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Authors: Alys Clare

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BOOK: Music of the Distant Stars
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Edild smiled grimly. ‘Hardly the best images to induce a mood of love and romance, for either a man or a woman.’
I pictured the panel depicting Lust. ‘No.’
Edild fell quiet, and I knew from her expression that she was thinking. Then she said, ‘Lassair, who do you think fathered Ida’s child? And did her mistress know of her condition?’
I could not answer either question and shook my head. ‘She was pregnant before she came to Lakehall,’ I said. ‘Remember? I asked Sir Alain when she arrived in the area, and he said under a month ago, so that would be towards the end of May. She’d already have been three months gone then, if you’re right about her being four months pregnant when she died.’
‘I believe I am right,’ Edild murmured.
‘Lady Claude’s family home is in the Thetford Forest,’ I said. ‘Hrype told us it was near the place where the ancestors mined the flint.’
Edild nodded. ‘They call it Grim’s Graves,’ she said. ‘Our forefathers believed the gods quarried there. It is long abandoned now. Morcar and the other flint knappers acquire their raw material from other sources.’
Morcar is my cousin, who lives with his mother – Edild’s twin sister – in the area known as the Breckland. But I was not thinking about him then. I had just felt a deep-seated shiver, as if a cold finger out of the past had run down my back. ‘Lady Claude’s family live near such a place?’ I asked. I would not have cared to have my dwelling close to such a site of power.
‘Their estate is called Heathlands,’ my aunt replied. ‘Hrype says it is close to the little hamlet of Brandon.’ I opened my mouth to speak, but Edild said, ‘I know exactly what you’re thinking, but listen to me, Lassair. You would need permission to leave Aelf Fen, and you can’t go and ask Lord Gilbert, because this matter concerns him closely and he will not allow you to interfere. Also, there is a killer walking the lonely places out there and you would be putting yourself in grave danger.’
There was that word again.
Grave
. I shook off an instinctive shudder of fear and commanded myself not to be so silly. ‘But the only way we’ll find out more about Ida and her lover is if I go and ask,’ I protested.
‘Why must we know more?’ Edild demanded. ‘Can we not just let the poor girl rest in peace?’
‘Everyone thinks Derman killed her and Zarina’s terribly distressed and Haward loves her!’ I blurted out. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but Edild seemed to understand. ‘I don’t think he did, and I believe Sir Alain has his doubts too, but all the time Derman’s missing and there’s suspicion all around him, nobody’s going to get any peace.
Are
they?’ I almost shouted the question, my anxiety transforming into anger.
‘No,’ my aunt agreed.
Suddenly, I knew how to persuade her to let me go. ‘I bet some married man got her pregnant, and then when she threatened to reveal his identity, he killed her!’ I exclaimed. ‘Oh, Edild, that
has
to be what happened! If Ida comes from this tiny little village, then probably everyone there knows everybody else’s business and this married lover would have had his nice, peaceful existence broken apart if Ida had named him as her child’s father.’
‘But Ida had left her home village,’ Edild pointed out. ‘She came here with Lady Claude.’
‘Yes, but she’d be going back again once Claude and Sir Alain were married and there was no more wedding sewing to do,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t she?’ Surely that was right, unless Claude had been planning to keep Ida in her household after the wedding. Suddenly, I wasn’t so certain.
Edild shrugged. ‘You tell me, Lassair. You seem to have worked it all out.’
I thought hard. Then I said, ‘This is how it must have been. Ida had a lover, a married man in the village. She went to work for Claude, and one day Claude told her she was going to stay at Lakehall with her cousin Lord Gilbert and Ida had to go too because Claude was going to be working on her trousseau. Claude came here because Sir Alain is based in the area at the moment –’ I was speaking faster now as it all came together – ‘and Claude wanted a chance to meet him, spend time with him and get to know him before the marriage.’
Edild nodded. ‘Yes, that sounds credible.’
