by Alys Clare
But Josse thought it did. ‘Who else would have known where she kept her jewellery?’
‘Oh, anyone who knew her well. Her sister, her maid. Me, of course.’
‘Her cousin?’ Josse hardly dared say it.
‘Elanor? Well, yes, I suppose so. She was a fairly regular visitor to Rotherbridge, and she and Dillian spent hours up here in Dillian’s chamber.’ He had picked up the gold circlet, and was turning it in his hands. ‘She wore this over her veil. She looked so beautiful. So eager.’
Josse had learned all he needed to know. His impulse now was to get going, as swiftly as he could, back to Hawkenlye. He had already stayed longer than he should – he was going to have to hurry to arrive back by nightfall.
Brice was still deep in his memories. Feeling guilty – for it was his presence that had caused Brice’s reverie, his questioning that had taken the man back into the pain of the recent past – Josse said, ‘My Lord Brice, I regret, but I must take my leave of you. It is a long step back to Hawkenlye, and, with your gift on me, I wish to be there before dark.’
Brice turned to him. ‘Gift? Oh, yes. Of course.’ Then, manners instilled from childhood reasserting themselves, he said, ‘Let me see you to your horse. May I offer refreshment to sustain you for your ride?’
I have had more than enough already, Josse thought. But it was surprising how his head had suddenly cleared. ‘Thank you, but no.’
As he mounted his horse, he leaned down and offered Brice his hand. ‘My thanks, my Lord. I will arrange for your late wife’s cross to be returned to you.’
Brice nodded. ‘I thank you.’
As Josse turned to leave, Brice called out, ‘Shall you find him, this man who murdered Gunnora?’
And Josse said, ‘I think I already have.’
* * *
All the way back to Hawkenlye he was thinking, it has to be him! Milon killed Gunnora, just as I’ve been saying. It all fits! He knew from the first that he would have to make her murder look like rape or robbery, or both, and so he instructed Elanor to get hold of Gunnora’s cross, so that it could be dropped by the body. But Elanor went one better – maybe she thought it would be too difficult to get her hands on Gunnora’s cross, once at Hawkenlye – and she stole Dillian’s cross before she left home. It would have been easy, surely, to visit her dead cousin’s chamber?
Damnation. He realised he should have asked Brice if such a posthumous visit had indeed taken place.
It must have done, he concluded, for how else could it have happened, that Dillian’s cross ended up beside her sister’s murdered corpse?
They were, he concluded, cleverer than he’d thought, those two. Milon and Elanor might seem like children burning their hands by playing with the fire of the adult world, but it had to be an act! How well-planned it had been, that first murder. And how brutal. Had Elanor turned away, when Milon slit her cousin’s throat? Had the horror of the spilled blood affected the grip of those hands on Gunnora’s arms, so that it slackened as Elanor swayed in a faint?
He would never know.
Turning his mind to the practical – how he was going to convince the Abbess that his version of events was the true one – he kicked his horse into a canter and raced back to Hawkenlye.
Chapter Seventeen
Helewise sat in the shrine in the valley, staring up at the Virgin Mary.
She was still feeling the after effects of the shock. Sister Euphemia had tried to make her lie down in the infirmary until she felt stronger, but Helewise had said firmly that she preferred to go and pray.
If Euphemia had assumed Helewise had meant she was going into the Abbey church – and so would be close to the infirmarer’s help, should it be necessary – then that was unfortunate.
Helewise was finding it difficult to concentrate her mind on her prayers. She felt rather odd – light-headed, as if she might quite easily float up to the ceiling, or, once out through the doorway, away over the trees – and still more than a little sick.
‘It’s a very nasty cut,’ Euphemia had said, bathing Helewise’s right forefinger with gentle hands. ‘What can you have been doing, Abbess dear?’
‘I was trying an edge to see if it was sharp,’ Helewise had replied, which was accurate, as far as it went.
‘Oh, dear, oh dear!’ Euphemia, clearly, had thought she would have had more sense, as indeed she should have done. It was just that it had been so unexpected … ‘Next time, Abbess,’ Euphemia had said, ‘test your knives on something that can’t feel pain!’
