by Candace Robb
Lucie took her hand, realising how insecure she must feel about her future. ‘Not you, child, Hugh. He is so earnest. As for Master Nicholas, I am no happier about his troubles than you are. His sister-in-law is my good friend, and well you know that. Let’s talk of something else. You say you are keen to be a healer. Have you always wished to be one?’
Alisoun shook her head as she slipped her hand from Lucie’s. ‘I wanted to work with horses. That is all I wanted to do.’
‘Yes. I recall how you tended your family’s horse,’ said Lucie. ‘What made you change your mind? What has inspired you to become a healer of men?’
‘Meeting the Riverwoman. When I was biding in her home I saw that she did not fear what would happen if she weren’t like others. She knew how to live in the world in her own way. Her life is free of pain.’
Lucie opened her mouth to comment that in any craft she might develop strength of character, but Alisoun did not pause.
‘Master Nicholas is so discouraged by the threat of excommunication, and now the charges and suspicion that hound him, that he spoke to us and withdrew all the brave and inspiring things he’d said about the Church so that they could not be used against him. He’s a coward. The Riverwoman would never be so meek.’ Alisoun’s colour had risen as she spoke, and her eyes flashed with anger. ‘And the dean and chancellor – they’re so keen to accuse him of all the wrongs in the city that they are letting the true murderer go free.’
Lucie knew that was a danger. ‘It is the city’s fortune that my husband is not convinced by their accusations and is still searching,’ she said. ‘But you are wrong about Magda feeling no pain. She has a heart as do we all, Alisoun, and she has known great sorrow. It is from her knowledge of pain and sorrow that she heals.’
‘She knows all about roots and healing plants,’ said Alisoun.
Lucie nodded. ‘That, also.’
‘What sorrow has she suffered?’
‘That is for you to ask Magda. But tell me, what draws you to healing besides wanting to be like her?’
Alisoun, grown sullen, shrugged and peered out the window. ‘The children look too wet. I must bring them in to sit by the fire.’ She rose.
‘Stay a moment, Alisoun. You have been here more than a year, yet we are almost strangers. You are so gentle and loving with my children. That is a great strength in you. Is that what you wish to use in healing?’
Sinking back down, Alisoun slowly shook her head. ‘I don’t feel the same about people once they’re grown. Just animals and children.’
‘Why do you think that is?’
She regarded Lucie with her dark brown eyes, an unwavering gaze that she used to keep people at a distance. ‘I don’t know. I get impatient. People can be very disappointing.’
The gaze, the comment – Lucie would never quite know what inspired her, but she believed she’d just seen through the role Alisoun had been playing for a long while, as long as Lucie had known her. She hesitated to point it out to the girl, doubting that she could express it in a palatable way. She tried a question.
‘What do you expect of people?’
‘More,’ Alisoun said with a bitter little laugh.
‘What do you think people expect of you?’
A flinch was quickly replaced by a harder stare. Lucie saw it so clearly now, the girl’s fierce defences.
‘I don’t care what people expect of me,’ she said through clenched teeth.
‘We regret the need for a wet nurse, Alisoun. I pray you believe that. Dame Magda never intended for you to be our children’s nurse for so long. She said you wanted to be a healer. But I would still be your friend.’ Lucie reached for one of Alisoun’s hands. The girl jerked away. ‘Forgive me. I thought that perhaps as you love my children, you might accept my friendship,’ Lucie said. ‘Let me just sow an idea in your mind, Alisoun. You sit in stern, unforgiving judgement over yourself and others, allowing no joy but in children and animals. If you are ever the judge you’ll find no joy in life.’
Alisoun shot up, already facing away from Lucie as she said, ‘I must see to the children, Dame Lucie.’ She walked stiffly to the door.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, I tried. Give me the grace to reach my children as they grow. I would know their hearts, and they mine. Lucie had experienced difficult times with Jasper, but it was his nature to want to understand and cooperate with those around him, so his sullen moods had never lasted. She wished that Alisoun would open her heart, even just a little.
A rapping on the street door brought Lucie to her feet, but Phillippa reached the door before her. Thank the lord that she was clear today. She escorted Emma Ferriby and her servant into the hall.
