The Way Between the Worlds (16 page)

‘Did you?’

‘No. Nobody had gone to ask about Herleva.’

It struck me as very sad, and I was sure from Hrype’s tone and his expression that he felt the same. ‘Perhaps they haven’t yet heard,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘It is possible. Or perhaps she was alone in the world.’

I did not want to dwell on that.

‘I, too, have been thinking about Herleva,’ I said. ‘In particular, how she died.’

Then I told him about the man in the fen, and how Gurdyman had taken me with him to assist as he inspected the body. I told him how the man had been killed, and what Gurdyman had concluded, and how I’d thought it was similar to how poor little Herleva had met her end. I confessed that, just for a moment, I’d wondered if she, too, had been a sacrificial victim. ‘But she wasn’t,’ I finished, ‘because if she was, she’d have been left somewhere in the marginal places between water and land.’

Hrype was deep in thought. I wondered if he’d heard a word I had said. Then, abruptly, he barked out, ‘Where do you think Herleva was found?’

‘I – er, Elfritha  . . .’ Oh, Elfritha! ‘My sister said Herleva’s body was found behind the stables.’ A very worrying thought struck me. ‘Hrype, you just said you needed to investigate the place where Herleva died, so you must have gone back inside the abbey walls!’ I stopped dead and looked up at him. ‘You did, even though it was so perilous, especially without me there pretending to be your daughter! Oh, what if they’d spotted you and recognized you?’ I felt a chill round my heart. ’They didn’t, did they?’

He waved an impatient hand. ‘No, Lassair.’

‘But how else—’

‘
Enough
,’ he said, quite sharply. Then, perhaps recalling where we were going and why, he said more kindly, ‘Listen, and I shall tell you.’

I shut my mouth and hung my head.

‘You misheard what your sister said,’ he said after a moment. ‘As, indeed, did I. We both understood her to have said that Herleva’s body was found behind the stables, which we took to mean the big stable block within the abbey where the horses and mules of visitors are cared for. So when I realized that I had to know more concerning her death, I thought I would have to go back inside the abbey, and this was, as you rightly pointed out, quite risky.’

‘I could have gone with you!’ I protested. ‘We could have disguised ourselves just like we did that first time! Why didn’t you—’

Again, he silenced me, this time by raising his hand. ‘It was not necessary for either of us to return inside the abbey,’ he said, ‘as I discovered when I asked the right questions. Lassair, we thought that Elfritha said Herleva was found behind the stables, but she didn’t. She actually said
stable
, in the singular.’

Stables? Stable? What difference could it make?

But then I understood. ‘The stable where she was found isn’t within the abbey walls, is it?’ I whispered. ‘It’s somewhere else entirely.’

‘It is,’ he agreed. ‘In fact, it is more a shed than a stable: a crude and simple little construction set in the far corner of a field some distance from the main buildings. It’s a shelter for the Chatteris donkey, on the rare occasions when the sisters aren’t using him to help in any one of a hundred tasks.’

I knew without being told what sort of a location this shelter was in. I said – and it was a statement, not a question – ‘It’s down by the water, right at the edge of the land, and sometimes in bad weather that corner of the field floods, almost up to the door of the little shed.’

Hrype looked very closely at me for a moment. Then, sounding like someone trying just too hard to speak in their normal tone, he said, ‘Yes, that describes it exactly.’ His curiosity overcame him, and he added in an urgent hiss, ‘Can you
see
it, Lassair?’

I nodded. He appeared to think about that for some moments. Then he said, ‘Herleva’s body was found half under water, right on the fen edge. But for her veil, still covering her head, she was naked. Her wrists and ankles were bound to hazel stakes with ropes made of honeysuckle.’

We had been walking for some time now, and the traffic travelling north out of Cambridge was building up as the day drew on and people made for home. Presently, Hrype flagged down a plump young woman driving a cart and persuaded her to give us a ride, on the pretext that his daughter (me) was lame and we still had many miles to go. I had the presence of mind to adopt a limp as the woman’s eyes swept to me to verify Hrype’s words. She didn’t seem to mind helping us, however, and soon she and Hrype were chatting away like old friends. He continued to amaze me; there he was, sounding like some simple peasant whose mind never dwelt on anything deeper than whether his crops would grow or his ewes produce healthy lambs. I would never have guessed he knew so much about farming  . . .

