As the snows slowly began to melt in the foothills of the Pyrenees, Ninian worked on his plan. His friends were venturing out of the village quite regularly now, for the weeks between the beginning of the spring thaw and the onset of the next season of campaigning were precious and not to be wasted. Once the crusading armies amassed again, Simon de Montfort would tell them where to strike next. Then the brief time of freedom would break up into rumour, fear and the constant, dreadful anticipation that the assault was going to veer their way.
The village was remote, difficult to access and far to the south and the west of de Montfort’s steady advance. Ninian knew his way round all the secret tracks and trails leading up and down the mountain on which the village sat, and he recognized that it had been well chosen as a stronghold. He believed it would survive when less easily defended places fell. When he had first been brought there, his guide had blindfolded him; it had been a sensible precaution, and Ninian had not resented it. But now that the time was approaching when he would have to leave the village and find his way back again, he was glad of the local knowledge he had managed to accumulate.
He had kept his ears open and his wits about him all winter, and he believed he knew where de Montfort and his senior commanders were likely to be overwintering. The front line of the crusader assault was sweeping up in a north-westerly direction, and Ninian had a good idea of where it had halted when campaigning had ended in the autumn. Now, he was sure, knights from the north would be setting off for the Midi, weapons of war at their sides and greed for the rich, sunny lands of the Languedoc egging them on. Knowing they were on their way, de Montfort would be making up his mind where to aim them.
With both old campaigners and newcomers arriving all the time, one more northern knight would not stand out. Any man who knew anything of a knight’s training would fit in like a tree in a forest. Unobtrusively, Ninian prepared his sword, his gear and his horse; when the moment came, he would be ready.
The opportunity that soon presented itself was so perfect that Ninian could almost have believed some benign spirit had engineered it. The bonshommes had decided that they must contact friends and kin in towns and villages that lay in the likely path of the crusader advance, encouraging them to leave their homes and come to the Pyrenean strongholds while they still could. Listening to the discussions, Ninian heard a familiar name: Utta.
She lived in a small town to the east, where the final convulsions of the Pyrenees began to give way to the plain. Back in the autumn, she had made the difficult journey to Ninian’s village because she wanted to meet the son of the woman who, back in England, had once saved her life.fn2 She had told Ninian that he was good, like his mother. His impulse to seek her out was genuine, and, fortuitously, it provided him with the excuse he needed to leave the village and come back again.
He knew his friends would not countenance anything as risky as the mission he had set himself, so he didn’t tell them. He left the village in the company of a group of four men, none of whom he knew well. They each had their appointed task and, when they came to the place at the foot of the mountain where tracks led off in different directions, it was easy to say a quick farewell and head out alone.
At first he was elated, full of pride that he, Ninian de Courtenay, was planning something so hazardous, so brave, purely for the selfless aim of helping the cause of the kind, decent, loving people who had taken him in and helped him when he needed it. After the months of enforced isolation up in the snowbound village, it was a joy simply to be out riding, on an eager horse. Even if the tracks were still icy in places and slushy with melting snow in others, he felt invincible and knew nothing was going to hold him back.
After three days, he was close to the encampment where, it was rumoured, Simon de Montfort was making his plans. Ninian found a sheltered spot in a pine wood from which to observe without being seen, and he thought the rumours were probably true. The camp was extensive and well guarded, and knights were arriving all the time, a few singly or in pairs, many more in rowdy gangs of thirty or forty.
The initial euphoria had long worn off. As Ninian watched the mass of knights, foot soldiers and camp followers, he began to realize the magnitude of the task he had set himself.
The apprehension was only going to get worse the longer he waited. As the sun climbed up towards its zenith, he led his horse, Garnet, out from beneath the pine trees, mounted up and rode down into the camp.
Nobody seemed to question that he was anything other than what he claimed to be: a knight from Brittany eager to carve out a patch of land for himself in the south, and even more eager to shed some heretic blood in order to do so. He encountered a group of Bretons who took him to heart like a long-lost brother, demanding to know where he came from, and when he said Dinan – a town he knew from his childhood – telling him it was a place with a fine reputation for fighting men and he’d better be sure he lived up to it.
