Alys Clare - Heart of Ice

In the autumn of 1192, a stranger had presented Josse with an ancient treasure that had rightfully belonged to his father. Josse’s father was dead and so, as the eldest son, the treasure had come to Josse; it came from Outremer and they said it had the power to detect poison and that, dipped in water, it made a powerful febrifuge. But Josse, fearing not only its magical power but, even more so, the awesome prediction that accompanied it, had given it to Helewise and begged her to hide it away. ‘It would be best to keep it here,’ he had said, ‘because it is only safe in the hands of the very strong, the very wise and the very good, and you and your nuns here at Hawkenlye are all of those.’ Deeply touched, she had agreed, although she had firmly told Josse that if ever the day came that he wanted his treasure back again, he had only to ask. ‘I won’t want it back,’ he had assured her, ‘I’ll be delighted to see the back of it!’

Helewise had taken the treasure and prayed for guidance as to what she should do with it. There were associations of violence in its long and complex history and, to cleanse it, she had decided it should be placed near the altar. Pleading with God that he would make the treasure fit for the healing work that might one day be performed with it, she had left it in its little silver box tucked away on a hidden ledge beneath the altar, where a wooden support was concealed by the linen cloth that covered the altar. Where for the past fifteen months, other than a brief excursion for a first tentative testing of its powers, the treasure had quietly remained. .

Helewise debated with herself. Magic jewels are a relic of heathen, pagan times, she thought, and we should have no use for them, trusting only in the merciful, healing love of God and his precious son.

But here you are, another part of her instantly replied, kneeling before God’s altar, and what happens? A memory of that jewel of Josse’s pops into your head, for all the world as if God himself were prompting you! And did you not see fit to let Sister Euphemia try it out — successfully — when there was that outbreak of fever a year ago last autumn?

To and fro the argument went until Helewise felt quite distraught. Then, as if a cool hand were smoothing her brow, she had the sudden thought: I’ll ask Josse. It is his jewel, so that will only be right. And if, as I’m sure that he will, he gives his permission, the thought went on — it seemed to have a life and a purpose all of its own — then I shall authorise that the treasure be used.

And we shall see, she concluded as, stiffly and with aching knees, she got to her feet, whether Josse’s Eye of Jerusalem is really as powerful as we have been led to believe.

Helewise did not know, when she awoke in the morning, that part of her desperate prayer had already been answered: Josse had arrived back in the Vale the previous evening, soon after the monks had settled for the night.

He presented himself in her room in the usually quiet time between Prime and Tierce and she had rarely been as glad to see anybody.

‘What news?’ she demanded, forgetting in her haste to greet him.

‘Some; not much,’ he replied, ‘although I believe that I begin to see a pattern in what was hitherto a mystery. My lady, unless there are matters about which you wish to speak with me, then, with your leave, I would set out what I see as a possible version of events.’

‘Yes, yes, do!’ she urged. Then, reminding herself that the poor man had been in the saddle for much of the past two days, she restrained her impatience and added more gently, ‘If you would, please, Sir Josse.’

His swift grin, there and gone in a flash, suggested he wasn’t convinced by her belated show of good manners. Then he said, ‘The foreign pestilence came to England with the Hastings merchant, Martin Kelsey, who had been on business in Paris and caught the sickness when he tended a dying beggar in Boulogne. Kelsey travelled back to Hastings on a ship called the Angel of Mercy in the company of the apothecary’s apprentice, Nicol Romley, who had been to the great market at Troyes buying supplies for his master. Someone followed the men on board the Angel , although employing such secrecy that nobody except an observant sailor spotted him. Kelsey went home and shortly afterwards fell sick; his spinster sister baulked at nursing him and delegated the task to her maidservant. Kelsey died and, with a cruel opportunism, that same night someone broke into the house and stole a few trinkets. The maidservant fell ill and went home to her family, whose surviving members are even now recovering here at Hawkenlye. Or so I pray?’ He looked at her with raised eyebrows.

‘The boy and the baby girl are better,’ she confirmed. ‘The simple uncle died yesterday.’

‘Ah.’ He muttered something under his breath; probably, she thought, a blessing on the poor man’s soul.

‘Go on,’ she said when she could no longer endure the wait; a matter of all of four heartbeats.

‘Nicol Romley fell ill soon after returning to Newenden,’ Josse said, ‘but there’s something else: the lad was mortally afraid that somebody was following him.’

‘You mean-’ she began, but stopped herself; Josse would tell his tale more succinctly and swiftly if she refrained from interrupting him.

With a quick nod, as if he understood her thought, Josse went on, ‘Nicol’s master tried to treat him but failed and instead sent the lad off to Hawkenlye. He got as far as the Vale, but then someone attacked and killed him. It’s unlikely that this was a simple case of robbery because, although it appeared that Nicol’s purse had been searched, the coins hidden at the bottom of it were still there when he was found.’

He waited to see if she wanted to comment but she shook her head.

‘So, my lady,’ he concluded, ‘a virulent and deadly pestilence has come by evil chance to our land. At the same time, some unknown assailant whose purpose we cannot begin to guess follows a young man home from France and kills him.’ With a helpless shrug, he said, ‘Would you care to propose a likely explanation?’

‘Not yet,’ she replied with a small smile. ‘Although one or two things occur to me. .’

‘Let’s hear them!’

‘Well, I am thinking about those coins that were overlooked in the apothecary’s purse. It seems that there is a similarity between this and the few trinkets stolen from the merchant’s house.’

‘Aye, that had crossed my mind too. In addition, the merchant’s sister’s best guess was that he died in the small hours, and she claimed that the ransacking of the house took place between the time that her brother died and when she found his body soon after daybreak.’

‘The house was ransacked?’ Helewise asked. ‘Did the sister not hear any sound?’

‘Apparently not, but I have an idea that she may have exaggerated the offence; my guess is that the intruder broke in, quietly looked into one or two rooms and, finding a dead man in one of them, took advantage of his good fortune and made a quick search, taking anything that caught his fancy and was small enough to carry away.’

‘Supposing,’ she said slowly, ‘good fortune had nothing to do with it?’

‘You mean-’ He stopped, had a think and then, as he realised exactly what she meant, said, ‘My lady, I had got as far as wondering if our mystery assailant had been watching Martin Kelsey’s house and, guessing that it would be an easy matter to search the house of a dying man, took his chance and by coincidence chose for his intrusion the very night that Kelsey died. But you, if I hear you aright, would go one step further?’

‘I am thinking,’ she said, ‘that, for some reason, the man who slipped aboard the Angel of Mercy has need of total secrecy for his mission in England, whatever it is. Therefore he had to make sure that the two men who might have seen him — the merchant and the apothecary’s apprentice — could not live to give testimony to the fact of his having made the crossing from France to England. So he broke into the merchant’s house, put a pillow over his face and then, to make his crime look like theft and not murder, he picked up one or two items and made off with them.’ Leaning forward, she said eagerly, ‘It was to his advantage that the merchant was so ill! Why, the killer may not even have known that Martin Kelsey had the sickness! If he was still in the vicinity in the morning, he would have been amazed at his good luck when it was assumed that the merchant had died of the pestilence and not by another’s hand.’