r and oils and clean linen cloths and set about her task.

  Watching the veiled head bent over the first man’s bleeding wrist, Helewise said, ‘Now, my friends, please relate to me the whole story and omit no detail, however small.’

  It sounded very businesslike – also quite dramatic – but for all that, once the three men had told their story, interrupting each other, butting in with additional observations, Helewise was really still no wiser than she had been to begin with. It boiled down simply to the merchants having left the Tomb of Merlin – one of the men offered the opinion that the guards on duty there had seemed ill at ease – and shortly afterwards, perhaps four or five miles along the track and still very close under the eaves of the forest, smelling the stench of death. They had quickly located its source and, with barely a glance at the body, hastily wrapped it up and loaded it on to one of their horses.

  ‘Sorry, my lady,’ one of the merchants said. ‘But that’s all we can tell you.’

  She nodded her acceptance. ‘Very well. Thank you for what you have done and please rest assured that I shall summon our priest, who will do what he can for the poor dead man’s soul. We shall bury him here at Hawkenlye unless someone comes forward to claim him, and we shall pray for him.’

  The man’s eyes filled with tears. ‘He could do no better than be buried here,’ he said. ‘I can think of nowhere finer nor more fitting to await the Day of Judgement than here with you and your good nuns.’

  Helewise bowed her head. ‘Thank you. Now, if you are all ready, I will see you on your way.’

  A short time later, Helewise was back in the infirmary, in a curtained-off cubicle at the far end of the long room. Hot water and lavender oil bubbled in a little pot over a candle flame, giving off a strong, cleansing scent, and Sister Caliste had prepared bunches of rosemary that now hung above the body on the narrow cot. She stood beside Sister Euphemia and Sister Caliste as the two nursing nuns first unwrapped the blanket and then set about carefully removing the corpse’s garments.