The Raven's Head (23 page)

Regulus giggles. He’s never heard Felix call Father John anything but his name. He sobers quickly, seeing the grim look on the older boy’s face.

‘Maybe he’s in the room on the stairs that lead down into the ground,’ Regulus says. ‘That’s where I slept the first night, leastways . . . There is a room, isn’t there? A real room?’

He gnaws his lip, realising that Mighel has been gone for days. Has he been locked in that terrible dark place all this time?

Felix shakes his head. ‘Room’s real, all right, but Peter got taken down to the cellars again three nights ago and he reckons the door of that room was open when he passed, ’cause I asked him, and he swears it was empty. And Mighel wasn’t in the cellars either. I reckon he’s been taken.’

The little boy looks up at Felix, his blue eyes full of anxiety. ‘Did the owl take Mighel? My brothers died in the night. The owl ate their souls. The charcoal-burner’s wife told Mam she heard it cry in the night. Can the owl get into our room?’

‘Wasn’t the owl took him,’ Felix says savagely. ‘It was the wizard. They gave him to the wizard. Sometimes he comes to the cellars. I’ve seen him when old Crabby drags me down there in the night. He’s a friend of Father Arthmael – heard them talking about the time when they were students together in France, years ago, but’ – Felix wrinkles his nose – ‘I don’t reckon they like each other much. I’ve seen ’em look like they’d kill each other, if they had half a chance.’

‘Why does the wizard come to see Father Arthmael if he hates him?’

Felix shrugs. ‘Father Arthmael gives him things . . . flasks and boxes.’

‘Why, if he doesn’t like him?’

‘Wizard brings him scraps of parchment . . . for the boxes, like they’re swapping eggs for butter in the market. Says he’s copied them from pages in some book. I reckon Father Arthmael must really want them ’cause when he gets one he shoves it inside his robe, like it was a gold coin and he’s afraid someone’ll steal it.’ Felix shakes his head irritably. ‘Anyhow, what does it matter why he comes? He has the evil eye, I know it. He could do worse things to you than Father Arthmael ever could, just by looking at you.’

Felix reaches down and grips the front of Regulus’s shirt, almost lifting him off his feet. ‘If old Crabby comes for you in the night and there’s another man waiting, a man dressed all in black, you scream and yell your head off. Wake the whole abbey if you have to. Run and hide if you can. They’ll punish you, but it’s better than being taken by him. He’ll turn you into a bird and keep you locked in a tiny cage to sing all day. That’s what he’s done to Mighel. Wizard’s turned hundreds of people into birds – that’s what the gatekeeper said. I heard him. Cages of birds all over his house, that’s what he reckons.’

Regulus remembers the magpie that flew at him in the chamber. Was that really a boy?

Felix, still gripping his shirt, gives him a little shake. ‘But you mustn’t tell anyone what I told you, none of the other boys and especially not Father John. If you do I’ll . . . I’ll cut your throat when you’re asleep and I’ll tell Father John you wet the bed again too. Swear?’

Regulus nods as vigorously as he can with Felix half choking him. ‘Swear . . . I swear, Felix, by . . .’ He tries to think of the most binding oath he’s ever heard. ‘By the Holy Virgin . . . by all the virgins ever.’

He isn’t sure what a virgin is, but he knows there are a great many of them, for one of the boys read a story from the lives of the saints while they were eating supper, a story about St Ursula who took eleven thousand virgins on a ship and sailed away. Regulus doesn’t know how many eleven thousand is either, but he’s pretty sure it’s more than all the trees in the forest, maybe more than all the trees in the world.

Felix seems satisfied and releases him.

‘You won’t tell, will you, about the bed?’ Regulus asks anxiously. This threat is far more menacing than merely having his throat cut.

Felix nods. He holds out his little finger and the boy wraps his own round it.

‘Brothers,’ Felix says. ‘I’ll keep your secrets and you keep mine.’

