The Paths of the Air h-11

by Alys Clare

  ‘I’m going,’ Paradisa stated flatly. ‘I will not stay here while others search for him — I just can’t.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ Helewise agreed. ‘I was going to say that I will summon Brother Saul and Brother Augustus, tell them to bring four other lay brothers and that you and I shall go with them.’

  For the first time since Sister Martha had brought the news, Paradisa smiled.

  They set out not long afterwards.

  Brother Augustus, who was the best tracker, found the prints quite easily, for quite soon they veered away from the muddy and much-used road and went off at an angle through the short grass.

  The tracks led towards the Great Forest.

  Silently Helewise and Paradisa followed Gussie and Brother Saul. Helewise was aware of the four other lay brothers behind them. Each one carried a cudgel. She hoped that such a precaution was unnecessary, but she was well aware that Josse had been very wary of those who stalked the runaway monk. If any of them were lurking nearby, it was better to be safe than sorry.

  They moved slowly up the long slope that led to the forest.

  The small party set out from Joanna’s hut mid-morning. She had administered another light dose of painkiller and the two men said they were more than capable of carrying their own saddles.

  ‘Very well,’ Joanna had said, ‘but all the same Meggie and I will come with you to the forest fringes.’

  Josse did not want that. The remaining Frankish mercenary was out there somewhere. Even if he had not come near the hut last night, it did not mean he would not attack today. Joanna seemed to have picked up his fear for her safety and she had summoned a friend to care for Meggie.

  Josse was relieved. ‘I cannot persuade you to remain here too?’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘I know the forest even better than you do, Josse. I’ll take you to the outside world along paths nobody else knows. It’ll be all right.’

  There was no changing her mind. He kissed Meggie, told her he would see her soon, nodded a greeting to Joanna’s friend Lora and then they set off.

  He regretted the weight of Horace’s saddle and bridle before they had gone a mile, and from the set expression on John Damianos’s face, guessed he felt the same. Joanna was leading the way. Josse recognized that it was a very roundabout route to the Abbey, which must lie over to the north-east. Still, if she kept them safe, then an extra few miles was well worth it, even carrying a saddle.

  Presently they came to an area of woodland that he thought he knew and with huge relief he realized they were not much more than half a mile from the open ground where the forest gave way just above the Abbey. He called out softly, ‘Joanna? May we rest?’

  She turned round, looking quickly at him and then at John. ‘Of course. I am sorry; I have been pushing the pace and I should have had more consideration for your hurts.’ She handed a water bottle to Josse, who drank deeply and passed it to John. ‘We are almost at the edge of the forest,’ she said encouragingly, ‘and already back on the better-known paths, so we should make haste.’

  John gave a grimace as he hefted up his saddle again. Josse caught his eye. ‘Not far. Good news, eh?’

  John nodded. Then they fell into step behind Joanna and set off once more.

  Helewise and Paradisa had caught up with the lay brothers on the edge of the trees. Augustus was bending down and examining the long grass, Saul beside him. The other brothers were staring ahead into the shadowy forest, cudgels in their hands.

  Helewise heard voices.

  One was Josse’s; she recognized his deep tones and relief flooded through her. Oh, thank you, thank you! If he was talking, he wasn’t dying.

  Thank God!

  The other voice was female and belonged to Joanna. Helewise narrowed her eyes and tried to make them out. There appeared to be someone else with them. It was a man, and he wore an enveloping, hooded dark robe. Was it John Damianos? Or was it the runaway monk? With his hood drawn up, she could not see his face and did not know if he was a Westerner or a Saracen.

  The trio passed out from the narrow path between the trees and into a clearing. They were close enough now to have seen the search party, had any of them thought to look. Josse and the other man seemed to be carrying saddles and bridles… Of course, she thought; their horses had already had their tack removed when they ran off.

  Paradisa was staring intently at the second man. Then, before Helewise could stop her, she had leapt over the low bank that marked the edge of the forest and was running along the track towards the clearing.

