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Blood of the South
An Aelf Fen Mystery
By Alys Clare Severn House Publishers Ltd
Copyright © 2014 Alys Clare
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78010-585-7
CHAPTER 1
There is a collective evil that comes over a crowd of people intent on bullying someone. Faces that are habitually genial twist and distort; mouths made for smiling turn down into scowls of anger, dislike and even hatred. It is as if, given a strong lead by the man who first singles out the victim – and I'm afraid it usually seems to be a man – other, kinder souls feel compelled to follow. Then the whole thing gathers an awful sort of impetus, and before you know it, someone gets hurt.
That September morning, as Gurdyman and I stood on the Cambridge quayside in the thin, early sunshine, the victim was a young woman. From her garments, her voluminous veil and what I could see of her face, she was not local. She had a baby with her: in that first glance, I could make out no details, merely noticing the wrapped shape placed on the ground beside her, the swaddling blankets folded too tightly to allow anything to emerge from the bundle except high-pitched, piercing screams. The woman was not trying to soothe her child; she wasn't even cuddling it. She had both hands up in front of her face in frantic, terrified self-defence, because someone had just chucked a lump of smelly mud at her.
Gurdyman and I, latecomers on the scene, were right at the back of the thronging people. We had intended to be on the quay early, since Gurdyman was expecting the arrival of a cargo from far away and he wanted to ensure first choice of the exotic, mysterious goods. Intentions often go astray, however. I had overslept, Gurdyman had forgotten that today was the day the boat was due to arrive, and, by the time we finally arrived puffing and panting on the path by the river – well, Gurdyman was puffing, but then he is many years my senior, twice my girth and he doesn't go out much – the port was already heaving. We had been steadily making our way through the crowd to where our boat was likely to tie up, when the loud, braying voices caught our attention.
'Filthy foreigner!' someone screamed. A woman; it is not only men who bully.
'You're not welcome here, you lying, cheating cow!' A man's voice, deep, furious. And he didn't say cow.
'Send her back where she came from!' someone else chimed in. 'We've got cheats and thieves enough of our own, without importing more!'
The voices were getting louder and angrier. The woman tried to say something – from the gesture of her clasped hands, I thought it might be an appeal for mercy – but this only served to further antagonize her persecutors. Another big lump of mud flew over the heads of the crowd, this one hitting the woman on the arm. She gave a sharp cry of pain. The mud had been packed round a stone.
The missile had been thrown from somewhere just behind us. I spun round and saw a fat, red-faced man stooping down to prepare another. Before Gurdyman could stop me – before I had time to think about it, and perhaps stop myself – I leapt on the fat man, knocking him to the ground and falling on top of him. 'That's enough!' I screeched. 'She's got a baby with her!'
The fat man lurched to his knees, shoving me away with sufficient force to make me sit down hard on my backside. 'What's it to you?' he demanded, struggling up and looming over me, his small eyes turned to narrow slits of fury. 'Mind your own bloody business!'
'It is my business if you hurt either the woman or her child!' I cried. 'I'm a healer!'
I was just getting to my feet, but he grabbed me by the shoulders and sat me back down again. 'Heal your own bruised bum, then!' he leered.
I'm not sure what would have happened next. In all likelihood, he'd have gathered up another fistful of mud, I'd have tried to stop him hurling it at the woman, he'd have hit me, Gurdyman would have had to step in and a tussle would have rapidly become a free-for-all. Without a doubt, there was enough violence in the air for punches and glancing blows to have escalated into knife-thrusts and serious injuries. Just at that moment, however, there came the sound of several pairs of booted feet marching in step, and a strong, carrying voice that held a distinct note of authority demanded to know what was going on.
The forces of law and order had arrived.
As the sheriff's men went about dispersing the crowd – not without one or two blows of their cudgels, if the occasional cry of pain was any indication – one of the senior deputies came over to where Gurdyman was helping me to my feet and brushing the dust from my skirts. 'You're that healer girl, aren't you?' the deputy demanded.
'Yes, I am,' I said reluctantly. I was cross, in pain, and humiliated by having Gurdyman repeatedly beat his hand on my bottom. Surely I wasn't that dirty.
'You're wanted,' the deputy said shortly. 'Over there.' He jerked his head towards the place where the woman was cowering. A bareheaded, broad-shouldered man in a leather jerkin – the sheriff, I presumed – was bending over her.
Impatiently I pushed Gurdyman's hand away. 'Is the baby hurt?' I asked anxiously, hurrying off in the deputy's wake. Oh, if that wretched fat man had inflicted some awful injury ...
'Don't know about that,' the deputy said, turning briefly to look at me. Again, he nodded towards the sheriff. 'Him over there, he just said to fetch you.'
