Alys Clare: Girl In A Red Tunic

But it did.

Not every night; sometimes she would wake refreshed and filled with hope. But then, the next night or the one after that, those powerful, emotional images would be there again and all the things that she was trying so hard not to think about — had no right to think about, having forfeited that dubious pleasure when she left the outside world and became a nun! — would come crashing back.

Now, sitting at her table with one of the Abbey’s huge account ledgers before her, she sat deep in thought, distracted, studying the end of her stylus with unfocused eyes. Her feet were numb. It was a bright November day but the lack of cloud had allowed the cold to penetrate. Usually one of her nuns would slip into her chilly little room at the end of the cloister with a hot stone wrapped in flannel, but she had discreetly ordered them not to; suffering feet like ice was part of her self-imposed penance.

I must bring myself to speak to Father Gilbert again, she told herself firmly. It is no good continuing to try on my own — I need help. Perhaps if I tell him about my dreams and why it is they disturb me so, he will talk it all over with me and rid me of my problem.

She went on sitting there.

Yes. I’ll go and see Father Gilbert straight away.

She did not move.

Then, with a gesture of despair, she flung down her stylus, folded her arms across the great ledger and dropped her head. In a fierce whisper, she muttered, ‘Oh, how I wish Josse were here!’

But Josse, as she well knew, was far away.

In the afternoon she begged a basket of dainties from Sister Basilia in the refectory and set out for Father Gilbert’s modest little house. It was quite a walk and she threw herself into the exercise, shoulders back, basket held firmly in one hand and the other arm swinging powerfully. Her numb feet grew warm and soon the heavy woollen cloak that Sister Euphemia in the infirmary had insisted she wear began to make her sweat. As she marched, puffing slightly, she rehearsed what she would say to the Father.

After trying out several different approaches, each of which sounded as contrived as the rest, she decided that the only thing to do was to give him the unadorned truth.

Which, a short time later, blushing and hesitating in so uncharacteristic a manner that Father Gilbert was gravely concerned for her, she did.

Father Gilbert walked with her back to the Abbey. They had been talking for what felt like hours and Helewise was feeling a great deal of relief; after her initial awkwardness, the Father’s sympathetic ear had made her confession relatively easy. Filled with a new hope that her dreams really would go away now and leave her in peace to do her best in this life that she had chosen, she would have broken into a run from sheer happiness had Father Gilbert not been with her.

As they went in through the Abbey gates, Sister Ursel, the porteress, was greeting some visitors. They were a group of three: a young man, a pale-faced, nervy looking woman and a child of about a year. Father Gilbert went forward to greet them. It did not often happen that he was in the Abbey when visitors arrived and he intended to make the most of the opportunity to hear news of the world outside his own small domain. He turned to Helewise, saying, ‘My lady Abbess, come and speak to the newcomers and-’

But the words died on his lips. Helewise, her face even paler than that of the young woman now being helped down from her horse, was staring with fixed eyes at the young man. He was staring right back and, for anyone sufficiently observant to notice, there was a remarkable similarity between the two pairs of eyes. Helewise put out a hand and began to say something. Then she fainted.

She came round quickly to find herself lying on the hard ground with her head on Sister Ursel’s soft lap; the sister was stroking her superior’s forehead with a gentle hand and murmuring anxiously, ‘There, there, my lady!’

Struggling to sit up, feeling very foolish, Helewise accepted the helpful hands offered by Father Gilbert and Sister Ursel and got to her feet. The young man was still staring at her, concern written all over his handsome face. Before anyone else could speak, he strode over to stand before her, took hold of both her hands and said, ‘Oh, God, Mother, you’re not ill, are you?’

Mother. Oh, dear God, it was so long since she had been addressed like that in the real, waking world! Squeezing his hands so hard that he winced, she said, ‘No, Leofgar, I am well.’ And, opening her arms to him, she hugged her son in an embrace that she did not want to end.

There was at first no opportunity for private talk and Helewise had to hold back her impatience. But her mind now raced even faster in its search for explanations. She urgently needed to know why it should be, by what miracle it had happened, that this son of hers should now appear in the flesh when, for the past two weeks or more, she had been dreaming of him. Hearing in her sleep his calls for her help, so real in her dreaming mind that, awake, she had been able to think of nothing else.

The Hawkenlye community threw itself into a bustle of preparations to welcome this son of their Abbess. Helewise found a moment to slip away by herself into the Abbey church where she offered up a prayer of thanks. ‘This was not the help that I expected, Lord,’ she whispered, ‘but it is a far better answer to my prayers than I could possibly have wished for.’

Putting aside for the moment any thoughts of just why her son should have chosen to seek out his mother after so many years, she gave herself up to gratitude that he had.

Helewise had known of her son’s marriage to Rohaise Edgar, the daughter of a friend of the knight to whom the young Leofgar had been page and then squire before, on maturity, taking up his inheritance from his late father. Leofgar was the elder of Helewise’s two sons and lived on the manor that had been Helewise’s marital home. His brother Dominic, sixteen months his junior, was a soldier in Outremer and had not seen either his family or his homeland for eight years.

Leofgar and Rohaise had married when the groom was twenty-two and the bride just sixteen. Their child — a willowy little boy named Timus — had been born two years later; he was now aged fourteen months. These were the bare facts known to Helewise when, feeling as nervous as a girl, she allowed Leofgar to escort her from her room across to the refectory for the welcoming meal. As they took their seats at the head of the long table, Rohaise got up to greet Helewise. There was a strange expression on the girl’s face, Helewise noticed, and she was still ashen. Perhaps that was her normal colour, although the rich brunette hair neatly dressed beneath the small veil and the dark brown eyes — huge, and circled in grey as if the girl did not sleep — made this seem unlikely. The deep russet shade of her gown seemed to increase the pallor. Trying to put her concern out of her mind, Helewise responded to her daughter-in-law’s politely formal words and, putting both arms on the girl’s thin shoulders, raised her up from her deep bow of reverence.

They sat down to eat and then, as Helewise had been secretly longing to do, she took her grandson on to her lap and began to make his acquaintance.

Quite early in the evening, Rohaise asked if she might take Timus to settle him for the night, adding that she would like to retire too, if that was acceptable. Assuring her that it was, Helewise gave orders for the girl and the baby to be shown to the guest accommodation that had been prepared for them.

As if by tacit agreement, the members of the Hawkenlye community quietly faded away and Helewise and her son were left on their own. There was a half-full jug of mulled wine left over from the meal and Helewise, having summoned Sister Basilia to pick it up and bring two clean mugs, led Leofgar out of the refectory and along to her own little room. Silently thanking whichever nun had foreseen this event and placed a small brazier in the room, Helewise pulled out the visitors’ stool and set it before her table. Dismissing Sister Basilia, who bowed and tactfully retreated, closing the door behind her, Helewise poured wine into the two cups then, seating herself in her throne-like chair, said, ‘Now, Leofgar. Tell me why you are here.’