Aeleis and Parsifal were to be buried side by side at Hawkenlye Abbey.
A cart had been prepared to carry Parsifal’s body up from Southfire Hall. The old groom had worked hard to turn the simple conveyance into something that was suitable for its grave purpose, scrubbing the boards and laying out a bed of clean straw, and he had groomed the sturdy horse that was to pull the cart till he shone like a thoroughbred. Parsifal lay in a pale oak coffin over which had been draped a banner bearing the family’s crest: ‘For he was a member of this family,’ Hugh had decreed, ‘married as he was to my youngest daughter.’ Josse and Helewise escorted the cart to the abbey, where the body would be placed beside Aeleis’s until the day of the interment.
Josse and Helewise rode on home.
Hugh, Isabelle, Editha, Jenna and Emma made the journey to Hawkenlye for the burial. They had organized a means of transport for Uncle Hugh, piling a palliasse, cushions, pelts and blankets on to a wagon so that he was able to travel in a degree of comfort. For Editha, a well-padded chair had been put up on the wagon beside him. Hugh’s family rode beside him, as if he were a king on a progress. They arrived at the abbey late one afternoon; the interment would be carried out the following morning.
Aeleis and Parsifal were laid to rest, side by side as Aeleis had requested, in a plot out beyond the abbey’s regular graveyard, on the fringes of the forest. There was no priest to speak the words over the grave. People said, probably with justification, that there weren’t any priests left in England. Abbess Caliste led a simple service, speaking eloquently and movingly of the pair’s great love for each other, and a small choir of nuns sang a soft, gentle chant into the bright morning.
When it was over, Josse invited his uncle and his kinswomen to the House in the Woods, for funeral meats, drink, and to stay for a few days to get to know his side of the family.
‘Not me, nephew, thank you just the same,’ Uncle Hugh said. ‘I shall head back to Southfire Hall, and Editha shall come with me. I appear to be my old self again, by some miracle I don’t begin to understand, but the fact remains I’m an old man, and old men need their own hearths and their own beds. One night away from home is quite enough! No offence,’ he added.
Josse grinned. ‘None taken. Of course, uncle. You’ll be back by nightfall if you leave now.’ He took his uncle’s hands. ‘I’ll come and see you soon, I promise.’
‘Good,’ Hugh replied. ‘Bring that lovely wife of yours.’
‘I promise that, too.’
As Josse and Helewise led Isabelle, Jenna and Emma through the forest to the House in the Woods, the mood among them was bright, with a lot of chatter and even some merriment. There was a palpable sense of relief, Helewise reflected, hearing Josse laugh at some remark of Jenna’s, and, as so often happens after the sad solemnity of a funeral, the living were affected by the sheer joy of being alive. From what she knew of them, Parsifal and Aeleis were unlikely to be the sort of people who would resent others’ appreciation of the good things in the beautiful world they had just left behind.
Back at the house, Josse was gratified to find a generous spread laid ready, and his entire household waiting to greet the guests. Busy with making the introductions, he observed Meggie approach Isabelle, and the women exchanged a warm embrace. I was right about those two, he thought with a private smile. They are going to be friends. Then Ninian made a short speech of welcome, Geoffroi carried around a tray bearing mugs of ale, and the whole group spread out into the hall, the visitors swiftly making themselves at home.
Later, after the food had been eaten and the lively, noisy hubbub of chatter had died down a little, Isabelle beckoned to Josse and took him outside into the sunshine for a private word. She informed him tonelessly that the body of Cyrille de Picus had been quietly buried in an out-of-the-way spot where, since the imposition of the interdict, most of the dead of Lewes had apparently ended up.
‘Did many attend?’ Josse asked.
She shook her head. ‘Jenna and I went with Herbert, and one of the monks from the priory mumbled a few words.’
‘How is he?’ Josse said softly. ‘Herbert, I mean.’
Isabelle smiled briefly. ‘Yes, Josse, I realized that.’ She paused, gazing into the distance. ‘I can’t say,’ she admitted. ‘He’s shaken, shocked, but some part of him is relieved. The good thing,’ she hurried on, as if speaking of her son’s mood distressed her, ‘is that he and Olivar have grown close. Herbert looks upon the boy as his true son now, and will go ahead with making him his heir. Both of them need somebody to love, I think.’ Once again hurrying away from the painful ground of deep emotion, she said, ‘Herbert has explained to him that Cyrille wasn’t really his mother.’
