The Enchanter's Forest

Chapter 16

Helewise’s first action after the early offices was to send for Brother Saul and Brother Augustus and request that they return to Merlin’s Tomb in order to ask anyone prepared to talk to them one or two pertinent questions. Saul, whose expression did not look like that of a man readily able to distinguish a pertinent question from any other sort, began to frown but Augustus said straight away, ‘Like did anyone notice some man hanging around and trying to find out which day Florian was most likely to be carrying home the takings and what time he was going to leave?’

Helewise beamed. ‘Precisely that, Gus.’

Saul’s tense face relaxed; he was evidently relieved that he now understood what was being asked of him. He nodded sagely and was about to speak when Augustus got in before him.

‘We might also try to find out about the guards, my lady,’ he said excitedly. ‘They looked a tough bunch to me and, without wishing to blacken anyone’s good name without due cause, it’d be pretty obvious to anyone that they’d likely be the best source of information regarding Florian’s movements.’

‘Yes, Augustus, that’s right.’ She shot him a smile, then turned to Saul. ‘Brother Saul? Were you about to say something?’

‘Oh — aye, my lady, but only that it’d be a relief to bring the killer of that poor young man to justice.’

‘Saul, there must be no heroic attempt to solve this by yourselves.’ She looked from Saul to Augustus and back again. ‘Florian was murdered by a cold-hearted and dispassionate killer who robbed him and threw his body in the brambles. Remember that.’

Saul and Augustus exchanged a glance. Then Saul said, ‘We will, my lady.’ And, as if they could no longer contain their eagerness for the unexpected outing, as one they bowed low, turned and hurried away.

For some moments after their hasty departure, Helewise sat staring at the door and wishing that she was going with them. She could have done; nobody would have questioned her motive in leading the little expedition. But she knew there was no need for her to go. Augustus was an astute young man who kept his eyes and ears open and who, for all his youth, seemed to know when people were trying to deceive him. And Saul — well, Saul was as solid as the very earth and as dependable as sunrise.

With a small sigh that even someone standing right in front of her would probably have missed, Helewise drew her accounts book towards her, reached for her stylus and got down to work.

The two lay brothers returned in the early afternoon.

‘What did you discover?’ she demanded as soon as they had come in and closed the door behind them.

It was Saul who spoke first.

‘The place is all shut up, my lady. There was a handful of people hanging around in the clearing just inside the forest, where all those trees were cut down. We stopped short and tethered the horses, then edged our way nearer so that we could hear what was going on but not be seen. There was a cross-looking man in a dirty leather jerkin-’

‘It was that fellow Jack, my lady, who came to relieve the gate guard when we visited,’ Augustus put in.

She nodded. ‘Go on.’

‘The man in the jerkin was telling the people they couldn’t visit the tomb’ — Saul picked up the narrative — ‘and that they should go back where they came from.’

‘I see.’ She could visualise the scene. She hoped that none of the pilgrims would suffer too badly from having made that abortive journey. She also hoped — and she knew it was unworthy — that all the people who were being frustrated in their desire to see Merlin’s Tomb would sooner or later find their way here to Hawkenlye.

‘The gate in that there outer fence — that’s the post and rail one, my lady — the gate was closed and chained. Er — me and Gussie, we reckoned it wouldn’t be too hard to climb over it, so we did. In fact it was quite easy, what with two of us, one helping the other.’ He was watching her hopefully, as if keen to know they had done right.

‘Well done, Saul,’ she said. ‘Then what?’

‘Not far beyond the first fence we came to a second,’ Saul continued. ‘This one was much more of a barrier, my lady, because the spaces between the rails had been filled in with hurdles and it was that thick, we-’ Saul broke off as Augustus leaned across to whisper in his ear. With an apologetic smile, Saul said, ‘But then you know, my lady, since you’ve seen it for yourself.’

‘Only from a distance, Brother Saul. Please, go on.’

‘The gate in the second fence was also chained and to begin with me and Gussie didn’t see as how we were going to get through. Then Gussie spotted a tree quite close to the fence, just about the only one around there that hadn’t been felled, and he reckoned he could climb it and crawl out along one of the higher branches so he could see over the fence, if you follow me, my lady.’

