The Raven's Head Read online

  Wilky is lifted down and set on the cobbles. His thin legs are so cold and numb, he staggers. He gazes longingly at the brazier by the high gate, desperate to steal a little handful of warmth, but he’s afraid to move.

  A huge stone building with slit windows towers above him on one side, and a cluster of smaller buildings face him. The other two sides of the courtyard are sealed by walls so high not even his eldest brother could climb them, and he can climb the tallest oak in the forest. The boy is trapped.

  He squeals in fear as a heavy hand suddenly grasps his shoulder. ‘This way, Regulus.’

  He stares up at the man, recognising the frosty chin of the older of the two white riders.

  ‘I’m not Re-lus,’ he says stoutly. ‘I’m Wilky.’

  ‘You are Regulus now. You will answer to that name, do you understand? There is no boy called Wilky.’

  ‘But I’m Wilky. It’s me,’ the boy says.

  Perhaps the man doesn’t know who he is. Maybe he took him from the cottage mistaking him for some other boy. If Wilky tells him, if he explains he is not this other boy, then they will take him home. He tries desperately to make them understand, but no one is listening to him.

  As Regulus is pushed towards the great building, a low door near the end opens silently and the younger of the two white riders hurries out.

  ‘I’ve told him we have the boy. You’re to take him straight down.’

  ‘The child has just been removed from his home. He’s exhausted and confused. He won’t understand what’s being asked of him. Can’t Arthmael use one of the others tonight?’

  The young man snorts as if the question surpasses stupid. ‘If he could, he would not have waited for this boy. I wouldn’t try his patience any longer.’

  Regulus jerks as the fingers gripping his shoulder dig sharply into his flesh. ‘Have a care how you address me, Madron. I have flogged boys scarcely younger than you. I know how you ingratiate yourself, but you are not Arthmael’s successor yet. Remember, I supply what he needs, not you.’

  Regulus, still protesting that he is Wilky, is propelled forward into a small chamber, but all things are relative and to Regulus the room is as big as his whole cottage, bigger even, for it has a vaulted ceiling. On the opposite side of the empty chamber is another door.

  When it is opened, the boy expects to see a byre or a forest on the other side. Where else do doors lead? But instead there is a set of stone steps spiralling downwards into the darkness. An eerie red glow flickers across the wall. A rush of damp, stale air carries snatches of an acrid stench, but the smell is not of any animal or herb the child recognises. In a panic he turns, trying to flee back across the chamber, but the grip on his shoulder is too fierce and he is hauled back.

  ‘Your mother instructed you to be a good boy and do exactly as you are told,’ the white rider whispers into his ear. ‘Your father wanted you to come here. He gave you to us. Your parents would never send you into harm, would they? Go down, Regulus, just a few steps, that’s all. One day you will learn there is far more to be afraid of in this world than what lies beneath here. Then you will truly understand fear.’

  Chapter 3

  The slab was like an open book, exhibited to all who entered that they should look at it . . . And now I shall make known to you what the wise man has hidden.

  I scattered a few crumbs of bread and some fragments of mutton in the slit window and waited for the magpie to pay its morning call. I had this notion that if I could tame the bird I could coax it down in the gardens in front of Amée and show her the bird feeding from my hand. In one of the hundreds of books stored in the turret, I’d read about a poor woodsman who’d won the love of a noble lady by training a wolf to eat from his fingers. She was so enchanted by his gentleness and skill in taming the savage creature that she instantly fell in love with him.

  If you ask me, that woodsman was lucky he had the time to go taming wolves. I couldn’t escape from work long enough to train a rabbit, never mind track down a wolf. The only wolves I’d ever encountered were the dead ones the hunters brought into the courtyard, swinging upside down from a stave. But surely any woman would be impressed by a man who could call the wild birds to him.

  I thought I’d start with an easy one. Magpies are thieving little vermin anyway, so bold they will fly in a woman’s face and try to snatch her necklace. On second thoughts, perhaps a magpie wasn’t the best bird to show off to Amée.

