He tapped his grimy nails against his teeth for several moments. Then, with a final glance at the seal, he nodded. ‘I suppose it would do no harm to let you aboard . . . But I can’t treat you any different from the other passengers, no better rations or sleeping quarters, case they start complaining and the captain asks questions.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to,’ I said hastily. ‘It’s vital I should not draw attention to myself. I’ll tell everyone I’m on a pilgrimage.’
I’d watched a friar bargain for passage for a party of pilgrims earlier in the day and, by the sound of it, he was making a handsome profit – he told his pilgrims that the ship’s master was charging considerably more than in fact he was for the voyage and plainly he would keep the difference.
The master gestured to where the other passengers were already claiming their little portion of the deck on which to sleep and I hurried to do the same, before the most sheltered spots were taken. I settled myself where I could keep a close watch on the ship’s master. I was confident he had believed my story, but if he started to have doubts or someone alerted him that a wanted man might be trying to gain passage, I had to be ready to flee. There were a few occasions when I tensed and my heart pounded as I spotted him deep in conversation with men on the quayside, though they never glanced in my direction.
But it was only when the mooring ropes were untied and a wide stretch of water opened between ship and shore that I could finally relax. I had done it! I had escaped Philippe. He would never be able to reach me in England, unless, of course, King Louis really did take it into his head to make another bid for the English throne. But by then I would have vanished into the heart of the country and have made my fortune. And there is no better disguise for a poor man than wealth.
Almost as soon as we were clear of the harbour, the rain began to fall, a light misty rain but, driven by the wind, it soon had all the passengers soaked and scrambling to find a place beneath the aft-castle. The sailors had stretched a canvas from the wooden platform at the stern as far as the mast, but this was more to protect the cargo than the passengers.
The last time I had been on a ship crossing from England to France I had been a boy, and either I had forgotten just how violently a ship could lurch and roll or, being a child, had been indifferent to it. I remembered slipping under the blankets of the soldiers as they lay wrapped on deck and burrowing into their broad backs for warmth. They had not kicked me out, using me as a puppy to heat their own bodies. But this time, returning to my homeland, there was no one to share a blanket with. I shivered. This was only the first night. How was I to endure a week of it, or longer if we were becalmed? But, judging by the wind howling like a demon in Hell through the rigging above, there wasn’t much chance of that. It was far more likely we’d be dashed to pieces on some cliff.
‘The raven flew off the ark, Lugh,’ I muttered. ‘And he didn’t bother to return, so you’d better grow some wings and save yourself.’
I’d found myself talking to the silver raven these past few weeks, like some men talk to their dogs. Halfway to madness, I know, but when you’re alone and on the run, you need someone to grumble to, someone to ask, ‘Shall we take this track or that one?’ Otherwise, you fear you’ll forget how to speak and be found wandering about, wild-haired and naked, as crazy as the tree-man.
There were days when I was so lonely I thought I’d died in those woods, but didn’t know it. You hear of spirits who haunt the forests trying to find their way home, believing they’re still among the living. I’d even seen them some nights, drifting pale as moths among the dark trees. But they don’t speak. So as long as I kept talking, I knew I must be alive.
Lugh, as I’d named him, after the ancient god, was an attentive listener. He’d peer at me from out of those glistening black eyes and I could almost swear he was about to answer. He was better than any priest when it came to confession and I’d had much to confess during those long weeks on the run. Theft, of course, I was certainly guilty of that – clothes left to dry on bushes, food and blankets from unattended cottages, and then, as I travelled further away from Philippe’s château, there were the pies and roasted sheep’s feet I stole from crowded market stalls, and the trinkets I scooped up and slipped beneath my cloak. The latter I sold for a few coins in the next village or exchanged for a beaker of wine and, when the snows and frosts started to bite hard, to pay for a night in a flea-ridden tavern in the poorest quarter of a town.
