Fortune Like the Moon

Chapter Four

‘And now, if you please, Abbess Helewise,’ Josse said when, Sister Euphemia having gone back to her infirmary, they were once more alone, ‘I should be grateful if you would tell me everything you can recall of Gunnora’s last hours.’

Helewise wondered if he had intended to sound so pompous. Studying him, observing the slight tension evident in the way he leaned forward in his seat, she decided in his favour. The man was nervous — perhaps uneasy at being inside a convent, it did affect some people that way, especially men — and his anxiety had given rise to an overformal tone of voice.

He was also, she had noticed, considerably too large for the delicate little chair he was sitting on. Well, it was hardly more than a stool, really, all right for a lightly built woman but not equal to the task of supporting a tall and broad-shouldered man. One, moreover, who appeared to have an innate restlessness, so that, trying to keep still on his inadequate seat, the effort was readily apparent.

It was up to her, Helewise decided, to put him at his ease. With that in mind, she arranged her face in what her late husband had been wont to refer to as her despot-after-a-good-dinner expression. Smiling benevolently at her visitor, she noticed brief alarm, quickly replaced by a tentative answering smile.

Oh, dear. Perhaps dear old Ivo had been right about the despot.

‘How much do you know about the daily routine of a convent, my lord d’Acquin?’ she began. ‘I ask because, without a working knowledge of our life, it will be more difficult for you to remark on any oddities in Gunnora’s final days.’

‘I understand. Madam, I know little other than that your hours are determined by the saying of the offices, and that your prayers intercede with Almighty God on behalf of all mankind.’

It was nicely said, and she inclined her head in recognititon. ‘Indeed, we follow the discipline of the Divine Offices, throughout the twenty-four hours of the day. Our rule, like that of the great foundation at Fontevraud, is modelled on the Benedictine Rule, although there are certain significant modifications. However, we are not like a strictly enclosed order, in that prayer within our own house is not our sole occupation. We serve the community in other ways.’

‘As I was escorted in, I saw a sister helping a man to accustom himself to walking with a crutch,’ Josse said. ‘And I could be wrong, but I thought I heard a baby cry.’

An observant man, this Josse d’Acquin, Helewise thought, to have noticed so much in the brief seconds it would have taken him to cross from the gates to the cloister. ‘You were not wrong. We run a hospital here, in the long wing beside the church. Sister Beata, whom you saw, has been caring for a poacher who lost his foot in a man trap. We also have a wing for the care and rehabilitation of penitential whores. It would perhaps surprise you, sir, to know how many former harlots are redeemed by motherhood into the wish for a purer life.’

‘I am happy to hear it.’ He appeared to have detected a reproof in her tone, which she had not intended, for he went on, ‘I did not wish to sound as if I were prying, Abbess Helewise, when I mentioned the baby — it was merely that the sound surprised me.’ In a convent, hung unsaid on the air.

‘Please, there is no need for explanations.’ She smiled at him again, this time more genuinely. ‘One of the girls in our care gave birth last week. We, too, are still sometimes taken aback at the sweet sounds of her baby.’

‘A hospital and a reformatory,’ he said, visibly relaxing now. ‘You have much work here at Hawkenlye.’

More than you think, she thought. Would it appear prideful to tell him the rest? Perhaps. But then she would be speaking for her sisters, who did the hard work. Who deserved recognition. ‘We also run a retirement home for aged and infirm monks and nuns, and a small leper hospital.’ He reacted to the last, as people inevitably did, and she said what she always said by way of reassurance. ‘Do not be alarmed, sir. The leper house is isolated from the community, and we are fortuante in that three of our sisters elected of their own free will to be enclosed with the sick. They, and those of their charges who are able, join in with the spiritual life of the community by way of a closed-off passage leading to a separate chapel, which backs on to a side aisle of the church. You are no more in danger of contagion here than in the world at large, possibly less so, since our nursing sisters are expert at detecting the early symptoms of leprosy. If they have the least suspicion, the patient is put in a separate holding ward until-’ No. No need to go into the clinical details. ‘Well, until the sisters are sure.’

He was shaking his head, had been doing so for the last few seconds of her speech. ‘Abbess, you misunderstand. My response to what you were telling me was not one of fear or horror.’ He paused, then amended, ‘Not entirely so, anyway. I cannot claim to be any more immune to the dread of the sickness than the next man. But actually what was passing through my mind was what a heavy burden of work you and your sisters bear. What a responsibility is yours.’

