Heart of Ice

Chapter 15

That night, sleep was in short supply for many people. The very sick at Hawkenlye were not so much asleep as in varying states of unconsciousness and coma; some, indeed, stood shadow-like at the gates of death and some passed through. Those who tended them — and of these there was a steadily increasing number — grabbed short cat naps when they could.

The Abbess Helewise knew that there was small chance of her being able to relax sufficiently to fall asleep and so she worked until after midnight, battling her fear into submission by a relentless attack on the all but illegible accounts submitted by the incompetent whose duty it was to keep the Abbey informed of affairs on its lands over to the north of the Weald. The diversionary tactic was only partly successful; she managed to complete the task but, having done so, found that her anxieties returned all the more forcefully for having been briefly banished from her mind.

In the Vale, Josse tried and failed to block his ears from the sound of the sick and the dying. Eventually giving it up as a bad job, he got up from his blanket and his thin straw mattress, made his way out of the shelter and found Brother Saul, busy carrying an endless supply of holy water from the spring in the shrine to the waiting hands of a weary Sister Caliste. She took the full vessels inside the makeshift infirmary for the hardworking nursing nuns and monks — so many of them there now selflessly caring for the sick! — to give to those patients still able to drink. With no word but just a brief understanding smile, Saul indicated a pile of empty vessels and Josse fell into step beside him; for what was left of the night, the two carried water side by side.

In the forest, Joanna lay fighting with her conscience. She had already used her minor weapons: what has the world ever done for me that now I should risk the person I love most to help its people? Why, in particular, should I be made to feel obliged to an Abbey full of nuns and monks when the worst of my sufferings were brought about by the dirty mind of a priest working on and encouraging the sexual perversions of my elderly and long-dead husband? Strange, she thought in a brief moment of total honesty, how those arguments did not seem to carry the weight they once had. .

She had moved swiftly on to more persuasive arguments. Oh, it was all very well for Lora and Tiphaine to say that Meggie need go nowhere near the Abbey and that there would be no danger of her becoming sick, but how did they know? How could they possibly be sure, when diseases such as this one that they described seemed to have a life and a volition all of their own? And, even given that Meggie’s safety was totally, unquestionably assured, there was still Josse.

He would not hold back because of the pain of seeing you again, she thought, with as much conviction as if he himself were standing before her and in her presence had been asked and answered. He would reason that his pain and yours ought to be seen in their proper place, and that place was well behind the possibility that some joint action of his and hers might ease the agony — even perhaps save the lives — of many people who were otherwise doomed to a particularly horrible death.

‘I cannot do it!’ she wailed softly to herself. ‘I have left the world of the Outlanders behind me. This is my place now, mine and Meggie’s, and here is where I must remain.’

When the stars began to fade ahead of the dawn, at last she slept. But it was to dream that the Bear Man was with her, holding her in strong arms as she wept, and somehow — for he did not use spoken words — imparting the message that there was a purpose to everything and that included the claw that he had given her and the healing powers that she now possessed.

It was only a dream. On waking, she told herself that over and over again; he was far away, she knew he was, and so it was strange that, in the mud on the bank of the stream that ran close by her hut, she should find the marks of huge, claw-tipped paws.

In the dense forest around the isolated settlement at Robertsbridge, poachers crept beneath the trees searching the monks’ land for anything edible. One of them was a trembling lad not much more than ten out on his first hunt and forced into the excursion because his father was sick, his brother was in hiding from the law and his mother and three little siblings were slowly starving. He was spooked into an evasive leap and a suppressed scream by a movement in the shadows; seconds later a large, pregnant sow boar broke cover and ran off into the night, twigs and low branches snapping with loud cracks marking her progress. The lad received a cuff round the ear for his carelessness and went home empty handed.

The sow’s panicky rush through the undergrowth was, however, heard by someone other than the poachers; she took a track that went close by the monks’ settlement and even closer to the rough guest accommodation, where yet another person lay sleepless. For him, however, it was a fairly routine state, for he was very old and did not need much sleep.

The noise of the boar made hope of even an hour or two’s light slumber towards dawn quite out of the question, for the old man misunderstood the innocent sounds of the boar’s headlong flight and ascribed them to a very different cause. He lay in a cold sweat of terror for some time after the boar had gone, waiting almost without breathing for the creak of the door, the knife at his throat or — terror of terrors — the first hint of smoke like that which had come that last dreadful time.

