I said carefully, ‘If he doesn’t return, it may of course mean he’s got right away from the area — which is why the search parties can’t find him — and perhaps someone has taken him in.’
She looked at me, her golden-green eyes unreadable. ‘Why would anyone do that?’
‘There are good people out there,’ I replied, then, warming to my theme, I plunged on. ‘There are monasteries and convents full of holy men and women whose duty it is to look after the needy and the helpless. There are lots of hard-working people who would be pleased of an extra pair of hands to help them on the land, or even in the home, and Derman’s very strong, isn’t he?’
She sighed, a faint smile on her face. As if she found my speculations about charitable nuns and monks and farmers desperate for hearty workmen too foolish to comment on, she said dreamily, ‘He was in a strongman act. When we were with the travelling entertainers, that’s what Derman’s job was.’
It was the first time she had ever spoken to me about her past. I said encouragingly, ‘What exactly did he do?’
Her smile broadened. ‘Not very much. He was always hard to teach, and he found it virtually impossible to remember anything very detailed. He’d stand with his legs apart and his arms out straight by his sides, then these other men would climb up his body and stand on him, and then more would stand on them till they’d made a mountain of men. Finally, one by one, starting from the top, they’d all leap off again, turning and twisting as they fell and landing in a circle all round him.’
I remembered. I’d seen the act at the fair when Zarina and her brother had first blown into our lives. It had been most impressive. The seven men who had just jumped down started turning tumbles and flips, then after a while seven girls had run out to join them. The girls had been dressed in extraordinary garments: tight little velvet bodices and layers of floaty fabric that formed their skirts, with their legs and feet bare. Their long hair had been loose, bound only with strands of ribbon plaited into it. They had tumbled and turned with the men, running round in a circle in the opposite direction, then they had formed into pairs — seven men dancing with seven girls — and their movements had speeded up till they’d been a brightly-coloured blur. I still couldn’t believe some of the things those men and girls had done. I’d never known the human body could bend like that.
Zarina had been one of the dancing girls. They had all been pretty, but she was the prettiest. I don’t know what life with a troupe of travelling entertainers had been like, but Zarina had given it up because she’d fallen in love with my brother.
Where had she and Derman come from? Who were their parents, and what had happened to them? Had they also been entertainers, and the rest of the troupe had taken in the orphaned brother and sister when they died?
Now might be my chance to find out.
‘Were your parents entertainers too?’ I asked, trying to keep my tone casual.
‘Dear Lord, no,’ she said. I thought she shuddered, but she might just have been chilly. It was decidedly cool, now that the sun had set. ‘No. My father was a nobleman.’
‘A — nobleman?’ And she was contemplating marrying my brother!
As if she had read my thoughts, she said, ‘He was neither very rich nor very important, but the title was an old one.’
‘Was he — is your family Norman?’
She burst out laughing. ‘No, Lassair. Neither are we Saxon.’ She regarded me, and there was still lively amusement in her eyes. ‘I was born a long way from here,’ she said. ‘In a country where a woman’s position is even lowlier than it is here. Where a man can give his daughter to a villain, a dullard or an octogenarian, even if it is so much against her will that she would rather die.’
A man can do that here, I thought, but I did not speak. I did not want to interrupt her.
‘My father wanted me to marry his oldest friend,’ she said, so quietly that I strained to hear. ‘If you can call it a friendship, when one man makes a loan to another and then demands it must be settled, and the only thing the debtor possesses that his creditor wants is his own daughter.’
‘So. . your father used you to pay his debt?’
‘He tried to,’ Zarina said with spirit. ‘I would not have it. In a barbarous, lawless region, my father’s friend was famous for his cruelty. He liked to arrange spectacles in which men he’d had arrested on imaginary charges were given the chance of fighting for their freedom. He’d have them let out into animal cages, two prisoners to a cage, then they’d be armed with swords, knives, clubs, anything, and at the end the one on his feet over the dead body of the other would be set free. Only, one of Haglar’s men would be sent to fetch him back and he’d be quietly beheaded. Haglar liked beheading people,’ she added. ‘They say he beheaded his first wife because she bore him two daughters.’
I realized I was sitting there with my mouth open, and quickly shut it. ‘And this Haglar hoped you would bear him a son?’
Zarina made an impatient sound. ‘There was little chance of that, for his other two wives had no more luck. Mind you, Haglar had an illegitimate son by one of the hundreds of women he’d seduced or raped, and this son did not want his father to have a son born in wedlock, so it’s very likely the baby born to the third wife was suffocated. It wasn’t even a boy,’ she said in a whisper. ‘He didn’t stop to make sure.’
In her dreadful tale, that seemed the worst atrocity of all. ‘So you ran away,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘I did. I’d seen the entertainers in the town square, and I knew they never stayed anywhere very long. I thought that if I could hide in one of their wagons until we were far away, then I might be able to convince them I could be useful to them and they’d let me stay. They seemed like friendly people, and I’d always been a good dancer.’
‘And there was Derman,’ I said.
‘Derman?’
‘Yes! They must have seen the potential in your brother. Being so big and strong, he’d have been very useful to them, and I bet they quickly realized it.’
‘Yes, yes,’ she said. ‘They did.’
‘Did he understand that you could never go back?’ I asked. ‘Did he appreciate why you had to leave?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she said slowly. ‘All I can tell you is that from the time I joined the troupe, Derman looked after me. We had hard times, and we faced danger. Not just things like fierce storms, flooding, desperate hunger and extremes of heat and cold, all of which you learn to take in your stride when you’re on the road.’
‘What other danger do you mean?’ I had an idea I already knew.
‘Haglar sent men after me,’ she said tonelessly. ‘He had one of my maids tortured till she told him what I’d been planning. Fortunately for me, although not for her, I didn’t tell her the truth. But they burst into my father’s house and searched my rooms, and when they found I’d taken only my jewels and none of my rich and costly garments, one of the men guessed where I was. He came alone. I guess he thought I’d be no trouble and he could claim all the glory from having brought me back. Haglar would have been very generous, I’m sure. But he never got the chance to discover how generous because Derman killed him and hid his body where it would never be found.’ She was staring at me, eyes wide with the drama of her tale. ‘He put it in a-’
She stopped. Just like that, in the middle of a sentence.
My mind was reeling. She had escaped from a ghastly future, and her brother had gone with her. He had protected her, to the extent of killing for her. He had hidden the body in a. . In a grave? Was that what Zarina had been about to say? And, having come up with such an unexpectedly good idea — for who would think to look for a body in someone else’s grave? — had Derman then employed it again when he had killed Ida?
It sounded horribly likely.
In the same moment that I accepted Derman might very well be guilty, I understood why his sister could not abandon him. He had give up so much for her, even if he did not realize it. Whether or not she loved him — and I still wasn’t sure — she owed him so much. She owed him her life.