Music of the Distant Stars

FOUR

Edild tended me solicitously for the remainder of the day. There was plenty of work to be done — we are usually kept busy, even in the middle of summer — but she insisted that I do nothing more arduous than wash out empty bottles and make them ready for new preparations and remedies. I would rather have done what I usually do, which is to take my share of the less demanding conditions that are presented to us by the villagers, because being forced to concentrate on something more exciting than bottle-washing would have taken my mind off Ida’s round, pretty, dead face. Still, Edild had her reasons. She keeps telling me that a healer must turn all her mind to every single patient, even those with something mundane like corns or a crop of boils, and she probably suspected that today I would have found it difficult. She’d have been right.

Catching her between patients — she was washing her hands in a bowl of warm water scented with lavender oil, and the smell was delicious — I said, ‘Edild, what’s a local justiciar?’

She paused, then resumed her washing and said, ‘King William has, I believe, a new system for promoting law and order. Apparently, he wishes to ensure that justice is done out in the more remote parts of the kingdom, and to this end he has appointed men to judge the graver mis-demeanours, attend meetings of the shire courts, observe how rulings are given out and, in general, ensure that the law is upheld.’

She did not ask why I wanted to know. I decided to tell her, anyway. ‘Alain de Villequier is our local justiciar.’

She gave me a serene smile and said, ‘I know.’

I did not bother demanding how she knew. My aunt seems to have the ability to pick information out of thin air; either that or she is exceptionally observant and just keeps her eyes and ears open. Instead I said, ‘Do you know anything else about him?’

Just then there was a very timid tap on the door. It sounded as if Edild’s next patient had arrived. My aunt looked at me, sympathy in her eyes. ‘I can see you’re burning with impatience, but you’ll have to wait,’ she said kindly. ‘As it happens, I do know more about Alain de Villequier, and I promise I’ll tell you later.’

I took myself out to the barrel in the yard behind the house to resume my bottle-washing. I could hear muttered words from inside the house, but deliberately I made myself deaf to what was said; it’s another part of my healer’s training. Instead, I filled my mind with a question: what did my aunt know of our new justice man, and how on earth had she found it out?

When the two of us had finished work for the day and were sitting outside on the bench in the shade of the three young birch trees behind Edild’s house, sipping one of her cool, refreshing concoctions, at last my patience broke and I said, ‘Well?’

She smiled. ‘Wait a while longer, for the person who provided the information is on his way.’

I waited. After a short while, there was the sound of quick footsteps on the path that leads around the house and Hrype appeared. He gave me a nod by way of greeting, paused behind my aunt and briefly touched her shoulder, then sat down on the end of the bench and accepted a mug of Edild’s cold drink.

My aunt and my friend Sibert’s uncle Hrype are lovers. Nobody knows this except for the two of them and me. I discovered their secret last autumn, through some unusual circumstances that I won’t describe now. Around that time I also discovered that Hrype is not in fact Sibert’s uncle; he’s his father. Both these fascinating facts I have kept to myself. If Hrype and Sibert choose to present themselves to the world as uncle and nephew, instead of father and son, that is their business. Regarding Hrype and Edild, I love my aunt dearly and would not hurt her for the world and, if the truth about her relationship with Hrype became known, it would cause her — and others — great distress and pain. I would not say I am fond of Hrype exactly; he is too strange and powerful for an ordinary mortal like me to have such a normal emotion regarding him. Another reason for keeping these secrets, which are his too, is that he’d probably turn me into a two-headed toad if I didn’t.

Hrype has begun to teach me about some very deep, dark magic. My respect and my fear of him are growing all the time.

That evening I watched them together, my aunt Edild and Hrype the cunning man. Now that I knew their secret, their feelings for each other were plain to see, or perhaps it was that, knowing I knew the truth, they allowed their guard to slip a little. Either way, it was both a pleasure and a pain to see the way his eyes filled with tenderness as he looked at her; the way she stroked a lock of hair away from his lean face with a hand as gentle as a mother’s with a sleeping baby. A pleasure because it touched my heart to see Edild looking so happy. A pain because I understood the difficulties they faced; also because observing a pair so devoted to each other reminded me of the man I love, who had slipped out of my life the previous autumn and left me with no hope that I’d ever see him again. Except for something my aunt had said. .

