Over the weeks that followed, Estienne gallantly paid court to his betrothed, but neither she nor anyone at the château could fail to notice that his gaze strayed constantly towards Hélène whenever she was nearby, and his eyes searched for her when she was absent. And they also observed how Hélène repeatedly turned towards the sound of Estienne’s voice, as if she could not help herself. It was plain she, too, was in love.
When Estienne pleaded with the marquis to grant him his youngest daughter’s hand in marriage instead of the elder’s, the marquis not unnaturally refused. But finally after both Hélène and Estienne entreated him on their knees, he could see that if he was not to lose this wealthy suitor entirely, he had no choice but to agree. But he declared that Hélène could not marry until her elder sister was safely wed to another for fear of shaming Lisette, and further that the youngest daughter would come with but half the dowry of the elder, for the marquis was a shrewd man and realised that, if Estienne was so determined to have the girl, he would not be obliged to part with nearly as much to sweeten the bargain.
A match was quickly arranged for Lisette with an old widower who was far wealthier even than Estienne. But her new husband’s riches did nothing to assuage Lisette’s fury and bitterness. She brooded constantly about what her sister had stolen from her and was determined to have her revenge. On the night before Hélène’s marriage, she covered herself with a cloak belonging to one of her maids and stole away to consult the wise woman who lived on an island in the lake. Lisette sought death for her sister, but the woman refused to grant her wish, fearing that she would be accused of the murder.
Instead she persuaded Lisette that revenge would taste far sweeter if she watched her sister’s marriage grow sour, and what better way to turn a man against his wife than if she failed to bear him heirs? The wise woman gave Lisette a charm to hide in the marriage bed to curse it, so that any child conceived in that bed would be stillborn. And so it came to pass that Hélène bore three sons, but not one drew breath.
Hélène, fearing that her husband would indeed try to put her away and take another to his bed, summoned a wise woman who lived on the edge of the forest to help her. This woman was cousin to the one Lisette had consulted and the forest woman recognised the evidence of her cousin’s handiwork. She knew at once how Hélène had been cursed.
She told Hélène that she must never again lie in her husband’s bed. Instead she must persuade her husband to lie with her in secret, deep in the forest beneath a cleaved oak that bore mistletoe, and when the child was born she must give birth beneath that same tree, for only that could protect the babe from the curse. She warned Hélène that on no account must she tell anyone of this for fear that word would reach Lisette, who would do the child harm. Then she gave Hélène a tame white dove, telling her to release it if she needed to summon her.
Each day Hélène rode out of the château alone on her palfrey, searching the forest until at length she found the oak the old woman had described. With her own hands she built a little bower beneath it. When all was ready, she persuaded her husband to come to meet her alone, telling him she had a great treasure to show him. She led him to the bower decorated with flowers and laid ready with wine, fruit and meat. Soothed by the wine and intoxicated by the perfume of the flowers, Estienne succumbed to his wife’s tender words and gentle caresses and made love to her. At once Hélène felt her womb quicken with child.
But as the weeks passed and the maids noticed their mistress’s swelling belly, rumours began to fly about the château that the babe was none of her husband’s getting, for both maids and manservants knew she had not been once to his bed these many months. They remembered seeing her repeatedly slipping out alone to the forest around the time the child had been conceived and concluded that she had gone to meet her lover. They laughed and whispered in corners, wondering how Estienne could be so blind as not to realise he had been cuckolded.
When Hélène felt the birth pangs coming upon her, she again slipped out alone and went to the little bower beneath the oak. She released the dove, which flew straight to the wise woman, and she hastened to help Hélène in her travail. When the babe was born the wise woman bit through the cord with her teeth for she would not use iron to sever the bond between infant and mother. Hélène was too afraid even to look at the child, fearing that, like her other sons before, this boy would not draw breath. But the wise woman rubbed his little chest and chafed his tiny hands and feet, and soon Hélène heard the sweetest sound in the whole world, the cry of her own living child.
After seven days she returned home and placed the baby in the crib with her husband’s own coat of arms carved into the headboard. Estienne brought the boy to the church to be baptised and stood for the child, declaring him to be his true son, and he named the infant Tristan. Then the proclamation went out that Monsieur le Comte at last had an heir for his lands and titles.
There were those who still claimed that the child was a bastard, but whenever such rumours reached Estienne’s ears, the gossipmonger who spread such tales found himself lashed to the blacksmith’s anvil where his tongue was ripped out with red-hot pincers. And thereafter whatever any man’s private thoughts might have been regarding the paternity of the child, he quickly learned to keep them to himself. For Estienne knew that his wife’s honour was above reproach and her virtue shone brighter than the north star. He loved Hélène more with each day that passed for all she had endured to give him his precious son.
Here the strange tale ended, but the scribe had added something more:
This is a true and faithful account as told to me by Estienne, Le Comte de Lingones himself, on the day of the marriage of his own beloved son Tristan, upon whose life he swore a solemn oath before God.
It was signed Father Vitalis, priest of this parish of St Luke’s, anno Domini, 1141.
