The eyes were half-closed. I took one glance at them, then hastily looked away. I’d believed I had conquered my revulsion, but, at the sight of those eyeballs, the nausea threatened to return. Edild’s quiet voice brought me back from the brink. ‘Enough remains to determine that the eyes were blue,’ she said, her tone devoid of any emotion. We are here to do a job, she seemed to be reminding me.
She folded the cloak back another turn, exposing the shoulders and upper arms. So far, the flesh was unbroken, although here and there angry bruises darkened its whiteness.
‘Is there any sign yet to suggest he did not die by drowning?’ Jack said softly.
Edild paused, apparently thinking, then reached under the cloak and brought out the corpse’s right hand. It was long-fingered and quite small. She turned it over, revealing the palm and the undersides of the fingers, all of which were deeply wrinkled. ‘He had obviously been in the water a long time,’ she said, ‘and I noticed a crust around his mouth and a small amount of foam in the nostrils, which can indicate death by drowning.’ Tucking the hand away once more, she went on, ‘I am, I confess, puzzled by some aspects of the markings on the skin, and I think it is time to study the body in its entirety.’ She looked up at me, nodded, and, taking this as my cue, I went round to the far side of the trestle and took hold of the cloak. Together we drew it right back to the feet of the corpse.
Then, as all three of us stared down at the naked body we had just revealed, our mistake shouted out at us.
The body was that of a woman.
She had been tall and strongly built; it was easy to see how, covered as she had been when brought into the hall, she had been taken for a man. Presumably it had not occurred to those who found her to reveal her sex, reasoning, perhaps, that it would be obvious as soon as the cloak was removed.
She was long-limbed and slim-hipped, but, as soon as the eye moved up to her chest, all resemblance to a man ended, for her breasts must have been round and generous. Not that we could have said for certain, for much of the soft flesh had gone. In part, this might have been due to the battering she had received as the furious waters drove her upriver. In part, also, it was the work of the marine creatures which had fed on her. An image came into my mind of the eels my father catches, with their wide, voracious mouths and sharp little teeth. Eels, it is well known, are partial to decaying animal remains.
For the second time, nausea threatened. I swallowed a couple of times, took a deep breath, and it receded.
With a soft sigh, Edild picked up her cloth sheet and draped it over that poor, ruined body. She drew it up over the head, then combed out the tangled hair with her fingers. I looked at Jack, and saw that his face was twisted in compassion. Edild stepped away from the woman’s body, and for a while the three of us simply stood, heads lowered, to pay our respects.
The silence was broken by the sound of some small object falling on the stone floor. Jack bent down to retrieve it, moving closer to one of the lamps to inspect it. He studied it for a while, then murmured, ‘It’s a crab. Quite dead -’ he tapped a fingernail against its dry, brittle shell to demonstrate – ‘and I imagine it fell out of her hair.’
‘We don’t normally find crabs this far inland,’ I said. ‘The water’s not salty enough.’
‘It probably is just now,’ Jack replied. ‘There will still be a lot of sea out in the rivers and the marshes. But this little thing’s been dead quite a while.’ He went on looking at it for a moment, then closed his hand on it.
‘We should report our findings to Lord Gilbert,’ Edild said. She gave the sheet a final adjustment, and I thought that it was only with reluctance that she stepped away from the trestle.
‘And what are those findings?’ Jack’s voice, I thought, had an edge of urgency.
‘That, as far as I can tell, this woman drowned,’ Edild replied, ‘but, in the absence of any garment, article of jewellery or any other possession, we are quite unable to establish her identity.’
He nodded, then, with a gesture of one hand, invited Edild and me to precede him up the steps. Before I left the undercroft, I blew out the rush lamps. It seemed kinder, somehow, to leave the dead woman in darkness.
‘I suppose,’ Lord Gilbert said heavily, ‘we’ll have to set about discovering who she is.’ He spun round to Jack. ‘Was there any clue from the three men who found her? Anything at the scene that might have belonged to her?’
‘I asked them, my lord,’ Jack replied, ‘and they said no. It may be, however,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘that the shock of discovering a naked body drove all thoughts of having a thorough search out of their minds. It would perhaps be worth having another look.’
‘The waters may have gone down a little by now,’ Lord Gilbert said, ‘so I think, Jack, that the idea is a good one.’ He paused. ‘And then what?’
‘Then I’ll go on downriver, north towards the coast,’ Jack said promptly, ‘and try to discover if any family is missing a tall, strongly built, fair-haired young woman.’
‘Thank you,’ Lord Gilbert said. I was sure there was relief in his voice. He’d probably been thinking that the painstaking and laborious task of discovering the dead woman’s name would fall to him, and, since he’s not renowned for being painstaking, and certainly never takes on an arduous task if anyone else will do it for him, his relief was understandable.
Edild suddenly spoke. ‘He should take Lassair with him.’
If I hadn’t happened to be looking at Jack as she said the words, I’d have missed the quick, appraising glance he gave me.
‘Why do you suggest that, Edild?’ Lady Emma asked.
Edild turned to her. ‘For two reasons, my lady. First, because Lassair is a dowser, and has a talent for finding things that are lost.’ Well, I couldn’t argue with that, although it embarrassed me to hear it mentioned in such company. ‘Second, because she is skilled at finding the safe ways over marshland that are usually hidden from our eyes.’
That, too, was true. Once, I had led two people – one of them Rollo – across the deadly, waterlogged land surrounding the island of Ely. Edild knew about it; in some strange way, she had predicted that I would do it. I was surprised, however, that she should bring such a private matter to the attention of anyone outside my own family.
‘What do you say, Lassair?’ Lord Gilbert was saying.
I felt four pairs of eyes intent on me, and my first instinct was to turn tail and run. But, resting my gaze on Jack, I saw his mouth briefly twitch in a smile.
I realized that he wasn’t at all dismayed at the prospect of my company.
‘Very well,’ I heard myself saying. ‘I’ll do it.’
We set off only a short time later. Edild had bade me a swift farewell, squeezing my arm briefly by way of encouragement. I had checked my satchel to make sure I had everything I was likely to need, and Jack had gone out to prepare the horses. The prospect of riding the beautiful Isis again was, I had to admit, one of my main reasons for agreeing to the mission. Lady Emma, meanwhile, had sent to the kitchens for food and drink for us to take with us.
Lord Gilbert and Lady Emma stood at the top of the steps, Bermund just behind them, watching as we rode out of the courtyard. Lady Emma raised a hand in farewell. We rode down the track leading to the road, and I went to turn to my right, through the village.
Jack stopped me. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘we’ll avoid the village.’ Putting heels to his grey, he trotted off to the left, then urged his horse up the bank and on to the higher ground. We cut across the neck of the bulge that forms Aelf Fen, past the ancient, solitary oak that stands behind Edild’s house and, very soon afterwards, descended on to the road leading north. Turning to me, Jack said, ‘How quickly do you think we can cover four miles?’
Never one to refuse a challenge, I tightened my knees against Isis’s flanks and we leapt forward.