by Alys Clare
I closed my eyes and opened myself to her.
Instantly, her turmoil reached out and hit me, with a force so violent that it seemed almost physical. I endured it, concentrating on analysing what ailed her and what I could do to help. I gritted my teeth and tried to call up all I had been taught, but quite soon I had to accept that Lady Claude was beyond my aid.
Very tentatively, I reached out and lightly took hold of her flying hand. ‘Lady Claude?’
At first she resisted, trying to pull her hand out of my grasp. I held on tightly, and finally she gave a click of irritation, raised her head and looked me in the eyes.
Hers seemed to burn, glittering so fiercely in the dim light that, had my hand on her skin not told me otherwise, I would have said she was feverish.
‘What?’ she snapped. ‘I must get on!’ she muttered. ‘There is so much still to do –’ she cast fearful eyes round the little room, taking in the untouched canvases and the piles of coloured wools – ‘and I have little time.’
‘You are not well,’ I said, trying to keep my voice low and soothing. ‘I have brought more of the draught that reduces pain, and also some medicine to help you sleep, but I sense that you are distressed beyond my power to help you. Will you allow me to bring my aunt to see you? She is very skilled, and she—’
Lady Claude’s eyes boring into me silenced me. ‘Your aunt is an attractive woman,’ she stated.
For the life of me, I could not see the relevance. ‘Er – yes, indeed she is.’ Edild has green eyes in a lovely face, and a tumble of glorious reddish-blonde hair that she normally restrains under a neat white cap.
Lady Claude was still fixing me with that imprisoning stare. ‘You, too, have the promise of beauty, although you are too thin, your figure boyish and lacking seductive curves.’
I know my own shortcomings perfectly well, and I did not need anyone pointing them out to me, especially a woman who looked like Claude de Seés. ‘Quite so, my lady,’ I said curtly.
It was a mistake. Her eyes narrowed, all but disappearing, and she snapped, ‘None of that insolent tone or I’ll have you whipped!’
Two thoughts struck me simultaneously: one was that Lord Gilbert would not allow anyone to be whipped for such a dubious offence; the other was expressed by a small, wailing voice inside my head that said plaintively, I’m here to help you!
I waited until my anger had subsided and then said, ‘Shall I fetch my aunt, my lady? She is at present watching over Sir Alain, for when he wakes there will be matters for her to attend to, such as feeding him, encouraging him to drink, bathing him and—’
With an action so sudden, so violent and so totally unexpected that it shocked me to my core, Lady Claude leapt up, flung her embroidery frame across the room and grabbed me by the shoulders.
Her fingers dug into me, and she shouted right in my face, so that I smelt her stale and foul breath, ‘Be quiet! I do not wish to be told of such things! Has your aunt no shame, that she is prepared to remain alone in the company of a man in such a state? Prepared to touch him?’
Angry in my turn, I stood up and tried to remove her hands. Her fingers were very strong – all that embroidery, no doubt – and she would not let go until I wrestled myself away and out of her reach. ‘My aunt is a healer,’ I said icily. ‘She cannot care for her patients without touching them.’ I backed away to the far corner of the room, only stopping when I was immediately beneath the window, high above me, and my back against the stone wall. I felt safer there, although I could not help wishing that Lady Claude was not standing between me and the door.
Making sure I spoke calmly, I said, ‘I will send for hot water, my lady, and make up a soothing draught for you to ease your pain and help you to rest.’ I was edging along the wall as I spoke, moving in front of the Deadly Sins embroideries hanging suspended side by side. She was watching me, and I felt her tension across the distance between us. ‘Lord Gilbert and Lady Emma will be back soon –’ I prayed that was true – ‘and I will explain to them that you are unwell.’
I was standing opposite to her now, and the door was to my right. I had closed it, as she had commanded when I’d arrived. ‘I’m sure it will be all right for my aunt to leave her patient and come to you now,’ I went on, ‘and if Sir Alain still needs care, I can give it.’ I watched her carefully for signs of renewed fury, but my suggestion did not seem to disturb her. ‘Edild could stay here with you, if you would prefer her not to remain with Sir Alain,’ I offered. I knew full well that it was against everything Edild honoured in her calling to even think about taking advantage of a helpless male patient, but I did not think Lady Claude was open to reason just then.
