The Raven's Head

by Karen Maitland

  ‘As her lips parted in speech, you saw the three rows of dagger-sharp teeth and they were crimson with fresh blood.

  ‘You fled to the door, but you couldn’t move as fast as that serpent’s tail. It lashed across the room, twisted you in its coils and dragged you back into her cold wet bed.

  ‘And ever since then, each year on the anniversary of your wedding night, the naiad slithers from her icy river, creeps into your cottage and into your bed. Neither bolt nor bar can keep her out for she is far stronger than any of them and you are forced again and again to spend the long dark night in her dreadful embrace.’

  My companion was now green in the face and staring at me in horror, as if he thought the creature might actually be waiting for him in his bed when he got home that night.

  I patted his arm bracingly. ‘There, you see? Now, all you have to do is tell the old widow that if you were to marry her, the same dreadful fate would befall her as your first wife and you love her far too much ever to allow that. Furthermore, the naiad has told you that if you should try to leave your cottage, and escape her, she will cause such a terrible wave to surge down the river that it will not only sweep away your mill but flood the whole valley, destroying everything in its path. So you’re forced to carry on living in the cottage alone and suffer this yearly torment to save the village. You’ll need to groan and look distraught. Sob, too, if you can, and I guarantee the old widow will feel so sorry for you she’ll cancel the debt on the spot and never mention marriage again.’

  He gazed at me for a moment, visibly shaken, dropped a few coins on the table to pay for his meal, and tottered from the tavern. I scooped up the coins before the tavern-girl could lay her hands on them, then bought myself another flagon of wine and a bed for the night in their barn.

  But I had learned three things from that encounter. First, negotiate a good price before you tell them the tale or they just toss you a coin as if you were a storyteller at a fair. Second, don’t tell a story that gives your customers nightmares. And third, Philippe, Le Comte de Lingones, was not the only man in the world badly in need of a good tale to rid himself of a pressing problem. The world abounded in such men and it seemed to me that a sharp-witted lad might make a passable living by giving them exactly what they needed, even if they didn’t yet know it.

  I knew these men wouldn’t all fall into my lap as easily as the miller had done. Like Philippe, most men hide their shameful secrets. The trick was to discover what a man, or woman, come to that, was afraid of losing most in this world and what they needed to conceal. I had to ferret out their dirty little secrets as I had done with Philippe, then, like an angel stretching down from Heaven, drag them up out of the flames of Hell. It had all gone wrong with Philippe, but that was because I’d come to him as a lowly servant, a gullible boy. I would not make that mistake again. A man of substance is not to be so lightly dismissed and that is what I would become, just as soon as I reached England and sold the silver raven.

  The rain was lashing down harder than ever and even though we were still hugging the French coast the ship was bucking and tossing, like a maddened bull. Most of the passengers were regretting ever having eaten supper. It was going to be a miserable voyage, but I comforted myself with the thought that luck was still on my side. I had eluded Philippe and escaped the gallows. I’d talked my way into being given free passage on the ship and as soon as I sold the raven I would have more money in my purse than even I had dreamed of. As I told you, Fortune favours those who help themselves. I was the proof of that.

  I swallowed hard, trying to fight down the first wave of nausea that rose in my gullet as the ship bucked ever more wildly, but as I pulled the blanket over my head, I thought I heard the rapid pruk-pruk-pruk alarm of a raven calling above the creaking sails and crashing waves. But whoever heard of a raven flying over the sea? I reached for the wooden box and held it tight against my chest. I could have sworn it was trembling, almost as if the box was an egg and the creature inside it was beginning to hatch.

  Chapter 26

  A chicken egg decays and from it is born a live chicken, thus the living animal comes forth from the decay of the whole.

  Regulus darts along in the shadow of the wall, the wet blanket in his arms. He means to wash the tell-tale patch in the stream that runs through the small vegetable garden, before Felix or Father John discovers it.

  The last time he had wet the bed he had tried to hide the blanket in the middle of the others, but that had led only to more trouble, more humiliation, greater punishment – sitting, hungry, in the corner of the dorter, watching the others eat, the piss-soaked blanket on his head, before finally being sent to wash not only his blanket but all the others he had contaminated. He had been permitted nothing to eat or drink for the rest of the day.

  ‘Wetting the bed is not just filthy and disgusting, but a wicked waste of urine,’ Father John had thundered. ‘Even animals do not soil their own nests. You are lazy, boy, too idle to get out of a warm bed and use the pot.’

  I’m not lazy, Regulus had wanted to tell him. It happens in his dreams, his nightmares. He cannot help himself. By the time he wakes it is too late. But he had said nothing: no words would burst through a throat closed tight with tears.

  The boy stops suddenly, as he sees two of the white-robed canons standing yards from him in the early-morning light. He quickly crouches down. They are talking with their backs to him. They haven’t seen him, but they are standing between him and the little stream.

  Keeping low he edges back along the wall, desperately searching for some other route. He sees the door in the wall, stretches up to turn the iron ring-handle with one hand. It moves a little, but not much. He drops the wet blanket on the ground and uses both hands to turn the stiff ring. It isn’t locked. Cautiously he pushes the door open, just a crack, and squints through the gap.

