The Chatter of the Maidens (8 page)

‘
Hurry
!’ she yelled. Then, catching sight of a party of lay brothers headed by Brother Saul – no doubt word had spread, and they were coming to see the fun – she called out to them. ‘Brother Saul! Brother Michael! Here!’

The nuns and the lay brothers arrived together on Helewise’s doorstep. Wordlessly she stood aside, gesturing inside to where Alba, now sitting on the floor, had buried her face in her hands.

‘Abbess?’ Brother Saul said quietly. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I am perfectly all right, thank you, Brother Saul. Please would you and one of the brothers – Brother Michael, perhaps – escort Sister Alba here to the punishment cell.’ There was an instant buzzing sound as several nuns and monks all began whispering in horror. ‘Make sure she has water and something in which to wrap herself. Then lock her in.’

The lay brothers did as they were bid. All resistance seemed to have leaked out of Sister Alba; she accompanied them with lowered head and without a word.

There wasn’t a word from anybody else, either. What had just happened was too awful to be spoken of. At least, until the shock wore off.

The punishment cell at Hawkenlye was a small and windowless room built into the stonework beneath the nuns’ dormitory, where it formed part of the undercroft. It was chilly and damp and, once the door was closed and barred, almost totally dark. There was just enough room for someone not above average height to lie down stretched out.

In the near half century of Hawkenlye Abbey’s existence, the cell had never before been used.

Helewise’s first reaction was fury, that she had been forced to this terrible and drastic response to Sister Alba’s intransigence. But, as she knelt before the altar, all alone in the church, soon fury changed to remorse. Oh, dear God, what have I done? I’ve sent a human being to that awful place! Forgive me, I—

But her fervent, panicky prayer stumbled to a stop.

You had no choice, her conscience said firmly. No nun is permitted to strike another. Sister Alba should really have been sent straight to the punishment cell for her attack on Berthe. When she compounded that by trying to hit her superior, you were left with no alternative.

Helewise felt a sob rise in her throat. She suppressed it. It was, after all, the lot of those in command to impose harsh penalties from time to time. No use weeping about it.

She continued her prayers, slipping into some of the familiar and beloved forms of words that always brought comfort. And, eventually, she felt calm.

As she got up from her knees and left the church, the sole emotion she had left was pity.

She had been anticipating a quiet end to what had been anything but a quiet day. Sister Alba had been provided with food and water, and two of the nuns had wordlessly handed covers from their own beds to Sister Martha, to be given to their Sister in torment. Special prayers had been said at Compline and now, Helewise fervently hoped, there remained nothing further for the community to do but to settle down for the night.

But, as the nuns left the church and headed for their dormitory, they all heard the sound of pounding footsteps from outside the gate, swiftly followed by loud banging and a voice shouting, ‘Open up! I need help; a man’s been attacked on the road to the Vale! Open
up
!’

Sister Ursel glanced at Helewise, who nodded her permission. As the porteress rushed to unbolt the gates, followed by several more of the nuns, Helewise caught at the sleeve of Sister Martha. ‘If you would, Sister, slip out of the rear gate and find Brother Saul. We have more need of him and his companions, I fear.’

The man at the gate had been admitted and, shaking and clearly in shock, he was blurting out his story. There was blood on the front of his tunic.

Helewise approached him. Holding up her hand to quieten him, she said, ‘Help is coming. We have summoned some of our lay brothers, who will accompany you back to where this poor man lies and bring him here to the infirmary, where we may tend him.’

‘Reckon you’ll be too late, Abbess,’ the man said. Calmer now, he was looking at Helewise with heavy-lidded, sorrowful eyes. ‘Reckon nobody could survive long, not with half their head bashed in.’

Somebody gave a low moan of distress. Belatedly, Helewise ordered the horrified nuns to go to the dormitory. I have only the trials of today, she thought ruefully, to excuse my lapse. Dear Lord, go with them, and protect them as they sleep and dream.

She waited alone for Saul, who arrived very soon afterwards, two other sturdy lay brothers with him. One of them, she noticed with relief, had had the good sense to arm himself with a stout stick.

She saw them on their way, the man who had sounded the alarm walking in their midst. Then, turning to go and join Sister Euphemia in the infirmary, she noticed the lone and forlorn figure of Berthe, coming towards her from the dormitory.

‘Berthe.’ Helewise put out her hands to greet the girl.

But Berthe shook her head. ‘Oh, Abbess, don’t be kind to me, not when we’re bringing you such troubles!’

‘None of which are your fault, Berthe,’ Helewise began. ‘And, in any case—’

But Berthe was rapidly losing what little control she had left. Flinging herself into Helewise’s arms, she sobbed, ‘Abbess, oh, dear, Abbess, Meriel’s gone missing!’

 

 

The dead man had been a visitor at the Holy Water shrine in the Vale. Brother Saul and Brother Firmin had both talked briefly to him, and they had a vague impression that the man had spoken with a strange accent.

That, and the information that he had been well equipped for travelling and unaccompanied, was all that the brothers could add to what was evident from the man’s dead body. Which was that he had been around thirty, bearded, with dark hair and a swarthy complexion, sturdily built, of middle height, and well nourished.

