Needle in the Blood (50 page)

“Thank you, Your Grace.” Odo bows, to give himself cover while he composes his features into the right expression of respect and affection with which to take his leave. He is angry at the time wasted but William, he thinks, is disappointed, which makes them even, but is troublesome nonetheless.

“I want you back by Lauds on Easter morning, Odo. I fancy we will have the play of Our Lord’s appearance to Mary Magdalene, as we do at Rouen. Eh?”

Odo smiles, holding William’s gaze. Reassurance, he tells himself, trustworthiness, loyalty, love, marshalling these emotions in his eyes as though preparing an assault. He backs away a few steps before turning and fleeing toward the door at the north end of the transept.

“You’ve still got dust on your forehead,” William shouts after him. “And, Odo, remind her she has no choice but to accept my terms, same as all the English.”

The eyes worked, thank God. You cannot perjure yourself with a look. Today is Holy Tuesday; even if his men find her today, he has no intention of leaving her to return here in time for Easter. He will contemplate the mystery of the Resurrection in the arms of his own Magdalene. Her rapt gaze will make the miracle plain to him.

***

Though everything is set for a quick departure, a fast horse and two of his knights equally well mounted awaiting him in the castle’s outer court, he finds his trials are not yet over. When they reach the city gate, the officer of the watch is reluctant to open up for them.

“In the name of the Earl of Kent,” barks one of Odo’s men, doling out his words slowly and deliberately, as though talking to an idiot or someone hard of hearing. The officer stands his ground, a torch held in front of him so Odo cannot read the expression on his face. With a momentary failure of nerve, he wonders if, after all, William has sent orders to have him detained in the city. No, of course not, William never changes his mind. He spurs his horse forward into the wavering circle of light cast by the officer’s torch and pushes back his hood to reveal himself.

“You know me, I think,” he says to the man, who glances from his face to the amethyst on his left hand and back again.

“I do, my lord.”

“Then open the gate.”

“It’s not as simple as that, my lord. There’s a rabble outside been clamouring to get in since before the watch changed.”

Odo’s horse stamps impatiently; letting the animal have its head just enough to trample the ground a little in front of the officer’s thin shod feet, he says, “A rabble? I hear nothing. No shouting, no clash of arms. What sort of rabble?”

“The holy sort, my lord. They’ve probably got a chap on a donkey and a stack of palm fronds for all I know.”

“Watch your tongue, man, and the minute you get off watch find yourself a priest and make confession. Now get that bloody gate open. Surely the might of the Norman army is equal to a few hedge preachers.”

The officer shrugs off any further responsibility for what may happen next and orders his men to open the gates. A muted soughing reaches Odo’s ears from the other side of the dense oak barrier as two of the watch remove the pegs holding the latches down and heave the bar free of its iron rest, a sound like wind in the upper branches of the trees bordering the road. Yet the night, in this hour between Matins and Lauds is still, holding its breath.

His knights loosen their swords, hands hovering nervously over hilts. Retreating to flank their officer in the entrance to the guardhouse, a lightless room hollowed like a rectangular cavern out of the city walls themselves, the two men of the watch seem determined to do nothing more. Odo walks his horse into the wedge of night sky filling the narrow gap between the gates, seeing nothing but the black outlines of trees and stars fading as the darkness is suffused by the blue glow of coming day. His scalp prickles where the hair, if he were not tonsured, would stand on end.
He descended into hell.
What is this rabble? A host of the undead sinking back into the earth at his approach? He crosses himself. Perhaps the last days are truly at hand. He signals to one of the knights behind him to bring up the officer’s torch.

“But this persecution flames up today and tomorrow blows away, today burns hot and cools tomorrow.” The voice is not loud, but resonates, as though the air in which it hangs is a sounding board, a drumskin stretched over the void. It is a voice he has heard before. Faces appear, flickering in and out of his vision, distorted by the play of fire and darkness, noses fantastically elongated or eyes evaporated from their sockets, gaping mouths, teeth of flame.

