The Chatter of the Maidens

by Alys Clare

  ‘Why must you keep them close?’ Helewise felt a stab of compassion for the woman in the tree. Such a pathetic hiding place. . . .

  ‘People leave me,’ Alba said. ‘My mother left me, and I had to live with Father. Nobody liked Father, and so nobody would be friends with me. You see, Abbess? Meriel and Berthe are mine, they’re all I have.’

  ‘I do see, Alba,’ Helewise replied. Dear God, but there was a weird logic in Alba’s argument. ‘But you can’t keep them with you if the course of their lives takes them away. We’re all put here for a purpose. None of us may decide what another’s purpose is, no matter how much we love them.’

  ‘I must keep them close,’ Alba repeated doggedly. ‘Oh, Abbess, it was such a perfect plan to come here! I was to be a Hawkenlye nun straightaway – quite a senior one – and Meriel, then Berthe, would become nuns too. We’d all be together, I could tell them what to do, and they’d never leave me.’

  There were so many points to argue with in that little address that Helewise didn’t even bother to start. Instead, reverting to something Alba had said earlier, she said, ‘Your mother didn’t leave you, Alba. She died. When you were born. She couldn’t help it, and I’m quite sure it wasn’t her choice. She must have wanted more than anything to live, because she had your father and you, and she would have been happy in her new home.’

  But Alba was shaking her head; gently at first, the movement quickly became faster and more violent. ‘No,’ she hissed. ‘No, no, no!’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’ Alba sat rock-still now. ‘She was in the whores’ home, with the nuns at Denney. They tried to beat her sins out of her. Did you know my mother was a whore, Abbess?’ She gave a dreadful laugh. ‘God alone knows why they were all so sure I was Wilfrid’s child, I could have been anybody’s.’ She fixed Helewise with a penetrating stare. ‘Can you keep a secret, Abbess Helewise?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There was talk,’ Alba said quietly, ‘that I was begotten on my mother by one of the monks. One of the grand Knights Templar. They keep their pricks, you know, Abbess, when they take their vows. The great and the good, they reckon they are, but let a pretty, compliant whore flash them a bit of leg and they’re after her like any other man.’

  ‘Is this true, Alba?’ Helewise asked. Dear Lord, but if it were. . . .

  Alba shrugged. ‘Maybe. How should I know?’ An expression of craftiness came over her face. ‘But if it’s not, then why did they work so hard to provide a credible explanation for me? I wasn’t the only bastard born in the whores’ home, believe me. But I was the only one pushed out and given to its father.’

  Helewise felt her heart pounding. Was this the truth? She had wondered herself how, out of a whore’s many clients, those who had decided Alba’s future had settled on Wilfrid as her father. But if they had known who the real father was, known it was a man who could never claim paternity, for whom even a hint at involvement with a whore would be devastating. . . .

  Suddenly she remembered Abbess Madelina at Sedgebeck. Saying of Alba, ‘She arrived with a generous endowment, including both money and goods’.

  Wilfrid had been a poor man. He surely could not have provided so well for Alba.

  Who had, then?

  A Templar with a guilty conscience?

  But there were far more urgent matters to worry about.

  She stared up at the woman straddling the branch high above. ‘Alba, you must put all this behind you,’ she said firmly. ‘It is useless to speculate, and you only torment yourself with these thoughts. Wilfrid is dead, your mother died at your birth, and—’

  ‘That’s a lie.’ Alba’s voice spoke clearly, echoing through the glade.

  ‘A lie? But—’

  ‘They told me that, those warrior monks. It was easier for them if I believed she had gone beyond my reach. But she didn’t die.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘They said she was mad. There’s a madhouse run by nuns, close by Denney. In the same place where the whores’ hostel is. Whores and mad people, it’s all the same to the nuns. They shut her up in there, in the madhouse. I didn’t know, Abbess. For years, all the time I was growing up, she was in there. I could have gone to see her, talked to her. But oh, no. They couldn’t have that, could they? She might have revealed who my real father was.’ Tears were falling down Alba’s white face now. ‘So they told me she’d died at my birth, and I never knew her.’

