Wild Wood
Page 13
“I can’t believe café wages would make a dent on this place.”
“She just wanted to get away from here. For good reasons.” Rory falls silent.
Jesse’s curious, but she doesn’t want to seem nosy. “So, did you grow up here?”
He nods. “For a while. My mum was a maid in this very building. Dad walked away not long after I was born, and Mum has never talked about him. I haven’t met him, don’t even know where he lives. He worked on the estate, though, and Mum said he looked after the livestock—sheep, principally. Hundredfield has always been famous for its wool.”
Another fatherless child, but Jesse says nothing.
Rory runs his fingers through his hair. “Divorce was a pretty big thing in those days, but Alicia’s parents stuck by Mum because her family had been in service here. She worked part-time until I was old enough to go to school, and then she took over as housekeeper. When I was about nine, she married again and we moved away to respectability and a new start.” He grimaces.
Jesse’s eyes soften. “It can’t have been easy for you.”
“Worse for her. She had to cope all on her own while we lived here.” He points out the window. “We had one of the tied cottages on the other side of the river. The house belonged to the estate and it was free. That probably kept me out of the orphanage, because Mum had no family support. She always said we were lucky. I could never work out why.”
“So, you and Alicia?”
Rory sighs. “When I was little, we played together—older sister, younger brother, that kind of thing. There were no other kids on the estate by that time—a lot of the cottages were empty and most of the workforce gone. Turns out her father thought I was bright, and when she was sent away to boarding school at nine, I went as well. I was seven.”
“Pretty young.”
He nods. “I thought I’d been sent to prison, that my mum didn’t want me anymore.” He’s staring out into the night.
Jesse says nothing.
A moment later and Rory snaps into focus. “I survived. Lots had it worse than me.”
“What happened then?”
“Maybe that’s where luck really did come in. The Donnes, Alicia’s parents, paid for my whole education even though we moved away from Hundredfield not that much later. I never understood why her old man did that, but I’m grateful. I got my own scholarship to university, though. Edinburgh. Best medical school in the world.” A crooked smile. “So here I am. I owe them a lot, Alicia and her family, and I come back whenever I can because it still feels like home, especially in summer.” He half closes his eyes. “Honeysuckle. What you first know as a child settles into your bones.”
“But before she went to London, Alicia lived here alone?” Jesse’s absorbing the honeysuckle statement.
He nods. “Yes. But now the house is shut up for most of the year.” He sighs. “It’s difficult. Hundredfield has always been hungry, and she’s got hard choices to make. Alicia’s an only child, and her father left things in a mess when he died. Lots more to tell, but . . .”
“We should go downstairs.”
“So?” Alicia offers Rory a bowl of buttered new potatoes.
He laughs as he serves himself with a tarnished silver spoon. “Obvious, huh?”
She flashes a grin at Jesse. “Like a pane of glass, you. Tell me all.”
Rory forks up a piece of poached salmon. “Very good, by the way. Hundredfield salmon?” He’s smiling.
Alicia looks pleased. “Caught this morning.”
He nods. “You always did have the touch. Under the bank below the bridge?”
She nods pleasantly. “And you can answer the question anytime you like, Rory.”
“But it’s really not about me.” He catches Jesse’s alarmed gaze. “Relax. This is normal.” He smiles at her.
Alicia watches the byplay. “Oh, no, you don’t. It’s you on the hook, not Jesse. Stop wriggling.”
“Hook?” His expression is so flagrantly innocent, both girls laugh.
“You and Ollie”—Alicia drops a morsel of salmon on the floor, snapped up by the Labrador—“opportunists from birth.” Picking up her fork, she stares at Rory. Her eyes are no longer quite so benign.
“You know me too well, Licia.”
“That I do.”
“All right, yes. I’ve a favor to ask.” He hesitates. “Thanks to you, I was handed this intriguing case after choir practice all those weeks ago.” A reassuring smile at Jesse.
