Josse was awake very early the next morning, the one thought going round and round in his head making it impossible to sleep any more. As the welcome daylight paled the sky, he got out of bed, put on his outer garments, picked up his boots and tiptoed out of the room. He peered into the little place where Meggie had slept, but the bed had been tidied away and she wasn’t there.
He found her in the Old Hall, sitting alone beside the great hearth, cross-legged on the floor with her eyes closed. He waited. Presently she opened her eyes, looked at him and said, ‘There is such a sense of relief in this house, Father, that I should think even you can feel it.’ She was smiling, as if wanting to make sure he knew she was teasing.
‘Oh, I can,’ he assured her. ‘What strikes me as sad is that nobody’s grieving for her.’
‘For – yes, I see what you mean.’ She hesitated. ‘Actually, I meant the house itself is relieved, not the people in it.’ Before he had time to comment, she hurried on, ‘I don’t know how Herbert feels. He has shut himself away, perhaps because he is trying to cope with overwhelming sorrow. As for everyone else …’
She didn’t need to complete the observation.
After a moment, he said, ‘It may surprise you, but in fact I know exactly what you mean about the house, because I’ve been coming here since I was a boy and I’ve long been aware that it wasn’t quite like other houses.’ He sought the right words. ‘I think it’s precisely because I first came here when I was too young to question it, but I’ve always felt its spirit very powerfully.’ He stopped, embarrassed.
‘I’m so glad,’ she said. ‘To me, it simply shouts out, and it’s not only powerful but undoubtedly benign. Protective of its own,’ she added thoughtfully. She shot him a questioning look.
‘Er – aye,’ he agreed. Then – for talking about such matters made him awkward – he said, ‘Meggie, I would like you to do something for me, if you will.’
‘Anything within my ability.’ She stood up, a single easy, graceful movement.
‘I’m afraid it involves going back to the body in the chapel.’
‘I don’t mind bodies, Father.’
He nodded. ‘Come on, then.’
They stood either side of the corpse. Josse had folded back the linen sheet to waist level. Silently he watched as Meggie went about her task. After only a short time, she said, ‘She has breathed in water. Her nose and her throat are saturated.’
‘Does that—’
Meggie held up a hand and shook her head, indicating she wasn’t ready to say any more yet. He watched as she worked on, checking in the ears, feeling all over the head. At one point, she laid the flats of both her hands on the chest, steadily increasing the pressure until she was leaning down with almost all her weight. A trickle of water and some regurgitated food trickled out of the body’s partly open mouth.
Meggie nodded, then carefully rearranged the disturbed garments, pulled the sheet up over the face and, stepping away from the trestle, said, ‘The fall didn’t kill her, or, at least, not straight away. She had time to draw several breaths, and, as far as I can tell, she took in water until she could no longer breathe.’
‘She drowned?’ He had to hear her say it.
‘Yes, Father.’
He went over to her and gave her a swift hug. ‘Thank you. I have to go – there is something I must check.’
‘Are you going outside?’
‘Aye.’
She grinned. ‘I’ll come with you. Some good, fresh air is exactly what I need.’
He led the way out of the main door, through the gates and round beneath the front wall of the house. ‘Be careful here,’ he warned as they negotiated the narrow gap between the wall and the start of the steep slope that fell away to the valley. ‘It’s slippery, after all the snow.’
They went on, placing their feet carefully and sometimes holding hands, until they were standing directly beneath the north wall of the solar. Then, turning sideways to the sloping ground, they edged their way downwards.
‘Here,’ Josse said, stopping. ‘She was lying here, with her feet pointing towards the valley.’
Meggie took in the scene. ‘From the evidence of the mud and the flattened grass, it looks as if the highest level that the stream waters reached was here.’ She took a pace back up the slope.
‘Aye,’ he agreed. He was crouched down, studying the place where Cyrille had lain, staring intently at the ground.
‘Father.’
‘Hmm?’ He didn’t look up.
‘Father.’
‘What is it?’
