Whiter than the Lily

by Alys Clare

  ‘May He continue to do so,’ Josse said, and she murmured ‘Amen’.

  He thought she had finished. He was looking around for Raelf, the stable lad and the missing saddle when she said softly, ‘Sir Josse, there is one final thing.’

  He turned to her and the grave expression on her face almost made him fearful. ‘What is it, my lady?’

  She studied him for a moment as if still uncertain whether or not to make this last confidence. Then, apparently making up her mind, she said, ‘Raelf’s first wife’s health was such that she could not conceive. She, however, did not seek a cure for her barrenness for, according to Raelf, she feared pregnancy and childbirth and believed herself insufficiently strong to endure the process.’ There was the faintest touch of contempt in Audra’s voice, as if the four times proven mother looked down with scornful pity on her feeble and unsatisfying predecessor. ‘For her, another solution had to be found,’ she went on. ‘They decided to adopt a child.’

  ‘Galiena,’ Josse said.

  ‘Quite so. Galiena.’

  Aye, he thought. It made sense. This unknown, dead Matilda would have had to be tall, pale and blonde to have given birth to Galiena, and even then the girl would have had to favour her mother entirely with nothing inherited from her squat, dark father.

  Galiena was adopted. No wonder she looked nothing like the rest of her family.

  There were two more questions to ask. Whether or not the answers had any relevance whatsoever to Galiena’s death would remain to be seen, but in any case Josse had to know.

  He said, ‘Who are her real parents? And where did she come from?’

  But Audra shook her head. ‘I cannot help you with the first question for I do not know.’ She frowned. ‘I asked Raelf a hundred times back in the early days, for as Galiena grew, her remarkable looks emerged and I was ever most curious as to who had borne her. But Raelf would not tell me.’

  ‘Did he give you any reason?’ Josse asked.

  ‘Not really. He used to say that it was for the best if we – and Galiena – put her past behind us. I kept at him for a little longer but then my own babies started arriving and I was too busy to care any more. Galiena was ours, just as my own girls are, and that was that.’

  Josse thought back and then said, ‘You said you could not answer the first question, my lady.’ With his hopes rising, he went on, ‘What of the second?’

  She smiled. ‘I can tell you a place name, nothing more. At least I have always assumed that it is a place name.’ She looked doubtful.

  ‘How do you come to know it?’ he asked.

  ‘Hm? Oh, I overheard Raelf one day. He was speaking to our priest – it was when my Emma was to be baptised – and Father Luke said something like, you won’t be needing any more visits to the Saxon Shore now, Raelf, with one of your own in the cradle!’

  ‘The Saxon Shore?’

  ‘Yes. I believe it means over on the east coast, in the area beyond the Great Marsh. Father Luke said the name of the actual place, too.’

  Josse waited an instant, then prompted, ‘Aye?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a place where the waves and the tides used to lap up against a cliff and where long ago men constructed a fort that overlooked the narrow seas. Only now the fort lies in ruins, the sands have built up and there is marshland where the waters once were.’ Audra hesitated. Then, in a whisper, she said, ‘It is called Deadfall.’

  And, watching her anxious face, he wondered why, as she spoke the name, he should feel as if a cold hand had closed sharp-nailed fingers around his throat.

  10

  Helewise had not expected that Josse would return from his journey to Galiena’s kin the next day; even for one who travelled as quickly as Josse did when need pressed, it would have been asking too much. She would, however, have welcomed his presence at Hawkenlye that day for it was the day they buried Galiena.

  It was the third day since the girl’s death. The weather continued hot but now there was humidity in the air that spoke of a possibility of storms ahead. Small black biting flies had appeared – clouds of them – and it was not the time of year to leave a dead body unburied.

  They interred her in the Abbey’s burial ground and, joined by the grieving husband, the servant lad and the woman, Aebba, the Hawkenlye community prayed all together for her soul.

  Later, Helewise was sitting alone in her room when there was a knock at the door and, in answer to her quiet ‘Come in’, Sister Euphemia appeared.

  ‘I hope I am not disturbing you, my lady?’ the infirmarer asked.

