Blood of the South

SEVENTEEN

Skuli stood staring up at the ancient ruins soaring above. Rollo had worked his way through the crewmen crowding around their captain, and now he was at Skuli’s side. Standing so close, he was able to pick up every nuance of Skuli’s mood.

What he observed horrified him.

Skuli had metamorphosed from a taciturn, driven, silent and brooding figure into a being who seemed lit from within. His expression was radiant, and his light eyes shone as if reflecting brilliant starlight. Somehow he was giving off energy. Rollo, glancing down at his own bare forearm, noticed that the hairs were on end.

They had been standing below the ruins for some time. Breaking abruptly from his enchanted stillness, Skuli turned to his crew and said, ‘At last, my faithful friends, we have reached our goal! At the almost unbearable cost of the loss of our three honoured companions, we stand at the very spot we have dreamed of and yearned for over so many long months.’

He opened his mouth in a great cry of joy, stretching out his arms as if to embrace the whole place. ‘Asgard, my friends! Here we stand on the very edge of the blessed realm, and soon we shall find Valhalla, and Bifrost that links Asgard to heaven!’

He paused, breathing hard. Then, more calmly, he went on. ‘Since we were children crouched wide-eyed round our fathers’ hearths, we have heard the old tales, learned of the deeds of the great heroes who fought a mighty war before these very walls, their chariots raising the sand in vast clouds and the fine dust soaking up the brilliant blood of the wounded and the glorious dead. And the blood of legendary men bred with the Aesir, who dwelled in Asgard, and from their loins sprang our own honoured gods, Thor, Odin, Freyr, Freya, Tyr, and even the evil Loki and his wolf-son, Fenrir.’

With a shiver of dread, Rollo recalled that haunting wolf’s howl …

‘Our beloved Odin travelled into the north, as the poets tell us,’ Skuli hurried on, his voice getting steadily louder, ‘and there he took many wives and populated our world. Now, at long last after the endless millennia, we have returned to pay homage.’ He paused, his eyes roaming around his enthralled crewmen. ‘And,’ he added, swooping down to a whisper that was even more frightening than the loud proclamations, ‘to tell them that the men of the north do not forget.’

Filled with disbelief, horror and dread, Rollo found he couldn’t move.

Solemnly Skuli turned to face the ancient ruins up on their plateau. Raising his voice again, he began to sing a hymn of praise, and after only a moment the crew joined in.

Rollo thought he had drifted into a dream world.

His reason battling with the evidence of his senses, his mind working frantically, he felt the deep shudder of the soul that affects a man when he comes face to face with madness.

For surely Skuli was mad; a sane man did not travel halfway across the known world in search of his gods.

Did he?

And why? What purpose did it serve, other than to bow down in worship? Could that not be done anywhere on the good earth that the gods had created? That, anyway, was what good Christians believed. But then, his rational mind pointed out, Christians in their droves went on pilgrimages, undertaking arduous, dangerous and expensive journeys purely to visit a shrine, a holy site, or even the place where a sacred relic was housed.

Skuli’s hymn was continuing, its intensity growing in pace with its volume. The air was thrumming and humming with the sound, which was being magnified as it rebounded from the great ruin-topped mound soaring up before them.

Rollo was in turmoil, the noise and the disturbed air seeming to crowd in on him, beating him down, spurring him to respond and fight back so that he could barely organize his thoughts.

But something was emerging … An idea, sparked off by something he had just been trying to work out …

Yes! He had it.

He knew suddenly, and without a doubt, why Skuli had come here; why he had risked so much, striven so hard and paid such a terrible price.

His gods had had their day; the world had changed, and a new deity was in the ascendant. The Christians had spread their faith all over the places where Skuli’s gods had once reigned unchallenged.

And Skuli had come here, to this place from which he believed they had once sprung, to reawaken them.

The singing had worked the men up into a state of ecstasy. Some were on their knees; some were weeping, sobbing, tearing at their hair and their beards. Skuli stood before them all, staring up at the soaring ruins, singing in a voice that seemed to shake the earth.

Shake the earth …

The wolf howled, close at hand; it was Fenrir, Loki’s wolf-son, evil in his heart. In a tumult of fear, Rollo heard the eight-legged horse again; Sleipnir, with Odin on his back, was thundering across the plain and racing into battle. Overhead flew Odin’s ravens, Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory, their sharp black eyes piercing any who dared to look, and-

With superhuman effort, Rollo pulled himself back. NO! There was no eight-legged horse; no evil wolf; no cruel-eyed, magical ravens! Such things did not exist; they belonged to the realm of legend and myth.

The earth shook again, and a deep, resonant rumble sounded from somewhere far beneath them.

Earthquake.

Grabbing Skuli, Rollo yelled, right in his ear, ‘We have to move! We must get the men away from the mound and from what stands on top of it, before the whole lot falls on us and crushes us to death!’

Skuli twisted round to face him, trying to shake him off. The mania that had him in its grip made his eyes blaze. ‘We stay where we are!’ he shouted. ‘This is what we have come for!’

Rollo tightened both hands on Skuli’s arm, dragging at him, only his desperation driving him to tackle a man so much taller, broader, stronger and heavier. ‘You cannot do this!’ he yelled. ‘These men are your responsibility! They have followed you loyally all this way, endured everything you have asked of them – you must not abuse their loyalty by endangering their lives!’

