A Shadowed Evil

by Alys Clare

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Alys Clare

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Josse’s Maternal Family Tree

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Postscript

  Footnotes

  Recent Titles by Alys Clare

  The Hawkenlye Series

  FORTUNE LIKE THE MOON

  ASHES OF THE ELEMENTS

  THE TAVERN IN THE MORNING

  THE ENCHANTER’S FOREST

  THE PATHS OF THE AIR *

  THE JOYS OF MY LIFE *

  THE ROSE OF THE WORLD *

  THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE *

  THE WINTER KING *

  A SHADOWED EVIL *

  The Norman Aelf Fen Series

  OUT OF THE DAWN LIGHT *

  MIST OVER THE WATER *

  MUSIC OF THE DISTANT STARS *

  THE WAY BETWEEN THE WORLDS *

  LAND OF THE SILVER DRAGON *

  BLOOD OF THE SOUTH *

  * available from Severn House

  A SHADOWED EVIL

  A Hawkenlye Mystery

  Alys Clare

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2015

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2015 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2015 by Alys Clare.

  The right of Alys Clare to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Clare, Alys author.

  A Shadowed Evil. – (A Hawkenlye mystery)

  1. D’Acquin, Josse (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Helewise, Abbess (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  3. England–Social life and customs–1066-1485–Fiction.

  4. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9’2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8520-3 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-620-6 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-673-1 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  In memory of my parents, together again –

  always in my heart.

  Josse’s Maternal Family Tree

  PROLOGUE

  February 1212

  He lay in his lonely little bed, curled up into the smallest shape he could contrive. He was six years old, and so scared that he was quite sure he was going to wet himself. She would be so angry if he did. She would probably do what she did last time and push his face into the stinky sheets, as if he was a puppy that had made a mess on the floor. He must get up and reach under the bed for the piss pot. He knew he had to. But he also knew there was a monster under the bed.

  He hadn’t really seen the monster. All the same, he could describe it. It had a big, long snout and a thick, ropy neck that sort of spread out into its shoulders. It had spiky bits on the top of its head and all down its neck and backbone. It was hairless, and its skin was hard and scaly. It made a rustling, rattling noise when it moved. It moved oh so slowly, like a snake sliding across the ground. It had huge gaping jaws and its breath smelt foul, like old meat. And its teeth—

  NO. Don’t think about its teeth, don’t, don’t, don’t …

  The little boy gave a soft moan, quickly stuffing his fist in his mouth to muffle it. He mustn’t make a noise. She had told him that, so many times. He must be a big brave boy because he wasn’t a baby any more. He was a Person of Importance. He must behave like a little lordling.

  He didn’t want to be a little lordling. It meant things he didn’t like. It meant wearing stiff, uncomfortable clothes that had to be kept very clean all the time. It meant having to have nice manners at table. It meant he wasn’t allowed to play with the other boys because they were servants’ children. She had caught him playing tag-and-run with the groom’s little lad, and she had pulled him away, that horrible expression on her face when her lips seemed to fold in on themselves and her eyes went cold and empty, and then, inside the house where nobody could see, she’d boxed his ears so hard that his head rang and he couldn’t hear properly for quite a long time.

  That had been quite a lot of days ago. His ears still hurt, sometimes.

  He thought for a while. He realized she hadn’t punished him since then. Well, not by hitting him, anyway, although she still kept sending him to his room when he’d done something naughty. Often he never knew exactly how he’d been bad or which one of her many rules he had broken. She had so many rules. It seemed to him that the more people did what she said – and it was funny how they usually did – the more rules she came up with.

  Being sent to his room such a lot was good in one way, and that was he didn’t have to see so much of Her. It was almost as if, having worked so hard at trying to make him the sort of boy she appeared to want – a little lordling – now she had stopped trying. Perhaps he was a little lordling now, and that was why she’d stopped, but he didn’t really think so. Much more likely was that he was so bad at being it that she had despaired of him and given up.

  It was all right in his room, but it was very lonely.

  I wish my daddy was here.

  He wasn’t sure if he’d whispered the words out loud or just thought them. They were true, either way. But his father was dead: he knew that. He had a new father now. The new father was quite nice, and he had a kind face. But he didn’t seem to know about boys.

  Don’t think about my daddy.

  The other thing he didn’t like about having to be a lordling and a Person of Importance was that he was no longer allowed to sleep in a safe, cosy, warm bundle with lots of other people. She said that Important People demanded and received their own beds. They slept in what she called splendid isolation, although he didn’t really understand the words. He knew what they meant, though. They meant being all by myself in the pitch-dark with nobody to hold my hand and nobody to snuggle up to not even a dog and so desperate to wee that it was going to come out and so afraid so so so afraid of the monster that I don’t even dare put one foo
t out of bed.