There were other sins too – a girl on a farmstead. She caught me stealing and threatened to tell her father if I didn’t come to the barn with her. She had the face of a cow with large brown eyes and a wet tongue that seemed too big for her drooling mouth. I’d always imagined my first time would be with a noble woman, with Amée to be exact. I had spent many hours up in old Gaspard’s tower, imagining every moment of our coupling from me carrying her to a bed covered with snowy white linen to the soft, slow caresses that would coax us, inch by inch, up to the heights of ecstasy.
But this slut dragged me down in the piss-soaked straw and was pulling up her skirts before I could stop her. I certainly wasn’t her first, that I can assure you, and I staggered away feeling as if I’d been slobbered over by a large smelly dog. During those long nights in the turret, I’d often feared I would die a virgin. After that encounter I was sorry I hadn’t.
But as I hastened away from that stinking barn, I came to the third and what would prove to be the most fateful decision I would take since the night of the ambush. Up to then I’d survived by stealing bread from old women who were probably hungrier than I was, being chased by slavering farm dogs and dragged into barns by amorous she-trolls. And every time I stole, I risked being caught and mutilated for that crime at the very least, even before they discovered I was also a man with a price on his head. All that effort and danger and for what – a piece of rancid ham or a stinking tunic that was only fit for an arse-wipe? I wasn’t suited to the life of petty crime. And it was Lugh who reminded me where my true talents lay.
My change of fortune came a few nights later. I’d hidden in the darkest corner of a wayside inn and was trying to make a small jug of sour wine last for as many hours as I could, just so that I could stay out of the rain. A man was sitting at one of the tables nearby, making idle patterns with his spoon in some rabbit stew, which he’d barely touched, while all the while my mouth was watering at the sight of it.
Finally, he pushed it away and I swallowed my pride to ask if I could finish it. He shrugged, which I took as yes, and I gobbled it down as rapidly as I could, before the gimlet-eyed innkeeper’s wife noticed. I was wiping up the last juices from the wooden bowl with my finger when the man gave a great sigh. I looked up to see him gazing despondently into mid-air, like a frog who had discovered his favourite pond had dried up.
‘Something troubling you?’ I asked.
I felt obliged to enquire since he’d given me his stew, but I wasn’t much interested in the answer. If this man had money enough to waste on food he wasn’t going to eat, whatever trouble was vexing him couldn’t be half as bad as what I was enduring.
‘A woman,’ he said morosely.
‘You love her, but she doesn’t love you – is that it?’
I’d read about such cases, youths so love-sick they couldn’t eat or pretended they couldn’t, refusing their food with great sighs and groans, in the hope that the object of their infatuation would take notice and have pity on them. But this man looked a trifle old to be afflicted with love-sickness, for he was grey and running to middle-age fat.
He shuddered. ‘Love her! I’d rather bed a sow.’
Having recently had my own encounter with the she-troll, I knew just how he felt.
‘Then what is the problem?’ I enquired cheerfully.
‘I’m betrothed to her. She’s a widow and I borrowed a good deal of money from her husband before he died to repair my mill. It’s been handed down from father to son for generations, has that mill, and needed a new waterw
heel and beam, as well as new grind stones. But the widow’s set her heart on marriage and she’s as good as said she’ll demand the return of all the money within the month unless I wed her. I’d pay her the money today if I had it, but it’ll take me at least three years to scrape it together, for the harvests have been so poor these past years. If she insists on her money, I’ll be forced to give her the mill itself in payment and make myself a beggar, so I’ve no choice but to wed her.’
He raised his face to me with an expression of such hopelessness in his eyes, it was like staring into the face of a man on the gallows as they put the noose about his neck.