‘Come and look at this.’
There was something in her voice – some altered tone – that made him instantly comply. He scrambled up and went to stand beside her. Silently she pointed.
In the mud some two paces above the spot where the body landed were two clear booted footprints. They were small, no bigger than a boy’s; a youth’s at most.
‘Do you think—?’ Meggie cleared her throat and tried again. ‘Did one of those who came out to bring in the body stand there?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t believe these are the prints of any member of the recovery party. Whoever it was stayed still for some time,’ he said. He spotted something else: over to the right of the footprints there was a narrow hole. ‘Long enough to make quite deep impressions.’
‘What about whoever first found her? They could have stood there trying to work out how to wade into the water and pull her out.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Helewise was the first to reach her, but the others weren’t far behind. Apart from the fact that you and I both know Helewise wouldn’t have wasted time deciding what to do but would have plunged straight in, the levels had already gone down a little by then, and Cyrille was clear of the water.’
‘Then—’ Again, Meggie hesitated to put her conclusion into words.
Josse did it for her. ‘Somebody stood here and watched as the waters rose up,’ he said solemnly. ‘He – or she – must have seen she was still alive; that, even if the fall had gravely injured her, she was still breathing.’ He looked up, meeting Meggie’s clear eyes. ‘They left her to drown,’ he murmured. ‘Either she fell into the water, or else it rose up over her as she lay helpless on the grass.’
And, although he fought the memory, telling himself it could only be coincidence, he couldn’t help but think of Aeleis, and her utter certainty that Parsifal de Chanteloup was perfectly capable of turning the curse that led to his beloved wife’s death against its perpetrator.
Of making that perpetrator die just as Aeleis had done: with her lungs slowly filling with liquid until she could no longer draw breath.
But what did Cyrille de Picus have to do with Aeleis and Parsifal? Josse was fuming silently, frustrated. Oh, he could hazard a guess, but guessing was easy.
He had to find proof.
Helewise, waking to find herself alone, had swiftly dressed and gone out to greet the morning. She had a task to perform; one she didn’t really want to do. Better get on with it, then, she told herself.
First she crept along into the heart of the family’s quarters to the little open hall where Cyrille’s work-basket had been put. There was the cushion on which she’d been working, and there, as Helewise had suspected, was the pulled, amber-coloured thread of wool that exactly matched the piece of fluffy fibre that Josse found adhering to Queen Eleanor.
Then she went back to the other side of the house.
She heard voices coming from the solar, and hurried along to see who it was. Editha sat on the seat beneath the south-facing window, with Jenna beside her and Emma sitting at her feet. All three looked up as Helewise approached.
‘We were just remarking,’ Editha said after they had exchanged greetings, ‘that this lovely, light room will now serve the purpose for which Father had it built, now that—’
‘Editha!’ Jenna hissed, with a glance at Helewise.
Editha ignored her. ‘Now that Cyrille is dead,’ she went on firmly. ‘Jenna, it’s no good pretending, and I for one don’t intend to. I won’t be as unchristian and unforgiving as to say I’m relieved she’s dead, but she is, and, as far as we can tell, it was a terrible accident, so nobody has anything to feel guilty about.’ A smile spread across her face. ‘But we can use this room now, all of us, without the fear of being accosted by Cyrille as soon as we come in and, for politeness’s sake, either joining in with whatever mindlessly mundane activity she’s doing or having to listen to her ceaseless chatter.’
‘I had noticed,’ Helewise said carefully, ‘that, more often than not, Cyrille would be in here by herself.’
‘Yes, she was,’ Emma agreed.
‘Was she—’ Oh, this was difficult. ‘Was she on her own the day she fell?’
Jenna’s eyes shot to meet hers. ‘She was indeed,’ she said coolly. ‘If you’re wondering if one of us could have crept up behind her and given her a push, we didn’t.’
