Blood of the South

by Alys Clare

  I trailed to a stop. Lady Rosaria bore an illustrious name, or so Jack had informed me, but her late husband – her Hugo Guillaume Fensmanson – hadn’t belonged to a prominent, important family. He and his father had been my own kinsmen.

  Edild was looking down at the dead woman’s head, encased in the elaborately wound headdress with its jewels and its fringe of tiny bells, and at the dead face, still shrouded in the heavy veil. Drenched, like every other garment she had been wearing, the veil clung to her features.

  ‘I think we must remove this,’ she said, delicately touching its bottom hem with her forefinger. ‘The headdress first; she should be allowed to go on concealing her face until the very last moment.’

  She began to unwind the headdress, the cloth coming away from the head in a long stream of gorgeous fabric. Lady Rosaria’s hair had been dark, long and wavy, and she had braided it into two heavy plaits.

  Then, at last, Edild took off the veil.

  And we stared, aghast, at what had happened to Lady Rosaria’s face.

  We made sure that she was decently covered from her chin to her toes before I was sent to summon Jack. We had already drawn our conclusions concerning her body, and there was no need for any eyes other than ours to look upon her.

  Her face, though, was a different matter.

  Now Jack stood between Edild and me, and, from his expression, I guessed he was as horrified as we had been.

  Lady Rosaria’s left nostril had been slit. The cut had gone right into the whorl that joins the nose to the cheek, slicing up so that the nostril was open, and the cartilage inside revealed.

  Below this horror, her mouth was now slack and blueish, but it was clear to see it had been generous and well-shaped.

  Eyes and mouth, then, were beautiful; before her mutilation, she must have been wonderful to look at.

  Unless the wound had been a terrible accident, or a healer’s attempt to excise diseased flesh, it looked as if someone had inflicted the cut as some barbaric punishment. I could scarcely make myself believe it. ‘Was this the result of some frightful sickness?’ I whispered, looking at Edild.

  ‘No, I do not believe so,’ she replied. ‘It looks, from the neatness of the wound and from the healthy flesh surrounding it, that it was done deliberately.’

  ‘Why?’ I cried.

  Beside me, Jack stirred. He hadn’t spoken since he had come down into the crypt, but now he did, and his voice was vibrant with emotion. ‘I believe this is the mark of a slave,’ he said. ‘In just such a way, or so I have heard, do men of the southern lands mark the men and women who are their property. If they try to run away, they are easily identified, and can be recaptured and returned to their masters for punishment.’

  I tried to absorb that. I knew such things existed; that, in many parts of the world, men did not think it wrong to own another human being. Serfdom, indeed, was only a little removed from slavery.

  But to mutilate someone in this way! To mutilate a woman like Lady Rosaria; to take away her beauty, so that she was driven to cover herself up every second of every day. It was beyond barbarous.

  Then I thought, If she was a slave, how can she be Lady Rosaria?

  And a slave, surely, can’t be a member of the family of the Byzantine emperor …

  I said, ‘Who was she?’

  And, with a sigh, Jack replied, ‘Well, we know who she wasn’t.’ He must have sensed my frustration at the inadequacy of the response. Catching my eye, he said with a faint smile, ‘It’s a start.’ Then, turning to Edild, he said, ‘Can she now go to her grave, or is there more that you can learn from the body?’

  Slowly Edild shook her head. ‘I think we have seen all we need to.’ She touched the dead woman’s shoulder with a gentle hand. ‘I will prepare her for burial.’

  ‘Need we tell Lord Gilbert and Lady Emma about her nose?’ I burst out. ‘It seems so – disloyal.’

  Jack looked at me, compassion softening his features. ‘We have to tell them, I think,’ he said gently. ‘But let’s wait until we have a few more answers.’

  I nodded. It was the best Lady Rosaria was going to get.

  We left Edild to her task. She said she didn’t need my assistance, and I was glad to get away. Jack went back up into the hall to tell Lord Gilbert what the corpse had revealed, but, again, I wasn’t needed. At the top of the steps, however, he turned and said, ‘Don’t go away.’

