Alys Clare - Fortune Like the Moon

Oh, dear. She wasn’t in the mood for understanding. Didn’t, apparently, want to be released from her self-accusation. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You were thinking how shiny the plinth was.’

‘Yes. I got up and had a closer look, and I could see a stain of some sort running underneath it, right at the point where it adjoins the rock wall into which it’s set. I touched the place, and the stain felt dry, sort of crusty. So I moistened the tip of my finger in the holy water and rubbed again. What came off was, I was almost sure, blood. I repeated the action, this time getting a good sample. Then there was no doubt.’

‘And you began to see what might have happened?’

‘I did. I thought of the steep, slippery steps, and, in my mind’s eye, I pictured that terrible wound in Gunnora’s neck. I saw that perfectly symmetrical cut. I’d always puzzled over that, hadn’t you?’

‘Aye.’

‘I mean, if you’re slitting someone’s throat, even with an accomplice holding them, surely you haven’t the time to make such a perfect cut?’

‘And nobody did,’ he said. ‘It was done by her falling against a circular edge. It is sharp enough?’

‘It is,’ she said with feeling. ‘I ran my forefinger gently around it, and almost sliced off the top joint. We must have it seen to — I must go and tell Brother Saul to close the shrine until we’ve done so, and he ought to send word to the silversmith immediately.’ She half-rose, as if she were going to go racing down to the vale there and then.

‘I’ll see to all that,’ Josse said hurriedly. ‘You have my word, Abbess.’

She looked doubtful.

‘My word,’ he repeated.

She bowed her head in acknowledgement, sinking back into her chair. ‘It’s sharper than any blade, you know, the edge of that plinth,’ she said. ‘For some reason, the silversmith cut off the skin of silver so that it overlapped the wooden platform. Only by a little. But it was enough to slice through flesh and sinew.’

‘She would have built up a great deal of momentum in her fall,’ Josse said. ‘Those steps are quite high, and she’d fallen from the top. Right on to that perilously sharp circle of metal.’ He shuddered.

Helewise must have noticed. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? And just imagine that poor man, Olivar, trying to clean up. Believing it was his fault, that the woman he loved so devotedly was dead because of him.’

‘The only small amount of logic there may be behind that is that it was he who requested the meeting,’ Josse pointed out.

‘But I don’t think it was. When we were talking, he and I, down in the shrine, he said that it wasn’t what he wanted, that secret tryst. Furtive, he called it. I had the impression it was something they’d agreed on before she even came to Hawkenlye, that, one day, they’d meet up and she would leave again. Only he, I think, was envisaging arriving at the main gates for her, having me ceremoniously put her hand in his. Going to the shrine was, I’m almost certain, her suggestion.’

‘Why did she change her mind?’ Josse asked, although not in any real expectation of an answer. ‘Olivar’s a fine-looking man, a man of substance, what’s more, and she surely had no doubt of his love?’

Helewise was looking at him, one eyebrow raised in faint irony. ‘Don’t you recall what I said to you, in the course of our very first meeting?’

Most of it, would have been the honest reply; she had, he recalled, said quite a lot. But then he thought he knew what she meant. ‘I do. Gunnora, you said, was not apparently bothered by the vow of chastity.’

‘Indeed.’ She leaned forward, as if eager for his understanding. ‘I have noted it before in young women — not only young ones — who enter the convent. While in the world, they do not question the ways of the world; they know what their duty as women — as wives — is, and has to be. Whether they like it or not is irrelevant. But then, when they take the veil, suddenly all that changes. The realisation that, from the very day they join us, they will for ever more sleep alone, comes to some women, I assure you, as nothing but a vast relief. Gunnora, I strongly suspect, experienced that realisation. She did not want to be any man’s wife. Certainly not Brice’s, whom she never loved, and, she discovered, not Olivar’s either.’

‘Whom she did love?’ Josse asked. He was reeling slightly from what the Abbess had just told him. He wondered if she would have spoken so freely were she not suffering from shock.

‘Did she?’ Helewise leaned back in her chair. ‘I’m not so sure. I asked the same question of that poor young man, and he said that, in return for all his protestations, she once — once! — said she thought she loved him.’

More fool him, was Josse’s instant thought, for pursuing her so singlemindedly.

But he didn’t say it aloud.

‘Her death was an accident, pure and simple,’ he said decisively after a moment. ‘I can’t think that there is any necessity for him to be arrested and put on trial, since, as I see it, there’s no question of his being responsible for her death. And, with the remains of the bloodstains under the plinth, what really happened can be proved. Do you agree, Abbess?’

‘Yes, Josse, indeed I do.’ It was, he noticed abstractedly, the first time she had called him simply by his given name. It was a timely moment for a move to more intimate terms between the two of them. ‘We shall have to make our reports on the two deaths to both the Church and the secular authorities, I suppose,’ she went on, ‘but, like you, I feel that there is no guilt attached to Olivar. He is innocent of blame over Gunnora’s death.’ She paused, frowning. ‘But I do not think we shall ever convince him of that.’

‘We must!’ he said, horrified. ‘The poor man’s life won’t be worth living, unless we do!’

The cool grey eyes looked on him with mild pity. ‘Do you think he’ll ever find it worth living anyway, without her?’

‘Of course! He’s young, and she’s not worth grieving for! She-’

‘Every one of us is worth grieving for,’ she said quietly. ‘Yes, I know what you think of her, you who hadn’t even met her.’ He heard no reproof in her words. ‘I feel the same. She was cold, she was calculating, she used people and she was not worthy of Olivar’s love and devotion. But he thinks she was. He has waited several years to claim her, and his love seems to have grown despite the absence of any encouragement from her. Why, he hadn’t even seen her, until the night of her death, for the year or more that she had been with us here!’

‘I don’t understand,’ Josse admitted. He stared at her. ‘Do you?’

‘No.’ She dropped her head into the palm of her unbandaged hand, kneading at her temple with her knuckles. ‘Not really. Not that it makes any difference.’

‘Does your head ache?’ he asked sympathetically.

‘A little.’

He stood up, moving round to her side of the table. ‘Why not lie down?’ he suggested. ‘You’ve lost a lot of blood, you’ve solved a murder that wasn’t, you’re in pain from both your hurt finger and your head. Don’t you think it’s time, my dear Abbess Helewise, to admit you’re only human, and need a good, long sleep?’

Her head flew up at his words, and he thought she was going to tick him off for his presumption. But then, to his great surprise, she began to laugh. ‘I don’t see what’s funny,’ he said, quite offended. ‘I was only trying to help.’

‘Oh, Josse, I know!’ She had recovered her solemnity. ‘Between you and that old hen Euphemia, I don’t think I stand a chance of staying here at my post for the rest of the day. So I think I might just give in. I must admit, the thought of lying down somewhere quiet, with a pleasant breeze to cool me, and one of Sister Euphemia’s cold lavender compresses on my forehead, is increasingly appealing…’ She stood up, too quickly, and he caught her as she toppled.