Fortune Like the Moon

Chapter Seventeen

Helewise sat in the shrine in the valley, staring up at the Virgin Mary.

She was still feeling the after effects of the shock. Sister Euphemia had tried to make her lie down in the infirmary until she felt stronger, but Helewise had said firmly that she preferred to go and pray.

If Euphemia had assumed Helewise had meant she was going into the Abbey church — and so would be close to the infirmarer’s help, should it be necessary — then that was unfortunate.

Helewise was finding it difficult to concentrate her mind on her prayers. She felt rather odd — light-headed, as if she might quite easily float up to the ceiling, or, once out through the doorway, away over the trees — and still more than a little sick.

‘It’s a very nasty cut,’ Euphemia had said, bathing Helewise’s right forefinger with gentle hands. ‘What can you have been doing, Abbess dear?’

‘I was trying an edge to see if it was sharp,’ Helewise had replied, which was accurate, as far as it went.

‘Oh, dear, oh dear!’ Euphemia, clearly, had thought she would have had more sense, as indeed she should have done. It was just that it had been so unexpected … ‘Next time, Abbess,’ Euphemia had said, ‘test your knives on something that can’t feel pain!’

Helewise was feeling pain, that was quite certain. A great deal of pain. Euphemia had found it a tough job to staunch the blood — the pad of Helewise’s finger had been cut neatly in two, right across the first segment — and it had been necessary for her to sit for some minutes holding her hand above her head, while Sister Euphemia pressed the cut edges together, before the blood had stopped pumping out. Then the infirmarer had applied a salve of white horehound, which had burned like hellfire, and bound the whole hand up tightly, instructing Helewise to try to remember to keep it held up against her left shoulder.

That, in fact, was easy to remember; the moment Helewise let the hand fall, the wound began to throb so violently that the pain increased tenfold.

It was the loss of blood that was making the Abbess feel so faint, or so Euphemia had informed her.

‘Faint,’ Helewise murmured to herself. ‘Faint.’

It made matters considerably worse. Perhaps, Helewise thought, Euphemia was right, and I should go and lie down? Not in the infirmary — I couldn’t bear it — but on my bed in the dormitory? But no! Abbesses don’t do things like that, even if their whole hand has been cut off! Abbesses keep a stiff back and an upright posture, maintaining a dignified air of quiet authority at all times. Lie on my bed, indeed!

She fixed her eyes on the Virgin’s statue and told herself not to be so feeble. She thought she saw the Virgin’s head turn slightly — she’s looking at me! — but, staring harder, realised she was mistaken. She wondered if she were hallucinating.

‘Ave, Maria…’ she began.

But the words, which she must have said thousands of times, refused to come. And so did the comfort she might have received from the saying of them.

Cradling her hurt finger in her other hand, she closed her eyes and waited, in the calming silence of the deserted shrine, for Josse’s return.

* * *

Some time later, she heard him enter the shrine. Heard the sound of boots on the steps, so it must have been Josse, for the monks and the lay brothers wore soft sandals.

‘You’re back,’ she said.

There was a grunt of agreement.

She opened her eyes and began to turn round to look at him, but it made her feel so sick that instantly she stopped. The shrine seemed to be whirling round like a spinning top, so she closed her eyes again.

She sensed him come close. Sit down beside her on the narrow form.

To her vague surprise — all her emotions seemed to be vague, she was discovering — she couldn’t remember for a moment where he had been. Then she thought she recalled a messenger … Yes. That was right. A boy had come, breathless from haste, his words tumbling over each other as he’d announced that he had to see Sir Josse d’Acquin, he brought a summons for him, an invitation to visit Brice of Rotherbridge. She wondered what that had been all about.

‘You found the Lord Brice in good spirits?’ she asked.

There was no answer for some time. Then a voice which she had never heard before said, ‘Aye, Brice is himself again. He has made his confession, done rigorous penance, and obtained absolution.’

There was such despair in those words that she felt her heart contract with compassion.

Opening her eyes again, very carefully she turned her head to her left and looked at him.

