Authors: Karen Maitland
‘That is you, Regulus – us,’ Father Arthmael says. ‘Do you know why the wren is the king of all the birds? The eagle is the strongest. But the wren is the most cunning.
For once, long ago, the birds of the air decided that whichever among them could fly the highest should become their king. The eagle was certain he would be proclaimed king for he was stronger than any of the other birds. All the birds flew into the sky, but the eagle’s great strength meant that it could climb higher than any of them. Then, just as the eagle’s strength was exhausted and he began to sink down towards the earth, a tiny wren, which had been hiding in the eagle’s feathers, flew up from his back. It was so light the eagle had not even felt the bird riding on him. Since the little wren had been carried all the way up, in just a few beats of its tiny wings it was able to rise higher even than the exhausted eagle, and so the wren was proclaimed the king of all the birds.’
Slowly, reverently, as if he unwraps the Holy Grail, Father Arthmael folds back the cloth with its eagle and wren. Regulus sees a flash of gold turn blood red in the firelight from the brazier. He is dazzled by the lights glinting from the object, which seems to his fogged mind the brightest thing he has ever seen, save for the sun. He stares transfixed as the tiny reflected flames undulate across the golden metal. Then Father Arthmael lifts it up in both hands and slowly Regulus comprehends what he is seeing. It is a sickle, though not nearly as big as the iron one his father uses. It is as long as the boy’s own forearm, the blade curved and razor-sharp.
Father Arthmael takes the boy’s hand and closes it about the handle. Holding the boy’s arm he makes small jabbing movements, as if he is slicing at ears of invisible corn.
‘When I tell you, you will strike his throat, like this. This blade is so keen, it will take little effort. Do you—’
‘He is coming, Father Arthmael.’ The voice is soft, urgent. Regulus cannot see the speaker, though he recognises his voice.
The birds in cages start to cry out in alarm and fly against the iron bars as if they, too, are warning –
he is coming, he is coming!
Laying the golden sickle on the table, Father Arthmael seizes the boy, pushing him back against the wall. ‘Stay there. You must not utter a word. Even if he should address you, say nothing. Do you understand?’
Regulus nods. In truth, he is not certain he could speak, even if he wanted to. Words float in his head, like dead fish, and he cannot make them swim to his tongue.
Father Arthmael seems to take his silence as obedience. He straightens the plain gold band of cloth encircling the boy’s brow, and steps back just as a man’s head emerges through the floor.
The man climbs up into the room, glancing first at Father Arthmael, then at the boy and finally at the chair that is set before the brazier. He is clad in black robes with silver thread-work at the neck and round the sleeves. His hands are encased in fine black leather gloves, with silver snakes encircling the wrists.
‘The marriage bed has been entered. The nigredo embraces the couple even as we speak. It will not be long before they are united in the ecstasy of death and putrefaction. Their union will be complete by dawn.’ He nods approvingly. ‘I see you have prepared the boy.’
Father Arthmael, his hands folded across his hollow belly, inclines his head. ‘If you would be seated, Sylvain, I will lay the boy across your knees and hold him as his blood is spilled. The vessel is ready.’
Something flutters in Regulus’s head, a fragile memory that this is not what Father Arthmael said before. The words are wrong. He wants to tell them. But when he forces his mouth open, no sound comes out.
The black-robed man shakes his head. ‘No, take him to the roof. It must be done where the wood is laid ready for burning, in the white light of the moon.’
He seizes the boy’s arm, urging him towards the bottom of the ladder that leads to the closed trapdoor above. ‘Up there, boy.’
Regulus turns his head, searching Father Arthmael’s face. Both men frighten him, but he knows he has most to fear from the man who rules the abbey.
‘Regulus,’ Father Arthmael warns, ‘remember what I said.’
The boy does not remember, not properly. He remembers a jumble of words, but they swirl round his head and he cannot make them stand still. Felix said if a man in black robes . . . What . . . what did Felix say to do then?
‘On the throne, Sylvain, that is where the blood must be spilled,’ Father Arthmael insists. ‘Come here to me, Regulus.’
The boy tries to pull away from the gloved hand holding his arm and return to the voice he recognises.
The man tightens his grip. Regulus jerks his head up to look at him, feeling a sudden tension in Sylvain’s body. He is staring at Father Arthmael.
