by Alys Clare
‘I may not tell you. Yet,’ Piers added with an apologetic smile. ‘But listen to the rest of my tale. One of the original thirteen knights was my own forefather, back through many generations, and, as is our custom, his place among the Knights of Arcturus was taken at his death by a nominated member of his own family. Thus the secret is kept within the same clans and, in time, it was my uncle’s turn to join the thirteen. Now, I knew nothing of any of this until very recently when, knowing he did not have long to live, my uncle summoned me and told me of my strange inheritance. He warned me to prepare for the summons and told me that I must obey it. I had no choice.’ He sighed.
‘You said before –’ the abbess spoke tentatively into the small silence – ‘that your uncle sent a note commanding you to stay away.’
‘Aye, my lady, indeed I did, and I could not fathom it because I had received a contradictory message from another of the thirteen. I did not know what to do – why should I be called by one of the knights, yet told in no uncertain terms by my own kinsman to stay away? Fool that I was, I told myself that my uncle was old and perhaps his wits had unravelled. Then I made my preparations and set off for France, where the knights had convened.’
‘You were curious, I don’t doubt, to discover what lay at the heart of this mystery,’ Josse suggested. ‘And, besides, your uncle had impressed upon you its importance.’
‘It is generous to ascribe such a noble motive,’ Piers said with a small smile, ‘but I fear simple curiosity is nearer the mark. So I announced my plans to my household and gave orders for my best horse and my new tunic to be prepared. I told my young squire that he was going to attend me on an exciting journey and set him to readying my gear. But then the poor lad fell down the courtyard steps and broke his ankle and, since I couldn’t present myself to the knights without a suitably trained attendant, I borrowed a lad from my neighbour. He was a good boy, bright, presentable and well mannered. He knew his stuff, and the two of us got on fine. We had an easy journey and reached the rendezvous on time, and a godforsaken spot it was too.’ His eyes clouded. ‘Dear Lord, but if only I’d obeyed my instincts and turned back,’ he muttered. ‘Well, I didn’t, and now I’m dealing with the terrible consequences.’
‘What did you discover?’ the abbess asked, in what Josse thought was commendably close to her usual tone.
‘Whatever pure motive may once have prompted the Knights of Arcturus,’ Piers said solemnly, ‘it and they have changed out of all recognition. But then they are now extremely powerful and wealthy, and that is very often a dangerous combination. They believe themselves to be above the law, for among their number are men from the very highest levels of authority. I mean that,’ he added forcefully. ‘You would not believe . . . But I must tell you what happened.’ He closed his eyes briefly as if steeling himself for some ordeal. ‘My lad and I went in all innocence to that dreadful place and, far too late, I found out why my uncle had tried to warn me off. I believe they killed the poor old man,’ he added. ‘I know he was ill, perhaps already dying, but I am almost certain that they found out what he had done and hastened his end.’ He looked sad. ‘It was cruel, for he was a good man, perhaps the last true Knight of Arcturus that there will ever be.’
‘Yet they did not kill you too?’ Josse said. It was surprising, since if the knights had found out that Piers was no more corruptible than his uncle, why had they allowed him to live?
Piers gave a hollow laugh. ‘Oh, they tried,’ he said bitterly, ‘and I’ve been on the run from them ever since. Don’t let them find me,’ he said desperately, his eyes going rapidly from Josse to the abbess and back. ‘You must not, for they . . . they are an abomination.’ The last word was barely a whisper.
‘We will guard you to the best of our ability,’ the abbess said. ‘You will never be left alone here in the infirmary, where nuns are on duty day and night. The gates are locked at sunset,’ she added.
‘Do they know you’ve come to England?’ Josse asked. He thought he already knew the answer.
‘One, the worst of them, yes, he knows.’ Piers gave a shudder. ‘As for the others, I cannot say for sure. They have spies everywhere, though, so I expect word has been sent to summon them.’
‘And they know where your home is?’
‘They do.’ Piers exchanged a glance with him. ‘Which is why I have no intention of going there.’ He twisted in his bed and gave a cry of pain; Josse saw a line of bloody patches suddenly bloom out along the bandage round his throat.