I sat in silence, thinking.

The plump woman dropped us close to where the boats for Chatteris tied up, and Hrype and I waited until one would turn up to ferry us across. The wait was long.

After quite some time, I said, ‘If Herleva and the man in the fen were killed by the same person—’

Hrype snorted. ‘I think, don’t you, that we can omit the
if
.’

‘If they were murdered by the same hands,’ I repeated firmly, ‘then we should think about what they might have had in common. Did they, for example, know each other? Were they the last remaining members of a wealthy family who had to be removed so that someone else could inherit?’

‘Herleva wasn’t a wealthy heiress,’ Hrype pointed out. ‘She was a novice nun.’

‘Yes, I know that, but perhaps she was a rich woman before she became a nun,’ I said, but I had to agree, it didn’t seem very likely. ‘Or  . . .’ I had run out of possibilities.

‘You are, I imagine, just speculating on a possibility, which we are to treat as a hypothesis rather than an attempt at the truth,’ Hrype said, his voice kind.

I wasn’t sure if I was, but I nodded anyway. ‘Or perhaps they were both involved in somebody else being killed,’ I went on, my imagination coming to life again, ‘and it became too dangerous to let them live.’

‘Hmm,’ said Hrype.

‘Herleva was killed just a few days ago,’ I went on, ‘and Gurdyman thinks the man in the fen died within the last few months. It couldn’t have been any longer because the honeysuckle used to bind him was still quite fresh.’

‘Hmm,’ Hrype repeated.

I was thinking very hard. There was something, some relevant fact, right on the edge of my mind, and I just couldn’t pin it down. I ordered my thoughts, summarizing what I knew.

Who? I asked myself. Answer: a chatty little nun and a middle-aged man.

When? One within a week or so; one within a few months.

Where? One on the island of Chatteris, over on the western side of the fens; one over on the eastern side, in the maze of channels that wind through the marshes to the north of Aelf Fen and up towards Lynn and, eventually, the sea.

Then I knew what it was that had been niggling at me, trying to catch my attention.

‘Hrype?’ I said softly.

He turned to look down at me, his strange silvery eyes catching the gleam of the slowly falling sun. ‘Yes?’

‘I think there
is
a connection between them.’ I was speaking too quickly, breathless in my excitement, and I made myself slow down. ‘The dead man was found in the water over towards the fens’ eastern margin, above where the two rivers flow down from the higher ground and below Lynn,’ I said.

‘What of it?’ He spoke quite sharply, but there was a faint smile on his face. He knew already, I was sure, what I was going to say; it would not have surprised me if he did, for he is adept at reading other people’s thoughts, and what was on my mind just then must have been shouting out at him.

‘Herleva came from over that way,’ I said, despite everything smiling back at him. ‘I spoke to an old Chatteris woman who sells cheese to the nuns. She told me Herleva was from up beyond Lynn. She and the dead man might have known each other!’

‘And they might not,’ I thought I heard him mutter. He took my hand and patted it. ‘That’s a start, I suppose,’ he said kindly. He could have added,
even if it’s not much
, but he didn’t.

We went on standing there. In time, we saw a boat approaching, and the ferryman agreed to take us across. I sat down in the stern, wrapping my shawl tightly round me against the chill air rising off the water.

My brief excitement had leaked out of me, and now I felt even lower than before. Hrype was right to be dismissive; so what if Herleva’s home was roughly in the same area as the place where the man in the fen had died? It really didn’t amount to very much and barely qualified for Hrype’s
it’s a start
.

And there was so much more I had to worry about. There we were, moving steadily across the misty water, and my poor sister lay deadly sick on the other side. Was she still alive? Again, I sent a tentative thought in her direction, and this time I received no reply at all. I buried my face in my shawl; I did not want Hrype to see my tears.

There was Rollo, too. I no longer heard his summoning voice in my dreams, and in my waking mind I knew, with no room for doubt, that something had happened to him. He had called to me for help, and I had failed him. Now he was gone: out of my head, out of my life, out, perhaps, of this world.

The sky was darkening as the sun finally set. All around the little boat, the water was dark and sinister, no glimmer of light on its black depths. Despair took hold of me, and for a dreadful moment I was tempted to give up on the horrible struggle of my life and throw myself into the fen’s cold embrace.

