Dark Night Hidden

5

While Josse was away, Helewise received another visit from Father Micah. The priest informed her that he was dissatisfied with standards within the Abbey and Helewise, controlling with some difficulty her instinctive, outraged reaction, asked him meekly to elaborate.

‘We will take a turn around the Abbey’s various departments,’ he said grandly. ‘I shall point out those areas which are of most concern.’ Rebellion seething under her quiet demeanour, Helewise fell into step beside him.

Within quite a short time, she had a good idea of what it was that formed the foundation of his complaint. In the small room behind the refectory where the cook nuns spent most of their working hours monotonously preparing large amounts of virtually the same few foods, Father Micah objected to the little songs some of the sisters sung and the occasional laughter-inducing pleasantry that helped to pass the long hours. In the infirmary anteroom, he objected to a weary young sister sitting down to roll bandages. The pain in her legs, which were swollen because she had spent much of the night on her feet caring for a very sick patient, should be, in Father Micah’s opinion, offered to God in penance for her sins. She must henceforth stand to do her work.

Out in the chilly cloister, the priest stood for some time over Sister Phillipa, seated at her desk and engaged in illuminating a capital letter A. The work was beautiful, Helewise thought, but Father Micah complained that over-use of blue and gold smacked of luxury, not seemly in an order vowed to poverty. About to tell him that the Queen herself had bestowed the wherewithal for the purchase of those very pigments, Helewise changed her mind. She would not explain herself to this man.

He passed through Sister Bernadine’s room without comment. Sister Bernadine was in charge of the Abbey’s small collection of precious manuscripts. Something about her austere manner and her air of detachment, as if she silently communed with the angels, earned Father Micah’s approval; with an all but imperceptible nod, he beckoned to the Abbess and left Sister Bernadine to her scripts.

Sister Emanuel, who had the care of the elderly in the small hostel that the Abbey ran for retired nuns and monks, also initially escaped without criticism. But then the retirement home was a quiet, devout place; aged men and women who were walking calmly and courageously towards their death and the hope of heaven tended not to sing and make jokes. When Sister Emanuel explained that she also helped the Abbess by taking over the keeping of the accounts ledger when Helewise was very busy, however, Father Micah fixed both nuns with an angry expression.

‘This duty then interferes with the devotion you owe to your patients, Sister.’

It was an accusation that was, Helewise knew quite well, totally unfounded. She was on the point of saying so when, to her amazement, the priest turned to her. ‘And, Abbess Helewise, you should not seek to ease your own burdens by increasing those of others.’

Helewise experienced the full range of emotions of the unjustly accused. Fury, resentment, humiliation and, yes, a certain amount of self-pity: she wanted to shout out, like a hurt and angry child, it’s not fair!

Taking a calming breath — if she were to remonstrate with Father Micah in her own defence, to do so in front of the astonished Sister Emanuel was not the place — she inclined her head and walked out of the retirement home into the fresh, cold air outside.

Rather to her surprise, she found that Father Micah had followed her. Did it count as a minor victory, that, instead of waiting for him decide when he was ready to leave and lead the way out, she had pre-empted him?

Probably not, in his view. But it certainly did in hers.

Father Micah reserved the greater part of his spleen for the home for fallen women. Unfortunately, this was the area of her responsibility in which Helewise felt the most satisfaction; during her time as Abbess of Hawkenlye, the Abbey had earned a reputation as a humane, instructive and encouraging place for those deemed by society to be outcasts. Yes, some of the older women were too set in their ways to heed the call back to the path of righteousness. But even they, whom the nuns knew would make their way straight back to the dark corners where they plied their trade and earned their crust, were given help when they asked for it and sent on their way with a good meal inside them. Their unwanted babies were loved and cherished in exactly the same manner as the legitimate offspring of the richest nobleman.

Younger women, some of them resorting to prostitution in desperation, some the victims of assault, some fooled by young men promising everlasting love and marriage if they would but give in just this once, came in shame to Hawkenlye and found there the answer to their prayers. The nuns cared for them in their pregnancies and, in return, they performed what tasks were set them usually without protest. They were encouraged — an encouragement that had the force of an order — to attend services in the Abbey church and to pray for the strength to amend their lives. Their babies were delivered under the watchful eyes of the infirmarer or one of her midwives and afterwards, when mother and child were strong enough, the nuns did their best to find them homes. Sometimes a reluctant father could, with a little pressure, be persuaded to take the mother of his child to wife and give her baby a home. Sometimes a baby would be adopted by some childless couple as their own. Sometimes the nuns themselves would keep the child in their care while the mother left and returned to her former life.

