Alys Clare - Girl In A Red Tunic

‘I understand,’ Josse said gently. ‘Your troubles have been grave, but-’

‘You have not,’ Leofgar cut in, ‘heard the half of them yet.’

‘Oh.’ His heart sinking, Josse said, ‘Very well. Tell me the rest.’

Leofgar went back to his bark stripping. ‘I have explained all this,’ he said, ‘as a prelude for what follows, because it is a reason for- Well, hear it for yourself and judge. When Father Luke had gone, I left the house and went out. I was angry with the priest and also, I am ashamed to confess, angry with Rohaise. God forgive me, I should have stayed there with her, comforting her, but I feared for a time that my anger would spill out and I would shout at her, the last thing I should have done. So I saddled up my horse and went for a ride until I was calm again. Then I went home.’

His face had paled, Josse noticed. Whatever he was remembering clearly had lost none of its power to distress.

‘Someone else had come to the house in the short time that I was away,’ he said, his voice low. ‘I think now that the man was waiting his chance and entered the hall soon after I had ridden away. I am not sure what he was after — although I can make a guess — but poor Rohaise, in her distress, believed that he had been sent by Father Luke to take Timus away. She heard him coming and hid behind the hangings at the far end of the hall.’

‘Were not your servants there?’ Josse broke in.

‘No. We were enjoying a bright spell of weather and Wilfrid and Anna were in the habit of taking Simeon out into the forest most days to collect wood. Again, the man who sneaked into my hall must have seen them go out that morning and known that his chance had come. Nobody at home but a frightened woman and a little child. How brave, not to be scared off by them!’ Anger coloured Leofgar’s voice but after a moment he calmed himself and resumed. ‘Rohaise peered round the wall hanging and saw a short, scrawny man creep through the doorway and across the hall. She was puzzled because at first he looked at the big table at the end of the room, feeling underneath it and up and down its legs as if looking for something. Then he went to the chest and, finding it locked, took out a knife and forced the clasp, splitting the wood. He rummaged through the contents — there were some blankets and some clothes of Rohaise’s — throwing them on the floor.’

‘I recall that chest,’ Josse murmured, half to himself. ‘I remember noticing a recent repair.’

‘You keep your eyes open,’ Leofgar observed. ‘Rohaise was too terrified to ask herself why this man who had come for Timus should be searching through our furniture. She stood there, trying not to breathe, trying to keep Timus calm, but, understandably, he was as frightened as she was and he let out a sob. The man heard and came lunging across the hall with his knife in his hand. Rohaise was beyond any coherent thought but instinctively she did the best thing that she could have done. As he approached she leapt out at him screaming at the top of her voice and he was so shocked that he stepped hastily back. She kicked out at the hand holding the knife and managed to knock it out of his grip, then threw herself on him, punching his face and raking him with her finger nails. He recovered very quickly and got hold of her hands, then ripped open her bodice and threw her on the ground, pulling up her skirt. But she wriggled out from beneath him and got to her feet, racing off down the hall and away from Timus, still hiding behind the wall hanging. She could hear the man thudding after her and she turned to look at him. He was holding the knife and it was aimed at her. She picked up a silver jug that he’d found in the chest and cast aside and she flung it at his legs. It caught him right on the knee and he tripped and fell heavily, cracking the side of his head on the stone flags.’

‘The fall killed him?’

‘No,’ Leofgar admitted. ‘Better for him had it done so,’ he added in a murmur. Then, eyes at last meeting Josse’s, he said, ‘Rohaise feared for her life, Josse. She believed this man had come to take Timus away but it seemed to her that for some reason he wanted to rape and kill her. I say this not to gain your sympathy’ — he must, Josse thought, have noticed the instinctive compassion that the story was arousing — ‘but to explain what she did next.’ He paused, took a breath and said flatly, ‘She fetched Timus from behind the wall hanging and put him safely away up in the bedchamber, telling him that he must hide, he’d got to hide and not be found, and she barred the door so that he could not get out.’

