Helewise’s sense of foreboding was present right from the moment she woke up, early the next morning. Quietly, so as not to disturb the sleeping child, she got up and went over to peer out of the small window, set high in the wall. Dawn had broken, and the low sun in the east was making long shadows on the land. There was a new sound: that of running water. The temperature had risen overnight – she could tell that from the sweet air blowing in her face – and melted snow must have increased the flow of the stream that ran in the narrow valley to the north of the house, high on its spur of the downs.
Olivar stirred, sat up and rubbed his eyes. He smiled at her. ‘Is it time to get up?’
‘It’s morning, yes, although still early.’
Olivar got out of bed, reaching for his outer tunic and his boots. ‘I’m hungry. Cecily says that if you go along to the kitchens and the cook’s in a sunny mood, she’ll give you a bit of bread when it’s just come out of the oven, so is it all right if I go and see? Cecily and the others’ll be there, they said so, and I promise I won’t get in anyone’s way.’
‘Of course it’s all right.’ Helewise returned his smile. ‘Off you go.’ Before your mother wakes up, she might have added. She was quite sure this was not a venture of which Cyrille would approve. Little lordlings didn’t go scrounging in the kitchen.
She listened to the sound of Olivar’s feet, running away up the passage. With the resilience of childhood, he appeared to have put the terrors of the night behind him; or, more likely, she reflected, he was eager to proceed with the excitements of the day, in the company of his three new-found friends, in order to help him forget.
She followed him out of the room, making her way past the network of rooms, passages and open halls that made up the family’s quarters, out into the Old Hall and along to the chamber she shared with Josse. Josse! Would he be back today? Was he all right? With an effort, she suppressed her anxiety. He would return as soon as he could, for she was well aware he’d know she was worried about him.
And not only about him. She had vaguely imagined that, once away from Olivar’s room, where that malicious apparition had materialized, the good spirit of the old house would reassert itself and her mood would improve. This, however, was not proving to be the case, and, judging from the tense expression on others’ faces, she was not the only one feeling uneasy. As the family gathered to break the night fast, she saw Isabelle muttering to Jenna and Editha, all three looking anxious. Emma sat alone, a preoccupied frown on her face. Philomena had her arm round Brigida, and Philippa sat on her lap. It was as if she sensed a threat and needed to keep her little daughters close to her.
The children, however, were surreptitiously watching their cousin and ringleader, and Cecily, in turn, was making urgent faces at Olivar, sitting beside Helewise. As soon as Cecily had finished eating and been given permission to leave the table, the two younger girls demanded to go too. With a quick look at Philomena, who shrugged, Isabelle said, ‘Very well. But don’t go far, and keep out of mischief!’
‘That applies to you, too,’ Emma said sternly to her sister, her glance including Olivar as well.
Olivar, evidently less adept at subterfuge than his playmates, said brightly, ‘We’re going to—’
Cecily gave him a hard shove and, before he could finish his remark, she said, ‘We’re going on with our hide-and-seek game! We’ve thought of dozens more places to hide, but we’ll be careful not to get dirty!’
With that, and quite a lot of giggling, the four children sped away.
Jenna sighed. ‘They ought to be able to go outside soon, if this thaw continues,’ she said. ‘It’s not good for them to be restricted to the house. They need the good fresh air, and space to run around.’
Helewise met her eyes. ‘Olivar will benefit from their company,’ she said quietly.
‘He seems better this morning. Did he sleep?’ Jenna asked. ‘Did you?’ she added with a smile.
‘Yes, we both did.’ Helewise leaned closer, lowering her voice. ‘Somebody tried to frighten him last night, and not for the first time.’
Jenna nodded grimly. ‘I know. Any ideas?’
Helewise hesitated. She did have an idea, but it was a horrible one and she was reluctant to mention it yet. ‘I will see what I can discover,’ she whispered.
Jenna regarded her, one eyebrow raised. In that moment, Helewise was sure that she understood; that she shared Helewise’s suspicion. But all she said was, ‘Good luck.’