When dawn came and he was still miraculously alive, he roused his companion and announced that they were leaving immediately. In answer to the puzzled questions — why? What is the rush? Where should we go? — he simply said, ‘He’s found us.’

And then there were no more questions; only a fast-growing fear that soon overtook his own. The pair were packed up ready to go within moments and as soon as Stephen could be persuaded to provide an escort — which, given Stephen’s urgent wish to be rid of his guests, for which he would subsequently do grave penance, took even less time — they were on their way and riding off along the road that led north-westwards.

He was losing control.

The sensation was unfamiliar for one such as he, who was meticulous both in the planning and the execution of a mission. He had not experienced failure in all the years he had been operating and it was this reputation for total reliability which, he believed, had caught the eye of the powerful man who had commanded the present task.

But things were going wrong.

For the first time in his professional life, he was indecisive and he was quietly, smoulderingly angry, for the indecision came about purely because his master kept changing his mind. Well, to be fair, he had changed it once: he had outlined the mission — and how well the man recalled that moment when his employer had announced the target! — and the man had considered the proposal, agreed that he would do it and, after the usual careful planning stage, had set off to accomplish it. Everything had gone smoothly; he had located his quarry, finalised the details of how the deed would be done and, even more important, how he would ensure a clean escape afterwards, and he had been poised to strike.

At the very last moment, the messenger had arrived to tell him to withdraw: the employer was in receipt of new intelligence and no longer wanted the mission to be carried out.

And then, purely because the man’s softly spoken fury had for a moment got the better of him, everything had started to go wrong. He always worked alone and the very presence of the messenger had disturbed him, making him act out of character. That must have been it, he told himself yet again, for what else could explain his breaking of his self-imposed rule of total silence until an operation was over? But the messenger had been there right in front of him, white-faced with the pain resulting from his own stupid clumsiness, cowering because he could plainly see the effect that the new instructions he had just relayed had had and, knowing the man’s profession and reputation, understandably terrified. The man had used the trembling messenger as a whipping boy and, for one self-indulgent moment, said, quietly but viciously, exactly what he thought about employers who changed their minds at the very last second.

It should have been all right and he ought to have got away with it. He and the messenger were in an out-of-the-way place where surely it was highly unlikely for them to have been overheard. But overheard they were: as the man had finished his brief but articulate rant, an emotion-charged silence ensued and into this silence came a small sound.

Anyone lacking the man’s long experience of survival against the odds and his talent for self-preservation might have dismissed the little noise as rats in the drains or mice in the stone walls. But the man’s acutely developed sense of hearing picked up the sound, checked it against like sounds stored in his memory and located the source. It was a very particular noise and the man knew exactly who had made it: nobody else coughed quite like that.

And that moment had led to this endless pursuit that had resulted in two deaths and would probably soon lead to two more.

Sitting on his horse in the forest clearing above the Hastings to London road and watching the five-strong party emerge from the track and set out northwards, the man wondered yet again why the pair of them had suddenly decided to run. They knew he was after them, he was quite sure of that, and he had begun to think that, if they persisted in demanding sanctuary at Robertsbridge, he was never going to get at them; this morning’s move was a surprise. He had almost missed the departure. They must have been up at dawn to have been on the road so early and it was pure luck that the man’s sleep had been restless that night, so that he was at his observation post some time sooner than he had been for the past few days.

Again he went through the possible reasons for the pair’s sudden move. This time he started further back, with the intention of trying to discover if there were some salient fact that he had left out of his considerations.

He had followed the pair to Troyes, where they had made the acquaintance of the apprentice lad. The man was quite sure they’d told him what had happened, what the old man had overheard; why else would the lad suddenly start looking over his shoulder, acting like a bodyguard, hardly letting the pair out of his sight and going about with his hand on his sword? The lad had been trying to impress the girl; of that the man was quite sure. Not that she’d have been very impressed if the man had chosen to make his attack in the open, for he would have made short work of the apprentice and his sword and dispatched him with the ruthless speed of a heavy boot crushing a cockroach.