‘I do, Saul. And you managed this?’ She turned to Augustus.

‘Aye, my lady, though I’ve bruised my- Aye. Saul gave me a leg-up and I got hold of one of the lower branches, then I shinned up till I could reach the higher ones. I crept out as far as I dared, only then I began to hear the branch creaking a bit and Saul said to come down.’

‘Saul was quite right,’ she said gravely. ‘If you had fallen inside the enclosure, Gus, how could Saul have come to your aid?’

‘Exactly what I said myself!’ Saul cried.

‘What did you see?’ She stared at Augustus.

‘I saw the tomb,’ he said simply. ‘It was a long, wide depression and, inside it, huge great bones.’

‘The grave was still open?’ She was surprised; would not whoever had locked up the site have at least made some attempt to cover the bones? It seemed almost. . shocking.

‘Wide open, my lady,’ Augustus said.

She could not control her curiosity. ‘What did you feel, Gus?’ she asked. Remembering what Josse had said, she added, ‘Did the bones affect you in any way?’

Augustus pondered the question for several moments. Then he said slowly, ‘I felt I was trespassing, and that’s the honest truth. I felt I was staring at something that I had no right to see and I even felt that something was watching me and telling me to get away from there and leave the dead in peace.’

‘Did you?’ It might, she thought, have been no more than a lad who lived with monks having picked up their respect for the dead. On the other hand. .

‘Aye. I tell you, my lady, I couldn’t get down out of that tree fast enough. Then me and Saul ran back to the track and to the place where we had left our mounts.’

‘Then,’ Saul interrupted, picking up the tale, ‘we rode right up to the fellow in the jerkin, pretending we’d just arrived, and asked him if we could see the tomb. He’d seen Gussie afore, of course, that time he went with you and Sister Caliste, my lady, only we kept our hoods up and he barely gave us a glance, so I don’t reckon there’s much chance he recognised Gus.’

‘That was clever,’ she said admiringly. They had done well! ‘What did he say?’

‘He said Merlin’s Tomb was closed and we should go away. Gus said but we’ve come all the way from the other side of the forest — which was true even if it implied we’d travelled much further than we really had — but the man in the jerkin just snarled a bit and said he couldn’t help that and the tomb was still closed.’

‘Did he not guess by your habits that you came from Hawkenlye?’

‘He didn’t seem to, my lady,’ Augustus said. ‘Truth to tell, he seemed preoccupied and even a bit scared-like and I reckon we could have worn crowns and carried sceptres and he still wouldn’t have noticed.’

Smiling at the exaggeration, she said, ‘What could he have been scared of?’

‘Of being found out, if he had something to do with his master’s death,’ Saul said shrewdly.

‘Hmm.’ She considered that, recalling her own suspicions regarding the guards. Was it really so simple and merely a question of a ruffian guard becoming greedy and attacking and robbing his master? But if so, then the last place the man in the leather jerkin would be now was at the entrance to the tomb site; if he had killed Florian, in addition to the bags of silver coins he would also have a fast horse. He would be several counties away by now if he had any wits at all.

No. Common sense said that it was not he who had killed Florian. He might, however, have some idea who did.

And of course he had not been the only guard at Merlin’s Tomb.

‘Did you ask him any more questions?’ She looked at Saul, eyebrows raised.

‘Gussie did.’ Saul grinned. ‘Said he’d heard that the man who ran Merlin’s Tomb had been robbed and murdered and was it true and did the guard know who was behind it?’

‘Ah, the direct approach,’ Helewise murmured. ‘Brave of you, Gus. What was the answer?’

Augustus smiled ruefully. ‘Told me to mind my own business, only he used an extra word that I won’t repeat, my lady.’

‘He knew it was true all right,’ Saul put in. ‘When he’d finished telling us to bugg- um, that is, to go away, he said we’d find out soon enough whether it was true and in his view it was just as well because he’d never felt happy about the tomb, he’d had more than enough of the place, he didn’t even want to talk about it and he was leaving the district as soon as he’d seen off the last of the visitors.’

