Girl In A Red Tunic (8 page)

     Standing with his head through the gap between the curtains, he said, ‘Lady Rohaise, may I come to talk to you? I am Josse d’Acquin.’

     She had raised a startled, wide-eyed face to him at his first words, as if her thoughts had been far away and he had made her jump. But, as he identified himself, her expression relaxed and, putting her sewing aside, she stood up.

     ‘Please come in, Sir Josse.’ Her voice was low-pitched and attractive. He stepped between the curtains and into the recess. She pulled another stool forward from where it had been set back out of the way beside the wall and invited him to sit. As she resumed her seat, he did so.

     ‘You are the very exceptional man,’ said Rohaise, ‘who not only is a good friend of the Abbess, my mother-in-law, but also performed the miracle of making my little boy laugh and speak.’

     Overcome by her praise, he muttered, ‘Hardy
speak
, my lady. It was but the one word.’

     ‘You cannot know what that one word means to me,’ she said urgently. ‘I wish with all my heart that I had been there to witness the moment, but I was sleeping. They gave me some drug that rendered me senseless,’ she added tonelessly.

     He wanted to go on talking about the child but her words seemed to imply criticism, and he leapt to Hawkenlye’s defence. As kindly as he could, he said, ‘They are skilled healers here, Lady Rohaise. Put yourself in their hands, I do urge you, and they will do their very best for you.’

     Her dark eyes met his and his kind heart shuddered at the misery he saw in their depths. ‘I am not sure that I can be helped,’ she said. She sighed. ‘There has been too much ...’ Her voice trailed off.

     ‘Too much?’ he prompted.

     She did not respond, instead reaching out her hand for the sewing. ‘I asked for something to do,’ she explained, ‘for when my son is not by my side I worry about him. I worry even when he is with me, now, and I fear that it will take more than hemming sheets to stop me.’

     ‘Why do you worry so?’ Josse asked gently. ‘Your boy is healthy, is he not? Some parents would say that, offered the choice, they would prefer a quiet child to a boisterous one.’

     ‘Oh, Timus can be as boisterous as any little boy,’ she replied quickly. ‘Sir Josse, he used to—’ But, as if someone had put a hand over her mouth, she stopped.

     ‘Can you not confide in me, my lady?’ Josse asked. ‘I am here to help; you have my word on that.’

     She gazed into his eyes, her needlework forgotten in her lap. ‘I am not a fit mother,’ she whispered. ‘Timus deserves better, for I fear that I contaminate him a little more with every day. I stopped feeding him, you know. My milk was bad for him and he was better off with Adela. She stopped coming to our home too, you know.
She
knew. She saw it all.’

     The poor woman makes no sense, Josse thought, deeply concerned. Making up his mind that the best way to respond was with the prosaic and everyday, he said, ‘Well, once your boy was weaned, he had no more use of a wet nurse. Isn’t that so?’

     ‘Oh, yes.’ She sounded dreamy, as if her thoughts were far away.

     ‘I do not believe that you can possibly contaminate your own child, my lady,’ Josse pressed on. ‘It is clear that you love him.’

     ‘Is it?’ She almost snapped out the words. ‘
Is
it?’

     ‘You have brought him here in order that help be given to him over these strange silences of his, have you not?’

     She gave him a tiny smile, enough to put a faint dimple in her gaunt cheek and give him a glimpse of how pretty she might have been under other circumstances. ‘Coming here was my husband’s idea, Sir Josse,’ she corrected him. ‘He told me – went on telling me until I was so tired that I silently screamed at him to stop – that this was a good place where they would help me.
Me
,’ she repeated, emphasising the word. ‘He thinks, like everyone else, that I am in dire need of help because I am an unnatural woman who cannot raise her child.’

     ‘I am sure that is not so!’ Josse protested, but even as he spoke the words he was wondering whether there might not be some truth in Rohaise’s pitiful accusations against herself. Then, like a blessing, he remembered the Abbess’s report on her talk with the infirmarer. ‘They tell me,’ he said, lowering his voice and leaning closer to her, ‘that quite a lot of young mothers have feelings such as yours and that many get better.’

     Damnation! He hadn’t meant to say that, to imply that some did not! ‘That is,’ he hurried on, ‘things quite naturally improve as the child grows and thrives, and – well, all turns out for the best in the end.’

     It sounded lame even to him. He was not at all surprised when she turned cool eyes on him and said, ‘So I have been told, Sir Josse. But it is a different matter to be
you
, out there where things make sense and normality rules, and to be
I
, who am forced to live in this nightmare world that threatens me.’

     ‘But threatens you with what, Lady Rohaise?’

     He wondered afterwards if he had spoken too urgently, for she seemed to flinch, then her eyes closed and two huge tears rolled down her sallow cheeks. Then she bent her head over her sewing and began to weep.

     With the horrible sensation of having done more harm than good, Josse got up, summoned one of the nursing nuns – it was Sister Beata, who might not have had the cleverest brain but certainly had the most generous heart – and asked her to look after Rohaise. With a worried little frown, Sister Beata wiped her hands and hurried into the recess, where she crouched down beside the weeping young woman and enveloped her in soft, loving arms, muttering kindly as the girl turned her wet face into the nun’s bosom.

     Feeling utterly redundant, Josse slunk away.

With nothing better to do, he remembered his resolve to exercise Horace and he fetched the horse from the stable. Trying to allow the bracing autumnal air to take his mind off his failure with Rohaise, he kicked Horace into a canter and then a gallop and they pounded along the track that led around the forest, the horse’s big feet sending up flying divots of frosty earth. After a while they slowed to a canter, then a brisk trot, until finally Josse drew the horse to a halt and they turned back towards the Abbey.

