Alys Clare - Music of the Distant Stars

All hopes of a terrible accident flew away. Had it happened as I had so hoped, had he slipped, cracked his head on the planks of the causeway and fallen, unconscious, into the water to drown, there would have been only the one blow to the head. This had been no innocent, fatal misfortune.

What poor Derman’s murderer had done to him was one of the most furious, frenzied onslaughts it has ever been my bad luck to witness.

It took all four of us to pull him up out of the water. It was as if the fen did not want to let him go and, when finally we wrestled his dead weight up on to the planks, the black mud gave out a last bubble of stinking gas as if to spite us. We were filthy, our hands, arms, bodies coated with muck, and Sibert was soaking wet, for at one point, frustrated at our lack of progress, he had armed himself with a stout stick, jumped down into the water and tried to lever the corpse up from beneath.

Edild spread out the blanket, and we laid Derman on it. We each took firm hold of a corner and, with a huge effort, lifted him off the ground. Then we set out across the mile or so of difficult terrain back to my aunt’s house.

Edild and I live on the edge of Aelf Fen, well away from the rest of the village. We prefer it that way, and so, I am sure, do the villagers. Healers are very welcome when people need us, and indeed our patients and their relatives are always grateful and fulsome in their praise and their gifts when we make someone well again. However, in most people’s minds healing is next door to witchcraft, and they are all more than happy that we don’t live right on top of them.

As we approached the path up to the house, we could see that Edild’s patients for the day had already begun to arrive. Fortunately, there were only two so far: an old man, and an even older woman. Edild gave a small sigh and indicated that we should lower our burden.

‘William and his old mother,’ she said quietly. ‘She is dying, and William will miss her very much when she goes. There is very little I can do, but he appears comforted by the tonics I prescribe for her.’ She frowned, then turned to me. ‘Lassair, go on and speak to them. Tell them to go home, and say to William that I’ll come to see his mother later.’

I ran on up the path and delivered the message. William looked at me worriedly and whispered, ‘Mother may not last till later,’ to which I could think of no answer except to agree with him. His mother looked as insubstantial as a piece of dandelion fluff, and I was amazed she’d managed to walk up from the village. I could not, of course, say so. I watched as they shuffled away and, when they could no longer see the house, went back down the path to summon the others.

We carried Derman’s body into the house, laid him very gratefully on the ground — he was extremely heavy — and Edild secured the door. There was no sign of Haward, and I hoped he was even now at home in the stoutly reassuring company of our parents. Working very swiftly, Edild removed Derman’s garments and studied the body. We all knew how he had died, and I turned away as she and Hrype studied the devastating wounds on the back of his head. Sibert, I noticed, had retreated to the furthest corner and was busy inspecting his hands.

He, however, was not an apprentice healer; I was. All too soon my aunt’s autocratic tones sang out: ‘Come here, Lassair, for it is rare that we have the chance to see what is inside the skull.’

With the utmost reluctance I did as I was told. Stepping forward, I made myself look at the great crater on the right side of the back of the head. To begin with, I had to fight the urge to be sick, for the bloody, oozing, waterlogged mess was a hideous sight. But then, listening to Hrype and Edild speculating on the brain as the source of all we do, all we are and all we think, revulsion turned to interest, and then to fascination.

‘Is his brain different from ours?’ I asked after a while.

Hrype turned to me, his eyes alert. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because he was simple,’ I replied. ‘He may have grown into a man, but he didn’t act like one. Everyone said he was like a child, but that’s not really right either. He was just. .’ I searched for the right word, gave up and said, ‘Just different .’

Hrype nodded. ‘It is an enigma, isn’t it?’ he agreed. I was not sure what an enigma was, but I said yes anyway. ‘Here we have the brain of a man who was different, as Lassair says — ’ he paused to prod at the white matter — ‘yet, for all that is visible to our eyes, it looks just like any other.’ I wondered how many brains Hrype had studied, but quickly decided I did not wish to think about that. ‘What happened, Derman?’ Hrype asked softly. ‘Were you born this way, and if so, why did the gods choose to make you as you were?’

Nobody answered him. I’m not sure any of us knew how.

Edild was inspecting the rest of the body. I moved closer to her, watching as she ran her hands over the stiffening limbs. I found myself looking at the genitals, blushed furiously and then sternly reprimanded myself for my coyness. Healers, as my aunt repeatedly tells me, treat every part of the human body with the same dispassionate interest, even the bits normally kept modestly out of sight. I stared at the penis and testicles beneath the fine downy body hair, noting their lack of development. Derman was a man, yet his genitalia were like those of a small boy.

I suddenly remembered something Zarina had said: He is not as other men, and he does not begin to comprehend the true nature of how a man and wife live in intimacy together . And, later, The idea of any sort of physical closeness is just not possible.

Staring down at Derman’s body, I wondered how she had known. At the widow Berta’s cottage, Derman had slept in the lean-to, but then these two had grown up together and travelled with the troupe of players for a considerable time; it was only to be expected that Zarina would have observed her brother’s naked body on occasions. All the same, there was something about this that bothered me. .

I did not have the chance to think it through because just at that moment Edild, who had been inspecting the large, flat feet and was now running her hands up the lower legs, gave a soft exclamation. ‘Look,’ she murmured.

Hrype and I edged closer to her and stared down at what she was indicating. I could see it immediately: across the front of both shins there was a red mark, a deep indentation that in one or two places had cut into the thin flesh.

‘That must have hurt,’ I said, wincing in sympathy.

‘It perhaps explains the sequence of events,’ Hrype said thoughtfully. ‘It would appear that he slipped, or tripped, and somehow as he fell he managed to bark his shins on the planks of the causeway. Perhaps he landed in the water; perhaps on the causeway. Either way, he was down, no longer on his feet, and, since he was a tall, strong man, I believe that is relevant.’ He paused. ‘Let us say that he landed, either on the planks or in the water, face down. It would then have been relatively easy for his assailant to raise their weapon and bring it down repeatedly on the back of his head.’

We all thought about that; even Sibert who, now that we were no longer talking about brains and poking at what was left of Derman’s, had crept forward to join us around the body.

It was he who voiced what I’m sure we were all thinking. ‘It wouldn’t have taken a man to kill him, then,’ he said slowly. ‘Even a woman could have done it.’

Although none of us said the words aloud, a woman like Zarina seemed to echo through the little room.

Hrype straightened up and said, in a tone that seemed to reject any contradiction, ‘I shall go and tell Sir Alain what has happened.’