The Raven's Head

by Karen Maitland

  Felix stares frantically around him for some hiding place, but before he can move, his gaze is arrested by something else on the roof of the tower. Two figures are silhouetted by the flames, a man in long billowing robes and another, much smaller. Even though they are at some distance, Felix’s young eyes are sharp. He cannot see the boy’s features, nor does he recognise the strange red costume, but he has seen his friend day and night these past months. He can recognise his shape, his movement, his stance. That is Regulus up there. Felix is certain of it.

  Even as he watches, two more figures smash their way up through the floor of the tower, like demons rising from Hell. The white-robed Father Arthmael and Father Madron stand side by side in the light cast by the twisting flames. The man in black robes grabs Regulus, dragging him away from the two canons, pulling him towards the very edge of the battlements as if he means to hurl him from the top of the tower.

  Felix does not hesitate, does not think, does not plan. He just runs, runs as if the devil himself is roaring at his back.

  Chapter 57

  Et moriendo docebo – I will teach you how to die.

  I don’t know which is worse, to be left in darkness so that you can’t see the horror that’s crawling towards you, or to be left with just enough light to see death edging ever closer as you lie, trussed up, awaiting it. But even if we hadn’t been able to see death coming, we would have smelt the wet, decayed reek of it and heard it scuttling towards us on spiders’ legs. Worse still were the whispers and shrieks of the phantasms echoing inside those walls. For I had little doubt that Gisa was right: the living could not have scaled that turret – only the dead could climb those stones.

  The stench of decay was by then so strong it blistered my nostrils, as if the mould was already eating its way inside me, its slimy black threads burrowing into my heart, liver and brain. I could smell dead flesh. Was it my own? My shoes were encased in thick cushions of mould. It was creeping up my hose. I couldn’t feel my feet any more. Had they already rotted away?

  I turned my head to look at the girl. Her jaw was clenched, as if she was trying to bite back a scream. Her breath was coming in sharp snorts. She was staring up at the spiders as they circled above us, weaving their webs, which turned black and glistening even as they were spun. The webs were spreading wider and wider above us, running into one another, as if we were giant flies to be wrapped. I could feel Gisa shrinking down on the pallet as if she was trying to push her way through the bottom of it.

  ‘Something’s touching me!’ she burst out. ‘It’s moving. I can feel it. My neck! What is it? What’s on my neck?’

  I craned my head to look at her. A tendril of black mould had slithered up over the side of the bed and was twining itself about her throat.

  ‘Worm, just an ordinary worm,’ I lied.

  Even if she hated the creatures, it was better she believe that than know the truth.

  ‘I . . . I can’t breathe. It’s choking me.’ Her breath was coming in dry sobs now.

  I wriggled my shoulder, trying to reach her neck and rub it off, but though I strained against the ropes until I thought I would sever my own hands, I couldn’t reach her.

  A stone crashed to the floor, narrowly missing the bed. I stared up to where it had fallen, expecting to see a glimpse of sky, but instead small clods of earth trickled down as if we were buried deep underground.

  ‘God’s arse! Where are we?’ I yelled. ‘It’s a turret! There can’t be anything above us. I know there can’t.’

  There was another crash and more stones fell, handfuls of earth pattering down behind them. Was that a jaw bone? I could see it lying yellow in the rubble.

  ‘We have to get out. We’ll be buried alive.’

  Something was crawling over my forehead, wet and slimy, yet my skin was stinging beneath it, as if it was slowly being peeled back from my bones. It was edging down my face towards my eye. It was a worm. I tried to convince myself it had to be a worm. Yet I knew from the horrified expression on Gisa’s face that it was not. Cringing, I screwed my eyes shut. I turned my face as far as I could into my shoulder, nearly snapping my neck in the effort to scrub the mould away. There was another rumble and crash. Gisa shrieked, or maybe it was me.

  ‘Here, hold still,’ a voice said.

  Gingerly, I opened one eye. A dark figure was standing beside the bed, leaning over us. For a moment I thought the mould had gathered itself into the terrible aspect of a man, until I saw the whites of two eyes and the flash of steel in the candlelight.

