The Chatter of the Maidens

by Alys Clare

  ‘So what did she do?’ Sister Euphemia asked.

  Sister Basilia smiled faintly. ‘I put her to pot scrubbing. But I don’t think she did very much, I think Sister Anne covered for her.’

  ‘Kind of Sister Anne,’ Sister Euphemia remarked.

  ‘Sister Anne is a follower, not a leader,’ Sister Basilia said gently. ‘She tends to give in before a stronger personality, and do what she’s told.’

  Helewise, although listening intently, had been gazing into the distance. It was only when she refocused on the trio in front of her that she realised they were all looking at her.

  ‘Thank you, Sisters,’ she said. ‘You have all done your best with Sister Alba, and I do appreciate your efforts. I will now think on what you have reported, and decide what to do next.’

  There was an awkward silence, during which Helewise noticed the three other nuns glance at each other.

  ‘Abbess, may we speak frankly?’ Sister Euphemia said.

  Helewise suppressed a smile. ‘Of course.’ You usually do, she might have added.

  ‘We – you—’ The infirmarer cleared her throat and began again. ‘Abbess, what the three of us are thinking is that it’s not right, you having to be bothered with all this, not given everything else you have to do. Sister Basilia here was remembering that, before, when old Sister Mary was still alive, she was Mistress of Novices, but, what with us not having floods of new nuns any more, the office has sort of been absorbed by the rest of us. Particularly you. And we were wondering, why not appoint someone, and fill the office again?’

  For an instant, Helewise wondered crossly if Euphemia had been talking to Queen Eleanor. But no, that was unworthy. And, anyway, they had a point.

  ‘Had you thought of a likely person?’ she asked, trying to sound encouraging and not as if she had just had to bite down on her irritation.

  Again, the three nuns glanced at one another. Then Sister Basilia said, ‘We wondered about Sister Amphelisia.’

  Sister Amphelisia. Sufficiently young to retain an empathy with postulants and novices, yet with enough years of convent life behind her to give her dignity and authority. At present, working with the learned and distant Sister Bernadine on maintaining and copying the Abbey’s small collection of holy manuscripts. And, as Helewise well knew, not particularly happy in her work.

  Sister Amphelisia as Mistress of Novices?

  Why not?

  Helewise composed her reply before uttering it. ‘Sisters,’ she said eventually, ‘you have clearly given this matter careful and diligent thought, and I am grateful.’ She took a deep breath, observing that it still cost her a great effort to hand over authority to another, and concluding from it that she was far too full of pride. She would have to have a long and, no doubt, painful and humiliating session with Father Gilbert, who would doubtless impose heavy penance. For the good of her soul, naturally, and for the furtherance of her growth in the religious life.

  Oh, dear.

  Where was she?

  ‘I will speak to Sister Amphelisia,’ she said, standing up to let the Sisters know that the meeting was over.

  Sisters Euphemia, Basilia and Edith bowed, then made their way out of Helewise’s room. She listened to their retreating footsteps as they set off along the cloister, waiting to see if they would make any audible comments about what had just happened.

  They didn’t.

  Adding the sin of curiosity – very well, nosiness – to the growing list to mutter into the merciless ear of Father Gilbert, Helewise wearily straightened her back and began to think out how best to raise the matter of her appointment with the potential new Mistress of Novices.

  Chapter Three

  The Abbess was emerging from the church in the middle of the following morning when a slight commotion from the gates alerted her to the fact that the Abbey had a visitor.

  Sister Martha, who had flung down her pitchfork and gone hurrying across from the stables, was holding the head of a docile-looking horse while the porteress, Sister Ursel, was standing beside the cart which the horse was pulling. Both nuns were exclaiming loudly, and exchanging remarks with a strangely familiar-looking man sitting at the front of the cart and holding the reins.

  Before Helewise had time to puzzle out who the man was, another figure leapt down from the back of the cart and, with Sister Ursel trotting along behind him trying to catch hold of his sleeve – ‘That’s the Abbess! You mustn’t go accosting her, she’s very busy!’ – made his way to Helewise.

