Girl In A Red Tunic

Chapter 8

Helewise sent word to Sister Martha and both Horace and the golden mare named Honey were saddled and waiting by the time she and Josse had collected what few belongings they were taking with them and were ready to leave. Helewise had dressed herself in an extra layer of warm underclothes — a fine woollen shift and petticoat — and she had found her heavy travelling cloak. Josse, she noticed, was also well wrapped up against the cold.

Sister Martha, eyes betraying her curiosity, saw them to the gate and watched them set off. Helewise turned Honey’s head to the right, instinctively knowing which way to go; Josse, catching her up, said, ‘How far away is this Old Manor, my lady?’

I should have told him, she thought. It is discourteous to have virtually ordered him to accompany me without telling him exactly where we were going. ‘It lies in a small hamlet in the shadow of the North Downs,’ she said, turning round in the saddle. ‘As to how far … a morning’s ride, perhaps a little more. I will take us along lesser-frequented tracks, Sir Josse, if you do not mind, for I prefer not to ride down through Tonbridge and possibly have people speculate and guess at our purpose.’

‘No, I don’t mind,’ he called back. ‘Lead on, my lady.’

They had been riding for some time when something occurred to her. ‘Sir Josse!’

‘My lady?’ He kicked the big horse and trotted up to ride beside her.

‘You speculated that perhaps Leofgar left as he did because he did not want to be a part of your search party.’

‘I was wrong, I am sure of it,’ he said quickly.

‘Never mind. What I wanted to say is this: I found my son in the stables last night and I realise now that he was probably getting everything ready for the family’s secret night-time departure. Did you tell him yesterday about the search party?’

‘No.’

‘I thought not because I did tell him, as we left the stables, and to judge from his reaction I would have said that he had not known of the plan before.’

‘Therefore he did not leave because he feared helping us search for a violent man,’ Josse concluded. ‘There, my lady. I said he was no coward.’

For some time the happy thought cheered her. But then she recalled all her other worries and the fleeting lightening of her burdens was gone again.

Although she had once covered the journey in the opposite direction, Helewise had never travelled the route from Hawkenlye Abbey to the Old Manor; nuns did not habitually leave the convent for visits back to their former homes for, once within the order, that was considered to be their life and reminders from the past were not encouraged. Returning to your previous existence to care for a sick parent, for example, turned your mind from where it belonged, with God and in His service, perpetually His to command.

So it was strange, she mused as they rode along in the feeble sunshine, that she knew the way without hesitation. They left the main route down Castle Hill towards Tonbridge soon after leaving the Abbey, branching off to the right and descending into the wide Medway Valley down a track that was mostly used by drovers trying to get their herds up on to higher — and therefore drier — ground. They crossed the river some distance to the east of Tonbridge. It was as well, she thought, that the weather had not been wet recently because the marshy areas either side of the river would have been impassable if the ground were anything but bone dry and hard with frost. She turned north-west on the far side of the Medway and soon the long ridge of the North Downs rose up before them.

I must, she decided as once again she made a slight change of direction with barely a thought, have made this journey many times in my mind …

But she was not sure that she wanted to dwell on that. The idea that she had mentally and unconsciously made her way back to her old home, perhaps with regular frequency, suggested that her detachment from her former life was not as complete as she had always believed.

They came into a small settlement with a wide green and a pond — there was nobody about and Helewise concluded that the inhabitants were wisely tucked up in their homes, sheltering from the cold — and rode on up a long, gentle rise towards the Downs.

Then the great line of oak and chestnut trees that sheltered the Old Manor from the east wind came into view. Helewise kicked the golden mare into a smart trot and then a canter and, with her veil flying in the breeze and the sound in her ears of Horace’s big hooves pounding the hard ground as Josse raced to keep up with her, at last she was approaching her former home.

And unbidden into her mind — impatient, as if it had been lying in wait for this moment — came a powerful vision of the first time she had set eyes on the place …

She is a bride — a very young although fully mature bride — and she wears rustling scarlet silk; her new father-in-law’s wedding gift. She rides a neat bay mare whose name is Willow. She is excited and her blood races lustily through her body. It is a morning of high summer and her husband of slightly less than two days rides beside her.

