A tangled woolly fleece seemed to have taken the place of my brains and I was having immense trouble grasping what he said. But as the words slowly sank in, I began to realise he was offering me a job. Not only that, but I was to be entertained as his guest until I’d finished.
A distant part of me was screaming, Leave! Get out of here while you still can. He half blinded you, broke your arm. What might he do next? The man is dangerous, ruthless. Everyone warned you of that.
But he healed you. Tended you in his own house. He could have dumped you out on the road, left you to die there, and no one would have been the wiser. They’d believe you’d been set upon by robbers. Think of the money you could earn from this story and the comfortable living you’ll enjoy while you compose it. You could spin this out for weeks.
But I can’t think of a single word.
You will. You always do. He does not expect you to start until you are stronger.
Lugh! That was Lugh talking. I glanced round the small chamber. Then a glint of light caught my attention. Sylvain was holding the raven’s head in his hands. I could have sworn they had been empty when he had sat down. But my head was so dulled, I couldn’t be sure of anything.
He held the silver head up to the candlelight. ‘Exquisite! And the symbols so cunningly concealed. The raven that flies in the night. The bird that flies without wings. As soon as I saw it I knew you had been sent to me. You must forgive my suspicious nature, Master Laurent. I have been wronged by so many men that I find it hard to trust anyone and see only greed and malice in every heart. I was angry when you came to me, thinking you were nothing more than a common blackmailer. But now I see you came only with a desire to help me and I swear that your true intentions will be most fittingly rewarded.’
He rose and, crossing to the altar, placed the raven’s head upon it beside the flickering candle. The silver turned to gold in the yellow light and flashes of scarlet seemed to light up each of the symbols so they burned brightly in the shadows. Then they became nothing more than tiny reflections of the candle flame.
‘You will work in this chamber. Tomorrow I will have my servants bring you clothes, ink and parchment – all you require. You must be sure to tell them of anything you desire to make your stay more comfortable. In the day we will work, but in the evening we shall talk, you and I.’ And before I could utter a word, he swept from the room.
I tried to convince myself that I was delighted. I had got exactly what I wanted. But I couldn’t squash the little worm of disquiet that was wriggling deep inside me. How long had I been lying in that chamber? I reached up to touch my beard. Its length might give me some clue. Only then did it penetrate my fuddled mind that my beard was gone. I’d been freshly shaved and even my hair was shorter now than when I had arrived, I was sure of that. I was more than a little annoyed. I’d been fond of that beard.
My eyes were beginning to adjust properly to the light now. I gazed back up at the dome of the heavens painted on the ceiling above. It was only then that I noticed something else in the painted sky, directly above the bed. The sun, moon and stars were positioned in swirls around some object in the centre, like angels clustered round the throne of God. But this was no throne, nor was it God. It was a shining glass flask, shaped like a tear, with something black suspended at its heart. Clutching the edge of the bed for support, I shuffled to the altar to fetch the candle and examine it more closely. With a jolt that set my heart pounding, I saw that the black object inside the flask was the head of a raven. Its beak was opened wide as if it cried out a warning, and from its mouth a long forked scarlet tongue quivered in the flickering candle flame, like a viper poised to strike.
Chapter 40
Dissolve the king or the queen in the red blood of children, then the sun and moon will take their bath in it, for this well is inexhaustible.
Sylvain is standing in the open doorway of the tower, waiting, as Gisa walks towards him across the garden from the door in the wall. Her shoes crush bitter chamomile and her skirts brush against the low hedges of sweet lavender and rosemary that frame the medicinal herbs. She doesn’t know why she should be so conscious of these fragrances today, when she has walked this route so many times, but something has changed. She shivers, glancing up, as the early-morning sun vanishes behind a cloud that resembles a great dragon. An omen, but is it good or bad? She doesn’t know.
She senses Sylvain’s excitement even before she draws close. There is tension in his frame. His fingers flex and clench, as if his hands might drop to the ground and scuttle off by themselves.
‘The raven who flies without wings in the blackness of the night and in the brightness of the day. It has begun! Death and life, corruption and resurrection, you will witness them all.’ His lips are drawn back from his teeth in an exultant grin, but there is a fevered determination in his eyes, as you see in the eyes of the naked beggars who slash themselves with sharpened flints and scream that the world is ending.
‘First there is something you must see. Come. Come!’
He grips her upper arm and marches her towards the manor house, but not to the path that leads across the garden to the Great Hall. Instead they turn the opposite way to the narrow turret built on the corner of the house. He leads her through the door and up a long spiral of stone steps, until they emerge into a bare chamber.
The walls of this room are painted with a dark landscape. On one side is a depiction of a tower, like Sylvain’s tower in the grounds, only much higher. A menacing storm-cloud hangs above it and a bolt of lightning strikes down at its roof. The sky in the painting is swarming with flying beasts – dragons, griffins and birds of every kind. There are eagles and hawks, screeching swans and crows with human faces, while peacocks trail their magnificent tails over the ground below.
