Alys Clare - Heart of Ice

Oh, dear God, no!

But it was not the role of abbesses to appear before their nuns distraught and hopeless; rallying, Helewise said, ‘I see. Now, Sister, will you please tell me the full story?’

‘She’s back,’ Tiphaine said shortly. ‘Joanna, I mean. She’s been away learning skills from the Great Ones of her people and now she’s formidable.’

A shiver went down Helewise’s back. ‘You mean — is she dangerous?’

Sister Tiphaine gave a brief snort that could have been laughter. ‘I’m sure she could be, my lady, but that was not what I meant. She’s been in training as a healer.’

‘A healer.’ Helewise stored that away for future thought. ‘And there is a child, isn’t there?’

Tiphaine gave her a thoughtful look. ‘You already knew that, my lady, did you not?’

Yes, was the truthful answer. But Helewise said somewhat stiffly, ‘It was but idle speculation.’

Tiphaine looked as if she was not fooled for a moment. But there was nothing but the usual respect in her tone when she spoke. ‘The child is a little girl, some sixteen months old. She is dark haired and has eyes that dance with light. She seems to have a sweet disposition and she is very pretty.’

‘She is the child of Sir Josse?’ Helewise just had to have it confirmed.

‘Aye, my lady.’ But you knew that too hung unspoken in the air.

‘She is- Does she resemble her father?’

‘Oh, aye. There would be no doubt in the mind of anyone who had seen both father and child that Meggie is his.’

‘Meggie,’ Helewise repeated softly. ‘A pretty name for a pretty child.’

‘Aye, my lady.’ The herbalist stood silent, eyes cast down, waiting for her Abbess to speak.

Which, eventually, she did. ‘Was any reason given for Joanna’s refusal to bring Meggie here to Hawkenlye?’

‘She fears the sickness, not for herself but for the little one. We suggested that she need bring the child no nearer than the forest fringe, where we could take water and the Eye to her, but Joanna’s real reason for staying well away from Hawkenlye is because of him.’

We , Helewise noted. Tiphaine had not been alone when she approached Joanna, then. Letting that pass, she said, ‘Because of Sir Josse, you mean.’ Yes, she could well understand why Joanna would not wish to open old wounds, either her own or Josse’s, and a part of her was dancing with delight at the young woman’s forbearance.

But Joanna keeping Meggie away would not help the Hawkenlye sick, she told herself firmly. Then, swallowing her pride because she was fairly sure what the answer would be, she asked tentatively, ‘Would it make any difference if I spoke to Joanna?’

‘None whatsoever, my lady,’ Sister Tiphaine said promptly. ‘I am sorry to speak so bluntly.’

‘It’s all right, Sister; I asked the question and I wanted an honest answer.’

There was a short silence and then Sister Tiphaine said, ‘Are there many sick now?’

And there was nothing for Helewise to say but, ‘Oh, yes, Sister, I’m afraid there are.’

That night, sleep was in short supply for many people. The very sick at Hawkenlye were not so much asleep as in varying states of unconsciousness and coma; some, indeed, stood shadow-like at the gates of death and some passed through. Those who tended them — and of these there was a steadily increasing number — grabbed short cat naps when they could.

The Abbess Helewise knew that there was small chance of her being able to relax sufficiently to fall asleep and so she worked until after midnight, battling her fear into submission by a relentless attack on the all but illegible accounts submitted by the incompetent whose duty it was to keep the Abbey informed of affairs on its lands over to the north of the Weald. The diversionary tactic was only partly successful; she managed to complete the task but, having done so, found that her anxieties returned all the more forcefully for having been briefly banished from her mind.

In the Vale, Josse tried and failed to block his ears from the sound of the sick and the dying. Eventually giving it up as a bad job, he got up from his blanket and his thin straw mattress, made his way out of the shelter and found Brother Saul, busy carrying an endless supply of holy water from the spring in the shrine to the waiting hands of a weary Sister Caliste. She took the full vessels inside the makeshift infirmary for the hardworking nursing nuns and monks — so many of them there now selflessly caring for the sick! — to give to those patients still able to drink. With no word but just a brief understanding smile, Saul indicated a pile of empty vessels and Josse fell into step beside him; for what was left of the night, the two carried water side by side.

In the forest, Joanna lay fighting with her conscience. She had already used her minor weapons: what has the world ever done for me that now I should risk the person I love most to help its people? Why, in particular, should I be made to feel obliged to an Abbey full of nuns and monks when the worst of my sufferings were brought about by the dirty mind of a priest working on and encouraging the sexual perversions of my elderly and long-dead husband? Strange, she thought in a brief moment of total honesty, how those arguments did not seem to carry the weight they once had. .

She had moved swiftly on to more persuasive arguments. Oh, it was all very well for Lora and Tiphaine to say that Meggie need go nowhere near the Abbey and that there would be no danger of her becoming sick, but how did they know? How could they possibly be sure, when diseases such as this one that they described seemed to have a life and a volition all of their own? And, even given that Meggie’s safety was totally, unquestionably assured, there was still Josse.

He would not hold back because of the pain of seeing you again, she thought, with as much conviction as if he himself were standing before her and in her presence had been asked and answered. He would reason that his pain and yours ought to be seen in their proper place, and that place was well behind the possibility that some joint action of his and hers might ease the agony — even perhaps save the lives — of many people who were otherwise doomed to a particularly horrible death.

‘I cannot do it!’ she wailed softly to herself. ‘I have left the world of the Outlanders behind me. This is my place now, mine and Meggie’s, and here is where I must remain.’

When the stars began to fade ahead of the dawn, at last she slept. But it was to dream that the Bear Man was with her, holding her in strong arms as she wept, and somehow — for he did not use spoken words — imparting the message that there was a purpose to everything and that included the claw that he had given her and the healing powers that she now possessed.

It was only a dream. On waking, she told herself that over and over again; he was far away, she knew he was, and so it was strange that, in the mud on the bank of the stream that ran close by her hut, she should find the marks of huge, claw-tipped paws.

In the dense forest around the isolated settlement at Robertsbridge, poachers crept beneath the trees searching the monks’ land for anything edible. One of them was a trembling lad not much more than ten out on his first hunt and forced into the excursion because his father was sick, his brother was in hiding from the law and his mother and three little siblings were slowly starving. He was spooked into an evasive leap and a suppressed scream by a movement in the shadows; seconds later a large, pregnant sow boar broke cover and ran off into the night, twigs and low branches snapping with loud cracks marking her progress. The lad received a cuff round the ear for his carelessness and went home empty handed.