Alys Clare - Whiter than the Lily

‘My lady Abbess, were you looking for me?’ he asked.

‘Indeed. I was thinking, my lord, that nobody has yet informed your household of your wife’s death. Perhaps you would like to arrange to do this?’

‘It is a charitable thought, my lady,’ he answered gravely. Thinking for a moment, he said, ‘I could send the lad, I suppose, although I hesitate to make him the bearer of such bad news, for he is rough in his ways.’

‘I will ask two of the brothers, if you would prefer,’ Helewise offered, ashamed even as she spoke of her duplicity. ‘Safer, in any case, for two to ride together than for you to send your lad by himself.’

Ambrose studied her closely. Keeping her expression wide-eyed and innocent, she stared right back. Then abruptly he nodded. ‘Very well, my lady. Thank you.’

Then, as if such brief consideration of matters he preferred not to dwell on were more than enough, he gave her a brief bow and returned to the bench-mending.

Helewise next sought out Brother Saul and Brother Augustus. ‘Come with me,’ she said to them, ‘I have a job for you.’

As they walked either side of her back up to the Abbey, she explained.

‘I have told the lord Ambrose that I am sending you to his manor of Ryemarsh to inform his household of his wife’s death,’ she said quietly; there was nobody else on the path but, all the same, she felt the need to keep her voice down. ‘But in fact I want you to act as my eyes, if you will.’

‘What do you wish us to see for you, my lady?’ Saul asked.

She paused, trying to think how to phrase it tactfully while not giving away her suspicions; nobody but herself, the infirmarer, Sister Caliste and Josse knew that Galiena had been pregnant and she intended to keep it that way.

‘I wish,’ she said eventually, ‘that you try to gain an impression of the sort of life that was lived at Ryemarsh when Galiena was alive. Whether Ambrose and his wife were happy together, whether they entertained many visitors, whether either of them had close friends. Men or women.’ She tried to sound casual. ‘That sort of thing,’ she added lamely.

‘You want us to ask some clever questions of the servants and have a bit of a nose around?’ Augustus asked.

Saul began a reproof: ‘Gus! You must not-’, but Helewise put a hand on his arm to stop him. Giving Saul a smile, she then turned to Augustus and said, ‘Yes, Gus. That is precisely what I want.’

Josse returned to Hawkenlye the next day. He left New Winnowlands early and was riding through the Abbey gates as the community were in church for Sext. Leaving Horace in the stables — a young lay brother rather nervously took the big horse’s reins in Sister Martha’s absence — Josse decided that, while he waited, he would stroll off down to the Vale to stretch his legs.

There was a group of pilgrims in the shelter or, more accurately, just outside it, sitting in the shade of the chestnut trees. The noon sun was strong and all of them — there were five men, seven women and four children — looked exhausted by the sultry heat. Josse nodded a greeting and walked on to the monks’ shelter.

There he found Ambrose. The woman Aebba was with him; it seemed that she had just brought him fresh linen. She gave Josse a quick and, he thought, somewhat furtive glance then, at a nod from Ambrose, she hurried out of the shelter and off up the path towards the Abbey.

Josse said straight away, ‘I have visited your late wife’s kinfolk, my lord, and told them the news. They were greatly saddened, of course, and they send their condolences to you.’

Ambrose studied him. ‘Thank you, Josse,’ he said quietly. He sighed. ‘She is buried now, my poor young wife. The nuns will pray for her soul.’

‘God will hear,’ Josse said softly. ‘Rest assured of that.’

‘Hm.’ There was a pause, then Ambrose said, ‘I am staying on in the Vale for a few days. I find that it is peaceful here.’

And, Josse thought, you are loath to return to a home where there will never again be the light tread of Galiena’s swift feet. ‘I understand,’ he murmured. ‘I, too, always find solace in the very air of Hawkenlye. Especially down here in the Vale, where the pace of life seems less urgent.’

Ambrose smiled faintly. ‘It is the Abbess Helewise, I judge, who drives the ship forward,’ he remarked. ‘Down here, the monks have but to pray, care for the small needs of the pilgrims and perform what light duties crop up.’

Josse, too, smiled. ‘Aye. The Abbess told me when I first met her how dear old Brother Firmin once famously announced that the nuns were the Marthas and the monks the Marys. I am not sure,’ he added, lowering his voice, ‘that the Abbess, in her heart of hearts, entirely approves of a division of labour whereby the women do the work and the men gaze in rapt adoration on the wonders of the Lord.’

‘It’s the way of the world, Josse,’ Ambrose said. ‘Within the home, anyway, a good wife will work quietly and unobtrusively while her husband idles away his day in activities that really only serve to pass the time.’

He was, Josse was sure, describing his own life. His tone was ironic and, Josse realised, probably concealed grief. No wonder the poor man did not want to go home.

He said tentatively, ‘My lord, there is no limit on the length of stay here, you know.’

Ambrose looked up at him sharply. ‘You are suggesting I become a monk, Josse?’

‘No! I merely meant to imply that nobody here will urge you to leave until — unless — you are ready.’

Ambrose’s harsh expression softened. ‘Thank you. I did not mean to be offensive.’

‘You did not offend.’

They sat in fairly companionable silence for a few moments, looking out at the peaceful scene before them. Then, as a group of monks appeared in the Abbey’s rear gateway, setting out on the path down to the Vale, Ambrose said, ‘The Abbess has sent two of the brethren to Ryemarsh with instructions to tell my household of my wife’s death.’

‘A kind gesture,’ Josse observed.

‘Indeed. Most considerate.’

Was anything to be read in Ambrose’s strangely expressionless tone? Josse wondered. Did he suspect — as Josse, who knew the Abbess so well, instantly did — that there might be more to the offer than its superficial purpose?

I need to speak to her, Josse thought …

He turned to Ambrose. ‘I see that the community have finished Sext,’ he said. ‘If you will excuse me, I will go and report to the Abbess.’

‘Please, do so.’ Ambrose looked at him briefly, then resumed his silent contemplation of the view down the Vale.

With a hurried bow, Josse left the shelter and hurried away.

He tapped lightly on her half-opened door and her instant ‘Come in, Sir Josse!’ told him that, once again, she had known it was him.

‘It is the sound of your spurs, as I have told you before,’ she said as he entered the room; her head was bent over a heavy ledger and she had not even looked up.

‘Good day to you, my lady,’ he said.

She raised her head and her grey eyes met his. ‘Good day, Sir Josse. How are Galiena’s parents? Are they prostrated by the dreadful news?’

‘They are, my lady, although there is a rare strength in Audra, her mother, that I am sure will see them all through their grief. But there is much that I have to tell you.’

Drawing up the stool that was kept behind the door for visitors, he sat carefully down — it was rather a small stool — and told the Abbess all that he had learned.

‘Adopted!’ she breathed when at last he had finished. ‘Well, I suppose it is not so rare an occurrence. Raelf and his first wife were desperate for a child and, presumably, found some fecund family with a baby to spare.’ She sighed. ‘It is a tragic irony, is it not, that Galiena should have come to us for treatment for the same complaint, in Raelf’s first wife, that led to the girl’s adoption?’