Sister Caliste sprang forward. ‘Keep still!’ she ordered, already picking at the edge of the pad that the bandage held in place. ‘The stitches are pulling – you must rest, Sir Piers.’ Glancing up at the abbess, she said, ‘Please, my lady, he does himself harm when he becomes agitated.’
‘We will return later,’ the abbess said and, with a glance at Josse, led the way out of the recess. ‘Someone tried to cut his throat,’ she said very quietly as they walked back to her room. ‘He has not told us anything of the attack, but he was badly beaten, so perhaps he has no memory of it.’
‘Aye, that’s likely,’ Josse agreed. ‘My lady, I am concerned about this lad that he took with him to the rendezvous. He has not spoken of the boy’s fate.’
‘I noticed that too,’ she said. ‘I pray that he is safe.’
Josse had been thinking very hard ever since he had heard Piers’s story. What if it was to the Île d’Oléron that Piers of Essendon had gone for this rendezvous? What if the Knights of Arcturus had decided that his young squire would make a suitable victim for their abhorrent practices? Supposing Piers had fiercely objected both the terrible deed they were about to do and their choice of victim and somehow had managed to get his squire safely away. Then, when the rest of the knights discovered that they had fled, two of them – perhaps including Philippe de Loup himself – had, together with the late king, set out after them, the three of them rowed out by the dark Oléron guard to the waiting boat. They must have been desperate to catch Piers; once they realized that he was not going to join them, the decision must surely have been made to kill him. He knew far too much about them to be allowed to live. He knew too – he must do – that King Richard was either of their number or at the least an eager witness to their foul practices.
But had Piers been telling the truth when he claimed to have had no knowledge of the knights’ foul reputation, or was the truth rather that he had known, had gone eagerly to the island with a victim to offer up and then something had gone wrong? Perhaps now, to cover his tracks, he was only pretending to be horrified . . .
Josse dragged his mind back from that unpleasant thought. What he had been trying to decide, all the time Piers was speaking, was if he should now tell the abbess the full story of the horror that had happened on Oléron. It was all very well for the queen to swear him to secrecy; now that this ghastly business had surfaced in England – right here in Hawkenlye Abbey – he was convinced that secrecy was no longer of prime importance.
Interrupting the abbess, who was still speculating anxiously about the fate of Piers’s young squire, he said, ‘My lady, there are more things I must tell you.’
Then, once they were safely behind the closed door of her room, at last he revealed to her the full account of what Queen Eleanor had commanded him to do and what he had discovered since.
When he finished, her face was ashen.
Josse could not settle. It had been a relief to unburden himself to the abbess, but since finishing his long discussion with her – which, comforting though it was, had not really offered any answers – he had been distracted from anything he had tried to do. Not wanting to distress Meggie, who picked up his moods with uncanny accuracy, he left her helping Sister Tiphaine pick herbs and took himself off for a walk.
He found that he had gone straight into the forest. Not thinking, letting whatever force that was acting on him guide his steps, he went slowly on and, as he had thought he would, in time he came to the clearing where Joanna lived i
n her little hut.
The open space around it was neat and tidy, just as presumably she had left it, although he noticed that the herb beds badly needed weeding and many of the shrubs were showing riotous growth. He went over to the door of the hut, unfastened the complicated knot in the rope that kept it closed and went inside. He was instantly hit with her presence, for the little room was redolent with the scent of sweet herbs and hay.
It was warm; the sun outside was hot. Feeling drowsy, he climbed up on to the sleeping platform and closed his eyes. It was as if she were beside him. He could smell the delicate floral scent that seemed to cloud around her; he could feel her cool, firm flesh. ‘Joanna,’ he whispered, ‘where are you?’
There was no answer.
He must have slipped into a light sleep for suddenly she was there with him, lying behind him and cuddled up against his back; she felt so solid that he knew she was real. But I’m dreaming, he thought, confused. Then he stopped trying to work it out and simply relaxed against her. ‘Joanna,’ he said again, and he thought he heard her say, ‘I love you, Josse. I always will.’
