The Song of the Nightingale

by Alys Clare

  ‘But – but that’s against God’s laws!’ she heard herself say. ‘You must not ask for that sort of help!’

  The girl had shied away. Belatedly appreciating her mistake, she said, ‘You’re not her, are you? Not the healer?’

  ‘No, I’m—’ What am I? Helewise wondered wildly.

  The young woman had turned and was running away. Already regretting her hasty response, Helewise started after her, but she was no match for the girl’s speed. By the time Helewise reached the first of the trees, the girl had already vanished inside the forest.

  Meggie had found some of the materials she needed down at the abbey, grateful for Abbess Caliste’s generous response to her request: ‘Take whatever you need!’ she’d said. The little hut was not, however, the cornucopia of useful herbs that it had once been. Standing there packing up what she had selected, Meggie wished fervently that Tiphaine was still the abbey’s herbalist. But Tiphaine seemed to have disappeared, and those who had known her best suspected that she had gone off with the forest people. As Helewise had once sagely remarked, Tiphaine always kept one foot in her pagan past. Whoever acted as herbalist now – if, indeed, anyone did – seemed to be lacking the imagination required for the task. The standard remedies were there, adequately well prepared and tidily stored on the shelves, but standard remedies only got you so far . . .

  Meggie realized that she was going to have to make another visit to her mother’s hut and raid her own herbal stores. She smiled to herself. She’d been planning to return anyway, but now she had an excuse. The prospect of possibly finding further traces of the mysterious visitor was distinctly thrilling; maybe she would meet the man himself. Always assuming it was a man.

  Back at the cell, she was greeted by an appetizing smell; Little Helewise had been busy and supper was ready. The mutton and vegetable stew had far more vegetables than mutton, but the girl had been imaginative in her use of herbs and it was delicious.

  Wiping her bowl with a piece of bread, Helewise said, ‘I feel positively guilty that I enjoyed that so much, especially when we all know quite well that so many will go hungry to their beds tonight.’

  There was a brief silence. Little Helewise, her mouth full, looked furtively at her grandmother. Meggie thought how to phrase her reply. ‘As you have often observed, Helewise,’ she said, ‘we can only go on helping the starving, the sick and the desperate if we remain healthy.’

  Helewise nodded quickly. ‘Yes, Meggie, I know.’ She gave her a smile. ‘Actually, I was thinking of one person in particular.’ She paused, and Meggie thought she looked sheepish.

  ‘Someone who came here today?’ Meggie prompted.

  ‘Yes.’ Carefully, Helewise put down her empty bowl and then folded her hands in her lap. ‘It was late this afternoon. You were down at the abbey fetching your herbs, and a thin, ill-looking young woman arrived. She asked if there was a healer, a herbalist, here, and when I said yes, she thought I meant that it was me. She – er, she told me what she needed.’ Helewise stared down at her hands. ‘I – er, I was a little hasty, and she turned and hurried away. I tried to go after her – I hurried to the spot where she’d gone back into the forest, but there was no sign of her.’ She shook her head, frowning. ‘I handled it very badly,’ she said angrily. ‘I should have offered help, for in retrospect I can see how desperate she was, and now, oh, I’m very afraid of what she might do.’

  Meggie had a fair idea of what the young woman had asked for. She had some sympathy for Helewise, who had been thrown into something she could not deal with. She had far more sympathy for the unknown young woman.

  Meggie reached out and took hold of Helewise’s hand. ‘She wanted an abortifacient, didn’t she?’ she asked quietly. Mutely, Helewise nodded.

  Little Helewise whispered, ‘What’s that?’

  Unthinkingly, Meggie said, ‘It’s a mix of herbs that causes a pregnant woman to slip the unborn child.’

  Little Helewise gasped, a soft sound quickly stifled as she put her hands over her mouth. Amid the larger anxiety, Meggie cursed herself for her tactlessness. I will speak to her later, she resolved. Then, turning her full attention to Helewise, she took a steadying breath and said, ‘You are right to berate yourself, although I understand why you reacted as you did. I don’t think you could have helped yourself, dear Helewise, given who and what you are.’

