Zarina.
‘And where did you see this exchange between her and Derman?’
‘Down one of the tracks that leads out to the fen edge. I reckon they thought they were alone out there — it’s a desolate spot.’
There spoke a man who didn’t live in the fens, I thought. I pictured the scene. I imagined Derman returning from some hopeless mission to spy on Ida. Perhaps she had been out collecting the wild flowers she had reproduced so beautifully and faithfully in her embroidery on Lady Claude’s bed sheets, and he had followed her. I pictured Zarina, angry because he’d been neglecting his duties and she’d had to do all the hard work. I heard Zarina’s furious, scolding voice in my head: Leave her alone! She’s no good for you!
Then, sliding into the corner of my mind so subtly that at first I didn’t notice, I thought of something else. I saw a passionate and beautiful young woman who had fallen in love with a village man and wanted more than anything to marry him. I saw her despair, because she was tied to a simpleton of a brother and, as he had saved her when she’d needed him, owed him far too much to allow herself to abandon him.
My excitement mounting, I wondered if I’d got it all wrong and Zarina had been reproving Derman because he was making no progress in his courtship of Ida. Perhaps she had been trying to encourage him, for if by some miracle Ida had taken pity on her unlikely suitor and accepted him, Zarina would have been free to marry my brother.
When it became clear that Ida, kind though she was, had gently turned Derman down, had Zarina’s frustration and rage got the better of her? Had she lost her temper and strangled Ida?
I pictured her hands, rough and very strong from the endless wringing of heavy, wet fabric. Before she’d been a washerwoman she’d been a dancer. An acrobat. I’d seen her perform with my own eyes, and I understood the power there was in her muscular frame.
Out of my memory I heard Zarina’s terrible cry: You know nothing about me! Oh, oh, had she been trying to tell me that the reason she couldn’t marry Haward was because she was a killer? And then had she, as I had suspected, gone on to kill Derman, not because he had stood in her way, but because he knew she had strangled Ida?
I had to find out.
Alberic was studying me. ‘Important, is it, what I just told you?’
The answer was yes. But I could not admit it. The woman I was prepared to welcome as my sister-in-law might well have committed two murders. . and, if she had, I was going to have to decide what to do about it. For the time being at least, the possibility had to remain a deadly secret. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said, my tone casual. ‘Probably not.’
I sat with him for a while longer. I did not want him to remember later that I had rushed off in a lather as soon as he’d mentioned Zarina and Derman. I waited, even hummed a little tune, then eventually I stood up and remarked that I ought to be getting back to my aunt.
Straight away he looked anxious again, and I guessed he was thinking about Sir Alain and wondering how he was. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘He seems to have a hard skull.’
Alberic managed a weak smile. ‘What’s he going to do? I’ll be arrested, won’t I? I tried to kill him, after all.’
I thought about it. Alain de Villequier had rather a lot on his conscience; too much, perhaps, to leap to accuse a man who had attacked him for the sake of the woman both men had loved. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Maybe not.’
Hope leapt into his eyes. ‘I was thinking I should get away from here,’ he muttered, ‘much as I want to stay.’
To be close to Ida, I guessed. ‘You can’t stay for ever,’ I pointed out gently.
He looked at me sadly. ‘For a while longer, at least.’ It sounded as if he were pleading with me.
I bowed my head. ‘As you wish.’
Then I hefted my satchel on to my shoulder and left him.
I didn’t return to Edild’s house. Instead I doubled back and slipped along under cover of the scrubby hedgerows, dipping back into the village close by the widow Berta’s house. She was within — I could hear her arguing with someone — but I caught sight of Zarina’s slim figure down by the water.
I approached her and, as she heard my footsteps, she paused in her work and looked up at me. I studied her. She had rolled up her sleeves, and her hands were red and raw. She wore her usual heavy sacking apron, and her hair was covered by a white kerchief. Her face was sweaty with effort.
I did not allow the stab of sympathy I felt for her to take hold. I said, ‘Zarina, you must tell me the truth.’
Emotion flashed in her golden-green eyes, and I sensed that she was tense with apprehension. Or — the thought was alarming — with anger.
‘About what?’ she said cagily.
There was no point in anything but a direct assault. ‘You told me once I know nothing about you,’ I said. ‘You have explained certain things concerning your past, but I am convinced that you have omitted more than you have revealed.’
Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes seemed to snap at me. ‘What right have you to know?’ she said in an ominous whisper.
‘You are to marry into my family,’ I snapped back. ‘That gives me the right, for I would not see my brother wed to a-’ I bit back the word. I would not yet accuse her. ‘To someone who would bring him wretchedness and unhappiness,’ I said instead.
She sank back on to her heels, considering me. ‘And why do you think I would do that?’
‘There are secrets you keep that, when they are known, will ruin Haward’s life, for if you are condemned he will suffer almost as much as you, so dearly does he love you.’
Her lovely face was the picture of puzzlement. I was just beginning to wonder if I was mistaken, when I recalled what else she had been before she was a washerwoman: she had been a performer, skilled, no doubt, in taking on a different persona when it suited her.
I would not, I told myself firmly, be fooled by her.
She was still looking perplexed. I said impatiently, ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.’
She smiled fleetingly. ‘But I don’t. Really, Lassair, I don’t.’
‘Then I will put it into words.’ I was furious now, all caution gone. ‘I know you argued with Derman over his love for Ida. I thought at first you were cross because all the time he was mooning after her, he wasn’t helping you, but then I realized the truth.’
‘And what was that?’ She spoke guardedly, and her tone gave away nothing.
‘You were beside yourself because his pathetic attempts to court her were failing!’ I cried. ‘If she had taken pity on him and accepted him, married him even, you would have been free. She would have taken your lifelong burden away from you, and you could have married Haward without having to bring your brother into the family too.’ I paused for breath. She said nothing, merely watched me closely, and I plunged on. ‘But Ida turned him down, and you were so angry that you killed her. Derman saw you do it, and so he had to die too. That’s why you slipped out by yourself that night to look for him. You had to find him, discover how much he had seen and, if he threatened to expose you as a murderer, you had to silence him. Which you did — you set a trip wire on the posts beside the causeway out to the island and, when he fell into the water, you crushed his skull.’ I paused again, panting hard. ‘Didn’t you?’
I stared down intently at her. I had expected angry denials, violence, a cat’s claw, hissing, scratching attack on my face. But Zarina stayed there, quite still, her expression impassive.
Then two tears spilled out of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
I did not know what to do or what to think. Desperate now, I said, ‘Are you left-handed?’
She looked up at me in amazement. ‘Why on earth do you-? No. I favour my right hand.’ As if to demonstrate, she dipped into her pocket and extracted a torn piece of thin linen, with which she dried her tears. She held it in her right hand.