The Chatter of the Maidens

by Alys Clare

  To that, Josse had been prompted to ask why the father and the mother hadn’t been the ones to discipline the younger girls. Berthe had replied, a remembered anger and hurt making her pretty face flush, ‘Father said we were like an army. He gave orders to Alba; she gave them to us. As for Mother’ – the girl’s expression softened – ‘she never interfered. It sometimes seemed as if she were another sister, kinder, more loving, who left the bossing about and the issuing of punishments to Alba. Who was, after all, far better suited to it.’

  Once, Josse asked her whether Alba had left home to enter the convent before or after the mother had died.

  ‘Oh, after,’ Berthe replied.

  ‘I wonder whether your mother’s death prompted her to take the veil?’ Josse mused aloud.

  ‘Oh, no, I shouldn’t think so, she . . .’ But, with a perplexed frown, Berthe trailed off. Josse waited, and after a moment she said, ‘You know, it’s strange, but, now I come to think of it, I think you might be right.’ She was staring at him, her face intent as she tried to put a vague idea into words. ‘She was – Mother and Alba were – well, it was Alba, really. It always felt as if she was sort of vying with Mother for control. For who was head of the household after Father. But, of course, when Mother died, that left Alba with nobody to vie with.’

  ‘Didn’t that make her happy? After all, the way was then clear for her and your father to rule between them, which you imply was what they wanted?’

  ‘It ought to have made her happy.’ Berthe sounded puzzled. ‘But having nobody to fight with didn’t seem to suit her at all. I remember that, when she made up her mind to enter the cloister, she said something about having won her battle, so there was no need for her to stay at home.’ She shrugged. ‘I really have no idea what she meant.’

  Berthe had sought him out in the cloister this morning. She came bearing a cushion and a warm woollen blanket; when he protested that he had no need of either, she ignored him as completely as Sister Euphemia would have done, and made him stand up while she placed the folded blanket beneath him and put the cushion between him and the rough stone wall. He had to admit he was far more comfortable like that.

  He glanced at her face, trying to judge if she was up to a little gentle teasing. Her serene expression suggested that she was, so he said, ‘You know, Berthe, you really are picking up infirmary ways. If I hadn’t known it was you, I could have sworn that commanding voice and that refusal to listen to my protests was pure Sister Euphemia.’

  To his delight, Berthe burst out laughing. ‘I’m delighted, Sir Josse!’ she said. He watched the dimples appearing and disappearing in her cheeks. ‘I have been modelling myself on her, but I had no idea I was doing so well!’

  She had brought some needlework with her. Settling herself beside him, she took some garment in soft white cloth from an embroidered workbag and, threading her needle, began to repair a seam.

  They made the occasional comment to one another but, in the main, sat in a happy, companionable silence.

  She sat with him for much of the day. She was quite radiant, Josse noticed; he was now as sure as he could be that she knew perfectly well that Meriel was safe. And, probably, that the two were in contact. Berthe, he observed, never spoke to him of Meriel’s disappearance. He liked to think it was because she was now too fond of him to tell him lies.

  For the fifth time, he made her put aside her sewing and hurry across to the gates, to look out along the road and see if there were any sign of three weary riders approaching the Abbey. The first four times, she had come hurrying back shaking her head.

  This time was different.

  He could tell by the way she stiffened as she looked down the road that she had spotted something. Watching, he saw her put up a hand to shade her eyes. Then, when she was certain, she started jumping up and down, waving her arms and shouting, ‘It’s her! It’s Abbess Helewise! She’s back!’

  He did not push forward to greet the Abbess straight away. Others had precedence. From his seat in the cloister, he watched her go through what appeared to be a routine, as if, in this regimented life of devotion, there was even a prescribed way for an Abbess to return to her community.

  He saw the senior nuns go in turn to see the Abbess in her room, and he assumed that they were reporting to her all that had happened in their particular departments during her absence. Some, it appeared, were more succinct than others; or perhaps less had happened in their areas of convent life.

  Then there were the Offices; she would naturally be eager to attend those with her sisters.