He decided that, in view of what he was really there for, it would be best to avoid the Breton contingent in future.
He had been in the camp for only a couple of days when he found out what he wanted to know. That, too, proved risibly easy, for it appeared to be no secret. De Montfort must be very confident, Ninian thought. Perhaps that was what an autumn’s successful campaigning did.
The next town to bear the brunt of crusader attack was to be Lavaur, north-east of Toulouse. As word of the decision spread, the encampment got busy with preparations, making repairs to the great siege engines, mending weapons and armour, exercising horses and drilling the foot soldiery. In the midst of the bustle, Ninian slipped away.
He was almost out of the camp when he was accosted by three large, drunken, blond-haired German knights. As they closed ranks and blocked the path, Ninian’s heart sank.
‘Running out on us, are you?’ the first one said, his accent so atrocious that Ninian only just made out the words.
‘My business is my own,’ he replied shortly.
‘You Froggie bastards are all the same,’ scoffed the knight. ‘First chance of doing a bit of fighting and you run for the hills.’
The remark was so monumentally inaccurate that Ninian didn’t even bother to reply.
The big German came closer, looking up at Ninian as he sat on his horse and pointing a wavering finger in the general direction of his face. ‘We don’t need you lot,’ he said, his words punctuated by a drunken hiccup. ‘There’s an army of our good lads on its way to join us, and they’ll be here in time to lay siege to this piss-hole town we’re going to attack.’ He hiccuped again, then belched noisily and liquidly. ‘Oops.’
‘I’m sure they’ll be a worthy addition,’ Ninian said neutrally.
The knight narrowed his eyes, clearly suspecting irony, but Ninian kept his face bland and the big man did not pursue it. ‘Ja, they are fine knights,’ he mumbled, ‘marching in a long, wide column from their homes in the north, marching to join their brothers here, marching to . . . marching to . . .’
He had apparently lost his thread. He turned to give the other knights a bemused look, then his legs gave way and he sank to the muddy ground. While the man’s companions tried to get him to his feet, Ninian put his heels to Garnet’s sides and hurried away.
He did not think anybody would come chasing after him. Why would they? In that great encampment of fighting men and camp followers, who was going to miss one man? Ninian had been surprised at the total lack of security, but, on reflection, it was another reminder of de Montfort’s invincibility. He didn’t care if the enemy knew where he was; didn’t even seem to be bothered by the details of his future plans being bandied about by the whole encampment.
He knows he’s going to win, Ninian thought.
The concept, once lodged in his mind, seemed to become a certainty.
As he rode along, keeping as much as possible within the sparse cover of the springtime woodlands, always moving in the general direction of the south-west, his resolve hardened. He had an important piece of information, and he was going to make quite sure he put it to good use.
Back in the village, he had heard the young fighters he’d been training speak in awe of the Count of Foix. An Occitan lord in the traditional mould, his support of the bonshommes was as much due to indignation at the crusade against them as belief in their faith; that and the sheer love of a good fight. His ferocity in battle was legendary, and, in his stronghold at the foot of the Pyrenees, he clearly felt himself safe from reprisals when he sent out his wild-eyed knights to besiege an enemy castle or murdered a priest or two.
All in all, Ninian reflected, he was the very man who might make good use of the knowledge that Simon de Montfort was poised to besiege Lavaur and was expecting the arrival of a vast column of German knights, fresh from the north and spoiling for a fight, to support him.
In the hill country half a day’s ride from Foix, Ninian stopped by a rushing stream to eat the last of his food. Although the day was sunny, the air was cold, for he was already in the lower reaches of the mountains. As he sat munching his way through dry bread and a rind of pungent cheese, he looked idly around and noticed that what he had taken as rocky outcrops were in fact the ruins of dwellings. Still chewing, he got up to investigate.
It had been a little village of perhaps fifteen or twenty dwellings; simple stone houses, many linked together in rows on either side of an overgrown cobbled track. He wondered who had lived there, and what had caused them to abandon the place. Unlike so many villages and towns in the region, this was not the site of a recent catastrophe. Nobody could have lived there for decades.
