by Alys Clare
‘Sister Bernadine!’ Helewise said. ‘You wish to see me?’
‘Yes, my lady. That is, I am not sure – it is probably nothing, just my imagination, but although I keep telling myself so, I am still perturbed.’
It was quite a long speech for the usually reserved Sister Bernadine. ‘Come in,’ Helewise said, ‘and tell me what it is that worries you.’
Sister Bernadine looked pale, Helewise thought, even more so than usual. And the smooth-skinned hands that were normally tucked neatly away in the opposite sleeves of the nun’s habit were restless and fluttering.
Helewise guided Sister Bernadine to her own chair. ‘You do indeed appear anxious,’ she said. ‘Here, take some sips of water . . .’ – she held out a cup to Sister Bernadine’s pale lips – ‘there, that’s better. Now, what has happened?’
Sister Bernadine turned wide, fatigue-shadowed eyes up to her superior. Not a woman to waste words, even when she was upset, she said, ‘I went to the script room after Tierce. When we were there yesterday with Father Micah I had noticed that there were fingerprints on the lid of the book chest. I was relieved that the Father did not see them for I should have been ashamed had I given him the opportunity for a reprimand.’
‘Quite,’ Helewise murmured. The Father, she thought, had issued quite enough reprimands as it was.
‘When I knelt down on the floor and began to polish the lid of the chest, something prompted me to look inside. I fetched the key from where it hangs in the window embrasure and opened the chest. And – oh, my lady Abbess, I cannot swear to it but I believe that somebody has been through the precious manuscripts.’
Helewise kept her voice calm. ‘Is anything missing, Sister?’
‘I don’t know. My first swift glance inferred that about the right number of scripts were there, but I did not stop for a proper look. I thought it better to come straight to you, my lady.’
‘Quite right, Sister Bernadine,’ Helewise said stoutly. ‘Now, we shall go back together and you will look more closely.’
‘But—’ Sister Bernadine, still very pale, closed her eyes.
‘But what?’
Opening her eyes, she raised them to Helewise’s. ‘Supposing the thief – if, that is, there is a thief – is still there? Hiding behind the door, waiting to jump out on us?’
‘It is not very likely, now, is it?’ Helewise said briskly. ‘Even if this hypothetical someone was there when you entered the room just now’ – Sister Bernadine gave a low moan at the very thought – ‘then they surely will not have remained there to be discovered.’
‘But—’
‘Come along.’ Helewise made her tone purposeful. ‘The sooner we have a good look, the sooner we shall know what we are faced with.’
She marched out of her room, Sister Bernadine at her side. They walked around the cloister to the small room that was Sister Bernadine’s domain and, silently, the pale nun pointed to the wooden book cupboard, a wide, shallow structure that stood roughly knee-high on six stout legs. Its front panel was decorated with a series of arches.
Helewise knelt down in front of it. She did not often look into the book chest and she had never gone right through it to inspect every script in detail, so she had little idea of what in fact she was looking for. She was about to make a remark to this effect when suddenly Sister Bernadine let out a wail.
‘Oh, I have not checked that the missal is still here!’ She hurried forward, knelt down beside Helewise and leaned into the chest. ‘Oh, I pray that it is!’
‘The missal, Sister?’
Sister Bernadine was carefully going through the scripts at one end of the chest. ‘The St Albans missal, my lady, one of our most precious documents, presented to us by His Grace the Bishop . . . oh, thank God! Here it is!’ She held up some sheets of parchment bound together, a smile of relief on her pale face. Helewise caught a glimpse of a page of careful lettering illustrated with three large and vivid illuminated capital letters before, with the care of a mother tucking up her infant child, Sister Bernadine tenderly replaced the missal in the book chest.
Looking around her, Helewise said, after a moment, ‘I do not believe that I can be of help, Sister Bernadine. Because I am not familiar with the usual arrangement of the manuscripts, I cannot tell whether any have been removed. Is this chest the only repository for our manuscripts?’