  ‘I’m no longer either an abbess or a nun,’ Helewise muttered.

  ‘Maybe, but you are still a deeply Christian woman, and you have been taught that thou shalt not kill applies as much to an unborn infant in the womb as to a man or woman who walks the earth.’

  ‘It does,’ Helewise said simply.

  Ah, Meggie thought. There seemed no point in battling Helewise head-on, so she said, ‘If I might suggest—’

  ‘Oh, please do!’ Helewise interrupted beseechingly.

  Meggie smiled. ‘I think it would have been best to have invited the young woman to sit down by the fire, offer her some broth—’

  ‘I did, and she said she wasn’t hungry!’

  ‘—and ask her to tell you a little about herself; how she had come to be pregnant, and why she felt she could not face bearing the child.’

  Helewise nodded slowly. ‘Ye–es.’ Then, a spark in her eyes, she said, ‘But, whatever the circumstances, I could never have given her what she asked for, even had it been within my power!’

  ‘Even if to carry a child to term and give birth to it would have taken the mother’s own life?’ Meggie asked softly. ‘Even if the pregnancy was the result of rape?’

  Helewise stared at her wide-eyed. ‘I – I don’t know,’ she admitted. Then, rallying: ‘If either was the case, then I believe I would suggest that the child be taken away at birth, either to be raised by nuns such as those in the foundlings’ home at the abbey, or else given to a family willing to take in another’s child.’

  Then we shall have to agree to differ, Meggie thought. She wondered if the girl would come back. She hoped so.

  But that was for another day. For now there was a more immediate distress to deal with. Getting up, Meggie turned to Little Helewise. ‘I’m going to fetch some more firewood,’ she said with a smile. ‘Would you come and help me?’

  Little Helewise was on her feet before Meggie had finished speaking. With a private smile, Meggie followed her outside.

  As soon as they were out of earshot of both the cell and the lay brothers’ shelter, Meggie said, ‘Due in July, I would guess.’

  Little Helewise gasped. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I’m a healer,’ Meggie replied. ‘I recognize the symptoms.’ There was no reply. ‘First of all, I should tell you that I am delighted,’ she continued. ‘I love my half-brother dearly, and I know you do too. I can’t wait to be an aunt!’

  Again there was no answer. Meggie thought Little Helewise was quietly weeping. She wrapped her arms round the girl, holding her close. ‘Don’t cry,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll have a beautiful baby, and I’ll be there to help you when the time comes.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of the birth,’ Little Helewise said. ‘But we’re not married, and he isn’t even here!’

  Meggie smoothed her hand over Little Helewise’s shaking shoulders. ‘Nobody’s getting married now,’ she said lightly. ‘You can’t, with the interdict. But babies are still being conceived.’ Briefly, she thought of the unknown woman who had come looking for help. ‘As for Ninian not being here, all I can say is that he will come home, one day.’ He will, she said with silent fervour. ‘In the meantime, you are safe, you have a home, you have a loving family, and—’

  ‘What’s my father going to say?’ Little Helewise wailed. ‘And my mother!’

  Meggie visualized Leofgar and Rohaise. Yes, Little Helewise was right in being more fearful of her mother’s reaction. Illegitimacy was a huge stigma to some people, and unfortunately Rohaise was one of them. Since Meggie herself had been born out of wedlock, as had her brother Geoffroi, and bearing in mind that her
half-brother Ninian was not the son of the man to whom Joanna had been wed at the time of his birth, it was a matter of little consequence to her. ‘Do you know what I should do?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’ Little Helewise disengaged herself, wiped a hand across her eyes and pushed back her hair. ‘What?’

