‘Er — you told me very little. Your father was a son of a minor branch of the de Courtenay family. Your mother, you said, was rather weak and not in the best of health.’
Joanna smiled. ‘That sums the poor soul up very well.’ Then: ‘She wasn’t my mother.’
‘Your people told you that? But how on earth did they know?’
‘They knew about me long before I was aware of them. My parents wanted children, as most married couples do, and my elder brother was born sickly and he died in infancy.’
‘Aye, you told me that.’
‘They tried time after time for another baby but without success. Then they had the idea that my father might beget a child on someone else and bring him or her up as their own. There was a woman they knew whom they admired and trusted. Although mature, she was still of childbearing age and she was fit, strong and intelligent. They approached her.’
‘Was she not insulted, to have friends ask her such a thing?’
‘No, Josse. She wasn’t exactly a friend; she worked for my mother’s uncle and his wife.’
‘The people who left you the manor house in the woods?’
‘Yes.’
He was beginning to understand. ‘Go on.’
‘The woman was one of ours; one of the best, or so they tell me. She had foreseen the approach from my father; she had foreseen my birth and what I would become. She made him have the idea, Josse, because she knew it all had to happen so that — so that I would be born. My father lay with her just once and I was conceived. When I was born the people whom I believed to be my parents took me in, although the woman was always there to keep an eye on me. She was my wet nurse and she remained a very important part of my life all through my childhood.’
She paused, eyes looking out across the clearing to the pond, now rimmed with a thin fringe of ice. ‘She died for me, Josse. Here in this very place, she was tortured to make her reveal my whereabouts but she would not tell. Then her head was pushed under the water and she drowned.’
Then Joanna was in his arms, the sweet sensation accompanied by the bitterness of her dry sobs. Smoothing the braided hair, he said, ‘I know, my love, I know. I saw her.’
She pulled away from him, staring up into his face. ‘You — yes! Of course you did!’
‘She was brave and she very obviously loved you very much,’ he said, trying to comfort her.
‘I just wish,’ Joanna cried, ‘that I had known she was my mother!’
‘She knew,’ he said.
‘Yes. Yes.’ Joanna was standing apart from him again, brushing away her tears. Giving him a brave attempt at a smile, she said, ‘To have Mag Hobson as my mother was very special and being her daughter remains true, I know, even thought I was not aware of it until very recently.’ She took a shaking breath. Then: ‘Josse, because I know what it feels like not to know that someone very wonderful is one’s parent, there’s something I must show you.’
She grabbed his hand and strode away towards the hut, marching fast as if she had to act quickly before she changed her mind. She opened the door wide, then gave Josse a nudge and said, ‘Go in.’
He stepped cautiously into the hut. It was quite dark inside; it was only afternoon and as yet, no candle flame had been lit to brighten the corners of the little room and the small fire had died down to golden embers.
On the floor by the hearth sat a child. Dark-haired, very pretty, she was playing with a little figure made of sticks that was dressed in miniature garments made of sacking and wool. She looked up at Josse and he saw his father’s eyes gazing up at him with a most interested expression from under the thick, glossy hair.
He knew then why the sound of this child’s laughter had been familiar; the little girl laughed as musically as her grandmother had done.
‘She’s mine?’ His voice was all but inaudible.
‘Yes.’
‘You did not think to tell me you carried my child?’
‘Josse, I — no.’
‘But you-’
‘Kneel down beside her,’ she whispered. ‘Make friends with her. Her name’s Meggie.’
Josse crouched, knelt and finally sat on the clean-swept floor of the hut. He stared at his daughter and her dark eyes did not look away. ‘Hello, Meggie,’ he said gently. ‘What have you got there?’
Trustingly she held out her stick doll. ‘She’s very pretty,’ he said. ‘What is she called?’
‘Ba’ee,’ the child said promptly.
‘Baby? Oh, I see. Your little baby.’
‘Ba’ee,’ the child agreed. She put the doll into Josse’s large hands and he jiggled it up and down as if to soothe it to sleep. Then he pretended to drop it, catching it at the last minute with a great show of relief and his daughter laughed in delight. Taking the stick doll back again, she thumped its head on the floor a couple of times then gave it back to Josse, who kissed the stuffed head better.
Meggie seemed to like that. She clambered on to Josse’s legs, clutched at a fold of his tunic to lever herself up and, when she could reach his face, gave him a kiss just like the one he had given the doll.
Very slowly he put his arms around her. She snuggled against him as if she had known him all her life.
For the remainder of the day, until it was time for Meggie’s bedtime, Josse and his daughter were not parted for a single moment. He let her lead him outside, where she showed him how she could leap across the stepping stones that allowed Joanna to cross the little stream without getting her feet wet. Meggie made Josse do it and then he watched her while she did it another eleven times. Then she showed him her favourite places in her small domain, all the while babbling away in her own infant language in which Josse recognised about one word in ten.
Joanna came to stand beside him as he watched Meggie throwing stones into the shallow, rushing water of the stream. ‘She will be talking fluently soon,’ she said.
‘She’s doing that now.’
Joanna smiled. ‘I meant that soon she’ll be talking comprehensibly.’
‘I rather like the nonsense.’
There was a rather awkward pause. ‘Josse,’ Joanna began, ‘I should explain-’
But Meggie needed her father’s help to lift a heavy stone and, with a haste born out of relief, for he was not yet ready to talk to Joanna in any depth, Josse hurried to assist.
Later Joanna made a simple supper for the child and she ate it sitting on Josse’s lap, with him spooning the thick soup into her mouth. Joanna watched indulgently; Meggie was quite capable of feeding herself if one did not object to quite a lot of mess. Then Josse washed the child’s face and hands in water that had been warmed a little over the fire and Joanna stripped the child down to her shift for bed.
Josse tucked her up in the covers that were neatly folded on top of the sleeping platform’s straw mattress. Meggie put her thumb in her mouth and around it she said, ‘Sto’y.’
‘Story?’ Josse echoed, as if it were the most outlandish request in the world. Meggie laughed.
‘Once-upon-a-time-there-was-a-little-girl-called-Meggie-and-she-went-to-sleep-the-end,’ Josse said very quickly.
Meggie laughed again, although Josse thought it was more at his sudden burst of rapid speech than because she understood what he had said. ‘Sto’y,’ she repeated firmly.
So he began again.
‘There was once a man called Geoffroi,’ he said softly, ‘and he went a very long way away to fight in a great battle in a foreign land. There he saved the life of a little princeling and as a reward the boy’s grandfather gave him a very precious jewel. This jewel was deep blue, like the summer sky at the end of the day, and it was set in a very old coin that was made of solid gold. .’
He heard Joanna give a faint gasp from where she was sitting on the floor behind him. Smiling to himself, he proceeded to tell his daughter the old family tale that his own father used to tell him of the Eye of Jerusalem and how it came into the family. For she is my family, he thought as the tale wound to its conclusion; she is as much the grandchild of my parents as those beloved nephews and nieces in Acquin.