I brought myself back to the present with a lurch; Hrype was speaking to me. ‘You wish to know about Alain de Villequier, Lassair?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Listen, then, and I will tell you what I know.’ He stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankle, and fixed me with his silvery eyes. ‘He is a man who moves close to the king’s intimate circle. He is not within it, but his own circle touches it.’ He leaned forward and drew a diagram in the dusty ground: a small circle surrounded by five other, larger circles, the edges of which touched against the small one. ‘This is King William, with his personal elite,’ he said, pointing to the inner circle. ‘These are the groups of his close associates — ’ he indicated the five larger circles — ‘in each of which there is a leading figure who reports directly to one of the elite. Alain de Villequier, who comes from a powerful and prominent Norman family, is in one such group. The king’s trust in him is sufficient that he has appointed him justiciar for our area and has provided him with a small but handsome manor house, Alderhall, where Sir Alain will live while he is with us.’

‘Edild explained what “justiciar” means,’ I said.

‘Good, then I shall not repeat her. This business of the dead girl in Cordeilla’s grave will be a test for him. The king will be kept informed as to how he handles the enquiry.’ I felt a shiver of sympathy for Alain de Villequier; such a challenge, with the spectre of King William looking over my shoulder, would have terrified me into petrifaction.

‘Sir Alain has much to gain if he is efficient and brings this matter to a swift conclusion,’ Hrype went on, ‘for as well as the king, there is a future mother-in-law to impress.’

‘Sir Alain is to be wed?’ I asked.

‘He is. The young lady’s father was long a bedridden invalid, and died some years ago, but it has always been her mother whose opinion really counts, for it is she who holds the strings of the purse.’ He paused. ‘The mother is a very wealthy woman.’

He frowned, apparently gathering his thoughts, and neither Edild nor I interrupted. ‘Alma de Caudebec, the young lady’s grandmother, married a great Norman baron, Bastien de St Claire. He was awarded a grand estate in the Thetford Forest, close to the place where in ages past the ancestors mined for flint. Alma bore her baron a single child — a daughter, Claritia — who wed Gaspard de Sees, the younger son of another, much less prominent, Norman family; their earthly comfort was dramatically heightened by the add-ition of her wealth, but they remain socially insignificant. Claritia and her husband had two children, both girls. Our Sir Alain’s family have much need of money, and I would guess that it was made plain to him from boyhood that he must marry wealth. A match was arranged between him and Claritia’s elder daughter, Genevieve, and negotiations were well advanced when the girl fell into a fainting fit from which she has never fully recovered.’

I glanced at Edild and met her eyes. I imagined that, like me, she was going through her medical knowledge — in her case, so much greater than mine — to see if she could hazard a guess as to what had caused this fit and why its effects should persist.

‘Fortunately for both families,’ Hrype went on, ‘each of whom has their reasons for desiring the match, there is another, younger, sister. She-’

‘Why do the girl’s family want this marriage with a man who is far from rich?’ I put in.

Hrype raised an eyebrow. ‘Because they want the de Villequier name,’ he said. ‘They have discovered that wealth is not enough. When it is in the hands of a name not recognized by the great magnates of the land, it buys material goods, but not position.’

‘So he comes from a famous family?’ I persisted.

‘He does. The name resonates through Norman halls of power.’ I would have liked to know more and was poised to ask another question when Hrype, who seemed to read my mind, shot me a glowering look and I subsided. ‘There was still a problem to be surmounted, however,’ he said, ‘because the younger daughter is very, very devout and had set her heart on entering a convent and dedicating her life and her body to the service of God. When her mother told her that she could not have her dearest wish and instead was to marry Alain de Villequier, she, too, fell into a faint, although in her case recovery was somewhat swifter. She tried everything she could think of, even going as far as shaving her head and adopting the habit of a nun, but her mother was adamant.’