‘Do not cross the room to greet me,’ Emma said, hurrying towards Lucie with her arms outstretched. ‘I am lighter than you at present.’ She laughed as she embraced Lucie, but quickly sobered as she settled on a bench, reaching her hands out towards the fire. ‘So here I am again, my friend, begging you for encouragement about Nicholas’s misfortunes. William came this morning to tell us that they’ve shut Nicholas’s school, have you heard? Peter says they’ve imprisoned him at the archbishop’s palace. What does Owen say of that?’
Lucie covered her smile and nodded to Kate to bring wine. ‘Biding with His Grace is hardly imprisonment, Emma. Archbishop Thoresby lives well, eats well, and ensures that his surroundings are pleasing and restful. Nicholas is most fortunate, truth be told.’
Emma thanked Kate for the cup of wine, but set it aside. ‘There is more, Lucie. William says that Chancellor Thomas had brought up Nicholas’s heretical opinions in chapter, accusing him of teaching them to his young scholars and thereby endangering their faith. It was inappropriate to discuss in chapter, but of course he was merely sowing the poisonous seed.’
‘By the saints, that is troublesome news.’ Lucie glanced out at Alisoun, who was still trying to convince the children to come inside. ‘Alisoun says that he withdrew those comments, telling the students he was in error.’
Emma tapped an elegantly shod foot. ‘William says he’s prepared to accept Nicholas’s vow to abstain from such controversial comments. He believes that most of the chapter would be satisfied with such a promise. But Nicholas must be cleared of all suspicion regarding the murders and the thefts.’ With a shake of her head she took Lucie’s hand and pressed it. ‘We all count on Owen for that.’ Her eyes sought reassurance.
‘He is doing all he can, Emma. Indeed, he’s riding to Weston this morning, convinced that it is there he’ll find the answers.’
‘He’s left you again? Now I feel guilty. But we are desperate.’
‘Your good friend the archbishop will not rest until he is assured that all is well with Nicholas. It is not you who is pushing Owen away.’
‘William had something to say about the archbishop’s interest in clearing the Ferriby name, you can be certain, for he’s heard it too often in the chapter. They say that John Thoresby forgets that he is the Archbishop of York with a duty to represent the interests and needs of the North in Westminster and at court. To their minds he is so old and his illnesses have so weakened his mind that he believes he is a parish priest again.’
Lucie said something banal in support of the archbishop but she was saddened by such gossip. Owen had expressed concern for Thoresby’s weakened health, but she had hoped it was not apparent to the public. Yet how could it go unnoticed when he was the second highest-ranking churchman in the realm, and a former Lord Chancellor, a man expected to make his presence felt in Parliament, in Westminster, and subtly in Canterbury, ensuring that the highest-ranking churchman in the realm did not forget the North.
* * *
As the light faded early, the sun hidden by snow clouds, the search parties straggled back to the stables, cold, weary, and frustrated. Though the snow the previous afternoon had begun late, and so had not been deep, the wind would have limited the amount of walking Ysenda would have managed, certainly if she’d been injured. Yet none of the
neighbours had seen her, none of the outbuildings sheltered her.
‘Perhaps Osmund was right.’ Aubrey cursed as he sank down before the fire in the hall. ‘She rode off with a lover, and we’ll never track her. Christ, to never know.’ He groaned as he tugged at his sparse hair. One of his hands was bandaged and needed tending – a huge splinter had sunk into the meaty part of his thumb when he’d pried open the door of an outbuilding. ‘Cursed door.’
Hubert wished he weren’t in his lord’s hall, because he thought a scream would help him release the tight band around his chest. For now, he went in search of a servant who could see to his father’s hand. He was directed to the kitchen behind the hall, and brought Aubrey there to an elderly woman who with perfectly steady hands soaked the wound and gradually coaxed out the splinter in one piece. She smiled and nodded at Aubrey’s profuse thanks. All the while she’d worked on him she had said not a word.
When they returned to the hall everyone grew quiet as they turned to look at father and son. Frightened to think what it meant, Hubert thought his heart stopped beating.
