The Raven's Head

by Karen Maitland

  ‘The hairs are too short to sew with,’ she protests.

  ‘You will sew one stitch at a time, as when you stitch a wound.’ He slams the box shut, before the wind, forcing its way through the slit window, can snatch the hair away. ‘When the task is complete, you may leave the bag here next to the box and return as usual tomorrow. I have lit the fire in the chamber above in readiness for you to heat the crucible. Do you have all that you need?’

  She nods. She wants him gone.

  ‘Carry out the task with diligence. Add nothing more than I have instructed, take nothing away. Men’s lives and, more importantly, their souls depend upon your work.’ He stares out across the garden towards the manor, then murmurs softly, ‘There is a book that your master consults. Perhaps you have seen it – emblazoned on the front is a golden sun.’

  She can see from the tension in his frame that the question is far from casual.

  ‘Lord Sylvain has many books,’ she says, keeping her expression blank.

  ‘There is some detail I wish to check. Is that book here, in this tower?’

  ‘Perhaps if you asked Lord Sylvain . . .’

  The abbot spins round furiously. ‘Sylvain cannot be disturbed. Why else do you imagine I am wasting my valuable time instructing you?’

  His gaze fastens on her swan brooch. ‘Sylvain walks a dangerous road. But for the moment it is one we must all walk with him until we reach that place where the road will divide in two. He is willing to kill the soul to protect the body, but Christ teaches us to slay the body to save the soul. Do not trust your master, child. Obey him, for the work you begin here will be used for God’s glory in the end. I will make certain of that. Obey, but do not trust. I will pray for you, child. I will pray that God will save your soul at least.’ He makes the sign of the cross over her. ‘Perfectum concedat nobis Dominus mortis. God grant us the perfect death.’

  Gisa shivers. She needs no warning not to trust Sylvain. But she does not trust Father Arthmael either. As soon as she sees him walking away across the grass towards the hall, she runs downs the stairs to check if he has locked her in. To her relief, she finds the door unfastened. She regrets coming down for now she will have to remount the stairs, walking over the steps she knows to be hollow, walking over the dungeon in which the winged creature unfurls its bat-wings in the darkness.

  She tries to focus only on the task as she lifts the little boy’s skull from the box in which she found it on the day she arrived. It is so very small, so very white and new. The baby teeth are still in the mouth, but his adult teeth will never grow now. The skull itself holds no terrors for her, but the tender age of its owner distresses her, for it might have been little Peter’s.

  As soon as the skull is baking in the crucible, Gisa turns her attention to the room. She has been waiting for this chance and there may never be another. She must find the book. Sylvain said it contained the knowledge to heal any infirmity, even if that person was already in the arms of death. She can heal Peter, she knows it, and once he is strong they will find a way out.

  She guesses that Father Arthmael has already searched the tower, but she convinces herself she can find what he has missed. She looks in and behind every box, lifts every covering, but there is no book. The vessels, which are normally bubbling away, are cold and empty. All the braziers, save the small furnace she is using, have been extinguished. Things are being made ready, but for what? She searches again, going over the places she has already examined, as if the book will suddenly appear because she wills it, but it does not.

  Gisa crosses to the window that faces the main house and stares at the blank wall of the turret where she guesses the hidden chamber to be. What reason does Sylvain have for detaining Laurent here? And she has the uneasy feeling that that is exactly what he is doing, even though he does not like strangers. Something slithers through the back of her mind, something Peter said, but it will not lie still long enough for her to name it.

  She hugs herself against the cold wind blasting though the windows. She is desperate to escape, but the heating of the skull cannot be rushed. Years seem to pass as she watches the fire, but finally she judges the skull is ready. She slips her hands into thick sheepskin bags to protect them from the heat and lifts it out, setting the brittle skull in the wind from the slit window to cool it.