He awoke to darkness and he was shivering with cold. Hurrying out of the hut – without her, it was not a place he wanted to be – he realized that in fact the sun had not yet quite set. He carefully closed the door and retied the rope. Then, still under the influence of his vivid dream, he made his stumbling, bemused way back to the abbey.
He was not sure when he first knew he was being followed; in his present condition, he realized that his senses were very far from their usual sharp state and it proved quite difficult to make himself attentive. He moved on, trying to be quiet, and the unseen shadow came after him.
It was a huge relief at last to see the open space beyond the last of the trees. He emerged from the forest on to the patch of ground beneath Meggie’s oak tree and automatically looked up at the place where the figure had been. It was back there once more.
From the darkness behind him he thought he heard someone take a soft breath. There was the faint crack of a snapped twig and a whistling sound that could have been a sword stealthily drawn from its scabbard.
It was too much. Josse broke out of whatever spell held him there and ran as fast as he could for the abbey gates.
Eleven
The abbey was no longer the calm refuge that it was designed to be. Several times a day, ox carts came slowly down the track, heavily laden with sandstone blocks from small local quarries and huge loads of timber. The stonemasons had set up their workplace close to the apron where Martin wished to site the new chapel, and within the abbey walls the air was full of dust and noise.
Helewise recognized that Martin had chosen a sensible place for his masons to prepare the stone, but a petulant voice in her head kept demanding, ‘Why is he working just there, as if he would emphasize that it is the only place for the queen’s chapel?’
She would have liked to talk it over with Josse, but the poor man had worries enough. He had come running to find her yesterday evening, red in the face, out of breath and, unusually for him, frightened. ‘It’s back in that damned tree!’ he said, instantly apologizing for the profanity. She had not believed him – it was twilight, after all, and his eyes could be playing tricks – but the figure was gone from the cupboard in the wall.
This morning, just before the midday office, Helewise went out to look once more at the site on the forest fringe. She tried to ignore the stonemasons, the carters and the shouts of the men engaged in unloading the carts, and looked beyond them to the small area of flat land in front of the trees. Would it be so very bad to have the chapel outside the walls? There was one important advantage to siting it there: when the abbey gates were locked at nightfall, having the chapel outside them meant that those in need of solace would still have somewhere to pray.
There was also the strange matter of the statue. Something – no, she corrected herself firmly, somebody – seemed quite determined that the figure belonged not in the book cupboard within the abbey but out there in the tree. Josse had claimed that the beautiful woman in the horned headdress was not the Virgin, for she was pregnant and made of black wood, indicating, he said, a black skin. Helewise was not so sure. The Virgin Mary had been pregnant, hadn’t she? The conception of her precious child might have been unorthodox but she had carried the baby and delivered him just like every other mother. Who could say what colour her skin had been? She was a woman of the hot southern lands, so might she not have been considerably darker than her usual depiction in paintings and statuary?
There was no doubting the power of the figure. Helewise was not entirely sure if she was right, but some very deep instinct told her that this power, although alarming, was good. Perhaps the statue was some earlier artist’s vision of the Mother of God. Perhaps he – or she – had been inspired by the Virgin in some earlier guise.
Helewise, quite shocked at the thought, dismissed it. Goodness, it was surely heretical! Somehow, though, standing there so close to the Great Forest, she could not make herself believe this. Without realizing it, she seemed to have walked up close to the tree where the statue had been found. It was now back in her room – Josse had fetched it first thing this morning – but she knew that it would soon return to the tree. That is where she wants to be, Helewise thought dreamily. Perhaps we should do as she wants and let her stay in her chosen spot. Perhaps we should build the chapel there and make a special place within it for her. As the concept waxed in her mind, she seemed to hear a voice saying, ‘Do it.’
Josse spent the first part of the morning with Meggie. Brother Erse the carpenter was busy making a series of carvings of the Apostles for the new chapel, and Meggie, intrigued at the way people came out of the wood, as she put it, wanted to try. She sat with Erse, and Josse watched as the monk solemnly handed her an offcut of oak, put a chisel and a light hammer in her hand and showed her how to make the first incisions.