  ‘Alba, I’m so sorry,’ Helewise said gently. ‘It must have been a terrible blow for you, when you found out.’

  Alba nodded. ‘I wasn’t meant to know, even after she really was dead. Only one of the nuns in the madhouse wasn’t aware of the true story. She’d been looking after my mother, and apparently my mother had asked her to come and tell me.’

  ‘Tell you she was dying?’

  ‘No. Tell me after she was dead.’

  ‘Was your mother sick, then? So sick that she knew death was close?’

  ‘She wasn’t sick. She hanged herself.’ Alba raised the rope belt in one hand. There was a clumsy knot in one end, and she set it swinging gently. To and fro. To and fro.

  Helewise watched the knot, hypnotised. Everything was beginning to feel unreal, unnatural. She gave herself a shake. ‘Oh, Alba,’ she whispered. But she didn’t think Alba heard.

  ‘This was hers,’ Alba said. ‘Her piece of rope. She stole it, and she hanged herself with it. The nuns gave me her poor, ragged robe, and this was wound up in the skirt.’ A wail of anguish soared up into the still air. ‘There’s nothing for me any more, Abbess! I’ve killed, I’ve been tracked down, there’s a mighty Templar hunting me to make me confess to my crimes, and they’re going to hang me!’

  ‘You will be tried, Alba,’ Helewise began, ‘and—’

  ‘They’ll hang me!’ Alba screamed. ‘Abbess, Abbess, I don’t want to die on the gallows, like some wretched thief, with the people all jeering and laughing! Not me!’

  Suddenly she swung the rope out in a great wide arc. ‘I’ve been trying to hang myself, and save them the bother. I wanted to do it with this, just like Mother’ – the wailing had become sobs, loud, heaving sobs – ‘but I don’t know how to do the noose! Forgive me, oh, forgive me!’

  She began to lean over, further, further. . . .

  Helewise rushed forwards, arms outstretched. ‘Alba, no!’

  But Alba ignored her. Leaning further and further over, she went past the point of balance.

  And fell, headfirst, thirty feet or more to the forest floor.

  Helewise heard Berthe scream, a sound so loud that it hurt her ears.

  Slowly she crept towards the body on the ground.

  Alba’s head was at a sharp angle to her shoulders; without even touching her, Helewise could see that her neck was broken. Blood was seeping from her ears, staining the starched white coif.

  Helewise knelt down, already praying, and felt the wrist. No pulse.

  Standing up, she finished her first, urgent prayer for the soul of Alba. Forgive her all her sins, dear Lord; of Thy mercy, show her Thy kindly face. . . .

  Then, turning to the edge of the glade where, behind the poised figure of Bastian, Josse held Berthe tightly against him, she said, ‘I’m afraid she’s dead.’

  Chapter Twenty-two

  It was dusk.

  Helewise had remained in the Abbey church after Vespers. The evening prayers had included an impassioned appeal for Alba, and the sisters had put their hearts into praying for the soul of their late companion. Considering that nobody had really liked her – Alba had not been a woman to invite affection – the fervour with which the nuns had pleaded with God to treat her kindly had touched Helewise deeply.

  Now she knelt alone beside the trestle table that bore Alba’s body. Sister Euphemia had straightened the twisted neck, and one of her nurses had dressed the corpse in a clean coif and brushed the mud and the grass from the black habit. Alba lay with her arms crossed on her breast, her
face calm, those troubled, anguished eyes closed forever.

  Standing up and leaning over the body, Helewise gave a muffled exclamation. Then, with a quick look to ensure that she really was alone, swiftly she reached down, picked something up and, with some difficulty since it was quite bulky, stowed it away in one of her sleeves.

  Then she fell to her knees and resumed her prayers.

  She recited the ‘Ave Maria’. Then, her mind filled with the love and the mercy of the Virgin Mary, she addressed a special plea to her. Reminding her politely that Alba had cried out for forgiveness, she begged the Holy Mother to intercede on Alba’s behalf.