  Then she carefully carries it down to her own workshop. She gently cracks the bone into pieces and begins to grind. The teeth lie like white pearls among the grey powder. She hesitates. If this was a suicide’s skull she was preparing for her uncle, she would remove them, for the powder would be made into a potion to be swallowed against the falling sickness and the teeth would cause harm. But this bag, sewn up with hair, must be some kind of amulet and Father Arthmael said all must be collected, so she empties the tiny teeth into the bag with the ground bone.

  Teasing out one of the golden-brown strands of hair from the wooden box, she stretches the curl to thread the bone needle. The hair is surprisingly strong and just long enough to pull through the lips of the fine-linen bag. But she has fashioned only a few stitches when she hears the wooden stairs below her creaking and soft footsteps ascending. Pushing the bag aside, she backs away from the trapdoor, her skin crawling with fear. Someone or something is rising from that dungeon. She fumbles behind her and seizes the first weapon she can find, raising the iron pestle high above her head.

  Chapter 45

  Rubedo: the Red Death – He who has dyed the poison of the sages with the sun and its shadow hath attained to the greatest secret.

  As I poked my head cautiously through the open trapdoor, there was a piercing shriek. It startled me so much I almost knocked myself out on the edge of the frame. It took me a moment or two to realise the cry had come from Gisa.

  ‘Gisa! It’s only me . . . Laurent,’ I whispered, as I waved a hand above the opening.

  I was afraid to stick my head back through in case she cracked my skull open with the pestle she was brandishing like some deranged Viking. I heard her footsteps crossing the boards and I cautiously peered over the edge of the trapdoor again.

  ‘I thought you were . . . You shouldn’t creep up on people,’ she whispered angrily. ‘I might have had something hot in my hands.’

  ‘Instead of a lethal weapon,’ I said sarcastically, as I stepped up into the small chamber. ‘Look, I didn’t mean to startle you, but I thought I’d best tread quietly. Odo said yesterday that Sylvain wouldn’t be coming to the tower, but Father Arthmael would.’

  Once again, thanks to the lack of windows in my chamber, I had woken unsure if it was still night or midday. A meal had been left for me, but cold meat and bread were hardly much of a clue. It had been placed outside my door this time and I wondered if Odo had reported Pipkin to his master, and he’d been ordered not to speak to me again.

  ‘The abbot has gone,’ Gisa said. ‘But you shouldn’t be here – not even Odo comes in – and if you were seen by one of the servants, they’ll tell Sylvain. He might even be watching the tower himself. He sees everything.’

  She pointed up to a silver ball that hung over the trapdoor above our heads. As if that thought reminded her she should be working, she pulled a strand of something from a box, squinting as she tried to wiggle the thread through the eye of a needle.

  ‘You’d do better with a longer thread,’ I told her. ‘And you want to try wetting that with your tongue.’ I’d been forced to repair the stitching of a book a few times, not to mention my own holed hose, and that always worked for me.

  ‘It isn’t thread,’ she said. ‘It’s some kind of hair. Father Arthmael gave it to me. I think it’s intended as an amulet.’

  Curiously, I peered more closely. Didn’t look like any sheep I’d seen. Horse’s mane? It was too short and curly for that. I prodded the mat of coarse hairs. I snatched my hand back. The hair felt familiar and it certainly looked it. A slow, hot blush spread up over my face. In disbelief I watched Gisa innocently stretching the springy hair with her finge
rs, pulling it into place before tying it off. God’s arse, I’d just told her to lick it!

  Too mortified even to look her in the eye, I ran up the steps to the chamber above, hoping that the cold air rushing through the slit windows would cool my skin. A furnace was burning in the chamber, which didn’t help, but I was far too embarrassed to face her yet. What was Sylvain up to? I’d told him the townsfolk were muttering sorcery. I hadn’t actually believed it, but now I wondered if was true after all.

  Gisa was whispering agitatedly below me, urging me to come down and to leave the tower at once. But my embarrassment had turned to fury. How dare he steal my hair, that hair, while I slept and use it for a charm or whatever the girl was making? I would not go down. I would stay right there and find out exactly what use Sylvain intended to make of my body parts. I had a right to know.