I tried to think of encouraging things to say. ‘Sir Alain will not lie abed any longer than is necessary,’ I went on, still in the same carefully calm voice, ‘for he is justiciar here and still has two crimes to solve. I am quite sure, being the man he is, that he will soon pick up the trail that leads him to the killer’s door.’
She was observing me intently, her eyes slits in her pale face. Her hands were twitching, the fingers opening and closing as if she were still engaged on imaginary sewing. Out of nowhere I had a sudden image of Ida’s hands, her needlewoman’s hands, and I remembered that this pathetic woman in front of me had suffered a loss that was probably affecting her more than she would admit.
‘I know you were fond of Ida,’ I said gently. ‘Everyone who knew her seems to have loved her. You must miss her very much.’ I edged closer to her. It was surely not helping to restore her equanimity to have me drawing myself so obviously away from her. She needed to see that I was happy being close to her; that I did not find her repulsive.
Which was difficult, because just at that moment I could hardly bear to be in the same room as her and she was making me feel sick.
‘Her killer will be found,’ I said confidently, although I was not at all sure this was true. ‘Sir Alain, I’m sure, has ideas of his own, and others of us in the village might be able to offer suggestions that may help.’ Warming to my theme, I hurried on. ‘I do not believe that her killer put her in my Granny’s grave,’ I said eagerly. ‘I think Derman found her – you know, he’s the simpleton who had been following her about – and he carried her out to the little island where my ancestors lie buried and put her in the grave because he cared about her and believed that was the right thing to do. But the man who strangled Ida must have been watching and, believing Derman had seen him, thought he had to kill Derman to keep him quiet.’
‘Derman,’ Lady Claude breathed. ‘Was that his name?’
‘Yes,’ I said, pleased that she was responding. ‘Did you see him lurking about when you were out with Ida collecting the flowers?’
‘The flowers?’
‘Yes, the ones she copied in her embroidery work on your sheets.’ I tried to recall what they had been, looking round to see if the sheets were to hand. I saw them neatly folded and stacked on top of a chest beside the door. ‘Here,’ I said, stepping over and picking up the top sheet. ‘Flag iris and—’
But she had leapt across the room, and now she grabbed the sheet out of my hands. ‘Leave that alone!’ she commanded coldly. She refolded it, put it back on the pile and smoothed it, her hands shaking.
Of course. It was Ida’s work, and therefore no doubt precious to her. ‘She sewed so beautifully,’ I said. ‘How lovely for you, that you will have a permanent reminder of her on your sheets, before your eyes every night when you go to sleep.’
Lady Claude gave a moan, grasped the sheet again and, before my horrified eyes, bit into the edge above the embroidered panel with small, sharp teeth. Then, holding it in a grip so tight that her knuckles were white, she tore it apart. The tear made a violently loud noise in the small space, and I watched as it snaked down through the cloth, ripping right through Ida’s delicate work. She tore off one long strip, then another.
Lady Claude threw the ruined sheet on the floor. ‘She fetched those flowers to give herself an
excuse to go out alone,’ she said in a low, harsh voice. ‘She was always going out. Out to flaunt herself before that great shambling idiot, with his loose, wet mouth and his hungry eyes! Out to meet—’ She broke off, squeezing her eyes shut as if the gesture would blank off the things she could not bear to see.
Out to meet who? Oh, surely she hadn’t been about to say Ida had gone to meet Sir Alain. He had told Edild and me that Claude did not know about him and Ida. What if he was wrong?
Her face was working, and her eyes held a look in which there was more than a hint of madness. Her pale face had flushed, suffused with a sudden rush of blood. If she did not try to regain control of herself, I truly feared she might fall dead at my feet. I had to distract her.
