by Alys Clare
She strode past the end of the infirmary and on to the church. The great west door was locked but the access to the side of it was open, as it always was. The gates were fastened and bolted; there was no need to put a lock on God’s dwelling place. She pushed the small door open just a crack, slipped inside and quietly closed it.
The air was heavy with incense, and in the soft glow of the sanctuary light she could see smoke from the censer lying in strata. She looked down the length of the nave, then raised her eyes to the vast wooden beam of the rood screen that swept from north to south above the transept, marking off the chancel beyond with its new double rows of choir stalls, beautifully carved out of local oak. Slowly she walked up the nave, pausing beneath the rood screen to look up at Christ on the cross high above her, then on between the choir stalls until she knelt before the altar. Closing her eyes, she stilled her mind in the hope of hearing God’s voice.
Some time later, she opened her eyes once more. Feeling peace all around her as if loving arms had placed a soft blanket on her shoulders, she rose to her feet. She heard a noise. She stood quite still, listening to see if it would come again, but there was nothing. Probably a mouse scouring the stone slabs for drops of wax. It was quite amazing what mice ate…
She walked on.
The soft, small noise came again.
She crossed to the end of one of the choir stalls and, holding up her small lantern, shone its light down on the shelf where the cresset lamps were kept ready for services after dark. She lit the five separate wicks — there was still plenty of oil in each depression — and, holding the lamp in one hand and her lantern in the other, slowly began to walk around the church.
She saw it when she was still several paces off. There was nothing particularly alarming about it at first sight, nothing to warn her; it was just that it was there where it should not be.
It was in a recess in the rounded wall behind the altar. There was a large wooden chest there with stout locks where the sacristan nun kept altar cloths, candlesticks and the precious beeswax candles. There was something on top of the chest. It looked like a bundle of clothes.
Helewise fought a sudden dart of fear. I am in the house of the Lord, she told herself. The gates were locked at sunset and there is nobody within to harm me.
Holding both lantern and cresset lamp high, she approached the chest.
She had been right in her guess, but from one end of the bundle protruded a sturdy boot. It was not very large and it showed signs of hard usage. The heel was worn down at one side, as if the wearer walked on the outsides of his feet, and the sole had been mended. Helewise moved her light to the other end of the bundle. Leaning down, she could make out the sound of deep, regular breathing. She sent up a swift and heartfelt prayer of gratitude, for in that first moment she had feared yet another dead body.
The sudden relief giving her courage — anything else was better than another murder! — she put down her lantern and, with her free hand, picked at the very edge of the cloak, or perhaps it was a blanket, that covered the sleeping man’s head. But the action did not reveal very much, for he wore an enveloping headdress that swathed his head, came down low right over his brows almost to his closed eyelids and covered the lower part of his face, ending in a fold across the bridge of his nose. He had cushioned his cheek on his leather pack and one hand was tucked under the pack as if even in sleep he would not relinquish his hold.
She stared down at her unexpected guest. What she could see of the skin around his eyes was dark, although smooth and unlined. He was a young man, then. She looked down at the hand tucked under the satchel; it was palm up, and the satchel covered it as far as the wrist. The flesh of the inside of the wrist looked pale; she could see a blue lace of veins and there was the faint bump, bump, bump of a steady, regular pulse.
This poor man is exhausted, Helewise thought.
What shall I do?
He must have come into the Abbey in the stream of those seeking our help and then crept in here once the community had left after compline. He must, she thought with a frown, reckon on waking up and slipping out before matins…
She was inclined to leave him. He was warmly wrapped up, he looked quite comfortable — the wooden chest would undoubtedly offer a friendlier bed than the hard stone floor — and quite obviously was in dire need of sleep. She would go to her own bed, she decided, but she would not undress. She would make sure she was up at the first stroke of the call to matins so that she could get down here first, wake him up and perhaps offer him the care of either the infirmarer if he was unwell or the refectory nuns if, as undoubtedly he would be, he was hungry.
