In Gurdyman’s courtyard a vine covered one wall, a wild rose another, and in a large earthenware pot grew a very healthy-looking bay tree with fragrant, glossy leaves. There was a wooden table in the centre of the paved floor and, beside it, a sturdy oak chair with a high, carved back and arms ending in dragon claws. A smaller table stood to the right of the chair; on it lay a rolled manuscript, a horn of ink and a quill. There was also a bench, which Gurdyman now pulled forward so that it was on the opposite side of the table from his chair.
‘Sit down,’ he urged his guests. ‘I will bring refreshments. Enjoy the sunshine and the sweet air,’ he exhorted them, ‘for it is good to be outside again after the fug in my crypt.’
He spun round and dipped back inside, humming to himself. Hrype, sensing Lassair’s tension, waited. When she could contain herself no longer, she burst out in a hissing whisper, ‘What was he making down there?’
Hrype smiled to himself. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’
‘I daren’t!’
‘He frightens you?’
‘He-’ She paused. ‘Yes.’
Hrype did not reply. There was no need for her, of all people, to fear the sage, but it was up to her to find that out for herself. She would not believe him, Hrype decided, if he told her.
They waited. After some time Gurdyman returned, bringing mugs of beer, lightly flavoured with honey and rosemary, and roughly-sliced chunks of gingerbread. He urged both food and drink on his guests, and only when they had consumed all they wanted did he sit back, fold his hands across the curve of his stomach and say, ‘Now, then. Hrype sent word that you had something to ask me.’ He looked enquiringly at Lassair.
She in turn spun round to Hrype, who almost laughed at her terrified expression. ‘Go on,’ he murmured, ‘he won’t turn you into a goblin.’
She gave a sort of snort, which might have been hysterical laughter. Then she gathered her courage and said, with admiral brevity, ‘A young woman has been killed. She was from Brandon, but came to Aelf Fen with her mistress, Lady Claude de Sees, being her seamstress. Ida — that’s the dead girl — was pregnant, and the child must have been fathered by someone she knew before she came to our area. She had no followers among the young men of the village — an older man who loved her did no more than admire her from afar — so her lover must have been someone she knew when she worked for Lady Claude at Heathlands. We — er, Hrype says you know quite a lot about Lady Claude’s kin, so I hoped you might be able to tell us of the household at Heathlands, so we could perhaps make a guess as to which of the servants fathered the child.’
She had done well, Hrype thought, silently applauding her. She had kept out all unnecessary detail, which suggested she had already realized that Gurdyman’s exceptional intelligence and astute mind needed nothing but the bones of a tale. He waited to see how the sage would respond.
With a question, as it turned out, and a not altogether unexpected one: ‘Why do you concern yourself with this matter?’ he asked Lassair.
‘Because people think a simple-minded man called Derman killed Ida, and I’m sure he didn’t,’ she replied promptly. ‘Ida was not married, and my suspicion is that her lover discovered she bore his child and killed her so that her condition did not become known. Perhaps he did not wish to marry her, or was already wed, and such a revelation would have ruined him.’
‘You know of this child she carried,’ Gurdyman observed.
‘Yes, my aunt Edild and I realized she was pregnant as soon as we saw her — my aunt’s a healer — but since it was us who laid her out, nobody else found out, and we have told nobody but Hrype, and now you.’
‘You, too, are a healer,’ Gurdyman murmured.
Lassair looked momentarily disconcerted and even slightly annoyed, as if she were wondering why Gurdyman had ignored all that she had said about Ida and was speaking of her. Hrype, who knew him well, did not doubt that the sage had heard, digested and decided upon every word. The truth was, Hrype decided, that Gurdyman was far more interested in Lassair than in the mission that had brought her to him.
‘I’m learning to be a healer,’ Lassair said shortly.
Gurdyman sat forward in his chair, his compact and beautifully-shaped hands grasping the dragon claws that formed its arms. ‘I have visited Heathlands,’ he said. ‘I knew Ralf de Caudebec, who fought with the Conqueror, for although we did not agree on the subject of kings, there were other matters on which we were happy to share our thoughts. Through him I met his cousin Claritia, mother of your Lady Claude, and I have been a guest at Heathlands on several occasions, the last one at the time when a husband had been selected for the elder daughter of the house.’
‘The one who fell sick,’ Lassair put in.
Gurdyman nodded. ‘Indeed she did.’
Hrype waited to see if Lassair felt sufficiently comfortable now with the sage to ask the question that he sensed burning in her. She did. ‘What was the matter with her?’
Gurdyman did not speak for a few moments, and it seemed to Hrype that he withdrew into himself as if searching for whatever thoughts and impressions he had had at the time. ‘I believe,’ he said after a while, ‘that Genevieve de Sees suffered a severe shock, and that the fear engendered in her by this experience turned her mind.’
Hrype listened attentively, for he had not heard this theory of Gurdyman’s. I did not ask the right question, he thought ruefully.
‘What sort of experience?’ Lassair was saying.
Gurdyman weighed his words. ‘Genevieve is a shy young woman, very modest, sheltered and innocent. Her mother was, I believe, wrong to push the proposed marriage. It was her desire to unite the de Sees with the de Villequiers that drove her, but she ought to have had more thought for her elder daughter’s suitability for the match.’
‘Sir Alain’s quite a nice man,’ Lassair said. ‘He seems sympathetic and kindly, and he’s-’
Gurdyman put up a hand. ‘I do not speak of his nature, but of Genevieve’s,’ he said. ‘She was, as I said, an innocent. She had been told by her mother what a wife is to expect on her wedding night — knowing Claritia, who is a somewhat coarse and insensitive woman, I do not imagine she spoke gently or cautiously — and Genevieve was said to be fearful and apprehensive. Then, as negotiations proceeded, she was found one morning wandering outside in the cold dressed in nothing but a thin shift. She had seen something that had terrified her, or so it was deduced, but she was unable to say what it was. The result, however, was that her quite understandable nervousness concerning the proposed marriage turned to abject horror. Then, when her mother attempted in her robust way to bring Genevieve to her senses, the girl fainted dead away and could not be revived for two days. Since then she has been a slight, silent shadow who flits on the periphery of her family’s life and, in the main, is left alone.’
Hrype watched Lassair digest this. Her face revealed her emotions very clearly. Then she said, ‘So Lady Claude had to be betrothed to Sir Alain instead, even though it meant giving up her desire to be a nun.’
‘She did.’ Gurdyman sighed. ‘Claritia must have seen all her hopes of allying her insignificant family with the de Villequiers, and thereby regaining the position in society that she believes is her rightful one, rapidly disappearing. Claude did not stand up to her mother’s determination for very long.’
‘Hrype said she shaved her head and started wearing a nun’s habit,’ Lassair said. Hrype was gratified that she had remembered.
Gurdyman smiled sadly. ‘She did, although it did her no good. The maltreatment was what finally wore away her resolve.’ He drew a hand over his face. ‘For a mother to beat and starve a daughter is cruel, but Claritia is a determined woman.’