He was, she guessed from the unlined quality of his skin, in his late twenties, but looked far, far older. It wasn’t only the dramatic streak of white threading through the dark hair, nor the weary, defeated posture. It was the eyes. Those dark eyes, heavily hooded, whose lids were swollen and which were circled with grey, as if someone had filled in each entire eye socket with smudged black powder.

No wonder he spoke with such hopeless envy of Brice’s recovery; here, she was in no doubt, was a man suffering such torments, pursued by such devils of misery, that the happy state of absolution must seem as far distant as the moon.

Who was he? Someone, clearly, acquainted with Brice of Rotherbridge.

But first things first.

She said, very calmly and quietly, ‘Are you here to pray, friend?’

A brief light of hope entered his eyes at her form of address, but, as quickly as it had come, it was extinguished.

‘I cannot pray,’ he said flatly. ‘I have tried, others have tried with me. The monks in the holiest shrine in all England have done their best for me. But it is hopeless. I am beyond help.’

‘No man is beyond God’s love,’ she said, maintaining the same level tone. ‘That is Christ’s message to us, that, with genuine repentance, we are to be forgiven.’

There was a silence.

Since he did not seem about to break it, she said, ‘Will you pray with me, now? Our Blessed Lady is here, see? She will listen.’

It had worked with others at the very end of their endurance; Helewise had sat, up at the Abbey and down here in the shrine, with seemingly hopeless cases, talking quietly, listening to the outpourings that told of a life gone wrong, of one bad deed leading with dreadful inevitability to the next, until the downward spiral of sin upon sin spun away out of control. Then, when they were empty of words, cried out of tears, she would begin to help them back up the long and difficult slope.

Yes. She had seen men — and women — apparently far beyond God’s love, brought back into the precious fold.

She watched the dark-haired man.

Slowly he raised his head until his sore eyes looked up at the statue of the Virgin. For a moment a half-smile spread over the handsome features, but then it was gone. His face falling, he said hoarsely, ‘Here, of all places, I cannot pray. She — Our Lady there — is watching me, like she did that night. She knows what happened. She knows that, but for me, Gunnora would still be alive.’

He turned to Helewise, and his hands suddenly gripped at her shoulders with surprising strength. ‘She promised me!’ he shouted. ‘Promised! It was to be that night, she said it would, after all my years of waiting! I didn’t rush her, I didn’t try to persuade her out of coming here, for all that I felt it was wrong. You welcomed her, didn’t you? Believed she really had a vocation, wanted to make a good nun! When, all along, it was just a place to hide away till the heat died down and Brice was safely married.’

Helewise’s head spun with a dozen questions. But now, when this poor tormented soul was in the throes of spilling all the pain out of him, was not the time to ask them. She said, ‘Yes, we made her welcome.’

He dropped his hands. ‘I know, I could tell! You are good women. Too good for-’ Too good for Gunnora? Abruptly he stopped, as if pulling himself up short of that betrayal. ‘We should have told them, all of them at home, from the start,’ he went on instead. ‘It wouldn’t have been easy, when her father was set on her marrying Brice, but I believe we could have won him round. He was a decent father, according to his own lights. I don’t think he would have insisted on doing things his way, when everyone else involved wanted it to be otherwise. But Gunnora was not to be diverted.’ He glanced at Helewise. ‘For some time, at the start, I became very worried. I thought she might actually enjoy being a nun, and I was terrified that she’d decide to stay at Hawkenlye. That I’d lose her.’

As he spoke, Helewise noticed, his hands were gripping at a fold of his tunic hem, pleating it first this way, then the other, with such force that the material was crushed beyond recovery. There was a compulsiveness about the repetitive action that spoke of a deeply troubled man.

For the first time, she felt afraid.

Don’t think of yourself, she commanded her quaking soul. Think of him.

It helped.

‘She knew how much you loved her?’ she asked. The man hadn’t spoken of love, but she was quite certain she was right to assume it.

‘Of course! I told her, over and over again!’

‘And did she return your love?’