I stepped forward, holding out my arms. ‘Lady Claude, sit down,’ I said gently. ‘Rest, and I will make you a soothing drink. Soon this business will be resolved and you will be able to put it behind you. Ida’s killer will be caught and—’
She acted so fast that it happened before I had time to react. She swooped down to gather up one of the long strips of linen and, in the same movement, grabbed my hands, twisted me round so that I had my back to her and bound my wrists together. Then she shoved me down on to her stool and tied the linen binding my hands to the leg of the stool.
She stood before me, and I stared up at her. I dared not speak. She was on the very edge of sanity, and I did not know how to bring her back.
Having restrained me, she appeared to relax a little. She began pacing up and down the room, pausing to rest her hand on her embroidered panels. ‘Ida,’ she murmured, ‘always Ida. She was lovely, wasn’t she?’ She glanced across at me. I had only seen Ida in death, and I did not reply. ‘Oh, yes –’ she resumed her pacing – ‘everyone adored Ida, everyone told me how lucky I was to have such a skilled seamstress to help me, and what good fortune it was that she was such a delightful person as well, for she was kind, cheerful, and at ease with everyone from the smallest baby to the oldest grandfather or grandmother. Oh, everyone loved Ida, and they never stopped telling me so.’
It was the impression I, too, had received. I didn’t think I had heard one person speak ill of her. ‘She had the gift of making people like her,’ I said quietly.
I didn’t think Claude heard. Now she was nodding to herself, muttering under her breath, and I had to strain to hear her. I’d inadvertently roused her to fury with what I’d said about Ida, and now I was paying the price. Surreptitiously, trying not to make any noise, I wriggled my hands, testing the linen strip that bound me. If I could just manage to loosen the loop that tied me to the stool, I could make a lunge for the door and get away . . .
‘Of course,’ Claude said, her voice louder now, ‘he had to take just one look at her to fall under her spell. I knew it would happen – he was betrothed to my sister, you know, before my mother arranged his marriage to me. It must have started right back then,’ she added wonderingly, ‘and nobody realized, clever little vixen that she was.’
Vixen. My Fox is male, but all the same his image sprang into my mind as Claude spoke the word. I closed my eyes and, with all my strength, pleaded with him to come to me.
‘I hated Ida,’ Claude was saying calmly. ‘I loathed her, with her dimples and her smiles and those sweet, round breasts that the men couldn’t take their eyes off.’ She nodded, smiling grimly. ‘But I was too clever for her, oh, yes!’ Now her expression turned crafty. ‘I used her own deceitful ways against her. I said, Ida, let us both go out together to the place where you found those pretty flowers. It is a fine day, so we shall take our work bags with us and sit out in the sunshine to sew.’ She glanced at me. ‘We went across the marshland until we reached the fen edge. She showed me where the pretty flowers were, in a place near to where the island lies close to the shore. Ida picked some flowers, and then I told her to get out the pieces of fabric she had brought in her basket. She sat there – I can see her now – starting to tear up a voluminous old linen shift to make strips on which to practise the new designs.’
She paused. I waited, hardly daring to breathe.
‘I had to be sure, although in truth I already knew,’ she went on softly. ‘So I spoke of him, Alain de Villequier, the man I am to marry. I spoke his name, and I watched her eyes light up, for she could not help herself.’ A spasm of pain crossed the thin, white face. ‘I looked at her, and I saw the signs. She was pregnant! She carried his child.’
She was panting from the raw emotion. ‘I did it,’ she said, eyes imploring as she stared at me. ‘I wrapped the plaited cord of my velvet bag around her throat, and I pulled it, pulled it, pulled it, until I could pull it no more.’
She fell silent, and I heard the echo of her terrible words sound again and again, diminishing until it was gone.
‘I came back here to the hall. I thought they would soon find her and realize what I had done,’ she said. She gave a little laugh; chilling, horrible. ‘But the idiot man found her first and put her in the grave. They thought he killed her, you see. I wanted them to go on thinking that, and so, before they found him and questioned him, he had to be removed.’
