Alys Clare - Girl In A Red Tunic

Josse hastened to relieve Sister Phillipa of the weight of the body and Saul climbed up the oak tree and tried to undo the knot that bound the rope to the high branch. Leofgar, who had put his arm around Sister Anne to comfort her and in the hope of stopping her piercing screams, looked up briefly and, catching Saul’s eye, took a sheathed knife out of his belt and threw it to Saul, who deftly caught it. He sawed through the rope about two hands’ breadths from the knot and instantly the full weight of the body descended into Josse’s arms.

Josse put his fingers to the throat and his ear to the gaping mouth, from which a blackened tongue protruded. As his senses confirmed what he already knew, Josse shook his head.

He sensed that someone had come to stand close beside him and Sister Phillipa’s low voice said, ‘Did I not succeed in saving him, Sir Josse?’

He laid the dead man carefully on the ground and, taking off his own cloak, spread it over the horrible spectacle of the ruined face. ‘Had you happened upon him soon after the rope tightened, your resourceful and brave action might well have helped, Sister,’ he replied. ‘But he is already cold and his limbs begin to take on the stiffness that follows death, so we must assure ourselves that any action we tried to take to save him came far too late.’

‘Sister Anne and I did not set out by this path,’ Sister Phillipa murmured. ‘Had we done so, we might have been in time.’

Josse looked at her and noticed how pale she was. Shock, he reminded himself, can manifest itself in other ways than in hysterical screaming. Straightening up, he took hold of Sister Phillipa’s hand, which was cold and clammy. Thinking quickly, he leaned close to her and whispered, ‘Sister, we must get Sister Anne back to the Abbey for she is beside herself and is in need of the infirmarer’s calming draught. Will you see her back, if Brother Saul and Leofgar go with you?’

‘But that means you would be left alone with the body, Sir Josse!’ she exclaimed. ‘I will stay with you, for two together will be better than one alone.’

She was courageous, there was no denying it, and he admired courage; indeed, he would have welcomed her company. But he did not want her to stay out there in the cold with him for the length of time it might take Saul to arrange and dispatch a party with a hurdle to fetch the body. ‘I will be quite all right, Sister,’ he assured her gently. ‘I have stood vigil by the dead many times and they do not frighten me.’

Her eyes met his. A very small smile touched her lips and she said, ‘And you would rather not have the additional worry of a woman who might pass out on you.’

He grinned back. ‘I have no fear of that, Sister. But you have had a disturbing experience and I would be reassured if I knew that you too were on your way to being tended by helping hands.’

She bowed briefly. ‘Very well, I will go.’

Brother Saul and Sister Anne had already started off down the path and now, for the first time, Josse looked over at Leofgar, about to ask him to take Sister Phillipa’s arm and help her along after them. What he saw quite surprised him, for Leofgar was almost as white as Sister Phillipa and he was staring down at the body as if he could see straight through the thick cloth of Josse’s cloak and was still studying the blackened, distorted features of the dead face. Perhaps, Josse thought, it is the first time he has seen violent death. Perhaps, despite the fine example of bravery set by Sister Phillipa, he cannot control his reactions. Well, if so, the sooner he puts distance between himself and the corpse, the better.

‘Leofgar?’ he said.

The young man slowly turned his head towards Josse, although his eyes remained fixed on the body. ‘Yes?’

‘Leofgar, please take Sister Phillipa back to the Abbey.’ This time Josse put a little asperity into his tone and to his relief Leofgar responded. As the young man stepped around the corpse and approached the nun, his features seemed to unfreeze and he gave her a comradely smile. ‘Come, Sister,’ he said, holding out his hand for hers, ‘Sir Josse is right, there’s no need for more than one to stay on guard here. Let’s help each other back to the sanctuary of the Abbey walls.’

She took his hand and Josse watched as the two of them strode off down the path, quickly catching up and overtaking Brother Saul and Sister Anne; Leofgar called out something, perhaps an assurance that he would alert the community to what had happened, and then he and Sister Phillipa, still rather touchingly holding hands, broke into a trot and hastened away. Leofgar might well have reacted like a green young lad on seeing the body, Josse mused, and I can’t really blame him for it was not a pleasant sight. But he’s pulled himself together, no doubt of that, and I am sure he will not falter again.

Josse put the matter out of his mind. There would be only a brief time before the hurdle bearers arrived to take the body away and he had work to do. First he inspected the ground beneath the branch from which the body had been suspended, but it was hard with the dry cold and, in any case, any informative footprints there might have been had been obscured by the lightly shod feet of the two nuns, by Saul’s sandals and by the boots of Leofgar and Josse. No help there, he decided. Then he went to look around the trunk of the tree. There were the prints of Saul’s feet; he had broken the thin ice on the edge of an all but dried out puddle and the marks of the hobnails on the thick soles of the lay brother’s sandals had made a sliding pattern in the mud.

There was another footprint too.

Josse hurried back to the dead man and studied his feet. He wore filthy boots of poor quality leather and the uppers had pulled away from the soles in one or two places. The backs of the boots were trodden down, as if the man had been in the habit of pushing his feet carelessly into them. Grimacing at the task, both because it took some force and because the man stank, Josse pulled the right boot off the dead foot. Then he carried it over to the base of the oak tree and compared it with the footprint there.

Interesting.

He laid the boot down beside the corpse — putting it back on the pale, naked and filthy foot would take time that he did not have and, besides, the infirmarer and her nurses would in any case soon be stripping the corpse in preparation for burial — and then he spat on his hands and shinned up the tree. He edged gingerly along the branch and, at the point where the knot was still tied to it, settled himself securely, winding his legs firmly together beneath the branch and, holding on with one hand, bending down to inspect the knot.

He traced the way in which the rope had been tied. That was interesting, too. Then he spotted something else. Leaning down, he teased out the small but revealing thing that was caught up in a strand of the knotted rope and carefully tucked it inside his tunic. He pushed himself back along the branch — funny how it seemed to be even further from the ground now that he was up there — and as he slid back down the oak tree’s trunk, he heard the hurdle bearers coming along the track.

Later, he and the Abbess waited together in the infirmary, outside the recess where Sister Euphemia had ordered the lay brothers to put the corpse. She would strip the dead man, she had said, have a preliminary look at him and invite the Abbess and Josse to join her when she was ready. She had just sent Sister Beata to fetch them and, as they waited there, the curtains parted and the infirmarer stood back to let them approach the cot where the body lay.

There was a strong smell of rosemary, combining refreshingly with some other flowery scent that Josse thought was geranium.

‘We’ve washed him,’ Sister Euphemia murmured. ‘He was lice-ridden and I didn’t want the little devils spreading.’