The Song of the Nightingale (23 page)

It was particularly painful to recall his parting from Alazaïs. She had been his first real friend in the village; she had provided the warm hearth and the kindly, welcoming affection that had helped him when the ache of homesickness became too much to bear. And she was old; even if other, fitter women and men survived the onslaught, it was not likely that she would. Ninian had wondered if he should suggest she came back north with him; there would surely be a home waiting for her with her son Gervase and his family. But he knew, without even having asked, that she would shake her head and, with a gentle smile, refuse.

She had held him in her arms as they had said goodbye. ‘I will keep you in my heart,' she had whispered. ‘I shall pray for you, every day, and picture you as you journey north.' He had told her the route he was planning to take. ‘You will see the Great Mother's shrine at Chartres in the spring,' she added. ‘Her time of most profound mystery.' Then she had kissed him and let him go.

They had all turned out to see him off, and he'd left with their promises of prayer and undying friendship echoing in his ears.

And then, as now, his heart had ached to leave them. No friends could have been in graver danger, now that winter was over and the brutal crusade against them was starting again.

He gazed up at the statue high above him. Not including the figure that he had taken back to Hawkenlye from Chartres, she was now the fourth he had encountered. The first had been in the deserted village where he had met Roger of Pépoulie, and it was she, he supposed, who had set his feet on the homeward path. He'd come across the second in the hands of a fellow traveller, staying, like Ninian, in a rough inn at the foothills of the mountains. The man, seeing Ninian's eyes on her, had kindly handed his treasure to him for a moment. She was about the size of the man's outstretched hand, and, as he informed Ninian, she kept him safe. The third, he'd found in a church beside the mighty Garonne River, at a spot where travellers waiting to cross went to pray for a safe arrival on the north bank. He had been told that there were many more of them, all over the Languedoc, as if the images touched on some fundamental part of the people's faith.

And now this one, this Black Madonna of Rocamadour, was looking down on him, silently communing to him some blessing that he felt like a soft stole around his shoulders.

He had once asked Alazaïs why the dark figures were so important. Her answer had been enigmatic: ‘She is the Mother Goddess, and her history is ancient. In Egypt she was Isis; she was also Virgo, Kore, Demeter and Persephone, for her nature is the heart of the feminine and she is both mother and daughter.'

The names meant little to Ninian. He waited to see if she would say more. Presently, she did. ‘She is depicted with her son, usually at her breast or on her knee, but very occasionally still in her womb.' Vividly, Ninian imagined the Hawkenlye figure. ‘Isis and Horus; and, as depicted by later artists, the Holy Mother and the Holy Child,' Alazaïs said dreamily. Then, eyes suddenly intent on Ninian's: ‘As to whether the child is Christ himself or the child of Christ, that is for each person's own heart to decide.'

The child of Christ?

At first, Ninian had been shocked by the blasphemy. It was only later that a chance, overheard remark had allowed him to understand the truth that had been staring him in the face: the bonshommes believed the Black Goddess to be Mary Magdalene. The baby she bore was the child of Christ. And, far from being the wild, outlandish fantasy of one mad old woman, it was the belief of most of the bonshommes and many of the dominant aristocratic families.

But he understood there was something yet beyond that extraordinary idea; something to do with the female side of god, which seemed to symbolize the whole essence of the feminine. It appeared to be embodied in the shape of the Black Goddess figures, and they were deeply revered.

Ninian did not fully understand what had happened to his mother in Chartres Cathedral. He and Josse had spoken about it briefly, and Ninian realized Josse was as confounded as he was. It must therefore, he reflected, be in his soul, or somewhere – a place, anyway, that was not his conscious, thinking mind – that he perceived a very important thing: the Black Madonna was connected with some sort of eternal, female, divine figure, and that, in turn, was connected to the mystery that surrounded his mother's disappearance.

No wonder the Black Goddess seemed so intent on leading him towards Chartres.