“You happened to be there, that’s all. I could have asked someone else from Barts—that other doctor, the one who’s a tenor.” Alicia is polite. As if she’s slightly bored.
“Henry? He’s a pathologist. Wouldn’t have known one end of Jesse from the other; they look at people as collections of cells.” A grin. He’s baiting her.
“Rory.” There’s an edge to that polite voice and Ollie growls.
He throws up his hands. “Oh, all right. I was very grateful, Alicia. Fate. ‘The mills of God, they grind—’ ”
“ ‘—slow. And exceeding small,’ ” she finishes the quote. “Yes, I know. So?”
Rory nods. “So, I’ve been studying the long-term effects of head trauma, as you know. Principally, I’ve been investigating how we should best manage post-traumatic care to maximize rehabilitation outcomes.”
Alicia murmurs, “Goodness.”
Rory flicks Jesse a glance. “And all I want to say about this particular case is that it offers some interesting information on how the brain can heal itself.”
Alicia’s eyebrows ascend. She says smilingly, “You were a willing research subject, Jesse?”
Rory doesn’t let Jesse reply. “Just to finish what I was saying. Jesse made a good recovery and improved to the point where the next step was discharge from the hospital. I was down to take a couple of weeks off, and planning to spend it here—as you know—and I didn’t want to leave her to the tender mercies of National Health rehab.”
Alicia glances at her guest. “Hope you don’t mind being talked about in the third person.”
It has been annoying her, but Jesse shakes her head. “Rory was very kind to me in the hospital, and when he offered me a lift, I was grateful because I was planning to visit Scotland anyway. Jedburgh, actually.”
Rory jumps in. “Yes, I did do that, but that was after I got the idea of supervising Jesse’s rehabilitation and advancing my research at the same time. Which she was good enough to agree to.”
“Ah. So you thought you might do that here?” Alicia’s expression is bland.
“Just for a couple of weeks.” A contrite glance at Jesse. “I tried to ring you last night, Alicia, really, but . . . I hoped you wouldn’t mind if we came up anyway.”
Alicia catches Jesse’s embarrassed expression. “He’s always been like this. But why would you particularly want to go to Jedburgh?”
Jesse’s brusque. “I was born there and given up for adoption. My adoptive parents took me to Australia.” She moves the salmon around her plate. She feels like she’s taking her clothes off in public. “They didn’t tell me. I found out by accident.”
Alicia puts her napkin down as the silence stretches. “You’re welcome to stay, Jesse. Truly. Least I can do, considering.” She flashes Rory a You’ll keep glance. “It was always full house in summer at Hundredfield when I was little. Lots of parties. I miss that.” Her eyes are wistful.
Rory leans across the table. “Come on, Jesse, what have you got to lose?”
The light beside the bed spills a line of pink under the door of the bedroom. Jesse sees it as she walks along the corridor. The glow is comforting somehow, a welcome of a kind. She pushes the door open and stares at the room. She hasn’t said she will stay, but why does she feel so upset? Rory and Alicia have a complicated relationship, that’s for sure, but it doesn’t have to affect her. She’s here for a purpose. Two purposes.
With a snort, Jesse marches over to the window to pull the curtains closed. And pauses.
Jesse’s heart bumps quickly in her chest. A wrench, and the curtains swing closed. She stamps to her case beside the armoire. Upset? There’s no one word for what she’s feeling, but it will do just fine till another comes along.
Snapping the catches on the bag, she stares at the clothes inside—all so neatly packed.
The other me did this. That girl who planned ahead, who didn’t run off with doctors, who didn’t draw buildings she’d never seen with her left hand. Underwear, pajamas, two skirts, two pairs of jeans, a jumper and one dressy cardigan, three shirts, two T-shirts, flat boots, one pair of heels and one of sneakers—plus her jacket. Obedient witnesses to the fact that that girl was real, the one who’s currently gone missing.
On automatic, she starts to unpack and notices two shirts where there should be three. Of course. She’d told the first nurse to throw the damaged one away—once she could write. She’s never been any use at sewing or mending. Like you can’t draw?