  It occurred to me that witches and sorcerers used their victim’s hair to cast a spell on them, putting it in jars with urine and pins then boiling it until the victim was seized with violent cramps and searing pains. There were certainly enough glass flasks lying around to keep a whole coven of witches occupied in mischief for a year. I felt a sudden stabbing pain in my leg. It was a very sharp needle that Gisa was threading with my hair.

  But did she know what she was sewing? I’d believed her to be an innocent, forced against her will to work for Sylvain. But suppose she was his apprentice in the dark arts, or even the sorceress herself. After all, he’d been dragged out of the tower half dead, while she had sauntered out after him unscathed. She might have enchanted him. It might have been her who’d shaved my hair and she was down there now, stitching a spell with it to kill me. No wonder she was so eager to have me leave the tower.

  This time it was me who shrieked at the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

  Gisa thrust her head through the trapdoor, beckoning urgently. ‘Quickly, Laurent, the master is coming across the grass. Go down. Hide at the bottom behind the stacks of wood till he’s come upstairs, then you can slip out of the door. Hurry. If you are caught . . .’

  The fear in her voice was contagious. Any defiance I’d felt instantly evaporated. I bounded down the flights of stairs and I’d only just reached the bottom when I saw the iron ring begin to turn in the door. I vaulted over the barrels and threw myself to the floor behind them. The door opened and I heard the slow, measured steps creaking up the staircase. I’d no idea if Sylvain could see behind the barrels as he ascended, but I prayed he wouldn’t look down. It was only as I heard his footfalls on the boards in the chamber above that I permitted myself to draw breath, and became aware that my face was pressed against a sack of fresh, steaming dung.

  The summons to dine with Sylvain came that night. It was the very last thing I wanted to do. In fact, I’d spent the hours since I’d fled the tower wondering how best to make my excuses and go. With Odo guarding the gate, there wasn’t much chance that I could slip out with Gisa. There was nothing for it. I’d have to tell Sylvain that I hadn’t thought of a story, couldn’t begin to think of one, so I’d trouble him no further and take my leave. If I admitted I couldn’t do the work he couldn’t force me to stay, could he? No purse, however fat, was worth getting mixed up in whatever Sylvain and the girl were plotting.

  When I entered the hall that night, Sylvain was already seated in a great chair set on the raised dais. Before him a table was spread with a crisp white linen cloth and set with silver and pewter vessels. I’d expected to see some sign of illness in him, since only the day before he’d been dragged unconscious from the tower, but if anything he looked fitter than he had on the day I’d arrived and there was a wild energy in his eyes, as if something had greatly excited him.

  Below the dais, logs blazed in the round hearth at the centre of the floor, and beyond that, running down the middle of the hall was the long table used for guests and servants, but that was bare. Even the dish of rotting fruit had at last been removed, but no cloth, bread or dishes had been laid in its stead. Clearly, the servants would not be eating with us.

  The baron gestured at a chair placed to his right on the dais. On the very rare occasions I’d eaten in Philippe’s hall I’d been languishing at the very bottom of the lower table, so far from the count and Amée that I could barely distinguish father from daughter. Here, I was seated as an honoured guest. Although, in truth, since I was the only guest, he could hardly have banished me to the other end of the hall.

  Pipkin and Odo, between them, carried in the dishes and served the wine. They were assisted by a gangling, slack-jawed youth who shuffled behind them to collect the empty platters and gravy-sodden bread trenchers. He gazed curiously at me, but when I attempted to smile he looked alarmed and swiftly dropped his gaze. It appeared he couldn’t speak, or had been instructed not to, for he made signs to Odo and Pipkin, such as monks use in their periods of silence when they wish to ask for salt or ale.

  I’d expected Sylvain to ask me how the story was coming on, and that was going to be my cue to tell him I was leaving. But instead he spoke only of the dishes that were spread before us, asking my opinion, as if I was in the habit of employing cooks. Was there enough saffron in the partridge in councy? Did I think the dish of songbirds sweet enough? I could see that Pipkin had his large bat-like ears pricked for my answer, so I praised fulsomely every dish as perfect, magnificent, never tasted better.