‘What's he supposed to have done?' Tiphaine's young apprentice asked as the two of them made their way to the undercroft where the prisoner was shut up. The young nun carried an empty bowl and a flask of hot water. Tiphaine had packets of lavender and comfrey in her worn old satchel, as well as a small pot of healing cream made to a recipe invented by Joanna. Its ability to prevent scarring was legendary.

‘They say he's killed,' Tiphaine said shortly, hoping to indicate by her brevity that she did not wish to gossip.

The young nun's eyes widened. ‘Will we be safe?' she whispered.

Tiphaine took pity on her. ‘Perfectly safe. It's not nuns he's accused of murdering, and anyway we're here to help him.'

The four guards left by Tomas were lounging around the entrance to the undercroft. One of them, seeing the two figures approach, got up from his leaning pose against the wall and went to block the door, a cudgel in one hand. ‘No entry here,' he said. ‘Dangerous prisoner inside.'

Tiphaine regarded him steadily. ‘His wounds need to be cleansed,' she said. ‘The punishment cell is filthy and probably rat-infested. If those cuts become inflamed and the fever starts up in his body, your prisoner will die before you have the chance to take him out and hang him.'

It was apparent from the men's expressions that they didn't like the sound of that. They put their heads together and muttered for a while, then the man who had blocked the door turned round and opened it.

‘Go on, then,' he said grudgingly. He handed her the key. As the young nun slipped past him, he shot out a hand and pinched her bottom. ‘We'll have to search you when you come out again, so don't go trying to smuggle him out under your skirts, Sister!' They heard the sound of the door being firmly closed and locked behind them.

‘That
hurt
!' the nun said, rubbing her buttock as they hurried along the dank passage.

‘I'm sure it did,' Tiphaine replied. It had been courageous of the girl not to cry out.

They reached the door, and Tiphaine inserted the key and turned the lock. She struggled with the bolts, finally managing to push them back. She looked at them thoughtfully for a moment, then, reaching in her satchel, took out a small pot of grease. Taking the bowl and the water from the young nun's hands, she gave her the pot. ‘Put some of this on those bolts,' she instructed the nun.

‘Why?' the girl asked, taking the pot. ‘You've got them open now, and—'

Good Lord in heaven
, Tiphaine thought,
what were young nuns coming to, asking questions like that?
‘Just do it,' she said tersely. Then she stepped down into the tiny cell.

She waited for her eyes to adjust. The passage was dim enough, with just two little windows set high up in the walls admitting light. The only illumination within the cell was through the open door.

He was lying on his side, his long legs curled up, his face to the wall. His instinct to prevent his cut flesh hurting even more by contact with the ground had probably saved his life, Tiphaine reflected, since he had kept the deep wounds out of the filth on the beaten-earth floor. Crouching down, she placed the bowl on the ground and poured in the hot water, adding the fragrant herbs. The clean, sweet smell of lavender quickly permeated the enclosed space, and Tiphaine felt the usual uplift of the heart.

The prisoner stirred. ‘Keep still,' Tiphaine said. ‘I have brought water and herbs, and I will clean the wounds on your back.'

He nodded. She sensed him tense, preparing for the pain that her ministrations would cause, and her hands were as gentle as a mother's with a newborn baby. She bathed, wrung out the soft cloth, bathed again, and he made no sound. Finally, when the wounds were as clean as she could make them, she smeared on generous amounts of the healing ointment.

‘What is that?' came his muffled voice; he had, she realized, buried his face in his sleeve to silence any cry that fought to escape him.

‘A tried and trusted remedy which seals the flesh and minimizes scarring,' she replied.

‘And it really works?' Despite everything, there was a touch of sardonic amusement in his tone.

‘It does.' She rubbed in a little more, then, sitting back on her heels, sealed the pot. It was hard to see in the darkness, but she thought she had put a good coating of the cream on each cut. She was about to replace the pot in her satchel when his hand shot out and grasped her wrist.

‘Will you leave it with me?' he asked softly.

‘I will, yes.' She put it into his hand, and his fingers closed round it. ‘You'll have to feel for where to rub it on, but I dare say that won't be difficult.'

