Fortune Like the Moon (25 page)

The door was ajar. Putting his face to the opening, he looked inside.

Down at the foot of the steps, sitting side by side on a bench that stood on the only flat area of floor, were Helewise and Olivar.

His instinct was to hurl himself forward; for some reason which he did not pause to analyse, he had the clear impression she was in danger.

He made himself stop. Stood perfectly still, listening.

Helewise had placed a heavily bandaged hand over Olivar’s hands, folded in his lap. She was leaning towards him, and Josse heard the tail end of what she was saying: ‘… try them and see if they do?’

Olivar didn’t respond for some moments, and, in the brief pause, Josse wondered wildly what he was doing there. Had he come to mourn Gunnora, in this the nearest place of worship to where she had been murdered? Or – frightening thought! – had he somehow discovered that Milon was responsible for the death of the woman he had loved, and was here to find him and extract his own vengeance?

Helewise, good woman that she was, seemed to have calmed him; Olivar was looking relaxed, Josse thought, perhaps persuaded by the Abbess into believing that praying for Gunnora’s soul was better than seeking out her killer, and that—

But just then Olivar began to speak, and Josse turned his full attention to listening.

‘We were to meet here, in the shrine, in the hour before dawn,’ he said. ‘She would attend Matins, then return with the sisters to the dormitory. But, as soon as she thought they were all asleep, she was going to get up and creep out. I said I’d wait from midnight onwards – I didn’t mind how long it was till she came, I just didn’t want her arriving first. I got here while you were at your devotions.’

‘You must have had a long vigil,’ Helewise’s soft voice said.

‘Yes, but I was so happy at the thought of seeing her again that I didn’t mind. It had been months since we’d had any contact – we’d only been able to make that tryst because of her silly cousin’s fun and games. I gave Elanor a letter for Gunnora, you see. I said a lot, wrote of my love for her. I wrote too much, perhaps. But I didn’t think it would matter – it was only for Gunnora’s eyes, Elanor couldn’t read. Nor could Gunnora, not really. At least, not very fluently. I suppose I was wasting my time.’ There was the smallest suggestion of amusement in the voice. ‘Then she – Gunnora – did as I suggested and left her brief reply hidden for me in a crack in the wall out there.’ He waved a hand towards the doorway; Josse, afraid that one or other of them might turn round, swiftly moved back out of sight.

‘That was how you knew she’d come,’ Helewise said.

‘Yes. I said in my message that the year was up, it was time for her to put our plan into operation and announce she was leaving the convent. I had hoped we would set a firm date, a time, even, then I could have been waiting at the Abbey gates for her and we could have found a priest straightaway and asked him to marry us. It wasn’t what I wanted, this secret meeting down here at dead of night. I didn’t want it to be so
furtive.
As if we were ashamed.’

‘So, you waited, and, eventually, she came?’ the Abbess asked.

‘Yes.’ Warmth flooding the bleak voice, he hurried on, ‘Oh, I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to see her again! I threw my arms round her, hugged her to me, tried to kiss her.’

There was a brief silence.

‘Tried?’ It was, Josse thought, exactly what he would have asked.

‘She wouldn’t let me, well, not on her lips.’ Olivar gave a small laugh. ‘She said she was still a nun, and that I must show due respect and only give her a brotherly peck on the cheek. And that was funny, because she didn’t look much like a nun – she was wearing her headdress, but it was loosely draped, and the wimple was tucked into the front of her habit, not secured round her throat. I pretended to find it funny, her not kissing me, but I didn’t really. I mean, it wasn’t as if we had been – well, you know – intimate, before, but we had exchanged kisses. Very passionate, thrilling kisses.’

Josse, knowing what he now knew of Gunnora, found that hard to believe. Passion, from a woman like that? Perhaps she had been good at simulating it.

‘Anyway, it didn’t matter,’ Olivar was saying, ‘because we’d be man and wife very soon, and then we’d be able to kiss, make love all night if we wanted to. So—’ his voice broke on a sob. Quickly bringing himself under control, he tried again. ‘So I said, “How soon can it be? When do you come out of the convent?” And then she told me. Said she’d changed her mind about marriage, didn’t feel that she wanted to be a wife after all.’

Helewise murmured something, but Josse couldn’t catch the words.

