Girl In A Red Tunic

Chapter 18

Inside the hut it was as dark as midnight. The man put a flame to a wick lying in a shallow bowl of animal fat and in the small amount of light that it gave off, Helewise looked about her.

There was just the one room and it was crammed with the detritus of years. A narrow bench was set against one wall and, towards the back of the room, there was a small hearth surrounded with stones, although it looked as though nobody had ever cleared away the ash and it had spilled out in a wide area extending well beyond the circumference of the circle of stones. A black cooking pot rested on a trivet beside the hearth. Along the walls, piled up quite high in places, were what looked like bundles wrapped in sacking and on a shelf set up under the roof were bunches of dried herbs and leaves. On a panel of wood that had once been painted white someone had drawn the rough outline of a bulky and indefinable animal. In a rear corner was a thin straw-filled mattress and some pieces of sacking, presumably a bed, and over this hung a strange cross with equal arms, roughly formed and made out of wood that was almost black. Belying the filth and the unkempt air of the hut, a besom stood beside the door, its twiggy hazel brush pointing upwards and the smooth handle stuck into the beaten earth floor. The room stank of burning fat from the oil lamp and, beneath that stench, Helewise’s sensitive nose could detect the smell of unwashed bodies and human waste receptacles that had been spilled and were habitually not emptied before they overflowed.

This man lived here?

She turned her head to look at him. He had paced the length and breadth of the small room almost as if looking for something and, from the way he darted back to the door and peered outside, she wondered if he had expected to find someone here waiting for him.

Oh, had it only been Josse!

She was afraid. But I shall not show it, she resolved firmly; seizing the initiative, she said frostily, ‘You are not who you pretend to be. Why have you brought me here?’

He spun round and stared at her. He was slightly shorter than she was and she felt a moment’s pride at this small advantage. Not that it would do her any good, she realised, for he would no doubt prove the stronger if she tried to wrestle with him and make a break for freedom.

He did not answer her question. But, after a moment’s scrutiny, he said, ‘No, my lady Abbess, I am not a sheriff’s man. I serve nobody but myself.’

‘Who are you?’ she demanded.

‘You do not know?’ He looked amused. ‘You are an intelligent woman, I have been given to understand; I had thought that you might have guessed my identity.’

Swiftly she thought. Someone was threatening her son, someone who seemed to know that he was her son and who had sent a vicious man to Leofgar’s house to search for something that had not been found. This someone was presumably still desperate to finish what he had set out to do and must feel that taking captive the Abbess of Hawkenlye was in some way going to help … There was really only one person who this man could be.

‘You are Arthur Fitzurse,’ she said coldly.

He pulled off his dirty cloak, revealing an expensive-looking tunic whose braid, she noticed when the light briefly caught it, was actually of poor quality and beginning to fray. And now he has brought me to this — this place, she thought, which, even if not his home, must be the best that he can find to fill his need, lowly and foul though it is. This man, she thought, with what felt like a surprising stab of compassion, tries too hard to achieve his illusion of respectability, education and wealth.

She wondered why. She thought she could probably guess.

‘Please, my lady, be seated.’ He stepped forward and flicked at the surface of the narrow bench and she moved towards it and sat down as elegantly as she could manage, back straight and head held high, spreading her wide skirts gracefully around her.

He watched her closely for a moment. Then he said, ‘I would tell you a tale, my lady, if you have ears to hear it?’

He sounded as if he could only just control his eagerness. Feeling again that strange impulse of pity, she inclined her head and said, ‘You have employed deception to bring me here, from which discourtesy I deduce that your motive, whatever it may be, is of great importance to you. Very well, I will listen. What would you say to me?’

He watched her for a moment longer then, as if he needed to concentrate and the sight of her was a distraction, turned away and, staring out through the mean little door, began to speak.

‘I am the only child of my mother,’ he said, ‘and for much of my life believed my father to have been a soldier killed in battle before I was born. As young fatherless children are wont to do, particularly if they are imaginative and male, I formed a secret picture of this man. He became in my eyes a hero, an Achilles, a Lionheart, and I told myself tales of his exploits in the Crusades and before the gates of Troy. I saw him as very tall, broad of shoulder, deep of chest, with a noble face like a Greek god. He was honourable, brave, modest in victory and considerate of his enemies and, naturally, he never lost a battle in his life.’ Arthur smiled briefly. ‘You will appreciate how childish was the mind that made up this comforting story, for had my soldier father truly never lost a fight, how was it that he came to die before I was born? I revised my tale as I grew older and decided that he had died of a single and totally painless sword thrust through the heart while in the act of saving the lives of an entire company of his loyal men, and that they gave him a hero’s funeral out in some beautiful oasis where the soft wind sighed in the trees and a huge moon rose over a flat plain.’