  Since Helewise sat before a table quite empty of ledgers, documents, parchments or anything else, the question was courteous but superfluous. ‘Not at all, Sister. I was thinking about Galiena.’

  ‘I have been, too.’ Sister Euphemia paused, then, as if only after reflection, went on, ‘I’ve had an idea.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Helewise looked up into the infirmarer’s lined face.

  ‘About how it came to be that she came to us to help her conceive when she was already pregnant.’

  ‘Yes, that’s rather what I thought you meant,’ Helewise murmured.

  ‘See,’ Sister Euphemia said, eagerness creeping into her voice, ‘I’ve been looking at it logically. If a couple that consists of an old man and a young wife have a job getting her with child, then you’d probably jump to the conclusion that the fault lay with the old man. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Well, you might,’ Helewise allowed. ‘It would seem the more likely explanation.’

  ‘Exactly! Well, supposing that’s what Galiena thought too? She knew a bit about herbs, so we’re told, so maybe she also understood the workings of her own body rather better than many young women. She might have known herself to be fit, healthy and regular in her courses and, that being the case, she’d have reckoned that the problem was with her old husband’s seed.’ Leaning forward confidentially, she said in a whisper, ‘They do say the vigour goes out of it when a man comes towards the end of a long, active life, if you take my meaning, my lady.’

  From the way the infirmarer stressed active, Helewise was all too afraid that she did. Banishing firmly from her mind the picture of Ambrose in a succession of beds with a succession of women, bouncing away as if his very life depended on it, she said, ‘Indeed, Sister. Do go on.’

  ‘Well, what if this young wife truly wants to have a child, both to please her husband and for her own sake, and decides to take matters into her own hands? She was a comely girl, Galiena, and I would judge also a bright one. I don’t imagine she’d have found it too difficult to find someone suitable. Then all she has to do is admit the young man discreetly into her arms – swearing him to secrecy, naturally – and go on doing so until he’s done the trick for her and she knows herself to be pregnant. Then comes the really clever bit!’

  Helewise, who had already guessed, did not want to spoil the infirmarer’s moment and so she said encouragingly, ‘Yes? And what is that?’

  ‘The lass begs to come here, to Hawkenlye, she takes the waters, prays a bit and goes off armed with a couple of Sister Tiphaine’s concoctions. She hurries back home, where she encourages old Ambrose into her bed as often as he’s willing to be persuaded, then, before a month’s passed, says, oh! How wonderful! I’ve missed my courses, my breasts are swelling like ripe fruit, I must be pregnant! Thank the Lord for Hawkenlye!’

  Helewise nodded slowly. ‘And if the baby were to arrive a few weeks early she would merely say, as doubtless many a woman does, that the child was a little premature.’

  ‘Exactly!’ The infirmarer folded her arms, her face triumphant. ‘What do you think, my lady?’

  ‘I think it is entirely possible and quite likely,’ Helewise said. ‘But tell me, Sister, do you have anything to support this interpretation of events?’

  ‘Nothing whatsoever,’ Sister Euphemia replied cheerfully. ‘Other than two decades of experience of human beings.’

  Helewise gave her a warm smile. She both admired and love
d the infirmarer; for her skill, her tender care of her patients, for her wisdom. Most of all for the fact that, although she had seen the depths to which people could sink and the terrible harm they were capable of doing to one another, she did not condemn. She was happy to leave that to God and, even so, Helewise thought, Sister Euphemia would always expect God to understand that sometimes men and women just couldn’t help themselves and hope that He would not deal with them too harshly.

  ‘I never underestimate your experience, Sister,’ she said. ‘But I do not know how we should set about proving this theory of yours, though.’

  ‘I’m not sure we should try,’ the infirmarer replied. ‘The poor girl’s dead. Perhaps we ought to let her secrets die with her.’

  ‘Yes,’ Helewise said slowly. ‘It is only that I am thinking of whoever it is whose child she carried. If we are right and there was a lover, what will he be thinking now? Will he be waiting for her, expecting her return, worrying that, having got her pregnant, he is now to be dismissed totally from her life?’

  ‘He may not have wanted anything but to bed her,’ the infirmarer said shrewdly.

  ‘That is, of course, possible. Still, I cannot but help picturing him.’