‘Yes, I know.’ Olivar was weeping openly now. ‘I couldn’t believe it, you’re right. I said, “Sweeting, it’s me! Olivar! You haven’t to be Brice’s wife, he’s married to your sister, remember?” I didn’t tell her what had just happened to Dillian – I know it was wrong, but I didn’t dare. Gunnora might have used that as further grounds for staying where she was – after all, she might have thought they’d have made her marry him, now that he was a widower. “It’s us that are to marry,” I said, “you and me, like we planned!” And’ – again, the break in his voice – ‘she just stood there, at the top of the steps’ – he waved his arm, indicating behind him – ‘and said she’d decided to stay in the Abbey a little longer. Or, failing that, she’d leave and get her father to reinstate her in his will, then live at Winnowlands on her own. Then she turned her back on me and made a dainty little curtsey to the statue of the Virgin.’

He paused briefly, collecting himself, then the grim narrative resumed. ‘I was standing beside her, and I tried to turn her round to face me. I don’t really know why – I think I thought that if I could just get her to kiss me – gently, you know, I didn’t intend to
force
her – then she’d get a bit aroused and remember how sweet it used to be for us, before, when we embraced.’

You poor deluded man, Josse thought. What an optimistic hope!

‘So – so – I took hold of her shoulder, and I said, “Gunnora, my dearest love, won’t you hug me? Please?” and she twisted herself out of my grasp and said, “No, Olivar, I don’t care to. I am going to pray.” Then’ – the weeping was loud now, each sob breaking out of him as if tearing him apart – ‘then she started to go down the steps, almost dancing, as if to say, see how happy I am? See how I love to be a nun, to pray before the Holy Mother?’

It seemed unlikely that he could go on.

But he didn’t need to; Helewise’s quiet voice took up the tale.

‘She danced down those slippery steps, and she missed her footing, didn’t she?’ Josse saw the young man nod. ‘It’s so easily done,’ Helewise said, ‘it’s the condensation from the spring, it settles on the stones and makes them as perilous as ice.’

There was another, longer, silence. Josse was beginning to wonder if either of them would finish the story – was there, indeed, any need, when both appeared to know perfectly well already what happened? – when Helewise spoke again.

‘You tried to catch her, didn’t you?’ Once more, the nod of agreement. ‘I knew. We saw the little bruises on the tops of her arms – we thought at first that someone had held her fast while another person – well, never mind that. Someone did indeed hold her, but the marks were from your hands on her, trying to stop her fall.’

‘Yes.’ Olivar’s brief monosyllable was so wracked with agony that Josse could have wept for him. ‘But it was no good – she was already tumbling forward, and I couldn’t hold her. She slipped out of my grasp, flew through the air, and then … then…’

‘She fell against the statue,’ Helewise finished for him. ‘By the most terrible ill fortune, the plinth caught her across the throat. Didn’t it?’

‘Aye.’ He rubbed at his eyes like a punished child crying at the injustice. ‘I leapt down the steps after her, to see if she was hurt. I don’t know what I expected – she was lying so still that I thought she’d bumped her head, knocked herself unconscious. Then I turned her over, and I saw.’

Helewise had her arm round him now, and he was leaning against her, the big body shaking. ‘There was so much blood!’ he cried, ‘all over that horrible plinth, pooling on the floor under her, soaking down into the black cloth of her habit, and I didn’t know what to do! I remember thinking I mustn’t leave her there, for her life’s blood to run into the holy spring water, so I picked her up and carried her outside. I think I intended to take her up to her sisters, but I’m not sure – it’s all so hazy, that bit of it. She was getting heavy, and I felt very sick – I laid her down on the path, but it was all dusty, and I thought it wouldn’t be nice if her poor hurt neck got dirty. So I carried her to the less-used path, where there was clean, damp grass at the edges, and settled her there. I’d brought her sister’s cross for her, as a betrothal present – I knew Gunnora didn’t have hers any more, she’d said she was going to give it to the Abbey. I didn’t think Dillian would have minded – for all I knew, she might have left it to Gunnora anyway. I knew where she’d kept it, in that old box of hers, and I went up to her chamber and took it. It wasn’t long after she died – everyone was in such a state, I don’t think they ever knew what I’d done. I brought it with me, that night. When I came to meet Gunnora.’

He paused for some moments. It seemed to Josse that, having gone back in his memory to a time before the terrible death had happened, he was reluctant to resume his account.

Eventually he spoke again.

