Music of the Distant Stars

NINETEEN

The effort of talking seemed to have exhausted Sir Alain, who was lying back on his pillows with his eyes closed. ‘He should sleep,’ Edild whispered to me.

I nodded. ‘Can you spare me for a while?’ I asked.

‘I can, yes. If you are going out, you can take this tonic round to William for his old mother.’ She took the small vessel down from the shelf and handed it to me.

I put it in my satchel. ‘What’s in it?’

Edild gave a wry smile. ‘Little that will do her any good, I fear, for she is dying. It is mainly honey and water, with some cleansing herbs that will give a bitter tang and make the medicine taste sufficiently unpleasant for the old soul to believe it must surely be beneficial.’ She had suggested to me before that even a mixture that was mainly water might persuade a patient that his symptoms had been reduced if the healer presented it with sufficient conviction.

I was turning to leave when my aunt caught my sleeve. ‘Don’t accept anything in payment,’ she said. ‘It would not be right, for what I am sending is worthless.’

I nodded my understanding. Worthless, I thought as I strode away. I would do as my aunt commanded and take no payment, but I did not agree with her assessment of her remedy. She may not appreciate it, but the people of our village believe in her, and indeed they are right to do so. Even a bottle of water has worth when it comes from Edild’s hands.

I made my way to William’s tiny house and, when he came to the door in answer to my soft tap, I gave him the remedy. He stared at it as if I had presented him with a magical elixir — which, in a way, I suppose I had.

‘Thank you,’ he breathed, his eyes moist. ‘Thank your aunt, please. I know how much this will help Mother.’

It did not seem right to allow him to hope. I said, as gently as I could, ‘Do not expect a miracle, William. She is very old and frail, and it may be that her time on earth is drawing to its close.’

He looked at me. ‘I know,’ he said simply. ‘But I am not sure she does. If I can keep her spirits up, it helps.’

I reached out and took his hand. His words had moved me, and I admired him for his selflessness. That it came at a heavy cost to him was evident in his face and his bearing. I could think of nothing to say, so presently I let his hand drop and, with a brief farewell and a reminder to call on us if he needed anything, I left.

I could stride away in the sunshine of a lovely day. William, poor man, had to shut himself up in the frowsty darkness with a very old woman. I asked the spirits to support him and give him the strength he needed.

William’s house was on the far side of the village, near the spot where the road diverges and paths strike off towards Breckland to the north-east and Thetford to the east. Instead of returning along the bend of the track that runs through the village, I cut due south across the higher ground that lies to the east so as to approach Edild’s house from the back. The land was much drier up here above the marshes, but even so it did not yield much. There was some pasture, cropped close by the nibbling teeth of Lord Gilbert’s sheep, and an area of strips was under the plough. As I walked I nodded to some of the villagers working away there on the upland. There were never very many of them. Most of the labour force of the village was down on the fen cutting reeds and sedge and carving out peat for fuel. It was hard work; few men or women in Aelf Fen made old bones.

Directly ahead of me was an ancient oak tree, a rare enough specimen in our area for it to be a landmark, and indeed I had been using it as a marker, for when I reached it I would turn right and come out behind Edild’s house. I was preoccupied, thinking that William’s mother was probably the village’s oldest inhabitant and wondering just how old she was, when I sensed movement among the thick foliage of the oak and, almost simultaneously, someone dropped out of its lower branches and called out to me.

It was Alberic.

‘What do you-’ I began, before he shushed me violently and beckoned to me to join him in the huge tree’s deep shadow. ‘What are you doing here?’ I hissed as I approached him.

‘Is he dead?’ he whispered urgently. ‘I couldn’t help it — I saw him there by her grave, and I went wild.’ The words were tumbling out of him. ‘He seduced her and made her pregnant, and all the time he knew perfectly well he was going to wed that whey-faced woman who would far rather be a nun, but I didn’t mean to kill him, and I shouldn’t have hit him like I did! He-’

I put my hand on his arm, trying to quieten him. ‘Sir Alain is alive,’ I said clearly and calmly. ‘My aunt is a healer, and she has tended him.’

I watched as Alberic absorbed the news. Then, predictably, he said, ‘Does he know who hit him?’

