The Song of the Nightingale (2 page)

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 still 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.

H
elewise, 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.

It was quite different at Hawkenlye Abbey, Little Helewise reflected. Abbess Caliste was, presumably, as honour bound as any other nun, monk or priest to obey the pope's dictates, yet somehow she and her loyal team were managing to succour all the desperate people who came asking. Little Helewise knew – or suspected – that men such as her father, her uncle Dominic and her grandmother's dear friend, Sir Josse d'Acquin, were helping to the best of their ability, and quietly sending as much as they could spare for the abbey to distribute. It made Little Helewise proud, even if sometimes, if she was honest, she might wish her own household kept back just a bit more for their own use. It was a selfish thought, perhaps, but she was only sixteen and life was dark and frightening.

The reality of her bleak, miserable situation broke out all at once from the corner of her mind in which she had tried to pen it. She suffered the ensuing wave of distress, then, when it had passed, straightened her spine and raised her head. Had anyone been there to witness, they might have thought she was steeling herself to go into battle.

She sighed, trying to find something to be cheerful about. Feeling suddenly exhausted, she crossed the cold stone floor and sat down on her bed, swinging her legs up and lying back on the soft pillows. She pulled up the wool blankets and the thick fur cover, snuggling down and making a warm nest. Gazing out across the chamber, she caught sight of a silver box resting on the low table beside the bed. It had been a gift from her father. He had brought it back from a recent trip to London, hoping, she guessed, to cheer her up.

If only it were that simple.

The box was a pretty thing. It was rectangular in shape, about the size of her hand, and, although the sides were decorated with a swirling pattern of leaves, the top was plain. She reached out for it, holding it up so that she could see herself reflected in the bright metal.

She saw her own wide eyes staring back at her, light in colour like her grandmother's. Her thick, dark hair was drawn back severely, leaving her pale face mercilessly exposed. She read knowledge in her eyes; the lids were puffy from weeping, and the dark circles that were etched deeply around them bore witness to sleepless nights.

She was pining. She was listless, miserable, and her customary high spirits appeared to have quite deserted her. Anxiety rode her constantly. Hardest to endure was the enforced imprisonment within the house. Not that she was alone in having to bear it; every young woman of her acquaintance was in the same position. The harsh winter was to blame: that, and the widespread, desperate poverty of the people of England. Bands of the homeless and the dispossessed lived – existed – out in the wilds of the countryside, and even the ones who had begun as honest men eventually became desperate. Cold to their very bones, often sick or wounded, hunger drove them to violence, and terrible tales were whispered of their crimes. Men such as Little Helewise's father no longer considered it safe to permit their womenfolk to travel the roads and the tracks unless they were accompanied by at least one strong, stoutly-armed man to act as guard, and the trouble with
that
was that most strong men in the employ of those such as Leofgar Warin were far too busy on essential tasks to have any spare time to escort a young woman while she went off visiting.

Little Helewise was lonely, longing more than almost anything to be allowed to go and visit family or friends. One member of the family in particular . . .

It was no use asking. Her mother Rohaise, frowning, always tense and anxious, preoccupied with running a home on increasingly tight rations, had no time for such queries. Had Little Helewise pleaded again, she knew she would get exactly the same answer:
if you have time on your hands and are bored and at a loose end, I will find you something to do
. The
something to
do
would invariably be a dreary, repetitive, dull task such as helping mend the household linen, or chopping endless cabbages and root vegetables for the soups that seemed to have become the household's sole food. To make matters worse, the task would have to be done beneath the stern, eagle-eyed scrutiny of her mother, who had a way of making it perfectly clear that she considered her daughter far too prone to daydreaming, time-wasting and generally failing to
drive
herself, whatever that meant. Working in her mother's company was, Little Helewise reflected, uncomfortable at the best of times. Now, it would be—

No. She must not think of that.

She lay back on the bed and hunched the blanket and the soft fur more tightly around her ears. She stroked the fine wool of the blanket with her fingertips. Her family were growing wealthy because of wool and, despite the increasingly severe demands of the king's incessant taxes, this wealth appeared to keep steadily growing. Not that it was doing them much good at the moment, when the terrible winter meant that food of every kind was in such short supply. But the flocks were surviving, despite the snow that refused to go away and the cold wind that went on blowing out of the north-east. The thick wool that now insulated the ewes against the elements would be shorn in the spring, as it was every year, and sent over to the Low Countries, where it would be turned into the fine, highly prized cloth that fetched the highest prices.

Money.

Yes, it was good to know it was there, shoring up her family and keeping them safe from the sort of lives endured by the tramps, vagabonds and brigands who paced the lanes and the tracks and somehow existed out in the woods. She would never take it for granted; never underestimate its importance.

But, oh,
oh
, it couldn't buy happiness, and it couldn't solve the sort of misery she was facing now.

She was on her own, and sometimes her heart hurt so much that it felt as if it would break.

Of all the extended family, it was Little Helewise who pined most for the absentee: Ninian, the adopted son of Josse d'Acquin, had been forced to flee England late the previous October – over three months ago now – and not a word had come to say where he had gone, how he was, whether he was managing to eke out an existence, or even if he was still alive.

He is still alive
, Little Helewise said silently to herself.
If it were not so, I would know
. She repeated the same phrases most days. Sometimes she managed to convince herself.

Her grandmother and Josse had gone after him, once he was no longer suspected of murder and it was safe for him to come home. Little Helewise's hopes had ridden high, so sure had she been that they would find him. Sir Josse was a legend – strong, determined, capable and resourceful – and Grandmother Helewise had the reputation of never giving up on a task until it was completed to her own and, more importantly, God's satisfaction. Grandmother Helewise used to be abbess of Hawkenlye Abbey; the habit of command, and the ability to inspire awed respect from lesser beings, was still draped around her like a rich and elegant cloak, or so it seemed to her granddaughter.