The Chatter of the Maidens (16 page)

Saul had carefully replaced the skull on the ash-soft floor of the dwelling. Now he and Augustine were crouching down, rummaging among the charred remains of beams and wooden wall supports. Saul murmured something – his tone sounded questioning – and Augustine replied. They were both picking up pieces of what looked like wood, holding them up to each other and then putting them back.

Suddenly Augustine let out a sharp breath, nudged Saul and pointed to what looked like a spike, sticking up out of the ground. His fingers were busy trying to pull something offit. . . .

Then Saul stood up, ashen-faced, and swiftly crossed himself. Helewise heard him say, ‘Dear God above, the poor wretch!’ Then, bowing his head, he came out of the dwelling and returned to her side. Augustine stood quite still in the centre of the cottage, gazing down at whatever it was he held between his fingers as if he could hardly believe his eyes.

Helewise said, ‘It
was
a human skull, wasn’t it, Saul?’

He sighed. ‘Aye, Abbess. I’m afraid it was.’

‘And the rest of the body . . . ?’

‘Aye, he’s there, what’s left of him. Only his bones, mind, and some charred remnants of his clothing and that. Leg bones, ribs, arms.’ An expression of deep disgust crossed his face.

‘It is a terrible thing to have seen, Saul,’ she said gently.

He glanced at her. ‘Oh, it’s not that, Abbess, bless you. I’ve seen my share of dead bodies; they don’t normally disturb me, beyond feelings of sorrow for the death. No, it’s – he was—’ But, shaking his head, he did not seem to be able to go on.

Augustine had joined them; silent and soft-footed, he had made no sound. He stared at Helewise, and his face, too, was pale.

‘That was no accidental death,’ he said. ‘Not a case of a man falling asleep while his supper cooks and, in his slumber, not noticing the fire spreading from the hearth and setting the house on fire. No. That’s not what it was.’

‘What, then?’ She could hardly speak.

Augustine held up what he had been holding so carefully in his hand. It looked like . . . it looked like the frayed remains of a piece of rope.

‘He was tied to a stake in the ground,’ Augustine said quietly and, instantly, the sense of dread that Helewise had been feeling grew till it all but floored her. Evil was there, right there, in that place where a poor man had been tied up inside a cottage and left to burn to death.

‘Could – could it not have been somehow accidental?’ she whispered. ‘Might it not have been an animal that was tethered to the spike, not the dead man?’

Augustine shook his head. Then he held up his other hand, and the object that had been concealed behind his back came into Helewise’s view.

It was a skeletal human hand, the fingers pulled up into a claw. Around the wrist was tied another length of rope.

 

They would have left the wood sooner, had Brother Saul not insisted that they bury the remains.

Helewise had resisted the temptation to suggest it; the expedition was under her command, and she was responsible for the brothers who were with her. She could sense peril all around them – and the sense that they were being followed, their every movement being observed, grew stronger by the minute – and, despite the clear Christian duty to inter what was left of the dead body, she felt it was an occasion when the living must take precedence over the dead.

But Saul insisted.

Augustine went to help him. They found lengths of wood to use as makeshift spades and, working hard, managed to dig a shallow pit within quite a short space of time; the recent heavy rain now worked in their favour, having softened the ground. Then Helewise helped them to pick up all the pieces of bone they could find and place them in the grave.

Augustine held up the pelvis. ‘This was a man and no mistake,’ he said quietly.

‘How can you tell?’ Helewise asked.

The boy gave a faint grin. ‘My family have been gravediggers, in their time. I was taught about bodies when I was quite young, and told how the wider opening’s for a woman’s skeleton, the narrower, more pointed arch for a man’s.’

Helewise felt quite faint. ‘Thank you, Augustine. Shall we put those bones in with the rest?’

When they were as satisfied as they could be that nothing of the man had been left within the ruined cottage for animals to destroy, the two lay brothers filled in the grave. Helewise recited the prayers for the dead, and they all stood in silence for some time with bowed heads. Saul found two pieces of roughly straight wood, and he fashioned them into a cross, tying them together with a piece of twine taken from the cord around his waist. He stuck it into the ground above the dead man’s head.

Then they returned to the horses.

It could reasonably be expected to be dark, in there under the trees. But, when they emerged into open countryside, to Helewise’s dismay she noticed that the sun had almost set.

Dear God, where were they to sleep that night?

Saul kicked the old cob into a canter and overtook both Helewise and Augustine, disappearing up the track into the gloom. They caught sight of him again as they entered Medely; he had dismounted and, leading his horse, was tapping at the doors of each of the inhabited dwellings.

Nobody was answering his knock.

Even the house from which the old man had peered out was shut up and dark. If he were within, he was lying low.

Saul turned to her, a look of desperation in his face. ‘I am sorry, Abbess, but I can’t make anybody hear.’

‘Never mind, Saul.’ She was, she realised, feeling better now that they were out of the wood. ‘We shall go into one of the empty houses. Should anyone come to ask what we’re doing, we shall say, with total honesty, that we tried to ask for accommodation but were ignored. We shall not do any harm, and we shall be gone tomorrow.’

Then, kicking the mare into a trot, she led her party up the track to the furthest of the deserted dwellings. And there, out of the wind and the night time mist if nothing else, they spent the night.

Helewise was awake very early the next morning. She lay listening, but could hear no sounds of human beings other than faint snores from one or both of the brothers, over in the far corner of the room.

She huddled deeper under the warm, wool cover. She was thankful to have it; she had only packed it because Josse had said you never knew when you might have to spend a night in the open, and it was better to go prepared.

