Edild was now stripping off the undergarments: there were several underskirts. Now she handed me a chemise made of some fine, smooth fabric …
I had seen a garment made of this material before.
‘Edild, I-’
My aunt gave a tsk! of impatience. ‘Not now, Lassair. Help me with her – I must attempt to detect if there’s water in her lungs.’
Together we gently turned the body so that it was face-down, and Edild applied steady pressure on the upper back. Water came out in a lazy stream, seeping through the veil and out from beneath it.
‘I think we can tell your lawman that she did indeed drown,’ Edild said.
We rolled Lady Rosaria on to her back once more.
Edild had covered her with a length of linen, and now, respectful of the dead woman’s modesty, she examined the body, uncovering it a bit at a time. Shoulders, chest and breasts, then waist and belly. Feet, ankles, legs, thighs, groin.
Edild stood back from the table, a frown of perplexity on her face.
‘What is it?’ I felt apprehensive; afraid, almost.
Slowly my aunt beckoned. ‘Come and see. I may be wrong – I must be wrong – but I’d like to hear what you think.’
‘What must I look at?’
‘Her breasts, then her private parts.’
I did as I was ordered. The breasts were small; I remembered the gown that had been too big in the bust, and how I’d imagined Lady Rosaria had lost the fullness as her milk dried up. The nipples were pink and dainty, like a girl’s. Carefully I drew up the sheet to cover her chest, then, raising it from its lower end, looked down on her belly and thighs.
It felt wrong to be examining her. She had been so proud, so haughty, and her stiff, erect posture had informed you, all the time that you were in her presence, that she was a fine lady. But I had a job to do, and I could not afford scruples.
I looked at her slim, smooth thighs, at the narrow hips, the flat, almost concave, belly. She must have padded out her underskirts for, naked, she had a much slighter, more boyish figure than she’d appeared to have when clothed.
Finally, aware of Edild’s eyes watching me, I gently parted the thighs and stared at the genitalia.
After a moment of utter stillness, I covered the body, tucking the sheet in around it. Then I met my aunt’s eyes.
‘She has never borne a child,’ I said.
‘No,’ Edild agreed.
We went on looking at each other.
‘So whose baby is Leafric?’ I whispered. ‘Is he an adopted child, do you think?’ My thoughts were racing ahead. ‘Perhaps Lady Rosaria was barren – she does look quite immature – or perhaps her husband was infertile? As members of a great family, they’d have definitely wanted a child to inherit and to carry on the name, so maybe …’
I trailed to a stop. Lady Rosaria bore an illustrious name, or so Jack had informed me, but her late husband – her Hugo Guillaume Fensmanson – hadn’t belonged to a prominent, important family. He and his father had been my own kinsmen.
Edild was looking down at the dead woman’s head, encased in the elaborately wound headdress with its jewels and its fringe of tiny bells, and at the dead face, still shrouded in the heavy veil. Drenched, like every other garment she had been wearing, the veil clung to her features.
‘I think we must remove this,’ she said, delicately touching its bottom hem with her forefinger. ‘The headdress first; she should be allowed to go on concealing her face until the very last moment.’
She began to unwind the headdress, the cloth coming away from the head in a long stream of gorgeous fabric. Lady Rosaria’s hair had been dark, long and wavy, and she had braided it into two heavy plaits.
Then, at last, Edild took off the veil.
And we stared, aghast, at what had happened to Lady Rosaria’s face.
We made sure that she was decently covered from her chin to her toes before I was sent to summon Jack. We had already drawn our conclusions concerning her body, and there was no need for any eyes other than ours to look upon her.
Her face, though, was a different matter.
Now Jack stood between Edild and me, and, from his expression, I guessed he was as horrified as we had been.
Lady Rosaria’s left nostril had been slit. The cut had gone right into the whorl that joins the nose to the cheek, slicing up so that the nostril was open, and the cartilage inside revealed.
Below this horror, her mouth was now slack and blueish, but it was clear to see it had been generous and well-shaped.
Eyes and mouth, then, were beautiful; before her mutilation, she must have been wonderful to look at.
Unless the wound had been a terrible accident, or a healer’s attempt to excise diseased flesh, it looked as if someone had inflicted the cut as some barbaric punishment. I could scarcely make myself believe it. ‘Was this the result of some frightful sickness?’ I whispered, looking at Edild.
‘No, I do not believe so,’ she replied. ‘It looks, from the neatness of the wound and from the healthy flesh surrounding it, that it was done deliberately.’
‘Why?’ I cried.
Beside me, Jack stirred. He hadn’t spoken since he had come down into the crypt, but now he did, and his voice was vibrant with emotion. ‘I believe this is the mark of a slave,’ he said. ‘In just such a way, or so I have heard, do men of the southern lands mark the men and women who are their property. If they try to run away, they are easily identified, and can be recaptured and returned to their masters for punishment.’
I tried to absorb that. I knew such things existed; that, in many parts of the world, men did not think it wrong to own another human being. Serfdom, indeed, was only a little removed from slavery.
But to mutilate someone in this way! To mutilate a woman like Lady Rosaria; to take away her beauty, so that she was driven to cover herself up every second of every day. It was beyond barbarous.
Then I thought, If she was a slave, how can she be Lady Rosaria?
And a slave, surely, can’t be a member of the family of the Byzantine emperor …
I said, ‘Who was she?’
And, with a sigh, Jack replied, ‘Well, we know who she wasn’t.’ He must have sensed my frustration at the inadequacy of the response. Catching my eye, he said with a faint smile, ‘It’s a start.’ Then, turning to Edild, he said, ‘Can she now go to her grave, or is there more that you can learn from the body?’
Slowly Edild shook her head. ‘I think we have seen all we need to.’ She touched the dead woman’s shoulder with a gentle hand. ‘I will prepare her for burial.’
‘Need we tell Lord Gilbert and Lady Emma about her nose?’ I burst out. ‘It seems so – disloyal.’
Jack looked at me, compassion softening his features. ‘We have to tell them, I think,’ he said gently. ‘But let’s wait until we have a few more answers.’
I nodded. It was the best Lady Rosaria was going to get.
We left Edild to her task. She said she didn’t need my assistance, and I was glad to get away. Jack went back up into the hall to tell Lord Gilbert what the corpse had revealed, but, again, I wasn’t needed. At the top of the steps, however, he turned and said, ‘Don’t go away.’
He was gone for some time. I guessed Lord Gilbert’s outrage at having been fooled by a slave girl into believing she was a great lady, and entertaining her accordingly for a whole week, was forcing him to demand answers which Jack wasn’t able to give. Yet: a brighter man would have hurried Jack away to get on with his investigations, but Lord Gilbert, as I have often observed, does not have the sort of mind that flashes and fizzes with intelligence.
In the end, it seemed to be Lady Emma who extracted Jack from Lord Gilbert’s angry indignation; she it was, at least, who ushered him to the door of the hall and wished him good luck.