A Shadowed Evil Read online

  For some moments, Josse simply sat there, silently digesting all that Isabelle had just said. It came as no surprise to hear that Aeleis had run off in a blaze of anger, proclaiming she didn’t need any man to control her life and her wealth. The bones of that self-reliance, independence and resentment of other, lesser mortals telling her what and what not to do had been there in her childhood, when she had been the mischievous, funny, pugnacious, frowning, dirty little girl whom Josse remembered with such affection. No: what had surprised him was that, having fled Southfire Hall and, presumably, set up her own establishment elsewhere, Aeleis had never contacted her family to say where she was. Whether she was all right. Whether she was happy.

  ‘Have you any idea where she is?’ he asked after a while.

  ‘No.’ Isabelle’s single word seemed to echo in the quiet hall.

  ‘There has been no message at all? No news?’

  Isabelle sighed. ‘We believe she went to London,’ she said. ‘A friend of Father’s heard some talk, and the woman involved sounded a lot like Aeleis.’

  ‘What sort of talk?’ Josse could see this conversation was distressing his cousin, but he did not let that stop him.

  ‘Oh, use your imagination!’ Isabelle flashed. ‘A wealthy lord, close to the King’s circle, takes a new mistress to the Christmas festivities at Windsor. Lovely women always get talked about, and it had already become clear that Aeleis would only grow more beautiful as she grew older. Then there was the whisper of a story that she’d married again, but we didn’t know whether or not it was true.’

  ‘Were you able to trace her by investigating these possible leads?’

  ‘We could have done, perhaps, but Father forbade anyone to try.’

  Josse dropped his head. So Hugh, distressed and embarrassed by his youngest daughter’s wild and unconventional behaviour, had done what any upright, moral, God-fearing man should do, and cut that child out of the family. Josse sighed, feeling suddenly as sad as if he bore the weight of the world’s sorrows. An upright, God-fearing man might act like that, aye, and be proud of himself for his courage. But how did a father feel? A father, moreover, who had always given every indication that he loved his three girls, and that the youngest in particular had only to twinkle a smile at him to lift his spirits and brighten his day.

  Losing Aeleis, and being held back by his own sense of right and wrong from doing anything to find her or bring her back, must have come close to breaking poor old Hugh’s heart.

  And now this …

  He turned to Isabelle, about to tell her what he had just remembered, and why it was suddenly so very relevant.

  But she was getting to her feet, a hand up to her forehead as if to soothe a headache. ‘I am going to bed,’ she announced. ‘I’m tired and my head’s splitting. Good night, Josse.’

  ‘Good night.’

  He watched her stride away across the hall. As the sound of her footsteps faded, he too got up and went in search of his bed.

  As he relaxed towards sleep, the present gently faded away and Josse’s mind took him back to the past. Eyes closed, he smiled, for it was the past of this house, and the memories were happy ones …

  ‘You have to get yourself tidied up now! They’ll be sending for us any moment, and you haven’t even washed your face!’

  Josse’s young voice is tight with anxiety. She’ll be punished again if she’s not neat and clean for supper, and he hates having to witness it. Not because the punishments are harsh – they’re not, for Aeleis’s father loves her far too dearly to do her physical harm. But being reprimanded at all damages her pride, and when Josse sees her face tighten with distress and reined-in anger, he aches for her.

  Also, and more to the point, if Aeleis isn’t in a fit state for the evening meal, Josse is very likely to get the blame.

  Aeleis abandons whatever it is she’s been doing with such single-minded attention. She rubs wet hands down her gown – she appears to have been washing something in a ewer of water, but unfortunately it’s not herself – and now, a smile splitting her grubby face, she holds the object out to Josse.

  ‘Look! Isn’t she wonderful?’

  Josse takes the little figure in his hands. It is a woman, regally dressed and seated on a block. One hand is up to her face.

  ‘It’s a chess piece,’ Josse says.

  ‘I know!’ Aeleis is scathing. ‘But she’s not like the set that Father has. She’s made of something different. What d’you reckon it is?’