‘No, there is also the book cupboard let into the wall over there.’ Sister Bernadine pointed. Getting up, she went to inspect the cupboard’s wooden door. ‘It may have been opened,’ she said, ‘I do not know.’ She peered inside the cupboard then, with a sigh, said, ‘I think that all is in order. But, as with the chest, something does not seem quite right.’ She frowned, biting her lip in her anxiety. ‘I am sorry, my lady, that I cannot be more explicit. It is merely that I know what the chest and the cupboard usually look like, and today – today—’
‘They look different,’ Helewise finished for her.
Sister Bernadine shot her a grateful glance. ‘Precisely.’
‘And you cannot yet say whether anything is missing?’
Sister Bernadine gave a helpless shrug. ‘No, my lady. I am sorry, but no.’
‘Very well.’ Helewise spoke decisively. ‘I suggest, then, that you now go through the full contents of the book chest and the cupboard and sort through the contents. I will send Sister Phillipa to assist you; between you, it should be possible to list what is here and compare it to the inventory. Take your time; I will not press you. Come and see me when you are able to say whether there has indeed been theft or whether somebody has merely been mischievous.’
Sister Bernadine, absorbed already in her task, muttered, ‘Yes, my lady. Of course,’ and gave Helewise a very brief bow. Then she began lifting manuscripts one by one from the chest, studying them and dusting off each one with a long white hand as if the possible indignity they had suffered, of somebody interfering with them who had no right to do so, could be stroked away.
And Helewise left her to her absorption and walked slowly back to her room.
She had decided that, regarding Father Micah, she must pay a visit to Father Gilbert. As a first step, in any case, for Father Gilbert might have knowledge of his replacement that could help Helewise in her dealings with him. She could also enquire tentatively how long it would be before Father Gilbert was up and about again.
If Father Gilbert could not help, then Helewise would have to appeal to a higher authority. Father Micah’s superior first and, if all else failed, then to Queen Eleanor herself.
Whatever it took, Helewise vowed to herself, she had no intention of doing what Father Micah said and turning her fallen women out on the dubious mercy of the world.
Whatever it took.
By the time she returned to the Abbey church for Vespers, Helewise was feeling considerably more optimistic. As always, her mood was improved by having thought about her problems and taken the first steps towards solving them. Full resolution might be some way off still – Sister Bernadine and Sister Phillipa had as yet only scratched the surface of their task, and the difficult matter of Father Micah still seemed all but insurmountable – but at least, Helewise told herself, she knew what she intended to do. Closing her eyes and bending her head, humbly she asked God to spare the time to consider the priest. Please, Lord, she begged, help him out of his distress. Help me, too. Please save the Hawkenlye community and those we serve from his wrath and his narrow-mindedness.
The voices of her sisters rose into the still air, and Helewise gave herself up to the sweet sound of their chanting.
The alarm went up before dawn the next day.
A pedlar with a heavy load had set out early for Tonbridge market, knowing that his burden would make his progress slower than usual and wanting not to be late and risk losing his habitual spot in the market place.
On a dark stretch of the track up above Castle Hill, where an outcrop of the Great Forest cast even deeper shadows across the night’s gloom, the pedlar noticed what he thought w
as a large sack lying half on the track, half in the ditch. Reasoning that it might very well have dropped off the cart of some other early riser making for market – Tonbridge was now only some five miles or so distant – the pedlar put down his own pack and went to see if he could find anything to his advantage.
He put his hands down to feel around what he thought was the neck of the sack; it certainly seemed, in the darkness, to be the narrowest point. And indeed it was a neck, of sorts; a human neck, broken, from which lolled a shaven head.
The pedlar did not wait to investigate further. Abandoning his pack – only extreme terror could have made him do that – he ran as fast as he could down the track to the place where it branched, one way going on down the hill to Tonbridge, the other skirting the forest and leading to Hawkenlye.
Banging on the Abbey’s wooden gates, yelling himself hoarse, the pedlar attracted the attention of the community as it prepared to rise for Matins. Two of the lay brothers, Brother Saul and Brother Michael, were summoned from the Vale and Josse came with them. The three of them accompanied the pedlar back to his gruesome find.
The pedlar was right, Josse instantly determined; the body was quite dead.