Regulus smiles. For the first time since he came here he feels safe, even after what Felix has told him about the wizard. Felix is going to be his big brother from now on. He will protect him because they share a secret, and Regulus would sooner die than betray Felix.

Chapter 27

If it be cast onto Earth, it will separate the element of Earth from that of Fire, the subtle from the gross.

We anchored in the port of Lynn Episcopi, Bishop’s Lynn, on the late-evening tide, but no one was allowed to disembark until the following morning. We were obliged to wait until the bishop’s official had been rowed out to inspect every keg of wine and plank of timber we were carrying. It was his job to collect the tolls and taxes to be paid, and you could tell at once he was a man who enjoyed his work. If he spotted even the smallest splinter that wasn’t actually part of the ship, he’d find some reason to tax it. He even inspected the passengers’ bundles in case he could unearth anything to tax there. Fortunately for me, he didn’t actually search our bodies, so Lugh was safe, nested in his little wooden box beneath my cloak.

As we’d tossed and rolled our way up the east coast I’d become more despondent by the hour. When I’d last lived in England as a boy, it had been in Winchester in the south, which in my memory was bathed in eternal summer, a town surrounded by sweet water-meadows where cattle grazed and corn ripened in the sun. But this coast, when I could glimpse it at all between the swirling clouds of dank mist, appeared to consist of nothing but bleak marshes and low, scrubby hills, inhabited only by flocks of half-wild sheep. From the stench of the smoke wafting across from the hundreds of little huts that lined the seashore, the entire population appeared to survive only on rotten fish cooked over fires of dung and seaweed.

The sight of the port of Lynn did nothing to lift my spirits. It seemed that the denizens of Hell itself had risen from the nether regions to lay siege to the town. Great waste heaps of sand and silt encircled the city and the air was choked with steam rising from huge copper pots and the smoke of dozens of roaring fires, whose flames bathed all in a devilish red glow. Half-naked men and boys loomed in and out of the mist, like the spirits of the damned, straining to push sledges and handcarts through the sand or staggering under the weight of sacks hefted on their backs.

‘What are they doing?’ I asked a man leaning on the gunwale beside me.

‘Salt,’ he said tersely. ‘That’s what my master’s sent me to trade for. This ship will be crammed to the masts with it going back. They make brine from the sand and boil it off in those vats. Filthy work, but it’s made this town’s fortune. Ships and salt – ’tis all you need to make a wealthy man, though only for them as owns them, of course, not for those poor bastards carrying the loads.’

‘God has ordained each of us our place in this world,’ a voice said behind us. ‘To question that is blasphemy.’

I turned to see the friar. The long fringe around his tonsure was blowing straight up from his head in the wind, which made him look like a startled goat. He gave me an oily smile. ‘Have you decided to join our pilgrimage to the shrine of the Blessed Virgin at Walsingham, Master Laurent?’

I almost looked behind me to see who he was talking to, until I remembered it was me. Naturally I’d changed my name. I was hardly fool enough to use the name I was known by in Philippe’s household, but it was taking me a while to get used to answering to it.

‘After we have enjoyed all the delights that Walsingham has to offer,’ the friar continued, ‘I shall be guiding my little band of pilgrims to Bromholm Priory where they may touch a fragment of the true cross. It has worked many miracles – lepers cleansed, the sight of the blind restored and even the dead raised to life.’

‘I hope my father doesn’t get to hear about that,’ my companion said, with a grin. ‘Cost me a fortune to bury him first time around, and knowing that old tight-purse, if he rises from his grave he’ll be wanting his pigs back ’n’ all, including the ones we’ve eaten.’

‘The relic also drives out demons from the possessed,’ the friar added, glaring pointedly at each of us in turn, as if he thought we might both be in need of a good exorcism.

I must confess I was sorely tempted to go to the shrine, though not because I was seized with a sudden attack of piety. Shrines attracted sinners with guilt on their consciences. They might confess all to God, who would absolve them of anything from gluttony to mass murder for a price, but man is far less forgiving of the weaknesses of his fellows and those sinners would still need tales to cover those dark secrets.

