by Alys Clare
After some time she whispered, ‘When will I know?’
And, his voice breaking, he said, ‘As soon as word reaches us down in Tonbridge, I will come back. You have my word.’
She looked up at him. I should thank him for taking the time and trouble to seek me out, she thought. ‘Thank you,’ she said politely.
Gervais had tears in his eyes. ‘Oh, my dear lady, no need for thanks! If Josse is dead, I …’ But, perhaps realizing such speculation wasn’t tactful, he stopped. After a little time, he said, more calmly, ‘Will you go back to the House in the Woods? The family should perhaps be together, so that you all may comfort each other.’
But she shook her head. ‘I should go back, yes, Gervais.’ She gave him a tiny smile. ‘But I cannot.’ The prospect of having them all weeping, worrying, grieving, speculating, draining her, needing her strength when she had no strength to give, was quite appalling. She looked straight into his eyes. ‘If Josse is dead, the greater part of me will go with him. Until I know—’ she choked back a sob – ‘I do not want company.’
‘But you—’
She held up a firm hand, stopping him. ‘I have a patient to care for.’ She indicated inside the Sanctuary to the sleeping Hadil. ‘Tiphaine stays here with me from time to time. She and my patient,’ she concluded in the sort of tone she had once used with recalcitrant novices, ‘are all the people I want.’
After a moment he gave her a look of total understanding. Then, getting up, he gently kissed her cheek and hurried away.
NINETEEN
Time passed. Helewise, not knowing if it was hours or days, lived in a sort of trance. Tiphaine had returned, and now she stayed at the Sanctuary, not speaking often, sharing the care of Hadil, a quiet, solid presence which Helewise discovered she needed as she needed to breathe.
Hadil was still alive, although now she rarely woke from her deep sleep. It was, Helewise thought, watching her, more like unconsciousness. The coma that led gently to death.
When her son comes home, Helewise thought, I will tell him what she told me.
There was no more news.
She didn’t know how to endure the agonizing wait. Other than the silent and rock-like Tiphaine, there was nobody she could lean on. They were, she realized as if it were a revelation, all used to leaning on her.
And then, in the long hours between midnight and dawn one night, she suddenly thought, I can lean on God, and then was amazed at herself that she hadn’t thought it before.
But I am not myself, she concluded. I haven’t slept, I have barely eaten, and then only when Tiphaine refused to take no for an answer.
God, she felt, would understand.
As soon as it was light enough to make out the path through the forest, she tapped Tiphaine on the shoulder and said very softly, ‘I am sorry to wake you but I need to tell you I shall be absent for a while. Will you stay with Hadil?’
‘Of course,’ Tiphaine murmured. Then, turning on her side, she slept again.
Bless you, dear sister, Helewise thought, for not asking me where I’m going.
But perhaps Tiphaine knew.
She walked the path without having to think about it, one foot falling softly after the other, just as she had done countless times over the years. Presently the trees began to grow less densely, and then the vale opened up before her and there was Hawkenlye Abbey, the lamps of one or two early risers penetrating the dim light of dawn.
She did not go on down to the abbey. Crossing the patch of grassy, open space, she opened the heavy door and slipped into St Edmund’s Chapel. In front of the large block of sandstone that formed the altar, her eyes on the simple wooden cross that was the only ornament, she sank on to her knees.
‘I do not have the words to pray, dear Lord,’ she said aloud. ‘I can only beg you to be here with me, hold me up, until …’
But she couldn’t manage the rest of the sentence. Not that it mattered, since she was quite sure God knew anyway.
After a time, she realized she was no longer alone. Someone was moving very quietly up the aisle towards her, and presently this person knelt down at her side.
‘Do you remember,’ Caliste’s soft voice asked, ‘how you and I first met?’
And Helewise, without opening her eyes, for she knew full well who it was, said, ‘Of course I do. You were little Peg, left as a baby in a bundle on the doorstep of the kind Hursts one night, named and cared for as one of their own by that kind-hearted family, and you stayed there with them, obedient and hard-working, until you were fourteen, whereupon you presented yourself at Hawkenlye Abbey and asked to be taken in as a postulant.’1
‘Remember how you felt?’ Caliste asked softly. ‘You thought I was far too young and that I didn’t have a vocation.’
Helewise smiled despite herself. ‘I also thought you were far too beautiful and utterly different from practically everyone else I knew.’ As indeed you were, she thought, her eyes open now and staring into Caliste’s midsummer-blue-twilight gaze. You were a child of the forest, and the gods that your ancestors worshipped predated the loving God you have given your life to by many thousands of years.
But what an exceptional nun Caliste had become.
Now Caliste put her arms round Helewise, rocking her gently.
‘I pray and I pray,’ Helewise whispered, ‘but I don’t really know what I pray for, because if it is Yves who is dead, then I know that Josse will have lost something of himself and he’ll never really recover, and if it’s Josse, then I-I …’
She couldn’t go on.
At long last, her tears began to flow and, once she had started, she didn’t seem to be able to stop.
And other nuns had now joined them, coming quietly, soft-footedly into the little chapel.
