The Song of the Nightingale
Table of Contents
The Hawkenlye Series
FORTUNE LIKE THE MOON
ASHES OF THE ELEMENTS
THE TAVERN IN THE MORNING
THE ENCHANTER'S FOREST
THE PATHS OF THE AIR *
THE JOYS OF MY LIFE *
THE ROSE OF THE WORLD *
THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE *
The Norman Aelf Fen Series
OUT OF THE DAWN LIGHT *
MIST OVER THE WATER *
MUSIC OF THE DISTANT STARS *
THE WAY BETWEEN THE WORLDS *
* available from Severn House
A Hawkenlye Mystery
Alys Clare
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First published in Great Britain and the USA 2012 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
9â15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.
This eBook edition first published in 2012 by Severn Digital an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2012 by Alys Clare
The right of Alys Clare to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Clare, Alys.
The song of the nightingale.
1. D'Acquin, Josse (Fictitious character)âFiction.
2. Helewise, Abbess (Fictitious character)âFiction.
3. EnglandâSocial life and customsâ1066-1485âFiction.
4. Detective and mystery stories.
I. Title
823.9'2-dc23
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-303-7(epub)
ISBN-13: 978-0-72788-194-6 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-447-9 (trade paper)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.
For Jon, Hannah and Imogen,
who know what it's like for families to be apart
Cytharizat cantico
Dulcis philomena,
Flore rident vario
Prata iam serena.
Like a lyre sings
The sweet nightingale,
Full of laughing flowers
Are the joyful meadows.
From
Carmina Burana
,
Cantiones profanae
Early in 1211
T
he three men were homeless and starving. Driven from their previous sporadic employment by the new poverty of their former masters, driven from their homes because they could not pay the meagre rent, they had, like so many others in King John's England, been reduced to roaming the countryside begging for handouts from people almost as hard-pressed as themselves.
They were not alone in their hunger and their desperation. What set them apart was their brutality.
All three were natural bullies, although one â a dark-countenanced, broad-shouldered man named Wat â was the worst. The other two, accepting instinctively that his cruelty was considerably more ruthless their own, deferred to him as the natural leader. Sometimes â increasingly â they feared that he would take them into dark places where they would probably not have gone without him. But the pair had the weakness of character that so often typifies the bully: it was easier to continue throwing in their lot with a tough, strong man like Wat than to go their own way. It never occurred to either of them that they might remonstrate with him and try to bring him back from the worst excesses of his savagery.
Over the months, they had roamed far from their former homes, in the west of England, at first travelling steadily towards London and then turning south. There were quite a lot of towns and villages where, because of some act of theft, violation or casual cruelty, the various forces of law and order were after them. They could not safely retrace their steps. Going ever on, in time they found themselves on the fringes of the great forest that stretched across the south-east corner of the land. There was a big abbey nearby; the trio heard people refer to it as a place where you could find care, kindness and a bite to eat. Not even the promise of food tempted the three men to approach the abbey, however. They had no time for priests and monks; and nuns, as Wat remarked with a leer, were only good for slaking a man's lust, and then only if they were young and pretty.
The trio made themselves a rudimentary camp a few hundred paces inside the perimeter of the forest. Even when they had been in work, they had always been lazy and shiftless, needing the threat of someone else's boot up their arses to make them pull their weight. Resentful of command, they were at the same time not capable of working for themselves, being to a man unimaginative and without any idea that dedicated effort might better their lot. Hence the camp was poorly made and totally lacking in comfort. The roughly-made roof leaked; there was no deep bed of branches, twigs and dead bracken to stop the damp from the ground penetrating their thin blankets; they did not know how to hunt nor which wild plants were safe to eat, and so were constantly hungry; and they quarrelled so violently and so frequently over whose turn it was to fetch firewood and tend the hearth that the fire was always going out.
Not one of them had the least modicum of sensitivity in his nature. If they had, they would have felt the forest's deep unease at their presence within its borders.
And their fate would have been quite different.
