The Devil's Cup

by Alys Clare

  Ninian’s mother had been one of the Forest People, one of their Great Ones. The forest, it seemed, didn’t forget.

  Fighting alongside Ninian were Helewise’s elder son Dominic and his boy, Hugo; the elder son, Ralf, was fully involved in a fight of his own, being part of the garrison at Dover. Geoffroi, Josse’s son by Joanna, was with Ninian. Sturdy and well muscled at seventeen years old, Geoffroi strongly resembled his father and fought as bravely, and Ninian was glad to have him.

  Helewise’s younger son Leofgar, however, had taken the side of the rebel barons. It was a cause of distress to his mother; not, Josse thought, because she disapproved of his having taken the barons’ side – she was a woman who believed fiercely in encouraging her children to work matters out for themselves – but because Leofgar being with the rebels divided the family.

  In addition, Josse strongly suspected Helewise attributed Leofgar’s choice of sides to his wife’s influence. Rohaise was ambitious. Not content with the comfortable life of a rural lady that Leofgar had provided for her, she wanted to advance him – and herself – to a position of far greater influence. She wanted, Josse believed, to infiltrate the outer circles of court; even, perhaps, the inner ones. She appeared to think that hitching her star to King John’s glittering but exhausted train was no use, and therefore had pinned her hopes on the new regime.

  Sometimes Josse wondered how she could be so utterly certain there would be a new regime.

  Josse’s other abiding concern was his daughter, Meggie; more precisely, Meggie’s lover, Jehan Leferronier. The two of them had been intermittently together for five years now, and, with Meggie’s help, Jehan had rebuilt the ruined and long-deserted forge in the old charcoal burners’ camp on the outer fringe of the forest. The business had thrived, for, as Jehan pointed out to Abbess Caliste of Hawkenlye Abbey when he sought her permission for the forge, the Hawkenlye area had been in dire need of a blacksmith nearer than Tonbridge, to save everyone the trudge down the hill to the town and back again whenever a horse needed shoeing, a door needed new hinges or a plough coulter bent by a stone required straightening. The day’s work, indeed, was often too much for one pair of expert hands, and Jehan was instructing both Meggie and Geoffroi, when he could spare the time, in the mystical art of smithing. Geoffroi, with his great love of and sympathy with animals, was particularly useful with nervous horses. The constant, hard physicality of the work had completed Geoffroi’s transformation from boy to man; now he was taller than Josse, and his upper body was enormously strong.

  Meggie and Jehan had also constructed a modest dwelling within the clearing. It was small, consisting of little more than a main room with a central hearth and, through an arched opening in the rear wall, a second, smaller room where they slept, but Jehan had made it solid and sound, and Meggie had made it comfortable and homely.

  For all that, it seemed to Josse – who would never dream of being so intrusive as to enquire – that Meggie and Jehan didn’t spend all that much time there together. Jehan was a very hard worker and he was usually to be found just where he should be: in his forge, busy on some task, and often with a small queue of people waiting for him to finish so that he could get on with whatever job they had for him. It was true that he absented himself from time to time – that was something else Josse didn’t ask about – but each time he made sure to put the word about that he wouldn’t be available for the next week, or fortnight – once it was a month – to save people the time and effort of coming out to the forge only to discover he wasn’t there.

  And when Jehan was at home, very often Meggie wasn’t.

  Josse didn’t even need to ask where she went, for he knew. She would be at the hut deep in the forest; the precious little dwelling where she had been born, where her mother Joanna had lived and, Josse now understood, had left quite a lot of her essence. With Joanna herself long gone from the world, this was a comfort to those who had loved her. Very few people knew about the hut, and even fewer could locate it. Even Josse, who had been there on countless occasions, sometimes couldn’t find it. He told himself it was mere fanciful whimsy to think that the little hut had the ability to hide itself when it – or its occupant – didn’t want to be found, but, in truth, that was how it felt.