‘I wasn’t—’
‘Yes, you were,’ Editha said calmly, ‘but don’t worry, it’s something that has already occurred to all of us, too.’ She smiled. ‘The only people whose whereabouts can’t be verified by at least one witness are you and Isabelle, Helewise. So, you see, we might ask you the same question: did you push her?’
‘No,’ Helewise said.
‘And neither did my mother,’ Jenna said angrily.
There was an embarrassed silence.
‘Since we have broached the subject,’ Helewise said eventually, ‘why don’t we discuss it openly? Not in an accusing manner, but simply to demonstrate that no malice was done?’
‘I think that’s a good idea,’ Editha said. ‘So: Philomena and Emma were setting out the children’s needlework, which they were going to get on with when they came back inside. They were playing—’
‘Yes, I heard them,’ Helewise interrupted, remembering. ‘I was resting in my room, and I heard them giggling.’
‘Jenna was with Father,’ Editha continued, ‘and you said, Jenna, that Agnes helped you bathe him?’
‘Yes,’ Jenna said curtly.
‘Were you with him all that afternoon?’ Helewise asked.
‘No, we left him to sleep. But you’re surely not suggesting he got out of bed, shuffled along to the solar, just happened to find Cyrille leaning out of the north window and gave her a shove?’
Helewise lifted her chin. Jenna’s antipathy was affecting her. ‘I’d have said it was unlikely until last night,’ she replied. ‘Now, we do at least realize he’s capable of doing so.’
‘He only managed to walk with Herbert’s help, and propping himself up with his stick!’ Jenna protested.
‘But he might not be as weak as he’s let us think,’ Editha said with a frown, ‘especially if he wanted us to believe him incapable of – er, of that.’
Emma was shaking her head. ‘Great-grandfather Hugh wouldn’t kill anybody,’ she said in a tremulous whisper. ‘He wouldn’t!’ she repeated, when nobody commented.
Helewise looked at her compassionately. ‘People are capable of extreme acts when they feel there has been a grave injustice, or when their loved ones are threatened,’ she said.
‘But all he’s accused her of is lying about being Olivar’s mother!’ Emma cried.
Helewise looked at Editha, then at Jenna. Like her, they knew; they had been in the Old Hall last night, when Emma had gone to bed. Would it be right to tell her now?
I don’t care, she thought. ‘Emma,’ she began, turning back to the young woman, ‘I’m afraid Cyrille was guilty of rather more than that. It can’t be proved without any doubt, but it appears it was she who smothered Peter Southey, since the piece of fluff found on the chess piece matches one of the wools in the needlepoint cushion she had just completed. But, perhaps even more unforgivable, she was trying to drive Olivar out of his mind by dressing up as some fearful fiend, or monster, and creeping into his room in the night.’
Emma was white-faced and shaking her head in disbelief. ‘Why would she do something so horrible?’ she whispered. ‘To her own little boy! Oh!’
‘But he wasn’t her own,’ Helewise said. ‘As it appears you already know, that, too, was established last night, and it is, I believe, why she had to get rid of him. She married Herbert pretending to be Olivar’s mother, and then presumably persuaded him that it would be best if he adopted the boy as his ward and, naturally, also his heir. She did that, I would guess, to ensure the security of her own position; she was Olivar’s mother, he was the son and heir. But then she discovered she was pregnant; or, rather, she believed she was. And, with a true son of hers and Herbert’s in her belly – she would have convinced herself it was a boy – suddenly Olivar was redundant.’
The harsh, cruel word echoed through the room.
‘Redundant,’ Editha whispered. ‘What a thing to say about a child.’
‘I’m sorry if it offends you, but—’ Helewise began.
Editha looked at her. ‘Oh, it doesn’t offend me,’ she said softly. ‘It’s exactly how Cyrille would have seen it.’
Editha and Jenna were talking quietly to Emma, comforting her, but Helewise barely heard. She was thinking about Hugh, and the startling return to sense and sanity, if not to physical strength, that he had demonstrated the previous evening.
She was thinking, too, about coincidence: the coincidence of his recovering his memory – and one particular, very relevant and highly condemning memory – a little over a day after Cyrille’s death.
