Alys Clare: Ashes of the Elements

There was, Helewise thought, little point in pursuing it any more. She couldn’t make the sheriff do anything he didn’t want to; clearly, he was far beyond being shamed into action by anything she said.

She let the tense silence continue a little longer. Then, rising to her feet, said, ‘Very well, Sheriff. But, please, do let me know if your enquiries arrive at any sort of satisfactory conclusion.’

Realising he was being dismissed — which, judging from his expression, he didn’t much like — Sheriff Pelham stood up. The Abbess opened the door, and he trudged out.

‘You may reclaim your weapons at the gate,’ Helewise told him. ‘Sister Ursel will have taken good care of them. I wish you good day, Sheriff.’

He muttered something in reply. It could have been ‘Good day’, but it could equally well have been something far less polite.

* * *

When she was quite certain he had gone, Helewise left her room and crossed the courtyard to the infirmary, where she begged Sister Euphemia to part with some of her precious lavender-scented incense. Despite her efforts to think charitably of the sheriff, still Helewise felt a very strong desire to fumigate her room of his presence.

* * *

Later that day, she went back up the track to the forest.

It was, she had discovered, very difficult to leave the matter there. A man had been brutally murdered right by the Abbey, and she had all but stepped on his body. It appeared there was no chance of his killer ever being brought to justice, and Helewise could see no way to alter that.

I must, she thought, striding up towards the trees, have one more try myself. Take one more look. See if I can find some clue that the sheriff and his men overlooked, and, the dear Lord knows, surely that wouldn’t be hard.

She found the place where the body had lain. There were still bloodstains on the grass. She walked a few paces on into the forest, and thought she could detect trodden-down undergrowth where the dead man’s running feet had passed. But what of the killer? Had he run in the dead man’s tracks? He must have stood still to throw the spear … She wandered on under the deep shade of the trees, not really knowing what she was looking for.

Some time later, she gave up the search. It was, she realised, quite hopeless.

She went back to the place where the man had fallen. There was some flattened grass a few paces off; she went to look.

There, amid the brilliant green, lay the spear.

Someone — Sheriff Pelham? — must have wrested it out of the dead man’s back and thrown it away. Its head and the first few inches of its shaft were still sticky with blood.

Helewise bent down and picked it up.

Carefully she wiped it on the fresh young grass, feeling, as she did so, an illogical but very strong urge to apologise for this act of desecration.

Then, when it was as clean as she could make it, she had a good look. The tip of the spear was made of flint.

Flint?

Helewise had lived for most of her life close to the South Downs, and she knew all about flint. One of her brothers had amused himself on a wet afternoon by making a flint knife, and had discovered that knapping wasn’t as easy as one might think.

But whoever had made this spearhead was a master in the craft. The point was exactly symmetrical, and shaped most beautifully. Like an elegant leaf. The knapped edges were perfect.

And the point was as sharp as any knife.

Helewise — who had learned her lesson over testing the sharpness of worked edges — tried the spearpoint on a patch of dandelions. It seared through the leaves and stems as if they hadn’t been there.

A flint spearhead, she mused. Why flint, in this age of fine metalwork? Did it mean that wretched sheriff was right, and this murder was the work of some band of primitive forest-dwelling people, who lived not in the present day but in the manner of their distant stone-working ancestors?

The idea sent an atavistic shiver of dread down Helewise’s spine. And here I am, she thought, not ten paces from the forest.

She turned and hurried back towards the Abbey.

But, disconcerted or not, still she took the spear with her. Even if this did appear to be the end of the matter, it seemed a good idea not to throw away evidence.

* * *

Back in her room, she found that the lavender incense had failed to burn properly, and the air still stank of the sheriff. In addition, the various tensions of the day had produced the beginnings of a headache.

And, to cap it all, it was Friday. Which meant it was carp for supper.

With quiet vehemence, Helewise muttered, ‘I hate carp.’

Josse d’Acquin put his strong hands under his small nephew’s arms and, glancing back towards the house to make sure his sister-in-law wasn’t watching, hoisted the boy up on to the broad back of his horse.

‘Gee-up!’ cried the boy, his voice shrill with excitement. ‘Gee-up, horsey!’

Josse quickly stilled the sharp little heels digging into the horse’s flanks; Horace was a good, strong mount, normally even tempered, but you never knew how even the calmest animal might react to such unexpected provocation.

‘Hush, Auguste my lad,’ Josse said. ‘I’ve told you before, gee-up isn’t the thing to say.’

‘What is the thing to say, Uncle Josse?’ piped the boy. ‘I keep forgetting.’

‘Well, you can go hup! if you must,’ Josse allowed. ‘But horses, as I’ve explained, respond to your legs, your hands and your voice, so you don’t use any of them without thinking about it.’

‘And your bum, Uncle Josse! You said you had to use your bum, for sitting down hard with!’ The child was squirming with mirth, loving the unaccustomed freedom of being with his lenient uncle. Being allowed to say ‘bum’ twice and get away with it.

‘Indeed I did.’ Josse grinned. ‘Sit down hard in the saddle, I said, let old Horace here know you’re on board.’

‘I want to go without you holding on!’ Auguste cried. ‘ Please, Uncle Josse!’

‘Certainly not!’ Josse took an even firmer grip on the rein. ‘Your dear mother would flay me alive if she knew I’d so much as put you on the horse,’ he muttered.

‘What’s flay, Uncle Josse?’ Auguste had sharper ears than Josse had realised.

‘Oh — er — nothing. Now, Auguste, laddie, once round the courtyard, then-’

‘Josse!’ shrieked a woman’s voice. ‘Josse, what do you think you’re doing! Oh, careful! Be careful !’

Running out of the house and across the yard as she spoke, Theophania d’Acquin, wife of Josse’s youngest brother, Acelin, looked furious. Mother not only to the six-year-old Auguste, but to his younger sister and his baby brother, Theophania’s protective maternal urges were easily aroused. Particularly by Josse, and virtually any contact he had with her children.

‘The lad’s fine!’ Josse protested, trying to control Horace; largely untroubled by having a small boy on his back, even if the child were kicking and yelling, the horse was reacting to the shrieking woman. ‘Shut up, Theophania!’ Josse shouted, hanging on the reins in an effort to keep Horace’s heavy head down. ‘Can’t you see you’re unsettling him?’

‘Well!’ cried Theophania. ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’

Josse, preoccupied with supporting Auguste’s weight — the child had evidently decided that on the back of Uncle Josse’s horse was no place to be, not with Maman racing across the courtyard in full battle cry — and, at the same time, holding Horace, muttered under his breath.

Again, he had underestimated a six-year-old’s acuteness of hearing. Just as Theophania, bristling with righteous anger, swept her child from Josse’s shoulder, Auguste asked innocently, ‘Uncle Josse, what’s salope ?’