‘He heard you singing,’ I replied. ‘Besides, it is, I think, fairly obvious.’

The dread and the terrible anxiety seemed to leach out of him, and he slumped against the broad, accommodating trunk of the oak, sliding down until his buttocks rested on the ground. ‘I shouldn’t have done it,’ he muttered. ‘I’m not a violent man.’

I sat down beside him. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’ I suggested.

Alberic slowly shook his head, but not in denial. ‘I don’t think there’s much to tell,’ he said. ‘I attacked him, right enough. He was kneeling by her grave with his back to me. I’d been sitting there all night, singing my song to her, and I think it was all too much.’ A sob broke out of him. ‘I knew he’d always had an eye for Ida, but I didn’t really think anything of it because, from what I’d seen of him, he was like that with all the pretty girls. Funny thing is, they must all have realized the sort of man he was, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. They all liked him.’ He shook his head again as if in puzzlement at the incomprehensible ways of the world.

I pitied him. Married to a jealous and possessive dragon of a woman, the one ray of light in his wretched life had been a girl whom he did not dare approach and with whom all he could share was the occasional song. What a contrast with Alain de Villequier who, as I had observed myself, did indeed have a way with women. .

‘They were that discreet, it didn’t even occur to me there was anything going on between them,’ Alberic said sadly. He glanced at me. ‘I–I thought better of Ida,’ he said, shamefaced. ‘I believed she was too good, too pure, to give herself to a man betrothed to another woman. But then, what do I know?’ he added bitterly.

‘When did you find out?’ I felt hugely sorry for him. Yes, he had just attacked a man and left him for dead, but I was beginning to understand what had driven him to it.

‘When I came here to Aelf Fen to seek her out,’ he replied. ‘I discovered that Lakehall was nearby, and I reckoned I’d be able to live rough, it being summer and the weather good, while I found her and told her I was now free.’ He laughed shortly. ‘Fat lot of good that did me, I can tell you. She looked at me out of those lovely eyes of hers and said she was honoured by my affection for her, but she loved another. When I pressed her, when I told her about my tidy little cottage and the decent living I make with my flint-working and the music and that, she said she was very sorry, but she could never be mine.’ He paused, and I saw tears in his eyes. ‘I went on at her, demanding to know who the other man was, and in the end she took pity on me and told me she was carrying this other feller’s child.’

‘She didn’t mention Sir Alain?’

He smiled grimly. ‘No. But now she’d told me there was someone else, I thought back, and I saw what I should have seen all along. She loved him all right. I knew then it was hopeless.’

I reached for his hand, then, pitching my voice so he would realize it wasn’t a serious suggestion, said, ‘You didn’t kill her in a fit of jealousy?’ I already knew the answer.

‘No,’ he said, his gentle face full of emotion. ‘I had to face up to the fact I had lost her, but I knew I just had to let her go. I loved her. It was not in me to take her life because she did not love me. I told her I wished her well, and in my heart I made myself believe it.’

That was true love indeed, I thought, that a man would place a woman’s happiness so far above his own, even though she would enjoy it with someone else.

‘I believe I know who put her in my Granny’s grave,’ I said. ‘I believe it was Derman.’ I explained my theory.

‘Derman?’ Alberic said when I had finished.

I explained about Derman too.

‘Didn’t know about him,’ Alberic muttered. ‘Someone else who couldn’t keep their eyes off my Ida.’

I was just thinking that, unless he was a very good liar, it didn’t look as if Alberic had killed Derman, when he spoke again. ‘Reckon I know who you mean, though,’ he said. ‘Big, awkward sort of feller, large head, big, floppy mouth.’

‘That was Derman, yes.’

‘Hmm.’ I waited. ‘Saw him talking to a woman,’ Alberic went on after a while. ‘Or, I should say, she was talking to him, standing there in front of him wagging her finger at him, giving him a right ticking-off.’

I stiffened. ‘What did this woman look like?’

‘She was a right looker. Black hair with a bluish sheen, lovely golden skin, and she moved like a dancer.’

Zarina.

‘And where did you see this exchange between her and Derman?’

‘Down one of the tracks that leads out to the fen edge. I reckon they thought they were alone out there — it’s a desolate spot.’