  All things considered, Josse found that he was taking even more pleasure than he had anticipated in the presence of the latest addition to his household: his brother Yves. He had arrived unexpectedly some six months ago and had said straight away, and with typical frankness, that he would like to stay. His wife was dead and he missed her; the wide hall and walled courtyard of Acquin weren’t the same without her, and he didn’t want to remain there. His son Luke was now master of the family estates, and, as Yves ruefully observed, would do a much better job without his father watching and criticizing.

  ‘I’ll wager you didn’t do much of that,’ Josse had remarked.

  Yves had shot him a slightly guilty look. ‘I did enough,’ he’d replied shortly.

  Sometimes, as he and his brother rode out together or sat in companionable silence beside the fire at the end of the day, Josse thought back over their long lives. Yves was the second eldest after Josse and only a year and a half separated them, so they had been each other’s natural allies as, one by one, three more little brothers arrived. They had always got on well, and Josse often reflected that they’d have sought each other out as friends even if they hadn’t already been linked by blood. Like all young men of their station in life, they’d been separated as they grew older, and their paths had taken divergent courses. Yet always, sooner or later, one would arrive at the other’s home, and the easy affection that masked a true and deep love would be re-established.

  The prospect of sharing his home with his favourite brother for the foreseeable future – well, until one or other of them died, probably – filled Josse with quiet joy.

  On a bright morning around the time of the autumn equinox, Josse sat in his comfortable old chair before the hearth, slowly turning over in his mind the many matters that were of current concern. Sometimes he thought to himself that going through the long list of all the people who were precious to him, pausing for a moment to bring each one to mind, reflect on what they were doing, think about what was happening in their lives and wish them well in their endeavours and, finally, where appropriate – and it almost always was – to send them his love, was a little like telling the beads on his rosary. He hoped this concept wasn’t blasphemous – he must remember to ask his priest – but he didn’t see how it could be. He was substituting loving thoughts for prayers, of course, but, in his own view, surely loving thoughts were what God would wish?

  The House in the Woods was quiet. It was an hour before noon, and the household were all about their duties. Josse was listening out for voices, for Yves and Geoffroi would be back soon, having set out some time ago with another couple of baskets of provisions for Helewise in the Sanctuary. Placed as it was close to the road that circled the Great Forest, it had gained a reputation as somewhere that the desperate would always find help. Helewise and her team of helpers offered simple but nourishing food, medical advice, a shoulder to cry on and, in Helewise’s case, someone to pray with. In these hard and dangerous times, the demand never seemed to grow less.

  Josse closed his eyes and slipped into a brief doze.

  The somnolent peace was broken by the sound of tentative footsteps on the flagstones. Jerked into wakefulness, Josse sat up straight, opened his eyes widely and took on the appearance of a man who hadn’t really been asleep but merely closing his eyes in thought.

  He focused on the face peering round the half-open door. ‘Come in, come in!’ he cried. ‘It’s Brother Watt, isn’t it?’

  A sturdy young lay brother edged his way into the hall. ‘I went round the back,’ he said apologetically, bending double in a deep bow, ‘but it seems nobody’s there, or else they’re all so busy that they didn’t hear me knock and call out.’

  Josse waved a hand. ‘Don’t
worry, you’re as welcome as anyone to come in by the main door!’ he exclaimed. ‘What can I do for you?’ Struck by a sudden alarming thought, he added swiftly, ‘Is all well at Hawkenlye Abbey?’

  Straightening up, Brother Watt made a face. ‘Aye, it is. At least, well as it can be, sir, in these times of peril and uncertainty, and the nuns and the brothers are working themselves as hard as ever. But it’s not why I’ve called,’ he said sternly, straightening his shoulders as if abruptly reminding himself that he was here on an important mission.

  Suppressing a smile, Josse said, ‘You’d better tell me why you have done, then.’

  Brother Watt reached inside his black robe and drew out an object, partly concealed by his large hand. ‘I was to give you this, Sir Josse,’ he said, holding it up. ‘It was brought to the abbey, with instructions to make absolutely sure it reached you as soon as possible.’ He grinned. ‘Seems the person who sent it has forgotten where you live!’