It was late one January afternoon, when since daybreak a fierce east wind had blown without ceasing, frequently hurling brief but angry sleet showers against the three men's chilled flesh. They had reached the depths of their miserable discomfort. Everything in the camp was wet; every garment they possessed was torn and filthy; nobody had scavenged for food, water or firewood; they were close to starving and shivering with cold. One â the youngest and least robust â had a persistent sniff and a harsh, barking cough. They looked at each other and silently came to the conclusion that they had to venture further afield in their search for plunder. For three or four weeks, they had made do with the isolated cottages and lonely hovels that hunched under the forest fringes, always spying out the land first to make sure that no big, strong husband or son lived within. They kept away from tough men, preferring the softer targets of feeble widows or the helpless, querulous elderly. Now, however, they were uncomfortably aware that they had robbed these local dwellings of everything there was to rob. Their victims were now as empty-handed as the three men.
Wat said they must go back towards the town on the river which they had passed â giving it a wide berth â on their way south to the forest. They would not go too close; as soon as they found a likely household, they would break in, grab what they could and then melt away back to the forest.
As soon as the short, bleak day came to its end, they set out. Wat carried a sword, in a worn leather scabbard, and his short, thick staff. The other two were armed simply with lengths of wood.
The sword was old and beautifully crafted. It had seen service in Outremer, where its carefully-forged Spanish steel blade had flashed and scythed its way through many infidel necks. Handed down solemnly from father to son through the generations, it was a family heirloom.
Not Wat's family; he had stolen it from its hiding place beneath a straw mattress on a low, meagre cot in a cheap lodging house in a small town south-west of London. The lodging house had been run by an elderly woman and her widowed daughter, and Wat had thrashed the former and raped the latter, leaving them bleeding and traumatized. He had ransacked the lowly dwelling's dark, dank rooms; the sword was the sole item worth stealing, and Wat had got away with it only because its owner was sleeping like a dead man.
Wat had his left hand on the sword's hilt as he led the way, and such was the confidence in his braggart step that the other two fell in meekly behind. He had a vague idea of where he was heading, recalling having seen a small but reasonably prosperous-looking dwelling set by itself down a track winding away off the road that led from the valley up to the forest. He wasn't quite as sure of himself as his demeanour suggested, but, nevertheless, his luck was in and he found the place after only one wrong turning.
Soft-footed as a cat for all his size, Wat crept up to the house. It was stoutly built, and even in the dim moonlight Wat could see that whoever lived within kept the place in good repair. He went up to peer through the tiny window. Inside, sitting snugly beside a small fire, he saw a frail old man, a plump woman who had a bad cough, and a sweet-faced younger woman.
Wat's hungry eyes fixed first on the pot of gruel that was suspended over the fire. His stomach gave a long rumble, and saliva filled his mouth. As he watched, the young woman leaned forward to give the pot a stir. Such was his position that, for a moment, he could see right down the front of her gown to where the rounded, creamy breasts swelled. As hunger of another sort flooded his veins and made him hard with desire, he took in the rest of her. The smooth curve of her hips. The long legs. The slim ankles and tiny feet.
Very little could have stopped Wat then. The family's fate was already set in stone.
He glanced briefly at the other two, gave a curt nod and then put his shoulder to the door. At first it did not yield; the old man, very aware of how alone they were out there, had recently fixed a stout bar that rested on brackets either side of the door. But Wat's blood was hot and, maddened by the delay, he renewed his efforts, his two companions coming to help. There was a splintering crash, and the door broke apart.
The old man had managed to rise, shaking, to his feet. He had a long knife in his hands. Wat, grinning, stepped swiftly forward and wrenched it out of the old man's grasp even as he tried to summon the strength to swing it.
âI'll have that,' Wat remarked, giving the knife a few experimental swishes. âYou might hurt yourself, Grandad.' He ran his thumb along the knife's edge. âMight be useful, once I've found a whetstone.'
One of the other two men was bending over the pot of gruel, grabbing the heel of bread that stood ready and dunking it deeply into the savoury-smelling gravy. The plump woman gave a heartfelt cry â âOh no, please, no, it's all we've got, and the first hot food we've had in days!' â but the man elbowed her roughly aside. She fell, hard, to the floor, banging her head. She tried to get up again, and the man kicked her. With a low moan, she collapsed.