But it was not the man’s way to attack in the open; he had got rid of the old man and the girl by firing their lodging house and then, still under cover of night, he had gone after the apprentice. He ought to have cornered him and seen to him that same night but the lad must have found a very good hiding place; the man had not been able to find him.

If he had only succeeded in finishing the business and curtailing the dangerous secret there and then in Troyes! It would have been a simple matter to go on to Paris, claim his payment and proceed on his way, putting the whole affair out of his mind. But he had been foiled again, this time by sheer bad luck: the old man ate a bad oyster at supper and, when the lodging house had gone up in flames, he had been alternately kneeling before and squatting over the privy in the yard voiding his system and the girl had been tending him.

The man was not to discover this until much later.

Although several other people were killed in the blaze, both the old boy and the girl had escaped unharmed. But, thinking them dead, he had hastened to pick up the apprentice’s trail and had followed him up to Boulogne. Somewhere along the road the lad must have become aware that he was being followed, for he had displayed all the symptoms of increasing fear. So close had the man been upon his trail that the man was quite sure the apprentice had not revealed his dangerous knowledge to anybody; there simply had been no occasion for such a sharing of confidences. In Boulogne the lad had met up with a merchant and on board the ship that they took for England, on to which the man had stealthily crept after them, the two had soon put their heads together. The man knew exactly what had been the main topic of conversation for, concealed in the dark shadows, he heard the lad speak. Eager to impress his wealthier and more sophisticated companion, the apprentice had carefully looked around him to make sure that none of the crew could overhear and then spilled out the full tale.

The man followed the merchant and the apprentice ashore in England and as soon as he could he killed them. The merchant he smothered with his own pillow — an easy death, that one, for the merchant had been weak with fever — and then he had set out to find the apprentice. The lad almost got away for, just as the man was about to make his move, the apprentice set off on his master’s horse and made his slow way to Hawkenlye Abbey. But there again the man’s luck was in, for the lad reached the Abbey on a very cold day just as the light was fading. Nobody had been about and it had been a simple matter to strike down the lad and roll his body into the pond.

That should have been that. The four people who knew what the man’s sensitive mission had been were dead and the secret had died with them.

Then, as the man had set off back to the coast to pick up a boat back to France, he had seen what at first sight he had thought must be a couple of ghosts. In deep countryside outside Hastings, following his usual practice when out in the wild of drawing off the road and concealing himself when he heard riders approaching, he had watched with increasing disbelief as the old man and the girl rode up from the port towards him. There was no time then to ask himself what they were doing in England or, indeed, how it came to be that they were still alive. In that urgent moment he calculated swiftly and, deciding that it would be best to slay them there and then, he had been about to pounce.

Then an ox cart had come crawling along the road from Hastings, in the direction from which the old man and the girl had come, accompanied by three horsemen and a troupe of peasants. The old man and the girl had paused to rest at the top of a rise and the group had caught up with them. With a quiet curse, the man had withdrawn deeper under the trees; unless he was prepared to kill the lot of them, attacking the old man and the girl here was just going to create yet more problems.

He followed them and watched from a safe distance as they rode for a few miles with the ox cart party and then turned off at the track for the abbey at Robertsbridge, where they were given lodgings. A few days later he trailed the girl as, escorted by a couple of burly monks, she rode to Newenden to ask after the apprentice, and he was sure she must also have made a similar excursion to Hawkenlye; there was a day where he had not been able to find her and he guessed that was where she had gone. She would probably know by now that the apprentice lad was dead, unless his body were still under the ice in the dark heart of the pond.

There had never been an opportunity to attack her and, indeed, killing her would only have achieved half the task, for there remained the old man, and he had the good sense not to leave the settlement at Robertsbridge.

And there matters had stood, the girl making occasional forays on to the tracks and the roads, always accompanied and therefore unassailable, and the old man all but camping out under Robertsbridge’s altar.

Until now. .

He waited until the group of riders were almost out of sight — a monk led the way, followed by the old man and the girl, with a pair of monks bringing up the rear — and then he nudged a knee into his horse’s side and, moving with his usual stealth, set out after them.

‘Are those structures also part of Hawkenlye Abbey?’

Sabin de Retz’s accented words managed to sound authoritative and faintly dismissive, as if the sight of the Abbey buildings down in the Vale was somehow a disappointment.