What she was trying very hard not to think was that, in an extraordinary way, Cyrille de Picus had been exerting some sort of power over the old man, ensuring that his fog of confusion steadily increased so that he would never manage to tell his family the damning fact he knew about her: that she wasn’t Olivar’s mother and had lied to them all.
But of course she wasn’t doing that, Helewise told herself firmly. People couldn’t control others in that way. Such a thing wasn’t possible.
Was it?
Josse and Meggie were back at the gates, about to go through into the courtyard. But then Josse stopped, and Meggie did too.
‘Go on in,’ he said to her.
‘Are you not coming?’
‘No. There’s something I want to check.’
‘Shall I come?’
He thought about it. ‘No, thank you. I’m better alone. I have to work out something in my mind.’
‘Very well.’ She went on into the yard.
‘Will you tell Helewise I’ve gone to see Gregory?’ he called after her.
‘Gregory.’
‘Aye. She’ll know who I mean and where I’ve gone.’
Meggie raised her hand in acknowledgement and went up the steps to the door.
Josse strode on down the path, soon meeting the track that wound its way down the long slope towards Lewes. He couldn’t get the image of those footprints out of his mind. When he added in the small hole in the grass beside the prints, it seemed to suggest one thing.
And there was another reason for visiting Gregory. Hadn’t he promised to try to recall why the name Cyrille de Picus was familiar, and what it had to do with some distressing event? It was something to do with a marriage or a betrothal, Gregory said, and I have the feeling that something very bad happened …
As he had hoped, Gregory was on watch in his little booth beside the gate. He greeted Josse’s approach with a friendly wave.
‘I’m glad you came by,’ he called out as Josse walked up to him. ‘I’ve remembered, see.’ Josse’s spirits rose hopefully. ‘I was going to come up to Southfire and seek you out,’ Gregory continued before Josse could ask him to elucidate, ‘but you know how it is when you’re busy, you’re trying to attend to half a dozen things all at once, and of late I’ve been fair rushed off my feet.’
‘But you’ve got something to tell me?’
‘Yes, yes, I just said so!’ He shook his head in mock-reproof. ‘Come on in and sit with me in my guard house – well, that’s what the holy brethren call it, but it’s just a hut, really.’ He ushered Josse inside, pulling up a stool for him. ‘It’s not much, but we’ll be out of the wind.’ He glanced back out through the door and, verifying that no black-robed figures were watching, drew out a flask from a little shelf set low down in the wall. ‘Drop of something to warm the blood?’
Josse accepted. The fire water almost took his throat out.
‘Powerful stuff,’ Gregory observed, taking a much larger swig and smacking his lips. Then, without preamble, he said, ‘I knew I recognized the name, and it’s all come back to me. Cyrille de Picus was betrothed to a young man – quite a bit younger than her, truth to tell, because she was hanging on hand a bit and well past the age when a pretty little girl gets snapped up by some keen lad of a suitor. Anyway, the man wouldn’t have her – didn’t even agree to meet her – and the gossips at the time said it was because he was already wildly in love with someone else, someone even older than Cyrille, if you’d credit that!’ Gregory sat back, a satisfied smile on his face.
Aye, I can credit it only too well, Josse thought sadly.
‘Anyway,’ Gregory went on, ‘she – Cyrille – took it very hard. Oh, of course it was very humiliating for her to be rejected in favour of someone else, but there was no need for her to do what she did.’
‘What did she do?’
‘Ah, now, sir, this is only rumour, you know, and I’m quite certain the lady did nothing of the kind. I’m the last man on God’s good earth to go placing any credence in malicious gossip.’ He sniffed, nose in the air, assuming the demeanour of someone who has just been unfairly accused.
‘Aye, I’m sure you are,’ Josse said, trying to hide his impatience. ‘But why not tell me the rumour anyway?’
