Hrype was staring at me, almost as if he was willing me to go on. Helplessly, I shook my head. I didn’t know what to say.
‘You ask if it was something to do with the baby,’ he said. ‘You are right, but not in the way you think.’ He paused, frowning. Then he said, ‘Let me tell you about what happened yesterday, Lassair. I went back to Aetha, Yorath’s old mother, believing that I would find either that Sibert was with her or that he had recently visited. Aetha, you see, worked with Froya and me during the rebellion. She has sharp eyes and a long memory. She knew what happened, and she has not forgotten. When Sibert finally nerved himself to go to her on her island, she told him.’
‘And that’s why he attacked you?’ I whispered.
‘Yes.’
I knew then, although I shied away from accepting it. To have everything I had always believed turned upside down at a stroke was like a blow to the head. If I felt as if I had just been stunned, however must Sibert have reacted?
Now Edild held Hrype’s hand in both of hers. She was gazing anxiously down at him, her full attention focused on him. He looked up at me. Then he said simply, ‘Sibert is my son.’
I don’t know how long I sat there in silence. It was probably only a few moments, but it felt like an age. Hrype was Sibert’s father. He had lain with his brother’s wife – his gravely wounded brother’s wife – and she had conceived his child. Nobody knew, for she had fled from Ely and taken the dying Edmer to Aelf Fen. Had he known his wife was pregnant? Oh, poor, poor man – he must have realized it was not his child, for a man with an infected wound in his thigh that leads to amputation could surely not be in any state to make love.
Hrype was still looking at me. Belatedly, I remembered his uncanny ability to read other people’s thoughts, although I dare say mine were fairly obvious just then.
‘He did not know, Lassair,’ he said softly. ‘Froya was a slender woman even then, and the swelling in her belly was easily disguised beneath her garments.’
And a fatally sick husband would not be likely to see or touch his wife’s naked body . . .
I was trying so hard to understand. I was trying not to hate Hrype and Froya for what they had done. Again, he knew what I was thinking. ‘It was done from compassion,’ he said. ‘I know it sounds as if I am trying to excuse a base action and disguise it as something less wicked, but when I took her in my arms it was with no wish but to comfort her.’ He twisted on the mattress and a moan of pain broke out of him. ‘My mother had recently died – my mother, whom Froya had grown to love, whom she had cared for during the flight across the fenlands and those terrible days in Ely – and her husband was so badly wounded that we knew, if we were honest with each other, that there was little hope for him.’ He stopped, took a deep breath and then, his eyes now fixed on a point on the wall as if he could no longer bear to look at me, he said, ‘I was asleep. She came to my bed, and she was weeping. She said, “Hold me, Hrype, hold me, for I am so afraid,” and I moved over so that she could lie beside me. She was cold, so very cold, and her face was wet with her tears.’ His voice broke. Recovering, he went on, ‘I held her, trying to warm her with my body, and I wiped away the tears with my fingers. She pressed herself to me and we clung to each other, both of us desperate for comfort, for she was forced to witness the sufferings of a treasured husband and I of a dearly loved brother.’
He paused again, this time for a long moment. Then he said, ‘It should not have happened, and we both knew it; we both know it to this day. But human flesh is weak, and in that brief time we gave each other the only thing we had to give. In the morning she was up and dressed before I woke. We did not speak of it, and I believe both of us pretended to ourselves that it had not happened.’
‘Then she discovered she was pregnant,’ I said dully.
‘Yes. She bore her shame and her pain all by herself. I told you just now that Edmer never knew she carried a child; I did not know either, not until a month or so before Sibert was born. I had joined her at Aelf Fen that summer, in time to be with my brother during his last days, and Froya kept her distance from me. When finally she had to tell me, I thought that the child was Edmer’s. Against all sense, I believed my dying brother had impregnated his wife.’ Slowly, he shook his head. ‘Such is our ability to fool ourselves. I believed what I wanted –
needed
– to be the truth.’
‘When did you find out?’ I whispered.
He smiled crookedly. ‘I saw the baby soon after he was born, and I knew him for a full-term baby. I thought back to where we had all been nine months ago and I knew. I asked her if he was mine and she said yes.’ There were tears in his eyes, but he ignored them and slowly they spilled out and ran down his face. ‘She said she and Edmer had not lain together as man and wife since before he had gone off to fight, and that was ten, perhaps eleven months back. There was no doubt in her mind, and there has never been any in mine.’
We sat there, the three of us, and I tried to take in what he had told me. Had Sibert suspected something? Had he wondered about that time in Ely, when his badly wounded father and his desperate mother had apparently started a child? Had he understood that the timing was wrong? He must have had his doubts, I realized, for given the opportunity to visit the place where his life had begun he had not hesitated. And, once there, he had set about discovering the truth with a dedication that bordered on obsessive.
Yes, I thought. Sibert had suspected. But now he knew, and that was something very different.
I sent my thoughts his way, telling him I was thinking about him and that I would help him bear this huge blow in any way I could. I didn’t know if he heard; I hoped so. I realized then why he had looked so sick when he’d seen Hrype’s wound: because he had inflicted it.
Sibert, Sibert
, I thought,
why did you want to kill him? Was it that terrible, to be told that your uncle is really your father? He is still Hrype, whatever his relationship to you
.
I tried to put myself in Sibert’s boots. How would I feel if suddenly they told me that, instead of the man married to my mother, my uncle Ordic or my uncle Alwyn had fathered me? I had no idea. Would I want to kill my true father? Again, I didn’t know. It was possible, I supposed. Then I thought, but it is not quite the same, because Sibert never knew Edmer whereas I have known and loved my father all my life.
