Girl In A Red Tunic by Alys Clare Read Free Book Online Page B

Then, as if a thread really did run from his bound left hand through his head to his right one, he pulled his right hand down and simultaneously raised his left, repeating the manoeuvre several times and beaming broadly in triumph.
         Timus, who had been watching open-mouthed, clumsily copied the gesture. Then, pointing at Josse, who had now stopped, he said quite clearly, ‘More!’
         Josse was smiling again, and one glance at Helewise and her son – whose mouths had dropped open just like Timus’s entranced by the trick – made him laugh aloud. ‘This is the child who does not speak?’ he said quietly; Timus was kneeling on his lap now and trying clumsily to make Josse’s hands do the trick again. Looking down at him, he added, ‘Well, whatever ails him that makes him opt for silence, it is not because he can’t speak.’ Staring up at the mother and son before him, he said, ‘Is it?’
         And as Helewise quietly shook her head, Leofgar’s face took on an expression of deep joy as he said, ‘No. Oh, I must tell Rohaise as soon as she wakes!’ Looking over his shoulder down the ward, it was clear to Josse where he wanted to be. Josse said, ‘Off you go. Timus will be quite safe with me. If his grandmother’ – he shot a look at Helewise – ‘has to be off and about her duties, I shall be glad of this little man’s company. I have a few more tricks yet and, if I remember children’s ways aright, the first two amusements may bear a repetition or two.’
         ‘Thank you, sir.’ Leofgar gave him a graceful bow, then turned and hurried away in the direction of his wife’s bedside.
         Josse knew she was looking at him even before he raised his head to check. ‘How did you do that?’ she breathed.
         ‘It’s quite easy really, you only pretend there’s a needle and thread and—’
         ‘Sir Josse, do not joke!’ But she was smiling as she spoke. ‘You have a rare gift with children; your brothers’ sons and daughters are fortunate in their uncle and you would appear to be a natural—’
         She stopped, and he could tell that she was confused. Well, perhaps what he guessed she had been about to say was a little personal, but he wouldn’t have minded.
         He watched the little boy crawling across his bed for a moment or two. Timus seemed to have made himself at home and instinctively Josse put out a hand and gently took hold of the child’s ankle, in case he went too near the edge and fell off. ‘Do you feel reassured a little, my lady?’ he asked.
         ‘I do, Sir Josse,’ she replied. ‘I do not dare to hope that this minor miracle you have brought about means that all Timus’s troubles are behind him but, as you said, we now know that he can utter sounds if he wants to.’
         ‘Aye,’ Josse agreed. And he thought, but did not say, that the next question was surely to ask why Timus did not want to speak. Or to laugh; he wondered if Helewise had also noticed what her son had said when Josse’s first trick had met with such a response: that it was the first time in a week that the little boy had laughed.
         Which surely implied that he had laughed – perhaps also made the normal speech-like sounds – up until a week ago. And that suggested to Josse that something must have happened to make him withdraw into silence.
         He realised that the Abbess was watching him intently and he almost asked her if she was thinking the same thing. But then her expression seemed to close up and, straightening her back and folding her hands away in the opposite sleeves of her black habit, she said in a voice that brooked no argument, ‘I must be on my way. There is much for me to attend to and I can spare no more time here.’
         ‘Very well, my lady,’ he said meekly.
         ‘I—’ She was staring at the child and he could see the longing in her eyes. ‘You will tell me if he speaks again?’ she asked.
         ‘Of