She turns to look at him and the invitation in her laughing grey eyes is all that it takes. He kicks his chestnut gelding and comes up alongside the bay mare. Without a word he reaches out with strong arms and catches his bride around her waist, easily lifting her from her saddle and swinging her across so that she sits in front of him astride the chestnut horse. She leans back against his broad chest and a sigh of desire slips from her open mouth. He puts a hand on her jaw and turns her head so that he can reach her lips with his own. He kisses her hungrily and she responds. She wonders, as the kiss goes on and she feels their excitement mount, whether they might pause a while and, in the shelter of those big trees over there, make love …

But he eases his mouth from hers and, opening her eyes, she sees that he is looking not at her but ahead. There is a light in his face that she has not seen before. Then he says, ‘Sweetheart, let’s wait until we’re home.’ Nodding towards whatever it is that he stares at with such deep pleasure, he says, ‘Look. We’re nearly there.’

She looks.

And sees a stone house perfectly sited; a gentle fold of the Downs rises up behind it and there is dense woodland screening it from the track that goes on up the hill. To the right — the east, and therefore the direction of the most spiteful winds — there is a copse of oak and chestnut; these are the very trees under which she has just been contemplating a short session of passion which, she now appreciates with a chuckle, would hardly have been suitable since the trees are actually rather close to the house.

The dwelling consists of a long building which she guesses is the great hall; it is a good size and it sits over an undercroft with a stout wooden door and one or two tiny windows. A stone stair leads up to the main entrance of the hall. To the right of this long, low construction is what she assumes to be a solar block. This too has an under storey, whose door, she will soon discover, gives on to a stone-walled room built half into the ground and off which a winding stair leads to the rooms above. The Old Manor, she can already see as she rides up to it, promises to be a magnificent home …

‘My lady?’

It was not Ivo calling; it was Josse. Shaking her head and dismissing her reverie, Helewise turned to him. ‘Yes?’

He was, she noted, looking slightly anxious. ‘Oh — you stopped and looked for so long that I wondered if you had mistaken your way and brought us to the wrong place.’

She smiled at him. ‘No, Sir Josse. I am sorry but I was remembering the first time I came here.’

‘Ah. Oh.’

He’s embarrassed! she realised. He thinks I’ve forgotten our present purpose and am lost in my past! Dear Lord, but he is not far wrong. Gathering Honey’s reins in firm hands, she said decisively, ‘Let us go up to the house and see if we can find Leofgar. The sooner we can speak to him and find out why he left in such a manner, the sooner we can be on our way back to Hawkenlye.’

Now Josse looked simply surprised, presumably at her lightning change of mood. ‘Very well, my lady,’ he said. But she noticed that he continued to eye her with a certain amount of suspicion, as if — the whimsical thought quite surprised her — he feared that she might suddenly change into somebody quite different.

She rode the short distance up to where the gates of the Old Manor stood open and, with Josse beside her, went on into the courtyard. Josse called out, ‘Halloa! Halloa the Old Manor!’

At first there was no response. The main door to the hall was firmly closed and remained so. Helewise turned to look towards the solar block, but the door into the undercroft was similarly shut fast. Josse called again, but still there came no reply.

‘My lady,’ Josse said softly, ‘I am beginning to think that either your son does not wish to see us or else he is not here.’

‘There must be someone about!’ she said, copying him and keeping her voice low. ‘Leofgar and Rohaise may only have a small staff but they certainly do not live in this place all by themselves. There must surely be house servants and grooms and such like.’

Josse dismounted and handed her Horace’s reins. Then he paced away to the end of the long building that housed the hall and disappeared round behind it. He must have seen the smoke from the kitchen fire, she decided — she too had spotted it — and he has guessed what I know. That, if there are indeed servants here, they’ll be round the back.

Presently Josse returned. With him was a slim young man aged somewhere in the mid-twenties. He had smooth dark hair and was dressed in a cheap-looking but clean tunic and neatly darned hose. His sturdy boots were well-made and had been recently buffed to a shine.

Josse, walking a pace ahead of the young man, said, ‘My lady, may I present Wilfrid, who is in charge here in his master’s absence. Wilfrid, this is the Abbess of Hawkenlye, your master’s mother.’

