by Alys Clare
‘No!’
The single word seemed to emerge from Elvera as if its expression gave her agony. As Helewise and Josse watched, she shut her eyes again. This time, two tears appeared from under the lids and slid down the pale cheeks.
Josse seemed to be at a loss as to how to continue. Helewise didn’t feel any more confident, but, in her own room and in her own abbey, it was up to her to do something.
‘Elvera, I understand your pain but you must tell us anything that might help,’ she said gently. ‘Take a moment to think back over that last day. You and Gunnora were heard laughing together outside the infirmary, and Sister Euphemia—’
‘She came thundering out of her hospital and gave us a right telling-off,’ Elvera said sulkily. ‘Especially Gunnora, since she was senior to me. But she had a go at me, too. Sister Euphemia, I mean. She told me I was a child, that I had to grow up.’
‘Never mind that now,’ Helewise put in. ‘Did you see any more of Gunnora that day?’
‘Of course. In the refectory, during the Holy Offices, here and there around the Abbey.’
‘I meant did you see her alone?’ Surely the girl realised that!
‘No.’ Elvera raised her head and looked Helewise straight in the eye. Her face looked strangely smug. ‘You told her we mustn’t. Didn’t you?’
‘Not that day!’ Helewise exclaimed. Elvera must know that, too. Oh, the interview seemed to be going round in circles! ‘We respect your feelings, Elvera, and we know what you’re going through, but—’
‘You don’t.’ Elvera spoke so softly that Helewise hardly heard. ‘You can’t.’
‘We want to help,’ Josse put in. ‘We must find her killer, Elvera, and he must be tried and punished for his crime.’
Josse, Helewise was well aware, was trying to reassure the girl. Encourage her to unite her efforts with his and find the murderer.
But, when once again Elvera raised her head, she looked neither reassured nor encouraged. She looked suddenly ten years older.
She said dully, ‘I know.’
Then, without waiting for permission, she turned and quietly let herself out of the room.
* * *
Helewise sat staring at the closed door. Beside her she sensed Josse start to move; returning to his chair, he said, ‘What did you make of that?’
‘She’s afraid.’
‘Indeed she is.’
‘She knows a great deal more than she has told us.’
‘She hasn’t told us anything!’
Helewise felt his frustration. ‘I am sorry, Sir Josse. She was, as you imply, singularly unhelpful.’
‘She’s bright, that one,’ he said musingly. ‘Not as bright as she believes she is, but not the sort to be pushed into revealing her secrets just because someone in authority orders her to.’
Helewise said mildly, ‘I did my best.’
He smiled. ‘Aye. And I thank you, Abbess.’ The heavy brows came down again. ‘Why does she deny the friendship? Do you believe this convenient explanation, that all the overtures were made by Gunnora, and Elvera just went along with it?’
‘Not for a moment. For one thing, it didn’t happen like that – I saw with my own eyes that, if anything, Elvera was the instigator. For another, Gunnora wasn’t the sort of woman to woo others for their favours.’
‘Hm. Why lie, then?’
‘She was horrified when she saw you hiding behind the door,’ Helewise remarked.
‘Many people react that way.’ He grinned. ‘I was comely when I was young, they used to say.’
Absurdly – and most inappropriately – she had to quell a desire to laugh. Pulling herself together, she said, ‘Did you observe her reaction when you suggested she had provided some happiness for Gunnora in her last days? And, later, how she looked when you spoke of Gunnora’s killer?’
He nodded. ‘Aye. Go on.’
She had the feeling he already knew what she was about to say, but went ahead anyway. ‘I think, Sir Josse, that our little Elvera is carrying a burden of guilt.’
Still nodding, he said, ‘A singularly heavy one.’
* * *
Between Compline and Matins, when most of the sisters were deep in the first dreamless sleep that comes from a busy day and a clear conscience, somebody was abroad.
As Gunnora had done the night she died, somebody crept along the dormitory and descended the steps, careful to avoid the third stair. Made her way in the shadows to the rear gate, slid back the bolts, emerged on to the track.
