Alys Clare - Heart of Ice

Humbly, more aware than ever in her life of her smallness and her unimportance, Joanna stood and let them use her until they were done.

Much later — or was it only a matter of moments? — Joanna opened her eyes. Something had woken her; listening, she heard quiet sounds from the ward beyond the curtain — booted feet on the floor; the sound of a cot being dragged across the stone; hushed voices — and she wondered absently whether yet another victim had just been brought in.

She was bone weary, so exhausted that she could barely stand. The agonising headache that followed trance work was just beginning; like the distant sound of a hammer on an anvil, the thumping pain was faint as yet, although it carried within it the full menace of what it would soon become.

Instantly aware of her patient, she fell to her knees beside the still, pale figure in the bed, reaching out her hand to touch the one that lay like a marble sculpture on the bedcovers.

The Abbess was breathing deeply. She was relaxed and her fever had gone down.

Joanna felt a painfully dry sob break from her. Pressing her face into the bed, she suppressed it. Then, looking up at the Abbess’s face, she whispered, ‘I think you chose right, Helewise. Welcome back.’

Then she got to her feet and, trying to straighten her back and walk like the woman of her people that she was, she pushed the curtain aside and walked out into the ward. The big nun stepped forward, her terrible anxiety evident in the very way she stood, straining forward, and the pain in her eyes shot out to Joanna as if she had loosed an arrow into her heart.

‘She is a little better,’ Joanna whispered. The pounding in her head was growing to a cacophony of agony. Gasping as she tried to control it, she reached into her leather satchel and extracted a small flask. It contained water in which Meggie had held the Eye; the jewel had had a longer contact with this particular water and Joanna hoped that it was correspondingly more potent. ‘Give her some of this as soon as she is able to swallow,’ she told the big nun. ‘I think — I am sure — it will help.’

The nun was watching her with the professional eyes of another healer and Joanna knew she could read the pain. ‘You poor soul,’ the nun said gently. ‘Would you like to lie down awhile, dear? You look exhausted.’

Joanna managed a smile. ‘No, I would rather return to my own place.’

‘Want me to find someone to go with you and see you safely home?’

It was a kind offer but one that Joanna knew she must instantly reject, for the most likely candidate for the task was Josse and she really could not cope with Josse right now. ‘I shall be perfectly all right alone. Thank you,’ she added.

The nun caught her sleeve. ‘Will you come back and see how she does?’

Joanna tried to think what it would mean if she said yes but the pain and the deadly fatigue were interfering with her mind. She said yes anyway.

The big nun still had not finished with her. ‘There’s another patient just been brought in,’ she said quietly, nodding to a cot quite close to the curtained recess where the Abbess lay. ‘He’s near death and-’

‘I’m very sorry but I can’t do any more now,’ Joanna whispered.

‘I was not going to ask you to!’ the nun said. ‘Dear child, you’ve done more than enough already.’ Dear child. The sweet words touched Joanna’s heart. ‘I was just going to ask,’ the nun was saying, ‘whether we could spare him some drops of this.’ She held up the flask that Joanna had just given her.

‘Of course. Give it to him with my blessing.’ Even to herself, Joanna’s voice was sounding distant. If I remain here any longer, she thought, I’ll lose my last chance of getting back to the hut before I collapse.

With what she hoped was a dignified bow to the nun, she straightened her back, lifted her chin, strode out of the long ward and set off on the path that would take her home.

Josse watched Joanna climb the path that led up to the Abbey. Her dark figure moved fast as, leaving the track, she strode off around the outside of the Abbey walls and disappeared from sight. Following her in his mind’s eye, he saw her hurry across the open ground and, finally reaching the safety of the trees, melt into the shadows of the Great Forest.

He was not sure whether or not she had noticed him standing there outside the Vale infirmary door as she hurried past. She had been staring straight in front of her, eyes narrowed as if fixed on some difficult goal that she might or might not achieve. He had so much wanted to reach out to her but there had been something about her — almost as if she wore invisible armour — that had stopped him.

So he had let her go.

Firmly putting her out of his mind, he turned and stepped inside the ward. Sister Euphemia was already hurrying towards him; she held a small flask in her hand and she was smiling.

‘You already know, don’t you?’ she said softly, taking him by the arm and leading him back outside again, where they sat down side by side on his bench.

Josse smiled. ‘Aye. I felt — oh, I don’t know.’ He scratched his head vigorously as if it might stir up his brains. ‘I had all but given up and then suddenly I had this picture of her with light on her face and she looked so happy, so beautiful-’ He broke off, not sure if he trusted his voice enough to continue.

‘Our prayers have been answered,’ Sister Euphemia said. ‘Her fever’s come down and she’s asleep. She’s still very ill,’ she added warningly, ‘and we shall have to take very good care of her.’

Josse looked at her anxiously. ‘But she won’t — she’s not going to die?’

‘No, Josse,’ Euphemia said gently. ‘I don’t think she is.’

Soon afterwards she stood up and announced she must be getting back to her patients. With the awful fear gone, Josse realised how tired he was; yawning, he stumbled away to his corner in the monks’ shelter, threw himself down fully dressed, huddled into his blankets and was soon soundly and dreamlessly asleep.

They did what they could for the man in the bed next to the Abbess’s recess. They washed him, bathed his hot face and tried to make him take some sips of the special water from Joanna’s flask. Sister Emanuel, who had the task of removing and folding his garments, found a small, wrapped parcel of some herbal mixture in the purse on his belt; Sister Euphemia thought it contained opium and, since the parcel only appeared to contain a small portion of what it had once held, they deduced that he had been dosing himself with it and decided that it could surely do no harm to give him the remainder. He was very close to death; anything was worth a try.

By morning, he had regained consciousness. Of a sort: the drug must have been strong, for he seemed to be in some waking dream that was indistinguishable from reality. But the spell of lucidity did not last long and presently he slipped back into a coma.

Two days later, the infirmarer, Sister Tiphaine and Sister Caliste got their heads together for a brief discussion. There had been a total of forty-six cases of the foreign pestilence at Hawkenlye, out of which twenty-nine had died not counting poor murdered Nicol — and sixteen had recovered. Within the Hawkenlye community, they had lost dear Sister Beata, the young monk called Roger and the quiet little novice; another nun who worked in the laundry had become ill but recovered. A dozen recovering patients still lay weak and querulous in the Vale infirmary, where there was also the Abbess Helewise, slightly stronger now, and the man brought in on the night she almost died. He alone was still giving grave cause for concern for his fever remained high and he only emerged from his deep coma on rare and very brief occasions. Whenever he did so he was given water from Joanna’s flask.