Alys Clare: The Rose of the World

Leaving his sentence unfinished, he had turned back to Caliste and shrugged. Then he and his men had ridden away.

She looked down at her notes, trying yet again to reconcile the tiny allowance with the minimum she knew she needed to keep the abbey alive. It could not be done. Resisting the overriding urge to drop her head on her hands and howl — a waste of time that would be — she closed her eyes, folded her hands together and forced her weary, desperate mind to think.

So many people depended on her, one way or another. She had to find a way to help them. She sat up straight, squared her shoulders and went back to her calculations.

The House in the Woods had a new name: it was officially called Hawkenlye Manor. Few people referred to it in that way. The country people had long memories, and they did not like change. The House in the Woods had been good enough for their parents and their grandparents — probably their great-grandparents too — so why go altering it?

On that late October day, Josse was returning home after a long ride. His old horse Horace had finally died, at an age so advanced that Josse could no longer calculate it, and now he rode a lighter horse that his young son Geoffroi had insisted be called Alfred. Josse and his family had known Alfred from when he was newborn, for he was descended from a golden mare called Honey who had once belonged to Geoffroi’s mother, Joanna. Alfred had inherited his grand-dam’s golden coat, but his dark mane and the luxuriously long tail were all his own.

As was his intractable temperament; Josse had been riding him for two years now, but his manners still left quite a lot to be desired. Today’s excursion had been to remind Alfred who was in control, and Josse was feeling sore and tired. He was also feeling maudlin, for almost without his volition he had found himself riding past the track in the forest that led off to the hut where Joanna had lived.

She had been gone for more than ten years now, but he still missed her. She was the mother of his two children, Meggie and Geoffroi, and also of his adopted son, Ninian. Her death — if, indeed, she really was dead — had left a hole in his life that had never been filled. That line of thought, too, made him sad.

Helewise had come to live at the House in the Woods. After waiting for her for so many years, finally she was there, under his very roof. She had arrived back in June — Good Lord, he thought, was it only four months ago? — and to begin with he had been so overjoyed that he had not noticed that all was not as he had hoped. She might have left the abbey, renounced her vows and become an ordinary woman, but the problem was — or so he saw it — that in her heart she was still a nun.

It’s only to be expected, he told himself as he rode along. She wasn’t just a nun, she was an abbess, and of a great foundation at that. Nobody can be expected to leave the religious life and all that it entailed behind in a few months!

It was some five years since Helewise had actually lived within the abbey. Soon after the death of Queen Eleanor back in 1202, Helewise had begun to implement the plans which had long been in her mind. She had quit Hawkenlye in stages, the first one being to stand down as abbess, witness the election and the installation of Caliste as her successor, and then go to live in the tiny little cell adjoining the new chapel on the edge of the forest. The chapel was dedicated to St Edmund and had been built on the orders of Eleanor in memory of Richard, the late king and her favourite son.

The pope’s action against King John had effectively closed the abbey to outsiders, and although Josse knew full well that Hawkenlye had done its best to go on being a place of refuge, help and succour, the task had been all but impossible. The attention of the king and his agents had always hovered over the abbey — it was just too important a foundation to be overlooked — and many were of the opinion that John would have robbed the abbey of all its treasures had he not feared the wrath of his formidable mother. Dead she might be, but apparently it made no difference.

The keen glance of the king, however, had slid over St Edmund’s Chapel and its little cell without pausing to look properly. Had he done so, he would have seen something quite surprising. The people, finding the church inside the abbey locked and barred, had quietly transferred their devotion to the chapel. Its door was always open, and there was usually a candle burning on its simple altar. Down in its hidden crypt it concealed a treasure known to very few, and it was perhaps the power of this secret that kept the chapel safe from those who wished it ill.

Whatever the truth of it, the people had a place where they could pray. Not only that, for the chapel had its own guardian, and she was a woman whose reputation went before her. She was always there for those in need, providing a smile, a kind word, a simple but nourishing plate of food, a warming drink; even, on occasions, a blanket on the floor for those too tired to make the journey home until morning. As the years passed, she also began to give remedies for the more common ailments, taught and helped in her work by both Tiphaine, the abbey’s former herbalist, and Josse’s daughter, Meggie.

In the summer, however, Helewise had implemented the second stage of her withdrawal from the abbey. The House in the Woods had grown in the decade since Josse had gone with his household to live in it, and there had been plenty of room for another resident. However, the sweet hopes that Josse had cherished of Helewise living in any sort of intimacy with him had been swiftly shattered. Quietly, she had explained what she needed: a small room readily accessible to visitors where she could receive and help those who came seeking her, with a little sleeping space leading off it. In effect, he had realized miserably, her desire was to reproduce her cell beside the chapel.

The trouble was, as Josse saw it, that the rest of the world still thought she was an abbess. Or, at least, the whole of the suffering, needy community in and around Hawkenlye did, which, as far as Josse was concerned, was the only part of the world that mattered.

It was all to do with the wretched interdict. Out in the forest, alone except for Alfred and unlikely to be overheard, Josse gave vent to his feelings and cursed the pope, the king, the interdict, the excommunication and everything else that was presently caused him distress.

The echoes of his angry shouts died away. Alfred twitched his ears sympathetically — he was growing on Josse, despite his stubborn nature — and Josse resumed his musings.

To cheer himself up he thought about the beloved people who would be waiting for him at home. His daughter Meggie, he knew, wasn’t there. He had actually been quite close to her earlier that day, when he had ridden past the track leading to Joanna’s hut. Meggie went over there quite often, and she kept both the tiny dwelling and its herb garden tidy and cared for. Sometimes she would not return for several days. Over the years, Josse had learned to curb his anxiety. She was, he knew, more than capable of taking care of herself and, just like her mother, she seemed to cherish the quiet, secret hut and its almost magical setting.

It was hardly surprising that even someone whose big feet were as firmly planted on the good earth as Josse’s should sense the magic, even if he did not understand it. Joanna had been one of the Great Ones of the strange forest people, as had her mother Mag before her. Both Mag and Joanna had left much of their power within the hut and its little clearing, and now Meggie — who, according to her people’s predictions, would be the greatest of them all — was adding to what they had so freely bestowed.

Meggie had been absent now for a couple of days. Josse hoped she would soon return. He never dared tell her how much he missed her when she was away but, being the woman she was, he probably didn’t need to.