Music of the Distant Stars

by Alys Clare

  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.

  The man gazed out along the narrow, rutted track that wound between the houses. ‘We are few who live here,’ he began, ‘and we work hard. Flint knapping’s a special skill. Most of us learned it from our fathers, and they learned from their fathers.’ I knew a little about the life of a knapper
because of my cousin Morcar, and I nodded. ‘There’s not much other work hereabouts, and that’s a fact,’ the man added lugubriously, ‘and, like I say, most of us have a struggle supporting ourselves and our families. Still, us in Brandon have a rare bit of good fortune because we’ve got our own minstrel. Well, of course he’s not really, he’s a knapper like the rest of us, only he plays that little harp of his like one of the Lord God’s angels, and whenever we have the least excuse for a bit of fun, out he comes with a tune and a song. Sometimes it’s something he’s written himself, and sometimes he’ll smile and agree to play one of the old tunes so we can all join in.’ A reminiscent smile spread across his face, revealing three crooked teeth and a lot of gaps.

  ‘You are indeed fortunate,’ Sibert said. ‘It raises a man’s spirits at the end of a hard day to down a mug of ale and sing a good song.’

  ‘Alberic didn’t often get the mug of ale, not while that sour faced bitch of a wife of his was watching,’ the man said forcefully. ‘And it’s a tribute to his music that it could make him smile with all he had to put up with. And it did make him smile – he used to look like he was in heaven, on God’s right hand, when he was singing.’ He shot us a sly glance. ‘Especially when Ida sang along with him.’

  I knew it! I thought. Ida did have a lover, and he was married! I felt my heart beat speed up.

  ‘This Alberic,’ Sibert was saying, ‘has a shrew for a wife, then?’

  ‘Shrew’s putting it mildly,’ the man replied. ‘We were all amazed when Alberic agreed to wed her, for she was a few years older than him, and whatever bloom she’d once had had long worn off. We warned him, but he said he’d given his word and that was that. Soon as she’d got the ring on her finger she started on at him, and I don’t reckon she as much as paused to draw breath even once after that. She was named for a martyr, was Thecla, and she made poor Alberic’s life one long martyrdom too. He didn’t work hard enough, he spent his money in the tavern and not on her, the snug little house he built for her was no better than a pigsty – that’s the sort of thing she hurled at him. Then there was his music, and you can guess what she had to say about him wasting his time with something as frivolous as that.’ Leaning close again, he confided spitefully, ‘Tone deaf, old Thecla. Couldn’t carry a tune if it had handles.’

  ‘No wonder Alberic fell for Ida,’ I put in softly. ‘It sounds as if she was everything Thecla wasn’t.’

  ‘That she was,’ the man agreed, ‘and her sweet young face looking up at him while he played fair touched Alberic’s heart, and she was only a girl back then. Not that there was anything improper going on,’ he added. ‘In those days – and I’m talking a few years back now – Alberic loved her like a daughter. It was only later that he started to see her like a man sees a woman, if you take my meaning.’

  We did.

  ‘Well, nothing could come of it,’ he went on with a deep sigh. ‘Alberic was a married man, and nothing was going to change that. He loved Ida far too dearly to make advances to her when he knew he could not do the right thing and offer marriage.’ That, I said to myself, is what you think. ‘So he loved her from afar, and he had to watch helplessly as she nursed her dying father and grieved for him after he’d gone. She was all alone then.’ He paused, and I noticed his eyes were wet. ‘Of course,’ he said after a moment, ‘Alberic knew he couldn’t offer to help her because it would soon get back to Thecla and she’d have her revenge on him. She tried to burn his harp once,’ he added matter-of-factly. ‘Just because she thought she’d seen him smile at a pretty woman in a red dress at the Lammas fair.’

  ‘He must have been relieved, in a way, when Ida went to work at the big house,’ I suggested. ‘At least he no longer had to see her every day.’

  ‘You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you?’ he agreed. He shook his head. ‘Wasn’t like that. Soon as she’d gone, Alberic began to fade away, almost before our eyes. We thought he was ill, but if so it was a strange sickness that didn’t progress or get better. We began to think old Alberic was on his way to meet the Maker. Then we heard Ida had gone off with Lady Claude to stay with some cousin of the lady, where she – Lady Claude, I mean – was going to get to know the man she’s to marry and work away on her marriage chest. Which was why Ida went with her too, her being a seamstress.’

  His brow creased in concentration. Then, as if he had been working out the dates, he said, ‘That were back in May. Next thing we know, a miracle happens and Thecla died.’

  I was framing the question, but Sibert got in first. ‘What happened to her?’

  Our informant chuckled. ‘Alberic didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking, although there’s not a man here that wouldn’t say she’d deserved it if he had done. No. Thecla had grown very fat over the years –’ so much for Alberic not providing sufficiently for her, I reflected – ‘and she tripped over her own slippers and fell down the step leading to her door. Cracked her head on the hard stone and burst her skull like a walnut. Alberic found her brains all over the path.’ He recounted the details with great relish.

  ‘So Alberic was free to court Ida?’ Sibert said.