  When the last dishes had been cleared, and we had washed our hands in the rose-scented water in the laver, the servants finally withdrew. Sylvain’s manner changed the instant the door closed behind them. He leaned towards me, his expression darkening.

  ‘So, you entered my tower uninvited.’ He held up a swift hand. ‘No, don’t trouble to deny it. And, no, it was not the girl who told me this time. She doubtless thought she was protecting you, as girls often do when they develop what they imagine is fondness for a young man. You look surprised, but don’t flatter yourself. She’s had little attention from men thus far in her life, so if a cross-eyed hunchback had given her flowers she would mistake her gratitude for affection.’

  Had she told him about the cowslips? She plainly acted as his spy. One thing I was certain about: if she had a fondness for anyone, it certainly wasn’t me.

  ‘But, Master Laurent, since you are so curious about what I do here, tonight you will join me in my work and I will show you. I think you will find it most instructive.’ His tone was cold enough to freeze the flames in his furnace.

  I won’t deny that I’m possessed of more curiosity than most men. Even as a child, I’d stick my head down badgers’ dens or over privy walls, desperate to know what was down there or behind that or being whispered in dark corners, but for the first time in my life, I had not the slightest desire to find out what work he was engaged in, much less join him in it. That was one secret I was in no hurry to uncover.

  I yawned. ‘Most kind of you to invite me, my lord, but I’m so weary and stuffed with good food, I’d fall asleep before I’d begun. I’ve still not recovered my strength from the accident.’

  ‘On the contrary, it would appear, from the way you so speedily descended those stairs in my tower, you have recovered most admirably. And I assure you that even if you are feeling drowsy now, what you are about to witness will banish sleep entirely from your mind.’

  That was exactly what I was afraid of.

  He strode to the door in the panelling that led to the garden. I thought he was making for the tower. If I followed him out into the dark I could slip away and hide. Maybe find a way to scramble over that wall. But Sylvain did not open the door. Before I fully realised what he was doing, he had locked it.

  ‘We don’t want the servants bursting in at the wrong moment, do we?’

  We did – God’s bones, we did! Wrong moment, right moment, I wasn’t fussy, just so long as they didn’t leave me alone with him.

  I found myself edging away, but he gestured to the long table at the opposite end of the hall from the dais.

  ‘Take that end and hel
p me to drag it aside.’

  It was every bit as heavy as it looked, but we scraped it over the yellow and brown tiled floor, then dragged the benches aside too. It was only once the table and benches had been moved that I saw they hid tiles of a different pattern in the floor. These tiles formed a black and white twin spiral, broad on the outer edge and narrowing in like the coils of a snail’s shell towards the centre.

  Sylvain crouched on the floor a little way from the spiral, muttering away to himself. Using red powder from a pot and a long white swan’s feather, he drew three concentric circles and inside them a five-pointed star, its points touching the inner circle.

  He lifted one of the bird cages from its hook on the beam. I dimly recalled seeing gaudily coloured songbirds in those cages on the afternoon I’d first entered the hall, but now they were empty. Placing the cage on the floor over the very heart of the spiral, he slid something out from the breast of his robe. It was the bag Gisa had been sewing with my intimate hair. I was sorely tempted to demand he hand it over. But suppose he stabbed the thing before I could reach it, like a witch’s poppet, and the wound appeared on my body? Something told me now was not a good time to challenge him. He laid the bag inside the cage and placed on top a gold ring, surmounted by a square stone of yellow amber. Then he locked the cage door.

  Finally, he set a clay pot on the tiles in front of it. He touched the burning wick of a candle to the pot and a mass of flames leaped up. As the flames died away, a dense, bitter-smelling smoke billowed out. It was as well the roof was so high else we would have been suffocated.

  Rubbing his hands clean, Sylvain gave a grunt of satisfaction and moved into the centre of the pentacle he’d drawn on the floor. ‘Come, Master Laurent, step in here, but be careful not to disturb the lines I’ve drawn.’