I felt a surge of sympathy for this poor girl. I am quite interested in the Christian religion, and I appreciate how people love the charismatic, compassionate, suffering figure of their saviour, but I cannot imagine dedicating my life to him at the cost of everything that normally lies in wait for a woman. Earthly love, a husband, children. My sister Elfritha is a nun, in the convent at Chatteris. I know that she is blissfully happy, despite the hardships of the life. I also know it is not for me. However, to want with all your soul to be a nun and be forced into marriage instead would, I imagined, be as bad as wanting to marry and being shut up in a convent.

‘In the end the girl bowed to her mother’s wishes,’ Hrype was saying, ‘although they say that the concession was partly starved, partly beaten out of her.’ He frowned. ‘Claritia has, apparently, a heavy hand.’

‘Where is she now?’ I asked. ‘Have they locked her up in a high tower in case she runs away?’

Hrype smiled. ‘No. She has given her word at the altar that she will marry Alain de Villequier, and her word is good enough. She is, as I have said, very devout. She will not break an oath sworn before God.’

It was, I thought, cunning of her mother to have made the girl swear her oath in church. It was devious, somehow, to use the strength of the girl’s feelings against her. I decided I really did not like the sound of this Claritia.

Hrype was speaking. To my amazement I heard the word Lakehall.

‘What?’ I demanded. ‘What’s that about Lakehall?’

‘It is where the lady is staying,’ Hrype said. ‘She lodges with her kinsman Lord Gilbert.’

Of course! I’d thought fleetingly when Hrype had mentioned the name of the young lady’s grandmother that it was somehow familiar. ‘So Lord Gilbert’s grandfather and the girl’s grandmother were brother and sister,’ I said slowly, working it out, ‘making her and Lord Gilbert second cousins.’

‘Yes,’ Hrype agreed. ‘With his future wife living for the moment at Lakehall, where she is staying prior to the wedding to allow her to become acquainted with her husband, all the more reason for Sir Alain to be given the task of investigating the death of the young seamstress.’

Information had been coming too fast. I held up my hands, muttering, ‘Wait, wait!’ It did not take me long; I just had to bring together two strands of the story, which I had thought ran separately. ‘So Sir Alain is to wed Lady Claude,’ I said, ‘for she is the woman you’ve been speaking of — the wealthy heiress who wanted to be a nun, but has to marry because her mother wants the power of an ancient and revered family name.’ Hrype began to answer, but I hadn’t finished. ‘Lady Claude has come here to meet Sir Alain, and it’s her seamstress, Ida, who accompanied her to Lakehall to help her sew her trousseau, who has been killed.’

Hrype waited with exaggerated patience to see if I was going to say more. When it became clear that I wasn’t, he said, ‘Well done, Lassair.’ There was a definite note of irony in his voice.

Edild had not spoken for some time. She had sat there absorbing Hrype’s story and only now did she stir. ‘You are well-informed, Hrype,’ she observed.

‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘how do you come to know all this?’

He took one of Edild’s hands in both of his, gently caressing the back of it with his long fingers. Then he turned to look at me. ‘I heard several weeks ago of Sir Alain de Villequier’s appointment,’ he replied, ‘and I thought that, since he would come to be a prominent figure in the vicinity, I ought to discover what I could about the man. I went to see a good friend of mine who lives in Cambridge.’ He glanced at me, a flash of mischief in his eyes. ‘Gurdyman is a wizard, Lassair. He has the power to stare into the scrying glass and divine the secrets of men’s lives and hearts.’

I did not know whether to believe him. The idea of a magical wizard living in the urban sophistication of Cambridge was somehow hard to accept but, on the other hand, Hrype certainly did know some very odd people. .

‘Have pity on her, Hrype,’ Edild murmured.