I glanced back to see if Gurdyman was following. He caught my eye, and gave an all but imperceptible shake of the head. Then, swiftly, he pointed to his eyes.
I understood. Gurdyman is wisest of the wise; my teacher, my mentor, my companion and my friend. In addition, he is a wizard – although he himself never uses the word except in ironic self-mockery – and he loves nothing better than to conduct extraordinary and sometimes terrifying experiments in the crypt hidden deep beneath his house. He is a practitioner of alchemy; he is trying to make a map of all the known lands of the world; he makes mysterious potions that on occasion almost choke him with their noxious fumes; he knows so much that often I wonder how it can all be contained within his round, bald head with its fringe of perfectly white hair. He is, I am convinced, a powerful magician.
All of which are reasons why he does not court attention. In those two small gestures – the infinitesimal shake of the head and the finger pointing to his eyes – he was telling me that he wouldn't accompany me as I answered the sheriff's summons, but that he would keep his eyes open to see what transpired.
My breath catching in my throat, I skidded to a stop in front of the woman and her baby. The sheriff looked up at me briefly and said, rather calmly, I thought, under the circumstances, 'They may have been hurt. Will you check them for injuries?'
I nodded. The child, its screaming now reduced to a pitiful sobbing, still lay where the woman had placed it. She had sat, or perhaps collapsed, down beside it, her back straight, the folds of her long, voluminous, high-collared cloak pooling round her feet. She was trembling. She wore a headdress consisting of generous folds of deep blue silk, wrapped round and round her head, concealing her hair and her forehead. The headdress was fringed with small black beads and tiny gold bells that tinkled softly when she moved. Beneath the headdress, entirely covering her nose and the lower part of her face, she wore a heavy veil. The sheriff was standing over her, and he opened his mouth to say something to me. I shook my head. I didn't want to talk; my instinct, both as a healer and simply as a human being, was to gather up the child, then crouch down beside the woman and give her a hug. She had, after all, just been through a horrifying ordeal. The sheriff seemed to understand. He nodded.
I got as far as scooping up the baby. Then, as I went to approach its mother, she turned and stared at me.
The look in her near-black, slanting eyes stopped me dead.
I felt as if some invisible force was holding me back. Confused, I muttered something, covering my embarrassment by looking down at the baby in my arms. It had stopped sobbing, and was now staring up at me with wide blue eyes. It was quite heavy, and I was just thinking that it was older than I had first thought – too old, surely, to be swaddled so tightly? – when, as if in response to my thought, it gave a powerful wriggle and kicked an arm and a foot out from within the blankets. The heel of the little foot caught me in the stomach; the fisted hand just missed my nose.
I'd had enough.
'Your child appears none the worse for its fright,' I said to the woman, staring at her as fiercely as she had just been staring at me. I had the advantage of height; she was still sitting on the ground. 'Won't you take it?' I went on. 'There are no one's arms better equipped for soothing a baby than those of its mother.'
For a moment, she didn't respond. Beside me, I sensed the sheriff move, and I guessed he was about to intervene. I went on looking down at the woman. Finally, with a sort of sigh, she nodded. Kneeling down in front of her, carefully I placed the squirming bundle on her lap. She didn't seem to know what to do next – undoubtedly she was in shock – and so, gently taking hold of her hands, I put one behind the baby's head and the other under its hips.
'We need to move her away from here,' the sheriff said quietly. He had bent down so that he could speak right in my ear. 'The mood's very ugly. We'll get to the bottom of it, but I'd be happier if that lot –' he cast a frowning glance over his shoulder – 'weren't still hovering around her.'
'I agree,' I replied. 'But first I need to check if either of them has been wounded.' If you move someone with a broken bone or a head injury, you can make a bad matter ten times worse. The sheriff appeared to know this, for he nodded, muttering something inaudible. 'Can't your men hold the crowd back?' I demanded. 'They appeared to be only too willing to crack a few heads just now, when you all burst on to the quay.'
'I have a dozen men with me, and the mob numbers maybe four, five times that,' the sheriff remarked. You could understand his point.
'I'd better be quick, then,' I muttered.
It seemed unlikely, but I was sure I heard the sheriff give a short laugh.
While the child lay across the woman's lap, I unwound the blanket and folded back the little garments. The blanket was of fine, soft wool, and the baby's robe was of silk. Whoever the woman was, she wasn't poor. Quickly, for the morning air was chilly, I checked over the baby for signs of injury. It – he – was a boy; he must have inherited his light blue eyes and fair hair from his father, but his skin – a beautiful, deep golden-brown colour – was like his mother's. He was clearly well-fed. He was, I judged, about six months old. He had been circumcised. His flesh was clean and sweet-smelling, and he had clearly been put in fresh linen a short time previously, for the wrappings were still dry and unsoiled. As far as I could tell, he had suffered nothing worse at the hands of the mob than a nasty fright.
