A Shadowed Evil Page 26

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the beggar agreed. ‘Perhaps she had done something almost as dreadful to him, would you imagine?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Josse agreed cautiously.

  ‘Supposing I set out a possible scenario?’ the beggar suggested.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Let us say,’ said the beggar, making himself more comfortable, ‘that he was related to her; her uncle, perhaps, for argument’s sake. Her dead father’s brother, asked by her father when he died to take care of her, for the father was a poor man with little in the way of wealth or possessions to leave to his only child.’

  ‘Very well,’ Josse said.

  ‘There they are together, the uncle and the niece,’ the beggar went on. ‘The uncle, although childless and unmarried himself, with no desire whatsoever for either wife or offspring, nevertheless has assumed responsibility for a niece he doesn’t even like very much. The niece, however, far from being grateful, makes up her mind that the uncle is far more trouble than he’s worth, and decides she will rid herself of him as quickly as she can.’

  ‘How could she hope to do that?’ Josse asked, intrigued despite himself. ‘Is she not a child still?’

  ‘Oh, no. She’s a woman now.’

  ‘But how can she throw her uncle out of his own home?’

  The beggar turned to him, face drawn into lines of mock-sorrow. ‘Because he’s not very well, this poor uncle. He suffers from episodes of madness. When these fits are upon him, he believes that the devil takes over his body, so that the whites of his eyes darken to red as Lucifer’s unholy hellfire rips through his body, and his water turns scarlet as he tries to expel it.’

  The beggar’s voice had risen, and a faint flush had coloured his pale cheeks. ‘It sounds most distressing,’ Josse said, trying to keep his tone calm, interested. ‘So what did the niece do?’

  ‘She waited until he had another fit of madness, and she locked him in his room.’ Once more in control, the beggar spoke dispassionately. ‘Soon he was lost within himself, helpless, and, without anyone to ensure he ate and drank, soon he became enfeebled. After many days, the niece, coming at last to see how he was, found him lying on the floor, barely able to move. By dead of night, she dragged him outside, bundled him up into a cart and took him to a run-down, out-of-the-way monastery and dumped him there.’ He paused, took one or two breaths, and then, still in the same calm tone, resumed his tale.

  ‘The monks were unsophisticated and ignorant. The care was rudimentary, ignorant and brutal, with barely anything to eat and many beatings to expel the devil. The uncle – oh, poor uncle! – was incarcerated for months, and the months grew to years, and, while he was helpless and sick, the niece made off with whatever of his wealth was portable and deserted him. She’d suffered a grave disappointment, however, that niece, because the pleasant little house she believed would be hers was only rented.’ He smiled, then chuckled softly. ‘Ah, how unwise it is not to ask the right questions.’ He looked up. ‘Where was I?’

  ‘The uncle was shut away with the ignorant monks and the niece had run away with all his possessions,’ Josse supplied promptly.

  ‘Thank you. When the uncle was at long, long last deemed well enough to be released, he found himself homeless, penniless, friendless, without family. Still in feeble health, he had no option but to take to the road as a beggar.’

  He glanced down at his hands. ‘He lost some fingers and some toes because of the white freeze that eats into flesh,’ he said conversationally. ‘That was the first, terrible winter, before he had any idea of how to cope with destitution. People who saw him thought he had leprosy and they shunned him, shut him out, threatened him with sticks and threw stones at him to drive him away.’ He sighed, and fell silent.

  Josse was thinking hard. The beggar had allowed him and Helewise – and, to begin with, the monks at Lewes Priory – to believe he was a leper, he recalled, and he had a good idea why. It was because, clever man, he wanted the outside world to believe that, from then on, he would be held in isolation by the monks at the priory, and therefore nobody could possibly suspect him of having stood by and watched Cyrille die.

  Was it murder? Josse wondered now. The beggar hadn’t so much as touched her. Possibly, too, she was already dying as a result of that terrible fall.

  Then he thought about madness. About a sort of mania that came periodically, and that made men – and women – strangers to themselves, so that they performed wild, cruel, uncharacteristic acts. Was such an affliction in the blood, so that it was likely to run through a family and appear, for example, in both an uncle and a niece?