  ‘Sweet Virgin Mother,’ Helewise prayed, ‘have mercy on one of your daughters who knew no mother of her own. She knew she was a sinner, that she had taken innocent life. But – but—’

  Words failing her, Helewise closed her eyes and, trying to fill her heart and her soul with her plea, dropped her face into her hands.

  Some time later, she heard the door open and quietly close again.

  She stood up, turning to face whoever had just come in.

  She was amazed to see that two people were slowly walking towards her: Meriel and Jerome. She waited until they had reached her then, with a small bow, she stood back to let them see Alba’s body.

  Meriel gave a gasp, and put her hand to her mouth. Her face working, she shook her head. ‘Oh,’ she whispered, ‘oh, I didn’t want it to end like this!’

  Jerome put his arms round her, holding her close to him, muttering soft endearments. Tactfully, Helewise withdrew; walking with soft footsteps, she let herself out of the church and stood outside to wait.

  They were not long.

  Jerome said, ‘Abbess Helewise, I am very sorry that we ran away. But I saw—’

  She put a hand on his arm. ‘I know, Jerome. There is no need of explanations, nor of apologies. Indeed, when we set out into the forest earlier, it was my most fervent prayer that you and Meriel would still be in hiding.’ She hesitated. ‘I feared that Alba would do you harm.’

  He was nodding, as if these facts were already known to him. ‘Yes. We were not, as you appear to know, fleeing from her.’

  ‘And I think,’ Helewise went on carefully, ‘that her intention was not in fact to hurt you.’ She met his eyes; she did not want to spell out, in front of the weeping Meriel, that she thought Alba had run off into the forest only to harm herself.

  He said quietly, ‘I understand.’ He glanced at his wife, huddled against his side in the shelter of his protecting arm. ‘Meriel?’ he said. ‘Are you feeling better, now that we’re out in the good fresh air? She felt faint,’ he added to the Abbess.

  ‘I am not surprised,’ she said.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Meriel said, wiping the tears from her face. ‘It was just seeing her.’

  ‘And you can only have heard of her death just now, when you returned to the Abbey,’ Helewise said.

  The young couple exchanged glances. Then Jerome said, ‘Actually, we knew much earlier. Soon after it happened.’

  ‘You – how?’

  Again, the exchange of glances. Meriel muttered something to Jerome; it sounded like, ‘We’ve got to tell her,’ and, turning to face Helewise, she said, ‘Abbess Helewise, we’ve been with someone of the Forest People. Er – a woman.’

  A shiver went up Helewise’s spine. Oh, but she remembered the women of the Forest People! Well, she remembered one of them, and one was quite enough. Trying to sound calm, she said, ‘And who was this woman? Did she have a name?’

  ‘She said she was called Lora.’ Jerome was still looking uncomfortable, as if having spoken with one of the Forest Folk were somehow a disloyalty to Hawkenlye and its Abbess. ‘She seemed to know all about us, and she was kind. She fed us, gave us a drink. And told us where to find a dry shelter.’

  ‘She’d gone away,’ Meriel went on, ‘but, this afternoon, she came and sought us out. She said there had been a death. We asked who it was, and she said, “It is the one who carries a murderer’s guilt. The Great Oak has answered her call.” Well, we realised she must mean Alba, but we had no idea what all that about the oak meant. She said we must go. That we could not turn away from those who needed us. Then Jerome—’

  ‘Then I said that I was being hunted by one who wanted to take me away from my wife,’ Jerome said, picking up the story. ‘And she – Lora – laughed. She laughed quite a lot, Abbess, which we thought was weird considering she’d come to report a death. Then when she stopped, she looked at Meriel and back at me, and she said, “It is not in the gift of any human being to take an honest, loving husband from his cherished wife. Fear not, he will not succeed.” Then she told us where to go, and she disappeared!’

  His voice had risen dramatically on the last few words; with a giggle, Meriel dug him in the ribs and said, ‘She didn’t disappear, Jerome, she slipped away through the trees.’

  Helewise’s head was spinning. These two young people had been so lucky! she was thinking. Their love and their honesty seemed to have impressed this Lora of the Forest Folk, and she had looked out for them.

