Free The Raven's Head by Karen Maitland Page B

the corner of the table in order to be able to stammer out a word.
    ‘The – the last entry, my lord, an entry concerning your great-grandfather’s marriage to Countess Hélène and the birth of their son . . . that’s what you wanted Gaspard to find.’
    At the edge of my vision, I saw Philippe’s feet stir and was unable to stop myself taking a step back, but he made no move towards me.
    ‘I had not realised Gaspard had confided in you,’ he said quietly.
    I could hardly tell him I’d listened at the door, but if I said that Gaspard had told me all, the old crow would surely deny it. So I remained dumb. But, unwittingly, there in that chamber, I learned my first lesson about how to discover what you need to know. If you stay silent, neither confirming nor denying, men will eventually begin to talk.
    Philippe sank down in the chair beside the fire. ‘Then you know already that my enemies were circulating rumours that my grandfather’s birth was not legitimate, which might have caused me some difficulties.’
    Difficulties!
Total ruin, more like. I’d be the first to admit I was as innocent as a newly hatched chick back then, but even I knew that the moment a man’s entitlement to lands and hereditary rank is questioned you can’t take a pace without treading on a hundred relatives, all clamouring to prove they have the greater legitimate claim.
    ‘But now I have proof that my grandfather was the legitimate son of Estienne, Le Comte de Lingones,’ Philippe continued softly. ‘The king is satisfied that all is in order, so that is the end of the matter.’
    ‘The proof was the story in the book from St Luke’s Church?’ I asked, though I already knew the answer.
    ‘Which Gaspard discovered in the attic,’ Philippe said carefully, arching his eyebrows, as if daring me to contradict him.
    ‘Which Gaspard
wrote
himself,’ I countered.
    ‘That’s nonsense, boy!’ Philippe was again on his feet. ‘Any man can see at a glance it was written many decades ago. The book is old, the ink faded. Whatever madness has possessed you to think otherwise?’
    ‘I saw Gaspard writing in that book, yet there are no new entries in it. The ink was made to look old. He didn’t use iron-gall ink, he wrote with the older form of ink they used a century ago. I found the recipe, which he also must have read for it was among the books I fetched for him from the attic.’
    As proof I recited the recipe from memory: ‘
Grind the seeds of goat-leaf and after let them boil in wine together with a rusted iron nail. This makes a green ink. But if thou wouldst make a black ink, add drops of vitriol till it turn black and also the sap of the hawthorn, so that will stay wherever thy pen does place it.
    ‘The base of that ink is green,’ I said, in case Philippe hadn’t got the point. ‘So when it’s old, the green tinge begins to show through the black again. Gaspard sent me to the still room for goat-leaf seeds for a purge, or so he said, but I know he used them for ink. By adding too few drops of vitriol, a little of the green hue would remain visible, so it would look as if black ink had faded with age. I can prove it to you. I can make that ink again and match it to the page.’
    You have to admire men like Philippe: they have been well schooled in the art of not betraying their emotions. Vital, I imagine, if you spend your life among the schemers at Court. But, even so, I thought I saw his face blanch a little, though it might just have been the flickering of the firelight.
    ‘Gaspard is a loyal servant,’ he murmured.
    I had no idea if Philippe himself knew what Gaspard had done or if he, too, had been tricked by the old man. He wasn’t stupid. He must have suspected something, but he’d been so desperate for proof that he’d probably grasped at any rope flung out to him that would pull him from the mire.
    His tone when he spoke aloud again was chilling enough to freeze the flames in a blacksmith’s furnace. ‘But