The Way Between the Worlds Page 26

  ‘ “Yes, I have,” she agreed readily, blushing and smiling with pleasure at being able to help. “My sister is apprenticed to our aunt, whose reputation is widely known in the fens around our home village.” ’

  I felt a pain like a knife in my guts. It was all my fault! If I’d kept my mouth shut and refrained from boasting of my latest knowledge before my sister, then she wouldn’t have told Herleva, and Herleva wouldn’t have been driven to try and do better with an even more fantastic tale of her own. Herleva would still be alive, and Elfritha would never have been poisoned. And, even worse, my beloved sister had actually bragged about me, her very words making her more suitable to test out the false Father Clement’s foul draught!

  He was shaking his head. ‘I do not know why she did not die,’ he mused. ‘The draught was made in the same way as that which killed her friend and my predecessor.’ He shot a look at Hrype. ‘What do you say, cunning man? Any suggestions?’

  Hrype, with the power of speech returned, sounded hoarse. ‘Elfritha is both sister and niece to healers,’ he said, and his voice was icy with hatred. ‘She has been given healing remedies since she was a child. It was your misfortune, false priest, to give your poison to someone who was used to the deadly ingredients, and so better able to withstand their impact.’

  The impostor nodded, as if the explanation made sense. ‘You are probably right,’ he said.

  He was concentrating intensely on Hrype. I wondered if that meant he had identified him as the main threat. I hoped so, for that would mean he was less concerned with Rollo and me. I tried once more to look at Rollo, and this time I managed it. He, too, was staring at me. He mouthed something, but the movements of his lips were so subtle that I did not pick it up. I concentrated on him, so fiercely that my head began to ache in protest. I bent all my mind to his, and then I knew what he wanted me to do.

  I wasn’t sure if I could. Turning my head slightly was one thing, but what I had to do involved far more than that. But we had to do something, and quickly. This man before us, dressed in his priest’s robes, had already demonstrated that he had power, and it was highly likely that he had already sent out a summons to his storm-raising friend. We might just be able to overcome him alone, but if both faced us, we’d have no chance.

  I tested myself. I tried to bend my knees, to let my shoulders slump. I managed both, after a fashion. Then I took a big breath and let my entire body go slack. I fell, in what must have looked exactly like a faint, and found myself lying on the damp ground.

  He was distracted, as Rollo must have known he would be. Not for long, but it was enough. The moment his fierce, intense attention slipped away from Rollo, Rollo raised his sword and leapt on him, flattening him so that he lay on his back, and then quickly straddling him, the point of his sword to the man’s throat. Hrype was only the blink of an eye behind him, dropping to his knees beside the black-clad figure.

  I thought Rollo was going to kill him. So, I believed, did Hrype, for he reached out and took hold of Rollo’s sword arm. ‘You cannot,’ he said. ‘In the eyes of the world, and, far more importantly, in the eyes of the church, this man is a priest.’

  ‘Those who knew the real Father Clement will testify that this man is no such thing!’ Rollo’s voice was hot with furious protest, and he wrested his arm out of Hrype’s grip.

  I shut my eyes. I could not bear to see him kill.

  But nothing happened.

  After a moment, I opened my eyes again.

  Hrype’s silver eyes were fixed on Rollo’s. Hrype said, very quietly, ‘Those who know the real Father Clement are not here. You will have been arrested, tried and hanged for priest murder before they even get here.’

  ‘What do you suggest, then?’ Rollo demanded harshly.

  ‘We bind him and take him back to the abbey,’ Hrype said, untying a length of rope belt from his waist and handing it to Rollo. ‘We make our accusations, and we send for the sheriff.’

  I had never thought to hear Hrype propose anything so mundane. He does not normally have much time for the forces of law and order.

  Rollo had pushed the impostor on to his side – I wondered briefly why he was making no protest – and Hrype was tying his wrists. ‘We will have to—’ Rollo began.

  Then the impostor suddenly gathered himself together, lunged up at Hrype and hit him very hard on the side of his jaw. Hrype went over like a felled tree and lay very still. The impostor flung himself at me, and I felt the sharp prick of steel on my neck.

  ‘Yes, it’s a blade,’ he said, right in my ear. ‘I should keep very still, if I were you.’

  Rollo stood before us both, his sword pointing at the false priest’s heart.

  ‘Kill him!’ I yelled. ‘He’s evil, he tried to poison my sister, and he doesn’t deserve to live! Kill him!’

  ‘Fierce words,’ the impostor remarked, the arm hooked around my throat tightening and the point of the knife pushing in just under my ear. ‘But useless, I’m afraid. If he lunges at me, he may indeed kill me, but you will die first. He won’t risk that. The man loves you,’ he added pleasantly. ‘Isn’t that wonderful?’

  He could not see my hands, and I was feeling with my right one for the buckles on my leather satchel. I always carry the items a healer needs for simple treatments, and among them is a short, sharp blade. I use it to open up festering wounds, or to edge further apart the sides of a deep cut so that I can clean it properly. Once I even used it to slice into a lad’s finger and extract a big splinter that had gone right under the skin.