He paused. Then, his voice tight, went on, ‘I took great comfort from these imaginary scenes, for in truth my childhood was wretched. What paltry wealth there was soon disappeared and the triple spectres of poverty, hunger and disease stalked me constantly. There was never enough to eat and we — I did not spend my youth as do other boys, for I was a solitary child and had no friends other than the creatures of the wild.’

Again he paused. Helewise burned to question him — who looked after him? Where did they live? Surely not here! — but she held back. Intuitively she knew that the telling of his story caused him pain and she was loath to interrupt and perhaps risk irrevocably halting the flow of words.

Presently he resumed his tale. ‘This is an unwholesome place, for it is permanently damp and the river seeps underground, turning firm green grass to a quagmire whenever there is rain; and rain, it seems, falls ever more frequently here than elsewhere. The mists creep about like living things and the very air is wet and foul, bringing phlegm to the throat and rheum to the chest. One’s bones ache, my lady, almost all the time. But this place has one advantage: nobody comes here unless they must. For certain, nobody but the outcast and the desperate would choose to live here.’ He sighed. ‘For those like me who are both, it is … convenient.’

‘Then this is indeed where you live?’ she whispered.

He turned to consider her. ‘It touches you, that this might be so?’ he asked.

‘I — it is an unwelcome thought to think of anyone making their home here,’ she replied guardedly.

He smiled faintly. ‘It is, isn’t it? Well then, my lady, be assured that I do not in fact live here; not all the time, at least, although it is, as I have implied, a most convenient place when one is concerned with matters of a clandestine nature.’ Again, she observed, that careful use of words and of grammatical constructions, as if he were very keen to demonstrate that he was — or was pretending to be — an educated man. ‘Which, of course,’ he was saying, ‘brings us to my purpose in bringing you here.’

‘It does,’ she agreed, ice in her voice.

‘Soon, my lady, soon,’ he soothed. ‘Let me first continue my story.’

She seemed to have no choice but to listen and so she gave him a curt nod of encouragement. Smiling again, he turned back to his contemplation of the dismal scene through the door and picked up the thread of his narrative.

‘The word that was most often used to describe my lot in life,’ he said slowly, ‘was unjust. I certainly employed it myself in my thoughts, for I was the son of a soldier, a hero, was I not? Did I not deserve better than to live in wretchedness on the very fringes of society? Yet there I was, dressed in rags, sleeping on mouldy straw, always hungry, frequently verm inous and usually dirty unless I saw to my cleanliness myself which, I might tell you, I began to do as soon as I was able.’ With what appeared to be an almost unconscious gesture he smoothed his tunic and ran a hand over his hair. ‘By making myself presentable, I was able, as I grew out of childhood, to find myself employment. Nothing much — never the sort of task for which I believed myself fitted — but at least I earned a little money and, by spending it wisely, steadily I improved my lot.’ He turned to look at her briefly, then said, ‘Not all of my dealings were strictly honest, my lady, for I burned with resentment and did not hesitate to take from those who had plenty. They were living the life that I should have had and I saw no reason why they should not donate to my cause, even though they might not know that was what they did.’

He is a thief, Helewise thought, although it would seem an honest one, for here he is confessing to me his past misdeeds.

‘I might have satisfied myself with what I managed to achieve,’ he went on, ‘for I reckoned that, for a boy of my upbringing and with my disadvantages, I had done pretty well. But …’ He paused. Then, as if he had thought about it and had, after consideration, decided to go on, said quickly, ‘But my own thoughts and opinions were not all that I had to cope with. Whenever the edge wore off my hunger for advancement, I was instantly reminded of the place — the position — which I ought to occupy, which it was my right to occupy. I was never allowed to forget!’ His suddenly raised voice startled her. As if he realised it, he turned and said, ‘I apologise, my lady. An honourable and courteous man does not shout.’

She inclined her head briefly but did not speak; she felt that he was on the brink of a further revelation.