He grinned, suddenly looking much younger and almost carefree. ‘Very well. Gurdyman is in truth a sage, a wise man who spends his days hunched up over ancient manuscripts, trying to winkle out the wisdom of the past. He is also very astute and, for a man of such an academic temperament, surprisingly well informed about the doings of the great and the good of our land. The de Villequier family’s history is well known to him, as is that of the de Caudebecs.’

I wondered why a Cambridge sage had been prompted to learn so much about a bunch of Normans. Hrype answered my question, even though I had not spoken it aloud.

‘I was not entirely in jest when I said Gurdyman was a wizard,’ he said softly. ‘He is profoundly wise in the Old Ways and therefore potentially an object of interest to our new masters. It always pays, young Lassair, to know your enemy. Gurdyman’s knowledge of the Normans is probably as great as that of King William himself.’

Your enemy. His words chilled me, not because they told me anything I did not already know — the Normans have been ruling over us for more than twenty-five years now and, although we have no choice but to bow down before their ruthless and chillingly efficient authority, nevertheless in our hearts they are still the enemy. No; what caused my attention to falter is that it is to one of them, a Norman, that I seem to have given my heart. The man I love is, on his own admission, close to the central power that now rules in our land.

It hardly mattered, though, who he was, if I was never going to see him again. .

There was a touch on my arm, and I came out of my sad reverie. Edild was looking at me, concern in her eyes. ‘You are very pale, Lassair,’ she said. ‘You should sleep now, for the day has been long and full of distress for you.’

She was right. All of a sudden I felt so weary that it was all I could do to stand up. ‘Please excuse me, then,’ I said politely. ‘I will go and prepare for bed.’

I wanted to visit the jakes and wash my face and hands before I undressed. In addition, it was nice if my aunt and Hrype had the chance to say goodnight without a witness. I took my time and, when I had finished, I strolled down the track for a few paces, sensing the small rustlings of the evening as the wild creatures settled down for the night. I looked up at the sky. The stars were appearing even as I watched. It was a beautiful sight.

Suddenly I was vitally alert, my eyes, ears, even my skin, sensing all around me and fear coursing through me like flame. I had heard an unexpected sound: someone was singing.

I don’t know why it alarmed me so much. Yes, it was a plaintive, sad song, so full of despair that it would have moved me to tears had I not been so afraid. It was not exactly a song; more a chant, and I am very familiar with chants. My Granny Cordeilla taught me that it is often easier to remember the endless lines of a long narrative if you put in some rhythm and some rhyme, and from there it’s only a matter of time before you start singing.

What was worrying about this lament — it could not have been anything else — was that I did not recognize the voice, the notes of the chant nor the words, and I knew therefore that the singer was nobody I knew; nobody who belonged in Aelf Fen.

What was really frightening was that, although I stared all around me, I could not see anybody. The singer was invisible.

I wanted to flee, but I could not. It was as if the sounds I was hearing, which seemed to flow over me and draw me into the strong emotion behind them, had fixed me to the spot. Against my will I listened to the words. It was very strange, but it was as if I could not hear them individually; I could only perceive the meaning they strove to impart. The chill of coming night seemed to flow up out of the ground into my feet, up my legs and into the warm centre of my body, and as the chant went on I felt as if my soul was being drawn out of me, up, up, away from the good, solid earth and into the darkening sky, heading for the stars. .

Then I heard a door quietly close and the sound of firm footsteps on the path behind me. Abruptly, the singing stopped.

Hrype called out, ‘Sleep well, Lassair.’

I dragged myself together and managed a reply. Even to my own ears, my voice sounded shaky. Hoping he would attribute this to my fatigue — he had stopped and was eyeing me curiously — I made myself smile. ‘I’ll be quite all right tomorrow,’ I said.

He smiled back. ‘You’d better be,’ he remarked. ‘It promises to be a challenging day.’

Wondering what he meant — it sounded ominous — I hurried back along the track to Edild’s cottage, let myself in and very carefully closed and fastened the door.