The Song of the Nightingale

by Alys Clare

  Table of Contents

  Recent Titles by Alys Clare

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Postscript

  Footnotes

  Recent Titles by Alys Clare

  The Hawkenlye Series

  FORTUNE LIKE THE MOON

  ASHES OF THE ELEMENTS

  THE TAVERN IN THE MORNING

  THE ENCHANTER’S FOREST

  THE PATHS OF THE AIR *

  THE JOYS OF MY LIFE *

  THE ROSE OF THE WORLD *

  THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE *

  The Norman Aelf Fen Series

  OUT OF THE DAWN LIGHT *

  MIST OVER THE WATER *

  MUSIC OF THE DISTANT STARS *

  THE WAY BETWEEN THE WORLDS *

  * available from Severn House

  THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE

  A Hawkenlye Mystery

  Alys Clare

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2012 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  This eBook edition first published in 2012 by Severn Digital an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2012 by Alys Clare

  The right of Alys Clare to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Clare, Alys.

  The song of the nightingale.

  1. D’Acquin, Josse (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Helewise, Abbess (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  3. England–Social life and customs–1066-1485–Fiction.

  4. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title

  823.9'2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-303-7(epub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-72788-194-6 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-447-9 (trade paper)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  For Jon, Hannah and Imogen,

  who know what it’s like for families to be apart

  Cytharizat cantico

  Dulcis philomena,

  Flore rident vario

  Prata iam serena.

  Like a lyre sings

  The sweet nightingale,

  Full of laughing flowers

  Are the joyful meadows.

  From Carmina Burana,

  Cantiones profanae

  PROLOGUE

  Early in 1211

  The three men were homeless and starving. Driven from their previous sporadic employment by the new poverty of their former masters, driven from their homes because they could not pay the meagre rent, they had, like so many others in King John’s England, been reduced to roaming the countryside begging for handouts from people almost as hard-pressed as themselves.

  They were not alone in their hunger and their desperation. What set them apart was their brutality.

  All three were natural bullies, although one – a dark-countenanced, broad-shouldered man named Wat – was the worst. The other two, accepting instinctively that his cruelty was considerably more ruthless their own, deferred to him as the natural leader. Sometimes – increasingly – they feared that he would take them into dark places where they would probably not have gone without him. But the pair had the weakness of character that so often typifies the bully: it was easier to continue throwing in their lot with a tough, strong man like Wat than to go their own way. It never occurred to either of them that they might remonstrate with him and try to bring him back from the worst excesses of his savagery.

  Over the months, they had roamed far from their former homes, in the west of England, at first travelling steadily towards London and then turning south. There were quite a lot of towns and villages where, because of some act of theft, violation or casual cruelty, the various forces of law and order were after them. They could not safely retrace their steps. Going ever on, in time they found themselves on the fringes of the great forest that stretched across the south-east corner of the land. There was a big abbey nearby; the trio heard people refer to it as a place where you could find care, kindness and a bite to eat. Not even the promise of food tempted the three men to approach the abbey, however. They had no time for priests and monks; and nuns, as Wat remarked with a leer, were only good for slaking a man’s lust, and then only if they were young and pretty.

  The trio made themselves a rudimentary camp a few hundred paces inside the perimeter of the forest. Even when they had been in work, they had always been lazy and shiftless, needing the threat of someone else’s boot up their arses to make them pull their weight. Resentful of command, they were at the same time not capable of working for themselves, being to a man unimaginative and without any idea that dedicated effort might better their lot. Hence the camp was poorly made and totally lacking in comfort. The roughly-made roof leaked; there was no deep bed of branches, twigs and dead bracken to stop the damp from the ground penetrating their thin blankets; they did not know how to hunt nor which wild plants were safe to eat, and so were constantly hungry; and they quarrelled so violently and so frequently over whose turn it was to fetch firewood and tend the hearth that the fire was always going out.

  Not one of them had the least modicum of sensitivity in his nature. If they had, they would have felt the forest’s deep unease at their presence within its borders.

  And their fate would have been quite different.

  It was late one January afternoon, when since daybreak a fierce east wind had blown without ceasing, frequently hurling brief but angry sleet showers against the three men’s chilled flesh. They had reached the depths of their miserable discomfort. Everything in the camp was wet; every garment they possessed was torn and filthy; nobody had scavenged for food, water or firewood; they were close to starving and shivering with cold. One – the youngest and least robust – had a persistent sniff and a harsh, barking cough. They looked at each other and silently came to the conclusion that they had to venture further afield in their search for plunder. For three or four weeks, they had made do with the isolated cottages and lonely hovels that hunched under the forest fringes, always spying
out the land first to make sure that no big, strong husband or son lived within. They kept away from tough men, preferring the softer targets of feeble widows or the helpless, querulous elderly. Now, however, they were uncomfortably aware that they had robbed these local dwellings of everything there was to rob. Their victims were now as empty-handed as the three men.