‘I was married once, years ago,’ he continued. ‘Wife ran off with my brother on our wedding night. I’ve not looked at another woman since, more trouble than they’re worth. I’m content with the quiet of my own hearth and the company of my cats. But once this widow gets her talons in me, I’ll not have a moment’s peace again. She’ll nag me from morn to night. She’s already started, and we’re not even wed yet. She’s insisting I must get rid of my poor cats, for when she moves in with me, she is bringing her pack of vicious lapdogs. Between them yapping and her yammering, I’ll not be able to hear myself think. I’ll end up drowning myself in my own mill pool.’
‘What you need,’ I told him, ‘is a tale to convince her you’d be the wrong man to marry, but also to make her pity you.’
‘And where am I to find such a story?’ he asked bitterly.
‘I might be able to help you there,’ I said.
I thought hard for a few moments. Then, pouring myself a beaker of his wine from his flagon, which was much better than my own, I began: ‘I reckon your story should go something like this . . .
‘Many generations ago in this valley the grain grew in abundance. But the women had to grind it by hand and it took most of the day just to produce enough flour for the next day’s bread. They had no time to tend vegetables or livestock or even to mind their children. So your ancestor resolved to build a water mill next to the river, so that the women could bring their wheat to be ground into the finest flour.’
The miller nodded morosely. ‘That’s how it came about, so I was told.’ He frowned. ‘But what’s the use of telling me what I already know? That’ll not rid me of the widow.’
‘Patience and I’ll tell you something you don’t know . . . Your ancestor and his sons laboured long and hard to build the mill and at last one evening it was completed and the miller eagerly anticipated the coming of dawn when he would begin milling his first sack of grain. But that night they heard a terrible roar and shrieking, and a huge wave swept down the river, smashing the mill wheel to pieces. They were baffled for there’d been no storm or rain in the night. But so great was the need for a mill in the valley, there was nothing for it but to patiently rebuild the wheel. But the very night it was finished, the water in the river began to race so violently that the wheel spun itself into kindling.
‘Refusing to be defeated, the miller and his sons rebuilt the wheel for a third time, and on the night it was completed the miller decided to sleep on the riverbank and watch over his wheel to see what transpired. The night was warm and tranquil. The moon shone brightly and the stars glittered in the indigo sky, and he almost drifted into sleep. Then, at the midnight hour, the water began to foam and churn. The miller hastily backed away from the bank, fearing there was a great beast in the river.
‘But, to his surprise, he saw a woman, with skin as white and shimmering as a pearl, rising out of the water. She was naked and her long hair floated out about her. She was the most beautiful woman the miller had ever seen . . . until she opened her mouth and began to scream in rage. The sound was so shrill it brought tears of pain to his eyes, and when he glimpsed the three rows of dagger-sharp teeth, he fell to his knees, shaking with fear.
‘“You miserable tadpole, is it you who have trespassed upon my river?” the naiad screeched at him.
‘The miller was so afraid he could hardly speak. But, trembling, he told her that he had built the mill to help the villagers and without it they would surely starve.
‘The naiad hauled herself out onto the bank and the miller was even more terrified to discover that below her waist her body was covered with thick green scales, and instead of legs she had the writhing tail of a great serpent. She slithered across the ground towards him. The miller scrambled to his feet and tried to run, but her scaly tail lashed out like a whip, wrapping itself around his knees, bringing him crashing to the ground. The miller dug his fingers into the grass, but the creature was so strong that she dragged him towards her with the coils of her tail.
‘The miller shut his eyes, certain that he had lived his last day on earth. The naiad wrapped her cold, wet arms about him and he was sure she meant to devour him, but instead she caressed and fondled him. The miller was powerless to resist her advances for her great thick tail was coiled tightly round his body, binding him fast.
‘Finally, when she’d had her lustful way with him, the naiad said, “I will make a bargain with you. I will not destroy your mill, if you pay me rent for my river. Every year on this night you shall tether a fat cow on this spot. And when you die, your sons and grandsons must do the same and I shall keep your mill safe. But if you or your descendants ever neglect to bring me my tribute I shall take their first-born son to be my husband.”
