Alys Clare - The Tavern in the Morning

Helewise was feeling well again.

Three days’ total bed rest had done the trick. She was a robust woman, and, as Sister Euphemia remarked, it had only been necessary for her to act sensibly and take to her bed, which had allowed Mother Nature to do the rest.

Sitting at her table once more, the truckle bed and the brazier — such signs of weakness! — removed, out of sight and out of mind, she was eagerly going through Sister Emanuel’s entries in the accounts ledger.

She was, although she didn’t admit it to herself, looking for mistakes.

There weren’t any.

Sister Emanuel, whose usual duties revolved around the care of the elderly folk in the retired nuns’ and monks’ house, was an educated woman. She was — and this was another thing Helewise didn’t care to admit — probably more learned than her Abbess.

Helewise came to the end of Sister Emanuel’s entries. Closing the heavy ledger, she folded her hands on top of it and tried to empty her mind of the many other items clamouring for her attention.

I resent the fact that another nun has just proved herself as capable as I over this matter of keeping the accounts in a neat, legible hand, she thought, spelling it out relentlessly to herself. My pride is bruised, because she can do a task I liked to think only I could do.

This I must confess, and I must do penance. Pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and particularly ill-housed in a nun.

Then I shall humbly ask Sister Emanuel if, amid her busy life, she can find the time to help me out by taking on the task of keeping the accounts ledger up to date.

That, Helewise was well aware, was going to hurt.

All the more reason, said her conscience firmly, to do it. When it hurts, it means it is important.

What, then, shall I do with the spare time I shall have bought for myself? she wondered. Then, as she sat there, still trying to empty her mind so as to make it receptive, she remembered a scheme she had dreamed up long ago, in the heady days when she had just been appointed Abbess of Hawkenlye and believed she could change the entire religious world single-handedly.

I shall teach my nuns to read and write.

Oh, not all of them! That would be impossible! For a start, there are too many, and secondly, many are not … She tried to find a way of expressing the fact that many were not bright enough for such skills without it seeming patronising or condescending (which would have added to her present weight of pride). Many are possessed of talents that do not suit them to the acquiring of literacy, such as skill with plants or animals, the ability to sew beautiful embroidery, a tender and patient hand with the sick.

Was that all right? she asked the Lord timidly.

She found herself suddenly feeling much happier. As if she had been … lifted. Taking this as a sign of the Almighty’s approval, she got up and went in search of Sister Emanuel.

* * *

When the company of Hawkenlye Abbey was leaving the Abbey church after Nones, there was a sudden commotion at the gate. Helewise hurried across to join Brother Saul, Sister Martha and Sister Ursel: Sister Martha was holding the reins of a large, heavy horse, soothing him and gently stroking his nose; Brother Saul and Sister Ursel were bending over the figure who had just slid off the horse’s back.

‘It’s SirJosse!’ Sister Ursel said, which Helewise had just seen for herself. ‘He reached out to push at the gate, fell off his horse, and had landed on the ground before I could rush out to aid him!’

‘He’s barely conscious,’ Saul said. He was sitting on the hard earth, with Josse’s head cradled in his lap. ‘He’s been hurt — there’s a bandage round his head.’

‘Sister Martha, would you please take Sir Josse’s horse into the stables and see to him?’

‘Of course, Abbess.’ Sister Martha led Horace away.

‘Brother Saul, can we, do you think, help Sir Josse between us to the infirmary, or should I summon help?’

‘I can walk!’ Josse said from the ground.

‘Come, then, Sir Josse,’ Saul said, helping him up, ‘the Abbess here and I will support you.’

Helewise went round to Josse’s other side, and they half dragged him the short distance across to the infirmary, where Sister Euphemia, assessing her latest patient with a practised eye, put a hand to his forehead, nodded and said, ‘No fever. Put him in the little cubicle at the end, please. No need to make him lie with my fever patients.’

Helewise and Saul did as they were ordered. Then Sister Euphemia shooed them out. ‘My nuns and I can manage now, thank you,’ she said firmly.

And Helewise, longing to ask Josse a dozen questions, had to nod meekly and leave.

* * *

Sister Euphemia came to report to her soon afterwards.

‘A bad blow on the head,’ she said, ‘which, according to Sir Josse, happened three nights ago. He’s confused, though, and he may not really know for sure. Says he was following someone through the woods, and was struck from behind. That he was, indeed. He was cared for, so he says, by some woman.’ Euphemia gave a sniff. ‘Put a poultice on his head, she did.’ Another sniff, as if Euphemia had trouble with the concept of anyone but herself having sufficient wits and knowledge to apply a poultice properly.

‘And did her nursing have any effect?’ Helewise made sure to keep her tone neutral.

‘Aye,’ Euphemia admitted grudgingly. ‘He’s on the mend. Leastways, his wounds are. But I reckon he’s still suffering from concussion. He’s complaining of dizziness — which was how come he fell off his horse, and that wasn’t the first time, either, when he came a cropper outside our gates. He says he’s been on the road since first light, only he fell off earlier, and must have lain senseless for some time before he came to again.’

‘Oh, dear,’ Helewise said, frowning in anxiety. ‘This sounds serious.’

‘Don’t you fret now, Abbess dear,’ Euphemia reassured her. ‘He’s a tough one, is Sir Josse. It’ll take more than a bash on the head and a couple of tumbles off his horse to keep that one down!’

‘I pray you are right.’ Helewise hesitated. ‘May I visit him, Sister? I must admit, I’m longing to talk to him. Or would it be better to let him rest?’

‘I think he’d rest better if he talked to you first,’ Euphemia said. ‘He’s fretting, see.’ She gave Helewise a speculative look. ‘Seems there’s something he wants to tell you.’

* * *

Josse looked, Helewise thought, stepping into the curtained-off cubicle where Euphemia had put him, pretty dreadful. She opened her mouth to say something bracing, but he got in first.

‘Don’t even try,’ he said wearily. ‘I’m quite sure I look as bad as I feel.’

She folded her hands in her sleeves and said, ‘Sister Euphemia says you wanted to speak to me.’

‘Aye.’ His voice dropping, he said, ‘Can we be overheard?’ She glanced out through the hangings. ‘No.’

He beckoned her closer. ‘Only it’s a secret. I gave my word I wouldn’t tell, but I’ve stumbled into a right clutch of adders,’ he said softly. ‘On the trail of little Tilly’s handsome stranger, I saw a man in Tonbridge Castle who wasn’t there, and, when I tried to trail him, he ended up following me. Then, when he surprised me, he hit me hard enough to half kill me.’ Leaning forward so that he spoke almost into Helewise’s ear, he whispered, ‘I was saved by a child with incredibly blue eyes, whose mother is plainly so desperate to keep her whereabouts a secret that I felt obliged to leave her before I should have done.’ Sinking back, he said, ‘And here I am.’

Helewise, trying and failing to make sense of what he had just told her, wondered if he were still fuddled. ‘A man who wasn’t there?’ she asked softly. ‘What does that mean?’