Pleased to have resolved the small matter, she bent down to pick up her lantern.
It was some tiny difference in the man’s breathing that alerted her, but it was too late: a hand shot out from the heaped garments and grabbed her wrist. The man on the chest sat up, shrugged off his blanket and cloak and swept up his other hand, in which she saw a long, curved knife. Its wicked point was a hand’s breadth from her throat.
Summoning every bit of her courage, praying that her voice would not give away her fear, she said, ‘I mean you no harm. I do not know how you come to be here in the church but clearly you need to sleep and I was going to leave you here until morning.’
The knife was held steady as a rock but she thought — hoped — that the man had lowered it a little.
‘This is God’s house and all who love him are welcome,’ she went on in the same calm, level tone. ‘It may be that you do not wish anyone to know you are here, in which case you could claim sanctuary and be safe from violence or arrest.’
The shadowed eyes watched her warily but still the man did not speak.
‘I am sorry that I startled you,’ she went on. ‘It must have given you quite a jolt, to wake up suddenly from profound sleep and find someone bending over you!’ She forced a laugh. ‘I would have been quite terrified, under the circumstances.’
At last the man spoke. In a low, hoarse, hesitant voice that she had to strain to hear, he whispered, ‘I am not afraid of you.’
‘Good, that’s good,’ she said. She held up the lamp so that he could see her face. ‘I am in holy orders, as you can see, and we are vowed to love our fellow men. We do not do them harm.’
He nodded; a quick, curt movement, his eyes fixed on hers.
‘Will you not accept a more comfortable bed?’ she suggested. ‘There will be a nun on duty in the infirmary. I could take you there — it’s not only the sick who sleep within. When they are in need, the healthy accept its comforts too.’
‘No,’ the man said in a low growl. ‘I do not — I did not want anyone to know I was here.’
‘But now I know,’ she pointed out.
‘You not tell!’ he hissed.
‘No, very well,’ she agreed. ‘But why are you here? Are you in truth in hiding? Do you wish to claim sanctuary?’
He regarded her steadily. Now the knife was pointing at her heart, although she was almost sure he had no intention of harming her. ‘In hiding, yes,’ he said. His eyes glittered in the light of her lamp; she could see five tiny flames reflected. Then he drew away, pulling the headdress still lower so that his eyes were in its shadow.
She thought suddenly, we could be here all night in this stand-off. She had guessed who he was and she said decisively, ‘You are Fadil, aren’t you? You came here to England with a monk from the Order of the Knights Hospitaller, whose prisoner you once were, and not long ago you asked a man who lives near here if you could stay in his outbuilding. You told him your name was John Damianos. Isn’t that so?’
His reaction greatly surprised her. In a strange echo of Thibault’s response when Josse suggested it was Fadil who turned up at New Winnowlands, this man too seemed to be amused. He went further, however, and she thought she heard a faint and muffled laugh. ‘Fadil?’ he said. Then, curtly, ‘Fadil not here.’
‘But you have been travelling with the English monk, haven
’t you?’ she persisted. It suddenly struck her that taking this man to the infirmary was not a good idea, since Thibault and Brother Otto might well recognize their monk’s companion; she said, ‘Two of the runaway’s brethren are looking for him. They are called Thibault of Margat and Brother Otto. They were hurt in a fire and they are recovering here in the infirmary.’
‘I know,’ he whispered. She tried to catch the cadence of his voice but it was difficult when he spoke so softly and huskily. She thought he was young, his voice not long broken to manhood.
‘Others were hunting you too, weren’t they?’ She longed to put out a hand to touch him but she did not dare; he might have lowered the knife but he still held it. ‘There were two Saracen warriors called Kathnir and Akhbir and they killed a man they thought was you. They tormented him before they killed him and we assume that was because they thought he — or, rather, you — carried a precious object that they were desperate to find.’
His eyes widened in surprise. ‘You — have discovered much,’ he rasped.