  ‘You’ve a kind heart, my lady,’ Sister Euphemia said. ‘If you’re right, news will spread to the young lad soon enough, I would guess. Anyway, how on earth would we set about finding him to tell him?’

  ‘You are quite right, Sister, it would be impossible. And, indeed, we may have imagined it all wrong; Galiena may have been innocently pregnant by her husband and just not realised.’

  ‘Hmm. It’s always possible, as I said at the time.’ Disbelief was written all over the infirmarer’s face but she managed not to express it.

  ‘Thank you for bringing your thoughts to me,’ Helewise said. ‘As always, you reason soundly.’

  ‘That’s kind of you, my lady. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must return to my patients.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Helewise sat deep in thought for some time after Sister Euphemia had gone. Then, making up her mind, she went to seek out three people.

  First she found Ambrose. After burying Galiena, he had gone down to the Vale with Brother Firmin; he seemed to find comfort in the old monk’s kindly and undemanding company. Ambrose had announced that, together with his two servants who were attending him, he would like to stay on at Hawkenlye for a few days and he was welcomed as a guest with nobody asking him for an explanation. He had been offered the comfort of a bed up in the Abbey guest quarters, but he preferred, he said, to put up in the simpler accommodation down in the Vale with the monks and the pilgrims who had come to take the waters. A space had been found for him with the lay brothers, while Aebba and the young manservant were lodged in the pilgrims’ shelter.

  When Helewise went to see Ambrose, he was sitting beside Brother Firmin and the carpenter, Brother Urse, while Brother Urse mended a rickety bench and Brother Firmin helped by handing him the tools. Seeing her approach, Ambrose got up and came to meet her.

  ‘My lady Abbess, were you looking for me?’ he asked.

  ‘Indeed. I was thinking, my lord, that nobody has yet informed your household of your wife’s death. Perhaps you would like to arrange to do this?’

  ‘It is a charitable thought, my lady,’ he answered gravely. Thinking for a moment, he said, ‘I could send the lad, I suppose, although I hesitate to make him the bearer of such bad news, for he is rough in his ways.’

  ‘I will ask two of the brothers, if you would prefer,’ Helewise offered, ashamed even as she spoke of her duplicity. ‘Safer, in any case, for two to ride together than for you to send your lad by himself.’

  Ambrose studied her closely. Keeping her expression wide-eyed and innocent, she stared right back. Then abruptly he nodded. ‘Very well, my lady. Thank you.’

  Then, as if such brief consideration of matters he preferred not to dwell on were more than enough, he gave her a brief bow and returned to the bench-mending.

  Helewise next sought out Brother Saul and Brother Augustus. ‘Come with me,’ she said to them, ‘I have a job for you.’

  As they walked either side of her back up to the Abbey, she explained.

  ‘I have told the lord Ambrose that I am sending you to his manor of Ryemarsh to inform his household of his wife’s death,’ she said quietly; there was nobody else on the path but, all the same, she felt the need to keep her voice down. ‘But in fact I want you to act as my eyes, if you will.’

  ‘What do you wish us to see for you, my lady?’ Saul asked.

  She paused, trying to think how to phrase it tactfully while not giving away her suspicions; nobody but herself, the infirmarer, Sister Caliste and Josse knew that Galiena had been pregnant and she intended to keep it that way.

  ‘I wish,’ she said eventually, ‘that you try to gain an impression of the sort of life that was lived at Ryemarsh when Galiena was alive. Whether Ambrose and his wife were happy together, whether they entertained many visitors, whether either of them had close friends. Men or women.’ She tried to sound casual. ‘That sort of thing,’ she added lamely.

  ‘You want us to ask some clever questions of the servants and have a bit of a nose around?’ Augustus asked.

  Saul began a reproof: ‘Gus! You must not—’, but Helewise put a hand on his arm to stop him. Giving Saul a smile, she then turned to Augustus and said, ‘Yes, Gus. That is precisely what I want.’

  Josse returned to Hawkenlye the next day. He left New Winnowlands early and was riding through the Abbey gates as the community were in church for Sext. Leaving Horace in the stables – a young lay brother rather nervously took the big horse’s reins in Sister Martha’s absence – Josse decided that, while he waited, he would stroll off down to the Vale to stretch his legs.