  He lay very still. Perhaps if he didn’t move at all the need to wee would go away. He could hear the house. It made soft, gentle sounds as if it was murmuring. As if, now that everybody was in bed and it was silent and dark, the house got a bit of peace and took the opportunity to have a little chat to itself. Hello, house, have you had a nice day? That was a bit silly, and the little boy grinned to himself in the darkness.

  It was a good house. A friendly sort of house. It was very, very old – somehow he knew that, although he couldn’t remember if anybody had actually told him – and he thought that a lot of good, kind people had lived in it and left something of themselves in its stones. The boy liked living there, and, had it not been for the monster, and Her, he would have been happy. Well, quite happy.

  He felt that the house liked him, too. It felt as if its darkness wrapped itself round him, comforting him. He had sensed that there was a big, strong presence looking out for him. Once when he’d screamed out loud because of the monster, and She had come and shushed him, pinching and punching and pushing at him and telling him to behave himself, he’d thought that, just for the blink of an eye, a big, strong man had come out of the shadows and told her to go away. The man cared about him. The man had defended him from Her.

  He really, really hoped the man would come again.

  Desperate, his bladder bursting, suddenly he threw himself out of bed, scrabbled beneath it for the pot, directed a long, strong stream into it, shoved it under the bed again and then scrambled back under the covers, pulling them right up over his head.

  He screwed his eyes tight shut. The monster was there. He had caught a glimpse of it as he pushed the piss pot back under the bed. A horrible, dark, thick, curled-up forelimb, like a huge coil of rope, only it ended in long, curved, wickedly pointed talons. The little boy gave a whimper.

  Was that snaky forelimb even now uncurling? Blindly pushing forward across the dusty floor, sensing for him, snuffling for his smell, the terrible talons extending as the monster prepared to strike?

  He listened, straining so hard that it made his ears hurt.

  Nothing. Not a sound.

  Ah, but monsters were very clever. Perhaps it was just pretending not to be coming for him …

  He lay still as stone for an eternity. Still no sound.

  He wondered how long he would have to endure the darkness and his bone-deep fear before morning came.

  ONE

  Josse d’Acquin looked up at the sky with anxious eyes. This morning, setting out from the House in the Woods, the weather had been mild, misty and damp. But the month was February: too early in the sun’s year for unseasonal warmth to be reliable. Now the wind had changed, going round to the east, the clouds were clearing and the temperature was falling. Despite having made an early start, there were many hours of the journey still ahead.

  He turned round in the saddle, looking back at Helewise, riding behind him. ‘It’s getting colder,’ he said, despite himself unable to keep the worry out of his voice. ‘Are you warm enough?’

  ‘I am, Josse,’ Helewise said with a smile, nudging her heels into her grey mare and coming to ride beside him. ‘Thanks to you and your sensible precautions, I am wearing several layers of good wool, and my travelling cloak is sufficiently thick and heavy to keep out worse weather than this.’ But he noticed that she, too, gave a swift glance up at the sky. ‘How far have we to go?’

  Only someone who knew her as well as Josse did would have detected the faint note of concern in her voice. Bracingly he said, ‘We’re well over halfway now; more like three-quarters, I’d say. We’ll go through the gap in the downs, turn westwards for a few miles, and then we’ll see the town ahead of us.’

  She nodded. ‘Let’s get on, then.’ She kicked Daisy, and for some time they went at a steady canter, eating up the miles.

  Emerging from a winding track on to a wider road where there was room to ride abreast, Helewise broke the companionable silence. Perhaps, he thought, she was growing more concerned about the steadily increasing cold, and trying to take their minds off it … ‘Tell me about the house and its inhabitants, Josse,’ she said. ‘You used to visit when you were a boy?’

  Eager to play his part, Josse replied, ‘Aye, that’s right, I did.’ He broke off to rein in his horse, letting Helewise pass and then taking up a position on her other side – the eastern side, from which direction the wind was blowing with growing strength – in the hope that Alfred’s big body would afford her some protection. ‘Although my mother moved to northern France after she married my father, she never forgot that her roots and her kin were in England, and she dispatched me regularly to stay with her brother Hugh and his wife Ysabel.’

  ‘And their children – your cousins – were all girls, you told me?’

  ‘Aye. Three of them, Isabelle, Editha and Aeleis, and, although Isabelle was nearest to me in age, Aeleis was my favourite.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘She was the tomboy, the leader into mischief, and wherever she went, I willingly followed.’

