by Alys Clare
I raised my chin and met his eyes. ‘Very well, sir.’
He went on looking at me for a moment, and I thought I saw the hint of a smile. Then he turned to Lord Gilbert, bowed deeply and, spinning round, strode out of the hall. I wondered if I ought to wait to be formally dismissed, but Lord Gilbert, obviously distressed, frustrated and bemused, waved an impatient hand and sent me on my way.
Out in the courtyard Sir Alain had already mounted. I stared at his beautiful horse. She was a bay mare, and she had a star-shaped mark on her brow. Her black mane and tail flowed free, and her coat gleamed with health. I was going to have to run hard to keep up with her, and my heart sank, for I had already covered quite a distance that morning and I was weary.
Sir Alain must have seen my face. He leaned down and held out his hand. ‘Come on, she can carry two, and you’re a slim little thing,’ he said.
I took his hand, and he swung me up behind him. I settled just behind the rear board of the saddle, frantically trying to arrange my skirts to preserve my modesty. He put his heels to the mare’s sides, and she sprang away, causing me to give out a yelp and fling my arms round Sir Alain. ‘No need to stop my breathing!’ he said with a laugh, and I eased my grip. Then I realized that the mare had settled into her stride – an easy, loping canter – and I no longer felt I was about to fall off. Embarrassed, very glad he could not see my hot face, I removed my hands from his firmly-muscled waist and held on to the back of the saddle.
I leaned forward to call out directions, and very quickly we had covered the ground and the stakes marking the walkway across to the island appeared in the distance. He drew rein as we approached, and I slid down off the mare’s back. He dismounted more slowly, gazing out across the dark waters of the mere.
‘What is this place?’ he asked. His voice was soft, almost awed.
‘It is an artificial island. It was built a long time ago as a safe place in times of threat. It is—’ But I had said enough. This was the secret place of my family, my kin, my ancestors. He might be charming and likeable, but he was still a Norman and therefore potentially an enemy.
‘Your grandmother is buried over there?’ He nodded over the water.
‘Yes. Shall I show you?’
‘Go on.’
I led the way across the planks. I could see Edild, standing quite still at the head of the grave. The young woman’s body, once more covered with the coarse linen, lay beside it. I wondered if Edild was in a light trance and thought I ought to warn her of our approach.
‘That’s my aunt Edild,’ I said loudly. ‘I went to fetch her as soon as I’d made the discovery, and she offered to wait here while I went for help. She’s—’
Edild turned to look at me. ‘No need to shout, Lassair,’ she said quietly. ‘I heard you coming when you were still some way off.’
‘Edild, this is Sir Alain de Villequier,’ I said, flustered. ‘Sir Alain, my aunt Edild.’
‘Good morning, sir,’ Edild said calmly, as if she greeted important Normans every day of her life.
‘Good day, Edild,’ Sir Alain replied.
She made a graceful gesture, indicating the grave. ‘That is where the dead young woman was placed.’ She pointed to the body on the grass. ‘My niece and I removed her from the ground so that we could unwrap the shroud and see who she was. We did not recognize her.’
Sir Alain knelt down in the grass and very gently folded the linen away from the dead face. He stared at her for some moments. His back was turned to Edild and me, and I could not see his expression. After a while he stood up, cleared his throat and said, ‘Her name was Ida. She was a seamstress in the employ of Lord Gilbert’s cousin, the lady Claude, who has recently come to our area and is staying at Lakehall.’
I’m not sure, but I thought I saw him pass a hand over his face before he turned around to us. I knew then that this dead Ida had cast her spell over him as well, just as she had done over Lord Gilbert and Lady Emma. He, too, had cared about her; he, too, would miss her.
Impulsively, I said, ‘She must have been such a lovely girl.’
He looked down, and I could not see his expression. ‘Why do you say that?’ His voice sounded gruff.
Because you’re all grieving over her death, I could have told him. But it wasn’t my place to make such an intimate remark, and instead I said, ‘I studied her face, and she looks like somebody who laughed a lot and brought sunshine into other people’s lives.’
