Alys Clare - The Chatter of the Maidens

‘That’s a lie.’ Alba’s voice spoke clearly, echoing through the glade.

‘A lie? But-’

‘They told me that, those warrior monks. It was easier for them if I believed she had gone beyond my reach. But she didn’t die.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘They said she was mad. There’s a madhouse run by nuns, close by Denney. In the same place where the whores’ hostel is. Whores and mad people, it’s all the same to the nuns. They shut her up in there, in the madhouse. I didn’t know, Abbess. For years, all the time I was growing up, she was in there. I could have gone to see her, talked to her. But oh, no. They couldn’t have that, could they? She might have revealed who my real father was.’ Tears were falling down Alba’s white face now. ‘So they told me she’d died at my birth, and I never knew her.’

‘Alba, I’m so sorry,’ Helewise said gently. ‘It must have been a terrible blow for you, when you found out.’

Alba nodded. ‘I wasn’t meant to know, even after she really was dead. Only one of the nuns in the madhouse wasn’t aware of the true story. She’d been looking after my mother, and apparently my mother had asked her to come and tell me.’

‘Tell you she was dying?’

‘No. Tell me after she was dead.’

‘Was your mother sick, then? So sick that she knew death was close?’

‘She wasn’t sick. She hanged herself.’ Alba raised the rope belt in one hand. There was a clumsy knot in one end, and she set it swinging gently. To and fro. To and fro.

Helewise watched the knot, hypnotised. Everything was beginning to feel unreal, unnatural. She gave herself a shake. ‘Oh, Alba,’ she whispered. But she didn’t think Alba heard.

‘This was hers,’ Alba said. ‘Her piece of rope. She stole it, and she hanged herself with it. The nuns gave me her poor, ragged robe, and this was wound up in the skirt.’ A wail of anguish soared up into the still air. ‘There’s nothing for me any more, Abbess! I’ve killed, I’ve been tracked down, there’s a mighty Templar hunting me to make me confess to my crimes, and they’re going to hang me!’

‘You will be tried, Alba,’ Helewise began, ‘and-’

‘ They’ll hang me! ’ Alba screamed. ‘Abbess, Abbess, I don’t want to die on the gallows, like some wretched thief, with the people all jeering and laughing! Not me !’

Suddenly she swung the rope out in a great wide arc. ‘I’ve been trying to hang myself, and save them the bother. I wanted to do it with this, just like Mother’ — the wailing had become sobs, loud, heaving sobs — ‘but I don’t know how to do the noose! Forgive me, oh, forgive me !’

She began to lean over, further, further. .

Helewise rushed forwards, arms outstretched. ‘Alba, no !’

But Alba ignored her. Leaning further and further over, she went past the point of balance.

And fell, headfirst, thirty feet or more to the forest floor.

Helewise heard Berthe scream, a sound so loud that it hurt her ears.

Slowly she crept towards the body on the ground.

Alba’s head was at a sharp angle to her shoulders; without even touching her, Helewise could see that her neck was broken. Blood was seeping from her ears, staining the starched white coif.

Helewise knelt down, already praying, and felt the wrist. No pulse.

Standing up, she finished her first, urgent prayer for the soul of Alba. Forgive her all her sins, dear Lord; of Thy mercy, show her Thy kindly face. .

Then, turning to the edge of the glade where, behind the poised figure of Bastian, Josse held Berthe tightly against him, she said, ‘I’m afraid she’s dead.’

It was dusk.

Helewise had remained in the Abbey church after Vespers. The evening prayers had included an impassioned appeal for Alba, and the sisters had put their hearts into praying for the soul of their late companion. Considering that nobody had really liked her — Alba had not been a woman to invite affection — the fervour with which the nuns had pleaded with God to treat her kindly had touched Helewise deeply.

Now she knelt alone beside the trestle table that bore Alba’s body. Sister Euphemia had straightened the twisted neck, and one of her nurses had dressed the corpse in a clean coif and brushed the mud and the grass from the black habit. Alba lay with her arms crossed on her breast, her face calm, those troubled, anguished eyes closed forever.

Standing up and leaning over the body, Helewise gave a muffled exclamation. Then, with a quick look to ensure that she really was alone, swiftly she reached down, picked something up and, with some difficulty since it was quite bulky, stowed it away in one of her sleeves.

Then she fell to her knees and resumed her prayers.

She recited the ‘Ave Maria’ . Then, her mind filled with the love and the mercy of the Virgin Mary, she addressed a special plea to her. Reminding her politely that Alba had cried out for forgiveness, she begged the Holy Mother to intercede on Alba’s behalf.

‘Sweet Virgin Mother,’ Helewise prayed, ‘have mercy on one of your daughters who knew no mother of her own. She knew she was a sinner, that she had taken innocent life. But — but-’

Words failing her, Helewise closed her eyes and, trying to fill her heart and her soul with her plea, dropped her face into her hands.

Some time later, she heard the door open and quietly close again.

She stood up, turning to face whoever had just come in.

She was amazed to see that two people were slowly walking towards her: Meriel and Jerome. She waited until they had reached her then, with a small bow, she stood back to let them see Alba’s body.

Meriel gave a gasp, and put her hand to her mouth. Her face working, she shook her head. ‘Oh,’ she whispered, ‘oh, I didn’t want it to end like this!’

Jerome put his arms round her, holding her close to him, muttering soft endearments. Tactfully, Helewise withdrew; walking with soft footsteps, she let herself out of the church and stood outside to wait.

They were not long.

Jerome said, ‘Abbess Helewise, I am very sorry that we ran away. But I saw-’

She put a hand on his arm. ‘I know, Jerome. There is no need of explanations, nor of apologies. Indeed, when we set out into the forest earlier, it was my most fervent prayer that you and Meriel would still be in hiding.’ She hesitated. ‘I feared that Alba would do you harm.’

He was nodding, as if these facts were already known to him. ‘Yes. We were not, as you appear to know, fleeing from her.’

‘And I think ,’ Helewise went on carefully, ‘that her intention was not in fact to hurt you.’ She met his eyes; she did not want to spell out, in front of the weeping Meriel, that she thought Alba had run off into the forest only to harm herself.

He said quietly, ‘I understand.’ He glanced at his wife, huddled against his side in the shelter of his protecting arm. ‘Meriel?’ he said. ‘Are you feeling better, now that we’re out in the good fresh air? She felt faint,’ he added to the Abbess.

‘I am not surprised,’ she said.

‘I’m all right,’ Meriel said, wiping the tears from her face. ‘It was just seeing her.’

‘And you can only have heard of her death just now, when you returned to the Abbey,’ Helewise said.

The young couple exchanged glances. Then Jerome said, ‘Actually, we knew much earlier. Soon after it happened.’

‘You — how?’

Again, the exchange of glances. Meriel muttered something to Jerome; it sounded like, ‘We’ve got to tell her,’ and, turning to face Helewise, she said, ‘Abbess Helewise, we’ve been with someone of the Forest People. Er — a woman.’