Heart of Ice (45 page)

     The hut stood over to one side and it was quite difficult to make out; it was as if it had been deliberately camouflaged to keep it secret from curious eyes. He found that he could see it better if he did not look straight at it but observed it out of the corner of his eye.

     Just as he was pondering on this strange fact he heard voices. A woman’s voice, then a child’s happy laugh. The last was such a happy, musical sound and it put him in mind of something . . . or someone  . . .

     Then, as if she had felt his presence, the door of the hut opened just enough to allow Joanna to emerge. She closed it carefully behind her and walked slowly across the clearing until she stood before Josse.

     So many things flashed through his mind. But he had come for just one reason. ‘Thank you, Joanna,’ he said, ‘for saving the Abbess Helewise’s life.’

     Joanna watched him steadily for some time. Then she said, ‘She was not ready to go on.’

     ‘Perhaps not, but she’d have gone, ready or not, had you not intervened. Your skill saved her, and—’

     ‘Not my skill alone,’ Joanna interrupted. She paused as if trying to decide whether or not to speak. Then she said, ‘Your magic jewel played its part.’

     Completely taken aback, he said, ‘You used the Eye of Jerusalem?’ Somehow he had not expected that.

     ‘Yes. Tiphaine told me that some of the nuns had tried and so had you. They – I imagine they thought it was worthwhile allowing me to have a go.’

     ‘With success,’ he said.

     ‘It is an object of power,’ she said simply. ‘Very old, extremely potent.’

     ‘I was told that one day a female of my blood would use it and be the first person to extract its full potential,’ he said. ‘That was why I gave it to the Abbess; I was afraid to put such an alarming burden on the girl children of my brothers.’

     ‘It is not an alarming burden in the right hands,’ she said calmly. ‘It is likely that your instant reaction to keep it well away from your nieces means that theirs are not the right hands.’

     ‘No, there’s no magic in my family!’ He spoke lightly, trying to alleviate the growing gravity that he sensed in the mood between them.

     ‘There is, Josse.’ Her voice was low, strangely compelling. ‘You have an ancestor, a forebear of your mother’s, whom we recognise as one of our Great Ones.’

     ‘I—’ Astounded, he did not know what to say. ‘I am not sure that I want to know about her,’ he muttered.

     She shrugged. ‘That is your choice.’ But the smile around the corners of her mouth suggested that she was well aware that he did; was avid, in fact, for details, although he was never going to admit it.

     He tore his mind away from his own bloodline. ‘You are a Great One now, Joanna,’ he said.

     ‘No!’ Quickly qualifying the denial, she said, ‘I have only just begun, Josse.’

     ‘But I can feel the power in you.’

     ‘Oh, the power is there, although we are taught that we are but channels through which it passes to do its work. That is certainly the way with such healing skills as I possess.’

     ‘They sufficed for the Abbess,’ Josse said.

     Joanna was watching him and he saw a question in her eyes. Abruptly she spoke. ‘They – Josse, I had been given to understand that there would be two people for me to heal at Hawkenlye and the night I sat with the Abbess Helewise, I left some of the especially potent water for one of the nursing nuns to give to a man lying in a bed near to the Abbess’s. I – well, I wondered if you could tell me what happened to him?’

     ‘He died, Joanna,’ Josse said softly.

     Her face fell. ‘Oh. I see.’ Now she was frowning, clearly puzzled.

     ‘But I think you did save him, for all that,’ Josse went on.

     ‘What do you mean?’

     ‘Joanna, he had a great deal on his conscience. Your healing talent gave him the precious time to make his peace so that he died shriven of his sins. So, in a way, although you did not heal him in this life, you gave him hope in the next.’ She did not speak, merely sat hanging her head. ‘Or do your people not believe in the promise of eternal life?’

     Now she looked up at him and she was smiling faintly. ‘Oh, yes, Josse. In our own way we certainly do.’ She nodded slowly. ‘Thank you for that. Now I think I understand.’

     There was silence for several moments. Then, as if she were bracing herself to raise some other matter, a flash of emotion crossed her impassive face and she said, ‘Josse, they told me something while I was away on my travels. Do you remember what I told you about my parents?’

     ‘Er – you told me very little. Your father was a son of a minor branch of the de Courtenay family. Your mother, you said, was rather weak and not in the best of health.’

     Joanna smiled. ‘That sums the poor soul up very well.’ Then: ‘She wasn’t my mother.’

     ‘Your people told you that? But how on earth did they know?’

     ‘They knew about me long before I was aware of them. My parents wanted children, as most married couples do, and my elder brother was born sickly and he died in infancy.’

     ‘Aye, you told me that.’

     ‘They tried time after time for another baby but without success. Then they had the idea that my father might beget a child on someone else and bring him or her up as their own. There was a woman they knew whom they admired and trusted. Although mature, she was still of childbearing age and she was fit, strong and intelligent. They approached her.’

     ‘Was she not insulted, to have friends ask her such a thing?’

     ‘No, Josse. She wasn’t exactly a friend; she worked for my mother’s uncle and his wife.’

     ‘The people who left you the manor house in the woods?’

     ‘Yes.’

     He was beginning to understand. ‘Go on.’

