A Shadowed Evil Read online

  Of making that perpetrator die just as Aeleis had done: with her lungs slowly filling with liquid until she could no longer draw breath.

  But what did Cyrille de Picus have to do with Aeleis and Parsifal? Josse was fuming silently, frustrated. Oh, he could hazard a guess, but guessing was easy.

  He had to find proof.

  Helewise, waking to find herself alone, had swiftly dressed and gone out to greet the morning. She had a task to perform; one she didn’t really want to do. Better get on with it, then, she told herself.

  First she crept along into the heart of the family’s quarters to the little open hall where Cyrille’s work-basket had been put. There was the cushion on which she’d been working, and there, as Helewise had suspected, was the pulled, amber-coloured thread of wool that exactly matched the piece of fluffy fibre that Josse found adhering to Queen Eleanor.

  Then she went back to the other side of the house.

  She heard voices coming from the solar, and hurried along to see who it was. Editha sat on the seat beneath the south-facing window, with Jenna beside her and Emma sitting at her feet. All three looked up as Helewise approached.

  ‘We were just remarking,’ Editha said after they had exchanged greetings, ‘that this lovely, light room will now serve the purpose for which Father had it built, now that—’

  ‘Editha!’ Jenna hissed, with a glance at Helewise.

  Editha ignored her. ‘Now that Cyrille is dead,’ she went on firmly. ‘Jenna, it’s no good pretending, and I for one don’t intend to. I won’t be as unchristian and unforgiving as to say I’m relieved she’s dead, but she is, and, as far as we can tell, it was a terrible accident, so nobody has anything to feel guilty about.’ A smile spread across her face. ‘But we can use this room now, all of us, without the fear of being accosted by Cyrille as soon as we come in and, for politeness’s sake, either joining in with whatever mindlessly mundane activity she’s doing or having to listen to her ceaseless chatter.’

  ‘I had noticed,’ Helewise said carefully, ‘that, more often than not, Cyrille would be in here by herself.’

  ‘Yes, she was,’ Emma agreed.

  ‘Was she—’ Oh, this was difficult. ‘Was she on her own the day she fell?’

  Jenna’s eyes shot to meet hers. ‘She was indeed,’ she said coolly. ‘If you’re wondering if one of us could have crept up behind her and given her a push, we didn’t.’

  ‘I wasn’t—’

  ‘Yes, you were,’ Editha said calmly, ‘but don’t worry, it’s something that has already occurred to all of us, too.’ She smiled. ‘The only people whose whereabouts can’t be verified by at least one witness are you and Isabelle, Helewise. So, you see, we might ask you the same question: did you push her?’

  ‘No,’ Helewise said.

  ‘And neither did my mother,’ Jenna said angrily.

  There was an embarrassed silence.

  ‘Since we have broached the subject,’ Helewise said eventually, ‘why don’t we discuss it openly? Not in an accusing manner, but simply to demonstrate that no malice was done?’

  ‘I think that’s a good idea,’ Editha said. ‘So: Philomena and Emma were setting out the children’s needlework, which they were going to get on with when they came back inside. They were playing—’

  ‘Yes, I heard them,’ Helewise interrupted, remembering. ‘I was resting in my room, and I heard them giggling.’

  ‘Jenna was with Father,’ Editha continued, ‘and you said, Jenna, that Agnes helped you bathe him?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jenna said curtly.

  ‘Were you with him all that afternoon?’ Helewise asked.

  ‘No, we left him to sleep. But you’re surely not suggesting he got out of bed, shuffled along to the solar, just happened to find Cyrille leaning out of the north window and gave her a shove?’

  Helewise lifted her chin. Jenna’s antipathy was affecting her. ‘I’d have said it was unlikely until last night,’ she replied. ‘Now, we do at least realize he’s capable of doing so.’

  ‘He only managed to walk with Herbert’s help, and propping himself up with his stick!’ Jenna protested.

  ‘But he might not be as weak as he’s let us think,’ Editha said with a frown, ‘especially if he wanted us to believe him incapable of – er, of that.’