‘So Merlin’s Tomb is truly to close,’ she said thoughtfully. Somewhere deep inside her, there was a profound relief. They will return to us, she thought, those people in need, and once again old Brother Firmin will dole out holy water and gentle kindness, and the monks and nuns will all do whatever they are best at to heal hurts of minds, bodies and souls.

She gave herself a shake: relief was all very well but it didn’t solve the problem of who had killed Florian.

‘Did you see any of the other guards?’ she asked. ‘Perhaps the one we spoke to, Gus, when we visited?’

Gus shook his head. ‘No, my lady. Seems the man in the jerkin was left to do the job by himself.’

Was left. . Something that had been nagging at her now came to the front of her mind. ‘Who left him?’ she wondered aloud.

‘My lady?’ Saul looked puzzled.

‘Gussie just said he was left to do the job. Left by whom?’

Saul’s frown deepened. ‘Well, left on his own by the other guards who’d legged it, my lady.’

She smiled. ‘I’m sorry, Brother Saul, I’m not explaining myself clearly. I meant with Florian dead, who is issuing the orders?’

Gus was nodding his understanding. ‘Someone must have told the guards to secure the place and chain up the two gates, and ordered one of them to stay to turn away visitors,’ he said eagerly. ‘Oh, Saul, why didn’t we think of that? We could have asked him!’

‘Don’t worry about it, Gus,’ Helewise said. ‘Even if you did he’d only have told you to go away again.’

Gus picked up the emphasis and grinned. ‘Aye, that’s likely true. All the same. .’

She got to her feet. ‘No use in regrets, Gus,’ she said briskly. ‘The two of you have done well and I am most grateful to you. Now, off you go. Return to your duties and leave me to torment my brains wondering what to do next.’

They bowed and backed out through the door. As they left, she added, ‘If you do come up with any bright ideas, please don’t hesitate to share them with me.’

And, with murmurs of assent, they were gone.

She sat quite still, staring into space, not seeing any of the familiar objects, few in number, that furnished her simple little room. Her mind was racing as she tried to think what she ought to do next.

She could not control the insistent thought that kept saying, Merlin’s Tomb is to close and Hawkenlye is safe! Soon they will begin to come back!

That is not all there is to this business, she reprimanded herself sternly. Florian of Southfrith has been robbed and murdered. Is his death to be written off with a shrug as the work of some vicious itinerant felon who has long fled the district?

She recalled her unspoken objection to Saul’s suggestion that the guard in the leather jerkin might have been involved in the crime: that, if he had been, he’d have fled the district long since. Surely the same applied to whoever it was who had really done the deed? There was that fast bay horse of Florian’s to keep in mind, after all. Why would the murderer stay when he had the means to escape?

Suddenly she thought, but I am forgetting that Gervase de Gifford will soon be home! As relief flooded her, she wondered if it would be wrong of her to hand the whole sorry matter of the murder in the forest over to him.

I shall not abandon the business entirely, she decided. I shall carry out the action upon which I had already decided; in a day or so, I shall send for one of my nursing nuns and go to visit that poor young woman, Primevere. She will be calmer by then and more prepared to speak to someone other than her mother.

Having thus made up her mind on what she should do next, with considerable relief she went back to her work.

Two days later she had returned to her room after Nones and was wondering if now would be a good time to fetch either Sister Euphemia or Sister Caliste and ride over to Hadfeld when there was an abrupt knock on her door. It opened in response to her ‘Come in!’ and Josse stood before her.

He looked terrible. His face was lined and haggard and there were dark circles beneath his eyes. He carried his right arm awkwardly and she could see a linen bandage on his forearm.

There was not the slightest sign of his usual smile of greeting.

Her first reaction was a painfully forceful stab of guilt: I have sent him on a mission that has returned him to a state of intimacy with the woman he loves and now he has had to lose her all over again.

And it was all for nothing.

Before he could speak she had hurried around her table and, taking both his hands, she said, ‘Josse, Florian of Southfrith is dead and Merlin’s Tomb is closed. Forgive me, for the journey on which I sent you was unnecessary. Had we but waited, you need never have gone.’

