Company of Liars

  Zophiel stated his intention to sleep without a light up in the chapel, for that was where we had stored all his boxes from the wagon. No one was of a mind to lug them all downstairs, and as Rodrigo told Zophiel when he protested, if the river level rose and we had to leave quickly we would not want to have to abandon his precious boxes, now would we? Xanthus and the wagon were concealed among the trees on the far side of the bridge on the opposite side to the town. And so we settled in and prepared to stay until Adela’s baby was born.

  Osmond knelt in the sanctuary beside the altar grinding a small quantity of terre verte in a mortar. I recognized it as the colour the painters use to paint flesh tones. As I watched he carefully added a few drops of oil and continued to grind vigorously with his pestle. He beamed up at me as I moved closer. His eyes were shining in a way I had never seen before.

  ‘I hope this will work,’ he gabbled excitedly. ‘I’ve always used eggs to bind the colour before, but at this time of year, even if we could find a hen or a goose that has not been eaten, they will not be in lay. I found some old pigeon’s eggs in the bell tower, but they were so raddled, they were useless. Rodrigo says some painters in Venice use oil to bind the pigment. I’ve never heard of it myself, but he’s usually right about these things. He’s given me a little of the oil he uses to keep his lute and pipes from drying out and cracking. I didn’t want to take it in case he can’t get more, for his instruments are his life, but he insisted.’

  I could not help smiling at his earnestness. ‘Rodrigo is a generous man, especially to a fellow artist. So what do you intend to paint?’

  By way of an answer he nodded at the eastern wall of the chapel which was covered in scaffolding. ‘I shall finish that. Whoever began this was a good painter. I hope I may do it justice.’

  I moved nearer to examine the painting. It was of the Virgin Mary. She wore a stiff blue and gold mantle which she held open, and beneath the mantle, as if they were sheltering in a cave, a crowd of diminutive figures knelt serenely in prayer, like dwarfs beneath the giant queen. Two figures in the foreground were painted larger than the rest, a bejewelled merchant and his wife. The other figures appeared to depict the merchant’s family, his children, parents and siblings. Also protected under Mary’s cloak were several tiny houses, two ships and a cluster of warehouses, all the property belonging to the merchant.

  Outside of the shelter of Mary’s mantle there were other figures, but they were not praying. They were fleeing in panic, for above Mary sat Christ on his throne, surrounded by angels and demons who were firing arrows and spears down on to the world below. The missiles bounced harmlessly off Mary’s cloak, but those outside of her protection cringed in terror as the spears and arrows rained down upon them, piercing them through torsos, limbs and eyes.

  Most of the painting had been completed except for Mary’s face and hands, which were sketched in red on the white wall.

  Osmond came across and stood beside me.

  ‘Mary Misericordia,’ he explained ‘Our Lady of Mercy who protects those who pray to her. And these,’ he gestured to the merchant and his wife, who knelt in the foreground, ‘must be the benefactors who commissioned this chantry, so that the priests could pray for their souls. They must have great wealth to build such a chapel. I can’t understand why it has been abandoned when they were so near to finishing it, and at a time when you’d think they would need the masses of the priests more than ever.’

  ‘Maybe the merchant and his family have already fallen to the pestilence or he has lost his fortune and can no longer pay the workmen. Whatever the reason, if the craftsmen didn’t receive their money when it was due, they wouldn’t stay and work for nothing. I suspect this will not be the last building to be abandoned before it is completed.’

  ‘I thought nothing could touch the wealth of the merchants. These last few years as the harvests failed, they seem to have grown even richer. They grew fatter as the poor grew thinner. I know my father did.’

  ‘Your father was a merchant?’

  He nodded, frowning, and turned his face away. I waited, but he did not say more. I didn’t press him. A man’s history is his own business.

  ‘Then I pity him. This pestilence will bring a change in many fortunes, for better or worse.’ I glanced at the paint and brushes in his hand. ‘So, I fear you can’t hope to be commissioned to finish this painting, not while the pestilence rages, anyway.’