  He is still not certain which places are forbidden and which are not, but he has another reason to be wary. He remembers the first night he came being taken through a door, a door that led down into a chamber deep below the earth where flasks bubbled and a magpie flew at him. At least he thinks he remembers that, but he has had such strange, wild dreams, he can no longer be sure if it happened in his sleep or his waking. He dreams he is pissing and wakes to find that he has. Are dreams real, then? But, real or nightmare, he is afraid of what lies behind these identical doors now, afraid that the next one he opens will lead back to that place, to that cell in which they shut him up all alone.

  But through the narrow gap he glimpses not a dark chamber, but grass and branches and wrinkled trunks. The place beyond the door is full of trees. His face breaks into a grin and he has to stop himself shrieking in delight. He has found the way out, the way back to the forest. Dragging the blanket behind him, he slips through the door as swiftly as a mouse darts into its hole and pulls it shut behind him.

  But as soon as he is on the other side of the door, his smile vanishes. In that fleeting moment between him peering through the crack and stepping through the door, it seems to him that great high walls have sprung up all around the small patch of trees. And the trees are barely trees at all, not the great towering oaks and swaying elms of the forest, but stunted, gnarled and bent as old men, like the apple tree near their cottage at home.

  The heavy cloud of disappointment that has enveloped him lifts briefly. He is a good climber. He can climb any tree in the forest – at least, he can in his head. He could easily climb up any of these twisted trunks and scramble over the wall. But even as he stares around, searching for a likely tree, he can see the branches are too low, too far away from the walls. He knows, without trying, he’d never be able to reach.

  There is a pool, though. The water in the stream that feeds it runs in under a low gap at the bottom of the wall. A frog could come and go as it pleased, but not a boy, not even one as small as Regulus.

  He wanders to the pool and dips the damp patch of his blanket in the cold water. If it doesn’t smell of piss, ma
ybe no one will notice. It is only as he tries to wring the water out that he glimpses someone moving at the far end of the orchard. Not a white-robed man, but a boy, a boy he knows. Felix is searching for something on the ground, walking back and forth across the grass, like a hound quartering in search of a slain bird. Regulus tries to bundle up the blanket and conceal it behind his back, but it is too big and heavy and just as he tries to edge back towards the door, Felix raises his head.

  For a moment neither of them moves. Then the blanket slips from Regulus’s hands and tumbles onto the grass. He is still trying to gather it again when he feels Felix tugging on the other side of it. Regulus cowers, afraid that Felix will start yelling, will call Father John – everyone – to come and look at the evidence of his sin.

  But Felix does not call out. Instead he takes the blanket from the boy and he wrings the wet patch out. His long fingers are far more adept at the task than Regulus’s. In silence they watch the grey drops splash onto the grass. They sparkle in the sun, before they are pulled down into the earth.

  ‘Shouldn’t be in here,’ Felix says.

  Regulus guesses that means him.

  ‘Bury them here under the grass . . . the White Canons,’ Felix says, but as Regulus continues to stare blankly at him, he adds helpfully, ‘When they die . . . When Father John dies, he’ll be buried here too, all the brothers will. It’s what makes the trees give lots of fruit, see. Roots burrow into their corpses, suck up all the juices.’ He jerks his head towards the trees. ‘You’ll see come autumn. Trees’ll be thick with apples, pears, too. We help to pick them. There’s loads. Best you ever tasted.’

  He chuckles. ‘My father used to say corpses are food for worms, but he was wrong. The White Canons are food for us. Next time Father John punishes you, tell yourself, One day I’ll be eating you. Everyone’ll think I’m just biting into a nice juicy apple, but really it’ll be your bones I’ll be crunching. That’s what I think when he locks me up. Then I don’t mind what he does to me.’ Felix grins and lifts his chin defiantly, as if trying to convince himself he really doesn’t care.

  The idea of eating Father John doesn’t make Regulus laugh. In fact, the very thought of eating an apple now makes him feel sick. He stares at the ground, picturing all those men lying beneath the grass. He wonders if he walked over someone’s body as he crossed the grass. He’s suddenly afraid to take another step in case a dead hand thrusts itself up through the earth and grabs his leg, angry at being trodden on.

  He shudders. ‘Is that what you were looking for, a dead body?’

  Felix looks surprised. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Saw you searching the grass over there.’ The boy points to the far side of the orchard.

  Felix grunts. ‘Thought maybe there’d be a fresh grave. Guessed this is where they’d bury Mighel, if he was dead.’

  ‘He’s not dead. His mam came for him and took him home,’ Regulus reminds him, convinced Felix must have forgotten. ‘Father John said.’

  ‘But they didn’t ’cause Mighel doesn’t have any parents. Father got killed by pirates and his mam’s dead too. That’s why the priest in the village brought him here, he told me so, ’cause there was no one else to look out for him. And you heard old Crabby – he said Mighel wasn’t sick, so he’s not been taken to the infirmary.’

  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

  Under the Astrological House of Aries, the Ram. Norfolk, England

  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.