She had borne a child.
I covered her up again. I knew I should hasten away – Jack was waiting to hear what I’d found out – but I couldn’t tear myself away from her. I reached out my hand and laid it over hers, clasped on her breast.
This woman, I knew without any doubt, was Leafric’s mother. She had given birth to him, loved him, played with him, nursed him. I knew she had; it must have been her breasts he’d fed at, for Rosaria had been no wet-nurse. And there could be no doubt that this woman had cared constantly and devotedly for her baby son; why else would he have missed her so very much when she disappeared?
He’s sad, Mattie had said, back in Cambridge. He just lies there, staring around, for all the world as if he’s looking for something.
Not something; someone. His mother. She had become ill, and she had died. Someone else had tried to take her place, but her poor little son hadn’t understood why that someone else didn’t smell right. Didn’t taste, feel or sound right. Didn’t hold him as he needed to be held.
He just wanted his mother.
Tears were splashing down on our hands; mine and the dead woman’s. I hadn’t realized I was weeping. Now, staring down at her long shape, wrapped all ready for burial, I wanted to gather her up and take her in my arms, devastated and ruined though her poor body was. I leaned down over her so that my lips were close to her ear.
‘I’ll see he’s all right,’ I whispered. ‘I promise.’
It was time to leave her. I kissed the smoothly wrapped forehead, and now there was no revulsion.
As I mounted the steps back up to the church and hurried outside, I wondered if I had just been touched with the great love which they say is the gift of the Christian lord. Kissing a body dead for well over a week wasn’t something I’d ever done before, yet it had been too strong an impulse to resist.
Love.
Yes, the gesture had been prompted by love.
I dried my eyes and hurried to find Jack.
EIGHTEEN
Jack and Father Augustine were standing, deep in conversation, by the gate into the churchyard. Hearing my running footsteps, both turned towards me.
Father Augustine’s lean face was creased with concern. Bending his long, thin frame so that he could peer into my face, he said, ‘Are you all right, child?’
‘Yes!’ I was taken aback at the question.
‘It is hard to accept the death of a kinswoman, even one who you did not know in life,’ he went on.
‘But-’ I’d been about to protest that she was only a relative by marriage, but just then I experienced another surge of that strange, unearthly love for her, and somehow our exact relationship didn’t seem important.
‘Now that we know who she is,’ the priest went on, ‘I will make arrangements for her burial service, if you and your family are ready?’
He was treating me with such kindness. Until quite recently, I’d thought him a chilly, self-contained man without much compassion. I’d been wrong. ‘Thank you, Father,’ I said. ‘We will discuss it and let you know.’
He bowed. ‘Of course.’ Then, almost hesitantly, he added, ‘I shall pray for her, and for you all.’
As if his offer had embarrassed him, he dipped his head again, turned and hurried away towards his church.
Jack grabbed my hand and led me down on to the track, turning left towards Lakehall. ‘Come on,’ he urged, hastening the pace.
We were going back to find Edild, I surmised, to tell her what we had just discovered. I said breathlessly, ‘We must make it clear to Father Augustine that the drowned woman was Harald’s daughter-in-law, not his daughter.’
Jack glanced at me, slowing his pace and drawing to a halt. ‘Describe her,’ he commanded.
‘What? We can’t waste time on-’
‘Yes we can. Describe the drowned woman.’
‘Strongly built, tall, blonde, blue eyed.’
‘Now describe her child, as you did when you first examined him.’
Responding to his urgency, frantically I tried to think back. ‘I said he had his mother’s olive skin, his hair was fair and his eyes light blue, and-’
‘And from that you concluded his father was a northerner,’ Jack interrupted. He was looking at me expectantly.
Then I understood. ‘It was his mother who was the northerner,’ I whispered. ‘Harald’s daughter?’ I couldn’t help making it a question.
‘I believe so,’ Jack agreed. ‘Remember how your great-uncle Sihtric told us Harald described his wife?’
‘“Her name was Gabriela de Valery, and she was tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, very beautiful and utterly perfect.”’ One of the benefits of being the family bard is learning how to memorize words after only one hearing.
‘Which could equally well describe the woman lying up there.’ Jack jerked his head in the direction of the church.
Slowly, inexorably – joyfully – the truth dawned. ‘She’s my kinswoman,’ I whispered. ‘My father’s cousin.’
I had felt love for her; perhaps it had been the link of our common blood, calling out as it recognized its own.
There was no time to dwell on that now, although I had the feeling I would do in the future. Already we were hastening on again, and all too soon we’d be confronting Lord Gilbert. And my aunt …
Something else occurred to me. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ I said.
Jack gave a swift grin, quickly suppressed. ‘Go on, then.’
‘It’s probably not important, but I can’t quite work it out. Lady Rosaria and the blonde woman exchanged clothes before they disembarked at Lynn – they must have done, because the mate of The Good Shepherd said it was the maid who had to be helped ashore, not the lady. But we now know it was the blonde woman, not Lady Rosaria, who was dying.’ I paused, trying to work it out. ‘I suppose Rosaria recognized that her mistress was already very sick and would probably die, and so swapped their roles while she had the chance.’
Jack gave me a strange look. I’d expected him to dismiss my unease, but instead I was left with the feeling that he shared it.
We got as far as telling Lord Gilbert that it had been the blonde woman, not Lady Rosaria, who was the infant’s mother, but he seemed to be unable to take it in. He asked the same questions over and over again, and I think we’d have gone on all day had Lady Emma not intervened, summing up our discoveries with admirable brevity and clarity. Holding my eyes, she inclined her head subtly towards her husband, as if to say, Don’t worry about him, I’ll explain it later.
Addressing my remarks to her and to Edild, who had been in the hall talking quietly to Lady Emma when we got back, I said, ‘The fact that Lady Rosaria wasn’t his mother explains his sadness, since he was pining for his real mother, and also why the bodice of Lady Rosaria’s gown was too loose, and why she’d taken up the hem. It wasn’t her gown.’
‘Please,’ Lord Gilbert said plaintively, ‘can we all stop calling her Lady Rosaria?’
I hid a smile. It was going to take Lord Gilbert some time to get over having been so thoroughly taken in.
‘I cannot but feel sorry for L- for Rosaria,’ Lady Emma said. ‘And for the mistress whose place she usurped. To have come all that way, surviving the perils of the rough seas, only for both of them to die on reaching the longed-for goal.’
‘Yes, my lady,’ I agreed. ‘And the poor blonde woman was sick almost all the way; certainly, from Bordeaux to Lynn …’
Three curious, intent pairs of eyes stared at me; four, if you counted Lord Gilbert’s, but he still only seemed to have a vague idea of what we were talking about.
My aunt said softly, ‘What is it, Lassair?’
‘Something has been worrying me for some time, and I’ve just realized what it is,’ I said, the words tumbling out. ‘It was odd, surely, that, according to the mate of the ship on which they sailed, the “maid” wasn’t sick on the voyage from Corunna to Bordeaux – perhaps the worst bit of the Bay of Biscay – yet, as soon as they sailed north from Bordeaux, she was vomiting continuously. Because-’