Music of the Distant Stars by Alys Clare Read Free Book Online Page A

out?
    When the two of us had finished work for the day and were sitting outside on the bench in the shade of the three young birch trees behind Edild’s house, sipping one of her cool, refreshing concoctions, at last my patience broke and I said, ‘ Well ?’
    She smiled. ‘Wait a while longer, for the person who provided the information is on his way.’
    I waited. After a short while, there was the sound of quick footsteps on the path that leads around the house and Hrype appeared. He gave me a nod by way of greeting, paused behind my aunt and briefly touched her shoulder, then sat down on the end of the bench and accepted a mug of Edild’s cold drink.
    My aunt and my friend Sibert’s uncle Hrype are lovers. Nobody knows this except for the two of them and me. I discovered their secret last autumn, through some unusual circumstances that I won’t describe now. Around that time I also discovered that Hrype is not in fact Sibert’s uncle; he’s his father. Both these fascinating facts I have kept to myself. If Hrype and Sibert choose to present themselves to the world as uncle and nephew, instead of father and son, that is their business. Regarding Hrype and Edild, I love my aunt dearly and would not hurt her for the world and, if the truth about her relationship with Hrype became known, it would cause her – and others – great distress and pain. I would not say I am fond of Hrype exactly; he is too strange and powerful for an ordinary mortal like me to have such a normal emotion regarding him. Another reason for keeping these secrets, which are his too, is that he’d probably turn me into a two-headed toad if I didn’t.
    Hrype has begun to teach me about some very deep, dark magic. My respect and my fear of him are growing all the time.
    That evening I watched them together, my aunt Edild and Hrype the cunning man. Now that I knew their secret, their feelings for each other were plain to see, or perhaps it was that, knowing I knew the truth, they allowed their guard to slip a little. Either way, it was both a pleasure and a pain to see the way his eyes filled with tenderness as he looked at her; the way she stroked a lock of hair away from his lean face with a hand as gentle as a mother’s with a sleeping baby. A pleasure because it touched my heart to see Edild looking so happy. A pain because I understood the difficulties they faced; also because observing a pair so devoted to each other reminded me of the man I love, who had slipped out of my life the previous autumn and left me with no hope that I’d ever see him again. Except for something my aunt had said . . .
    I brought myself back to the present with a lurch; Hrype was speaking to me. ‘You wish to know about Alain de Villequier, Lassair?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Listen, then, and I will tell you what I know.’ He stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankle, and fixed me with his silvery eyes. ‘He is a man who moves close to the king’s intimate circle. He is not within it, but his own circle touches it.’ He leaned forward and drew a diagram in the dusty ground: a small circle surrounded by five other, larger circles, the edges of which touched against the small one. ‘This is King William, with his personal elite,’ he said, pointing to the inner circle. ‘These are the groups of his close associates –’ he indicated the five larger circles – ‘in each of which there is a leading figure who reports directly to one of the elite. Alain de Villequier, who comes from a powerful and prominent Norman family, is in one such group. The king’s trust in him is sufficient that he has appointed him justiciar for our area and has provided him with a small but handsome manor house, Alderhall, where Sir Alain will live while he is with us.’
    ‘Edild explained what “justiciar” means,’ I said.
    ‘Good, then I shall not repeat her. This business of the dead girl in Cordeilla’s grave will be a test for him. The king will