Alys Clare: Blood of the South

I got as far as scooping up the baby. Then, as I went to approach its mother, she turned and stared at me.

The look in her near-black, slanting eyes stopped me dead.

I felt as if some invisible force was holding me back. Confused, I muttered something, covering my embarrassment by looking down at the baby in my arms. It had stopped sobbing, and was now staring up at me with wide blue eyes. It was quite heavy, and I was just thinking that it was older than I had first thought – too old, surely, to be swaddled so tightly? – when, as if in response to my thought, it gave a powerful wriggle and kicked an arm and a foot out from within the blankets. The heel of the little foot caught me in the stomach; the fisted hand just missed my nose.

I’d had enough.

‘Your child appears none the worse for its fright,’ I said to the woman, staring at her as fiercely as she had just been staring at me. I had the advantage of height; she was still sitting on the ground. ‘Won’t you take it?’ I went on. ‘There are no one’s arms better equipped for soothing a baby than those of its mother.’

For a moment, she didn’t respond. Beside me, I sensed the sheriff move, and I guessed he was about to intervene. I went on looking down at the woman. Finally, with a sort of sigh, she nodded. Kneeling down in front of her, carefully I placed the squirming bundle on her lap. She didn’t seem to know what to do next – undoubtedly she was in shock – and so, gently taking hold of her hands, I put one behind the baby’s head and the other under its hips.

‘We need to move her away from here,’ the sheriff said quietly. He had bent down so that he could speak right in my ear. ‘The mood’s very ugly. We’ll get to the bottom of it, but I’d be happier if that lot -’ he cast a frowning glance over his shoulder – ‘weren’t still hovering around her.’

‘I agree,’ I replied. ‘But first I need to check if either of them has been wounded.’ If you move someone with a broken bone or a head injury, you can make a bad matter ten times worse. The sheriff appeared to know this, for he nodded, muttering something inaudible. ‘Can’t your men hold the crowd back?’ I demanded. ‘They appeared to be only too willing to crack a few heads just now, when you all burst on to the quay.’

‘I have a dozen men with me, and the mob numbers maybe four, five times that,’ the sheriff remarked. You could understand his point.

‘I’d better be quick, then,’ I muttered.

It seemed unlikely, but I was sure I heard the sheriff give a short laugh.

While the child lay across the woman’s lap, I unwound the blanket and folded back the little garments. The blanket was of fine, soft wool, and the baby’s robe was of silk. Whoever the woman was, she wasn’t poor. Quickly, for the morning air was chilly, I checked over the baby for signs of injury. It – he – was a boy; he must have inherited his light blue eyes and fair hair from his father, but his skin – a beautiful, deep golden-brown colour – was like his mother’s. He was clearly well-fed. He was, I judged, about six months old. He had been circumcised. His flesh was clean and sweet-smelling, and he had clearly been put in fresh linen a short time previously, for the wrappings were still dry and unsoiled. As far as I could tell, he had suffered nothing worse at the hands of the mob than a nasty fright.

I turned my attention to his mother.

I had not expected that she would permit me to examine her, and I was right. She drew herself away, one hand going to her veil as if she feared I was about to tear it off.

I nodded my understanding. ‘I was not proposing to inspect you as I have just done your son,’ I said. ‘But I must ask if you are hurt? Did any of those stones or lumps of mud hit you, especially on the head or face? Such blows can cause concussion, and that carries grave risks.’

‘I am not injured,’ the woman whispered.

It was, I realized, the first time she had spoken. Although not as dramatic in its effect on me as her original intent stare, nevertheless her voice was a surprise. It was immediately clear that the common language was not her mother tongue, although her manner of dress, her veil and her dark eyes had already informed me that she was a stranger, just as they presumably had told the screeching fishwife who had yelled out, Filthy foreigner! No: it wasn’t her accent so much as the husky timbre of her voice that was so startling. She sounded … it was odd, but she almost sounded like someone with a naturally deep voice who was trying to make it higher in pitch. It was totally absurd, but just for a heartbeat I wondered if the veiled woman was really a man.

‘We must go,’ the sheriff said, and now his tone had a definite sense of urgency. Two brawny-looking men had been talking to him while I dealt with the baby and his mother, and one of them raised his voice in repeated accusation: the veiled woman, it appeared, had tried to take two small loaves of bread when she had only paid for one. It seemed a small enough crime to warrant all this fuss, but then times were hard. Bakers have to earn their living like everyone else, and it’s true that nobody likes thieves and cheats. The fact that, being a foreigner, the veiled woman had simply made a mistake seemed a distinct possibility, but I didn’t think now was the time to mention it.

Between us, the sheriff and I got the woman to her feet. She seemed to be unsure how to carry the baby – I thought once more that she was probably still in shock – and she tried to hold him across her outstretched arms, so that his head lolled backwards and he shrieked in alarm.

‘Dear Jesus, she’s going to drop it!’ the sheriff hissed. ‘That’s all we need. Take it from her!’

‘ Him . He’s a boy,’ I said, before I could remind myself that being pert with sheriffs is not in general a wise course of action. The sheriff, however, accepted the reprimand with a grin, and said softly under his breath, ‘Take him , then.’

I did as he said, holding the baby up against my chest and wrapping my arms round him. Either he was comforted by being held so firmly, or else his crying had exhausted him; the important thing was, he stopped yelling. Then he gave a huge yawn, his eyelids fluttered down and he went to sleep.

The sheriff’s men had formed up into a double line, standing two abreast, and they held back the crowd while the sheriff led the woman and me away from the quayside. The aggrieved baker and his companion stomped along behind. More deputies had arrived, and the mood of the mob seemed all at once to go off the boil. There was a lot of muttering, some name-calling, and I thought I heard the screeching woman again, still protesting about filthy foreigners. It was deeply unpleasant and unsettling, but I no longer felt in danger of actual harm, either to myself or to the veiled woman and her child. Soon, the river, the quay and the humming activity of the town’s port were left behind us.

I wondered if we were heading for the small stone-built house by the Great Bridge. It was the place where the port officials were to be found, and I knew of it because I had occasionally been there on errands for Gurdyman, when goods he had ordered and paid for were temporarily impounded: Gurdyman’s list of necessities contains some quite unusual items. Thinking of him made me wonder where he was, and if he had succeeded in keeping the promised eye on me. I glanced around, but the streets were busy and I could not see whether or not he was following. You would think that Gurdyman, being short, rotund and habitually dressed in a brightly coloured shawl which he drapes over his sombre gown, would have been easy to spot. In fact, when he wants to, he manages to blend in with his surroundings remarkably well.