Sister Liese the infirmarer. Sister Madelin, middle-aged now, composed, tall and thin, with wiry strength. Sister Philippa the artist, who long ago made the Hawkenlye Herbal, beautiful and graceful in youth, serene and lovely in age. Sister Bernadine, in charge of the abbey’s small collection of precious manuscripts, austere, pale, detached.
In a show of such gentle, perfectly judged kindness that it made her weep the more, they came and quietly gathered round her, so that she was enfolded by their love. And Caliste said, ‘Dearest Helewise, it is done. Whatever has happened, it is over and cannot be changed. Let God hold you up, for he knows of your pain and has you in the palm of his hand. And, just in case you can’t quite feel him, we are here, his representatives, and we will support you.’
Meggie and Faruq were waiting for a boat to take them across the Thames estuary. It was evening, and Meggie had discovered she couldn’t bear the thought of settling for the night on the northern shore. Ever since Newark, she’d been haunted by a growing dread. Something was wrong, and the desperate anxiety was robbing her of sleep and had totally taken away her appetite. Had it not been for Faruq’s coaxing, she wouldn’t have eaten at all.
He stood silently beside her now, holding the horses. They were on a low promontory leading out into the estuary, on one side of which was a wooden pontoon where the ferries berthed. One was approaching, and she was preparing the words with which to persuade the ferryman that he must do one last crossing before he went home for his supper.
She knew she was being unreasonable. They’d passed several possible places to spend the night – a tavern a few miles short of the coast had looked and smelled particularly inviting – but she had insisted they go on. Turning now to look at him, she said, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t explain, but I just know I have to get home.’
He nodded.
The ferry had tied up. It was a broad, squat boat, riding low in the water. The passengers alighted and, just as Meggie stepped forward to speak to the ferryman, a party of half a dozen riders came clattering on to the pontoon, the leader demanding loudly that they be ferried to the Kent shore straight away. The ferryman sighed and stood back for them to come aboard, and Meggie, Faruq and the horses followed.
Some tim
e later, in the soft light of their little fire, Faruq said, ‘We are alike, Meggie, for both of us accept the truth of things we sense as well as that which we see, hear, smell and can touch.’
She realized straight away what he meant. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘And thank you, in case I haven’t said it before, for not even asking me to explain why I am so driven to get home.’
‘You know somehow that something has happened,’ he said calmly, ‘just as, when we had at last arrived in the area where the King was, I knew that evil was close.’
‘And you were right,’ she said quietly.
He was staring at his pack, lying beside him in the shadows. ‘I want to look at it again,’ he whispered.
She knew she should have stopped him, but her desire to stare again at that malign object was far too strong. ‘Go on, then.’
He opened his pack and took out a small bundle. He unwrapped the length of cloth, fold after fold dropping on the grass. Then, with a gesture worthy of a priest at the altar, he placed what was concealed in the cloth on a flat stone beside the fire.
It was the perfect place for it, for the flames seemed to set the jewels on fire.
She said, ‘It’s hard to believe how malicious it is.’
He nodded. ‘Yes. But you proved it. Back at Newark, when first you showed it to me, we put water in it and you dipped in that beautiful sapphire.’
‘The Eye of Jerusalem. Yes, that’s right, I did.’ She didn’t want to think about what had happened. Out here in the darkness, all alone but for Faruq, it was too frightening. ‘Put it away,’ she said abruptly.
She guessed he, too, was scared. He wrapped the beautiful object in its cloth and shoved it back inside his pack.
In the morning, they rose early and, after a swift and fairly meagre breakfast, set off south.
Others making the same journey ahead of them were already home.
She was not at the House in the Woods. When at last he and Geoffroi rode into the courtyard, the family and the household who flew out to welcome them, to fall on them with love and grief, told them she was at the Sanctuary.
Pausing only as long as good manners and kindness demanded, he left his horse with Geoffroi and walked on.
My brother is dead, he thought. He had been thinking the same thing constantly, all the long way back. I have loved him all my life, although our lives took us in different directions and we did not see as much of each other as we’d have liked. Until I knelt there in the mud beside his fallen body and saw that there was no hope, I had never realized how much I am going to miss him.
He increased his pace.
It was evening, and the autumn night was fast closing in. A light burned in the Sanctuary and the door stood slightly ajar.
She must have heard his approach.
Suddenly the door was flung right open, and light spilled out into the clearing. She called out in a tight, strained voice, ‘Who is it?’
He advanced.
But of course she couldn’t see him properly, for he was in darkness and she had only just emerged from the light of the interior.
She took a step, two steps. He could see her face now. The agony of this interminable time of his return was written plainly. She looked as she would no doubt look when she was a very old woman.
He said softly, ‘It’s me.’
And then she was in his arms, weeping, laughing, hugging him so tightly that he could barely breathe.
She said, ‘Oh, my dearest love, your brother. Dear Yves, and you loved each other so long and so well. Oh, I’m so, so sorry.’
He gave a muffled moan of pain. The loss was so raw, and kindness made the grief overflow. He didn’t speak, and she reached up and put her hand on his cheek, feeling his tears.
Then, as if she could bear no more, she buried her face in his chest and wept.