It was beyond me. All I could think was that Sibert was suffering and I could not help him. Would he come back to Ely once Gewis was safe at Aelf Fen? Or would the desire to put as much distance as possible between him and Hrype drive him far away?
I looked up to find Hrype staring at me.
‘What are you going to do?’ I asked.
He just shrugged.
Edild murmured something – it appeared she wanted to check his wound – and I watched as her gentle hands tended him. Did he care for her as she did for him? I studied his face as he looked up at her. He said something that I did not catch, and her face broke out in a lovely smile. He reached up and touched her cheek, and she folded his hand in hers and drew it to her lips. The love between them seemed to envelop them in a soft little cloud. I had my answer.
I was young and still to experience love between man and woman. Nevertheless, I understood something about Hrype and my aunt Edild that night, something that moved me profoundly and made me ache for them. It was this: by the well-intentioned actions of one night nineteen years ago, Hrype had tied himself to a woman whom he did not love. Well, he might love her as a brother loves a sister, but she was not his soul mate and, I guessed, did not share his bed and had never done so, apart from that one fateful occasion. He could not leave her, for together they had betrayed his brother and her husband and she had borne their child. Froya was slowly destroying herself with guilt – now I recognized exactly what ailed her and why – and Hrype, who shared that guilt with her, felt far too much responsibility for her to leave her and go where his heart led him. She was frail. She would not manage life without him.
I was so sad for them, all three of them, that I knew I was going to weep. Edild and Hrype were wrapped up in each other – this was, I realized, a rare opportunity for them to be alone together – and they did not need a third.
Quietly, I picked up my cloak, tiptoed across the room and let myself out into the pale light of early morning.
TWENTY
T
he morning was chilly, and it was as yet too early for any of the food stalls to be serving. A few workmen were queuing up waiting for the abbey gates to open. The men were huddled inside their heavy garments, preoccupied and not interested in a young woman pacing the streets. I was alone with my thoughts.
I crossed the marketplace and headed off to the east, towards the rising sun, keeping level with the high wall that bordered the abbey on its north side. I passed a gatehouse and noticed a clutch of low buildings beside it. This gate, too, was still fast closed. I imagined that somewhere within the monks were at prayer, perhaps seeking strength for the vagaries of the day ahead.
It was very quiet. There was no wind and, although heavy clouds were massing in the western sky, as yet it was fine. The pale sun made the green grass glow. I walked on, presently coming to a meadow that sloped gently down to the water. There was a stand of trees over to the left, and I noticed absently that the water level reached well up their trunks.
There was a ruined building behind me – it looked as if it had once been a cow byre – and I went to sit on a low wall, lifting my feet out of the wet grass and resting them on a stone. I put my elbows on my knees and dropped my chin in my hands. Then I gave myself up to the whirl of thoughts, impressions and recent memories flying around inside my head.
She did not know he was there until he was standing just behind her. He had been watching her for some time, impressed by her utter stillness and wondering what she was doing out there all by herself. He had approached slowly, expecting that at any moment she would hear him and spin round. He only saw the tears on her face when he was close enough to touch her.
He said the first thing that came into his head: ‘What’s the matter?’
She did not turn; it seemed she knew who he was without looking. ‘I’ve just been told something so sad,’ she said.
‘Ah.’ He sat down beside her on her wall. ‘Is there anything you can do to help?’
‘No, I don’t think there is. It’s to do with something two people did here on the island nineteen years ago. They are still living with the consequences – someone else is as well – and nothing’s going to change what’s happened.’
‘I see.’ This, then, seemed to be nothing to do with the boy in the abbey. To be sure, he said, ‘It concerns friends of yours?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Well, one of them’s actually my aunt. The other two are my friend’s mother and father, only up until yesterday he thought he was his uncle.’
He worked out what she meant. She could not be speaking of the pale youth, and he was surprised at the relief that flooded through him. He had found her, by the purest chance, and it seemed they had been given an opportunity to talk of matters far removed from the business that had brought him to Ely. That still must be resolved, and he knew it. He knew, too, that soon he would have to ask her why she had been in the abbey and what her interest was in the pale youth. For now, she was distressed because of something that had nothing to do with him. Perhaps he could comfort her. He intended to enjoy this moment out of time to the full.
He leaned closer to her. He caught her scent – she smelled of rosemary and lavender, among other things, and he guessed she was a healer. The scent awoke memories of how it had felt to kiss her.
‘I’m sorry you are sad,’ he said softly. He put his arm around her and she snuggled against him. ‘Would it help to talk about it?’
‘No,’ she replied, then immediately added, ‘That was rude and I apologize. I know you’re trying to be kind.’
I would always wish to be kind to you
, he thought.
They sat close together, not speaking. Presently, he raised a hand and, gently cupping her face, turned her so that he could kiss her. She kissed him back.
After an embrace that had lasted quite a long time, he said, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Lassair.’
‘Do you live here on Ely?’
‘No.’
He did not ask her where she did live; he sensed she would not answer.
‘What are you called?’ she asked.
‘Rollo.’
‘And you don’t come from here either.’ It was a statement, not a question.
He said simply, ‘No. I was born a long way away.’
‘You sound foreign,’ she remarked. ‘You don’t talk like other people round here.’
He smiled. ‘I speak several languages. This is one of them.’
She reached up and ran a finger the length of the scar that bisected his eyebrow. She said softly, ‘Rollo.’ Then she grabbed hold of his face and kissed him with an intensity that took his breath away.
She was warm in his arms, her smooth hair soft under his hands. It was long – so long – since he had held a woman. She was arousing sensations and emotions in him which he had believed he had put aside. For now, anyway, when there was a job to be done.