Alys Clare - Music of the Distant Stars

I thought she had gone too far. Whatever a local justiciar might be, I was sure they did not permit the likes of Edild to speak to them so curtly and, in effect, tell them what to do. Possibly Sir Alain did not realize this, for, far from being angry, he jumped up, helped Edild and me to our feet and said, ‘Of course. I am sorry. Lassair — go home now, rest, and if I need to speak to you again, I will come to find you.’

I felt we ought to go before he changed his mind and got cross after all. I grabbed Edild’s hand, muttered, ‘Come on, then,’ and led her away.

I risked a glance behind me as we hurried back over the water. He was standing where we had left him, staring down at Ida’s body. His head was bent, and I thought his hands were clasped in front of him.

He looked as if he were praying.

Edild tended me solicitously for the remainder of the day. There was plenty of work to be done — we are usually kept busy, even in the middle of summer — but she insisted that I do nothing more arduous than wash out empty bottles and make them ready for new preparations and remedies. I would rather have done what I usually do, which is to take my share of the less demanding conditions that are presented to us by the villagers, because being forced to concentrate on something more exciting than bottle-washing would have taken my mind off Ida’s round, pretty, dead face. Still, Edild had her reasons. She keeps telling me that a healer must turn all her mind to every single patient, even those with something mundane like corns or a crop of boils, and she probably suspected that today I would have found it difficult. She’d have been right.

Catching her between patients — she was washing her hands in a bowl of warm water scented with lavender oil, and the smell was delicious — I said, ‘Edild, what’s a local justiciar?’

She paused, then resumed her washing and said, ‘King William has, I believe, a new system for promoting law and order. Apparently, he wishes to ensure that justice is done out in the more remote parts of the kingdom, and to this end he has appointed men to judge the graver mis-demeanours, attend meetings of the shire courts, observe how rulings are given out and, in general, ensure that the law is upheld.’

She did not ask why I wanted to know. I decided to tell her, anyway. ‘Alain de Villequier is our local justiciar.’

She gave me a serene smile and said, ‘I know.’

I did not bother demanding how she knew. My aunt seems to have the ability to pick information out of thin air; either that or she is exceptionally observant and just keeps her eyes and ears open. Instead I said, ‘Do you know anything else about him?’

Just then there was a very timid tap on the door. It sounded as if Edild’s next patient had arrived. My aunt looked at me, sympathy in her eyes. ‘I can see you’re burning with impatience, but you’ll have to wait,’ she said kindly. ‘As it happens, I do know more about Alain de Villequier, and I promise I’ll tell you later.’

I took myself out to the barrel in the yard behind the house to resume my bottle-washing. I could hear muttered words from inside the house, but deliberately I made myself deaf to what was said; it’s another part of my healer’s training. Instead, I filled my mind with a question: what did my aunt know of our new justice man, and how on earth had she found it out?

When the two of us had finished work for the day and were sitting outside on the bench in the shade of the three young birch trees behind Edild’s house, sipping one of her cool, refreshing concoctions, at last my patience broke and I said, ‘ Well ?’

She smiled. ‘Wait a while longer, for the person who provided the information is on his way.’

I waited. After a short while, there was the sound of quick footsteps on the path that leads around the house and Hrype appeared. He gave me a nod by way of greeting, paused behind my aunt and briefly touched her shoulder, then sat down on the end of the bench and accepted a mug of Edild’s cold drink.

My aunt and my friend Sibert’s uncle Hrype are lovers. Nobody knows this except for the two of them and me. I discovered their secret last autumn, through some unusual circumstances that I won’t describe now. Around that time I also discovered that Hrype is not in fact Sibert’s uncle; he’s his father. Both these fascinating facts I have kept to myself. If Hrype and Sibert choose to present themselves to the world as uncle and nephew, instead of father and son, that is their business. Regarding Hrype and Edild, I love my aunt dearly and would not hurt her for the world and, if the truth about her relationship with Hrype became known, it would cause her — and others — great distress and pain. I would not say I am fond of Hrype exactly; he is too strange and powerful for an ordinary mortal like me to have such a normal emotion regarding him. Another reason for keeping these secrets, which are his too, is that he’d probably turn me into a two-headed toad if I didn’t.

Hrype has begun to teach me about some very deep, dark magic. My respect and my fear of him are growing all the time.

That evening I watched them together, my aunt Edild and Hrype the cunning man. Now that I knew their secret, their feelings for each other were plain to see, or perhaps it was that, knowing I knew the truth, they allowed their guard to slip a little. Either way, it was both a pleasure and a pain to see the way his eyes filled with tenderness as he looked at her; the way she stroked a lock of hair away from his lean face with a hand as gentle as a mother’s with a sleeping baby. A pleasure because it touched my heart to see Edild looking so happy. A pain because I understood the difficulties they faced; also because observing a pair so devoted to each other reminded me of the man I love, who had slipped out of my life the previous autumn and left me with no hope that I’d ever see him again. Except for something my aunt had said. .

I brought myself back to the present with a lurch; Hrype was speaking to me. ‘You wish to know about Alain de Villequier, Lassair?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Listen, then, and I will tell you what I know.’ He stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankle, and fixed me with his silvery eyes. ‘He is a man who moves close to the king’s intimate circle. He is not within it, but his own circle touches it.’ He leaned forward and drew a diagram in the dusty ground: a small circle surrounded by five other, larger circles, the edges of which touched against the small one. ‘This is King William, with his personal elite,’ he said, pointing to the inner circle. ‘These are the groups of his close associates — ’ he indicated the five larger circles — ‘in each of which there is a leading figure who reports directly to one of the elite. Alain de Villequier, who comes from a powerful and prominent Norman family, is in one such group. The king’s trust in him is sufficient that he has appointed him justiciar for our area and has provided him with a small but handsome manor house, Alderhall, where Sir Alain will live while he is with us.’

‘Edild explained what “justiciar” means,’ I said.

‘Good, then I shall not repeat her. This business of the dead girl in Cordeilla’s grave will be a test for him. The king will be kept informed as to how he handles the enquiry.’ I felt a shiver of sympathy for Alain de Villequier; such a challenge, with the spectre of King William looking over my shoulder, would have terrified me into petrifaction.

‘Sir Alain has much to gain if he is efficient and brings this matter to a swift conclusion,’ Hrype went on, ‘for as well as the king, there is a future mother-in-law to impress.’