The slim figure pushed back her short, ugly veil, and the springy hair, not yet confined by wimple and barbette, caught the soft moonlight. The girl breathed in deeply, striding over the short grass as if glad to be free, to be outside the confines of the convent wall and, for a short time, out of sight of the watching, gossiping nuns.
There was nothing tentative about the way she walked; an observer would have gained the impression she had done this before, and, indeed, would have been right. For anyone within the Abbey who wanted a private meeting with an outsider, going out secretly by night was the only way to achieve it. And she wanted such meetings. Oh, she did! Wanted them, needed them, for more than one reason.
Nearing the meeting place, well hidden in the undergrowth beside the path, she broke into a run. Let him be there! He must be, it is the day of the week that he always waits!
She left the path and made her way into the bushes. Called his name softly, waited for an answer.
Nothing.
Called again, went deeper into the shrubbery.
Then, as she stood still to listen, heard a footfall.
Turned, a smile of relief and love on her face.
And, as he approached, moved forward into his arms.
The Second Death
Chapter Ten
Josse had been offered accommodation in the shelter down in the vale, where pilgrims coming to the shrine were put up. Just as he had suspected, it was not particularly comfortable, but the floor was swept and the straw filling of his palliasse was reasonably fresh.
Whether or not it was because rumours had spread about the recent murder, at present there were no visitors to the shrine. Few, if any, pilgrims were arriving during the long, warm summer days to take the miracle waters; certainly, none were asking to be accommodated overnight.
Josse was inclined to be impatient with a man – or a woman – who would let a surely unreasonable, superstitious fear stand between them and a possible cure for whatever sickness or trouble ailed them. Why, the greatest fool in the kingdom could see, couldn’t he, that this was no random crime of violence? That, whoever had slaughtered Gunnora, he had somehow been involved in her secretive, complicated life?
No. He corrected himself. Of course they couldn’t see it. For Josse’s speculations had been shared with no one but the abbess, and she, he was quite sure, hadn’t been passing them on.
No. As far as the outside world was concerned, this murder remained what it had been from the start. A random crime committed by a released prisoner.
Mentally putting spurs to himself, Josse vowed to increase his efforts and prove, once and for all, otherwise.
Settling down as best he could in his solitary discomfort, he closed his eyes and made himself relax.
* * *
He did not sleep well. Disturbed by dreams of violence and by the conviction that there were living things within the straw, things, moreover, determined to feast off his blood, it was a relief when the faint grey of dawn lightened the eastern sky.
He got up and, scratching, went outside and walked the short distance to the latrine, hidden behind a paling fence. He held his breath as he relieved himself. It appeared to be some time since the trench had been dug, and the contents now neared ground level. Then he crossed to where a trough of water stood against the wall to the rear of the shelter. Plunging his head into it, he scrubbed at his short-cropped hair and splashed the back of his neck. It served to bring him to full wakefulness, even if he didn�
��t feel a great deal cleaner. On his wrists, he noticed, were several rough circles of small red bites, which, he was sure, hadn’t been there when he went to bed.
I’m getting soft, he decided as he stood staring out at the scene before him, the details gradually clarifying as daylight brightened. Shaking the drops of water out of his ears, he thought, fleas, lice, a hard pallet and the constant stench of shit, what should they matter to a former soldier? I’m too used to the comforts of court, to the pleasure of cleanliness. To the sweet perfumes of the ladies of Aquitaine. I must accustom myself to different standards here.
Outside the narrow world of the convent, the English, Josse had been discovering, stank.
His thoughts wound to a halt as his eyes focused on an object on the path. The smaller path, the one that led to the pool.
The path where Gunnora had been found.
Not pausing to raise the alarm, he was off, running as fast as he could. Although, even then, some deep awareness within him was telling him it was too late for haste.
She was lying face-down, and her head and shoulders were under the water. Grabbing her by the tops of her arms, he dragged her backwards, then, turning her on to her back, he put his cheek right by the partly open mouth.