‘When the miller had sworn a solemn oath that he would do as she asked, the naiad kissed him on the lips, a kiss so icy and terrible that he felt as if all the breath had been sucked from his lungs. Laughing, she uncoiled her tail and slithered back into the water.
‘The following year the miller did exactly as he was bade and tethered a plump cow on the riverbank. In the morning he found the rope cut as if it had been bitten through and the ground churned up by the cow’s thrashing hoofs. But all that remained of the poor animal were the blood-stained tail and horns. The miller and his sons were so chilled by the sight that they resolved never to forget the tribute. Nor did they, and the mill wheel kept turning.’
I paused and my unwitting host shifted his buttocks on the wooden bench. He frowned, puzzled.
‘It’s a good tale to wile away a winter’s evening,’ he said, ‘but how will it help me get out of this marriage to the old widow?’
‘I’m coming to that,’ I said, ‘but my throat’s dried up with all this talking.’
My companion took the hint and waved his empty flagon at the tavern-girl, who carried it off to refill it. When she returned, and after I’d taken a long swig of wine, I resumed my story.
‘Every year since that night down through the generations, the tribute was paid as the naiad demanded, until your father’s time. He didn’t believe in naiads, but he continued to leave a cow by the river, afraid to stop in case it brought ill fortune. But times were growing hard, and one particular year, when you were just an infant, a plague of insects swarmed through the valley, eating every green stalk down to the bare earth. Men and beasts alike went hungry. Your father could not afford to waste a good cow that year, so he picked out the skinniest, most sickly beast and began to lead it to the river. As chance would have it, a neighbour with whom he’d quarrelled passed him on the road and jeered at him.
‘“There’s not enough meat on that scrawny beast to keep me fat this winter.”
‘He went off chuckling to himself. And your father began to wonder – was it his neighbours who’d been taking the cow each year and laughing at him behind his back? Determined not to be taken for a fool any longer, he turned and led the cow home.
‘Though he was sure it was his neighbours who were making off with the cows, still your father lay awake all night worrying just in case the legend might be true. But come dawn, the mill was still standing and the river was as calm as a nun at prayer. Your father rubbed his hands in satisfaction. He had been right all along. The legend was no more than a silly tale to frighten children and he’d waste not a single cow more on it.
‘All was well for
several years. You grew up and when your father died you became the miller. You fell in love with a pretty maid and were overjoyed when she consented to become your wife. She was a beautiful bride and you couldn’t wait for the wedding feast to end and the wedding night to begin. But no sooner were the two of you alone in your cottage than you heard a great roaring as if a huge wave was rolling down the river. You ran out into the darkness to check the mill wheel, but it was undamaged and the river was no higher than before. It must have been rocks falling up in the hills that you’d heard. But you wasted little time pondering about that, for it was your wedding night and your adorable bride was waiting. You hurried back to the cottage.
‘Your bride had extinguished the candle, but by the dim glow of the damped-down fire you could just make out the outline of her head on the pillow and her arms stretched out to receive her new husband. You ran to the bed and jumped in, but the arms that embraced you were wet and cold, her leg rubbing against your bare thigh felt as if it was covered with thick slimy scales, and when she pressed her icy lips upon yours it was as if she was sucking the breath from your body.
‘Alarmed, you sprang from the bed and in your haste you trod on something warm and sticky lying on the floor. With trembling fingers you lit a candle and saw that what you had stepped on was a blood-soaked hand, bitten off at the wrist. To your horror, you saw a ring on that dead hand, the very one that, only that afternoon, you had slipped onto your wife’s finger. The hand was all that remained of your beautiful bride. Aghast, you stared at the bed and saw a naked woman resting against the pillows, with skin as translucent and gleaming as a river-pearl, while beneath the blankets something slithered and coiled. The woman held out her arms to you.
‘“Come to your new bride, my husband. I’ve been waiting for you.”