  Josse stares down into the tiny face. The woman – she’s wearing a crown, so she must be the queen – has strong features, and there is something powerful about her expression. Josse has seen faces like hers before, on a big brass bowl his family uses back home which, so tradition has it, was acquired from the Norsemen. ‘She comes from far away,’ Josse says. ‘She’s made from the tusk of a walrus, and she was crafted up in Viking lands.’

  Aeleis laughs scornfully. ‘You don’t know that!’

  He grins. ‘No, I don’t. I’m just guessing.’

  Aeleis has taken back her treasure, and is stroking it with a gentle forefinger. ‘She’s a brave, strong woman like Queen Eleanor,’ she croons. ‘She doesn’t let anybody boss her around. She makes her own rules and nobody ever dares get angry if she gets her clothes dirty.’ She puckers up her lips and places a kiss on the figure’s forehead. ‘She’s going to be my lucky charm,’ she says decisively. ‘I’m going to keep her with me always and for ever.’

  Josse has the guilty feeling that the figure, which is clearly very old, may well be valuable. ‘Er – where did you find it?’

  ‘Her,’ corrects Aeleis. Her eyes flash to meet Josse’s. ‘You’re not to tell!’ she hisses furiously. ‘If you do, I’ll tell them you pushed me down the steps and that’s how I tore my gown and got that huge bruise on my knee.’

  ‘I didn’t!’ Josse protests.

  Aeleis gives him a very sweet and totally unconvincing smile. ‘I know.’

  ‘All right, then.’ He surrenders with a grin. ‘I promise I won’t tell. So, where did you unearth her?’

  ‘In the old cellar. The place we crawled through to.’

  Josse remembers noticing Aeleis digging in a corner. ‘She was just lying there?’

  ‘No, stupid, she was under the earth. I was just scratching around, looking for treasure, and I found her.’ Her eyes light up. ‘Do you think there are any more pieces?’

  Her excitement is infectious. ‘I don’t know,’ he says, ‘but I think we ought to check.’

  They wait until the evening meal is over and people are relaxing in the Old Hall, talking, drinking. Nobody notices when the two children creep away. It is dark underground, but then it’s always dark there, and Josse has had the foresight to bring two cresset lamps. They dig for what seems hours, but find nothing.

  Aeleis is upset. ‘I wanted you to have one too,’ she says crossly. Then, in the companionable mood of their joint adventure, she adds, ‘You can share Queen Eleanor a bit, if you like. Just when you’re staying here, and not all the time, but you can hold her sometimes.’

  Seeing the fervour of possession in the small face, Josse understands just what a very generous offer this is. He grins at his cousin. ‘Thank you,’ he says with grave courtesy, ‘but she’s yours. You are her liegeman,’ he improvises, ‘and queens don’t like it when their loyal servants make free with them.’

  Relief floods Aeleis’s face. ‘All right, then,’ she says. She fakes a deeply unconvincing sigh of resignation. ‘I’d better do as you say.’

  With a smile of pure joy, she gives her queen a final buffing with the hem of her skirt, then hides her away up her sleeve.

  And Josse, half-awake in his uncle’s house many, many years later, turned over, thumped his pillow and, with a sigh, fell deeply into a profound sleep.

  ‘Peter Southey must know Aeleis!’ Josse said to Helewise. They had been talking for some time, for he had woken at first light and, restless with the swirl of thoug
hts and conjectures filling his mind, had disturbed her. Once awake, she had demanded to know what he was fretting about, and he had told her. ‘She must be someone important to him,’ he continued, ‘or, rather, he must be important to her, for she wouldn’t have parted with her queen for anyone she didn’t care about very deeply.’ Swept along by his own enthusiasm, he added eagerly, ‘Do you think he—’

  But Helewise interrupted. ‘Just a moment, Josse,’ she said calmly. ‘Before you get carried away making connections where none may exist, let’s look at the evidence. Peter has a chess piece, which normally he carries in a little leather sack around his neck, and from just one brief sighting of it, you’ve convinced yourself that it once belonged to your cousin Aeleis.’

  ‘It was her most treasured possession!’ he protested. ‘She loved it, and it became her talisman.’