Wilfrid went down on one knee on the hard-packed earth of the courtyard and said, ‘You are most welcome, my lady Abbess, and what hospitality I can offer you is yours to command.’

‘Thank you, Wilfrid.’ She took the hand that he held out to her — it was clean, even down to the fingernails — and dismounted; Josse silently took Horace’s reins from her and collected Honey’s as well.

Face to face with her son’s man, Helewise studied the pleasant, open expression and the regular features. He reminded her of someone and, bearing in mind where they were, it did not take her long to decide who; his father had been manservant here before him. But she must get on with the matter in hand; deciding that there was no use in prevaricating, she said, ‘I had hoped to find Leofgar and the lady Rohaise at home.’

Clearly puzzled, Wilfrid said, ‘They have gone to Hawkenlye Abbey, my lady. Did you not receive them there?’

She glanced at Josse, who gave a faint nod of encouragement; he too, it seemed, had formed a good opinion of Wilfrid and was, she thought, urging her not to hold back from telling the whole strange story. Or, at least, telling as much of it as she knew. ‘We did,’ she said after a moment. ‘But then they departed and we had assumed they were heading for home.’

‘They have not arrived, as you see, my lady.’ Now Wilfrid was looking worried. ‘When did they set out?’

She hesitated. Then, with a rueful smile, said, ‘In the middle of the night.’

Silently she applauded Wilfrid’s discretion. Instead of asking the question that he must have been longing to ask — why on earth did they do that? — instead he said quietly, ‘Perhaps they are even now on their way and it is merely that you have overtaken them.’

She hadn’t thought of that. ‘Sir Josse, is it possible, do you think?’ she asked, turning to him.

He was frowning hard. ‘We came by a route other than the main way, did we not?’ he asked.

‘Yes, but the main way would, I believe, have been more direct and therefore quicker. If they came that way then they should already be here.’

‘Aye, my lady, so I appreciate, but what if Leofgar too took a less frequented and more roundabout road? After all-’ He made himself stop.

But she guessed what he had been about to say: after all, a man who creeps away under cover of darkness is unlikely then to ride home along the best-used and most public road, especially if that road takes him through a populous market town and over one of the busiest river crossings in the south-east of England.

‘Yes, I understand your meaning,’ she said quietly. ‘And Wilfrid is right in saying that they may well be still on their way home.’

‘My lady, I would be delighted to offer you hospitality,’ Wilfrid said quickly. ‘Will you and Sir Josse not come inside? I will light a fire and food will be prepared for you while you wait for your son to arrive.’

It was a kind offer, she thought, and her opinion of this man of her son’s rose a little more. And indeed, what else was there to do but wait at the Old Manor and see if Leofgar turned up?

‘Thank you, Wilfrid.’ She exchanged a look with Josse, then said, ‘We would be very pleased to accept.’

Wilfrid turned and gave a whistle and a boy of about eight came running round from behind the house. ‘This is my lad,’ Wilfrid said. The lad gave the visitors a big grin. ‘We’re teaching him the care of horses. Here, Simeon, take these two and make sure they want for nothing.’ With a formal bow he took the two sets of reins from Josse and solemnly handed them to his son who, despite his small stature, gamely took them and, making an encouraging clucking sound with his tongue, led the horses off behind the hall. To the stables, Helewise remembered. The smell of sun-warmed hay fleetingly filled her nostrils and there was a memory of laughter; then it was gone.

‘Please, my lady, Sir Josse,’ Wilfrid was saying, ‘follow me.’

They climbed the steps up to the main door, Wilfrid going ahead. He opened the door and, stepping back, waved his hand to usher them inside. Little had changed, Helewise saw: new hangings over that far door that was always draughty; a different table at the far end of the room; a careful and clearly recent repair to the huge iron-bound wooden chest that stood against the wall opposite the door. Otherwise it was very much the place she had left eighteen years ago. Her eyes went to the section of wall on the far side of the room, beyond the sooty stones where the fire would soon be burning in its central hearth; Wilfrid was already busy with flint, straw and kindling. There on the wall, in the place where it had always been, was the ancient shield of the Warins, Ivo’s kin. Dark with age now and blackened by the smoke of a thousand fires, the device could still just be made out. A bear, long-clawed and fierce, stood on its hind legs against a background of deep blue sky and soft green grass on which there was depicted a tiny castle flying a long red pennant.