  Emma was shaking her head. ‘Great-grandfather Hugh wouldn’t kill anybody,’ she said in a tremulous whisper. ‘He wouldn’t!’ she repeated, when nobody commented.

  Helewise looked at her compassionately. ‘People are capable of extreme acts when they feel there has been a grave injustice, or when their loved ones are threatened,’ she said.

  ‘But all he’s accused her of is lying about being Olivar’s mother!’ Emma cried.

  Helewise looked at Editha, then at Jenna. Like her, they knew; they had been in the Old Hall last night, when Emma had gone to bed. Would it be right to tell her now?

  I don’t care, she thought. ‘Emma,’ she began, turning back to the young woman, ‘I’m afraid Cyrille was guilty of rather more than that. It can’t be proved without any doubt, but it appears it was she who smothered Peter Southey, since the piece of fluff found on the chess piece matches one of the wools in the needlepoint cushion she had just completed. But, perhaps even more unforgivable, she was trying to drive Olivar out of his mind by dressing up as some fearful fiend, or monster, and creeping into his room in the night.’

  Emma was white-faced and shaking her head in disbelief. ‘Why would she do something so horrible?’ she whispered. ‘To her own little boy! Oh!’

  ‘But he wasn’t her own,’ Helewise said. ‘As it appears you already know, that, too, was established last night, and it is, I believe, why she had to get rid of him. She married Herbert pretending to be Olivar’s mother, and then presumably persuaded him that it would be best if he adopted the boy as his ward and, naturally, also his heir. She did that, I would guess, to ensure the security of her own position; she was Olivar’s mother, he was the son and heir. But then she discovered she was pregnant; or, rather, she believed she was. And, with a true son of hers and Herbert’s in her belly – she would have convinced herself it was a boy – suddenly Olivar was redundant.’

  The harsh, cruel word echoed through the room.

  ‘Redundant,’ Editha whispered. ‘What a thing to say about a child.’

  ‘I’m sorry if it offends you, but—’ Helewise began.

  Editha looked at her. ‘Oh, it doesn’t offend me,’ she said softly. ‘It’s exactly how Cyrille would have seen it.’

  Editha and Jenna were talking quietly to Emma, comforting her, but Helewise barely heard. She was thinking about Hugh, and the startling return to sense and sanity, if not to physical strength, that he had demonstrated the previous evening.

  She was thinking, too, about coincidence: the coincidence of his recovering his memory – and one particular, very relevant and highly condemning memory – a little over a day after Cyrille’s death.

  What she was trying very hard not to think was that, in an extraordinary way, Cyrille de Picus had been exerting some sort of power over the old man, ensuring that his fog of confusion steadily increased so that he would never manage to tell his family the damning fact he knew about her: that she wasn’t Olivar’s mother and had lied to them all.

  But of course she wasn’t doing that, Helewise told herself firmly. People couldn’t control others in that way. Such a thing wasn’t possible.

  Was it?

  Josse and Meggie were back at the gates, about to go through into the courtyard. But then Josse stopped, and Meggie did too.

  ‘Go on in,’ he said to her.

  ‘Are you not coming?’

  ‘No. There’s something I want to check.’

  ‘Shall I come?’

  He thought about it. ‘No, thank you. I’m better alone. I have to work out something in my mind.’

  ‘Very well.’ She went on into the yard.

  ‘Will you tell Helewise I’ve gone to see Gregor
y?’ he called after her.

  ‘Gregory.’

  ‘Aye. She’ll know who I mean and where I’ve gone.’

  Meggie raised her hand in acknowledgement and went up the steps to the door.

  Josse strode on down the path, soon meeting the track that wound its way down the long slope towards Lewes. He couldn’t get the image of those footprints out of his mind. When he added in the small hole in the grass beside the prints, it seemed to suggest one thing.

  And there was another reason for visiting Gregory. Hadn’t he promised to try to recall why the name Cyrille de Picus was familiar, and what it had to do with some distressing event? It was something to do with a marriage or a betrothal, Gregory said, and I have the feeling that something very bad happened …

  As he had hoped, Gregory was on watch in his little booth beside the gate. He greeted Josse’s approach with a friendly wave.