As if he couldn’t wait to repeat it, and had only needed to be persuaded, instantly Gregory leaned closer and said, ‘They say she was quite determined, and managed to find out eventually where her rival lived. She made a dolly, see, in the likeness of the lady who’d taken away her sweetheart – not that there could have been any of that between Cyrille and the young man, seeing as they never even met – and she put a curse on the lady!’ He didn’t so much speak the last six words as mouth them. ‘That doll was found head-down in a bucket of water, so the story goes, because she – Cyrille – wanted her to die by drowning.’ He paused dramatically. ‘Goes without saying that I don’t believe a word of it,’ he said self-righteously. ‘Far as I know, the lady’s alive and well, and I pray the good Lord above will keep her that way.’
I only wish you were right, Josse thought sadly.
Gregory was muttering something about hoping Josse wouldn’t think the less of him for repeating such a scurrilous tale, and being sure Josse would appreciate that it would avoid distress if he were to refrain from telling any of the good monks what he’d just been told, but Josse shut him out.
He was reflecting on what struck him as a great irony: Cyrille didn’t kill Peter Southey because she knew he was really Parsifal de Chanteloup, the man she was meant to marry and who rejected her. She couldn’t have done so, because she didn’t even recognize him. She killed him in the mistaken belief that he was Aeleis’s son and would do the child she thought she was carrying out of the inheritance.
Parsifal, on the other hand, Josse’s sad thought went on, had come for Cyrille. Somehow he had discovered where she was – perhaps a friend, or a friend of a friend, had mentioned having attended the marriage of Aeleis’s nephew Herbert to the widow of William Crowburgh, and mentioned the bride’s name. Perhaps Parsifal had been searching for her all this time, and finally been successful. Nobody would ever know, now, and how he had located Cyrille didn’t really matter. But, blaming her as he did for Aeleis’s sickness, because he believed she had put a curse on her, he would not have given up until he found her.
Had he set out to confront her, accuse her or kill her? Josse wondered. Surely not to kill her, for, when Parsifal had left Aeleis in the care of the Hawkenlye nuns, he had had no suspicion that she was going to die: Aeleis had made sure of that. Perhaps, Josse thought with a shiver, he simply came to do exactly what Aeleis said he’d do: conjure up an invisible reflecting glass, hold it up against the curse that Cyrille placed on Aeleis, and turn it back sevenfold on the originator.
Cyrille drowned, Josse mused. Perhaps Parsifal succeeded …
He couldn’t bear to dwell on that. Instead, he turned his mind to the other reason he had come to the priory.
Breaking into Gregory’s interminable chatter, he said, ‘How’s the leper getting on? Has he recovered a little strength under the monks’ care?’
Gregory laughed. ‘Oh, him! He’s gone.’
‘Gone? But I thought lepers were always detained, and—’
‘Come with me, and you’ll find out,’ Gregory said.
He led the way over to the infirmary. The black-clad infirmarian whom Josse had seen on his previous visit looked up, recognized him and, smiling, came across to talk to him.
‘I’m Brother Anselm,’ he said. ‘You’re the man who brought the leper in to us.’
‘I am,’ Josse agreed. ‘I hear he’s left.’
Taking Josse a little apart, away from the many patients lying in their cots and straining to hear, Brother Anselm went on, ‘You are surprised, I expect, that we should permit a leper to leave our care and protection and allow him to go back among the general population?’
‘A little, aye, although it’s not for me to question what you do, and I do know the sickness isn’t as readily passed on as people believe.’
‘Indeed not,’ the infirmarian agreed, ‘although we do have a policy of keeping sufferers isolated as much as we can. But your man wasn’t a leper.’
‘Not – but he was missing fingers and toes!’
Brother Anselm smiled. ‘Yes, but not as a result of leprosy. He’d lost his toes to frostbite, which is sadly all too common among the destitute homeless who perpetually travel our roads, out in all weather, frequently with no shelter and no fire to warm them.’ He shook his head, as if despairing of the ways of the world. ‘We did what we could for him. By and large, he just needed some good, nourishing food and a few sound nights’ sleep. We found a pair of boy’s boots that more or less fitted him to protect his feet from further damage, got the blacksmith to re-tip his staff and sent him on his way.’