‘We think there is a third group who hunt you,’ she went on, her confidence growing. ‘Men of their number are skilled with the bow. It was-’ She had been about to say that one of the unknown group had killed Kathnir, but she stopped. It was not wise to reveal too much too soon.
‘You think correctly,’ he muttered. Then, putting down the knife, he said, ‘There is abbess here?’
‘Er-’ Should she tell him who she was? Again, caution prevailed: ‘Yes, that’s right. Abbess Helewise.’
‘She is good woman?’
How, Helewise wondered, should she answer that? ‘They say so,’ she said guardedly.
‘And fair? Just?’
‘She would not condemn anybody without hearing what they had to say,’ she said firmly. ‘Even then her inclination would be towards mercy rather than condemnation, for she does her best to follow in the steps of her master, Our Lord.’
‘This is what I have heard,’ the man whispered.
‘Why do you ask?’
He looked at her for what seemed a long time. She sensed tension in the air like crackling frost. Then he growled, ‘I have come a very long way and I have been threatened over every mile and at every turn by these three parties. One party alone hunts for me. The others search for the Englishman.’
‘The runaway monk,’ she said, wanting to be quite clear.
‘He is not-’ The man stopped. ‘Yes.’
‘Is he close by?’ she whispered. Something went through her — some strange sense of heightened awareness — as she spoke the words. When, very slowly, the man nodded his confirmation, she had the peculiar sense that she had already known.
‘He cannot come here,’ the man said softly. ‘It is not safe.’
‘Because of the presence of Thibault, yes, I understand.’
‘Not-’ Again he stopped. Then: ‘Yes, Sister, that is so.’ She thought there was a different quality in his voice: he sounded almost… regretful.
Letting her instinct guide her — after all, thinking and reasoning did not seem to be getting her very far — she said, ‘Would you like to meet the Abbess?’
There was a pause and then slowly he nodded.
‘Come, then,’ she said. ‘I will take you to her.’
Again he shrank back. ‘It is late. She will be sleeping.’
‘She has been working late tonight.’ That at least was the truth. ‘I will take you to her private room, where there is a small fire and candles for light. There you may reveal to her why you are here.’
‘I cannot-’ He seemed to be debating with himself. Then, once again, he nodded. Sliding the knife into a sheath on his belt, he swung his legs down, gathered up his satchel, swirled his wide cloak around him and, jumping off the wooden chest, stood beside her.
He was perhaps her own height; possibly just a little taller, but then she was a tall woman and stood eye to eye with many men. He was lightly built and, as they moved off, she noticed that he was catlike on his feet. Even in the heavy boots he made little noise.
He told me he is not Fadil, she thought, and from his reaction I am quite sure that he is not. But he must be John Damianos: the style of dress, the hesitant speech of a foreigner speaking an alien tongue, it all matches. I’m pretty certain he’s been brought back from Outremer and abandoned, Josse had said. Well, if this young man was in truth not Fadil then perhaps Josse had been right in the first place. The runaway monk could easily have brought a Saracen body servant with him.
They had reached the great doors and she led the way out through the smaller side door. Very aware of him walking beside her, she strode on past the infirmary and into the cloister, then along to her little room.
‘Now, sit here on this stool,’ she said, pushing it forward, ‘and I will add firewood to the brazier. It was banked down only recently and the embers will soon ignite the new fuel.’ She worked swiftly and, when the flames caught, held out her hands to the warmth, watching him out of the corner of her eye.
He was staring around him, as well he might. ‘Where is she?’ he demanded, careful to keep his face away from the light of the fire. ‘Where is the Abbess? You said she would be here!’ There was a faint but definite note of suspicion — of fear? — in the low voice.
She walked around her table and lit the candle she had been using earlier. She had brought the cresset lamp over from the church and she put it down beside the candle. She glanced at the man. He was sitting on the stool, hunched into himself. His headdress was still drawn closely around his head and she could barely see anything of his face.
