Alys Clare - The Enchanter's Forest

He looked terrible. His face was lined and haggard and there were dark circles beneath his eyes. He carried his right arm awkwardly and she could see a linen bandage on his forearm.

There was not the slightest sign of his usual smile of greeting.

Her first reaction was a painfully forceful stab of guilt: I have sent him on a mission that has returned him to a state of intimacy with the woman he loves and now he has had to lose her all over again.

And it was all for nothing.

Before he could speak she had hurried around her table and, taking both his hands, she said, ‘Josse, Florian of Southfrith is dead and Merlin’s Tomb is closed. Forgive me, for the journey on which I sent you was unnecessary. Had we but waited, you need never have gone.’

He studied her for a few moments. His face was tanned from days spent riding out in the sun and his tunic, open at the neck, showed that the brown skin continued down across his chest; he’s been riding out in the sun with few clothes, she thought before she could stop herself.

But his eyes were full of pain.

His hands, which had been limp in hers, suddenly squeezed. He said, with a curious formality that was never usually in his tone when he spoke to her, ‘My lady Abbess, you have no scrying glass with which to predict the future. You asked me to do what at the time seemed the only possible thing that could be done to close the fraudulent tomb and willingly I accepted.’ There was a brief pause, then, looking down, he muttered, ‘Be consoled that, however I may be feeling now, I would not have missed the past couple of weeks for all the gold in the world.’

She felt tears in her eyes. She whispered, ‘Oh, Josse,’ then, before the emotion could make her add something she might later regret, she dropped his hands and, returning to the other side of her table, sat down heavily in her chair.

The best thing, she knew, would be to get going straight away on discussing what each of them had to report. The trouble was that neither she nor Josse seemed to know how to start.

Eventually it was he who broke the awkward silence. ‘Florian of Southfrith is dead, you say?’

‘Yes.’ Briefly she told him the little that she could about the murder, adding that she had visited the young man’s wife and spoken to his mother-in-law. ‘It was she — her name’s Melusine, she’s a rich widow and a bit of a dragon — who came here and identified the body.’ She went on to summarise what she had learned of Florian’s background and circumstances.

Josse absorbed it all in silence, nodding occasionally. When she had finished, he said, ‘I’ve met the mother-in-law. Well, I saw her, at any rate, that time I went to look for Florian at his house. So the young fool exaggerated his wealth in order to win his bride. Overspent, in debt and with an expensive wife, he must have been quite desperate for money.’ He paused, wincing, and altered his position so that he was supporting his right arm in his left hand. She was about to make some comment — You’re hurt! May we help? — but he did not give her the chance. ‘So, when he found some old bones which by their very size looked strange and mystical, the idea of making some much-needed cash out of them must have come to him like a blessing from above. He created the tomb on the edge of the forest, not caring who he upset, and then all he had to do was stand there by the gate and take the coins pressed into his greedy hands by gullible pilgrims.’

‘He’s dead, Sir Josse,’ she reminded him gently. ‘Whatever he did wrong, he did not deserve to die out there in the forest.’

‘Hmm.’

Josse, she thought, did not seem entirely convinced.

Something he had said returned to her. ‘You appear to be in no doubt that the Merlin’s Tomb near Hadfeld is a fake,’ she said, trying to keep the sudden flare of hope out of her voice; how much simpler for the closure of the tomb to be universally accepted if it could be shown up to be nothing but a clever pretence! ‘Does this mean that you have seen the magician’s real burial place?’

He sighed. ‘I have seen a place of great power which is known by the local people as Merlin’s Tomb, aye. There is a great oak in the middle of a clearing in a forest and a vast granite slab from beneath which issues a healing spring. In those parts they tell how it was there that Merlin revealed the secrets of his magic powers to the woman that he loved and that she used the knowledge to pen him up and bind him to her for ever. He lies under a hawthorn tree, they say, and one such tree does indeed stand there close by the oak and the fountain.’

She felt an atavistic shiver run down her back. ‘You saw where Merlin lies?’ she whispered.

He smiled faintly. ‘I saw where some say he lies,’ he amended.

‘But do you believe them?’ she persisted; it seemed very important.

He shrugged. ‘If I believed that Merlin was a real person then aye, I could accept that he was buried in that place, for I did in truth sense a great power there.’

‘Then-’ she began.

‘But, my lady, remember that I also felt some force emanating from the great bones at Florian’s site,’ he said gently. Then, with another sigh: ‘Perhaps I’m just gullible.’

‘You’re not gullible!’ she protested.

Now his smile seemed to spring from genuine amusement. ‘Thank you for that. But I think you may be being overgenerous.’

She decided not to pursue that; she was quite sure he was speaking of something other than merely the matter of the two tombs. Oh, but he has endured so much! she thought, pity for him making her emotions churn. But it would be no kindness to do as she longed to do and express her deep sympathy and risk undermining him; she must, she well knew, stick to the practicalities.

She cleared her throat a couple of times and said, ‘So, you made up your mind to return to us here at Hawkenlye and report that you had seen the true Merlin’s Tomb over in the Breton forest, which meant that the place near Hadfeld must be nothing but a pretence?’

He hesitated. Then: ‘Aye. Pretty much. I can’t be entirely certain, my lady, but then who could? I spoke long with Joanna’s people over there — they’re good people, speakers of the truth — and they refused to say unequivocally that their forest held the enchanter’s bones. They’ — his brow creased as he tried to find the words — ‘they more or less said to me that this is what some people believe, and why that belief came to be, and then they left it to me to make up my own mind.’

‘Nothing was definite, then?’

‘No. But then, in matters of belief, is that not always so? We believe that Jesus is the son of God, came to earth, died and was resurrected, but there’s no proof and so we can’t say that it’s definite.’

‘It’s in the Bible!’ She heard the shock in her voice.

He smiled but did not speak.

And after a moment she thought, but he is right. Faith has nothing to do with reading things, or being told them. Faith is in the heart, not the head.

There was silence in her little room. Then, as the whirl of her thoughts finally dropped her gently back in the here and now, she realised that he was tired, dirty, perhaps in pain, probably hungry and thirsty and undoubtedly grieving. She said, ‘I apologise, Sir Josse, for keeping you here talking for so long. Please, go and refresh yourself down with the monks in the Vale and, if necessary, ask Sister Euphemia or one of her nuns to look at that wound on your arm. When you are rested, come back and eat with us. Then I prescribe a good night’s sleep.’ Watching his sad eyes, she added hopefully, ‘Things often look better in the morning.’

‘Thank you, my lady,’ he said courteously. ‘I will do as you suggest.’