  All in all, it was dusk before she put her head out of her doorway and said, ‘Sir Josse? Will you come and speak with me?’

  When the door was closed behind him, she came towards him with her arms open and said, ‘I am so happy to see you looking well! You have been in my heart all the time I have been away, and I have prayed for your recovery.’ She gave him a wide, beaming smile. ‘Sister Euphemia tells me you have been a model patient, listening to her advice, working with her, and with God, to bring about your healing. And now we see the result! Up and about all the long day, so I hear, and you look fine!’

  He was responding to her delight, a smile spreading over his face. ‘I thank you for your concern, Abbess. Aye, I am well on the way to recovery.’ He studied her; she looked tired. ‘But what of you? Did you find Sister Alba’s convent? Were they able to answer your questions?’

  She went to sit down in her chair, motioning him to be seated on the wooden stool that she kept for visitors. ‘We found the place, yes. And, although the good nuns did indeed provide some answers, those in turn posed more questions. Such as, why did Alba describe a totally different background to the Abbess of Sedgebeck from the one she revealed to me? According to that Alba, she was a spoiled, only child of an indulgent father.’ She sighed. ‘A very different woman from the one who tore herself from the place where she was so happy, in order to take her grieving, poverty-stricken, homeless younger sisters away to a new life.’

  ‘Which tale is the true one?’ he asked. ‘Have you any idea?’

  She stared at him. ‘Yes. We managed to find the former family home. We spoke to a villager who confirmed that the girls’ mother died long since, and—’ Something in his expression must have alerted her. ‘But I think that you already know that, Sir Josse.’

  He didn’t want to interrupt her story, so he just said, ‘Aye. Berthe told me. But I’ll explain when you’ve finished.’

  She nodded. ‘Very well. The village has suffered recently from the sickness and many died, including the girls’ father. That part of Alba’s account is true. The farm was abandoned, the house empty. But, Sir Josse, our informant said that Meriel was already planning to take Berthe with her and leave the village, before Alba returned from Sedgebeck and brought them all here!’

  ‘Was she, now?’ Josse said slowly. That would fit, he thought, wouldn’t it? He wished his brain were not so sluggish; it seemed to work far less swiftly than before his illness. If Meriel’s plans had been torn apart by the bossy Alba, throwing her weight around and dragging her sisters far away into the depths of south-east England, would that not be grounds for Meriel’s subsequent misery?

  A misery that, perhaps, was even now being relieved. . . .

  He felt that he was on the very edge of understanding the mystery. If only, if only, he could think!

  He gave the Abbess a rueful grin. ‘I wish I were more use to you than simply sitting here saying is that so? and was she really?’ he said. ‘I do believe that we have sufficient information between us to solve this puzzle. Indeed, I feel that I already have the answer, but my mind is so foggy that I can’t reach it.’

  She gave him a sympathetic look. ‘Don’t distress yourself, Sir Josse. It is the way with fevers, to leave the brain like a tangle of sheep’s wool. Do not push yourself so hard.’

  ‘I must!’ he exclaimed. ‘There are matters that cannot be resolved until we know.’

  ‘Yes, of
course.’ A worried frown creased her brow. ‘Meriel is still missing, I am told.’

  ‘She is safe, Abbess,’ he said softly. ‘I cannot say where, or with whom, but I would stake my life on her being both safe and well.’

  And he explained about Berthe.

  She nodded slowly. ‘You make good sense, as always, Sir Josse. The child does not appear to be a habitual liar, I agree. And, now that your friendship had progressed so well, I am sure you are right when you say that she does not speak of Meriel because, in the face of your kind-hearted concern, she could not bear to uphold the fiction that she doesn’t know where her sister is.’ She paused. Then: ‘But there is still Alba.’

  He had noticed that she no longer referred to Sister Alba; fearing that he might have guessed why, he asked her why not.

  When she had told him, he let out a long breath. ‘What do you do with her now, Abbess? If she is no longer a nun, then surely you can’t go on imprisoning her here in the Abbey?’

