The Song of the Nightingale

by Alys Clare

  He laughed. Then, anxiously, he said, ‘What of the lay brothers who will watch over you? Will they be—?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Father,’ she said, squeezing his arm. ‘There are two of them, both strong, brave young men, and even as we speak they are in the forest, foraging for dead wood to build their shelter. We really will be quite all right,’ she added in a whisper.

  He prayed, silently and intently, that she was right.

  Then, deliberately turning his thoughts away from his fears, he said, ‘Meggie, I have something here I’d like you to look at, if you are willing.’ He withdrew his arm from hers and reached inside his tunic, bringing out the parchment. He unrolled it and handed it to her.

  She studied it in silence for some time. Then she said, ‘Where did you get this?’

  He hesitated, then said, ‘It is a copy of the symbols that were scratched on to the chest of a dead man.’ Scratched did not really describe the manner in which the symbols had been etched, but any more accurate word would sound too brutal.

  She nodded. There was another period of silence – he sensed she was deep in thought – and finally she said, ‘This is, I think, what is called a bind rune. It’s a combination of three runes blended together, so that the meaning of all three merges together to make an ultimate message.’

  ‘Runes . . .?’ He was familiar with the word, but was not sure if his scant knowledge was enough.

  She smiled. ‘They are ancient symbols, Father, used in magic writing for spells and talismans. They can form charms for protection and defence – warding off evil – and, in addition, those who have studied them are able to use them as an aid to prediction. Or so it’s said,’ she added hastily.

  He smiled to himself. Did his beloved daughter still think he was unaware of her strange powers and her wide knowledge of the secret world she had shared with her mother? ‘Can you interpret what this symbol means?’ he asked.

  She frowned. ‘Yes, I think so . . .’ She hesitated, and he could tell that she was still thinking even as she spoke. ‘It’s – you have to sort of hold the three individual meanings in your mind and let them mix together, so that each one contributes to a bigger meaning . . .’ She fell silent again, her frown deepening, her lips moving as she muttered under her breath.

  Then, abruptly, she turned to him, her face shining with triumph. ‘I’ve got it!’ He returned her grin. ‘This man, was he a bad man? Had he done something wrong?’

  ‘Er – he might have done, aye.’

  She was nodding again. ‘He did. Or, at least, whoever carved this symbol in his chest believed he did, and he – or someone – killed the man because of what he’d done.’ Holding the parchment in one hand, she pointed with the forefinger of the other. ‘This rune is Haegl—’ she outlined the letter Josse had thought was H, two uprights with a connecting bar that sloped down from left to right – ‘and it means disruption, or hurting, bad damage. This one is Eoh—’ her finger drew over the right-hand upright of the H, which had a mark from the top end sloping down to the right and one going up from the bottom and to the left – ‘and it means prevention, or a weapon – maybe deflecting harm. Then finally this one is Tir—’ her finger moved to the left-hand upright, which terminated in two downward-pointing lines forming an arrow head – ‘and it stands for battle. Taken together, you have Tir-Eoh-Haegl, which has so many meanings and levels of meaning that I can’t begin to explain them all, but the overriding one is a battle to prevent damaging forces; against evil, if you like.’ Her eyes turned to him, wide with awe. ‘Father, this is a very powerful bind rune.’ He noticed that her hands holding the parchment were shaking. ‘Whoever cast it, whoever cut it into that man, he was telling the spirits that the man had been killed in order to exact vengeance.’

  FIVE

  In the isolated village high up in the Pyrenees that had become his home, Ninian had thrown himself so wholeheartedly into life with his new friends that at times he almost forgot he did not belong there. The winter was harsh, with snow so deep around the village that getting in or out was all but impossible. Food was scant, and apparently nobody was tempted to relieve their hunger by slaughtering a sheep and tucking in to a good meat meal. There wasn’t much to do, but there was lots of praying. Despite all this, the overall impression Ninian received was that everyone was happy and would not have exchanged their lot even for a king’s palace.