This will not do, she told herself. We are circling each other like two wary dogs.
She drew out her throne-like chair and sat down. Then she said, ‘I am Abbess Helewise. Tell me who you are and what you want of me.’
Sixteen
The young man seemed to take her revelation in his stride although since she could see so little of him it was hard to tell. When he spoke it was in the same gruff voice.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘For what?’
‘I ask to see you. You see me.’
She inclined her head. ‘You are welcome.’
He had turned away and when he spoke again, he appeared to be addressing the wall rather than her.
‘I tell you of Fadil,’ he announced.
It seemed an odd place to start but at least he was starting. ‘Very well.’
‘Fadil fight with Muslim army and is taken prisoner. He is beloved of man named Hisham. Hisham claim Fadil is his young brother but this is not so. Relationship is — different.’ He hesitated. ‘Bad.’
‘I see.’ Helewise thought she knew what he meant.
‘Hisham approach Knights Hospitaller and make offer to exchange Fadil for something of very great value. Knights agree and meeting in desert at night is arranged. But knights and Hisham are alike. Both wish to keep prisoner and ransom. Very bad things happen — I cannot describe for I not there — and Hisham is wounded and many of his servants die but Hisham very clever, very devious, and he hide more men — fighting men — and more horses out in dark desert. These men help others to kill knights. They take Hisham away to where healers treat his wounds.’
‘Both parties tried to cheat?’ Helewise asked.
‘Very much at stake,’ the young man said. ‘Even good men will do bad things in such circumstances.’
Helewise had noticed something. Careful so as not to alert him, she said, ‘The monk who survived took the prisoner — Fadil — and fled, didn’t he?’
‘Yes. He take ransom as well.’
She nodded. ‘So Hisham sent his men Kathnir and Akhbir to chase after them and the Hospitallers sent Thibault and his companions. Both pursuing parties wanted to recapture the prisoner and take possession of the ransom. Is that not so?’
The young man turned his swathed face her way and just for an instant the light of the candle flames illuminated his eyes.
Had Helewise not
been paying such close attention and waiting tensely for just such a chance, she would have missed it. As it was she saw: just a glimpse in a split second. Her suspicion was confirmed.
Whoever this young man might be, he was not a Saracen. For one thing, as he told his tale the halting speech of someone speaking an alien language vanished. For another, Helewise was fairly certain that Saracens did not have jade-green eyes. He must not know that I have seen, she thought. For some reason it is very important to him that I believe in this false identity.
‘Two parties pursue, yes,’ he was saying. ‘But only one cares about Fadil.’
‘Hisham wanted his — er, his-’
‘His boy,’ supplied the young man. Helewise would have sworn that he was amused by her discomfiture.
‘He wanted him desperately enough to have offered something of great value in exchange,’ she said.
‘He did, but it was never his intention that the thing he offered would be given away. Thirty fighting men of his household hidden out in the darkness beyond the circle of light would see to that.’
‘So the monk and Fadil galloped off into the night,’ she resumed. ‘Then what?’
‘Fadil did not wish to be returned to Hisham. He had become a fighter to get away from his particular form of servitude, and when he was captured and imprisoned he hoped that by the time he was released Hisham would have found another sexual slave and forgotten all about him. When Fadil was told that Hisham was going to buy him back, he was so desperate that he thought about taking his own life. But he did not and in the end he was very glad, for the monk took him far away from the desert and Fadil will never see Hisham again.’
‘Where is he? What happened to him?’
‘When the Knights Hospitaller were attacked and slaughtered by Hisham’s men, Fadil slipped to the ground and went over to where Hisham had been lying on his divan. Hisham was intent on the fight, so Fadil helped himself to his purse. It contained not only a large sum of gold but also very valuable rings which Hisham had removed before he drew his knife. Hisham has fat hands,’ he added, ‘and the jewels that he wears are set in wide bands of gold, so it is hard to grip a weapon.