Helewise was feeling pain, that was quite certain. A great deal of pain. Euphemia had found it a tough job to staunch the blood – the pad of Helewise’s finger had been cut neatly in two, right across the first segment – and it had been necessary for her to sit for some minutes holding her hand above her head, while Sister Euphemia pressed the cut edges together, before the blood had stopped pumping out. Then the infirmarer had applied a salve of white horehound, which had burned like hellfire, and bound the whole hand up tightly, instructing Helewise to try to remember to keep it held up against her left shoulder.
That, in fact, was easy to remember; the moment Helewise let the hand fall, the wound began to throb so violently that the pain increased tenfold.
It was the loss of blood that was making the Abbess feel so faint, or so Euphemia had informed her.
‘Faint,’ Helewise murmured to herself. ‘Faint.’
It made matters considerably worse. Perhaps, Helewise thought, Euphemia was right, and I should go and lie down? Not in the infirmary – I couldn’t bear it – but on my bed in the dormitory? But no! Abbesses don’t do things like that, even if their whole hand has been cut off! Abbesses keep a stiff back and an upright posture, maintaining a dignified air of quiet authority at all times. Lie on my bed, indeed!
She fixed her eyes on the Virgin’s statue and told herself not to be so feeble. She thought she saw the Virgin’s head turn slightly – she’s looking at me! – but, staring harder, realised she was mistaken. She wondered if she were hallucinating.
‘Ave, Maria…’ she began.
But the words, which she must have said thousands of times, refused to come. And so did the comfort she might have received from the saying of them.
Cradling her hurt finger in her other hand, she closed her eyes and waited, in the calming silence of the deserted shrine, for Josse’s return.
* * *
Some time later, she heard him enter the shrine. Heard the sound of boots on the steps, so it must have been Josse, for the monks and the lay brothers wore soft sandals.
‘You’re back,’ she said.
There was a grunt of agreement.
She opened her eyes and began to turn round to look at him, but it made her feel so sick that instantly she stopped. The shrine seemed to be whirling round like a spinning top, so she closed her eyes again.
She sensed him come close. Sit down beside her on the narrow form.
To her vague surprise – all her emotions seemed to be vague, she was discovering – she couldn’t remember for a moment where he had been. Then she thought she recalled a messenger … Yes. That was right. A boy had come, breathless from haste, his words tumbling over each other as he’d announced that he had to see Sir Josse d’Acquin, he brought a summons for him, an invitation to visit Brice of Rotherbridge. She wondered what that had been all about.
‘You found the Lord Brice in good spirits?’ she asked.
There was no answer for some time. Then a voice which she had never heard before said, ‘Aye, Brice is himself again. He has made his confession, done rigorous penance, and obtained absolution.’
There was such despair in those words that she felt her heart contract with compassion.
Opening her eyes again, very carefully she turned her head to her left and looked at him.
He was, she guessed from the unlined quality of his skin, in his late twenties, but looked far, far older. It wasn’t only the dramatic streak of white threading throug
h the dark hair, nor the weary, defeated posture. It was the eyes. Those dark eyes, heavily hooded, whose lids were swollen and which were circled with grey, as if someone had filled in each entire eye socket with smudged black powder.
No wonder he spoke with such hopeless envy of Brice’s recovery; here, she was in no doubt, was a man suffering such torments, pursued by such devils of misery, that the happy state of absolution must seem as far distant as the moon.
Who was he? Someone, clearly, acquainted with Brice of Rotherbridge.
But first things first.
She said, very calmly and quietly, ‘Are you here to pray, friend?’
A brief light of hope entered his eyes at her form of address, but, as quickly as it had come, it was extinguished.
‘I cannot pray,’ he said flatly. ‘I have tried, others have tried with me. The monks in the holiest shrine in all England have done their best for me. But it is hopeless. I am beyond help.’
‘No man is beyond God’s love,’ she said, maintaining the same level tone. ‘That is Christ’s message to us, that, with genuine repentance, we are to be forgiven.’