Josse. How was he? I wish he were here right now, she thought, I could do with his good sense and his insight. Not that I am criticising dear Saul and Augustine, she added to herself, they have been exemplary companions. But Josse and I have puzzled over many a problem together. . . .

She dozed for a while, then had a half-sleeping, half-waking dream in which she sat before Josse and told him that she had brought him a hand and a pelvis, and that he must put the dead man together again. But Josse held up his wounded arm and said he couldn’t manage such a task just then, and instead snapped off two of the skeletal fingers and made them into a cross.

It was quite a relief to wake up.

When all three of them were awake and had eaten a sparse breakfast, she asked Brother Augustine to prepare the horses. When he had done so, she said, ‘I think, my brothers, that it is time we went home.’

‘Is there nothing more that we can find out here, Abbess?’ Saul asked.

She smiled at him. ‘Many things that I should
like
to find out, Saul. But who is there to ask?’

Slowly he nodded, gazing out at the empty track outside. ‘Aye. And the three people who we know to be most closely involved are back at Hawkenlye.’

‘Do you think that Alba and her sisters knew of that place in the woods?’ she mused. ‘It is so close to their father’s farm that it is hard to believe they did not. They will be distressed to know of the fire, and even more so if we tell them that we found a body inside. The poor man might even have been somebody they knew.’ She thought for a while. ‘In fact I think, brothers, that we should not tell them.’

Both the brothers nodded.

Then, leaving Medely as silent as it had been when they arrived, they mounted the horses and turned their heads for the long road home.

Josse’s days of convalescence seemed interminable. He was bored, sick of the sight of the four walls of the infirmary, and longed to be up and out in the fresh air. He was quite sure he was ready for such an excursion, but had not yet managed to persuade Sister Euphemia. At least he was now visiting the latrine, though, and spared the ignominy of using a bottle to pee in.

As his spirits and his health recovered, Sister Euphemia allowed him more visitors. He was relieved to discover that talking no longer exhausted him. He enjoyed long conversations with many of the nuns and quite a few of the monks; Brother Firmin brought him a daily phial of holy water, praying solemnly with him while he drank it. Whether it was the water, or whether he was catching Brother Firmin’s sincere and fervent belief in it, the daily drink always left Josse feeling full of vitality.

His most frequent – and, he had to admit, most beloved – visitor was Berthe. She came to see him at least once every day, and often managed to slip back in the evening when the infirmary was meant to be closed to visitors. He began to think that she might treasure their time together as much as he did for, although she never said as much, he guessed that she was lonely, worried and very unhappy.

Their conversation had steadily become more wide-ranging as they relaxed in one another’s company. Berthe never mentioned the sister penned up beneath the infirmary, and she seldom speculated about where Meriel was. That in itself was a little suspicious, Josse thought; while she easily might not be too disturbed to have the bullying Alba unable to get at her, surely she must be desperately anxious about Meriel? The two younger sisters had appeared to be so close.

Puzzling over the problem one morning, a thought occurred to him. Perhaps Berthe wasn’t worrying about her sister because she knew quite well that Meriel was safe. . . .

Feeling only a little ashamed of himself, Josse resolved to do some gentle probing the next time Berthe came to see him.

He did not have long to wait. Towards the end of the morning, he heard her light step coming down the long ward of the infirmary and, leaning forward, he saw her approaching his bed.

‘I’ve brought you some bluebells,’ she said, proffering a small bunch. ‘Alba used to forbid us to pick them, because they would always droop so quickly and then she had to throw them away and wash out the jar. But Meriel says – Meriel used to say the smell was so perfect.’

A pink blush was creeping up the girl’s face. Dear child, Josse thought, lying doesn’t really suit you. ‘Thank you,’ he said, pretending he hadn’t noticed either the slip or the blush. ‘Have you been into the forest?’

‘Yes! But only a little way, the nuns told me it’s easy to become lost.’

‘The nuns were quite right.’ He pretended to be preoccupied with the bluebells while he thought how to proceed. Berthe was on her guard, he realised, so questions pertaining directly to Meriel were probably not the best way. After a moment, he said, ‘There were woods near where I grew up. One of my earliest memories is of picking flowers with my mother.’

‘We used to do that, too, Mother and Meriel and me!’ Berthe responded, with such innocent pleasure that Josse cringed at his own duplicity. ‘Sometimes when Father wasn’t there, Mother used to pack up food, and we’d be out all day. Once we made a pretend house out of dead branches and stuff, and Mother even let us have a fire. We had to make a proper hearth – she showed us how, using stones from the stream as a surround so that the fire didn’t burn out of control. After Mother died, sometimes Meriel and I—’

Too late, she heard her own words.

Josse began to say, ‘It’s all right, Berthe, we’d already—’ But, observing with alarm the girl’s face, he stopped.

Berthe had gone deadly white, and had thrust her knuckle so hard into her mouth that she had drawn blood. She was rocking to and fro in a compulsive, persistent rhythm that was dreadful to watch, emitting all the time a soft, high-pitched keening.

Josse opened his arms to her. After an instant’s indecision, she threw herself against him and began to sob.

She even sobs quietly, he thought, compassion for her drenching his heart. As if crying out loud were likely to earn her a punishment. Poor lass, what can her life have been like?

When the crying subsided, he said very softly, ‘Berthe my love, we had guessed that some of what you have told us wasn’t quite true. We also understand that sometimes people have to tell a lie. It may be to protect somebody else, or it may be because someone is threatening to hurt them if they tell the truth. Which means, sweeting, that a lie isn’t always a bad thing.’