  He was gone for some time. I guessed Lord Gilbert’s outrage at having been fooled by a slave girl into believing she was a great lady, and entertaining her accordingly for a whole week, was forcing him to demand answers which Jack wasn’t able to give. Yet: a brighter man would have hurried Jack away to get on with his investigations, but Lord Gilbert, as I have often observed, does not have the sort of mind that flashes and fizzes with intelligence.

  In the end, it seemed to be Lady Emma who extracted Jack from Lord Gilbert’s angry indignation; she it was, at least, who ushered him to the door of the hall and wished him good luck.

  He came flying down the steps, grabbed hold of my hand and, pulling me along, ran across the yard and down the track. ‘We need to talk, but not here,’ he panted. He glanced back at the hall. ‘If that fat fool asks me once more who she is, I’ll punch him.’

  I grinned. ‘It might shake his brains up a bit, but I don’t believe it’d make him any brighter.’

  Jack laughed shortly. I joined in, but then suddenly I had an image of what he’d done to Gaspard Picot and his man. Jack, I realized with a shiver, was more than capable of punching even a man of Lord Gilbert’s status, and I should not fool myself otherwise.

  It was frightening.

  We hurried on, and, reaching the main track, turned away from the village. A man and a woman passed, then an ox cart rumbled in the opposite direction. Jack looked around. ‘Where can we go where we can speak in private?’

  ‘Follow me.’ I led the way up the sloping ground to the left, heading past the fields and the pastures until, at the summit of the higher ground, we reached the ancient oak tree that stands its solitary watch over Aelf Fen.

  Jack and I were alone.

  He leaned back against the oak’s massive trunk, closed his eyes and let out a long breath. ‘That’s better,’ he said after a while. ‘Now I can think.’

  Deducing from his words and his actions that he wanted to be left in peace, I moved away, round to the other side of the oak. I hitched up my skirts and climbed up to the convenient cleft between two of the huge lower branches. It’s a spot I’ve been hiding in since I was a child, and very good for quiet contemplation.

  I copied Jack’s example, leaning back and closing my eyes. Immediately I saw Lady Rosaria’s ruined face. No; don’t think about that. I made myself relax, and very soon, out there in the peace and the silence, I appreciated the good sense of getting right away from the clamouring, demanding voices and the unanswerable questions.

  Unhurriedly, I went through everything I’d noticed about Lady Rosaria’s corpse. After a while, one thing floated to the surface of my mind: the chemise. It was made of a fabric with which I wasn’t familiar, yet, as soon as I handled it, I knew I’d recently seen something similar: the shift which Jack had found in the pool where the first drowned body had ended up, and which we’d surmised had belonged to our tall, fair-haired woman.

  Although that had been a cheaper, poorer-quality garment, I’d have been ready to swear that both were made of the same fabric.

  Clothing … I had a sudden vision of Lady Rosaria back at the inn in Cambridge, sewing up her hem. Then I saw that same hem as I’d seen it just that morning, the stitches already coming undone. I’d thought it meant she hadn’t been much of a seamstress. But another reason for making a botch of a sewing task is that you’re in a hurry.

  The bodice of the gown had been loose.

  She was tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, very beautiful and utterly perfect.

  Facts and snippets of conversation were flowing freely around my head,
and I was beginning – just beginning – to see a picture. The urge to leap down and run to lay it before Jack was almost irresistible, but I kept calm, stayed where I was and thought some more.

  Was it too much to construe, when all there really was to go on was two undergarments made of the same, unfamiliar, foreign material?

  No.

  Slowly I descended from my perch and walked round to where Jack was still leaning against the tree.

  ‘They swapped clothes,’ I said.

  His eyes flew open. ‘What?’

  ‘Lady Rosaria and the woman who was found in the flood pool. They both had undershifts of the same fabric, only one was a far more costly item; a lady’s garment as opposed to a maid’s. And Lady Rosaria – the woman we knew as Lady Rosaria – had altered her gown. I know she did,’ I insisted, ‘I caught her sewing when I visited her in the Cambridge inn. And the bodice was too loose.’