‘When did he leave?’
Brother Anselm looked surprised at the question, but said mildly, ‘The day before yesterday, as far as I recall. He ate a good meal in the morning, then, when I came back later to see how he was, Luke told me he’d left.’
Thanking him, trying to take a very hasty leave without causing offence, finally Josse escaped.
As he trudged back up the hill towards Southfire Hall and the top of the downs, Josse went over it all. He knew now the identity of Cyrille’s killer, or, rather, he knew who he was, if not his name. Did he hold her down under the water? Did he do no more than stand there and watch her die?
And why did he want her dead?
Josse walked on. He had no idea where he was going, for nobody at the priory had known where the beggar was heading. He’d been seen clambering up the slope leading to the higher ground to the south-west of the town, but that was all.
He will be lurking nearby, Josse told himself. He will not be satisfied with her death; he will want someone to know why she had to die.
Hoping that he was right, and that he might be that someone who received the explanation, he went on.
Presently he came to a stand of stunted hazel trees, all bending over as if bowing before an undetectable wind. Within their shelter, his staff by his side and his legs stretched out in front of him and casually crossed, sat the beggar.
He smiled at Josse, patting the grass beside him in invitation. ‘Come and join me. It’s quite dry under here,’ he said.
Josse sat down. ‘I’ve just come from Lewes Priory,’ he said.
‘Ah,’ replied the beggar.
‘Before that, I stood by a dead body and saw the proof that death was brought about by drowning.’
‘Indeed?’ the beggar said in a tone of polite interest.
‘I’m wondering,’ Josse went on, ‘why someone might stand beside a woman in mortal danger, and do no more than watch as the water slowly rose up her body until she drowned.’
‘I could think of a few reasons,’ the beggar remarked.
‘He would have to hate her very much, I’m thinking.’
‘Oh, yes,’ the beggar agreed. ‘Perhaps she had done something almost as dreadful to him, would you imagine?’
‘Possibly,’ Josse agreed cautiously.
‘Supposing I set out a possible scenario?’ the beggar suggested.
‘Go on.’
‘Let us say,’ said the beggar, making himself more comfortable, ‘that he was related to her; her uncle, perhaps, for argument’s sake. Her dead father’s brother, asked by her father when he died to take care of her, for the father was a poor man with little in the way of wealth or possessions to leave to his only child.’
‘Very well,’ Josse said.
‘There they are together, the uncle and the niece,’ the beggar went on. ‘The uncle, although childless and unmarried himself, with no desire whatsoever for either wife or offspring, nevertheless has assumed responsibility for a niece he doesn’t even like very much. The niece, however, far from being grateful, makes up her mind that the uncle is far more trouble than he’s worth, and decides she will rid herself of him as quickly as she can.’
‘How could she hope to do that?’ Josse asked, intrigued despite himself. ‘Is she not a child still?’
‘Oh, no. She’s a woman now.’
‘But how can she throw her uncle out of his own home?’
The beggar turned to him, face drawn into lines of mock-sorrow. ‘Because he’s not very well, this poor uncle. He suffers from episodes of madness. When these fits are upon him, he believes that the devil takes over his body, so that the whites of his eyes darken to red as Lucifer’s unholy hellfire rips through his body, and his water turns scarlet as he tries to expel it.’
The beggar’s voice had risen, and a faint flush had coloured his pale cheeks. ‘It sounds most distressing,’ Josse said, trying to keep his tone calm, interested. ‘So what did the niece do?’
‘She waited until he had another fit of madness, and she locked him in his room.’ Once more in control, the beggar spoke dispassionately. ‘Soon he was lost within himself, helpless, and, without anyone to ensure he ate and drank, soon he became enfeebled. After many days, the niece, coming at last to see how he was, found him lying on the floor, barely able to move. By dead of night, she dragged him outside, bundled him up into a cart and took him to a run-down, out-of-the-way monastery and dumped him there.’ He paused, took one or two breaths, and then, still in the same calm tone, resumed his tale.