He could feel not a whisper of breath.
Her face was dead white, the lips blueish. Her tongue, protruding slightly, looked swollen. Rolling her over on to her front, he pressed down with his hands and leaned his weight on her back, at the level of the lungs: he had seen a man saved that way once, seen how the pressure squeezed the water from the body, brought the victim back from the brink so that he coughed out the muck in his throat and drew a life-restoring breath …
But that man had been under water for a matter of minutes. And this girl, this poor girl, had, Josse was forced to recognise, been immersed for hours.
She was quite dead.
He sat back on his heels, staring down at her. He felt tears running down his face, and brushed them away.
Her hair, he noticed absently, had been reddish. Curly, springy. It would have been sad when the day came to clip it short for the donning of barbette and wimple. He hadn’t noticed it yesterday … No. Of course not. Yesterday she had been wearing the short black veil of the postulant.
He took off his tunic and draped it over her head and the upper part of her body. Then, bare-chested, he went to find Abbess Helewise to tell her that Elvera had drowned.
* * *
If the Abbess were surprised at being summoned by a half-naked man before Prime, she gave no sign. Very shortly after Josse had located one of the sisters on night duty in the hospital, and told her the brief details of his urgent mission, Helewise had appeared, gliding down the steps from the dormitory, perfectly dressed, bringing with her a faint scent of lavender.
She, Josse thought absently, was indeed the exception to the general rule. She was as sweet-smelling as an Aquitaine gentlewoman.
‘Good day, Sir Josse,’ she greeted him. ‘It was you who found her, Sister Beata tells me?’
‘Aye, lady.’
‘Drowned.’
‘Aye. Drowned.’
She was having the same dreadful thought; he could read it in her eyes. She glanced over her shoulder, but Sister Beata had gone back to the hospital. Drowned postulants, her attitude seemed to say, were not her business, not while she had the sick and the suffering in her charge.
‘Do you think she died at her own hand?’ Helewise asked quietly.
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s possible.’
She was nodding slowly. ‘We both noticed her state of mind yesterday,’ she said, in the same quiet, controlled tone. But he noticed the agitated hands, the strong fingers pulling at each other. As if she realised, she folded her hands and hid them away inside her sleeves. ‘I should have stayed with her, comforted her,’ she went on. ‘If she took her own life, I am to blame.’
He wanted to shake her. Tell her that, ultimately, every man and woman on God’s earth is responsible for themselves. That, if a soul is intent on self-destruction, that is their choice.
He said simply, ‘If she took her own life, Abbess, it was because it had gone so terribly awry that she considered it no longer worth the living. And that, you must agree, is not something for which you must blame yourself.’
She didn’t answer for some time. Then, after a faint sigh, she said, ‘We had better arrange for her body to be brought up to the Abbey.’
‘Not just yet.’ He heard the urgency in his voice. ‘I only had the briefest look at her. Let us return together. There may be things we can learn.’
She gazed at him. She seemed hardly to hear, and he wondered if she were in shock. Then abruptly she gave herself a shake, and said, ‘Of course. Lead the way.’
* * *
She made a detour from the track to go to the lay brothers’ quarters, and he heard her telling one of them about this latest death. ‘Come along in a little while,’ she said, ‘and bring something on which to carry her.’
The lay brother glanced at Josse, made some remark, and disappeared inside the shelter, to emerge with a brown robe in his hands. He nodded towards Josse.
The Abbess, returning to him, handed him the robe. ‘With Brother Saul’s compliments,’ she said.
‘I am sorry to appear before you like this,’ Josse said belatedly, putting on the robe. ‘My tunic covers her face.’
The Abbess nodded.
Then, silently, they went on to Elvera.
* * *
It was Abbess Helewise who noticed the marks on Elvera’s throat, purely because, out of delicacy, Josse had left it to her to unfasten the neck of the robe and expose the soft, creamy flesh.