I quickly scrolled back to some of the earlier records, flipping back and forth between this signature and other entries by Father Vitalis. They were all written in the same hand using the same type of ink, the black having a slightly greenish tinge as is common when old inks fade over time.
So that was it. I had searched through the book from cover to cover and there wasn’t a single word that had been freshly added to these ancient texts. No pages seemed to have been torn out. This simply could not have been the book my master had been writing in.
I closed the covers and was about to examine some of the others on the desk when the old crow gave a great trumping snort and rolled over to face me. Thankfully his eyes were still closed, but I wasn’t about to take any more risks that night. Besides, staring at those old dusty pages had made me as sleepy as a bear in winter. I tiptoed back to my pallet but, though I was aching with tiredness, I could not sleep. I was sure the ancient one had been writing something of great importance, but what on earth was it? Had he found the document Philippe wanted after all and was copying it for him? I should get up and search again, but in the morning . . . the morning would be time enough.
Chapter 6
A weakling babe, a greybeard old,
Surnamed the dragon: me they hold,
In darkest dungeon languishing
That I may be reborn a king.
Regulus stumbles down the last step of the spiral staircase and through a door at the bottom, which is as stout as the door of his own parish church. It closes behind him with a thud that echoes from the stone walls. The white rider’s hand still grasps his shoulder, but if it is to prevent the child darting forward, the restraint is not needed, for the boy’s only thought is to retreat. But even in his fear he knows that is impossible. His gaze ranges frantically around the great chamber, like a trapped fly.
The long cellar is divided into three by the arches that support the vaulted ceiling. There are no windows. How could there be, so far beneath the earth? But torches gutter on the soot-blackened walls and here and there on the many tables fat candles burn, adding their acrid fumes to the room. Beneath the middle arch is a furnace
shaped like a giant egg. Bellows and long pincers lie beside it on stacks of wood. The ruby glow of the fire spreads out into the room, staining the stone flags on the floor as if they are wet with fresh blood. In the far corner, a great vat rests on six short pillars. But even the firelight cannot penetrate the black hole beneath it.
There are pestles and mortars, boxes and jars, charts and books. There are round tubs, big enough for a woman to bathe in up to her neck, and wicker cages on four legs, large enough to contain a boy. Regulus’s gaze darts over all these things, but he has no names for these objects and doesn’t understand what they are for, so they simply blur into a tangle of shapes in his mind.
His attention is captured by the great glass flasks with bellies round and swollen as his mother’s when she is heavy with child. Some are suspended over candles or tiny brass braziers. The vessels are full of rising steam that turns to beads of liquid at the top of the flasks, dripping back down onto whatever blackened mess lies within. Other flasks sit in nests of stinking horse shit, belching into each other through long glass tubes, which, to Regulus, look like birds pecking each other’s chests with long sharp beaks.
Something flies across the room. The boy ducks and cringes as the long feathers of its tail brush his head. A black-and-white magpie gives a harsh croak and perches on a shelf on the far side, glaring down, its head cocked. One for sorrow, the rhyme pops into the child’s head and he finds himself anxiously searching for a second bird – two for mirth – but he cannot see one.
‘I have brought you the boy, Father Arthmael,’ the white rider says.
A tall, gaunt man steps from behind one of the archways into the glow of the furnace. The skirts of his white robes turn as red as the burning wood. Tiny reflected flames glitter in his eyes as if a fire is burning inside his skull, but his fingers, when he caresses the boy’s face, are cold. He touches the boy’s red curls.
‘Rubedo, the red death,’ he murmurs, ‘the slayer and the slain.’ He glances up sharply at the white rider. ‘His youth, his colouring are right. But can we be sure?’
‘His father brought him to us on St Stephen’s Day and see on his right index finger – the snake.’
Father Arthmael seizes the boy’s wrist and pulls it closer to the furnace. The boy struggles, afraid of the heat. He has had a terror of fire ever since, as an infant, he was bouncing on his father’s outstretched leg playing horses and slipped off, his fingers plunging into the glowing embers of the hearth fire. His father had snatched him up straightaway, but he had sobbed for hours from the shock and pain of the burn. He still bears a raised scar encircling one finger like a jagged ring, and it is this scar that Father Arthmael examines.
‘Ouroboros.’ He exhales the word as a deep sigh. ‘Yes, that is what you saw. Yet if we look at the space contained within the line and not the line itself, it is sol, the sun, the egg of life itself. A blink of the eye, and the empty space becomes the solid object. Behind the shadow is the light, but that light in turn hides another shadow. You must learn to see deeper.’
‘This is Regulus,’ the white rider snaps. ‘I know it.’ The irritation in his voice makes the boy glance up. When his mother’s voice crackles like that, it is time to hide.
‘Regulus,’ Father Arthmael repeats slowly, as if chewing the letters. ‘Our little wren. Do you know, Regulus, that a man who seeks wisdom and the divine must first seek the wren? If he can find a bird so small and invisible in a great forest, he will find the elixir vitae. And that I will find, little wren.’
