Alys Clare - Fortune Like the Moon

The Abbess, returning to him, handed him the robe. ‘With Brother Saul’s compliments,’ she said.

‘I am sorry to appear before you like this,’ Josse said belatedly, putting on the robe. ‘My tunic covers her face.’

The Abbess nodded.

Then, silently, they went on to Elvera.

* * *

It was Abbess Helewise who noticed the marks on Elvera’s throat, purely because, out of delicacy, Josse had left it to her to unfasten the neck of the robe and expose the soft, creamy flesh.

Josse had been inspecting the girl’s hands — the right, which had been in the water, was dead white and crinkled, but the left had been on dry land, and there was something about it he wanted to show the Abbess — when he suddenly noticed Helewise’s stillness.

‘What?’ he asked. ‘What is it?’

Helewise pointed.

Elvera had a long neck, slim, graceful. At the front, neatly, side by side, were two clear thumb marks. And descending down the soft skin behind each ear were two rows of finger marks.

As Josse watched, Helewise put her own hand over the marks. Whoever had done this had hands considerably larger than hers.

‘She was throttled,’ Josse said quietly. ‘I would think, by a man.’

Helewise was stroking the bruised neck, tenderly, as if trying to assuage the pain of the wounds. ‘Throttled,’ she repeated. Then, looking up, she met Josse’s eyes. ‘God help me, but I am so very glad. I was so afraid that she had killed herself,’ she said, speaking rapidly.

He understood. Knew, too, even from his brief experience of her, that, by and by, she would realise what she had just said.

He did not have to wait long. With a sort of gasp, she stopped her ministrations, put both hands to her face and said from behind them, ‘What have I said? Oh, dear God, I’m sorry!’

He watched her anguish, aching with sympathy. He did not know what to do; on balance, it seemed best to do nothing. Pretend he hadn’t noticed. He gave a brief rueful smile; that would be impossible.

After some moments, he said, ‘Abbess, I don’t want to intrude, but Brother Saul…’

She removed her hands from her face. She was ashen, and the anguish in her eyes made his heart ache for her. She said, very quietly, ‘Thank you for the reminder.’ With a visible effort, she pulled herself together. She bent over Elvera’s body, and, as if she were tucking the covers around a sleeping child, rearranged Josse’s tunic over the girl’s head. Then, standing up, she turned to look up the path towards the shrine. ‘Brother Saul is on his way,’ she said, in what sounded very like her normal tone.

Josse looked too. ‘Aye.’ Then, suddenly remembering the mass of footprints at the place where Gunnora had been found, obscuring any trace a fleeing killer might have left, he hurried along the track and spoke briefly to Saul. Then, very aware of both Saul’s and the Abbess’s eyes on him, he began to walk slowly along the path in the other direction.

The short grass on the path was dry, the earth hard-baked, and there was little chance he’d find anything. But then he saw a disturbance in the longer grass between the path and the pond; it looked as if someone’s foot had missed the path and slipped sideways into the softer gound at the edge of the water.

Hardly daring to hope, he knelt down and went forward on all fours.

Very gently, he parted the long grass. And saw, quite clearly, the marks of running feet. Whoever it was had taken three … four … five paces on the softer ground. Perhaps he had been looking back over his shoulder at what he had left behind him, and not noticed that he was no longer running on the path. But he had certainly been running, there was no doubt of that. The prints were of the front part of the foot, and the toes had dug deep into the soft ground as if he had been pushing himself as hard as he could.

Josse stared down at the footprints.

And, as he did so, pieces of the puzzle started to fit together.

He got up and walked back to the Abbess, beckoning to Brother Saul; it was safe for him to advance now. For any number of people to churn up the ground, as long as nobody obscured those tell-tale prints on the margin of the pond. Not, at least, until Josse had found some way to make a cast of them.

* * *

Helewise walked up the slope to the Abbey behind Josse and Brother Saul, neither of whom seemed to find their sad burden very heavy. They had lain her on a hurdle — was it, Helewise wondered absently, the one on which Gunnora had been carried? — and both Saul, at the head, and Josse, at the feet, seemed slumped in sorrow.

They entered inside the walls. Brother Saul turned to her. ‘To the infirmary, Abbess?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. Wait, Saul, I’ll ask Sister Euphemia where we should put her.’

She walked ahead, and Sister Euphemia came out to meet her. With a brisk nod — Euphemia, Helewise was well aware, always coped with grief by an ostentatious display of efficiency — she indicated a little side ward, nothing more than a curtained-off recess. ‘In here, please,’ she said.

It was where she had laid out Gunnora.

The men carried Elvera’s body inside, and Helewise watched as they placed it on the narrow cot. They were turning to go when Helewise, removing Josse’s tunic from the corpse, silently returned it to him. For a moment he stared at her, and she could not read what was in his face. Then, with his usual brief bow of reverence, he was gone.

I do not deserve reverence, Helewise thought. Not this morning.

Guilt was still strong in her. She had a fierce need to put herself to some disagreeable task, force herself, in charity, to do something she hated.

Taking a deep breath, she said to Sister Euphemia, ‘It is not fair that you alone should bear the burden of the laying-out of a second young victim, Euphemia. If you will permit it, I will assist you.’

Sister Euphemia’s round eyes reflected her astonishment. ‘But, Abbess, you-’ Abruptly she stopped. She was too well-schooled to question her superior, even though, as Helewise well knew, she must be perfectly aware of Helewise’s squeamishness. ‘Very well,’ she said instead. ‘First thing is to get the poor lass’s habit off her — it’s wet almost as far as the waist. We’ll put her in a dry one for burial.’

Helewise made her reluctant hands get to work, unfastening the black gown, peeling it off the poor cold body as Euphemia propped the dead girl up. The bruises on the girl’s neck were livid now, showing up more clearly than they had done down by the water. As the garment came clear of the breasts, Euphemia made a small exclamation.

‘What is it?’ Helewise asked.

Euphemia didn’t answer. Instead she took the neck of the robe in both hands and, more swiftly than Helewise had been doing, pulled it right down to the girl’s thighs. Then she unfastened the undergarments and removed them too.

Then she put her hand on the girl’s belly, low down, just above the pubic bone. Frowning, she paused for a moment, her hand exploring the area. Then she said to Helewise, ‘Abbess, I must make an internal examination. I’m sorry, but it’s necessary.’

Helewise had opened her mouth to protest. But then she closed it again, and gave a quick nod.

She couldn’t bring herself to watch.

After a short time, Euphemia said, ‘You can open your eyes. I’m done.’

Helewise did so. She noted with relief that Euphemia had covered Elvera from shoulders to thighs with a piece of sheeting. Reaching beneath it, Euphemia stripped the dead girl’s clothes right off her body.

Then, without looking at Helewise, said, ‘She was pregnant. About three months gone, I’d say at a guess, maybe a little more. I thought she was when I saw her breasts — that darkening of the nipples is a fairly reliable sign, young girls usually have rosy pink ones, specially redheads like her. But when I felt her belly, I knew. I can feel the enlarged womb.’