Heart of Ice (28 page)

     ‘I—’ Whatever Joanna was about to say, she changed her mind. ‘Farewell, Lora, Tiphaine.’

     As the two older women passed her by and left the hut, she gave them both a curt bow and then closed the door behind them.

     ‘Could we not have tried to persuade her?’ Tiphaine said crossly as they hurried away along the winding forest tracks. ‘People are dying, Lora, and she could help!’

     ‘It is Joanna’s decision,’ Lora said firmly, ‘and that’s an end to it.’

     Watching her face, Tiphaine wondered why, when she seemed to be resigned to failure, Lora should look quite cheerful about it  . . .

Back at Hawkenlye that evening, Josse and Augustus were the first to return. Josse went straight to the Abbess to report that they did not find Sabin de Retz at Robertsbridge but that he and Gus both had the distinct impression that the monk to whom they spoke was eager to see the back of them.

     ‘The Cistercians are renowned for their love of solitude,’ the Abbess remarked. ‘Could this monk’s demeanour have been simply the desire of a man who has become accustomed to his own company to be free of outsiders?’

     ‘Perhaps,’ Josse agreed. ‘Only Gussie pointed out that Stephen – that was the monk’s name – excusing himself by saying he had to get back to work was odd since the White Monks have lay brothers for the hard labour.’

     ‘There is work in a monastery apart from tilling the fields and digging,’ the Abbess said, indicating her heavily loaded table. ‘Possibly this Stephen was behind in his accounts?’

     Josse sighed heavily; he was far too tired to rack his brains to find the words to explain the subtle sense that both he and Gus had felt that Stephen was being economical with the truth. ‘No doubt you are right, my lady,’ he said, rather more tetchily than he had intended; the Abbess, he noticed, gave a faint smile. ‘But what of matters here?’ he asked, hastening to change the subject. ‘How fare the infirmarer’s patients in the Vale?’

     Now it was the Abbess who sighed. Putting her hands up to rub at her eyes, she said, ‘More sick people arrived this morning; five very ill and three with fever but sufficiently well to help their relatives. Two are dying; for another two there is little hope. And a man came stumbling into the Vale not long ago; he is a thatcher and lives in a hamlet under the eaves of the forest some five miles from here. He is sick but ignores his own symptoms out of anxiety for his twelve-year old son; that boy too, according to Sister Euphemia, will be lucky to see the morning.’

     ‘I see.’ Josse’s faint optimism that there would be no more new cases said a brief farewell and melted away. ‘How is Sister Judith?’

     ‘She is holding on.’

     Josse hesitated. ‘Brother Firmin?’

     The Abbess closed her eyes, as if in a brief prayer. ‘He, too, is still with us.’

     Observing her face, Josse said gently, ‘There is still hope, my lady.’

     ‘Hope for what?’ she snapped back. ‘Nearly a dozen dead and the accommodation in the Vale filled to overflowing with feverish, pain-racked, vomiting people who void their bowels as fast as the nursing nuns and monks can pour the liquid into them! It is a nightmare down there, Sir Josse; a vision of hell, complete with sounds, stenches and suffering that must be making the devil dance with glee!’

     She paused, panting, and he waited. Then, calming herself, she said more quietly, ‘I am sorry. You know these things as well as I do and I should not have shouted at you.’

     ‘Shout away, my lady, if it helps,’ he said kindly.

     She was looking at him with an odd expression in her eyes, and he remembered how strange she had seemed before he had left to go to Robertsbridge. Puzzled, he was about to ask her outright what was the matter when she spoke; her words serving only to increase his mystification, she said, ‘Oh, Sir Josse, do not be generous with me; I do not deserve it.’

     ‘My lady, I—’

     But she was not going to allow him to speak. Standing up, she said, ‘I must seek out Sister Tiphaine, for there is a matter I wish to discuss with her. Sir Josse, I will not keep you any longer from your well-earned rest; off you go to the Vale where, I am quite sure, Brother Saul will be able to find you something hot to eat.’

     Reckoning that he had rarely received such a clear dismissal, Josse opened the door for her and stood back to allow her to precede him out into the cloister. He watched her stride away in the direction of the herbalist’s hut, then spun round and hurried away to the rear gate of the Abbey and the path down to the Vale.

     I would do anything in my power to help you, you stubborn woman, he thought angrily. But if you prefer to keep me shut out, then you render me helpless and I am happy to leave you to it.

     But as his anger faded he knew that
happy
was completely the wrong word.

Helewise had no idea whether in fact Sister Tiphaine had yet returned from the forest; she had used a visit to the herbalist as an excuse to see Josse on his way. As the hours had passed she had been feeling increasingly guilty about the events she had set in motion and having him standing right in front of her being
kind
to her had been more than she could bear.

     She hastened past the Great West Door of the Abbey church, hurried on by the sinister, windowless walls of the leper house and turned right along the far perimeter of the Abbey, pacing along the path to the herbalist’s garden and hut.

     There was a light showing under the hut’s closed door; it looked as if Sister Tiphaine were back. Opening the door, Helewise stepped into the warm, scented air of the little room and immediately Sister Tiphaine bent in a low reverence.

     ‘My lady Abbess, I would have come to find you straight away following my return,’ she said after the customary exchange of greetings, ‘but I saw Sir Josse approaching your room and deemed it best not to see you when he was in your presence.’

     ‘Quite right, Sister.’ Trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice, she said, ‘Now, what news?’

     Sister Tiphaine’s very expression seemed to speak of her failure; straight away she said, ‘It’s no good, I’m afraid, my lady; she won’t agree to it.’