  The villagers lived in small cottages, huddled close together and sometimes interconnecting, and communal living was the norm. Kin or friendship groups selected one house, where everyone crammed in together, both during the working day and for the short hours of leisure. Weaving was the main occupation; men, women and the older children were busy all day, as long as the light lasted, at the small, simply-constructed looms which they made themselves. Ninian had studied the people as they worked and had been encouraged to learn the technique. His teacher, a jolly, round-cheeked girl of about fifteen called Corba, explained the method: ‘We have so little room that we have to weave the way they did in ancient times, using these frames that are propped against the wall, you see, because they do not take up so much floor space. The warp threads hang from this crossbar, and they’re kept taut by being tied to the loom weights. Then we weave from the top, moving to and fro across the width of the cloth, winding the finished cloth around the frame’s top beam and adding warp threads that we unwind from the weights, like this, so that a piece of cloth can be as long as you like.’

  It had both sounded and appeared simple when Corba did it. Ninian’s first attempt had his friends hooting with laughter, and he too could not suppress his grin at the sight of the wobbly, uneven length of fabric. Nevertheless, he kept it, announcing that he would wear it as a scarf, a constant reminder not to underrate the inherent difficulties of a task.

  When he had first arrived late the previous autumn, before the snows, Ninian had lived with Alazaïs de Saint Gilles, the woman he had been sent to find. Later he moved out – kind though she was, it was clear she preferred to be alone in her tiny house – and now he lived in a household of two young men and their elderly grandfather. The youths were among the group that Ninian was training; a task for which he was far better suited than weaving. Consequently, he was as busy as anyone else in the short hours of daylight, dedicated to his self-appointed task of passing on everything he knew about fighting. Considering that he had spent many years learning the skills you needed to become a knight, he knew quite a lot. His pupils had become his friends, and he had grown close to many of them.

  The men did not want to fight. They believed it was wrong to kill, and their ways were paths of peace. But what were they to do if others attacked? Simply lie down and die, the elders said, for that way we shall be reunited all the sooner with our true spiritual selves, from which we were torn away to this earthly existence.

  Some of the younger men felt the same; quite a lot more had started quietly turning up whenever Ninian began to instruct. For them, earthly life was still too sweet to wish to give it up.

  In those early months of 1211, everyone knew that the vicious, unrelenting crusade against the Cathars would not stop. But nobody fought in the winter; certainly not in the Pyrenees, anyway, for the snow was a more effective ban on hostilities than any truce made by kings or priests. In the village, the ice-bound months passed slowly but peacefully. The villagers tended their sheep, worked at their looms, said their prayers, met in the enfolding darkness after the day’s work to talk animatedly about their faith.

  With nothing else to occupy him in the evenings, Ninian had taken to sitting quietly in the corner of whatever room the elders had gathered in, and listening. He learned a great deal. He learned of the basic conundrum which, it seemed, lay at the heart of the Cathar faith: how can an all-powerful, good and merciful god permit the monstrous evil that undoubtedly existed in the world? The answer was that there had to be two equally powerful gods, one all good and the other all evil.

  Many of the conversations tha
t roamed freely all around him in the course of those long evenings in tiny, smoky rooms, with inadequate heating and one feeble tallow lamp for illumination, were so far above Ninian’s understanding that he did not even try to follow them. Some things, however, stuck in his mind: Cathars was what the outside world called his new friends; it was a term coined by their enemies. Their own name for themselves was good men or good women; or, as they would say, bonshommes. Those who loved and supported them, but who were not ready to take the ultimate vow that would admit them into the rarefied circle of the bonshommes, were simply called credentes: believers. And the term perfect, which appeared to apply to the extremely devout men and women who led the rest – people who lived lives of such austere purity that it was hard to see how they managed to look so happy all the time – was a word used by the enemy not in admiration but with a sarcastic irony. Like Cathar, it also meant pure one, but as a constant, sarcastic insult, as if to say, you lot think you’re so pure, too good to be true!