Few women presented themselves again at the Abbey for the same reason, which alone made Helewise believe that the Hawkenlye method was the right one.

Father Micah, it was immediately apparent, did not agree. The home was fairly quiet just then and, as he stalked into the low room, divided into one section for those who were pregnant and another for those who had given birth, only five women and two babies looked up to watch him.

‘Come to lead us in our prayers, Father?’ one of the recently delivered women asked cheerfully. She was a street woman from Tonbridge, known to the nuns because she had earlier brought a younger colleague to Hawkenlye. They had been surprised to see her present herself into their care; as Sister Tiphaine had remarked, she had been engaged in her trade for so long without mishap that they had imagined she could take care of herself.

Now, a first-time mother at the advanced age of twenty-nine, she held up her chubby and gurgling baby girl for the priest to bless.

He did no such thing. Instead, drawing his robes aside as if he feared that contact with a whore would pollute them, he said, ‘Begone from my sight, harlot! And take that spawn of Satan with you.’

Then he spun round and marched out of the room.

Helewise heard the noisy sobs of the woman, the angry cries of her fellow-patients and, as an inevitable aftermath, the crying of their babies, frightened and upset by the disturbance. Above the babble a single female voice shouted out, making a suggestion as to what Father Micah ought to do with himself that was highly imaginative, if biologically impossible.

Helewise hardly heard. Racing after the priest, she caught up with him on the threshold.

‘Father Micah, I must protest!’ she said, as quietly as she could manage. ‘In the name of Christ and his charity, I-’

He turned on her a face like thunder. ‘Do not dare to speak Our Lord’s name in such a context!’ he commanded. ‘That woman is shameless! Shameless! Holding up her bastard to receive the blessing of a man of God, with her cronies simpering around her, displaying their foul flesh, polluting God’s pure air with the stench of their rottenness, the smell of the disgusting, putrid substance that seeps from their swollen breasts! How dare she! They should be flogged, the lot of them, aye, and branded with the mark of their shame!’

His thin face had turned almost purple in his fury. His breathing came very fast and small bubbles of sweat were appearing on his brow and upper lip.

Helewise, observing him, feared for his health. And, in the midst of that detached thought, she suddenly felt sorry for him.

‘Let us return to my room,’ she said calmly. ‘Perhaps you will take a restorative glass of cool water, Father.’

He turned on her. ‘Not from you,’ he replied rudely. ‘I shall visit the holy brethren in the Vale.’

‘As you wish.’ She kept her tone neutral.

‘I expect there to be changes here.’ He was gazing out towards the Abbey church. ‘I want to see less flippancy and wasteful profligacy and more evidence of devotion.’ He turned to stare at Helewise. ‘And those filthy whores are to be gone when next I visit.’

He is mad, Helewise thought as she watched him stride away. That, surely, is the only answer. Walking back to the precious sanctuary of her little room, she wondered what on earth she was to do.

Some time later, there was a timid knock on her door and Brother Firmin came in. He was in tears. Father Micah, he said, had ordered him to stop being so generous with the Holy Water and to be sure to give it only to those who led a devout life and prayed several times a day for forgiveness. ‘But how am I to tell, my lady?’ the old monk sobbed. ‘He didn’t think to explain that!’

Trying to comfort him — which was not easy — Helewise told him to continue as he had always done for the time being, and promised that she would take the matter up with Father Gilbert.

‘He said he would be back,’ Brother Firmin said dully. ‘He told us he had other calls to make — he mentioned some noble lord who has to be reminded of God’s law and he said something about banishing lost souls to the eternal fires. But he’ll be back, my lady.’ His tear-reddened eyes met Helewise’s, and her heart turned over with pity.

‘Try not to worry, Brother Firmin,’ she said kindly. ‘Return to the Vale and to ministering to your pilgrims. Leave Father Micah to me.’

She saw, with relief, that her words seemed to bring some comfort to Brother Firmin. She wished, as she watched him shuffle away, that she could say the same for herself.