She stared hard at him, but could detect no insincerity, no attempt to flatter her, win her over. ‘My nuns and I are greatly helped by the lay brothers, who live with the monks down beside the shrine,’ she said. Credit where it was due. ‘They are good men. Unlearned, but strong and willing. They remove from us the need to weary ourselves with hard labour.’

‘I did not know about them,’ Josse said. ‘I was only told of the monks, who care, I believe, for the spring where the holy water flows.’

‘Indeed they do.’ She was careful to keep her tone neutral. No need to reveal to this sharp-eyed visitor that one of her most persistent problems was with the fifteen monks in the vale, who appeared to think that living so close to Our Lady’s blessed shrine gave them an aura of holiness that everyone else ought to revere. A holiness that, so they seemed to believe, gave them immunity from hard work. They were, in Brother Firmin’s own words, the Marys, adoring the Lord, or in this case His Holy Mother, while the Marthas — Helewise and her nuns — got on with being ‘busy with many things’.

Instead she went on, ‘You appreciate, my lord d’Acquin, the reason for our hospitals and homes?’

‘Aye. You have a healing spring in your Abbey.’

‘Yes. And, according to tradition, the original sick merchant to whom the Blessed Virgin appeared — you are aware of the story?’ He nodded. ‘The merchant said that Our Lady praised him for giving the spring water to his fevered companions, and she told him it was the best possible cure.’

‘The monks, then, tend the spring,’ Josse summarised.

‘Yes. They see to the immediate needs of those who come to take the water. They provide shelter from the sun or the rain, a warm fire when it is cold, benches to sit on, simple lodgings for those who wish to stay overnight. They collect the water in jugs and pour it into the pilgrims’ cups. They also provide. spiritual counsel for those in need.’

Josse caught her eye. She knew what he was going to say before he said it. ‘It sounds a relatively undemanding life, compared with that of your sisters,’ he remarked.

He had picked up what she had tried so hard to ensure that he didn’t. I must, she told herself sternly, be even more careful not to allow my resentments to show. ‘The monks work devotedly,’ she said, filling the words with sincerity.

He was still watching her, and the brown eyes held a certain compassion. ‘I don’t doubt it.’

There was a moment of silence, during which Helewise felt the very beginning of a sympathy between them.

Then Josse d’Acquin said, ‘You have, Abbess, given me a most clear picture of life at Hawkenlye Abbey. I think, now, that I am ready to ask again if you would tell me what you can of Gunnora’s final hours here.’

Helewise sat back in her chair, and, after a moment to collect her thoughts, turned her mind back to that day, remarkable, surely, because, although it had been Gunnora’s last on earth and the precursor to that terrible death, yet it had been so very un-remarkable.

‘Gunnora had, as I believe I told you, been with us not quite a year,’ she began. ‘This means that she was still a novice. During a sister’s first year, we prefer her to spend more time at her devotions than engaging in the practical work of the sisterhood — it is important, we feel, to ensure that our nuns are firmly secure in the spiritual life of the community. Trials and rigours lie before them, and we wish to armour them for the test by helping them to become safe in the Lord.’

‘I understand,’ Josse said. ‘It sounds very wise. Besides, a year is not long.’

‘Indeed not. There is much for a novice to learn.’

He twisted on his flimsy seat, making as if to cross his long legs; again, she had a sudden vivid impression of energy kept under strict control. The stool gave a squeak of protest, and Josse arrested the movement, slowly and carefully replacing his foot on the floor. Bringing her mind back — not without difficulty — to the matter under discussion, she heard him say, ‘You also commented earlier that Gunnora wasn’t really suited to convent life,’ he said. ‘Could you elaborate?’

