The Way Between the Worlds (8 page)

Having made up my mind, I felt better. The first thing I must do, I decided, was to find out as much as I could about the late Sister Herleva. Discovering where she came from, and whatever it was about her that had driven someone to kill her, would be a good start. The obvious person to speak to was her best friend, my sister, but Elfritha was the one person I couldn’t seek out, for if I did so someone would probably remember who I was and I could be putting myself in danger. I would try not to enter the abbey at all, I thought; instead, I would keep my eyes open for some local person – a tradesman, a craftsman – who had dealings with the nuns without being of the community. If I was lucky, encouraging this person to talk would be the easy part. Murders were a rare occurrence, especially in abbeys, and this one would be the talk of the area for weeks, probably months, to come.

I went back to my hiding place under the alders, made myself comfortable and waited.

Presently, a fat, red-cheeked countrywoman puffed in through the abbey gates, two large half-barrels suspended from a wooden yoke that rested on her broad shoulders. I stood up to see better and saw that each barrel contained what looked like small, round cheeses, each wrapped in white cloth. My hungry stomach gave a growl at the thought of a fresh, tasty cheese, and as I reached in my leather satchel to find coins, I realized I had the perfect excuse to catch the old woman’s attention.

She stayed for quite some time inside the abbey. I hoped she was busy gossiping. When she emerged, I slipped out from the trees and followed. I waited until she was some distance down the track that led to the settlement to the east of the abbey, then increased my pace and caught up with her.

She was happy to sell me a cheese, putting down her burden to rest as she did so. She perched her ample buttocks on the bank beside the track, and I sat down beside her. Not wasting a moment, I said, ‘I hear there’s been a murder at the abbey.’

As soon as she turned to me, eyes wide in wonder and an expression on her face that told me she was just dying to tell the latest news to somebody, I knew I’d chosen well. ‘Yes, my dearie, so there has!’ she began. ‘It’s one of the novices, a pretty, plump, chatty little thing, quite my favourite because whenever she was on kitchen duty when I delivered my cheeses, she always gave me a drink and a crust to help me on my way. She and her friend, they were about the only ones who had time for a weary old soul like me.’ Her face fell momentarily. I did not believe her, for Elfritha had many good friends among the nuns, both novices and the fully professed, and I was quite sure most of them would have had the charity to give their cheese woman some refreshment.

‘What was her name?’ I asked, although of course I already know.

‘Sister Herleva,’ the woman said. ‘She was from over beyond Lynn way, from some place up on the coast. She hadn’t been with the nuns long – let me see, I reckon it was last summer she came, maybe autumn. It’s – it was taking her a while to settle down to convent ways, and I did wonder if she’d stay. They don’t let them take their vows, you know,’ she added confidingly, leaning towards me, ‘if they don’t think they’re ready. Sometimes they never are and then they go out again.’ She smiled in a self-congratulatory way. ‘I know a lot about nuns, me. I’ve been taking my cheeses to Chatteris Abbey these thirty years, and not much gets past me.’

‘No, I’m sure it doesn’t.’ Flattery seemed a good idea. ‘They say her throat was cut,’ I said, dropping my voice to an intimate whisper.

The cheese seller put her mouth close to my ear. ‘She was hit on the head and her neck was slit from ear to ear,’ she whispered back. She looked swiftly up and down the track, but there was nobody in sight. ‘There’s something else,’ she hissed. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this. No one’s supposed to know, not even the nuns themselves, but I had to visit the herbalist on account of she wanted some of my sage and I overheard her talking to the abbess.’ She paused, undoubtedly for dramatic effect, then said, ‘Poor little Herleva was poisoned!’

I remembered Elfritha mentioning the pool of vomit. I’d thought perhaps Herleva had been sick because of her terror. But poison! How extraordinary, that she’d been poisoned, then hit on the head, then had her throat cut. Had the poison not been sufficiently potent and the blow to the head not hard enough? Poor little Herleva, indeed. Somebody had been utterly determined that she should die, even if it took three attempts.

‘Surely she was very young, for someone to hate her so much?’ I said, opening my eyes wide and trying to sound naive.