  Wat said they must go back towards the town on the river which they had passed – giving it a wide berth – on their way south to the forest. They would not go too close; as soon as they found a likely household, they would break in, grab what they could and then melt away back to the forest.

  As soon as the short, bleak day came to its end, they set out. Wat carried a sword, in a worn leather scabbard, and his short, thick staff. The other two were armed simply with lengths of wood.

  The sword was old and beautifully crafted. It had seen service in Outremer, where its carefully-forged Spanish steel blade had flashed and scythed its way through many infidel necks. Handed down solemnly from father to son through the generations, it was a family heirloom.

  Not Wat’s family; he had stolen it from its hiding place beneath a straw mattress on a low, meagre cot in a cheap lodging house in a small town south-west of London. The lodging house had been run by an elderly woman and her widowed daughter, and Wat had thrashed the former and raped the latter, leaving them bleeding and traumatized. He had ransacked the lowly dwelling’s dark, dank rooms; the sword was the sole item worth stealing, and Wat had got away with it only because its owner was sleeping like a dead man.

  Wat had his left hand on the sword’s hilt as he led the way, and such was the confidence in his braggart step that the other two fell in meekly behind. He had a vague idea of where he was heading, recalling having seen a small but reasonably prosperous-looking dwelling set by itself down a track winding away off the road that led from the valley up to the forest. He wasn’t quite as sure of himself as his demeanour suggested, but, nevertheless, his luck was in and he found the place after only one wrong turning.

  Soft-footed as a cat for all his size, Wat crept up to the house. It was stoutly built, and even in the dim moonlight Wat could see that whoever lived within kept the place in good repair. He went up to peer through the tiny window. Inside, sitting snugly beside a small fire, he saw a frail old man, a plump woman who had a bad cough, and a sweet-faced younger woman.

  Wat’s hungry eyes fixed first on the pot of gruel that was suspended over the fire. His stomach gave a long rumble, and saliva filled his mouth. As he watched, the young woman leaned forward to give the pot a stir. Such was his position that, for a moment, he could see right down the front of her gown to where the rounded, creamy breasts swelled. As hunger of another sort flooded his veins and made him hard with desire, he took in the rest of her. The smooth curve of her hips. The long legs. The slim ankles and tiny feet.

  Very little could have stopped Wat then. The family’s fate was already set in stone.

  He glanced briefly at the other two, gave a curt nod and then put his shoulder to the door. At first it did not yield; the old man, very aware of how alone they were out there, had recently fixed a stout bar that rested on brackets either side of the door. But Wat’s blood was hot and, maddened by the delay, he renewed his efforts, his two companions coming to help. There was a splintering crash, and the door broke apart.

  The old man had managed to rise, shaking, to his feet. He had a long knife in his hands. Wat, grinning, stepped swiftly forward and wrenched it out of the old man’s grasp even as he tried to summon the strength to swing it.

  ‘I’ll have that,’ Wat remarked, giving the knife a few experimental swishes. ‘You might hurt yourself, Grandad.’ He ran his thumb along the knife’s edge. ‘Might be useful, once I’ve found a whetstone.’

  One of the other two men was bending over the pot of gruel, grabbing the heel of bread that stood ready and dunking it deeply into the savoury-smelling gravy. The plump woman gave a heartfelt cry – ‘Oh no, please, no, it’s all we’ve got, and the first hot food we’ve had in days!’ – but the man elbowed her roughly aside. She fell, hard, to the floor, banging her head. She tried to get up again, and the man kicked her. With a low moan, she collapsed.

  Now the young girl stood in front of the hearth, a wooden ladle in her hand. Wat barked out a laugh, echoed by the others. He reached out and grabbed her by the hand that held her makeshift weapon, twisting her arm up behind her back and making her cry out in pain.

  ‘Tuck in, lads,’ Wat said.

  For a short while there were no sounds in the small room except for the slurping, animal sounds of the three men wolfing down the little family’s supper. The plump woman lay still on the floor; the old man sat gasping to breathe, clutching convulsively at his left arm, and the young girl bit her lip to stop herself crying out from the pain Wat was so thoughtlessly inflicting. When the pot was empty, Wat looked round the room and, catching the old man’s terrified gaze, said, ‘Now, what else have you got hidden away?’

  ‘Nothing!’ The single word emerged as a sort of squeak.

  Wat spat out an oath. ‘Don’t try to fool me, Grandad. Snug little place like this, stands to reason you’ll have some treasures tucked away to tide you through the bad times.’

  ‘No, no!’ the old man wailed. ‘Everything’s gone, every last coin and silver spoon! It’s these incessant demands for taxes, you see,’ he added, attempting an ingratiating smile.

