by Alys Clare
He led the way off up the street. We crossed the alley that runs to the west of the market place, threaded our way between two churches, then emerged on to the long, wide stretch of gently sloping grassland that borders the river. He stopped some distance short of the water; down there, it was only marginally less busy than the centre of the town.
Turning to me with a smile, he said, ‘Now, tell me about the baby.’
I’d been assembling my thoughts as we walked. Jack Chevestrier was obeying orders and keeping a watchful eye on the veiled woman and her child. He’d been asking Mattie about her, and, just now when I’d walked into him, it was likely he’d been heading for the inn. Given what I’d concluded concerning his intelligence, I didn’t think he’d be satisfied with anything but a full answer.
I took a breath, then said, ‘To judge by her clothing and the fact that she has no idea how to nurse or even care for her child, the veiled lady is a noblewoman. Until very recently, she’s had a wet-nurse for the baby, and, I imagine, other servants too. The baby is well-fed, dressed in costly garments, clean and, as far as I can tell, healthy. Her attire, too, is luxurious and in good condition. Someone’s been polishing those fine leather boots, and her robe and cloak have been diligently maintained.’
I paused, thinking. ‘She’s a widow, and her bereavement must have been within the last fifteen months, because I don’t think the baby is more than six months old. The baby’s name is Leafric, and, although the veiled woman is a foreigner – originally from the south, perhaps, to judge by her very dark eyes and olive skin – her late husband must have been a northerner. There’s the baby’s name, for one thing – the woman told me he was named for a forebear of her husband’s, and Leafric is a Saxon name – and also his colouring. Although he has her olive skin, his hair is fair and his eyes are light blue. Oh, and I think the woman may be a Saracen – for one thing, there’s her veil, which I haven’t yet seen her without, and I’m sure I heard her putting it on when I tapped on the door of her room just now. Also, her little boy’s been circumcised, and that’s not a custom we routinely practise here.’
Was she a Saracen? I wondered. Where had she come from? What did she—
Jack Chevestrier, I noticed, emerging from my intense concentration, was waiting.
‘I think something frightening must have happened to her very recently,’ I said. ‘When we first encountered her, you asked if she had kin or servants with her, and she said she was alone. She also said she was making for the fens.’
‘She did,’ Jack Chevestrier murmured. ‘I told her to be more specific.’
‘She’s had a shocking experience of some sort,’ I went on, ‘and it’s very likely she’s still suffering from the after-effects. That would account for her strange air of detachment, and—’
‘And her failure to engage with the child?’ he suggested.
‘Oh, no, I think that has more to do with the level of society she comes from,’ I said. ‘It’s usual for high-born ladies to hand the whole matter of raising their babies over to others. No: I think there was an accident of some sort, and somehow – although I’ve not the first idea how, for it seems so unlikely – the veiled lady became separated from her travelling companions and from her servants. Well, I can’t swear that she had travelling companions, but, as I just explained, she must have had servants. Or, at least, a nursemaid and wet-nurse, or maybe it was the same person.’
Jack Chevestrier was silent for a while. I risked a quick look at him, and guessed from his expression that he was thinking hard. Finally, he turned to me. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to come and work for the sheriff?’
He kept such a straight face that it took a moment for me to realize he was joking. And that he’d just paid me a pretty nice compliment.
The compliment had me confused. Looking down at my left boot, with which I was tracing semicircles in the grass, I said, rather more brusquely than I’d intended, ‘It was nothing – just listening and observation.’
‘That’s what I keep telling my men,’ he said with a sigh. ‘You’ve no idea the problems I have getting them to use their eyes and ears, never mind their brains.’ He fell silent again. Then, after a moment, said, ‘She arrived on one of the trading boats that ply the fenland rivers. I spoke to its master, who told me she’d come on board at Lynn.’ He glanced at me. ‘Although I don’t think either you or I believe her journey originated there.’
‘No, I’m sure it didn’t. Was she alone when she boarded? Other than the baby?’
‘She was.’
‘And did the boat’s master report anything out of the ordinary happening at Lynn? Rumour of sickness on board another ship, or a fight?’