The cheese seller patted my hand kindly. ‘Oh, there’s reasons enough to kill a person other than hatred,’ she said, ‘as I fear you’ll come to understand, my dearie, before you’re much older.’

‘But what could they possibly be?’ I asked, genuinely wanting an answer. Herleva was young, kind, gossipy and a novice nun. Why would any of those things make anyone want to kill her?

The old woman shook her head. ‘No use asking me, dearie. I came to realize years ago that the ways of this wicked world are beyond my comprehension.’

She levered herself to her feet and raised her yoke back on to her shoulders, wincing as she did so. ‘The lass would have been poor, so it can’t have been theft that made someone do for her. Nor love, come to that, since the nuns are chaste, or meant to be!’ She laughed shortly. ‘Your guess is as good as mine, dearie. Now, I must be getting on my way, or I won’t be done afore dark.’

I stood up too. ‘I hear there’s a new priest here,’ I said. I was interested to see if the woman would have an opinion on him, and I wasn’t disappointed.

‘
Him
!’ She spat on the ground. ‘Yes, we’ve a new priest all right. I don’t know how he is with those nuns, but I can tell you, dearie, he’s as tough as they come with the likes of us. Hard as rock, he is. Rigid in his ways, with no time for excuses and explanations. A sin’s a sin, and that’s that.’ She leaned closer, dropping her voice. ‘We don’t much like him, I can tell you that. He’s got no heart, see. Like my son says, he wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.’ She nodded, as if to emphasize her words.

‘I see.’

‘Don’t tell anyone I said that,’ she added, her face suddenly anxious.

I patted her broad arm. ‘Of course I won’t.’ On impulse I reached in my satchel and took out a small pot of Edild’s remedy for stiff muscles. ‘Use some of this on your shoulders before you go to bed tonight,’ I said, pressing it into her hand. ‘It’ll help the pain.’

She looked at it, then up at me, giving me a kind but almost toothless smile. ‘Thank you,’ she said simply. ‘It’s good to know there’s some fine, Christian folk left in this wicked world.’

Then she waddled away.

It was time for me to leave Chatteris. So thoroughly was my curiosity aroused that if I stayed, I knew I might be tempted to throw caution to the winds and try to go into the abbey and seek out Elfritha. She had been Herleva’s friend. She would know, if anyone did, the secret reason why the poor little novice had died. She might not realize she knew, but I could, I was sure, winkle the information out of her if I asked the right questions.

No, I must not even think of going into the abbey.

My footsteps had taken me back along the track that led to the gates, but I made myself turn aside and return to the alder grove. I sat down on the grass, eyes fixed on the abbey before me. Herleva had died in there, her body left behind the stables. Was there any point in going to inspect the place? The body had long been removed, and no doubt the blood and the vomit had been cleaned away, so the answer to that was no.

Nevertheless, I just didn’t seem able to tear myself away.

I heard voices from the direction of the quay. Turning to look, I saw a big, lithe, broad-shouldered man dressed in black, accompanied by a short, round little man in the coarse wool habit of a monk. The tall man was quite young; perhaps only twelve or fifteen years older than I was. He walked with an athletic stride, his shoulders flung back and his back straight. There was a sense of power about him that did not come solely from his physical presence.

He was almost at the abbey gates now. I drew further back into the shadows and stared at him. His face was tanned, as if he spent much time out of doors, and rather lean, the jaw square. The mouth was wide and mobile, the light eyes set deep beneath thick, fair brows. His hair – also fair, with coppery highlights – was worn long and looked very clean, and his robe was newly laundered.

I realized what a very handsome man he was.

He was talking to his fat companion. Straining my ears, I tried to make out the words.

‘. . . should arrange to bury her as soon as we can, Brother Paul, for the weather grows warm.’

‘They will miss her, sweet child that she was,’ panted the monk, who was having to hurry to keep pace with the tall man’s long strides.

‘They will indeed.’

‘Shall you – er, I don’t like to make suggestions, but shall you mention after the service her kind nature and how everyone really liked her, her being so gossipy and friendly and all?’

‘Oh, I think so,’ the tall man said with a sad smile. ‘Frivolous characteristics, perhaps, in one who believed she had heard God’s call to enter his service as a nun, but then the poor child did not really have any gifts that the Lord would truly value.’

