Alys Clare - Whiter than the Lily

She did not say so to Sister Ursel — who had been known to speculate quite wildly enough without anyone actually encouraging her to do so — but it occurred straight away to Helewise that Saul and Augustus must have something important to tell her to have made such haste to come back to Hawkenlye …

She dismissed the porteress and then sat with outward serenity while she waited. Inside, however, her mind seethed with questions and possibilities. Disciplining her thoughts was difficult but not, she discovered, impossible; by the time the two brothers arrived — both wearing clean robes and with wet hair — her outward poise was reflected by inner silence.

She accepted their reverences with a brief inclination of her head and then said calmly, ‘What did you find at Ryemarsh?’

Saul and Augustus exchanged a glance and then Saul said, ‘We rode up at dusk, my lady. We feared we were too late to seek admission and were planning to find a sheltered spot to camp out till morning but there was a manservant out in the courtyard doing me locking-up round and he heard us.’

‘Suspicious sort, he was,’ Augustus put in. ‘Picked up a pitchfork when he caught sight of us and brandished it in our direction while he challenged us.’

‘He did,’ Saul agreed, ‘but he calmed down when we told him who we were.’

‘By then he’d caught sight of the habit we wear,’ Augustus put in. ‘He reckoned he’d less to fear from his visitors than he’d thought.’

Helewise smiled. Augustus was probably right; the habit of religion did tend to disarm people. ‘Then he invited you inside?’ she prompted.

‘Aye,’ Saul said. ‘We said we were from the Abbey with news from their master, the lord Ambrose, and that it was bad tidings.’ He exchanged a look with Augustus and went on, ‘It was strange, my lady, because the old servant and the woman who was in the kitchen both seemed very worried even before we told them about the poor young lady.’

‘I see.’ She would, she decided, return to that remark in a moment. First she asked, ‘How did they react to the news of Galiena’s death?’

‘They were most distressed,’ Augustus said. ‘No doubt about it, was there, Saul?’ Saul shook his head sadly. ‘They loved her, my lady, that’s for sure, and they were genuinely heartbroken to know she was dead.’

‘Did you-’ She paused, thinking how to phrase her question tactfully. ‘Were you able to gain any impression of how the household servants viewed their master and mistress? Did they, would you say, think that Ambrose and his wife were happy?’

‘Without a doubt,’ Saul assured her. ‘They said she made the sun shine for him, which I imagine you’d readily understand, what with her being so young and pretty. But they insisted that she cared for him deeply too, even though he was so much older.’ He turned to the younger man. ‘Wouldn’t you say so, Gussie?’

Augustus nodded enthusiastically. ‘Aye. The old kitchen woman said she — Galiena — had been a shy girl when she came to Ryemarsh as the lord Ambrose’s wife, and they all jumped to the conclusion that she was an unwilling bride. But they had to accept they’d been wrong because she blossomed, according to the manservant, and turned from someone who was reserved with them and hardly spoke into a happy and outgoing young girl who made the sap rise in old Ambrose and only needed a baby or two to complete her happiness.’ Saul dug him in the ribs and he said, with some indignation, ‘Saul, I’m only repeating what they said!’

‘It’s all right, Brother Saul,’ Helewise said. ‘After all, I did ask you to report anything that struck you as relevant.’ There was something else that she was very keen to know; again taking a moment to word her question, she said, ‘And what of visitors? Did they entertain family or friends? Were there any that came regularly?’

‘The lord Ambrose doesn’t have kin, they’re all dead.’ Augustus spoke matter-of-factly. ‘The lady went visiting her folks at Readingbrooke from time to time, often with the lord Ambrose, and the family there would return the visits. She had several sisters, they told us, and an aunt to whom she was devoted who has young children of her own. The family’s a close one, it seems.’

‘I see.’ No need, Helewise decided, to reveal the details of Galiena’s adoption by the family at Readingbrooke. ‘Anyone else?’

‘Well, that neighbour of theirs, from Rotherbridge,’ Saul said. ‘He’s a friend of the lord Ambrose and calls by when he’s passing.’

‘I see,’ she said again, trying hard not to let her sudden excitement show in her voice. ‘And the household — er — they liked all these visitors?’

She knew even as she spoke that the question was absurd. Both Saul and Augustus looked surprised and Augustus, more forthright than Saul, said, ‘I don’t see as how it was for them to have likes or dislikes, my lady, since they’re servants and do as they’re told.’ His comment — possibly a little forthright for a young lay brother addressing his Abbess, but entirely justified, Helewise thought — earned him another dig in the ribs and, casting down his eyes, he muttered, ‘Sorry, my lady.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said. She could not see a way to find out what she needed to know other than a direct question so, after a moment, she asked it. ‘Did you receive the impression,’ she said carefully, ‘that there was any gossip concerning Sir Brice and Galiena? Oh, I know what you said about Galiena being so devoted to her husband, but you both know how servants love to chatter!’ She gave what even to her sounded a totally unconvincing little laugh.

Saul and Augustus looked at each other, then back at her. Then, in unison, they shook their heads and said firmly, ‘Oh, no.’ Augustus added, as if for emphasis, ‘There wasn’t anything like that. Was there, Saul?’

And Saul said, ‘No.’

Well, she thought, that was not necessarily relevant. After all, if Josse had been right and Brice had been Galiena’s lover, he’d hardly have ridden up to the door proclaiming it to the world.

The more she dwelled on it, the more it seemed to her that the very strong denials of ‘anything like that’ were in themselves suspicious. Wouldn’t it have been more natural for Brice and the beautiful Galiena to have engaged in a little harmless flirtation?

But her train of thought was interrupted; Saul was addressing her. ‘My lady,’ he said, ‘there is something else.’

‘Indeed? Go on, Brother Saul.’

‘You remember that we said they seemed upset even before we told them the news?’

‘I do.’

‘Well, it seems there was a young stable lad called Dickon. He was sent to escort the lady Galiena over to Hawkenlye, together with the woman Aebba.’

‘But he didn’t arrive here!’ she exclaimed. ‘Neither did Aebba, not until she rode in with the lord Ambrose. Galiena arrived alone.’

‘Aye, my lady. It seems that Aebba returned from the trip with her young mistress by herself and when the lord Ambrose asked what had happened to the groom, she said he had gone on with the young lady.’

‘Here to Hawkenlye?’

‘That’s what Aebba said.’

If that were so, Helewise thought, then Galiena had been lying, because she had said that she had dismissed both Aebba and the groom just before reaching the Abbey gates. ‘So, according to the servants at Ryemarsh,’ she said slowly, ‘Aebba and this Dickon set out to escort Galiena to Hawkenlye, only Aebba turned for home some time before they reached here’ — something occurred to her and she amended her words — ‘some time between setting off from New Winnowlands, where Sir Josse left the three of them, and here. Leaving Dickon to bring Galiena on to Hawkenlye, after which he was meant to return to Ryemarsh. Yes?’