The prior stood very still. “I will instruct my novice.” The remark was measured, the tone cold as ice on bone. I heard some of what was said between them, though he spoke softly to the boy; “box” was mentioned and “in my cell.”
I permitted the prior to dismiss the child, but I called out as he hurried away, “One moment.”
The boy quivered where he stood, his eyes large as a cat’s. I did not like to frighten children and said gently, “Your brothers should stay in the chapel. They will be safer there.”
The boy nodded, and with one wild glance he ran; skinny legs flickered white as the habit flew up.
We waited. At first the prior held himself rigid and still as a tree, but lack of muscle let him down. So did fear of the knife in my hand. Soon he began to tremble, and his sweat, rank and doglike, drowned the air we both breathed. But I was used to sweat and said conversationally, “You made the right choice, Prior.”
Two dark shapes hurried toward us, one small, one larger, and I could no longer hear the service being sung.
The taller was a young man and properly thin. His expression too was mild and certainly anxious. I saw he stumbled under the weight of the large wooden box he carried.
I made shooing motions to the boy. “Back to your prayers.”
A glance at the prior, and the child scurried away.
I addressed the priest. “Can you ride?”
The man swallowed, his eyes on the prior. “No. That is to say, not well.”
“Then I am the man to teach you. Tell me your name.”
“I am called Simeon.” He controlled the quaver quite well.
“Father Simeon, my brothers—Lord Godefroi and Lord Maugris—will be pleased to welcome you to Hundredfield as our new priest. As shall I.” Perhaps I was too pleasant.
The prior muttered, “No priest can save your family.”
I stared at the man and he dropped his eyes as I hustled Simeon through the gate. Outside, the mare had wandered a little way, cropping what fodder there was. I grabbed her reins and got her to stand.
“Get up.” I nodded to the saddle. “I’ll lash the box behind you.”
Simeon shook his head. “It is too far. I cannot.”
The horse sensed his fear and began to fidget, throwing her head and snorting.
I bunched the reins tighter, cupping my other hand into a step. “Put the box down. Your foot goes here.”
The priest gulped but did as I asked, and as he tried to step up, I flung him into the saddle. This was nice judgment; any farther and he would have fallen over the other side. Perhaps my expression helped him hang on. I cannot have looked especially friendly.
The ride was miserable for Simeon, though he only tumbled off once and that into mud; but the pace was frustratingly slow, and though I had hoped to return before first light, a red dawn bloodied the river and the sky as we came to the bridge.
“Father, I have good news.” I turned to look at the priest. The wretch was hunched over the pommel, his face the color of neglected cheese.
“Any words of cheer are welcome, Lord Bayard.”
The courtesy of the title pleased me; it said the man was pragmatic. I reined Helios to a stop and hauled the mare close. “As you see, soon we shall be inside the keep, and safe.”
“From your brother?” The tone was dry.
“Lord Godefroi will have traveled ahead of us.” I dared him to ask more. He did not. So I said, “You have two immediate duties. One is joyful—a mass to celebrate the birth of our Savior. The other, most sadly, is not. The Lady Flore, my brother’s wife, must be buried. Hers will be the first service.” I crossed myself; the priest did not as he stared at the castle.
I saw what he saw then. Fulk’s tower, in that red light, was grim as a skull.
But this time there was no delay—the drawbridge descended when I called out—and we rode into the outer ward in reasonable order.
I had not known I was so stiff until, in the stable, I tried to dismount; the priest was in worse condition.
Throwing my reins to Dikon, I hobbled to the mare’s head. “Take my hand, Father.”
Father. An odd word to describe so young a man.
But if he was weary, the priest had some pride. Avoiding the box, he tried to swing a leg over the back of the mare, but his body let him down; the other leg buckled in the stirrup, and he fell.
I caught Simeon before his head hit the cobbles, though the same cannot be said for his knees. “I have you.”