‘The throne . . . You called it the throne. That is where the old king dies.’
He takes a step forward. With both hands grasping the boy’s shoulders, he pushes him in front of himself like a shield. ‘And which of us is the old king, Arthmael? Black or white, which do you intend will fall into the grave with the boy? No, don’t bother to answer that. I can see it in your face. I seek resurrection for one who is dead. You . . . you seek eternal life for yourself. But what you fail to grasp, after all those years of study, what you failed to learn from the Great Master is that to gain the eternal life you seek there must be death, and the death must be your own. You cannot escape the grave, Arthmael.’
Without warning he shoves Regulus forward hard against the abbot. Regulus’s head smashes into Father Arthmael’s stomach, knocking the breath from him. Regulus crashes down onto the wood boards and Father Arthmael doubles up, crumpling down against the wall, trying desperately to pull the air back into his lungs. In one fluid movement, Sylvain snatches the golden sickle from the table. Regulus sees only the flash in the light of the brazier, which seems to leave a long golden-red trail in the air, as if a flame hangs there suspended.
Sylvain springs towards the crouching abbot. He raises the sickle in his right hand and with his left tries to grab Father Arthmael’s hair to drag his head back. But the priest is tonsured and the short fringe around his head is slippery with grease. The hair slides from Sylvain’s fingers. With a shriek of frustration, he lifts the sickle higher as if he means to cleave the man’s skull in two. Father Arthmael, still struggling for breath, raises his arm to shield his head, his face distorted in fear. But just as the murderous blade descends, Sylvain shrieks again, this time in pain, as a thick staff knocks the sickle from his hand and sends it spinning across the floor.
Father Madron shoves Sylvain aside and hauls his superior to his feet.
‘Forgive me, Father. I know you gave instructions I was to keep watch outside, but when I heard the commotion I—’
‘Stop him! Stop him, you idiot!’ Father Arthmael cries.
But it is too late. Sylvain is dragging Regulus across the floor. The young canon and Father Arthmael try to lunge for him together, but succeed only in falling over each other in their haste. Sylvain releases his grip on the boy only long enough to grasp him around the waist and, with the small child tucked under his arm, he mounts the ladder, using his own head as a battering ram to push open the trapdoor above him. Regulus’s shoulder is rammed against the frame, and he yelps in pain as Sylvain drags him through the small opening. The trapdoor falls back into place with a hollow thud, and Father Madron, scrambling up behind them, puts his hand to the trapdoor just moments too late to prevent the bolt being kicked into place above him.
They must be extracted, conjoined, buried and mortified and turned into ashes. Thus it comes to pass that the nest of the birds becomes their grave.
Gisa turned her head to me. It might have been the shadows cast by the single trembling flame, but her face suddenly looked as gaunt as a skull, her eye sockets hollow, as if all the flesh had been sucked from her.
‘I am sorry,’ she said, ‘sorry that I drew you into this, that it is my grandfather who is responsible.’
Not as sorry as I am, I thought. Why on earth had I persuaded her to ask Sylvain to see me? I should have taken it as an omen when Odo first refused me at the door. I should have walked as far away from this accursed place as I could. I should never have crossed the river. I should never have crossed the sea to England. I should never have mentioned the forgery to Philippe in the first place. Why had I ever left my life with old Gaspard?
‘Not your fault,’ I said gruffly, though I wasn’t sure I believed that.
Come to think of it, it was entirely her fault. I had come merely to offer my services in telling stories. If she hadn’t gone around sewing bags with my intimate hair or helped Sylvain brew his potions, things would never have got this far.
Gisa gave a startled cry as another lump of blackened plaster crashed to the floor. The stench of rotting wood was growing stronger. Was it just a shadow thrown by the candle flame, or was the mould now creeping up over the end of the bed towards our feet?
My hands were still tied firmly behind my back and the full weight of my body was pressing down on them. Pains were shooting up my arms and shoulders. My hands had already gone completely dead. I twisted, trying to turn onto my side to ease the blood flow.
‘Stop! You’re just tightening the ropes,’ Gisa said. ‘We have to try to undo the knots.’
‘And how exactly do we do that?’ I snapped.
