Ashes of the Elements

Chapter Two

Helewise stood for some time, watching the Queen’s party disappear down the road. As Eleanor had predicted, all those mounted men had indeed made an almost intolerable amount of dust. Thinking that a breath of clean air would be pleasant, Helewise delayed her return within the Abbey walls, and set out instead for a brisk walk along the track that led off towards the forest.

The warm air of early June was bringing the wild flowers into bloom, and a soft, sweet perfume seemed to fill the air. Somewhere nearby, a blackbird sang. Ah, it was good to be alive! Straightening her shoulders and swinging her arms, Helewise increased her pace and marched towards the first of the trees. She would not go far into the forest, she decided, because it was always dark in there; even in June, the sun did not seem to penetrate, so that the atmosphere always struck chill. She would just take a brief turn around the perimeter of the woodland, a mile or so, no further, then-

She almost trod on him.

Hastily stepping back, twitching the full skirt of her habit away from the blood pooled on the fresh green grass, she pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle the horrified reaction.

He was dead. He had to be. He was lying face down, and the long shaft of a spear protruded from his back; from the angle, it appeared that the point, buried deep in the torso, must have penetrated the heart.

He was dressed in the rough clothing of a peasant. The hose were coarse and ill-fitting, and the tunic had been patched and darned. Neatly; someone had taken care with those tiny stitches. He must have had a wife, Helewise thought, or maybe a loving mother. Some poor woman will be grieving, when she learns of this. If she were his wife, it will mean loss of husband and loss of breadwinner. A bad day for her, whoever she is.

As the initial shock receded, it occurred to Helewise to wonder what the man had been doing on the fringes of the forest. And had he been lying there long? Had she and her nuns been going about their business for some days, while, all the time, this poor wretch lay dead not half a mile from the Abbey?

She bent down and touched the back of the man’s neck; it was, she couldn’t help but notice, filthy dirty. There were lice active in his greasy hair; would they not have left the corpse, had the man been dead for any length of time? Surely such little blood-suckers only supped on fresh, uncongealed blood … The flesh retained some semblance of warmth, although, Helewise realised, that could be because he was lying at least partly in the sun. Tentatively she picked up one of the man’s outflung arms: the limb was getting stiff. The rigor that came to the dead was beginning.

Had he died, then, during the past night?

Helewise stood over the corpse, a frown deepening across her brows. Then, abruptly, she turned away. Hurrying back towards the Abbey, she thought, I must get help. I must send word to the sheriff. This is a matter for him.

Breaking into a trot — not a dignified mode of locomotion for an Abbess, but she didn’t notice — she reflected that it was just as well this death — this murder — hadn’t come to light during Queen Eleanor’s visit. Had it done so, then everyone would have been far too preoccupied for the Queen and the Abbess to have had their calm and private little tete-a-tete.

Hard on that thought came another: that it was scarcely appropriate to be pleased about such a thing when a man lay dead, brutally murdered. Her shame at her own musings adding haste to her progress, Helewise gathered up her skirts and sprinted down the track to the Abbey gates.

* * *

Sheriff Harry Pelham of Tonbridge was an odious man.

Helewise, sitting listening to his pronouncements on the murder, had to bite down her irritation. At having to listen to his opinions — grandly stated, as if he alone could be right, as if she, a mere woman, could not possibly have any valid contribution — and at having to tolerate his very presence in her room.

He was a big fellow. Solid, squat, a chest like a barrel, and short legs which seemed barely up to the job of supporting the rest of him. He was dressed in a well-worn leather overtunic, and, when he performed his frequently repeated mannerism of flinging out his chest, it was as if his intention were to draw attention to the battle scars which criss-crossed the tough leather. As if he were saying, look! See what perils my duties take me into! See what cudgel blows and broadsword thrusts I have fended off!

It had apparently been quite a job to make him leave his own sword and knife at the gates. Sister Ursel, so Helewise had been informed, had stood her ground like an aggravated hen with her feathers ruffled out, and told Harry Pelham that, sheriff or not, nobody bore arms into God’s holy place.

The same observant nun — it was Sister Beata, who, as a nurse, was always observant — also reported to the Abbess that Harry Pelham’s sword was stained, and his knife looked as if he’d recently used it to carve his meat.

And it is this careless man, Helewise now thought, listening to his booming voice, who is our sole protector of law and order. Efficient he might be — he must be, she corrected herself, for he was appointed by the Clares of Tonbridge, and they surely did not tolerate slackness in their officers — but, oh, what an oaf he is!

‘Of course,’ Harry was saying, leaning back on the little wooden stool so that its rear legs squeaked a protest, ‘of course, Hamm Robinson was a well-known felon. Me, I’m not in the least surprised someone’s done him in, no, no, not at all, ha, ha, ha!’

Unable, for the life of her, to see why that was funny, Helewise said in a cool tone, ‘Felon, Sheriff? What was the nature of his crime?’

