Alys Clare - Heart of Ice

Joanna came to stand beside him as he watched Meggie throwing stones into the shallow, rushing water of the stream. ‘She will be talking fluently soon,’ she said.

‘She’s doing that now.’

Joanna smiled. ‘I meant that soon she’ll be talking comprehensibly.’

‘I rather like the nonsense.’

There was a rather awkward pause. ‘Josse,’ Joanna began, ‘I should explain-’

But Meggie needed her father’s help to lift a heavy stone and, with a haste born out of relief, for he was not yet ready to talk to Joanna in any depth, Josse hurried to assist.

Later Joanna made a simple supper for the child and she ate it sitting on Josse’s lap, with him spooning the thick soup into her mouth. Joanna watched indulgently; Meggie was quite capable of feeding herself if one did not object to quite a lot of mess. Then Josse washed the child’s face and hands in water that had been warmed a little over the fire and Joanna stripped the child down to her shift for bed.

Josse tucked her up in the covers that were neatly folded on top of the sleeping platform’s straw mattress. Meggie put her thumb in her mouth and around it she said, ‘Sto’y.’

‘Story?’ Josse echoed, as if it were the most outlandish request in the world. Meggie laughed.

‘Once-upon-a-time-there-was-a-little-girl-called-Meggie-and-she-went-to-sleep-the-end,’ Josse said very quickly.

Meggie laughed again, although Josse thought it was more at his sudden burst of rapid speech than because she understood what he had said. ‘Sto’y,’ she repeated firmly.

So he began again.

‘There was once a man called Geoffroi,’ he said softly, ‘and he went a very long way away to fight in a great battle in a foreign land. There he saved the life of a little princeling and as a reward the boy’s grandfather gave him a very precious jewel. This jewel was deep blue, like the summer sky at the end of the day, and it was set in a very old coin that was made of solid gold. .’

He heard Joanna give a faint gasp from where she was sitting on the floor behind him. Smiling to himself, he proceeded to tell his daughter the old family tale that his own father used to tell him of the Eye of Jerusalem and how it came into the family. For she is my family, he thought as the tale wound to its conclusion; she is as much the grandchild of my parents as those beloved nephews and nieces in Acquin.

Meggie had been drowsy even when she was put to bed and she was already asleep when Josse kissed her goodnight and returned to sit down beside Joanna.

‘I don’t think she heard the end of the story,’ he said softly. ‘Not that she’d have understood the part she did hear.’

‘Oh, I shouldn’t be so sure,’ Joanna replied. ‘But, with your permission, I’ll tell her the story again, many times. It is important that she knows it.’

‘Because the Eye is her inheritance,’ he said. ‘Aye. I had worked that out for myself.’ It was not the only thing he had worked out; between the shock of being presented with his daughter and the opportunity to talk about it, he had had time for a great deal of thinking.

There was a pause, heavy with unspoken things.

Then Joanna said, ‘It was Meggie who held the Eye into the water.’

‘I thought it might have been.’

As if she felt the need to defend herself, Joanna hurried on, ‘They’d asked me before, Josse, and I refused. Even when they told me about the prophecy and I knew it must mean Meggie, I wouldn’t let her do it. I was afraid for her safety, with a fatal sickness affecting the Abbey and those within it. But beyond that, I was afraid of seeing you again.’

She paused as if to allow him space to comment, but he was not ready yet. ‘Go on.’

‘It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see you; it was that I felt I’d managed to make my life without you and I guessed you had done the same. Seeing each other would only open old wounds.’

‘And has it?’

She turned her eyes to his. Her eyes were much darker than her daughter’s — almost black in the dim light — and he felt a surge of unexpected pleasure at this confirmation that Meggie’s eyes were indeed like his father’s and not like Joanna’s. There will always be something of the d’Acquins in her, he thought, whatever her life brings to her.

But then Joanna said very quietly, ‘Of course it has.’

Hastening away from treacherous ground, Josse said, ‘I asked you earlier why you did not tell me that you were pregnant with her but now I think I know. Joanna, you do not want to live the life that I lead, do you? Even if I promised you all the freedom you needed, you were not born to be somebody’s wife.’

She reached out and took his hand, pressing it to her face. ‘No, Josse. I know now what I was born for and it isn’t that. But don’t let that fact make you think I do not love you for, in my way, I certainly do. Meggie was conceived in love and now, seeing you again, I realise that love is still there.’

Was it in him too? He watched her, head bent over his hand, and the answer soon came. ‘As is mine for you,’ he said gently. ‘What, then, are we to do?’

She straightened up and edged closer to him and he put his arms round her. ‘I may not want to share your life as your wife,’ she said tentatively — perhaps, he thought with a wry smile, she’s just realised that I haven’t in fact asked her to marry me; not recently, anyway — ‘but that doesn’t mean I never want to see you again.’

‘I’m glad. I should not like to think that this was the last time.’

‘Apart from our feelings for each other, there’s Meggie,’ she went on. ‘She has a father as well as a mother and it is your right, if you so choose, to influence her upbringing.’

‘I don’t know.’ Josse frowned. ‘What am I and what have I to offer her, against the world you now occupy? You’ve just told me you’re the daughter of one of your people’s most powerful women and that your birth, and presumably Meggie’s, were foreseen because the child was somehow predicted.’

‘That is how I understand it, yes.’

‘Then, Joanna, what influence can a man like me have on such a one as she?’

‘Do not underrate yourself, Josse. If Meggie’s birth was foreseen, then what happened between us that led to her conception was also part of the prediction.’

It was a shock. His mind instinctively tried to reject the thought that his role in the advent of this wonder child had been preordained. He was about to ask why me? but, deciding it would sound too like an invitation for her to list his virtues — and that would be a short list — he didn’t.

It was all too much to take in.

As if she realised this — which would not surprise him as she seemed to pick up virtually everything else — she said, ‘Josse, there’s no doubt that Meggie has some special touch. The Eye changed the water instantly and we all saw it. And the charged water did seem to possess a unique healing power.’

‘The Abbess is doing well,’ he said, aware that his thoughts had gone off at a tangent. ‘But then the water was only the second form of treatment; you had already brought her back.’

‘You asked me to save her life,’ Joanna said gently. ‘I could not refuse. Not only for her sake — and I know full well she is a good woman — but also for yours. Josse, you would be lost without her.’

‘I did nearly lose her,’ he mused. For a dangerous moment he allowed himself to imagine life without her. He’d have gone back to New Winnowlands, probably returned to Hawkenlye now and again, but with the Abbess in her grave every inch of the place would have been nothing but an agonising reminder that she was no longer there.