Alys Clare - Ashes of the Elements

‘Aye.’ Funny how, when she said it, it did sound a little foolhardy. ‘I’ll be all right, Abbess, I can take care of myself.’

‘Yes, Sir Josse,’ she said with heavy irony, ‘you have, I’m well aware, eyes in the back of your head which will see the spear coming.’

It was not a good thought; he felt the muscles of his back contract in a brief involuntary spasm. ‘I’ll be armed,’ he said defensively. ‘And, unlike poor Hamm, I’ll be on the look out.’

‘ That’s all right, then,’ said the Abbess.

‘I have to do something! ’ he said with sudden fierceness.

‘Hush!’ she hissed swiftly, ‘someone will overhear!’

‘I want to find out who killed him and why,’ Josse went on, in a whisper that was almost as loud as his normal speech. ‘I can’t just let it go, even if you can!’

That last remark was unfair, and he knew it. Regretting the words as soon as he had spoken them, he said, ‘Sorry, Abbess. I know you would find the killer if it were within your power.’

She didn’t reply for some time, and he was afraid he had mortally and irredeemably offended her. But then, stretching out a hand in his general direction, she said, ‘I will have a pack made up for you — some food, drink, a flint and a torch. If you are going into the forest by night, it is only sensible to take precautions.’

‘But-’ He didn’t want to be burdened with a pack. Still, if doing what she could to help him was her way of showing that she had forgiven him — and that she, too, wanted to do her bit to catch the murderer — then it seemed he had little choice but to accept.

He valued her friendship too much to let ill-feeling remain between them.

‘Thank you,’ he said humbly. ‘I shall be grateful.’

* * *

He ate with the sisters that evening, and, on an impulse, went with them to Compline. The last office of the day, it had, he found, a particularly calming effect on his stretched nerves. It was always that way, he reflected, listening to the heavenly sound of the choir nuns, just before going into action. Muscles and sinews taught as bowstrings, mouth dry, heartbeat unsteady. Whereas, as soon as the fight began and you-

But that didn’t seem a very suitable thing to recall, in church listening to hymns of praise. Deliberately he turned his thoughts to his devotions.

* * *

He slipped out of the Abbey a couple of hours later. All was quiet, and, as he raised the Abbess’s small and neatly prepared pack on to one shoulder, not a single light showed from any of the Abbey buildings.

He collected his sword and his knife from the corner of the wall between the porteress’s lodge and the Abbey’s front wall, where he had concealed them earlier in the day. Sliding his sword into its scabbard, he felt his confidence grow. He opened the gates just enough to slip out, and carefully closed them behind him.

Then he set off up the track into the forest.

* * *

The moon was waxing, and, only a day from the full, gave sufficient light for Josse to make his way without stumbling. Until, that was, he moved deep under the shadow of the trees. He stopped and waited for his eyes to adjust, fiddling idly with the strap on his pack.

His hand encountered something. An object — made of metal, to judge by its cool smoothness — fastened to the flap. Feeling all around it with his fingers — it was quite small — he thought it was a little cross.

The Abbess, he thought. She put it there, for protection.

God bless her kind heart!

His night vision had sharpened as much as it was likely to. With gratitude for such a friend giving a lift both to his spirits and to his steps, he headed on into the depths of the forest.

As he trod warily deeper and deeper into the forest, despite his best efforts Josse found his mind filling with every bad thing he had ever heard about its sinister reputation.

In the stillness beneath the thick tree canopy, he developed the odd sensation that he was within some great living thing, some dark creature of unimaginable mystery and strangeness. His careful footfalls on the forest floor could, if one did not keep tight rein on the imagination, be mistaken for a quiet, steady heartbeat. And the distant sound of the faint breeze stirring the treetops sounded very like patient, watchful breathing …

Deliberately Josse stopped, stood up very straight and, with his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, said aloud, ‘I am not afraid.’

It helped. A little.

He made himself take in the details of the woodland all around him.

Oak, birch and beech. Ivy and lichen-covered trees, some of them huge with age. Yes. The forest was ancient, had been old even when the Romans came. It had been the haunt of mysterious men and women who understood the trees, worked with Nature, worshipped Her, sacrificed to Her. Went out under the moon to gather the mistletoe with golden sickles and perform rituals in Her honour.

Some said they were still there, the secret people from the far past. Still living deep in those vast tracts of impenetrable woodland, still emerging, briefly, to do terrible violence and then withdraw once more into their leafy strongholds …

Determined not to let his renewed fear overcome him, Josse’s hand crept to his pack, sought for and clasped his talisman. The cross fitted into his palm, and, as his fingers closed around it, he detected a loop at its head, made of the same metal.

Stopping, he unfastened it from the pack. Pulling out from under his tunic the length of leather cord on which he wore the crucifix given to him at baptism, he untied the cord and slung the Abbess’s larger cross beside it.

Proceeding once more, holding the Abbess’s cross in his hand, suddenly he felt a good deal braver.

* * *

He could tell by the stars that he was going almost due west; there were regular clearings amid the trees, wide enough for him to see quite large areas of the sky and locate the Plough and the Pole Star. Having worked out which way was north, the rest was easy.

He would be in trouble if, when he was deep in the forest, the sky clouded over. If that happened, he’d be there till morning.

Not a pleasant thought.

After about a mile of fairly easy going, he came to a wide track. Relatively wide, at any rate; the paths he had followed until then had been mere deer or badger tracks. Or perhaps boar; he had noticed the marks of scrabbling feet on the banks either side of some of the better-defined paths that were typical of wild boar. Now, the track was wide enough for two to walk abreast.

He walked along it for possibly half a mile, whereupon it branched. Left or right? He hesitated, unsure. He became aware of an urging voice in his mind: go right!

Well, he had to do something.

He set off along the right-hand track.

And, soon afterwards, came across a length of plaited braid. Tripped over it, in fact.

He picked it up. Unless he was very much mistaken, it was part of a snare. Dropped by Hamm, or one of his poacher friends?

Thoughtfully Josse wound it up and tucked it into his pack.

A little further on, he saw ahead of him a patch of bright moonlight, startling in the dim forest. Approaching, he realised what had happened: a great oak had fallen, right across the path, and its falling had left a hole in the leaf canopy above.

Josse went into the patch of light. Not one tree but two lay on the ground. One seemed to have fallen from some natural cause; its roots, torn up out of the earth, soared above Josse’s head in a great semicircle, leaving a deep hole where they had been. There was water at the bottom of the hole.

The other tree, slightly smaller than its fellow, had been felled by the action of man. Not very expertly felled, at that; the furrowed trunk had been savagely hacked at in several places before the main cut had been made that had brought the tree crashing to the ground.