‘I did not mean to sound judgemental,’ Helewise said quickly. Dear Lord, but she had. ‘Only it seemed to me that Gunnora struggled more than most with the tenets of a nun’s life.’ He was still wearing his enquiring expression. ‘Poverty, obedience, chastity,’ she said. ‘Different sisters have difficulty with each of those three. Young women who come to us in their late teens and early twenties have to fight a natural inclination towards the strong demands of the flesh, and older women who enter the Order after a life as a wealthy man’s wife find it very hard to sleep on a plank bed and wear the plain black habit. Many, if not all, of us find constant and total unquestioning obedience a heavy cross to carry.’ She paused. ‘Gunnora, God rest her soul, while not, I think, having problems with chastity, never ceased to fight poverty and obedience. So consistent were her infringements against the Rule that I find it virtually impossible to say with any honesty that she had made much progress in a twelvemonth.’ She met Josse’s eye. ‘Soon she should have been taking the first of her final vows. I was not going to permit it, sir. I was going to tell her, as gently as I could, that I did not consider her ready.’ Again, she hesitated. Would it be disloyal to go on? But then Gunnora was dead. And, to find out the why and the how, this man needed to know the whole truth. She added softly, ‘And that, in my view, she never would be.’

He accepted that without comment. But she knew he had heard, knew he had understood the significance. His contemplative silence went on for several moments, then he said, ‘And that last day, presumably, had its share of infringements?’

‘Presumably, although they would not necessarily all have come to my notice straightaway, unless I happened to observe them. Gunnora was present at each Divine Office, outwardly one of the community, yet, as ever, giving that sense, that strong sense, that her thoughts were elsewhere.’ She leaned towards him, trying to put across what she had perceived of Gunnora in terms that would have meaning for one who had not known the girl. ‘Sir, she was here at her own wish, yet always you felt she considered she was imparting a great gift by favouring us with her presence. When things went well with her — and it would be wrong to suggest they never did — she would adopt a particular expression. A sort of superior smile, as if she were saying, there, I can do it if I so choose. And, if one of the senior sisters uttered even so much as a mild reproof, Gunnora would receive it with a face cut out of stone. There was clear resentment in her very immobility.’

Josse nodded. ‘Aye. What in a soldier would be called dumb insubordination.’

‘Yes!’ The phrase fitted perfectly.

‘She had few friends, I believe you said?’

‘I did, although in truth the concept of friends is not one we recognise here. Partiuclar associations are discouraged, since it is too easy for a group of two or three close friends to exclude others, ignore the social needs of less outgoing sisters. However, what you say is right in essence. Gunnora was rarely sought out in recreation, rarely the first one to be chosen if a sister required a companion for an excursion outside the Abbey. Until shortly before her death, I would have judged that she spent most of her time in the secrecy of her own thoughts, and that it was precisely where she preferred to be.’

‘What happened to change that?’ Josse prompted.

‘The arrival of a new postulant. She and Gunnora took to each other, although it seems hard to imagine why, when they were so different. Elvera is a lively young woman, and I am at present entertaining doubts as to whether what she has is truly a call from God, or a romantic notion that she cuts a dashing figure in a habit, administering holy water to the grateful sick.’ She met Josse’s eye, echoing his smile. ‘It happens, sir. Out of the many girls and women who ask for admittance each year, at least a quarter eventually decide that the call existed only in their imagination.’

‘What do you do with them?’ He sounded genuinely interested. If, as seemed likely, he had been in command of men, then it followed that he would be interested in such delicate matters of administration.

‘Everyone who comes knocking on the door is allowed entry, but at first all we undertake is to admit them for a trial period of six weeks, during which they are free to leave at any time. With the totally unsuitable, it usually takes no more than a fortnight. When the six weeks are up, those still with us are admitted as postulants, and their training as nuns begins. Six months later, they take a simplified form of the vows and become novices. If, after a year, all has gone well, they then take the first of their permanent vows.’

‘And how long, Abbess, do you give this Elvera?’

She permitted herself a brief laugh. ‘She may not even last the day.’

‘Don’t allow her to go till I’ve spoken to her,’ he said quickly. ‘If that’s allowed?’

‘Yes.’ She did not think she needed to ask him why he wanted to talk to Elvera; he would no doubt tell her.

She was right.

‘They were friends, you say, these two?’ She nodded. ‘So, a woman who had been quite content with her own company for nearly a twelvemonth suddenly becomes close to an apparently quite unsuitable new arrival. How new was she?’

‘She has been here almost a month. She and Gunnora had known each other a little over a week.’

‘Brief, for the birth of such an unlikely liaison.’

‘It was. But already I had had to remind Gunnora several times that she must not seek out the girl so blatantly. And, the very morning of the day she died, I overheard Gunnora and Elvera laughing.’

‘Laughing.’

Something about the way he said it suggested he had misunderstood. ‘We don’t forbid laughter,’ she said gently. ‘Only, as in every other walk of life, there is a time and a place. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘And by the hospital, outside the room where a grieving husband sits beside his dying wife, is not the place for girlish giggling.’