‘The monks were unsophisticated and ignorant. The care was rudimentary, ignorant and brutal, with barely anything to eat and many beatings to expel the devil. The uncle – oh, poor uncle! – was incarcerated for months, and the months grew to years, and, while he was helpless and sick, the niece made off with whatever of his wealth was portable and deserted him. She’d suffered a grave disappointment, however, that niece, because the pleasant little house she believed would be hers was only rented.’ He smiled, then chuckled softly. ‘Ah, how unwise it is not to ask the right questions.’ He looked up. ‘Where was I?’
‘The uncle was shut away with the ignorant monks and the niece had run away with all his possessions,’ Josse supplied promptly.
‘Thank you. When the uncle was at long, long last deemed well enough to be released, he found himself homeless, penniless, friendless, without family. Still in feeble health, he had no option but to take to the road as a beggar.’
He glanced down at his hands. ‘He lost some fingers and some toes because of the white freeze that eats into flesh,’ he said conversationally. ‘That was the first, terrible winter, before he had any idea of how to cope with destitution. People who saw him thought he had leprosy and they shunned him, shut him out, threatened him with sticks and threw stones at him to drive him away.’ He sighed, and fell silent.
Josse was thinking hard. The beggar had allowed him and Helewise – and, to begin with, the monks at Lewes Priory – to believe he was a leper, he recalled, and he had a good idea why. It was because, clever man, he wanted the outside world to believe that, from then on, he would be held in isolation by the monks at the priory, and therefore nobody could possibly suspect him of having stood by and watched Cyrille die.
Was it murder? Josse wondered now. The beggar hadn’t so much as touched her. Possibly, too, she was already dying as a result of that terrible fall.
Then he thought about madness. About a sort of mania that came periodically, and that made men – and women – strangers to themselves, so that they performed wild, cruel, uncharacteristic acts. Was such an affliction in the blood, so that it was likely to run through a family and appear, for example, in both an uncle and a niece?
Cyrille de Picus had killed Peter Southey, and tried to drive her little stepson out of his mind, because she wanted no other claimants to the inheritance she believed belonged to the child she thought she was carrying. Before that, she had been driven to such fury by the man who rejected her in favour of another woman that she placed a terrible curse on her rival. She was ruthless and cruel, and, when crossed, her revenge knew no limits.
Perhaps, now, Josse understood why …
But, on the other hand, perhaps this beggar was merely passing the time by telling him a horror story, and there wasn’t a word of truth in it, and it certainly didn’t describe himself or Cyrille.
Perhaps Cyrille had no excuse. Perhaps she was simply evil.
Time had gone by. Josse didn’t know how much; he had the strangest feeling that he had just passed a period of minutes, or hours, outside normal time.
He got to his feet, and started walking slowly away from the hazel trees and back to the track.
‘Goodbye,’ called the beggar softly. ‘Go well, Josse d’Acquin.’
Josse raised a hand in farewell.
Helewise was with the children, kneeling on the floor of the solar and trying to interest them in a game. But neither the three little girls nor Olivar wanted to play. All of them were listless, and, as the afternoon went on, increasingly distressed. Finally Helewise said, ‘Something’s the matter with you all, isn’t it?’
Brigida looked up at her out of wide, frightened eyes. Philippa began to cry.
‘It’s just us here, so there’s only me to hear,’ Helewise went on persuasively, ‘and, whatever it is you’re all so worried and upset about, I’ll do my best to help.’
Cecily looked at her little cousins, then at Helewise. ‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
And, at last, it came out. How the girls, led by Cecily, played a trick on Cyrille, wanting to get even with her because she was so horrid to Olivar. The little girls planned it. They were going to yell up from the ground below the solar to get Cyrille’s attention, then throw snowballs at her.
