Alys Clare - The Joys of My Life

It was stalemate and neither Helewise nor Martin saw any way to break it. Meanwhile the team of stonemasons sat idle in the camp they had erected down in the vale and, as everyone knew, the devil had a habit of finding mischief for men with time on their hands.

In due course mischief arrived. Two days after the arrival of the masons, a badly wounded man wrapped in a bloodstained cloak was found at the abbey gates by the porteress when she went to open up after the first office of the day. The cloak was wet with dew and the man’s hands so icy to the touch that at first Sister Ursel thought he was dead. Sister Martha, hurrying over from the stables on hearing the porteress’s cry, bent down, put her cheek to the man’s lips and said, ‘He’s breathing. Come, Ursel, we must take him to the infirmary before he bleeds to death.’

Sister Euphemia, busy organizing the early morning round of patient care, told the two nuns to put the man in the curtained-off recess at the end of the long ward. Summoning Sister Caliste, she stripped him, washed off the blood and inspected his wounds. He had been savagely attacked; there were blows to the forehead and left cheek, cuts and bruises to the shoulders and chest, and a deep slashing wound across the throat. Although this had bled copiously, Sister Euphemia discovered that no major vessel had been damaged; she watched as Sister Caliste neatly stitched the wound and then she prepared a dressing soaked in comfrey and diluted lavender oil and covered it up.

The man remained unconscious for most of the day. As the sun set, his eyelids fluttered open and he gave a hoarse cry. While Sister Caliste tried to calm his extreme agitation, Sister Euphemia hurried to find the abbess.

‘I am Abbess Helewise and you are safe in Hawkenlye Abbey,’ Helewise said, bending over the man a few moments later. He was, she noticed in a quick assessment, in his middle years, lean-faced and wiry, with greying light brown hair and hazel eyes set in a face whose lines indicated that he was more inclined to happiness than misery.

He stared up at her. ‘How long have I been here?’

‘You were found outside the gates this morning. You were wounded but the infirmarer and her nurse have tended you and they believe you will live.’ She smiled.

‘My throat hurts,’ he said. Raising a hand, his fingers encountered the soft dressing. His face crumpled and he whispered, ‘I thought I was going to die!’

Sister Caliste gave him a few sips of a greenish-coloured drink and after a moment or two his eyes closed.

‘I will leave him to sleep,’ Helewise whispered, ‘and not bother him with questions until-’

The man’s hand shot out and he grasped her sleeve. ‘No!’ he croaked. ‘I must tell you, my lady abbess, for there is such danger and I am so afraid!’ He struggled as if trying to get up, but as soon as his head was off the flat pillow his face paled and he moaned, ‘Oh, but I’m so dizzy!’

Sister Euphemia gently but firmly pushed him down again. ‘You have lost a lot of blood,’ she said. ‘Lie flat and still, and let us heal you.’

He gave her an ironic smile. ‘It seems I have little choice,’ he said. ‘But there are things I must tell you, my lady — ’ he turned his eyes to Helewise — ‘terrible things, and the evil is right here…’ His eyes closed.

Helewise looked enquiringly at the infirmarer. ‘He’s rambling,’ Sister Euphemia whispered, ‘probably doesn’t know what he’s saying. I dare say there’s a bit of fever in his blood and he’ll-’

The man’s eyes were open once more. ‘It is a secret, my lady,’ he whispered, ‘a black, dark secret that was discovered by the Thirteen Knights long ago and far away. They knew its vast importance and they swore an oath to protect it. Thirteen, you see — the magic number that is the sum of moons in the year. There must always be thirteen and each one nominates his successor, so that as one dies the next takes his place and the company of the Knights of Arcturus is always complete.’ He stopped, for the effort of speaking had made him gasp for breath. Sister Caliste offered more of the drink but he pushed her hand away; perhaps, Helewise thought, he realizes that it is a sedative and will take no more until his tale is told, although the great effort hardly seemed worth it when he was talking such incomprehensible nonsense.

‘I was summoned in my turn, my lady,’ he went on, grasping her hand in a painful grip, ‘but it was odd, for the call came not from my old uncle, to whom I was close, but from another of the thirteen. My uncle did send me a message, but it was not the summons I expected when I learned he was dying. I could not understand it — I do not understand it even now — for my uncle sent me a note that was encrypted in a code only he and I knew, and he told me to stay away. Now what, dear lady, am I to make of that?’

Perhaps nothing, Helewise thought compassionately, for you are sick and probably have no idea what you are saying. In the morning, all this will seem like a bad dream and we shall find out what really happened to you. ‘Try not to distress yourself,’ she said soothingly. ‘Drink the medicine that Sister Caliste has prepared, for it will help you to sleep and ease your pain. Tomorrow we shall speak again and I-’

‘Tomorrow may be too late!’ the man cried, his voice breaking. ‘I cannot… I cannot…’

The strong herbs were having their effect at last. As the infirmarer, Sister Caliste and Helewise watched, his eyelids drooped, the desperate tension in his face relaxed, and he seemed to slump down in his bed.

Sister Euphemia said softly, ‘That’s more like it. He’s stopped fighting now and he’ll sleep till morning, which will give his body time to start healing itself.’ She smoothed the crisp linen sheet over the man’s chest, now rising and falling with the long, steady breaths of deep sleep. ‘We’ll look after him, my lady,’ she added, ‘and I’ll send word when he’s ready to talk to you.’

‘Thank you, Sister Euphemia. Well done — ’ she addressed Sister Caliste — ‘you have provided the rest that he so badly needed.’

Then she turned her back on the infirmary’s worrying but intriguing new patient and went back to her room to return to the vexing question of the new chapel.

I n te mid-morning something else happened to push the problem of the chapel from her attention: Josse arrived and before him on the big horse sat his daughter.

Helewise, who had been on her way to the infirmary to see if the new patient was awake, saw them ride in and hurried over.

‘May I leave Horace here?’ Josse said after the most perfunctory of greetings.

‘Of course, but-’

Josse had slipped down from the saddle and was lowering Meggie to the ground. ‘Meggie, take Horace over there to the stables,’ he said to her, pointing. ‘He knows the way and he won’t be naughty.’

Meggie, Helewise observed, did not need that assurance. She seemed to have no fear of the big horse but, on the contrary, treated him with such easy familiarity that he might have been a pet puppy, though her head, with its brown curls, barely reached Horace’s broad chest.

Josse was whispering urgently and Helewise turned to listen. ‘She turned up all by herself at New Winnowlands yesterday afternoon,’ he said, ‘and I need to find out who brought her and where her mother is.’

‘Joanna is not in the forest?’

He hesitated. Then, ‘No. I last saw her in Chartres.’

In Chartres! Oh, why had he not mentioned it? Watching his face, in which the profound anxiety was all too readable, she realized that now was not the time to ask. ‘You’re going to speak to the Domina?’

‘I need to speak to one of them, but the Domina may be in Chartres too — they’re up to something there, something to do with the new cathedral. I can’t fathom it.’ He sounded both distressed and angry.