All the clothes she owns in the world are now arranged in neat piles on the shelves of the armoire. Leaving Sydney, she only took things she’d bought for herself—nothing her parents had given her made it into the case. Slowly, she takes out her sponge bag and a pair of pajamas, then hesitates. Suddenly, she flips the lid down. Snapping the catches closed is satisfying; so is bundling the case in the cupboard where she doesn’t have to see it.
Out there, somewhere in the dark, are her real parents. Her real mum and her real dad. And whatever Rory might want, whatever he thinks he can do to help her brain repair itself, what she needs is to find them. And she will.
A library and a phone book. In St. Bartholomew the Great all those weeks ago with Rahere as her witness, she’d promised herself she’d ring everyone called Green in Scotland. And she will. But she’s weary now—so tired—and this whole experience from soup to nuts feels like some kind of hallucination.
Has the world gone mad, or is it just her?
She’ll think about what that might mean in the morning.
17
CROSSING THE inner ward, wind sliced my face as I went to find Ambrose, the carpenter who served the keep. His father, a charcoal burner, had trained his son well, for the man was skilled at picking good timber to cut and work, and in splitting, sawing, and shaping logs into useful things for the castle.
A bier is assuredly a useful thing at the end of life, but there would be little time for its fashioning today, and Ambrose, a craftsman, must be convinced to hurry. He would not like that.
As the day faded, I passed three men I did not know. The woad-dyed hoods that all the Hundredfield serfs wore were pulled low over their faces, and they did not meet my glance or respond to a greeting. In the keep Godefroi never acknowledged our servants, but that was not my way; at another time, I would have stopped and spoken to them, found out their names and where they worked on the estate. As it was, I hurried on to the carpenter’s hut. Sullen faces and silence seemed normal in Hundredfield now. That would have to change. Godefroi would have to change.
“Ambrose?” I pushed back the panel of wicker that served as a door. The place was empty and shavings blew across the floor like leaves.
“Lord Bayard?” Robert was behind me. He held up a torch and the light hollowed his face to a mask.
“Where is he? There’s a bier to be made.” But the flare from the torch told the story. No tools remained in the hut.
Robert cleared his throat. “The man has gone, Lord Bayard. Three months ago.” He did not meet my eyes.
“Gone where?”
“I do not know.” The man was lying.
“I see strangers’ faces in the keep, Robert. And Ambrose is missing. Why?”
The man muttered a few words I could not hear.
“Speak louder.”
“The times are hard, lord. And when there is not enough to eat . . .” The reeve raised his eyes. I saw a man who was frightened, but brave enough to test if I was worth his trust.
“At Alnwick, we were told men had been seen in Hundredfield’s forests. Strangers. Raiders, maybe.” I watched Robert’s face keenly. “Is this true?”
Robert hesitated—and nodded.
“And this is where Ambrose has gone?”
Another pause. “Yes.”
“Alois, Swinson’s son. Is it he they go to?”
The man’s face shut down. That was my proof, but I said, “A bier must still be made. How shall we do that?”
“We could use a door, lord. That might serve, if we cover it with cloth.”
“Do it.”
When the man turned to go, I called out, “I thank you, Robert. My brother shall know of your service to our family.”
The man’s expression lifted a little as he bowed and strode away.
I lingered as the moon climbed the wild sky. One night past full, the cold light searched out desolation and found it in the carpenter’s empty hut. If there was fear and anger in this place, here was evidence. And voiceless reproach.
Maugris called out, “Where are you?”
“By the cistern.” I was in the storeroom under the stables where the spare horse tack was kept, and though I was exhausted, the filth after the ride from Alnwick—and all that followed—was yet to be removed. I would not defile Flore’s corpse with dirty hands.
As my brother clattered down the steps, I took the bucket from the well’s windlass and tipped it over my head. The water near stopped my heart.
Maugris stared.
