Alys Clare - Fortune Like the Moon

‘We made love,’ Milon said. ‘We made love a lot, ever since we were wed.’ An echo of the smile again. ‘Before that, once, although we never told anyone. Many, many times, once we were man and wife and we were allowed to. She was pregnant.’ There was a distinct note of pride in his voice. ‘Did you know that, Abbess?’

Helewise nodded. ‘Yes, Milon. I knew.’

‘It was wonderful, wasn’t it,’ he hurried on eagerly, ‘for her to be with child so soon after our marriage? Of course, she didn’t tell Gunnora. Didn’t even tell her we were wed. So, apart from me, there was nobody she could chat to about how happy she is, how excited.’ He frowned. ‘That was sad. She needed to tell people, Elanor did. She always needs to share it when something good happens to her. That’s why it’s — why it was so hard for her being in the Abbey.’ He looked around him, as if suddenly remembering where he was. ‘Being here,’ he added, in a whisper.

Helewise wondered if Josse, too, had noticed Milon’s confusion of past and present. Turning to look quickly at him, she saw that his deep frown of disapproval had lifted slightly. And that, mingled with the outrage and the anger, was pity.

Yes, she thought. He has noticed. And, like me, he is torn between condemning this youth for what he has done and pitying him for the frailness of his mental state.

But now was no time to allow compassion to overrule justice.

‘The child — your and Elanor’s child — would have been rich, wouldn’t he?’ she pressed on. ‘Or she, of course. Born into wealth.’

Milon was nodding again. ‘Yes! Yes! He’d have had a silver spoon, all right! That was why, you see.’ He looked eagerly from Helewise to Josse, as if inviting their understanding. ‘We were thinking of ourselves at first, I can’t deny it, thinking how unfair it was, that, with Dillian gone, the old fool was thinking of changing his will and leaving the lot to Gunnora after all. And she didn’t want it!’ He opened his hands wide as if to say, just imagine! ‘That was the stupid thing! She hated wealth, and everything to do with it! That’s why she had to come in here — it was all part of her plan. She was going to-’

Just then Josse interrupted. ‘And you couldn’t bear the thought of your uncle-in-law’s wealth ending up in Hawkenlye Abbey, could you? So you killed her.’

‘No!’ The denial came out with such deep anguish that Helewise began to sense she had been right all along.

‘There’s no point keeping on saying no when we-’ Josse began furiously.

But Helewise said, ‘Sir Josse, if you please?’ and, with an obvious effort, he stopped.

She turned back to Milon. ‘So Elanor posed as the postulant Elvera, entered the convent and met up with her cousin. How did she explain herself?’

Milon smiled. ‘She told Gunnora it was for a bet. That I’d bet her a gold coin she couldn’t fool everyone into believing she really wanted to be a nun, and she’d claimed she could, and, what’s more, she’d show me. Of course, she said it wouldn’t be for very long, that, soon, she’d pretend she’d changed her mind and go again. Before they threatened to cut her hair off, that’s for sure!’

The sound of his laughter — bright, happy, as if he hadn’t a care in the world — was, Helewise thought, almost as dreadful as that moaning had been.

And then, looking confidingly into her eyes, he added, ‘She’s got lovely hair, hasn’t she?’

Fortunately for Helewise, who was, just at that moment, incapable of continuing, Josse took up the questioning.

‘And Gunnora believed in this stupid prank?’ He sounded incredulous. ‘But didn’t it strike her as deeply irreverent, when she herself was about to take the first of her final vows?’

But she wasn’t, Helewise thought. And she was beginning to understand why. She sighed. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Gunnora swallowed the story. She believed everything Elanor told her. Didn’t she, Milon?’

‘Yes.’ He was grinning. ‘She went along with it. She actually thought it was as funny as Elanor did.’

‘But all the time Elanor’s presence here had a much darker purpose,’ Josse said. ‘All along, you and your wife were planning to kill Gunnora.’

‘I keep telling you, it wasn’t like that!’ Milon cried. ‘We just wanted to make a friend of her, wanted her to like us, so that when she got her father’s money, she’d pass it on to us and not give it to the Abbey.’

‘You felt that your need was the greater?’ Helewise said, with some irony.

He turned to her. ‘No.’ His expression was aggrieved. ‘It wasn’t because of that.’

‘What, then?’ Josse demanded.

Again, Milon looked at both of his questioners in turn. Meeting the tormented, shadowed eyes, Helewise was reminded of a wild animal cornered by hounds.

But then, finding from some unsuspected reserve a vestige of pride, Milon sat up and straightened his shoulders. Raising his chin, he said with quiet dignity, ‘Because I’m his son.’

There was utter silence in the cold little room. Then Josse repeated, ‘His son.’

Helewise’s mind had leapt to one crucial thing. Silly, really, she thought, when so much else is at stake. ‘Your marriage wasn’t legal, if Sir Alard was indeed your father,’ she said. ‘A union between first cousins is within the prohibited degree.’

Milon dropped his eyes. ‘I know. But Elanor didn’t — I didn’t want to upset her, when we loved each other so much. Getting married was the only way, you see — we’d never have been allowed to be together unless we were wed. So I never told her who I really was.’

‘But surely Sir Alard would have done!’ Josse protested. ‘Great God in heaven, he should have been more responsible than to let such a union go ahead, no matter how much the pair of you wanted it!’

Milon waited until the blustering had finished — Josse must be beside himself, Helewise thought absently, to blaspheme like that, although the provocation was understandable — and then said, ‘Alard couldn’t have told her, since he didn’t know himself.’

‘Then how can you be so sure?’ Helewise asked gently.

‘My mother told me,’ Milon said. ‘When she was dying, I was the one she wanted to be with her.’ He gave a brief ironic smile. ‘That didn’t go down at all well with my brothers, but then they’ve always been jealous of me. I was different, you see. I looked different, for one thing, and I always had my mother’s favour. Even when they all ganged up on me, she’d look after me.’ He sighed. Then, as if recalling himself to the present, went on, ‘She didn’t have long to live, they were all saying that, so I did as she asked and went up to her room.’ His nose wrinkled. ‘It smelt. She smelt. I didn’t like it there, I wanted to go back to Elanor. But then my mother said I had to go and find my father, and when I said, all right, I’ll fetch him, she grabbed my arm and said she didn’t mean him, she meant my real father.’

‘That must have come as a great shock to you,’ Helewise said tonelessly.

‘It did, oh, it did!’ Milon agreed. ‘Of course, though, once it had sunk in, I realised. I saw how it explained a lot of what had been happening, all through my childhood. Then I got interested, and I asked her to tell me about him. My father.’

Helewise pictured the scene. The dying woman, anxious to impart a long-held secret to her favourite son. And the son, listening not out of love but because he was ‘interested’.

‘She said, “Go and find him, and get your inheritance off him,”’ Milon was saying. ‘She was very bitter, you know. She always had been, but I didn’t know why till then. From what she said — and she said a lot, believe me, for a woman who was meant to be dying — I gathered that she had imagined it would mean a bit of comfort for her, having a child by a rich man, even if she wasn’t married to him. And when the child turned out to be a son, well, that made it even more important, given that the man only had daughters. But it didn’t work out that way. She never even managed to tell him about me — he sent her letters back unopened. Didn’t want his wife, the Lady Margaret, knowing he’d had sex with another woman, that’s what she reckoned. She — my mother — couldn’t pursue it, she said, because, if she made too much fuss, she’d risk her husband finding out. And she only slept with Alard the once!’