‘You’re trying to account for the missing companions and servants.’ I nodded. ‘No, he didn’t. He—’ Abruptly he stopped, then, taking my arm, said, ‘Come and talk to him. His name’s Alun, and his boat’s called The Maid of the Marsh.’
I hurried along behind him. ‘But surely he’ll have left by now? It was –’ how long had it been? – ‘the day before yesterday that the veiled woman arrived.’
Jack Chevestrier turned briefly and gave me a swift grin. ‘He’s still here,’ he said firmly. ‘His boat’s bows needed repair, and he’s not sailing till tomorrow. Come on!’
FOUR
The Maid of the Marsh was a typical river craft: long and narrow, not very big, with a wide space on her foredeck for cargo. There was a mast amidships and spaces down each side for oars. One of her crew had clearly suffered a lapse of attention, allowing her to run into something hard, and at some speed. On the right hand side of her bow, there was quite a large area of new planking, in the seams of which a sailor was now splashing large amounts of a thick, tarry substance. Hearing our footsteps, he looked up and gave us a toothy grin.
‘Is your master aboard?’ Jack asked.
‘Aye, that’s him, back there.’ He inclined his head towards the stern.
‘May we come on board and speak to him?’
The man waved his brush in an expansive gesture. ‘Aye, help yourself.’
I followed Jack along the plank that provided the only access to the boat. It was several paces long, and it was just that: a plank, with no handrails or even a rope to hold on to. I had a vision of myself ending up in the water, but I managed to keep my feet. We crossed the deck and edged along to what appeared to be the master’s own particular space. Not that there was much to distinguish it from the rest of the ship, being cramped, and hemmed in with crates and sacks, neatly stowed.
The master sat on a narrow shelf, swinging his legs to and fro as he watched us approach his domain. Recognizing Jack, he greeted him cheerfully.
‘Repairs nearly done, I see,’ Jack said, having returned the greeting.
‘Aye, and I’m docking the cost from that stupid bastard’s wages,’ the master said. ‘That’ll teach him to eye up pretty girls when he should be keeping his mind on his work.’ He was staring at me. ‘Talking of pretty girls …’
‘This is Lassair, Alun.’
The master jumped down from his seat – he was a head shorter than me – and gave me a bow. ‘How d’ye do, Lassair,’ he said with a grin.
‘Very well,’ I responded, returning the smile. It was impossible to resist his good cheer.
‘That woman you picked up at Lynn,’ Jack said. ‘We have some more questions.’
The master gave him a knowing look. ‘Been stealing again, has she?’
‘Not as far as I know, and she insisted it wasn’t theft the first time,’ Jack replied.
The master gave a snort of laughter. ‘Oh, she did, did she? Well, it looked like it to me.’
‘She paid the baker both for the loaf and for his inconvenience,’ Jack said. ‘I decided to let that be an end to the matter.’
‘Well, you know your own business,’ the master said. ‘She was a slippery one. We were all glad to see the back of her.’
I sensed Jack’s suddenly heightened alertness. ‘W
hat makes you say that?’
‘Arrogant, she was. Gave orders like a queen, and expected my crew to jump to it. Surly, too – when we tried to look after her, she acted like it was her due and never gave a smile or a thank you. Well, like I told you, she came on board at Lynn, wanting passage up to Cambridge. She wanted to get into the fens, but you can’t just drop a passenger out in the middle of nowhere, and I reckoned this was the best place, and the nearest port to the fens. I mean –’ his face creased in a frown – ‘if I’d have put her ashore out in the watery wilds, likely she’d have lost her way and drowned, and that little baby along with her. She paid it no mind,’ he added with sudden vehemence. ‘Didn’t seem to know how to look after it. Didn’t even seem to like it, come to that.’ His frown deepened. ‘The mate found someone who knew how to get a bit of milk inside it, otherwise it’d have yelled its head off all the way.’
‘It’s a he,’ I said. ‘He’s being tended by a wet-nurse, and he’s doing all right.’
The master turned to me. ‘I’m right glad to hear it.’