I supposed that he was right, strictly speaking, but it seemed unkind, especially considering how poor Herleva had met her death. Perhaps there was little use for her light-hearted sort of cheerfulness within the walls of a convent, although on my visits to Elfritha I had always been surprised at how much laughter the nuns seemed to share. Herleva probably would never have been a senior nun, perhaps not even a very good one, but the world was a sorry place for most of its inhabitants and it seemed to me that this tall, black-clad man was being unnecessarily harsh in his judgement of the dead girl. He must—

Then I knew who he was.

I would have realized sooner, I’m sure, had I not been preoccupied with my thoughts about Herleva. For one thing he was dressed in black and accompanied by a monk; for another, the monk had referred to what he was going to say about Herleva.

I crept to the very edge of my hiding place, intent on getting a better look at him. He had his back turned, for he was speaking to the hatchet-faced nun who had opened the door to Hrype and me the previous day. Now she was bowing to her visitor, straightening up to stand back and usher him inside with a wave of her arm.

The monk scurried in first, the tall man following.

Just as he was about to move out of sight behind the abbey’s high walls, he turned.

I knew he could not have seen me, for instantly I drew right back, crouching low to the ground so that I was entirely hidden behind the lush spring undergrowth.
He did not see me
, I repeated silently. I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t help myself: I summoned my fledgling power and sent out a feeler in the tall man’s direction.

In return I got such a violent shock that it threw me flat on my back. Terrified that he had heard the thump as I fell, I got to my knees and parted the leaves to peer down at the abbey. To my vast relief, he had gone inside and the gate was closing behind him.

Hrype had said he was a powerful man. If I had ever doubted it, I did so no longer. I had felt that fathomless, light gaze turn in my direction, and for the blink of an eye it had felt as if searing beams of white-hot light had raked over me.

Whatever his beliefs, whatever he was, Father Clement was a man to be reckoned with.

A man, I was forced to admit, to be feared.

SIX

I
made my way back to Cambridge.

I felt so low and dispirited that I would much rather have gone home to my family. I was very tired, for I had spent two nights sleeping out of doors and, although the weather had been mild enough, I had not been able to relax sufficiently to allow the deep sleep that restores. I had been so worried about my sister, and that anxiety had taken its toll. It was a vast relief to know that it was not Elfritha who had been so horribly, violently murdered, but the dead girl had been her friend and I knew she grieved for her. I wanted to go to my sister and comfort her, but I couldn’t.

As if all that wasn’t enough, there was also the legacy of my dreams. I kept seeing images – the mist, the dark figure, that strange crypt-like hollow in the hillside – and the sounds of the visions rang inside my head. I heard that restlessly moving stretch of water, waiting, lurking, somewhere beyond my sight. And, of course, those words were always with me.

My family would have given me their love and their support. But I needed something more than that: I wanted someone to help me untangle the mystery into which I had been drawn. Hrype would have been capable of advising me, I was sure, but he had disappeared without a word. He might have gone back to Aelf Fen, but it was by no means certain.

And that was why I went back to Gurdyman.

I knocked on the door of the twisty-turny house just as dusk was falling. I had been travelling since morning and I was worn out. Gurdyman let me in, took one look at me and, with a shake of his head and a quiet ‘Tut!’ led me along the passage to the open courtyard. He must have been sitting out there in the evening light, for when he gently pushed me down so that I was sitting in his big chair, the soft cushion on the seat was still warm from his body. He disappeared back inside the house, returning presently with a tray of food. I started to say something, but he held up a hand.

‘Eat first, Lassair.’

I wolfed down good white bread and cold meat, two small, spiced savoury pies and then three little sweet cakes, flavours of honey and cinnamon mingling deliciously in my mouth. Gurdyman handed me a fine pewter cup, filled to the brim, and I drank deeply. It was some special concoction of his own and, although it was cold as I swallowed it down, quite soon it seemed to spread warmth through my body. For the first time in days, I began to relax.

He was watching me closely. As I leaned back in his chair – he was perched opposite to me, on the bench he usually made his visitors sit on – he smiled. ‘That’s better,’ he murmured. ‘Now, first I must tell you that yesterday I received a message that I was to send word to the eel catcher that his daughter was safe.’