Naked figures, male and female, as tall as the tower itself, wander through a landscape of rocks and mountains. Some are twined with serpents, others lead lions. Corpses clamber out of tombs. Babies, dangling from the fists of warriors, are being slashed with swords and great arches of blood from their wounds spurt into wells that overflow and run in streams across the earth.
Gisa spins round, unable to make sense of any of it. It must be a depiction of the Last Judgment, yet which are the righteous souls and which the sinners? Where is the throne of God and His angels? Here, Heaven and Hell have sprung up on earth and are at war.
But Sylvain ignores the paintings and eagerly beckons her over to the far wall, pointing to a squint hole. Putting his finger to his lips, he motions her to peer through. She is staring into a circular chamber. A man lies in a bed, his eyes closed, his hands limp. A linen sheet is drawn halfway up his bare chest, which rises and falls in deep sleep. Soft yellow candlelight glints on his golden hair. He looks familiar, but there is something odd about him too.
With a jolt she suddenly realises it is Laurent. But he is clean-shaven now. That is what looks so strange. The lower half of his face is paler than the tanned skin of his cheeks and forehead. She turns, her mouth open to speak, but Sylvain shakes his head warningly. She puts her eye to the hole again, unable to resist another glance. Laurent’s lips are slightly parted and his eyelids flutter, as if his eyes beneath are looking at things she cannot see.
She’d thought him long gone. Has he been lying here all this past week? Each morning and evening she has walked below this blind room without even knowing it existed, much less that he was in it. It is as if she has looked into the solid rock of a mountain and seen a new world hidden inside it. But why is he sleeping at this hour? Is he ill?
Sylvain lets her watch for a few moments more, then pulls her away and leads her back down the stairs and out into the grounds. She can feel his gaze on her face. What is he trying to read there?
‘Master Laurent is staying here. He is undertaking some work for me. You will enjoy his company, I think. But such pleasures cannot interrupt our work. Perhaps one evening you might wish to stay after we have finished to sup with Laurent . . .’
They reach the tower and she steps aside so that he might enter ahead of her, for he is her master.
He stands close to her, always too close. ‘Today all I have striven for will be set in motion, like the first trickle of water that turns the mighty wheel of the mill and then the stones begin to grind. I must prepare myself, cleanse myself. You will help me.’
He closes the door of the tower, plunging them into deep shadow. She hears the key grate in the door. He is locking them in. Panic rises in her and she has to stop herself yelling at him to unfasten the door. What does he mean to do?
Brushing past her, he bends down and tugs at an iron ring recessed into the third step of the wooden stairs, a ring she has never noticed before in the gloom of the chamber. The three lower steps lift upwards, like a trapdoor, revealing a hole that glows red as if a great fire burns beneath their feet, but there is no heat. A wave of cold, damp air rolls up from the shaft beneath. Sylvain beckons to her and, as she inches closer, she sees a set of wooden steps descending into the maw below. For a terrible moment she fears he is going to shut her down there. She backs towards the door even though she knows it is locked and the key hangs about Sylvain’s neck. But without even glancing at her, he edges down the staircase, calling her to follow, and she does. She dare not refuse.
The chamber beneath is round and small, the floor made of beaten earth, the walls rough stone. Four candles burn on spikes on the walls above her head, each flame shielded by a translucent blood-red stone, which she recognises as dragon’s blood. The red light is so dim she cannot see the expression on Sylvain’s face, only the glitter of his eyes.
In the centre of the chamber there is a long stone trough, like a coffin, almost covered over with a slab of stone, which has been pulled away from one end. She can see the glint of water inside, or she thinks it is water. It is hard to tell in the ruby light.
Sylvain faces her across the trough. ‘I must descend into the first death. I must be cleansed. It has taken weeks to prepare the aqua vitae, the water of life that springs from death, the water of the flood that drowned the boy. It has been distilled many times over, till there is nothing left of his body. Only the pure essence of his spirit remains. Now you must add the drops of the distillations you prepared from the moon plants you gathered the first day you came to me. The essence of the moon, gathered by a virgin, added to the death of innocence.’
She does not understand. Who has drowned? Where did the boy drown? Peter swims into her thoughts, but he is not drowned, though daily she fears it. Besides, Sylvain does not know about Peter. He speaks in riddles. These are just words, symbols like grey wolf and the green dragon devouring the sun.
He hands her the flask. ‘Pour it all in.’
She hesitates. This is too simple. Surely he brought her down here to do more than this. As she tips the liquid into the stone trough, Sylvain unfastens the neck of his robe and pulls it over his head. She gives a little cry of alarm for he is naked beneath. Her hands shake as she empties the last drops. She can see almost nothing of his wrinkled body in the dim light, but still she looks away, ashamed, embarrassed, fearful that he will force her to undress too. And what then? What then will he do to her?
‘When I am inside you must pull the lid into place so that it covers the stone coffin. Then you must wait with me. Whatever you see or hear, you must not be alarmed. It is the cleansing and I must endure it. When the last candle has burned away and extinguishes itself, you will push back the lid and release me. But not before then, however much I might scream and beg you to let me out, for I must pass through the terror. But if you do not release me as soon as the last flame dies, I shall drown.’