  ‘I’m glad you came by,’ he called out as Josse walked up to him. ‘I’ve remembered, see.’ Josse’s spirits rose hopefully. ‘I was going to come up to Southfire and seek you out,’ Gregory continued before Josse could ask him to elucidate, ‘but you know how it is when you’re busy, you’re trying to attend to half a dozen things all at once, and of late I’ve been fair rushed off my feet.’

  ‘But you’ve got something to tell me?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I just said so!’ He shook his head in mock-reproof. ‘Come on in and sit with me in my guard house – well, that’s what the holy brethren call it, but it’s just a hut, really.’ He ushered Josse inside, pulling up a stool for him. ‘It’s not much, but we’ll be out of the wind.’ He glanced back out through the door and, verifying that no black-robed figures were watching, drew out a flask from a little shelf set low down in the wall. ‘Drop of something to warm the blood?’

  Josse accepted. The fire water almost took his throat out.

  ‘Powerful stuff,’ Gregory observed, taking a much larger swig and smacking his lips. Then, without preamble, he said, ‘I knew I recognized the name, and it’s all come back to me. Cyrille de Picus was betrothed to a young man – quite a bit younger than her, truth to tell, because she was hanging on hand a bit and well past the age when a pretty little girl gets snapped up by some keen lad of a suitor. Anyway, the man wouldn’t have her – didn’t even agree to meet her – and the gossips at the time said it was because he was already wildly in love with someone else, someone even older than Cyrille, if you’d credit that!’ Gregory sat back, a satisfied smile on his face.

  Aye, I can credit it only too well, Josse thought sadly.

  ‘Anyway,’ Gregory went on, ‘she – Cyrille – took it very hard. Oh, of course it was very humiliating for her to be rejected in favour of someone else, but there was no need for her to do what she did.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Ah, now, sir, this is only rumour, you know, and I’m quite certain the lady did nothing of the kind. I’m the last man on God’s good earth to go placing any credence in malicious gossip.’ He sniffed, nose in the air, assuming the demeanour of someone who has just been unfairly accused.

  ‘Aye, I’m sure you are,’ Josse said, trying to hide his impatience. ‘But why not tell me the rumour anyway?’

  As if he couldn’t wait to repeat it, and had only needed to be persuaded, instantly Gregory leaned closer and said, ‘They say she was quite determined, and managed to find out eventually where her rival lived. She made a dolly, see, in the likeness of the lady who’d taken away her sweetheart – not that there could have been any of that between Cyrille and the young man, seeing as they never even met – and she put a curse on the lady!’ He didn’t so much speak the last six words as mouth them. ‘That doll was found head-down in a bucket of water, so the story goes, because she – Cyrille – wanted her to die by drowning.’ He paused dramatically. ‘Goes without saying that I don’t believe a word of it,’ he said self-righteously. ‘Far as I know, the lady’s alive and well, and I pray the good Lord above will keep her that way.’

  I only wish you were right, Josse thought sadly.

  Gregory was muttering something about hoping Josse wouldn’t think the less of him for repeating such a scurrilous tale, and being sure Josse would appreciate that it would avoid distress if he were to refrain from telling any of the good monks what he’d just been told, but Josse shut him out.

  He was reflecting on what struck him as a great irony: Cyrille didn’t kill Peter Southey because she knew he was really Parsifal de Chanteloup, the man she was meant to marry and who rejected her. She couldn’t have done so, because she didn’t even recognize him. She killed him in the mistaken belief that he was Aeleis’s son and would do the child she thought she was carrying out of the inheritance.

  Parsifal, on the other hand, Josse’s sad thought went on, had come for Cyrille. Somehow he had discovered where she was – perhaps a friend, or a friend of a friend, had mentioned having attended the marriage of Aeleis’s nephew Herbert to the widow of William Crowburgh, and mentioned the bride’s name. Perhaps Parsifal had been searching for her all this time, and finally been successful. Nobody would ever know, now, and how he had located Cyrille didn’t really matter. But, blaming her as he did for Aeleis’s sickness, because he believed she had put a curse on her, he would not have given up until he found her.

