Alys Clare - Heart of Ice

But there were, Josse realised, more urgent things to speak about. With apprehension making his heart beat faster, he asked de Gifford if anyone in Tonbridge had fallen sick of a strange illness.

By the time all those in the community not engaged in vital and life-saving work assembled for Vespers, the sicker of the two merchants, the elderly man and the woman were dead. The three reported as being on their way had arrived; one of their number, a strong young woman, had pushed a handcart on which lay her father, who had apparently been lucid when he was carried out of his home but was now very sick. The father had been clutching a crippled boy who was almost at death’s door.

Each of the sick had, in one form or another, been given some of the water that had been treated with the Eye of Jerusalem; not one was showing any improvement.

Helewise sat in her room late into the night. Compline was long over and, down in the Vale, Josse had returned from Tonbridge and, presumably, had settled down for the night. One bright spot in the day had been the welcome news, relayed to her by Brother Augustus soon after Josse had got back, that nobody in Tonbridge was sick of a mysterious foreign pestilence.

Josse, Helewise thought. Oh, Josse. What shall I do for the best?

She knew what she ought to do, for her first — indeed, her only — duty was to fulfil her role as Abbess of Hawkenlye and care as best she could for those who came to her in need. That meant doing all she could to cure the sick, which, in turn, meant using each and every tool put into her hands for that purpose.

She had resigned herself to ordering the employment of the Eye of Jerusalem and, she had to admit, she had been bitterly disappointed when it had not worked. Not only for the poor victims and for Sisters Euphemia and Tiphaine, but also for herself; because she knew that, if the first attempt failed, then there was something else that, dislike it as she may, she was duty-bound to try.

Even if in so doing she was forced into an action that would have a potentially devastating effect upon someone who was very dear to her. .

Now, in the night-time quiet of the Abbey, she made herself face up to what she knew she had to do.

The iron-hard cold of February was not the best time to resume the exacting life of a forest dweller. As she trod the long road back to the hut in the Great Wealden Forest, strong legs tirelessly pacing out the miles, Joanna was filled with a mixture of excited pleasure at the prospect of her return to the place where she had made her home and dread of what she might find there.

Dread, too, of how she would cope with being on her own again when, for the best part of a year, she had lived in the powerful embrace of her adopted people. They had taught her, tested her, taught her some more and made her face up to who and what she was; even now, far away in both distance and time from those experiences, they still had a strange force that reached out to her, so that an echoing shiver of atavistic terror ran down her spine.

Her people had also given her their love and that gift, in a life that had largely been loveless, was what had empowered Joanna and endowed her with the strength to achieve almost all that had been demanded of her. She had a long way to go — it had been impressed upon her with belittling regularity just how little she knew and how much there was still to learn — but, as the day dawned whose evening would, with the Great Ones’ blessing, see her back in her forest hut, she reflected back over the extraordinary twelve months that she had been away and knew in her heart that she had at least made a good start.

She had left the Hawkenlye Forest the previous March, almost a year ago, setting out on the road alone but for the baby Meggie, secure in the snug sling that Joanna wore across her chest. Joanna had been initiated into the life of her people in the February prior to her departure on her travels but the Great Ones had known — even as she had known herself — that there remained a barrier to full acceptance. She had killed two people and, although both acts were done in defence of innocents who would otherwise themselves have been slain and had therefore been no crime in the eyes of her people, nevertheless death had resulted. ‘You have taken life,’ she had been told, ‘and these acts must be assimilated into the great web that is the life of the tribe.’ It was as if, these violent acts having happened, somehow accommodation must be made for them. After an initial month of contemplation and meditation in a cave hidden away deep within the forest, Joanna had been sent on her way, off along the ancient and secret tracks that led into the north-west.

To Mona’s Isle.

Her fear and apprehension at what awaited her there might, had she been alone, have slowed her pace to a crawl; might even have made her turn round and run away to hide in some lonely place where they would never find her. But she had not been alone. She had endured solitude during the month in the cave; the main reason that she could find the optimism and courage to keep going on the road to Mona’s Isle was because the small person whose absence then had all but beaten her to her knees was with her again. Meggie, four months old, brown-eyed and with the first silky curls forming on her round little head, sat in the sling that Joanna carried across her chest and beamed up at her mother with a toothless smile that never lost its power to go straight to Joanna’s heart.

Those smiles, Joanna well knew, were probably more often the product of wind than any conscious response to mother love, but it made no difference whatsoever.

So they had covered the miles together and Joanna sang aloud as she marched. She had never doubted that she would find her way; although she had not known it at the time, there were long periods of her childhood that had been preparing her for this new life. The lessons that she had unconsciously absorbed from Mag Hobson, the beloved woman who had cared for her, now provided the necessary knowledge to get her safely to her destination. She found that she knew how to locate the tracks that were hidden from the casual eye but quite obvious to those who knew where — or perhaps how — to look. She knew how to maintain direction when there was no sun by day and no stars by night to guide her and it became second nature to keep a part of her awareness concentrated on making sure that the wind stayed on the appropriate side of her face. The prevailing wind that February of her long march north-westwards had been in the east: as long as it blew on her right ear, she knew she was moving roughly north. She had memorised the markers that would confirm that she was on the right track and, confidence growing, she had hastened on her way.

She had taken the road with her people once and they had taught her the forest arts of making a snug camp, with a shelter made out of discarded branches and dead bracken and a small, careful fire that usually escaped the notice of the curious. Most important of all, she had been taught the methods by which the temporary camp could be abandoned in the morning with no sign, except a narrow circle of burned ground, to show that she had ever been there. Her people did not abuse the earth for the Earth was their mother; their love and respect were too great to risk doing anything that might cause her harm.

Eventually she had reached the channel that cut off Mona’s Isle from the mainland. Not that she could see the island, for all that it was not much more than a mile away, because a thick white mist hung like a heavy curtain over the water.

She waited — a day, two days; she could not be sure — and, just as her faith was starting to slip, a round boat with a willow and wicker frame covered in heavily tarred leather appeared out of the mist in the shallows before her. It was being propelled along swiftly with a single oar by a dark-haired man with a gold ring in his right ear. He wore a leather tunic that was made of the colours of the earth and his arms were bare. As were his feet, Joanna noticed when he skilfully brought the small craft up on to the shore and leapt out.