  The man had seen her. Flinging down the saddle, he raced to meet her. They met in the middle of the clearing and were instantly wound in each other’s arms. A beam of sunshine penetrated the low cloud and shone down into the glade as if its sole purpose was to illuminate them.

  That, said Helewise to herself, just has to be Brother Ralf.

  Smiling, affected by their evident joy, she walked on into the glade. Josse and Joanna were entering it from the opposite side. In that happy moment danger seemed irrelevant. Helewise had forgotten all about it and so, it seemed, had everyone else.

  But danger was still there.

  The Frankish mercenary known simply as William was watching. He had an arrow to the bow and the young man in the hooded robe was in his sights. He knew who he was. He knew he had robbed the great Leo Rubenid Anavarza of his bride. William had a mission; he had lost his colleague and his friend but he could not return to his master all those long miles away unless he had the woman with him. He stared at Leo Rubenid’s bride. In order to take her he would have to kill the man.

  Slowly he lowered the bow. Even had he killed the young man — and he did not doubt that he could — there was little point, for the big knight who had slain poor Tancred was just behind him. There were also two more women in the clearing, one of them a nun, and six monks armed with stout sticks.

  The odds were too great.

  Stealthily, he crept away.

  Twenty

  Helewise did not see Joanna go. One minute she was standing just behind Josse, then when she looked again she had gone. She has been caring for them, Helewise thought. They were wounded and she tended them and sheltered them during the night. She knew that she should be thankful for Joanna’s skill but just then gratitude was not the foremost of her emotions.

  She instructed two of the lay brothers to relieve Josse and Brother Ralf of the heavy tack and then she led the company down the long slope to the Abbey. Paradisa and her lover had their heads close together and were talking urgently in low voices. The young man had not yet been presented to Helewise but she knew it was not the moment to stand on ceremony, for both he and Josse had walked all the way from Joanna’s hut, wherever that might be, and they were exhausted. She led them in through the Abbey gates, where Sister Martha and Sister Ursel, the porteress, came out to greet them. Sister Martha had tears in her eyes as she squeezed Josse’s hand.

  They went on to the infirmary.

  Helewise realized that it would cause uproar if Josse’s companion were put anywhere near Thibault and Brother Otto and so, with a look at Sister Euphemia, who nodded her understanding, Helewise led him and Josse to the recess at the far end of the long ward. Sister Euphemia saw her new patients inside then, drawing the curtains, turned to Helewise and Paradisa and said firmly, ‘I will care for them now. My lady Abbess, they must be stripped of their soiled garments and bathed, then we will see to their hurts. When we have finished’- there was a slight emphasis on when — ‘I will send word.’

  The infirmarer evidently did not think such tasks were fit for any woman except a professional healer. Helewise hid her amusement. ‘Very well, Sister,’ she said. She glanced at Paradisa, who was fuming. ‘Come, Paradisa.’ Helewise turned it into a command. Turning, she walked away. After a moment she heard Paradisa’s footsteps following behind her.

  ‘It isn’t fair!’ the young woman burst out as she and Helewise stepped into the open air. ‘He and I have cared for
each other for two years and a thousand miles! There is little that I haven’t done for him or he for me.’

  ‘I do not doubt it,’ Helewise said soothingly. ‘But now you are at Hawkenlye Abbey and you must do as everyone else does and abide by its rules.’

  ‘Which I don’t suppose include women intimately tending their lovers in the infirmary?’ There was a faint smile on Paradisa’s face.

  ‘No, they do not.’ Helewise tried to keep a straight face. ‘Come with me, young Paradisa. We shall go and say a prayer of thanks that these beloved men are safe, and then you shall come with me on my rounds and meet my nuns.’ Paradisa hesitated. ‘Do not worry,’ Helewise added gently, ‘Sister Euphemia knows she must send word the instant we are permitted to see them.’

  With that, Paradisa had to be satisfied. She fell into step beside Helewise and together they went into the church.

