Alys Clare - Dark Night Hidden

‘But-’

‘Come along.’ Helewise made her tone purposeful. ‘The sooner we have a good look, the sooner we shall know what we are faced with.’

She marched out of her room, Sister Bernadine at her side. They walked around the cloister to the small room that was Sister Bernadine’s domain and, silently, the pale nun pointed to the wooden book cupboard, a wide, shallow structure that stood roughly knee-high on six stout legs. Its front panel was decorated with a series of arches.

Helewise knelt down in front of it. She did not often look into the book chest and she had never gone right through it to inspect every script in detail, so she had little idea of what in fact she was looking for. She was about to make a remark to this effect when suddenly Sister Bernadine let out a wail.

‘Oh, I have not checked that the missal is still here!’ She hurried forward, knelt down beside Helewise and leaned into the chest. ‘Oh, I pray that it is!’

‘The missal, Sister?’

Sister Bernadine was carefully going through the scripts at one end of the chest. ‘The St Albans missal, my lady, one of our most precious documents, presented to us by His Grace the Bishop. . oh, thank God! Here it is!’ She held up some sheets of parchment bound together, a smile of relief on her pale face. Helewise caught a glimpse of a page of careful lettering illustrated with three large and vivid illuminated capital letters before, with the care of a mother tucking up her infant child, Sister Bernadine tenderly replaced the missal in the book chest.

Looking around her, Helewise said, after a moment, ‘I do not believe that I can be of help, Sister Bernadine. Because I am not familiar with the usual arrangement of the manuscripts, I cannot tell whether any have been removed. Is this chest the only repository for our manuscripts?’

‘No, there is also the book cupboard let into the wall over there.’ Sister Bernadine pointed. Getting up, she went to inspect the cupboard’s wooden door. ‘It may have been opened,’ she said, ‘I do not know.’ She peered inside the cupboard then, with a sigh, said, ‘I think that all is in order. But, as with the chest, something does not seem quite right.’ She frowned, biting her lip in her anxiety. ‘I am sorry, my lady, that I cannot be more explicit. It is merely that I know what the chest and the cupboard usually look like, and today — today-’

‘They look different,’ Helewise finished for her.

Sister Bernadine shot her a grateful glance. ‘Precisely.’

‘And you cannot yet say whether anything is missing?’

Sister Bernadine gave a helpless shrug. ‘No, my lady. I am sorry, but no.’

‘Very well.’ Helewise spoke decisively. ‘I suggest, then, that you now go through the full contents of the book chest and the cupboard and sort through the contents. I will send Sister Phillipa to assist you; between you, it should be possible to list what is here and compare it to the inventory. Take your time; I will not press you. Come and see me when you are able to say whether there has indeed been theft or whether somebody has merely been mischievous.’

Sister Bernadine, absorbed already in her task, muttered, ‘Yes, my lady. Of course,’ and gave Helewise a very brief bow. Then she began lifting manuscripts one by one from the chest, studying them and dusting off each one with a long white hand as if the possible indignity they had suffered, of somebody interfering with them who had no right to do so, could be stroked away.

And Helewise left her to her absorption and walked slowly back to her room.

She had decided that, regarding Father Micah, she must pay a visit to Father Gilbert. As a first step, in any case, for Father Gilbert might have knowledge of his replacement that could help Helewise in her dealings with him. She could also enquire tentatively how long it would be before Father Gilbert was up and about again.

If Father Gilbert could not help, then Helewise would have to appeal to a higher authority. Father Micah’s superior first and, if all else failed, then to Queen Eleanor herself.

Whatever it took, Helewise vowed to herself, she had no intention of doing what Father Micah said and turning her fallen women out on the dubious mercy of the world.

Whatever it took.

By the time she returned to the Abbey church for Vespers, Helewise was feeling considerably more optimistic. As always, her mood was improved by having thought about her problems and taken the first steps towards solving them. Full resolution might be some way off still — Sister Bernadine and Sister Phillipa had as yet only scratched the surface of their task, and the difficult matter of Father Micah still seemed all but insurmountable — but at least, Helewise told herself, she knew what she intended to do. Closing her eyes and bending her head, humbly she asked God to spare the time to consider the priest. Please, Lord , she begged, help him out of his distress. Help me, too. Please save the Hawkenlye community and those we serve from his wrath and his narrow-mindedness .

The voices of her sisters rose into the still air, and Helewise gave herself up to the sweet sound of their chanting.

The alarm went up before dawn the next day.

A pedlar with a heavy load had set out early for Tonbridge market, knowing that his burden would make his progress slower than usual and wanting not to be late and risk losing his habitual spot in the market place.

On a dark stretch of the track up above Castle Hill, where an outcrop of the Great Forest cast even deeper shadows across the night’s gloom, the pedlar noticed what he thought was a large sack lying half on the track, half in the ditch. Reasoning that it might very well have dropped off the cart of some other early riser making for market — Tonbridge was now only some five miles or so distant — the pedlar put down his own pack and went to see if he could find anything to his advantage.

He put his hands down to feel around what he thought was the neck of the sack; it certainly seemed, in the darkness, to be the narrowest point. And indeed it was a neck, of sorts; a human neck, broken, from which lolled a shaven head.

The pedlar did not wait to investigate further. Abandoning his pack — only extreme terror could have made him do that — he ran as fast as he could down the track to the place where it branched, one way going on down the hill to Tonbridge, the other skirting the forest and leading to Hawkenlye.

Banging on the Abbey’s wooden gates, yelling himself hoarse, the pedlar attracted the attention of the community as it prepared to rise for Matins. Two of the lay brothers, Brother Saul and Brother Michael, were summoned from the Vale and Josse came with them. The three of them accompanied the pedlar back to his gruesome find.

The pedlar was right, Josse instantly determined; the body was quite dead.

And, although it was difficult in the darkness to be absolutely sure, he had a good idea of its identity.

Agreeing with the pedlar’s repeated claim that he had done all he could, all you could reasonably ask an ordinary man to do, Josse said he could go on down to market; the pedlar had recovered by now and was once again preoccupied with his day’s trading. When Brother Michael asked in a whisper if it was wise to let him go, Josse replied that the pedlar could hardly be a murder suspect since only a foolwould kill a man, unseen, unsuspected, in the middle of the night and far from human habitation and then go and confess to an abbey full of nuns that he had done so.

‘Oh,’ said Brother Michael. ‘Oh, I suppose so.’

Between the three of them they rolled the body on to a hurdle and, having first covered the head and face with a piece of sacking somewhat grudgingly given by the pedlar, bore it back to Hawkenlye.