  And that’s the way I like it, and, indeed, have striven to bring about, Josse thought. The House in the Woods was secluded, in its secretive setting deep within the Great Wealden Forest, and few who did not live there knew its location. Sometimes, when he thought about it, Josse remembered Joanna’s hut, and how she had seemed to be able to conceal it even from his eyes if she’d wanted to; the thought still had the power to wound, even all these years later. He did wonder, though, if somehow Joanna was exerting her power and similarly keeping the House in the Woods hidden from unfriendly eyes.

  But he told himself he was being fanciful.

  ‘Let me see, then,’ he said, smiling at Brother Watt. Encouraged, Watt came across the wide flagged floor of the hall in a respectful semi-crouch, and now Josse saw that what he bore in his hand – with the sort of care that suggested it was both very fragile and highly valuable – was a rolled document of vellum. ‘Sir, this was delivered to the abbey and taken straight to Abbess Caliste, and she sent for me immediately and told me to bring it with all speed to you.’ He bowed so deeply that his forehead all but touched his knees, at the same time holding the rolled parchment up aloft. It was an awkward pose, and Josse instantly took pity on him.

  ‘Stand up, Brother Watt, for heaven’s sake,’ he said cheerfully, ‘you’ll put your back out crouching like that! And there’s no need for such servitude – it’s me, Josse, and you know perfectly well I don’t stand on ceremony and I certainly don’t bite!’

  Slowly and reluctantly, Watt straightened up.

  Josse waited, but nothing happened. ‘Hadn’t you better give me whatever it is you’ve brought?’ he prompted gently.

  Watt gave a great start, blushed, and the hand holding the document shot out. Josse held out his own hand to receive it, and Watt thrust it into his open palm and instantly stepped back, as if the document had burned him and he couldn’t wait to get away from it.

  His curiosity thoroughly aroused, Josse looked at what lay in his hands. It was a large piece of very heavy, expensive vellum, of the finest quality and with a soft sheen. It was pale creamy-yellow in colour, and Josse’s name and the destination – Hawkenlye Abbey – had been inscribed in rich, dark ink in a beautiful hand, flowing and even.

  Josse turned it over to inspect the seal. This was in vivid scarlet wax, very large and impressive, and it was a seal that Josse instantly recognized. It depicted a crowned man sitting on a throne, sword in his right hand, orb and sceptre in his left.

  Then he understood Brother Watt’s strange behaviour, particularly the sudden onset of obsequious bowing and the very obvious fear; and it had had little, if anything, to do with Josse.

  The document bore the royal seal.

  It had been sent by King John.

  Sensing that this was something he ought to read alone, without any witness, Josse sent Brother Watt off to the kitchen in the hope that Tilly had returned and would find him something to eat and drink before he rode back to the abbey. Then, turning his chair so that nobody would be able to stand behind him and read over his shoulder, he broke the seal and unrolled the parchment.

  The bulk of the contents was in the same hand as that which had written Josse’s name on the outside. It was a typical cleric’s hand, and Josse imagined it had been written at the dictation of one of the King’s senior advisors. It was phrased in the careful, complicated language of officialdom, and consequently it took Josse a while to extract the meaning.

  The missive began with a journey into the past.

  In a lengthy paragraph, it set out Josse’s life from early boyhood. It reminded him that he had been a page and then a squire in the court of Henry II; that once he had fought alongside the King’s sons, Henry the Young King and Richard. It was just a skirmish, Josse thought, momentarily putting down the document and smiling happily into the distance as the memory came galloping back. He and some of the other squires had been out with the two princes when they’d encountered a scouting party of King Henry’s. Since the princes were at the time furiously angry with their father (when were they not? Josse reflected with a smile), they’d attacked the scouts, disarmed and unhorsed several of them, and then invited the youngsters to celebrate with far too much wine. The result had been Josse’s introduction to what happened on the rueful, nauseous, shaking, shivering, painful day after a heavy drinking bout …

  He made himself leave the past and return to the parchment.

