Alys Clare - Music of the Distant Stars

Sir Alain must have read my expression. ‘Don’t you want Derman caught?’

Before I could think about it I blurted out, ‘I don’t want your men to catch him.’

I thought I had gone too far. But, when at length he spoke, his voice was gentle. ‘He may be a ruthless killer, Lassair. Ida was-’ He cleared his throat. ‘Ida had done him no harm. If she rejected him, as is speculated, she would have done so kindly and gently.’

‘Yes, I know,’ I said wearily. ‘But what if he didn’t kill her? What if he’s just a convenient, defenceless fool who was silly enough to fall for her and just happened to be in the vicinity when she was killed?’

He looked at me for some moments. Then a faint smile twitched at the corners of his mouth and he said, ‘Do you imagine I haven’t thought of that?’

I was ravenous when I finally got back to Edild’s house. I’d been far too tense that morning to think of food, and my ministrations up at the hall had taken me long past the hour of the midday meal. My aunt had thoughtfully left bread and cheese ready for me, and I crammed the food into my mouth as if I hadn’t eaten for a week. She waited while I took the edge off my hunger, then asked how I had found Lady Claude. I told her, thinking hard to make sure I relayed all my impressions as well as what Claude had actually said and done.

‘Hmm,’ Edild said when I had finished. ‘Her grief eats at her, it seems. And I would guess there is some battle going on in her head between what she sees as her vocation — to answer God’s call and enter a convent — and her duty to her family.’ She frowned. ‘I am disturbed at these embroideries you describe. They speak of a mind in torment.’

‘And she’s going to hang them round her bed !’ I added.

Edild smiled grimly. ‘Hardly the best images to induce a mood of love and romance, for either a man or a woman.’

I pictured the panel depicting Lust. ‘No.’

Edild fell quiet, and I knew from her expression that she was thinking. Then she said, ‘Lassair, who do you think fathered Ida’s child? And did her mistress know of her condition?’

I could not answer either question and shook my head. ‘She was pregnant before she came to Lakehall,’ I said. ‘Remember? I asked Sir Alain when she arrived in the area, and he said under a month ago, so that would be towards the end of May. She’d already have been three months gone then, if you’re right about her being four months pregnant when she died.’

‘I believe I am right,’ Edild murmured.

‘Lady Claude’s family home is in the Thetford Forest,’ I said. ‘Hrype told us it was near the place where the ancestors mined the flint.’

Edild nodded. ‘They call it Grim’s Graves,’ she said. ‘Our forefathers believed the gods quarried there. It is long abandoned now. Morcar and the other flint knappers acquire their raw material from other sources.’

Morcar is my cousin, who lives with his mother — Edild’s twin sister — in the area known as the Breckland. But I was not thinking about him then. I had just felt a deep-seated shiver, as if a cold finger out of the past had run down my back. ‘Lady Claude’s family live near such a place?’ I asked. I would not have cared to have my dwelling close to such a site of power.

‘Their estate is called Heathlands,’ my aunt replied. ‘Hrype says it is close to the little hamlet of Brandon.’ I opened my mouth to speak, but Edild said, ‘I know exactly what you’re thinking, but listen to me, Lassair. You would need permission to leave Aelf Fen, and you can’t go and ask Lord Gilbert, because this matter concerns him closely and he will not allow you to interfere. Also, there is a killer walking the lonely places out there and you would be putting yourself in grave danger.’

There was that word again. Grave . I shook off an instinctive shudder of fear and commanded myself not to be so silly. ‘But the only way we’ll find out more about Ida and her lover is if I go and ask,’ I protested.

‘Why must we know more?’ Edild demanded. ‘Can we not just let the poor girl rest in peace?’

‘Everyone thinks Derman killed her and Zarina’s terribly distressed and Haward loves her!’ I blurted out. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but Edild seemed to understand. ‘I don’t think he did, and I believe Sir Alain has his doubts too, but all the time Derman’s missing and there’s suspicion all around him, nobody’s going to get any peace. Are they?’ I almost shouted the question, my anxiety transforming into anger.

‘No,’ my aunt agreed.

Suddenly, I knew how to persuade her to let me go. ‘I bet some married man got her pregnant, and then when she threatened to reveal his identity, he killed her!’ I exclaimed. ‘Oh, Edild, that has to be what happened! If Ida comes from this tiny little village, then probably everyone there knows everybody else’s business and this married lover would have had his nice, peaceful existence broken apart if Ida had named him as her child’s father.’

‘But Ida had left her home village,’ Edild pointed out. ‘She came here with Lady Claude.’

‘Yes, but she’d be going back again once Claude and Sir Alain were married and there was no more wedding sewing to do,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t she?’ Surely that was right, unless Claude had been planning to keep Ida in her household after the wedding. Suddenly, I wasn’t so certain.

Edild shrugged. ‘You tell me, Lassair. You seem to have worked it all out.’

I thought hard. Then I said, ‘This is how it must have been. Ida had a lover, a married man in the village. She went to work for Claude, and one day Claude told her she was going to stay at Lakehall with her cousin Lord Gilbert and Ida had to go too because Claude was going to be working on her trousseau. Claude came here because Sir Alain is based in the area at the moment — ’ I was speaking faster now as it all came together — ‘and Claude wanted a chance to meet him, spend time with him and get to know him before the marriage.’

Edild nodded. ‘Yes, that sounds credible.’

‘Ida probably didn’t know she was pregnant when she left Brandon,’ I plunged on, ‘and when she found out, somehow she sent word to the man, and he panicked because he thought she was going to ruin him. So, before anyone else could discover the secret — especially his wife — he came here, asked Ida to meet him in the middle of the night and then strangled her.’

Edild looked at me for a long moment. ‘It is possible, I suppose,’ she said grudgingly. Then a faint smile touched the corner of her mouth. ‘Take Sibert,’ she said. ‘He’s looked after you before when you’ve hared off on such wild missions.’

‘You mean you’re allowing me to go?’ I could hardly believe it.

Edild’s smile was wider now, but she also looked exasperated. ‘We’ll get no work out of you till you’ve followed this particular trail all the way to the end,’ she remarked. ‘Go tomorrow, at first light. You can be there and back by sunset.’

Excitement bubbled up in me. ‘Can I go and tell Sibert?’

‘You may go and ask Sibert,’ she corrected. ‘You’re inviting him to wriggle out of a day’s work and set out on a journey without permission, and, considering the trouble he’d be in if anyone found out, he has every right to say no.’

He did, yes. But I knew he wouldn’t.

Sibert and I had a really lovely day for our walk. We had some eight or ten miles to go, and in the warm sunshine, with the birds singing all around us and the scents of summer filling the air, I’d gladly have gone twice as far. The weather had been dry of late, and the ground was firm. Our way took us up out of the fens towards the higher ridge that cups them to the east, and for the first few miles we climbed gently but steadily.