Alys Clare - Fortune Like the Moon

* * *

Helewise found herself suffering from an uncharacteristic inability to concentrate during the late afternoon devotions. It was not, in fact, that she couldn’t force her brain to focus, but that it wouldn’t focus on her prayers. With a determined effort of will, ruthlessly she put the many disturbing matters clamouring for her attention to the back of her mind and made herself listen to the singing of the choir nuns.

Leaving the church afterwards, she felt uplifted; as if it were a divine reward for her efforts, she sensed that suddenly her mind was sharper. As she crossed towards the archway into the cloisters, Brother Michael appeared from the stables and informed her that Josse d’Acquin had returned, and had gone down to the vale to visit the shrine.

Thanking him, she walked slowly to a shady spot on the western side of the cloister, and, sinking down to perch on the stone bench that ran along inside the wall, swiftly she began to order her thoughts.

Josse would have information to impart to her, that was certain. Word from Gunnora’s father, if nothing else. But there would be more; Josse d’Acquin was not, she had already decided, the sort of man to be satisfied with what people elected to tell him, not when there was even the remotest possibility of winkling out more for himself.

And I, she thought, what have I to tell him?

Free now to return to the matters that had been demanding her attention in church, she put them in order of importance.

And uppermost in her mind was the postulant, Elvera. Who, in the days since Gunnora’s death, had changed. At first almost imperceptible, the speed of the change had suddenly accelerated, until, in the space of the last twenty-four hours, the young girl seemed like a different person.

I could have understood it, Helewise thought, had the alteration happened as soon as we learned of Gunnora’s death. After all, they obviously liked one another, and what would have been more understandable than that Elvera would have been struck both by grief and by the horror of her friend’s slaughter? Although Elvera did not appear to be the sort of girl who needed someone to lean on — Helewise would have said rather the opposite — one couldn’t always tell, and possibly the strangeness of Elvera’s new life within the Abbey’s walls had made her act out of character, affecting her with an unusual feeling of being at sea, in need of the stabilising influence of a sister who was more settled, more secure in the religious life.

Except that, were that the case, then Elvera would surely have latched on to one of the sisters who exhibited such an air of security. A girl of her intelligence — and, it was clear, Elvera did possess considerable intelligence — would not have chosen Gunnora.

Pulling her thoughts back from that intriguing diversion, Helewise returned to the question of Elvera’s changed behaviour.

No. For a week — over a week — following the murder, she had been much the same. Horrified, as they all were, but, had Helewise had to make an assessment, she would have said that, then, it was more a matter of Elvera’s reaction being less than one would have expected, not more. The laughter had been suppressed, but Helewise had had the strong impression that this was for form’s sake; nobody had so much as smiled in the dreadful days after Gunnora’s death.

It wasn’t like that now. Now, Elvera was pale and distracted, and the smooth young brow wore a frown. It was almost, Helewise reflected, as if the reality of what had happened had only now got through to her.

Was that it? Was it simply a case of delayed shock? Helewise had seen such phenomena, following both physical injury and bereavement.

Slowly Helewise shook her head. That wasn’t the answer, she was quite sure, tempting though it was to accept it and pursue the matter no further. No. Something had happened to upset Elvera, something that had occurred since Gunnora’s death.

Twenty-four hours since Elvera had been stricken. Twenty-four hours since Josse d’Acquin had blown into their lives and, as suddenly, gone off again. And it was common knowledge within the Abbey what he had come for and where he had gone.

The coincidence was too strong to be dismissed; the conclusion was, quite obviously, that something about Josse or, more likely, about his mission to Gunnora’s family, had unsettled Elvera.

Why should either be a cause for distress? And in Elvera, of all people! The youngest of the sisterhood, the most recently arrived, the only person who could have been called, even in the loosest of terms, a friend of Gunnora. Helewise shrugged off an unaccountable sense of foreboding; I am being needlessly dramatic, she told herself, allowing my imagination to run away with the thought of a mystery, an intrigue, when, in all probability, what Elvera is suffering from is no more than reaction to what was, after all, a truly horrific event. And, naturally, a certain apprehension, since a girl as bright as she is must have worked out that, sooner or later, she would be summoned to speak to the man who has come to investigate Gunnora’s death.

Yes, Josse said he wanted to talk to the girl, Helewise remembered. Said, when I remarked that she probably wouldn’t last much longer in the Abbey, ‘Don’t let her go till I’ve spoken to her.’ There wasn’t the occasion before he left for Winnowlands, but there’s plenty of time now.

Getting to her feet, Helewise left the cloister and went across to the Abbey’s rear gate. Going on along the track until she could see down into the valley, she noticed a familiar figure just beginning on the walk back up to the Abbey.

Smiling to herself, she retraced her footsteps. On the way back to her room, she beckoned to one of the novices.

‘Sister Anne?’

Sister Anne bobbed a rather graceless curtsey. ‘Yes, Abbess?’

‘Would you please find the postulant Elvera for me — I believe she may be with Sister Beata in the herb garden. When you find her, ask her to come to see me.’

‘Who?’

Sister Anne, Helewise reminded herself resignedly, was not the brightest of women. ‘Elvera, Sister Anne.’ Chastising herself for her momentary irritation, she made herself smile and added, ‘If you would be so kind.’

Sister Anne managed to look both interested and faintly shocked. A summons from the Abbess was — or could be — a serious matter. And for a postulant to be sent for! What could she have done? Helewise could imagine the lurid possibilities racing through Sister Anne’s mind.

There was enough gossip and speculation rampant in the Abbey already; with a quelling look, Helewise said, ‘It is not a matter to interest anyone save Elvera and me, Sister Anne. Now, off you go.’

‘No, Abbess,’ Sister Anne only seemed slightly contrite. ‘Sorry, Abbess.’

Helewise watched her hurry away, white veil flapping, large feet slipping about in the solid wooden clogs: Sister Anne’s particular way of serving God in the Hawkenlye community was in the vegetable patch. Ah, well, Helewise thought, producing a large, tasty cabbage was just as important and, no doubt, as pleasing to the Lord, as spending most of the day in fruitless speculation over the motives of some innocent postulant.

Dismissing both Sister Anne’s cabbages and her own rueful thoughts from her mind, she turned and made for her room. Josse, she was sure, would look for her there; it would be interesting to observe Elvera’s reaction when they came face to face.

Helewise, sitting behind her oak table, had only been waiting for a few moments when Josse arrived. She inclined her head in response to his greeting, then, even before she could invite him to sit down, he announced that he’d seen Gunnora’s father and had been given permission for Gunnora to be buried at Hawkenlye.