Alys Clare - Blood of the South

In the end, it was my dear father who came up with the right solution.

He has a brother, Alwyn, the second eldest of Granny Cordeilla’s children. When I say brother , I really mean half-brother, my father having been sired by Thorfinn and not by Cordeilla’s quiet, reserved husband, Haward. It would be stretching the truth to say that my father and his two eldest siblings were close, but they cared for one another, were aware of how each other’s lives progressed, and, to an extent, shared in each other’s joys and griefs.

Alwyn was a fisherman and a fowler, living close to his creatures and the land which they shared. He had always been a self-contained man; my father and Granny Cordeilla always said he closely resembled Haward. Apparently the family had all decided he would live out his life in self-sufficient solitude, apart from the fish and the water birds, but, when he was heading into middle age, he surprised everyone by marrying a very pretty but extremely shy woman named Edith. She, too, was on the cusp of middle age, but nevertheless their union was just in time for her to conceive and bear a child: a daughter who they named Gytha.

Gytha was perhaps a couple of years older than my eldest sibling, Goda, and she had married the year before my sister. (I had only met her on a handful of occasions, but I could see that she was much nicer than Goda; that, however, applied to most people.) Gytha’s husband was a very pleasant, nice-looking man named Eddius, and I knew him rather better than I did Gytha because he, like my father, was an eel-fisher, and quite often they worked together.

You would have thought life was good for Gytha and Eddius. They clearly loved each other. They had a tiny but immaculately kept house close to a little-known waterway which was a fine source of eels. They were young and strong. Yet they had a great sorrow, for, despite seven years of marriage, they had no children. I believe both of them had consulted Edild, and apparently there was no obvious reason why the joys of parenthood had not been forthcoming. I was well aware that the barrenness of the marriage pained both of them, especially Gytha. On the rare occasions since the wedding that I had seen the pair – often at some gathering to welcome the newest member of the family – it had obviously taken a huge effort for Gytha to smile, congratulate the new parents and dandle the proffered baby on her knee.

I learned afterwards that, as concerned as the rest of us over Leafric’s heartbreaking circumstances, my father had had a private word with Edild, and she had quietly slipped away to see Gytha and Eddius, and asked them if they would consider adopting a six-month-old orphaned baby boy, adding, as if the proposal were not tempting enough for a child-hungry couple, that the baby was in fact kin to Gytha, her father and the baby’s dead mother having been first cousins.

It’s rare in life that what is a highly satisfactory outcome for one party in an arrangement is equally good for the other, but the adoption of Leafric by Gytha and Eddius quite definitely qualified. Of course, I never met Harald’s daughter alive; I only wish I had. But, from the moment I set eyes on Leafric, I had felt some sort of bond with him. It had affected me deeply to see him look so lost and sad, staring round him in puzzled misery as he tried to find the loving mother who wasn’t coming back. Gytha wasn’t the woman who bore him, but she made a very, very good substitute. Seeing her with her newly adopted son in her arms, smiling down into his little face, her eyes full of love and her hands as gentle as an angel’s, it was hard not to be moved to tears. Had Harald’s daughter been able to watch, too, I think she would have thanked her fenland cousin from the bottom of her heart.

Gytha and Eddius, knowing so little about their new son, decided to ask their priest to baptize him. The priest, a rotund, cheery, affectionate old man called Father Henry, readily agreed. As he said, better twice than not at all, and he was quite sure God wouldn’t mind a repetition.

To my surprise and delight, Gytha asked if I would stand as their son’s godmother. As I stood beside the font watching Father Henry pour the holy water over Leafric’s firm little head, his wide blue eyes looked straight into mine and he smiled.

Jack returned to Cambridge. With both his official and his unofficial business concluded – trying to locate Lady Rosaria’s kin, and identifying the woman whose body was found in the flooded pond – there was no reason for him to remain in Aelf Fen. He sought me out in the little back room at my aunt’s, and, staring down at the floor, told me he was leaving. I thought he sounded detached – cold, even – but then he raised his head and I saw his expression.

‘Will you be all right?’ I said. I wanted to reach out for his hand, but I didn’t know if he’d have welcomed such a gesture.

He grinned. ‘All right?’ he echoed.

I leaned closer, lowering my voice. ‘Your sheriff’s nephew sent a man to kill you. Unless he died out there where you left him -’ the thought still haunted me – ‘he’ll undoubtedly try again.’

‘Gaspard Picot was already among my many enemies,’ Jack said with a shrug. ‘Admittedly, I now have another, in the form of Gaspard’s hired killer, but one more won’t make a lot of difference.’

I didn’t understand how he could take it so calmly. ‘But you-’

‘How did you know?’ he asked, interrupting. His eyes were intent, his expression hard to read. ‘You knew the knife was aimed at us, and it was only because you threw yourself on me that it failed to find its target.’

I looked at him for some moments. I very nearly told him, but in the end I held back. ‘I said to you before that there was something I’d tell you one day, but I wasn’t yet ready,’ I said. ‘Do you remember?’

‘Of course,’ he said quietly.

‘This – how I knew we were in danger – is connected to it.’ That was an understatement, if ever there was one, and, feeling panicky, I hoped the shining stone wasn’t somehow able to pick up my words.

He waited, but, when I didn’t go on, he seemed to understand that I had said all I was going to. He smiled briefly. ‘I can wait,’ he murmured.

I didn’t know how to respond. Very aware of Edild in the next room, I muttered something about returning to Cambridge myself soon and no doubt we’d bump into each other.

I think he felt as confused as I did. He gave me a sort of bow, backed out of Edild’s little still room, struck his broad shoulders quite hard on the door frame, muttered something inaudible and then, turning so fast he almost tripped, hurried away.

I gave him a few moments, then slipped out after him. Crouching behind the low trees and bushes which conceal Edild’s house from the track, I watched him mount the grey gelding and, with my beautiful Isis following behind on a long rein, break into a trot, and then a canter.

An uninformed observer would have thought he couldn’t get away fast enough.

With a private smile, I went back inside and got on with my work.

I went back to Cambridge two weeks later.

I had to go back. I was in the middle of a course of instruction. When I’d left, Gurdyman was in the middle of revealing to me the mysteries and intricacies of the Nine Herbs Charm, and I knew he had many more such charms to teach me before I return to Aelf Fen for the dead time that is the middle of winter.

There was something else for which I needed Gurdyman’s wisdom; something whose importance, to me, exceeded everything else.

The shining stone.

I hadn’t seen Thorfinn since the awful night I’d shouted at him and told him the stone wasn’t his any more, and he could no longer use me to look into it for him. I had wished ever since that I had bitten back that parting shot, when I hurled at him that he ought to tell my father the truth.