  I felt a blade sawing at the rope across my chest.

  ‘Lie still, you codwit. Got to get you out afore Odo comes back, or this bloody tower falls in on us.’

  It was only when I heard his voice that I recognised Pipkin.

  ‘What happened to your face?’ I said, staring up at the blackened skin. God’s bones, had the mould infected him?

  The rope gave way and Pipkin chuckled, jerking me up into a sitting position, so that he could reach the rope that tied my arms. ‘Blacked it, didn’t I? Learned that trick long ago. Only way to sneak in and out of this place of a night time without Odo sticking his great beak in. There was one time—’

  He broke off as another piece of masonry crashed behind him and, with a frightened glance at the ceiling, he hastily resumed sawing at the rope binding my arms. With enormous relief, I felt my bonds burst open.

  ‘Leave me. Untie the girl – you must get her out!’

  I surprised even myself. I hadn’t realised until that moment how badly I wanted her to live.

  ‘You make haste to free your feet, then,’ Pipkin urged, glancing nervously up at the roof again. ‘That’ll not hold long.’

  Frantically, I flexed my numb fingers, trying to get enough feeling back into them to tackle the knots. Desperate though I was to escape the crumbling chamber, I hesitated, staring down at my mould-encrusted shoes, fearing to touch them. I couldn’t move my feet. Were they just numb like my hands or had they been eaten away? Were my shoes nothing more than slime-filled bags?

  Pipkin dragged Gisa off the bed moments before another lump of stone crashed down, straight onto the place where her head had been. I threw myself off the bed. Gisa’s legs were buckling beneath her, as if she couldn’t feel her feet either. Pipkin grabbed her waist and with his other hand hauled her arm across his neck, heaving her upright until she dangled beside him. He twisted his head to look at me.

  ‘Shift your fecking arse,’ he roared, tossing the knife down to where I lay on the floor. ‘Cut yourself free, else you’ll be wearing that roof on your pate.’

  He staggered towards the door, hauling Gisa with him as she made feeble kicking motions with her legs in a futile attempt to walk.

  I grabbed the knife and hacked at the rope, thanking every saint in Paradise that Pipkin was a cook and kept his knives sharp. As the rope snapped, there was another rumble, and stone, earth and bones crashed onto the floor, inches from my face. For a moment, I found myself staring straight into the empty eye-sockets of an ancient skull. More earth rained down and the candle was snuffed out.

  I said I wondered if it was worse to face death in the dark or by candlelight. Now I knew that the dark is worse, much worse. I couldn’t stand. If my feet still existed, they certainly wouldn’t bear me up. I crawled forward over the rubble, choking in the cloud of dust, my lungs burning from the mould. My fingers squelched through heaps of soft, sticky worms, and my skin crawled as if a thousand insects were running across it. I wanted to tear at my body, slap them away, but I dared not stop. All around me I could hear stones falling, but I couldn’t see a damn thing. Nothing. Not even the smallest glimmer to tell me if I was crawling towards the door or straight into a wall. The darkness was so complete I thought for one terrifying moment the mould had reached my eyes and eaten them away.

  ‘Pipkin! Gisa!’ I yelled, between coughs. I shrieked as a falling lump of stone bounced painfully off my shoulder. I jerked away and immediately banged my other shoulde
r into something hard.

  ‘Pipkin!’ I shrieked again. ‘In God’s mercy tell me where you are. I can’t see!’

  ‘’Ere, over ’ere,’ he called. ‘Lass is on her way down. But you’d best hurry.’

  He kept calling to me as I crawled towards the sound and a hand reached down and grasped my upper arm, trying to drag me to my feet.

  ‘Stand up,’ he urged. ‘You’ll break your neck if you try to crawl down those stairs.’

  There was a great rumbling sound behind me as he hauled me upright. The violent pains stabbing through my feet at least reassured me I still had a pair. I staggered to the top of the staircase, following Pipkin, who was already lumbering down. I was vaguely aware of a red glow coming from somewhere, but thought little of it, save that at least I could dimly make out the top step.