‘The pain is already much lessened,' he said, ‘but that's not why I want it.' He hesitated. ‘It smells of the outdoors,' he went on, a catch in his voice.

The brief comment all but broke her heart. She heard a gasp and felt a hand on her shoulder, and only then realized that her young apprentice had followed her down into the cell. Tiphaine glanced up at the girl, whose face was wrung with compassion. The wide, blue eyes were filled with tears. ‘We can't leave him here,' the girl hissed in Tiphaine's ear. ‘We
can't
! We've got to—'

‘
Hush
,' Tiphaine commanded. Such horrified anguish would not help the poor prisoner.

Too late; he had heard. He turned round, looking first at the young nun and then at Tiphaine.

It was Tiphaine's turn to gasp. Remembering, grabbing hold of the girl, she said urgently, ‘Is this him?'

The nun shook her head, bewildered. ‘Is it who?'

Trying to hold on to her temper and speak calmly, Tiphaine tried again. ‘You said that, six weeks back, you'd met a man in the vale who was seeking a priest because he was about to do a bad deed. You described him as a brown man.
Is this him?
'

Her eyes gazing down at the tall figure before her, Sister Estella, apprentice herbalist, said, ‘No, it's not.'

For Tiphaine, the reply was both relief and anguish. Relief because the prisoner was not the man who had been looking for forgiveness for a sin he was going to commit; not the legendary Brown Man who was wanted for murder. The anguish because, all the same, he was lying helpless in the punishment cell, accused of killing three men and flogging another.

His presence there was affecting Tiphaine deeply, for she knew who he was.

Moreover, the thought of leaving him there was making her feel physically sick, for he was a man of the outdoors who had never lived within walls. And now he was penned inside this tiny space, cut off from the light, the sky, and the air, only to emerge again to walk to his hanging.

Not if I can help it
, Tiphaine thought grimly.

She reached down and tightened the man's grip on the pot of ointment. ‘Remember the smell of the forest,' she said softly. ‘Do not despair.'

Then she got up, slung her satchel over her shoulder and, grabbing Sister Estella's hand, hurried out of the cell.

Tiphaine dismissed her apprentice, sending her off to make some more white horehound and lungwort cough mixture, a remedy she had recently learned. In fact there was plenty of the mixture on the shelves in the herbalist's hut; Tiphaine needed to be alone because she had a great deal to think about.

For the young man in the punishment cell to be hanged was out of the question. For one thing, he was not the Brown Man whom Josse and the others believed had committed the revenge crimes. Whether or not the prisoner had murdered anybody was not, as far as Tiphaine was concerned, relevant. Knowing who he was – more important, knowing
what
he was – she knew he could well have killed, although she also knew he would not have done so without a very good reason.

He could not die because he was a good man. He was loyal and true, protecting those who could not protect themselves, looking out for people on the point of starvation or despair and doing what he could to help them. He was the respected, valued, beloved leader of a group of others like him, and if Lord Benedict were to bring about his death, the world would be a poorer place.

Tiphaine strode away from the abbey, heading for the deep forest. The beginnings of a plan were forming. She sent a silent prayer of gratitude to whichever divine being had put it into her head. It was a wild plan, depending on several things outside Tiphaine's control. The chances of it working without a hitch were slim.

It was, however, the best she could do.

She hitched up her robe, lengthened her stride and sent out a long, silent, continuous call to the person she urgently needed to find.

J
ehan had insisted that they stay in their hiding place for the remainder of that day and all the following one. Or, rather, he insisted
she
stay hidden, while he repeatedly slipped out to see what was happening. When she complained, with increasing vociferousness, about her enforced captivity, finally losing her temper and yelling at him that she was leaving right that moment, and would get across the narrow seas and find her way to Chartres by herself, he had put his hands on her shoulders, stared intently into her eyes and said, ‘Please, do no such thing. If they are who I fear them to be, the men outside want to kill me. They saw you with me, and so I am afraid that means you are in danger too.'

She was not sure why, but she had believed him.