The fire began to crackle and Wilfrid pulled forward two high-backed, carved oak chairs. Then he excused himself, saying he would see about some refreshments, and Josse and Helewise were left alone. Josse paced slowly away down the length of the hall, touching the old stones, smoothing his fingers across the shiny surface of the table, looking everywhere.

Helewise stared into the fire …

She is in the hall and her new husband is impatient with the servants who bustle around them, telling them to hurry up and bring this meal they’ve prepared. But it is clear that there is no malice in his words for the fat woman and the slim young man who serve the food are clearly amused and trying not to laugh out loud. She has a sudden fierce hope that Elena will be happy here, that she will like the fat woman and the slim young man, for where she goes, Elena goes; but it is important to Helewise that her old nurse settles in this new place to which her young mistress has brought her. She hears the fat woman say something to the dark young man, not quite quietly enough, but although it is a ribald remark and the fat woman should not really have made it, the young bride is so glad that she did because it’s just the sort of earthy, crude, rude thing that Elena would say.

The meal is served, eaten and cleared away in record time. At last the servants melt away into their own quarters at the back of the house and Ivo takes Helewise on to his lap. She puts her arms around his neck and kisses him passion ately, gasping between kisses ‘I’ve been waiting — hours — and hours — to do that to you!’

His hand slides inside the bodice of her red tunic and his fingers cushion the warm, smooth roundness of her breast, taking the nipple in gentle fingertips and playing with it until it stands erect. ‘And I this to you,’ he says huskily.

She is sitting astride him now and she feels his hard penis push against her. A moan of desire escapes her and she whispers in his ear, ‘Is this where you mean to bed me, husband?’

He laughs. ‘Oh, aye, wife. I shall fling you on to the clean rushes and ride you like a man on a wild horse until you cry for mercy!’

‘Until I cry for more,’ she corrects him, greedy for him, hungry to have him …

‘Are you hungry, my lady?

Wilfrid was addressing her. Wilfrid, who so resembled his father whom she had just been seeing again in her mind’s eye as the slim young servant he once was.

She was not hungry at all; far from it, for her stomach felt as if it were tied in knots and she sensed the onset of a slight queasiness. But Wilfrid, or someone, had prepared a platter of cured strips of meat and bread generously buttered, and in these times of hardship she knew she must not refuse. ‘Thank you, Wilfrid’ — she was very relieved that, despite the tumult of her memories, her voice sounded perfectly calm — ‘I should like to take a little food.’

He held out the platter and she helped herself, then watched as he did the same for Josse; he, she noticed, had considerably more of an appetite. Then Wilfrid offered them some watery beer — ‘I’m sorry that it’s not better quality but, like every household, we’re not able to offer ale of our usual fine standard at present’ — and they both drank. When they had consumed all that they wanted, Wilfrid took away the leftover food and the beer jug and once more disappeared down the passage that led to the kitchen quarters.

Josse went over to the door and stood looking outside, as if by staring down the track he could somehow make Leofgar and Rohaise appear. He was, Helewise had observed, unusually quiet and she wondered if his silence might be out of respect for her and her memories. If so, she would really rather he chattered away to her on virtually any subject under the sun, her memories being almost more than she could cope with.

To encourage him to talk to her, she said, ‘How long, Sir Josse, should we give them, think you?’

He turned from the door, closed it — there was a cold wind blowing in — and came back to the hearth where she sat, throwing himself down into the other chair. ‘I have been thinking, my lady, that it may be that they travel only by night. If indeed they have a need to keep their journey a secret, then maybe they rode out from the Abbey and then, when dawn broke, found a place to hide themselves away out of sight for the hours of daylight, planning to set out again once it is dark.’

‘But why should they want to disguise the fact that they are returning here?’ she asked. It was all so strange! ‘They live here. Why be furtive about their homecoming?’

He stared at her. He looked worried. ‘I am thinking more and more as time passes that they are not coming home,’ he said neutrally.

She felt instinctively that he was right. What, indeed, was the point of a furtive flight in the middle of the night only to ride away to the one place everyone would expect to find you?