  There was such hopeful trust in her face that Meggie paused for an instant before speaking. This was the moment; she must not waste it. ‘I would go back inside the cell and tell your grandmother,’ she said firmly. Overriding Little Helewise’s gasp of horror, she went on: ‘Then the two of you should find an opportunity to tell my father, who is the last person to protest at babies being conceived outside marriage. With him and Helewise on your side – oh, yes, she’ll be on your side, I guarantee it – you can then go and face your parents.’ She hesitated, then said: ‘Your mother will probably lecture you for several days about how wrong it was to let Ninian have his way with you, how he won’t respect you any more, how a woman must save herself for the marriage bed, but it’s her right as your mother to express her opinion and you’ll just have to put up with it.’

  Little Helewise’s face had softened into a reminiscent smile. ‘It was by no means him having his way,’ she said. ‘If anything, I persuaded him. There was no immediate prospect of a marriage or a marriage bed, and we weren’t prepared to wait. And I don’t think respect comes into it really, do you?’

  Meggie grinned. ‘I don’t see it as particularly relevant, no.’ She looked at Little Helewise, affection and the beginning of love in her heart. ‘Am I right that the baby’s due in July?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Little Helewise confessed.

  ‘How long had you been lovers before he went away?’

  ‘Not long.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She took Little Helewise’s hand and set off down the track into the forest. ‘We’d better get this firewood, then we’ll go back and you can tell your grandmother the news.’ Ignoring the muffled groan, she added, ‘Tomorrow we’ll find a quiet, private moment and I’ll examine you and ask you a few pertinent questions. Oh – that is, if you want me to?’ Never assume automatically that someone wants you to treat them had been one of Joanna’s maxims.

  ‘I do,’ came the instant reply.

  ‘Very well, then. Tomorrow I’ll try to explain everything you need to know, and then, with any luck, tell you when you can look forward to having a baby in your arms.’

  As, a little later, Little Helewise and Meggie made their way back to the cell, arms full of foraged firewood, Meggie was thinking hard about Ninian. Was Little Helewise’s pregnancy the reason for Meggie’s visions and dreams of her brother? Was it what was prompting the urgent need to get through to him? Ever since he had been cleared of the charge of murder last autumn, she had been trying to send him a message via the strange telepathy that sometimes seemed to exist between them, telling him it was safe to return. So far, there was no evidence whatsoever that he had heard her.

  Now there was another reason to bring him back: he was going to be a father in a few months’ time and in all likelihood he had no idea.

  Meggie sent up a swift plea to the friendly spirits, her mother’s included, that they might put their ethereal heads together and suggest to her a way to tell Ninian it was time to come home.

  EIGHT

  As the snows slowly began to melt in the foothills of the Pyrenees, Ninian worked on his plan. His friends were venturing out of the village quite regularly now, for the weeks between the beginning of the spring thaw and the onset of the next season of campaigning were precious and not to be wasted. Once the crusading armies amassed again, Simon de Montfort would tell them where to strike next. Then the brief time of freedom would break up into rumour, fear and the constant, dreadful anticipation that the assault was going to veer their way.

  The village was remote, difficult to access and far to the south and the west of de Montfort’s steady advance. Ninian knew his way round all the secret tracks and trails leading up and down the mountain on which the village sat, and he recognized that it had been well chosen as a stronghold. He believed it would survive when less easily defended places fell. When he had first been brought there, his guide had blindfolded him; it had been a sensible precaution, and Ninian had not resented it. But now that the time was approaching when he would have to leave the village and find his way back again, he was glad of the local knowledge he had managed to accumulate.

  He had kept his ears open and his wits about him all winter, and he believed he knew where de Montfort and his senior commanders were likely to be overwintering. The front line of the crusader assault was sweeping up in a north-westerly direction, and Ninian had a good idea of where it had halted when campaigning had ended in the autumn. Now, he was sure, knights from the north would be setting off for the Midi, weapons of war at their sides and greed for the rich, sunny lands of the Languedoc egging them on. Knowing they were on their way, de Montfort would be making up his mind where to aim them.

  With both old campaigners and newcomers arriving all the time, one more northern knight would not stand out. Any man who knew anything of a knight’s training would fit in like a tree in a forest. Unobtrusively, Ninian prepared his sword, his gear and his horse; when the moment came, he would be ready.