After a moment he spoke again, and his voice was now distant and cool as if he needed to detach himself from some strong emotion. ‘When I was sixteen I learned the truth about my past. I was not the posthumous son of a soldier. My mother had not even been married to my father; I was the result of a quick and animal mating when a lascivious man’s blood ran too hot for him to control himself and he grabbed the nearest compliant female. My mother,’ he added, very quietly, ‘enjoyed sex.’ He shot Helewise a swift and somehow sly glance, as if he knew he spoke of forbidden things. ‘Or so they took pleasure in telling me.’ Flinging out a hand in a despairing gesture, he said passionately, ‘From the taunts and the beatings I received because of who and what my mother was, you’d think she was the first woman who ever sold her body in order to feed herself. But she would not have been driven to it if those who stood in judgement over her had had the smallest drop of compassion in their cold and stony hearts! She had other skills but they persecuted her for those too because they were afraid, and their fear served to increase their cruelty.’

Other skills? Helewise thought. Skills that frightened people? Dear God, could Arthur mean what she thought he meant?

He had brought himself under control. After a moment he went on in a quieter tone, ‘But all of that was afterwards. I speak of her coupling with the man who fathered me.’ He paused again, and then said, ‘She would have welcomed him, I am sure, for even as he entered her, brought her to a climax and sowed his seed, she would have been thinking how she could turn his lust to her future advantage.’

A dark suspicion was filling Helewise’s mind. No, more than a suspicion, for was this not what she had feared all along? But to have it confirmed by this man whose resentment had been burning in him for twenty years turned it from a worrying fear to a dread: what did he propose to do? And, even more frightening, how would it affect those that she loved?

‘Unfortunately for my mother,’ Arthur said, ‘the man who fathered me was as unscrupulous as she was. When she told him she was pregnant and stated her modest demands — somewhere to live, an income to support herself and the baby, recognition of the child as his — he laughed in her face and said that since she slept with anyone who asked, what proof was there that it was he who had got her pregnant?’ Hot eyes suddenly fixed on Helewise’s, he cried, ‘He lied! My mother swore that at the time of my conception she had lain with nobody but him and I believed her!’

Helewise held his stare. For reasons of her own she yearned to support the father’s version. But there was a hint of fanaticism in Arthur’s dark eyes and she feared what he might do if she appeared to doubt his mother’s word. So she said, ‘Was no helping hand extended?’

‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘On the contrary, my mother’s seducer saw to it that she was shunned by so-called decent people.’ He laid heavy emphasis on the word. ‘And when she fought back, my mother was maligned and ridiculed. They called her a whore and threw filth at her. When she took her revenge on her tormentors — and she was very good at that — they said she was a witch who killed their cows with a glance of her black eyes and made their children cry all night with inexplicable fevers and terrifying nightmares. We were driven out!’ His voice rose to a shout. ‘She came here, and she’s been here ever since.’

‘She — your mother is still alive?’ Helewise was amazed. If Arthur were indeed the age that Josse had guessed, around the mid-thirties — and now that she was face to face with the man, she was inclined to agree with the estimate — then his mother, even if she had been little more than a girl when she bore him, must be fifty at the least. To have lived for more than thirty cold and hungry years in this damp and fog-ridden hovel was some achievement.

As if Arthur followed the line of her thoughts, he said softly, ‘It is her resentment that keeps her going, my lady. Such is her desire for revenge that, even when she feeds on it alone, she claims to feel as satiated as if she had attended a banquet.’

‘Where is she?’ Helewise asked faintly.

‘She will not be far away.’ Arthur sounded confident. ‘She knows that you were to be brought here. She will soon come back.’

Then, with a glance at her that she could not read, he went outside and closed the door. She heard him push some heavy object up against it and, when after a while she quietly got up and went to try to open it, it would not budge.

She sat down again and waited.

Trying to keep fear out of her mind, she thought about Arthur Fitzurse. It was as she had conjectured, she was sure of it. He was in truth the illegitimate son of Benedict Warin, and that was why he was doing all this; it was why he had sent someone to search Leofgar’s house and implicate him in murder, why now he had brought her here. Before dread could take hold of her, she made herself think about something else. Two matters presented themselves for her immediate consideration: first, why should Benedict have fought so hard to deny the son he had fathered? For a man of his station to spread his seed and throw up one or two bastards was hardly uncommon, after all; why, even kings did it! And Benedict had in any case been a well-known womaniser; although people might have thought the less of him, nobody would have been very surprised to know about Arthur.

The other matter for her to think about was the interesting fact that it seemed to be Arthur’s mother, not he, who was the driving force. She was just turning over in her mind who this fierce woman might be when there came the sound of voices outside. Soon afterwards the door was thrust open and Arthur came in. Behind him stepped a slight figure dressed all in black, a shawl over its head and pulled forward to conceal the face.