  Cuts hurt less when the knife is keen, and I also carry a small whetstone. I always keep my little blade very, very sharp.

  I had the satchel open, and I had located the blade. I took firm hold of it and, meeting Rollo’s eyes, made sure he could see what I intended to do.

  Then I wrested myself to one side, as far as I could, and swung my blade up. I knew I made contact, for I felt his warm skin under my hand. Instantly, the knife point under my ear drove in, and I felt my own blood flooding out.

  I swung my hand again and again, trying to make contact, but with each sweep the arc was less. I saw him above me, fury in his eyes, a long cut on his chin where my flailing blade had caught him.

  He had his knife pointing at my heart, and I knew I was about to die. I held my little blade in front of me – if only I could hit a vital place, I might . . .

  There was a roar from behind the black figure of the impostor. It was Rollo, demanding his attention.

  Not knowing what his name was, Rollo had shouted out, ‘Devil!’

  The impostor turned. He and Rollo faced each other, one armed with a knife, one with a short sword. But the one with the lesser weapon had magic in him.

  Quite how much, I did not yet appreciate.

  He stood looking at Rollo, and he began to laugh. ‘You believe there are two of us, don’t you? I, who with my background can readily impersonate a priest, and my companion, the wild-haired man of magic, the storm-raiser.’ He lifted both arms and, in a language I did not know, screamed out some words to the wide blue sky. From nowhere there was a great rumble of thunder, and I felt the earth shake.

  ‘You fools!’ cried the black-clad figure. ‘We are one and the same!’ Then he lowered his left arm and pointed it at Rollo.

  He might have been full of wild, unnatural power, but Rollo was younger, fitter and a fighter. He was so fast that I did not see the strike, only its result. The dark robes fluttered as the body hit the ground, and the unknown man who had taken the identity of Father Clement fell dead.

  I looked up at Rollo.

  He had just killed a man, and I knew for sure that the dead impostor was not his first victim. It should have given me pause. But as I stared up at him standing there over the corpse of the false Father Clement, his whole body still alight and glowing with blood lust – killing lust – I knew it made no difference.

  I could try to justify myself and remind myself that Rollo had killed to save the lives of th
e three of us, not to mention taking vengeance on the man who had killed the real Father Clement and Herleva, and who had tried to poison Elfritha too. But that justification would have meant I was being untruthful with myself, and Edild always says that, no matter who else you lie to, you must never lie to yourself.

  I loved Rollo. I had loved him since first I met him. I would go on loving him, no matter what. He was my friend, my protector, my responsibility; he had just saved my life, and I had saved his. He would very soon also be my lover; that was already certain. There was no going back.

  In that instant I understood something about the man I loved. I understood, too, that I would never change him. If we had a future together, I was going to have to find a way to accept it. Accept him.

  I knew it was not going to be easy, for I was a healer and my instinct was to save life, not to take it. But I also knew without a doubt that I would manage it.

  Rollo came over and knelt beside me. He put a hand to the cut under my ear, pressing hard. Presently, he said, ‘It’s stopped bleeding. Have you a dressing in your satchel?’

  I nodded. He seemed to appreciate that I was temporarily unable to do much for myself, so he took out a pad of linen and the small bottle of lavender oil that I always keep wrapped inside the linen.

  ‘You should put some of the lavender—’

  ‘On the pad. Yes, I know. You told me.’ He sounded as if he were smiling. He wound a strip of cloth around the pad to hold it in place, tying it round my neck. Then, with one more look at me, he went to see to Hrype.

  I’m the healer, I thought. That’s my job. I tried to get up, found that I could and went to join him. Hrype had a huge bruise on his jaw, but his eyelids were flickering and he was regaining consciousness.

  He struggled to sit up and looked around, seeing the dead body of the impostor. He glanced up briefly at Rollo, who nodded. Hrype murmured something, and Rollo smiled. It occurred to me that Hrype had probably said well done.

  ‘What shall we do with him?’ I asked.

  Hrype had staggered over towards the water. I thought he was going to vomit – people often do after they’ve been knocked out – but in fact he was just having a look. He glanced around at the surrounding landscape and nodded. ‘We’ll do what he would have asked for if he could,’ he said.

  Then I knew.

  They wouldn’t let me help. They were, for once, totally united, and they absolutely forbade it. So I sat on the bank over the fen and watched.

  Hrype made the honeysuckle ropes; Rollo cut and trimmed the hazel stakes. Then Hrype made a wound on the body so that it had received three. One from each of us . . . They carried the dead man out into the fen, so that I could no longer see clearly what they were doing. I guessed, though. They would have hammered in the hazel stakes and tied him down, under several feet of water.

  It was very unlikely that anyone would ever find him.