  ‘Greetings to you, Abbess,’ he said with a sketchy bow. ‘Forgive my lack of ceremony, but Sir Josse lies in the cart, gravely sick with the fever, and we, that is, Sir Brice and me, we—’

  But Helewise was already running towards the cart.

  The man on the front – yes, of course, he was Sir Brice of Rotherbridge, Josse’s neighbouring landowner – jumped down as she hurried towards him, catching her as she stumbled. ‘Abbess, we need the skills of your infirmarer,’ he said quietly, his face close to hers.

  ‘What is the matter with him?’ she demanded, panting, heart in her mouth. Then, realising belatedly that she was hardly behaving in a dignified and abbess-like manner, she straightened up, pulled a little away from Sir Brice and said more calmly, ‘Sister Euphemia will attend to him as soon as she is able. Sir Brice, will you and—’ She glanced questioningly at the other man.

  ‘Will,’ Brice said.

  ‘Please will you carry Sir Josse into the infirmary?’ She pointed out the door. ‘Sister Martha, Sister Ursel, perhaps you could help . . . ?’

  She stood back and watched as, with great care, Will and Brice edged Josse’s tall, sturdy body out of the cart, supporting him under each shoulder while Sister Martha, strongly-muscled herself, hurried to hold him under the hips. Sister Ursel took hold of his feet, and, moving with exaggerated care, the four of them set out towards the infirmary. Overtaking them, refusing to allow herself even a peep at Josse’s face, Helewise went to alert Sister Euphemia.

  The next few minutes were a trial for them all. Sister Euphemia was calm in the midst of the furore, despite having to think of three things at once; in addition to Josse, she was supervising the delivery of a badly-positioned baby and administering a pain-killing sedative to a man who was about to have his gangrenous left hand removed.

  She made room for Josse at the far end of the infirmary, in an area which, although its position gave him privacy, meant that his four bearers had to carry him the length of the long ward. Despite their best efforts, between them they managed to upset a pail of water, knock over a small table containing herbal potions and crack Josse’s head against the doorframe. The last accident caused their patient finally to break his silence; the howl of pain that emerged from him made Helewise’s blood go cold.

  With a barely perceptible gesture, Sister Euphemia had summoned two of her nurses. And as, with polite but firm insistence, they made their way past Helewise, Brice and Will, the Abbess and the two men found themselves excluded from Josse’s bedside.

  The infirmarer caught her eye; Sister Euphemia briefly turned down her mouth in an anxious expression. Oh, dear Lord, Helewise thought. I am very afraid that this is as serious as I feared.

  Then Sister Euphemia turned back to her patient. As Sister Beata and Sister Judith began their first task – stripping the patient of his shirt and removing the bloodstained dressing on his arm – Helewise had a brief glimpse of Josse’s face.

  I cannot bear to see him like this, she thought.

  Then, putting aside her personal feelings and assuming once more the mantle of Abbess of Hawkenlye – rarely could she recall a moment when it had been so hard – she said to Brice, ‘Please, come with me. I will order something to eat for you and Will, and, if you wish it, we offer you the Abbey’s hospitality while we see if he is going to – that is, until there is word of Sir Josse’s condition.’

  Brice and Will, she noted, looked as stunned as she felt. They seemed to be waiting for her to make th
e first move away from the bedside and out of the infirmary; with a brief bow to Brice, she led them off, back down the ward and out into the bright sunshine outside.

  The long wait was easier for Helewise than for the two men. She was in her own environment, and she had the daily round of duties to occupy her mind, preventing it from dwelling constantly on that white-faced, agonised figure in the infirmary.

  She also had the vast solace of prayer. The hour for Sext had come and gone, and it was almost time for Nones, and still there was no word from the infirmary save only, ‘He lives’.

  On her way to the Abbey church, Helewise caught sight of Brice and Will. They were sitting on a stone seat by the gate. Brice was tracing patterns in the ground with a stick, Will sat with folded arms staring straight in front of him.

  She went over to them. They stood up as she approached and, impetuously holding out her hands to them, she said, ‘Will you not come to pray with us? When we have said the Office, we shall be asking God that He look kindly on Sir Josse, and that He lessen his pain.’

