Alys Clare - The Way Between the Worlds

‘Did you?’

‘No. Nobody had gone to ask about Herleva.’

It struck me as very sad, and I was sure from Hrype’s tone and his expression that he felt the same. ‘Perhaps they haven’t yet heard,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘It is possible. Or perhaps she was alone in the world.’

I did not want to dwell on that.

‘I, too, have been thinking about Herleva,’ I said. ‘In particular, how she died.’

Then I told him about the man in the fen, and how Gurdyman had taken me with him to assist as he inspected the body. I told him how the man had been killed, and what Gurdyman had concluded, and how I’d thought it was similar to how poor little Herleva had met her end. I confessed that, just for a moment, I’d wondered if she, too, had been a sacrificial victim. ‘But she wasn’t,’ I finished, ‘because if she was, she’d have been left somewhere in the marginal places between water and land.’

Hrype was deep in thought. I wondered if he’d heard a word I had said. Then, abruptly, he barked out, ‘Where do you think Herleva was found?’

‘I — er, Elfritha. .’ Oh, Elfritha! ‘My sister said Herleva’s body was found behind the stables.’ A very worrying thought struck me. ‘Hrype, you just said you needed to investigate the place where Herleva died, so you must have gone back inside the abbey walls!’ I stopped dead and looked up at him. ‘You did, even though it was so perilous, especially without me there pretending to be your daughter! Oh, what if they’d spotted you and recognized you?’ I felt a chill round my heart. ’They didn’t, did they?’

He waved an impatient hand. ‘No, Lassair.’

‘But how else-’

‘ Enough ,’ he said, quite sharply. Then, perhaps recalling where we were going and why, he said more kindly, ‘Listen, and I shall tell you.’

I shut my mouth and hung my head.

‘You misheard what your sister said,’ he said after a moment. ‘As, indeed, did I. We both understood her to have said that Herleva’s body was found behind the stables, which we took to mean the big stable block within the abbey where the horses and mules of visitors are cared for. So when I realized that I had to know more concerning her death, I thought I would have to go back inside the abbey, and this was, as you rightly pointed out, quite risky.’

‘I could have gone with you!’ I protested. ‘We could have disguised ourselves just like we did that first time! Why didn’t you-’

Again, he silenced me, this time by raising his hand. ‘It was not necessary for either of us to return inside the abbey,’ he said, ‘as I discovered when I asked the right questions. Lassair, we thought that Elfritha said Herleva was found behind the stables, but she didn’t. She actually said stable , in the singular.’

Stables? Stable? What difference could it make?

But then I understood. ‘The stable where she was found isn’t within the abbey walls, is it?’ I whispered. ‘It’s somewhere else entirely.’

‘It is,’ he agreed. ‘In fact, it is more a shed than a stable: a crude and simple little construction set in the far corner of a field some distance from the main buildings. It’s a shelter for the Chatteris donkey, on the rare occasions when the sisters aren’t using him to help in any one of a hundred tasks.’

I knew without being told what sort of a location this shelter was in. I said — and it was a statement, not a question — ‘It’s down by the water, right at the edge of the land, and sometimes in bad weather that corner of the field floods, almost up to the door of the little shed.’

Hrype looked very closely at me for a moment. Then, sounding like someone trying just too hard to speak in their normal tone, he said, ‘Yes, that describes it exactly.’ His curiosity overcame him, and he added in an urgent hiss, ‘Can you see it, Lassair?’

I nodded. He appeared to think about that for some moments. Then he said, ‘Herleva’s body was found half under water, right on the fen edge. But for her veil, still covering her head, she was naked. Her wrists and ankles were bound to hazel stakes with ropes made of honeysuckle.’

We had been walking for some time now, and the traffic travelling north out of Cambridge was building up as the day drew on and people made for home. Presently, Hrype flagged down a plump young woman driving a cart and persuaded her to give us a ride, on the pretext that his daughter (me) was lame and we still had many miles to go. I had the presence of mind to adopt a limp as the woman’s eyes swept to me to verify Hrype’s words. She didn’t seem to mind helping us, however, and soon she and Hrype were chatting away like old friends. He continued to amaze me; there he was, sounding like some simple peasant whose mind never dwelt on anything deeper than whether his crops would grow or his ewes produce healthy lambs. I would never have guessed he knew so much about farming. .

I sat in silence, thinking.

The plump woman dropped us close to where the boats for Chatteris tied up, and Hrype and I waited until one would turn up to ferry us across. The wait was long.

After quite some time, I said, ‘If Herleva and the man in the fen were killed by the same person-’

Hrype snorted. ‘I think, don’t you, that we can omit the if .’

‘If they were murdered by the same hands,’ I repeated firmly, ‘then we should think about what they might have had in common. Did they, for example, know each other? Were they the last remaining members of a wealthy family who had to be removed so that someone else could inherit?’

‘Herleva wasn’t a wealthy heiress,’ Hrype pointed out. ‘She was a novice nun.’

‘Yes, I know that, but perhaps she was a rich woman before she became a nun,’ I said, but I had to agree, it didn’t seem very likely. ‘Or. .’ I had run out of possibilities.

‘You are, I imagine, just speculating on a possibility, which we are to treat as a hypothesis rather than an attempt at the truth,’ Hrype said, his voice kind.

I wasn’t sure if I was, but I nodded anyway. ‘Or perhaps they were both involved in somebody else being killed,’ I went on, my imagination coming to life again, ‘and it became too dangerous to let them live.’

‘Hmm,’ said Hrype.

‘Herleva was killed just a few days ago,’ I went on, ‘and Gurdyman thinks the man in the fen died within the last few months. It couldn’t have been any longer because the honeysuckle used to bind him was still quite fresh.’

‘Hmm,’ Hrype repeated.

I was thinking very hard. There was something, some relevant fact, right on the edge of my mind, and I just couldn’t pin it down. I ordered my thoughts, summarizing what I knew.

Who? I asked myself. Answer: a chatty little nun and a middle-aged man.

When? One within a week or so; one within a few months.

Where? One on the island of Chatteris, over on the western side of the fens; one over on the eastern side, in the maze of channels that wind through the marshes to the north of Aelf Fen and up towards Lynn and, eventually, the sea.

Then I knew what it was that had been niggling at me, trying to catch my attention.

‘Hrype?’ I said softly.

He turned to look down at me, his strange silvery eyes catching the gleam of the slowly falling sun. ‘Yes?’

‘I think there is a connection between them.’ I was speaking too quickly, breathless in my excitement, and I made myself slow down. ‘The dead man was found in the water over towards the fens’ eastern margin, above where the two rivers flow down from the higher ground and below Lynn,’ I said.

‘What of it?’ He spoke quite sharply, but there was a faint smile on his face. He knew already, I was sure, what I was going to say; it would not have surprised me if he did, for he is adept at reading other people’s thoughts, and what was on my mind just then must have been shouting out at him.