  Josse and John Damianos were put in adjoining beds. Nursing nuns stripped them, washed them and dressed them in clean linen shifts, careful not to disturb their wounds more than necessary. Josse noticed that John tried to keep a hand on the strap of his leather satchel and as soon as the nuns had finished, he picked it up and put it on the bed. The infirmarer came into the recess and gave both men a thorough examination.

  After her first close look at her patients’ wounds she met Josse’s eyes and said, ‘I believe I recognize the skilful hand that tended you.’

  ‘Aye.’

  Sister Euphemia gave a brisk nod. ‘What luck that you were nearby when your urgent need arose.’

  To which, Josse thought wearily, the only response was to say ‘Aye’ again.

  But he noticed a frown on Sister Euphemia’s face as she put her hand on John’s forehead. She said bluntly, ‘You, young man, have a slight fever. I shall give you a sedative. You, Sir Josse, could do with a good rest as well. I shall send word to the Abbess that I would prefer you not to have visitors before tomorrow morning.’

  John looked aghast. ‘But I must talk to Paradisa!’

  The infirmarer looked at him compassionately. ‘And she is just as eager to talk to you. But you will both have to wait.’ With that she left the recess, drawing the curtains together very pointedly after her.

  ‘She means it, I’m afraid,’ Josse said quietly.

  ‘And Abbess Helewise will do as she says?’

  ‘In matters concerning the health of Sister Euphemia’s charges, aye, she will.’

  Silence fell. A nun came in with John’s sedative and put it beside him. ‘Drink it all,’ she said as she turned to go. ‘I shall be back for the empty mug.’

  John looked at it. Then he threw it under his bed.

  ‘You must take your medicine!’ Josse whispered urgently. ‘You have a fever!’

  ‘It is but slight,’ John said. ‘I’ve had fevers before and re covered. I can’t possibly sleep, Josse. If I am forbidden to speak to Paradisa, then I must talk to you.’

  Josse looked into the light eyes, now clouded with fever and with anxiety. Knowing there was no alternative, he said, ‘What about?’

  ‘I’ve told you, or you’ve guessed, much of my story,’ John began, ‘and now I shall tell you the rest. Well, most of it,’ he amended, ‘for the last piece is for another to hear first. You know, Josse,’ he went on before Josse could query that, ‘how I went to Outremer with Gerome de Villieres and left his service to fight with the Hospitallers, meeting up with Gerome later and escorting him to his kinswoman, where I met Paradisa. You know I was involved in that prisoner exchange and had to abandon my brethren to escape with Fadil and the incredible thing that was to have paid for him.’

  ‘Aye,’ Josse agreed. ‘All of that is clear, as are the identities and the purposes of the three groups that pursued you back to England.’

  ‘England,’ John said softly. ‘Yes. It had to be England.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I will explain, but not yet. For now, let me tell you how I escaped death in the desert when all my brethren died.’ He smiled grimly. ‘It was quite simply because of childhood greed.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When I was a little boy I stole a batch of marigold, saffron and cinnamon cakes and ate every single one. Not only was I punished but I was sick for the rest of the day and ever since I have not been able to abide the smell of cinnamon, let alone eat or drink anything flavoured with it. Out in the desert they gave us poison, Josse; the fat man’s smiling servants handed round pretty glasses of a cinnamon-flavoured drink and every monk but I drank it. Hisham intended to kill us all. He had only offered his treasure for Fadil to make absolutely sure we agreed to the exchange. He never intended us to take it away.’

  ‘You did not consume the drink?’

  ‘No, I poured it away in the sand beneath the rugs and when the servants offered more, I held up my empty glass and then poured that away too.’

  ‘It has been suggested that the Knights Hospitaller also intended to deceive,’ Josse said. ‘Was that why you fled? Because you could not trust your own Order with either Fadil or this treasure offered for him?’

  ‘Yes. But Josse, strictly speaking they are not my Order. I never took my vows.’

