The Enchanter's Forest

Chapter 22

Aware as if in a dream of Joanna helping him on to Horace’s back, Josse sat slumped in the saddle as she led the big horse along narrow forest tracks, twisting and turning this way and that, until at last they reached her hut in its secret clearing. He felt a sharp stab of pain in his head as she got him off Horace and inside the hut, where it was all she could do to make him drink an infusion that she hastily prepared from her stocks of herbs on the shelves in the hut.

He lay stretched out on the sleeping platform and she covered him with soft blankets. He tried to keep his eyes open — there was so much he needed to know — but sleep was overcoming him relentlessly.

‘It’s all right, dearest Josse,’ Joanna murmured.

‘But how-?’

‘No more questions till the morning,’ she said very firmly. Then she lay down beside him, curled up against him and, immeasurably comforted by her warmth and her presence, at last he surrendered.

He woke to the lovely sensation of having his forehead massaged with a feather touch by very small fingers. There was the sweet, sharp smell of lavender oil. Seeing his eyes open, his daughter said, ‘Does it still hurt, Josse?’

He was not entirely sure but he thought not. To test this out he raised his eyebrows and lowered them very quickly four or five times in quick succession, which amused Meggie so much that he did it several times more. Then she had to try, and in the resulting laughter one of them managed to upset the little dish of oil.

‘Sorry,’ he said to Joanna when presently she came into the hut. ‘Some of the oil got spilled.’

She sniffed. ‘It doesn’t matter. This hut always smells of some remedy or another and lavender is one of the better ones.’ She came up to stand in front of the sleeping platform. ‘You look better. How’s the head?’

‘It’s fine,’ he assured her. ‘Whatever you dosed me with last night has mended me.’

‘Just a pain killer,’ she said.

‘A strong one, and it made me sleep like the dead.’ She did not reply. ‘Were you, I wonder,’ he added softly, ‘hoping that it would also serve to confuse me, so that I could no longer tell what really happened late yesterday from the weird and unlikely things that cropped up in my dreams?’

Her dark eyes were steady on his. ‘Yes.’

‘It didn’t work,’ he told her. ‘I can still see that image of my sword swinging down in a blow that should have beheaded him, yet-’ No. Whatever had happened next had completely gone, if indeed it had ever been there in the first place. ‘And you with that lethal knife of yours, I could have sworn you cut the other man’s throat.’

‘Sssh!’ She put a warning finger to her lips and belatedly he remembered Meggie, sitting just behind him. He turned but she seemed absorbed in making a very neat plait from the fringed ends of one of the blankets.

‘Meggie, Josse and I are going outside for a while,’ Joanna said. ‘We won’t be long, then we’ll come back and I’ll prepare some food. I’ve put a pot of water over the hearth to boil and, because fire and hot water can hurt, you must stay up there where it’s safe, yes?’

‘Yes. Stay,’ the child agreed.

‘She’s very obedient,’ Josse said as he and Joanna walked slowly over to the far side of the clearing.

‘She’s very sensible,’ she replied. ‘When I tell her to do or not to do something, I try to explain why, and usually — not always — she accepts without too much complaint.’

Something within Josse protested at the thought of a child not yet three years old being sensible. ‘Does she never just play or be naughty?’ He could hear accusation in his voice.

Joanna smiled, not to be ruffled. ‘Oh, she does both of those.’

They had moved into the shade of a great oak tree. Birds sang in its dense green foliage and from near at hand came the rushing sounds of a stream. He said, ‘So, what happened? Did the Domina turn those two men to mist just as our weapons struck?’

He had intended sarcasm, but surprisingly she nodded. ‘Yes, sort of,’ she replied. ‘They had something to do with it too; the uninjured one is a very powerful man and his abilities far exceed those of his brother. Actually I think brother is not to be taken literally, only to imply that they are united in the clan. The men are, I believe, no more than distant cousins.’

As if, he thought, it made any difference. ‘So why didn’t the stronger one undertake the task of following us?’ he demanded. ‘For one thing, his greater power might have allowed him to realise the truth about what we found out at Barenton so that he wouldn’t have launched his attack on us. For another, maybe if it had been he who fought that — that whatever it was that came to our defence in the Broceliande, he might have emerged the victor.’

‘He might,’ she agreed. ‘They would indeed have been more evenly matched.’