But somebody still came to the place; walking on between the ruins, Ninian discovered a tiny chapel, its wooden door hanging off the hinges and most of the roof gone. He went inside, and the scent of fresh greenery hit him. A garland of spring leaves, beautifully woven, had been placed on the floor in front of a statue.
Ninian went closer. The statue was in shadow and, after the bright light outside, it took his eyes a few moments to adjust.
When he saw what the figure was, he gasped aloud. In an instant, he was back in his own past. Back to a terrifying time when he had almost lost his life and then hurried across France to England, helping to escort an object of great antiquity and immense power to somewhere it – she – would be safe.fn3
That object was a statue depicting a heavily pregnant woman dressed in a sweeping robe and wearing a horned headdress like the crescent moon. She was made of dark wood and was known as a Black Madonna.
She looked exactly like the figure at which Ninian’s eyes, wide with wonder, were now staring.
It was as if seeing this figure had opened a locked door in Ninian’s mind, for now as he stood there in the little chapel, his head swimming and spinning, he was assaulted by memories, dreams and visions. He saw Josse and a certain tree on the fringe of the Hawkenlye Forest. He saw St Edmund’s Chapel and the Black Goddess who reigned there, serene and secure in her secret niche down in the crypt. He saw the hut in the forest, which Meggie had taken over from Joanna. He saw Meggie, whose face was anxious and who was calling out to him, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly, so that he knew she was trying to tell him something but could not make out the words.
Perhaps she was telling him he was no longer wanted for murder and it was safe to come home. Or perhaps that was just wishful thinking.
Briefly, heartbreakingly, he saw his mother. Not as he had last seen her; for he had been only a boy when she had left him in Josse’s care and gone to embark on her strange life in the forest; no, she was older now, her long dark hair streaked with grey, her face lined but still beautiful.
He shook his head to try to clear it, for he didn’t understand. He was seeing images of home – powerful images, joined now by a vision of Little Helewise laughing up at him, flowers in her hair, love and healthy, eager lust in her eyes – but another, more powerful message was pressing down on him.
It was to do with the Black Goddess. Out of nowhere came the memory that she had been destined for the new cathedral at Chartres, but removed to Hawkenlye because she would be safe there. Chartres . . . It was where his mother had died. Where he and Josse also had almost lost their lives.
‘What must I do?’ he asked the black figure now. ‘I want to stay here and fight with the people who have become my friends. I’ve got information that’s going to help those who stand in opposition to the crusaders, and maybe it’ll give us a chance . . .’
It won’t.
He wondered where the words came from. He looked around, but there was nobody there.
He felt a wave of dizziness. Had the statue spoken? Or was it just his own good sense, telling him, now that he was in this strange, altered state – he was nearly exhausted and half-starving – what he could not bear to face when he was his normal self??
This battle will not be won, went on the voice, because the forces ranged against the south are too strong. Church and king together can draw on endless resources and are ultimately invincible.
‘But I can’t leave!’ he protested, almost weeping. ‘They took me in, they’ve cared for me over the long winter, and I’ve shared their lives all this time!’
They made use of you, said the voice. You were sent from danger into greater danger, bearing a treasure which they wanted so badly that they did not care how they got it.
‘But—’ He stopped. It was true.
Standing there all alone, weak from hunger, his mind reeling so much from the onslaught that he felt on the verge of delirium, a change began to come over him.
He saw again the images that had so stunned him, one after the other in swift succession: Josse, the forest, the chapel above the abbey, Meggie, the hut.
Little Helewise.
Home.
Then, flashing so fast that he was not sure he’d even seen her, Joanna. And a huge building soaring up into the sky that he recognized as Chartres cathedral, contained within a cone of bright, white light that rose high up into the sky . . .
A stab of pain like a knife thrust hit Ninian between the eyes. With a groan, he slumped to the stone floor. The voice and the visions faded, and he sank into unconsciousness.