     Oh, dear God, no!

     But it was not the role of abbesses to appear before their nuns distraught and hopeless; rallying, Helewise said, ‘I see. Now, Sister, will you please tell me the full story?’

     ‘She’s back,’ Tiphaine said shortly. ‘Joanna, I mean. She’s been away learning skills from the Great Ones of her people and now she’s formidable.’

     A shiver went down Helewise’s back. ‘You mean – is she dangerous?’

     Sister Tiphaine gave a brief snort that could have been laughter. ‘I’m sure she could be, my lady, but that was not what I meant. She’s been in training as a healer.’

     ‘A healer.’ Helewise stored that away for future thought. ‘And there is a child, isn’t there?’

     Tiphaine gave her a thoughtful look. ‘You already knew that, my lady, did you not?’

     Yes, was the truthful answer. But Helewise said somewhat stiffly, ‘It was but idle speculation.’

     Tiphaine looked as if she was not fooled for a moment. But there was nothing but the usual respect in her tone when she spoke. ‘The child is a little girl, some sixteen months old. She is dark haired and has eyes that dance with light. She seems to have a sweet disposition and she is very pretty.’

     ‘She is the child of Sir Josse?’ Helewise just had to have it confirmed.

     ‘Aye, my lady.’
But you knew that too
hung unspoken in the air.

     ‘She is— Does she resemble her father?’

     ‘Oh, aye. There would be no doubt in the mind of anyone who had seen both father and child that Meggie is his.’

     ‘Meggie,’ Helewise repeated softly. ‘A pretty name for a pretty child.’

     ‘Aye, my lady.’ The herbalist stood silent, eyes cast down, waiting for her Abbess to speak.

     Which, eventually, she did. ‘Was any reason given for Joanna’s refusal to bring Meggie here to Hawkenlye?’

     ‘She fears the sickness, not for herself but for the little one. We suggested that she need bring the child no nearer than the forest fringe, where we could take water and the Eye to her, but Joanna’s real reason for staying well away from Hawkenlye is because of him.’

   
We
, Helewise noted. Tiphaine had not been alone when she approached Joanna, then. Letting that pass, she said, ‘Because of Sir Josse, you mean.’ Yes, she could well understand why Joanna would not wish to open old wounds, either her own or Josse’s, and a part of her was dancing with delight at the young woman’s forbearance.

     But Joanna keeping Meggie away would not help the Hawkenlye sick, she told herself firmly. Then, swallowing her pride because she was fairly sure what the answer would be, she asked tentatively, ‘Would it make any difference if I spoke to Joanna?’

     ‘None whatsoever, my lady,’ Sister Tiphaine said promptly. ‘I am sorry to speak so bluntly.’

     ‘It’s all right, Sister; I asked the question and I wanted an honest answer.’

     There was a short silence and then Sister Tiphaine said, ‘Are there many sick now?’

     And there was nothing for Helewise to say but, ‘Oh, yes, Sister, I’m afraid there are.’

Chapter 15

That night, sleep was in short supply for many people. The very sick at Hawkenlye were not so much asleep as in varying states of unconsciousness and coma; some, indeed, stood shadow-like at the gates of death and some passed through. Those who tended them – and of these there was a steadily increasing number – grabbed short cat naps when they could.

     The Abbess Helewise knew that there was small chance of her being able to relax sufficiently to fall asleep and so she worked until after midnight, battling her fear into submission by a relentless attack on the all but illegible accounts submitted by the incompetent whose duty it was to keep the Abbey informed of affairs on its lands over to the north of the Weald. The diversionary tactic was only partly successful; she managed to complete the task but, having done so, found that her anxieties returned all the more forcefully for having been briefly banished from her mind.

     In the Vale, Josse tried and failed to block his ears from the sound of the sick and the dying. Eventually giving it up as a bad job, he got up from his blanket and his thin straw mattress, made his way out of the shelter and found Brother Saul, busy carrying an endless supply of holy water from the spring in the shrine to the waiting hands of a weary Sister Caliste. She took the full vessels inside the makeshift infirmary for the hardworking nursing nuns and monks – so many of them there now selflessly caring for the sick! – to give to those patients still able to drink. With no word but just a brief understanding smile, Saul indicated a pile of empty vessels and Josse fell into step beside him; for what was left of the night, the two carried water side by side.

     In the forest, Joanna lay fighting with her conscience. She had already used her minor weapons: what has the world ever done for me that now I should risk the person I love most to help its people? Why, in particular, should I be made to feel obliged to an Abbey full of nuns and monks when the worst of my sufferings were brought about by the dirty mind of a priest working on and encouraging the sexual perversions of my elderly and long-dead husband? Strange, she thought in a brief moment of total honesty, how those arguments did not seem to carry the weight they once had  . . .

     She had moved swiftly on to more persuasive arguments. Oh, it was all very well for Lora and Tiphaine to say that Meggie need go nowhere near the Abbey and that there would be no danger of her becoming sick, but how did they know? How could they possibly be sure, when diseases such as this one that they described seemed to have a life and a volition all of their own? And, even given that Meggie’s safety was totally, unquestionably assured, there was still Josse.

     He would not hold back because of the pain of seeing
you
again, she thought, with as much conviction as if he himself were standing before her and in her presence had been asked and answered. He would reason that his pain and yours ought to be seen in their proper place, and that place was well behind the possibility that some joint action of his and hers might ease the agony – even perhaps save the lives – of many people who were otherwise doomed to a particularly horrible death.