  ‘Indeed not,’ she agreed. ‘And while on the one hand I should be relieved to be rid of her, can I, in Christian charity, turn her out into the world when she has nowhere to go?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said gently.

  Turning her mind with an obvious effort from the problem of Alba, the Abbess straightened up and said, ‘Has Sheriff Pelham made any progress with the murder in the Vale?’

  ‘None,’ Josse said in disgust. ‘He asked some of the pilgrims a few fairly pointless questions, and he now seems to have settled on the man having been attacked by a traveller on the road who is now miles away.’

  ‘A typical Sheriff Pelham solution,’ the Abbess murmured.

  ‘Aye.’ He remembered what it was about the dead man that had struck him as significant. ‘But there is one thing, Abbess.’

  Instantly she looked alert. ‘Yes?’

  ‘He wore a pilgrim badge from Walsingham. Which is only about fifty miles north of Ely.’

  ‘And so you conclude that he was connected with the girls? With Alba and her sisters?’

  ‘Ah, not necessarily!’ he protested. ‘I dare say many of our visitors wear such badges. Walsingham is a popular place.’

  ‘But to have someone from the same area of the land killed, here, where the sisters fled to, must be more than coincidence,’ she insisted. ‘Mustn’t it?’

  ‘My reason tells me no,’ he said bluntly. ‘But yet it keeps coming back to me, as if some part of me doesn’t want me to forget about it.’

  ‘That is God’s voice speaking directly to you,’ she said. ‘We must always listen when God speaks, Sir Josse.’

  ‘Aye, Abbess.’ He felt duly chastened. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’ She opened her mouth to say something more, but before she could speak, he hurried on. ‘Now, if I may, Abbess, I’ll summarise the picture that emerges when we add your findings to what I have concluded from talking to my ingenuous little friend, Berthe.’

  He thought briefly, then began.

  ‘A bullying man and his gentle, timid wife had three daughters, one much older than the other two. The mother and the two younger ones form an alliance, but they are under the domination of the father and the oldest girl. She, among her other bullying ways, is insistent on the family keeping up high standards in the way they appear to the outside world. Then the mother dies and the oldest girl, no longer having anybody to compete with for the role of her father’s second-in-command, takes herself off and joins a convent. But she is not suited to convent life, and she is asked to leave. In the meantime, the tyrannical father succumbs to illness and dies, leaving the middle sister free to make her own plans for her and her little sister’s future. But, before those plans can be implemented, the big sister comes back from her convent, decides that her sisters’ grief for their father is too strong to be assuaged there, in their former home with all its memories, so she drags them away and brings them all the way south to Hawkenlye.’ He paused for breath. ‘Have I left anything out?’

  ‘Only that Alba lied to us to make her story more convincing,’ the Abbess said.

  ‘Aye, she did. She told us both parents had recently died.’

  ‘And that – Oh! You’ve also omitted something I have thought of; that something had happened in their former home which Alba was desperate to run away from,’ she said. Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and her face, he noticed with a stab of anxiety, had paled. ‘Oh, dear God, Sir Josse, I—’ She put a hand to her mouth, as if physically holding back her words.

  ‘I had concluded the same thing,’ he said. ‘That the reason Alba showed such an extreme and uncontrolled reaction to Berthe working down in the Vale was because she feared somebody might have followed them from East Anglia and would recognise the girl.’

  The Abbess was nodding. ‘Yes, that is true, of course.’ She hesitated. Her hands, he noticed, were trembling. ‘But I’m afraid I was thinking of something far more terrible than that.’

  He waited while she got herself under control. She lifted her chin, closed her eyes as if in a brief prayer, then said, ‘Josse, I haven’t yet told you everything. I hope and pray that this last discovery was pure chance, and has nothing to do with the girls. However, I am very afraid that . . .’ She broke off. ‘But I must tell you, then you can judge for yourself.’ She paused. ‘We found the farm where the family used to live, as I have said, and it was not at all a cheerful or welcoming place; indeed, we sensed the presence of death quite strongly. We were riding through the woodland which surrounds it, on our way back to the village, when we spotted a cottage deep in amongst the trees. It had suffered a devastating fire.’ She paused again, folded her hands tightly together, then said, ‘The roof had collapsed, and there was little left that was recognisable. Except that we found a human skeleton.’