One or two of the other pilgrims – pop-eyed with amazement to have the extraordinary thrill of a murder in a place where they had gone for prayer and healing – said that the dead man, who had but recently arrived, had attended some of the services conducted by the brothers, but had hidden himself away at the back, as if he wanted to be unobtrusive.

Nobody knew his name.

But, whoever he was, somebody had badly wanted him dead. He had been attacked from behind, and struck down with a series of blows to the back of the head. There was evidence of severe damage to the skull which, in one place, had collapsed into a distinct indentation. It appeared that further blows had been struck after the man had been felled, since there were deep cuts across his brows.

The body, the surrounding area and the clothing of anybody who had touched the corpse were all heavily stained from the copious amounts of blood that had spattered out like a fountain.

Helewise asked Brother Saul to go through the dead man’s belongings. Saul reported that the man’s small leather satchel was well made but worn, as if from long use, and that the pilgrim’s broad-brimmed hat was decorated with the shell of Santiago di Compostela, and the souvenir badge from the Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham. His water bottle, made from a gourd, looked quite new.

He had been dressed in a simple tunic and cloak which, like the rest of his garments, were of cheap, undyed fabric. His boots, however, were sturdy and made of good leather.

From the bloodstains on its thick end and from the location where it had been discovered – beside the dead body – it appeared that the man’s heavy, iron-tipped walking staff had been employed as the murder weapon.

Helewise sat with Brother Saul and Brother Firmin in the rough shelter where the pilgrims took their meals. Brother Firmin, who headed the fully professed monks in the little community, was clearly distraught and not a great deal of help; Helewise had to arrest the swift wish that he would go away and find something else to do and send her one of his other monks instead. Not that any of them would be a great deal better, she reflected; they were excellent at tending the shrine and seeing to the small needs of their visitors, and their devotion to the Virgin and her Holy Place was remarkable. But when a practical mind and a deft pair of hands were required. . . .

Each to his own, the Abbess told herself firmly. God calls us all, but sets each of us on a different path.

‘Brother Saul,’ she said, meeting the alert eyes of her secret favourite among the lay brothers, ‘your summary?’

Brother Saul paused, brows together in a frown of concentration as he gathered his thoughts. Then, with admirable brevity, he said, ‘I would judge that the dead man was an habitual and well-travelled pilgrim. The souvenir badges suggest extensive journeys, and both the scrip and the boots show wear. He may have come from far away, he travelled alone, and he liked to keep himself to himself.’ Saul paused again. ‘We know that he sat here, in this very shelter, for the evening meal, and we surmise that he went for a walk before settling for the night, where he encountered his killer.’

‘He
was
deliberately killed?’ Helewise asked. ‘It cannot have been an accidental death?’

Again, Saul seemed to think carefully about his reply. Then: ‘Had the weapon been a stone, then it might just have been possible that he had slipped and bashed his skull against the stone as he fell. But the thick knot at the top of his staff shows blood and hair, and the hair seems to look very like that of the dead man.’

‘And it is surely beyond the bounds of possibility for a man to kill himself by falling on his own staff,’ Helewise concluded for him.

He nodded. ‘Yes. And, Abbess, there are the wounds to the forehead to consider. A fall could scarcely inflict damage to both the back and the front of the head simultaneously.’

‘Indeed not. Thank you, Brother Saul.’

It was her turn to think. Beside her, Brother Firmin was fretting, his hands busy with the end of the cord that he wore knotted around his waist. He was muttering under his breath, and Helewise wished he would stop. Saul, by contrast, sat still as a rock, eyes focused on some spot in the middle distance.

Presently Helewise said, ‘Are any other pilgrims absent this morning? Who were here yesterday, I mean?’

‘All are present, Abbess,’ Brother Firmin said. ‘No more new arrivals, for which we must thank the good Lord, since it would only add to our burden to have newcomers in our midst, making everything more complicated.’

‘Quite.’ Helewise suddenly turned to Saul; something in Brother Firmin’s little outburst had reminded her of a question she should have asked already. ‘Brother Saul, was there anything about the position of the body to suggest whether the man had been coming to the shrine or going
away
from it?’

Saul must have been thinking the same thing, for instantly he said, ‘Going away, I would judge, Abbess. I should say that he was walking along the path when somebody crept up on him from behind – perhaps they were tiptoeing in the grass, so as to be quite silent – and struck him from behind.’

‘With his own staff,’ she mused.

‘Aye.’

She met Saul’s eyes. ‘Did they wrest it from him to strike him, then?’

Saul shook his head. ‘I cannot imagine that was how it was, Abbess. Taking the staff from the dead man would have alerted him to the fact that someone was attacking him, and surely, in that case, the heaviest blows would have fallen on the front of his head. They’d have been face to face, wouldn’t they?’

‘Yes, they would.’ She was thinking hard. ‘Then, Brother Saul, can it be that, setting out merely for a stroll, he didn’t take his staff, but left it here, by his bedroll? And that someone else crept in to fetch it, then followed the poor man and killed him?’

Brother Saul began to speak, but Brother Firmin overrode him. ‘Abbess Helewise, you speak of the Holy Vale as if it were a den of thieves and cut-throats!’ he protested. ‘Killers stealing staffs and stalking each other? Caving in each other’s heads on the path? And now some girl has gone missing, they say? Dear Lord above, but all this
cannot
be true!’