The Raven's Head by Karen Maitland Read Free Book Online Page A

another to his bed, summoned a wise woman who lived on the edge of the forest to help her. This woman was cousin to the one Lisette had consulted and the forest woman recognised the evidence of her cousin’s handiwork. She knew at once how Hélène had been cursed.
She told Hélène that she must never again lie in her husband’s bed. Instead she must persuade her husband to lie with her in secret, deep in the forest beneath a cleaved oak that bore mistletoe, and when the child was born she must give birth beneath that same tree, for only that could protect the babe from the curse. She warned Hélène that on no account must she tell anyone of this for fear that word would reach Lisette, who would do the child harm. Then she gave Hélène a tame white dove, telling her to release it if she needed to summon her.
Each day Hélène rode out of the château alone on her palfrey, searching the forest until at length she found the oak the old woman had described. With her own hands she built a little bower beneath it. When all was ready, she persuaded her husband to come to meet her alone, telling him she had a great treasure to show him. She led him to the bower decorated with flowers and laid ready with wine, fruit and meat. Soothed by the wine and intoxicated by the perfume of the flowers, Estienne succumbed to his wife’s tender words and gentle caresses and made love to her. At once Hélène felt her womb quicken with child.
But as the weeks passed and the maids noticed their mistress’s swelling belly, rumours began to fly about the château that the babe was none of her husband’s getting, for both maids and manservants knew she had not been once to his bed these many months. They remembered seeing her repeatedly slipping out alone to the forest around the time the child had been conceived and concluded that she had gone to meet her lover. They laughed and whispered in corners, wondering how Estienne could be so blind as not to realise he had been cuckolded.
When Hélène felt the birth pangs coming upon her, she again slipped out alone and went to the little bower beneath the oak. She released the dove, which flew straight to the wise woman, and she hastened to help Hélène in her travail. When the babe was born the wise woman bit through the cord with her teeth for she would not use iron to sever the bond between infant and mother. Hélène was too afraid even to look at the child, fearing that, like her other sons before, this boy would not draw breath. But the wise woman rubbed his little chest and chafed his tiny hands and feet, and soon Hélène heard the sweetest sound in the whole world, the cry of her own living child.
After seven days she returned home and placed the baby in the crib with her husband’s own coat of arms carved into the headboard. Estienne brought the boy to the church to be baptised and stood for the child, declaring him to be his true son, and he named the infant Tristan. Then the proclamation went out that Monsieur le Comte at last had an heir for his lands and titles.
There were those who still claimed that the child was a bastard, but whenever such rumours reached Estienne’s ears, the gossipmonger who spread such tales found himself lashed to the blacksmith’s anvil where his tongue was ripped out with red-hot pincers. And thereafter whatever any man’s private thoughts might have been regarding the paternity of the child, he quickly learned to keep them to himself. For Estienne knew that his wife’s honour was above reproach and her virtue shone brighter than the north star. He loved Hélène more with each day that passed for all she had endured to give him his precious son.
     
    Here the strange tale ended, but the scribe had added something more:
     
This is a true and faithful account as told to me by Estienne, Le Comte de Lingones himself, on the day of the marriage of his own beloved son Tristan, upon whose life he swore a solemn oath before God.
     
    It was signed
Father