He came flying down the steps, grabbed hold of my hand and, pulling me along, ran across the yard and down the track. ‘We need to talk, but not here,’ he panted. He glanced back at the hall. ‘If that fat fool asks me once more who she is, I’ll punch him.’
I grinned. ‘It might shake his brains up a bit, but I don’t believe it’d make him any brighter.’
Jack laughed shortly. I joined in, but then suddenly I had an image of what he’d done to Gaspard Picot and his man. Jack, I realized with a shiver, was more than capable of punching even a man of Lord Gilbert’s status, and I should not fool myself otherwise.
It was frightening.
We hurried on, and, reaching the main track, turned away from the village. A man and a woman passed, then an ox cart rumbled in the opposite direction. Jack looked around. ‘Where can we go where we can speak in private?’
‘Follow me.’ I led the way up the sloping ground to the left, heading past the fields and the pastures until, at the summit of the higher ground, we reached the ancient oak tree that stands its solitary watch over Aelf Fen.
Jack and I were alone.
He leaned back against the oak’s massive trunk, closed his eyes and let out a long breath. ‘That’s better,’ he said after a while. ‘Now I can think.’
Deducing from his words and his actions that he wanted to be left in peace, I moved away, round to the other side of the oak. I hitched up my skirts and climbed up to the convenient cleft between two of the huge lower branches. It’s a spot I’ve been hiding in since I was a child, and very good for quiet contemplation.
I copied Jack’s example, leaning back and closing my eyes. Immediately I saw Lady Rosaria’s ruined face. No; don’t think about that. I made myself relax, and very soon, out there in the peace and the silence, I appreciated the good sense of getting right away from the clamouring, demanding voices and the unanswerable questions.
Unhurriedly, I went through everything I’d noticed about Lady Rosaria’s corpse. After a while, one thing floated to the surface of my mind: the chemise. It was made of a fabric with which I wasn’t familiar, yet, as soon as I handled it, I knew I’d recently seen something similar: the shift which Jack had found in the pool where the first drowned body had ended up, and which we’d surmised had belonged to our tall, fair-haired woman.
Although that had been a cheaper, poorer-quality garment, I’d have been ready to swear that both were made of the same fabric.
Clothing … I had a sudden vision of Lady Rosaria back at the inn in Cambridge, sewing up her hem. Then I saw that same hem as I’d seen it just that morning, the stitches already coming undone. I’d thought it meant she hadn’t been much of a seamstress. But another reason for making a botch of a sewing task is that you’re in a hurry.
The bodice of the gown had been loose.
She was tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, very beautiful and utterly perfect.
Facts and snippets of conversation were flowing freely around my head, and I was beginning – just beginning – to see a picture. The urge to leap down and run to lay it before Jack was almost irresistible, but I kept calm, stayed where I was and thought some more.
Was it too much to construe, when all there really was to go on was two undergarments made of the same, unfamiliar, foreign material?
No.
Slowly I descended from my perch and walked round to where Jack was still leaning against the tree.
‘They swapped clothes,’ I said.
His eyes flew open. ‘What?’
‘Lady Rosaria and the woman who was found in the flood pool. They both had undershifts of the same fabric, only one was a far more costly item; a lady’s garment as opposed to a maid’s. And Lady Rosaria – the woman we knew as Lady Rosaria – had altered her gown. I know she did,’ I insisted, ‘I caught her sewing when I visited her in the Cambridge inn. And the bodice was too loose.’
He was staring at me intently, the green eyes slightly narrowed in fierce concentration. ‘You’re saying Lady Rosaria and the drowned woman travelled to England together?’
‘Yes.’
He shook his head. ‘But the drowned woman didn’t match the description of the maid which the mate of The Good Shepherd gave us – he said the maid was small, nimble and dark, and he’d have sworn she was a Spaniard – oh!’
I almost heard the blinkers fall off his eyes. For a moment we just stood grinning at each other. Then he said, very softly, ‘Lady Rosaria was the maid, and the drowned woman was her mistress.’ He pursed his lips in a silent whistle. Then, frowning, he said urgently ‘Does it stand up to scrutiny? Does everything fit?’
‘Yes!’ I shouted, although the response was inspired more by instinct than reason. Forcing my flying thoughts to slow down, I said, ‘The real daughter-in-law – the tall, fair woman who drowned – was heading to England, to Harald’s only living kin. She became ill, and her maid – Rosaria – realized she couldn’t save her. So she took her place, in the expectation that she was exchanging the life of a servant, or even a slave, for that of a lady.’
Jack nodded slowly. ‘It’s easy to understand why,’ he said. ‘Rosaria must have been a slave, and probably had already tried once to run away to a better life. It was that attempt which earned her the mutilating mark that would henceforth always identify her status.’
‘If the real daughter-in-law was dead,’ I went on – thinking even as I did how strange it was that both Jack and I were trying so hard to defend Rosaria, given that neither of us had liked her – ‘then she must have asked herself, where was the harm?’
‘Had she reported her mistress’s death,’ Jack said, ‘she wouldn’t have been able to carry out the deception.’ He looked at me steadily. ‘And it wouldn’t have altered the fact that the mistress was dead.’
‘She could have-’ I began. Then a new thought struck me; perhaps the most powerful consideration of all. ‘Leafric,’ I whispered. ‘No wonder Lady Rosaria wasn’t much of a mother to him – she wasn’t his mother.’
I realized I hadn’t told him what Edild and I had discovered. ‘Rosaria had never given birth,’ I said. ‘I’d wondered if Leafric had been adopted, but that’s not right, is it?’
I think Jack and I both had the same impulse at the same moment. As we started to run, winding through the fields and jumping the ditches, I was thinking, over and over again, There’s one way to prove it! There’s one way to prove it!
We arrived, hot and panting, in the churchyard. ‘What’s the priest’s name?’ Jack demanded.
‘Father Augustine.’
‘I’ll find him and explain – you go and check.’
Trying to calm my gasping breathing, I went into the cool, dark church. I approached the simple altar, pausing to bow my head. In common with so many of the people of our region, my family still remember the old gods. However, I had come to recognize much to love in the merciful, compassionate God of the Christian faith. He was, I had discovered, a good, true friend in times of severe trial. I whispered to him now, praying that what I was about to do was the right thing. That, somehow, it would help the innocent, helpless infant who had lost so much.
I went over to the low door that opens on to the steps down to the crypt. The sweet herbs and incense helped to disguise the smell, but only a little. I told myself to ignore it.
The body of the drowned woman lay in its winding sheets, ready for burial. There was no need to look at her upper body; I remembered what her face had been like when first she’d been brought to Lakehall, and didn’t want to see the damage done by the passage of another week. And there was no point in inspecting her breasts; what remained of them had indicated she had been full-chested.
Slowly I unwound the fabric covering her lower limbs, folding it back until the belly and pubis were revealed. Forcing myself on, I looked at what I had come to see.
Compared to my aunt, I was still a novice midwife. But I knew enough to judge. There were stretch marks over the lower belly, extending out towards the hips. And, when I further violated the dead woman’s privacy, there was no more room for doubt.