  Cyrille de Picus had killed Peter Southey, and tried to drive her little stepson out of his mind, because she wanted no other claimants to the inheritance she believed belonged to the child she thought she was carrying. Before that, she had been driven to such fury by the man who rejected her in favour of another woman that she placed a terrible curse on her rival. She was ruthless and cruel, and, when crossed, her revenge knew no limits.

  Perhaps, now, Josse understood why …

  But, on the other hand, perhaps this beggar was merely passing the time by telling him a horror story, and there wasn’t a word of truth in it, and it certainly didn’t describe himself or Cyrille.

  Perhaps Cyrille had no excuse. Perhaps she was simply evil.

  Time had gone by. Josse didn’t know how much; he had the strangest feeling that he had just passed a period of minutes, or hours, outside normal time.

  He got to his feet, and started walking slowly away from the hazel trees and back to the track.

  ‘Goodbye,’ called the beggar softly. ‘Go well, Josse d’Acquin.’

  Josse raised a hand in farewell.

  Helewise was with the children, kneeling on the floor of the solar and trying to interest them in a game. But neither the three little girls nor Olivar wanted to play. All of them were listless, and, as the afternoon went on, increasingly distressed. Finally Helewise said, ‘Something’s the matter with you all, isn’t it?’

  Brigida looked up at her out of wide, frightened eyes. Philippa began to cry.

  ‘It’s just us here, so there’s only me to hear,’ Helewise went on persuasively, ‘and, whatever it is you’re all so worried and upset about, I’ll do my best to help.’

  Cecily looked at her little cousins, then at Helewise. ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  And, at last, it came out. How the girls, led by Cecily, played a trick on Cyrille, wanting to get even with her because she was so horrid to Olivar. The little girls planned it. They were going to yell up from the ground below the solar to get Cyrille’s attention, then throw snowballs at her.

  They positioned themselves under the west wall, where the ground was much nearer to the level of the windows. ‘We could never have thrown a snowball right up to the north window, it’s far too high!’ Cecily said, an expression on her lovely little face that said, Everyone but a silly fool would have known that!

  But Cyrille looked out of the wrong window. Not seeing anyone down there, but still hearing the children’s shouts, she leaned further out. And further. And still further, until there was no going back.

  Shaken, Helewise forced herself to sound calm and reassuring. ‘You didn’t mean her to fall,’ she said very firmly. ‘It was very naughty to scheme to throw snowballs at her, and I’m afraid I’ll have to tell your mothers, girls.’ Three little faces fell. ‘But I will tell them how very, very sorry you all are, and say that, in my opinion, your remorse and your distress are punishment enough. Although,’ she added quickly, ‘your mothers may not see it that way.’

  ‘What are you going to do with us?’ Brigida piped up.

  ‘I am not going to do anything,’ Helewise replied. ‘But I suggest you three go and find your mothers, tell them what you’ve just told me, and, in a little while, I’ll go and find them and speak up for you.’

  ‘You’re not going to beat us?’ Cecily asked.

  ‘No, of course
not!’ Helewise exclaimed, about to laugh when she realized Cecily was in earnest. ‘You don’t get beaten here, do you?’

  Cecily hung her head, but Brigida whispered, ‘We don’t. But Olivar does. His mother beats him a lot. That’s why we—’ A jab in the ribs from her cousin’s elbow stopped her. ‘Owww!’ she yelled, scowling ferociously at Cecily.

  The little girls got up and hurried away. Olivar crept closer to Helewise. She thought he was going to make some comment about the girls’ confession; tell her, perhaps, that he hadn’t known what they were planning.

  But when eventually he spoke – in a very small voice – it was something quite different.

  ‘I saw her fall,’ he whispered.

  Oh, no! ‘Did you, Olivar?’

  He nodded. ‘I knew Cecily and the others were going to do something, but I didn’t dare get involved because I was afraid of what she’d do when she found out. So I stayed in here, hiding behind the hanging over there.’ He pointed to the corner of the solar. ‘I was going to run away but then She came in and got out her sewing, and it was too late and I had to go on standing there, or else she’d have seen me coming out of my hiding place and she’d have demanded to know what I thought I was doing and I’d have told her because I always do in the end and then the girls would have been in terrible trouble too.’ The frightened, tumbling words stopped. Olivar, panting, was trembling.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Helewise began, but he wasn’t listening.