He studied her for a few moments. His face was tanned from days spent riding out in the sun and his tunic, open at the neck, showed that the brown skin continued down across his chest; he’s been riding out in the sun with few clothes, she thought before she could stop herself.

But his eyes were full of pain.

His hands, which had been limp in hers, suddenly squeezed. He said, with a curious formality that was never usually in his tone when he spoke to her, ‘My lady Abbess, you have no scrying glass with which to predict the future. You asked me to do what at the time seemed the only possible thing that could be done to close the fraudulent tomb and willingly I accepted.’ There was a brief pause, then, looking down, he muttered, ‘Be consoled that, however I may be feeling now, I would not have missed the past couple of weeks for all the gold in the world.’

She felt tears in her eyes. She whispered, ‘Oh, Josse,’ then, before the emotion could make her add something she might later regret, she dropped his hands and, returning to the other side of her table, sat down heavily in her chair.

The best thing, she knew, would be to get going straight away on discussing what each of them had to report. The trouble was that neither she nor Josse seemed to know how to start.

Eventually it was he who broke the awkward silence. ‘Florian of Southfrith is dead, you say?’

‘Yes.’ Briefly she told him the little that she could about the murder, adding that she had visited the young man’s wife and spoken to his mother-in-law. ‘It was she — her name’s Melusine, she’s a rich widow and a bit of a dragon — who came here and identified the body.’ She went on to summarise what she had learned of Florian’s background and circumstances.

Josse absorbed it all in silence, nodding occasionally. When she had finished, he said, ‘I’ve met the mother-in-law. Well, I saw her, at any rate, that time I went to look for Florian at his house. So the young fool exaggerated his wealth in order to win his bride. Overspent, in debt and with an expensive wife, he must have been quite desperate for money.’ He paused, wincing, and altered his position so that he was supporting his right arm in his left hand. She was about to make some comment — You’re hurt! May we help? — but he did not give her the chance. ‘So, when he found some old bones which by their very size looked strange and mystical, the idea of making some much-needed cash out of them must have come to him like a blessing from above. He created the tomb on the edge of the forest, not caring who he upset, and then all he had to do was stand there by the gate and take the coins pressed into his greedy hands by gullible pilgrims.’

‘He’s dead, Sir Josse,’ she reminded him gently. ‘Whatever he did wrong, he did not deserve to die out there in the forest.’

‘Hmm.’

Josse, she thought, did not seem entirely convinced.

Something he had said returned to her. ‘You appear to be in no doubt that the Merlin’s Tomb near Hadfeld is a fake,’ she said, trying to keep the sudden flare of hope out of her voice; how much simpler for the closure of the tomb to be universally accepted if it could be shown up to be nothing but a clever pretence! ‘Does this mean that you have seen the magician’s real burial place?’

He sighed. ‘I have seen a place of great power which is known by the local people as Merlin’s Tomb, aye. There is a great oak in the middle of a clearing in a forest and a vast granite slab from beneath which issues a healing spring. In those parts they tell how it was there that Merlin revealed the secrets of his magic powers to the woman that he loved and that she used the knowledge to pen him up and bind him to her for ever. He lies under a hawthorn tree, they say, and one such tree does indeed stand there close by the oak and the fountain.’

She felt an atavistic shiver run down her back. ‘You saw where Merlin lies?’ she whispered.

He smiled faintly. ‘I saw where some say he lies,’ he amended.

‘But do you believe them?’ she persisted; it seemed very important.

He shrugged. ‘If I believed that Merlin was a real person then aye, I could accept that he was buried in that place, for I did in truth sense a great power there.’

‘Then-’ she began.

‘But, my lady, remember that I also felt some force emanating from the great bones at Florian’s site,’ he said gently. Then, with another sigh: ‘Perhaps I’m just gullible.’

‘You’re not gullible!’ she protested.

Now his smile seemed to spring from genuine amusement. ‘Thank you for that. But I think you may be being overgenerous.’

She decided not to pursue that; she was quite sure he was speaking of something other than merely the matter of the two tombs. Oh, but he has endured so much! she thought, pity for him making her emotions churn. But it would be no kindness to do as she longed to do and express her deep sympathy and risk undermining him; she must, she well knew, stick to the practicalities.

