Heart of Ice

by Alys Clare

  He wanted more than anything to ask if she was prepared to try to help heal the Abbess, but somehow it did not seem diplomatic, on seeing a former lover for the first time in two years, to ask almost immediately if she would go with him to help another woman.

  But the other woman is the Abbess, he told himself firmly. He opened his mouth to speak but Joanna got in first.

  ‘Of course I will come, Josse,’ she said.

  He glanced back at Sister Tiphaine; the herbalist was no more that a vague dark shadow, some distance away. ‘Has she already asked you, then?’ he demanded. ‘She said not, she—’

  ‘No, Tiphaine has not spoken. I read it in your mind, dear Josse.’

  ‘You – is that the sort of thing they’ve been teaching you?’ Even to his own ears, he sounded like a shocked and prissy old woman.

  Now she was laughing and, despite everything, he found himself joining in. It was impossible not to: she carried a joy in her that was irresistible. ‘Anyone could pick up what preoccupies you at the moment,’ she told him, ‘especially one who was aware of your deep love of the Abbess Helewise.’

  ‘I don’t—’ he began. But why deny it when it was true? Saying the first thing that came into his head, he asked, ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘That you love her? Josse, why should I?’ Joanna sounded genuinely puzzled.

  Trying to set aside the bewildering swirl of emotions that the brief exchange had sparked off, Josse spun round, said, ‘Let’s be away to her, then,’ and stomped off out of the forest.

  He was quite sure that he heard Joanna’s soft laughter behind him.

  Marching along behind Josse’s broad shape – Sister Tiphaine was trotting at his side – Joanna tried to overcome her surprise at what the reunion with him had done to her. Ever since she had realised that the meeting was inevitable – Tiphaine had told her that the Abbess was dying and she had known Josse would come, sooner or later – she had been dreading it.

  Now, most of her mind already thinking ahead and seeking out the Abbess’s spirit in order to try to call her back, Joanna reflected briefly that, while she had known she still loved him, she had never expected the surge of sheer happiness that his appearance in the clearing had given her.

  But it was no time to think of herself or of him; she had a job to do and she knew it was going to be a tough one. Sending out a fleeting thought to Meggie – the child had been taken home to the hut by Lora, who would look after her until Joanna returned, whenever that might be – she turned her thoughts to what lay ahead.

  They must have realised that she worked alone. The large nun with the kind eyes showed her to the recess at the end of the ward and then, with the curtain pulled behind her, it was just the Abbess and Joanna.

  Joanna studied the statue-still figure lying on the narrow cot, taking in the visual signs. The prospect of bringing this woman back from where she now was seemed all but impossible; the Abbess was burning hot, deadly pale and the infrequent, shallow little breaths barely lifted the chest beneath the white sheet.

  Joanna stood quite still and closed her eyes. She concentrated on her breathing, turning her full attention to each deep intake and outlet of air. She felt them come to her almost instantly, as if they knew her need and were just waiting for the chance to join her.

  You are a channel, they had told her. You do not heal; healing is bestowed through you. It is we who heal. Who are we? she had asked. We are the collective spirit of the people. We are the consciousness that was ancient even when the first stones were set up; the consciousness that awoke and greeted the first day. We are always here for those who seek us with the right mind; you have but to learn what that mind is and how to achieve it.

  Joanna had spent a year doing just that. She was a rank beginner, she well knew it; a green sapling among mature, majestic oaks, birch and beech. She had undergone the exacting, alarming and sometimes downright painful initiations; she had experienced her first spirit journey. She had the supreme soul friend in the Domina and this was, Joanna was well aware, an important factor in having achieved the progress she had managed.

  Now, standing in the recess where the Abbess lay dying, Joanna drew on all that she had been taught and sent out a silent cry to the spirits clustering around her to help her find the swiftly receding soul and try to bring it back.

  She did not know how long she stood there; time as a phenomenon of the earth ceased once she had entered the trance state and walked with the spirits. Presently she saw that she was in a little hollow beside a stream; it was a lovely place, bright and shining with spring greenery and with the scent of growing things on the soft air. Helewise sat before her on a narrow strip of sandy shore that formed a beach by fast-rushing, shallow water.