  He looked straight up at her. ‘The house didn’t like her,’ he said. ‘I know it can’t have done, because I saw what it did.’ He drew a shaky breath. ‘She was leaning out of the window, trying to see who was calling, and I crept out to watch. I was standing right behind her.’ Briefly he shut his eyes, screwing them up tight. Then, opening them wide and staring straight into hers, he said, ‘The house didn’t want her here any more. It gave a sort of a shake, as if to rid itself of her, and she fell.’

  Helewise couldn’t speak. She wouldn’t have known what to say, even if she could. Part of her was shocked to hear such an extraordinary story; one, moreover, which Olivar had told with total conviction, clearly convinced that it was what had really happened.

  It can’t be true, her logical mind was insisting. Houses don’t have likes and dislikes! They don’t shake themselves so that nasty people fall out of their windows and drown!

  This one does.

  Who said that? Helewise looked wildly around, but nobody was there. Belatedly realizing that she had done nothing to comfort Olivar after his painful revelation, she knelt down beside him and took him in her arms, wrapping him in an enfolding hug. Instantly he responded, clinging on to her as if he would never let go.

  A small boy, she thought, who had lost his mother and then his father, and been left to the cruel, manipulative, evil vicissitudes of a woman who had tried to terrify him into madness. A child who, deprived of the love that was his right, was silently crying out for it.

  Surreptitiously, Helewise wiped her eyes. In that moment, as the hot fury and the fierce, protective love soared through her, she sympathized entirely with the house.

  She could cheerfully have pushed Cyrille de Picus out of a window herself.

  POSTSCRIPT

  Aeleis and Parsifal were to be buried side by side at Hawkenlye Abbey.

  A cart had been prepared to carry Parsifal’s body up from Southfire Hall. The old groom had worked hard to turn the simple conveyance into something that was suitable for its grave purpose, scrubbing the boards and laying out a bed of clean straw, and he had groomed the sturdy horse that was to pull the cart till he shone like a thoroughbred. Parsifal lay in a pale oak coffin over which had been draped a banner bearing the family’s crest: ‘For he was a member of this family,’ Hugh had decreed, ‘married as he was to my youngest daughter.’ Josse and Helewise escorted the cart to the abbey, where the body would be placed beside Aeleis’s until the day of the interment.

  Josse and Helewise rode on home.

  Hugh, Isabelle, Editha, Jenna and Emma made the journey to Hawkenlye for the burial. They had organized a means of transport for Uncle Hugh, piling a palliasse, cushions, pelts and blankets on to a wagon so that he was able to travel in a degree of comfort. For Editha, a well-padded chair had been put up on the wagon beside him. Hugh’s family rode beside him, as if he were a king on a progress. They arrived at the abbey late one afternoon; the interment would be carried out the following morning.

  Aeleis and Parsifal were laid to rest, side by side as Aeleis had requested, in a plot out beyond the abbey’s regular graveyard, on the fringes of the forest. There was no priest to speak the words over the grave. People said, probably with justification, that there weren’t any priests left in England. Abbess Caliste led a simple service, speaking eloquently and movingly of the pair’s great love for each other, and a small choir of nuns sang a soft, gentle chant into the bright morning.

  When it was over, Josse invited his uncle and his kinswomen to the House in the Woods, for funeral meats, drink, and to stay for a few days to get to know his side of the family.

  ‘Not me, nephew, thank you just the same,’ Uncle Hugh said. ‘I shall head back to Southfire Hall, and Editha shall come with me. I appear to be my old self again, by some miracle I don’t begin to understand, but the fact remains I’m an old man, and old men need their own hearths and their own beds. One night away from home is quite enough! No offence,’ he added.

  Josse grinned. ‘None taken. Of course, uncle. You’ll be back by nightfall if you leave now.’ He took his uncle’s hands. ‘I’ll come and see you soon, I promise.’

  ‘Good,’ Hugh replied. ‘Bring that lovely wife of yours.’

  ‘I promise that, too.’

