I learned afterwards that, as concerned as the rest of us over Leafric’s heartbreaking circumstances, my father had had a private word with Edild, and she had quietly slipped away to see Gytha and Eddius, and asked them if they would consider adopting a six-month-old orphaned baby boy, adding, as if the proposal were not tempting enough for a child-hungry couple, that the baby was in fact kin to Gytha, her father and the baby’s dead mother having been first cousins.
It’s rare in life that what is a highly satisfactory outcome for one party in an arrangement is equally good for the other, but the adoption of Leafric by Gytha and Eddius quite definitely qualified. Of course, I never met Harald’s daughter alive; I only wish I had. But, from the moment I set eyes on Leafric, I had felt some sort of bond with him. It had affected me deeply to see him look so lost and sad, staring round him in puzzled misery as he tried to find the loving mother who wasn’t coming back. Gytha wasn’t the woman who bore him, but she made a very, very good substitute. Seeing her with her newly adopted son in her arms, smiling down into his little face, her eyes full of love and her hands as gentle as an angel’s, it was hard not to be moved to tears. Had Harald’s daughter been able to watch, too, I think she would have thanked her fenland cousin from the bottom of her heart.
Gytha and Eddius, knowing so little about their new son, decided to ask their priest to baptize him. The priest, a rotund, cheery, affectionate old man called Father Henry, readily agreed. As he said, better twice than not at all, and he was quite sure God wouldn’t mind a repetition.
To my surprise and delight, Gytha asked if I would stand as their son’s godmother. As I stood beside the font watching Father Henry pour the holy water over Leafric’s firm little head, his wide blue eyes looked straight into mine and he smiled.
Jack returned to Cambridge. With both his official and his unofficial business concluded – trying to locate Lady Rosaria’s kin, and identifying the woman whose body was found in the flooded pond – there was no reason for him to remain in Aelf Fen. He sought me out in the little back room at my aunt’s, and, staring down at the floor, told me he was leaving. I thought he sounded detached – cold, even – but then he raised his head and I saw his expression.
‘Will you be all right?’ I said. I wanted to reach out for his hand, but I didn’t know if he’d have welcomed such a gesture.
He grinned. ‘All right?’ he echoed.
I leaned closer, lowering my voice. ‘Your sheriff’s nephew sent a man to kill you. Unless he died out there where you left him -’ the thought still haunted me – ‘he’ll undoubtedly try again.’
‘Gaspard Picot was already among my many enemies,’ Jack said with a shrug. ‘Admittedly, I now have another, in the form of Gaspard’s hired killer, but one more won’t make a lot of difference.’
I didn’t understand how he could take it so calmly. ‘But you-’
‘How did you know?’ he asked, interrupting. His eyes were intent, his expression hard to read. ‘You knew the knife was aimed at us, and it was only because you threw yourself on me that it failed to find its target.’
I looked at him for some moments. I very nearly told him, but in the end I held back. ‘I said to you before that there was something I’d tell you one day, but I wasn’t yet ready,’ I said. ‘Do you remember?’
‘Of course,’ he said quietly.
‘This – how I knew we were in danger – is connected to it.’ That was an understatement, if ever there was one, and, feeling panicky, I hoped the shining stone wasn’t somehow able to pick up my words.
He waited, but, when I didn’t go on, he seemed to understand that I had said all I was going to. He smiled briefly. ‘I can wait,’ he murmured.
I didn’t know how to respond. Very aware of Edild in the next room, I muttered something about returning to Cambridge myself soon and no doubt we’d bump into each other.
I think he felt as confused as I did. He gave me a sort of bow, backed out of Edild’s little still room, struck his broad shoulders quite hard on the door frame, muttered something inaudible and then, turning so fast he almost tripped, hurried away.
I gave him a few moments, then slipped out after him. Crouching behind the low trees and bushes which conceal Edild’s house from the track, I watched him mount the grey gelding and, with my beautiful Isis following behind on a long rein, break into a trot, and then a canter.
An uninformed observer would have thought he couldn’t get away fast enough.
With a private smile, I went back inside and got on with my work.
I went back to Cambridge two weeks later.
I had to go back. I was in the middle of a course of instruction. When I’d left, Gurdyman was in the middle of revealing to me the mysteries and intricacies of the Nine Herbs Charm, and I knew he had many more such charms to teach me before I return to Aelf Fen for the dead time that is the middle of winter.
There was something else for which I needed Gurdyman’s wisdom; something whose importance, to me, exceeded everything else.
The shining stone.
I hadn’t seen Thorfinn since the awful night I’d shouted at him and told him the stone wasn’t his any more, and he could no longer use me to look into it for him. I had wished ever since that I had bitten back that parting shot, when I hurled at him that he ought to tell my father the truth.
I wasn’t very proud of myself for that.
I’d hoped to see Hrype, for then I could have asked him to act as intermediary. But Hrype was away from the village, and, when I asked my aunt when he’d be back, she merely shrugged. Finally I went back to the little inlet where Thorfinn’s boat had been moored, but, as I had feared, he was no longer there.
‘Did you find out what you were so desperate to know, Grandfather?’ I asked softly, gazing out over the marshy, treacherous ground and the numerous small waterways threading through it. ‘When I shut you out of using the shining stone, did you get Hrype to read the runes for you?’
I was still deeply curious about what he’d wanted me to see. What was the dreadful mission that Skuli had embarked upon? Had he succeeded? Was he even now on his way home, or had he and his crew perished? And – the question wouldn’t leave me alone – why had that image of Rollo intruded?
I had no answers.
Bending down, I gathered a handful of dry grasses and the last of the autumn wildflowers, weaving them into a little wreath. I threw it in the water where Thorfinn had moored his boat. ‘Be safe, Grandfather,’ I said. ‘And please come back soon.’
Then I turned and walked home.
I looked into the stone again that night. I cleared my mind, deliberately banishing thoughts of my grandfather and Skuli. I tried to let the stone speak to me. For a long time, I saw nothing but a sort of dark mist, with the ribbons of green and gold weaving through it. I was on the point of stopping when, just for an instant, I saw a long, beautifully shaped ship, flying on dark blue water under a huge square sail.
Then, in a flash so brief I couldn’t be sure if I’d really seen it, I saw Rollo. For an instant, he looked straight at me. Then he turned away.
The stone withdrew into darkness. With shaking hands, I wrapped it and put it back in its leather bag, then I stowed it away.
I would not look into it again, I vowed, until I had Gurdyman to guide me.
I walked back to Cambridge singing.
The resumption of my studies and the request for Gurdyman’s help with the shining stone were good enough motives for returning; both were true enough, after all.
But the real reason I wanted to be in Cambridge was because that’s where I’d find Jack Chevestrier.