  She wondered how the woman had known about the death. Oh, dear Lord, had she been watching?

  ‘Er – Jerome?’

  ‘Abbess?’

  ‘This place where you were, the shelter Lora found for you, was it nearby?’

  ‘No, no, it was miles away. That’s why we’ve only just got here – we’ve been walking through the forest for ages.’

  ‘Then how did the Forest woman know about Alba?’ she whispered. ‘There cannot surely have been time for her to witness the death, come to find you, and for you to get back here!’

  ‘She didn’t see Alba fall, Abbess,’ Meriel said, her voice low. ‘But she said they always know when somebody dies in the Great Forest. She said—’ She broke off, her face going quite white. Then, in a whisper, she finished, ‘She said the trees tell them.’

  The trees. Yes, Helewise reflected, I expect they do.

  Then, realising what she had just thought – how readily she had accepted a pagan superstition – she shook herself, and offered a swift, sincere prayer for God’s forgiveness.

  Really, she thought, still angry with herself, I’ve lived too long near this Great Forest!

  Meriel and Jerome were looking at her in silence, clearly waiting for her to say something. Bringing herself back to the present moment – which was quite difficult – she said briskly, ‘Now you must both get some rest. You have had an anxious time, these many days and weeks. You must put it all behind you, and think about the future.’

  In a hollow voice, Jerome said, ‘I cannot, Abbess. I have to go back to Denney and—’

  But she was already shaking her head, smiling as she did so. ‘No, Jerome. You do not. Bastian was not searching for you to drag you back to Denney. He needed to find you to tell you that you are free.’

  ‘Free?’ Jerome and Meriel spoke in chorus.

  ‘Yes. You had taken no official vows, so there was no need for you to ask for release from them.’

  ‘But I had my hair cropped!’ Jerome cried. ‘And I’d grown a beard! I only shaved it off to marry Meriel!’

  Ah, but he’s so young! Helewise thought, her heart melting. ‘Those things are but the outer signs,’ she said gently. ‘They do not alone make a man a monk.’

  ‘Thank the Lord!’ Meriel said fervently.

  Jerome turned to her and, with a whoop of delight, took his wife in his arms.

  Thinking it was time to leave them alone, Helewise slipped away.

  The Abbey was host to its young guests for almost a fortnight. During this time Alba was buried, and the first desperate grief of her shocked youngest sister began to abate.

  Berthe spent much time with Josse. He did not turn the conversation round to Alba, and Berthe rarely mentioned her; for much of the time, they spoke of everyday matters. The weather. The burgeoning spring. The work Berthe was doing in the infirmary.

  But once, the girl said,
‘Is it for the best, Sir Josse, that she died?’

  His mind flying across several possible answers, eventually he just said, ‘Aye, child.’

  She nodded. As if his word were all she had lacked, straightaway she seemed to be calmer.

  And she never spoke of her dead sister again.

  Bastian, too, stayed on for a while.

  He had asked the Abbess to show him where Brother Bartholomew was buried, which she did. They had put him in the little area, beneath three of the Vale’s chestnut trees, that was reserved for pilgrims who died while at Hawkenlye. The graves there were plain and simple, but the grass was kept clipped and sometimes the monks planted flowers.

  She stood by his side as he prayed.

  ‘I had thought to take him home to Denney,’ Bastian said as they walked back up to the Abbey. ‘But I think now that I will not.’

  ‘The decision is, of course, yours,’ she murmured.

  Bastian was silent for a moment, as if hunting for the right words. Then: ‘He is very peaceful where he is, Abbess.’

  More peaceful than he would be buried at Denney? he wondered.

  But she did not ask.

  Before Meriel and Jerome left Hawkenlye, taking the fast-recovering Berthe with them, Helewise asked the two of them to come to see her.

  They stood before her in her room. They were, she noted, holding hands.

  It was now ten days since Alba’s death, and the Abbey was still alive with a constant buzz of excited talk. It was understandable, Helewise realised, and probably inevitable.

  Still, the sooner they could get back to normal, the better. And a good first step would be to see these two, and the little sister, on their way.