‘No. Of course it isn’t.’ He sounded appalled. ‘Gunnora, at least, should have had more self control, she’d been with you long enough, surely, for that?’

‘She had.’ The incident, small but distressing, was, Helewise thought, a perfect illustration of what she had been trying to put across. Gunnora abided by her own rules. Lived inside her head, and did not appear even to notice the needs of others.

Josse was muttering something. Noticing her eyes on him, he said, ‘You reproved her, for the laughter?’

‘Not I. But Sister Beata rushed out to hush the pair of them, shoo them away, and Sister Euphemia heard the disturbance. She, I understand, administered something of a tongue-lashing. She cares deeply, sir, for her patients. And for the good reputation of her hospital.’

‘I don’t doubt it. And what of the rest of that day?’

‘Gunnora’s face took on its stoniest expression, and there was a dramatic air of suffering about the way she deliberately distanced herself from Elvera, from all of us, in fact. It was extraordinary’ — Helewise was quite surprised to find herself making the admission — ‘but she had the gift of actually making her accuser feel guilty, even when, as in this case, she was totally in the wrong, and whoever had remonstrated with her did so with every justification.’

‘So, she spoke to no one during the evening?’

‘I think not. I cannot speak for the entire evening, for I did not observe her continually. But I sat near to her at supper and opposite her at recreation, and she utterly rejected any attempt to draw her into conversation. She seemed relieved, in fact, when the bell summoned us to Compline and, immediately afterwards, to bed.’

‘And no one ever talks after going to bed?’

‘No. Never. Contact between one nun and another is not permitted in the dormitory.’ No need, she was sure, to explain why.

‘And no one ever gets up, wanders about, leaves the dormitory?’

‘No. The answering of calls of nature is accomplished within each sister’s curtained recess.’

‘Ah.’ He reddened slightly. ‘Abbess, I apologise for these questions which touch on delicate matters so private to your community. But-’

‘I understand the need. Go on.’

‘Would anyone have heard a sister get out of bed? Leave the dormitory?’

She considered. ‘I would have said yes, but I may be wrong. Our days are long, sir, and most of us fall asleep quickly and stay that way until we are called, first at midnight for Matins, and then at daybreak for Prime.’

‘Gunnora was present at midnight?’

‘She was. And absent for Prime, when the alarm was raised and the search parties sent out.’

‘She left, then, in the small hours.’ He closed his eyes, apparently as an aid to visualising the scene. ‘Let us say that, intending this nocturnal expedition, she returned to her recess after the midnight office and made sure she stayed awake. Perhaps lay down fully dressed, so as not to risk making a noise when she rose again. Would anyone have noticed if she did that?’

‘No. We do not peer into each other’s sleeping areas. And, besides, the candles are blown out as soon as we are back in the dormitory.’

‘So. Gunnora waited until everyone was asleep, then moved silently along the dormitory, past all the sleeping sisters, and-’

‘Not all of them. Gunnora’s cubicle was three from the door.’

‘I see. She opened the door, and-’

‘No, it was propped open. It was a very hot night, and we had elected to leave the door open so as to get a little more air into the dormitory.’

‘Ah. Hm.’ Again, the closed eyes. ‘Abbess, might I be permitted to look inside the dormitory?’

She had known he would ask. She replied simply, ‘Yes.’

* * *

She guessed what he was going to do. He asked her to arrange the long room — now quite empty — as it had been that night. She did so, propping the door with the same stone and arranging the flimsy hangings around the first few cubicles. The tidiness and immaculate order pleased her; she was glad this wasn’t a day when some sister, in a hurry, had left her bedding even slightly disarrayed. Then she showed him where Gunnora had slept. He stepped inside the adjacent cubicle, and let the thin curtain fall again.

‘Now, if you would be so kind?’ he asked.

She went into Gunnora’s cubicle. It was disturbing, to be where the girl had spent her last, lonely hours. She removed her shoes, then waited, making herself count to fifty. Then, as silently as she could, she tweaked up the hanging, slid under it and tiptoed along the dormitory and out of the door. She knew, as did all the nuns, that the third of the wooden stairs tended to creak, so she stepped straight from the second to the fourth. Then, still with exaggerated caution, she went on down to ground level.