  The narrative went on to remind Josse of his service to three kings: Henry, Richard and John. In flowery prose that Josse knew was designed to flatter, it set out what an invaluable aid he had always been; how the monarchs, each in their turn, had been pleased and reassured whenever they thought, as they so regularly and frequently did, of the undoubted and eternal loyalty of Our faithful King’s Man down in the South-West.

  South-East, Josse corrected silently. He grinned. So much for thinking so regularly and frequently of me; they can’t even remember where I live.

  He skipped a few lines and went on to the final paragraph. Now the flattery and the roundabout, courtly, wordy tone had gone, for the narrative had turned to matters of immediate importance and not inconsiderable peril. Josse was all but certain he heard his monarch’s own voice – impatient, boastful, bombastic and proud – behind the words. The message was quite clear: Prince Louis’s advance had been stopped, and he was slowly but steadily being beaten back by the stalwart English loyal to the Crown. The siege of Dover had proved a total failure, Louis’s troops were disheartened and deserting him in droves, barons who had previously supported the French prince had seen the error of their ways and were flocking back to fight shoulder to shoulder with their rightful King. Now was the time, the missive concluded, for loyal men to stand up and be counted; now was the time for every true knight to remember his vow of fealty and show his love, his loyalty and his courage. There followed a brief word on the King’s present whereabouts and his intentions for the immediate future.

  It was a summons.

  Slowly Josse lowered the parchment to his lap. Only then, as one end curled up into its roll, did he notice that there was another paragraph. This one was brief, written with the sort of untidiness that suggested the writer had been in a hurry. The monks who taught him in his youth, Josse reflected with a smile, would have been horrified at the scrawl, which in addition was decorated with several blots, as if the writer had impatiently shaken the quill to make the ink flow.

  I am surrounded by indecisive men and turncoats, it said. It is a time for old friends to come to my aid. I want you beside me, Josse d’Acquin. For the sake of the love you bore my father, my brother and, I may hope to say, me, come to me.

  The signature, large and bold, sprawled right across the corner of the document. And there was something else: beneath the black letters something else had been written, but then, apparently changing his mind, the writer had impatiently and violently crossed it out, the ink so thick and the lines inscribed so forcefully that the vellum had been scarred. But, holding the document up to the light, Josse
thought he could make out the words: I am so tired.

  Time passed: Josse could not have said how long. He was musing on the power of words; awed at how just four of them could force their way deep inside him, straight to his heart. His mind was overflowing with vivid, alarming, colourful, sometimes very funny memories, for he had known John in boyhood and the lad had never been one to sit quietly in a corner …

  He heard the sound of a soft cough, the sort designed not to clear the throat but to alert attention. Looking up, he saw Brother Watt in the doorway.

  ‘Did you wish to speak to me again?’ he asked. ‘Come closer, Watt, I have finished reading the document you brought.’

  Brother Watt came to stand before him. ‘Well, yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Fact is, I’ve been ordered to speak to your daughter. I mentioned it to Tilly and Gus out in the kitchen – she’s a fine cook, isn’t she, Tilly? – and they said they didn’t know where she was and I’d better ask you.’ He looked hopefully at Josse.

  ‘You could, Brother Watt, only she isn’t here at the moment,’ Josse replied. ‘Would you like me to pass on a message when she returns?’

  Brother Watt’s pleasant and friendly face had gone through several expressions as Josse spoke, and now he simply looked relieved, as if glad that the burden of the messenger’s responsibility had been passed on. ‘Aye, that I would, sir, and thank you. Abbess Caliste asks if she will come to the abbey as soon as she can,’ he said, closing his eyes as he concentrated on repeating the message verbatim, ‘because Sister Liese has a patient in the infirmary she’s very worried about. It’s a woman and she’s delirious, ranting about something very evil that’s a danger to someone.’ He opened his eyes, frowning. ‘Or something – oh, which was it?’ He looked aghast. ‘I can’t remember!’