  I brushed the crumbs from the ledge just as the door opened and Gaspard staggered in, a tower of ledgers and documents clamped to his chest, held there by pressing his chin down on top.

  ‘This mess, this mess!’ he screeched at me. ‘How am I to find anything?’

  He was right about the mess. Anyone visiting the chamber on that day would have sworn that our little turret room had been plundered by English soldiers. Chests lay open. Cylindrical boxes had been pulled apart, their lids scattered and the scrolls they’d contained strewn over the dusty boards. Books and parchments had been heaped on desks, stools and boxes, only to slide off in great avalanches to the floor. You couldn’t take a step without crunching a roll of parchment underfoot or tripping over a leather-bound book.

  One moment Gaspard was yelling at me to tidy up and the next demanding that I leave that and search for another box. He would be halfway through rummaging in a chest when it would suddenly occur to him that whatever he was looking for might be in another place entirely, so he’d abandon what he was doing and totter off on a new quest.

  He’d even made me clamber up through the trapdoor into the eaves. I hadn’t known there were boxes up there. They were smothered in dust and bird dung. The rolls of parchments inside were mildewed and crumbled away even as they were unrolled, those that the mice hadn’t already gnawed. I imagined the generations of mouse-pups that had been whelped on those words and suckled among all those sentences. How many stories had they shat on and royal proclamations had they pissed on through the decades?

  I had asked Gaspard a dozen times what we were looking for, trying to convince the old fool that it was pointless for me to go searching through documents when I didn’t know what I was trying to find. I could easily have what he was looking for in my hand and cast it aside without recognising it.

  I reminded Gaspard of the story of a boy who is sent to capture an elephant. They tell him to look for a creature with large ears. But since he’s never seen an elephant, he brings back a bat, for that has large ears. So they tell him to look for a beast with a long nose and he returns with a shrew, for that has a long nose. Then they tell him an elephant has a bare, skinny tail and he returns with a mouse, for that has a bare, skinny tail. No one has told him that the creature he seeks is bigger than a house.

  ‘And if the elephant was in that chest, you still wouldn’t find it,’ Gaspard snapped, cuffing me round the head. ‘I told you already you’re to bring me anything, anything at all, that mentions Monsieur le Comte’s grandparents. And don’t ask impertinent questions.’

  The days passed and the nights, too, for we continued to search by candlelight and when, finally, I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, I was invariably woken by Gaspard still scrabbling away, like a squirrel digging for his buried nuts. The pile of papers concerning Philippe’s grandparents grew into a bale and then a haystack. Gaspard had been right: neither he nor the librarian who’d occupied this chamber before him had ever thrown away the smallest scrap of writing, from the bill of sale for a hound to an order for a lady’s gown. I was beginning to think that we’d discover the bones of the old librarian himself tucked away on one of the shelves, bound in ribbon and sealed with a lump of wax.

  But nothing we found satisfied Gaspard. The old man grew more frantic by the hour, tossing books and scrolls aside before he’d read more than a few lines, then frantically trying to find them again in case he’d missed something. If he wasn’t making himself sick from lack of sleep, he was certainly making me ill.

  Then at dawn one morning,
after I felt I’d only just fallen asleep, he shook me awake. ‘I need you to go to the still room and fetch all the goat-leaf seeds they have.’

  ‘All, Master Gaspard?’

  ‘Yes, every last seed, and if it isn’t enough you’ll have to get more.’

  ‘But the still-room maid will never give me all she has. What do you want them for, anyway?’

  ‘Tell her . . . tell her I need to purge myself. Something I’ve eaten has disagreed with me.’

  That was news to me. I’d not seen him eat anything these past few days, save for the few morsels of bread he chewed while searching through yet another ledger.

  ‘She has purges already made up, Master Gaspard, in case of poison.’

  ‘I don’t want one of her purges,’ the old crow said, flapping his hands impatiently. ‘I want the seeds. Steal them if she’ll not give them to you. I must have them.’