  ‘She loved it when she was a child,’ Helewise pointed out. ‘She is a grown woman now, and, from what you’ve been telling me, rather a wealthy one. I’m quite sure she has jewels and golden bracelets and entire chess sets, beside which an old ivory piece she unearthed when she was five years old pales into insignificance.’

  ‘It was her lucky charm,’ Josse insisted. ‘It’s hard to understand for someone who didn’t know her when she was little, but she always knew her own mind, even then.’

  ‘Very well,’ Helewise conceded. ‘But the next point is, how can you be so sure that Peter Southey’s piece is the same one? I have seen those carved chess sets, and they are not exactly rare. Peter’s piece could have come from anywhere.’

  ‘And yet it has turned up here, in the very place where it was once lost and Aeleis found it.’

  Helewise did not immediately reply. Then, with a sigh, she said, ‘I grant you, it does seem quite a coincidence.’

  Josse’s mind ran on. ‘He said he was bound for Lewes,’ he said slowly. ‘He was going to put up at an inn, but he never said what his business in the town was.’ He paused, for the direction of his thoughts suddenly seemed incredible.

  ‘Perhaps he wasn’t really making for the town,’ Helewise whispered. ‘Perhaps he was coming here all along.’ She looked at Josse, her face flushing with excitement. ‘He knew all about Southfire Hall, because Aeleis told him. He was about to come and announce himself when he had his accident. His horse slipped and took a bad fall, and Peter was brought here, and … Oh.’

  He nodded, grinning. ‘And just forgot to say, Fancy me getting hurt so close to the very place I was heading for! I’m a very good friend of Aeleis’s, and she sent me to find you all!’

  ‘Could he have lost his memory when he hit his head?’ Helewise’s voice held a note of desperation.

  ‘I don’t think so. He remembers other things. You were telling me only yesterday that he said he was alone in the world, with nobody to worry if he went missing.’

  Something occurred to him. The same thought must have simultaneously struck Helewise, for, meeting her eyes, he could see her dismay. ‘If he’s alone,’ he said slowly, ‘then does that mean Aeleis is dead?’ He was surprised at the surge of grief that swept through him.

  Helewise took hold of his hand. ‘Steady, my love,’ she said gently. ‘We race ahead of ourselves, I think. Perhaps they are just friends, and he doesn’t presume to imagine she will concern herself if he fails to return. Let us not even consider that Aeleis might be—’ She stopped. ‘We won’t think about it until and unless we must.’

  He nodded. She was right, although the sense of dread – lying somewhere near his heart, like a cold, hard stone – did not dissipate.

  ‘I must talk to them,’ he announced. ‘To Isabelle, anyway, for surely she must suspect what happened to Aeleis, even if she doesn’t know, and also to Uncle Hugh.’

  ‘You will distress him,’ Helewise said warningly. ‘He may well feel much guilt at having acted in such a way that she felt there was no alternative but to leave.’

  Josse got to his feet and, squaring his shoulders, headed towards the door. ‘If he does, then perhaps it is no more than he deserves.’

  He heard Helewise give a gasp, and he knew she thought he was being too harsh. He didn’t care.

  Left alone, Helewise took a deep breath, composed herself and then went over again in her mind everything Josse had told her, adding her own impressions and recollections of all that had occurred since Peter Southey had been brought into Southfire Hall.

  She thought about what happened when they asked him his name. She thought about how he asked not once but twice where he was. She recalled how he had resisted the invitation to go and join the household in the Old Hall. And, most of all, she thought about a young man who seemed to have something on his conscience.

  Who, just perhaps, felt very guilty because people for whom he intended to make a specific sort of mischief had treated him with kindness … far more than I deserve, he said.

  A small spark of certainty lit up her contemplation. Wait, she told herself firmly. Frowning in concentration, she tried to recall everything Josse had told her. Aeleis had been at Southfire Hall twenty years ago, a young widow perhaps in her early twenties. Then, as Isabelle had informed Josse, her parents had tried to make her marry again, but she had refused, after which she had left the family home and not been seen or heard of since.

