Alys Clare - The Way Between the Worlds

Anyone who did not know my aunt might be forgiven for judging her as detached and unfeeling, considering it was her niece who lay dying on the bed. But I did know her, rather well. I was all too aware that it was her habit to adopt a chilly demeanour at the very times when her heart and her emotions threatened to force her sobbing to her knees.

I put out a hand and gently laid it on my sister’s hot forehead. It might have been my imagination, but I thought she moved, just a tiny amount, as if in response. ‘She is very hot,’ I said. ‘She has sweated a great deal, and her body must be desperate for water.’

‘It is,’ Edild agreed. ‘Yet whenever she takes a decent mouthful, she vomits it up again almost instantly, thereby losing more than she has absorbed.’

That was even worse than I had thought. ‘Oh, but then how-?’

‘I am feeding her tiny amounts at a time,’ Edild interrupted. ‘Watch.’

I moved aside to let her take my place by the bed. Edild took a cup of cold water — I could see how cold it was, for it had formed beads of moisture on the outside of the cup, and I guessed that a concerned nun had just drawn it from some deep well that was their water supply — and dipped a small spoon into it. Very gently, she put the spoon against Elfritha’s slightly open mouth and let one tiny drop fall on to the lower lip. After a moment, the tip of Elfritha’s tongue emerged to lick it away. I wanted her to do it again immediately, over and over until my sister had taken in a decent amount, but Edild sensed my impatience and, turning to me, shook her head.

‘We must not hurry,’ she whispered. A very sweet smile swiftly crossed her face, there and gone again in the blink of an eye. ‘I do know how you feel,’ she added.

I watched as Edild put two more minuscule drops of water on Elfritha’s lip. I fought my desire to grab the cup from her and do it faster, faster. Slowly, I felt the anxiety leave me, until I knelt at Edild’s side, quite calm.

Then she handed me the cup and told me to carry on.

Intent as I was on my sister, I was aware of Edild’s movements only on the edge of my attention. She went to stand beside Hrype, and he put his arms around her. She leaned against him — or, to be exact, she seemed to collapse into him — and for a little while he just held her, as if he were putting some of his formidable strength into her. Then, with a little smile just for him that went straight to my heart, she disengaged herself and stood away from him. I heard them muttering, and it appeared from what I picked up that she was describing the course of Elfritha’s sickness.

‘Is it some disease from which others too are suffering?’ Hrype asked.

‘No,’ my aunt replied. ‘It is possible that more of the nuns may succumb, but Elfritha has been sick for two days now, and I would have expected somebody else to be already unwell, were this something that is going to affect many.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ Hrype muttered.

I was concentrating so hard on putting the smallest possible droplet of water on to my sister’s lip that I missed what Edild said next. Hrype spoke, the low rumble of his deep voice a soft and sort of hypnotic sound. But then one word leapt put at me, and all at once I was fully alert.

Edild must have sensed my involuntary movement. She crouched down beside me, waiting as I administered another drop of water.

‘How many has she taken?’

I knew she would ask and had been carefully counting. ‘Seven.’

Edith nodded. ‘Well done,’ she whispered. ‘That’s enough. Now we wait.’

I did not need to ask what we’d be waiting for.

I stood up, putting the cup and the spoon down on the little table beside the bed. Straightening up, I was met with the disconcerting sight of two pairs of eyes, green and silvery-grey, watching me with the intensity of a hawk eyeing the mouse that will be its supper.

I collected my thoughts, for I knew what they were about to tell me.

‘Someone tried to poison her, didn’t they?’ I said.

Instantly, they both shushed me, stepping closer so that the three of us stood in a tight triangle. ‘We think so,’ Hrype agreed.

I paused, again thinking rapidly. ‘Have we a sample of the vomit?’

Edild’s mouth turned down in a grimace. ‘Not of what she brought up at the outset. Since I have been here, it has mainly been watery bile.’

The product of a stomach that had emptied itself, I reflected.

I had a sudden thought. ‘What of her garments?’ I asked eagerly. ‘If the sickness came on her abruptly, might she not have been sick down herself?’

Edild glanced at Hrype, then back at me. ‘Surely someone would have washed her clothes by now?’ There was doubt in her tone.

I made the offer before either of them could ask me. ‘I’ll go and find out.’

I realized quite quickly that the nuns must be in their church, saying one of the daily offices, for the abbey was all but deserted. Two lay nuns sat at either end of the infirmary, and one nodded to me as I emerged from the short passage outside Elfritha’s room. Rather than go down the length of the long room, I used the door that opened directly on to the cloister. I paused to look around, gazing out over the abbey and listening. There was another stout lay sister on duty at the gate, and from somewhere close at hand I could hear voices, a man and a woman’s.

I slipped back into the shadows of the cloister and wondered how I was going to find the laundry. It would have to be close to a water source, I reasoned, and I recalled having seen a little stream running along the western edge of the enclosing walls, where the abbey was closest to the surrounding fen. I turned in that direction and presently saw a small hut, its door propped open to reveal big tubs and a small hearth over which a large pot was suspended, presumably where water was heated. On a rough frame behind the hut, a load of washing was drying in the last rays of the setting sun.

I checked quickly, but there was nobody watching. I looked at the items on the frame, and most of them appeared to be bedlinen. I crept inside the hut.

There was a big pile of dirty clothes awaiting the laundress’s attention. The pot above the hearth was full of cold water, and kindling had been set ready. The nun in charge must have been intending to do a wash when she returned after the office.

I fell on the bundle of clothing, searching for my sister’s habit. I thought I was going to be disappointed, for almost all of the garments were light in colour — novices’ white linen veils, several under-shifts — but then I saw something black rolled up tightly underneath them. I reached for it, my fingers finding the coarse cloth of a nun’s habit. I drew it out from the pile, and even as I unrolled it I knew I had found what I was searching for: I could tell by the smell.

My beloved sister had been sick all over the front of her habit. Smoothing out the fabric so that I could inspect what was spread over it, I held it to the light coming in through the open door.

My heart seemed to lurch in my chest, and I smothered a gasp.

Among the sticky, smelly mess, I could clearly make out pale berries and those dark, distorted rye seeds.

I had seen enough — more than enough, for I was feeling pretty queasy myself, my fear and anxiety adding to the unpleasant atmosphere inside the little hut. I rolled up the habit again and pushed it back underneath the shifts and the veils, careful to make it look as much as possible as it had done before I disturbed it. I peered out through the doorway, checking to make sure there was still nobody watching, then I gathered up my skirts and hurried back to the infirmary.

Back in Elfritha’s room, I found my aunt busy changing the soiled bedlinen, helped by two of the infirmary nuns. I did not at first see Hrype; looking round for him, I spotted him standing behind the door. I had already noticed what a master he was in the art of appearing invisible, and I doubted very much if either of the nuns, preoccupied as they were, had realized he was there.