Alys Clare - Fortune Like the Moon

Who was he? Someone, clearly, acquainted with Brice of Rotherbridge.

But first things first.

She said, very calmly and quietly, ‘Are you here to pray, friend?’

A brief light of hope entered his eyes at her form of address, but, as quickly as it had come, it was extinguished.

‘I cannot pray,’ he said flatly. ‘I have tried, others have tried with me. The monks in the holiest shrine in all England have done their best for me. But it is hopeless. I am beyond help.’

‘No man is beyond God’s love,’ she said, maintaining the same level tone. ‘That is Christ’s message to us, that, with genuine repentance, we are to be forgiven.’

There was a silence.

Since he did not seem about to break it, she said, ‘Will you pray with me, now? Our Blessed Lady is here, see? She will listen.’

It had worked with others at the very end of their endurance; Helewise had sat, up at the Abbey and down here in the shrine, with seemingly hopeless cases, talking quietly, listening to the outpourings that told of a life gone wrong, of one bad deed leading with dreadful inevitability to the next, until the downward spiral of sin upon sin spun away out of control. Then, when they were empty of words, cried out of tears, she would begin to help them back up the long and difficult slope.

Yes. She had seen men — and women — apparently far beyond God’s love, brought back into the precious fold.

She watched the dark-haired man.

Slowly he raised his head until his sore eyes looked up at the statue of the Virgin. For a moment a half-smile spread over the handsome features, but then it was gone. His face falling, he said hoarsely, ‘Here, of all places, I cannot pray. She — Our Lady there — is watching me, like she did that night. She knows what happened. She knows that, but for me, Gunnora would still be alive.’

He turned to Helewise, and his hands suddenly gripped at her shoulders with surprising strength. ‘She promised me!’ he shouted. ‘ Promised! It was to be that night, she said it would, after all my years of waiting! I didn’t rush her, I didn’t try to persuade her out of coming here, for all that I felt it was wrong. You welcomed her, didn’t you? Believed she really had a vocation, wanted to make a good nun! When, all along, it was just a place to hide away till the heat died down and Brice was safely married.’

Helewise’s head spun with a dozen questions. But now, when this poor tormented soul was in the throes of spilling all the pain out of him, was not the time to ask them. She said, ‘Yes, we made her welcome.’

He dropped his hands. ‘I know, I could tell! You are good women. Too good for-’ Too good for Gunnora? Abruptly he stopped, as if pulling himself up short of that betrayal. ‘We should have told them, all of them at home, from the start,’ he went on instead. ‘It wouldn’t have been easy, when her father was set on her marrying Brice, but I believe we could have won him round. He was a decent father, according to his own lights. I don’t think he would have insisted on doing things his way, when everyone else involved wanted it to be otherwise. But Gunnora was not to be diverted.’ He glanced at Helewise. ‘For some time, at the start, I became very worried. I thought she might actually enjoy being a nun, and I was terrified that she’d decide to stay at Hawkenlye. That I’d lose her.’

As he spoke, Helewise noticed, his hands were gripping at a fold of his tunic hem, pleating it first this way, then the other, with such force that the material was crushed beyond recovery. There was a compulsiveness about the repetitive action that spoke of a deeply troubled man.

For the first time, she felt afraid.

Don’t think of yourself, she commanded her quaking soul. Think of him.

It helped.

‘She knew how much you loved her?’ she asked. The man hadn’t spoken of love, but she was quite certain she was right to assume it.

‘Of course! I told her, over and over again!’

‘And did she return your love?’

‘Yes! Yes! ’ Then, after a pause, ‘I think so. She once said she thought she loved me. But it would have grown!’ He spoke very rapidly, as if he wanted to defend himself against a protest which he hadn’t given Helewise the chance to make. ‘It was enough, that she had the beginnings of love for me! Wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ It was the only possible response.

‘My brother said I was a fool,’ he went on. ‘Brice didn’t mind Gunnora not wanting to marry him, and he could never see why I loved her so much. But we’d grown up together, you see. I’d assumed, like everyone else, that she’d marry Brice, but I always hoped something might happen … God forgive me, but once I found myself hoping he’d die, then she’d marry me. My own brother!’ Tears sprang into his eyes.

‘We all have bad thoughts sometimes,’ Helewise said. ‘But we don’t mean them. Do we? You would never have turned your brief, private hope that your brother would die into reality, would you? Nor have failed to grieve deeply and honestly had he died?’

‘No! No, of course not.’

‘Well, then.’ She gave him a quick smile, hoping to reassure. ‘God sees into our hearts, you know. Give Him credit for that.’

The man nodded slowly. ‘Yes. That’s what the Canterbury monks said.’ Briefly he seemed to brighten, but then, as if some further dread thought took over his mind, he said mournfully, ‘But Christ and His Holy Mother won’t understand about Gunnora.’

Offering a swift prayer of her own, Helewise took a steadying breath and said, ‘I believe that I understand, now. Why not try them and see if they do?’

* * *

They told Josse up at the Abbey that the Abbess Helewise was praying. Not finding her in the church, he hurried on down into the vale and, for some unknown reason walking with exaggerated stealth, approached the shrine.

The door was ajar. Putting his face to the opening, he looked inside.

Down at the foot of the steps, sitting side by side on a bench that stood on the only flat area of floor, were Helewise and Olivar.

His instinct was to hurl himself forward; for some reason which he did not pause to analyse, he had the clear impression she was in danger.

He made himself stop. Stood perfectly still, listening.

Helewise had placed a heavily bandaged hand over Olivar’s hands, folded in his lap. She was leaning towards him, and Josse heard the tail end of what she was saying: ‘… try them and see if they do?’

Olivar didn’t respond for some moments, and, in the brief pause, Josse wondered wildly what he was doing there. Had he come to mourn Gunnora, in this the nearest place of worship to where she had been murdered? Or — frightening thought! — had he somehow discovered that Milon was responsible for the death of the woman he had loved, and was here to find him and extract his own vengeance?

Helewise, good woman that she was, seemed to have calmed him; Olivar was looking relaxed, Josse thought, perhaps persuaded by the Abbess into believing that praying for Gunnora’s soul was better than seeking out her killer, and that-

But just then Olivar began to speak, and Josse turned his full attention to listening.

‘We were to meet here, in the shrine, in the hour before dawn,’ he said. ‘She would attend Matins, then return with the sisters to the dormitory. But, as soon as she thought they were all asleep, she was going to get up and creep out. I said I’d wait from midnight onwards — I didn’t mind how long it was till she came, I just didn’t want her arriving first. I got here while you were at your devotions.’

‘You must have had a long vigil,’ Helewise’s soft voice said.

‘Yes, but I was so happy at the thought of seeing her again that I didn’t mind. It had been months since we’d had any contact — we’d only been able to make that tryst because of her silly cousin’s fun and games. I gave Elanor a letter for Gunnora, you see. I said a lot, wrote of my love for her. I wrote too much, perhaps. But I didn’t think it would matter — it was only for Gunnora’s eyes, Elanor couldn’t read. Nor could Gunnora, not really. At least, not very fluently. I suppose I was wasting my time.’ There was the smallest suggestion of amusement in the voice. ‘Then she — Gunnora — did as I suggested and left her brief reply hidden for me in a crack in the wall out there.’ He waved a hand towards the doorway; Josse, afraid that one or other of them might turn round, swiftly moved back out of sight.