She had just put her shoes back on when, some minutes later, Josse appeared at the top of the short flight of steps.

‘I didn’t hear you,’ he said. ‘I had my eyes shut, and I called out to you, and you didn’t answer, so I knew you’d gone. I didn’t hear a thing,’ he repeated, ‘and I was wide awake! I was listening out for you!’

‘I know.’ She felt strangely excited, affected by this small discovery that it was perfectly possible for someone to leave the dormitory unheard. She said, genuinely wanting to know, ‘What now?’

The light in his face drained away, and he said sombrely, ‘Now, please, you show me where she was found.’

Helewise led him out of the rear gate of the convent. It gave on to the track that wound down into the vale; after only a few yards, the rooftops of the shrine and the monks’ house came into view. Soon after that, she branched off on to a lesser-used track, which became steeper as it neared the valley floor.

She had not been down here since they’d found Gunnora.

‘She lay there.’ Helewise pointed. ‘Just off the path. Right in the open, which was odd.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘You’d have thought whoever killed her might have tried to hide the body. A belated discovery of the murder surely would have helped him, if only to give him longer to get away.’

‘It was more than not hiding her,’ Helewise said slowly. ‘It looked for all the world as if he’d been quite determined we would find her. She’d been — arranged.’ It was the best word she could think of.

‘Arranged,’ he repeated.

‘Her arms and legs made a sort of star pattern’ — oh, it was hard, remembering! — ‘and it seemed that some trouble had been taken to make the shape as perfect as possible.’

‘Dreadful,’ he muttered. ‘Callous, and quite horrible.’

She didn’t want to, but she knew she must tell him the rest. ‘Her skirts were folded back so neatly. I noticed that.’ Realising her omission, she said, ‘I did not find her — two of the lay brothers did, only a matter of minutes after the search began. I was just coming down from the Abbey, and I heard them shout. I was the third one to look on her.’

‘I see.’ His voice held compassion. ‘Go on. You were telling me about her skirt.’

‘Yes.’ She swallowed. ‘The skirt and underskirt had been folded as one, and there were three folds. The first raised the garments to knee level, the second to thigh level, the third placed them across her belly. She was, as I think you know, naked from the waist down. And covered in blood.’

Her voice was shaking. She clenched her teeth, hoping he wouldn’t ask her anything else until she had recovered her equanimity.

He didn’t. Instead, he wandered slowly around the place where Gunnora had been found. It was impossible even for Helewise, who had seen her, to say exactly where the dead girl had lain; the small amount of blood that had trickled down into the grass had been ground in by the many boot and shoe soles that had trampled the scene. It was not, then, immediately clear what Josse was gaining from his long perusal. Perhaps he was just giving her some time.

Eventually he returned to stand beside her.

‘There was something about a cross, a jewelled cross?’ he asked quietly.

‘Yes. They found it there, at the bend in the path.’ She pointed.

‘A rape that wasn’t, and a stolen cross that was thrown away. Although it is difficult to see why, unless it was by accident, since the murderer was not being pursued.’

‘Not by us,’ Helewise said. ‘It is possible that someone else saw him.’

‘Someone who prefers not to advertise his presence here in the dead of night?’

‘Quite.’

‘Hm,’ he said. And, again, walking a few paces away, ‘Hmmm.’

She said, ‘About the cross.’

He turned, alert eyes on her. ‘Yes?’

‘It wasn’t Gunnora’s. It was very similar to hers, same gold mounting, same size and colour of ruby. But Gunnora gave hers to me a few months ago, and asked instead to wear a cross of plain wood.’

‘She did? Why?’

That was easy. ‘As a demonstration of poverty, I think.’ A very ostentatious show, Helewise had thought privately at the time, and not a very useful one since Gunnora had specifically asked Helewise to put the cross away safely for her. It would have been more convincing had she asked her Abbess to sell the pretty thing and use the proceeds for the poor.

‘So she would not have been wearing her own jewelled cross when she died?’

‘No.’ It was still secure in Helewise’s cabinet; she had checked. Now the other one, that was found beside her, was there with it. ‘The wooden cross was still round her neck, but it had somehow slipped under her scapula. Probably only another nun would have thought to look for it.’

‘A rape that wasn’t,’ Josse repeated thoughtfully, ‘and, now, a theft that wasn’t.’ He stared at Helewise. ‘Abbess, all we seem to be left with is murder.’