     ‘The woman was one of ours; one of the best, or so they tell me. She had foreseen the approach from my father; she had foreseen my birth and what I would become. She
made
him have the idea, Josse, because she knew it all had to happen so that – so that I would be born. My father lay with her just once and I was conceived. When I was born the people whom I believed to be my parents took me in, although the woman was always there to keep an eye on me. She was my wet nurse and she remained a very important part of my life all through my childhood.’

     She paused, eyes looking out across the clearing to the pond, now rimmed with a thin fringe of ice. ‘She died for me, Josse. Here in this very place, she was tortured to make her reveal my whereabouts but she would not tell. Then her head was pushed under the water and she drowned.’

     Then Joanna was in his arms, the sweet sensation accompanied by the bitterness of her dry sobs. Smoothing the braided hair, he said, ‘I know, my love, I know. I saw her.’

     She pulled away from him, staring up into his face. ‘You – yes! Of course you did!’

     ‘She was brave and she very obviously loved you very much,’ he said, trying to comfort her.

     ‘I just wish,’ Joanna cried, ‘that I had known she was my mother!’

     ‘
She
knew,’ he said.

     ‘Yes.
Yes
.’ Joanna was standing apart from him again, brushing away her tears. Giving him a brave attempt at a smile, she said, ‘To have Mag Hobson as my mother was very special and being her daughter remains true, I know, even thought I was not aware of it until very recently.’ She took a shaking breath. Then: ‘Josse, because I know what it feels like not to know that someone very wonderful is one’s parent, there’s something I must show you.’

     She grabbed his hand and strode away towards the hut, marching fast as if she had to act quickly before she changed her mind. She opened the door wide, then gave Josse a nudge and said, ‘Go in.’

     He stepped cautiously into the hut. It was quite dark inside; it was only afternoon and as yet, no candle flame had been lit to brighten the corners of the little room and the small fire had died down to golden embers.

     On the floor by the hearth sat a child. Dark-haired, very pretty, she was playing with a little figure made of sticks that was dressed in miniature garments made of sacking and wool. She looked up at Josse and he saw his father’s eyes gazing up at him with a most interested expression from under the thick, glossy hair.

     He knew then why the sound of this child’s laughter had been familiar; the little girl laughed as musically as her grandmother had done.

     ‘She’s mine?’ His voice was all but inaudible.

     ‘Yes.’

     ‘You did not think to tell me you carried my child?’

     ‘Josse, I – no.’

     ‘But you—’

     ‘Kneel down beside her,’ she whispered. ‘Make friends with her. Her name’s Meggie.’

     Josse crouched, knelt and finally sat on the clean-swept floor of the hut. He stared at his daughter and her dark eyes did not look away. ‘Hello, Meggie,’ he said gently. ‘What have you got there?’

     Trustingly she held out her stick doll. ‘She’s very pretty,’ he said. ‘What is she called?’

     ‘Ba’ee,’ the child said promptly.

     ‘Baby? Oh, I see. Your little baby.’

     ‘Ba’ee,’ the child agreed. She put the doll into Josse’s large hands and he jiggled it up and down as if to soothe it to sleep. Then he pretended to drop it, catching it at the last minute with a great show of relief and his daughter laughed in delight. Taking the stick doll back again, she thumped its head on the floor a couple of times then gave it back to Josse, who kissed the stuffed head better.

     Meggie seemed to like that. She clambered on to Josse’s legs, clutched at a fold of his tunic to lever herself up and, when she could reach his face, gave him a kiss just like the one he had given the doll.

     Very slowly he put his arms around her. She snuggled against him as if she had known him all her life.

For the remainder of the day, until it was time for Meggie’s bedtime, Josse and his daughter were not parted for a single moment. He let her lead him outside, where she showed him how she could leap across the stepping stones that allowed Joanna to cross the little stream without getting her feet wet. Meggie made Josse do it and then he watched her while she did it another eleven times. Then she showed him her favourite places in her small domain, all the while babbling away in her own infant language in which Josse recognised about one word in ten.

     Joanna came to stand beside him as he watched Meggie throwing stones into the shallow, rushing water of the stream. ‘She will be talking fluently soon,’ she said.

     ‘She’s doing that now.’

     Joanna smiled. ‘I meant that soon she’ll be talking comprehensibly.’

     ‘I rather like the nonsense.’

     There was a rather awkward pause. ‘Josse,’ Joanna began, ‘I should explain—’

     But Meggie needed her father’s help to lift a heavy stone and, with a haste born out of relief, for he was not yet ready to talk to Joanna in any depth, Josse hurried to assist.

     Later Joanna made a simple supper for the child and she ate it sitting on Josse’s lap, with him spooning the thick soup into her mouth. Joanna watched indulgently; Meggie was quite capable of feeding herself if one did not object to quite a lot of mess. Then Josse washed the child’s face and hands in water that had been warmed a little over the fire and Joanna stripped the child down to her shift for bed.

     Josse tucked her up in the covers that were neatly folded on top of the sleeping platform’s straw mattress. Meggie put her thumb in her mouth and around it she said, ‘Sto’y.’

   
‘Story?’
Josse echoed, as if it were the most outlandish request in the world. Meggie laughed.

     ‘Once-upon-a-time-there-was-a-little-girl-called-Meggie-and-she-went-to-sleep-the-end,’ Josse said very quickly.

     Meggie laughed again, although Josse thought it was more at his sudden burst of rapid speech than because she understood what he had said. ‘Sto’y,’ she repeated firmly.