I no longer cared if she would shy away from me. I reached out and took both her hands in mine, moving so close to her that our hips touched. ‘Zarina, we must find Derman and bring him back,’ I said urgently. ‘He must stand trial, but if he is innocent — ’ oh, I hoped I was wrong and that he wasn’t a killer — ‘he’ll be freed, and then when you marry Haward — ’ she made as if to speak, but I wouldn’t let her — ‘you and Derman will both go to live in my parents’ house till Haward builds you one of your own.’
She snatched her hands away and turned on me, all the soft gold gone from her eyes, leaving them glittering green and hard as emeralds. ‘I cannot marry Haward!’ she cried.
‘But he loves you! You love him!’
She emitted a great sound of fierce anger and frustration. ‘Love!’ she echoed. ‘You think it is all that matters!’
I didn’t understand. ‘I know you are bound to Derman and cannot forsake him, but my mother and my father will not try to make you! It won’t be easy, naturally, especially at first while everyone’s getting used to-’
Zarina had had enough. She leapt up from her cot and began flinging her few possessions into an old leather bag. ‘I cannot marry Haward,’ she repeated.
I, too, had reached the end of my rope. ‘I want to see my brother happy!’ I shouted. ‘You can make him happy, Zarina, I know you can because I-’ I almost said because I’ve seen it in the runes, but I remembered just in time that such things were secret. ‘I appreciate that you care for Derman,’ I went on more calmly, ‘but he’s not the only person to consider. I care for Haward, and I refuse to see his chance of happiness with you taken away from him because you are-’
‘I am?’ She rounded on me. ‘I am what?’ She screamed at the top of her voice, a great aaaaagh that tore out of her. ‘You do not know what I am!’ she cried. Then, pausing to draw breath: ‘You know nothing about me!’
It was very late.
The man lurking on the edge of the village watched as the last lights were extinguished. He waited a little longer and then, keeping to the shadows, crept along the track and up the path that sloped up to the church. The melody of his song ran through his head as he walked. He would sing it soon.
He went straight to the new grave. He knew exactly where it was. He had not dared go too close earlier, while they were burying her, instead keeping to the back of the crowd, his hood drawn up around his face.
He had heard the prayers. He had listened to the villagers as they muttered together. They spoke of him, that shambling, drooling simpleton. There were search parties out hunting for him, and many of the villagers believed they should take matters into their own hands. The singer agreed with them, although he would be the one meting out the richly-deserved punishment. You killed her, he thought. You put her body in the grave on the island. I know you did, for I saw you do it. I saw you there, although I did not know until later what you were doing. You left her there, my beautiful Ida, then you ran away and sobbed because you knew you had done wrong and would be made to pay the price.
Now, standing over her as she lay dead in the ground, his love, his loss and his grief welled up uncontrollably. He closed his eyes, opened his mouth and softly, sweetly, heartbreakingly, he began to sing.
TEN
In the morning Edild said as she stirred the breakfast porridge that I ought to go up to Lakehall and see how my patients were faring.
‘Patients?’ I echoed. I could only think of one. Claude.
Edild went on stirring. ‘You told me that you tended Lady Emma when she fainted,’ she reminded me.
‘I didn’t do much,’ I protested. ‘She sort of fell against me, and I bathed her face with cold water when she’d recovered from her faint. Anyone else there could have done the same,’ I added, modestly lowering my eyes.
‘Naturally, since what you did was common sense rather than healing skill,’ Edild said crushingly. I know she loves me dearly — I have good reason to — but sometimes she is all stern teacher, reminding me how far I have to go before I can call myself a healer. ‘However, it does no harm for an apprentice like you to make their mark with the lady of the manor,’ she continued, ‘and if, as it appears, Lady Emma is inclined to trust you, it would be wise to do what you can to develop her dependency.’
‘But you’re the village healer,’ I said. ‘It ought to be you looking after the lady of the manor.’
Edild gave me a small smile. ‘I am not really at home in the halls of lords and ladies,’ she murmured.
That was a surprise. I’d have said that my aunt, with her dignity, her grace and her slight air of aloofness, was happy anywhere the sick and injured needed her, be it a peasant hovel or a castle. As she ladled out porridge into a wooden bowl, stirring in a generous spoonful of honey from her own bees, I thought about what she had said. I realized quite soon that she was right. With the poor and lowly, the full force of her personality emerged. When she and I had gone to Lakehall to lay out Ida’s body, Edild, although perfectly polite, had sort of withdrawn into herself. I must have noted the difference in her without really thinking about it, and it was only now, when pointed in the right direction, that I understood.
As if she knew what I was thinking, she said gently, ‘The rich can buy the assistance of whomever they choose, Lassair. The poor have to make do with what they can get, and in many villages that amounts to some ignorant old woman who probably does more harm than good.’
Yes. One of my sister Goda’s friends had almost lost her baby — and her own life — because a village midwife hadn’t known what she was doing. Goda had had the good sense to send for Edild, who had saved both mother and child. We learned later that the woman had afterwards spent a lot of time on her knees in church praying to the Virgin Mary, most honoured of all mothers, to look favourably on Edild and take special care of her. Edild, when she’d heard of this, had smiled gently. I think that the Great Mother to whom Edild prays is far, far more ancient than the Mother of Christ, but no doubt she appreciated the sentiment. Maybe, in some strange and unfathomable way, the two are one and the same. .
Edild was instructing me on how to conduct myself up at the hall; I made myself pay attention. Then, when I had washed and put away our mugs and bowls, tidied our beds and swept the floor ready for the day’s work, I straightened my headdress, put on a clean apron, packed my satchel and set out for the hall.
As I passed the track that led up to the church, I looked over in the direction of Ida’s grave. I decided I would go and spend a few moments there with her on my way home. Preoccupied with working out who had killed her, I had forgotten the sheer sadness of her death. She was young, cheerful, pretty, and people had liked her. Loved her. She should have grown up to be cherished and adored by a husband and a whole clutch of children, in addition to the one who had died with her. Instead she had been brutally strangled, and now she lay in the cold ground.
I walked on, deliberately putting those thoughts to the back of my mind. You have to approach all healing work with the right mental attitude, and I knew I would do Lady Emma and Lady Claude no good at all if I was brooding about Ida. I began planning the questions I would ask and the remedies I would prescribe, and soon the healer had taken over from the emotional girl and the threatening tears had been firmly put in abeyance.