  Joanna sat down beside her.

  ‘Helewise,’ she said after a while, ‘you are on the brink of passing from this world on to another.’

  ‘Yes.’ Helewise sounded dazed. ‘I guessed that might be the case.’

  ‘Are you sure that you truly wish to go?’ Joanna kept her voice low, hypnotic; nothing in that dream-like place was loud or discordant.

  Helewise considered. ‘I thought I saw Ivo waiting for me,’ she murmured. ‘This is where he and I first met. Where, not very long afterwards, my first son was conceived.’ She laughed, a sound of such happy remembered joy that it touched Joanna’s heart.

  ‘Will you go on to him now?’ she asked.

  Helewise hesitated. ‘I – a part of me is so tired and in such distress that I long to lie in his arms again and find my comfort in him, as once I did.’

  ‘But?’ Joanna prompted. She knew there was a but; there usually was.

  ‘But I feel that my road in this earth—’ She stopped, turning puzzled eyes to Joanna. ‘Are we still within this earth?’

  Joanna smiled. ‘Our bodies certainly are. As for our spirits . . .’ She shrugged.

  Helewise appeared to accept that. ‘My road on earth goes on,’ she said simply. ‘I can see it sometimes if I try not to look, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I do,’ Joanna assured her. ‘What is on your road? Can you see?’

  Helewise broke into a lovely smile. ‘Oh, very many things! My son and his wife are there . . . my grandson Timus . . . Oh! And a baby girl too and she’s called Little Helewise! Isn’t that delightful? And . . . yes, there’s my younger son and his skin is so deeply tanned – whatever has he been doing? There is a look about him that I . . . And there’s— Oh!’ The last vision, whatever it was, affected her very much.

  ‘What is it?’

  But Helewise turned to her, still with that happy smile, and said, ‘I will not tell you, if you don’t mind.’

  Joanna could have been mistaken but she thought there was a slight emphasis on you; as if Helewise were saying, anyone else I might tell, but not you.

  ‘What is your decision?’ Joanna asked. ‘Will you go on or will you let me help you return?’

  For a long time Helewise did not speak. She sat there smiling, face turned up to the sun so that brightness shone on her, from her; as if some wonderful, blessed light beamed down and she felt its power and its benevolence.

  Eventually she said simply, ‘I would like to go back, please.’

  Joanna swayed on her feet as the healing force of her people surged through her and out through her hands, extended over the Abbess, and into the dying body. The power came in waves; one at the start was so strong that she felt as if a great jolt had flowed through her, jerking her like a puppet dancing on its strings.

  She heard them; sometimes she thought she could see them. They chanted – quietly, hypnotically, continuously – and they wore white. In their hands they held rods tipped with quartz that looked very like her own. But the mighty strength that came pulsing out from them was as far removed from anything she had yet achieved as a puddle is from an ocean.

  Humbly, more aware than ever in her life of her smallness and her unimportance, Joanna stood and let them use her until they were done.<
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  Much later – or was it only a matter of moments? – Joanna opened her eyes. Something had woken her; listening, she heard quiet sounds from the ward beyond the curtain – booted feet on the floor; the sound of a cot being dragged across the stone; hushed voices – and she wondered absently whether yet another victim had just been brought in.

  She was bone weary, so exhausted that she could barely stand. The agonising headache that followed trance work was just beginning; like the distant sound of a hammer on an anvil, the thumping pain was faint as yet, although it carried within it the full menace of what it would soon become.

  Instantly aware of her patient, she fell to her knees beside the still, pale figure in the bed, reaching out her hand to touch the one that lay like a marble sculpture on the bedcovers.

  The Abbess was breathing deeply. She was relaxed and her fever had gone down.

  Joanna felt a painfully dry sob break from her. Pressing her face into the bed, she suppressed it. Then, looking up at the Abbess’s face, she whispered, ‘I think you chose right, Helewise. Welcome back.’

