Alys Clare - The Way Between the Worlds

Edild was too busy to stop and talk to me, so I met Hrype’s eyes and inclined my head very slightly towards the doorway. He understood instantly. As I crept back outside, once more using the door that was closest to Elfritha’s little room, I knew without looking that he was right behind me.

We found a place in the far corner of the cloister, where we sat down on a low wall. The cloister was deserted, and we positioned ourselves so that we could see anyone coming. It was evening now and beginning to grow dark. I checked that there were no doorways in which people could lurk and listen to our conversation.

I had a final quick look round, then I told him, as succinctly as I could, what Gurdyman had found in the stomach of the dead man in the fen. I was on the point of describing how Gurdyman and I had speculated that Herleva had also been given the same poison, but there was no need because, being Hrype, he had already worked it out.

‘And the little nun — your sister’s friend — she, too, had vomited,’ he said.

‘We’ve no way of knowing what it was that poisoned Herleva,’ I went on. ‘But I am pretty sure that Elfritha was given the same fatal gruel that the man in the fen ate.’

‘Not fatal yet,’ Hrype put in swiftly.

I ached for reassurance. Could he give it? I knew he had ways of seeing through the mist into the future. ‘Will she live?’ I asked in a small voice.

He turned to meet my eyes. ‘I do not know, Lassair,’ he said. ‘Your aunt has not said, and she is the healer, not me.’

‘Couldn’t you-’ I began. I dropped my head, unable to go on.

‘Could I ask the runes?’ he supplied. ‘Is that what you would ask, child?’ Mutely, I nodded.

There was quite a long pause. Then he said, ‘I could, yes, and they would give an answer. But they do not lie, and they tell truths that often cause terrible pain, for sometimes to know of a dreadful event before it happens is to suffer it many times over rather than just once.’

‘Then you do think she’s going to die.’

‘ No ,’ he said very firmly. ‘I said I do not know. Nobody does, Lassair. All we can do is look after her to the best of our ability.’ His mouth creased up in a very small smile. ‘By we , I mean, of course, you and your aunt.’ He reached for my hand, clasping it for a moment and then letting it go. ‘Nobody could have better care,’ he added softly.

It was kind of him, but really undeserved. I would only be doing what Edild told me; if Elfritha survived, it would be thanks to my aunt.

We were quiet for some time. It was pleasantly warm in our corner out of the wind, and I thought fleetingly how lovely it would be to curl up in my shawl and go to sleep.

Hrype’s voice broke the spell.

‘Why should someone try to kill Elfritha?’ he asked.

My eyelids had been drooping, and I had been sitting slumped against the warm stone of the wall behind me. Now I sat up, rubbed the drowsiness away and forced myself to think. I’d had a theory, hadn’t I? Last time Hrype and I had visited the abbey, I’d worked it all out. I composed my thoughts and, when I was ready, began to speak.

‘There was one thing that occurred to me,’ I said. Hrype’s sudden intent gaze told me I had his full attention. ‘When we came here the first time, you insisted that we adopt the guises of an old man and his daughter, and I realized you wanted to hide our true identities from somebody. I wondered who it was, and why you didn’t want them to recognize us.’

He went: ‘Hrmph,’ and I knew he was thinking. Then he said, ‘What did you decide?’

‘That you believed the abbey was dangerous to us. To me, especially, because the new fanatical priest you spoke about — Father Clement — might have learned that I’d spoken to Elfritha concerning. . well, concerning my healing, which he probably would regard as pagan, sinful, the devil’s work. Oh, I don’t know,’ I exclaimed in sudden frustration, ‘I don’t really understand.’

‘You are quite right,’ Hrype said, coming to my rescue. ‘A man such as Father Clement believes there is but one true path to salvation. It is very straight, very narrow, the walls on either side are very high and there is no alternative way. He would view you as a sorcerer, a witch, and a practitioner of magic. And, worst of all, you’re also a woman.’ He gave me an ironic smile. ‘Doubly damned, I’m afraid.’

I barely recognized myself from his description, other than the bit about being a woman. ‘I don’t do magic,’ I whispered.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘No? Then the stories I’ve heard about a certain young healer who can dowse for hidden paths and lost objects must be untrue.’

‘That’s different,’ I began. ‘That’s just something I can do. .’ I stopped.

He grinned. ‘There you are, then. It’s magic, to someone as narrow-minded as Father Clement.’

There was a pause while I thought about that. Then I said, ‘Do you think I’m right? Do you think Herleva and Elfritha were poisoned because they’d been whispering about forbidden things?’ My words were hurting me, but I had to finish. ‘Things I’d told Elfritha, that she’d passed on to her best friend?’

Oh, if that were true, if those two innocent young women had been harmed because of something I had done, then how was I going to live with myself? Nevertheless, I was convinced I was right. They’d sat in a corner somewhere, white-veiled heads close together, and Elfritha had told her friend all about the wonderful, thrilling, magical things her little sister got up to. Someone had overheard; somehow the conversation had reached the attention of a powerful figure in the abbey. And this person had killed Herleva, dressing her death up as a sacrifice to the spirits of the place, and then they had tried to poison my sister.

Although I shied away from the thought, I knew who I suspected, and there seemed no room in my mind for any other possibilities. But was I right? Could such evil have been perpetrated by the person I suspected?

I had to ask.

‘Hrype?’ I whispered. He turned to look at me, his face unreadable. ‘Hrype, could Father Clement be so fanatical that he would murder two young nuns, simply because they had spoken of forbidden matters?’ Even as I spoke the words, I found myself denying them. Surely no man of God could have done something so brutal, even a fanatic like Father Clement.

The instant denial that I’d been hoping for did not come. Instead, after a long pause, Hrype said, ‘Father Clement is strict, blinkered and powerful. His own beliefs are so strong that he truly thinks his is the only path to certain redemption. He is, I feel, hard on others because he sincerely wants them to come to his god and, when they die, be permitted to spend eternity in paradise. Everything he does — and, as I told you before, he is as tough on himself as on his flock — is with that aim in mind.’

‘But would he kill?’ I persisted.

Hrype looked at me, smiling. ‘No, Lassair.’ He hesitated, then went on, ‘He is the priest of the Chatteris nuns, responsible for their spiritual welfare, and, up to a point, he would be prepared to impose much hardship and even suffering, in the form of penance, if he thought he would thereby bring an errant soul to his god.’ He leaned closer to me, the smile gone. ‘But murder is a sin, a deadly sin, and a priest such as Father Clement would no more consider it than fly off over the fens. He is no killer, Lassair. Be assured of that.’

It was both a relief, because the thought of my sister and her friend being poisoned by a man they trusted was so dreadful, and a disappointment, because if Father Clement wasn’t responsible, who was?

We sat there a little while longer, and then, without speaking a word, at the same moment we stood up and set off back to the infirmary.