Saying vaguely that she might go along to the chapel later, and perhaps also go and see if Uncle Hugh felt like some company, Helewise slipped away from the Old Hall. As she had lain waiting for sleep, and again when she woke this morning, she had kept thinking about how that thing last night had vanished. Had it been a ghostly presence, such a disappearance was to be expected. But, for one thing, Helewise didn’t believe in ghostly presences. For another, she had touched the thing. Beneath that repellent outer skin, she had felt bone and warm flesh. For something that was undoubtedly human to vanish, there had to be some secret doorway, passage or flight of steps which it had utilized.
It was Helewise’s firm intention to locate it.
After quite a long time of dead ends and flashes of intuition that proved baseless, she found a tiny, low opening in the north-east corner of the chapel, hidden behind a pillar. With a three-wick cresset lamp in her hand, she descended into the earth down an ancient spiral stair and found herself in a low-ceilinged crypt. No, not a crypt, she decided, raising her lamp to look around; it was just a space, dark, dank, full of bits of rough, unshaped stone and odds and ends of timber. Over to the left, Helewise could make out a rising flight of wide steps, worn and with some of the stones missing. Picturing the Old Hall above, she realized these must once have been the steps leading up to the original main entrance, on the south side of the hall. Crouching low, she went on past the base of the steps. Was she now in Josse’s childhood playground? Would she come across the ancient heath that he and Aeleis had uncovered? The place where Aeleis had unearthed her precious chess piece?
It was dark down there, and the shadows beyond the light of her lamp seemed to gather and multiply. Go on, she commanded herself sternly. She discovered that there was a solid earth wall to her right, which must be the outer boundary of the house and its extensions. But she found she could squeeze through a rough arch to the left, on the far side of which she could stand up. She looked around. This must be the undercroft beneath the Old Hall. It was well constructed, with a flagged stone floor, stone walls and stout pillars holding up the mass of the hall above.
She stood still for a moment, orientating herself. She was under the hall, and so the foundations of the first extension, where the family had their quarters and where the thing had vanished, must be ahead and then a little to the right …
Determined now, her fear dissolved by hot anger, Helewise went on.
In the late morning, Helewise heard the sound of hooves, and voices calling a greeting. She was back in her room, brushing off the dust and dirt that soiled her skirts and her sleeves following her explorations underground. She smiled grimly. What a lot she had to tell Josse.
Racing through the Old Hall, out of the main door and on to the steps, she stared down into the courtyard. There was only one rider, now dismounting from his sweaty horse. It was Herbert.
Isabelle stood beside him, and Jenna was behind her. He was speaking urgently to them, and all three looked anxious.
Helewise flew down the steps. ‘Where’s Josse?’ she demanded. ‘Is he all right? Why—’
Herbert handed his reins to the stable lad and took her hands. ‘He is perfectly all right, Helewise, and he sends you his love.’ She let out the breath she’d been holding, smiling now with relief. ‘As I was just saying to Mother and Jenna, we found the place where Peter Southey’s horse came from, and then we found the house where he lived, but there was nobody there except an old servant. That’s as far as I’d got.’ He paused. Then, looking at Isabelle, said, ‘Mother, it was Aeleis’s house, but—’
‘Pard’s Wood?’ Isabelle cried incredulously. ‘No, no, it can’t have been, she can’t possibly have been living there without our knowing!’
Herbert frowned. ‘How do you know the name?’
‘Because it was Godric’s house! He left it to Aeleis when he died, but I thought she’d moved away long ago.’ Slowly she shook her head. ‘Did you see her? How is she?’
‘Mother, I just said there was nobody there except the servant,’ Herbert repeated. ‘I’m afraid to say she’s not well. Her son’s taken her to Hawkenlye Abbey, and Josse has gone there too to speak to them.’
‘So Peter Southey wasn’t Aeleis’s son?’ Helewise said.
‘No. Oh, I don’t know,’ Herbert said in exasperation. ‘Josse had some idea that maybe he – Peter – stole the horse and found the chess piece in a saddle bag, although that would surely have meant that the horse was stolen after Aeleis and her son got to Hawkenlye, and somehow that doesn’t seem very likely.’
‘The abbey is secured at night,’ Helewise said absently, ‘and nuns or lay brethren are usually on duty all day, both in the stables and on the gates.’ Three pairs of eyes turned to stare at her; one with incredulity, two with understanding.
‘You know a lot about it,’ Herbert said with a smile, eyebrows raised enquiringly.
‘Er – yes.’
Jenna came to her rescue. ‘So when will Josse be back?’
