warmth of a fire after a long cold journey in the wind and rain. Then the constriction at his throat would begin to dominate his thoughts, his whole consciousness condensing to that tight band around his neck. After a while he couldn’t tell who was asking him the questions, or if he was replying. He seemed to be somewhere else, not in the clearing at dusk but somewhere much darker. He was underground, he could sense it. The air felt close on his skin, damp and cold. Was this hell? Voices were around him. He recognised one as his own but, bizarrely, he couldn’t tell which one it was.
‘Where will we find her?’
‘Who?’
‘The girl who was with you in the church at Paris.’
‘She has always been with me.’
‘Where is she?’
‘I know.’
‘Where is she?’
‘She has come to me.’
‘Where is she?’
‘I must fortify myself for the struggle ahead.’
And then he moved, the rope dug into his neck and he choked. He felt hands adjusting his position, alleviating the tightness slightly. The odour of putrefaction was in his nostrils, the horrid voice of the Raven in his ear, resuming that blasphemous chant.
‘Odin, who gave his eye for lore,
Odin, who hung for nine days on the storm-racked tree,
Odin the bold, the furious and the mad,
Odin accept our gift of pain.’
Jehan forced the words from his strangled throat: ‘Jesus, who died for our sins on the cross, who suffered so we may be free, forgive my sins and welcome me to your heaven, Lord.’ The confessor was certain he was to die there and offered a prayer against pride that God had selected him as a martyr.
He heard the Raven snort in frustration. Then the woman’s voice changed, took on a different quality, more cracked, urgent, imploring. That was when the first bird came to him.
It had been more of an irritation than anything when it had first dropped onto his chest. He hadn’t known what it was, its touch as light as a spider’s until he heard it call. Of course he had heard the birds gathering in the trees, but in his pain and his anguish he hadn’t registered the noise above any of the other sounds of the evening. When the second bird descended, dread set in. He had heard them pecking but couldn’t feel them on his own skin; they were tearing at something about his neck. Then the first wound had come, just an exploratory nip at his cheek. He gasped but then there was another stab at his cheek, harder, and the rasp of the bird, hoarse and exultant. He tried to writhe away but the rope bit deeper into his neck. The birds were on him then, shredding his flesh and his willpower in a torrent of pecks like the fall of an agonising rain. He managed to turn; the rope tightened and he blacked out for a second.
When he came back to consciousness he heard voices.
‘Adisla, come back to me!’
‘No, Vali, no. You are trapped in the schemes of the gods and I want no part of that.’
‘I love you.’
‘And I you. But it is not enough.’ He recognised neither of the names, but they seemed to resonate within him, like the shadow of a memory, known and then slipping away, leaving no more trace of itself than the feeling that something of huge importance lay lurking at the limit of the mind, ungraspable.
Then the memory sparked in his mind, as real as if it was happening right there. The Virgin Mary was in front of him gathering to herself the light of the cornfields and the blue of the sky. She was beautiful and she touched him on the shoulder.
‘Do not seek me,’ she said; ‘let me go.’
He was crying out, screaming and moaning as the birds tore his flesh to a bloody lace.
‘Where is she?’
The voice brought him back. He had betrayed himself, not known himself. Who knew what he had said, who knew what he would say, under such torture? They wanted the lady. He knew where she was; he needed no divine presence to tell him. She was with the merchant. He could stop the pain and the sharp tac tac tac of the bites, the stabbing and the tugging at his skin, in an instant. The confessor knew he could not hold out much longer. As a bird tore a red string of meat from his lips, he recited the words in his head: I put my faith in Christ. Then he opened his mouth to the savage beak. After that a blackness seemed to come up from inside him and his senses failed.
16
Aelis went to the mule and led it to where the confessor lay. It came quietly and without complaint. She didn’t know how to get the monk to stay on its back — it was a pack animal and had no saddle. She glanced across the clearing. The low drone of chanting from the shelter in the woods went on. The torturers were still in their den. Aelis looked at the smouldering fire the Vikings had left. She had a powerful urge to take up its embers and use them to burn the horrible pair in the middle of their sorceries.
She knew that she could not succeed, though. All she would do was get them to come out.
The monk’s eyes were glassy and he was scarcely conscious. She spoke to the mule in a low voice, telling it to be quiet and hold still, summoning that shape in her thoughts, the one that said horse to her. There it was — she felt it, shivering and stamping in her head. For a moment the strangeness of that struck her, but she was too scared of the Raven and his awful sister to dwell on it for long. She picked up the confessor. He exhaled heavily as she lifted him. He was not heavy, his body wasted by his paralysis, but still she struggled to get him up. She spoke again to the mule, wedging the confessor against the animal’s flank. Her kaftan was wet with Jehan’s blood as she slumped him over the mule’s back. He gave a short cry, more like someone dreaming than in pain, as he fell into position.
The chanting in the shelter stopped and Aelis froze. The chanting did not start again but she heard no other noise from that direction, just the sounds of the Viking camp drifting up through the night. She led the mule forward but the confessor started to slide off its back. She caught him beneath the armpits just before he fell and shoved him back up.
The monk would not remain on the mule by himself. She put one hand out to steady him and took the halter with the other. She was having to escape by edging sideways, nearly backwards. There was no immediately obvious track through the woods, other than the one that had been beaten down by the Raven to get to his den.
Which way to go? Should she follow the merchant’s instructions? She didn’t trust him but she had no other protector. She would go to the ford. Where was it? Over the hill. In her panic she couldn’t even remember if the woods thinned on the top of the hill to allow her a view of the river. Never mind. The grass was long and there were many brambles but she chose what looked like the easiest way and pulled the animal on. It responded to her, stepping forward into the darkness beneath the trees. She hadn’t gone five paces when the monk slipped again. This time he let out a loud cry.
She heaved the monk back up and went on. Beneath the trees the dark was shot with a web of moonbeams that sparkled and teemed with insects. Fireflies flashed green against the blackness and the moon frosted the trunks of the great oaks. It was like a trap though, the whole wood. She couldn’t move forward without snaring her feet, without the mule blowing and snorting enough to wake a thousand Vikings, without the monk falling.
From down towards the Viking camp she heard voices. Someone was coming up the hill. She breathed in. She could not continue as she was. Almost without thinking, she shoved the confessor forward and jumped up behind him onto the mule’s back. The animal gave a sigh of complaint but didn’t buck or shy. She gently kicked it in the ribs to encourage it forward. It didn’t move. Then she realised: the mule hadn’t been trained for riding. It was a good pack animal but it had spent all its life in a train.