And, although it was difficult in the darkness to be absolutely sure, he had a good idea of its identity.
Agreeing with the pedlar’s repeated claim that he had done all he could, all you could reasonably ask an ordinary man to do, Josse said he could go on down to market; the pedlar had recovered by now and was once again preoccupied with his day’s trading. When Brother Michael asked in a whisper if it was wise to let him go, Josse replied that the pedlar could hardly be a murder suspect since only a foolwould kill a man, unseen, unsuspected, in the middle of the night and far from human habitation and then go and confess to an abbey full of nuns that he had done so.
‘Oh,’ said Brother Michael. ‘Oh, I suppose so.’
Between the three of them they rolled the body on to a hurdle and, having first covered the head and face with a piece of sacking somewhat grudgingly given by the pedlar, bore it back to Hawkenlye.
The Abbess was waiting.
She accompanied the three men into the infirmary. Under Sister Euphemia’s direction, they carried the corpse to a curtained-off recess and placed the hurdle on a trestle. Then, holding a light, Sister Euphemia leaned down, removed the sacking and inspected the dead face.
Straightening up, eyes wide with shock, she stared at the Abbess. Who had also seen who the dead man was.
In a voice that shook, the Abbess said, ‘Dear God, it’s Father Micah.’
6
‘But how did he come to be lying out there?’ the Abbess asked for the third time. ‘What was he doing?’
Josse, bending over the corpse with Sister Euphemia beside him, felt a moment’s annoyance; it was not like the Abbess, he thought, to stand wringing her hands in distress.
‘We cannot yet know, my lady,’ he said. ‘The first thing is to determine how he died.’
‘I thought you said his neck was broken!’
‘Aye, it is.’ Josse sensed rather than heard the infirmarer’s irritation with her uncharacteristically nervous superior. Turning to the Abbess, he said, forcing what he hoped was a reassuring smile, ‘Why not leave this to Sister Euphemia and me? When we’re ready to start finding out what the Father’s movements were yesterday, I’ll come and find you to discuss how we might best go about it.’
‘Oh.’ She frowned. ‘But I—’ Then abruptly she nodded, turned swiftly and strode out of the infirmary.
‘Something’s worrying her,’ Sister Euphemia muttered. ‘But we won’t dwell on what it is at the moment, eh, Sir Josse?’
‘No,’ he agreed. He gave her a grin. ‘More important things to do.’
They returned to the task of inspecting Father Micah’s dead body. As the infirmarer began carefully to unfasten and remove his garments, she said, ‘Sir Josse, this robe feels like the laundry when it’s been left out in the frost. It’s stiff as a board.’
‘Aye, Sister, you’re right. Which suggests he was lying out there for quite some time.’
They worked in silence for a while. Then Josse said, ‘Sister, would it be in order if we sent for Brother Augustus?’
She raised her head from removing the priest’s sandals. ‘You think we could do with another pair of sharp eyes?’
He chuckled. ‘Well, you and I have managed reasonably efficiently on our own before now. But I’m thinking it would be good for the lad to give him some more experience in something for which he already shows an aptitude.’
‘I agree,’ she said. ‘Aye, Sir Josse, you send for our Gus.’
Brother Augustus arrived from the Vale a little while later, panting. ‘There was no need to hurry, lad,’ Josse remarked. ‘The Father here isn’t going anywhere.’
‘It is true, then, what they told me?’ Augustus was advancing wide-eyed towards the trestle and its burden.
‘Depends what you’ve been told,’ Josse replied. ‘What’s true is that Father Micah was found on the track above Castle Hill early this morning. It seems that he was lying there all night. His neck is broken.’
‘Did he have a fall? An accident?’ Augustus asked. His eyes, Josse noticed, had gone straight to the dead man’s throat.
‘I already checked that,’ Josse murmured to him. ‘They’re not there. No bruises on this one’s neck.’
Sister Euphemia wrenched off the last of the priest’s meagre undergarments. He lay, pale, thin and still, naked before the three of them. It was Augustus who muttered a quiet prayer; Sister Euphemia met Josse’s eye and gave him a faint smile, jerking her head in Augustus’s direction as if to say, nice lad, isn’t he?