     They were not far from the gates when Josse spotted the figures of a man and a small child. The man was crouched down beside the small and well-wrapped figure of the boy and as Josse drew closer he saw that Leofgar was showing his son how to make a skeleton leaf.

     ‘...gently, now, don’t damage the veins of the leaf – there!’ Leofgar was saying as he held up the child’s clumsy attempt. ‘That’s very good, Timus, we’ll take it home as a present for your mother.’

     The child caught sight of Josse before his father did. With a smile of welcome that went some way towards making up for Josse’s failure with the boy’s mother, Timus pointed and said, ‘Man!’

     Spinning round, Leofgar’s wary expression instantly relaxed into an ironic grin as he saw who it was. ‘I should have guessed,’ he called, ‘you being the only person who inspires my son to speech.’

     Hurrying to cover the remaining paces between them, Josse slid off Horace’s back, keeping tight hold of the reins in case the horse should frighten the child by a bit of innocent curiosity; the disparity in their sizes suggested this might be unwise. Then he went to greet them. With a nod to Leofgar – Josse could not for the moment think of any suitable reply to the young man’s comment – he knelt down beside the child and opened his arms for a hug. Timus rushed straight up to him and snuggled against his chest, grasping a fold of Josse’s cloak and pulling it over his head. Josse, thinking it was a game, began to laugh but Timus turned a solemn face up to him and whispered something that he did not understand.

     ‘What was that, Timus?’ Josse asked. The little boy repeated the word, which sounded like
hide
, but still Josse did not quite catch it. Leofgar made as if to remove his son from the nest he had made of the cloak against Josse’s broad chest but, to Josse’s surprise and faint dismay, the child cowered against him and would not be budged.

     ‘If you will lead my horse, I’ll carry the lad back to the Abbey,’ Josse said, trying to make light of the strange occurrence.

     Leofgar was not fooled. ‘It is not as it seems, Sir Josse,’ he said softly.

     ‘I was not making a judgement,’ Josse protested.

     Leofgar smiled thinly. ‘No? The smallest part of you was not saying, see how this silent child pulls away from his father into the protecting arms of a near-stranger! Does this not suggest that the child fears the father?’

     ‘I do not believe that.’ It is true! Josse told himself. But whether he believed it because of Leofgar himself or because he was Helewise’s son, he did not dare think about.

     They walked slowly along the track towards the Abbey gates. Horace walked obediently behind Leofgar, and Timus, still snuggled in Josse’s arms, put his thumb in his mouth and with the other hand reached out and delicately took hold of a strand of Josse’s dark hair, which he twiddled with small, deft fingers.

     The silence between the two men was hardly companionable and Josse was relieved when Leofgar broke it. ‘May I risk a confidence, Sir Josse?’

     ‘A—?’ Josse played for time while he thought rapidly. Then he said, ‘I would be honoured to hear anything you would wish to say to me privately. But I cannot give my word that I would not repeat it to – to another.’

     ‘To my mother,’ Leofgar said calmly. ‘Yes, I know. I think, though, that I must speak anyway.’ Not giving himself further time for consideration, he plunged on, ‘Sir Josse, there are several reasons why I have brought my wife and son here to Hawkenlye. The first you know, for it is no secret that I wished to consult the excellent infirmarer and her nuns not only about my mute son’ – he shot a swift and loving smile at the sleepy Timus – ‘about my hitherto mute son but also about my sick wife. This we have done. The other – no, if I am to be honest with you, as indeed I wish to be,
an
other reason is because my wife feels threatened at home.’

     ‘Aye, so I am beginning to understand,’ Josse said. ‘She seems—’

     But, with an apologetic smile, Leofgar interrupted him. ‘Forgive me, Sir Josse, but I must explain before we— Well, hear as much as I feel able to say, if you will.’

     More mystified than ever, Josse said, ‘Gladly.’

     Again the smile, and this time Leofgar’s expression was grateful. ‘Thank you. Sir Josse, I am the son of a nun, an Abbess, a woman who stands high in the esteem of the Church, and what I must tell you may displease her when she comes to be told of it. Part of my reason for speaking initially to you is that I would be pleased to have your advice on
how
my formidable mother is told.’

     He paused, apparently waiting for a response, and Josse said, ‘I usually find that the direct approach is best. But I will listen and if I can make any helpful suggestions, I will.’

     Leofgar nodded. ‘I am grateful.’ He took a breath, then said quickly, ‘Sir Josse, back at home the clergy have come to know of my wife’s state of mind. Our parish priest has prayed for her and with her and still there is no improvement. He has decided, in his wisdom, that my beloved Rohaise has suffered the misfortune of having a changeling put in the cradle. You understand what that is?’

     Memories of half-forgotten folk tales were surfacing slowly in Josse’s astonished mind. A changeling, he recalled, was the name given to a fairy child substituted for a human baby. Hardly crediting that a priest should believe such superstitious nonsense, he said grimly, ‘I understand, aye.’

     ‘Father Luke tells Rohaise that it is not her fault she cannot be a proper mother – which, as you will imagine, does further damage to her desperate lack of confidence – because the child she tries to care for is not the product of her own womb but an evil spirit, planted in our baby’s cradle for some malicious and secret purpose of the dark world of the spirits.’

     Josse, stunned, noticed that in this alarming Father Luke’s version, the innocent ‘fairy’ had become ‘evil spirit’. Dear God alive! ‘Go on,’ he said.

     ‘He tells us – tells Rohaise especially, for it is she who constantly turns to him for help – that the real Timus is now the captive of the spirits and that only our true and deep penance will make Father Luke’s stern God relent and send our little boy home.’