The boy has seen hundreds of wrens. He knows they are not invisible. They come to feed near the cottage. His parents, his sisters and brothers are asleep in that cottage tonight. In spite of the heat of the room, he shivers with misery. When can he go home? When will his father come for him and take him home?
Father Arthmael lifts an empty glass flask from the shelf and places it on the flags. It is not as big as those bubbling on the tables, but it is as big as the boy’s head. The lights from the flames catch this, too, and wriggle across its shiny throat. They are inquisitive children, determined to touch everything.
Father Arthmael comes closer and the boy backs away until he is pressing into the leg of the white rider behind him. He is afraid of them both, but more afraid of the tall one.
‘Urinate into this,’ Father Arthmael says.
The white rider lowers his head to the boy’s ear and whispers, ‘Piss into the flask, child.’
Regulus shakes his head. ‘Don’t want to.’
The man regards him with a frown. ‘Do you mean that you have no urge to urinate at this time, or are you refusing to obey?’
‘The boy is exhausted,’ the white rider says. ‘In the morning—’
‘I intended to begin tonight,’ Father Arthmael says, his voice sharp with anger and exasperation. He sighs. ‘Patience, diligence and perseverance,’ he breathes, as if he is reciting a prayer. ‘They are the servants and the masters of the royal art.’ He nods towards the boy. ‘Very well, but see that he’s kept separate from the others for now and fed only on herbs and the flesh of birds until he passes water. I must have it. It is the seed, the primal matter.’
The white rider turns the child and leads him back through the door, but they only retrace their steps halfway up the stairs. There he pauses before another door, which Regulus had not noticed on the way down. The man turns the key, which is already in the lock, and reaches inside for a candle, which he lights from one of the torches on the staircase.
The room is tiny, narrow, though it does not seem so to the boy, for he has known only a single-roomed cottage crammed with a press of children and animals. A narrow bed occupies most of the room, with just enough space for a rough wooden table. The white rider sets the candle on a spike on the wall above it. A flat disc of brass stands on the table, engraved with concentric circles and letters, though to the boy they look like the casts of worms or the trails of a snail.
The man shows Regulus two pots set side by side on the floor.
‘This glass one is for pissing into. This clay one is for shitting into. You must not shit into the glass piss pot. You will be punished if you forget. Do you understand?’
The boy understands nothing. At home he simply wanders outside to a hole his father digs, which the whole family uses. Everything that is to be thrown away goes into the hole, piss and shit, withered apple cores and bloody pigeon guts. When it is full, his father simply digs another.
The white rider makes him point to the glass pot and the clay pot in turn, reciting which each is to be used for over and over until he is sure the boy has memorised it.
‘I will come again in the morning with food.’
He makes to snuff out the candle, then looks at the hunched, shivering little figure and smiles gently. ‘I will leave the light for you. Sleep now.’
But the boy, all alone in the locked room, cannot sleep. He has never slept by himself in a bed before. He has never slept without hearing the sound of the wind in the trees and the murmur of his parents’ voices or the snorts and snuffles of his brothers and sisters. He lies on the bed and pulls the blanket over his head. He is cold. He is afraid and now, at last, he desperately wants to piss, but is too afraid of that pot.
Chapter 7
Purify the lead by special washing, extract the blackness and the darkness from it and its whiteness will appear.
At first I couldn’t tell if the sound was real or part of my dream. I forced my eyes open. Thin blades of silvery morning light pierced the narrow slit windows. I heard the sound again and realised it was the ancient one, tip-tapping towards the door on his staff. His beard was freshly combed and he had a book clamped under one arm. As he shifted it to lift the latch, I glimpsed the winged ox on the cover and knew it was the one I had leafed through the night before.
On any other day, as soon as Gaspard was awake, he’d have thrown something at my head to rouse me and set about issuing orders before I’d had a chance to untangle myself from my
blanket. But that morning he was moving quietly, as if anxious not to waken me at all. I knew the old crow better than to believe he’d suddenly decided I should be allowed to rest after all my work. So what was he sneaking out to do?
I quickly shut my eyes, giving what I fancy was a pretty convincing snore. It fooled him anyway, for I heard the latch drop back into place as he closed the door behind him. As his stick clacked away down the stone steps, I sprang up and rushed to the slit window directly above the door where I knew he’d emerge from the turret.
I had to wait for so long I began to fear he’d changed his mind and was coming back up, but at last I saw the figure limp from the door and vanish into the early-morning mist. He was heading not towards the Great Hall or the gate, but towards Philippe’s private solar in the tower that stood alone, separate from the main building. I waited at the window, my stomach growling ever more fiercely. I considered whether to go down to the kitchens in search of food, but they lay in the opposite direction to the solar and I feared I might miss Gaspard’s return. In the end I scrabbled in the basket containing the remains of last night’s supper and found a pork bone with some meat left on it. I took it back to the window and gnawed on it as I kept watch.
It was a long time before I saw Gaspard emerge from the mist and pick his way back towards the turret. I ducked in case he glanced up, but the old crow hobbled along, leaning on his stick, his head bent down against the chill air. I folded away his blankets and pulled the straw pallet to one side. I was just dragging my own on top of it when the door opened.