Mist Over the Water by Alys Clare

Author:Alys Clare [Clare, Alys]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ingram Distribution
Published: 2011-04-01T06:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

H

rype set off as soon as he had watched Lassair cross the water and march off on the road down to Cambridge. He hoped she would get a lift; he admired her gallant spirit, but it was a long walk. Within the privacy of his own head he briefly stepped into the other world that ran parallel to his own and put in a polite request. When you asked for something for someone else, and there was no advantage to yourself, he had found that the spirits usually helped.

He looked around him. He remembered it all so well. Coming back to Ely was a torment, for at every turn the sights, smells and sensations of now were mingled and blurred with those of before. The marketplace was busy this noon time with a bustle of cheerful, hard-working people, and with his inner eye he saw as it had been during the rebellion. He saw desperate men, their eyes hard with resolve, encouraging one another with the justice of their cause. He saw hungry children who clung in terror to their mothers’ skirts. He saw weeping widows, grieving mothers and daughters. He saw the sick and the gravely wounded; he saw himself shoulder to shoulder with other healers as, with arms that were red to the elbow with the blood of the dying, he tried with all his skill and all his might to save a life.

He saw his brother.

Then the memories became too much. With a great effort he drew down a veil in his mind and covered them up.

Without his conscious guidance his feet trod the way to the house where he had laboured so long and so desperately. He wrapped his dark cloak closely around him, bent his long body to make himself shorter and cast his eyes down, so that he looked quite unlike himself. He imagined himself melting into the shadows of the abbey wall; in all likelihood, nobody noticed him at all.

He left the populous areas behind him, and soon he came to the row of little reed-thatched cottages at the end of the track. He stopped by the one outside which stood a lavender bush in a tub. He hesitated and then, barely pausing to knock, eased the door open and stepped inside.

The child he remembered had grown into a thin, tired-looking woman. She sat at her spinning, head bent, back bowed. She looked up at him as if she had been expecting him.

He said softly, ‘Yorath. It has been a long time since we saw each other.’

‘Yes,’ she replied. He sensed wariness.

‘I mean you no harm,’ he assured her. ‘I seek news of my nephew who, brought to the island on other business, has taken the opportunity to investigate what happened here during the rebellion.’

She was watching him closely, but she sat in the shadows and he could not read the expression in her eyes. He sensed her confusion and her fear. He waited.

‘He was here,’ she said eventually, her voice barely above a whisper.

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