  The leaders themselves had no special rank or title. They did not need one, for their promise to live a perfect life was between themselves and God. Everyone and everything else was irrelevant.

  They read the bible. This, Ninian perceived, was the worst sin in the eyes of the Catholic Church, for whose priests the idea of letting a layman anywhere near the Word of God was anathema. St John’s Gospel was the important book for the bonshommes. Ninian’s knowledge of the scriptures was sketchy to the point of being virtually non-existent, and to begin with he had paid attention when one of the elders read aloud from the bible only because it was such a novelty to hear and understand, since the words were not in the Church’s language, Latin, but in the vernacular of the people. The bonshommes had not only translated the bible into the langue d’oc, they had also set up paper mills in the region so that they could copy out as many copies as the people desired.

  Mary Magdalene turned out not to be a sinner and a prostitute, as she was in Ninian’s vague memory. On the contrary, she was held in great esteem by the bonshommes as the close and beloved companion of Jesus. She was honoured and worshipped throughout the Languedoc, for the people believed she had lived the last years of her life there. One of Ninian’s new friends came from the village on the Mediterranean coast where they claimed Mary Magdalene had arrived in an open boat in which she’d travelled all the way from the Holy Land, in the company of Martha, Lazarus and a dark-skinned Egyptian maid called Sarah Kali. So beloved was the Magdalene in the south that it seemed to Ninian she was virtually the region’s patron saint.

  The bonshommes were diligent and thorough teachers, painstaking and patient. When they encountered credentes who could not read and who found it difficult to understand the central tenets of the faith, they used a series of images to help comprehension. Many of the good men and good women carried their own set of images, some beautifully painted and printed on thick card; some more crude and on thin, flimsy paper that showed signs of long handling. The paper mills must have been busy, Ninian reflected, and somewhere there must be rooms full of artistically-gifted bonshommes and credentes, patiently copying out the images.

  He was reminded of the precious manuscript that he had unwittingly taken with him on his long journey from southern England to the Midi. The same life thrummed through the little cards as in the vibrant paintings in the manuscript. The manuscript he knew to be so holy, so inherently powerful, that it was virtually magic. It contained, amongst other treasures, a notation of the celestial music that the good men and women tried so desperately to recall from their days in the spirit realm. Just once, Ninian had heard human voices reproduce the music. Shaken to his core, he’d felt as if the solid earth had tilted beneath him. He knew he would never be the same again.

  Curious about the images that the bonshommes used as teaching aids, Ninian had asked Alazaïs. The images, she explained after a moment to gather her thoughts, were symbolic. The idea was that a glimpse of an image would bring to mind what lay at the heart of the illustration: ‘They stand for much more than they are,’ she added.

  Ninian was none the wiser. He would have liked to ask if he might examine a set, but somehow he understood that his request would politely and kindly be turned down. Perhaps he just wasn’t ready . . .

  The weeks passed and turned into months. In time there came the first signs that the iron grip of the ice and snow was starting to relent; the drip-drip of melting icicles was a constant music to the day’s work; snowdrops pierced the snow; both humans and animals were restless.

  Everybody knew, although it was not spoken aloud, that the crusade would start again as soon as the roads up into the mountains were clear of snow. And now, increasingly, well-meaning people with anxiety in their eyes would hint to Ninian that it was time he began to think about going home.

  Home. The word seemed to echo round inside his head. He wished there were some way to get word to England that he was safe and well, but he could not think how to do it, and nobody in the village volunteered a suggestion. Perhaps they feared that any such attempt would somehow reveal information to the enemy. He did not know.

  Home. The House in the Woods, Josse, Meggie, Geoffroi, all the others in that close, affectionate household. Little Helewise: his beloved Eloise, as he had come to think of her. Creamy skin, so soft under his fingers. Thick, dark-brown hair, that he used to take in his hands and wind into a long rope to wrap around his own throat, binding her to him, binding himself to her . . . Except that it hadn’t, because men had died – important men – and Ninian had been accused of their murder.

  I cannot go home, he thought.