Harry Pelham leaned towards her, as if about to confide a secret. His fleshy nose had semicircles of little blackheads in the creases where the nostrils met the cheeks, and there were oily-looking creamy flakes in his eyebrows and at his hairline. ‘Why, Sister, he was a poacher!’

‘A poacher,’ she repeated. ‘My word, Sheriff, a dangerous man.’

Entirely missing the mild irony, Harry Pelham nodded. ‘Aye, Sister, dangerous, desperate, all of that.’ He hesitated, and she had the strong conviction he was wondering how far he dare exaggerate the details of what he was about to say. Leaning close again — she wished he wouldn’t, he didn’t smell any too fresh — he said, ‘Come near to apprehending him, I have, on several occasions. Tracked him, see, through those old woods.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the vague direction of the forest. ‘Ah, but he was a sly one! Wormed his way through that undergrowth like some wild animal, he did, all silent and swift, like. Reckon he knew the lie of the land like the back of his hand.’ Harry Pelham shook his head. ‘Never could quite lay my fists on him.’

‘Perhaps he heard you coming,’ Helewise remarked neutrally.

The sheriff shot her a quick glance. ‘Aye, that’s as maybe. And it’s also maybe my good fortune that I never did catch him, desperate man like him! Why, maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here now talking to you, Sister, if I had of!’

‘Yes,’ Helewise murmured, ‘he’d have put up a rare fight, of that I’m quite sure.’ Deliberately she stared at Harry Pelham’s broad shoulders. ‘Was he a big man, would you say, Sheriff?’ she asked, raising innocent eyes to his. ‘I only saw him dead, and it was hard to tell.’

The sheriff went, ‘Humph,’ and ‘Ha!’ a few times, then grunted something barely audible.

‘What did you say, Sheriff? I didn’t quite catch it.’

‘I said, he was big enough,’ Harry Pelham growled.

‘Ah.’ Helewise bent her head to hide her smile. Then, straightening her face, she said, ‘He was killed by the spear thrust, and, when hit, he was running from the forest. Yes?’

Another grunt. Then, grudgingly, as if he resented her awareness of even such bare facts, ‘Yes. That’s how it was.’

‘And from that, you hazard the guess that he was killed by — what did you call them, Sheriff? The Forest People?’

‘Aye. Forest People, Wild People, folks refer to them by both names.’

‘And you know for sure that these Wild People were in the forest the night before last?’

‘Aye. It’s June, see. They come here in June.’ He frowned. ‘Leastways, they sometimes do. They have done in the past, anyhow.’

‘I see.’ It seemed, Helewise thought, slim evidence on which to convict this unknown, hitherto unsuspected group of people who, apparently, were wont to camp at certain times of the year, almost on the Abbey’s doorstep. ‘And — forgive me, Sheriff, if I seem to be questioning your actions, only what with the murder being so close, and-’

‘And what with you finding him, Sister,’ the sheriff interrupted her. ‘Aye, I understand.’ A patronising smile stretched the moist lips. ‘You go on and ask me,’ he said earnestly, ‘anything I can tell you, to set your mind at rest so you and the good sisters can lie easy in your beds at night, I will!’

‘How kind,’ Helewise murmured. ‘As I was saying, Sheriff, you’ve been up into the forest, I take it? You’ve found evidence that these Wild People have been there recently?’

‘Well, I…’ Again, the frown. More like a scowl, really, Helewise thought, deciding that, frown or scowl, it probably meant that Harry Pelham was about to tell her a lie. Or, at least, try to get away with a fudging of the truth. ‘There’s not much point in looking for signs of the Wild People, see, Sister. They’re cunning and canny, and they don’t go about cutting down trees or hacking off branches to make shelters. They’re more, like, open-air folk. They live under the trees, under the sky. They’ve been there forever, they have, carrying on in their strange ways. Old even when the Romans came, some say.’ Remembering the point he was making, he repeated. ‘No use looking for evidence. None at all. Although, of course, I sent some of my men up there anyway.’

‘Of course.’ A likely story! ‘And they found nothing.’ It was a statement, not a question.

Harry Pelham grinned. ‘No. Like I said.’

Helewise carefully put her hands together, resting her chin on the tips of her fingers. ‘What we have, then, Sheriff, is a dead poacher, whom, despite any evidence, you are quite sure was killed by these Wild People. Who, since you have not managed to locate them, cannot be questioned.’ She shot him a direct look, and felt a totally unworthy pleasure in seeing him flinch slightly. ‘Therefore you have no proof of their guilt, other than your own conviction.’

Harry Pelham rallied quickly. Giving her his most threatening scowl, he said, ‘My conviction’s quite enough for me!’ As if even he realised the flimsiness of that, he added, ‘Anyway, you tell me who else could have done it! Go on, tell me!’

‘Not knowing anything of the man or his background, naturally, I can’t,’ Helewise said mildly. ‘But, surely, that is your job, Sheriff? To discover how and where the man lived, if he had any enemies, if anyone would be likely to gain from his death?’

