Black Is the Colour of My True Love's Heart

“But she told Dad… she told us…”

“I know! She told us she parted from him where the paths cross. She said she left him there and came on over the stone bridge… She didn’t know where he went afterwards, but she left him there. But she didn’t,” said Tossa with absolute conviction, and very quietly, “Because before she met us she was under that lilac tree. She was there by the river with him. She knows what happened!”

They looked for her in the libraries, in the drawing-rooms, in the gallery, but she was nowhere to be found. In the end they were forced to go in to the afternoon session without having spoken to her; and at the last moment she slid in from nowhere and took a seat in a dim corner, and sat through the two hours of song and argument and speculation with a pale face and haunted eyes. But that meant that at least they could corner her when the session was over, before she could escape again into whatever lair she used for her private agonies.

The afternoon meeting ended with a tour-de-force by Liri Palmer, a thirty-five verse ballad without a dull line in it, all about a traitorous nobleman who killed his king and usurped his kingdom, but suffered the pregnant queen to live, on the understanding that if her child turned out to be a boy, he should be instantly killed, but if it was a girl she should be allowed to live. But the queen managed to elude her gaolers for a short time when her hour was near, and hid herself alone in the stables to bear her son. When the wife of one of the courtiers found her there, the queen begged her to exchange her girl baby for the royal boy.

“ ‘And ye shall learn my gay goshawk

Right weel to breast a steed.

And I shall learn your turtle-dow

As weel to write and read.

“ ‘At kirk and market, when we meet.

We’ll dare make no avow

But: Dame, how does my gay goshawk?

Madam, how does my dow?’ ”

Thirty-five verses, all to one unchanging tune, and mounting excitement with every verse. Liri Palmer was an artist, no question of that. It was partly the pure, passionate drama of her voice, and the latent acting ability that enabled her to people her stage with so many living characters, without breaking the melody or distorting the tone; and partly the virtuosity of her accompaniment, which varied with every verse, and produced the rattle of duels and the muted agitation of women’s plotting as fluently as the hammer of hooves or the ripple of rain. They reached the point where the gay goshawk had grown up, and was hunting with his foster-father:

“ ‘Oh, dinna ye see yon bonny castell

With halls and towers so fair?

If every man had back his ain.

Of it ye should be heir.’

“ ‘The boy stared wild like a grey goshawk:

“Oh, what may all this mean?’

“My boy, ye are King Honour’s son.

And your mother’s our lawful queen.’ ”

Tossa looked at Dominic, and her eyes signalled that they must be near the end of the story now. She was next to the wall, and in a quiet corner; she rose softly, and slipped back into the shadows, to circle the room unobtrustively to Felicity’s hiding-place.

The goshawk had reached his apotheosis, leaping the castle wall and confronting False Foundrage in arms. Not all ballads have happy endings. This one did. The boy killed his enemy, delivered his mother, and took the turtle- dow as his bride. The entranced hush broke, the moment the last shuddering chord of Liri’s strings had vibrated into silence. Under cover of the applause Felicity got up to slide out of the room; and Tossa’s hand closed on her arm.

“Felicity, come into the little library. We want to talk to you.”

The tone was quiet and reasonable, but Felicity recognised its finality. Perhaps she had been waiting for someone to take the burden out of her hands, with even more longing than terror. She went with them, stiff and silent, not trying to escape now, except into the deeps of her own being, and even there hoping for little. They, sat her down in a quiet corner of the small library; the cheerful pre-tea din told them where all the others were, and assured them that their solitude here was safe for a little while.

Tossa laid the spray of wilting lilac flowers in the girl’s lap. “We found these this afternoon. We were looking for you before the session, to show you. These are the same kind you had in your hair yesterday, when we met you. We know now where you’d been. Not just along the path to the bridge. You’d been by the grotto, with Lucien. Hadn’t you?”

Felicity looked all round her in a last convulsion of protest and despair, and shrank into herself and sat still, her eyes on the flowers. She didn’t try to deny anything.

“You’ll have to tell us what you know, Felicity. You understand that, don’t you? It isn’t any use trying to pretend you know nothing now. We know you were there.”

Felicity melted suddenly from her frozen stillness and began to shake uncontrollably. She linked her small hands together before her, and gripped until the slight knuckles were blanched like almonds.

“Yes,” she whispered, the word jerking out of her like a gasp of pain. She looked up at Tossa in desperate appeal, and asked in a small level voice: “What happens to people who’re accessories before the fact? Of murder, I mean? Supposing someone caused someone else to kill a person, but without meaning to?” Her face shook, and as resolutely reassembled its shattered and disintegrating calm; she wasn’t crying, and she wasn’t going to cry. What was the use now? “Or suppose they did mean to, but never really believed it could happen? What do they do to people like that? Do you know?”

They looked at each other over her head, shaken to the heart.

“I think,” said Dominic, with careful, appalled gentleness, “we’d better go into the warden’s office and wait for