I pointed at the bucket. “Again.” I was naked but for linen covering my privates, and resolve would soon shatter. “Hurry.”
Maugris dropped the pail into the water and, grumbling, pulled it up. Then he threw the contents over my chest.
It seemed I could not breathe. Until I yelled.
Slipping on the wet stone, Maugris pulled a horse cloth from a peg. He rubbed my body hard and the flesh burned. “Fool. The kitchen would have heated water.”
My jaw clattered like a leper’s rattle. “There was no time.” I snatched the blanket and pulled it around my shoulders.
“A sword in your hand would be more useful.”
I knew that look. Maugris expected trouble. He said grudgingly, “Where are your clothes?”
On a ledge were piled my new doublet—black and amber silk with squirrel-fur tippets—and green hose, along with an undershirt of fine-spun and a mantle of black wool lined with squirrel. If we had stayed the twelve days at Alnwick I would have worn them at the feasts.
A snort from Maugris when he saw them. He thought fashionable clothes a waste of money and tossed the garments to me as if they were of no value.
After I pulled on the undershirt and tied the points of my hose, I dragged fingers through my hair. From months in the wild it was long and tangled, so a thong must suffice to hold it back. I could do nothing about the beard. “Wash your hands and face at least, brother. Godefroi will want us to put her on the bier.”
“There is no time for such foolishness.”
“No time to honor our house? They must see us in control and know that all continues here as it always has—that we do not change and all will yet be well.”
My brother did not say he agreed, but he dropped the bucket down, and we both heard the distant splash. “In my saddlebag are clothes, though not as rich as yours. Hurry.”
The face of the dead woman shone like a gilded saint as she was carried down on the shoulders of our fighters.
But the stairs from Godefroi’s chamber to the chapel were steep, and Flore’s body was bound to the door on which she lay. Seeing a corpse tied this way was eerie—as if she might yet struggle against the bonds. But in death, the grace of Godefroi’s wife rivaled that of any living woman. Hair loose like a maiden’s, she lay in the gown of blue and silver—the bride of the lord of Hundredfield still—and her pale fingers clasped snowdrops. These flowers, in
nocent symbols of new life, brought hope to even this—the last, dark night of her marriage.
Godefroi walked beside his wife’s corpse, but the procession was led by Maugris; my position was at the back, behind the group. We three were armed as were our fighters, but the men were silent and did not look at the girl they carried. From all they must have heard since our return, I knew it would not have been their choice to bear Flore’s body to the chapel.
Ill lit, the stairs commanded our attention, and there was no sound among us except for breath and the scrape of boots on stone. But when the wind began to rise, the night was given a voice, and it seemed such a howl of lamentation that the men faltered, even Rauf, and their grip on the bier slackened.
“Bear her up.” It was my plea and not an order.
Rauf nodded. “With me now.” And the fighters did as he asked.
Then Godefroi did an eerie thing. He picked up the snowdrops and, taking one of Flore’s hands, said pleasantly, “Come, dear love, I am with you.” It was as if they were setting out on a visit together, and his wife were a little shy of those she might not know.
Maugris held a torch above his head, flames guttering in the draft. Below, the stairs descended into dark. “Not far, friends.” He stepped to one side so the bier could pass him by.
The fighters moved on and their shadows fled before us.
Holding the bier, the men paused before the chapel doors. They were closed and Godefroi nodded to Maugris, who stepped forward to turn the iron ring.
It did not move.
Maugris tried again and would have used more force, but Godefroi said, “Rauf, take the men to their posts. Vigil shall be kept tonight for my wife, and we are not to be disturbed.”
Who else but the priest would have dared lock the chapel doors? This act of silent rebellion was the same as if the man had stood on the battlements and shouted that the Dieudonné were all damned, that Flore was a demon, and neither had rights to God’s grace.
Perhaps muscles had cramped from the long and careful descent, but the bier was almost dropped when our men put it down, as if it were suddenly too heavy to hold.