Alys Clare - The Joys of My Life

‘Yet they did not kill you too?’ Josse said. It was surprising, since if the knights had found out that Piers was no more corruptible than his uncle, why had they allowed him to live?

Piers gave a hollow laugh. ‘Oh, they tried,’ he said bitterly, ‘and I’ve been on the run from them ever since. Don’t let them find me,’ he said desperately, his eyes going rapidly from Josse to the abbess and back. ‘You must not, for they… they are an abomination.’ The last word was barely a whisper.

‘We will guard you to the best of our ability,’ the abbess said. ‘You will never be left alone here in the infirmary, where nuns are on duty day and night. The gates are locked at sunset,’ she added.

‘Do they know you’ve come to England?’ Josse asked. He thought he already knew the answer.

‘One, the worst of them, yes, he knows.’ Piers gave a shudder. ‘As for the others, I cannot say for sure. They have spies everywhere, though, so I expect word has been sent to summon them.’

‘And they know where your home is?’

‘They do.’ Piers exchanged a glance with him. ‘Which is why I have no intention of going there.’ He twisted in his bed and gave a cry of pain; Josse saw a line of bloody patches suddenly bloom out along the bandage round his throat.

Sister Caliste sprang forward. ‘Keep still!’ she ordered, already picking at the edge of the pad that the bandage held in place. ‘The stitches are pulling — you must rest, Sir Piers.’ Glancing up at the abbess, she said, ‘Please, my lady, he does himself harm when he becomes agitated.’

‘We will return later,’ the abbess said and, with a glance at Josse, led the way out of the recess. ‘Someone tried to cut his throat,’ she said very quietly as they walked back to her room. ‘He has not told us anything of the attack, but he was badly beaten, so perhaps he has no memory of it.’

‘Aye, that’s likely,’ Josse agreed. ‘My lady, I am concerned about this lad that he took with him to the rendezvous. He has not spoken of the boy’s fate.’

‘I noticed that too,’ she said. ‘I pray that he is safe.’

Josse had been thinking very hard ever since he had heard Piers’s story. What if it was to the Ile d’Oleron that Piers of Essendon had gone for this rendezvous? What if the Knights of Arcturus had decided that his young squire would make a suitable victim for their abhorrent practices? Supposing Piers had fiercely objected both the terrible deed they were about to do and their choice of victim and somehow had managed to get his squire safely away. Then, when the rest of the knights discovered that they had fled, two of them — perhaps including Philippe de Loup himself — had, together with the late king, set out after them, the three of them rowed out by the dark Oleron guard to the waiting boat. They must have been desperate to catch Piers; once they realized that he was not going to join them, the decision must surely have been made to kill him. He knew far too much about them to be allowed to live. He knew too — he must do — that King Richard was either of their number or at the least an eager witness to their foul practices.

But had Piers been telling the truth when he claimed to have had no knowledge of the knights’ foul reputation, or was the truth rather that he had known, had gone eagerly to the island with a victim to offer up and then something had gone wrong? Perhaps now, to cover his tracks, he was only pretending to be horrified…

Josse dragged his mind back from that unpleasant thought. What he had been trying to decide, all the time Piers was speaking, was if he should now tell the abbess the full story of the horror that had happened on Oleron. It was all very well for the queen to swear him to secrecy; now that this ghastly business had surfaced in England — right here in Hawkenlye Abbey — he was convinced that secrecy was no longer of prime importance.

Interrupting the abbess, who was still speculating anxiously about the fate of Piers’s young squire, he said, ‘My lady, there are more things I must tell you.’

Then, once they were safely behind the closed door of her room, at last he revealed to her the full account of what Queen Eleanor had commanded him to do and what he had discovered since.

When he finished, her face was ashen.

Josse could not settle. It had been a relief to unburden himself to the abbess, but since finishing his long discussion with her — which, comforting though it was, had not really offered any answers — he had been distracted from anything he had tried to do. Not wanting to distress Meggie, who picked up his moods with uncanny accuracy, he left her helping Sister Tiphaine pick herbs and took himself off for a walk.

He found that he had gone straight into the forest. Not thinking, letting whatever force that was acting on him guide his steps, he went slowly on and, as he had thought he would, in time he came to the clearing where Joanna lived in her little hut.

The open space around it was neat and tidy, just as presumably she had left it, although he noticed that the herb beds badly needed weeding and many of the shrubs were showing riotous growth. He went over to the door of the hut, unfastened the complicated knot in the rope that kept it closed and went inside. He was instantly hit with her presence, for the little room was redolent with the scent of sweet herbs and hay.

It was warm; the sun outside was hot. Feeling drowsy, he climbed up on to the sleeping platform and closed his eyes. It was as if she were beside him. He could smell the delicate floral scent that seemed to cloud around her; he could feel her cool, firm flesh. ‘Joanna,’ he whispered, ‘where are you?’

There was no answer.

He must have slipped into a light sleep for suddenly she was there with him, lying behind him and cuddled up against his back; she felt so solid that he knew she was real. But I’m dreaming, he thought, confused. Then he stopped trying to work it out and simply relaxed against her. ‘Joanna,’ he said again, and he thought he heard her say, ‘I love you, Josse. I always will.’

He awoke to darkness and he was shivering with cold. Hurrying out of the hut — without her, it was not a place he wanted to be — he realized that in fact the sun had not yet quite set. He carefully closed the door and retied the rope. Then, still under the influence of his vivid dream, he made his stumbling, bemused way back to the abbey.

He was not sure when he first knew he was being followed; in his present condition, he realized that his senses were very far from their usual sharp state and it proved quite difficult to make himself attentive. He moved on, trying to be quiet, and the unseen shadow came after him.

It was a huge relief at last to see the open space beyond the last of the trees. He emerged from the forest on to the patch of ground beneath Meggie’s oak tree and automatically looked up at the place where the figure had been. It was back there once more.

From the darkness behind him he thought he heard someone take a soft breath. There was the faint crack of a snapped twig and a whistling sound that could have been a sword stealthily drawn from its scabbard.

It was too much. Josse broke out of whatever spell held him there and ran as fast as he could for the abbey gates.

The abbey was no longer the calm refuge that it was designed to be. Several times a day, ox carts came slowly down the track, heavily laden with sandstone blocks from small local quarries and huge loads of timber. The stonemasons had set up their workplace close to the apron where Martin wished to site the new chapel, and within the abbey walls the air was full of dust and noise.

Helewise recognized that Martin had chosen a sensible place for his masons to prepare the stone, but a petulant voice in her head kept demanding, ‘Why is he working just there, as if he would emphasize that it is the only place for the queen’s chapel?’