  Twenty years ago … Helewise’s shoulders slumped. Only twenty years. No. She was wrong – what she had believed for a moment was the answer to the riddle couldn’t be true.

  Or could it?

  The man’s face was badly damaged, after all, and the pain of such a battering, not to mention the dislocated shoulder, would make him look drawn; older than his true age.

  She knew she was allowing her imagination to run away with her, making connections and drawing conclusions on the slimmest of evidence. She ought to—

  But then something else struck her. It was horrible, and surely so very unlikely that it couldn’t possibly be true. She needed someone with whom to discuss it; another, cooler, mind. She would just have to keep calm till Josse came back, and see what he thought.

  Shaken, she tried to compose herself for the wait.

  Josse strode away up the passage, his mind full of unthinking anger. He really wasn’t sure who he was so cross with: Isabelle, for having allowed her little sister to disappear without protest, or Uncle Hugh, for his intransigent attitude that forced Aeleis away. Both, probably.

  Editha was seated on a settle by the hearth in the Old Hall. The little girls were running in and out, but otherwise the big room was deserted. Belatedly, Josse realized it was still very early.

  Editha beckoned to him, a smile of welcome on her face. He didn’t want to stop and talk politely, for he was wound tight with indignation and something else – something that hurt – and needed to hurry on to seek out Isabelle and Hugh. But Editha called out again: ‘Josse? Are you all right?’ and her tone was so anxious that he had no choice but to go and join her.

  She stared at him as he came to stand before her. ‘What on earth is the matter?’ she asked, her face falling into lines of concern. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘Aye, it has!’ he began. His voice was far too loud, so that Editha shrank back. All at once he was contrite. She had no way of knowing what he suspected, and it really wasn’t fair to take out his anger on her.

  He sank down beside her. ‘I apologize,’ he said gruffly. ‘I shouldn’t have shouted at you.’

  ‘Just tell me what’s happened!’ she pleaded. Then, her pale face losing what little colour it had, she said in a whisper, ‘Is it Father?’

  ‘No, no,’ he reassured her. She had half-risen, and, taking hold of her hand, gently he pulled her down again. Looking into her wide eyes, he could think of nothing to say other than the truth. ‘Peter Southey knows Aeleis.’

  She shrank away from him. ‘No,’ she said in a tiny voice. ‘It cannot be!’

  ‘I believe it to be so,’ he replied.

  Editha was shaking her head, holding up her hands a
s if to fend him off. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she muttered, ‘I – I—’

  He caught her as she slumped into his arms in a faint. She was heavy against him, and, very carefully, he got up, laid her head down on the cushions and swung her feet up. Then, looking frantically around, he spotted a serving woman who had come to tend the fire.

  ‘Go and fetch your mistress!’ he cried. ‘The lady Editha is unwell!’

  The woman dropped her basket of logs and ran back the way she had come. Very soon, Isabelle appeared, swooping down to kneel beside her sister, patting her hands and calling out her name.

  Editha opened her eyes. ‘Oh, Isabelle,’ she whispered, ‘Josse says – oh, no!’

  Isabelle turned furious eyes up to Josse. ‘What have you done?’ she demanded. ‘You’ve upset her, that’s plain enough, but how? What did you say?’

  The serving woman was still hovering, face agog with lively interest. With an impatient gesture, Isabelle shooed her away.

  Josse crouched down beside her. ‘I only said that Peter Southey must be acquainted with Aeleis, and Editha—’

  Editha groaned. ‘Hush!’ Isabelle said. ‘Really, Editha, you ought to be able to hear her name by now without going into a swoon. Now, Josse, what grounds have you for this extraordinary claim?’

  ‘He has Queen Eleanor.’

  Isabelle gasped, a hand flying to her face. For a few moments she didn’t speak. She merely knelt there, staring at him, her eyes wide with an expression he couldn’t read. Eventually she said, ‘You’re sure?’

  He shrugged. ‘It looks exactly the same. And what are the chances of a stranger turning up here and coincidentally treasuring a copy of just the chess piece your sister adopted as her lucky charm?’