  But as the stairs twisted away, I found myself back in darkness again, pressing my sore shoulder and arm against the rough wall and trying to feel for the next uneven step. But I dared not pick my way too carefully. The sounds of falling stone reverberated through the turret, driving me on until I finally tumbled out of the door and onto the flags outside.

  I crouched there on all fours, gulping the cool fresh air. But Pipkin did not let me rest there for long. Once again he was dragging at my arm. ‘Come away – if the tower falls . . .’

  I scrambled to my feet and stumbled forward across the grass until I tripped and lay face down, panting and moaning.

  ‘Look!’ It was Gisa’s voice.

  I raised my head. She was sitting on the grass a few yards ahead of me, evidently trying to regain her breath, too. She was safe, thank God, she was safe! But she was trying to scramble to her feet, pointing towards Sylvain’s tower.

  A great red glow spread over the sky above it. Some kind of beacon had been lit on top of the tower and I could see figures moving about on the roof. As if plugs of wax had suddenly been pulled from my ears, an explosion of sound hit them. Screams and shouts from the figures on the tower mingled with the roar and crackle of flames.

  A great rumble, like a violent thunderclap, made us jerk round. The turret, in which minutes before we’d lain imprisoned, had finally collapsed in on itself, sending up a cloud of dust that glowed as red as the mouth of Hell in the light of its twin. The ruins stood jagged as a broken tooth, the staircase still rising into the dark sky, but leading nowhere, save to death.

  Chapter 58

  Whoever takes the blood of the lion and then does him justice by burning to ashes, with heat and violence, the body of his father . . . he will obtain a remedy healing all sickness.

  By the time Felix barges through the door at the bottom of the tower he is trembling with a fury that has driven out all fear. He feels again every punishment he has ever received at the canons’ hands, as if he is covered with a hundred stinging welts. And it’s not just the beatings that make him smart, but the humiliation, the way they stare at his naked body with the slack-mouthed expression that he does not fully comprehend. He shudders with shame. But, above all, it’s the lies that anger him most, treating him as if he is stupid. Do they really think he believes their stories? Do they laugh together at how gullible he is, how easily fooled? Well, he isn’t. He never has been.

  He races up those two flights of stairs, scrambles up the ladder like a squirrel. Through the open, splintered trapdoor above he can see a little square of night sky. He has almost reached the roof. He edges cautiously up the last rungs, feeling the wind tugging the top of his hair as he peers over the rim. He still hasn’t the slightest idea of what he is going to do, except that he wants so badly to hurt them that he can almost feel his fist smashing into their faces.

  None of the men notice the top of Felix’s head in the shadows. On the far side of the roof, a man clad in billowing black robes holds Regulus in front of him. One hand grips the boy’s shoulder, the other arm is locked tight about his throat. Regulus, his eyes bulging, is clawing desperately at the arm that is choking him, but he might as well try to bend an iron bar. Father Arthmael stands facing them, with Father Madron close behind, their white robes flapping in the wind. The golden sickle is once more in Father Arthmael’s hand and he is inching ever closer to Sylvain and the boy, while behind them the flames and smoke from the beacon twist up into the dark sky.

  ‘Sylvain,’ Father Arthmael is saying, ‘do you want your daughter to live again? Then the death must be yours. You are the father, the father who is slain. Let the boy do his work. It will be over in a moment. Unlike him, you will be dead before the flames touch you. Your corpse will drag his living body into the flames. Isolda will live. Your souls will be reunited in God.’

  Sylvain is shuffling backwards. His legs touch the low parapet. He can go no further.

  ‘It is you whom the boy must kill, Arthmael. The old king, the white king. Don’t you have faith in your Saviour that He will raise you to life again? Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. I expect the resurrection of the dead. Isn’t that what you recite daily? Isn’t that what you teach those grieving widows and bereft parents? Your husband, your daughter will live again. But you don’t really believe that. You see nothing beyond the grave, so you are determined never to enter it. You want eternal life for yourself now, here in the flesh. You want to remain just as you are now, while all around you wither and die. Ruling an abbey is not enough. You crave the power that will come only when you can outlive them all.’