Encouraged, I said, ‘It’s obvious she’s a noblewoman, and must somehow have become separated from the companions and servants she was travelling with. She seems to be in a state of shock, and I was wondering if, back in Lynn, you heard any talk of some incident that might have resulted in her being all alone? A ship having met with an accident, or illness aboard?’
The master shook his head. I saw his left hand make the sign against evil, no doubt in reaction to my mention of shipwrecks and sickness. ‘No, I heard nothing.’
‘Did she say where she had come from?’ Jack asked.
‘No. She offered no information at all.’ The master thought for a moment, then grinned. ‘But I think I can tell you what ship she arrived in, because she’d underpaid the cost of her passage – see, told you she was a slippery one! – and one of the crew came after her to collect what she owed.’
‘What was the ship?’ Jack’s eyes were narrowed like a cat’s. ‘And where had she come from?’
‘She was The Good Shepherd,’ the master said, ‘out of Yarmouth.’ He nodded, as if confident that he had answered all our questions. ‘That’s where that veiled woman came from – Yarmouth.’
Jack Chevestrier didn’t say a word as we headed back over the Great Bridge into the heart of the town. I could understand his mood; it really had seemed that we’d been on the point of discovering something crucial about the veiled woman. Yarmouth, however, was no likelier a starting point for her voyage than Lynn.
I went over my earlier encounter with the lady. Something had occurred to me, pushed out of my mind by subsequent events, and now I returned to it.
There had been an aspect of her which recalled a matter I’d once discussed with my aunt Edild. It concerned a new mother in Aelf Fen who, for some inexplicable reason, had taken a dislike to her newborn daughter; a dislike so profound that she had, for a few terrible days, refused to feed, tend or in any way care for the child. The baby was not her first; there was just something about her that the mother couldn’t tolerate. Edild said it sometimes seemed to happen – fortunately not with any frequency – that, following a birth, a mother became inexplicably miserable; unable to feel any joy in the new life she had brought into the world. Often it occurred when a birth had been particularly long or hard, as if the baby was a constant reminder of the pain and the distress its arrival had caused.
My wise aunt had succeeded in persuading the Aelf Fen woman to accept the baby. Observing the veiled lady, I’d wondered if Edild might be able to help her, too. And, after all, the lady wanted to locate her kinsman’s dwelling in the fens.
I hurried to catch up with Jack. ‘I’ve had an idea,’ I panted.
He turned to look at me. ‘Yes?’
‘I should take the veiled woman and her child to my village.’
‘Why?’
‘First, because she’ll have to go into the fens if she’s to find her kinsman’s house, and that’s where my village is.’
‘I know,’ Jack said. ‘You are from Aelf Fen.’
‘I didn’t—’ Then I remembered. When the veiled woman had said she sought the fens, Jack Chevestrier had said it was an extensive region, and he’d added, as this young woman could tell you. He’d known I was a healer. He knew where I came from. It was only surprising that he’d had to ask my name.
‘So, why else do you want to take her to your village?’ he asked.
‘My aunt Edild is a healer.’
‘So are you,’ he observed.
‘Not like her!’ I protested. ‘She’s my teacher, and she’s had years of experience. She’s very knowledgeable, and full of compassion for people with problems. She helped a village woman who couldn’t love her new baby, and she’s fine now; the woman, I mean. Well, they both are, the woman and the baby, only she’s not a baby any more, and the woman’s had another since and—’ I stopped gabbling. I could hear how stupid I sounded.
But Jack didn’t seem to think so. He said, ‘If you are the healer you are because of your aunt’s teaching, she is indeed a fine woman.’ Then, before I could even begin to deal with the embarrassment his words had caused, he added, ‘And we’d better see about getting you, the veiled woman and her baby out to your village as soon as we can.’
I dreaded telling Gurdyman I was leaving. For one thing, we were in the middle of a new course of study. For another, I knew how eager he was for me to have another attempt at looking into the shining stone. He thought he was managing to disguise his impatience, but he gave himself away with constant oblique references to it. I didn’t want to look into the stone. The thought of peering into its smoky, murky depths frightened me, and I kept seeing an image of those two dark birds. I was quite sure they came from another world: the world of the spirits. Being presented with an excellent reason for distancing myself from my strange inheritance was like a gift from some beneficial god.
