Alys Clare: Heart of Ice

She stared at the spots. They were flat and did not appear to contain fluid. In some places they had flared up and joined together into large blotches. On the shoulders there was a sort of — Sister Euphemia searched for the word — a sort of scaly look to the skin. She touched one of the roughened patches with a fingernail and a tiny piece of skin flaked off. Swiftly she wiped her hand with a piece of linen soaked in lavender oil, carefully cleaning under the nail with which she had scraped the skin, and the familiar smell of the oil — so clean, so heartening and refreshing — calmed her.

After a moment she returned to her inspection. Placing her hands on the body’s right hip, she tensed the muscles in her strong arms and pushed the corpse away from her until it was lying on its side. For all that the nuns had thoroughly washed the dead man, there was still a faint reminder of the stench; undressing him, they had found a nasty surprise when it came to pulling off his hose and the long under chemise, for he had soiled himself. Copiously; his poor stomach, Sister Euphemia thought compassionately, must have been in a frightful turmoil. She studied the buttocks and the area around the anus, as if the dead man were a baby and she was checking for the rash that comes when an infant is left too long unwashed. The man’s skin was red and sore-looking; whatever had caused the flux in his bowels, the condition had been present for some time.

The infirmarer wiped her hands again and then gently laid the body flat once more, drawing up the sheet and covering the dead man from his head to his toes. She felt, despite herself and her professionalism, an attachment to this young man, unreasonable since she had no idea who he was and had no reason to mourn him. Except, she said to herself, the fact that he was young, quite handsome and just starting out in adult life, and someone has chosen to halt him in his tracks with that savage blow.

Sister Euphemia put her hand on the tangled brown hair — it was still damp — and, closing her eyes, asked God to see His way to admitting this poor soul to Paradise.

Then, worn out, very anxious and with aching feet and back, she left the recess, put the bar across its entrance that was the accepted signal for do not enter and, with dragging steps, made her way slowly to the dormitory and her bed.

Josse had been both surprised and pleased to see Brother Augustus ride into his courtyard. More than pleased: he had found himself hurrying down the steps into the courtyard to embrace the young man as if he were a long-lost son, an action which, when Josse stopped to consider it some time later, suggested to him that he might just possibly be lonely.

Darkness had fallen by the time Augustus arrived and the temperature had dropped. Before the lad could say much more than ‘Good evening, Sir Josse’, Josse had yelled for Will to come and see to the Abbey’s cob, to Ella to get something hot to eat as fast as she could and to Augustus himself to hurry on inside and warm himself by the fire.

Augustus was wearing his customary sandals and his feet were so white that it looked as if they could not be part of a living human body.

Josse tutted as he fussed round the young man. ‘Could the Abbey not have found you a pair of boots?’ he muttered. And, noticing the thin black fabric over the boy’s shivering back, ‘Would a winter cloak be too much to ask?’

Ella brought a mug of hot, spiced, watered wine and thrust it into Augustus’s hands. He said a polite ‘Thank you’, to which the taciturn Ella responded with a sound that might equally well have been a reply or a brief attack of wind. Augustus looked up at Josse, an irrepressible grin spreading across his face, and Josse hurriedly despatched Ella back to her kitchen.

‘She’s rather shy,’ he whispered to Augustus.

Augustus nodded knowingly, as if gauche serving women were his daily lot. ‘The wine’s wonderful,’ he said. His nose was in the mug and he seemed to be breathing in the spicy fumes. ‘It’s going straight to my toes.’

‘Ella will bring you food soon,’ Josse said confidently. ‘I’ll ask her to make a bed up for you, lad — it’s far too late to ride back to the Abbey tonight.’ Then belatedly he said, ‘What can I do for you?’

Augustus grinned again. ‘Sorry, Sir Josse, I should have said straight away. The Abbess sends her compliments and asks if you could possibly come to Hawkenlye because there’s a young man been hit on the head and thrown in the lake in the Vale. It was frozen, you see,’ he added, ‘and the cadaver only came to the surface when the ice melted today.’

Cadaver, Josse thought. The careful way in which young Gussie had pronounced the word suggested it did not form part of his day-to-day vocabulary and Josse decided he must have been listening to the infirmarer.

‘The dead man was hit on the head,’ he repeated. ‘He could not have tripped on a patch of ice on the path, perhaps, and done the damage accidentally?’

‘No.’ Augustus spoke firmly. ‘To hit himself where the wound is, he’d have had to be walking on his hands.’

‘I see.’ It did not seem very likely. ‘A young man, you said?’

‘Aye.’

‘What sort of a person?’

Augustus shrugged. ‘I can’t say, Sir Josse. I helped get him out of the water and carry him up to the infirmary but you can’t accurately judge a man’s station in life when he’s soaking wet and dead.’

‘No, I suppose not.’ Josse was thinking. ‘Nobody knows who he is?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘Hm.’

‘The Abbess has sent for Gervase de Gifford,’ Augustus offered. ‘Maybe he’ll recognise the body.’

‘Aye.’ Again, Josse hardly heard. He was busy with his conscience because, for quite a few moments, he had been so pleased at this summons back to Hawkenlye that he had quite forgotten to be sorry about its cause.

Josse and Brother Augustus rode through the Abbey gates in the middle of the following morning. Augustus offered to take Josse’s horse off to the stables and Josse made his way straight to the Abbess’s little room at the far end of the cloister.

She got up to greet him, advancing towards him and holding out her hands to take his. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘Dear Sir Josse — what a friend you are.’

Embarrassed, he dropped her hands as quickly as he could and waved away her gratitude. ‘Young Gussie said that Gervase de Gifford had been summoned,’ he said. ‘Is he here?’

The Abbess frowned. ‘He intended to come up first thing this morning,’ she said. ‘However, he has sent word that another matter has called him away. Knowing you were to arrive, I believe he must have thought that this other matter took precedence.’

Josse could not tell from her carefully neutral tone what the Abbess thought about this, so wisely he made no comment. ‘Gus told me about the dead man in the pond,’ he said instead. ‘Shall we go to see him?’

‘Of course.’

He stepped back to let her precede him and she led the way around the cloister and across to the infirmary, where she turned to her left and, removing a bar that had been put across its narrow entrance, went into a small curtained recess. Wondering about the barrier — and why, indeed, they had just ignored it — he moved to stand beside her in front of the narrow cot.

The body lying on the cot was covered with a sheet.

Sister Euphemia must have seen the Abbess and Josse walk along to the recess; she appeared almost immediately and, with a brief bow to Josse and a deeper one for the Abbess, said quietly, ‘I’ll show you the wound, Sir Josse.’

He watched as she folded back the sheet to expose the head; he noticed how careful she was that the rest of the body remained covered. He looked at the blow that had killed the man and he saw straight away what Augustus had meant. ‘Aye, the man was murdered,’ he muttered, half to himself. Glancing up at the infirmarer, he asked, ‘Any more marks on him, Sister?’