  He smiled, his dark mood vanishing in a trice. ‘But I don’t want to be paid. I’ll finish this painting as an offering, so that the Virgin will smile down on us and Adela will be safely delivered of a healthy child.’

  He swung himself up on to the wooden scaffolding and eyed the space where the Virgin’s face should have been, first from one angle and then from another.

  I stood and watched him for a while, but Osmond was already absorbed in the first tentative brush strokes and seemed to have forgotten I was there. I walked to the door and looked back at him. His brow was furrowed in concentration, yet the expression of his face was one of utter contentment as the rapid strokes of the brush grew more confident in his hands.

  ‘You realize that if the craftsmen ever return here after we are gone, they will think the face of the Virgin has miraculously appeared on the wall. The chantry will grow rich from all the pilgrims coming here to see the miracle.’

  He laughed without taking his eyes from the wall. ‘Then I must paint the most perfect face in England to be worthy of such a miracle.’

  Few people passed over the bridge in the next few days. It was winter, and a wet winter at that, not a time for travelling unless you had to. Those families displaced by the flooding or fleeing the pestilence had not made it this far, preferring to take shelter in the towns which were still open. There was more hope of finding work and cheap lodging in a town, or if they could not find work, there would be a greater chance of receiving alms in the crowded streets than on a lonely road. Those travellers who did cross over the bridge were on urgent business and most scarcely gave the unfinished chantry a second glance, except occasionally to cross themselves and mutter a prayer for a safe journey from horseback as they passed. It was obvious that the chapel was unfinished and unconsecrated, so no one bothered to stop to light a candle in it. And we were careful to show no lights at night in case we attracted those whose business was not so honest.

  Then it was Christmas morning. We heard the church bells ringing in the town for the Angels’ Mass at midnight and again for the Shepherds’ Mass at dawn, but we didn’t answer the call. As for so many throughout the land, for us this Christmas would not be as any Christmas before. In many churches, the bells would not ring and the candles would not be lit, for there would be no one left to light them.

  They say that at midnight on Christmas Eve the bees in the hives sing a psalm, all the cows in the byres kneel down and all the sheep turn to the east. They say too that every wild beast falls silent at that hour. If they are right, then what we heard after the chimes of the midnight bell died away was, as Osmond said, nothing more than the baying of a town dog provoked by the bells. But though he said it soothingly as Adela clung to him, I don’t think even he believed that. We’d heard that same cry too often before to mistake it now. It was the howl of a lone wolf.

  Osmond held Adela tightly in his arms. ‘Even if it was a wolf, we have thick stone walls and a new stout door to protect us. Not even a mouse could get in here.’

  ‘But it must be ravenous to come so close to a town.’

  ‘Even if there’s a whole pack of them, we are safe in here. Now, go to sleep, Adela.’

  But even if Adela could sleep, I could not. I could not get that howl out of my head. There were wolves in the forests, but with a bounty on every wolf’s head, they had been driven into the remote places far from highways, farms and towns. It was true that in recent years hunger had brought some packs close to crofts and isolated villages in the dead of winter, but we had kept to the main highways, we were forced to wit
h the wagon. So why had we heard a wolf so many times on our journey, and why only ever one, unless there was only one – the same one – following us? It wasn’t possible, it didn’t make sense, and yet still I shuddered.

  The crypt remained cold and damp; the heat from the brazier barely penetrated the room. The sound of rushing water, which was not so noticeable during the day, grew louder in the silence of the night and several times I woke from a fitful doze, sure that the river was in flood and pouring into the chamber.

  Cygnus, who had been muttering in his sleep for several nights, also suddenly woke with an anguished cry and sat up trembling in the dim light cast by the brazier.

  Narigorm was watching him. She was sitting upright, hunched against the wall, wrapped in a blanket. Something small fell from her hand with a faint clack on to the stone flags. She swiftly retrieved it. Pulling the blanket more tightly about her, she rested her chin on her knees, then turned her head to stare into the firelight. I wondered if she had slept at all. This biting cold was hard on all of us, even the young.

