‘I could have gone with you!’ I protested. ‘We could have disguised ourselves just like we did that first time! Why didn’t you-’
Again, he silenced me, this time by raising his hand. ‘It was not necessary for either of us to return inside the abbey,’ he said, ‘as I discovered when I asked the right questions. Lassair, we thought that Elfritha said Herleva was found behind the stables, but she didn’t. She actually said stable, in the singular.’
Stables? Stable? What difference could it make?
But then I understood. ‘The stable where she was found isn’t within the abbey walls, is it?’ I whispered. ‘It’s somewhere else entirely.’
‘It is,’ he agreed. ‘In fact, it is more a shed than a stable: a crude and simple little construction set in the far corner of a field some distance from the main buildings. It’s a shelter for the Chatteris donkey, on the rare occasions when the sisters aren’t using him to help in any one of a hundred tasks.’
I knew without being told what sort of a location this shelter was in. I said — and it was a statement, not a question — ‘It’s down by the water, right at the edge of the land, and sometimes in bad weather that corner of the field floods, almost up to the door of the little shed.’
Hrype looked very closely at me for a moment. Then, sounding like someone trying just too hard to speak in their normal tone, he said, ‘Yes, that describes it exactly.’ His curiosity overcame him, and he added in an urgent hiss, ‘Can you see it, Lassair?’
I nodded. He appeared to think about that for some moments. Then he said, ‘Herleva’s body was found half under water, right on the fen edge. But for her veil, still covering her head, she was naked. Her wrists and ankles were bound to hazel stakes with ropes made of honeysuckle.’
We had been walking for some time now, and the traffic travelling north out of Cambridge was building up as the day drew on and people made for home. Presently, Hrype flagged down a plump young woman driving a cart and persuaded her to give us a ride, on the pretext that his daughter (me) was lame and we still had many miles to go. I had the presence of mind to adopt a limp as the woman’s eyes swept to me to verify Hrype’s words. She didn’t seem to mind helping us, however, and soon she and Hrype were chatting away like old friends. He continued to amaze me; there he was, sounding like some simple peasant whose mind never dwelt on anything deeper than whether his crops would grow or his ewes produce healthy lambs. I would never have guessed he knew so much about farming. .
I sat in silence, thinking.
The plump woman dropped us close to where the boats for Chatteris tied up, and Hrype and I waited until one would turn up to ferry us across. The wait was long.
After quite some time, I said, ‘If Herleva and the man in the fen were killed by the same person-’
Hrype snorted. ‘I think, don’t you, that we can omit the if.’
‘If they were murdered by the same hands,’ I repeated firmly, ‘then we should think about what they might have had in common. Did they, for example, know each other? Were they the last remaining members of a wealthy family who had to be removed so that someone else could inherit?’
‘Herleva wasn’t a wealthy heiress,’ Hrype pointed out. ‘She was a novice nun.’
‘Yes, I know that, but perhaps she was a rich woman before she became a nun,’ I said, but I had to agree, it didn’t seem very likely. ‘Or. .’ I had run out of possibilities.
‘You are, I imagine, just speculating on a possibility, which we are to treat as a hypothesis rather than an attempt at the truth,’ Hrype said, his voice kind.
I wasn’t sure if I was, but I nodded anyway. ‘Or perhaps they were both involved in somebody else being killed,’ I went on, my imagination coming to life again, ‘and it became too dangerous to let them live.’
‘Hmm,’ said Hrype.
‘Herleva was killed just a few days ago,’ I went on, ‘and Gurdyman thinks the man in the fen died within the last few months. It couldn’t have been any longer because the honeysuckle used to bind him was still quite fresh.’
‘Hmm,’ Hrype repeated.
I was thinking very hard. There was something, some relevant fact, right on the edge of my mind, and I just couldn’t pin it down. I ordered my thoughts, summarizing what I knew.
Who? I asked myself. Answer: a chatty little nun and a middle-aged man.
When? One within a week or so; one within a few months.
Where? One on the island of Chatteris, over on the western side of the fens; one over on the eastern side, in the maze of channels that wind through the marshes to the north of Aelf Fen and up towards Lynn and, eventually, the sea.
Then I knew what it was that had been niggling at me, trying to catch my attention.
‘Hrype?’ I said softly.
He turned to look down at me, his strange silvery eyes catching the gleam of the slowly falling sun. ‘Yes?’
‘I think there is a connection between them.’ I was speaking too quickly, breathless in my excitement, and I made myself slow down. ‘The dead man was found in the water over towards the fens’ eastern margin, above where the two rivers flow down from the higher ground and below Lynn,’ I said.
‘What of it?’ He spoke quite sharply, but there was a faint smile on his face. He knew already, I was sure, what I was going to say; it would not have surprised me if he did, for he is adept at reading other people’s thoughts, and what was on my mind just then must have been shouting out at him.
‘Herleva came from over that way,’ I said, despite everything smiling back at him. ‘I spoke to an old Chatteris woman who sells cheese to the nuns. She told me Herleva was from up beyond Lynn. She and the dead man might have known each other!’
‘And they might not,’ I thought I heard him mutter. He took my hand and patted it. ‘That’s a start, I suppose,’ he said kindly. He could have added, even if it’s not much, but he didn’t.
We went on standing there. In time, we saw a boat approaching, and the ferryman agreed to take us across. I sat down in the stern, wrapping my shawl tightly round me against the chill air rising off the water.
My brief excitement had leaked out of me, and now I felt even lower than before. Hrype was right to be dismissive; so what if Herleva’s home was roughly in the same area as the place where the man in the fen had died? It really didn’t amount to very much and barely qualified for Hrype’s it’s a start.
And there was so much more I had to worry about. There we were, moving steadily across the misty water, and my poor sister lay deadly sick on the other side. Was she still alive? Again, I sent a tentative thought in her direction, and this time I received no reply at all. I buried my face in my shawl; I did not want Hrype to see my tears.
There was Rollo, too. I no longer heard his summoning voice in my dreams, and in my waking mind I knew, with no room for doubt, that something had happened to him. He had called to me for help, and I had failed him. Now he was gone: out of my head, out of my life, out, perhaps, of this world.
The sky was darkening as the sun finally set. All around the little boat, the water was dark and sinister, no glimmer of light on its black depths. Despair took hold of me, and for a dreadful moment I was tempted to give up on the horrible struggle of my life and throw myself into the fen’s cold embrace.
Then there was a gentle bump as the boat came alongside the little quay. The ferryman jumped out to make his craft secure, and Hrype climbed ashore after him. He turned back to me.
He said, so softly that I hardly heard him, ‘Nobody is dead yet, Lassair.’ And he held out his hand.