There was that word again. Grave. I shook off an instinctive shudder of fear and commanded myself not to be so silly. ‘But the only way we’ll find out more about Ida and her lover is if I go and ask,’ I protested.
‘Why must we know more?’ Edild demanded. ‘Can we not just let the poor girl rest in peace?’
‘Everyone thinks Derman killed her and Zarina’s terribly distressed and Haward loves her!’ I blurted out. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but Edild seemed to understand. ‘I don’t think he did, and I believe Sir Alain has his doubts too, but all the time Derman’s missing and there’s suspicion all around him, nobody’s going to get any peace. Are they?’ I almost shouted the question, my anxiety transforming into anger.
‘No,’ my aunt agreed.
Suddenly, I knew how to persuade her to let me go. ‘I bet some married man got her pregnant, and then when she threatened to reveal his identity, he killed her!’ I exclaimed. ‘Oh, Edild, that has to be what happened! If Ida comes from this tiny little village, then probably everyone there knows everybody else’s business and this married lover would have had his nice, peaceful existence broken apart if Ida had named him as her child’s father.’
‘But Ida had left her home village,’ Edild pointed out. ‘She came here with Lady Claude.’
‘Yes, but she’d be going back again once Claude and Sir Alain were married and there was no more wedding sewing to do,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t she?’ Surely that was right, unless Claude had been planning to keep Ida in her household after the wedding. Suddenly, I wasn’t so certain.
Edild shrugged. ‘You tell me, Lassair. You seem to have worked it all out.’
I thought hard. Then I said, ‘This is how it must have been. Ida had a lover, a married man in the village. She went to work for Claude, and one day Claude told her she was going to stay at Lakehall with her cousin Lord Gilbert and Ida had to go too because Claude was going to be working on her trousseau. Claude came here because Sir Alain is based in the area at the moment — ’ I was speaking faster now as it all came together — ‘and Claude wanted a chance to meet him, spend time with him and get to know him before the marriage.’
Edild nodded. ‘Yes, that sounds credible.’
‘Ida probably didn’t know she was pregnant when she left Brandon,’ I plunged on, ‘and when she found out, somehow she sent word to the man, and he panicked because he thought she was going to ruin him. So, before anyone else could discover the secret — especially his wife — he came here, asked Ida to meet him in the middle of the night and then strangled her.’
Edild looked at me for a long moment. ‘It is possible, I suppose,’ she said grudgingly. Then a faint smile touched the corner of her mouth. ‘Take Sibert,’ she said. ‘He’s looked after you before when you’ve hared off on such wild missions.’
‘You mean you’re allowing me to go?’ I could hardly believe it.
Edild’s smile was wider now, but she also looked exasperated. ‘We’ll get no work out of you till you’ve followed this particular trail all the way to the end,’ she remarked. ‘Go tomorrow, at first light. You can be there and back by sunset.’
Excitement bubbled up in me. ‘Can I go and tell Sibert?’
‘You may go and ask Sibert,’ she corrected. ‘You’re inviting him to wriggle out of a day’s work and set out on a journey without permission, and, considering the trouble he’d be in if anyone found out, he has every right to say no.’
He did, yes. But I knew he wouldn’t.
Sibert and I had a really lovely day for our walk. We had some eight or ten miles to go, and in the warm sunshine, with the birds singing all around us and the scents of summer filling the air, I’d gladly have gone twice as far. The weather had been dry of late, and the ground was firm. Our way took us up out of the fens towards the higher ridge that cups them to the east, and for the first few miles we climbed gently but steadily.
There were many questions I wanted to ask Sibert. The revelation that Hrype was not his uncle but his father had hit him very hard; he had attacked Hrype when he’d first found out. He was still living with Hrype and Froya, his perpetually pale and anxious-looking mother, and I would have sworn that neither Hrype nor Sibert had told Froya that her son now knew the truth about his parentage. It was, of course, none of my business, but that did not stop me burning to ask Sibert about the mood between the three of them.
‘I saw Hrype the other day,’ I said as we trudged along. ‘He-’
Sibert sighed. ‘Lassair, I know what you’re working up to asking. Don’t waste your time. I’m not going to tell you anything.’
Oh. ‘But are you all right?’ I persisted. ‘Have you and Hrype-’
‘Enough.’
I had rarely heard my friend speak so harshly. An angry flush had spread up his neck and over his face. I realized he meant what he said.
We walked on in a hurt silence — well, I felt hurt — for a while. Then Sibert spoke, and his voice sounded so normal that you’d never have thought he’d been so furiously vehement only a short while ago. ‘We’re on the Icknield Way,’ he said. ‘They say it’s one of the oldest tracks in the land.’
‘Oh.’ I did my best to make the short syllable sound disinterested.
Sibert chuckled. Reaching for my hand, he gave it a swing. ‘Don’t get huffy, Lassair,’ he said. ‘I agreed to come on this ridiculous search with you to keep you out of mischief, and you ought to be grateful.’
‘You didn’t need much persuading,’ I observed.
‘Maybe not, but neither of us will enjoy the day if you’re sulking.’
‘I’m not sulking!’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘I’m not!’
‘Are.’
We carried on like that for a while. Then he nudged me, I nudged him back harder and we both started laughing.
Brandon was a very small village of about ten or a dozen little dwellings. The wide acres of Thetford Forest stretched away on the horizon, and I thought that somewhere out there was the grand baronial home of Claude’s kin, where sooner or later she would no doubt be returning with her new husband.
Our business was not with the great men and women of power who lived in vast castles and manor houses, however. We were there to ask about a little seamstress who someone had impregnated and someone had killed. In my own mind, I was quite sure that the two men were one and the same.
The door to one of the cottages was open, and a man stood there looking at us. He wore a heavy leather apron, and there were shards and chips of flint on the ground at his feet, radiating in an arc from the wooden stool where he must sit to work. He said, not unpleasantly, ‘What do you want?’
There was no point in prevaricating. ‘We come from a village near a place called Lakehall, on the fen edge,’ I said.
If he had heard of it he gave no sign. ‘And?’
‘Lady Claude is at present staying there. Her family home is at Heathlands, I understand?’
‘What’s it to you?’ Now he was frowning slightly, but in puzzlement, I thought, not suspicion.
‘She took a young girl with her, by the name of Ida, and-’
The man’s face fell. ‘Ida’s dead,’ he said baldly. ‘They sent word. We were all truly sad to hear it. She was a grand lass.’
‘Has she family here?’ I asked. I had in mind, I think, to seek them out and perhaps say a few consoling words, although what those words might be, considering how she had died, I did not know.
‘She was an orphan,’ the man said. ‘Used to live with her old father, just the two of them, but he took sick and died, two years back. Ida did her best, poor love, and she had a neat hand with a needle, but we’re poor people hereabouts, we can’t afford new clothes and our women folk do their own mending. We all tried to help her a bit but, like I say, we’re poor.’ There was no need for further explanations. Ida had indeed been much liked, as I’d always thought, and it must have been hard for her neighbours not to have been able to do more for her.