  ‘I will come, thank you, Abbess,’ Brice said.

  Will stood mutely, staring at the ground; Helewise thought she saw him briefly shake his head.

  But later, when some small movement caused her to turn round and look down from her position near the altar towards the entrance to the church, she noticed that Will had crept in and was kneeling by himself, just inside the great door.

  Somehow, to have Josse’s devoted manservant adding his pleas to those who prayed so hard for Josse seemed, to Helewise, oddly comforting.

  It was at dusk that Sister Euphemia finally came to Helewise with definite news.

  Helewise was in her room; as the infirmarer came in and made her reverence, Helewise wondered if she should summon Brice and Will.

  As if Sister Euphemia read her mind – it quite often happened between them – she said as she straightened up, ‘I’ll tell you first, Abbess, if you will allow it. Then may I ask that you tell the others, Sir Brice and what’s-his-name?’

  ‘Of course,’ Helewise said. Euphemia was, she realised, totally exhausted; it would be far less exacting for her to explain everything to just one person than to three. ‘Please, Sister, come and sit here, in my chair.’

  Sister Euphemia looked quite shocked at the suggestion. ‘Indeed I will not, Abbess!’ She squared her shoulders. ‘Thank you all the same,’ she added.

  ‘How is he?’ Helewise asked quietly.

  Sister Euphemia nodded. ‘He will live. And, with God’s help, I believe that we have saved his arm. He’s strong, very strong, else he’d have been dead by now. That servant of his has been doing his best, but I suspect that he and his woman haven’t any real skill. Probably knew to keep his master drinking, and to sponge that fearful wound occasionally – and I must admit, the dressing was fairly fresh and neatly applied – but I wouldn’t imagine either of them knew of any specific for a violently rising fever.’

  ‘But you do,’ Helewise said, deliberately making it a statement; she could not bear there to be any doubt.

  ‘I do,’ Euphemia agreed. ‘Sister Anne and Sister Judith got down to cleaning and dressing the arm, soon as you left us, and I got Sister Tiphaine to help me with the strongest medicine we could think of. Thank the good Lord, it’s spring, and the plants we needed are green and potent.’ She paused, frowning, as if going over in her head what she had done and wondering if she had forgotten anything. ‘Anyway, seems we did right. The fever’s broken and is receding.’

  ‘God be praised,’ Helewise said softly.

  ‘Amen.’ Euphemia was still frowning.

  ‘Sister?’ Helewise prompted. ‘What is it?’

  Sister Euphemia shook her head, as if to drive away whatever thought was bothering her. ‘Nothing, leastways, nothing very relevant.’ She smiled briefly at Helewise. ‘Don’t you fret, Abbess dear. Like I said, he isn’t going to die, I’m as sure of that as I can be. I don’t think the good Lord is impatient to call him home just yet awhile.’

  ‘I was only—’ Helewise began. But she couldn’t think how to continue. Anyway, was there any point in denying, to the observant and perceptive Euphemia of all people, the special place that Josse occupied in her heart?

  Euphemia gave her another smile, one that brimmed with kindness and understanding. ‘Me, I’m puzzling over why a man with a severe wound in his arm should take it into his head to go riding his great horse at large obstacles, that’s all.’ She sighed. ‘Didn’t we tell him he was lucky to keep the arm, when the wound was first inflicted? Did we really need to say, make sure you don’t put it to the test until it’s fully healed?’ She shook her head, tutting under her breath at the ways of men.

  ‘Apparently we did,’ Helewise said. ‘He’s a man of action, Sister. It must have been hard for him, having to sit around like an invalid.’

  The infirmarer gave her a shrewd look. ‘Especially when there were things on his mind,’ she said. ‘Things he was brooding over. A man of action, like you say, would look on a good gallop and a few challenging ditches to jump as a good way of taking himself out of himself. Yes?’

  Helewise nodded. She, too, remembered how dejected Josse had seemed, back in the early spring. Joanna de Courtenay might have worked her magic to save his arm, but there were other legacies of that brief time in February which were not so readily healed.