Josse wondered if the infirmarer had shared the Abbess’s antipathy towards the dead priest. On balance, it seemed likely.
Augustus finished his prayer and opened his eyes. He looked faintly accusingly at Josse and the infirmarer, both of whom muttered belated and sheepish amens.
‘Now then,’ Sister Euphemia said, ‘let’s see if there is any information to be gained from this poor wretch’s corpse.’
And then for some time there was quiet in the little recess as the three of them put their various emotions aside and got on with their task.
‘His body bears no obvious injury,’ Josse reported to the Abbess in the middle of the morning, ‘other than a bruise on the chin and, of course, his broken neck. That appears to have been done from the front. As if, for example, he had run into a beam, hitting it hard with his chin so that his head was thrown violently backwards.’
‘But there are no beams out on the track,’ the Abbess said.
Josse wondered why her customary intelligence appeared to have deserted her. ‘Quite so, my lady. I only cited the beam as an illustration. He could, perhaps, have slipped and hit his chin on the low branch of a tree.’
‘A tree. Ah, yes.’ Her grey eyes were vague and unfocused. Then, looking up and seeing him watching her, she appeared to make an effort. ‘Or I suppose he might have died elsewhere – where there were beams – and then been dumped on the track.’
‘He could, aye,’ Josse said slowly. ‘But that would make it murder, my lady, since a man whose neck is broken does not get up and walk somewhere else.’
To his consternation, she flushed deep pink and shouted, ‘Well I didn’t kill him!’
He said instantly, ‘My lady, I did not imagine for one moment that you did!’
But she could hardly have heard. She was weeping, her head lowered on to her arms folded on top of her table. He went round to stand at her side, putting out a tentative hand to touch her shoulder. ‘There, there,’ he said, thinking even as he did so what an inane, inadequate utterance it was.
After a moment, one of her hands came up and clasped his in a quick, hard squeeze. He flinched slightly; she had strong hands. Then she raised her head, wiped her eyes and said, in almost her normal voice, ‘I am sorry, Sir Josse, for that outburst. I did not sleep we
ll, for my conscience is uneasy concerning Father Micah.’ She turned her head so that she was looking up at him. ‘I feared, in the first shock of receiving the news, that his death was my fault. I prayed to God last night at Vespers that Father Micah be helped out of his distress. I also asked that we at Hawkenlye be saved from his wrath and his bigotry.’
Josse perched on the edge of her table, a liberty he would not normally have taken. ‘And you thought that God had answered your plea by kindly breaking the Father’s neck for you?’ She nodded. ‘Oh, Helewise!’ he whispered.
For a moment her eyes on his were full of emotion. Then she lowered them and began an earnest and concentrated examination of her folded hands.
He got off her table and went round to the other side of it, taking up his usual position just inside the door. From that slight distance, it was easier to get his own feelings under control. After a moment – which he could not help but think she needed as much as he did – he cleared his throat and said, ‘I have indeed been wondering, in fact, if somebody attacked him. Not that there is any certainty of that – Sister Euphemia, Brother Augustus and I found no evidence for or against. It is equally possible that he had a fatal accident.’
‘The putative branch,’ she said. She still did not meet his eyes. ‘Quite so.’
‘We now have to look into how the Father spent his day yesterday,’ Josse went on. This was easier, he was finding, if they kept their minds on the business in hand. ‘He was here in the Abbey early in the day, I believe, my lady?’
‘He was.’ At last she raised her head and looked up at him. ‘He insisted on my escorting him all around the various departments so that he could point out where we were going wrong. He was particularly vociferous in his condemnation of our work with the fallen women. He made a vicious comment to one of our newly delivered mothers and either she or one of her friends gave him an equally savage reply.’
‘Indeed? Do you know which woman?’
‘No, Sir Josse.’ She gave a very faint smile, quickly gone. ‘And even if I did, I am not sure that I would tell you. The idea that a heavily pregnant woman or a recently delivered mother would creep out of the Abbey, locate Father Micah out on the road and break his neck is, as I am sure you will agree, unlikely.’