Candace Robb - The Riddle Of St Leonard's

‘Is that why you still shoot so well, Captain? Because you feel how to adjust your aim?’

‘Somewhat. And days, weeks, months of training myself over again after I lost my eye.’

‘So you meant to continue as captain of archers?’

‘Nay, lad. I meant to sail to Italy and offer my services as a mercenary. Over there, a man might make enough to live in such service.’

‘You wanted to become a mercenary?’

‘A dark, devilish secret, eh? I lusted for blood.’ Owen laughed to see the surprise on Jasper’s face. He patted the boy on the back. ‘Nay, ’twas nothing so terrible. I could think of naught else to do. My lord was dead. I believed he had kept me in his service after I’d lost my eye out of Christian duty. Henry of Grosmont was a devout man, a man of honour and grace. His successor was the son of the King. He had a retinue. What need would he have of a half-blind archer? Or a spy? So I planned, worked, then found myself taken up by the archbishop.’

‘God watched over you.’

‘Most days I think that. I would not be Lucie’s husband were it not for His Grace.’ Owen shifted so that he might see Jasper’s face more clearly. The boy sat with legs bent, knees high, hands behind propping him up at an angle, his bony shoulders hunched. An age of angles and long limbs. ‘Which brings me to something that is weighing on my mind.’

Jasper clenched his jaw, shook his head once so his straight flaxen locks fell across his eyes. ‘I know. You wish to send me away.’

‘For Lucie’s sake, Jasper, not mine. I would lief have you here. You are a fine apprentice, and she needs you in the shop. But she is thinking of the last time, when the pestilence took her son Martin. She believes it is the children who are in the most danger. And it does seem so. Even with all their care, the sisters of St Leonard’s have lost several orphans, but only Matilda de Warrene and John Rudby among the grown men and women.’

Jasper sat up, turned to Owen. ‘Mistress Warrene? So they were plague things burned at the hospital.’ His eyes were earnest. A little too earnest for the subject matter.

‘Do not try to change the direction of this conversation, Jasper.’

The boy slumped again, head down, hair in his eyes. ‘I must stay in the city, Captain. I am Mistress Lucie’s apprentice. I am bound to stay, I am bound to do what I can to help the people of York against the pestilence.’

‘But if Lucie is right you are one of those in greatest danger.’

Jasper’s head shot up again. ‘I am not a child.’

‘Aye, ’tis true. You are thirteen, not a babe. But not yet so far from it.’

Jasper leaned forward, elbows on knees, looking out at the water. ‘What would I do all day?’

Ah. More to the heart of the matter. ‘Sir Robert would find occupation for you. You would not tend the children.’

The lad was silent for a time. Owen thought perhaps he had run out of arguments. But when Jasper spoke, that hope evaporated.

‘Mistress Lucie spoke of Brother Wulfstan the other day, how he is risking his life to go among the sick in the city because so many of the priests are fearful to go near those with the pestilence.’ Brother Wulfstan was the infirmarian of St Mary’s Abbey. ‘She said it is dangerous for him, far more so than for others, because he is so old. But she spoke of him with admiration.’ He glanced at Owen to see his reaction.

Owen could not help but smile. The lad was bright, and a good debater. ‘Lucie is worried for him, Jasper. She prays for him.’ Lucie and Wulfstan were old friends.

‘But she believes he is fulfilling his vow. I, too, have such a vow.’

Owen gazed on the flaxen-haired, gangly youth and found himself loath to argue further. ‘I always said you grew so fast, one day I would look on you and think you a stranger. And there you sit, suddenly a young man.’

‘Then I can stay?’

‘How are we to reassure Lucie?’

‘I do not mean to cause her pain.’

‘The pain is not your fault, lad. It comes from memories. I see her suddenly turn pale, or her eyes grow dark, and I cannot understand what brought the memory, the pain. A scent? A sound? And even with all of you gone to the country I cannot say that would cease. Such pain dulls with time, but never disappears.’

Jasper had grown quiet, and Owen realised how thoughtless he had been. Jasper had painful memories of his own — by his ninth year he had lost both parents, and the man who was to become his foster father. ‘Come. Let me see whether your shoulder remembers what I taught it today.’

The novice Gervase showed Jasper into the infirmary at St Mary’s Abbey. Brother Henry glanced up from his prayers with a worried frown. ‘I pray you do not seek Brother Wulfstan for someone in your household?’

‘No,’ Jasper said. ‘I need to speak with him. I need advice.’

The subinfirmarian got to his feet. ‘I need advice myself. How do I stop him? How do I protect him?’

‘From tending the sick in the city?’

Henry’s eyes were wild. ‘Night and day. He comes but to eat and gather more physicks, then he goes forth again. He says he sleeps at their bedsides.’

‘What does Abbot Campian say?’

‘My lord abbot says, “One does not stop a saint from his work.”’ Henry stuffed his hands up his sleeves, shook his head. ‘I have tried sending novices with Brother Wulfstan, but he convinces them to return alone. He is impossible.’

‘Do you think he will be back today?’

‘Oh yes, yes. You are welcome to wait. Pray for him whilst you do, lad. Pray for him.’

Jasper chose to wait in the abbey garden, among Brother Wulfstan’s lovingly tended beds of medicinal plants. This garden gave him solace, for it was here that Jasper had first understood he might love someone as much as he had loved the parents he had lost. It was Wulfstan who had helped him see that. Jasper knelt, pinched off some spent blossoms, watched a pollen-laden bee in slow, awkward flight among the flowers. He noticed a lop-sided lavender. Someone must have assisted Brother Wulfstan with the pruning, someone clumsy with a clipper. It made Jasper’s stomach ache to think of someone other than Brother Wulfstan tending the garden.

‘You are sad, my child?’ Wulfstan smiled and spread his arms wide as Jasper looked up, startled, then threw himself into the old monk’s embrace, suddenly a child once more. Wulfstan patted him, let him cling until his heart stopped racing. Then the old monk dropped his arms, stepped back, lifted Jasper’s chin. ‘No tears, so it is not a loss that brings you here.’

Jasper was glad he had stayed the tears. Brother Wulfstan did not need reminders of his age. ‘Mistress Lucie wants to send me to Freythorpe Hadden. Gwenllian and Hugh are already there.’

Wulfstan tilted his bald head, sucked in his wrinkled cheeks, nodded. ‘Ah. Lucie thinks to protect you from the pestilence. And who would blame her? Have you yet seen a victim, Jasper?’

‘Not this time, but when I was very young I had a sister die of it.’

The old monk rested a hand on Jasper’s head. ‘I did not know you had a sister.’

When Jasper thought back to that frightening time he could smell the horrible sickness again. ‘Her name was Anne. She would scream when anyone tried to clean the swelling in her armpits and on her neck. My mother tried to heat them so they would burst, but she could not bring herself to lance them.’

‘If your mother were here now, would she not be frightened for you, remembering her loss?’

‘But my place is here. I am Mistress Lucie’s apprentice.’

Wulfstan’s pale eyes were sympathetic. ‘Come. Let us sit on the bench. My legs ache.’ Wulfstan shuffled over to a stone bench beneath a linden tree. He settled down on it with a grunt and drew a cloth from beneath his scapula, shook it out, blotted his forehead and upper lip and the back of his neck. ‘Winter is the curse of old age, but summer this year does not feel much kinder. The Lord slows me down. Perhaps He means me to retire to the chapel and contemplation.’