Alys Clare - Ashes of the Elements

She gazed at the small object he was holding out to her. ‘But I didn’t give you that!’

‘What? But it’s a cross, and I thought that…’ He was holding it about a foot in front of his face, focusing on it. ‘It’s not a cross,’ he said tonelessly. ‘It looks more like a sword.’

She leaned forward to have a better look. ‘May I?’

He lifted the thong over his head and handed it to her. As well as the sword, there was a small gold crucifix on it. She held the sword in her right hand, staring at it. It was about the length of her palm, made of metal, exquisitely worked with a decoration of vivaciously swirling patterns all over the blade. Where the blade met the narrow hilt, there was a tiny head, bearing an expression of distinct ferocity.

‘What is it?’ For some reason, he spoke in a whisper.

‘It is, I think, an amulet. It’s not a real knife — too small. And the blade is dull. I imagine it is a protection against evil, to be worn when one is going into danger.’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it before,’ he said.

‘It resembles the workmanship of old,’ Helewise murmured. ‘My father possessed an ancient brooch which he found in a stream-bed, and it was decorated with the same swirls and circles as this.’ She was absently tracing the biggest swirl as she spoke; it was odd, but, as she reached its heart, she seemed to feel a slight tremor go through her. There and gone in an instant, but it had felt … Stop it, she ordered herself. This is no time for fancies!

‘If you didn’t give it to me,’ Josse said slowly, ‘then who did?’

She had been wondering that, too. ‘Someone who knew you were going into the forest. Someone, moreover, who wanted you to be protected.’

She met his eyes. It was at the same time a thrilling concept and a faintly alarming one.

‘Abbess, I shall have to go back,’ he said. ‘What I discovered last night is only the beginning. I have to see if there is anything still buried, and, although I fear to say so, I must seek out the Forest People.’

‘No!’ The denial was instinctive. ‘Sir Josse, they have already killed to keep their secret! If they find you digging under some fallen tree, they might-’ But what they might do was unthinkable.

‘I don’t believe they would harm me,’ he said gently. ‘For one thing, it will be me seeking them, not the other way round. And, for another-’

‘You intend to go back into the forest, stand in that clearing and shout, here I am, forest folk! Come and find me!’ she said incredulously. ‘Come and kill me!’ Absurdly, she felt a sob rise in her throat. Swiftly she controlled it.

He was looking at her in faint surprise. ‘Abbess!’ he said softly. But whatever he had been about to say, he must have changed his mind. Shaking his head, he muttered something.

‘What was that?’ she asked, with some asperity.

‘Nothing.’ His eyes met hers. ‘Abbess Helewise, please believe me, if I felt there was peril in this venture, I would not be contemplating it.

‘Oh, wouldn’t you!’

He pretended not to hear that. ‘I am quite sure that, if I make an open approach and appeal to these people’s sense of honour, they’ll respond. Perhaps it’ll be a question of my assuring them that we’ll do our best to stop people like Hamm Robinson meddling in their affairs, perhaps then they’ll-’

But whatever nonsensical thing he had been going to go on to say, Helewise didn’t hear it. At that moment, after a perfunctory knock at the door, Sister Euphemia burst in.

‘Abbess, Sir Josse,’ she panted, red in the face, ‘forgive my interruption, but it’s Sister Caliste. She’s disappeared!’

Sister Caliste had, it transpired, been missing for some time.

They established this fact, over the course of the next hour, by working out who had seen her last. She had been present at Tierce, that was quite certain; a lot of the nuns remembered that. She had then gone about her morning’s work in the infirmary, including a visit to Sister Tiphaine for some white horehound; Sister Euphemia needed to make more syrup for an elderly woman suffering from chest pains and a racking cough.

‘I know she came back here with the herbs,’ Sister Beata said, clearly suppressing tears of distress. ‘I remember telling her to take them straight to Sister Euphemia, who was anxious to have them and who really had better things to do than twiddle her thumbs waiting for some novice to get a move on!’ The threatened tears spilled down Sister Beata’s cheeks. ‘Oh, do you think I upset her? Do you think I made her run off?’

‘Not for a moment.’ Helewise briefly touched Sister Beata’s hand. ‘If you did issue a reprimand, then I’m perfectly certain it can have been but a mild one.’ She gave the worried nun an encouraging smile. ‘You are not capable of unkindness, Sister.’

Sister Beata looked a little more cheerful. Then, her face falling again, ‘But Sister Caliste is still missing. Whoever’s fault it was.’

‘Quite,’ Helewise agreed. ‘However, Sir Josse and I are questioning everyone, and we’ll soon know where she’s gone.’

She gave Sister Beata an encouraging smile; whether its chief aim was in fact to encourage the sister or herself, she didn’t stop to think.

Helewise searched out the remaining sisters who could possibly have useful information. There was, for instance, little point in talking to the Madeleine nuns who lived in the Virgin Sisters’ House, since they hardly ever left it, nor to the sisters who devotedly, and in total isolation, cared for the lepers. But, these nuns apart, she consulted all the rest. Nobody had anything useful to tell her on the subject of Sister Caliste.

* * *

The afternoon was well advanced by the time she had finished. Josse, in the meantime, had been down in the vale, and had even, so she had been told, gone riding off after some pilgrim family who had left that morning, just in case they could shed light on Caliste’s disappearance.

He returned looking dejected; there was no need to ask if he had met with success.

The two of them were discussing what they should do next when, again, Sister Euphemia came in search of them.

This time, she looked not so much disturbed but annoyed. ‘Abbess Helewise,’ she said, her face tight, ‘would you please come with me? One of my patients’ — she almost spat out the word — ‘has something to tell you. And for the life of me I can’t think why she didn’t speak up earlier,’ she added in a mutter as she led the way over to the infirmary, ‘truly I can’t!’

She marched through the door and along the length of the room, stopping at the foot of the cot occupied by the old woman with the cough.

‘Hilde!’ she said, in a loud voice. ‘I have brought Abbess Helewise and Sir Josse d’Acquin.’ If she had hoped to cower the old woman by announcing Helewise and Josse so loudly and grandly, then, Helewise observed, Euphemia was in for a disappointment.

‘Oh, aye?’ Hilde said hoarsely. ‘Nice, it is, to have visitors! Good day, lady! Good day, Sir Knight!’

Sister Euphemia was shaking her head in annoyance. ‘Never mind all that! Hilde, kindly tell the Abbess here what you just told me! Right now, if you please!’

The three of them waited while Hilde shifted first to the left, then to the right, punched the straw-filled pillow a couple of times, coughed, then settled herself comfortably. Clearly, she was intending to make the most of the brief attention. ‘Well,’ she began slowly, ‘I heard you’re looking for that sister, the pretty blue-eyed one with the white novice’s veil?’

‘Yes!’ Sister Euphemia said crossly. ‘Do get on with it!’