I stood beside the baker. His happy face was drawn with sorrow. He put a companionable arm around me. ‘Want to come back to the village?’ he asked. ‘I’ll do you something to eat and a hot drink. I could put some honey in it — give you some heart.’
It was kind of him. However, he seemed for the moment to have forgotten I’d come to the village asking about the dead woman’s family, and it seemed wise to leave before he remembered. His companions had decided this death was a horrible accident — apparently, none of them had thought to ask himself why Asfrior had left the path and why, if she had tripped and hit her forehead, she was found lying on her back — but I did not want to disabuse them.
‘Thank you but I must be on my way,’ I replied.
‘You have far to go?’ He was still eyeing me anxiously.
‘No, no, not far,’ I lied. ‘My father will have set out to meet me by now,’ I added, compounding the lie.
The baker nodded. ‘Well, if you’re sure.’
‘Quite sure. Thank you for looking after me,’ I said meekly.
‘That’s all right.’
‘Goodbye then.’
‘Goodbye, lass.’
As I hurried away I was sure he was watching me. I increased my pace, hoping he would not notice, and soon I was nearing the crossroads. I turned round. The baker had gone.
I set off along the ancient track. It was rough and overgrown, but it went in the direction I had to go. After what seemed like a very short time, I emerged on to the Cambridge to Ely road. I did not meet up with my farmer of the morning, but a merchant heading home with a load of market goods picked me up. This time the treatment I bartered in exchange for my ride was for his wife; I supplied a costly cream made of rose petals and honey that smoothes a woman’s wrinkles, although the effect is only temporary. I was so relieved to be on my way back to the four walls of the little room on the island that I would have given him whatever he asked.
I was rowed back to Ely Island on one of the last boats to cross that evening. When I finally got back, it was so good to close the door behind me that I was only a little distressed to find that I was alone.
THIRTEEN
Hrype set off as soon as he had watched Lassair cross the water and march off on the road down to Cambridge. He hoped she would get a lift; he admired her gallant spirit, but it was a long walk. Within the privacy of his own head he briefly stepped into the other world that ran parallel to his own and put in a polite request. When you asked for something for someone else, and there was no advantage to yourself, he had found that the spirits usually helped.
He looked around him. He remembered it all so well. Coming back to Ely was a torment, for at every turn the sights, smells and sensations of now were mingled and blurred with those of before. The marketplace was busy this noon time with a bustle of cheerful, hard-working people, and with his inner eye he saw as it had been during the rebellion. He saw desperate men, their eyes hard with resolve, encouraging one another with the justice of their cause. He saw hungry children who clung in terror to their mothers’ skirts. He saw weeping widows, grieving mothers and daughters. He saw the sick and the gravely wounded; he saw himself shoulder to shoulder with other healers as, with arms that were red to the elbow with the blood of the dying, he tried with all his skill and all his might to save a life.
He saw his brother.
Then the memories became too much. With a great effort he drew down a veil in his mind and covered them up.
Without his conscious guidance his feet trod the way to the house where he had laboured so long and so desperately. He wrapped his dark cloak closely around him, bent his long body to make himself shorter and cast his eyes down, so that he looked quite unlike himself. He imagined himself melting into the shadows of the abbey wall; in all likelihood, nobody noticed him at all.
He left the populous areas behind him, and soon he came to the row of little reed-thatched cottages at the end of the track. He stopped by the one outside which stood a lavender bush in a tub. He hesitated and then, barely pausing to knock, eased the door open and stepped inside.
The child he remembered had grown into a thin, tired-looking woman. She sat at her spinning, head bent, back bowed. She looked up at him as if she had been expecting him.
He said softly, ‘Yorath. It has been a long time since we saw each other.’
‘Yes,’ she replied. He sensed wariness.
‘I mean you no harm,’ he assured her. ‘I seek news of my nephew who, brought to the island on other business, has taken the opportunity to investigate what happened here during the rebellion.’
She was watching him closely, but she sat in the shadows and he could not read the expression in her eyes. He sensed her confusion and her fear. He waited.
‘He was here,’ she said eventually, her voice barely above a whisper. ‘He was with a young woman. He asked about you, and I told him my mother worked with you trying to help the wounded and the dying.’
The rush of words sounded like a confession and he saw her fear had increased to terror. She was afraid of him.
‘That is no more than the truth,’ he said gently, ‘and it was not unreasonable for you to tell him.’
‘He wanted very badly to see Mother,’ she went on; it was almost as if the words were being drawn out of her against her will.
‘But your mother is not willing to meet him,’ he murmured, half to himself.
‘That’s right, yes, that’s right,’ she exclaimed in a rush. ‘I went out to see her and to ask, just like I promised the young man I would, but she’s shut her mind to the past and wants no reminders.’
It is as I thought, Hrype reflected. The vision was true.
While she spoke he had been creeping steadily towards her, and now he crouched down at her side. He looked up into her face — he could make out her features now and saw that her eyes were wide and her face drained of colour — and very gently he reached for her hand.
‘I laboured for many, many days with your mother, and I have the utmost respect for her,’ he said, putting into his voice all the sincerity he could muster. ‘I fully understand her wish not to revisit those terrible times, and I uphold her decision not to speak to my nephew.’
He sensed Yorath slump with relief. With a small, wry smile he wondered if she had feared he would cast a spell on her and force her to do what Sibert wanted and take the youth to her mother, whether Aetha wanted to see him or not. And, he thought, how far that was from the truth of what he really wanted.
He was silent for some moments, sensing Yorath’s mood. When she had at last mastered her emotion he said, ‘Your mother no longer lives here on the island?’ He knew she did not, but he turned it into a question. As a rule he found it wise not to disclose how much he managed to divine through methods that were not available to most people.
‘No,’ Yorath replied easily. There was, he noted with satisfaction, no apprehension in her tone. ‘She never felt the same after the. . That is to say, she found she could not settle here under the new masters. She tried, and for some time after the rebellion I thought she was all right. Then they announced they were going to tear down our church and start on that.’ She jerked her head violently in the direction of the new cathedral. ‘Mother left. Said she wasn’t going to stay here to see it rise up.’
Hrype saw Aetha in his mind, adding a couple of decades. He smiled. She had always been a courageous, determined and outspoken woman. He could well understand her decision to move away from the island before her sharp tongue that refused to shy away from the truth got her into trouble with the new masters. ‘Where did she go?’ he asked quietly.
He had been stroking the back of Yorath’s hand all the while, the small repetitive movements designed to put her into a very light trance. It worked.