Odo’s horse, responding to its master’s fear, baulks at the gate and rears. Unprepared for the sudden uprush of muscle, he is thrown forward, forced to cling to the animal’s mane like a boy at his first riding lesson. He would have fallen were it not for the tall man stepping forward from the mad jostle of silent faces, calmly reaching for the reins flapping about the horse’s neck, oblivious, it seems, of thrashing hooves or bared teeth, the sheer weight of the beast should he come down on him. He talks quietly to the horse in a rhythmic murmur, like the chant of gentle waves on a shore, until it steadies. As the animal comes to rest, blowing softly through its nose, head low in submission to the man now scratching it between the ears, Odo’s own feeling of powerlessness increases, condenses to a cold sense of the inevitable located somewhere which may be his forehead or deep in his chest, but is anyway his center.

“You again,” he says, gathering his reins and looking into the unreadable lizard eyes of the latterday Sebastian. “It seems I am indebted to you.”

“God has appointed me to give succour to souls in torment, Norman.” Odo’s knights are drawn up on either side of him now, the torch held aloft by one lending its glow to the red blond hair cascading over Sebastian’s shoulders. The other has his sword drawn.

“I have no time to debate the state of my soul with you now.” And no time to arrest you and have you flung in gaol as I should. But you will keep, Saxon. He kicks his horse forward, forcing Sebastian aside, but cannot accelerate above a slow, disjointed walk as the preacher’s followers mill about him. A pathetic bunch, barefoot, ragged, mostly, it seems, young women with babies and small children. Pretty, some of them, once. Fearing they may try to cut him off from his escort, he calls out behind him, “Trot on. Don’t be nice about it. If some get in the way, it’s a few souls to keep the Devil off our backs,” and takes the whip to his horse’s rump.

“I shall see you again then,” Sebastian shouts after him as the horse leaps into a canter, but Odo does not hear him, nor the curses of a young mother as she snatches her child from under its hooves, nor the crunch of bone in the foot of someone less nimble. His senses are ahead of him now, rushing toward the lightening horizon, to Dover, to his love. Nothing else is real.

***

Margaret, Martin, and the rat-faced man do not leave the cottage until well after dark. Martin leads them away from the road, through scrubby woodland at first and then deeper into a forest where Margaret thinks the light probably never penetrates even when there is any. The moon has not yet risen, and she cannot see an arm’s length in front of her, stumbling over tree roots and brambles, hawthorn and holly tearing her clothes. Her arms and legs are scratched raw, yet Martin is adamant they cannot risk a light if the earl’s men are abroad. He himself moves as quietly and sure footedly as a lynx, pausing often to let the other two catch him up.

“Albino,” pants the rat-faced man eventually. “Half blind. Prefers the dark. Take my hand if you like.” His fingers brush her arm, the skin exposed by a tear in her sleeve. She gasps. The rat-faced man laughs, a hoarse, high-pitched sound like the bark of a fox. “Don’t you fear, girl. Martin guards Sebastian’s new disciples very close, especially the women.”

Margaret has no idea how long they have been walking when her straining eyes pick up a flicker of light between the trunks of trees. At last. But Martin says nothing and they carry on, the light sometimes just visible, sometimes lost to them so she is sure they cannot be going straight and begins to fear a trick, despite the rat-faced man’s assurances. Her heart beats in her throat as though a live bird is stuck there. She is dizzy with exhaustion. Somewhere, beyond this forest, it must already be morning, but she will never see light again and her ears are condemned to hear nothing but the rasping breath of the rat-faced man and the occasional death shriek of some forest creature taken by a wild cat.
Wolves
, she thinks,
bears
, without light what defence do they have? Will even her bones be found? Surely bears eat bones, sucking out the marrow the way she might suck the green sweetness from a grass stalk. God has deserted her. She has gone down to Hell, and the world will close over her like water over a stone.