‘I imagine the lad was relieved to hear that.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Isabelle breathed. ‘Poor boy. The things she did to him …’ She shook her head. ‘Enough of that: it’s over, and she’s gone. Herbert has vowed to seek out Marthe de Withan’s family so that Olivar can meet his true kin,’ she went on in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘and, with any luck, find some kindly soul who’ll be able to tell him all about his real mother. My father has already started to do so,’ she added, her expression softening, ‘and he’s the best person to begin, because he obviously thought a lot of Marthe.’
‘He never let her memory die,’ Josse said quietly. ‘He kept on trying to say her name, even when—’
He stopped abruptly. Even when Cyrille was doing her utmost to cloud his mind and make him forget, he had been about to say, but there was no proof of that.
‘Why did she do it?’ Isabelle mused aloud. ‘Oh, I don’t mean why did she try to fuddle poor Father’s wits, if indeed that’s what she did, because that’s obvious: it was to stop him revealing that she wasn’t really Olivar’s mother. What I want to know is, what drove her to do something so dangerous and malicious to poor Aeleis, and then put a cushion over Parsifal’s face and kill him?’
Josse thought about how to reply. ‘I believe,’ he said slowly, ‘she was motivated by a great need for security.’
‘But—’
He held up his hand, and Isabelle’s angry protest subsided.
‘Herbert told me she came from lowly stock,’ Josse continued, ‘and that her life hadn’t been easy. Perhaps the main attraction of marriage to Parsifal de Chanteloup wasn’t so much his looks and his youth but his wealth and position.’
‘Was he wealthy?’ Isabelle demanded.
‘I assume so. Aeleis implied as much, although no doubt his family cut him off without the proverbial penny when he ran off with her.’ He grinned. ‘I’m quite sure he thought she was worth it.’
‘So am I,’ Isabelle agreed loyally. ‘So, go back to what you were saying about Cyrille?’
‘Aye. Well, she probably thought she’d found a safe haven when William Crowburgh married her, but, it proved less secure than she’d hoped. Herbert explained that William had come to grief and was close to ruin when he died, and so, yet again, someone in whom Cyrille had placed her trust had failed her.’
‘I’m sure he didn’t do it just to spite her!’ Isabelle exclaimed angrily.
‘No, I’m sure not. And then, when she was newly widowed, with no money and the imminent prospect of losing the roof over her head—’
‘Along comes my big-hearted, chivalrous son, who conveniently falls for her, marries her, and sweeps her off to live in a grand and beautiful old house, where she is called upon to do nothing more arduous than work at her needlepoint,’ Isabelle finished for him.
He didn’t reply. In truth, there was nothing to say. ‘What was she, Josse?’ Isabelle said in an anxious whisper. ‘A witch? An evil spirit in human form?’
Josse had no answer.
‘Cyrille recognized the beggar when he came to the door, of course,’ Helewise said to Josse as finally, with the household and the guests having retired for the night, they sat together beside the dying fire.
‘Aye,’ he agreed. He had been thinking the same thing.
‘What I took for horror at having a leper so close to the house,’ Helewise went on, ‘was in fact horror of a different sort. She recognized the uncle she had treated so badly, and instinctively she hid her face with her veil, so he wouldn’t know who she was. Only he did.’
‘And made up his mind to do what?’ Josse asked. ‘There was obviously some plan in his head, when he let us take him down to the monks at Lewes Priory.’
‘Well, for one thing, nobody believed that a leper would ever be coming out again, which would have given him a perfect alibi for – er, for whatever he decided to do.’
‘Aye, I worked that out, too,’ Josse agreed.
She looked at him. ‘You listened to him tell his story, Josse. What do you think? Did he slip out of the priory with the express intention of going back to Southfire Hall to accuse her? To kill her?’ she added in a whisper.
‘To accuse her, aye, I’ll believe that,’ he said. ‘As for killing … I just don’t know.’
‘I think I do,’ Helewise said after quite a long time. ‘I think he came to seek her out and, by some stroke of fortune – I don’t know if it should be called good or bad fortune – he happened upon her just after the fall. And—’ She stopped.
‘And, seeing her lying there, helpless, in the most perilous situation, he decided to walk away,’ he finished for her.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Josse, do you think he stood and watched? Do you think he hated her that much?’
He looked at her for a long moment. The vision she conjured up was indeed frightful, and he could barely conceive of anyone doing something so dreadful to another human being.
