Alys Clare - Heart of Ice

Knowing the location of Joanna’s dwelling by no means meant that Tiphaine could simply stroll up, knock on the door and ask admisssion, for Joanna had grown greatly in power over the past year and Tiphaine did not dare approach unannounced, uninvited and alone. Before she could seek out Joanna, she knew she must first find an intermediary. Which was why, as the sun rose on to another cold and bright February day, she was making her way to the oak grove deep in the forest that was her usual meeting place with Lora.

Time passed.

By mid-morning, there was still no sign of Lora and Tiphaine was beginning to wonder if she ought after all to go on to Joanna’s hut. There was no guarantee that Lora would come; the forest people might be miles and miles away and, even if word had somehow reached Lora that Tiphaine was looking for her, sheer distance could well mean that Lora would not appear in the glade today. And it certainly was not acceptable to keep Abbess Helewise waiting when her request and her need were so very urgent.

The low midday sun of winter was shining down into the glade when a slim, supple figure clad in soft grey stepped out from behind the concealing trunk of a huge oak tree. Her silvery eyes held the knowledge of ages and her long hair was white, yet the smooth skin of her tanned face had barely a wrinkle and she moved like a dancer. Coming forward into the sunshine, she smiled as she called out Tiphaine’s name.

Tiphaine rose hastily to her feet from the log on which she had been sitting and the two women embraced. ‘You were asleep,’ Lora said.

‘I was not!’ Tiphaine protested. ‘I was closing my eyes against the sun’s glare.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Lora said, ‘that February glare.’

‘I need to see Joanna,’ Tiphaine said, ignoring the mild jibe. ‘There’s sickness at the Abbey. I am not sick,’ she hastened to reassure Lora.

‘I know that,’ Lora replied calmly. ‘I should not be here standing so close to you if you were.’

‘They’ve got this jewel that they’ve been trying to use to make people better,’ Tiphaine continued, ‘but it’s not working. It’s a family treasure of Josse’s’ — it was odd, she thought fleetingly, how worldly titles had no meaning here when she was among the forest people — ‘and they reckon there’s some old prophecy that says the stone will only be truly effective when it’s in the hand of a female of Josse’s kin.’

Lora had been nodding as if this was no news to her, although she did not interrupt but allowed Tiphaine to finish. ‘So they need Joanna’s child, do they?’ she said thoughtfully. ‘They would think it appropriate to allow a fifteen-month-old infant to try out her power?’

‘They do not know for sure that Joanna has a child,’ Tiphaine protested, aware both that she was evading the issue and that it had not gone unnoticed.

‘The Abbess knows,’ Lora said.

‘Aye, I reckon she does. But she has never breathed a word to — to anyone else, even though they’re such close friends.’

‘She has not told Josse, you mean.’

‘Aye.’

Tiphaine waited. Lora was one of the venerated elders here in this forest domain and it did not do to hurry her. Since any chance of Tiphaine’s getting to see Joanna rested entirely with the woman standing before her, the herbalist tried to control her impatience by silently reciting a list of the Healing Herbs. .

‘You can stop that,’ Lora said. ‘You are distracting me.’

‘Sorry.’ Tiphaine had known Lora far too long to be surprised at her ability to overhear another’s thoughts.

Finally Lora spoke. ‘I have no quarrel with the Abbess,’ she announced, ‘for our impression of her is that she has a good heart and, although she suffers from a sense of her own importance, she uses her position more to help others than to inflate her pride.’

‘She-’ Tiphaine began, but made herself stop.

‘And similarly I can find no fault with her wish to use an object of power to save life, even though it is clear that she cannot have the first understanding of what this stone is. Therefore I will agree to take you to Joanna.’

‘Thank you, Lora,’ Tiphaine said humbly.

But Lora had not finished. ‘I say only that I will take you to her,’ she warned. ‘You may then tell Joanna what you have told me, but I caution you not to put any pressure on her.’ She lowered her voice and added, ‘She has been to our sacred places and she has learned a very great deal. She is not the woman you once knew, Tiphaine.’

A shiver of fear went through the herbalist. ‘I will do as you command, Lora,’ she whispered. ‘I sense already that Joanna has come into her power, for even from some distance away, I could sense her presence in her hut.’

Lora nodded. ‘Aye. She is back there, with the child, after a year’s absence. She is busy strengthening her defences.’

Tiphaine nodded. She knew without being told that the defences were not on the physical level; no wonder, she thought, she had sensed Joanna’s power.

I am afraid of what lies before me, she realised as she trod in Lora’s footsteps across the clearing and out between the trees. If it were left to me, I should turn tail and flee back to the safety of the Abbey, to the arms of a gentler god than the force they bow before out here in the woods.

But it was not up to Tiphaine.

Squaring her shoulders, praying both to the old god and the new for their protection, she bent down beneath the tangled undergrowth to follow Lora into the mouth of the hidden path that led to Joanna’s hut.

Josse and Augustus found no trace of Sabin de Retz on the journey back to Hawkenlye. That was not to say, as Augustus remarked, that she was not there, hidden away in some house where, out of charity, they had taken her in before the dread threat of the pestilence became common knowledge.

It was possible, Josse agreed, although from his knowledge of how gossip travelled in country districts — it was as unstoppable as rats in a hay barn — he privately considered it unlikely. Had the young woman in fact found sanctuary somewhere along the road, then he reckoned that one of the handful of people who had reluctantly opened their doors a crack to speak to him would have known about it. And, with no reason to keep it secret, they would have told him all about her, probably adding all sorts of highly colourful and unlikely speculative details for good measure.

Deep in the country, he mused as they approached Hawkenlye, it was so rare for anything unusual to happen that, when it did, people habitually made the very most of it.

‘D’you reckon she’s putting up in Tonbridge, then, Sir Josse?’ Augustus said, coming to ride alongside him as the track broadened; they were only a few miles from the Abbey now and soon would pass the turning that led down to the town.

Josse glanced at him, pleased to note that a day in the fresh air and away from his anxieties had put colour in the lad’s face. ‘She may be,’ he agreed, ‘although if she is and has been enquiring after Nicol Romley, then I imagine news of that would have reached Gervase de Gifford and he would have told us.’

‘He keeps his eyes and ears open, that one,’ Augustus remarked solemnly. Lowering his voice to a whisper, he added, ‘They do say he has spies everywhere.’

‘Do they?’ Josse hid a smile, amused at the concept of an innocent young lay brother such as Augustus knowing all about the sophisticated professional practices of the sheriff of Tonbridge.

‘Oh, aye,’ Augustus was saying, ‘we talk to lots of folks from down in the town when they come up to the Vale for the water and for Sister Tiphaine’s simples. They suffer terribly from the rheum down there, you know, Sir Josse — it’s all that water and marshland so close to where they live. It’s said you can’t tell a sheriff’s man from an innocent traveller putting in at Goody Anne’s for a mug of ale and a piece of pie, so well do they blend in with the company.’