For an instant, Skuli stopped struggling. Rollo had time for one fleeting moment of relief – he’s seen reason! – and he eased his fierce grip.

It was a huge mistake.

Released, Skuli swung back his massive right arm and punched Rollo very hard on the side of the head. Blackness flooded Rollo’s vision even as he fell.

Lady Rosaria’s body was brought back to Lakehall on a hurdle. Someone had covered her with a beautiful velvet cloak, its rich purple shimmering in the soft autumn sunshine.

Lord Gilbert and Lady Emma stood side by side at the foot of the steps leading to the great door of the hall, heads bowed. Edild and I, summoned to Lakehall as soon as Lord Gilbert had learned what had happened, stood behind them, a couple of steps up. Looking down on them, I saw Lady Emma straighten her back. I thought she was disguising her emotions well, but then, revealing a more human side, I saw her reach out for her husband’s hand. He turned to her briefly, giving her a quick smile.

In the mood of distress and shock, it was comforting, somehow.

The four men carrying the body came slowly up to the steps, and one of the pair at the front looked up at Lord Gilbert. ‘Where shall we take the lady, my lord?’ he asked.

Lord Gilbert looked at Lady Emma, who turned round to us. ‘Where do you think, Edild?’ she asked quietly.

‘Again, the undercroft is suitable, my lady,’ my aunt replied. ‘Lassair and I will tend her there.’ She hesitated, looking at Lady Emma with raised brows.

Lady Emma understood the unasked question. ‘The other body has been removed,’ she said, her voice quite steady despite her shocked pallor. ‘It is now in the crypt beneath the church. Lord Gilbert and Father Augustine have decided to postpone the burial, in the hope that someone may yet turn up to claim her.’

It was, I thought sadly, an increasingly faint hope.

Lady Emma murmured to the men with the hurdle, and they bore their burden away around the side of the house, to the door that opened on to the undercroft. Hitching my satchel on my shoulder, I followed Edild in their wake.

The wide vaulted ceiling of the huge undercroft spread out above us as we bent over the trestle on which Lady Rosaria had been laid. Lord Gilbert’s house servants had provided many candles, set in tall brass holders and spaced around the trestle. Our little area of the crypt was brightly lit but the shadows gathered in the corners, and the bulky shapes of whatever was stored there loomed over us as if they drew close to watch us at our work.

Water from Lady Rosaria’s garments dripped steadily on to the stone floor. We removed her little silk slippers – her feet were tiny – and rolled her over on to her side so that we could unlace her gorgeous gown. Edild slid it down off the cold, pale body, then handed it to me. I was touched to see that the hem was coming down; in her flight, she must have caught her heel. I had a sudden, painful image of her, sitting sewing in that tavern room in Cambridge. As I inspected her work, I thought, Poor Rosaria; you weren’t very good with your needle, were you?

Edild was now stripping off the undergarments: there were several underskirts. Now she handed me a chemise made of some fine, smooth fabric …

I had seen a garment made of this material before.

‘Edild, I-’

My aunt gave a tsk! of impatience. ‘Not now, Lassair. Help me with her – I must attempt to detect if there’s water in her lungs.’

Together we gently turned the body so that it was face-down, and Edild applied steady pressure on the upper back. Water came out in a lazy stream, seeping through the veil and out from beneath it.

‘I think we can tell your lawman that she did indeed drown,’ Edild said.

We rolled Lady Rosaria on to her back once more.

Edild had covered her with a length of linen, and now, respectful of the dead woman’s modesty, she examined the body, uncovering it a bit at a time. Shoulders, chest and breasts, then waist and belly. Feet, ankles, legs, thighs, groin.

Edild stood back from the table, a frown of perplexity on her face.

‘What is it?’ I felt apprehensive; afraid, almost.

Slowly my aunt beckoned. ‘Come and see. I may be wrong – I must be wrong – but I’d like to hear what you think.’

‘What must I look at?’

‘Her breasts, then her private parts.’

I did as I was ordered. The breasts were small; I remembered the gown that had been too big in the bust, and how I’d imagined Lady Rosaria had lost the fullness as her milk dried up. The nipples were pink and dainty, like a girl’s. Carefully I drew up the sheet to cover her chest, then, raising it from its lower end, looked down on her belly and thighs.

It felt wrong to be examining her. She had been so proud, so haughty, and her stiff, erect posture had informed you, all the time that you were in her presence, that she was a fine lady. But I had a job to do, and I could not afford scruples.

I looked at her slim, smooth thighs, at the narrow hips, the flat, almost concave, belly. She must have padded out her underskirts for, naked, she had a much slighter, more boyish figure than she’d appeared to have when clothed.

Finally, aware of Edild’s eyes watching me, I gently parted the thighs and stared at the genitalia.

After a moment of utter stillness, I covered the body, tucking the sheet in around it. Then I met my aunt’s eyes.

‘She has never borne a child,’ I said.

‘No,’ Edild agreed.

We went on looking at each other.

‘So whose baby is Leafric?’ I whispered. ‘Is he an adopted child, do you think?’ My thoughts were racing ahead. ‘Perhaps Lady Rosaria was barren – she does look quite immature – or perhaps her husband was infertile? As members of a great family, they’d have definitely wanted a child to inherit and to carry on the name, so maybe …’

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.