Josse’s return later in the day brought a very welcome distraction. Putting aside her own concerns, she asked him what he had discovered about the dead gaoler. Listening to his deep voice as he told her of the marks on the dead man’s throat, gratefully she turned her mind to the mystery.

‘Is it any way possible, Sir Josse, that one of the prisoners could have reached out through this trap door you speak of, where food is put into the cell?’

‘I think not, my lady. And, in any case, neither prisoner had noticeably large hands, apparently. One was an adult man, but short and slight, the other but a youth.’

‘And the cell door had not been forced?’

‘No. Opened with a key.’

‘The dead man’s own key?’

‘His colleagues believe so. But, my lady, they are a sorry lot and, I would guess, singularly dull-witted and unobservant.’

‘Hmm. I conclude, Sir Josse, as I am certain you do too, that the assailant came from outside, struck down the guard, took his key and released the prisoners.’

‘Quite so.’

‘But why? Who were they, Sir Josse? Were you able to discover?’

‘The other guards had little to offer on the matter.’ He sighed, and she could sense his frustration. ‘I dignify the three of them with the title of guard, but indeed two seemed to have been recruited merely to serve as bearers; they were on the point of removing the body when Augustus and I arrived. He’s a good lad, Augustus,’ he added. ‘Uses his head.’

‘I agree,’ she said quietly. Then: ‘You were saying, Sir Josse, that the guards had little to say?’

‘Aye, aye.’ He sighed again. ‘One of them reported that the prisoners were strangers. Foreign, he said. His friend the dead man had complained that they kept shouting out and he couldn’t make out what they wanted. Not that it would have made any difference, I imagine, since I’m sure he wouldn’t have given them what they were asking for even if he had understood what it was.’

He was, Helewise observed, looking uncharacteristically dejected. ‘What is it, my friend?’ she asked gently. ‘What is bothering you?’

‘Oh — I’m being soft,’ he said, rousing himself to a brief smile. ‘It is entirely possible that those two prisoners were justly jailed, that they were guilty of some crime which deserved harsh treatment. But, my lady, you and I would not keep an animal in such conditions as I found in those cells, let alone a human being.’

‘I do not think that your compassion earns you the accusation of being soft,’ she said. ‘If, indeed, such is a matter of accusation. But, Sir Josse, could you gain no idea of what their crime was?’

‘No. The gaolers didn’t seem to know and, when Gus and I tried making a few enquiries among the villagers, they wouldn’t talk to us. They seemed afraid.’

‘Of the gaolers?’

‘Funny that you should ask, but no, I don’t think that was it. There was someone else they feared. One woman Gus spoke to kept looking over her shoulder as if she feared the Devil himself was going to leap out at her. And a small child broke out in sobs and said something about the black man.’

‘The black man? Black-skinned, do you think?’

‘Aye, maybe.’

‘Could these foreign prisoners have been dark-skinned?’ Eager now, she pursued the idea. ‘Perhaps a really tall, broad, black man came to rescue his friends, killing the gaoler with a huge hand and scaring all the villagers with his very size!’

Josse looked indulgently at her. ‘I don’t know, my lady. But it’s as good a guess as any I’ve managed to come up with.’

In the morning, Helewise went to Prime with a heavy heart. She had slept badly, overcome with anxiety concerning what she was to do about Father Micah. Kneeling, she thanked God for that gift of pity for the priest, without which she would have been well on the way to hating him. ‘He needs help, dear Lord,’ she whispered, ‘for surely something is seriously amiss with him. .’

As the office began, she gave herself to her devotions. Peace began to settle around her, as it always did, and she felt the inestimable help of a strong energy supporting her. Some time later, heartened, she went out to face the day.

The first of the dramas came in the middle of the morning, when Helewise was seated at her wide oak table studying a list of outstanding rents owed by some of the tenants who farmed the Abbey’s lands. Her concentration was broken by the faint sounds of someone outside her door. There was no knock, but she heard a quiet, suppressed cough and the sound of soft footfalls, as if someone were walking up and down the cloister.

Once she had noticed the noises, she found it impossible to ignore them. It seemed likely that, if she managed to do so and get back to work, whoever it was would instantly make up their mind that they really had to see her and tap on the door.

Helewise got up, went over to the door and opened it. Outside, her hand raised as if about to knock, was Sister Bernadine.

‘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 was 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.’