Alys Clare - Fortune Like the Moon

Brice was still deep in his memories. Feeling guilty — for it was his presence that had caused Brice’s reverie, his questioning that had taken the man back into the pain of the recent past — Josse said, ‘My Lord Brice, I regret, but I must take my leave of you. It is a long step back to Hawkenlye, and, with your gift on me, I wish to be there before dark.’

Brice turned to him. ‘Gift? Oh, yes. Of course.’ Then, manners instilled from childhood reasserting themselves, he said, ‘Let me see you to your horse. May I offer refreshment to sustain you for your ride?’

I have had more than enough already, Josse thought. But it was surprising how his head had suddenly cleared. ‘Thank you, but no.’

As he mounted his horse, he leaned down and offered Brice his hand. ‘My thanks, my Lord. I will arrange for your late wife’s cross to be returned to you.’

Brice nodded. ‘I thank you.’

As Josse turned to leave, Brice called out, ‘Shall you find him, this man who murdered Gunnora?’

And Josse said, ‘I think I already have.’

* * *

All the way back to Hawkenlye he was thinking, it has to be him! Milon killed Gunnora, just as I’ve been saying. It all fits! He knew from the first that he would have to make her murder look like rape or robbery, or both, and so he instructed Elanor to get hold of Gunnora’s cross, so that it could be dropped by the body. But Elanor went one better — maybe she thought it would be too difficult to get her hands on Gunnora’s cross, once at Hawkenlye — and she stole Dillian’s cross before she left home. It would have been easy, surely, to visit her dead cousin’s chamber?

Damnation. He realised he should have asked Brice if such a posthumous visit had indeed taken place.

It must have done, he concluded, for how else could it have happened, that Dillian’s cross ended up beside her sister’s murdered corpse?

They were, he concluded, cleverer than he’d thought, those two. Milon and Elanor might seem like children burning their hands by playing with the fire of the adult world, but it had to be an act! How well-planned it had been, that first murder. And how brutal. Had Elanor turned away, when Milon slit her cousin’s throat? Had the horror of the spilled blood affected the grip of those hands on Gunnora’s arms, so that it slackened as Elanor swayed in a faint?

He would never know.

Turning his mind to the practical — how he was going to convince the Abbess that his version of events was the true one — he kicked his horse into a canter and raced back to Hawkenlye.

Helewise sat in the shrine in the valley, staring up at the Virgin Mary.

She was still feeling the after effects of the shock. Sister Euphemia had tried to make her lie down in the infirmary until she felt stronger, but Helewise had said firmly that she preferred to go and pray.

If Euphemia had assumed Helewise had meant she was going into the Abbey church — and so would be close to the infirmarer’s help, should it be necessary — then that was unfortunate.

Helewise was finding it difficult to concentrate her mind on her prayers. She felt rather odd — light-headed, as if she might quite easily float up to the ceiling, or, once out through the doorway, away over the trees — and still more than a little sick.

‘It’s a very nasty cut,’ Euphemia had said, bathing Helewise’s right forefinger with gentle hands. ‘What can you have been doing, Abbess dear?’

‘I was trying an edge to see if it was sharp,’ Helewise had replied, which was accurate, as far as it went.

‘Oh, dear, oh dear!’ Euphemia, clearly, had thought she would have had more sense, as indeed she should have done. It was just that it had been so unexpected … ‘Next time, Abbess,’ Euphemia had said, ‘test your knives on something that can’t feel pain!’

Helewise was feeling pain, that was quite certain. A great deal of pain. Euphemia had found it a tough job to staunch the blood — the pad of Helewise’s finger had been cut neatly in two, right across the first segment — and it had been necessary for her to sit for some minutes holding her hand above her head, while Sister Euphemia pressed the cut edges together, before the blood had stopped pumping out. Then the infirmarer had applied a salve of white horehound, which had burned like hellfire, and bound the whole hand up tightly, instructing Helewise to try to remember to keep it held up against her left shoulder.

That, in fact, was easy to remember; the moment Helewise let the hand fall, the wound began to throb so violently that the pain increased tenfold.

It was the loss of blood that was making the Abbess feel so faint, or so Euphemia had informed her.

‘Faint,’ Helewise murmured to herself. ‘Faint.’

It made matters considerably worse. Perhaps, Helewise thought, Euphemia was right, and I should go and lie down? Not in the infirmary — I couldn’t bear it — but on my bed in the dormitory? But no! Abbesses don’t do things like that, even if their whole hand has been cut off! Abbesses keep a stiff back and an upright posture, maintaining a dignified air of quiet authority at all times. Lie on my bed, indeed!

She fixed her eyes on the Virgin’s statue and told herself not to be so feeble. She thought she saw the Virgin’s head turn slightly — she’s looking at me! — but, staring harder, realised she was mistaken. She wondered if she were hallucinating.

‘Ave, Maria…’ she began.

But the words, which she must have said thousands of times, refused to come. And so did the comfort she might have received from the saying of them.

Cradling her hurt finger in her other hand, she closed her eyes and waited, in the calming silence of the deserted shrine, for Josse’s return.

* * *

Some time later, she heard him enter the shrine. Heard the sound of boots on the steps, so it must have been Josse, for the monks and the lay brothers wore soft sandals.

‘You’re back,’ she said.

There was a grunt of agreement.

She opened her eyes and began to turn round to look at him, but it made her feel so sick that instantly she stopped. The shrine seemed to be whirling round like a spinning top, so she closed her eyes again.

She sensed him come close. Sit down beside her on the narrow form.

To her vague surprise — all her emotions seemed to be vague, she was discovering — she couldn’t remember for a moment where he had been. Then she thought she recalled a messenger … Yes. That was right. A boy had come, breathless from haste, his words tumbling over each other as he’d announced that he had to see Sir Josse d’Acquin, he brought a summons for him, an invitation to visit Brice of Rotherbridge. She wondered what that had been all about.

‘You found the Lord Brice in good spirits?’ she asked.

There was no answer for some time. Then a voice which she had never heard before said, ‘Aye, Brice is himself again. He has made his confession, done rigorous penance, and obtained absolution.’

There was such despair in those words that she felt her heart contract with compassion.

Opening her eyes again, very carefully she turned her head to her left and looked at him.

He was, she guessed from the unlined quality of his skin, in his late twenties, but looked far, far older. It wasn’t only the dramatic streak of white threading through the dark hair, nor the weary, defeated posture. It was the eyes. Those dark eyes, heavily hooded, whose lids were swollen and which were circled with grey, as if someone had filled in each entire eye socket with smudged black powder.

No wonder he spoke with such hopeless envy of Brice’s recovery; here, she was in no doubt, was a man suffering such torments, pursued by such devils of misery, that the happy state of absolution must seem as far distant as the moon.