  He was staring at me intently, the green eyes slightly narrowed in fierce concentration. ‘You’re saying Lady Rosaria and the drowned woman travelled to England together?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He shook his head. ‘But the drowned woman didn’t match the description of the maid which the mate of The Good Shepherd gave us – he said the maid was small, nimble and dark, and he’d have sworn she was a Spaniard – oh!’

  I almost heard the blinkers fall off his eyes. For a moment we just stood grinning at each other. Then he said, very softly, ‘Lady Rosaria was the maid, and the drowned woman was her mistress.’ He pursed his lips in a silent whistle. Then, frowning, he said urgently ‘Does it stand up to scrutiny? Does everything fit?’

  ‘Yes!’ I shouted, although the response was inspired more by instinct than reason. Forcing my flying thoughts to slow down, I said, ‘The real daughter-in-law – the tall, fair woman who drowned – was heading to England, to Harald’s only living kin. She became ill, and her maid – Rosaria – realized she couldn’t save her. So she took her place, in the expectation that she was exchanging the life of a servant, or even a slave, for that of a lady.’

  Jack nodded slowly. ‘It’s easy to understand why,’ he said. ‘Rosaria must have been a slave, and probably had already tried once to run away to a better life. It was that attempt which earned her the mutilating mark that would henceforth always identify her status.’

  ‘If the real daughter-in-law was dead,’ I went on – thinking even as I did how strange it was that both Jack and I were trying so hard to defend Rosaria, given that neither of us had liked her – ‘then she must have asked herself, where was the harm?’

  ‘Had she reported her mistress’s death,’ Jack said, ‘she wouldn’t have been able to carry out the deception.’ He looked at me steadily. ‘And it wouldn’t have altered the fact that the mistress was dead.’

  ‘She could have—’ I began. Then a new thought struck me; perhaps the most powerful consideration of all. ‘Leafric,’ I whispered. ‘No wonder Lady Rosaria wasn’t much of a mother to him – she wasn’t his mother.’

  I realized I hadn’t told him what Edild and I had discovered. ‘Rosaria had never given birth,’ I said. ‘I’d wondered if Leafric had been adopted, but that’s not right, is it?’

  I think Jack and I both had the same impulse at the same moment. As we started to run, winding through the fields and jumping the ditches, I was thinking, over and over again, There’s one way to prove it! There’s one way to prove it!

  We arrived, hot and panting, in the churchyard. ‘What’s the priest’s name?’ Jack demanded.

  ‘Father Augustine.’

  ‘I’ll find him and explain – you go and check.’

  Trying to calm my gasping breathing, I went into the cool, dark church. I approached the simple altar, pausing to bow my head. In common with so many of the people of our region, my family still remember the old gods. However, I had come to recognize much to love in the merciful, compassionate God of the Christian faith. He was, I had discovered, a good, true friend in times of severe trial. I whispered to him now, praying that what I was about to do was the right thing. That, somehow, it would help the innocent, helpless infant who had lost so much.

  I went over to the low door that opens on to the steps down to the crypt. The sweet herbs and incense helped to disguise the smell, but only a little. I told myself to ignore it.

  The body of the drowned woman lay in its winding sheets, ready for burial. There was no need to look at her upper body; I remembered what her face had been like when first she’d been brought to Lakehall, and didn’t want to see the damage done by the passage of another week. And there was no point in inspecting her breasts; what remained of them had indicated she had been full-chested.

  Slowly I unwound the fabric covering her lower limbs, folding it back until the belly and pubis were revealed. Forcing myself on, I looked at what I had come to see.

  Compared to my aunt, I was still a novice midwife. But I knew enough to judge. There were stretch marks over the lower belly, extending out towards the hips. And, when I further violated the dead woman’s privacy, there was no more room for doubt.

  She had borne a child.

  I covered her up again. I knew I should hasten away – Jack was waiting to hear what I’d found out – but I couldn’t tear myself away from her. I reached out my hand and laid it over hers, clasped on her breast.