Cyrille de Picus wasn’t human, said a soft voice in his ear.
Helewise was looking at him expectantly, waiting for an answer. He reached out for her hand, drawing her close. ‘Aye, I think he did,’ he said.
The Southfire kinswomen stayed for another day and night, then set off for home. Josse and Helewise rode with them as far as Hawkenlye Abbey, where they would halt briefly so that Emma could have a look around the abbey, speak to some of the nuns about their life there and, most importantly, have a formal audience with Abbess Caliste about the possibility of her entry into the community as a postulant.
Emma emerged from the abbess’s little room at the end of the cloister with shining eyes and a joyful expression.
Observing her as, walking between her mother and her grandmother she went to fetch her horse and mounted up, Josse said to Helewise, ‘Do you think she’ll enter the community?’
Helewise turned to him, smiling. ‘We’ll see.’
By an unspoken conspiracy, all the people touched by Cyrille de Picus’s death resolved to regard it as a sad accident. The forces of law and order were not put on the trail of the beggar; as Josse remarked to Helewise, what would be the point? The man had not been responsible for her fall out of the solar window, and even the wisest in the land could not now say whether, had the water not killed her, she would have survived the devastating damage of the accident.
Josse wondered what had become of the beggar. Was he still out there, treading his lonely path? The awful thing was, as fair-minded, law-respecting Josse was forced to admit, he had a sneaking sympathy for the poor man. Although he sincerely hoped he would have done his utmost to drag Cyrille to safety as she lay there helpless, the water rising, he found he just couldn’t find it in his heart to condemn the beggar. He confessed the sin, did penance, sincerely apologized for his lack of charity, prayed to God to give him the grace to mourn her as he should. But nothing seemed to work.
Whatever he tried, he just couldn’t help feeling that, with Cyrille de Picus no longer in it, the world was a better place.
Helewise told nobody, not even Josse, what Olivar had said to her. Indeed, as the days and the weeks went by, she was increasingly inclined to dismiss it; to put it down to the effects of severe shock on a small child.
But it wouldn’t quite be dismissed …
She knew one thing: she had to go back to Southfire Hall one day. It both attracted and scared her, a little, but the attraction outweighed the fear, and she knew she had to return and find out more.
Not that it was going to be difficult.
Josse had fallen in love all over again with the house he knew in childhood. The house of my ancestors, he mused, sitting by the fire in the House in the Woods, his thoughts far away. Into his mind flitted an image of the strong, matriarchal women who tended the sacred fire up on the downs and, in the end, commemorated the spot by building the first dwelling there, still inhabited by descendants of the same blood. I need the house, and perhaps it needs me, he thought, although he wasn’t sure what put the idea into his head. I will never leave it so long again without going back.
Meggie, too, resolved to return to the house on top of the downs. She had grown up knowing all about her inheritance from her mother; nobody had made any secret of it. This, though, this strong call from the ancient home of her forebears on her father’s side, was something totally different. It was powerful and thrilling; she intended to get all the information she could from Josse, and Isabelle too. It’s my place too, she thought with proprietorial pride. It opened its soul to me, and I am accepted.
Southfire Hall was calm again.
Evil had come, cleverly disguised, as evil so often is. Now it had gone away again; all vestiges of it had been removed; burned, buried or destroyed.
The house itself had got rid of the dark cloak made of the strange, clammy fabric, which once a woman had worn to scare a little boy out of his mind. It had been left where she had hidden it, under a pile of stones beneath the north wall of the ancient undercroft. Melt water had loosened some of the old stonework; the house had shifted a little on its deep foundations, and the breach had widened. The water found the weakness, as water always does, and quite soon a little streamlet was flowing through.
Just before the damage was discovered, and workmen hastily sent for to repair it before more harm was done, the water lapped up to the rolled-up cloak. The water lifted it, spread under and through it, supporting it up so that it floated like some frightening, repellent, dead thing. Slowly it began to move, carried on the weak current; under the wall, on, on, moving faster now as the waters gathered together and picked up pace. Down the long slope to the stream in the valley; borne along by the stream until it emptied into the river that ran through the town. On, on, tumbled and twisted now by the swollen river waters, till, at last, fresh water met salt and the cloak flowed out into the sea.
And, up there on the top of the downs, Southfire Hall settled back into its habitual tranquillity.
The spirit of the house was content.