  ‘And what of the house?’ Helewise’s teeth were chattering, and Josse only just made out her words. He pressed his heels to Arthur’s sides, subtly increasing their pace.

  ‘Southfire Hall has been in my mother’s family for many generations,’ he began. ‘The house is ancient, and they say there’s been a dwelling on that spot, on the top of the rise of the downs to the south-west of Lewes, since time out of mind. The first time I went there, Uncle Hugh was having an extension built, which, as you’ll imagine, made the most exciting playground for my cousins and me.’ He glanced at her, then wished he hadn’t, for her lips were blue with cold. ‘We had the run of the place,’ he went on in a tone which, even to his own ears, sounded far too hearty, ‘exploring into all the strictly forbidden places, because everyone was much too busy and harassed to watch over us.’ He smiled briefly. ‘Aeleis always took it as a personal challenge when someone told her somewhere was not safe for children and strictly out of bounds.’ His smile widened as the images formed in his memory: grubby faces and hands, cut knees, and his boyhood self trying to help a small girl restore a ripped and filthy gown before her nursemaid discovered the damage. ‘The old undercroft – beneath the original building – was the best place,’ he went on. ‘It was vast and creepy, spooky with long-forgotten things and low, half-blocked doorways to subterranean passages and little rooms that nobody had seen in decades, if not more. It was as if –’ he paused, thinking how to put a fleeting childhood impression into words – ‘as if the whole site bore an imprint of every dwelling that preceded the present one, like old footprints half-obliterated by later ones. We once found what looked like an ancient hearth,’ he added, the memory suddenly surfacing, ‘and Aeleis pinched a flint and tinder from the kitchens so that we could light a fire.’

  ‘And did you?’ Helewise managed to sound as if, despite the increasingly uncomfortable and worrying conditions, she was enjoying the tale.

  ‘No,’ he admitted with a grin. ‘There was no draught, since whatever hole had once provided for the flow of air had long been blocked up.’ He chuckled, a sudden picture in his mind of Aeleis cursing and swearing as she rubbed her streaming eyes. ‘We choked ourselves on the smoke.’

  They had come to a place where the road descended a long, steep slope, and they turned their attention to their mounts, picking their careful way down. On level ground again, Helewise said with a sigh, ‘And now it seems that your Uncle Hugh is seriously ill.’

  ‘He’s dying, Helewise,’ Josse said gently. ‘My cousin Isabelle would not have sent word to come had it not been so, given the season and all that it carries with it.’ Bad weather, winter-damaged tracks, short daylight, he reflected morosely.

  ‘You cannot be sure he is dying!’ Helewise protested. ‘All the message said was that he was sick, and wandering in his mind.’

  ‘He is an old man,’ Josse said, struggling with a sudden, unexpected surge of emotion. ‘Old men die.’

 
She let that go without comment. ‘When did you last visit?’ she demanded.

  ‘A while back, now.’ He tried to work it out. ‘It was at Christmastide, and, even then, Uncle Hugh was grown stout and balding. It was just before we had that business with the heretics.1 Must be all of ten years.’

  He heard her laugh softly. ‘Dear Josse, that was twenty years ago.’

  Twenty years? He spun round to look at her, aghast. Had so much time gone by, then? He studied her – the clear grey eyes, the wide mouth always so ready to smile, the modest headdress of spotless white linen beneath the hood of her heavy cloak, the straight back and square shoulders that did not bend under heavy loads. I do not believe it, he thought, although in truth he did. You look exactly the same as you did when first I set eyes on you, and I believe I have loved you every day since.

  It was not a sentiment for expressing aloud; not when they needed more than anything to press on to Southfire Hall as fast as they could. So he just smiled and murmured, ‘Is it really so long?’ and they rode on.

  Presently they came to the town of Lewes, and made their way across the bridge over the river Ouse that linked the two parts of the settlement. The waterfront was lined with warehouses and taverns, and several craft were tied up along the quays. The river was vital to the town, for it was the means by which the many businesses transported their produce and their goods to the rest of the world. Now, however, the port lay quiet and there were few signs of activity, for the rapidly falling temperature had driven most folk indoors.

  They passed the castle, up on its imposing rise to their right. Then, descending to ride for a while beside another, smaller, waterway, they saw the great spread of the priory over to the left. Josse, watching Helewise, observed her close attention to the network of buildings, gardens, stables, streamlets and ponds. Her eyes were wide with awe, for it made Hawkenlye Abbey look like a small rural convent.