Arthur stood aside and tucked himself away in a corner just inside the door. The shrouded figure moved across the room and stopped right in front of Helewise. There was a husky laugh — a woman’s laugh — and then a voice said, ‘Young Helewise de Swansford, or I suppose I should call you Helewise Warin. It must be a quarter of a century since last I set eyes on you. To these eyes of mine that see so clearly, you have scarcely changed. Despite the habit of poverty’ — she seemed almost to spit the word — ‘I would have known you anywhere.’

Helewise drew herself up. ‘You have the advantage, then. Who are you, and what do you want of me?’

The woman laughed again, a sound that now she managed to fill with malevolence and menace. ‘Do you not know? Then I will tell you what happened to me and we shall see if you can guess.’ Before Helewise had a chance to comment, the woman pressed on, her voice louder now and the words coming readily, as if she had gone through this story very many times.

‘I was the daughter of a widow of spotless reputation but limited means,’ she began. ‘We lived honestly but we were poor, and when I was thirteen a position was found for me in a large household. I began as the lowliest of maidservants but as the great improvement in my diet took effect I grew comely and men began to notice me.’ Her face was still concealed but it seemed to Helewise that she stood straighter, preening herself; perhaps she was remembering her lost looks. ‘I was given easier work and a better position, then one day I went with my master and mistress to the Old Manor.’ Helewise gave a start. ‘Aye, Helewise, you remember the place?’ Now the woman was jeering. ‘You remember its master too, I dare say. You remember Benedict Warin as he was in his prime. So do I, lady. So do I.’

She stopped. Turning away from Helewise, she strode to the door and back, as if the memory that she was conjuring up was too powerful for her to stand still. ‘I liked what I saw, I admit that,’ she said, resuming her position in front of the bench where Helewise sat. ‘I knew by then how to attract a man, how to make him think he would never rest again until he had bedded me, and I put my spell on Benedict. It’s quite easy to draw a man when you know how, Helewise,’ she remarked, as if Helewise had asked, ‘a simple matter of a love potion slipped into his broth, a spell spoken naked in the moonlight and the exquisite scent of your own lust on your fingers when your hands are close to his face. He came running, I can tell you, quicker than a hound on a hare.

‘Then when I found I was with child I sought him out and asked him what he was going to do. I told him what I wanted-’

‘Yes,’ Helewise interrupted, ‘I already know the sum of your demands.’

‘Oh, you do, do you?’ The woman’s mocking tone had returned. ‘Reasonable, were they not? The pity of it was that Benedict Warin did not agree. He claimed the child wasn’t his and when I insisted, he threw me out. I kept coming back and he blackened my name, hounded me wherever I went, and I was driven to trying a few little ruses of my own to keep body and soul together. I was pregnant, mind, and you know, don’t you, Helewise, how that state makes the appetite grow? Especially when it’s a healthy boy who kicks in your womb?’

‘Little ruses?’ Helewise demanded sharply. ‘You speak of spells and witchcraft, do you not?’

‘Perhaps, perhaps.’ The woman drew out the words. ‘Folk are superstitious, no matter how the church tries to beat it out of them, and if they prefer to trust in the old ways when they perceive a threat instead of running to that meek and mild saviour whom their priests value so highly, why should I care?’

‘What did you do?’ Helewise whispered.

The woman smiled. ‘Oh, I poisoned a well and when the people fell sick I told them they’d offended the spirit of the spring and that only my charms would save them. Then when they had all paid up I stopped putting the potion in the water — don’t look like that, Helewise! It wouldn’t have killed them, for I know my herbs better than to kill where I don’t intend to — and miraculously the people recovered.’ Leaning closer, she said softly, ‘That was a trick. But I have the Sight and the power to see and to influence things that are veiled from others. You would be surprised to know how many folk crept to my room by night and begged me to make this person fall in love with them, or that person’s crops fail, or tell them what some secret enemy was saying behind their back.’

Despite herself, Helewise was fascinated. ‘How can you see these things?’ she asked.

The woman contemplated her for a long moment. ‘Does your bible not speak of visions?’

‘Yes, but-’

Sirida sighed. ‘But such things are allowed among the holy but not for witches? Helewise, witches are but the holy of an earlier religion! Are you so blind that you cannot see?’

Closing her eyes and her mind to what this terrible person would have her see, Helewise fell silent.