He places his hands about her small neck, massaging her throat with his thumbs. She shudders at his touch and the closeness of his naked body, the stench of stale urine on his skin.
‘See how much I trust you, little swan. I am putting my very life in your hands.’
She jerks away. ‘What if I cannot move the lid? Odo is far stronger.’
‘Only a woman, a virgin, may do this.’
She can feel his stare on her body, as if he is peeling away the layers, stripping off her clothes, her skin, and burrowing deep inside her to assure himself she is still a virgin.
She turns her face away as he grasps the edge of the trough. She hears the sharp intake of his breath as the icy water touches his skin. She hears the water slap against the stone as he eases himself down inside the coffin.
‘The lid.’
She does not want to see his eyes staring up at her out of the blood-red water. She goes to the far end and pushes the lid forward. Although it is heavy, it slides easily, as if the surfaces have been greased. It fits perfectly, seals stone to stone.
The red light flickers in the chamber, making the stones of the wall undulate, as if they, too, are liquid. She longs to run up into the light and air, even though she knows she cannot escape the tower. But she cannot see how thick the candles are through the shards of dragon’s blood to determine how long they might burn. Suppose they go out while she is upstairs? Suppose she cannot open the stone coffin again? Panic seizes her and she wants to drag the lid off at once, just to be sure that he is not already drowning. But the fear of his wrath stays her hand.
She can hear voices, faint murmurs, snatches of words, as if people are passing by outside the tower. She cannot understand what they are saying. The muttering grows louder, and she realises that what she can hear is not coming from above her but through the walls around her, as if a great crowd is crawling through the earth towards the cellar.
The muttering gives way to discordant shrieks and moans. Dull echoing thuds shake the walls, as if bones are being struck violently against the stones, as if the dead are trying to break through the walls. Terrified, Gisa races up the stairs, but before she can reach the top, the three steps above her fall back into place with a crash and the staircase is plunged into instant darkness. She pushes and pushes against the wood above, but it will not yield.
Behind her the din stops abruptly and in the same breath, the first candle is extinguished.
Using the wall to guide her, Gisa edges down the stairs, feeling for each one with her foot until she reaches the bottom steps, which are illuminated by the glow of the candles inside the chamber. Something is moving on the dark earth floor. It is liquid, thick, glowing in the red light. Water is seeping up through the floor, creeping up the walls. It will rise and rise until it fills the chamber. It will flood the stairs. She is trapped!
She turns to try again to open the trapdoor above her and then, at the edge of her vision, she sees the liquid is forming itself into a ring about the chamber, a ring of quicksilver. It swells and a great silver head rises from it, with huge black eyes and a long viper’s tongue that flickers in and out, tasting the air. The snake slithers towards the stone coffin, wrapping its coils around it, squeezing until the edges of the stones begin to splinter.
The second candle goes out, leaving a wisp of smoke. The snake vanishes.
The creaking of a rope makes her look up. A naked man is hanging from a noose above the stone coffin. He is struggling to free himself, gasping and wheezing, trying to force his fingers behind the rope biting into his neck, but he cannot loosen it. He spins round, thrashing on the rope, his eyes bulging, his face swollen purple and black in the red light. His features are so distorted she cannot recognise him, but yet she knows him. She searches desperately for some means of cutting him down. She scrambles on top of the stone coffin, trying to reach him, to lift his legs, support his body, but as her fingers almost touch him, he is jerked upwards out of her reach. She stares up into the dark dome. She cannot see what he is hanging from. It is as if she is staring down into the deepest well.
Then she hears a scuttling, the sound of a hundred sharp claws. The rope is alive with mice that swarm
down it and over the choking man. He opens his mouth to scream but no sound comes out except a dreadful gurgling. He is thrashing, trying to fling the mice off, but they are eating him alive, stripping the flesh from his limbs and face. Gisa shrinks back in horror. There is nothing she can do to help him.
The third candle is snuffed out. The space above her is empty.
The chamber is almost in darkness. The single flame cannot push back the shadows as they flood towards it. Gisa bends to lower herself off the coffin and onto the ground. Then she freezes. Something is standing on the stairs, where the shadows are deepest. It moves, unfolds, rises up. Two bat-like wings open like a cloak, revealing a woman’s body with great pendulous dugs and a swollen belly. Her long hair whips and writhes about her head as if she is being buffeted by a violent wind. The woman slowly lifts her head to gaze at Gisa. Her face is gaunt as a skull, and a black fire blazes in the sockets of her eyes. Her wings flex, their leathery skin rasping on the stones behind. She opens her mouth and shrieks in fury, the scream so high-pitched that Gisa thinks her ears bleed. The wings beat wildly as if the creature means to fly at the girl. Gisa throws herself from the stone coffin and crouches on the floor, cowering against the wall, her eyes clenched shut, her hands over her ears, as a whirlwind rages around her.
The chamber is plunged into perfect darkness. The air is still and silent.
Gisa remains on the floor, too afraid to move, too afraid that the woman might still be in the chamber somewhere, waiting like a bird of prey for the slightest sound, the tiniest movement and then it will pounce.
The Raven's Head Page 28