I tried to take it in. I looked from one to the other of them and read such a complex mix of emotions that I felt totally confused. Eventually, I said, ‘Why?’
Hrype sighed deeply, wincing as the movement tugged at his wound. The wound that his own nephew had inflicted. . Then he said, ‘It is a long story. I will begin the tale, for it is mine to tell, and if I grow weary Edild will take over.’
I waited.
After what seemed like an age, he began. ‘You have heard, Lassair, of how my mother, my brother, my brother’s wife and I were together here on the Isle of Ely at the time of Hereward’s rebellion against the Conqueror’s rule.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You know that Edmer my brother was gravely wounded and that, although Froya and I did all we could, in the end there was no alternative and I had to amputate his leg.’
‘Yes, and then she got him away because his enemies here wanted to kill him, and she took him to Aelf Fen while you stayed here pretending you were still looking after him, and she was pregnant with Sibert and he was born later, after your brother was dead.’
‘You know the story well,’ he remarked. ‘Yes, all that is true.’ Something flashed across his face — I thought he was reacting to a stab of pain — and then he said, ‘Lassair, consider this: Sibert was born a little less than nine months after Edmer was struck by the arrow that eventually took his life.’
‘Yes I know,’ I said, ‘I just said that.’
Hrype seemed to be waiting for me to go on. When I didn’t he sighed again and then said, ‘Let me tell you about Froya. What do you think of her, Lassair? What sort of a woman would you say she is?’
I felt very awkward. It was not for me to judge my elders or, even if I did, it would be disrespectful to reveal my thoughts. ‘She’s. . er, she’s very nice,’ I said.
Hrype smiled, the expression there and gone swiftly. ‘You may speak freely,’ he said.
‘Oh.’ I arranged my thoughts. ‘She is an unhappy person. She finds life hard, and she is easily cast down by problems.’ I recalled how, when Sibert had gone to fetch Edild — oh, Sibert! — he had asked if he should also fetch Froya, and my instinctive reaction was that she would be the last person I’d want in a crisis. ‘She panics readily and she is not strong,’ I finished. I hoped it was enough — it felt like much more than enough to me.
Hrype nodded. ‘All that you observe is true,’ he said. ‘However, I must tell you that she was not always as you see her today. She was my pupil — it was I who introduced her to my brother — and as a young woman she was spirited and a quick learner. We achieved much working side by side and never more so than when we tended the wounded and the sick during the rebellion here.’
‘She fell in love with your brother,’ I said dreamily, ‘and they were wed.’
‘They were,’ he agreed. ‘They made a good couple, for Edmer loved her dearly, and it moved many people to see that big, tough, strong man side by side with a fair, fragile woman like Froya. Her looks were an illusion, back then, for she, too, was strong, in her own way.’
‘I have never doubted it,’ I said. ‘No weakling wife could have got her gravely wounded husband across the fens the way she did. It must have been dreadful, and she was pregnant so she must have worried about the child she carried as well as poor Edmer.’
The child she carried. . Something was nagging at me, trying to claim my attention.
Hrype was speaking, and I made myself listen. ‘What she achieved was remarkable,’ he said, ‘and in many ways it was an event that she has never truly got over.’
I tried to work out what he meant. ‘You mean she injured herself in some way?’ That made sense. ‘Was it something to do with the baby? Did her efforts to take Edmer to safety damage her body so that the birth was more difficult than it should have been?’ I was quite sure I was on the right track; after all, Froya had borne no more babies after Sibert. But then, cross with myself, I thought, of course she hadn’t! She couldn’t have, because her husband was dead.
Hrype was staring at me, almost as if he was willing me to go on. Helplessly, I shook my head. I didn’t know what to say.
‘You ask if it was something to do with the baby,’ he said. ‘You are right, but not in the way you think.’ He paused, frowning. Then he said, ‘Let me tell you about what happened yesterday, Lassair. I went back to Aetha, Yorath’s old mother, believing that I would find either that Sibert was with her or that he had recently visited. Aetha, you see, worked with Froya and me during the rebellion. She has sharp eyes and a long memory. She knew what happened, and she has not forgotten. When Sibert finally nerved himself to go to her on her island, she told him.’
‘And that’s why he attacked you?’ I whispered.
‘Yes.’
I knew then, although I shied away from accepting it. To have everything I had always believed turned upside down at a stroke was like a blow to the head. If I felt as if I had just been stunned, however must Sibert have reacted?
Now Edild held Hrype’s hand in both of hers. She was gazing anxiously down at him, her full attention focused on him. He looked up at me. Then he said simply, ‘Sibert is my son.’
I don’t know how long I sat there in silence. It was probably only a few moments, but it felt like an age. Hrype was Sibert’s father. He had lain with his brother’s wife — his gravely wounded brother’s wife — and she had conceived his child. Nobody knew, for she had fled from Ely and taken the dying Edmer to Aelf Fen. Had he known his wife was pregnant? Oh, poor, poor man — he must have realized it was not his child, for a man with an infected wound in his thigh that leads to amputation could surely not be in any state to make love.
Hrype was still looking at me. Belatedly, I remembered his uncanny ability to read other people’s thoughts, although I dare say mine were fairly obvious just then.
‘He did not know, Lassair,’ he said softly. ‘Froya was a slender woman even then, and the swelling in her belly was easily disguised beneath her garments.’
And a fatally sick husband would not be likely to see or touch his wife’s naked body. .
I was trying so hard to understand. I was trying not to hate Hrype and Froya for what they had done. Again, he knew what I was thinking. ‘It was done from compassion,’ he said. ‘I know it sounds as if I am trying to excuse a base action and disguise it as something less wicked, but when I took her in my arms it was with no wish but to comfort her.’ He twisted on the mattress and a moan of pain broke out of him. ‘My mother had recently died — my mother, whom Froya had grown to love, whom she had cared for during the flight across the fenlands and those terrible days in Ely — and her husband was so badly wounded that we knew, if we were honest with each other, that there was little hope for him.’ He stopped, took a deep breath and then, his eyes now fixed on a point on the wall as if he could no longer bear to look at me, he said, ‘I was asleep. She came to my bed, and she was weeping. She said, “Hold me, Hrype, hold me, for I am so afraid,” and I moved over so that she could lie beside me. She was cold, so very cold, and her face was wet with her tears.’ His voice broke. Recovering, he went on, ‘I held her, trying to warm her with my body, and I wiped away the tears with my fingers. She pressed herself to me and we clung to each other, both of us desperate for comfort, for she was forced to witness the sufferings of a treasured husband and I of a dearly loved brother.’
He paused again, this time for a long moment. Then he said, ‘It should not have happened, and we both knew it; we both know it to this day. But human flesh is weak, and in that brief time we gave each other the only thing we had to give. In the morning she was up and dressed before I woke. We did not speak of it, and I believe both of us pretended to ourselves that it had not happened.’
‘Then she discovered she was pregnant,’ I said dully.
‘Yes. She bore her shame and her pain all by herself. I told you just now that Edmer never knew she carried a child; I did not know either, not until a month or so before Sibert was born. I had joined her at Aelf Fen that summer, in time to be with my brother during his last days, and Froya kept her distance from me. When finally she had to tell me, I thought that the child was Edmer’s. Against all sense, I believed my dying brother had impregnated his wife.’ Slowly, he shook his head. ‘Such is our ability to fool ourselves. I believed what I wanted — needed — to be the truth.’