‘Yes! Yes!’ Then, after a pause, ‘I think so. She once said she thought she loved me. But it would have grown!’ He spoke very rapidly, as if he wanted to defend himself against a protest which he hadn’t given Helewise the chance to make. ‘It was enough, that she had the beginnings of love for me! Wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ It was the only possible response.

‘My brother said I was a fool,’ he went on. ‘Brice didn’t mind Gunnora not wanting to marry him, and he could never see why I loved her so much. But we’d grown up together, you see. I’d assumed, like everyone else, that she’d marry Brice, but I always hoped something might happen … God forgive me, but once I found myself hoping he’d die, then she’d marry me. My own brother!’ Tears sprang into his eyes.

‘We all have bad thoughts sometimes,’ Helewise said. ‘But we don’t mean them. Do we? You would never have turned your brief, private hope that your brother would die into reality, would you? Nor have failed to grieve deeply and honestly had he died?’

‘No! No, of course not.’

‘Well, then.’ She gave him a quick smile, hoping to reassure. ‘God sees into our hearts, you know. Give Him credit for that.’

The man nodded slowly. ‘Yes. That’s what the Canterbury monks said.’ Briefly he seemed to brighten, but then, as if some further dread thought took over his mind, he said mournfully, ‘But Christ and His Holy Mother won’t understand about Gunnora.’

Offering a swift prayer of her own, Helewise took a steadying breath and said, ‘I believe that I understand, now. Why not try them and see if they do?’

* * *

They told Josse up at the Abbey that the Abbess Helewise was praying. Not finding her in the church, he hurried on down into the vale and, for some unknown reason walking with exaggerated stealth, approached the shrine.

The door was ajar. Putting his face to the opening, he looked inside.

Down at the foot of the steps, sitting side by side on a bench that stood on the only flat area of floor, were Helewise and Olivar.

His instinct was to hurl himself forward; for some reason which he did not pause to analyse, he had the clear impression she was in danger.

He made himself stop. Stood perfectly still, listening.

Helewise had placed a heavily bandaged hand over Olivar’s hands, folded in his lap. She was leaning towards him, and Josse heard the tail end of what she was saying: ‘… try them and see if they do?’

Olivar didn’t respond for some moments, and, in the brief pause, Josse wondered wildly what he was doing there. Had he come to mourn Gunnora, in this the nearest place of worship to where she had been murdered? Or — frightening thought! — had he somehow discovered that Milon was responsible for the death of the woman he had loved, and was here to find him and extract his own vengeance?

Helewise, good woman that she was, seemed to have calmed him; Olivar was looking relaxed, Josse thought, perhaps persuaded by the Abbess into believing that praying for Gunnora’s soul was better than seeking out her killer, and that-

But just then Olivar began to speak, and Josse turned his full attention to listening.

‘We were to meet here, in the shrine, in the hour before dawn,’ he said. ‘She would attend Matins, then return with the sisters to the dormitory. But, as soon as she thought they were all asleep, she was going to get up and creep out. I said I’d wait from midnight onwards — I didn’t mind how long it was till she came, I just didn’t want her arriving first. I got here while you were at your devotions.’

‘You must have had a long vigil,’ Helewise’s soft voice said.

‘Yes, but I was so happy at the thought of seeing her again that I didn’t mind. It had been months since we’d had any contact — we’d only been able to make that tryst because of her silly cousin’s fun and games. I gave Elanor a letter for Gunnora, you see. I said a lot, wrote of my love for her. I wrote too much, perhaps. But I didn’t think it would matter — it was only for Gunnora’s eyes, Elanor couldn’t read. Nor could Gunnora, not really. At least, not very fluently. I suppose I was wasting my time.’ There was the smallest suggestion of amusement in the voice. ‘Then she — Gunnora — did as I suggested and left her brief reply hidden for me in a crack in the wall out there.’ He waved a hand towards the doorway; Josse, afraid that one or other of them might turn round, swiftly moved back out of sight.

‘That was how you knew she’d come,’ Helewise said.