  But it was wiser, she thought, not to speak further of things best forgotten.

  ‘Was the whole dreadful cut infected?’ she asked Sister Euphemia. ‘Will healing be as long and as painful a matter as I fear it may be?’

  ‘Indeed, no,’ the infirmarer said. ‘That girl knew what she was doing, and the muscles and sinews have mended well. No, like I said, only one end of the wound – where it bit the deepest – was proving stubborn. And when the silly man went off hunting, he must have wrenched the arm and disturbed the scab. He let it get dirty, and some ill humour entered his blood. The result you saw this morning. Fever burning like hellfire and a bowlful of foul pus.’

  ‘Oh,’ Helewise said weakly. Euphemia, for all her great strengths and skills, did have a tendency to forget that everyone she addressed wasn’t as accustomed to the seamier side of nursing as she and her nuns were.

  ‘Abbess, dear, you’ve gone quite pale!’ the infirmarer was exclaiming. ‘Just you stay there and I’ll fetch you a restorative—’

  ‘Thank you, Sister, but there is no need.’ Helewise took a couple of deep breaths, and the light-headed feeling slowly passed. She met Sister Euphemia’s worried eyes. ‘May I see him?’

  ‘If you wish to, then of course,’ Sister Euphemia replied, sounding as if it were a surprise to have her superior ask permission. ‘Only I must warn you, he’s very deeply asleep. You don’t get a mere light doze, with poppy and mandrake,’ she added, half under her breath.

  With a swift, silent prayer that she be able to keep her reaction and her emotions under control, Helewise accompanied Sister Euphemia over to the infirmary.

  Josse lay as if dead, so deeply asleep that he did not so much as twitch.

  Sister Euphemia bent down to put her hand on to his forehead. ‘Still hot, but not as bad as he was,’ she said.

  ‘The improvement continues?’ Helewise whispered.

  ‘Aye.’ The infirmarer smiled briefly. ‘No need to whisper, Abbess. Right now, he wouldn’t hear a battle cry.’

  There was a strong smell on the air. Quite pleasant, but with elements oddly at variance . . . Helewise sniffed, trying to identify it.

  ‘We’re putting poultices on his arm.’ The infirmarer lifted a soft piece of cloth draped across Josse’s shoulders to demonstrate. ‘See, Abbess? Cabbage leaf to draw out the poison, lavender and self-heal to cleanse, crushed garlic to combat the yellow humours in the discharge.’

  Lavender and garlic, Helewise thought. Not exactly an everyday combination of smells.

  ‘. . . prefer it if we’d had lavender flowers, and a few more self-heal leaves,’ the in
firmarer was saying, ‘but Sister Tiphaine’s stock of fresh plants is still small, what with the poor weather and all, and, of course, lavender won’t be in flower for a while yet.’

  The two women stood looking down at Josse for some moments in silence. Then the infirmarer said, with a slight and uncharacteristic tentativeness, ‘You reckon he’s looking better, Abbess?’

  Helewise could have kicked herself. This excellent woman, her skilled and prized infirmarer, had been working herself to a standstill all day, and Helewise hadn’t given her a word of thanks or appreciation!

  She turned to Sister Euphemia. ‘Indeed I do, Sister. And forgive me that I did not say so without prompting.’ She hesitated, wondering if to go on. Bearing in mind their relative positions in the community, she should really strive always to maintain her distance, even from the most senior of her nuns. But, on the other hand, there was nobody near to overhear. And Euphemia, as she well knew, was a woman to appreciate and honour a confidence. . . .

  ‘Sir Josse is a valued friend and ally of our community,’ she went on eventually, making up her mind. ‘We should all miss him grievously, were any harm to come to him.’ She took a deep breath. She was just starting to say the words, ‘especially me’ when Sister Euphemia touched her sleeve.

  ‘I know, Abbess,’ she said quietly.

  And, for the first time in all that long day, Helewise felt tears in her eyes. Strange, she thought, turning away so that her coif hid her face, how often we manage to maintain our composure all the while we are tense and waiting for some dreaded outcome, only to break down afterwards, when it’s all over and the worst hasn’t happened.