She cleared her throat a couple of times and said, ‘So, you made up your mind to return to us here at Hawkenlye and report that you had seen the true Merlin’s Tomb over in the Breton forest, which meant that the place near Hadfeld must be nothing but a pretence?’

He hesitated. Then: ‘Aye. Pretty much. I can’t be entirely certain, my lady, but then who could? I spoke long with Joanna’s people over there — they’re good people, speakers of the truth — and they refused to say unequivocally that their forest held the enchanter’s bones. They’ — his brow creased as he tried to find the words — ‘they more or less said to me that this is what some people believe, and why that belief came to be, and then they left it to me to make up my own mind.’

‘Nothing was definite, then?’

‘No. But then, in matters of belief, is that not always so? We believe that Jesus is the son of God, came to earth, died and was resurrected, but there’s no proof and so we can’t say that it’s definite.’

‘It’s in the Bible!’ She heard the shock in her voice.

He smiled but did not speak.

And after a moment she thought, but he is right. Faith has nothing to do with reading things, or being told them. Faith is in the heart, not the head.

There was silence in her little room. Then, as the whirl of her thoughts finally dropped her gently back in the here and now, she realised that he was tired, dirty, perhaps in pain, probably hungry and thirsty and undoubtedly grieving. She said, ‘I apologise, Sir Josse, for keeping you here talking for so long. Please, go and refresh yourself down with the monks in the Vale and, if necessary, ask Sister Euphemia or one of her nuns to look at that wound on your arm. When you are rested, come back and eat with us. Then I prescribe a good night’s sleep.’ Watching his sad eyes, she added hopefully, ‘Things often look better in the morning.’

‘Thank you, my lady,’ he said courteously. ‘I will do as you suggest.’

He turned to go but, at the door, stopped and looked back at her. ‘What ought we to do next? About young Florian, I mean?’

‘Sir Josse, you need do nothing, for you have done more than enough already to help me in my concerns. Anyway’ — she tried to speak lightly — ‘you have earned a good rest!’

‘I don’t want a rest,’ he snapped back. Then, quietly, ‘Forgive me, my lady. You meant well, I know. But I would rather keep busy, if you don’t mind.’

Her heart ached for him. Trying to sound brisk — for surely now he really would break down if she offered him kindness and sympathy — she said, ‘Well, I plan to make another visit to Florian’s widow, Primevere. She is grieving, of course, and in addition there seems to be some suggestion that she might be unwell. I thought to take either Sister Euphemia or Sister Caliste with me, then, if the young woman would agree to being examined, help might be offered to heal whatever ails her.’

He nodded. ‘I see.’

‘In addition, I feel that somehow it is important to discover, if we can, just who is in charge of the Merlin’s Tomb site now that Florian is dead. Who, for example, gave the order to close it? Who posted the guard at the entrance to turn would-be visitors away?’

‘Quite,’ he said neutrally.

‘I had been thinking of going this afternoon,’ she went on, ‘but it can just as well be tomorrow. Then, well rested after a night’s sleep, if you really want to you might accompany us?’

‘Aye, I’ll do that,’ he said. Then, with a nod, he was gone.

She waited but he did not return. Presently Brother Micah tapped at her door, bringing Sir Josse’s apologies but he was going to eat with the brethren down in the Vale, being too weary to be very good company. He would present himself tomorrow morning, Brother Micah went on, for the trip down to Hadfeld.

He doesn’t want to take the risk that I might question him about Joanna, she thought. Poor Josse; I would not have spoken of her until and unless he raised the subject, but he was not necessarily to know that.

A part of her felt terribly sad that he did not know her better than to realise it.

‘Thank you, Brother Micah,’ she said with a calmness she did not feel. ‘Please send Sir Josse my best wishes and say I shall expect him early in the morning.’

Micah bowed his way out of her room.

Leaving Helewise — heart-sore and anxious for her old friend, deeply hurt that he chose not to be with her but to suffer alone — right back in the claustrophobic circle of her own thoughts.