Alys Clare - The Enchanter's Forest

‘What is it, then?’ Sabin looked only partially reassured.

Joanna took a breath, trying to steady herself. Then she said, ‘I used to live near here. I was married to a man — Thorald — whom I hated and when he died I took my son and we ran away. His younger brother thought I had killed him and was after my blood, only he never found me.’

‘Oh, how terrible! He was cruel to you, this Thorald?’

‘Yes.’ She was not going to elaborate. ‘And Cesaire — he’s the brother, the one who thought I’d killed Thorald — is right at this moment eating his supper in the tavern.’

Sabin rushed to her side. ‘Has he seen you?’

Joanna’s terror broke out of her control and flooded through her; dropping her face into her hands, she whispered, ‘Yes.’ She removed her hands and stared at Sabin. ‘He won’t let me go again. He’ll have me arrested and they’ll probably hang me.’

Sabin put her arms around Joanna. ‘No they won’t,’ she said bracingly. She gave her a little shake. Then, after a moment’s swift thought, she said, ‘Listen. I’ve got an idea.’

Josse watched Joanna return to the dining room. She edged her way through the jostling crowds of people, the folds of her veil falling gracefully and concealing her face. She reached the table and took her place beside Josse. Leaning towards her, peering around her veil to look into her face, he was about to tell her what there was to eat when suddenly he stopped, his mouth opening in surprise as an involuntary exclamation rose to his lips. She shook her head, a minute gesture that only he could see; puzzled, eyeing her warily, he subsided. Gervase, busy trying to get a singularly dim-looking lad to understand what he was trying to order for the party to eat and drink, had greeted Joanna’s arrival with no more than a vague nod.

Josse clutched Meggie closer and tried to keep her attention on the little stick man that he had made from a piece of the straw that was strewn on the floor. Obliging child that she was, she studied the little figure to the exclusion of everything else; praying that whatever crisis was currently being enacted would not last too long, Josse risked a quick glance around the room.

A man was pushing his way towards their table. Of medium height and running to fat, he had long, lank dark hair surrounding a bald crown and his thin face was set in an expression that was an unpleasant mixture of disgust, hatred and triumph.

Gervase had seen him too. It was apparent that whatever had aroused the man’s fury had to do with their own party, for now he was standing beside their table and his hand was on the handle of a long knife in a scabbard hanging from his belt.

Gervase half rose. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

The man did not look at him. ‘Her,’ he said tersely. ‘Come along quietly, Joanna; best in the long run if you don’t make a fuss.’ He fingered the knife. ‘We don’t want people getting hurt, do we?’

Josse grasped her arm as if to keep her from the stranger by force; she shook him off. She sat with her head lowered, the concealing veil falling forward.

‘Joanna!’ the man hissed. ‘I don’t know why you’ve come back but, by God, I’m glad you have! It’s too many years that my poor brother has gone unavenged but at last the day of reckoning has come. Stand up, woman, and come with me, or must I call someone who will force you?’

At last she raised her head. Staring the man full in the face, she said haughtily, ‘I do not know who you think I am but let me tell you that you are mistaken. I am not this Joanna, whoever she is, and you will kindly go away and leave us alone.’

And Sabin de Retz, anger in her bright blue eyes, fixed the stranger with such a fierce glare that his own eyes fell. But, apparently unable to accept defeat, he raised his head again and gave Sabin another long, hard stare. ‘You were her,’ he murmured, a bewildered frown creasing his sallow face. ‘How did you. .?’ Fear twisting his expression, he hissed, ‘It’s witchcraft. It must be, for how else was I deceived into seeing a woman who now turns before my very eyes into another?’

Josse, deeply alarmed by the mention of the word witchcraft , was about to do what he could to prevent the situation getting even worse but Gervase got in first. Standing up and straightening his shoulders, he said quietly to the man, ‘This lady is Sabin de Retz and she is a native of Nantes. She is a renowned apothecary in her home town, where she has in the past numbered the great and the good among her patients. She is under the protection of myself and of this knight’ — he indicated Josse, who had also risen to his feet — ‘and she is to be my wife.’ In case the stranger had missed the point, Gervase added, ‘Do not further insult her by your unwelcome attention, for it is displeasing to all of us.’

The man closed his mouth with a snap. Pointing a shaking finger at Sabin, who was staring at him as if he were a rat, he muttered, ‘You’ve done magic. It’s enchantment. I-’

‘You,’ Josse said loudly, squeezing past Sabin and grabbing the man by the arm, ‘have taken too much ale and it has addled your wits. It is high time you went home.’

‘But-’ the man protested.

Josse ignored him. To the amusement of several bystanders, he grasped the man by his upper arms and, lifting him off his feet, carried him to the door and, once out in the street, promptly dropped him and shoved him on his way. The man took a couple of steps, stumbled and collapsed on to the ground, where he sat looking bemused and shaking his head in disbelief.

‘Go home and sleep it off,’ Josse advised. ‘We won’t make any complaint against you if you do. But if you return to bother the lady again. .’ Josse left the remark unfinished; somehow it sounded more threatening that way.

The man stared up at Josse’s tall, broad body filling the doorway. Then he got slowly to his feet and staggered away.

Josse returned to the table at the far side of the dining area to find Gervase sitting next to Sabin, Meggie beside them chewing on a piece of bread and eyeing with evident glee the steaming dish that had been set before them: the food had arrived. Gervase was holding Sabin very closely and from the frown on his face, it appeared he had just been remonstrating with her. Sabin glanced up at Josse with a faint smile.

‘Joanna saw someone she did not wish to meet,’ she said quietly. ‘She seemed in fear of him and so I suggested we exchanged clothes. I came back in here, hoping that the man would make his approach, as indeed he did. Seeing that I was not Joanna, with luck he will believe he was mistaken and leave us — her — alone.’

Josse squeezed her shoulder. ‘You think quickly, Sabin,’ he remarked. He was about to express his profound thanks for the resourcefulness that had saved Joanna but remembered in time that she did not know — or at least he didn’t think she knew — about what lay between him and Joanna. Collecting himself, he said decisively, ‘We’ll take our supper along to your room, Sabin, with your permission. That way, Joanna will get her meal without having to risk showing her face out here again.’

‘That’s sensible,’ Gervase commented, helping Sabin to gather up the trenchers, bread basket and serving dish. ‘Come on, Meggie — you’ll have your supper soon, I promise.’

Later that night, when Josse and Gervase had gone off to find what comfort they could in the communal sleeping accommodation and Meggie was fast asleep, Sabin propped herself up on one elbow and, looking down at Joanna lying beside her, said, ‘Now it’s time to tell. Since I saved your skin earlier this evening, I think, don’t you, that I have a right to know what all the fuss was about?’