Then there was a gentle bump as the boat came alongside the little quay. The ferryman jumped out to make his craft secure, and Hrype climbed ashore after him. He turned back to me.

He said, so softly that I hardly heard him, ‘Nobody is dead yet, Lassair.’ And he held out his hand.

If he was telling me my dearest sister was still alive, that was, of course, something to rejoice over, although if she was as sick as we had been told, life could turn to death in the blink of an eye.

He could not be speaking of Rollo. He didn’t know Rollo was in danger; nobody did except Gurdyman and me, and I was all but sure now that the danger, whatever it was, had overcome him.

I thought about it for a couple of heartbeats. Go on? Give up? Then I took Hrype’s hand, jumped out of the boat and on to the Chatteris quay.

TEN

R
ollo was attacked when he was in sight of the great sea that lies off the east coast of Britain. He had made his way steadily and swiftly, usually keeping the Wall in sight over to his left. As well as providing a clear aid to going in the right direction – due east towards the coast – he had discovered that what tracks and roads there were in that lonely and largely deserted country were better maintained near to the Wall.

They laid an ambush for him. The sun was setting in the west behind him, for he had been encouraged by the sea’s proximity into travelling on later than usual. Darkness was rapidly descending. He was approaching a place where the road ran down into a shallow valley, on each side of which were stands of ancient trees. Up there in the north country, spring was late in coming and the trees were only just showing the first signs of leaf. Rollo would not have thought that the stark trunks and all but bare branches could have provided places of concealment for even one man, let alone four.

It was his horse who first sensed danger. Named as she was for an entity with supernatural powers, perhaps elements of a particularly keen awareness had rubbed off on the mare. As she bore Rollo down into the valley, she must have heard, seen or even smelt something which, wise horse that she was, she knew ought not to be there.

She had been going along at a smart trot, affected by her master’s mood and as keen as he to reach the coast and turn south. Suddenly, she stopped, so abruptly that Rollo was almost unseated.

‘Strega?’ he said softly. ‘What’s the matter?’

The horse, of course, could not answer. She gave a soft whicker, and a shudder ran under the skin of her shoulder. A variety of possibilities ran like fire through Rollo’s mind: was she exhausted? Had she picked up a stone in her foot? Was she throwing up lame?

He was about to dismount and check her over when at last, and far too late, he finally took in the topography of the place where Strega had so abruptly stopped. His heart pounding, he looked on down the road and saw the stands of skeletal trees on either side. Somebody made a small movement just as he was staring at the trees on his right.

He pressed his heels into the mare’s sides and said to her urgently, ‘On, Strega, on!’ Still she hesitated. He leaned forward on to her neck and said, as close to her ear as he could, ‘Yes, I know, I’ve seen them. Now
go
!’

She needed no further urging. Just as abruptly as she had stopped, she started to move again, her sturdy strength taking her from standing to a full gallop in moments. Her speed took the ambushers by surprise, and it was only when they had been flying down the track for some moments that Rollo heard the whoops and yells of the men who had lain in wait as they left their hiding places and raced after him.

He knew quite soon that two were no threat, for they were mounted on old, broken ponies whose laboured breathing was audible across the rapidly increasing distance between them and Rollo. Soon his swift glances over both shoulders told him that it was now between him and the two remaining men.

He knew what he would have done in their position. The track went on through the valley in a wide curve to the right, and the shortest distance to the far end was to cut across the curve. While the land inside the curve did not look secure enough for Rollo to risk it – what would happen if he floundered in a patch of boggy ground or if Strega failed to clear the fast-flowing stream that rushed through the valley? – he would, had he been one of the pursuing pair, have taken that chance and hastened to cut his quarry off as he hurried along the road.

He heard a shouted conversation between the two men, although they spoke in a language he did not understand. He was pretty sure what they were saying, however, and very shortly afterwards, he saw with dismay that his assumption was right. One man remained right behind him; his horse was perhaps not quite as swift as Strega, but it was close. The second man cracked his fist down hard on his horse’s rump, yelled something in a high, wild voice and, with a fierce tug on the reins that had his horse jerking its head in pain, plunged down off the track and across the green grass of the valley.