He turned away from me and stared down at the dead girl. He looked at her for some moments. Then he said heavily, ‘She did. She—’ It was as if he, too, had suddenly recalled our relative positions in the world, for whatever he had been going to say, he bit it back. I thought he made an effort to control himself – I saw a sort of shudder go through him – and then he said curtly to Edild, ‘Well? Have you studied the body? Have you anything to tell me concerning how she died?’
Edild and I exchanged a quick glance – I could tell she was as taken aback as I was by Sir Alain’s abrupt change in demeanour – and then she stepped forward and crouched down beside the body. ‘I have,’ she said neutrally. She beckoned – to him, I believe, but I, too, took it as a summons – and Sir Alain and I knelt down either side of her.
My aunt began to speak, and straight away I felt calmer, for her voice had taken on the tone that it adopts when she is teaching me something new. I dare say she did it purposefully, for she must have sensed how unsettled I was by that morning’s discovery and she would have wanted to soothe me. It was only later that I realized she also wanted me to be fully alert so that I did not miss anything.
‘Death was by strangulation,’ she began, moving the long hair away from the dead girl’s neck with a tender hand. She pointed, and I saw the deep purplish-red mark around the throat. It had bitten deep into the soft flesh. Below it, the skin was white. Above it, the dead face was a different colour, as if stained with dark blood. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed before; I had, I supposed, been too busy staring at the features in that face made for fun and laughter.
‘What—’ Sir Alain coughed and tried again. ‘What was she strangled with?’
Edild pointed again. ‘A thin length of plaited leather, I believe. In some places there are the marks of a regular pattern. See?’
I spotted what she meant. Someone must have wrapped a plaited thong round the girl’s throat, strangled her and then removed it. Unless—
Sir Alain had had the same thought. ‘You have not found such a thing, I imagine.’ He sounded as if he already knew we hadn’t, and no doubt he realized Edild would have shown him straight away if she had.
‘No,’ she confirmed. ‘The killer must have taken his weapon away with him.’
‘And the shroud?’ He picked up the edge of the linen in which the body had been wrapped.
‘It appears to be an old piece of fabric,’ Edild said, ‘something previously used for a different purpose, for there are seams in it. It’s been torn so as to make a long strip.’
‘Did the killer bring it with him, knowing he would have need of it?’ Sir Alain said. ‘Or did he tear up his shirt and use that?’
Edild was smoothing the fabric. ‘It is too long for a shirt,’ she said. ‘My guess is that the killer prepared it earlier and brought it here, knowing he would have a body to wrap.’
Sir Alain did not speak. I wondered why. I was bursting with questions, but then I was not in the habit of trying to discover how people had met their death and perhaps he was; the things I was so desperate to know were probably clear as daylight to him.
‘He came here knowing he was going to kill her, then,’ I said, trying to prompt a reaction.
I got one. Sir Alain spun round to me and said sharply, ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because, although anybody might have a piece of plaited leather on them, not many people carry lengths of linen except their clothes, and Edild thinks there’s too much fabric in the shroud for a shirt.’
I sensed him relax. ‘
Well reasoned,’ he said with a quick smile. ‘Yes, you speak with good sense.’
Then I had another thought. ‘Maybe Ida had the cloth with her!’ I exclaimed.
Both Sir Alain and Edild glared at me. Edild could be forgiven, for she did not know and must have thought I was being foolish. I would, however, have expected Sir Alain to see the relevance. ‘You just said, Sir Alain, that Ida was a seamstress,’ I said. ‘She was helping Lady Claude prepare linens for her marriage, so maybe she’d brought some sewing out here to do while she sat in the sunshine.’
‘But this cloth is old,’ Edild pointed out.
‘Yes, but she could have been using it as a practice piece,’ I said eagerly. ‘You know, perfecting some new stitch before she sewed it into the object it was intended for?’
‘Hmm,’ said my aunt. She did not seem convinced.
Sir Alain was about to speak but, too carried away by my own argument, I did not let him. ‘Perhaps this lady Claude is a perfectionist and very fussy about her linens, so Ida felt she had to make sure her work would be acceptable and had to practise on this old linen. Perhaps Lady Claude is—’
‘Your speculation is interesting,’ Sir Alain said, interrupting my flow of words. ‘However, we can readily test your theory. Edild, have you noticed any fresh stitching on the shroud?’