  His friends’ gentle suggestions turned gradually to worried urgency. ‘It is not your battle, Ninian,’ an ancient, serene-faced elder told him, one claw-like hand clutching at his wrist. It was February, a morning of hesitant sunshine, and they had climbed up to sit on a rock in a sheltered spot overlooking the village.

  ‘You’re my friends, Guillaume,’ Ninian protested. ‘I have lived and worked alongside you all these weeks and months of winter. I can’t just leave you. Besides,’ he hurried on, as Guillaume began to speak, ‘you need me. Who’ll carry on with instructing your fighting men if I’m not here?’

  Guillaume gave a faint shrug. ‘We should not fight,’ he murmured.

  Ninian bit back his protest. It was all right for Guillaume, for he was old, he’d had his life, and, as a perfect, he was probably longing for the release from earthly existence that would allow his soul to fly joyfully back to heaven. But Ninian knew, because they had told him, that many of the younger people were not ready to die.

  ‘Some of the villagers don’t share your strong convictions,’ he said quietly.

  Guillaume waved a thin hand. ‘I know, I know.’ His fine face creased in a frown. ‘I understand,’ he added in a whisper. He glanced up at Ninian. ‘Nevertheless, you should prepare to leave. Give your pupils a few more lessons, then you must put your pack on your fine horse’s back and ride away, before—’ He did not go on.

  Before the snows melt and the passes into the mountains open again, Ninian finished for him. Trained in the ways of fighting knights as he was, he well knew what would happen then. They would come thundering down from the north, hungry for plunder, hungry for the sweet, sun-warmed lands of the south, ready to kill in the name of their god, their pope and their king, most of them not overly concerned with the cause when the prizes were so seductive.

  Guillaume had fallen silent beside him, and Ninian sat wondering what de Montfort would do once he had sufficient men under his command. Swiftly he went over what he had learned of the final months of the previous autumn’s campaigning. De Montfort had appeared unstoppable, winning a series of victories culminating in the fall of Termes, a mountaintop town in the Corbières that was said to be out of reach to anything but the goats. The lord of Termes was now in a Carcassonne dungeon.

  The elation of de Montfort’s armies in the wake of their success had led to a wave of hangings and b
urnings, so terrible and so widespread that many southern lords had chosen surrender over death. More and more rebel strongholds had gone, and the threat of war hung over all of Languedoc. In January, Pedro, king of Aragon, deeply worried at the convulsion in these lands so close to his own, had reputedly approached the men of power within the Church. He undertook to recognize Simon de Montfort as his vassal, thus legitimizing his conquest of the lands already taken, but in return Pedro demanded that Raymond of Toulouse – who happened to be his brother-in-law – should assume once more his rightful position as the most important lord of Languedoc. The Church agreed, but only under conditions that amounted to the Languedoc lords meekly giving up and walking away, leaving their homes, their lands and everything they possessed to the vicious, avaricious, ever-hungry and ruthless crusaders.

  The lords of Languedoc elected to go on fighting.

  Where would the blow fall next? Ninian went over in his mind what he knew of de Montfort’s tactics, trying to work out where he would turn his attention once he was ready. Last autumn, the crusaders had been pressing further and further into the territory of the great St Gilles family, northwards across the ridges and valleys to the east of Toulouse. Which town should now be preparing to defend itself? If only there were a way of knowing what was in de Montfort’s mind.

  Very slowly, the beginnings of an idea began to crystallize . . .

  He became aware of Guillaume, stirring restlessly beside him, and realized with a stab of guilt that the poor old man must be getting very cold. ‘We should go back to the village,’ he said, leaping up and holding out his hands to Guillaume. ‘Come on, let me help you.’

  With a wince and a groan, Guillaume got to his feet. Clinging tightly to Ninian, he made his careful way down the steeply-sloping, rocky path. ‘You are a good man,’ he said, squeezing Ninian’s hand. He added softly, ‘You undoubtedly have many who love you and miss you, back in your faraway home.’ The squeeze intensified. ‘You should go back to them, Ninian. They must surely need you.’