Alys Clare - Music of the Distant Stars

‘Patients?’ I echoed. I could only think of one. Claude.

Edild went on stirring. ‘You told me that you tended Lady Emma when she fainted,’ she reminded me.

‘I didn’t do much,’ I protested. ‘She sort of fell against me, and I bathed her face with cold water when she’d recovered from her faint. Anyone else there could have done the same,’ I added, modestly lowering my eyes.

‘Naturally, since what you did was common sense rather than healing skill,’ Edild said crushingly. I know she loves me dearly — I have good reason to — but sometimes she is all stern teacher, reminding me how far I have to go before I can call myself a healer. ‘However, it does no harm for an apprentice like you to make their mark with the lady of the manor,’ she continued, ‘and if, as it appears, Lady Emma is inclined to trust you, it would be wise to do what you can to develop her dependency.’

‘But you’re the village healer,’ I said. ‘It ought to be you looking after the lady of the manor.’

Edild gave me a small smile. ‘I am not really at home in the halls of lords and ladies,’ she murmured.

That was a surprise. I’d have said that my aunt, with her dignity, her grace and her slight air of aloofness, was happy anywhere the sick and injured needed her, be it a peasant hovel or a castle. As she ladled out porridge into a wooden bowl, stirring in a generous spoonful of honey from her own bees, I thought about what she had said. I realized quite soon that she was right. With the poor and lowly, the full force of her personality emerged. When she and I had gone to Lakehall to lay out Ida’s body, Edild, although perfectly polite, had sort of withdrawn into herself. I must have noted the difference in her without really thinking about it, and it was only now, when pointed in the right direction, that I understood.

As if she knew what I was thinking, she said gently, ‘The rich can buy the assistance of whomever they choose, Lassair. The poor have to make do with what they can get, and in many villages that amounts to some ignorant old woman who probably does more harm than good.’

Yes. One of my sister Goda’s friends had almost lost her baby — and her own life — because a village midwife hadn’t known what she was doing. Goda had had the good sense to send for Edild, who had saved both mother and child. We learned later that the woman had afterwards spent a lot of time on her knees in church praying to the Virgin Mary, most honoured of all mothers, to look favourably on Edild and take special care of her. Edild, when she’d heard of this, had smiled gently. I think that the Great Mother to whom Edild prays is far, far more ancient than the Mother of Christ, but no doubt she appreciated the sentiment. Maybe, in some strange and unfathomable way, the two are one and the same. .

Edild was instructing me on how to conduct myself up at the hall; I made myself pay attention. Then, when I had washed and put away our mugs and bowls, tidied our beds and swept the floor ready for the day’s work, I straightened my headdress, put on a clean apron, packed my satchel and set out for the hall.

As I passed the track that led up to the church, I looked over in the direction of Ida’s grave. I decided I would go and spend a few moments there with her on my way home. Preoccupied with working out who had killed her, I had forgotten the sheer sadness of her death. She was young, cheerful, pretty, and people had liked her. Loved her. She should have grown up to be cherished and adored by a husband and a whole clutch of children, in addition to the one who had died with her. Instead she had been brutally strangled, and now she lay in the cold ground.

I walked on, deliberately putting those thoughts to the back of my mind. You have to approach all healing work with the right mental attitude, and I knew I would do Lady Emma and Lady Claude no good at all if I was brooding about Ida. I began planning the questions I would ask and the remedies I would prescribe, and soon the healer had taken over from the emotional girl and the threatening tears had been firmly put in abeyance.

Bermund showed me into the hall with only the smallest hint of disapproval. I would not go as far as to say he was growing to like me, but then I don’t think he likes anyone, really. It was, I felt, a major achievement that he hadn’t kept me waiting at the bottom of the steps while he went inside to see if it was all right to admit me.

He held out a hand to stop me and walked on towards where Lady Emma sat on a dais at the end of the hall. She, however, had looked up at the sound of our footsteps and was already beckoning to me to approach.

‘Thank you, Bermund, that will be all,’ she said softly to him. Then, addressing me: ‘Good morning, Lassair. You have no doubt come to see Lady Claude.’

It would have been easy to bow and mumble meekly, Yes, my lady . Recalling Edild’s words, I walked right up to her, dipped my head and instead said very quietly, ‘I have also come to attend you, Lady Emma. You are quite recovered from your faint, I hope?’

She looked up at me and smiled. I could see just by looking at her that she was fully well again, for her face had a good colour, her eyes shone and her hair, neatly smoothed back under a thin gold circlet holding in place a fine silk veil, was glossy with health. ‘How very kind,’ she said. ‘I am indeed, although there is a small matter I would discuss with you.’

‘Of course, my lady.’ I swung my satchel down off my shoulder and was about to put it on the floor when she stood up and said, ‘My own little concern is not grave, Lassair; I would prefer it if first you tended to Lady Claude.’ Moving gracefully, accompanied by the swish of silk from the full skirt of her beautiful green gown and whatever she wore beneath, she walked regally across the hall, and I followed. We went through the curtained doorway and up the short flight of stairs, and once again I stood outside Lady Claude’s chamber. Lady Emma tapped gently on the door and called, ‘Claude? Are you there?’

I was not surprised when there was no reply. Lady Claude had made it very clear what she thought of people who lay in bed all morning. I had a very good idea where she would be. Lady Emma walked on up the passage and rapped on the closed door of the sewing room, so sure, it seemed, of an immediate response of Come in that her hand was already on the latch.

I did not want to go back into that narrow chamber with its lurid depictions of sin. I did not want to sit closeted with Lady Claude and breathing the close, fusty air while I asked about her headaches and her insomnia. To be frank, she smelt. Her breath had the faint odour of dead meat, and I suspected that lack of fresh air and exercise had resulted in a sluggish digestion. I had herbs that would swiftly relieve her constipation, but I hesitated to offer them unless she mentioned her complaint, and I did not think she would. Besides, she troubled me, and my instinct was to get away from her. That, I told myself very firmly, was no attitude for a healer. I recalled how she had been yesterday in the churchyard, standing by the grave of her dead seamstress, rigidly controlling her distress except for those tell-tale glances at Sir Alain. She wasn’t so bad after all, I realized. She might appear chilly and distant, but that little moment of weakness had proved that she was human after all.

A smile on my face, I waited to confront my patient.

Having received no answer, Lady Emma knocked again. This time when Lady Claude did not reply, she gave me a puzzled glance and opened the door.

The completed panels still hung on the walls, and I noticed that Lady Claude had stretched a new piece of canvas over the wooden embroidery frame. On it there was an outline of figures. I thought this one must be Envy; a skeletal, mean-faced woman with cruel, narrow eyes was depicted crouched at a doorway, one long, thin arm stretched out towards a plump baby in a crib. The woman’s fingers were curved into hooks, her hand poised over the baby’s round little head. One nail had already made contact, and there was the suggestion of a drop of blood. The image was shocking, its message plain: childless, eaten away by envy of another woman’s child, the woman was about to grab what she so desperately desired.