There was a silence.
Since he did not seem about to break it, she said, ‘Will you pray with me, now? Our Blessed Lady is here, see? She will listen.’
It had worked with others at the very end of their endurance; Helewise had sat, up at the Abbey and down here in the shrine, with seemingly hopeless cases, talking quietly, listening to the outpourings that told of a life gone wrong, of one bad deed leading with dreadful inevitability to the next, until the downward spiral of sin upon sin spun away out of control. Then, when they were empty of words, cried out of tears, she would begin to help them back up the long and difficult slope.
Yes. She had seen men – and women – apparently far beyond God’s love, brought back into the precious fold.
She watched the dark-haired man.
Slowly he raised his head until his sore eyes looked up at the statue of the Virgin. For a moment a half-smile spread over the handsome features, but then it was gone. His face falling, he said hoarsely, ‘Here, of all places, I cannot pray. She – Our Lady there – is watching me, like she did that night. She knows what happened. She knows that, but for me, Gunnora would still be alive.’
He turned to Helewise, and his hands suddenly gripped at her shoulders with surprising strength. ‘She promised me!’ he shouted. ‘Promised! It was to be that night, she said it would, after all my years of waiting! I didn’t rush her, I didn’t try to persuade her out of coming here, for all that I felt it was wrong. You welcomed her, didn’t you? Believed she really had a vocation, wanted to make a good nun! When, all along, it was just a place to hide away till the heat died down and Brice was safely married.’
Helewise’s head spun with a dozen questions. But now, when this poor tormented soul was in the throes of spilling all the pain out of him, was not the time to ask them. She said, ‘Yes, we made her welcome.’
He dropped his hands. ‘I know, I could tell! You are good women. Too good for—’ Too good for Gunnora? Abruptly he stopped, as if pulling himself up short of that betrayal. ‘We should have told them, all of them at home, from the start,’ he went on instead. ‘It wouldn’t have been easy, when her father was set on her marrying Brice, but I believe we could have won him round. He was a decent father, according to his own lights. I don’t think he would have insisted on doing things his way, when everyone else involved wanted it to be otherwise. But Gunnora was not to be diverted.’ He glanced at Helewise. ‘For some time, at the start, I became very worried. I thought she might actually enjoy being a nun, and I was terrified that she’d decide to stay at Hawkenlye. That I’d lose her.’
As he spoke, Helewise noticed, his hands were gripping at a fold of his tunic hem, pleating it first this way, then the other, with such force that the material was crushed beyond recovery. There was a compulsiveness about the repetitive action that spoke of a deeply troubled man.
For the first time, she felt afraid.
Don’t think of yourself, she commanded her quaking soul. Think of him.
It helped.
‘She knew how much you loved her?’ she asked. The man hadn’t spoken of love, but she was quite certain she was right to assume it.
‘Of course! I told her, over and over again!’
‘And did she return your love?’
‘Yes! Yes!’ Then, after a pause, ‘I think so. She once said she thought she loved me. But it would have grown!’ He spoke very rapidly, as if he wanted to defend himself against a protest which he hadn’t given Helewise the chance to make. ‘It was enough, that she had the beginnings of love for me! Wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ It was the only possible response.
‘My brother said I was a fool,’ he went on. ‘Brice didn’t mind Gunnora not wanting to marry him, and he could never see why I loved her so much. But we’d grown up together, you see. I’d assumed, like everyone else, that she’d marry Brice, but I always hoped something might happen … God forgive me, but once I found myself hoping he’d die, then she’d marry me. My own brother!’ Tears sprang into his eyes.
‘We all have bad thoughts sometimes,’ Helewise said. ‘But we don’t mean them. Do we? You would never have turned your brief, private hope that your brother would die into reality, would you? Nor have failed to grieve deeply and honestly had he died?’
‘No! No, of course not.’
‘Well, then.’ She gave him a quick smile, hoping to reassure. ‘God sees into our hearts, you know. Give Him credit for that.’
