Alys Clare - The Joys of My Life

‘Do not try to hurry it,’ the Domina advised. ‘It will come or not, in its own time.’

‘I am a vowed nun,’ Helewise muttered, distress filling her mind. ‘An abbess!’

‘But you are also a woman who thinks for herself,’ the Domina said. ‘Soon you will find that your Church begins to frown on such a person, especially if she is female.’

‘What do you mean?’ Helewise tried to sound affronted but she did not think she had succeeded. The Domina’s words were all too true an echo of what Helewise had observed for herself.

The Domina sighed. ‘I have recently been in France, with many of my people. Some of them were with me in the Shining City; others travelled far and wide to meet men and women like us and hear what is happening in distant lands. The story is always the same: the Church marches with a new determination to rout out all those who do not see the deity as they order that their God must be seen. They command men and women not only what to believe but how to believe it; faith, they would tell us, is an intellectual process through the head and no longer a loving, powerful inspiration through the heart. They set out rules of what is and is not permitted, and the least deviation attracts severe penalty.’ She paused, breathing hard, and waited until she was calmer. Then she said very quietly, ‘Helewise, there will come into being a new and terrible institution whose sole purpose is to suppress heresy. You who have seen with your own eyes will comprehend the ferocity with which this battle will be fought. Thousands, hundreds of thousands will die for nothing more than that they view the creating spirit in a different form from that which the Church stipulates.’

A shiver of fear ran through Helewise. How would such an institution deal with the forest people? With the Domina? With Joanna? With dear old Tiphaine, who despite being loyal to Helewise and a first-rate herbalist had always kept one foot in her pagan past? How would they deal with me, she wondered, horrified, if they knew I planned to place a black statue of the Great Mother Goddess in the new chapel?

‘Wh-what will the members of this institution do?’ she whispered.

‘They will round up all those who do not conform. They will have no difficulty finding these people, for others will betray them. Some will be acting out of misplaced solicitude, genuinely believing the priests when they say that, in turning away from the rules of the Church, their friends and neighbours risk eternal damnation. The majority of informers will simply be settling old grudges. If your neighbour is taken away to be tortured and burned at the stake, nobody will notice if you quietly move the disputed boundary fence. And what better way of getting even with the innocent old woman whom you blame for the death of your cow than seeing her kept awake for days, stripped, prodded and beaten, then led out naked to her terrible death?’

‘But the Lord told us to love each other.’ Helewise’s eyes were full of tears.

‘I know, Helewise,’ the Domina said on a sigh. ‘I know.’

Helewise was thinking, as she had often done recently, of the Cathar woman Aurelia and her companions. She remembered her priest, Father Gilbert, telling her of a planned Crusade against the Cathars, launched by the Church and the king of France and fuelled by their combined hatred, greed, power and vast resources. More pain; more death; more families torn apart; more helpless, hopeless, lost souls.

She wondered if this Crusade had already begun. The Domina must have picked up the thought: ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘But within a decade, it will come to pass.’

It will come to pass, Helewise repeated silently, bowing her head as the intolerable images filled her mind. My Church will do this. In the name of the vast body to which I have given my life and my soul, people will be hunted down and killed because they refuse to acknowledge any man’s right, even that of a priest, to tell them what to believe. What am I to do, I who, if I were put to the test and somehow found the courage to answer honestly, might be cast out with the heretics?

She did not know.

She looked up to speak to the Domina but she had gone. Helewise stood alone in the clearing enduring the agony of her thoughts.

Josse and Ninian made their way up to the coast by the network of paths and tracks that spread out from the meandering Seine as the river made its stately way westwards to the sea. Josse felt strongly that they must remain out of sight, and keeping off the main roads ensured that few people would remember, if asked, a big man and a lad riding good horses and leading a distinctive grey.

He told himself his caution was in case any of the surviving Knights of Arcturus were on their trail, determined to take back the black figure, but he knew in the depths of his mind that this was not true.

He was not sure what he feared. Sometimes when he was very tired he thought he heard a baby; sometimes it cried; sometimes it made gurgling sounds of contentment.

It just went to show, he thought, how grief, anxiety and fatigue could play tricks.

They left the river and headed off north towards Fecamp. Josse knew the little place and had decided it was a better option than the bigger ports such as Le Havre or Dieppe. As they approached the sea, calm and silvery-grey under the bright afternoon sun, he saw that he and Ninian need not even advertise their presence in Fecamp for, ahead of them on the shore, he spotted a small fishing hamlet where a cluster of wooden-framed dwellings made a semicircle round a jetty stretching out into the sea. Tied to the jetty was a small fleet of fishing boats and some larger craft. He drew rein, signalling to Ninian, and, wheeling Horace round, headed back into the shade of a small copse through which they had just passed.

‘Stay here with the horses,’ Josse said, ‘while I go down to the shore and ask about passage over to England.’

Ninian nodded, already jumping down to take Horace’s reins. ‘Be careful, Josse,’ he said. He looked worried. Josse nodded an acknowledgement.

He trotted over the short, wiry grass, pleased to be using different muscles after so long in the saddle. In the hamlet he quickly found a seaman happy to take two people and three horses over to Pevensey. The price was steep — with no competition, for his boat was the only one available that could transport horses, the seaman could ask what he liked — but Josse agreed. They would sail on the evening tide.

Josse bought a flagon of cider, some fresh bread, a large creamy cheese and two small onions from the seaman’s wife and hurried back to the hiding place in the trees. He and Ninian consumed the food and most of the cider, and then Ninian curled up in the shade and went to sleep.

Josse sat with his back to a birch tree, staring out over the distant sea and listening to the natural sounds all around. Birds sang; a soft breeze stirred the leaves. The three horses, their tack removed and hobbled to prevent them straying far, tore at the grass. Ninian snored gently. No baby sounds now, Josse reflected.

I imagined those little cries, he thought. My half-aware mind heard an animal or a bird and, because I am tired and grieving, translated it into a human sound. I must not give way to such fancies.

Firmly he turned his mind to Philippe de Loup and the Knights of Arcturus. He had not liked leaving the dead man out there in his lonely grave; it went against everything he believed in. No prayers were said over de Loup; no marker told others where he rested. Even thinking about it now gave Josse a shudder of abhorrence and he vowed that he would have prayers said for de Loup’s soul as soon as he was back at Hawkenlye.

But what else could I have done? Josse asked himself. Aye, I could have returned to Chartres and found a law officer to tell him there was a dead man out on the road beside the river, and that would have brought down on my head such a barrage of suspicious questions that I should have been driven to my knees. Moreover, it would not take a genius to connect de Loup with however many of the knights were found in the cathedral crypt, dead or too badly injured to escape. I would probably have been accused of laying out the night watchmen too.