  I’d suspected for a long time that Gaspard was losing his wits. Now I was certain. Days and nights of searching for this wretched document had sent him scurrying into his dotage.

  ‘Tell no one else what I’ve sent you for, bâtard. No one. Do you hear?’

  The old man grasped my ear, as if I was some kitchen scullion, and dragged me to the door, pressing an old leather bag into my hand. I think he would have booted me down the stairs, if he could have done it without falling flat on his scrawny arse.

  Yawning, I groped my way down the spiral stone steps. The sun was only just beginning to rise and no light yet penetrated the narrow slits in the walls. The icy morning chill painfully reminded me that the first frosts couldn’t be far off. I didn’t know which was worse in that turret room, the stifling heat of summer, or winter, when even the ink came close to freezing.

  Even at this hour, the Great Hall was already bustling with maids and scullions falling over one another as they fetched perfumed water to fill the lavers and laid the tables for the first meal of the day. I winked at one of the younger maids, but she stalked past me with a face as sour as last week’s milk.

  I knew Philippe’s daughter, the adorable Amée, would still be sleeping soundly, as I wished I was, but even so, I found myself repeatedly glancing towards the door to the family chambers in the impossible hope she would glide into the hall. Not that she would have noticed me if she had. Even the lowliest of kitchen maids looked through me as if I was nothing but a chewed bone to be kicked into the rushes.

  But that didn’t stop me dreaming, and often as I lay awake at night, while Gaspard scratched away at his books or his balls, I imagined Amée stumbling as she crossed the hall and me being there to catch her, or her favourite brooch being lost and me finding it. But since the closest I ever got to her was looking down on her when she walked below in the gardens, unless I learned to fly, I’d have as much chance of getting her to notice me as of persuading old Gaspard to take up jousting.

  I suddenly spotted Charles by the great fire and hastily slipped out in case he should still be brooding about the arrow that had only just missed him. The sight of me might remind him of who occupied the turret room.

  The torches had long since burned away in the courtyard, but the grey dawn light didn’t yet have strength enough to penetrate the corners. The stone still room was in darkness. I knocked at the stout door, but there was no answer. The old woman who had charge of it would probably still be sleeping, or out gathering herbs, for many had to be plucked at dawn with dew upon them or in moonlight when their potency was at its height.

  I tried the handle and found to my great relief it was not locked. Once inside, though, there was only the dim red glow from the damped-down fire to light the chamber and that wasn’t enough to be able to distinguish a mummified cat from a monkey’s paw, never mind one jar of seeds from another. I had no choice but to risk lighting a candle.

  It took me some time to search the shelves, even though all the pots and containers were labelled with crude drawings of the plants so that those who couldn’t read could identify the contents. But eventually I found a small pot containing goat-leaf seeds and hastily tipped the whole lot into the leather bag that Gaspard had thrust at me. The still-room maid was sure to miss them, for she’d never let any pot run empty, but with luck she wouldn’t discover the theft for a few days.

  I had just replaced the empty container on the shelf when the door creaked open behind me. As I whirled round, both I and the woman in the doorway gave a squeak of surprise. It was Amée! My face burned as hot as a baker’s oven. The early-morning light cast a halo round her loose flaxen curls. I’d never been so close to her before and, in spite of praying ceaselessly for a moment like this, now that it had happened I found myself gawping at her like the village mooncalf.

  ‘I saw the candle,’ she said. ‘I thought Meli was in here. Who are you?’

  I bowed low, knocking several pots with my bag as I did so. I lunged wildly at them to steady them before they crashed to the floor. Amée giggled and I knew even my ears had turned scarlet. This was not how I had pictured our meeting. My first and possibly my only chance ever to impress her, and here I was, floundering around like a cow on ice.

  I took a step forward and bowed again, taking care not to knock against anything else.

  ‘Vincent, Comtesse, apprentice to Gaspard the scribe.’

  She was trying unsuccessfully to suppress a grin and I suddenly realised how dishevelled I must look, having been dragged from my bed without time even to wash my face or comb my hair.

  ‘So what is an apprentice scribe doing in a still room?’ she asked.