  ‘How dare you accuse such a holy man of base ambition?’ Father Madron yells. ‘His only desire—’

  ‘The raven has returned!’ Sylvain holds Regulus out in front of himself, brandishing the boy as if he is a trophy of war. Regulus squeals in fear, but he, too, is ignored. ‘The raven’s head came to me, to my hand. It knows I am the true inheritor of the mysteries.’

  Father Arthmael reels back. ‘You . . . have the raven? I don’t believe you. Count Philippe has—’

  ‘Had,’ Sylvain corrects. There is no disguising the satisfaction in his tone. ‘Philippe believed the bird would do his bidding, but the raven serves only the true master. It kept the youth alive and brought him to me, the perfect partner for the marriage of death.’

  ‘The raven would never serve the man who betrayed the Great Master,’ Arthmael says savagely. ‘I know it was you who betrayed him to King Philip of France for that is where your allegiance has always lain. Our master died in agony at the hands of the torturers because he would not reveal the secrets of our art. How much did Philip Augustus pay you for your treachery, or was it only the Great Master’s book you coveted?’

  ‘The Great Master was the traitor, not I,’ Sylvain says. ‘He betrayed us. He became obsessed with transforming his soul, purifying it for God. In the end he was spending more time in the chapel on his knees than in his laboratorium. And that was your doing, Arthmael. You poisoned his reasoning.’

  The abbot’s hand strays to the wooden cross he wears round his neck. ‘I convinced him that God and God alone can open our eyes to the true meaning of the symbols and mysteries, if we ask Him.’

  Sylvain gives a mirthless laugh. ‘Tell me, Arthmael, do you honestly think that your God will hear you over the screams of all those children who died at your hands?’

  The boy standing unseen in the shadow of the trapdoor feels a strange mixture of terror and elation. So Father Arthmael did kill Mighel, Peter, too. He wants to shout out – I told you! But his glee at being right is instantly drowned beneath a flood of fear.

  Father Arthmael lifts his stubbled chin as if challenging any to dare to condemn him. ‘He blesses me for sending those boys straight to the arms of the Holy Virgin. Those children in Heaven pray for me in gratitude that I spared them the horrors of this world. Half those boys would have grown up to end their days on the gallows and spend eternity in the fires of Hell, if I hadn’t saved them. And you . . . you didn’t hesitate to make use of them too. As soon as you believed you could raise your daughter from the dead, you came to me begging for a share of their water and t
heir blood. The book was useless to you without those. But what you fail to understand is that if you raise Isolda you will do no more than raise a revenant, the walking dead. Her body will be saved, but her soul destroyed for ever. You must surrender your body, Sylvain, sacrifice yourself, and I swear on the Blood of Christ, I will use the stone to send both your souls to the eternal flame.’

  Sylvain gives a slow, mirthless smile. ‘Sacrifice – you Christians are so devoted to that word.’ He fixes his gaze on Father Madron. ‘You said that Father Arthmael was a holy man. I’ve heard you call him a saint. Very well, then. Take the sickle, give it to the boy, and let Father Arthmael prove to you and all those he leads that he has faith enough to die, as Christ and all His saints have done.’

  Arthmael does not take his gaze from Sylvain, but with his free hand he gropes behind him until he has caught hold of his young canon’s voluminous sleeve, dragging him forward.

  ‘Seize the boy, Father Madron! You are sworn in obedience to me.’

  Felix holds his breath as the young priest takes a pace forward, but before he can touch Regulus, Sylvain shifts his arm from the boy’s throat to his waist. He swings him out over the parapet, so that the child is dangling high above the flagstones far below.

  Regulus screams, arching rigid over the sickening drop. Felix has no hope of grabbing him. If he launches himself at Sylvain, he will let Regulus fall. Felix stares around, looking for something, anything, he can use to distract the men. He ducks back down into the chamber below, and seizes the first thing he can find, a leather-bound book, gilded with a great golden sun. It looks valuable. If he threatens to throw it on the beacon fire, maybe . . . maybe they will give him Regulus to save the book.