‘I think,’ she said, ‘that I must agree with you. Wherever Leofgar has taken his wife and child, he is not bound for here.’

Josse was looking at her sympathetically. ‘It will be dark soon,’ he said. ‘Do you wish to set out for Hawkenlye and try to reach the Abbey before nightfall?’

She thought about it. Then: ‘No. For one thing, the journey will be easier’ — safer too, she thought but did not say, if indeed this vicious ruffian Walter Bell is abroad — ‘in the morning. For another thing, if we stay for the night then we shall be giving Leofgar a little longer to appear.’

He gave a small bow of acknowledgement. ‘It is your choice, my lady, but I think that is a wise decision,’ he observed. Standing up again, he added, ‘I’ll find that Wilfrid and request that he arranges accommodation for us.’

She and Josse were made as comfortable as it was possible for unexpected guests to be made in the midst of a hard November when nobody had much of anything to spare. Josse said he was quite happy to bed down by the fire and Wilfrid found him a straw mattress and a couple of blankets. Helewise, for reasons of her own, would greatly have preferred the same but both Josse and Wilfrid looked quite shocked when she suggested it and Wilfrid protested that he had already arranged that a bed be prepared for her in the smaller of the bedchambers on the upper floor of the solar block.

At least, Helewise thought as, later, she wearily climbed up the winding stone staircase, I have not been put in the main bedchamber. Nevertheless, she was quite sure that she would be powerless to withstand the flood of memories that would assault her the moment she lay down to sleep.

As indeed she was …

Ivo has been teasing her about taking her there and then down on the rushes, in the hall where she sat on his lap and so aroused them both, but she knows full well that he isn’t serious because he has already shown her the sleeping chamber. He led her up to the larger of the two rooms that open off the solar soon after they arrived at the Old Manor and he showed her the big marriage bed made up ready for them. Someone — perhaps the jolly fat woman whose name, she now knows, is Magda; perhaps Elena — has placed a sweet-smelling garland of lavender and rosemary on the pillows. It is because this bed is so very inviting that Ivo and his bride have been so desperately impatient to get into it.

Now, at last, it is time. Down in the hall Ivo stands up with Helewise in his arms, intending to bear her off up the spiral stair to their bedchamber. But Helewise is no lightweight — she is only a little shorter than Ivo, although not nearly as broad in the shoulder or deep in the chest — and, with a shout of laughter, he has to admit defeat and he sets her on her feet. But there is in truth no need for him to carry her to bed; she cannot wait to be there and she runs ahead of him up the stone steps, holding his hand and dragging him behind her.

Up in the bedchamber, a soft summer breeze stirs the light hangings and makes the rose petals that float in the bowl of warm, scented water set out for their use skim across the surface like tiny pink boats. Ivo tears off his tunic and tries to remove his undershirt without loosening the strings that fasten the neck, and he almost throttles himself. Helewise, breathless with both laughter and lusty excitement, helps him and then positions herself before him and stands quite still so that he can untie the laces that fasten down the back of her gown and pull the red silk tight against her curvaceous body. As soon as the laces are sufficiently slack, she drags the lovely, bright garment over her head and places it carefully over a clothing chest that stands stoutly by the bed. Ivo is naked now, and she finds the sight of his hairy chest, flat belly and obvious strength very arousing; he is the very epitome of healthy masculinity. He is a big man. But Helewise is unafraid and she stares at his manhood, reaching out her hand to touch. As her fingers begin to caress, Ivo lets out a moan of desire and, pulling off his bride’s chemise, picks her up, lays her on the bed and sets about celebrating their marriage for the very first time under his own roof.

Helewise, Abbess of Hawkenlye, lay in her narrow, solitary bed and shivered. Fighting the past, fighting the seductive pictures and sensations that tried to pull her back to the woman she used to be, she gave up trying to sleep and, getting out of bed, fell on her knees on the floor. She prayed, as hard as she had prayed for anything, for the strength to overcome her own memory and the grace to remind herself that she was now and would ever more be a nun.

It was hard, so hard.

It was not until the night was pitch black and perfectly still — even the owls had fallen silent — that peace of a sort fell upon her and at last she fell dreamlessly asleep.