‘You tripped him up,’ I whispered. ‘He fell into the water, and you found a weapon and hit him on the head again and again till he was dead.’
‘Quite dead,’ she agreed. ‘I used a heavy piece of dead wood that I found floating on the water.’
And then, far too late, I realized what I should have been looking out for from the first moment I walked into the room. I saw her as she had been when I came in: sitting on the stool to which I was now bound, bent over her embroidery, her needle in her hand.
Her left hand.
She was walking slowly in front of her panels, her hand caressing the image of Lust. ‘They were fornicators, you know,’ she said. ‘Ida and Alain were sinners, and they had to be punished. She had to be punished, for it was her plump body and her pretty smile that seduced him, and he could not help himself.’ Her face twisted with contempt. ‘She was carrying his child, and that child died with her, so Alain, too, will suffer,’ she went on. Then, her strong fingers suddenly clutching at the scarlet-clad woman in the panel, crushing her image as if she were caught in an eagle’s talons, she whispered, ‘Lust. Lust. Lust.’
I could bear no more. ‘They loved each other,’ I protested angrily. ‘It wasn’t lust, and their feelings for one another went far beyond the hungry passion of a moment. Sir Alain would not have abandoned her – he told my aunt and me what he planned to do, how he was going to set Ida up with the baby and—’
It was not a tactful or sensible thing to say to the woman before me, already dangerously unbalanced, who was to be Sir Alain’s unwilling wife. But I was beyond tact and sense.
Straight away she had her revenge. She spun round and, before I could duck, her left hand flew down in a vicious backhand swing and caught me on the cheek.
My left cheek, where I bear a scar like the new moon.
I had won that scar as I’d fought side by side with Rollo. I bent down low, my arms straining painfully, pretending to be more badly hurt than I was. I needed time . . . Briefly, I closed my eyes, my soul crying out to him, wherever he was.
I saw him. He was standing on a rocky outcrop, and he had a sword in his hand. He wore a heavy leather jerkin, open to the waist, and his shirt was stained with blood. He looked exuberant: whatever fight he had just been in, clearly he had won.
He was out there somewhere in the world, and in my bones and my blood I knew that a part of him was with me, just as a part of me went with him. Silently, I made a vow: I will not die here before we have a chance to be together.
I took several deep breaths.
Just as I opened my eyes to face her, I saw Fox. Well, I didn’t really see him; he was no more than a flash of red on the edge of my vision. I shut my eyes again and saw him clearly. He was standing by the table where Claude had laid out the contents of her sewing bag and, as if the part of me that was Fox had seen what I should have not
iced for myself, I saw the object at which his twitching black nose was sniffing.
Claude raised her hands and launched herself at me. She clutched at my arms, but I was ready for her, and I wrestled myself out of her hard grip. The stool fell over, and I landed on my right arm, crushing it to the stone floor with my own weight. I stifled a cry of pain. Claude was beside herself, striking out blindly, trying to pin me down as I wriggled and twisted beneath her. I could not see the table, but I knew where it was. With a lurch I threw myself against it, and it toppled over.
I needed my searching hands on the floor beneath me, and I had no choice but to turn on to my back. She was on me, a cry of triumph roaring out of her wide open mouth as she landed on top of me. Praying to my guardian spirits that I would find what I sought before she killed me, I scrabbled with my fingers across the floor . . .
. . . and the edge of my hand touched cold metal.
I grasped Claude’s small sewing knife and found the blade; it sliced into my thumb. Ignoring the pain, I grabbed the bone handle and pressed the blade against the linen strip that bound my wrists. I cut myself several times – the blade was very sharp – but the fabric gave way.
With my hands free, I levered myself off the ground and, lowering my head, butted Claude very hard in the stomach. She gave a grunt as the air was forced out of her body and slumped, winded, against the wall.
I hurled myself at the door, raised the heavy latch with bleeding hands and raced out into the corridor and down the steps. I flew out into the hall, crying, ‘Help! Help! Is anyone there? I need help!’
I heard running footsteps, and Bermund appeared through another doorway, two startled-looking women servants behind him.