And then Lady Gamyll came to them, smiling and reaching out for their hands. ‘Dame Ysenda has been found. She is weak, injured, and in a fever sleep, but she is alive.’
‘God be praised!’ Aubrey cried and kissed her hand. ‘My lady, my lady, God bless you.’
Hubert fell to his knees and bowed his head to say a prayer of thanks for his mother’s deliverance. Lady Gamyll knelt to him.
‘They are bringing her in a wagon. She’ll be here very soon.’ She hugged him. ‘I thought my mother was dead in a flood when I was about your age. I remember how that felt, young Hubert, I remember.’ She smiled at him with such understanding that he clung to her.
When they rose, he saw his father wiping his eyes with his bandaged hand, and was glad for him. People crowded round them with offers of drink and pats on the back. Hubert discovered his appetite once more.
It was a brief interlude of happiness. When they carried in his mother he thought she looked pale as death, with a deep gash in her head and a bandaged hand hanging limply from a blackened sleeve. Lady Gamyll called servants and they disappeared with her into a room screened off from the main hall.
Aubrey rushed out of the hall to talk to the farmer who had found her, and Hubert followed. The farmer lived outside the range of the day’s search, but even so he’d searched his outbuildings for her when he’d gotten word she was missing, even before he’d joined them in the morning. He’d found no sign of her.
‘But when I returned home, my daughter was babbling about a woman at the pond, an old weedy place I hardly ever go, but the young ones play there in summer. God must have sent her there today, for that’s where I found your good wife, Aubrey, lying with her hand out in the icy water. She’ll lose it, I trow, it did not look good and who knows how long she’d been lying there. Poor Ysenda.’ He took off his cap and wiped his eyes.
Lying there all night with her burned hand in the freezing water. Hubert wondered whether she could have still been drunk. He remembered Aubrey carrying her in the previous winter, having found her snoring in one of the outbuildings, her clothes soaked in cider. Hubert had thought she’d been knocked out as a jug of cider fell on her, and that’s how it had opened and soaked her, but he knew better now. God forgive him for thinking ill of her when she might be dying.
‘God bless you and your family,’ Aubrey said as the man and his son prepared to leave.
‘You’d do the same for me,’ said the farmer. ‘God watch over you and yours. We’ll be praying for Ysenda.’
They stood there a while, Hubert standing close to his dad and looking up at the stars that twinkled in the patches of clear sky in between the scudding clouds. He had an ache deep down in his stomach. This growing up was frightening. He understood too much yet not enough, and he feared it would only get worse.
‘How do you bear it, Da?’
Aubrey looked down at him. ‘Bear what?’
‘Everything. Nothing’s what I thought it was.’
‘Let’s go in, see if they’ll let us see your mother.’
Folk clustered around the fire, quiet now, the efforts of the day beginning to show in their faces and their slumping shoulders. Hubert’s feet ached, but not so badly as they had on his journey home from York.
They met a servant coming from the screened room. She was carrying a bowl of bloody rags and frowned at them as she hurried past.
Lady Gamyll stood in the doorway holding a tray with a cup, a small spoon, and small bottle. Her sleeves were covered with protective rags and her apron was already blood-stained and streaked with something darker. She was watching the silent woman who’d tended Aubrey – she now sat at the edge of the bed in which Ysenda lay, wrapping her head as a servant held it. Ysenda’s burned hand was propped on a cloth-wrapped board, glistening – with grease, Hubert guessed. The rest of her arm looked much better than the hand, red to the elbow, then fine as far as he could see from the doorway.
‘Could we sit with her?’ Aubrey asked Lady Gamyll.
‘In the morning,’ the healer called out. So she did have a voice, and a strong one. ‘We have work to do tonight, and then she must rest.’
‘Will she live?’ Hubert asked.
The woman shrugged. ‘If God so wishes.’
‘I am her husband.’ Aubrey’s voice rang out so loudly Hubert expected his mother to respond. But even that did not wake her.
‘God watch over you,’ said the healer. ‘I know this is painful for you. I am doing all that I know how for her.’
‘God bless you,’ said Aubrey, crossing himself and turning away.