  The opportunity that soon presented itself was so perfect that Ninian could almost have believed some benign spirit had engineered it. The bonshommes had decided that they must contact friends and kin in towns and villages that lay in the likely path of the crusader advance, encouraging them to leave their homes and come to the Pyrenean strongholds while they still could. Listening to the discussions, Ninian heard a familiar name: Utta.

  She lived in a small town to the east, where the final convulsions of the Pyrenees began to give way to the plain. Back in the autumn, she had made the difficult journey to Ninian’s village because she wanted to meet the son of the woman who, back in England, had once saved her life.fn2 She had told Ninian that he was good, like his mother. His impulse to seek her out was genuine, and, fortuitously, it provided him with the excuse he needed to leave the village and come back again.

  He knew his friends would not countenance anything as risky as the mission he had set himself, so he didn’t tell them. He left the village in the company of a group of four men, none of whom he knew well. They each had their appointed task and, when they came to the place at the foot of the mountain where tracks led off in different directions, it was easy to say a quick farewell and head out alone.

  At first he was elated, full of pride that he, Ninian de Courtenay, was planning something so hazardous, so brave, purely for the selfless aim of helping the cause of the kind, decent, loving people who had taken him in and helped him when he needed it. After the months of enforced isolation up in the snowbound village, it was a joy simply to be out riding, on an eager horse. Even if the tracks were still icy in places and slushy with melting snow in others, he felt invincible and knew nothing was going to hold him back.

  After three days, he was close to the encampment where, it was rumoured, Simon de Montfort was making his plans. Ninian found a sheltered spot in a pine wood from which to observe without being seen, and he thought the rumours were probably true. The camp was extensive and well guarded, and knights were arriving all the time, a few singly or in pairs, many more in rowdy gangs of thirty or forty.

  The initial euphoria had long worn off. As Ninian watched the mass of knights, foot soldiers and camp followers, he began to realize the magnitude of the task he had set himself.

  The apprehension was only going to get worse the longer he waited. As the sun climbed up towards its zenith, he led his horse, Garnet, out from beneath the pine trees, mounted up and rode down into the camp.

  Nobody seemed to question that he was anything other than what he claimed to be: a knight from Brittany eager to carve out a patch of land for himself in the south, and even more eager to shed some heretic blood in order to do so. He encountered a group of Bretons who took
him to heart like a long-lost brother, demanding to know where he came from, and when he said Dinan – a town he knew from his childhood – telling him it was a place with a fine reputation for fighting men and he’d better be sure he lived up to it.

  He decided that, in view of what he was really there for, it would be best to avoid the Breton contingent in future.

  He had been in the camp for only a couple of days when he found out what he wanted to know. That, too, proved risibly easy, for it appeared to be no secret. De Montfort must be very confident, Ninian thought. Perhaps that was what an autumn’s successful campaigning did.

  The next town to bear the brunt of crusader attack was to be Lavaur, north-east of Toulouse. As word of the decision spread, the encampment got busy with preparations, making repairs to the great siege engines, mending weapons and armour, exercising horses and drilling the foot soldiery. In the midst of the bustle, Ninian slipped away.

  He was almost out of the camp when he was accosted by three large, drunken, blond-haired German knights. As they closed ranks and blocked the path, Ninian’s heart sank.

  ‘Running out on us, are you?’ the first one said, his accent so atrocious that Ninian only just made out the words.

  ‘My business is my own,’ he replied shortly.

  ‘You Froggie bastards are all the same,’ scoffed the knight. ‘First chance of doing a bit of fighting and you run for the hills.’

  The remark was so monumentally inaccurate that Ninian didn’t even bother to reply.

  The big German came closer, looking up at Ninian as he sat on his horse and pointing a wavering finger in the general direction of his face. ‘We don’t need you lot,’ he said, his words punctuated by a drunken hiccup. ‘There’s an army of our good lads on its way to join us, and they’ll be here in time to lay siege to this piss-hole town we’re going to attack.’ He hiccuped again, then belched noisily and liquidly. ‘Oops.’