‘Is Walsingham close by?’ I asked.

The friar plucked at his lower lip. ‘Less than thirty miles away. There’s a stable in the town where we can hire good horses. So, even riding at a pace that will suit the women, we should be comfortably installed in the pilgrims’ lodgings by nightfall tomorrow, provided, of course, we are permitted to leave this ship within the hour.’

That thought seemed to remind him he was in a hurry and, without another word, he sped off in pursuit of the ship’s master, demanding to know when we would be allowed ashore.

The man at the gunwale snorted. ‘So they’re not planning to crawl to Walsingham on their knees, then. Doesn’t believe in suffering on his pilgrimage, does he?’ He gave me an amused glance. ‘Are you really planning to go with them? I’d not have marked you as a relic-kisser.’

‘Thought it might be a good place to earn a few coins,’ I told him, though it was a few well-stuffed purses I was really after. I’d had my fill of struggling to earn mere pennies.

But first I’d need to sell the raven’s head if I was to hire a good horse and buy some decent clothes. I’d need to arrive in Walsingham looking like a wealthy man. That way I’d be admitted to the better lodgings where the rich pilgrims stayed. The poor didn’t have much to lose in this life, so they wouldn’t pay for tales to cover their guilt, but the wealthy had both salt and ships or, in this case, secrets and money.

But the salt-buyer shook his head. ‘You go near a shrine and the only money you’ll be seeing is what’s going out of your purse ’cause there’ll be none going in. Those monks are there to fleece the pilgrims, not give them coins. They won’t even allow the mongers to sell the crowds food or ale while they’re waiting in line unless the sellers pay the monks half their profits for the privilege. That friar’s as bad. I’ve met his type before. Those pilgrims’ll be lucky if he hasn’t filched the breeches off their backsides before they get there. He’ll charge them each an ungodly sum to guide them there and that’ll only be the start of it. I’ll wager he’s in the pay of that stables too. They bribe him to bring the pilgrims to them, so they can charge twice what it’s worth to hire one of their broken-winded nags. And whatever he promises, they won’t reach Walsingham by tomorrow night. That’ll mean another night on the road and another handful of coins for the friar from the innkeeper who puts them up.’

A shout from the ship’s master made us both turn round. The last of the bishop’s men was lumbering down the creaking gangplank to the quayside and we were finally free to disembark. My companion heaved his belongings onto his back and clapped a heavy hand on my shoulder. ‘If you need good honest work, take my advice, stay here in Lynn. There’s a tavern in the town close by the river they call Purfleet. Woman who runs it goes by the name of Ibby. Tell her Martin, steward of Foxby, sent you. She can usually find work for a willing lad.’

I thanked him politely, but refrained from telling him I had no intention of working for my supper – at least, not by washing pots or turning a spit in some poxy inn. I had my heart set on much bigger prizes than that.

I took my time exploring the town. The harbour was crammed with ships bringing in wine from Germany and France, figs, oil and leather from Spain, dried fish and live hunting falcons from Norway, spices and dyes from the Far East, and countless bales of sable, beaver and Arctic squirrel pelts from the great fur market of Novgorod, all to be loaded onto carts or river boats and dispatched to every corner of England. Seamen and merchants thronged the streets, laughing and quarrelling in a dozen different languages. Buildings seemed to spring up even as I passed them. Makeshift hovels were being torn down to be replaced with great warehouses, and fishermen’s huts chopped to firewood to make room for the houses of wealthy merchants and sea captains.

Several times I was elbowed into the open sewers by merchants and their clerks, who strode down the middle of the street, ostentatiously showing off the sumptuous fur linings of their woollen cloaks by artfully folding back the edges. Great jewelled clasps flashed on their tabards, and their sword hilts were more elaborately gilded than a saint’s reliquary, though the men who wore them were so portly I doubted they’d be able to pull the swords from their sheaths without slicing open their own bellies.