  There was a group of pilgrims in the shelter or, more accurately, just outside it, sitting in the shade of the chestnut trees. The noon sun was strong and all of them – there were five men, seven women and four children – looked exhausted by the sultry heat. Josse nodded a greeting and walked on to the monks’ shelter.

  There he found Ambrose. The woman Aebba was with him; it seemed that she had just brought him fresh linen. She gave Josse a quick and, he thought, somewhat furtive glance then, at a nod from Ambrose, she hurried out of the shelter and off up the path towards the Abbey.

  Josse said straight away, ‘I have visited your late wife’s kinfolk, my lord, and told them the news. They were greatly saddened, of course, and they send their condolences to you.’

  Ambrose studied him. ‘Thank you, Josse,’ he said quietly. He sighed. ‘She is buried now, my poor young wife. The nuns will pray for her soul.’

  ‘God will hear,’ Josse said softly. ‘Rest assured of that.’

  ‘Hm.’ There was a pause, then Ambrose said, ‘I am staying on in the Vale for a few days. I find that it is peaceful here.’

  And, Josse thought, you are loath to return to a home where there will never again be the light tread of Galiena’s swift feet. ‘I understand,’ he murmured. ‘I, too, always find solace in the very air of Hawkenlye. Especially down here in the Vale, where the pace of life seems less urgent.’

  Ambrose smiled faintly. ‘It is the Abbess Helewise, I judge, who drives the ship forward,’ he remarked. ‘Down here, the monks have but to pray, care for the small needs of the pilgrims and perform what light duties crop up.’

  Josse, too, smiled. ‘Aye. The Abbess told me when I first met her how dear old Brother Firmin once famously announced that the nuns were the Marthas and the monks the Marys. I am not sure,’ he added, lowering his voice, ‘that the Abbess, in her heart of hearts, entirely approves of a division of labour whereby the women do the work and the men gaze in rapt adoration on the wonders of the Lord.’

  ‘It’s the way of the world, Josse,’ Ambrose said. ‘Within the home, anyway, a good wife will work quietly and unobtrusively while her husband idles away his day in activities that really only serve to
pass the time.’

  He was, Josse was sure, describing his own life. His tone was ironic and, Josse realised, probably concealed grief. No wonder the poor man did not want to go home.

  He said tentatively, ‘My lord, there is no limit on the length of stay here, you know.’

  Ambrose looked up at him sharply. ‘You are suggesting I become a monk, Josse?’

  ‘No! I merely meant to imply that nobody here will urge you to leave until – unless – you are ready.’

  Ambrose’s harsh expression softened. ‘Thank you. I did not mean to be offensive.’

  ‘You did not offend.’

  They sat in fairly companionable silence for a few moments, looking out at the peaceful scene before them. Then, as a group of monks appeared in the Abbey’s rear gateway, setting out on the path down to the Vale, Ambrose said, ‘The Abbess has sent two of the brethren to Ryemarsh with instructions to tell my household of my wife’s death.’

  ‘A kind gesture,’ Josse observed.

  ‘Indeed. Most considerate.’

  Was anything to be read in Ambrose’s strangely expressionless tone? Josse wondered. Did he suspect – as Josse, who knew the Abbess so well, instantly did – that there might be more to the offer than its superficial purpose?

  I need to speak to her, Josse thought …

  He turned to Ambrose. ‘I see that the community have finished Sext,’ he said. ‘If you will excuse me, I will go and report to the Abbess.’

  ‘Please, do so.’ Ambrose looked at him briefly, then resumed his silent contemplation of the view down the Vale.

  With a hurried bow, Josse left the shelter and hurried away.

  He tapped lightly on her half-opened door and her instant ‘Come in, Sir Josse!’ told him that, once again, she had known it was him.

  ‘It is the sound of your spurs, as I have told you before,’ she said as he entered the room; her head was bent over a heavy ledger and she had not even looked up.

  ‘Good day to you, my lady,’ he said.

  She raised her head and her grey eyes met his. ‘Good day, Sir Josse. How are Galiena’s parents? Are they prostrated by the dreadful news?’