The Enchanter's Forest (4 page)

     He heard the echoes of his furious words die away. He felt ashamed for having shouted; all of this was no fault of Brice’s or Isabella’s, who had merely relayed the news. He could not in fairness be angry with either of them, for if they chose to believe in something which he himself viewed with the greatest suspicion, then that was their choice. And, from what they had told him, it would seem that their view was the popular one; to have such a discovery made virtually on the doorstep would, for the local populace, be the sort of awesome and exotic event that they could only dream about. Word would spread like fire in a hay barn and soon the whole country would be beating a path to see the new wonder.

     He, it appeared, would be in a minority of one.

     No.

     His would not be the sole voice that spoke out against the new attraction, for he could think of another who would be shoulder to shoulder with him. And
she
most certainly did not stand alone.

     Abruptly he stood up, experiencing a brief wave of dizziness; he had been sitting in the heat for too long. For all that the bench was in the shade, the summer afternoon was hot. And two large, empty jugs testified to the amount of ale that he and Brice had downed.

     ‘I must be on my way,’ he announced. ‘Thank you, Isabella, for your hospitality; thank you both for your entertaining conversation.’ He bowed, first to Isabella, then to Brice.

     Both of whom, he noticed, were hiding smiles.

     ‘You will be on the road again early tomorrow, I’ll warrant,’ Brice said.

     ‘Eh? Well – er – I—’

     ‘Don’t tease, Brice,’ Isabella admonished. ‘Dear Josse, your affection for the Hawkenlye community is well known and we merely surmise that you would wish to support them in their time of trouble.’

     Josse turned worried eyes to her. ‘That is so, my lady. Any help that I can offer is hers – is theirs to command.’

     ‘The new shrine may be but a passing attraction,’ Isabella said.

     ‘Especially if the supply of miracles starts to run out,’ Brice added cynically.

     Isabella frowned at him. ‘If the discovery is true, such will not be the case.’

     Her remark recalled to Josse something that had been worrying him and he spoke it aloud. ‘Tell me one thing: just how can these bones be those of Arthur when we are told that Arthur and Guinevere are buried at Glastonbury?’

     Again, the exchange of glances between Brice and Isabella. Then, at a faint nod from his wife, Brice took Josse’s arm. ‘Florian is not claiming to have found Arthur’s bones,’ he murmured.

     Despite the heat, a shiver seemed to run through Josse. Fearing that he already knew the answer, he whispered, ‘Whose, then?’

     Brice’s eyes were oddly sympathetic. Softly he replied, ‘It is said that they belong to Merlin.’

Chapter 2

Josse rode in through the gates of Hawkenlye Abbey in the middle of the morning of the next day, having covered the familiar road from New Winnowlands in what was probably record time. He had been awake early, anxious to speak to the Abbess. He had dreamt of her; she had been floating on a moonlit expanse of lake and she had held up a hand to him, pleading for his help. Reaching down, he had found her surprisingly strong and had been helpless to save himself as she pulled him down into the bright water. He had woken shaken and sweating and offered a brief, panicky prayer that the dream was not an omen.

     Now the hot June sunshine had dispelled night fears and as he handed Horace’s reins to Sister Ursel, the Abbey porteress, he was more than ready to exchange the usual mildly flirtatious remarks with the stout old nun. She, however, was not; he could tell from her very demeanour that something was wrong.

     ‘What’s the matter, Sister?’ As if he did not know. He put a hand out to touch hers.

     But she shook her head. ‘Better talk to the Abbess, Sir Josse. She’ll tell you.’ And before he could ask again, she had clicked her tongue to Horace and was leading the big horse off in the direction of Sister Martha’s stables.

     Leaving Josse to wonder where the Abbess was and how quickly he could find her.

     He spotted her quite soon. She was coming out of the Abbey church and what looked like the entire contingent of Vale monks followed behind her. As he watched, she turned to exchange a few words with them, giving them all what from long experience he recognised as her best, bracing, chins-up smile. The monks bowed to their superior and headed off for the rear gate and the path that led down to the Vale.

     The Abbess turned, saw Josse and, her face now beaming in a genuinely happy smile, hurried to greet him.

     ‘What luck that you should arrive, just when I have been praying for your company!’ she said, reaching out to take both his hands in hers. ‘Sir Josse, rarely have you been more welcome!’

     Flattered that she should have been praying he would turn up, nevertheless he thought it only right to explain that, as far as he knew, it was not divine intervention that had brought him. Hastily he said, ‘My lady Abbess, right pleased I am to see you, too, but I know what it is that troubles you and that makes you glad of my presence.’

     Her face fell. ‘You do?’

     ‘Aye. I was with Brice and Isabella – she’s expecting another child, by the way – and they told me.’

     ‘I am so happy for Isabella, and for Brice.’ Even in her anxiety, the Abbess appeared genuinely delighted at that part of his news. Josse, recalling that she too was aware of the couple’s history, felt sure she would include Isabella in her prayers until a healthy baby was safely delivered. ‘But, oh, what are we to do about Merlin’s Tomb?’

     They had begun to walk away from the gate and off in the direction of the Abbess’s private room at the far end of the cloister. But, before they reached it, she took hold of his sleeve and indicated a bench, half in sunlight and half in shade, that ran along the wall. ‘Let us settle here,’ she suggested. ‘The morning is too lovely to waste it sitting inside.’

     They sat down side by side on the bench. Then he said, ‘You notice an effect already, then?’