We tried, but with her wrists crossed in front of her and tied to the bed posts and mine pinioned behind my back, not to mention the ropes lashed across our chests, neither of us could reach a single knot, not even with our teeth. Odo had made quite sure that even an acrobat couldn’t have freed himself from those bonds. Sweating from the effort, we sank back exhausted again.
‘We’re in no danger,’ I said, trying to sound as if I believed it. ‘This is just some insane fantasy of Sylvain’s. All we have to do is wait till morning, and when he finds we’re still alive, he’ll realise whatever spell he thinks he’s cast isn’t working and give up. Whenever have you heard of mould killing anyone? It can’t. It just can’t!’
But it was already covering the toes of my leather shoes.
‘Look, up there,’ Gisa breathed.
The mould covering the ceiling was swelling out in fat black cushions. But there was something else up there too. Spiders! Dozens of them, swinging on threads across the chamber on currents of warm air from the candle flame. They were spinning webs, great thick swathes of them.
Even as I stared up, a movement on the walls caught the edge of my vision. The stones appeared to be trembling. For a moment, I feared the tower was collapsing, but there was no sound. Then I saw that what was moving were worms, thousands of them, wriggling out between the cracks, burrowing through the crumbling stone and falling in thick slimy handfuls into the carpet of mould on the floor.
I clenched my jaw, trying to suppress a scream. The spiders swung lower on their threads, dropping down towards our faces. I started to struggle frantically again. But even as I did I heard a murmur of voices, snatches of words, as if there were people close by.
‘In here!’ I yelled. ‘Up in the turret. We can’t get out. Help us. For God’s sake, come quickly.’
The mutterings grew louder, though I could not distinguish anything that made sense, but somewhere close by was a whole crowd of people. They really had stormed the manor, after all, and come to rescue us. Relief surged through me.
‘Up here,’ I yelled. ‘Hurry, for God’s sake, hurry. Break the door down!’
But the words were turning to shrieks, moans and wails. Then came a rhythmic thumping, like the sound children make with bone-clappers on All Hallows Night, as if a crowd of people was trying to smash through the walls of the tower.
I called out again, but was cut short by Gisa, who had gone rigid.
‘No! No! Don’t call to them. For pity’s sake, don’t.’
‘But we need their help,’ I protested.
‘They won’t help us,’ Gisa whispered. ‘I’ve heard them before. Those are the dead. And they’re coming for us.’
The wingless bird that is below holds the winged bird that is above and will not let it escape the nest.
A cloud passes across the moon and a tide of darkness floods over trees and buildings alike. On the road outside the manor house a weasel-thin boy grins to himself. He has already moved the broken cartwheel into position against the wall and he’s been watching the cloud creeping towards the moon, waiting for it to obliterate the light. He won’t have long, though. The wind is gathering strength. The clouds are moving more swiftly. Far off there is a growl of thunder. A storm is coming, but it will not break yet.
He balances precariously on the wheel’s rim, stretching up to a stone near the top of the wall where he is sure he can get a finger-hold. He grabs the stone with one hand and, as the cartwheel topples away beneath him, gropes wildly for the top of the wall with his free hand. For a moment, he hangs there limply, like the hanged felon he may very well become if they catch him breaking in. Then, as his bare toes scrabble against the rough stones, he gains the purchase he needs to haul his belly onto the top of the wall and tip himself over it. He lands on the grass, jarred and smarting from a dozen grazes, but he doesn’t care. He’s suffered worse, far worse, and his elation at having got inside dulls any pain.
But his triumph does not last long. His plan, if such it can be called, extended no further than getting over the wall, and now that he has done it, he swiftly realises he has not even the wisp of an idea of how to find Regulus.
When Regulus did not return to the dorter for supper, or appear among the boys at Compline, Felix knew at once that, like Mighel and Peter, he would never come back. In the morning, Father John would provide some explanation for the boy’s absence – Regulus’s family had come for him or he had been sent out to become an apprentice to some great man. The little boys would believe it, because they wanted to believe it, in the way a dying man wants to believe that the figure he sees sitting in the corner of his chamber really is an angel, not a huddle of discarded clothes. But Felix never would. They’d never convince him that Regulus was back in his mother’s arms, not even if they swore on a thousand virgins.