There spoke a man who didn’t live in the fens, I thought. I pictured the scene. I imagined Derman returning from some hopeless mission to spy on Ida. Perhaps she had been out collecting the wild flowers she had reproduced so beautifully and faithfully in her embroidery on Lady Claude’s bed sheets, and he had followed her. I pictured Zarina, angry because he’d been neglecting his duties and she’d had to do all the hard work. I heard Zarina’s furious, scolding voice in my head: Leave her alone! She’s no good for you!

Then, sliding into the corner of my mind so subtly that at first I didn’t notice, I thought of something else. I saw a passionate and beautiful young woman who had fallen in love with a village man and wanted more than anything to marry him. I saw her despair, because she was tied to a simpleton of a brother and, as he had saved her when she’d needed him, owed him far too much to allow herself to abandon him.

My excitement mounting, I wondered if I’d got it all wrong and Zarina had been reproving Derman because he was making no progress in his courtship of Ida. Perhaps she had been trying to encourage him, for if by some miracle Ida had taken pity on her unlikely suitor and accepted him, Zarina would have been free to marry my brother.

When it became clear that Ida, kind though she was, had gently turned Derman down, had Zarina’s frustration and rage got the better of her? Had she lost her temper and strangled Ida?

I pictured her hands, rough and very strong from the endless wringing of heavy, wet fabric. Before she’d been a washerwoman she’d been a dancer. An acrobat. I’d seen her perform with my own eyes, and I understood the power there was in her muscular frame.

Out of my memory I heard Zarina’s terrible cry: You know nothing about me! Oh, oh, had she been trying to tell me that the reason she couldn’t marry Haward was because she was a killer? And then had she, as I had suspected, gone on to kill Derman, not because he had stood in her way, but because he knew she had strangled Ida?

I had to find out.

Alberic was studying me. ‘Important, is it, what I just told you?’

The answer was yes. But I could not admit it. The woman I was prepared to welcome as my sister-in-law might well have committed two murders. . and, if she had, I was going to have to decide what to do about it. For the time being at least, the possibility had to remain a deadly secret. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said, my tone casual. ‘Probably not.’

I sat with him for a while longer. I did not want him to remember later that I had rushed off in a lather as soon as he’d mentioned Zarina and Derman. I waited, even hummed a little tune, then eventually I stood up and remarked that I ought to be getting back to my aunt.

Straight away he looked anxious again, and I guessed he was thinking about Sir Alain and wondering how he was. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘He seems to have a hard skull.’

Alberic managed a weak smile. ‘What’s he going to do? I’ll be arrested, won’t I? I tried to kill him, after all.’

I thought about it. Alain de Villequier had rather a lot on his conscience; too much, perhaps, to leap to accuse a man who had attacked him for the sake of the woman both men had loved. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Maybe not.’

Hope leapt into his eyes. ‘I was thinking I should get away from here,’ he muttered, ‘much as I want to stay.’

To be close to Ida, I guessed. ‘You can’t stay for ever,’ I pointed out gently.

He looked at me sadly. ‘For a while longer, at least.’ It sounded as if he were pleading with me.

I bowed my head. ‘As you wish.’

Then I hefted my satchel on to my shoulder and left him.

I didn’t return to Edild’s house. Instead I doubled back and slipped along under cover of the scrubby hedgerows, dipping back into the village close by the widow Berta’s house. She was within — I could hear her arguing with someone — but I caught sight of Zarina’s slim figure down by the water.

I approached her and, as she heard my footsteps, she paused in her work and looked up at me. I studied her. She had rolled up her sleeves, and her hands were red and raw. She wore her usual heavy sacking apron, and her hair was covered by a white kerchief. Her face was sweaty with effort.

I did not allow the stab of sympathy I felt for her to take hold. I said, ‘Zarina, you must tell me the truth.’

Emotion flashed in her golden-green eyes, and I sensed that she was tense with apprehension. Or — the thought was alarming — with anger.

‘About what?’ she said cagily.

There was no point in anything but a direct assault. ‘You told me once I know nothing about you,’ I said. ‘You have explained certain things concerning your past, but I am convinced that you have omitted more than you have revealed.’

Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes seemed to snap at me. ‘What right have you to know?’ she said in an ominous whisper.

