Alys Clare: The Chatter of the Maidens

Helewise nodded. She, too, remembered how dejected Josse had seemed, back in the early spring. Joanna de Courtenay might have worked her magic to save his arm, but there were other legacies of that brief time in February which were not so readily healed.

But it was wiser, she thought, not to speak further of things best forgotten.

‘Was the whole dreadful cut infected?’ she asked Sister Euphemia. ‘Will healing be as long and as painful a matter as I fear it may be?’

‘Indeed, no,’ the infirmarer said. ‘That girl knew what she was doing, and the muscles and sinews have mended well. No, like I said, only one end of the wound — where it bit the deepest — was proving stubborn. And when the silly man went off hunting, he must have wrenched the arm and disturbed the scab. He let it get dirty, and some ill humour entered his blood. The result you saw this morning. Fever burning like hellfire and a bowlful of foul pus.’

‘Oh,’ Helewise said weakly. Euphemia, for all her great strengths and skills, did have a tendency to forget that everyone she addressed wasn’t as accustomed to the seamier side of nursing as she and her nuns were.

‘Abbess, dear, you’ve gone quite pale!’ the infirmarer was exclaiming. ‘Just you stay there and I’ll fetch you a restorative-’

‘Thank you, Sister, but there is no need.’ Helewise took a couple of deep breaths, and the light-headed feeling slowly passed. She met Sister Euphemia’s worried eyes. ‘May I see him?’

‘If you wish to, then of course,’ Sister Euphemia replied, sounding as if it were a surprise to have her superior ask permission. ‘Only I must warn you, he’s very deeply asleep. You don’t get a mere light doze, with poppy and mandrake,’ she added, half under her breath.

With a swift, silent prayer that she be able to keep her reaction and her emotions under control, Helewise accompanied Sister Euphemia over to the infirmary.

Josse lay as if dead, so deeply asleep that he did not so much as twitch.

Sister Euphemia bent down to put her hand on to his forehead. ‘Still hot, but not as bad as he was,’ she said.

‘The improvement continues?’ Helewise whispered.

‘Aye.’ The infirmarer smiled briefly. ‘No need to whisper, Abbess. Right now, he wouldn’t hear a battle cry.’

There was a strong smell on the air. Quite pleasant, but with elements oddly at variance. . Helewise sniffed, trying to identify it.

‘We’re putting poultices on his arm.’ The infirmarer lifted a soft piece of cloth draped across Josse’s shoulders to demonstrate. ‘See, Abbess? Cabbage leaf to draw out the poison, lavender and self-heal to cleanse, crushed garlic to combat the yellow humours in the discharge.’

Lavender and garlic, Helewise thought. Not exactly an everyday combination of smells.

‘. . prefer it if we’d had lavender flowers, and a few more self-heal leaves,’ the infirmarer was saying, ‘but Sister Tiphaine’s stock of fresh plants is still small, what with the poor weather and all, and, of course, lavender won’t be in flower for a while yet.’

The two women stood looking down at Josse for some moments in silence. Then the infirmarer said, with a slight and uncharacteristic tentativeness, ‘You reckon he’s looking better, Abbess?’

Helewise could have kicked herself. This excellent woman, her skilled and prized infirmarer, had been working herself to a standstill all day, and Helewise hadn’t given her a word of thanks or appreciation!

She turned to Sister Euphemia. ‘Indeed I do, Sister. And forgive me that I did not say so without prompting.’ She hesitated, wondering if to go on. Bearing in mind their relative positions in the community, she should really strive always to maintain her distance, even from the most senior of her nuns. But, on the other hand, there was nobody near to overhear. And Euphemia, as she well knew, was a woman to appreciate and honour a confidence. .

‘Sir Josse is a valued friend and ally of our community,’ she went on eventually, making up her mind. ‘We should all miss him grievously, were any harm to come to him.’ She took a deep breath. She was just starting to say the words, ‘especially me’ when Sister Euphemia touched her sleeve.

‘I know, Abbess,’ she said quietly.

And, for the first time in all that long day, Helewise felt tears in her eyes. Strange, she thought, turning away so that her coif hid her face, how often we manage to maintain our composure all the while we are tense and waiting for some dreaded outcome, only to break down afterwards, when it’s all over and the worst hasn’t happened.

Especially when some good soul says a few kindly words.

Sister Euphemia was being very tactful and bending down to test the poultice. Helewise took advantage of the moment, and wiped away her tears.

‘Will you leave your patient — indeed, all of your patients — and come with me to Vespers?’ she asked Sister Euphemia presently. The infirmarer was one of a handful of nuns who, when their duties necessitated it, were permitted to be absent from church for the canonical hours.

‘That I will,’ Sister Euphemia said. With one last look at Josse, she moved away from the bedside. ‘There are others who will watch while I am away, and I need to make my thanks.’

‘As do we all,’ Helewise agreed.

Sometimes, she reflected as the two of them left the infirmary and crossed to the church, joining in the file of all the other members of their community heading for their evening prayers, it was easy to forget.

To overlook the fact that the infirmarer, the nurses, all of them were but instruments. And that, no matter how skilled the hands, healing — not only for Josse but for all those poor souls in the infirmary who had survived to the end of another day — did not come from anywhere but from God.

With her heart light with the relief of Josse’s first step on the long road to recovery, Helewise humbly bowed her head before God’s goodness and went in through the church door.

For the next week, Sister Euphemia battled against the infection in Josse’s wounded arm. Although his fever never again rose to a burning heat that threatened his life, the encroaching inflammation in the wound refused to give up.

Brice and Will returned to their respective homes, apparently only partially swayed by the infirmarer’s assurance that Sir Josse would live. Will, his face intent, said to the Abbess as he left, ‘Pray for him, Abbess. The good Lord’ll listen to you.’

And she did. All the sisters prayed, the nursing nuns tried potion after potion, and still the battle was not won. Sister Euphemia, knowing full well what the loss of his right arm meant for a fighting man, nevertheless prepared herself for what began to seem the inevitable.

Then, after a mysterious absence that led to her doing penance for three missed devotions, Sister Tiphaine appeared one evening in the infirmary, a small earthenware pot clutched in her hand.

‘Try this,’ she said, thrusting the pot at the infirmarer.

‘What is it?’ Sister Euphemia had removed the cloth cover and was sniffing the contents of the pot. ‘Hmm. Smells quite pleasant.’

‘Something we haven’t yet tried.’ Sister Tiphaine seemed reluctant to meet her Sister’s eyes.

‘All well and good,’ Sister Euphemia said, ‘but what is it?’

‘Secret remedy.’ Sister Tiphaine gave her a swift grin. ‘They do say some of the magic goes, if the secret’s revealed.’

‘Sister, really, we-’ the infirmarer began. Then she made herself stop, instead thanking Sister Tiphaine with a brief bow and promising to try the new potion on her patient without delay.

It was ever Sister Tiphaine’s way, she thought a little while later, watching the sleeping Josse as if the potion would announce its efficacy straight away. She knows her herbs; there is no doubting that; but sometimes, such an air of mystery hangs about her that one would almost suspect she keeps one foot in the pagan past. Magic, she said. The secret potion possesses magic, which would be lessened by revealing its constituents.