In the event, the anticipation was worse than the actuality. When I told Gurdyman where I was going, and why, he simply nodded and said, as he always does, ‘May the good spirits guard your path.’
As I checked through my satchel and packed into it a few necessities for my journey, I congratulated myself on having neatly evaded something I dreaded doing. But, just as I was fastening my satchel straps, I heard heavy steps on the ladder up to my attic room, accompanied by the sound of Gurdyman’s laboured breathing. His head appeared at the top of the ladder, and, with a smile, he said, ‘Take the shining stone, child. It needs to stay close to you.’
My heart gave a leap of fright.
Had he said what I thought he said? Surely it must have been, You need to stay close to the stone?
I listened to the echo of his words. No: he had definitely said the stone needed to be close to me.
As if it had thoughts and emotions.
As if it were alive.
Without my volition, my hand went to the place beside the bed where I keep the shining stone. I watched myself pick it up – I noticed how reverently I handled it – and place it carefully inside my satchel.
Behind me I heard Gurdyman murmur, ‘Well done.’
It was a vast relief to find myself outside in the bright, fresh air of early morning. It was the next day; Jack hadn’t wasted any time. Putting the memory of that disturbing scene with Gurdyman right to the back of my mind, I strode off through the maze of lanes and emerged on to the wide street that leads up to the Great Bridge.
Jack was waiting on the far side. Beside him, the veiled woman sat on a beautiful bay palfrey. She had fastened her high-collared cloak tightly around her throat, and pulled its generous hood up over her headdress and veil. Her dark eyes seemed to be fixed on some point in the distance, as if she was determined to disassociate herself from the proceedings. Since those proceedings were entirely for her benefit, I thought this a little arrogant.
Jack was talking to a tall, slim man dressed in dark garments, a cloak slung back across his shoulders. Whethe
r from choice or necessity, his head was bald. His lean face was pale, and his close-set, narrow dark eyes were shadowed by heavy brows drawn down in a thunderous frown. He was speaking rapidly, gesticulating, and seemed to be issuing orders. As I reached the group, he looked up and saw me. He leaned close to Jack to say something more, his mouth right up close to Jack’s ear, then he spun round and, with a whirl that revealed the luxurious lining of his cloak, marched away. He turned briefly to spit on the ground and give Jack a final glare. I turned to Jack, about to ask who the man was, but Jack’s expression was equally forbidding and I lost my nerve.
Mattie stood beside the lady’s mount, the baby in her arms. I smiled at her. ‘Are you coming with us, Mattie?’
‘No,’ Jack said curtly. Then, his expression softening, he added, ‘Well, not if you’re prepared to carry the baby.’
I’d carried heavier loads between Cambridge and Aelf Fen. ‘I’ll manage,’ I said grumpily. Great lady or not, it seemed a bit hard that, although the veiled woman was mounted, it was going to be me, walking on my two feet, who would have to carry the child.
‘… should be here very soon,’ Jack was saying.
I came out of my sulk and asked, ‘What was that?’
‘I said, the other horses should be here soon,’ he repeated.
‘Other horses?’
‘Yes,’ he said. Then, as I still must have looked blank, he went on, ‘Mine – he’s having a new shoe fitted – and one from the sheriff’s stables. For you,’ he added.
‘For me?’
He grinned. ‘Of course. How do you usually get to your village?’
‘I walk.’
‘Well, you can’t walk carrying a baby.’
My spirits rose. I love riding, and only wish that the chance to do so came my way more often. And today I was going to ride a horse from the sheriff’s stables! We all knew Picot didn’t stint himself, so this wasn’t to be some sway-backed old nag not capable of more than a resentful trot.
Then something occurred to me. Whoever was bringing my horse was also bringing Jack’s. Was he coming with us? I had imagined that his involvement would end with explaining to the veiled woman what was planned for her, finding her a horse and sending us on our way. I hadn’t thought he’d travel out to Aelf Fen with us; didn’t he have duties that kept him in the town?