Music of the Distant Stars (24 page)

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Authors: Alys Clare

BOOK: Music of the Distant Stars
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‘No.’ She cut my offer dead. Then, managing a smile, she said, ‘It’s kind of you, Lassair, and I know you mean well.’ I
hate
it when people say that because it usually means that you’re so far from achieving your aim that you might as well not have bothered. ‘But I think it’d be better if I went alone,’ she went on. ‘He’ll be in a very bad state. He’ll be frightened, hungry, thirsty and tired. He doesn’t manage very well on his own.’ Briefly, she turned her face away, and I guessed she was hiding sudden tears.
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘You know best, I’m sure.’
She must have detected from my voice that I felt snubbed. Turning back, she said, ‘You’re very kind, like all your family. I really don’t—’
She did not finish whatever she had been about to say. Without another word, she picked up the sheet, brushed off a few pieces of grass and went back to her wringing.
‘When will you go?’ I asked.
She shot me a quick glance, and then the golden-green eyes were covered again as she lowered her gaze. ‘Soon.’
I had the strong sense that was all she was going to say. There seemed little point in staying, so I left.
Hrype came, as he had promised, soon after Edild and I had tidied up after supper. As before, we were sitting out under the trees, and he knew where to find us.
I had already told Edild what I had found out on the island, and now I repeated it to Hrype. We all agreed that the wreath must have been left by Derman. I had called in at my parents’ house on my way back to Edild’s after seeing Zarina, and my mother had said that, as far as she knew, nobody in the family had left any such offering for Granny.
‘Zarina’s going to go out to the island to see if she can find him,’ I said now. ‘I offered to go with her, but she said she was better on her own.’
I watched Hrype and my aunt exchange a glance. ‘I wonder,’ Edild said softly.
‘You wonder what?’ I demanded.
But she shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
It wasn’t nothing; of course it wasn’t. What she meant was that, whatever it was, she wasn’t going to share it with me.
They
weren’t going to share it, because clearly Hrype knew what she meant. ‘It would be a solution,’ he murmured.
I was about to demand that they tell me but Hrype, as if he realized, turned to me and said, ‘Now, you have told Edild what we learned concerning Sir Alain’s familiarity with the household at Heathlands?’
‘Yes,’ I said shortly. I was cross with them.
‘Don’t sulk, Lassair,’ my aunt said. ‘So –’ she was addressing Hrype – ‘you are suggesting that Sir Alain and Ida were lovers before Ida accompanied Lady Claude here to Lakehall?’
‘Possibly,’ Hrype said guardedly. ‘It seems likely that the two of them met. At the least, they could have done.’
‘Let us assume he fathered a child on the girl yet was betrothed to Lady Claude,’ Edild mused. Then, cutting straight to the point: ‘Lady Claude is very devout and intolerant of sinners. If she discovered the man she was to wed had bedded another woman, moreover one to whom he was not married, and had made her pregnant, she would have nothing more to do with him.’
‘Motive enough for him to kill Ida?’ Hrype asked softly.
‘Oh, I can’t believe he killed her!’ I burst out, earning urgent
Shhh!
sounds from my aunt and Hrype. ‘I just can’t,’ I repeated in a whisper.
‘Why?’ Hrype asked.
It was a good question. I had been asking it of myself all day and still had no answer. My sensible, logical head said that of course he’d strangled Ida; who else could have? My heart, however, just would not accept it. ‘Because he’s nice,’ I muttered under my breath. Fortunately, neither of them appeared to hear. ‘I don’t know,’ I said lamely.
We talked long into the night, for there was no obvious way to test our tentative theory of Sir Alain’s involvement with poor, dead Ida. The household at Heathlands would have been able to give us some answers, but the likes of us could hardly go marching up to the door and begin asking questions about Lady Claritia’s future son-in-law and his possible dalliance with Lady Claude’s seamstress. Hrype proposed trying to talk to some of the servants, but you could never tell how loyal a man or woman was going to be to his lord and lady and, if word got back to our Lord Gilbert that Hrype had been asking questions at Heathlands, it would undoubtedly lead to trouble.
