Girl In A Red Tunic (6 page)

     ‘Has she any reason to think they will?’

     ‘I do not know. I can’t imagine that any decent soul would make such a threat but I will ask my son. He is with Rohaise at the moment, sitting beside her with Timus on his lap watching her as she sleeps, but I have asked him to come along to meet you presently.’

     ‘I look forward to that meeting with pleasure.’ He spoke courteously but he was frowning, apparently thinking hard. Then he said, ‘Does Sister Euphemia recognise the symptoms of whatever it is that affects Rohaise?’

     Helewise felt herself smile. ‘Yes. I am wrong, I’m sure, to take such comfort in her words, for in truth she urged me not to and said there was no certainty that she guesses aright. But she did admit that she had observed such irrational fears and such ongoing lowness of spirit in other mothers.’

     ‘Did those other mothers recover their serenity?’

     Trust Josse, she thought, to put the arrow in the bull’s eye. ‘Sometimes,’ she said. It was the very word that Sister Euphemia had used.

     As if he too found it unpromising, Josse just said, ‘Oh.’ Then, after a pause, he said, ‘In summary, then, my lady, your son has brought his wife here to Hawkenlye because she is unwell.’ He hesitated, as though not sure how best to speak his thoughts. Then he went on, ‘Forgive me if I speak too bluntly, my lady, but is it, would you say, Hawkenlye’s great reputation as a centre of healing that draws him rather than the identity of the person who is its Abbess?’

     It was a roundabout way of asking something that she had already asked herself. Modesty ordered that she meekly agree with him and say,
Oh, of course it’s because of our healers, he didn’t come here with any wish to see me!
But modesty had never been her greatest strength and when, as in this case, it fought with maternal emotion, there could only be one winner.

     Staring down at her hands, lying still and folded in her lap, she said, ‘He was calling for me, Josse. I heard him in my dreams and I was so very troubled because hearing my son’s voice, even after so many years, took me straight back to my previous life. I felt so wretched when I could not concentrate on those things that make up my present existence, but I could not help myself. I’m a nun!’ she said in an angry hiss. ‘I’m Abbess here and all these people depend on me! I’ve no business returning to the sentiments of my past, it is surely wrong!’

     Apparently ignoring her little outburst, he said, his voice low and full of warmth, ‘Did you verify that your son really did call out to you in his trouble?’

     She found that she dared not risk speaking so she just nodded.

     After a time Josse said, ‘You once said to me, my lady, at a time when I felt myself to have been betrayed and was greatly distressed, that the act of childbirth turns a wife into a mother and there is no going back.’

     She gave a small gasp; she remembered the conversation very well, and also the tense and emotional circumstances under which it had occurred. She whispered, ‘Yes.’

     In the same gentle tone, he said, ‘Your words gave me great comfort then, Helewise. Hear them again, apply them to yourself and take the same comfort, for I am quite sure that God wouldn’t have bestowed on the world the immeasurable gift of maternal love had He not intended his children to benefit from it.’

     She felt tears spill from her eyes. Trying to be discreet, she turned her head so that her coif hid her face while she wiped them away.

     Josse said, far too bracingly, ‘And what of the little boy? Timus, was it?’

     An absurd chuckle almost broke from her at the obvious distracting ploy. But then she thought about her grandson and no longer felt like laughing. ‘He is too quiet,’ she said. ‘He was never very vocal, my son says, but now he makes no attempt at speech.’

     ‘Is that not normal in so young a child?’ Josse looked as if he were trying to recall if it was; no doubt, she thought, he was envisaging all those nephews and nieces of his.

     ‘Children speak when they are ready and in some it is sooner than in others,’ she replied. ‘For sure, I never knew a child to speak proper words much before a year and a half to two years. But most little ones try out their voices, Sir Josse! They make sounds and begin to string them together and sometimes they make up what sounds like a language of their own, although of course it is nothing but nonsense.’

     A vivid picture came powerfully into her head. She tried to dismiss it.

     ‘What of your own boys?’ Josse was saying. ‘I ask because I’m thinking that these matters of how soon a child walks and talks may be similar in the father and his son.’

     Oh, he was trying to help and she was more than grateful to him, but his innocent question was making those remembered images from so long ago so lifelike that she could smell the sweet lilac blossom and feel the tiny hands clutching hers. ‘My sons were always noisy, the pair of them,’ she said. She noticed absently that she sounded as if there were something constricting her throat. ‘Dominic spoke early, but he had his talkative elder brother to copy.’