Still she seemed serene, quite unfazed by his angry comments. With an exasperated sigh, he said, ‘Joanna, I don’t understand supernatural powers and I never will. But, since it seems that twice recently people wielding such powers have tried to kill me, I do think that you might at least try to explain.’

She smiled. ‘Of course. Yesterday the Long Men were angry because they thought people — you — were again violating the grave of their venerated ancestress. You weren’t,’ she added quickly, ‘but they didn’t know that. We — you and I — saw them and, recalling how the wounded one tried to attack us before, we defended ourselves, once the Domina had released what the Long Man had done to stop you drawing your sword.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Oh, that’s actually quite simple. You could have unsheathed it all along but he had put the thought into your mind that it was suddenly impossible.’

‘How could he possibly do that?’

‘Josse, it would take all of today and tomorrow to explain, let alone to tell you how to do it. Just take my word for it that putting thoughts into someone else’s head is quite easy when you know how.’

‘Can you do it?’

‘I can, yes, but I never do it to those I love.’

‘Oh.’ He could not for the moment think what else to say.

‘Where was I? Oh, yes. The Domina knew that the Long Men would not wish to harm us once they knew the true story. Once they knew that the information we brought home from the Broceliande supported the closure of Merlin’s Tomb and not the opposite, because what you were shown there in the forest of Armorica confirmed your belief that the tomb here was a fake. Also, once they knew that you went there yesterday to apologise to the ancestress for what had been done, even though it wasn’t your fault, and to try to make amends.’

‘I suggested to the Domina that I could start to fill in the grave,’ he recalled with a grin.

‘I can imagine her reaction. That was a task of great honour reserved for the dead woman’s own people. But you weren’t to know. The Domina knew she must stop our attack on the men because, once everyone knew the truth, there was no more need either for them to try to kill us or for us to defend ourselves and retaliate.’ She paused, then added quietly, ‘The Domina is more far-sighted than most people and she no doubt saw what would have happened had your sword and my knife found their mark. Two of the Long Men would have been slain in their own sacred grove and, even though they are nowadays few in number, still the repercussions would have been terrible.’

‘So she turned my man to cloud and my sword passed straight through him,’ Josse murmured. He still could not believe it.

‘It’s mind control again, Josse,’ she said earnestly. ‘You thought you did things that, in reality, worked out rather differently.’

‘I’ve been a soldier all my life!’ he cried. ‘I know when I’m swinging my sword down in a death blow and you can’t tell me otherwise.’

She began to speak but then, with a nod, stopped; it was almost, he thought, as if she were listening to a voice within her head giving her instructions. .

‘Let us just be relieved that further harm has been averted,’ she said calmly. ‘Now, what do you want for breakfast?’

‘I-’ Breakfast? When his mind was still bursting with things he was desperate to know?

But she was already moving away back towards the hut. She held out her hand to him and, after a moment, he took it.

After they had all eaten, Joanna unwound the linen bandage and inspected the wound on his forearm. It had healed well and skilfully she removed the stitches.

Then there was no more reason for him to stay.

Joanna and Meggie went with him to the edge of the forest. He had announced he must return to the Abbey; ‘She’ll be worried about me,’ he said.

Joanna did not have to ask who she was.

Dear Josse, she thought now as the moment of parting approached. He did not really understand one little bit of what had happened by Merlin’s Tomb yesterday. She did not understand all of it herself; the level of power possessed by beings such as the Domina and the Long Men was as far beyond her own small skills as Saturn was beyond the Moon. But she, unlike Josse, had the great advantage of knowing that it was quite possible to learn how to do such things, provided you were prepared to devote your life to the process.

I am prepared for that, she thought. I shall miss Josse more than I can now know, I am certain of that. But my life is here. I have set my feet on the path and I cannot deviate now.

And he would be back.

The thought gave her a deep, secret joy.

They had emerged from the trees. Meggie had stooped down in the grass that began where the trees stopped and was picking daisies.

‘Farewell, dearest Josse,’ Joanna said, both his hands in hers.

‘Take care, sweeting.’ His eyes were wet.

Feeling the emotion rising, she tried to think of something to say that might lighten the mood. Ah, yes; she had the very thing.

‘About that female antecedent of yours who used to tend the sacred fire on the Caburn,’ she began. ‘Remember?’