Josse had been inspecting the girl’s hands – the right, which had been in the water, was dead white and crinkled, but the left had been on dry land, and there was something about it he wanted to show the Abbess – when he suddenly noticed Helewise’s stillness.
‘What?’ he asked. ‘What is it?’
Helewise pointed.
Elvera had a long neck, slim, graceful. At the front, neatly, side by side, were two clear thumb marks. And descending down the soft skin behind each ear were two rows of finger marks.
As Josse watched, Helewise put her own hand over the marks. Whoever had done this had hands considerably larger than hers.
‘She was throttled,’ Josse said quietly. ‘I would think, by a man.’
Helewise was stroking the bruised neck, tenderly, as if trying to assuage the pain of the wounds. ‘Throttled,’ she repeated. Then, looking up, she met Josse’s eyes. ‘God help me, but I am so very glad. I was so afraid that she had killed herself,’ she said, speaking rapidly.
He understood. Knew, too, even from his brief experience of her, that, by and by, she would realise what she had just said.
He did not have to wait long. With a sort of gasp, she stopped her ministrations, put both hands to her face and said from behind them, ‘What have I said? Oh, dear God, I’m sorry!’
He watched her anguish, aching with sympathy. He did not know what to do; on balance, it seemed best to do nothing. Pretend he hadn’t noticed. He gave a brief rueful smile; that would be impossible.
After some moments, he said, ‘Abbess, I don’t want to intrude, but Brother Saul…’
She removed her hands from her face. She was ashen, and the anguish in her eyes made his heart ache for her. She said, very quietly, ‘Thank you for the reminder.’ With a visible effort, she pulled herself together. She bent over Elvera’s body, and, as if she were tucking the covers around a sleeping child, rearranged Josse’s tunic over the girl’s head. Then, standing up, she turned to look up the path towards the shrine. ‘Brother Saul is on his way,’ she said, in what sounded very like her normal tone.
Josse looked too. ‘Aye.’ Then, suddenly remembering the mass of footprints at the place where Gunnora had been found, obscuring any trace a fleeing killer might have left, he hurried along the track and spoke bri
efly to Saul. Then, very aware of both Saul’s and the Abbess’s eyes on him, he began to walk slowly along the path in the other direction.
The short grass on the path was dry, the earth hard-baked, and there was little chance he’d find anything. But then he saw a disturbance in the longer grass between the path and the pond; it looked as if someone’s foot had missed the path and slipped sideways into the softer gound at the edge of the water.
Hardly daring to hope, he knelt down and went forward on all fours.
Very gently, he parted the long grass. And saw, quite clearly, the marks of running feet. Whoever it was had taken three … four … five paces on the softer ground. Perhaps he had been looking back over his shoulder at what he had left behind him, and not noticed that he was no longer running on the path. But he had certainly been running, there was no doubt of that. The prints were of the front part of the foot, and the toes had dug deep into the soft ground as if he had been pushing himself as hard as he could.
Josse stared down at the footprints.
And, as he did so, pieces of the puzzle started to fit together.
He got up and walked back to the Abbess, beckoning to Brother Saul; it was safe for him to advance now. For any number of people to churn up the ground, as long as nobody obscured those tell-tale prints on the margin of the pond. Not, at least, until Josse had found some way to make a cast of them.
* * *
Helewise walked up the slope to the Abbey behind Josse and Brother Saul, neither of whom seemed to find their sad burden very heavy. They had lain her on a hurdle – was it, Helewise wondered absently, the one on which Gunnora had been carried? – and both Saul, at the head, and Josse, at the feet, seemed slumped in sorrow.
They entered inside the walls. Brother Saul turned to her. ‘To the infirmary, Abbess?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Wait, Saul, I’ll ask Sister Euphemia where we should put her.’
She walked ahead, and Sister Euphemia came out to meet her. With a brisk nod – Euphemia, Helewise was well aware, always coped with grief by an ostentatious display of efficiency – she indicated a little side ward, nothing more than a curtained-off recess. ‘In here, please,’ she said.