I said, ‘I could go and see Lady Claude again. She wasn’t there when I went a couple of days ago, so it’d look odd if I didn’t try again.’
Two pairs of clever eyes turned to me. ‘What have you in mind to say to her?’ Hrype asked. ‘Other than asking how she feels, of course.’
I hesitated. ‘I could try to draw her out about Ida,’ I said. ‘I could even tell her that her symptoms – the headaches and the sleeplessness – are often an accompaniment of grief, and that talking about the dead person sometimes helps. All of that is true,’ I assured him. ‘Isn’t it, Edild?’
‘Yes, it is,’ she said slowly, ‘although I do not like the idea of making use of your profession to extract information that is not strictly to do with healing.’
There was a pause. Then Hrype said, ‘I am sure that Lassair would not permit her curiosity to interfere in any way with the correct treatment of her patient.’
It was very generous of him, and I hoped it was true.
Edild made up her mind. ‘Very well,’ she said eventually. She fixed me with a hard stare; she knows me better than Hrype does, and she is never taken in by my dissembling. ‘But remember you are there to heal,’ she said forcefully. ‘Anything else – anything at all, even if it does pertain to a young woman’s death – is secondary. Is that understood?’
I made myself hold her eyes. ‘Yes, Edild.’
Once Hrype had gone and my aunt and I were settling for sleep, I found that my mind was too hectic with thoughts and conjectures to allow me to relax. After what seemed ages, but was probably not all that long, I slipped out of bed, picked up Elfritha’s shawl against the night chill and went outside.
I walked slowly down the path, looking out over the marshy ground to the fen edge and the island. I thought of Derman. Was he out there now? I wondered. Had his sister found him and was she even now reassuring him, encouraging him to come home? If so, we would all have to watch him, perhaps taking turns, because it would be best if he did not venture out until Ida’s killer had been found. The people of Aelf Fen were not bad, I knew that well enough, but they had got it into their heads that Derman’s hopeless love for Ida had led to murder when she’d turned him down – and, it seemed, they weren’t going to change their minds.
I thought about Sir Alain. Had he killed her? If he had, and we could somehow prove it, what were we to do? We would have to approach Lord Gilbert, and that wouldn’t be easy, and he would probably—
The singing began. From somewhere quite close by, I heard that eerie voice. For all that I had now met its owner, it sounded no less strange rising softly into the night air. I was tempted to seek him out, speak to him, try to comfort him, but if, as I guessed, he did not know I was there, then it might dismay and distress him further to know he had a witness to his pain and his grief.
I edged into the soft darkness beneath a group of alders and listened. I noticed then that, where before there had been no more than a hummed chant, a succession of heartbreakingly sad sounds, now there were words. I strained my ears, and eventually I made them out.
Alberic was singing his lament for Ida.
The singer of a thousand songs was I
,
Yet now but one remains, the saddest of them all.
For now that in the fenland soil you lie
,
I have no longer any hopes on which to call.
At first I was not free my love to show
,
And then, by fate, another took your heart from me
,
My dearest hopes were shattered by this blow
So cruel, and yet I knew I had to set yu free.
Oh Ida, can you hear this sad refrain?
Can notes of music pierce your damp and peaty frame?
And would you hold me close if I were lain
Beside you? Could we sing the happy songs again?
He had stopped. I stood there alone in the silence for some time, tears on my face. Then I wrapped my shawl tightly around me and went back to my bed.
We were woken at first light by someone’s fists hammering on the door. ‘Open up, oh, for the Lord’s sake, open up!’ cried a voice.
Struggling out of sleep, I realized with horror that I recognized the voice. It was my brother’s.
Edild was already on her feet, fumbling with the door latch. I elbowed her out of the way, wresting the door open. ‘It’s Haward!’ I cried. ‘Something’s wrong – someone’s been taken ill or is hurt!’
