Alys Clare - Fortune Like the Moon

Helewise, shocked to her core, stood staring at Euphemia in utter silence.

Mistaking this, Euphemia said, ‘I’m quite sure, Abbess. There’s no doubt about it.’

‘I wasn’t doubting you.’ Helewise had difficulty speaking with a suddenly dry mouth. ‘Three months gone, you said.’

‘Perhaps more. The womb’s just peeping above the pubic bone.’

Helewise nodded absently. A couple of weeks here or there didn’t really make a lot of difference. The crucial fact — from Helewise’s viewpoint, at least — was that Elvera had been pregnant before she entered the convent. By at least two months.

‘Did she — would she have known?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yes.’ Euphemia nodded for emphasis. ‘She couldn’t not have done, unless she was a total innocent, which somehow I doubt.’ She gave the body on the cot an affectionate look. ‘Little chatterbox, she was, and many’s the time I’ve had to reprove her for her light-hearted ways, even in the short time she’s been with us. But I’d not have said she was the sheltered sort of lass who didn’t know the facts of life. She’d have missed her courses, a couple or three times, her breasts would have been tender, she’d have needed to pass her water more than usual. She’d have been sick a few times, likely as not, and sometimes found herself suddenly bone-achingly tired.’

Helewise could well recall the symptoms of early pregnancy. ‘Quite so.’ Her brain was working hard, trying to remember the full details of the background Elvera had related on her admission to her postulancy.

A background, Helewise now realised, which was total fiction. For, although some aspects would not come readily to mind, the one thing she did remember — because Elvera had emphasised it by at least one repetition — was that she was not interested in men and could never envisage herself having children.

Both of which statements, in the light of this new and alarming discovery, were complete falsehoods.

Josse, impatient to speak to the Abbess, knew that, out of respect, he must not disturb her in her laying-out of the dead. A task which, he had seen only too plainly, was not in the least to her liking. He understood why she was doing it. Understood her guilt. For didn’t he, who had been scratching his flea bites and restlessly sleeping not a hundred paces from where Elvera had been found, also feel the same burning emotion?

To occupy the time, he returned to the shelter in the vale and changed back into his tunic. Giving the robe back to Brother Saul, he thanked him and asked where he might find something with which to make a cast.

‘A cast,’ Saul repeated doubtfully.

Josse explained. Saul’s face brightened, and, with a touch on Josse’s sleeve, he said, ‘Follow me.’

He led the way to a small shed attached to the back of the shelter. In it was an assortment of cracked vessels, benches awaiting mending, objects left behind by visitors. And candles. Tall, votive candles. And, in a bin on the floor, dozens and dozens of candle stubs.

‘Brother Saul, you’re brilliant!’ Josse said. Picking up the bin, he was about to head off down the path when, again, Saul touched his sleeve. This time, without speaking but with a faint smile, he handed Josse a flint.

* * *

It was no easy task, Josse discovered, to make a satisfactory cast. It proved to be the very devil of a job acquiring enough molten wax to fill even the front half of a footprint, and, in the end, he’d had to light a small fire on the dry mud of the path. But at least he was done, and, having thoroughly stamped out his fire and returned the unused candle stumps in their bin to the little shed, he went up to the Abbey to report to Abbess Helewise. She had by now left the infirmary and, according to Sister Euphemia, would be found in her room. Carrying his carefully wrapped cast, he went to find her.

She was sitting at her table, hands folded before her and resting on the well-polished wood. There was no sign, now, of the pallid, stricken woman who had knelt by the dead girl and buried her face in her hands. She looked as she always did. Calm, controlled, slightly aloof. And as if, whatever the day threw at her, she would always remain so. But Josse, who had seen her in her distress, knew better. And found himself liking her the more for having seen her fallibility.

‘So, Abbess, you and Sister Euphemia have prepared Elvera for burial,’ he said, responding to her invitation to sit. He was, he found, tired out, for all that the day had scarcely begun.

‘We have. Sister Euphemia entirely supports the notion that she was killed by manual strangulation.’ The words were uttered tonelessly.

Josse hesitated. Should he say what was uppermost in his mind? He met her eyes. He thought she read his thought; abruptly she turned her head and fixed her glance on something over to her left. Hard to say what, he thought, when, following her gaze, he discovered that all there was to see was an unadorned stone wall.

It needs saying, though, he told himself. Even if the Abbess is reluctant to speak of such matters. ‘She did not kill herself,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Abbess, there is no question of our actions having driven her to her death. Any, anyway, we had to speak to her, we had no choice. She was close to Gunnora, and we still have-’

‘How can you say that?’ she hissed back. ‘That we did not drive her to her death? Very well, she didn’t put her head under the water and drown herself, that I accept! But would she, do you think, have left the safety of the convent in the middle of the night, venturing out into the dangers of a lonely place in darkness, had we not forced her to?’

‘It was not we who forced her!’ His voice had risen. ‘Abbess, ask yourself this! Were she innocent, with a clear conscience, why in God’s holy name would our gentle questioning have upset her so? And it was gentle, you know that as well as I do. Neither of us bullied the poor child.’

‘But we — I — knew her to be disturbed already! I should have prevented the interview! Then she would have stayed safe in the dormitory, and this second killer would have been robbed of his victim!’

He leapt to his feet. ‘ Second killer? No! Abbess, that’s not the way of it! Two nuns from the same community, brutally murdered within weeks of each other, and you tell me there is no connection?’

‘A connection, yes, of course. But I do not believe they were murdered by the same hand.’ She looked doubtful, as if her own conclusion were surprising her.

‘But-’ He couldn’t believe it. Swallowing his angry frustration, he said, ‘Can you explain?’

‘I doubt it,’ she murmured. Then, with a visible effort, ‘Sir Josse, consider the methods. Gunnora was held from behind while a second assailant slit her throat. Very neatly, very tidily. Then she was laid on the ground, her skirts were arranged around her waist and her legs and arms placed symmetrically. Her own blood was smeared on her loins, to confuse the crime with that of rape. Elvera, on the other hand, was strangled. By someone’s bare hands. We have both seen his finger and thumb prints, we know he used no other weapon.’ Her brows went up suddenly, as if something had just occurred to her. ‘Perhaps,’ she added tentatively, ‘that — the fact that he had brought with him no weapon — implies there was no premeditation.’

‘He killed her in a fit of passionate fury?’ Josse mused. ‘Aye, perhaps, but that’s no reason to suspect he was not the same man who killed Gunnora. Surely, Abbess, he has to be?’ How to convince her to abandon this irrational line of reasoning! ‘Elvera, let us surmise, was somehow involved in Gunnora’s death, which seems likely because you and I both observed her distress when I came to start asking questions. She went out to meet her fellow conspirator, and poured out to him her terror and her fear at having been interviewed by the king’s investigator. “It’s all very well for you,” I can imagine her saying, “you’re out here where nobody knows of your presence. You’re not having to face the gossips and the accusing comments, not having to brace yourself to answer questions from people who seem to know far more about this business than you’d like!” And, in her hysteria, perhaps she says she can’t go on. “ You killed her,” she says, “yet it’s I who am having to go through all this!”’ Warming to his imagined scene, he leaned forward, and the small stool creaked ominously. He ignored it.