‘I don’t know. He just said he’d come as soon as he could.’
‘Come inside,’ Isabelle urged. ‘It’s milder today, but you’ve had a hard ride and you will become chilled if you stay out here.’
‘And I should go and find Cyrille!’ Herbert looked very guilty, as if, Helewise thought, he could already hear the scolding voice that asked what he thought he was doing, standing out in the courtyard gossiping with his mother and his sister, when he should have shown his wife the respect that was her right and reported first to her.
Isabelle, she noticed, was staring after him as he hurried away, an expression on her face that suggested she was thinking the same.
The day went on. Helewise, desperate to share her thoughts, her discoveries and her conclusions with Josse, ached for his return. At times as the long hours dragged by, she considered confiding in Isabelle. But what if I’m wrong? she thought. To raise such awful suspicions would, if she was mistaken, only serve to make a bad matter very much worse …
I’m not wrong, she told herself.
She was sitting alone in the solar when all at once an image came into her mind of Peter Southey’s dead body: once again, she saw with her mind’s eye the cut on his lip and the small bruise on his chin. Then swiftly another image imposed itself on that one: a gesture that she and no doubt others had observed many times. She thought about it, and then she knew why those images had appeared.
She got up, walked on soft feet across the solar and along the passage to the chapel. In the soft light of the candles left burning around the trestle table before the altar, she folded back the cloth and stared at Peter’s dead face. She reached inside his chemise – her fingers touched the cold flesh and she tried not to shudder – and took out the chess piece in its little leather bag. Extracting it, she placed it against Peter’s mouth, just as she had seen him do.
Queen Eleanor’s protruding hand fitted exactly the cut in Peter’s lip, and her bent knee pushed against the bruise on his chin.
‘You used to kiss her, just like this,’ Helewise said softly to him, ‘because she belongs to your mother, who you loved.’ She wiped a tear from her face. ‘You were holding Queen Eleanor when they came for you, weren’t you? You’d been dosed with Isabelle’s soporific, and you’d have been deeply asleep.’ There had been, she recalled, a small piece of amber-coloured fluff adhering to the chess piece when Josse picked it up from the floor beside Peter’s bed. ‘They slipped into your room and held a pillow over your face until you were dead,’ she breathed, ‘and the pillow drove Queen Eleanor into your flesh and left these marks.’
With gentle hands, she replaced the chess piece in its bag, put it inside his chemise and once more covered his face with the cloth.
Now, the urge to confide in Isabelle was even stronger. Wait for Josse, she told herself.
She bided her time and held her peace.
Olivar and the three little girls appeared, breathless, tingling with suppressed excitement and not a little grubby, to eat with the family, then, as soon as they were excused, raced away again. All three were flushed from their exertions, and, to Helewise’s eye, had an air of conspiracy, as if they were planning even more thrilling escapades for the rest of the day. Cyrille did not put in an appearance. She sent word with Herbert that she would like to be provided with food and drink in her own quarters, and Isabelle, with no comment but an expression that made words redundant, gave the necessary order.
Helewise lay on her bed. She was exhausted, the broken night, Olivar’s terror and today’s long explorations, discoveries and musings having combined to wear her out. She closed her eyes, drifting quickly into the sort of half-sleep in which it is almost impossible to distinguish sounds in the real world from fragments of lurking dreams.
She thought she heard whispering; a childish voice hissed a command … whishwhishywhishhisshiss. There was some giggling, quickly hushed. Helewise dreamed of her sons, small boys again, plotting how to steal a pot from the kitchen so they could go and gather frogspawn. Don’t you let your little brother fall in the pond, she said to Dominic. Hold his hand firmly, for the water is high. There was a soft thud, as if some object had been thrown. Then – was that a faint cry from somewhere near at hand? No, it was Leofgar, in her dream, protesting because his big brother had taken her command to heart and grabbed his wrist in a grip that hurt.
The images faded. Faint sounds seemed to come from a long way away. Helewise, falling into a deep sleep, heard no more.
The body fell a long, long way. Emerging from the little window in the north wall of the solar, it looked for a few seconds as if it would go on flying through the air for ever.
Of course, it didn’t.