  Wat sniffed. Taxes, yes. People had to pay taxes; even he knew that.

  The girl moved fractionally in his grip, trying to ease the pain in her arm and shoulder. With food in his belly, Wat’s other hunger flooded through him again. ‘No treasure, you say, Grandad?’ he said with a sneer. He twisted the girl round so that he could look into her face. ‘Now I call that downright impolite, don’t you, sweetheart? Looks like your old dad can’t see what’s right in front of him, eh?’

  In one single, violent movement, he thrust his hand inside the neck of her gown and dragged downwards. The material was clean but worn, and gave instantly. The girl threw up her hands across the front of her white chemise, but Wat pushed them away and ripped that from her as well. He flung her down on to the floor, pushed her legs apart and drove into her. After a few thrusts he was done. Kneeling back, he stared down at her. She lay still, eyes closed, lips clamped together. Wat looked up at his two companions. ‘Who’s next?’

  When, after an eternity, they went away, the girl slowly got to her feet. Before she did anything else – even before she wrapped the ruined garments around her – she staggered to the water barrel behind the screen in a corner of the room and washed herself, forcing the cold water inside her sore and aching body, trying to remove every trace that her assailants had left. Then, when she was at last blessedly numb, she picked up her shift and gown and tied them round her as best she could. She straightened her hair and put on her coif. Then, trying to walk erect, she went to look at her parents.

  Her father was dead. For years his heart had pained him; he had stayed alive thanks to the special medicine made from the foxglove plant that he regularly took. Now, his damaged heart seemed to have given out under the horror and the shock. She went over to crouch beside her mother. Would there be comfort there?

  No. Her mother was still alive, but she was beyond giving comfort to anyone, even her own daughter. Her eyes were wide and unfocused, her body shaking with repeated tremors. From time to time she gave an eerie chuckle.

  Her mind had gone.

  The girl looked dispassionately around the room, noting what was missing. The men had taken everything they could carry: a thick woollen blanket; the neat pile of three wooden platters which the little family had been about to use to eat their supper; several cooking implements; her father’s worn old boots, with the mud still clinging to them from the last time he had ventured outside. The room was now all but bare.

  With a sigh, she looked at her dead father. She would have to see to him, first thing tomorrow. The country was st
ill under the pope’s interdict, forbidding the clergy of England to carry out their normal duties, which, among other privations, meant that nobody was laid to rest in the graveyard and prayed over by their priest; people disposed of their dead themselves. Not having much belief in priests and prayers, the girl was not all that bothered by the prospect, except that, with the ground so hard, it would be a long, arduous job to dig the grave.

  She stood in the still, silent room for some time. Anger began to stir, burning up through her and paining her as forcefully as the rapes had done. She opened the broken door and slipped quietly out of the house. She walked the few paces to the edge of the forest, moving in under the deep shadow of the trees. She knew the forest: she had lived close by it all the years of her life.

  She made herself go on until she emerged into the glade she sought; it was not very far. There she stopped, drew a deep breath and, with all her might, gave a great cry. ‘My father is dead and my mother driven out of her mind!’ she shouted. ‘I have been raped, and that which was mine to give to the man of my choice has been torn from me!’ She paused, listening to the echoes of her voice die away. Then, drawing another breath: ‘Avenge me!’

  In time, she turned, walked out of her clearing and went home. The gesture had been one of defiance; she had no hope that anything would come of it. Who, after all, was there to hear her? She knew she was on her own.

  She was mistaken. The forest had a spirit, and that spirit knew a grave wrong had been done.

  Vengeance was already on its way.

  ONE

  Helewise, daughter of Leofgar Warin and his wife Rohaise, and known in the family as Little Helewise to distinguish her from the grandmother for whom she had been named, stood by the window of her chamber staring out at the bare landscape. The February weather was bitter, and as yet there had been few signs that spring would ever come. The previous autumn had been very wet, and the winter had been hard; stored grain had rotted, animals had died and food was scarce everywhere. There had been barely enough to eat, even in the Warin household. In addition, her parents were constantly nagging at their daughter and the servants not to waste fuel, so that the main hall of the old house, where they all spent most of their time, was barely ever warm enough. Everyone was miserable, their hard lives made harder by the incessant demands of the king’s inspectors. If they weren’t enough to put up with, constantly coming up with new ways of taxing the suffering populace, there were also the men sent out by the church, demanding that everyone give tithes to help the poor. Help the poor, indeed, Little Helewise thought with a quiet snort of disgust. Everyone knew that many, if not most, of the tithes went anywhere but to the most needy. It was rumoured that, all over the land, members of the clergy were making themselves rich as the interminable interdict wore wearily on, which was even more unfair when many priests, using the excuse of being commanded by the pope himself, were apparently sitting back and doing absolutely nothing to help the people.