She wept for a long time.
It was, he thought with a puzzled wonder, a sort of breakdown.
And it formed itself into the final factor in the decision he had been beginning to make ever since he had left home all those days and weeks ago; the decision that had slowly and steadily been hardening since his beloved brother fell dead in the mud beside him with a perfectly placed arrow in his generous and loving heart.
Now, at last, he recognized that it was irrevocable.
‘I’m home to stay,’ he said in her ear. ‘We’re old, my dearest love, you and I, and, even given good health and enough to eat, we won’t have that many more years together.’
She raised her wet face and looked straight into his eyes. ‘Do you mean it?’ she demanded. ‘Oh, Josse, don’t make the promise if you won’t be able to keep it.’
‘I do mean it,’ he said, so roughly that it sounded like a curse. ‘I’ll not leave home again.’
TWENTY
‘I think,’ Josse said as, having called for quiet, he stood in the circle of his household, ‘that we have a story to piece together, and that, if we are patient and allow each one their turn, we shall succeed and, at last, understand.’ There were a few murmurs of assent. ‘But first, please join me as I raise my cup to the dead.’
There was a noise of benches and stools dragging on the stone flags of his hall as everyone stood up.
‘To King John, God rest him,’ Josse said.
‘King John,’ echoed up into the high roof.
‘And to his successor,’ Gervase de Gifford added. ‘To King Henry.’ Once more the voices repeated the toast.
It was Faruq who spoke next. ‘To my mother, Hadil,’ he said, his voice strong. Hadil had almost managed to last until her son’s return, dying in the late afternoon of the day before. Faruq had been in time to arrange her burial, at sunset of the next day, attended only by Helewise and Tiphaine, the women who had cared for her so well. Afterwards, he and Helewise had talked alone long into the night.
Finally, Josse stepped forward again. ‘To my brother,’ he said, his voice breaking.
This time the cups and mugs were raised in silence. Yves’s death was too recent and sharp a grief, and nobody trusted their voice.
Yves’s body had been brought home to the House in the Woods. Josse had worried anxiously about where his brother should rest, and said several times to his kin that he ought to take him back to Acquin.
It was Geoffroi who persuaded him otherwise. ‘He came to find you, Father,’ he said. ‘His wife was dead, his sons managed Acquin well enough without him, and he chose to live out his life with you.’ Before Josse could reply he went on, ‘When you die, you’ll be buried at Hawkenlye, won’t you?’
‘So I hope and pray,’ Josse replied.
‘Then Uncle Yves should be there waiting for you.’
Yves had been buried that morning, and the Hawkenlye priest had conducted his funeral in the abbey church. The numbers who had turned out to say farewell to Josse’s brother had been astonishing and, even amid his sorrow, Josse had found comfort.
Slowly he sank down into his big wooden chair, and, taking this as a signal, everyone else began to move.
Several people, having come up to speak to him, slipped away, for they had nothing to contribute to the story Josse needed so much to understand. Gervase was one of the last.
‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he said. His voice was stiff.
‘Thank you,’ Josse replied. Then, catching the sheriff’s expression, he said, ‘Gervase, I know that, since that business with Lord Benedict, relations between our two families – between us – have been awkward.’1
Gervase gave a rueful laugh. ‘Yes, so they have.’
‘Let us put all that in the past, where it belongs,’ Josse went on. ‘You came here to my family, to Helewise, when you all thought – er, when you heard the news – and I know how much your presence meant to them. Life’s too short to let a good friend turn into an enemy.’ He stood up, holding out his hand, and Gervase took it.
‘It is indeed,’ Gervase agreed. He smiled. Then, with a bow, he turned and strode out of the hall.
Faruq sat with his head bowed. Slowly he nodded. ‘You have every right, sir,’ he replied. Then, looking up, he stared straight into Josse’s eyes. ‘My mother did indeed make me swear to keep the secret. But …’ He seemed on the point of saying something more – something that, from his expression, affected him deeply – but with a small shake of his head he said, ‘This is my tale, and I’ll tell it as briefly as I can. Some of you—’ he glanced at Helewise – ‘know some of it; indeed, may know more than I do.’ He smiled grimly. ‘I come from Outremer, and my family’s home is Jerusalem. There, nearly a hundred years ago, a girl was raped by a member of the Order of the Knights Hospitaller. Not long afterwards, when he was being punished for another crime, he was put to digging graves outside the city walls, and he dug up some treasure. He hid it, then went back by night to fetch it. As he crept away, the father, brother and cousin of the raped girl set upon him, and he and the cousin were killed. The father searched the body and stole the treasure, but very soon he and his family realized it carried a stain of evil. They divided it into five lots and got rid of it. The girl grew up to marry and have children, and, as the years passed and evil tales reached their ears, her descendants came to accept that, by disposing of the treasure – to their own great financial advantage, it must be said – they had unwittingly released a terrible evil, and it was their responsibility to rid the world of it. I do not know the details of what happened to four of the five lots, for my mother never told me. But it was her task, and therefore mine as her son, to ensure the discovery and the destruction of the fifth and last portion.’