  Had he set out to confront her, accuse her or kill her? Josse wondered. Surely not to kill her, for, when Parsifal had left Aeleis in the care of the Hawkenlye nuns, he had had no suspicion that she was going to die: Aeleis had made sure of that. Perhaps, Josse thought with a shiver, he simply came to do exactly what Aeleis said he’d do: conjure up an invisible reflecting glass, hold it up against the curse that Cyrille placed on Aeleis, and turn it back sevenfold on the originator.

  Cyrille drowned, Josse mused. Perhaps Parsifal succeeded …

  He couldn’t bear to dwell on that. Instead, he turned his mind to the other reason he had come to the priory.

  Breaking into Gregory’s interminable chatter, he said, ‘How’s the leper getting on? Has he recovered a little strength under the monks’ care?’

  Gregory laughed. ‘Oh, him! He’s gone.’

  ‘Gone? But I thought lepers were always detained, and—’

  ‘Come with me, and you’ll find out,’ Gregory said.

  He led the way over to the infirmary. The black-clad infirmarian whom Josse had seen on his previous visit looked up, recognized him and, smiling, came across to talk to him.

  ‘I’m Brother Anselm,’ he said. ‘You’re the man who brought the leper in to us.’

  ‘I am,’ Josse agreed. ‘I hear he’s left.’

  Taking Josse a little apart, away from the many patients lying in their cots and straining to hear, Brother Anselm went on, ‘You are surprised, I expect, that we should permit a leper to leave our care and protection and allow him to go back among the general population?’

  ‘A little, aye, although it’s not for me to question what you do, and I do know the sickness isn’t as readily passed on as people believe.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ the infirmarian agreed, ‘although we do have a policy of keeping sufferers isolated as much as we can. But your man wasn’t a leper.’

  ‘Not – but he was missing fingers and toes!’

  Brother Anselm smiled. ‘Yes, but not as a result of leprosy. He’d lost his toes to frostbite, which is sadly all too common among the destitute homeless who perpetually travel our roads, out in all weather, frequently with no shelter and no fire to warm them.’ He shook his head, as if despairing of the ways of the world. ‘We did what we could for him. By and large, he just needed some good, nourishing food and a few sound nights’ sleep. We found a pair of boy’s boots that more or less fitted him to protect his feet from further damage, got the blacksmith to re-tip his staff and sent him on his way.’

  ‘When did he leave?’

  Brother Anselm looked surprised at the question, but said mildly, ‘The day before yesterday, as far as I recall. He ate a good
meal in the morning, then, when I came back later to see how he was, Luke told me he’d left.’

  Thanking him, trying to take a very hasty leave without causing offence, finally Josse escaped.

  As he trudged back up the hill towards Southfire Hall and the top of the downs, Josse went over it all. He knew now the identity of Cyrille’s killer, or, rather, he knew who he was, if not his name. Did he hold her down under the water? Did he do no more than stand there and watch her die?

  And why did he want her dead?

  Josse walked on. He had no idea where he was going, for nobody at the priory had known where the beggar was heading. He’d been seen clambering up the slope leading to the higher ground to the south-west of the town, but that was all.

  He will be lurking nearby, Josse told himself. He will not be satisfied with her death; he will want someone to know why she had to die.

  Hoping that he was right, and that he might be that someone who received the explanation, he went on.

  Presently he came to a stand of stunted hazel trees, all bending over as if bowing before an undetectable wind. Within their shelter, his staff by his side and his legs stretched out in front of him and casually crossed, sat the beggar.

  He smiled at Josse, patting the grass beside him in invitation. ‘Come and join me. It’s quite dry under here,’ he said.

  Josse sat down. ‘I’ve just come from Lewes Priory,’ he said.

  ‘Ah,’ replied the beggar.

  ‘Before that, I stood by a dead body and saw the proof that death was brought about by drowning.’

  ‘Indeed?’ the beggar said in a tone of polite interest.

  ‘I’m wondering,’ Josse went on, ‘why someone might stand beside a woman in mortal danger, and do no more than watch as the water slowly rose up her body until she drowned.’

  ‘I could think of a few reasons,’ the beggar remarked.

  ‘He would have to hate her very much, I’m thinking.’