Southfire was built upon a height, and the north side of the house stood over a long, deep drop. Down, down it went, off the edge of the escarpment and into the valley below where the stream ran, bubbling its way along to add its waters to the River Ouse in Lewes. From the other, west-facing windows of the solar, the drop wouldn’t have been nearly so great. With the vestiges of snow still lying on the ground to soften a fall, tumbling out of one of those windows would have been a survivable accident.
Nobody, though, could long survive that fall from the little north window.
For some time the body did not move. Then the eyes slowly opened. Looked about. Unease came into them, then fear.
‘Where am I? What’s happened?’ a whimpering voice asked.
‘I’m lying on the slope beneath the solar,’ the voice answered itself. ‘I – I fell, out through the north window.’
Presently, the thought came to her that she should try to move. The grass beneath her was wet with melting snow, and she knew she must be very, very cold. ‘But I don’t feel cold,’ she whispered.
With dawning horror, she realized that she couldn’t in fact feel at all. From the chest down, it seemed as if her body just wasn’t there. She couldn’t feel the cold, wet ground beneath her. She felt no pain, although after such a fall, pain there must surely be.
‘I am paralysed,’ she said aloud. Screwing up her face with effort, she tried to move her left foot. Her right foot. Her legs. Tried to lift herself off the grass.
Nothing.
She had a little movement in her right arm. Aware, somehow – perhaps from some deep and unconscious survival instinct – she knew she should try to move up the slope.
Away from the rising waters of the stream.
But then suddenly, looking down, a wonderful thought stuck her and she was filled with relief: the water was lapping over her feet and her legs, pushing now against her backside, and it would be – surely it had to be! – very, very cold, for the stream was flooding with snow melt. ‘It’s not paralysis, it’s the numbing effect of the chill!’ she cried joyfully. ‘I’m all right! I’m going to be all right!’
With new determination, she stretched out her right arm, grasped a clump of grass tightly in her fingers and pulled with all her might. Her body stayed exactly where it was. Some of the grass stems broke off in her hand.
She tried again. And again. And again.
She thought she should try with her left hand, but for some reason, although it wasn’t under water yet, that hand did not respond.
She lay back on the cold ground. It didn’t feel quite so cold now.
She thought quite a lot of time had passed. It was growing dark. Had she slept? Oh, oh, how could that be? Panicking, she raised her head, looking down the length of her useless body.
The water now reached her waist.
Opening her mouth wide, she let out a scream of fury, frustration and terror.
Time passed.
Someone was standing over her. She managed to move her head a little, but not enough to see who it was. It occurred to her that, whoever he or she was, the person was deliberately keeping out of her sight.
‘Help me,’ she snapped. ‘I can’t move my legs, and I need you to pull me clear of the water.’ There was no response. ‘Hurry up!’ she commanded. ‘What in God’s name are you waiting for?’
‘Please,’ whispered a very soft, husky voice. Man or woman?
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘What?’
‘Say please. You’re so rude,’ the voice murmured conversationally. ‘You expect such high standards in others, yet you do not deem it necessary to observe them yourself.’
She spluttered in fury. ‘Do as you’re told!’ she screeched, craning round, trying again to see who was there.
She heard a quiet movement; the person had stepped further away.
‘No,’ came the soft whisper.
A shiver of dread ran through her. Frantically she tried once more to move; to wriggle up the steep bank a little and get herself out of the icy water.
Then there came the terrible sound of a quiet laugh. ‘So the fall didn’t kill you,’ the low voice said. ‘A pity, really.’ A gentle sigh, as if this soft-spoken man or woman were rueing nothing worse than a morning without sunshine. ‘We shall just have to see what the flood waters can do.’
The ground echoed to the gentle vibration of light footfalls as the speaker walked away.
The water continued its inexorable rise.
Half an hour later – the longest, most terrible half-hour in all the world – her face was under water.
And she was dead.
Then something quite strange happened. The sky was overcast, and, with the rise in temperature and the melting of the snow, a thick, white blanket of mist flowed over the ground, rolling down the hillside and pooling in the valley. Cloud and mist, it would seem, would have their way with the day, smothering the world in white.
But, at the precise moment of death, as if the very heavens were celebrating, a gap appeared in the enfolding white above and the sun poured through. It radiated the scene with light and warmth and, to anyone with the ears to hear, it seemed as if a brief, beautiful chord of deep joy rang out.
Then the clouds massed together once more and the ray of golden light went out.