‘Ha!’ the sheriff cried, punching the air as if to say, got you there! ‘I know who he was. He was Hamm Robinson, like I said. He has a wife — poor meagre little woman she is, Hamm bullied and beat her within an inch of her life, the good Lord alone knows why she didn’t make off in the night — and, as for what he did, he was a poacher.’ He pointed a grubby finger at the Abbess. ‘Told you that, too.’ He exhaled a big sigh, and said, ‘If you ask me, the world’s well rid of him.’

‘Perhaps so!’ Helewise cried. ‘But he was a man, Sheriff! A living, breathing man, until someone threw a spear at him and killed him. Is he not as entitled to justice as any other man?’

Harry Pelham, she was certain, almost said, ‘No.’ That, she thought, would have been the truth. Instead, the fleshy, greasy face took on its patronising look once more. ‘Like I keep telling you, Sister,’ he said, ‘I’d do what you want and go and accuse the Wild People if I could. Arrest them, bring them to trial, hang a few, if it was in my power! But how can I if they’ve gone?’ He chuckled. ‘Even I can’t arrest a man if he’s not there, now can I, Sister?’

There was, Helewise thought, little point in pursuing it any more. She couldn’t make the sheriff do anything he didn’t want to; clearly, he was far beyond being shamed into action by anything she said.

She let the tense silence continue a little longer. Then, rising to her feet, said, ‘Very well, Sheriff. But, please, do let me know if your enquiries arrive at any sort of satisfactory conclusion.’

Realising he was being dismissed — which, judging from his expression, he didn’t much like — Sheriff Pelham stood up. The Abbess opened the door, and he trudged out.

‘You may reclaim your weapons at the gate,’ Helewise told him. ‘Sister Ursel will have taken good care of them. I wish you good day, Sheriff.’

He muttered something in reply. It could have been ‘Good day’, but it could equally well have been something far less polite.

* * *

When she was quite certain he had gone, Helewise left her room and crossed the courtyard to the infirmary, where she begged Sister Euphemia to part with some of her precious lavender-scented incense. Despite her efforts to think charitably of the sheriff, still Helewise felt a very strong desire to fumigate her room of his presence.

* * *

Later that day, she went back up the track to the forest.

It was, she had discovered, very difficult to leave the matter there. A man had been brutally murdered right by the Abbey, and she had all but stepped on his body. It appeared there was no chance of his killer ever being brought to justice, and Helewise could see no way to alter that.

I must, she thought, striding up towards the trees, have one more try myself. Take one more look. See if I can find some clue that the sheriff and his men overlooked, and, the dear Lord knows, surely that wouldn’t be hard.

She found the place where the body had lain. There were still bloodstains on the grass. She walked a few paces on into the forest, and thought she could detect trodden-down undergrowth where the dead man’s running feet had passed. But what of the killer? Had he run in the dead man’s tracks? He must have stood still to throw the spear … She wandered on under the deep shade of the trees, not really knowing what she was looking for.

Some time later, she gave up the search. It was, she realised, quite hopeless.

She went back to the place where the man had fallen. There was some flattened grass a few paces off; she went to look.

There, amid the brilliant green, lay the spear.

Someone — Sheriff Pelham? — must have wrested it out of the dead man’s back and thrown it away. Its head and the first few inches of its shaft were still sticky with blood.

Helewise bent down and picked it up.

Carefully she wiped it on the fresh young grass, feeling, as she did so, an illogical but very strong urge to apologise for this act of desecration.

Then, when it was as clean as she could make it, she had a good look. The tip of the spear was made of flint.

Flint?

Helewise had lived for most of her life close to the South Downs, and she knew all about flint. One of her brothers had amused himself on a wet afternoon by making a flint knife, and had discovered that knapping wasn’t as easy as one might think.

But whoever had made this spearhead was a master in the craft. The point was exactly symmetrical, and shaped most beautifully. Like an elegant leaf. The knapped edges were perfect.

And the point was as sharp as any knife.

Helewise — who had learned her lesson over testing the sharpness of worked edges — tried the spearpoint on a patch of dandelions. It seared through the leaves and stems as if they hadn’t been there.

A flint spearhead, she mused. Why flint, in this age of fine metalwork? Did it mean that wretched sheriff was right, and this murder was the work of some band of primitive forest-dwelling people, who lived not in the present day but in the manner of their distant stone-working ancestors?

The idea sent an atavistic shiver of dread down Helewise’s spine. And here I am, she thought, not ten paces from the forest.

She turned and hurried back towards the Abbey.

But, disconcerted or not, still she took the spear with her. Even if this did appear to be the end of the matter, it seemed a good idea not to throw away evidence.

* * *

Back in her room, she found that the lavender incense had failed to burn properly, and the air still stank of the sheriff. In addition, the various tensions of the day had produced the beginnings of a headache.

And, to cap it all, it was Friday. Which meant it was carp for supper.

With quiet vehemence, Helewise muttered, ‘I hate carp.’