     ‘Oh, yes!’ She turned to face him, distress evident in her expression. ‘From towards the end of last month, we began to see a diminution in our visitors. Brother Firmin mentioned it to me – he prepares the Holy Water, as you know, and he was wondering why he did not seem to be as busy as usual. Then Brothers Saul and Augustus began to check on the daily tally of pilgrims and they brought me the results. Usually our numbers are anything from half a dozen to as many as twenty a day – it’s the season, Sir Josse; people save their travelling up for fine summer weather and long hours of daylight whenever they can. But now, well, the average was at first closer to three per day. Then two, then, last week, only four people for the entire week. This week’ – she gave a pathetic little shrug – ‘so far, nobody.’

     ‘
Nobody?
No pilgrims at all?’ He was amazed that the rival attraction should have had such a devastating effect so soon.

     ‘Not a one. Here we all sit, ready and eager to fulfil our purpose in life by giving aid to all who come seeking it, yet nobody comes. And oh, Sir Josse, I am so afraid that when word gets round that the people now go elsewhere for succour, as no doubt it already has, then all those who support us so generously will think again.’ Lowering her voice to a whisper, as if she could not bear the thought of anyone else hearing the humiliating words, she said, ‘We need the funds, you see. We cannot charge for the care that we give; that would be unthinkable, for we do the Lord’s work. Yet we must have money to survive and one of our main sources of income is the gifts that the wealthy bestow in exchange for Hawkenlye’s prayers and its beneficial, healing presence within the wider community. If our benefactors choose to support a rival foundation, then with a huge and unfillable hole in our income and, far more crucially, without the needy, the lost, the sick and the desperate to care for, we shall no longer have a reason to exist and we are lost.’ She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap, and her coif cut off his view of her face. Leaning forward, he saw that she had her eyes tightly shut, as if trying to blot out the dismal prospect before her.

     ‘What shall we do?’ he said. ‘What
can
we do?’

     She turned to him, a smile spreading over her face. ‘Dear Josse. Thank you for the
we
.’

     He waved away her gratitude, embarrassed, as he always was, when she accredited him with altruistic motives when what he was really doing was to ensure that, for the foreseeable future anyway, he would be near— No. He made himself arrest that thought. ‘I know the name of the man behind this tawdry scheme,’ he said gruffly.

     ‘
Do
you?’ She seemed amazed. ‘Sir Josse, you
are
well-informed – I have asked whomsoever I can for details of this dreadful business but they appear to be scant. Who is he?’

     ‘He’s a young man named Florian of Southfrith.’

     ‘Southfrith. He is a local man, then, for the Southfrith lands are close by. Yet he made his discovery on the far side of the forest, where the woodland peters out and the heathland begins.’

     ‘So I’m told. Giant bones, apparently, and this Florian seems to have sufficient evidence to prove that they belong to Merlin. My lady,’ he turned to her with a frown, ‘what puzzles me is how it is that all the people who now divert like brainless sheep after the bellwether to this new shrine know the name of Merlin!’

     She looked surprised. ‘But Sir Josse, everyone has heard of Merlin. I would warrant a small wager that if we assembled my nuns and monks and asked for a show of hands, all but those with their heads permanently in the clouds – and I own that we do have a few of those – would raise their arms and say, Merlin? Oh, yes, I know of Merlin. He was King Arthur’s magician.’

     Greatly taken aback – was he in truth the only person in England not to be fascinated by this Arthur and his companions? – Josse shook his head wonderingly. ‘I see.’ His voice sounded dejected, even to himself. Then: ‘My lady, I do not believe for one moment that these vast bones belong to Merlin. Do you?’

     She hesitated. ‘I would like to be as sure as you, Sir Josse, but I do not think that I can. For one thing, it seems that miracles have already been reported and attributed directly to Merlin’s intervention.’

     ‘But—’ He had been on the point of saying that miracles always happened at shrines; in his own view, he had a vague and barely formed notion that when people genuinely believed they were going to become well again, quite often they did. The healing water, or the saint’s finger bone, or the splinter of the True Cross, or the phial of the Blessed Virgin’s milk, might be the impetus that brought about that belief, but the cure itself was merely the body doing what it was best at.

     However, recognising that his own ideas were quite irrational and probably blasphemous as well, Josse firmly closed his mouth on his objection.

     ‘But?’ the Abbess prompted.

     He shook his head. ‘Nothing, my lady.’

     After a while, she spoke again. ‘Brother Firmin said something comforting,’ she said slowly.

     ‘Aye? And what was that?’

     ‘He is remarkably sanguine about the whole thing. I was relieved – I had thought that he would be deeply distressed at this apparent shunning of the precious Holy Water that has become almost his life’s blood. And he is still weak, you know, after the sickness last year.’

     ‘Aye.’ Privately Josse was amazed that the old monk was still alive.

     ‘I asked him why he seemed so unconcerned,’ the Abbess went on, ‘and he replied that as soon as the pilgrims realise that the new shrine doesn’t work, they’ll be back.

     ‘But it does work,’ Josse protested. ‘You have just been telling me of the recent miracles.’

     ‘Brother Firmin maintains that they are false. He was very apologetic about what he saw as wishing disappointment on those who think they’ve been cured, but he says that what appear to be miracles are just the excitement of the new attraction.’

     ‘Does he, now?’ Good for Firmin, Josse thought, quite surprised that the old boy should demonstrate such clear-eyed objectivity. ‘Well, my lady, that is an encouraging thought. But since we can have no idea of how long it will be before people discover their mistake, and since the Abbey which you and I both love is suffering in the meantime—’