  Then she got to her feet and, trying to straighten her back and walk like the woman of her people that she was, she pushed the curtain aside and walked out into the ward. The big nun stepped forward, her terrible anxiety evident in the very way she stood, straining forward, and the pain in her eyes shot out to Joanna as if she had loosed an arrow into her heart.

  ‘She is a little better,’ Joanna whispered. The pounding in her head was growing to a cacophony of agony. Gasping as she tried to control it, she reached into her leather satchel and extracted a small flask. It contained water in which Meggie had held the Eye; the jewel had had a longer contact with this particular water and Joanna hoped that it was correspondingly more potent. ‘Give her some of this as soon as she is able to swallow,’ she told the big nun. ‘I think – I am sure – it will help.’

  The nun was watching her with the professional eyes of another healer and Joanna knew she could read the pain. ‘You poor soul,’ the nun said gently. ‘Would you like to lie down awhile, dear? You look exhausted.’

  Joanna managed a smile. ‘No, I would rather return to my own place.’

  ‘Want me to find someone to go with you and see you safely home?’

  It was a kind offer but one that Joanna knew she must instantly reject, for the most likely candidate for the task was Josse and she really could not cope with Josse right now. ‘I shall be perfectly all right alone. Thank you,’ she added.

  The nun caught her sleeve. ‘Will you come back and see how she does?’

  Joanna tried to think what it would mean if she said yes but the pain and the deadly fatigue were interfering with her mind. She said yes anyway.

  The big nun still had not finished with her. ‘There’s another patient just been brought in,’ she said quietly, nodding to a cot quite close to the curtained recess where the Abbess lay. ‘He’s near death and—’

  ‘I’m very sorry but I can’t do any more now,’ Joanna whispered.

  ‘I was not going to ask you to!’ the nun said. ‘Dear child, you’ve done more than enough already.’ Dear child. The sweet words touched Joanna’s heart. ‘I was just going to ask,’ the nun was saying, ‘whether we could spare him some drops of this.’ She held up the flask that Joanna had just given her.

  ‘Of course. Give it to him with my blessing.’ Even to herself, Joanna’s voice was sounding distant. If I remain here any longer, she thought, I’ll lose my last chance of getting back to the hut before I collapse.

  With what she hoped was a dignified bow to the nun, she straightened her back, lifted her chin, strode out of the long ward and set off on the path that would take her home.

  Chapter 21

  Josse watched Joanna climb the path that led up to the Abbey. Her dark figure moved fast as, leaving the track, she strode off around the outside of the Abbey walls and disappeared from sight. Following her in his mind’s eye, he saw her hurry across the open ground and, finally reaching the safety of the trees, melt into the shadows of the Great Forest.

  He was not sure whether or not she had noticed him standing there outside the Vale infirmary door as she hurried past. She had been staring straight in front of her, eyes narrowed as if fixed on some difficult goal that she might or might not achieve. He had so much wanted to reach out to her but there had been something about her – almost as if she wore invisible armour – that had stopped him.

  So he had let her go.

  Firmly putting her out of his mind, he turned and stepped inside the ward. Sister Euphemia was already hurrying towards him; she held a small flask in her hand and she was smiling.

  ‘You already know, don’t you?’ she said softly, taking him by the arm and leading him back outside again, where they sat down side by side on his bench.

  Josse smiled. ‘Aye. I felt – oh, I don’t know.’ He scratched his head vigorously as if it might stir up his brains. ‘I had all but given up and then suddenly I had this picture of her with light on her face and she looked so happy, so beautiful—’ He broke off, not sure if he trusted his voice enough to continue.

  ‘Our prayers have been answered,’ Sister Euphemia said. ‘Her fever’s come down and she’s asleep. She’s still very ill,’ she added warningly, ‘and we shall have to take very good care of her.’

  Josse looked at her anxiously. ‘But she won’t – she’s not going to die?’

  ‘No, Josse,’ Euphemia said gently. ‘I don’t think she is.’