  ‘Aye, so he was, and he barely waited till Thecla was in the ground before setting off to find her,’ the man agreed.

  ‘When was this?’ I demanded suddenly. An awful thought had struck me.

  The man’s eyes flew to meet mine, and I knew from the compassion in them that I was right. ‘Not four days ago,’ he replied.

  I worked it out.

  Oh, no.

  Alberic had hurried to find the love of his life to tell her he was now free to marry her on the very day somebody killed her. I was aching for him, aching for both of them. My brilliant solution to the mystery of Ida’s death – that her married lover had slain her to stop her revealing that she carried his child – seemed to have flown right out of my head.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about her; about both of them . . .

  Sibert and I thanked our friend and set off on the road back to Aelf Fen. It was not long past midday, and the sun was hot, so quite soon we found a shady spot a few paces off the track under some trees and sat down to eat the supplies we had brought with us.

  I took a long drink from my flask and handed it to Sibert. ‘That’s better,’ he remarked as he set it down. He stretched out on his back while I prepared the food. ‘Did you believe that man when he said Alberic hadn’t seduced Ida?’

  ‘No,’ I replied, busy slicing dense dried meat. ‘She was pregnant, Sibert. Of course he’d seduced her. Perhaps,’ I added, ‘she seduced him. She probably felt sorry for him. Everyone else did, apparently.’

  ‘Poor man,’ Sibert muttered. He sat up, and I handed him his food. ‘He thought he’d found happiness at last after a lifetime of misery, only to have it snatched away from him.’

  Poor man indeed.

  I chewed my bread and dried meat, idly wondering where Alberic was now. Had he gone straight back to Brandon after learning Ida was dead, or had he decided to wait to see her buried? He might have—

  Then I knew where he was, or at least where he had been the night before last. It had taken me a long time to realize it, but then, in my own defence, the man described by our informant sounded very different from the one I had heard.

  Two nights ago, when I had dragged my exhausted body back to Edild’s house after our hopeless search for Derman, I had encountered an invisible singer. I had heard him the night before that, too, at the end of that long and dreadful day when I found Ida’s body. Somehow Alberic had learned that she was dead, and he stayed in Aelf Fen, pouring out his grief for his dead love the only way he knew how. In my mind I could hear the echo of his lament, so tragic and so ethereal that I had thought him not human but a spirit: longing to fly away, but bound by grief to the indifferent earth.

  I was no longer hungry. Surreptitiously, I slid my share of the food over beside Sibert’s. Then, saying that I was sleepy and would have a brief nap before we went on, I lay down, turn
ed my back to Sibert and quietly mourned for a man, a girl and a love that had had to die.

  NINE

  Sibert and I slipped quietly back into Aelf Fen in the early evening. We took great care to make sure nobody spotted us, although in fact there wasn’t a soul watching out because almost all the village had gone to the churchyard to witness the burial of Ida’s body.

  We hurried along after the last stragglers, panted up the slight rise to the church and found a place on the edge of the silent crowd. The priest was just finishing his prayers for the dead girl’s soul, and at his feet the linen-shrouded corpse lay in the freshly-dug grave. It was a beautiful evening, and the westering sun was casting long shadows from the stumpy trees around the graveyard, illuminating the watchful faces with a soft, golden light. Somewhere nearby a chaffinch was singing, the fluting notes ending in a repetitive little phrase that seemed to say, too young to die!

  Immediately behind the priest, on the highest ground, stood Lord Gilbert and Lady Emma, their heads bent. Lady Emma’s lips moved as she added her own pleas to those of the priest. Lady Claude stood beside her, very pale, her mouth compressed as if to hold back the tears. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her eyelids were puffy. I felt a stab of compassion for her; it did not look as if my sleeping draughts were helping very much. On the far side of Lord Gilbert and a little behind him, Sir Alain de Villequier stared out over the assembled villagers. I noticed that Lady Claude kept shooting him anxious little glances, and I was touched that she seemed to be trying to draw strength from him. Perhaps, despite those terrible embroidered panels and her tight features that spoke eloquently of rigid self-control, there was a chance that their marriage would be happy . . .

  I thought back to Brandon, going over everything that Sibert and I had learned. Was Alberic here, watching as the body of the girl he loved was buried miles from her home? Suddenly filled with the conviction that he was, I copied Sir Alain and began scanning the crowd for an unfamiliar face, only to realize pretty quickly that it was an impossible task, for there were dozens of strangers present. I guessed everyone who had a friend or relative in Aelf Fen had heard of the mysterious death of a young seamstress and come hurrying over to witness the burial. Part of me wanted to shout at them, tell them to get back where they belonged and not be so ghoulish. Then, reflecting on how rarely anything at all exciting happened in most people’s dull and monotonous lives, I relented. After all, they weren’t doing any harm. Villagers and outsiders alike were standing listening respectfully to the priest’s endless prayers, and one or two even had tears on their faces. As for Ida, if any part of what had made up the living girl was present and watching the proceedings, then she would surely be gratified that so many had come to see her off.