  As Josse and Helewise led Isabelle, Jenna and Emma through the forest to the House in the Woods, the mood among them was bright, with a lot of chatter and even some merriment. There was a palpable sense of relief, Helewise reflected, hearing Josse laugh at some remark of Jenna’s, and, as so often happens after the sad solemnity of a funeral, the living were affected by the sheer joy of being alive. From what she knew of them, Parsifal and Aeleis were unlikely to be the sort of people who would resent others’ appreciation of the good things in the beautiful world they had just left behind.

  Back at the house, Josse was gratified to find a generous spread laid ready, and his entire household waiting to greet the guests. Busy with making the introductions, he observed Meggie approach Isabelle, and the women exchanged a warm embrace. I was right about those two, he thought with a private smile. They are going to be friends. Then Ninian made a short speech of welcome, Geoffroi carried around a tray bearing mugs of ale, and the whole group spread out into the hall, the visitors swiftly making themselves at home.

  Later, after the food had been eaten and the lively, noisy hubbub of chatter had died down a little, Isabelle beckoned to Josse and took him outside into the sunshine for a private word. She informed him tonelessly that the body of Cyrille de Picus had been quietly buried in an out-of-the-way spot where, since the imposition of the interdict, most of the dead of Lewes had apparently ended up.

  ‘Did many attend?’ Josse asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Jenna and I went with Herbert, and one of the monks from the priory mumbled a few words.’

  ‘How is he?’ Josse said softly. ‘Herbert, I mean.’

  Isabelle smiled briefly. ‘Yes, Josse, I realized that.’ She paused, gazing into the distance. ‘I can’t say,’ she admitted. ‘He’s shaken, shocked, but some part of him is relieved. The good thing,’ she hurried on, as if speaking of her son’s mood distressed her, ‘is that he and Olivar have grown close. Herbert looks upon the boy as his true son now, and will go ahead with making him his heir. Both of them need somebody to love, I think.’ Once again hurrying away from the painful ground of deep emotion, she said, ‘Herbert has explained to him that Cyrille wasn’t really his mother.’

  ‘I imagine the lad was relieved to hear t
hat.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Isabelle breathed. ‘Poor boy. The things she did to him …’ She shook her head. ‘Enough of that: it’s over, and she’s gone. Herbert has vowed to seek out Marthe de Withan’s family so that Olivar can meet his true kin,’ she went on in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘and, with any luck, find some kindly soul who’ll be able to tell him all about his real mother. My father has already started to do so,’ she added, her expression softening, ‘and he’s the best person to begin, because he obviously thought a lot of Marthe.’

  ‘He never let her memory die,’ Josse said quietly. ‘He kept on trying to say her name, even when—’

  He stopped abruptly. Even when Cyrille was doing her utmost to cloud his mind and make him forget, he had been about to say, but there was no proof of that.

  ‘Why did she do it?’ Isabelle mused aloud. ‘Oh, I don’t mean why did she try to fuddle poor Father’s wits, if indeed that’s what she did, because that’s obvious: it was to stop him revealing that she wasn’t really Olivar’s mother. What I want to know is, what drove her to do something so dangerous and malicious to poor Aeleis, and then put a cushion over Parsifal’s face and kill him?’

  Josse thought about how to reply. ‘I believe,’ he said slowly, ‘she was motivated by a great need for security.’

  ‘But—’

  He held up his hand, and Isabelle’s angry protest subsided.

  ‘Herbert told me she came from lowly stock,’ Josse continued, ‘and that her life hadn’t been easy. Perhaps the main attraction of marriage to Parsifal de Chanteloup wasn’t so much his looks and his youth but his wealth and position.’

  ‘Was he wealthy?’ Isabelle demanded.

  ‘I assume so. Aeleis implied as much, although no doubt his family cut him off without the proverbial penny when he ran off with her.’ He grinned. ‘I’m quite sure he thought she was worth it.’

  ‘So am I,’ Isabelle agreed loyally. ‘So, go back to what you were saying about Cyrille?’

  ‘Aye. Well, she probably thought she’d found a safe haven when William Crowburgh married her, but, it proved less secure than she’d hoped. Herbert explained that William had come to grief and was close to ruin when he died, and so, yet again, someone in whom Cyrille had placed her trust had failed her.’