Free The Song of the Nightingale by Alys Clare Page B

the others in that close, affectionate household. Little Helewise: his beloved Eloise, as he had come to think of her. Creamy skin, so soft under his fingers. Thick, dark-brown hair, that he used to take in his hands and wind into a long rope to wrap around his own throat, binding her to him, binding himself to her . . . Except that it hadn’t, because men had died – important men – and Ninian had been accused of their murder.
    I cannot go home
, he thought.
    His friends’ gentle suggestions turned gradually to worried urgency. ‘It is not your battle, Ninian,’ an ancient, serene-faced elder told him, one claw-like hand clutching at his wrist. It was February, a morning of hesitant sunshine, and they had climbed up to sit on a rock in a sheltered spot overlooking the village.
    â€˜You’re my friends, Guillaume,’ Ninian protested. ‘I have lived and worked alongside you all these weeks and months of winter. I can’t just leave you. Besides,’ he hurried on, as Guillaume began to speak, ‘you need me. Who’ll carry on with instructing your fighting men if I’m not here?’
    Guillaume gave a faint shrug. ‘We should not fight,’ he murmured.
    Ninian bit back his protest. It was all right for Guillaume, for he was old, he’d had his life, and, as a perfect, he was probably longing for the release from earthly existence that would allow his soul to fly joyfully back to heaven. But Ninian knew, because they had told him, that many of the younger people were not ready to die.
    â€˜Some of the villagers don’t share your strong convictions,’ he said quietly.
    Guillaume waved a thin hand. ‘I know, I know.’ His fine face creased in a frown. ‘I understand,’ he added in a whisper. He glanced up at Ninian. ‘Nevertheless, you should prepare to leave. Give your pupils a few more lessons, then you must put your pack on your fine horse’s back and ride away, before—’ He did not go on.
    Before the snows melt and the passes into the mountains open again
, Ninian finished for him. Trained in the ways of fighting knights as he was, he well knew what would happen then. They would come thundering down from the north, hungry for plunder, hungry for the sweet, sun-warmed lands of the south, ready to kill in the name of their god, their pope and their king, most of them not overly concerned with the cause when the prizes were so seductive.
    Guillaume had fallen silent beside him, and Ninian sat wondering what de Montfort would do once he had sufficient men under his command. Swiftly he went over what he had learned of the final months of the previous autumn’s campaigning. De Montfort had appeared unstoppable, winning a series of victories culminating in the fall of Termes, a mountaintop town in the Corbières that was said to be out of reach to anything but the goats. The lord of Termes was now in a Carcassonne dungeon.
    The elation of de Montfort’s armies in the wake of their success had led to a wave of hangings and burnings, so terrible and so widespread that many southern lords had chosen surrender over death. More and more rebel strongholds had gone, and the threat of war hung over all of Languedoc. In January, Pedro, king of Aragon, deeply worried at the convulsion in these lands so close to his own, had reputedly approached the men of power within the Church. He undertook to recognize Simon de Montfort as his vassal, thus legitimizing his conquest of the lands already taken, but in return Pedro demanded that Raymond of Toulouse – who happened to be his brother-in-law – should assume once more his rightful position as the most important lord of Languedoc. The Church agreed, but only under conditions that amounted to the Languedoc lords meekly giving up and walking away, leaving their homes, their lands and everything they possessed to the vicious, avaricious, ever-hungry and ruthless