  POSTSCRIPT

  We left Chatteris Abbey, Edild coming with us, for Elfritha was well on the way to regaining her health. Besides, we – and only we – knew that my beloved sister was no longer in any danger. I don’t know what the nuns thought had become of the man they believed to be Father Clement. I was quite bothered at the thought of those women, one or two of whom I’d met and really liked, abruptly being robbed of their priest, but then I remembered that he wasn’t a priest at all and I didn’t feel so bad.

  We went down to the waterside where the boatmen waited, Hrype and Edild walking together ahead, Rollo and I following. They, I guessed, would return to Aelf Fen. Edild had been away from her patients for too long, and, with me absent too, the villagers who’d had the misfortune to fall sick over the past few days would have had to see to themselves. Hrype, I knew, would be anxious about Froya. Even though he must have longed to disappear with Edild somewhere out in the wilds where nobody knew them, it just wasn’t possible.

  We asked around and soon found a ferryman who was bound for Ely and then on to Wicken, and he said he was willing to take passengers.

  My aunt spoke quietly to me. ‘You’re not coming with us,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I agreed.

  She smiled, very sweetly. ‘Your sister is very impressed,’ she said, nodding in Rollo’s direction.

  I felt myself flush. I just said, ‘Oh.’

  Edild gave me a quick, hard hug. ‘Go and enjoy it,’ she whispered.

  ‘I don’t think Hrype likes him much,’ I said glumly.

  ‘Hrype thinks a lot better of him than he did at first,’ she countered quickly, ‘and it’s early days yet. There’s no hurry.’

  Rollo came to stand beside me, and we watched as Edild and Hrype got into the boat and it slowly pulled away from the shore. ‘Give my love to the family,’ I called, and she waved a hand in acknowledgement.

  When they were almost out of sight, Rollo took my hand. ‘Come on.’

  I looked up at him. ‘Where are we going?’

  He grinned. ‘Does it matter?’

  We, too, took a ferry, and ours went just the short distance from Chatteris island to the mainland. There we wandered off into the warm late spring countryside, stopping in a small village to purchase some provisions. Then we walked further into the isolation of quiet fields, woods and little streams, until there was nobody about but us. Then we stopped.

  I hadn’t really thought that he would stay.

  We had a magical two days together and one even more magical night. We said so many things to each other, told tales out of our pasts, made promises, much as all new lovers do. We exchanged tokens, I giving him a wristband crafted of fine strips of plaited leather that I’d made one dark night in winter; it was not much, for I had little. I fastened it round his wrist, and he touched it as reverently as if it had been encrusted with jewels. He gave me a ring. It was gold, rather heavy, and depicted a serpent with its mouth open devouring its own tail. He said it had belonged to his grandmother, who, like his mother, was a strega.

  It was magic, he added nonchalantly.

  ‘You know I have to go, don’t you?’ he said on our last morning together. He was holding my face between his two hands, staring down at me, his dark-brown eyes intent on mine.

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered.

  ‘I have to tell him what we discovered, for he sent me to find out if a rumour was true, and now we know that it was.’

  ‘Yes,’ I repeated.

  ‘He needs to know that the man who raised the storm is dead.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He will be impressed when I tell him I couldn’t have done it without a simple-looking village healer girl,’ he added. ‘He’ll probably think I’m joking. He likes a joke.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that all you’re going to say to me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He paused, his smile deepening. ‘So what if I said let’s make love again? What would you say to that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Parting from him wasn’t so funny. It wasn’t funny at all.

  I went back to Gurdyman’s house, where I now am. I don’t know how much he knows about me and my Norman, as Hrype still insists on calling him, but when I get sad, Gurdyman is kind, and you can’t ask more than that.

  I am kept busy, for Gurdyman drives me hard and there is so much to learn. Sometimes I go and visit my family and friends in Aelf Fen, and I shall be going for a longer stay soon. The bad weather is coming, and Edild will need another pair of hands to deal with the sicknesses that invariably follow.

  I shall miss Gurdyman, and the twisty-turny house, and my lessons, and the excitement of living in a big, busy, bustling place like Cambridge. But I’ll be back here before too long, and in the meantime it’ll be lovely to be home again. Zarina and Haward’s baby was born back in May, and so far I’ve hardly seen him – his name’s Ailsi – so that’s something to look forward to. There are also my other niece and nephew, my sister Goda’s children, and it’s high time I got to know them better. And my parents will be happy to see
me, for I’m sure they miss me.

  I know that it doesn’t matter where I am, because, as soon as he can, Rollo will find me. I just wish I knew when that might be.

  Maybe I’ll have to ask the runes.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles records as follows for the year 1091:

  When the king William was out of England, the king Malcolm travelled from Scotland here into England and raided across a great part of it. Then when King William heard of this in Normandy, he came back to England and immediately ordered his army to be called out, both the ship-army and land-army; but before he came to Scotland, four days before Michaelmas, almost all the ship-army wretchedly perished.

  And in 1092:

  In this year the king William travelled north to Carlisle with a very great army, and restored the town and raised the castle, and set the castle with his men, and sent very many peasants there with women and with livestock to live there to till the land.