  Cygnus rose and tiptoed up the stairs. He did not return.

  ‘Osmond, are you awake?’ Adela whispered. ‘I think Cygnus might be ill. Did you hear him cry out? Should we go after him?’

  ‘He’s not ill,’ Osmond muttered sleepily. ‘When a man screams like that in his sleep it means he has a guilty conscience. I don’t want you to be alone with him. He’s dangerous. Who knows what goes on in the head of a creature like that?’

  ‘But you can’t still think he murdered –’

  ‘Will you both shut up and go to sleep,’ Jofre snapped irritably from the corner.

  We must have finally slept, for when we all woke again daylight had penetrated the gloom of the crypt. The damp seeping up from the cold stone floor had turned my bones to ice and it took several minutes of standing in front of the glowing brazier before my stiff and aching back was ready to move. But Osmond, despite the disturbances in the night, had woken in a remarkably cheerful mood. He was determined that something should be done to celebrate Christmas Day and had soon persuaded Jofre and Rodrigo to help him net some ducks on the river, while Zophiel rather more grudgingly agreed to turn his hand to trying to catch some fish.

  Rodrigo and I were still struggling into our damp boots long after Osmond and Jofre had bounded upstairs. The others had followed, all except for Narigorm who was still sitting hunched beside the smouldering brazier, her doll in her lap.

  ‘You’d best stir yourself too, girl,’ I told her. ‘If the lads catch anything we’ll need a good fire to cook it. You and I will search for kindling and wood. You take the town side of the river and I’ll take the other.’

  ‘I don’t want to collect wood. I want to hunt for birds.’

  Rodrigo chuckled. ‘Leave that to Jofre and Osmond, bambina. The river is too fast. It is not safe for one as small as you.’ He patted her hair affectionately. ‘Come now, as you search you can think about a plump duck roasting on the wood you collect. Imagine how good that will taste, si?’ He took her gently by the hand, pulling her to her feet. Her wooden doll clattered to the floor.

  Rodrigo bent down to pick it up. ‘I will put her safely…’

  He was staring aghast at the doll in his hand. The rags were still wound around the doll’s body, but they had been pulled back from its face. And now that they were removed, we could see that the doll no longer had a face. The brown wool hair had been ripped off; the carved nose and ears had been chipped away; the pretty eyes had been scratched out, the mouth obliterated. Rodrigo stared from the mutilated doll to Narigorm and back again as if he could not believe a child capable of such a thing.

  ‘Why have you done this? Osmond spent many hours carving and painting this for you. It will hurt him that you have destroyed it, Adela too.’

  Any other child would have looked ashamed or tried to make excuses, but Narigorm neither blushed nor answered defiantly. She regarded Rodrigo calmly.

  ‘It’s mine and I didn’t like its face. Now it can be anyone I choose.’

  As we emerged from the chantry, I noticed that for the first time in months the sky was lighter. The wind had turned, the clouds had rolled back and there was a patch of blue in the sky, just enough to make the Virgin a new cloak. I realized I had not looked up for months. You don’t look up in the rain. I stood for a few moments gazing up at the bare branches of the trees waving in the breeze and the rooks flying overhead, their ragged wings tossed in the gusts of wind. A flock of starlings, the pale sun glinting iridescent from their purple feathers, wheeled towards the distant scarp and a single pigeon winged its way towards the town. I supposed birds must have taken to the wing through all those months of rain, but it was as if only that morning they had remembered how to fly.

  I found Cygnus on the far bank, tethering Xanthus in a new patch of grass, her coat gleaming red-gold as the light caught it. Even she seemed to sense the weather was on the turn, lifting her head and flaring her nostrils as if to taste the wind. But I could see at once that Cygnus was not caught up in the mood of excitement. His face was drawn and there were dark circles around his eyes, making them appear blacker than ever. His movements were listless and everything seemed an effort for him. I hadn’t noticed before how tired he looked. Xanthus nuzzled him gently and he rested his cheek against her flank and closed his eyes.

  ‘Are you unwell, Cygnus?’

