The Song of the Nightingale by Alys Clare

over the top. She was warm from walking and wanted to preserve her body’s heat. She thought about what she had just seen.
    There were signs that a horse had been tethered under the shelter of the skeletal willows down by the little stream. She had noticed some droppings, covered with a scrape of earth. She had fetched a spade and removed the dung to the herb bed, bare in that end of winter season. The unknown visitor, she realized, had covered his – or her – tracks pretty well, considering what an out-of-the-way spot it was, but Meggie’s thorough search had uncovered some hoof prints and a scatter of oat husks. The visitor had clearly taken good care of the horse; Meggie had found a wisp of horse hair from where the animal had been groomed. The hair was reddish-brown. Now she held it in her fingers, absently plaiting it into a neat braid.
    She raised herself on one elbow, looking around the hut. She had left the door open, and the blueish moonlight streamed in. The interior of the hut looked almost exactly as she had left it, and anyone but Meggie would not have noticed the tiny differences. Whoever had used the hut – and she knew without a doubt someone had – had been careful and respectful.
    It was just as she had thought. She gave a small private smile of satisfaction, pleased that again she had trusted her instincts and again they hadn’t let her down. She’d known even before she saw the retied knot that someone had been there. She had tested her reaction to this alien presence and, as extra protection, sent up a swift thought to Joanna’s guardian spirit. Her mother’s and her own response had been the same: there was no danger.
    She settled back on the platform. Her mother felt very close. Whoever had been inside the hut had not disturbed the sense of Joanna’s presence; this in itself told Meggie that the visitor meant no harm.
    She felt herself relax. Soon, oh, soon, she would sink down into the light trance state in which she so urgently needed to be. There, with any luck, she might begin to understand why she kept having the strong sense that her mother was calling out to her.
I’m here
, she said silently to Joanna.
Tell me what it is you want me to do
.
    Her breathing slowed and deepened as the trance took her.
    Within Hawkenlye Abbey, the three dead men lay like statues on the trestles in the undercroft beneath the nuns’ dormitories. Sister Liese had left incense burning, and the air within the stone-walled crypt was very cold, but still the stench of death was slowly and steadily permeating the room. It was rumoured that the men were to be buried within the next couple of days, and many among the Hawkenlye community considered that it would not be a moment too soon.
    No priest was meant to bury the dead. Under the pope’s interdict, funerals were not permitted. Abbess Caliste and her priest did not believe that a king’s quarrel with a pope should mean men went to their graves with nobody to pray for their souls, and the abbess had murmured to Father Sebastian that such prayers were even more vital when the bodies in question belonged to men who had in all probability been violent criminals.
    Not that the indistinct figure creeping along in the deep shadow of the dormitory walls was aware of any of that. He was there to do one task only, and all his thoughts were bent towards its completion.
    He reached the low door that led to the undercroft. It was locked, but locks did not present a problem. Reaching into a pouch that hung from his belt, he extracted a set of narrow, delicate tools fixed on to a ring, careful not to let the pieces of metal clink together. With a quick look around him – there was nobody in sight; the abbey seemed to be fast asleep behind the security of its stout gates – he put the first of the tools into the lock. He used two more in swift succession, then the lock gave and, opening the door a crack, he went