Edild gave me a glance in which pity and irritation were perfectly mixed. ‘No.’
Sir Alain turned back to me, eyebrows raised as if to say, Well?
‘Perhaps she hadn’t started yet!’ I cried desperately. ‘Perhaps she was just threading her needle when he jumped on her! Perhaps—’
But I had run out of possibilities. I don’t know why I was so keen to believe Ida had supplied the fabric for her shroud. It might have been because the alternative – that her killer had been so cold-blooded in his meticulous preparations that he had taken it with him – was just too harsh. For the second time that morning, I realized I was weeping.
My aunt made a soft sound and put her arms around me. I leaned against her, taking comfort from her warmth, her nearness and her love. She said, quite crossly, ‘Sir Alain, Lassair has borne enough. Please let me take her home, for there is nothing more that she or I can do here.’
I thought she had gone too far. Whatever a local justiciar might be, I was sure they did not permit the likes of Edild to speak to them so curtly and, in effect, tell them what to do. Possibly Sir Alain did not realize this, for, far from being angry, he jumped up, helped Edild and me to our feet and said, ‘Of course. I am sorry. Lassair – go home now, rest, and if I need to speak to you again, I will come to find you.’
I felt we ought to go before he changed his mind and got cross after all. I grabbed Edild’s hand, muttered, ‘Come on, then,’ and led her away.
I risked a glance behind me as we hurried back over the water. He was standing where we had left him, staring down at Ida’s body. His head was bent, and I thought his hands were clasped in front of him.
He looked as if he were praying.
FOUR
Edild tended me solicitously for the remainder of the day. There was plenty of work to be done – we are usually kept busy, even in the middle of summer – but she insisted that I do nothing more arduous than wash out empty bottles and make them ready for new preparations and remedies. I would rather have done what I usually do, which is to take my share of the less demanding conditions that are presented to us by the villagers, because being forced to concentrate on something more exciting than bottle-washing would have taken my mind off Ida’s round, pretty, dead face. Still, Edild had her reasons. She keeps telling me that a healer must turn all her mind to every single patient, even those with something mundane like corns or a crop of boils, and she probably suspected that today I would have found it difficult. She’d have been right.
Catching her between patients – she was washing her hands in a bowl of warm water scented with lavender oil, and the smell was delicious – I said, ‘Edild, what’s a local justiciar?’
She paused, then resumed her washing and said, ‘King William has, I believe, a new system for promoting law and order. Apparently, he wishes to ensure that justice is done out in the more remote parts of the kingdom, and to this end he has appointed men to judge the graver mis-demeanours, attend meetings of the shire courts, observe how rulings are given out and, in general, ensure that the law is upheld.’
She did not ask why I wanted to know. I decided to tell her, anyway. ‘Alain de Villequier is our local justiciar.’
She gave me a serene smile and said, ‘I know.’
I did not bother demanding how she knew. My aunt seems to have the ability to pick information out of thin air; either that or she is exceptionally observant and just keeps her eyes and ears open. Instead I said, ‘Do you know anything else about him?’
Just then there was a very timid tap on the door. It sounded as if Edild’s next patient had arrived. My aunt looked at me, sympathy in her eyes. ‘I can see you’re burning with impatience, but you’ll have to wait,’ she said kindly. ‘As it happens, I do know more about Alain de Villequier, and I promise I’ll tell you later.’
I took myself out to the barrel in the yard behind the house to resume my bottle-washing. I could hear muttered words from inside the house, but deliberately I made myself deaf to what was said; it’s another part of my healer’s training. Instead, I filled my mind with a question: what did my aunt know of our new justice man, and how on earth had she found it out?
When the two of us had finished work for the day and were sitting outside on the bench in the shade of the three young birch trees behind Edild’s house, sipping one of her cool, refreshing concoctions, at last my patience broke and I said, ‘Well?’
She smiled. ‘Wait a while longer, for the person who provided the information is on his way.’
I waited. After a short while, there was the sound of quick footsteps on the path that leads around the house and Hrype appeared. He gave me a nod by way of greeting, paused behind my aunt and briefly touched her shoulder, then sat down on the end of the bench and accepted a mug of Edild’s cold drink.