The man nodded slowly. ‘Yes. That’s what the Canterbury monks said.’ Briefly he seemed to brighten, but then, as if some further dread thought took over his mind, he said mournfully, ‘But Christ and His Holy Mother won’t understand about Gunnora.’
Offering a swift prayer of her own, Helewise took a steadying breath and said, ‘I believe that I understand, now. Why not try them and see if they do?’
* * *
They told Josse up at the Abbey that the Abbess Helewise was praying. Not finding her in the church, he hurried on down into the vale and, for some unknown reason walking with exaggerated stealth, approached the shrine.
The door was ajar. Putting his face to the opening, he looked inside.
Down at the foot of the steps, sitting side by side on a bench that stood on the only flat area of floor, were Helewise and Olivar.
His instinct was to hurl himself forward; for some reason which he did not pause to analyse, he had the clear impression she was in danger.
He made himself stop. Stood perfectly still, listening.
Helewise had placed a heavily bandaged hand over Olivar’s hands, folded in his lap. She was leaning towards him, and Josse heard the tail end of what she was saying: ‘… try them and see if they do?’
Olivar didn’t respond for some moments, and, in the brief pause, Josse wondered wildly what he was doing there. Had he come to mourn Gunnora, in this the nearest place of worship to where she had been murdered? Or – frightening thought! – had he somehow discovered that Milon was responsible for the death of the woman he had loved, and was here to find him and extract his own vengeance?
Helewise, good woman that she was, seemed to have calmed him; Olivar was looking relaxed, Josse thought, perhaps persuaded by the Abbess into believing that praying for Gunnora’s soul was better than seeking out her killer, and that—
But just then Olivar began to speak, and Josse turned his full attention to listening.
‘We were to meet here, in the shrine, in the hour before dawn,’ he said. ‘She would attend Matins, then return with the sisters to the dormitory. But, as soon as she thought they were all asleep, she was going to get up and creep out. I said I’d wait from midnight onwards – I didn’t mind how long it was till she came, I just didn’t want her arriving first. I got here while you were at your devotions.’
‘You must have had a long vigil,’ Helewise’s soft voice said.
‘Yes, but I was so happy at the thought of seeing her again that I didn’t mind. It had been months since we’d had any contact – we’d only been able to make that tryst because of her silly cousin’s fun and games. I gave Elanor a letter for Gunnora, you see. I said a lot, wrote of my love for her. I wrote too much, perhaps. But I didn’t think it would matter – it was only for Gunnora’s eyes, Elanor couldn’t read. Nor could Gunnora, not really. At least, not very fluently. I suppose I was wasting my time.’ There was the smallest suggestion of amusement in the voice. ‘Then she – Gunnora – did as I suggested and left her brief reply hidden for me in a crack in the wall out there.’ He waved a hand towards the doorway; Josse, afraid that one or other of them might turn round, swiftly moved back out of sight.
‘That was how you knew she’d come,’ Helewise said.
‘Yes. I said in my message that the year was up, it was time for her to put our plan into operation and announce she was leaving the convent. I had hoped we would set a firm date, a time, even, then I could have been waiting at the Abbey gates for her and we could have found a priest straightaway and asked him to marry us. It wasn’t what I wanted, this secret meeting down here at dead of night. I didn’t want it to be so furtive. As if we were ashamed.’
‘So, you waited, and, eventually, she came?’ the Abbess asked.
‘Yes.’ Warmth flooding the bleak voice, he hurried on, ‘Oh, I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to see her again! I threw my arms round her, hugged her to me, tried to kiss her.’
There was a brief silence.
‘Tried?’ It was, Josse thought, exactly what he would have asked.
‘She wouldn’t let me, well, not on her lips.’ Olivar gave a small laugh. ‘She said she was still a nun, and that I must show due respect and only give her a brotherly peck on the cheek. And that was funny, because she didn’t look much like a nun – she was wearing her headdress, but it was loosely draped, and the wimple was tucked into the front of her habit, not secured round her throat. I pretended to find it funny, her not kissing me, but I didn’t really. I mean, it wasn’t as if we had been – well, you know – intimate, before, but we had exchanged kisses. Very passionate, thrilling kisses.’
