Alys Clare - Heart of Ice

‘Aye. He was healthy when he went ashore from the Angel , that I can tell you.’

‘Aye, I know,’ Josse said reassuringly. ‘The young apprentice became ill as well and he also died.’

‘God rest them both,’ the captain said.

‘Amen,’ Josse muttered. Then: ‘Have there been any more cases of sickness among your crew, Captain?’

‘Thank God, no,’ the captain replied. He looked sideways at Josse, who guessed that both were sharing the same thought: no more sickness yet .

‘This pestilence spreads quickly,’ Josse said. ‘If you all remain well then soon, Captain, you may start to be optimistic that you and your crew have been spared.’

‘Can’t think what we’ve done to deserve that blessing,’ the captain observed. Then, lifting the jar of whatever he had been consuming and waving it at Josse, he said, ‘Here’s my remedy.’

Despite himself, Josse laughed. He stood up and, with a grin, said, ‘I wish you luck. Thank you for your help, Captain.’

As he approached the head of the gangplank in preparation for descending to the quay, the sailor hurried up to him. ‘I were listening,’ he said disarmingly. ‘It weren’t two men we brought back from Boulogne, it were three. Leastways, I’m pretty sure of it.’

‘Three?’

‘Aye. We was just slipping our moorings when this dark shadow comes creeping along the quayside, all shifty-like as if he didn’t want to be seen. I saw him, though. Well, I think it was a him.’

‘And he came on board the ship?’

The sailor shrugged. ‘Reckon he must have done. He weren’t on the quay no longer and weren’t nobody in the water, so wasn’t no place else he could have gone.’

‘But nobody actually discovered him aboard?’

The sailor laughed. ‘No, but there’s a hundred places a man could hide on the old Angel . And,’ he added reasonably, ‘nobody was looking for him, was they?’

‘No,’ Josse agreed, ‘I suppose not.’

An image was forming in his mind. A dark figure following the merchant and the apothecary on board the Angel of Mercy , trailing Nicol home to Newenden. Not quite carefully enough, for Nicol had suspected his presence and was afraid. With good reason, it seemed.

But why? Why should anyone go to the trouble of stowing away on a ship and following the poor lad all the way to England; first to Newenden, then to Hawkenlye, where, if Josse’s instinct was right, this someone waylaid Nicol and killed him?

Oh, but he was so far from getting at the truth of it!

He reached inside his pouch and, extracting a coin, flipped it at the sailor, who deftly caught it. ‘I’m grateful to you,’ Josse said. ‘Have a drink on me.’

Then, with a great deal to think about and one or two possibilities already forming in his mind, he made his way back to the inn where he had left the cob and set off for Hawkenlye.

In the day and a half that Josse had been absent, Hawkenlye Abbey seemed to have filled up with fear, pain and sorrow.

The simple-minded man called Jabez, young Waldo’s dead mother’s brother, had died early that morning. Two merchants had arrived a little later, both complaining of terrible pains in their heads and their joints; one of them, the weaker of the two, was showing a rash of dark pink spots on his face, throat and chest. They were being cared for in the far part of the shelter where Jabez had died. The less unwell of the two was able to take in fluids and, as Brother Augustus remarked, the liquid consumption really appeared to help, for all that it seemed that the poor man was losing it out of his rear end as fast as they poured it into his mouth. The older merchant was deep in delirium by midday and too far gone to drink; his fever was steadily increasing and the monks did not think he would last the night.

A little over a week ago, the merchants had put up overnight in Newenden, where, according to the younger man, they had delivered a consignment of frankincense to a certain apothecary’s apprentice.

In the afternoon a woman came in with a dead child. The little girl had only just died and the rash still stood out in ugly, vivid blotches all over her small face.

Sister Euphemia, standing in the Vale with Helewise, was setting out her orders for what must be done. So preoccupied and worried was she that she had been talking for some time before she recalled whom she was addressing: ‘Forgive me, my lady; hark at how unsuitably I’m speaking, telling my Abbess what she should and should not do!’

‘Please, Sister Euphemia, do not stop to consider such a thing,’ Helewise replied swiftly. ‘I thank God that, at this dreadful time, he has seen fit to supply us with someone like you. Go on with your instructions and, if you can, think of me simply as another pair of hands.’

The infirmarer’s dubious expression suggested that she was going to find this difficult. Nevertheless, she went back to her ordering and soon, as her clear-sightedness took over, she forgot all about what was suitable and what wasn’t.

Her instructions were based upon trying to keep the sick well away from the healthy and to this end she decreed that, since there were sick people there already, the sleeping shelter in the Vale be converted into an emergency infirmary. Braziers would be installed and the monks would do what they could to make the roof and walls more substantial; ‘Patients with fever,’ said the infirmarer, ‘feel the cold something wicked.’ She would send nursing nuns down to tend the patients as required.

Nobody who did not have to mingle with the sick in the Vale for the purposes of taking care of them would go anywhere near them. Those monks who had already tended the sick would bear the brunt of the nursing; ‘It’s nothing that requires special skill,’ Sister Euphemia said, ‘and I’ll be here if anybody’s unsure what to do.’

‘You can’t carry everybody all by yourself,’ Helewise said gently. ‘Let me help you; I’m not skilled but I’m willing.’

‘Aye, I know, my lady. But we need you to go on performing the role you were chosen for. Besides’ — she gave Helewise a swift and preoccupied smile, possibly in apology for having so summarily dismissed the offer of help — ‘I’ve already accepted the first two volunteers.’ She gave a nod back up the track that led to the Abbey and Helewise, looking in that direction, saw two black-clad figures hurrying towards her.

Soon they were close enough for their identities to be distinguished. Helewise felt a lump in her throat. As she might have expected, Sister Beata and Sister Caliste had been the nuns who had stepped forward when volunteers were called for. And Helewise, who valued both women not just for their loving, generous hearts and nursing skill but also for themselves, did not know whether to be glad or sorry.

That evening, Brother Firmin complained that his head hurt.

Up at the Abbey, Helewise knelt in the church and prayed that there would be no more cases of the terrifying sickness, that those who were sick now would get better — oh, especially Brother Firmin! Oh, dear Lord, please spare Brother Firmin! — and, perhaps most urgently of all, that Josse would come back.

As the first panicky outpouring of her appeal spent itself, she began to speak the words of the familiar prayers and, as always, felt comfort fall on her like a soft shawl around her shoulders.

And then — perhaps it was the juxtaposition of thinking of Josse and about Brother Firmin, that staunch believer in the benefits of holy water — something slipped into Helewise’s mind. At first it was faint and elusive. . a snatch of memory, nothing more, from, what, a year and a half ago? But then the dreamy images began to clarify and she knew what it was that something — someone — had prompted her to remember.