‘You are to marry into my family,’ I snapped back. ‘That gives me the right, for I would not see my brother wed to a-’ I bit back the word. I would not yet accuse her. ‘To someone who would bring him wretchedness and unhappiness,’ I said instead.

She sank back on to her heels, considering me. ‘And why do you think I would do that?’

‘There are secrets you keep that, when they are known, will ruin Haward’s life, for if you are condemned he will suffer almost as much as you, so dearly does he love you.’

Her lovely face was the picture of puzzlement. I was just beginning to wonder if I was mistaken, when I recalled what else she had been before she was a washerwoman: she had been a performer, skilled, no doubt, in taking on a different persona when it suited her.

I would not, I told myself firmly, be fooled by her.

She was still looking perplexed. I said impatiently, ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.’

She smiled fleetingly. ‘But I don’t. Really, Lassair, I don’t.’

‘Then I will put it into words.’ I was furious now, all caution gone. ‘I know you argued with Derman over his love for Ida. I thought at first you were cross because all the time he was mooning after her, he wasn’t helping you, but then I realized the truth.’

‘And what was that?’ She spoke guardedly, and her tone gave away nothing.

‘You were beside yourself because his pathetic attempts to court her were failing!’ I cried. ‘If she had taken pity on him and accepted him, married him even, you would have been free. She would have taken your lifelong burden away from you, and you could have married Haward without having to bring your brother into the family too.’ I paused for breath. She said nothing, merely watched me closely, and I plunged on. ‘But Ida turned him down, and you were so angry that you killed her. Derman saw you do it, and so he had to die too. That’s why you slipped out by yourself that night to look for him. You had to find him, discover how much he had seen and, if he threatened to expose you as a murderer, you had to silence him. Which you did — you set a trip wire on the posts beside the causeway out to the island and, when he fell into the water, you crushed his skull.’ I paused again, panting hard. ‘Didn’t you?’

I stared down intently at her. I had expected angry denials, violence, a cat’s claw, hissing, scratching attack on my face. But Zarina stayed there, quite still, her expression impassive.

Then two tears spilled out of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

I did not know what to do or what to think. Desperate now, I said, ‘Are you left-handed?’

She looked up at me in amazement. ‘Why on earth do you-? No. I favour my right hand.’ As if to demonstrate, she dipped into her pocket and extracted a torn piece of thin linen, with which she dried her tears. She held it in her right hand.

Slowly, I lowered myself on to the ground beside her. Our eyes met and held. I sensed her reaching out to me. I said, ‘Zarina, won’t you confide in me?’ Realizing that, bearing in mind the dreadful accusations I had just thrown at her, I was probably the last person on earth she would trust, I gave her hand a squeeze. ‘Whatever you’ve done, I’m quite sure you had your reasons,’ I said softly.

After what seemed a very long time, she removed her hand from mine and started to speak.

‘I related to you how I had to flee from Haglar,’ she began.

‘The man your father was trying to make you marry,’ I replied. ‘Yes. I remember.’

‘I told you, too, how he sent a man after me and Derman killed him?’

‘Yes.’

She nodded. ‘Good. Then you will understand, perhaps, if I explain how I never felt safe, even with the troupe of entertainers. We travelled all over, this country, that city, and always the fear lurked that, having sent one man who managed to track me down, Haglar would do so again and this time I would not be so fortunate as to have Derman on hand to conveniently remove him.’ She paused, her eyes full of the memory of that constant dread. ‘In the end I confided in one of the older women in the troupe,’ she went on. ‘Knowing what Derman was like, you will, I am sure, understand that it was not much comfort to talk to him. He would kill for me — he had killed for me — but his comprehension was severely limited. As long as he was well fed, warm, and the sun shone, he was happy. Until he met Ida,’ she added under her breath.

‘So,’ she continued after a moment, ‘I opened my heart to Mathilde. She listened in silence, although I could sense she understood and sympathized. When I had finished, she said that she, too, had been threatened with a marriage she did not want, and her way of avoiding had been simple: she had married someone else.’

As the surprise faded, I saw the sense of it. Haglar might still succeed in tracking Zarina, and he would no doubt try to have her abducted, but even if he did, she would be able to hurl in his face the fact of her being legally married to someone else and, unless or until he could contrive to have that marriage annulled, he would be powerless.

