Alys Clare - Heart of Ice

She put the wand into Joanna’s outstretched hand. Not knowing what to expect, but anticipating something, Joanna was surprised to find that there was no jolt of energy, no force that made the hairs on her arms stand up. She might as easily have been holding a piece of driftwood.

She heard Huathe chuckle. ‘Do not worry, Beith,’ he said quietly, ‘for when you need the power, it will be there.’

The ceremony was over. Huathe carefully poured sand on the fire, extinguishing it and then burying the embers so that every trace disappeared. The Domina fastened her pack, saying to Joanna, ‘You may wear your finery for what remains of the night. Tomorrow, put it away and revert to anonymity.’

Joanna bowed her acceptance. Standing still barefoot on the sand, she wondered if it was permitted to put her boots on; the tide was coming in and the sand felt damp under her toes.

Huathe gave her a hug. ‘Farewell, Beith,’ he said. ‘We shall meet again, but it may not be for many years.’ He bent and kissed her, twice on each cheek, then, with a low reverence to the Domina, hastened away towards the cliff path. Joanna, who had by his action received the confirmation of what she already suspected — that she was leaving Armorica — looked expectantly at the Domina.

‘Aye, child, you and your daughter are to sail this night back to Britain. The ship will be here soon. But, before you go, I would speak with you on a matter that has been kept from you.’

Several possibilities flashed through Joanna’s mind. When the Domina spoke, it was concerning none of them. Instead she said, ‘Have you not asked yourself why it is that you have been accepted into the tribe?’

Immediately Joanna was reminded of many small moments and incidents; of all the times that her new people had spoken of her as one of them; of the growing sense that they had all known about her long, long before she had been aware of them. She said, ‘Yes. I have.’

‘It is time,’ the Domina said heavily, ‘for you to be told.’

What she learned on the shore that night was such a shock that, when the small boat came grinding up the shingle to carry her and Meggie out to the ship that awaited them, Joanna could barely walk by herself and had to be helped by the two sailors. She felt weak and did not trust herself to take adequate care of Meggie, and the Domina entrusted the child to the sailor who was not engaged in rowing the boat. Joanna heard her daughter give a little cry of protest, but even that could not restore her. The Domina stood on the shore watching as the boat set off towards the ship; she might have been waving, but Joanna did not notice.

What she had just been told had removed, in a few words, everything that she had believed herself to be. The fact of that former identity having been replaced by something far more interesting, and with many times the potential, she managed, for the time being anyway, totally to overlook. .

The ship took her to a place the sailors called Ellan Vannin; the island, set in the seas between England and Ireland to the north of Mona’s Isle, was to be her home until Imbolc. Still in a daze even after four days at sea, Joanna meekly followed the orders that anyone chanced to give her, going ashore into yet another new place and settling into what in fact seemed like better accommodation than she had enjoyed before. Sometimes she would hold on to the bear’s claw on its chain around her neck, as if that alone had the power to reassure her that it was true, not a dream or the last fling of the wonder voyage she had taken on that Armorican beach.

In time she accepted the truth. As if they had been waiting for that moment, her new teachers set about the most intensive period of study that she had ever had, instilling into her that she had gifts but they had no virtue and no purpose if she did not learn to use them. Building on what she had learned at Folle-Pensee, they showed her how to make the soul journey into the heart and mind of another, how to seek out whatever malady might lie there and how to cure it. When Samhain came round, the combined effects of her mysterious studies and her exhaustion meant that she was very close to what lay the other side of the veil. Too close, in fact; her teachers, afraid that she would be tempted to raise the veil and venture beyond, would not let her attend the festival. ‘Wait until next year,’ they said kindly, seeing her bitter disappointment, ‘next year you will be strong and the danger will be less.’

She was allowed — encouraged — to celebrate Meggie’s first birthday on the last day of October. But on Samhain night they gave her a strong sedative and she slept, deeply and dreamlessly, into the month of November.

Yule passed. Joanna worked harder and harder, knowing, for all that she had not been told, that she would soon be leaving. In the New Year they sent her back to Mona’s Isle, where she was received joyfully — and, it had to be said, with a certain amount of awe — by the friends she had made there. She celebrated Imbolc with her people there and then, a few days afterwards, the man with the gold earring came for her again and rowed her back to the mainland.

She knew what she had to do, for there had been so many hints that she had taken matters into her own hands and used her scrying bowl. As she trod the long road back to Hawkenlye Forest and her little hut, she was already building her mental strength for what lay ahead.

As Josse awoke in his quarters in the Vale on the morning following his visit to Gervase de Gifford, he went over their conversation. It had not amounted to much, but anything was better than allowing himself to think about the growing number of sick people who lay sweating and suffering not twenty paces from where he sat.

The welcome news that there were no cases of the foreign pestilence down in Tonbridge encouraged Josse to mutter fervent prayers of gratitude as he sipped at the hot herbal drink that Brother Saul had just brought him; Tonbridge lay on the river and its flat, marshy, mist-prone lands seemed to trap foul air. Many people living in and around the town suffered from the ague, and the disease was by no means limited to those who lived in the squalor of poverty. The consequences of this new peril let loose among such a weakened population did not bear thinking about.

Well, then I won’t think about it, Josse decided. As long as sick folk come up here to Hawkenlye — which is, after all, the obvious place if they want help — then Tonbridge ought to be safe.

Brother Saul brought him a bowl of porridge. With a smile of thanks, Josse took it and, although he didn’t feel much like eating, forced himself to finish it. Then he stood up, straightened his tunic and took his bowl and mug to wash them at the monks’ trough. Saul hurried to take the utensils from him; although Josse protested, clearly Saul considered that washing up was no job for a knight.

Saul dried his hands on a piece of sacking and reported that morning’s figures, which Josse had offered to pass on to the Abbess: the son and daughter-in-law in the party of five who had arrived the previous day were now very ill and unlikely to survive the day; the woman’s sister was also feverish, although her child remained well. The crippled boy and the man who had arrived on the cart were also very poorly, but the woman who had brought them in had not sickened and was proving a great help to the nursing sisters.

Poor Sister Beata had developed an agonising headache but as yet showed no signs of developing a fever; two more nurses, Sister Anne and Sister Judith, had been ordered to report to the makeshift infirmary in the Vale.

There was one notable exception in Saul’s report. Putting a hand on the man’s arm, Josse said softly, ‘And Brother Firmin?’