Alys Clare - Blood of the South

‘Very well,’ I responded, returning the smile. It was impossible to resist his good cheer.

‘That woman you picked up at Lynn,’ Jack said. ‘We have some more questions.’

The master gave him a knowing look. ‘Been stealing again, has she?’

‘Not as far as I know, and she insisted it wasn’t theft the first time,’ Jack replied.

The master gave a snort of laughter. ‘Oh, she did, did she? Well, it looked like it to me.’

‘She paid the baker both for the loaf and for his inconvenience,’ Jack said. ‘I decided to let that be an end to the matter.’

‘Well, you know your own business,’ the master said. ‘She was a slippery one. We were all glad to see the back of her.’

I sensed Jack’s suddenly heightened alertness. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Arrogant, she was. Gave orders like a queen, and expected my crew to jump to it. Surly, too – when we tried to look after her, she acted like it was her due and never gave a smile or a thank you. Well, like I told you, she came on board at Lynn, wanting passage up to Cambridge. She wanted to get into the fens, but you can’t just drop a passenger out in the middle of nowhere, and I reckoned this was the best place, and the nearest port to the fens. I mean -’ his face creased in a frown – ‘if I’d have put her ashore out in the watery wilds, likely she’d have lost her way and drowned, and that little baby along with her. She paid it no mind,’ he added with sudden vehemence. ‘Didn’t seem to know how to look after it. Didn’t even seem to like it, come to that.’ His frown deepened. ‘The mate found someone who knew how to get a bit of milk inside it, otherwise it’d have yelled its head off all the way.’

‘It’s a he ,’ I said. ‘He’s being tended by a wet-nurse, and he’s doing all right.’

The master turned to me. ‘I’m right glad to hear it.’

Encouraged, I said, ‘It’s obvious she’s a noblewoman, and must somehow have become separated from the companions and servants she was travelling with. She seems to be in a state of shock, and I was wondering if, back in Lynn, you heard any talk of some incident that might have resulted in her being all alone? A ship having met with an accident, or illness aboard?’

The master shook his head. I saw his left hand make the sign against evil, no doubt in reaction to my mention of shipwrecks and sickness. ‘No, I heard nothing.’

‘Did she say where she had come from?’ Jack asked.

‘No. She offered no information at all.’ The master thought for a moment, then grinned. ‘But I think I can tell you what ship she arrived in, because she’d underpaid the cost of her passage – see, told you she was a slippery one! – and one of the crew came after her to collect what she owed.’

‘What was the ship?’ Jack’s eyes were narrowed like a cat’s. ‘And where had she come from?’

‘She was The Good Shepherd ,’ the master said, ‘out of Yarmouth.’ He nodded, as if confident that he had answered all our questions. ‘That’s where that veiled woman came from – Yarmouth.’

Jack Chevestrier didn’t say a word as we headed back over the Great Bridge into the heart of the town. I could understand his mood; it really had seemed that we’d been on the point of discovering something crucial about the veiled woman. Yarmouth, however, was no likelier a starting point for her voyage than Lynn.

I went over my earlier encounter with the lady. Something had occurred to me, pushed out of my mind by subsequent events, and now I returned to it.

There had been an aspect of her which recalled a matter I’d once discussed with my aunt Edild. It concerned a new mother in Aelf Fen who, for some inexplicable reason, had taken a dislike to her newborn daughter; a dislike so profound that she had, for a few terrible days, refused to feed, tend or in any way care for the child. The baby was not her first; there was just something about her that the mother couldn’t tolerate. Edild said it sometimes seemed to happen – fortunately not with any frequency – that, following a birth, a mother became inexplicably miserable; unable to feel any joy in the new life she had brought into the world. Often it occurred when a birth had been particularly long or hard, as if the baby was a constant reminder of the pain and the distress its arrival had caused.

My wise aunt had succeeded in persuading the Aelf Fen woman to accept the baby. Observing the veiled lady, I’d wondered if Edild might be able to help her, too. And, after all, the lady wanted to locate her kinsman’s dwelling in the fens.

I hurried to catch up with Jack. ‘I’ve had an idea,’ I panted.

He turned to look at me. ‘Yes?’

‘I should take the veiled woman and her child to my village.’

‘Why?’

‘First, because she’ll have to go into the fens if she’s to find her kinsman’s house, and that’s where my village is.’

‘I know,’ Jack said. ‘You are from Aelf Fen.’

‘I didn’t-’ Then I remembered. When the veiled woman had said she sought the fens, Jack Chevestrier had said it was an extensive region, and he’d added, as this young woman could tell you . He’d known I was a healer. He knew where I came from. It was only surprising that he’d had to ask my name.

‘So, why else do you want to take her to your village?’ he asked.

‘My aunt Edild is a healer.’

‘So are you,’ he observed.

‘Not like her!’ I protested. ‘She’s my teacher, and she’s had years of experience. She’s very knowledgeable, and full of compassion for people with problems. She helped a village woman who couldn’t love her new baby, and she’s fine now; the woman, I mean. Well, they both are, the woman and the baby, only she’s not a baby any more, and the woman’s had another since and-’ I stopped gabbling. I could hear how stupid I sounded.

But Jack didn’t seem to think so. He said, ‘If you are the healer you are because of your aunt’s teaching, she is indeed a fine woman.’ Then, before I could even begin to deal with the embarrassment his words had caused, he added, ‘And we’d better see about getting you, the veiled woman and her baby out to your village as soon as we can.’

I dreaded telling Gurdyman I was leaving. For one thing, we were in the middle of a new course of study. For another, I knew how eager he was for me to have another attempt at looking into the shining stone. He thought he was managing to disguise his impatience, but he gave himself away with constant oblique references to it. I didn’t want to look into the stone. The thought of peering into its smoky, murky depths frightened me, and I kept seeing an image of those two dark birds. I was quite sure they came from another world: the world of the spirits. Being presented with an excellent reason for distancing myself from my strange inheritance was like a gift from some beneficial god.

In the event, the anticipation was worse than the actuality. When I told Gurdyman where I was going, and why, he simply nodded and said, as he always does, ‘May the good spirits guard your path.’

As I checked through my satchel and packed into it a few necessities for my journey, I congratulated myself on having neatly evaded something I dreaded doing. But, just as I was fastening my satchel straps, I heard heavy steps on the ladder up to my attic room, accompanied by the sound of Gurdyman’s laboured breathing. His head appeared at the top of the ladder, and, with a smile, he said, ‘Take the shining stone, child. It needs to stay close to you.’

My heart gave a leap of fright.

Had he said what I thought he said? Surely it must have been, You need to stay close to the stone ?

I listened to the echo of his words. No: he had definitely said the stone needed to be close to me .