The Song of the Nightingale by Alys Clare

Author:Alys Clare [Clare, Alys]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

The sturdy horse called Auban had an extremely comfortable gait, something between an amble and a trot. To Meggie, sitting securely behind Jehan as they covered the miles down to the coast, it was as if she’d been perched there half her life.

She felt as if she was in a dream. So much had happened in such a short space of time, and her own actions still amazed her. Had anyone asked her if she’d be willing to give up everything she knew and leave the country of her birth in the company of a total stranger, she’d have given them short shrift. I cannot possibly leave my work and my responsibilities, she’d have said; or, my father loves me deeply, and he is already bearing the loss of one child. Or even, my mother is gone, and I need to stay close to the places she frequented in order to keep her spirit with me.

Yet when she had come across Jehan Leferronier sitting so calmly in her hut, and he had told her he was about to leave and where he was bound, she knew as if it had been planned out for her that she would go with him. She was still not ready to think about that; about why it was she did not even pause to question whether he was a threat to her or whether he would keep her safe.

She already knew.

The one thought hammering through her mind as she’d raced back to the cell beside St Edmund’s Chapel to stuff her few belongings into her bag and gather up her heavy cloak had been: oh, please, please, make him wait for me! Let him still be there when I get back!

He had, and he was. The reddish-chestnut horse stood ready, bridled and with a simple saddle on his broad back, attached to which were two worn leather saddlebags. Jehan, it appeared, travelled light. The man himself was busy with the knot that fastened the door. Not turning round – he had known without looking the very moment she stepped into the glade – he’d said, ‘I believe I now can do it precisely as you do.’

Approaching, she had checked. He could.

They had set out straight away, and by the time dawn had begun to light the sky in the east, they were already out on the south side of the great forest and in the valleys and small, wooded ridges between the Weald and the South Downs. Now it was mid-morning, and, as the big horse trod carefully along a narrow little track that wound and twisted along the high ground behind a small village, Meggie wondered what was happening back at home.

It had been quite easy to persuade Little Helewise not to come with her, desperate as the girl was for news of Ninian. With the pregnant woman’s instinct to protect her child, she had readily accepted that the journey Meggie was about to undertake was too risky for her and her baby girl.

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