  ‘A – what?’ Great heavens, no wonder she was agitated! ‘You’re sure it was human? Not some animal caught inside when the place went up in flames?’

  She was shaking her head. ‘No, no, that’s what I hoped. But Brother Augustine knows about bones. He insisted the skeleton was human. A man, he said.’

  Again, Josse wished with all his soul for his usual speed of thought. A dead body, in an out-of-the-way location so close to the girls’ former home? What did this mean? ‘Perhaps the fire and the death happened years and years ago,’ he suggested.

  ‘No,’ she said again. ‘We discussed that on the long road home, and Brother Saul remarked that the small degree of regrowth of vegetation bore witness to the fact that the fire can have been but recent.’

  ‘I was afraid you’d say something like that,’ Josse muttered.

  He met her eyes. She was looking at him with an almost compassionate expression, as if about to give him very bad news.

  As, it proved, she was. ‘Sir Josse,’ she said very quietly, ‘we cannot even console ourselves with thinking that it was a dreadful accident. This was murder.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘The dead man had been tied to an iron stake set into the floor of the dwelling,’ she said dully. ‘Brother Augustine found what was left of the rope, knotted very securely around the bones of the wrist.’

  And Josse, momentarily overwhelmed, dropped his head in his hands.

  She let him be for a while, for which he was profoundly grateful. So much to assimilate! There was a pattern behind it all, there had to be, and he kept having the frustrating, nagging feeling that it was there for the seeing, if he could only think!

  Presently he heard her get up and move round her table to stand beside him. ‘Sir Josse?’ she said gently.

  He raised his head. ‘Abbess?’

  ‘Sir Josse, there is a further matter I should tell you about,’ she said, face creased in anxiety. ‘I hesitate to do so, since it is but a suspicion, without any real substance. But . . .’ She did not continue; she seemed to be waiting for him to invite her to.

  ‘You had better tell me anyway,’ he said dully.

  A fleeting smile lit her face, there and g
one in an instant. ‘Try not to sound so eager,’ she murmured.

  He managed a grin. ‘Sorry. Go on. What was this suspicion of yours?’

  She straightened, took a breath and said, ‘I am almost certain that we were being followed.’

  ‘Followed? Where? When?’

  ‘I first sensed it when we were going to Medely – the girls’ old home. I was convinced somebody was watching us in the woods, where we found the body, although that was such a creepy, eerie place that it would have been surprising not to have thought someone was there, hidden away. Then there were times on the road home when I . . . Oh, this is silly! I shouldn’t have mentioned it! When I stop to think, of course there were people following us! It’s a warm, sunny April, and the whole of England is probably on the move!’

  He understood her sudden emotion. But knowing her as he did, he did not dismiss what she had just revealed. Weighing his words, eventually he said, ‘I’m glad you told me. Perhaps it was nothing, perhaps there really was someone following you. If the former is true, then there’s no harm done. If the latter, then sharing your suspicions with me means that now we shall both be on our guard.’

  Her face fell. ‘Against what?’

  He gave a helpless shrug. ‘Abbess dear, I have no idea.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Staring at her old friend’s hopeless expression, Helewise had a moment’s urge to wave her arms and shout, We have to get to the bottom of this, right now! Two men are dead, a young girl is missing, and we two must go on thinking until we know why!

  But he’s still convalescing, she told herself severely. I have no right to push him so hard when he has been so ill. And I, too, am exhausted. Neither of us is at our best at the moment.

  She stepped away from him and, making herself move slowly and calmly, walked round her table until she was once more in front of her wooden chair. Raising her head so that her eyes met his, she said, ‘Sir Josse, I am sorry that I have kept you here for so long, tiring you out by talking. Please, go back now to Sister Euphemia, and surrender yourself into her care once more. We will speak again tomorrow.’