Alys Clare - Blood of the South

But to mutilate someone in this way! To mutilate a woman like Lady Rosaria; to take away her beauty, so that she was driven to cover herself up every second of every day. It was beyond barbarous.

Then I thought, If she was a slave, how can she be Lady Rosaria?

And a slave, surely, can’t be a member of the family of the Byzantine emperor …

I said, ‘Who was she?’

And, with a sigh, Jack replied, ‘Well, we know who she wasn’t.’ He must have sensed my frustration at the inadequacy of the response. Catching my eye, he said with a faint smile, ‘It’s a start.’ Then, turning to Edild, he said, ‘Can she now go to her grave, or is there more that you can learn from the body?’

Slowly Edild shook her head. ‘I think we have seen all we need to.’ She touched the dead woman’s shoulder with a gentle hand. ‘I will prepare her for burial.’

‘Need we tell Lord Gilbert and Lady Emma about her nose?’ I burst out. ‘It seems so – disloyal.’

Jack looked at me, compassion softening his features. ‘We have to tell them, I think,’ he said gently. ‘But let’s wait until we have a few more answers.’

I nodded. It was the best Lady Rosaria was going to get.

We left Edild to her task. She said she didn’t need my assistance, and I was glad to get away. Jack went back up into the hall to tell Lord Gilbert what the corpse had revealed, but, again, I wasn’t needed. At the top of the steps, however, he turned and said, ‘Don’t go away.’

He was gone for some time. I guessed Lord Gilbert’s outrage at having been fooled by a slave girl into believing she was a great lady, and entertaining her accordingly for a whole week, was forcing him to demand answers which Jack wasn’t able to give. Yet : a brighter man would have hurried Jack away to get on with his investigations, but Lord Gilbert, as I have often observed, does not have the sort of mind that flashes and fizzes with intelligence.

In the end, it seemed to be Lady Emma who extracted Jack from Lord Gilbert’s angry indignation; she it was, at least, who ushered him to the door of the hall and wished him good luck.

He came flying down the steps, grabbed hold of my hand and, pulling me along, ran across the yard and down the track. ‘We need to talk, but not here,’ he panted. He glanced back at the hall. ‘If that fat fool asks me once more who she is, I’ll punch him.’

I grinned. ‘It might shake his brains up a bit, but I don’t believe it’d make him any brighter.’

Jack laughed shortly. I joined in, but then suddenly I had an image of what he’d done to Gaspard Picot and his man. Jack, I realized with a shiver, was more than capable of punching even a man of Lord Gilbert’s status, and I should not fool myself otherwise.

It was frightening.

We hurried on, and, reaching the main track, turned away from the village. A man and a woman passed, then an ox cart rumbled in the opposite direction. Jack looked around. ‘Where can we go where we can speak in private?’

‘Follow me.’ I led the way up the sloping ground to the left, heading past the fields and the pastures until, at the summit of the higher ground, we reached the ancient oak tree that stands its solitary watch over Aelf Fen.

Jack and I were alone.

He leaned back against the oak’s massive trunk, closed his eyes and let out a long breath. ‘That’s better,’ he said after a while. ‘Now I can think.’

Deducing from his words and his actions that he wanted to be left in peace, I moved away, round to the other side of the oak. I hitched up my skirts and climbed up to the convenient cleft between two of the huge lower branches. It’s a spot I’ve been hiding in since I was a child, and very good for quiet contemplation.

I copied Jack’s example, leaning back and closing my eyes. Immediately I saw Lady Rosaria’s ruined face. No; don’t think about that. I made myself relax, and very soon, out there in the peace and the silence, I appreciated the good sense of getting right away from the clamouring, demanding voices and the unanswerable questions.

Unhurriedly, I went through everything I’d noticed about Lady Rosaria’s corpse. After a while, one thing floated to the surface of my mind: the chemise. It was made of a fabric with which I wasn’t familiar, yet, as soon as I handled it, I knew I’d recently seen something similar: the shift which Jack had found in the pool where the first drowned body had ended up, and which we’d surmised had belonged to our tall, fair-haired woman.

Although that had been a cheaper, poorer-quality garment, I’d have been ready to swear that both were made of the same fabric.

Clothing … I had a sudden vision of Lady Rosaria back at the inn in Cambridge, sewing up her hem. Then I saw that same hem as I’d seen it just that morning, the stitches already coming undone. I’d thought it meant she hadn’t been much of a seamstress. But another reason for making a botch of a sewing task is that you’re in a hurry.

The bodice of the gown had been loose.

She was tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, very beautiful and utterly perfect.

Facts and snippets of conversation were flowing freely around my head, and I was beginning – just beginning – to see a picture. The urge to leap down and run to lay it before Jack was almost irresistible, but I kept calm, stayed where I was and thought some more.

Was it too much to construe, when all there really was to go on was two undergarments made of the same, unfamiliar, foreign material?

No.

Slowly I descended from my perch and walked round to where Jack was still leaning against the tree.

‘They swapped clothes,’ I said.

His eyes flew open. ‘What?’

‘Lady Rosaria and the woman who was found in the flood pool. They both had undershifts of the same fabric, only one was a far more costly item; a lady’s garment as opposed to a maid’s. And Lady Rosaria – the woman we knew as Lady Rosaria – had altered her gown. I know she did,’ I insisted, ‘I caught her sewing when I visited her in the Cambridge inn. And the bodice was too loose.’

He was staring at me intently, the green eyes slightly narrowed in fierce concentration. ‘You’re saying Lady Rosaria and the drowned woman travelled to England together?’

‘Yes.’

He shook his head. ‘But the drowned woman didn’t match the description of the maid which the mate of The Good Shepherd gave us – he said the maid was small, nimble and dark, and he’d have sworn she was a Spaniard – oh! ’

I almost heard the blinkers fall off his eyes. For a moment we just stood grinning at each other. Then he said, very softly, ‘Lady Rosaria was the maid, and the drowned woman was her mistress.’ He pursed his lips in a silent whistle. Then, frowning, he said urgently ‘Does it stand up to scrutiny? Does everything fit?’

‘ Yes! ’ I shouted, although the response was inspired more by instinct than reason. Forcing my flying thoughts to slow down, I said, ‘The real daughter-in-law – the tall, fair woman who drowned – was heading to England, to Harald’s only living kin. She became ill, and her maid – Rosaria – realized she couldn’t save her. So she took her place, in the expectation that she was exchanging the life of a servant, or even a slave, for that of a lady.’

Jack nodded slowly. ‘It’s easy to understand why,’ he said. ‘Rosaria must have been a slave, and probably had already tried once to run away to a better life. It was that attempt which earned her the mutilating mark that would henceforth always identify her status.’

‘If the real daughter-in-law was dead,’ I went on – thinking even as I did how strange it was that both Jack and I were trying so hard to defend Rosaria, given that neither of us had liked her – ‘then she must have asked herself, where was the harm?’