     ‘And Leofgar?’

     She could no longer fight her memories. ‘It was Leofgar of whom I was thinking when I spoke of the nonsense language,’ she said. ‘He was so eager to speak that he even made sounds in his sleep. Ivo claimed he was snoring but I said he was trying to communicate with us. Oh, and he used to make every other sort of sound, too – he’d laugh at almost anything, he was such a sunny, cheerful child.’

     The nun that she now was commanded
enough
, and abruptly she stopped.

     As if he were reluctant to bring her from the happy past to the distressing present, Josse waited a moment before he spoke. Then he said, ‘What does Sister Euphemia have to say about your son’s child?’

     She went back to studying her hands. ‘She says he is afraid.’ She looked up hastily and met his compassionate face. ‘And before you ask, afraid of what, I have no idea!’ Then she shot to her feet and said, ‘Wait here. I will fetch Leofgar and the child and you can judge for yourself.’

Josse watched her tall figure stride away down the infirmary. He lay back on his pillows, momentarily exhausted by the tension. She’s feeling very guilty because she’s putting a mother’s natural instinct to care for and help her child above her duty as a nun, he thought, trying to make sense of it all, and in addition to that she’s frantic with worry about her daughter-in-law’s fragile mental state and her grandson’s dumbness.

     Great God, he reflected, no wonder she’s so distressed.

     He was just making a solemn promise to himself that he would do all that he could to help her when he saw her coming back. Now there was a tall young man walking beside her, carrying a small child dressed in a short blue tunic and thick hose.

     As they approached, he wondered if anyone else had had the same thought: that these three people were so alike that, even had you not known them, you would have guessed that the same blood just had to run in their veins. Leofgar was taller than his mother but shared her broad shoulders and her upright bearing; his hair was dark (and Josse knew full well that Helewise’s was reddish-fair) and his skin had the same golden glow. The little boy’s colouring was light, like his grandmother’s, and the well-shaped mouth, although now set in a solemn line, looked as if it were made for smiles and laughter.

     What pointed them out as close relatives, though, was their eyes.

     Struggling to sit up, Josse held out a hand to this sad man who was the son of his dearest friend and said, ‘I am in my infirmary bed and you are troubled, young Leofgar. This is no time for lengthy and formal introductions – I shall only say that I’m Josse and I’m delighted to meet you.’

     Amusement filled Leofgar’s eyes – making him look even more like his mother – and, taking Josse’s hand, he said, ‘The delight is all mine, sir. My mother has told me all about you.’

     Not all, Josse hoped. That would be too much for anyone to absorb in a few hours and anyway he fervently hoped that the tenderest parts of
all
remained his own secret.

     ‘And this is Timus?’ Josse turned to look at the child.

     ‘Yes. Timus, say hello to Sir Josse,’ Leofgar commanded.

     But the little boy was timid and hid his face in his father’s tunic, turning his head only a fraction so he could look at Josse out of the corner of his eye.

     Josse remembered a trick that had once amused one of his nephews. Making sure that Timus was still looking at him, he raised both hands and, with an expression of deep concentration, pretended to wrench off his left thumb, tucking it down into the palm of that hand. Then he put his right hand behind his left and, sticking up the thumb, slid it up and down as if it were the detached left thumb.

     Timus had come out of hiding now and was openly staring, eyes wide with fascination. Then, as Josse looked with exaggerated and horrified amazement at his wayward thumb, suddenly the boy laughed.

     The sound was so sweet and so infectious that, almost without realising it, the three adults began to laugh too. But then Leofgar said, ‘You are a magician, Sir Josse. That is, I believe, the first time in a week that my son has laughed.’

     Josse gave him a vague grin; he was busy with the next trick. As once more he held up his hands, Timus struggled round in his father’s arms to get a better view; Leofgar, with a raised eyebrow at Josse, who nodded, carefully placed the child down on Josse’s bed. Josse caught Timus’s eye and said softly, ‘Watch.’

     Frowning and narrowing his eyes as if he were having trouble seeing, Josse threaded an imaginary needle. Then, wincing in pretend pain, he stuck the imaginary needle through each of the fingers of his left hand, starting with the little one and ending with the thumb. He gave the invisible thread a twitch, which brought all his fingers snapping together, then, pushing hard and going ‘Ouch!’, he pretended to push the needle into his left ear and pull it out of his right. 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.’