Alys Clare - The Enchanter's Forest

She added something more — perhaps a word of comfort — but whatever it was, Helewise could not hear over the torrent of hysterical sobbing that rose in a crescendo of dreadful sound from the stricken Primevere. Melusine patted her daughter’s hands, offered a handkerchief, a drink of water, but Primevere, eyes squeezed shut and leaking a flood of tears, batted her blindly away. She tried to speak, eventually getting the words out: ‘Dead! Florian is dead! Oh, and here I lay, wasting time in polite pleasantries with my neighbour’s fussy old serving woman, all the time not knowing that my beloved husband was lost to me!’

Helewise, affected by the girl’s outpouring of grief, moved over to the bed and crouched down beside Primevere. ‘My dear, you were not to know that anything was amiss,’ she said. ‘Your mother told me that you had convinced yourself all was well and that Florian’s absence was merely because he was too busy at the tomb to come home.’

‘Yes, yes, that’s what I thought!’ sobbed Primevere. ‘But I was wrong, wasn’t I?’ She had opened her eyes and was staring fixedly at Helewise. ‘All the time he lay dead and I did not know!’ Then, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand, she asked plaintively, ‘When did he die, my lady?’ She took a sobbing breath. ‘And how ? Did he have an accident? A fall?’

Anxious to help in any way, even if it meant answering painful questions such as this one, Helewise quickly said, ‘We think it happened about four days ago. I spoke to a guard at the tomb, who told me that Florian was heading for home late in the day bearing bags of coins. He did not do as he usually did and detail one of them to ride with him because all the guards had their hands full looking after the overnight guests. But, as the guard pointed out, Florian rode a fast horse and he must have been confident that he could escape from any attempt to waylay him and rob him.’

‘Is that what happened?’ Primevere whispered.

Helewise glanced at Melusine. Was it, she wondered, the right moment to tell this poor, grieving young woman the brutal details of her husband’s death? Would it not be better to reveal the nature of his murder in a day or two, when she was over the first terrible shock?

But Primevere caught the look and, before Melusine could respond, she fixed Helewise with a stare and said in a surprisingly authoritative voice, ‘You must answer my question, my lady. I have a right to know how my husband met his death.’

‘Indeed you do,’ Helewise said soothingly, ‘and I thought only to spare you further pain at this dreadful time.’

‘I wish,’ said Primevere, the tears falling freely, ‘to be told.’

‘Somebody was lying in wait for him,’ Helewise said, agonising for her. ‘It appears that his habits were well known and presumably some opportunist had discovered that, on that particular night, Florian was to ride without a bodyguard.’ It suddenly occurred to her in a flash of illumination that perhaps one of the guards had been paid for that very information — perhaps, contrary to what she had been told, it had been the guards themselves who had stated that they were too busy with the overnight guests for any of them to accompany their master home. .

But that was not a thought to share with anybody just yet, particularly poor Florian’s shocked and weeping widow.

Who was now staring at her with wide eyes in a deathly pale face, waiting for her to go on. ‘They attacked him and stole the money?’ she whispered.

‘They did,’ Helewise confirmed.

‘Could they not have just robbed him?’ Primevere murmured pathetically. ‘When they had got what they wanted, could they not have just left him there? Oh, but to kill him!’ She dropped her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving with the extremity of her pain.

‘I am so very sorry,’ Helewise said softly. ‘I shall pray for you, my dear, and for Florian.’

‘Florian,’ Primevere said, slowly raising her head. Then she wailed, ‘Oh, oh , what am I to do? What is to become of me?’

‘You have your home and your husband’s wealth,’ Helewise said, wanting nothing more than to make the poor young woman realise that things could be worse. ‘Believe me, my dear, I see many women who, on the death of a husband, lose everything else as well and must henceforth depend on charity for their daily bread. It is no comfort now, I know that, but in time it will be and you will be reassured by having the blanket of your husband’s fortune to shelter you from the cold.’

‘She speaks true,’ Melusine added. Her voice taking on an unexpected and not entirely convincing sugary tone, she added, ‘Listen to her, Primevere, and tell yourself that poor Florian would be deeply distressed to see you thus, he who so loved to look into your lovely eyes and admire your pale beauty.’

Primevere dropped her face in her hands again and sobbed even harder. Catching Helewise’s eye, Melusine said quietly and with cool dignity, ‘Thank you, my lady, for all that you have done. I will look after my daughter now.’

She bent her veiled head over her daughter’s wild hair. Helewise got to her feet and, with one last glance, left the room and tiptoed away.

It was a great relief to rejoin the two monks and get away from Hadfeld. The brothers knew better than to question her but she told them briefly what had happened. Saul, his own eyes moist with sympathetic tears, said it was dreadful, quite dreadful, and he didn’t know what the world was coming to. Augustus said nothing. When, a little later, Helewise caught his eye, he said, ‘Saw someone ride away after you went into the house, my lady, although we only got a quick glimpse.’

‘Yes. I was informed that there was a visitor. It was the serving woman of a neighbour of theirs called Ranulf of Crowbergh.’

‘A serving woman?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hm. She rode a fine horse for such a person. It was a bay gelding. Seems such horses are two a penny hereabouts.’

Helewise thought about that. Then, for in her experience bay geldings were two a penny almost everywhere, she put it from her mind and, urging the cob on, set a pace sufficiently fast to ensure that they would arrive back at Hawkenlye well before the long summer daylight began to fade.

In the Broceliande forest, Josse and Joanna made their way steadily northwards. It was the morning after the storm; the weather was once more fine and hot and the rain had given everything a shine as if newly painted.

That morning they had set out before the sun had climbed far into the sky. The rain having driven them to seek shelter so early the previous day, they had turned the setback into an advantage and all had had a long night’s sleep; Meggie had wakened them soon after sunrise saying there was something moving around in the forest below the shelter and oh, please could she have something to eat because she was starving?

While the child had been preoccupied with eating, in between mouthfuls sipped from the hot herbal infusion that Joanna had prepared, Josse, speaking very quietly into Joanna’s ear, asked if the mysterious something moving was likely to be real or a product of Meggie’s half-awake, half-dreaming mind.

Joanna had shot him a keen glance. ‘I’d say she imagined it, mainly because she doesn’t seem at all frightened. Only. .’ She hesitated.

‘Only what?’

Joanna’s eyes on his were wide and wondering. ‘Only I thought I heard something too.’

‘What sort of something?’ he demanded, the rush of adrenalin making him speak more sharply than he intended. ‘And why,’ he added softly, ‘did you not wake me up and tell me?’

Her face melted into a smile. ‘So you’re determined to be our bodyguard, bless you,’ she murmured. ‘Josse, it’s all right. I’m quite used to taking care of Meggie and myself all on my own, you know. And the reason I didn’t disturb your exceptionally deep sleep to tell you I’d heard noises was that I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming. And when, wide awake, I listened again, there was nothing.’