They positioned themselves under the west wall, where the ground was much nearer to the level of the windows. ‘We could never have thrown a snowball right up to the north window, it’s far too high!’ Cecily said, an expression on her lovely little face that said, Everyone but a silly fool would have known that!
But Cyrille looked out of the wrong window. Not seeing anyone down there, but still hearing the children’s shouts, she leaned further out. And further. And still further, until there was no going back.
Shaken, Helewise forced herself to sound calm and reassuring. ‘You didn’t mean her to fall,’ she said very firmly. ‘It was very naughty to scheme to throw snowballs at her, and I’m afraid I’ll have to tell your mothers, girls.’ Three little faces fell. ‘But I will tell them how very, very sorry you all are, and say that, in my opinion, your remorse and your distress are punishment enough. Although,’ she added quickly, ‘your mothers may not see it that way.’
‘What are you going to do with us?’ Brigida piped up.
‘I am not going to do anything,’ Helewise replied. ‘But I suggest you three go and find your mothers, tell them what you’ve just told me, and, in a little while, I’ll go and find them and speak up for you.’
‘You’re not going to beat us?’ Cecily asked.
‘No, of course not!’ Helewise exclaimed, about to laugh when she realized Cecily was in earnest. ‘You don’t get beaten here, do you?’
Cecily hung her head, but Brigida whispered, ‘We don’t. But Olivar does. His mother beats him a lot. That’s why we—’ A jab in the ribs from her cousin’s elbow stopped her. ‘Owww!’ she yelled, scowling ferociously at Cecily.
The little girls got up and hurried away. Olivar crept closer to Helewise. She thought he was going to make some comment about the girls’ confession; tell her, perhaps, that he hadn’t known what they were planning.
But when eventually he spoke – in a very small voice – it was something quite different.
‘I saw her fall,’ he whispered.
Oh, no! ‘Did you, Olivar?’
He nodded. ‘I knew Cecily and the others were going to do something, but I didn’t dare get involved because I was afraid of what she’d do when she found out. So I stayed in here, hiding behind the hanging over there.’ He pointed to the corner of the solar. ‘I was going to run away but then She came in and got out her sewing, and it was too late and I had to go on standing there, or else she’d have seen me coming out of my hiding place and she’d have demanded to know what I thought I was doing and I’d have told her because I always do in the end and then the girls would have been in terrible trouble too.’ The frightened, tumbling words stopped. Olivar, panting, was trembling.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Helewise began, but he wasn’t listening.
He looked straight up at her. ‘The house didn’t like her,’ he said. ‘I know it can’t have done, because I saw what it did.’ He drew a shaky breath. ‘She was leaning out of the window, trying to see who was calling, and I crept out to watch. I was standing right behind her.’ Briefly he shut his eyes, screwing them up tight. Then, opening them wide and staring straight into hers, he said, ‘The house didn’t want her here any more. It gave a sort of a shake, as if to rid itself of her, and she fell.’
Helewise couldn’t speak. She wouldn’t have known what to say, even if she could. Part of her was shocked to hear such an extraordinary story; one, moreover, which Olivar had told with total conviction, clearly convinced that it was what had really happened.
It can’t be true, her logical mind was insisting. Houses don’t have likes and dislikes! They don’t shake themselves so that nasty people fall out of their windows and drown!
This one does.
Who said that? Helewise looked wildly around, but nobody was there. Belatedly realizing that she had done nothing to comfort Olivar after his painful revelation, she knelt down beside him and took him in her arms, wrapping him in an enfolding hug. Instantly he responded, clinging on to her as if he would never let go.
A small boy, she thought, who had lost his mother and then his father, and been left to the cruel, manipulative, evil vicissitudes of a woman who had tried to terrify him into madness. A child who, deprived of the love that was his right, was silently crying out for it.
Surreptitiously, Helewise wiped her eyes. In that moment, as the hot fury and the fierce, protective love soared through her, she sympathized entirely with the house.
She could cheerfully have pushed Cyrille de Picus out of a window herself.