He turned to her and the grave expression on her face almost made him fearful. ‘What is it, my lady?’
She studied him for a moment as if still uncertain whether or not to make this last confidence. Then, apparently making up her mind, she said, ‘Raelf’s first wife’s health was such that she could not conceive. She, however, did not seek a cure for her barrenness for, according to Raelf, she feared pregnancy and childbirth and believed herself insufficiently strong to endure the process.’ There was the faintest touch of contempt in Audra’s voice, as if the four times proven mother looked down with scornful pity on her feeble and unsatisfying predecessor. ‘For her, another solution had to be found,’ she went on. ‘They decided to adopt a child.’
‘Galiena,’ Josse said.
‘Quite so. Galiena.’
Aye, he thought. It made sense. This unknown, dead Matilda would have had to be tall, pale and blonde to have given birth to Galiena, and even then the girl would have had to favour her mother entirely with nothing inherited from her squat, dark father.
Galiena was adopted. No wonder she looked nothing like the rest of her family.
There were two more questions to ask. Whether or not the answers had any relevance whatsoever to Galiena’s death would remain to be seen, but in any case Josse had to know.
He said, ‘Who are her real parents? And where did she come from?’
But Audra shook her head. ‘I cannot help you with the first question for I do not know.’ She frowned. ‘I asked Raelf a hundred times back in the early days, for as Galiena grew, her remarkable looks emerged and I was ever most curious as to who had borne her. But Raelf would not tell me.’
‘Did he give you any reason?’ Josse asked.
‘Not really. He used to say that it was for the best if we — and Galiena — put her past behind us. I kept at him for a little longer but then my own babies started arriving and I was too busy to care any more. Galiena was ours, just as my own girls are, and that was that.’
Josse thought back and then said, ‘You said you could not answer the first question, my lady.’ With his hopes rising, he went on, ‘What of the second?’
She smiled. ‘I can tell you a place name, nothing more. At least I have always assumed that it is a place name.’ She looked doubtful.
‘How do you come to know it?’ he asked.
‘Hm? Oh, I overheard Raelf one day. He was speaking to our priest — it was when my Emma was to be baptised — and Father Luke said something like, you won’t be needing any more visits to the Saxon Shore now, Raelf, with one of your own in the cradle!’
‘The Saxon Shore?’
‘Yes. I believe it means over on the east coast, in the area beyond the Great Marsh. Father Luke said the name of the actual place, too.’
Josse waited an instant, then prompted, ‘Aye?’
‘Yes. It’s a place where the waves and the tides used to lap up against a cliff and where long ago men constructed a fort that overlooked the narrow seas. Only now the fort lies in ruins, the sands have built up and there is marshland where the waters once were.’ Audra hesitated. Then, in a whisper, she said, ‘It is called Deadfall.’
And, watching her anxious face, he wondered why, as she spoke the name, he should feel as if a cold hand had closed sharp-nailed fingers around his throat.
10
Helewise had not expected that Josse would return from his journey to Galiena’s kin the next day; even for one who travelled as quickly as Josse did when need pressed, it would have been asking too much. She would, however, have welcomed his presence at Hawkenlye that day for it was the day they buried Galiena.
It was the third day since the girl’s death. The weather continued hot but now there was humidity in the air that spoke of a possibility of storms ahead. Small black biting flies had appeared — clouds of them — and it was not the time of year to leave a dead body unburied.
They interred her in the Abbey’s burial ground and, joined by the grieving husband, the servant lad and the woman, Aebba, the Hawkenlye community prayed all together for her soul.
Later, Helewise was sitting alone in her room when there was a knock at the door and, in answer to her quiet ‘Come in’, Sister Euphemia appeared.
‘I hope I am not disturbing you, my lady?’ the infirmarer asked.
Since Helewise sat before a table quite empty of ledgers, documents, parchments or anything else, the question was courteous but superfluous. ‘Not at all, Sister. I was thinking about Galiena.’
‘I have been, too.’ Sister Euphemia paused, then, as if only after reflection, went on, ‘I’ve had an idea.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Helewise looked up into the infirmarer’s lined face.
‘About how it came to be that she came to us to help her conceive when she was already pregnant.’
‘Yes, that’s rather what I thought you meant,’ Helewise murmured.
‘See,’ Sister Euphemia said, eagerness creeping into her voice, ‘I’ve been looking at it logically. If a couple that consists of an old man and a young wife have a job getting her with child, then you’d probably jump to the conclusion that the fault lay with the old man. Wouldn’t you?’
‘Well, you might,’ Helewise allowed. ‘It would seem the more likely explanation.’
‘Exactly! Well, supposing that’s what Galiena thought too? She knew a bit about herbs, so we’re told, so maybe she also understood the workings of her own body rather better than many young women. She might have known herself to be fit, healthy and regular in her courses and, that being the case, she’d have reckoned that the problem was with her old husband’s seed.’ Leaning forward confidentially, she said in a whisper, ‘They do say the vigour goes out of it when a man comes towards the end of a long, active life, if you take my meaning, my lady.’
From the way the infirmarer stressed active, Helewise was all too afraid that she did. Banishing firmly from her mind the picture of Ambrose in a succession of beds with a succession of women, bouncing away as if his very life depended on it, she said, ‘Indeed, Sister. Do go on.’
‘Well, what if this young wife truly wants to have a child, both to please her husband and for her own sake, and decides to take matters into her own hands? She was a comely girl, Galiena, and I would judge also a bright one. I don’t imagine she’d have found it too difficult to find someone suitable. Then all she has to do is admit the young man discreetly into her arms — swearing him to secrecy, naturally — and go on doing so until he’s done the trick for her and she knows herself to be pregnant. Then comes the really clever bit!’
Helewise, who had already guessed, did not want to spoil the infirmarer’s moment and so she said encouragingly, ‘Yes? And what is that?’
‘The lass begs to come here, to Hawkenlye, she takes the waters, prays a bit and goes off armed with a couple of Sister Tiphaine’s concoctions. She hurries back home, where she encourages old Ambrose into her bed as often as he’s willing to be persuaded, then, before a month’s passed, says, oh! How wonderful! I’ve missed my courses, my breasts are swelling like ripe fruit, I must be pregnant! Thank the Lord for Hawkenlye!’
Helewise nodded slowly. ‘And if the baby were to arrive a few weeks early she would merely say, as doubtless many a woman does, that the child was a little premature.’
‘Exactly!’ The infirmarer folded her arms, her face triumphant. ‘What do you think, my lady?’
‘I think it is entirely possible and quite likely,’ Helewise said. ‘But tell me, Sister, do you have anything to support this interpretation of events?’
‘Nothing whatsoever,’ Sister Euphemia replied cheerfully. ‘Other than two decades of experience of human beings.’
Helewise gave her a warm smile. She both admired and loved the infirmarer; for her skill, her tender care of her patients, for her wisdom. Most of all for the fact that, although she had seen the depths to which people could sink and the terrible harm they were capable of doing to one another, she did not condemn. She was happy to leave that to God and, even so, Helewise thought, Sister Euphemia would always expect God to understand that sometimes men and women just couldn’t help themselves and hope that He would not deal with them too harshly.