He fell into the little room. His face was wet with sweat, and his eyes were wide with horror. ‘Is it our parents?’ I demanded, my hands on his shoulders shaking him roughly in my terrible anxiety. ‘Squeak? Oh, not Leir, lovely little Leir?’
Haward shoved my hands away, and I fell over my own feet and sat down hard on the earth floor. He rushed to help me up again, hugging me tightly. ‘No, n–n–none of them. They are all unharmed.’ He brushed a quick kiss against my cheek.
With my immediate fears allayed, there was time to think of others. ‘Then who—?’ I began.
My aunt took charge. In a quiet voice that was nevertheless full of calm authority, she said, ‘What has happened, Haward? Tell us what we must do.’
He turned to her gratefully. ‘Yesterday Lassair told Zarina that she’d found a wreath by Granny’s grave, and we all guessed it had been left there by Derman, thinking Ida was still in the tomb. Zarina went out some time last night to see if she could find him.’ Such was the power of Edild’s effect on him that his stammer had temporarily vanished.
‘She went
in the night
?’ I protested. ‘By herself? How could you let her?’
‘I d–d–didn’t!’ He rounded on me as swiftly as when we were children and I had accused him unfairly. ‘I thought we were going to go together, early in the morning, but she must have waited till I had g–gone home and was asleep, and then slipped away by herself.’
‘I see,’ I muttered. I ought to have known him better than that. ‘Sorry.’
‘Then what happened?’ Edild asked, glaring at me as if to say,
Don’t you dare interrupt him again!
‘I went j–just before dawn to see if she was ready to go. You know I always wake early, and it seemed a good time to try to c–c–catch him – Derman – unawares.’ He stopped, swallowed and, his expression anguished, began again. ‘She – she wasn’t there. I s–s–set out for the island.’ Again, a pause. His face was working, and I knew how hard it must be to try to force the words out past the gagging stutter. ‘I m–m–m–met her c–c–coming back. Sh–sh–she was crying. I p–put my arms r–round her and for just an instant she h–h–hugged me. I knew then she hadn’t found h–h–him s–s–so I t–told her to go on home and I’d h–h–have a look round.’ He stopped, drew breath and said, ‘I w–went out on to the island. I c–c–couldn’t see any s–s–sign of him. Then I turned to c–c–come back and th–th–there was a sh–sh–shadow under the water. Sh–sh–sh–she w–w–wouldn’t have s–s–s–seen it, there was only j–j–j–just enough light f–f–for me.’ He shuddered to a halt, exhausted by the huge effort of stuttering out his tale.
‘What was this shadow, Haward?’ Edild’s voice was gentle, soothing, hypnotic almost, and, responding to her again, for a few moments Haward calmed down.
He fixed his eyes on a spot on the wall above her head, breathed deeply and said, ‘It was a body. A big body, face down in the water, the head and shoulders caught under the planks of the causeway on to the island.’
Nobody spoke. Haward dropped his head. Then Edild took his hand, bent down so that she could see into his face and said, ‘Who was it?’
Haward’s expression was dreadful to behold. Shock had taken hold, and he was shuddering, his teeth rattling. Although he was still sweating, he was deathly pale. His eyes on Edild’s he said, ‘It’s Derman. The back of his head isn’t there any more.’
FIFTEEN
 
I
n that first shocked moment as the three of us stood there wide-eyed with horror, I believe we all had the same unspoken thought: did
Zarina kill him?
She had had the opportunity, for she had gone alone during the night to the island to seek him out. Did she find him? Perhaps she tried to reason with him, imploring him to come back to the village and speak to Sir Alain, to face those who believed he had slain Ida. Did he refuse? Did he – oh, it was horrible! – did he tell his sister that the reason he couldn’t turn himself in was that he
had
killed poor Ida? If so, what would Zarina have done? Would she have hurled herself at him in such fierce anguish that he slipped from the causeway and hit his head as he fell?

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