  He started at my voice and straightened up. He gave me a weak smile. ‘Have no fear, Camelot, it’s not the pestilence.’

  ‘There are other kinds of sickness.’

  ‘I’m not sick, Camelot, just tired.’ He reached down, tore up a hank of grass and fed it to Xanthus.

  He turned to stare at the water surging beneath the bridge and finally, after a long pause, he turned back to me. ‘I dream of the swans, Camelot. That’s what disturbs my sleep every night. They’re waiting for me. I see them swimming up the river, first a pair, then three, then four. I want to swim out to them, but I can’t. I see them coming, more and more from every direction until the river is full of white bodies. Their wings arch, their necks bend and their dark eyes turn towards me, glittering in the darkness. They wait silently and I know they are waiting for me. Then suddenly they all begin to flap their wings. Their wings are beating me about the head. I have to crouch down to protect myself, the air is full of their feathers and I can’t breathe. I’m gasping for air and all at once they are in the sky flying away from me. I call out to them to wait, but they can’t hear me.’

  Cygnus covered his face with his hand as if he was still protecting himself from the beating wings.

  I moved closer and put my hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s the crypt, Cygnus. It’s too close to the river. The noise of the water crashing against the pillars is so loud it penetrates my dreams too.’ I tried to laugh. ‘You’ll think me an old fool, but I have nightmares that the water is pouring in and I am drowning.’

  Cygnus didn’t smile.

  ‘Why don’t you try sleeping up in the chapel for a night or two until you are rested, Cygnus? The dreams will stop then, I’m sure.’

  He didn’t reply. He hesitated for a minute, then turned to face me, stripping off his shirt until his folded wing was exposed. He unfurled his wing and as he did so, more feathers fell from it and were caught up by the wind. There were large gaps now in the wing, and in the bright winter sunshine, those feathers that remained were no longer smooth and white, but matted and grey. Cygnus held out his good arm and caught a falling feather in his hand before it was whisked away by the wind. He held it out to me, like a child offering a flower.

  ‘Why is this happening, Camelot? I thought all I had to do was believe in my wing, but I’m losing my faith and the swans sense it, they know I am betraying them. They come to make me believe again, but the new feathers do not grow. I can’t believe in them any more. I can’t believe enough to make them grow again.’

  Osmond and Jofre tumbled through the door of the chantry, their arms linked
and waving limp ducks in the air like favours at a tournament. Osmond was dripping wet and Jofre was caked in mud, but Jofre’s eyes were sparkling and his cheeks flushed with cold and exertion. Rodrigo and Zophiel followed behind them at a more sedate pace, carrying fish and nets. Between them they had caught three ducks and even a few small trout, despite Zophiel complaining that the river was too churned-up and fast-flowing for good fishing. But even so, among eight hungry people, the ducks and fish would not go far, especially as we had little else to add to them. Still, we had reason to be thankful for it was a better meal than many would have that day.

  Osmond threw his birds on to the floor of the chapel and told, amid much laughter, how he had accidentally slipped down the bank into the water and had only been saved from a full ducking by Jofre grabbing him, before his head went under. Adela, once reassured that he had neither broken any bones, nor cracked his head, fretted that he would catch his death of cold. So she insisted he strip off his wet clothes while she fetched dry ones from their pack in the chamber below. Osmond meekly did as he was bid and stood naked waiting for her to return, shivering and hugging his arms around him. He had lost weight these past few weeks and gained muscles which sculpted his body. Beads of water glistened on the fine golden hairs of his chest and he slapped at his body to warm it, for Adela, encumbered by the great bulge of her baby, was taking a long time to find him some clothes.

  His teeth chattering, Osmond picked up his wet shirt and chucked it at Jofre’s head. ‘Don’t just stand there staring, idiot. Fine friend you are, saving a man from the river only to let him freeze to death. For pity’s sake, get me a blanket or something.’

  Jofre seemed to come out of a trance and reaching for his own cloak held it out, but Osmond, numb with cold, fumbled and dropped it.