‘After she – afterwards, I went back into the shrine and I cleaned away all the blood. It’s a holy place, and I knew it wasn’t right to defile it. It took so long. I took off my shirt and used it as a wash cloth, but I had to keep scooping up water to wet it, over and over again. And there was so little light, just a few candles burning, and I couldn’t really see if I’d done it properly. In the end, I just had to leave it. I wanted to get back to her, you see. She was all on her own, out there in the dark.’

Helewise said something, her voice soft, soothing. Josse saw Olivar nod briefly.

‘I said, “I’m back, Gunnora,” then I bent over her, unfastened the chain and put the cross round her neck,’ he went on quietly. ‘It looked so pretty, against the black of her habit. I was kneeling by her side, and I stayed there for a long time, just looking down at her. Then I ran away.’

Helewise was rocking him gently, crooning as if she were soothing a child waking from a nightmare. ‘There, there,’ the soft voice intoned, ‘all done, you’ve got it out of you now. There, there.’

There was a silence. An extended silence.

Olivar said presently, ‘Is she buried?’

‘She is,’ Helewise said. ‘Tucked up snug and safe in her coffin, where no more harm can come to her.’

‘Is she with God?’

Josse noticed Helewise’s hesitation; he wondered if Olivar did. ‘I expect she soon will be,’ Helewise said. ‘We have prayed for her soul, and we will continue to have Masses said for her. We will do all we can to shorten her time in purgatory.’

‘She was good!’ Olivar protested. ‘She will not have many sins staining her soul, Abbess. Soon she’ll be in heaven.’

Helewise murmured, ‘Amen.’

Then, dropping her head down on top of the dark head resting against her shoulder, she began to pray out loud for the late sister of the Abbey, Gunnora of Winnowlands.

Chapter Eighteen

They put Olivar in the infirmary.

When Helewise had finished her prayer for Gunnora, he had straightened up, looked around him with an expression that suggested he didn’t quite recall where he was, then, remembering, had slowly slumped to the ground. His face in his hands, he said, in a tone which had torn into the souls of both those who heard, ‘She is gone. What is there left for me now?’

He had suffered some sort of collapse. Josse and Helewise, at a loss to know what to do, had half led, half dragged him up the hill to Sister Euphemia. Observing his extreme distress, she had prescribed a draught of her poppy mixture, strengthened with a little precious mandrake root. ‘It is best that he sleeps, for now,’ she said. ‘To give him some of the blessed oblivion is, I fear, really all that I can do.’ Her round face creased in concern. ‘It’s only a temporary solution, mind,’ she added practically, ‘the poor soul will find nothing changed for the better when he wakes.’

She found a corner of the infirmary for him, where he could lie screened by thin hangings, a little apart from the sights, sounds, and smells of the other patients. One of the nursing sisters placed a shallow bowl of full-blown roses by his head, and their powerful scent soon wove itself through the air. ‘Roses are good for grief,’ Sister Euphemia remarked, nodding her approval. As Olivar gradually relaxed into sleep, she stood over him for some minutes. Then, with a tender touch of her hand on his shoulder, left him.

Brother Firmin had presented himself and announced, although Sister Euphemia had given no indication of either wanting or needing assistance, that he had come to help her. He had brought a cup of the healing spring water for the patient. He waited patiently while Olivar was settled down, then, observing that Olivar had in fact gone to sleep, sent one of the sisters to fetch him a stool, which he placed at the foot of Olivar’s bed.

‘I will remain here,’ he announced to Sister Euphemia. ‘Yes, sister, I know full well that the young man sleeps. But it may be of help to him, in some way, that somebody is with him.’

Then, putting the cup of spring water carefully beside the roses, he closed his eyes, and, lips moving in silent prayer, he settled himself down to his vigil.

*   *   *

Josse had sought out Brother Saul and asked if he would make the journey to Rotherbridge. Brice had to be notified, and, this time, Josse felt that it was acceptable to ask another to set out on the errand. Josse had a suspicion that Abbess Helewise might prefer it if he were to stay at the abbey. He was trying, haltingly, to explain this to Brother Saul, when the brother put out a hand to touch Josse’s arm and said, ‘There is no need. I understand.’

Abbess Helewise, Sister Euphemia, Brother Firmin, Brother Saul, the unknown sister who had brought the roses, all of them, Josse reflected, so eager to help, so full of compassion, with willing hands, willing legs, hurrying to do what was asked of them, often before it had even been asked …