Then suddenly the lights are all around them, torches, a cooking fire, lamps glimmering through the walls of makeshift shelters. What was it the midget fortune teller said, at the Pentecost fair when she was still quite a little girl? The fruits of your labours will endure for a thousand years. Of course the world is not finished with her yet. She wipes her face with the back of one hand, smoothes her hair, pulling out leaves and bits of branches, pats and picks at her skirt, trying to pleat the ragged edges of torn cloth with her fingers.

“That’s better,” says the rat-faced man, not unkindly.

“Where is Sebastian?” she asks Martin. “I must see Sebastian.” She does not want to stay here any longer than she has to. She looks around her.

It is an untidy camp, as though a giant child has left her toys lying just as they were when she was sent to bed. There are shelters of scrub and animal hides, a few mangy looking horses, some clothing spread to dry in the lower branches of trees, a dented cauldron set over a loose fire. A juggler is practising his art with three wooden spoons. The cook perhaps? Sitting on the ground at the edge of the clearing with her back against a tree is a heavily pregnant woman, a young girl squatting beside her holding out a bowl and spoon. A group of men dressed as friars, but unkempt, in patched habits and bare feet, are carrying a large box, supported by poles at each corner, across the clearing. It reminds her of something. The oath, that’s it. Alwys embroidered a reliquary very similar, though much more ornate, for the scene where King Harold stood on the shore at Bayeux and swore fealty to William of Normandy. Now Alwys refers to it as the Ark of the Covenant and frequently tells Sister Jean that God wishes a rainbow to be added to the scene. There is no sign of Tom.

“All in good time,” says Martin, flinching as another woman emerges from one of the shelters and comes toward them carrying a torch. He takes a piece of black cloth from somewhere in the folds of his clothes, shakes it out and pulls it over his head, a hood with blinkered eye pieces, similar to those you sometimes see on horses in races or tournaments. “This is Irene,” he tells Margaret. “She will take care of you now.”

Irene smiles, showing two upper teeth missing, one in front and one at the side. Once a handsome woman, with strong cheekbones and a pointed chin like a cat’s, she looks worn out, her skin slack and grey, her mouth, in repose, disappointed.

“My, my,” she says, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth the way Margaret remembers her stepmother doing when she had been out with the boys and dirtied her clothes. “We shall need to tidy you up a bit before Sebastian will see you.”

“Will he see me tonight? How late is it?” Irene? There is something about Irene and Saint Sebastian. She wishes she had listened more to her grandmother, who used to tell them the stories of the saints before bed each night when they were small.

“So many questions. There’s no need to be quite so impatient. I don’t expect the Antichrist to appear before morning.” Smiling again, Irene takes her arm and leads her toward one of the shelters, a large tent of hides spread over withies. Inside it is warm and cheerful with a shallow pit full of glowing embers and some boxes set on their sides to make shelves for cups and plates, spoons, combs, children’s toys. Piles of brush covered with blankets serve as beds, though none of the tent’s occupants is asleep. Several women are grouped around the fire pit chatting quietly, one suckling a baby, another plucking a primitive, three-stringed lute. Some have pieces of needlework in their laps, though the light is far too poor for sewing. They sit idle, but alert, as though waiting for something. The smell of milk and blood and sweaty hair reminds Margaret of the atelier, and she has to blink away sudden tears.

Irene. The woman who found Saint Sebastian left for dead by his executioners and nursed him back to health. She must know. If he calls her Irene, she must have been there when whatever happened, happened.

“This is…tell us your name, girl,” says Irene. Margaret opens her mouth, but something stops her. She does not want to give her name to these people. What might they do with it? If the earl’s soldiers are hunting for her, they might give her up before she has a chance to speak to Tom. Hawise. She should never have told Hawise. But it’s too late to remedy that now, she must simply be more careful from now on.

Irene laughs. “Then we shall call you Zoe, after the Christian woman to whom the saint restored the power of speech.”

Margaret nods and smiles.

“A lot who come here leave their old names behind,” continues Irene.

“Did you?”

Irene takes a little iron cup, in which she mixes a handful of herbs and water from a jug standing beside the entrance to the shelter, then sets it to warm over the embers. “We don’t talk about the past. It’s the future that matters.”