Hide, Josse thought. Hide. Aye, that was what the child had said when he’d snuggled inside Josse’s cloak that day. Great God, the poor little lad had seen the man attack his mother! No wonder he’d turned dumb.

‘Then,’ Leofgar was saying, ‘she went for my hounds and let them into the hall.’

‘Your hounds,’ Josse echoed, his heart still overflowing with pity for the damaged child.

‘Yes, my hounds,’ Leofgar sounded impatient. ‘They are big dogs and they are trained to go after wounded creatures that get up and try to crawl away. They go for the throat, you know, as that way the kill is accomplished quickly.’

‘And-’ Josse swallowed. ‘And they attacked the intruder?’

‘Rohaise shut them in the hall and went a little way up the stair, leaving them there with the body. She thought she heard some sounds, although she is not sure what they implied. She waited, but there was nothing more. Then she crept down again and opened the door a crack. The man was lying exactly as she had left him and one of the dogs was sniffing at the blood pooling on the floor beneath his head. Rohaise tiptoed closer, then closer, until she was standing right over him. Suddenly he leapt up and lunged at her with his knife. She screamed and flung herself out of his reach and at the same moment one of the hounds leapt at him and took him by the neck. Great arcs of scarlet flew out all over her as the dying heart beat its last — Josse, she was covered with his blood.’ Leofgar’s eyes were wide with remembered horror. ‘Then the hounds padded off towards the door and she stood staring down at the man.’ Leofgar paused. ‘Soon after that I came home and found them. Rohaise had crept away to hide on the stair, shaking with shock and trying pitifully to pull the ripped pieces of her bodice together to cover herself. Timus was weeping hysterically up in the bedchamber and the man was on the floor of the hall. He was quite dead. He no longer had a throat.’

Josse waited while his shocked reaction abated slightly. Then he said firmly, ‘Your wife was threatened, Leofgar. She feared that this intruder had come to take her child, and furthermore that for some reason he meant to assault or even kill her. When a man armed with a knife attacks an unarmed woman whom he has just tried to rape, anyone would surely agree that she is within her rights to defend herself!’

‘Perhaps,’ Leofgar said dully. ‘But I dared not take that chance.’

‘So you came to Hawkenlye.’ But no, that could not be right, Josse thought, for there had been no bloody body lying in the hall at the Old Manor when he and the Abbess had arrived.

He looked enquiringly at Leofgar and said, ‘What did you do with him?’

‘I stripped him, burned his foul and filthy clothes in a big fire on the hearth and hid him in an outbuilding,’ Leofgar said tonelessly. ‘I buried his knife, his belt buckle and the remains of his boots. Rohaise and I tried to comfort Timus and finally we got him to go to sleep up in our bed. Then we cleaned every inch of the hall and she put her torn and bloody gown on the fire with the blood-soaked rushes from the floor. We had to make sure there was no sign left to give us away when Wilfrid and his family returned and when I asked him — Wilfrid — to mend the broken chest I told him a lie about having lost the key.’ Leofgar looked sad, as if it had hurt to treat his faithful servant this way and he still regretted it. ‘While we cleaned the hall I had worked out what to do with the body,’ he hurried on, ‘and when the light began to fail, I slipped out to make my secret preparations. I penned my swine up in a lonely place where nobody goes, leaving them without any food, and then two days later I took the dead man out into the forest and fed him to them. What was left of him when they were done, I buried.’ His anguished eyes suddenly raised to meet Josse’s, he said, ‘Rohaise tried to stop me. Even after the horror of knowing for two whole days that his — that the corpse was hidden away on our land and what would happen were it to be discovered, still she said it was wrong to deny the man Christian burial. We-’ He stopped, drew a breath and then said softly, ‘We almost fought over it. She was beside herself, but I was determined.’