My aunt and my friend Sibert’s uncle Hrype are lovers. Nobody knows this except for the two of them and me. I discovered their secret last autumn, through some unusual circumstances that I won’t describe now. Around that time I also discovered that Hrype is not in fact Sibert’s uncle; he’s his father. Both these fascinating facts I have kept to myself. If Hrype and Sibert choose to present themselves to the world as uncle and nephew, instead of father and son, that is their business. Regarding Hrype and Edild, I love my aunt dearly and would not hurt her for the world and, if the truth about her relationship with Hrype became known, it would cause her – and others – great distress and pain. I would not say I am fond of Hrype exactly; he is too strange and powerful for an ordinary mortal like me to have such a normal emotion regarding him. Another reason for keeping these secrets, which are his too, is that he’d probably turn me into a two-headed toad if I didn’t.
Hrype has begun to teach me about some very deep, dark magic. My respect and my fear of him are growing all the time.
That evening I watched them together, my aunt Edild and Hrype the cunning man. Now that I knew their secret, their feelings for each other were plain to see, or perhaps it was that, knowing I knew the truth, they allowed their guard to slip a little. Either way, it was both a pleasure and a pain to see the way his eyes filled with tenderness as he looked at her; the way she stroked a lock of hair away from his lean face with a hand as gentle as a mother’s with a sleeping baby. A pleasure because it touched my heart to see Edild looking so happy. A pain because I understood the difficulties they faced; also because observing a pair so devoted to each other reminded me of the man I love, who had slipped out of my life the previous autumn and left me with no hope that I’d ever see him again. Except for something my aunt had said . . .
I brought myself back to the present with a lurch; Hrype was speaking to
me. ‘You wish to know about Alain de Villequier, Lassair?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Listen, then, and I will tell you what I know.’ He stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankle, and fixed me with his silvery eyes. ‘He is a man who moves close to the king’s intimate circle. He is not within it, but his own circle touches it.’ He leaned forward and drew a diagram in the dusty ground: a small circle surrounded by five other, larger circles, the edges of which touched against the small one. ‘This is King William, with his personal elite,’ he said, pointing to the inner circle. ‘These are the groups of his close associates –’ he indicated the five larger circles – ‘in each of which there is a leading figure who reports directly to one of the elite. Alain de Villequier, who comes from a powerful and prominent Norman family, is in one such group. The king’s trust in him is sufficient that he has appointed him justiciar for our area and has provided him with a small but handsome manor house, Alderhall, where Sir Alain will live while he is with us.’
‘Edild explained what “justiciar” means,’ I said.
‘Good, then I shall not repeat her. This business of the dead girl in Cordeilla’s grave will be a test for him. The king will be kept informed as to how he handles the enquiry.’ I felt a shiver of sympathy for Alain de Villequier; such a challenge, with the spectre of King William looking over my shoulder, would have terrified me into petrifaction.
‘Sir Alain has much to gain if he is efficient and brings this matter to a swift conclusion,’ Hrype went on, ‘for as well as the king, there is a future mother-in-law to impress.’
‘Sir Alain is to be wed?’ I asked.
‘He is. The young lady’s father was long a bedridden invalid, and died some years ago, but it has always been her mother whose opinion really counts, for it is she who holds the strings of the purse.’ He paused. ‘The mother is a very wealthy woman.’
He frowned, apparently gathering his thoughts, and neither Edild nor I interrupted. ‘Alma de Caudebec, the young lady’s grandmother, married a great Norman baron, Bastien de St Claire. He was awarded a grand estate in the Thetford Forest, close to the place where in ages past the ancestors mined for flint. Alma bore her baron a single child – a daughter, Claritia – who wed Gaspard de Seés, the younger son of another, much less prominent, Norman family; their earthly comfort was dramatically heightened by the add-ition of her wealth, but they remain socially insignificant. Claritia and her husband had two children, both girls. Our Sir Alain’s family have much need of money, and I would guess that it was made plain to him from boyhood that he must marry wealth. A match was arranged between him and Claritia’s elder daughter, Geneviève, and negotiations were well advanced when the girl fell into a fainting fit from which she has never fully recovered.’