Alys Clare - Blood of the South

Or perhaps some one .

I had an idea who the someone might be.

I turned back to the veiled lady. ‘Madam, I have been given to understand by concerned people that your baby may need my attention,’ I said stiffly. Her steady, unblinking gaze was unnerving.

‘ Concerned people?’ Her husky voice echoed and mocked my words, managing to make them sound risible. ‘Who are these people? And why should your attention be required?’ Again, she used emphasis with cruel efficiency, as if it was unbelievable that anyone in their right mind could think I could be of any help.

‘I am a healer, madam,’ I said coldly. ‘As I believe you are aware.’

She sniffed, drawing herself up. ‘I am not unwell.’

‘Perhaps not.’ I was holding on to my temper with difficulty. ‘You, however, are not the only person here.’

She looked across at the narrow bed. ‘He is in good health,’ she pronounced. ‘He feeds, he does not cry unduly.’ She shrugged, as if to say, So why are you here?

‘May I not look at him?’ I asked. I tried to smile, but found that it was impossible.

She shrugged again. ‘If you must.’

I went over to the bed, and the movement caught the baby’s attention. The light blue eyes turned to me, and I was quite sure I saw expectation in them. Then he gave a sad little sigh and turned away.

I picked him up, holding him close to me. I murmured to him – silly nonsense, intended to soothe – and kissed the top of his head. He smelt sweet and clean; Mattie was doing a good job.

‘It is not my embrace he needs, madam,’ I said quietly. I glanced at her. ‘He had, I imagine, a nurse?’ For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine the veiled lady ever having held her son in her arms. It was not her he pined for.

‘He did.’

‘And that nurse is no longer in your employ?’

‘There is another one who comes.’

‘Yes, I know.’ It was I who found her for you! I wanted to yell. Dear Lord, was she still in shock? Had something so awful happened on the way here that her mind had been affected? I took a calming breath. It would not help either the veiled woman or her child if I became agitated. ‘The new wet-nurse will not be familiar to your son,’ I said, trying to speak kindly. ‘It will take him a while to get used to her. She will smell different from the previous nurse, and her milk will not be quite the same.’ The veiled woman gave a distinct shudder of revulsion. She is a grand lady , I told myself firmly. It is not her fault that she has been brought up to believe such ordinary, human functions are not only beneath her but also slightly disgusting. ‘Madam, would you not hold him?’ I suggested. ‘In the absence of his old nurse, you are someone he knows and recognizes.’ I stepped closer, ready to put the baby in her arms if she showed the slightest sign of being willing to receive him.

She turned away.

I went back to the bed, laid the child down and sat down beside him, gently stroking my fingers across his forehead. His skin was cool and smooth. As far as I could tell, he was indeed perfectly well.

He was just, as Mattie had so accurately said, sad .

I stared at the veiled woman, and, as if she felt my eyes on her, she turned to face me. ‘What is his name?’ I asked.

She glared at me. There was a long pause, and I was just deciding that she was going to refuse to tell me, and, moreover, order me out of her room for my presumption, when she spoke. ‘Leafric.’

‘Leafric,’ I repeated under my breath. I was surprised, for it was a Saxon name; one of the old names that had been in use before the Normans came. There were Leafrics in my own ancestry. I had inherited the role of bard from my Granny Cordeilla, and one of my responsibilities was to memorize the long list of our forebears. I should have expected such a name, for the baby’s light eyes and fair hair had already suggested to me that his other parent must have originated a lot further north than the veiled woman.

I risked another question, although I held out little hope that she would give me an answer. ‘Your boy was named for his father, perhaps?’

Again, the long pause, while she fixed me with her dark-rimmed, black-eyed stare as if calculating how much to reveal to this brash and forward stranger sitting on her bed beside her son. ‘Not his father.’ Another pause. ‘But, yes, an ancestor. Of my late husband,’ she added.

She was a widow, then. That alone should have made me more compassionate. The baby was no more than six months old, so this poor woman’s loss must have been quite recent. ‘I am sorry,’ I murmured.

‘Sorry?’

‘For the death of your husband.’ Surely it was obvious?

‘Oh.’ The veiled woman lowered her head. Then – and it sounded as if she had to force out the words – ‘Thank you.’

There was much more I wanted to know. My thoughts were whirling. Things that I had just been observing were reminding me of matters which Edild had touched on, as together we treated and, later, discussed the patients who beat a steady path to the door of her little house back in Aelf Fen.

I was tempted to begin asking questions there and then. As if she sensed it, the veiled woman said, with a note of cold command in her voice that expected instant obedience, ‘And now you will leave. I wish to rest.’

I managed not to slam the door. There was the baby to consider. I strode off along the passage, the heavy satchel in which I carry the requirements of my craft banging painfully on my hip, and flung myself out of the inn, all the while muttering under my breath, calling the veiled woman the sort of names that would deeply have shocked my parents.

Out on the street, my failure to see beyond my own fury made me temporarily blind, and I marched right into a man coming the other way. I came off worse, for he was so stocky and hard-muscled that it was like walking into a stone wall. I lost my footing, and a strong hand caught my elbow, holding me upright.

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, that was entirely my fault. I wasn’t – Oh!’

I had just bumped into Jack Chevestrier.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, restoring the strap of my satchel to its place over my shoulder.

‘No.’

‘You appear to be cross about something.’

It seemed he’d heard my cursing. ‘Er – yes.’

He nodded in the direction of the inn. ‘I think I might be able to guess the cause of your anger.’

I smiled. ‘You’d be right. She’s not an easy woman to help.’

Sudden sharp interest flared in his eyes. ‘You’d gone to help her?’

‘Well, her baby more than her. Mattie sought me out – she said you’d told her to.’

‘It wasn’t a command, Lassair,’ he said mildly. ‘I said if she happened to see you, she might ask if you’d give your professional opinion concerning the baby.’

I studied him. To look at him – not over-tall, sturdily built, thick with muscle and habitually grave of expression – you’d take him for the sort of powerful, unsophisticated and boneheaded strongman with whom the great lords who uphold the law like to surround themselves. His apparel supported this, for he was armed with sword and knife, and the sleeveless jerkin, made of sturdy leather, was marked with what looked like the scuffs and scars of old fights. Yet I sensed there was far more to him than that. For one thing, his manner of speech was not that of a common thug – he had just made a courteous remark – and, for another, I had the feeling that there was a fine intelligence inside his round, close-cropped head.

He appeared to be waiting for me to speak. I brought myself back to the matter in hand. ‘Mattie said the baby wasn’t ill, but seemed sad,’ I said. ‘Now that I’ve seen him, I agree.’