Candace Robb - A Spy For The Redeemer

‘I thought you might wish a word,’ Lucie said, and headed for the house, taking Tildy by the elbow and propelling her forward.

By the time Lucie’s party entered the hall, the servants had set up a trestle table near the fire. Flagons of ale and wine, and a cold repast were brought in for the travellers. Lucie looked round for her aunt.

‘I shall fetch the mistress,’ a maid said, bobbing a curtsy.

‘No,’ said Lucie, ‘it is best that I speak with her alone.’ The maid directed her to a screened area in the far corner of the hall.

‘She no longer sleeps up in the solar?’

‘No, Mistress,’ the young woman said.

Lucie paused halfway across the hall, noticing a rent in the tapestry on the far wall, repaired with the open, ineffectual stitches of a child just learning to sew. The tear extended an arm’s length from the side of the tapestry inward. ‘What has happened here?’ she said to herself.

At her elbow, Daimon said quietly, ‘I should warn you, Mistress, Dame Phillippa has not been herself of late.’

‘She tore it? Or repaired it?’

‘Both, I think.’

Such clumsy stitches? And on Phillippa’s favourite tapestry, one of the few items left from her dowry.

The alcove had once held her parents’ bed, before the hearth had replaced the fire circle and a fireplace was possible up in the solar. It was a large space, enclosed by carved wood screens. Lucie tapped on the screen nearest the heavy curtain that served as a door. ‘Aunt? It is Lucie.’

A little cry, then a shuffling. Lucie pushed back the curtain. Phillippa was already there, one arm stretched out to embrace her niece. ‘My dearest child!’

‘Aunt Phillippa.’ Lucie was startled by her aunt’s bony shoulders. She stepped back, saw how her aunt’s gown hung loosely upon her tall frame. And she leaned upon a stick. ‘You are unwell. I did not know.’

‘Always eager to try your remedies on me, child.’ Phillippa patted Lucie’s hand. ‘But I do not believe that you have a remedy for old age, eh? Is my brother with you?’

Lucie shook her head.

Phillippa’s smile faded. ‘Tell me,’ she whispered.

Lucie looked round. The space was lit by two oil lamps on either side of Phillippa’s large bed. At the foot was a chest and in a corner of the screens a bench. Lucie drew her aunt down on to the latter and told her Owen’s account of Sir Robert’s passing.

Crossing herself with a trembling hand, Phillippa sighed as if weary.

‘Brother Michaelo is here,’ said Lucie. ‘He was with father to the end. He has offered to tell you all you wish to know about father’s journey, and his passing.’

Phillippa dropped her gaze to her hands, which rested limply in her lap. ‘So many years on pilgrimage,’ she said sadly. ‘Well, it is how he wished to die.’ She was weeping now, silently, her head bowed.

Tildy appeared in the doorway with a cup of wine. At Lucie’s nod she pressed it into Phillippa’s hands. The elderly woman lifted the cup, but paused with it halfway to her lips, set it back down.

‘Father had a vision at St Non’s Well,’ Lucie said. ‘He saw my mother and she smiled on him.’

Phillippa put aside the untouched cup and drew a cloth from her sleeve, blotted her eyes. ‘So long a pilgrim. I am grateful that God at last granted Robert’s wish. Would that I might go on pilgrimage.’ Lucie was about to ask what favour Phillippa wished from such a pilgrimage, but her aunt suddenly said, ‘I should like to talk with Brother Michaelo.’

‘You do not need to rest a while?’

‘That is what I should be asking you, my dear one,’ Phillippa said. She handed Lucie the cup. ‘I am certain that you need this more than I do.’

Lucie was tired. And thirsty. She accepted the cup gladly.

‘Your father did not expect to return,’ said Phillippa. ‘It was forgetful of me to ask if he accompanied you.’ She reached for the stick. Lucie supported her as she rose. ‘Apoplexy,’ Phillippa added. ‘I have seen it in others. Not so bad as some, God be thanked, but it has me leaning on this stick, as you see.’

She walked slowly, pushing the left leg forward rather than lifting it, refusing Lucie’s arm in support.

When they joined the other travellers in the hall, Lucie introduced Harold Galfrey. Phillippa welcomed him, then turned to Brother Michaelo and invited him to join her and Lucie by the fire. As soon as the three were seated, Phillippa asked, ‘Did my dear Robert suffer long?’

Gently, Michaelo told her of Sir Robert’s last days. Phillippa listened quietly, asking a question here and there. Lucie thought her oddly calm. But when the monk’s tale was finished, Phillippa said in such a low voice Lucie almost did not hear her over the crackling of the fire and the bustle of the servants, ‘What am I to do without him? Where shall I go?’ Phillippa looked old, frail, frightened.

Lucie put her arm around her aunt. ‘This is your home. But you are also welcome to stay with me in York. For as long as you wish.’

There was no reply. Phillippa did not weep. She stiffly accepted her niece’s embrace, but kept her own hands in her lap. When Lucie drew away, Phillippa sat quite still, staring off into the fire.

*

Lucie awakened in a dark, unfamiliar room. Softly, someone whispered. Lucie sat up and gradually remembered she was sleeping in the alcove with her Aunt Phillippa and Tildy, all in the large bed, Lucie in the middle.

‘Mistress,’ Tildy whispered beside her, ‘it is your aunt. She mutters in her sleep. Last summer she paced, also. Gwenllian said her great-aunt had walking dreams.’

‘What is she whispering?’

‘I never could hear — the floorboards creaked too much up there. But some of the servants were talking this evening, said she speaks to her dead husband, Douglas Sutton.’

‘Shall I wake her?’ Lucie asked.

‘Ma always said that folk should never wake a sleepwalker. Oft-times they die being torn from the world of dreams.’

Lucie doubted that, but she decided against waking her aunt. And tomorrow night she thought she might move up to the solar. She had not wished to leave her aunt alone after giving her such sad news. But it seemed her presence offered no comfort.

Phillippa had said the weakness came on her suddenly, just after Sir Robert departed. ‘Why did she not send word to me she was ill?’

‘She is a proud woman,’ Tildy said.

Lucie already knew she could do little but comfort her aunt. Nicholas, Lucie’s first husband, had also been struck suddenly with apoplexy. He had suffered terrible headaches with it. But God seemed at least to have spared Phillippa the headaches. It was the hardest thing to bear, watching a loved one suffer and being unable to help them.

In the morning, remembering Tildy’s comment about the servants talking, Lucie sought a quiet word with Daimon. ‘My aunt is causing gossip among the servants?’

Daimon shifted his weight, frowned. ‘I do not like to say it, Mistress, but Dame Phillippa has been queer of late. Muttering to herself, refusing to eat, fixing her eyes on a spot in the air, as if she sees something we cannot see.’

‘Tildy knew she paced and whispered to herself at night, but the rest of it — did it come on with her illness?’

Daimon nodded.

‘This muttering? Can you understand any of it?’

‘Not myself, no. But cook says she talks to a man named Douglas and sometimes calls him husband.’ Daimon lifted his shoulders, dropped them, shook his head. ‘My mother talked much the same in her sickness, but to a sister who was long dead.’

‘Does her behaviour bother the household?’

‘We worry for her, is all. She is a firm mistress, but fair.’