The man was panting as he plucked straw from his habit. Crossing his chest, he muttered, “That is true.”
With Dikon carrying the chest, I walked the priest to Matthias’s old cell. We passed four girls, pale from their beds. They were going to the byre to milk. As was proper for female servants, they dropped their eyes to the ground, though one was bold enough to look back and she said something behind her hand when she saw Simeon beside me.
I called out cheerily enough, “Good morning, on this holy day.” But they hurried on without speaking. I did not know if they were afraid of me or modest.
Built into the castle wall beside the stables, Matthias’s cell was comfortless. It had a bench, a plain prie-dieu, and a truckle bed, though someone, perhaps on my brother’s orders, had left bread and hard cheese beside a jug of ale.
“Here is food to break your fast, Father, and also”—I gestured at the bed—“a place to lay your head.”
Simeon stared around the chamber. “All I require is time for prayer. I cannot eat before the mass.”
I said politely, “Lord Godefroi will let me know when he wishes the service to be sung and you shall be told. For now, I will leave you to contemplation.”
I closed the door quietly. A key was in the lock outside. I used it.
The damage to the chapel doors was worse than I remembered. My first thought was that the splintered timber and mutilated lock must be removed before the household saw what was there.
A voice called out from inside the chapel—Godefroi’s. I hurried to speak to him. But candles danced shadows across the walls and the floor, and in that uncertain light I did not see him at first.
“Flore!” My brother lay beside his wife’s bier. He was sobbing her name.
“Godefroi?” Shocked, I did not immediately understand the bier had no occupant—until I saw the dress: an abandoned husk. The girl was gone.
21
BEFORE YOU ask, I do not know where her body is.”
I had stumbled against Maugris as I backed away from the bier. He was kneeling in the chancel, directly under the silver Christ.
“You were praying?”
He got up quickly. “Am I not a Christian?”
His tone was belligerent, but I could smell the truth. My brother was terrified.
“What—that is to say . . .” I did not know how to frame the question.
“He was in the chapel all night. So was she.”
“Did you see—”
Maugris said roughly, “I saw nothing.”
“But—”
He grabbed the front of my jerkin, pulled my face against his. “Understand this. Godefroi kept vigil with her as he said he would.” Maugris did not use Flore’s name. “I was outside in the annex, watching over him. None came in, and none went out of this place. I did not sleep. Before dawn, I found what you see.”
He let go, breathing hard.
I remembered another time—the morning before I fought first as a man. I was fifteen and my gut had contracted so tight against my spine it squeezed my bladder and I thought I would piss myself. I seemed to hear Death breathing beside me; I heard him again on that Christmas morning.
Maugris swallowed. “I have searched the keep, Bayard, every floor. The stables, the cellars. Her body is”—Maugris’s face twisted—“it is not to be found.”
My expression must have mirrored his, and God knows his was horrified.
Two nights, and the day in between, had upended the certain order of the world
. Maugris and I stood balanced on the lip of an abyss we could not fathom, and something lay in wait for us down there. I swear I could hear it stir.
At the foot of the altar steps, Godefroi shuddered a breath and wailed, “Flore!”
“That is all he says. We must make him speak to us.”
Maugris was right. And so we knelt beside our brother, trying not to look at the bier, the empty dress. One on each side, we held him upright. A heave, and we stood together like a trio of drunks.
“Godefroi?” Maugris spoke into his ear.
There was no change.
“You must walk, Godefroi. Now.”
Bleared and dull, at least his eyes had opened.
“We shall take you to your bed.”
Godefroi sighed and drooped between us.
“No, you must walk. The stairs are close.” I tightened my grip.
Godefroi mumbled, “Too far.”
I leaned closer. He might slur like a drunk and walk like a drunk, but I could smell no wine on his breath.
“First foot, next foot. And again. First foot, next foot. Yes. And again.” Maugris talked as if Godefroi were learning to walk.