  Soon afterwards she stood up and announced she must be getting back to her patients. With the awful fear gone, Josse realised how tired he was; yawning, he stumbled away to his corner in the monks’ shelter, threw himself down fully dressed, huddled into his blankets and was soon soundly and dreamlessly asleep.

  They did what they could for the man in the bed next to the Abbess’s recess. They washed him, bathed his hot face and tried to make him take some sips of the special water from Joanna’s flask. Sister Emanuel, who had the task of removing and folding his garments, found a small, wrapped parcel of some herbal mixture in the purse on his belt; Sister Euphemia thought it contained opium and, since the parcel only appeared to contain a small portion of what it had once held, they deduced that he had been dosing himself with it and decided that it could surely do no harm to give him the remainder. He was very close to death; anything was worth a try.

  By morning, he had regained consciousness. Of a sort: the drug must have been strong, for he seemed to be in some waking dream that was indistinguishable from reality. But the spell of lucidity did not last long and presently he slipped back into a coma.

  Two days later, the infirmarer, Sister Tiphaine and Sister Caliste got their heads together for a brief discussion. There had been a total of forty-six cases of the foreign pestilence at Hawkenlye, out of which twenty-nine had died not counting poor murdered Nicol – and sixteen had recovered. Within the Hawkenlye community, they had lost dear Sister Beata, the young monk called Roger and the quiet little novice; another nun who worked in the laundry had become ill but recovered. A dozen recovering patients still lay weak and querulous in the Vale infirmary, where there was also the Abbess Helewise, slightly stronger now, and the man brought in on the night she almost died. He alone was still giving grave cause for concern for his fever remained high and he only emerged from his deep coma on rare and very brief occasions. Whenever he did so he was given water from Joanna’s flask.

  Since the night of his arrival, there had been no new cases of the sickness. The nuns hardly dared think it, let alone say it, but each was just starting to hope that the disease might just have run its course.

  Inside the ward, Brother Firmin – who had recovered sufficiently to get up for an hour or so each day – went to sit by the unknown man’s bed. Waiting patiently until the man opened his eyes, he said, in the manner of one speaking to the deaf, ‘DO – YOU – KNOW – WHERE – YOU – ARE?’

  The man gave a wry smile. ‘Not in heaven,�
� he muttered.

  Brother Firmin was faintly shocked. ‘Oh, dear, no!’ he said, wondering if he had just heard a blasphemy. Deciding that, if he had, then it was forgivable under the circumstances, he said, ‘You are at Hawkenlye Abbey, in the temporary infirmary that we have set up down in our Vale, where the holy water spring is situated, and our nursing nuns are doing their utmost to help you get better.’

  Before he had finished his little speech, the man had closed his eyes and wearily turned away. Firmin put out a tentative hand. ‘Are you in pain, friend?’ he asked. ‘Is there anything that I can do for you?’

  The man opened his eyes again. ‘I am dying,’ he said baldly.

  ‘Oh, you must not say that!’ Firmin told him. ‘There is always hope, and God is merciful.’

  The man’s eyes fixed on to Firmin’s in a stare so intense and blank that Firmin shrank back. ‘Is he?’ the man demanded. ‘Is there mercy even for one such as me?’

  ‘There is mercy for everyone,’ Firmin assured him. Then, made nervous by what he read in the man’s eyes, ‘Would you like me to send for a priest?’

  After a long pause, the man nodded. Then, as Brother Firmin made to call out to one of the nuns to fetch Father Gilbert, he caught the old monk’s sleeve. With an attempt at a smile, he said, ‘Better find one with time on his hands, Brother, for I have much to confess.’

  The infirmarer had decided that she could no longer put up with Josse’s constant demands to be allowed in to see the Abbess. Almost sure now that the danger of infection was past, she put her head out through the doorway of the Vale ward, saw him in his usual place on the bench and told him he could come in. She did add, ‘But you can only stay with her for a few moments’; however, he had already leapt to his feet and rushed in past her and she was quite sure he could not have heard.