  This woman, I knew without any doubt, was Leafric’s mother. She had given birth to him, loved him, played with him, nursed him. I knew she had; it must have been her breasts he’d fed at, for Rosaria had been no wet-nurse. And there could be no doubt that this woman had cared constantly and devotedly for her baby son; why else would he have missed her so very much when she disappeared?

  He’s sad, Mattie had said, back in Cambridge. He just lies there, staring around, for all the world as if he’s looking for something.

  Not something; someone. His mother. She had become ill, and she had died. Someone else had tried to take her place, but her poor little son hadn’t understood why that someone else didn’t smell right. Didn’t taste, feel or sound right. Didn’t hold him as he needed to be held.

  He just wanted his mother.

  Tears were splashing down on our hands; mine and the dead woman’s. I hadn’t realized I was weeping. Now, staring down at her long shape, wrapped all ready for burial, I wanted to gather her up and take her in my arms, devastated and ruined though her poor body was. I leaned down over her so that my lips were close to her ear.

  ‘I’ll see he’s all right,’ I whispered. ‘I promise.’

  It was time to leave her. I kissed the smoothly wrapped forehead, and now there was no revulsion.

  As I mounted the steps back up to the church and hurried outside, I wondered if I had just been touched with the great love which they say is the gift of the Christian lord. Kissing a body dead for well over a week wasn’t something I’d ever done before, yet it had been too strong an impulse to resist.

  Love.

  Yes, the gesture had been prompted by love.

  I dried my eyes and hurried to find Jack.

  EIGHTEEN

  Jack and Father Augustine were standing, deep in conversation, by the gate into the churchyard. Hearing my running footsteps, both turned towards me.

  Father Augustine’s lean face was creased with concern. Bending his long, thin frame so that he could peer into my face, he said, ‘Are you all right, child?’

  ‘Yes!’ I was taken aback at the question.

  ‘It is hard to accept the death of a kinswoman, even one who you did not know in life,’ he went on.

  ‘But—’ I’d been about to protest that she was only a relative by marriage, but just then I experienced another surge of that strange, unearthly love for her, and somehow our exact relationship didn’t seem important.

  ‘Now that we know who she is,’ the priest went on, ‘I will make arrangements for her burial service, if you and your family are ready?’

  He was treating me with such kindness. Until q
uite recently, I’d thought him a chilly, self-contained man without much compassion. I’d been wrong. ‘Thank you, Father,’ I said. ‘We will discuss it and let you know.’

  He bowed. ‘Of course.’ Then, almost hesitantly, he added, ‘I shall pray for her, and for you all.’

  As if his offer had embarrassed him, he dipped his head again, turned and hurried away towards his church.

  Jack grabbed my hand and led me down on to the track, turning left towards Lakehall. ‘Come on,’ he urged, hastening the pace.

  We were going back to find Edild, I surmised, to tell her what we had just discovered. I said breathlessly, ‘We must make it clear to Father Augustine that the drowned woman was Harald’s daughter-in-law, not his daughter.’

  Jack glanced at me, slowing his pace and drawing to a halt. ‘Describe her,’ he commanded.

  ‘What? We can’t waste time on—’

  ‘Yes we can. Describe the drowned woman.’

  ‘Strongly built, tall, blonde, blue eyed.’

  ‘Now describe her child, as you did when you first examined him.’

  Responding to his urgency, frantically I tried to think back. ‘I said he had his mother’s olive skin, his hair was fair and his eyes light blue, and—’

  ‘And from that you concluded his father was a northerner,’ Jack interrupted. He was looking at me expectantly.

  Then I understood. ‘It was his mother who was the northerner,’ I whispered. ‘Harald’s daughter?’ I couldn’t help making it a question.

  ‘I believe so,’ Jack agreed. ‘Remember how your great-uncle Sihtric told us Harald described his wife?’

  ‘“Her name was Gabrièla de Valéry, and she was tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, very beautiful and utterly perfect.”’ One of the benefits of being the family bard is learning how to memorize words after only one hearing.