It gave Josse pleasure to observe that his daughter seemed to have skill in her small hands. Her figure had none of the stylized grace and power of Erse’s saints, but then it was her first attempt and it was a very lifelike hound.
As the morning wore on, he knew he could no longer postpone the task that was waiting for him. If he was right and Piers had gone to the tower at World’s End with his young squire and then escaped, it seemed likely that two of the three men whom the Oléron guard had rowed away from the island that March night were Philippe de Loup and King Richard. All three men were hard on Piers’s trail. Which one was de Loup, the tall, fair one or the one described as short and lightly built? Josse had no way of knowing. The Chartres mason had referred to de Loup having followed two others to the city; had one of the men been Piers, in the company of some fellow traveller he had met on the long road from the Île d’Oléron? Oh, but it all seemed to fit! De Loup and perhaps other Knights of Arcturus must have lost Piers’s trail after leaving Oléron and gone with the king to besiege Châlus, where the lure of treasure had proved more powerful for Richard than the prospect of trying to find Piers, but then the king had met his death, the treasure had vanished, and the Knights of Arcturus had returned to the urgent matter of finding and silencing the renegade.
I must speak to Piers again, Josse resolved. I need to ask him if I’m right. I must make him confirm – if, indeed, he knows – whether the king, de Loup and a third man followed him as he fled from Oléron.
Against his volition something else that the Oléron guard had said kept echoing over and over again in Josse’s head: Screams were heard coming from the tower, dreadful, horrifying, agonized screams . . . and through the arrow slits . . . there poured a brilliant, unearthly blue light that suddenly changed to blood red.
What were they doing up there? Did they snatch Piers’s young squire, bind him, tie him face down to the altar and then make Piers watch as de Loup stepped up to the dais? He recalled the splattered blood and the stained silver robe and his mind turned in horrified disgust from the irrevocable conclusion. Was i
t the lad whose screams rang out into the night? Was it his sacrificial death that turned the blue light blood red? Dear God, if so, then what a frightful end to a young life.
Abruptly he stood up, and wood shavings tumbled from his lap. Meggie looked enquiringly at him. ‘I have to go and speak to someone, sweetheart,’ he said, forcing a smile.
‘But I haven’t finished my fox!’
‘I thought it was a hound.’
‘It was but its tail’s too bushy so it’s a fox.’
Brother Erse grinned. ‘I’ve done the same myself, Sir Josse, when a face I was carving turned out more like one saint than another. I’ll watch over her,’ he added quietly. ‘If you’re not back by noon, I’ll take her along with me and get her something to eat.’
‘Thank you, Brother Erse. See you soon, Meggie.’
In the infirmary, he asked to see Piers but Sister Euphemia, hurrying to intercept him, said it was impossible. ‘He has a fever,’ she said. ‘We have done everything we can to cleanse that wound in his throat but still it has become foul.’
‘Will he live?’ Josse muttered.
‘I hope so.’ The infirmarer glanced over at the curtained recess where Piers lay. Her tone, Josse thought, did not sound very optimistic.
‘I have to speak to him,’ Josse said. ‘It’s very important.’
‘You’ll get no sense out of him today,’ Sister Euphemia said firmly. ‘He’s raving again. Something about some boy who died and he was to blame. It’s the fever, Sir Josse. Either that or a guilty conscience.’
‘Then I must—’
‘Not till I say so! Go away and leave us alone. If your man recovers, I’ll send for you.’
And with that Josse knew he had to be content.
He decided to go back into the forest. If he had been in his right mind last evening – and he was not sure he had been – then there had been someone following him as he returned from Joanna’s hut. Could it have been de Loup? Having tried and failed to kill Piers, was he hanging around waiting for the opportunity to try again? Why? Because, he answered himself, Piers is horrified by the Knights of Arcturus and, far from becoming one of the thirteen, he may well betray them. Perhaps he had already done so.