I turned my attention to his mother.
I had not expected that she would permit me to examine her, and I was right. She drew herself away, one hand going to her veil as if she feared I was about to tear it off.
I nodded my understanding. 'I was not proposing to inspect you as I have just done your son,' I said. 'But I must ask if you are hurt? Did any of those stones or lumps of mud hit you, especially on the head or face? Such blows can cause concussion, and that carries grave risks.'
'I am not injured,' the woman whispered.
It was, I realized, the first time she had spoken. Although not as dramatic in its effect on me as her original intent stare, nevertheless her voice was a surprise. It was immediately clear that the common language was not her mother tongue, although her manner of dress, her veil and her dark eyes had already informed me that she was a stranger, just as they presumably had told the screeching fishwife who had yelled out, Filthy foreigner! No: it wasn't her accent so much as the husky timbre of her voice that was so startling. She sounded ... it was odd, but she almost sounded like someone with a naturally deep voice who was trying to make it higher in pitch. It was totally absurd, but just for a heartbeat I wondered if the veiled woman was really a man.
'We must go,' the sheriff said, and now his tone had a definite sense of urgency. Two brawny-looking men had been talking to him while I dealt with the baby and his mother, and one of them raised his voice in repeated accusation: the veiled woman, it appeared, had tried to take two small loaves of bread when she had only paid for one. It seemed a small enough crime to warrant all this fuss, but then times were hard. Bakers have to earn their living like everyone else, and it's true that nobody likes thieves and cheats. The fact that, being a foreigner, the veiled woman had simply made a mistake seemed a distinct possibility, but I didn't think now was the time to mention it.
Between us, the sheriff and I got the woman to her feet. She seemed to be unsure how to carry the baby – I thought once more that she was probably still in shock – and she tried to hold him across her outstretched arms, so that his head lolled backwards and he shrieked in alarm.
'Dear Jesus, she's going to drop it!' the sheriff hissed. 'That's all we need. Take it from her!'
'Him. He's a boy,' I said, before I could remind myself that being pert with sheriffs is not in general a wise course of action. The sheriff, however, accepted the reprimand with a grin, and said softly under his breath, 'Take him, then.'
I did as he said, holding the baby up against my chest and wrapping my arms round him. Either he was comforted by being held so firmly, or else his crying had exhausted him; the important thing was, he stopped yelling. Then he gave a huge yawn, his eyelids fluttered down and he went to sleep.
The sheriff's men had formed up into a double line, standing two abreast, and they held back the crowd while the sheriff led the woman and me away from the quayside. The aggrieved baker and his companion stomped along behind. More deputies had arrived, and the mood of the mob seemed all at once to go off the boil. There was a lot of muttering, some name-calling, and I thought I heard the screeching woman again, still protesting about filthy foreigners. It was deeply unpleasant and unsettling, but I no longer felt in danger of actual harm, either to myself or to the veiled woman and her child. Soon, the river, the quay and the humming activity of the town's port were left behind us.
I wondered if we were heading for the small stone-built house by the Great Bridge. It was the place where the port officials were to be found, and I knew of it because I had occasionally been there on errands for Gurdyman, when goods he had ordered and paid for were temporarily impounded: Gurdyman's list of necessities contains some quite unusual items. Thinking of him made me wonder where he was, and if he had succeeded in keeping the promised eye on me. I glanced around, but the streets were busy and I could not see whether or not he was following. You would think that Gurdyman, being short, rotund and habitually dressed in a brightly coloured shawl which he drapes over his sombre gown, would have been easy to spot. In fact, when he wants to, he manages to blend in with his surroundings remarkably well.
The sheriff, the veiled woman, the baker and his friend and I strode on, past the port officials' house and over the Great Bridge. Once or twice the woman stumbled – she didn't seem much better at walking than she was at holding her baby – and each time the nearest deputy reached out a hand to steady her. I noticed that she didn't thank him.
Suddenly I knew what was the matter with her. The costly blanket and garments in which the baby was wrapped should have given me a hint, and, now that I had belatedly realized, her own cloak and richly decorated headdress supported my conclusion. I glanced down at her feet: she was wearing soft little boots in a gorgeous purplish-blue shade, the leather so shiny and supple that it looked like a second skin.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Blood of the South by Alys Clare. Copyright © 2014 Alys Clare. Excerpted by permission of Severn House Publishers Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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