Alys Clare - Blood of the South

In the mood of distress and shock, it was comforting, somehow.

The four men carrying the body came slowly up to the steps, and one of the pair at the front looked up at Lord Gilbert. ‘Where shall we take the lady, my lord?’ he asked.

Lord Gilbert looked at Lady Emma, who turned round to us. ‘Where do you think, Edild?’ she asked quietly.

‘Again, the undercroft is suitable, my lady,’ my aunt replied. ‘Lassair and I will tend her there.’ She hesitated, looking at Lady Emma with raised brows.

Lady Emma understood the unasked question. ‘The other body has been removed,’ she said, her voice quite steady despite her shocked pallor. ‘It is now in the crypt beneath the church. Lord Gilbert and Father Augustine have decided to postpone the burial, in the hope that someone may yet turn up to claim her.’

It was, I thought sadly, an increasingly faint hope.

Lady Emma murmured to the men with the hurdle, and they bore their burden away around the side of the house, to the door that opened on to the undercroft. Hitching my satchel on my shoulder, I followed Edild in their wake.

The wide vaulted ceiling of the huge undercroft spread out above us as we bent over the trestle on which Lady Rosaria had been laid. Lord Gilbert’s house servants had provided many candles, set in tall brass holders and spaced around the trestle. Our little area of the crypt was brightly lit but the shadows gathered in the corners, and the bulky shapes of whatever was stored there loomed over us as if they drew close to watch us at our work.

Water from Lady Rosaria’s garments dripped steadily on to the stone floor. We removed her little silk slippers – her feet were tiny – and rolled her over on to her side so that we could unlace her gorgeous gown. Edild slid it down off the cold, pale body, then handed it to me. I was touched to see that the hem was coming down; in her flight, she must have caught her heel. I had a sudden, painful image of her, sitting sewing in that tavern room in Cambridge. As I inspected her work, I thought, Poor Rosaria; you weren’t very good with your needle, were you?

Edild was now stripping off the undergarments: there were several underskirts. Now she handed me a chemise made of some fine, smooth fabric …

I had seen a garment made of this material before.

‘Edild, I-’

My aunt gave a tsk! of impatience. ‘Not now, Lassair. Help me with her – I must attempt to detect if there’s water in her lungs.’

Together we gently turned the body so that it was face-down, and Edild applied steady pressure on the upper back. Water came out in a lazy stream, seeping through the veil and out from beneath it.

‘I think we can tell your lawman that she did indeed drown,’ Edild said.

We rolled Lady Rosaria on to her back once more.

Edild had covered her with a length of linen, and now, respectful of the dead woman’s modesty, she examined the body, uncovering it a bit at a time. Shoulders, chest and breasts, then waist and belly. Feet, ankles, legs, thighs, groin.

Edild stood back from the table, a frown of perplexity on her face.

‘What is it?’ I felt apprehensive; afraid, almost.

Slowly my aunt beckoned. ‘Come and see. I may be wrong – I must be wrong – but I’d like to hear what you think.’

‘What must I look at?’

‘Her breasts, then her private parts.’

I did as I was ordered. The breasts were small; I remembered the gown that had been too big in the bust, and how I’d imagined Lady Rosaria had lost the fullness as her milk dried up. The nipples were pink and dainty, like a girl’s. Carefully I drew up the sheet to cover her chest, then, raising it from its lower end, looked down on her belly and thighs.

It felt wrong to be examining her. She had been so proud, so haughty, and her stiff, erect posture had informed you, all the time that you were in her presence, that she was a fine lady. But I had a job to do, and I could not afford scruples.

I looked at her slim, smooth thighs, at the narrow hips, the flat, almost concave, belly. She must have padded out her underskirts for, naked, she had a much slighter, more boyish figure than she’d appeared to have when clothed.

Finally, aware of Edild’s eyes watching me, I gently parted the thighs and stared at the genitalia.

After a moment of utter stillness, I covered the body, tucking the sheet in around it. Then I met my aunt’s eyes.

‘She has never borne a child,’ I said.

‘No,’ Edild agreed.

We went on looking at each other.

‘So whose baby is Leafric?’ I whispered. ‘Is he an adopted child, do you think?’ My thoughts were racing ahead. ‘Perhaps Lady Rosaria was barren – she does look quite immature – or perhaps her husband was infertile? As members of a great family, they’d have definitely wanted a child to inherit and to carry on the name, so maybe …’

I trailed to a stop. Lady Rosaria bore an illustrious name, or so Jack had informed me, but her late husband – her Hugo Guillaume Fensmanson – hadn’t belonged to a prominent, important family. He and his father had been my own kinsmen.

Edild was looking down at the dead woman’s head, encased in the elaborately wound headdress with its jewels and its fringe of tiny bells, and at the dead face, still shrouded in the heavy veil. Drenched, like every other garment she had been wearing, the veil clung to her features.

‘I think we must remove this,’ she said, delicately touching its bottom hem with her forefinger. ‘The headdress first; she should be allowed to go on concealing her face until the very last moment.’

She began to unwind the headdress, the cloth coming away from the head in a long stream of gorgeous fabric. Lady Rosaria’s hair had been dark, long and wavy, and she had braided it into two heavy plaits.

Then, at last, Edild took off the veil.

And we stared, aghast, at what had happened to Lady Rosaria’s face.

We made sure that she was decently covered from her chin to her toes before I was sent to summon Jack. We had already drawn our conclusions concerning her body, and there was no need for any eyes other than ours to look upon her.

Her face, though, was a different matter.

Now Jack stood between Edild and me, and, from his expression, I guessed he was as horrified as we had been.

Lady Rosaria’s left nostril had been slit. The cut had gone right into the whorl that joins the nose to the cheek, slicing up so that the nostril was open, and the cartilage inside revealed.

Below this horror, her mouth was now slack and blueish, but it was clear to see it had been generous and well-shaped.

Eyes and mouth, then, were beautiful; before her mutilation, she must have been wonderful to look at.

Unless the wound had been a terrible accident, or a healer’s attempt to excise diseased flesh, it looked as if someone had inflicted the cut as some barbaric punishment. I could scarcely make myself believe it. ‘Was this the result of some frightful sickness?’ I whispered, looking at Edild.

‘No, I do not believe so,’ she replied. ‘It looks, from the neatness of the wound and from the healthy flesh surrounding it, that it was done deliberately.’

‘ Why? ’ I cried.

Beside me, Jack stirred. He hadn’t spoken since he had come down into the crypt, but now he did, and his voice was vibrant with emotion. ‘I believe this is the mark of a slave,’ he said. ‘In just such a way, or so I have heard, do men of the southern lands mark the men and women who are their property. If they try to run away, they are easily identified, and can be recaptured and returned to their masters for punishment.’

I tried to absorb that. I knew such things existed; that, in many parts of the world, men did not think it wrong to own another human being. Serfdom, indeed, was only a little removed from slavery.