  ‘Then why,’ Josse hissed, leaning close, ‘have those two Hospitallers lying there at the other end of the infirmary gone to such extraordinary lengths to catch you?’ Light dawned in a flash and he said, ‘They aren’t after you at all, are they?’

  And John Damianos patted his satchel and said, ‘No.’

  Josse leaned back against his pillows. ‘You have to tell me what it is,’ he said. Or else, he added silently, my intense curiosity might just kill me. ‘Whatever it takes, whatever promises of secrecy you have to break, I must know.’ Turning his head, he fixed John with a piercing glare.

  ‘Yes, I appreciate that,’ John said quickly, ‘and you of all people have earned the right to be told.’ He paused, as if deciding exactly where to begin, and then said, ‘There were two special reasons why they selected me for the desert mission. One of them was that I was unavowed — not one of them — and therefore expendable. The other… Once again, it refers to my childhood. I was taught to read and write, Josse, and those skills are rare outside the ranks of the clerics. So there I was, the very person the Hospitallers needed for the mission that night. I was ordered to join the group as night fell and we rode out to the meeting place. Then as we all sat down, something extraordinary happened: my commanding officer turned to me, handed me a piece of parchment, a quill and a brass pot of ink and, nodding in the direction of the fat man on the divan, he said quietly, “When the fat man starts to speak, write down exactly what he says.”

  ‘I sat there straining my ears to catch every word. The fat man was reading from a manuscript and he made no attempt to speak slowly or clearly and I was scribbling faster than I had ever done in my life before. I was fervently hoping for the chance to write out a fair copy before handing it over, otherwise nobody would have made any sense of it at all.’

  ‘It must have been nerve-wracking,’ Josse said. Barely able to write, he readily understood the demands and the horrors of John’s task.

  ‘The main problem was that although I recognized most of the individual words, together they made no sense. Many of them were Latin words. I did not try to understand but merely scrawled them down just as the fat man spoke them. I kept thinking, if only I could have a respite! A few moments to go over what I had written so far and try to extract some meaning! If I’d had an inkling of what it was about, I would have stood a better chance of getting the rest right. But no such respite came. The fat man’s voice went on and on. My hands were damp with sweat and the effort of concentration was making my head pound, but I went on scribbling.

  ‘After an eternity, the fat man at last stopped speaking. It would probably be some time before I could study what I’d written and I was really worried that I wouldn’t be able to decipher it. I decided to have a look there and then, when everybody was cheerful and friendly and my monks wer
e innocently sipping those lethal drinks. So I smoothed out the parchment and studied it.

  ‘All the time I’d been writing, I was so preoccupied with not missing anything that I hadn’t considered the piece as a whole. Now I read it right through and for the first time I understood the full import. As I sat there the heat died out of me and my sweat cooled on my skin. I sat in the brilliant luxury of that tent, looking down in horror at my piece of parchment, and my blood felt like ice in my veins.’

  ‘What had the fat man dictated?’ Josse asked in a whisper. Something came back to him — a word, spoken what seemed a long time ago. ‘John, what does simyager mean?’

  John’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘It’s a Turkish word. It’s what Hisham is. However do you know it?’

  ‘What is he?’

  There was an instant of perfect silence.

  Then: ‘Hisham is an alchemist. The treasure with which he lured us into the desert that night was a deadly formula he’s discovered.’

  ‘What is this formula?’ Josse whispered fiercely. ‘What does it do?’

  John was watching him as if, even now, he was reluctant to confide the secret that he had borne for so long. Then with a sigh he said, ‘It makes a black powder. If it is compressed and set alight, it explodes. If the balance of materials and the method of operation are accurate, it hurls a heavy object with incredible force.’

  Dear God… The soldier in Josse conjured up instant images. Heavy objects hurled with great force into buildings. Into men. Blasting them apart. ‘It’s the devil’s work,’ he breathed.

  ‘I don’t believe in devils other than human ones,’ John said calmly.

  Josse still could not accept what he was hearing. ‘But — are you sure?’ he demanded. ‘You only have this Hisham’s word for it, and-’