Alys Clare - Fortune Like the Moon

He stepped silently back to the little clearing and beckoned to Saul, who had been lying on the ground. Not sleeping, or he wasn’t when Josse summoned him. He got to his feet, eyebrows raised. Josse nodded, pointing in the direction of the path. He moved back to the edge of the undergrowth, and sensed Saul quietly following after him.

They stood side by side on the edge of the path, in the deep shade of a vast oak tree.

And Milon, using that same tree to provide his next patch of shadow, walked right into them.

As Josse’s arms closed around him, he let out a shriek of terror. Struggling with him — he was trying to reach down to his belt, where, no doubt, he had a knife — Josse spared him a moment’s pity. To be creeping along like that, already afraid, and have someone grab you! No wonder the youth’s heart was hammering so hard, hard enough for Josse to detect it.

Saul must have been able to see Milon’s weapon, for, with a sudden gasp, he shot out his hand. Josse was aware of the two of them, Milon and Saul, wrestling grimly, grunting with effort, and then Saul was holding something up in the air.

It was a knife.

The blade was long and quite broad, tapering to an evil point. It was double-sided, and — as Saul tested it on the hairs of his forearm — quite obviously honed to a vicious sharpness.

Josse was in no doubt that he was staring at the weapon that had slit Gunnora’s throat. His moment of pity for the youth vanished as if it had never been.

‘Milon d’Arcy, if I’m not mistaken,’ he said grimly, twisting the youth’s arms behind his back and taking a firm grip on his wrists. ‘And just what are you up to, creeping along here in the dead of night?’

‘You’ve no right to apprehend me in this way!’ Milon cried, his voice thin with fear. ‘I’m on my way back to my camp, I’ve done no harm!’

‘Done no harm?’ Josse was momentarily so angry that he gave the boy’s wrists a savage jerk, causing him to cry out. Brother Saul muttered, ‘Easy, now!’ and Josse relaxed his hold slightly. ‘Where is this camp?’ he demanded.

‘Up in the forest,’ Milon said. ‘Where the charcoal burners go.’

‘Aye, I know it. And what are you doing there?’

‘I have come to these parts to see a friend,’ Milon said with surprising dignity. He had clearly recovered some of his courage. ‘And you, whoever you are’ — he tried to twist round to look at Josse — ‘have no right to prevent me!’

‘I have every right,’ Josse said. ‘Brother Saul and I are here at the express wishes of the Abbess of Hawkenlye Abbey. Another quarter of a mile, my fine young man, and you’ll be climbing up to her convent walls.’

‘I will?’ The attempt at innocence did not convince.

‘Aye. As well you know.’ Josse hesitated, but only for an instant. Then said, ‘Hard, was it, seeing a beautiful young bride go inside those walls pretending she wanted to take the veil?’

Still clutching at Milon, he was close enough to feel the momentary tension. But Milon was a better actor than Josse would have given him credit for; he said mildly, ‘A bride — my bride — taking the veil? I think you are mistaken, sir. My bride would not do anything so foolish, certainly not now that she is my bride.’ The sexual innuendo was unmissable. Gaining confidence, Milon added, ‘And if, sir, you are aware of who I am, then it is possible you have been looking for me in my own home, where, I am perfectly sure, you will have been told that my wife stays with kin of mine, near-’

‘Near Hastings. Aye, that’s what they said.’

Milon gave an exaggerated sigh, as if to say, well, then! ‘In that case, might I be allowed to continue on my way?’

‘I went to your kin at Hastings,’ Josse said tonelessly. ‘They knew of no visit. Elanor d’Arcy was neither with them nor expected there.’

‘You went to the wrong place!’ Milon cried. ‘Fool!’ He had begun to struggle again. ‘Go back, sir! I’ll tell you the right place, then you can go and check! She’ll be there, my little Elanor, sitting in the sun of the courtyard, waiting on my return, lovely as a summer day, she is, you know, a fairer bride no man ever had.’ Twisting round, he put his face closer to Josse’s. ‘And in our bed when the lamps are blown out, sir, well, if I say I’ve had not a full night’s sleep since the day my Elanor and I were wed, I’m sure you won’t need any further detail to make your own pictures!’

Was the man raving? Josse felt strangely uneasy, as if he were in the presence of madness as well as evil. ‘Stop that, Milon,’ he ordered. ‘It will do you no good. Your wife Elanor d’Arcy came to the convent as a postulant, assuming a false identity and calling herself Elvera. She met up with her cousin Gunnora, who, once Dillian was dead, stood between her and the inheritance of Alard of Winnowland’s fortune.’

‘No!’ Milon protested. ‘Oh, no! ’

‘Between the pair of you,’ Josse continued relentlessly, ‘Gunnora’s brutal death was planned and executed. When I arrived, Elanor took fright and, fearing she would give you away, you strangled her.’ Holding Milon in his grip, so close to a man who had ruthlessly done away with two defenceless women, suddenly Josse’s temper boiled over. Shaking Milon like a terrier with a rat, he shouted, ‘You bastard! You foul, murdering bastard!’

Screaming with the agony of having both arms twisted up behind his back, Milon wriggled like a hooked fish and wrenched himself out of Josse’s grip. Turning a furious face on him, he screeched, ‘Don’t call me that!’

Then he collapsed, weeping, on to the ground.

For some moments Josse and Brother Saul stood staring down at him in stunned silence. Then Saul said, ‘I suppose we’d better get him up to the Abbey, sir. There’s nowhere down here in the valley where we can secure a prisoner.’

A prisoner. Aye, Josse thought, that’s what he is, from now on. And, once he has been tried and found guilty, his imprisonment will only have one end.

‘Let’s get him to his feet,’ he said, and he and Saul each took hold of one of Milon’s arms. As they dragged him up, Josse heard the thin, fine cloth of the young man’s shirt start to tear. Again, Josse felt the painful mixture of emotions surge through him; so proud, Milon had been, of his appearance, so careful of his fashionable clothes. And now look at him. In the pale pre-dawn light, he was revealed as a sorry figure, dirty, stinking, the daringly cut tunic stuck with burrs and covered in grass stains, the shirt with a sleeve all but ripped out …

Cross with himself — the youth was a double murderer! — once again Josse found that he was having to fight down his compassion.

And, with Milon as silent and unresisting as if he were walking in his sleep, they made their way up to the Abbey.

* * *

Dawn was breaking when they closed the door on Milon. Saul had suggested putting him in an end chamber of the undercroft beneath the infirmary, which was empty but which had a stout lock.

The young man kept up his silence until they were descending the steps into the undercroft. Then, as the dank darkness wrapped itself around them, he started to emit a thin, high screaming. An awful sound: Josse felt the hairs on the back of his neck start to prickle.

‘A light, Brother Saul,’ he commanded gruffly. ‘We cannot pen him down here in the pitch dark like an animal.’ Saul fetched a flare and lit it, sticking it in a bracket on the wall of the passage.

But the door to Milon’s cell had only a small grille, up at eye level. Little of the warm, comforting light would penetrate inside to him.