‘Ida probably didn’t know she was pregnant when she left Brandon,’ I plunged on, ‘and when she found out, somehow she sent word to the man, and he panicked because he thought she was going to ruin him. So, before anyone else could discover the secret – especially his wife – he came here, asked Ida to meet him in the middle of the night and then strangled her.’
Edild looked at me for a long moment. ‘It is possible, I suppose,’ she said grudgingly. Then a faint smile touched the corner of her mouth. ‘Take Sibert,’ she said. ‘He’s looked after you before when you’ve hared off on such wild missions.’
‘You mean you’re allowing me to go?’ I could hardly believe it.
Edild’s smile was wider now, but she also looked exasperated. ‘We’ll get no work out of you till you’ve followed this particular trail all the way to the end,’ she remarked. ‘Go tomorrow, at first light. You can be there and back by sunset.’
Excitement bubbled up in me. ‘Can I go and tell Sibert?’
‘You may go and
ask
Sibert,’ she corrected. ‘You’re inviting him to wriggle out of a day’s work and set out on a journey without permission, and, considering the trouble he’d be in if anyone found out, he has every right to say no.’
He did, yes. But I knew he wouldn’t.
Sibert and I had a really lovely day for our walk. We had some eight or ten miles to go, and in the warm sunshine, with the birds singing all around us and the scents of summer filling the air, I’d gladly have gone twice as far. The weather had been dry of late, and the ground was firm. Our way took us up out of the fens towards the higher ridge that cups them to the east, and for the first few miles we climbed gently but steadily.
There were many questions I wanted to ask Sibert. The revelation that Hrype was not his uncle but his father had hit him very hard; he had attacked Hrype when he’d first found out. He was still living with Hrype and Froya, his perpetually pale and anxious-looking mother, and I would have sworn that neither Hrype nor Sibert had told Froya that her son now knew the truth about his parentage. It was, of course, none of my business, but that did not stop me burning to ask Sibert about the mood between the three of them.
‘I saw Hrype the other day,’ I said as we trudged along. ‘He—’
Sibert sighed. ‘Lassair, I know what you’re working up to asking. Don’t waste your time. I’m not going to tell you anything.’
Oh. ‘But are you all right?’ I persisted. ‘Have you and Hrype—’
‘
Enough
.’
I had rarely heard my friend speak so harshly. An angry flush had spread up his neck and over his face. I realized he meant what he said.
We walked on in a hurt silence – well,
I
felt hurt – for a while. Then Sibert spoke, and his voice sounded so normal that you’d never have thought he’d been so furiously vehement only a short while ago. ‘We’re on the Icknield Way,’ he said. ‘They say it’s one of the oldest tracks in the land.’
‘Oh.’ I did my best to make the short syllable sound disinterested.
Sibert chuckled. Reaching for my hand, he gave it a swing. ‘Don’t get huffy, Lassair,’ he said. ‘I agreed to come on this ridiculous search with you to keep you out of mischief, and you ought to be grateful.’
‘You didn’t need much persuading,’ I observed.
‘Maybe not, but neither of us will enjoy the day if you’re sulking.’
‘I’m not sulking!’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘I’m not!’
‘Are.’
We carried on like that for a while. Then he nudged me, I nudged him back harder and we both started laughing.
Brandon was a very small village of about ten or a dozen little dwellings. The wide acres of Thetford Forest stretched away on the horizon, and I thought that somewhere out there was the grand baronial home of Claude’s kin, where sooner or later she would no doubt be returning with her new husband.
Our business was not with the great men and women of power who lived in vast castles and manor houses, however. We were there to ask about a little seamstress who someone had impregnated and someone had killed. In my own mind, I was quite sure that the two men were one and the same.
The door to one of the cottages was open, and a man stood there looking at us. He wore a heavy leather apron, and there were shards and chips of flint on the ground at his feet, radiating in an arc from the wooden stool where he must sit to work. He said, not unpleasantly, ‘What do you want?’
There was no point in prevaricating. ‘We come from a village near a place called Lakehall, on the fen edge,’ I said.
