‘Happy?’ Leofgar appeared to consider. ‘I’m not sure that I expected happiness, Sir Josse. I was well fed, well clothed, my duties were no more than those of any other boy. And when I was one of the older ones, I dare say I was not above making some smaller lad’s life a misery from time to time. It’s the way of things,’ he concluded. Then, with a flash of anger in the grey eyes that were so like his mother’s, he hissed, ‘Don’t you dare tell her!’
Josse almost laughed. ‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘You have my word on that, too.’
They had moved away from the dell, walking as they talked, strolling a short distance back down the path that would eventually emerge out from the trees just above the Abbey. Now Leofgar stopped and, putting a hand on Josse’s sleeve, said, ‘I will not come any further. Will you stay here with me while I tell you what I have to say?’
‘Aye, lad. That I will.’ But then a thought struck him; he said, ‘Just now you implied that you expected me to come looking. But I wasn’t looking for you; I’m searching for somebody else.’
‘I know who you’re looking for. My mother told me about the search party.’
‘You know who he is, then?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Leofgar’s face was grave. ‘You won’t find him, Sir Josse. Nobody will, or I pray that they won’t.’
‘But you-’
‘Please,’ Leofgar said urgently, ‘let me tell my story. Then all will become clear.’
With an ironic bow, Josse said, ‘Go on. I will try not to interrupt.’
Leofgar had snapped a length of twig from the beech tree and his long hands were steadily peeling off the bark. Intent on this small action, he began to speak. ‘My wife Rohaise, as you observed, is not well. She suffers from unaccountable miseries and she thinks things — bad and terrible things — that are not true. As I told you at the Abbey, we have sought help from various sources and our parish priest encouraged us to pray. When that did no good, Father Luke decided that Timus was a changeling and must be taken away to the monks, where hopefully the real Timus would miraculously appear to replace the spirit child.’
‘But Father Luke did not really believe that!’ Josse burst out. ‘Your mother and I have been to see him and he told us he made that up to try to help Rohaise! He hoped that if he took Timus away and then brought him back again, explaining to Rohaise that this was her real child, it might just put everything right!’
Leofgar was nodding. ‘I wondered if that might be his thinking,’ he said. With a brief self-deprecating smile, he went on, ‘Perhaps I should have tried to argue with him. But if he made Rohaise believe there was a reason why she felt she was failing with her son — the reason being that he wasn’t in truth her son but a changeling — then she might feel as if she had been offered a new beginning when her so-called real son was returned to her.’
‘Aye, that’s it!’ Josse said eagerly. ‘Almost exactly the priest’s words!’
Leofgar looked questioningly at him. ‘You think Father Luke did right?’
‘No, of course not! He utterly misread Rohaise’s distress and his attempt was at best blundering, at worst deeply damaging. But your mother and I felt him to be more a fool than an intentionally cruel man.’
‘Yes, I agree,’ Leofgar said, ‘although it is difficult to maintain a charitable view when someone is threatening to return very shortly and take your child away.’
‘I understand,’ Josse said gently. ‘Your troubles have been grave, but-’
‘You have not,’ Leofgar cut in, ‘heard the half of them yet.’
‘Oh.’ His heart sinking, Josse said, ‘Very well. Tell me the rest.’
Leofgar went back to his bark stripping. ‘I have explained all this,’ he said, ‘as a prelude for what follows, because it is a reason for- Well, hear it for yourself and judge. When Father Luke had gone, I left the house and went out. I was angry with the priest and also, I am ashamed to confess, angry with Rohaise. God forgive me, I should have stayed there with her, comforting her, but I feared for a time that my anger would spill out and I would shout at her, the last thing I should have done. So I saddled up my horse and went for a ride until I was calm again. Then I went home.’
His face had paled, Josse noticed. Whatever he was remembering clearly had lost none of its power to distress.
‘Someone else had come to the house in the short time that I was away,’ he said, his voice low. ‘I think now that the man was waiting his chance and entered the hall soon after I had ridden away. I am not sure what he was after — although I can make a guess — but poor Rohaise, in her distress, believed that he had been sent by Father Luke to take Timus away. She heard him coming and hid behind the hangings at the far end of the hall.’
‘Were not your servants there?’ Josse broke in.
‘No. We were enjoying a bright spell of weather and Wilfrid and Anna were in the habit of taking Simeon out into the forest most days to collect wood. Again, the man who sneaked into my hall must have seen them go out that morning and known that his chance had come. Nobody at home but a frightened woman and a little child. How brave, not to be scared off by them!’ Anger coloured Leofgar’s voice but after a moment he calmed himself and resumed. ‘Rohaise peered round the wall hanging and saw a short, scrawny man creep through the doorway and across the hall. She was puzzled because at first he looked at the big table at the end of the room, feeling underneath it and up and down its legs as if looking for something. Then he went to the chest and, finding it locked, took out a knife and forced the clasp, splitting the wood. He rummaged through the contents — there were some blankets and some clothes of Rohaise’s — throwing them on the floor.’
‘I recall that chest,’ Josse murmured, half to himself. ‘I remember noticing a recent repair.’
‘You keep your eyes open,’ Leofgar observed. ‘Rohaise was too terrified to ask herself why this man who had come for Timus should be searching through our furniture. She stood there, trying not to breathe, trying to keep Timus calm, but, understandably, he was as frightened as she was and he let out a sob. The man heard and came lunging across the hall with his knife in his hand. Rohaise was beyond any coherent thought but instinctively she did the best thing that she could have done. As he approached she leapt out at him screaming at the top of her voice and he was so shocked that he stepped hastily back. She kicked out at the hand holding the knife and managed to knock it out of his grip, then threw herself on him, punching his face and raking him with her finger nails. He recovered very quickly and got hold of her hands, then ripped open her bodice and threw her on the ground, pulling up her skirt. But she wriggled out from beneath him and got to her feet, racing off down the hall and away from Timus, still hiding behind the wall hanging. She could hear the man thudding after her and she turned to look at him. He was holding the knife and it was aimed at her. She picked up a silver jug that he’d found in the chest and cast aside and she flung it at his legs. It caught him right on the knee and he tripped and fell heavily, cracking the side of his head on the stone flags.’
‘The fall killed him?’
‘No,’ Leofgar admitted. ‘Better for him had it done so,’ he added in a murmur. Then, eyes at last meeting Josse’s, he said, ‘Rohaise feared for her life, Josse. She believed this man had come to take Timus away but it seemed to her that for some reason he wanted to rape and kill her. I say this not to gain your sympathy’ — he must, Josse thought, have noticed the instinctive compassion that the story was arousing — ‘but to explain what she did next.’ He paused, took a breath and said flatly, ‘She fetched Timus from behind the wall hanging and put him safely away up in the bedchamber, telling him that he must hide, he’d got to hide and not be found, and she barred the door so that he could not get out.’