‘I was desperate,’ she went on. She was looking at me, her face flushed with embarrassment. ‘I was young, I was out of my mind with worry, I was alone — ’ you had your brother, I wanted to say, but then, remembering what sort of man he had been, I realized she was right — ‘and I did what I did with barely a thought. Before I knew it, I was married and — ’ her blush deepened, turning her cheeks to scarlet — ‘and because I was well aware that an unconsummated marriage can be dissolved, I did my utmost to make that marriage one of the flesh.’ She dropped her head. ‘I failed,’ she whispered.

I wondered what he had been like, this man from the troupe who had agreed to marry the young Zarina so as to keep her out of another man’s clutches. Why had he not succeeded in making love to her? Had he been very old, perhaps? I found it hard to imagine any other reason for a man not to leap at the invitation into Zarina’s bed. Or — I recalled something Edild had told me — perhaps this husband had been one of those men who are aroused only by their own sex, as the rumours said our reeve, Bermund, was.

Could I ask her? I waited, not speaking, and after a while she raised her head again and looked at me. To my surprise, she was smiling.

‘You do not know, do you?’

‘How could I?’ I flashed back. ‘I only saw your troupe on one occasion. How do you expect me to guess which man was your husband?’

Your husband.

The words sank in at last, and I understood. I stared at her, horrified. ‘You’re married!’ I whispered. ‘That’s why you can’t marry Haward!’ I saw my dear brother’s face, imagined him having to say goodbye to his hopes of happiness, and something in me broke. ‘You’re married,’ I repeated numbly. ‘Your reluctance had nothing to do with Derman.’

She reached out and took my hand again, holding it so tightly that I could feel the cracked, rough skin of hers. I felt a wave of emotion coming off her — a wave of love? — and I did not know what to do. I saw again the fall of my runes, that time I had tried to read the future for this extraordinary woman and my beloved brother. I remembered what I had seen. A very small, very faint hope began to shine.

Zarina put her face close to mine and whispered, ‘It has everything to do with Derman. Lassair, dear Lassair, he was already with the troupe when I ran away and joined them. He wasn’t my brother, he was my husband.’

I believe I knew it a blink of an eye before she told me. Nevertheless, her words still rocked me to my core. It all fell into place: You know nothing about me, she had cried. How right she was.

‘I regretted it almost straight away,’ she was saying softly. ‘My terrible attempt to make him consummate the marriage is something for which I can never forgive myself. He didn’t understand, you see, yet somehow I fear I planted in him the seed that would lead to his infatuation with Ida.’ She paused. ‘He was not formed as most adult men are formed,’ she said delicately.

‘I know,’ I said dully. ‘I helped my aunt lay him out, and I saw his body.’

‘Of course you did,’ she breathed. I sensed she was relieved. ‘Well, then.’

I could think of nothing to say. After a moment Zarina spoke again. ‘Life was not so bad,’ she said. ‘I loved the travelling, and I enjoyed my work as a performer. I learned to tolerate Derman and forgive him his shortcomings, which, indeed, were no fault of his. I knew that I could trust him, for he had already proved that he would do almost anything for me. In a way, I grew fond of him.’ She hesitated. ‘Then one Lammas time we came to a small settlement in the fen country and I fell in love with your brother.’ She glanced at me.

‘I didn’t kill Derman,’ she said after a while. ‘It would have been like killing a child. I swear to you, Lassair, on all I hold dear. I wanted him gone — of course I did — but I took no step such as you suggest to rid myself of him. He saved my life,’ she reminded me. ‘What vengeance would I have brought down on to myself, had I murdered my saviour?’

Slowly, I nodded. I understood. Some things in this world are simply unforgivable, and the retribution would have been terrible.

She was still holding my hand, and now I placed my other hand over hers. ‘I am sorry I accused you,’ I said humbly. ‘I know I was wrong.’

My head was down, and she bent so she could look into my face. ‘Do you?’ She spoke with sudden fervour.

‘Yes.’ I smiled. ‘Really, yes.’

Her tense expression relaxed. She smiled. ‘I’m very, very glad to hear it.’

‘Why?’ I was smiling too.

‘Because I’ve just told your brother I’m going to marry him.’

The runes had been right. My heart began to sing.