Hubert felt numb as he followed his father back out into the still-crowded hall. ‘Can we walk outside and talk, Da?’ He intended to tell him everything. He could think of no benefit in secrecy.
But Aubrey shook his head. ‘On the morrow, son, on the morrow. Tonight I want to forget.’ He poured himself a full mazer of wine and settled by the fire, staring into the flames.
So that was how he bore it. And tomorrow he might forget how he felt tonight? Hubert thought it a poor solution. But it made him wonder what his mother tried to forget with all the cider. The loss of his brother and sister, perhaps, or maybe she still loved Sir Baldwin and resented his new lady. Or was the bargeman someone she tried to forget? Hubert headed out to the stables to see if he could find kittens or puppies or a lonely horse for company.
A wan sun did little to warm Owen as he rode hard, Alfred just a little ahead of him. At least they’d dried their cloaks by the fire in the wretched inn in which they’d tried to sleep the night on the floor, visited by curious rats and ravenous fleas. The snow had chilled them too much to keep riding until they might find a better place to stop for the night.
A groom greeted them in the yard before Sir Baldwin’s hall, helping them dismount and then taking their horses away to be rubbed down and fed. Lady Gamyll met them at the door, looking tired.
‘Captain Archer, you are most welcome in our hall. But I pray you, how are you come so soon? News of the fire cannot have reached York so quickly.’
‘I know nothing of a fire, my lady. Tell me, if you would.’
‘Aubrey’s house – oh, here, my lord will tell you …’
They’d been joined by Sir Baldwin and a dark-haired man with startling blue eyes who was introduced as Aubrey, the missing spouse. Owen studied him with interest. He looked every bit a soldier, great strength in shoulders and thighs, a scarred face and hands. They told Owen and Alfred about the fire and Ysenda’s injuries.
‘When her fever is down the hand should be removed,’ said Sir Baldwin. ‘We feared to do it sooner.’
Owen crossed himself and said a prayer for Ysenda remembering the horror of amputations in the field camps when he fought in France.
‘May God ease her pain, and yours,’ said Owen.
‘Now it is your turn to tell us what has happened since you departed,’ said Sir Baldwin
.
Aubrey was quiet, and, having heard about the condition of his wife and his loss of property, Owen understood his silence.
‘Another man was murdered in York,’ Owen began, ‘by the name of Nigel, a goldsmith’s journeyman. The pilot Drogo had shown him your cross, Sir Baldwin, and someone did not like that he’d done so.’
‘Drogo,’ said Baldwin. ‘He grew up at the mill on my land, Captain. I’m sorry I’d forgotten.’
‘I found that out.’ Owen turned his eye on Aubrey. ‘Do you remember him?’
Pale blue eyes considered Owen’s face, making him conscious of his scars, the leather patch over his left eye. Aubrey removed his hat and bunched it in his hands. ‘I knew him to speak to, Captain Archer, but his da and his older brother saw to us when we brought corn to be ground and then picked up the sacks of flour, so I know nothing of his life, his state of grace. And that was so many years ago.’ His eyes were swollen – from weeping and fighting the fire, Owen guessed – and seemed sensitive to light.
‘As I recall he was a good lad,’ said Sir Baldwin.
‘Did your wife live here as a child, Master Aubrey?’ Owen asked.
He nodded, with reluctance it seemed to Owen.
‘I’d like to talk to your son. Is Hubert here?’
‘He’s sitting with his mother,’ said Aubrey. ‘I’ll ask you –’
He was silenced by a look from Sir Baldwin.
Owen asked Aubrey how Hubert was faring. He said that Hubert felt responsible for the fire, that he believed that if he’d been at home it would not have happened. The boy had not explained why he was so certain of that.
Lady Gamyll escorted Owen across the hall. ‘I’ll bring wine,’ she said as she left him in the doorway.
The stench of burned flesh was familiar to Owen. Ysenda’s right hand was burned as if she’d tried to rescue something from the fire. The burn extended midway up her forearm, so she’d either reached for something very near or realised too late that she’d extended her hand into flames. The gash on her forehead might have happened as she fled, falling forward.
