Alys Clare - Ashes of the Elements

Josse, falling to his knees beside her, could see the blood already spreading out from under the starched white linen that bound her forehead. In sudden dread, roughly he pushed aside her wimple and put his fingers to her throat.

For a terrible few seconds he could feel no pulse.

But then he could. Irregular, and quite feeble, but still a pulse.

Fervently he said aloud, ‘Thank God! Oh, thank God!’

From the profound shadows beside the path, someone said, ‘Amen.’

His head flew up. Staring around him, trying to peer into the gloom beneath the trees, at first he couldn’t see anybody.

Then she was there. It was like that: one moment he could see nothing but the trunks of the trees and the tangling undergrowth, then, like an apparition, suddenly a figure was standing there.

His head felt muzzy. Josse didn’t really know if he was awake or dreaming.

The robed figure moved closer, seeming to float as if she rode on a cushioning cloud of sweet-smelling smoke. Leaning over Josse and Helewise, her long silver hair brushed against his face. She smelt as sweetly as the smoke. Of flowers, and fresh green things.

A long-fingered hand stretched out, touched the Abbess’s cheek, was laid flat across her forehead. ‘She is injured,’ a calm voice said.

‘She hit her head,’ Josse said, his own voice sounding strangely distant. ‘As we ran in under the trees, she banged her forehead on a branch.’

No answer.

The robed figure had vanished. Then, some time later, she came back. He knew she was coming because she held a light in her hand, and it was the light that he saw.

She held it out to him.

‘Make a fire,’ the voice intoned. ‘It is forbidden here in the forest, except by my decree, but, for this need, I allow it. Keep the woman warm.’

She was, Josse noticed then, carrying something in her other hand: it was his pack. He must have left it by the smaller grove, where they had witnessed that incredible ceremony. The light from her flare caught a glitter of response from the pack, and he remembered pinning his talisman on the pack’s flap, before he and the Abbess had set out.

He said, having to force out the words as if his mouth were full of wool, ‘Thank you, lady.’

The woman stood staring down at him for a few moments. Then she said, ‘I am Domina.’

Watching her float off across the clearing and disappear away under the trees, Josse thought absently that he would bet money on ‘Domina’ being as much a title as ‘Abbess’.

* * *

The moon had set.

In the utter darkness of the pre-dawn, the temperature went down sharply.

And Josse gave thanks all over again to Domina, and her fire.

* * *

Left alone with the unconscious Abbess, Josse had hastened to make some sort of shelter for her; clearly, there was no question of trying to move her very far until she awoke. If that had not happened by daylight, then Josse would have to think about leaving her there in the deep forest and going for help.

It was a disturbing thought.

Using the Domina’s flare, he went in under the trees and, in the thick bracken, found a shallow dell with an earth bank at its back, overhung with hazel and holly trees. Stamping down the green fronds of bracken, he took one of the blankets out of his pack and laid it down, putting the other one ready beside it. Then he went back for the Abbess.

Had he been fully himself, then he probably wouldn’t have found carrying her the short distance to the shelter such a task. As it was, he still felt sick and dizzy, and the exertion of carrying a well-built woman a dozen or so paces almost made him black out.

As he was settling her, trying to arrange her habit around her legs so as to keep her warm before tucking the blanket round her, he wondered briefly why he felt so ill.

But then he remembered the wound on her forehead, and, in the rush of anxiety which that recollection brought, the thought went out of his mind.

He rammed the flare into the crook made where a low branch of the hazel tree met its trunk, and, by its steady light, bent down to examine the Abbess’s head. There was a wash of blood over her eyebrows now, and a thin trail had run into her right eye. Through the fuzz in his brain he thought: water. I need water to bathe her face.

It took him quite a long time to remember that he had put a flask of fresh water in his pack.

He needed a cloth of some sort, preferably clean … Rummaging in the pack, he came across the dagger which he had hidden away right at the bottom, wrapped in a square of linen. The cloth was not all that clean, but it would serve. It would have to.

He washed her eyes and her forehead, noticing with dismay that the blood had turned the stiff, pristine white of her linen headdress to scarlet.

I must see the wound, he decided. Hesitantly he pushed back the black veil, and untied the tapes which fastened the linen cap covering her head and her forehead, experiencing as he did so the shameful sensation that he was violating her. But I must, he told himself firmly, because the wound might still be bleeding, and, if so, I need to staunch the flow before-

Before what?

He decided it was better for his peace of mind not to dwell on that.

The wimple was tied at the top of her head, the ties normally sitting beneath the headdress. With that last item removed, the Abbess was bareheaded, and at last Josse could see her injury.

There was a huge bruise on the left side of her forehead, starting just under the hairline and extending almost to her eyebrow. In the centre of the bruise — which had swelled up to the size of a child’s fist — was a deep cut, the length of the top pad of his thumb. Blood was slowly welling out of it.

He wiped away the steadily seeping blood, then squeezed out his cloth until it was as clean as he could make it. He tore a long strip off one edge, folding the rest into a pad; he pressed the pad against the wound, and tied it firmly in place with the strip of cloth.

He said softly out loud, ‘That, my dear Helewise, is the best I can do for you.’

He looked down at her, frowning. Was it his imagination, or was she even paler? Perhaps it was just that her face seemed more pale, now that it was framed by her hair and not by the black veil on top of the white linen band and wimple.

Her hair, he noted absently, was reddish-gold, cut short and curling round her face, a little grey at the temples. The skin of her neck and throat, normally hidden beneath her wimple, was smooth and unlined; somehow, seeing her like this, he thought she seemed younger …

Looking down at her when she could not return his gaze was making him uneasy. And besides, he thought, he could be of more use to her than merely standing there gawping with his mouth open. He could, for example, do something about trying to warm her.

He made a swift search for dry and well-seasoned kindling and firewood — both of which were abundant in these wild, uninhabited depths of the forest — and, touching the Domina’s flare to the base of his fire, he soon had a small but intense blaze going. He put a stack of branches within reach beside it. Then, having stared at the still-unconscious Abbess for some moments, he gently turned her on to her right side, the front of her body to the fire, and lay down behind her.

She was well wrapped-up, in her own clothes and, outside them, the blanket; there must be, he was sure, a good four or five layers of various materials between her body and his. Nevertheless, he felt that he was committing a sin.

‘I’ve got to keep her warm,’ he said aloud to nobody in particular. ‘I’m doing it the best way that I can, by building the fire and by the heat of my own body. But I-’