‘Yes. I said in my message that the year was up, it was time for her to put our plan into operation and announce she was leaving the convent. I had hoped we would set a firm date, a time, even, then I could have been waiting at the Abbey gates for her and we could have found a priest straightaway and asked him to marry us. It wasn’t what I wanted, this secret meeting down here at dead of night. I didn’t want it to be so furtive. As if we were ashamed.’

‘So, you waited, and, eventually, she came?’ the Abbess asked.

‘Yes.’ Warmth flooding the bleak voice, he hurried on, ‘Oh, I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to see her again! I threw my arms round her, hugged her to me, tried to kiss her.’

There was a brief silence.

‘Tried?’ It was, Josse thought, exactly what he would have asked.

‘She wouldn’t let me, well, not on her lips.’ Olivar gave a small laugh. ‘She said she was still a nun, and that I must show due respect and only give her a brotherly peck on the cheek. And that was funny, because she didn’t look much like a nun — she was wearing her headdress, but it was loosely draped, and the wimple was tucked into the front of her habit, not secured round her throat. I pretended to find it funny, her not kissing me, but I didn’t really. I mean, it wasn’t as if we had been — well, you know — intimate, before, but we had exchanged kisses. Very passionate, thrilling kisses.’

Josse, knowing what he now knew of Gunnora, found that hard to believe. Passion, from a woman like that? Perhaps she had been good at simulating it.

‘Anyway, it didn’t matter,’ Olivar was saying, ‘because we’d be man and wife very soon, and then we’d be able to kiss, make love all night if we wanted to. So-’ his voice broke on a sob. Quickly bringing himself under control, he tried again. ‘So I said, “How soon can it be? When do you come out of the convent?” And then she told me. Said she’d changed her mind about marriage, didn’t feel that she wanted to be a wife after all.’

Helewise murmured something, but Josse couldn’t catch the words.

‘Yes, I know.’ Olivar was weeping openly now. ‘I couldn’t believe it, you’re right. I said, “Sweeting, it’s me! Olivar! You haven’t to be Brice’s wife, he’s married to your sister, remember?” I didn’t tell her what had just happened to Dillian — I know it was wrong, but I didn’t dare. Gunnora might have used that as further grounds for staying where she was — after all, she might have thought they’d have made her marry him, now that he was a widower. “It’s us that are to marry,” I said, “you and me, like we planned!” And’ — again, the break in his voice — ‘she just stood there, at the top of the steps’ — he waved his arm, indicating behind him — ‘and said she’d decided to stay in the Abbey a little longer. Or, failing that, she’d leave and get her father to reinstate her in his will, then live at Winnowlands on her own. Then she turned her back on me and made a dainty little curtsey to the statue of the Virgin.’

He paused briefly, collecting himself, then the grim narrative resumed. ‘I was standing beside her, and I tried to turn her round to face me. I don’t really know why — I think I thought that if I could just get her to kiss me — gently, you know, I didn’t intend to force her — then she’d get a bit aroused and remember how sweet it used to be for us, before, when we embraced.’

You poor deluded man, Josse thought. What an optimistic hope!

‘So — so — I took hold of her shoulder, and I said, “Gunnora, my dearest love, won’t you hug me? Please?” and she twisted herself out of my grasp and said, “No, Olivar, I don’t care to. I am going to pray.” Then’ — the weeping was loud now, each sob breaking out of him as if tearing him apart — ‘then she started to go down the steps, almost dancing, as if to say, see how happy I am? See how I love to be a nun, to pray before the Holy Mother?’

It seemed unlikely that he could go on.

But he didn’t need to; Helewise’s quiet voice took up the tale.

‘She danced down those slippery steps, and she missed her footing, didn’t she?’ Josse saw the young man nod. ‘It’s so easily done,’ Helewise said, ‘it’s the condensation from the spring, it settles on the stones and makes them as perilous as ice.’

There was another, longer, silence. Josse was beginning to wonder if either of them would finish the story — was there, indeed, any need, when both appeared to know perfectly well already what happened? — when Helewise spoke again.