Presently the woman spoke again. ‘What if I did use my talents? I had to help myself, seeing as nobody else was going to. But they turned that against me too and drove me away, accusing me of making magic, of putting the evil eye on their livestock and turning their bawling brats sickly. I promised I’d make all well again if they’d give me what I wanted but oh, no, even my small requests were too much for those smug and self-righteous folk who had once been my neighbours and my friends!’

She was spitting with anger, all the passion of her rejection returning in full force. Her thin body shook with the force of her rage and the concealing shawl slipped slightly; with an impatient hand, the woman pulled it back in place.

Trying to speak calmly, Helewise said, ‘And so you came here and brought up your son alone.’

‘I did,’ the woman agreed, quieter now. ‘Aye, I did.’ She turned and, for a brief moment, stared into the dark corner where Arthur still stood, his head bowed. Facing Helewise again, she said, ‘But I did not let him forget his roots. He’s a Warin, never mind that he was conceived out of wedlock. Yet look at him and look at your own son, Helewise!’ Son, Helewise thought with the first stab of relief; this woman, whoever she is, does not know as much as she believes she does! She does not even know that I bore two sons. ‘Look at Leofgar in his splendid house,’ the black-clad woman was saying, ‘lovely wife and handsome child, food on the table, servants to attend to his every wish, doting mother who conveniently hears the call from God and vacates her marital home so as to leave it free for her son!’

Indeed she does not know everything, Helewise thought jubilantly. She knows nothing of Dominic and she is only guessing at how I came to leave the Old Manor and enter Hawkenlye Abbey. Eyes down lest the woman read her expression, she said meekly, ‘Leofgar has lived a blessed life, in truth.’ Until you came along to spoil it, she wanted to add. ‘But what of it? What is it to you?’ She made her voice sound puzzled and indignant, as if she truly had not grasped what was happening.

The woman gave a sound of annoyance; hard, abrupt. Then: ‘They do not require intelligence of their nuns up at Hawkenlye, then.’ Helewise held her peace. ‘It’s obvious,’ the woman hurried on, eager now. ‘Leofgar has what Arthur ought to have. Leofgar has it all, Arthur has nothing. I am old now and I will not live much longer, yet I would see my son come into his inheritance before I die.’

‘Your son is illegitimate and has no legal claim on the Warins,’ Helewise stated flatly. ‘That is the law. It will not be changed to suit you.’

‘No legal claim, perhaps.’ The woman pretended not to have heard the rest of Helewise’s remark. ‘But he has a moral claim, do you not agree, Helewise? Your father-in-law used me cruelly and flung me away when he was finished with me, and my son and I have lived wretchedly ever since. Why should not Leofgar give some of what he has in such abundance to improve Arthur’s lot?’ When Helewise made no reply — she had no intention of doing so — the woman cried out, ‘I do not ask for much! But what I demand I will have, I swear to you, or else it will be the worst for Leofgar! You think he has suffered already? Well, you wait! If you do not give me what I want, you’ll learn very quickly the terrible things I can do when I’m really angry!’

The threat was awful. But Helewise’s own anger had burned up through her; leaping to her feet, towering over the woman, she shouted, ‘You will not succeed! You have sent a thief to my son’s house and tried to make it appear that my son killed him, and now you have taken me captive, but neither measure will avail you! I am not afraid of you — you will not succeed!’

The echo of her words rang out in the hut and, as they faded, there was silence. A horrible, creeping silence, as if the last word in the world had been spoken. Alarmed, wondering why she should suddenly feel such dread, Helewise stared down at the woman.

Who, with agonising slowness, drew back her dark shawl so that Helewise could at last see her face.

It was very white, as if she seldom ventured out, and thin, the cheekbones stark and sharp. Her wide mouth was tight and surrounded by small outward-radiating lines, deep-etched as if from constant pursing. It was a dead face, sucked dry of all joy and of all generous impulse. In it the only living things were her eyes.

Her eyes burned with fire.

And she was muttering under her breath, continuously, repetitively; it was a spell, and the terrible sense of malice in the hut was the result.

When at last she stopped and Helewise was released from her thrall, the woman spoke in her normal voice. ‘Know me now, do you? They told you I was a witch the first time you saw me, didn’t they?’ She laughed. ‘They were right.’

Helewise, transported back twenty-six years to her wedding day feast as easily as if she were flying on the besom in the corner, saw the woman as she once had been. And she said, with a calm that cost her dear, ‘Yes, I know you. Hello, Sirida.’