‘Aye. What of her?’ Despite himself, he looked interested.

‘About you, taller than most men.’

‘What are you talking about?’ He frowned ferociously, then all of a sudden his face cleared and, wonder in his eyes, he said, ‘She was of their people?’

She nodded, almost laughing. ‘Indeed she was. They didn’t let just anyone muck about with the Caburn fire.’

‘Have you known all the time?’

‘No, of course not — I knew hardly anything about the Long Men until very recently. The Domina told me yesterday. In fact, she said she told you too but you weren’t listening.’

‘She did no such thing!’

‘Some men whose antecedents were from this area still stand out by their height. Don’t those words sound familiar at all?’

‘Er-’ He hardly liked to think.

‘She was referring to you, Josse.’

‘So — that woman lying in the tomb is one of my forebears.’ It was yet another thing that scarcely bore credence.

‘Indeed she is.’ She thought for a moment, then added, ‘The Domina will have told the Long Men who you are. I shouldn’t think they would object if, once in a while, you went back to the grave of your ancestress to pay your respects.’

He was shaking his head, giving every impression of a man too bemused and perplexed by a succession of wonders to know if he was on his heels or his elbows. ‘I just don’t know what to make of it all, and that’s the truth,’ he said.

She put her arms round him. ‘Go now, my love,’ she urged him. ‘Go back to the Abbey, speak to the Abbess Helewise and reassure her that all is well, both at Merlin’s Tomb and with you, which will be concerning her far more than some old bones in the ground.’

‘She doesn’t know that we-’ he protested.

But she put a gentle finger up to his lips, silencing the words. ‘Oh, yes, she does.’

She watched as, still looking as if he had been recently poleaxed, he walked slowly over to Meggie, gave her a hug and a kiss and said, in a remarkably cheery voice, that he would be seeing her soon. Meggie reached up to return his kiss and dropped her daisy chain around his neck.

With Meggie standing at her side and holding her hand, Joanna watched as he mounted Horace and, kicking the horse to a trot, descended the slight slope towards the Abbey gates.

Then, doing her best to sound as cheerful as Josse had managed to do, she blinked away her tears and said, ‘Now, Meggie, time to go home.’

Helewise heard his footsteps coming along the cloister with vast relief and when he knocked on the open door and stepped into her room — he appeared to be wearing a daisy chain — she got up and hugged him.

‘Sir Josse, I do apologise,’ she said hastily, taking two large paces backwards. ‘It’s just that I was so very worried about you because I know how you and-’ Flustered, she stopped abruptly and then tried again. ‘That is, the brethren in the Vale said you did not come back last night and I feared some harm had come to you.’

He was watching her, deep affection in his brown eyes, smiling gently as if at some small private joke. ‘What is it?’ she demanded.

‘Oh — nothing, my lady. I am very sorry to have caused you anxiety. I — er, I met some people I was not expecting at Merlin’s Tomb but all is well there now. The site is indeed closed and the grave has been filled in.’

She stared intently at him. ‘That is for sure?’

‘Yes, my lady. Your Abbey is safe.’

Oh, thank God, she thought. ‘Thank you, Sir Josse. I am more grateful than I can say.’

‘No need to be grateful to me, my lady. The principal reason it’s closed is because Melusine paid a killer to murder Florian, and so far it looks as if both of them are getting clean away with it.’

‘Give Gervase time,’ she soothed. ‘He will not give up so easily, I know.’ Then, remembering why he had gone back to the tomb the previous day, ‘Did you find out whose the bones were?’

‘Aye,’ he said. She waited, but he said no more.

Well, perhaps it didn’t really matter.

She read sorrow in every part of him. Walking slowly out to the stables to see him off — he had declined her offer of sharing the midday meal, saying that he really ought to return to New Winnowlands — she had a sudden vivid picture of him going back to that empty house.

Oh, Josse!

But what can I do? she demanded of herself. My work and my duty are here; I cannot make rash offers to ride over and visit him to see how he is and check that he’s happy. Anyway, he probably won’t be.

Impulsively she reached for his hand. ‘Come back whenever you feel like company,’ she urged him. ‘Remember that you have many friends here who care about you very much.’

She saw tears in his eyes. He bent to kiss her hand and muttered something about knowing that right enough. Then he strode into the stable, emerged leading Horace and, with barely a nod in her direction, mounted and hurried away.