It was still dark inside the keep, for arrow loops give little light, but with each dragging step Godefroi seemed heavier until Maugris and I dripped sweat like flogged horses; finally, we brought our brother to his bedroom.
Half carrying Godefroi, Maugris and I rolled him over the edge of his bed; he lay on his back, deep asleep.
“And now?” Locking our brother inside, we moved quietly down the stairs.
Maugris led the way to the chapel. “We must take the bier away.”
“But what to say if anyone asks where she is?”
“No one will ask because no one will see.”
We stared at the abandoned dress, mute witness to so much we did not know. I gestured. “The ropes have not been cut.”
Maugris went to speak, but then did not.
“How could she have—”
He spoke over me, “This must all be hidden.”
“Yes.”
Neither of us moved. As if laid out before dressing, Flore’s gown seemed undisturbed, yet this was the winding sheet of an actual woman; where had she gone, how had she gone? Even now the damask held the shape of her body in some faint way—the swell of breasts, the suggestion of hips. Could cloth remember? Or was she a snake, to have shed her skin and left it behind? I shook my head, shook it hard, to banish the fantasy. “The Madonna.”
“What did you say?” Maugris was staring at the dress. He too seemed dazed.
“In the shrine. We can hide the bier there. And the dress.”
“Not the dress.” With a quick movement, as if he feared to touch it, Maugris dragged the gown and the ropes off the bier. “Help me.” Averting our eyes from what lay on the floor, we carried the door, plain wood, to the hidden shrine.
The Madonna was behind a painted screen, and inside, covering the statue, was a silk hanging embroidered with our crest; this Maugris now drew back.
Revealed, the Madonna seemed almost a real girl with rounded limbs under her clothes. But she was taller than any woman would ever be, and her face was covered with a fall of blue silk. Perhaps Maugris longed to uncover her face as I did, for it was years since we had seen it, but he did not touch the veil. “There is enough space.”
It seemed sacrilege to prop the door against the wall behind her, but the niche was large enough. I said, “We shall need this again when we find Flore’s body.”
“If we find it. It is as if she has flown away.”
This was so like my own thoughts, I had no words.
Maugris stared at the chapel’s damaged doors. “We will need Rauf’s help.”
But I remembered last night as the men left. “And if he is not willing?”
Maugris’s voice was harsh. “He has no choice.” He strode ahead to the altar. “Burn it.” He was pointing at the dress.
I hesitated. “But—”
“Do not question me.” His eyes were fierce.
A lit candle stood in one of the stands. Maugris took it down. “Then find Margaretta and the child. Perhaps they can bring him back, if we cannot. Go.”
I, who so loved beauty, would now conspire in its destruction, but as my fingers touched the material of Flore’s gown, there was this. The cloth was warm, as if its owner had only now put it aside. And the surface was, horrifyingly, as smooth as a woman’s skin.
I could not do it. I could not pick the dress up.
“What ails you?”
Older brother, younger brother. “This is valuable. Godefroi will not be pleased.”
“What use has he for a dress?” But Maugris knew what I meant. To despoil a corpse of its covering was wrong.
But there was no corpse
And so I folded the gown and held it under my cloak as I climbed the stairs.
Where could such a thing be burned, unseen? Straw was stored near the cistern under the stables. So early in the day, it would be unvisited.
Keeping the candle burning as I crossed the inner ward was not easy, but the place was quiet and cold as a winter tomb. In the undercroft beneath the stables, I dragged stooks into the shape of a pyre and brought the candle close among the straw. The wisps would not catch. I knelt and blew, steady as a bellows; a thread of smoke was my reward, then the gleam and spark of fire.
I fed the blaze with care. Straw is quickly consumed but smothers too if not watched carefully. It came to me that if I were seen, I would seem a servant of the devil—my face lit by the flames of burning grave clothes.
I heard something.
