Alys Clare - Music of the Distant Stars

I spun round to look where she had looked. I thought I saw movement, and for the blink of an eye I could see a silver wolf and, right up close behind me, a red fox.

I should have known they were there. They are our spirit guides; my Fox is often with me, and I have almost — but not quite — learned to accept his presence. It was, however, a rare privilege to be allowed to catch a glimpse of Edild’s silver wolf. I have only seen him twice before, and the first time I thought he was a fox. When I told my aunt I had seen him she told me I had been imagining things. I was young then, and I almost believed her. I know better now.

I whispered to Fox, telling him how much I appreciated his presence, especially when I hadn’t been conscious of asking him to come, and for a moment he stood beside me, mouth stretched in what looked very like a grin. Then he faded away.

It was as if the presence of the spirit animals had brought a special, precious mood inside the little room. While they were there, everything had a shine to it; scents were intensified, colours were brighter. With their departure, life returned to normal and, just for a moment, I saw how uninspiring normal actually was.

Then Edild commanded me to go outside and fetch fresh water, and I remembered with a jolt that this was no time for meditating on the spirits. We had a job to do.

Some time later, Edild said there was no need for both of us to watch over our patient, because, with any luck, he would wake up soon and in the meantime it was only a matter of keeping him warm and regularly renewing the compress. ‘We have almost used up our supplies of water pepper,’ she said. ‘Go and gather some more.’

I hastened to obey. I would have to walk right down to the fen edge, but I was glad of it. My mind still kept going back to the images of that terrible operation, and I knew that what I needed was a good, hard walk in the sunshine. I fetched my basket and set off.

I was surprised to see by the sun that it was still only mid-morning. It felt as if my aunt and I had been battling for our patient’s life for days. I turned my face up to the sun’s warmth and silently expressed my gratitude to the spirits who had come to help us. Later, I knew, Edild would slip outside and perform her ceremony of thanks, and I would join her. She frequently reminded me that she and I were but the instruments through which the spirits did their healing work. The power came from them.

I made my way along the water’s edge, gathering as I went. I found that my steps had once again led me to the island, which was hardly surprising since it was there, a presence in the back of my mind, all the time. Putting down my basket, I stepped on to the planks of the causeway. I remembered those cuts in Derman’s shins. I recalled my certainty, earlier that morning, that they had not been caused by his falling against the planks.

I stopped above the place where his body had been found. I stared down into the black water, then I looked at the planks on which I stood. Just beside me there was one of the upright posts that supported the causeway. This one was quite thick — about as wide as my palm — and stuck up about a foot or so above the planking. Could it be this that had caused the cuts on Derman’s shins? I bent down and felt its edge. It was not very sharp, and surely it was too narrow to have wounded both shins. I straightened up again, puzzled. Something had tripped him; the evidence was there on his body. Unless, of course, the trip had happened some time earlier in the day that he had died. . But he had fallen into the water, and how else had that happened? Had he been pushed?

I looked from one side of the causeway to the other, trying to decide if it was wide enough for a man to have got up close enough behind Derman — a big man himself — to push him in. It was, but surely Derman would have seen or at least heard his assailant’s approach?

‘ Oh! ’ I cried out aloud in frustration.

Then I saw it. My eyes flashed to the other side of the causeway — and I could have cheered.

On each of the two upright posts, right at the spot where Derman fell into the water, there was a faint mark. Each mark was an indentation in the wood, more pronounced on the outside edge of each post, and about three or four hands’ breadths above the planking.

Someone, knowing that Derman visited the island and the place where he believed his beloved Ida still lay, had been waiting. This someone had fixed a trip wire between the two posts. They had hidden until Derman arrived; then, perhaps, had spooked him, so that when he crossed towards the island, he was hurrying. Perhaps in his haste to get to her he always hurried.

The trip wire caught him across the shins, and he fell, down into the mere. His assailant had then leapt out from his cover, raised his weapon and, as Derman lay in the water, the breath knocked out of him by his fall, had brought it down savagely and repeatedly on the back of Derman’s head.

Who was it?

I had thought it was Sir Alain, but now that he had been attacked, bludgeoned in exactly the same way, I knew I was wrong. Was it someone who believed Derman had killed Ida?

I thought about the day I had discovered Ida’s body. Derman had been hiding in the clump of willows that stood on a small area of higher ground between the island and the village. He had been weeping. He must have just seen Ida, dead in Granny Cordeilla’s tomb; I was sure of it. I was equally sure he had put her there. I had talked with Zarina, and she’d told me how her brother had killed a man who was hunting for her.

Derman killed him and hid his body where it would never be found. He put it in a-

In a grave, I’d thought then. Derman was of very limited intelligence, but one thing he would surely remember was killing a man and hiding the body in someone else’s grave. I had wondered — believed — that Derman had killed Ida and then used the same clever ploy — the one clever ploy of his entire life — again.

What if he hadn’t killed her? Now, all but sure he hadn’t, I thought about it again. What if, having sneaked away from Zarina’s vigilance one night and gone off wandering on his own — perhaps to sit out under the stars and think about his beloved — he had come across her dead body? Oh, poor, poor Derman. My heart filled with pity for him. If it had indeed happened like that, what ill chance that he should have been the one to find her.

I pictured him as I had seen him that morning, his face red, his eyes swollen from weeping. I pictured him some time earlier during that long night, stumbling on Ida as she lay dead. I saw his disbelief turn to certainty; saw him pick her up as easily as if she had been a child, cradling her to him in death as he surely never could have done in life. I saw him bear her to the island, where he knew there had recently been an interment. I saw him place her carefully on the ground, then push aside the heavy stone slab and place her in the ground beside my Granny.

How long had he sat there sobbing? Had it been the first lightening of the sky which heralds the dawn that had finally driven him away, into his pathetic and inefficient hiding place among the willows? I thought of his pain, his grief. It was all but unbearable.

I let myself into the house carefully and quietly, anxious not to disturb Sir Alain. Edild looked up from her place beside him. She smiled at me and said, in a voice only a little softer than usual, ‘Did you find any?’

The water pepper. Of course; that was why I had gone out. ‘Yes, the basket’s half full. I left it outside by the outhouse.’

‘You covered it? The stems should not be left out in the sunshine because-’

‘Yes, I covered it, and anyway it’s in the shade.’