If he had heard of it he gave no sign. ‘And?’
‘Lady Claude is at present staying there. Her family home is at Heathlands, I understand?’
‘What’s it to you?’ Now he was frowning slightly, but in puzzlement, I thought, not suspicion.
‘She took a young girl with her, by the name of Ida, and—’
The man’s face fell. ‘Ida’s dead,’ he said baldly. ‘They sent word. We were all truly sad to hear it. She was a grand lass.’
‘Has she family here?’ I asked. I had in mind, I think, to seek them out and perhaps say a few consoling words, although what those words might be, considering how she had died, I did not know.
‘She was an orphan,’ the man said. ‘Used to live with her old father, just the two of them, but he took sick and died, two years back. Ida did her best, poor love, and she had a neat hand with a needle, but we’re poor people hereabouts, we can’t afford new clothes and our women folk do their own mending. We all tried to help her a bit but, like I say, we’re poor.’ There was no need for further explanations. Ida had indeed been much liked, as I’d always thought, and it must have been hard for her neighbours not to have been able to do more for her.
‘Then she came to the notice of them up at Heathlands,’ the man continued, jerking his head in the direction of the surrounding forest, ‘and before we knew what was happening she’d packed up her few belongings, the Lord’s man had come and closed up her little house and she’d gone to live at the manor.’
‘Was she happy there?’ I asked.
‘Happy? Who worries about happy, as long as you’ve a roof over your head and food in your belly?’ the man demanded.
He was right. King William’s rule had not eased the hardships faced daily by most of his more lowly subjects. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said humbly. ‘It’s just that I saw her body, you see, and I felt I’d have liked her. She had a face that looked as if it smiled a lot.’
The man relented. ‘You’re right there,’ he said. ‘I reckon you’d have warmed to her, lass. Everyone else did, and not a few loved her.’
My attention came into sharp focus. What was he saying?
While I was still framing a tactful question, Sibert spoke up. ‘Pretty girls always attract followers,’ he remarked, giving our new acquaintance a man-to-man glance.
‘Aye, so they do, and Ida was no exception,’ he agreed. ‘Not that she was easy, I’m not suggesting that,’ he added quickly, frowning at us as if we’d questioned Ida’s morals. ‘No, no, she kept herself pure and decent. She was always kindly, don’t mistake me, but when a young lad had his head turned because she smiled at him and started making a bit of a nuisance of himself, she had a sweet way of gently letting him know he was sniffing round the wrong bitch.’ Instantly, his face coloured and he said, ‘Sorry, I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have said that. There’s no need to be crude, especially about a girl like Ida.’ We waited while he remembered what he’d been saying. ‘No, like I said, she never encouraged any of them. Treated them more like brothers than potential lovers, I’d have said. It was no fault of hers if they loved her.’ He dropped his head, eyes on the ground. ‘If
he
loved her,’ he said in a whisper.
I could have corrected him and told him he was wrong about Ida keeping herself pure. But there was no point; let the poor girl keep her good name. I was far more interested in this
he
that the man spoke of.
‘There was someone in particular who had fallen for her?’ I asked. I wanted to know so badly, but I was afraid that if I pushed too hard he would get suspicious, clam up and shut the door on us.
By good fortune, however, Sibert and I seemed to have encountered the village gossip, which was probably why he’d been working outside his house in the first place: so that he could catch the attention of anyone who passed by and exchange a word or two with them. Several more than two, in our case.
The man leaned towards us, elbow resting on the top rail of the simple fence that ran round his yard. ‘It’s a sad tale,’ he said, ‘but if you knew Ida and have taken the trouble to seek out those who used to be her neighbours, then I reckon you’ve a right to hear it.’ I hadn’t known Ida, and Sibert and I had had no intention of seeking out her former neighbours except to find out the identity of the man who had been her lover, but this was no time to be pedantic.
‘Please tell us,’ I said.
BOOK: Music of the Distant Stars
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