‘You tried to catch her, didn’t you?’ Once more, the nod of agreement. ‘I knew. We saw the little bruises on the tops of her arms — we thought at first that someone had held her fast while another person — well, never mind that. Someone did indeed hold her, but the marks were from your hands on her, trying to stop her fall.’

‘Yes.’ Olivar’s brief monosyllable was so wracked with agony that Josse could have wept for him. ‘But it was no good — she was already tumbling forward, and I couldn’t hold her. She slipped out of my grasp, flew through the air, and then … then…’

‘She fell against the statue,’ Helewise finished for him. ‘By the most terrible ill fortune, the plinth caught her across the throat. Didn’t it?’

‘Aye.’ He rubbed at his eyes like a punished child crying at the injustice. ‘I leapt down the steps after her, to see if she was hurt. I don’t know what I expected — she was lying so still that I thought she’d bumped her head, knocked herself unconscious. Then I turned her over, and I saw.’

Helewise had her arm round him now, and he was leaning against her, the big body shaking. ‘There was so much blood!’ he cried, ‘all over that horrible plinth, pooling on the floor under her, soaking down into the black cloth of her habit, and I didn’t know what to do! I remember thinking I mustn’t leave her there, for her life’s blood to run into the holy spring water, so I picked her up and carried her outside. I think I intended to take her up to her sisters, but I’m not sure — it’s all so hazy, that bit of it. She was getting heavy, and I felt very sick — I laid her down on the path, but it was all dusty, and I thought it wouldn’t be nice if her poor hurt neck got dirty. So I carried her to the less-used path, where there was clean, damp grass at the edges, and settled her there. I’d brought her sister’s cross for her, as a betrothal present — I knew Gunnora didn’t have hers any more, she’d said she was going to give it to the Abbey. I didn’t think Dillian would have minded — for all I knew, she might have left it to Gunnora anyway. I knew where she’d kept it, in that old box of hers, and I went up to her chamber and took it. It wasn’t long after she died — everyone was in such a state, I don’t think they ever knew what I’d done. I brought it with me, that night. When I came to meet Gunnora.’

He paused for some moments. It seemed to Josse that, having gone back in his memory to a time before the terrible death had happened, he was reluctant to resume his account.

Eventually he spoke again.

‘After she — afterwards, I went back into the shrine and I cleaned away all the blood. It’s a holy place, and I knew it wasn’t right to defile it. It took so long. I took off my shirt and used it as a wash cloth, but I had to keep scooping up water to wet it, over and over again. And there was so little light, just a few candles burning, and I couldn’t really see if I’d done it properly. In the end, I just had to leave it. I wanted to get back to her, you see. She was all on her own, out there in the dark.’

Helewise said something, her voice soft, soothing. Josse saw Olivar nod briefly.

‘I said, “I’m back, Gunnora,” then I bent over her, unfastened the chain and put the cross round her neck,’ he went on quietly. ‘It looked so pretty, against the black of her habit. I was kneeling by her side, and I stayed there for a long time, just looking down at her. Then I ran away.’

Helewise was rocking him gently, crooning as if she were soothing a child waking from a nightmare. ‘There, there,’ the soft voice intoned, ‘all done, you’ve got it out of you now. There, there.’

There was a silence. An extended silence.

Olivar said presently, ‘Is she buried?’

‘She is,’ Helewise said. ‘Tucked up snug and safe in her coffin, where no more harm can come to her.’

‘Is she with God?’

Josse noticed Helewise’s hesitation; he wondered if Olivar did. ‘I expect she soon will be,’ Helewise said. ‘We have prayed for her soul, and we will continue to have Masses said for her. We will do all we can to shorten her time in purgatory.’

‘She was good!’ Olivar protested. ‘She will not have many sins staining her soul, Abbess. Soon she’ll be in heaven.’

Helewise murmured, ‘Amen.’

Then, dropping her head down on top of the dark head resting against her shoulder, she began to pray out loud for the late sister of the Abbey, Gunnora of Winnowlands.