Alys Clare - Girl In A Red Tunic

‘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.