‘Hmm.’ De Gifford straightened up, rubbing at his back. ‘What now, Josse?’
‘I confess I am very disappointed,’ Josse said. ‘I had really thought that we should find a hidden drawer or panel and within it some object to explain what Fitzurse is about.’
‘Well, we didn’t,’ de Gifford said somewhat curtly. ‘We should return to Tonbridge, Josse. There is nothing more we can do here and we may get back to find that there is news of the Abbess.’
With that hope high in his heart, Josse followed him outside. Wilfrid came to see them off; observing their expressions, he remarked, ‘You didn’t find what you came looking for, then.’
‘No,’ Josse said. With an optimism he was far from feeling, he added, ‘But we will!’
Then he kicked Horace and rode off behind de Gifford back to Tonbridge.
Chapter 18
Inside the hut it was as dark as midnight. The man put a flame to a wick lying in a shallow bowl of animal fat and in the small amount of light that it gave off, Helewise looked about her.
There was just the one room and it was crammed with the detritus of years. A narrow bench was set against one wall and, towards the back of the room, there was a small hearth surrounded with stones, although it looked as though nobody had ever cleared away the ash and it had spilled out in a wide area extending well beyond the circumference of the circle of stones. A black cooking pot rested on a trivet beside the hearth. Along the walls, piled up quite high in places, were what looked like bundles wrapped in sacking and on a shelf set up under the roof were bunches of dried herbs and leaves. On a panel of wood that had once been painted white someone had drawn the rough outline of a bulky and indefinable animal. In a rear corner was a thin straw-filled mattress and some pieces of sacking, presumably a bed, and over this hung a strange cross with equal arms, roughly formed and made out of wood that was almost black. Belying the filth and the unkempt air of the hut, a besom stood beside the door, its twiggy hazel brush pointing upwards and the smooth handle stuck into the beaten earth floor. The room stank of burning fat from the oil lamp and, beneath that stench, Helewise’s sensitive nose could detect the smell of unwashed bodies and human waste receptacles that had been spilled and were habitually not emptied before they overflowed.
This man lived here?
She turned her head to look at him. He had paced the length and breadth of the small room almost as if looking for something and, from the way he darted back to the door and peered outside, she wondered if he had expected to find someone here waiting for him.
Oh, had it only been Josse!
She was afraid. But I shall not show it, she resolved firmly; seizing the initiative, she said frostily, ‘You are not who you pretend to be. Why have you brought me here?’
He spun round and stared at her. He was slightly shorter than she was and she felt a moment’s pride at this small advantage. Not that it would do her any good, she realised, for he would no doubt prove the stronger if she tried to wrestle with him and make a break for freedom.
He did not answer her question. But, after a moment’s scrutiny, he said, ‘No, my lady Abbess, I am not a sheriff’s man. I serve nobody but myself.’
‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
‘You do not know?’ He looked amused. ‘You are an intelligent woman, I have been given to understand; I had thought that you might have guessed my identity.’
Swiftly she thought. Someone was threatening her son, someone who seemed to know that he was her son and who had sent a vicious man to Leofgar’s house to search for something that had not been found. This someone was presumably still desperate to finish what he had set out to do and must feel that taking captive the Abbess of Hawkenlye was in some way going to help … There was really only one person who this man could be.
‘You are Arthur Fitzurse,’ she said coldly.
He pulled off his dirty cloak, revealing an expensive-looking tunic whose braid, she noticed when the light briefly caught it, was actually of poor quality and beginning to fray. And now he has brought me to this — this place, she thought, which, even if not his home, must be the best that he can find to fill his need, lowly and foul though it is. This man, she thought, with what felt like a surprising stab of compassion, tries too hard to achieve his illusion of respectability, education and wealth.
She wondered why. She thought she could probably guess.
‘Please, my lady, be seated.’ He stepped forward and flicked at the surface of the narrow bench and she moved towards it and sat down as elegantly as she could manage, back straight and head held high, spreading her wide skirts gracefully around her.
He watched her closely for a moment. Then he said, ‘I would tell you a tale, my lady, if you have ears to hear it?’
He sounded as if he could only just control his eagerness. Feeling again that strange impulse of pity, she inclined her head and said, ‘You have employed deception to bring me here, from which discourtesy I deduce that your motive, whatever it may be, is of great importance to you. Very well, I will listen. What would you say to me?’
He watched her for a moment longer then, as if he needed to concentrate and the sight of her was a distraction, turned away and, staring out through the mean little door, began to speak.
‘I am the only child of my mother,’ he said, ‘and for much of my life believed my father to have been a soldier killed in battle before I was born. As young fatherless children are wont to do, particularly if they are imaginative and male, I formed a secret picture of this man. He became in my eyes a hero, an Achilles, a Lionheart, and I told myself tales of his exploits in the Crusades and before the gates of Troy. I saw him as very tall, broad of shoulder, deep of chest, with a noble face like a Greek god. He was honourable, brave, modest in victory and considerate of his enemies and, naturally, he never lost a battle in his life.’ Arthur smiled briefly. ‘You will appreciate how childish was the mind that made up this comforting story, for had my soldier father truly never lost a fight, how was it that he came to die before I was born? I revised my tale as I grew older and decided that he had died of a single and totally painless sword thrust through the heart while in the act of saving the lives of an entire company of his loyal men, and that they gave him a hero’s funeral out in some beautiful oasis where the soft wind sighed in the trees and a huge moon rose over a flat plain.’
He paused. Then, his voice tight, went on, ‘I took great comfort from these imaginary scenes, for in truth my childhood was wretched. What paltry wealth there was soon disappeared and the triple spectres of poverty, hunger and disease stalked me constantly. There was never enough to eat and we — I did not spend my youth as do other boys, for I was a solitary child and had no friends other than the creatures of the wild.’
Again he paused. Helewise burned to question him — who looked after him? Where did they live? Surely not here! — but she held back. Intuitively she knew that the telling of his story caused him pain and she was loath to interrupt and perhaps risk irrevocably halting the flow of words.
Presently he resumed his tale. ‘This is an unwholesome place, for it is permanently damp and the river seeps underground, turning firm green grass to a quagmire whenever there is rain; and rain, it seems, falls ever more frequently here than elsewhere. The mists creep about like living things and the very air is wet and foul, bringing phlegm to the throat and rheum to the chest. One’s bones ache, my lady, almost all the time. But this place has one advantage: nobody comes here unless they must. For certain, nobody but the outcast and the desperate would choose to live here.’ He sighed. ‘For those like me who are both, it is … convenient.’
‘Then this is indeed where you live?’ she whispered.