Alys Clare - The Joys of My Life

‘He’s a foreigner?’ Canon Mark demanded.

‘Aye, from an island off the west coast of France.’

Canon Mark was nodding vigorously. ‘He was here! He slept in our guest wing for a night, a day and another night, and we judged that he had ridden far and needed sleep. Other than leaving food and drink for him, we left him alone. Oh, Sir Josse, why did he not tell us he was injured? We would have sent for a healer to tend him! Sabin lives close by and she-’

‘I believe he had his reasons for keeping his wound to himself,’ Josse interrupted. ‘I am sorry, Canon Mark, that I cannot tell you more, but for now I must know where he is. You said he was here; when did he leave?’

‘But-’

‘Please.’

Picking up Josse’s urgency, Canon Mark put aside his curiosity and his distress at having unwittingly failed a guest who was in need and said, ‘He left us yesterday evening. He set off up the road that climbs the hill to the south.’

The road that led to Hawkenlye. And to the forest.

Hastily thanking the canon, Josse ran for the stables, dragged Horace’s nose out of the water trough and, swinging up into the saddle, rode furiously away.

He wanted more than anything to find Ninian, but of the two of them he was the safer, for his hiding place was deep in the forest and he was under its protection. Piers, on the other hand, was known to be wounded and lay helpless in a place where anyone who asked a couple of questions could find him.

Josse handed the blowing, sweating Horace to Sister Martha and raced to the infirmary. He knew even before he had the chance to ask, for the curtains around Piers’s recess were drawn back and the bed was empty.

Sister Caliste and a young nun in the white veil of a novice had stripped the sheets and were wiping down the straw mattress. Both looked deeply upset, and the younger nun had tears on her face. Seeing Josse, Sister Caliste spoke a quiet word to her companion and then came over to Josse, taking his arm and guiding him out of the infirmary.

‘He’s dead, then,’ Josse said.

She nodded. ‘We found him this morning.’

It was callous in the face of her distress, but he had to ask. ‘His injury overcame him at last?’

‘No, Sir Josse.’ She spoke very quietly. ‘He was much improved, for the infection in the wound was retreating and his fever was down.’ She met his eyes. ‘Sister Euphemia found tiny feathers in his nostrils. She thinks someone put his pillow over his face and held it there until he died.’

There was nothing more that Josse could do for Piers, but Ninian was out in the forest and Josse certainly could — must — help him. First he had to speak to the abbess.

‘Where is Abbess Helewise?’ he demanded of Sister Caliste.

‘Oh, she and Sister Euphemia have gone to the church with Piers’s body. They’ll be in the crypt.’

He hurried away, slowing to a decorous walk as he crossed the floor of the church but then descending the stone steps into the crypt so quickly that he slipped and almost fell. Bursting into the low chamber with the huge pillars holding up the vaulted roof, he saw the two black-clad figures standing either side of the dead man.

He approached the abbess. ‘Sister Caliste tells me that he was smothered,’ he said, keeping his voice low.

‘He was,’ Sister Euphemia said grimly. Then, tears welling in her eyes, she muttered, ‘And he was on the mend! We’d have had him on his feet inside a week.’

The abbess looked at him. ‘You will no doubt be able to identify the hand of his murderer, Sir Josse?’

‘Aye. Philippe de Loup.’

‘Why should anyone want to kill a man like Piers?’ the infirmarer asked sadly. ‘There was no harm in him — he bore his suffering bravely and we all liked him so much.’

‘Aye, he was a good man and he is dead because of it,’ Josse said slowly, the realization firming in his mind as he spoke. ‘Sister,’ he said to the infirmarer, ‘he was invited to join in an activity that was both a crime and a sin, and he refused. He took away something that was precious from the hands of men who were no longer worthy of it, and for that he had to die.’

The infirmarer was staring at him. ‘He was a hero, then?’

Josse hesitated briefly and then said, ‘Aye. He was.’

And Sister Euphemia said, with the ghost of a smile, ‘I knew it all the time.’

He nodded to the abbess and, picking up his signal, they left the infirmarer praying over the body of Sir Piers of Essendon. Once outside the church, he turned to the abbess and said, ‘My lady, now I must-’

‘Go and find the boy. Yes, Sir Josse, I know. You fear that… You believe de Loup will now hunt for him?’

‘I know it.’

He turned to leave her but she called him back. ‘Oh, Sir Josse?’ She must have read the impatience in his expression for, with an apologetic smile, she said, ‘I won’t keep you long. Two things: first, I have given orders to my master mason that he may begin work on the chapel.’

Despite his urgency, her momentous announcement stopped him dead. ‘Where is it to be?’

It seemed to him that there was an instant of perfect stillness. Then, with a broad smile, she said, ‘On the forest fringe.’

‘That is the right place,’ he said.

Her eyes were suddenly glistening with tears. ‘I know,’ she said softly.

‘The — ’ he cleared his throat — ‘the other thing?’

‘Oh… Yes. I think young Ninian has been in my room again, for the statue is gone. No doubt you’ll find her returned to her tree. Would you bring her back, please? Until she has a secure and fitting place in the new chapel, I really think she is safer in my cupboard.’

‘I agree, my lady.’ He did not entirely understand Ninian’s insistence that the figure must be in the oak tree. If, indeed, it was the lad who kept putting her there. It was the only explanation although, Josse realized now, Ninian hadn’t actually admitted that he was responsible. ‘I’ll have a word with him,’ he said, deliberately turning his mind from that worrying thought. Then, as he hurried off, he looked back at her and said, ‘Good luck with your chapel.’

He thought he heard her gentle protest — ‘It is not my chapel!’ — and, smiling, he headed out through the gates and off towards the forest.

He had arranged to meet Ninian today, although the lad had not said when. As Josse hurried up the slope to the forest, he prayed silently that Ninian would be waiting for him. It was still early and the boy might not expect Josse to be there yet. He stopped to stand for a moment on the apron of flat ground projecting out from the trees where, soon now, a chapel would stand. Slowly he turned in a circle, envisaging the walls of the little building stretching and extending up into a roof that soared over his head. A plain altar, he thought, a beautiful cloth and a simple wooden cross. Aye, it ought to be simple, for although he had been a king, St Edmund was no cosseted weakling but a fighting man who had died leading his troops against the invading Danes. He would not have wanted luxury and pomp any more than King Richard. Well, both of them, saint and sinner, would have their wish.

Sinner.

Amid all his other concerns, Josse remembered his mission for Queen Eleanor. When he had found his answers, he would seek her out and tell her in person. Standing there on the site of the new chapel, silently he made a vow that he would not call this matter closed until he had summoned the courage to tell her to her face the truth about her son and the March night in the tower at World’s End.

He crossed the space that would soon be the chapel’s nave and ducked down beneath the branches of the oak tree. Recalling his undertaking to the abbess, he looked up, fully expecting to see the statue back in her usual place.