Light picked out the glimmer of water as it welled over the cistern’s sides and crept toward me like a living thing. Soon, my fire would be engulfed.
As if it were not mine, my hand moved. It flung the gown into the heart of the blaze, and then the rope. Though cloth does not easily burn, the damask might have been steeped in oil, for, writhing, gleaming, it twisted among the flames.
I listened for screams—as if this dress covered the body of a mortal woman blazing on her pyre.
22
AS THE warm day chills, rain spatters the gravel outside the New Range.
In the kitchen, Alicia’s absorbed; a notepad is on the table and she’s staring at what she’s scribbled down.
Two columns. Pros. Cons.
Pros:
We’ve always lived here.
Estate should be preserved.
Must be a way to trade through this.
Get advice.
The pros run out.
Cons:
Money.
Alicia stares at that one word. And underlines it.
Staring at what she’s written, she doodles something else. RORY. They’re big, bold letters, and she underlines his name as well. Then, like a schoolgirl, she draws a trailing border of little hearts.
Abruptly, she rips the sheet off the pad and hurries to throw it into the firebox of the stove.
Something’s tapping on the window above her head.
Alicia looks up. “No!”
Rain streaks the windows.
Alicia grabs a flashlight and takes the back stairs at a run; five floors and she’s panting. At the very top is a last extension, a wide ladder that’s propped against a landing high above her head. As Alicia climbs the final rungs, she hears the sound she dreads.
Pushing the attic door wide, Alicia juggles the flashlight. The sound is enormous as water, glittering, falls through that silver beam.
“Please, God, please, God . . .”
Sliding down the ladder, praying, cursing, Alicia’s chest contracts like a drum skin, but she makes it to the buttery. Loading buckets, she starts back up. The rain is thicker now; there’s a drowned layer to the window glass.
Sweating, she counts the steps, but when she gets to the attic, she’s splashing through water.
Catch the leaks! That’s what she has to do. That’s all there is.
&
nbsp; As Rory drives Jesse back to Hundredfield, the world shimmers. The rain has passed away to the west, the trailing edge of the storm flaring in a dark sky as fingers of light walk fields of vivid green.
“How beautiful this is.” Jesse’s making conversation. The drive’s been tense.
“You don’t remember from when you were little?” Rory knows, as Jesse does, that they’re skirting around what happened at the pub. He shifts down, slows the Saab to walking pace.
Ahead, the road is filled with black-faced sheep. The leaders balk in front of the car, and the rest of the flock banks up behind, bleating.
“I was very young when we went to Australia. Less than one.” Jesse leans forward as the car stops, staring through the windscreen. “I couldn’t have memories. Could I?”
The sheep, ewes and well-grown lambs, are pushed forward by two border collies and the shouts of the farmer walking behind. A nervous mass, they stream past on both sides of the car calling to each other—the mothers hoarse and anxious, the lambs lighter, sweeter, in reply.
“Do you think they’re talking about us?” Jesse winds her window down and half hangs out. “Hello, there.” A gust of lanolin and sheep shit hits. Jesse wrinkles her nose and slides back inside. “It’s the smell that seems familiar. Is that possible?”
The farmer waves them on.
Rory puts the car in gear. “It might be. Smell’s very powerful. It’s the last sense to go as you die.”
“What about when you’re born? Does it arrive first?” Jesse looks back as the Saab speeds up. The dogs have gathered the flock into a milling huddle, and when a gate opens, they flow through, a river of cream and black.
“Interesting thought.” Rory accelerates, drops back into a higher gear.
After some minutes, Jesse says, “You told Helen that we’d be at Hundredfield for a couple of weeks, and you said that to Alicia as well. We should talk.”
“I’m grateful for any time you’ll give me, Jesse.” Rory catches her glance in the mirror. “I want you to get well. You’ve been under a great deal of stress and you’ve handled that bravely, but you’re not bulletproof. Let me take care of you. It’s what I’m here for.”
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