  ‘I, too, came looking for Meli. I need physic for my master, Gaspard.’

  At once her face was all concern. ‘He’s not sick, is he? My father is depending on him. Perhaps I should come and see.’

  ‘No, Comtesse. It’s . . . it’s only a touch of indigestion. He’s been working late, missing meals.’

  ‘For my father, I know,’ she said, frowning. ‘I’ll see that good meat is sent up to tempt his appetite and you must see that he eats it. He mustn’t make himself ill. We desperately need his services. My mother is fretting so much, it has brought on one of her dreadful headaches. She’s sent me to ask Meli to prepare an unguent to rub on her temples. But I know the only thing that will really help is for this terrible anxiety to be lifted. Has Gaspard discovered anything yet?’

  I hesitated. I knew he hadn’t – at least, I was pretty sure he hadn’t. But I couldn’t tell Amée that. I wanted to be her hero and I’d hardly be that if I brought her bad news.

  ‘I think he might have found something, Comtesse,’ I said. ‘But please don’t tell Monsieur le Comte yet, in case it proves false.’

  Her face broke into such a glorious smile, it made my groin throb and my knee tremble. She was a beauty.

  ‘Does he seem encouraged, though?’ she asked eagerly.

  Gaspard seemed completely moon-crazed, that’s what he seemed, but I wasn’t about to say that.

  If only I could find the lost document, whatever it was, before he did . . . I pictured Amée flinging her soft little arms about my neck in gratitude and planting a dozen kisses on my mouth, her father insisting on bestowing his daughter’s hand on me in abject gratitude.

  Yes, all right, I knew that was never going to happen! Even if I single-handedly rescued Amée from the jaws of a slavering lion or slew a fire-breathing dragon to save her, she’d still end up married to some wealthy nobleman, and I’d be lucky to be tossed a gold ducat for my pains, but if there was any justice in this world . . .

  ‘This document is very important to Monsieur le Comte,’ I began, hoping she’d assume I knew all about it and innocently tell me what Gaspard would not.

  But back then I knew nothing about how to draw a man or woman into revealing their secrets. I didn’t know how to form the questions that would make them tell me more or how to read the subtle signs that would reveal a lie – a downward glance, a twitching hand, a rubbing of an ear. I hadn’t learned to utter the ambiguous phrases that w
ould lead them to confide all, believing I knew all. Those skills I had yet to learn, for though I didn’t know it then, my whole future was to be constructed from those velvet lies and pretty deceptions.

  As it was, Amée merely smiled sadly. ‘That document is important to all of us. Our whole future rests upon its discovery.’ She turned. ‘If you see Meli, tell her she is to attend my mother at once. And the moment Gaspard is certain he has found what my father needs, you must bring us word immediately.’

  I opened my mouth, trying desperately to think of something to detain her, but the space where she had been standing was empty and only the cold dawn light filled the doorway.

  Up in the turret, Gaspard was waiting for me with the impatience of a ravenous baby demanding the breast. God’s arse, what a revolting thought! Had some poor woman once been forced to give suck to a creature like Gaspard? Although, looking at the dried-up old crab apple, I should think his mother’s breast must have been the last one he ever got to lay his hands on.

  But it was plain the old man was agitated. His eyes were red from dust and lack of sleep, but there was a wild excitement in them that was almost frightening. Though I often joked about him being mad, for the first time I began to fear he really had become crazed or even possessed. He tore the leather bag from my hand and limped across to the table, clutching it fiercely like a miser protecting a bag of gold.

  He started to pour out the seeds, then seemed to remember I was still standing there.

  ‘What are you doing hanging around in here, petit bâtard?’ He gazed wildly around the room, then snatched up the blankets in which he wrapped himself at night. ‘They’re filthy, stinking. Why haven’t you washed them?’

  He threw them at my head. A cloud of dust flew out, making me cough.

  ‘There, see? Is it any wonder my chest wheezes, sleeping in such filth? Take them to the wash house and see you get every mote of dust out of them, and yours too.’