It was not the case; she was driven by her need to sound calm and confident, which was not easy when her heart was thumping with fear. This place, she had been thinking as the journey proceeded relentlessly to its destination, this place where we’re going, which I saw but briefly before and where I’m bringing Grandfather, is the place where poor Nicol was struck down. Not only that, but it’s now foul with disease and we approach it at our peril.

The monk in the lead — his name was Brother Basil and he was broad in the shoulders and his heavy-featured face showed the scars of some violent past left behind when he entered Robertsbridge — turned at her words. ‘Aye, lady,’ he acknowledged. ‘The main foundation’s up there on the rise. Down in the valley’ — he indicated with a jerk of his head — ‘is where they discovered the spring with the precious healing water.’

Sabin stared down into the Vale. Two distant black-clad figures were carrying a long, slim shape wrapped in a sacking shroud into what had to be an improvised burial ground, where there were a number of obviously recent graves, scars of brown earth on the frosty ground; she bit back the remark that the holy waters didn’t seem to be making much headway against the pestilence.

‘Why have we stopped?’ Her grandfather’s voice was querulous, tinged with the very edge of complaint; knowing him as she did, for she had lived with him all her life and he had been training her as his assistant for the last fifteen years or more, she realised that the moment was ripe for some encouragement.

‘We are discussing what is the best option now that we are here, Grandfather,’ she improvised, casting a quick glance at Brother Basil in apology for the small lie.

‘Didn’t you say we must search out that knight who came asking for us down at Robertsbridge?’ Benoit de Retz said tetchily. ‘Isn’t that why we’ve come all this way on a bitter morning? Surely the best option’ — he mocked her words — ‘is to ride right up to the Abbey gates and demand to see him!’

Sabin hesitated. Her grandfather knew about the sickness at Hawkenlye — it had been he who had confirmed it to her, having overheard the knight Sir Josse tell Stephen — but he could not see what she was now looking at, and the sight of the new graves and the body being carried to the graveyard brought the severity of the danger home to her far more forcefully than mere words had done. Benoit would undoubtedly have refused to leave Robertsbridge, she reflected, had he somehow had a preview of the scene now before them. It had crossed Sabin’s mind that she could leave him there in relative safety while she went alone up to Hawkenlye to search for Sir Josse, but every instinct had argued against it. Her grandfather had cared for her diligently, if not especially tenderly, ever since her parents had died when she was three. Now that he was old, feeble and all but blind, it was her turn to look after him. It had been different when she had made the earlier journeys to Newenden and to Hawkenlye alone, for then he had been too sick to travel and she had had no alternative. Now that he was once more well, leaving him for what might be quite a long time in the care of strangers was just not a choice.

Making up her mind, she said bluntly, ‘There is very much sickness at Hawkenlye. The situation is worse than we thought. We can see the monks burying a body even as we sit here.’

Benoit gasped, crossed himself and muttered a hasty prayer. ‘We cannot risk going any nearer! To do so would be folly!’

We could help. Sabin bit back the exclamation. You, Grandfather, she thought, are renowned far and wide for your skills, not a few of which you have passed on to me. But: ‘Very well,’ she said instead. With a jerk of her head to Brother Basil, she asked, ‘Where else might we put up hereabouts? Is there a town nearby?’

‘Aye. Just down the hill there.’ He pointed back along the track to where another road led off down the slope of the hillside. ‘Tonbridge is but a short ride and there’s an inn.’

He appeared to know the area quite well so she ventured another question. She was thinking that, if this Sir Josse d’Acquin had indeed returned to Hawkenlye Abbey and thus rendered himself out of bounds, as it were, to anybody who had not already risked an encounter with the sickness, then she would need to find someone else to talk to about the death of Nicol. ‘Is there a-’ She was not sure what the right word would be. ‘Will I be able to find a man of law down in this town?’

‘A sheriff?’ Brother Basil shrugged. ‘Probably. There’s a big castle there and not a few wealthy folks, and where there’s money there’s usually rules to protect it and that means a man of law.’ He risked a very small smile as he used the words that she had done.

‘Then, please, Brother Basil, if you will,’ she said courteously, ‘increase our indebtedness to you by escorting us on to Tonbridge.’

Brother Basil looked at her for a moment, then, with a nod to the two monks sitting shivering on their mules to the rear of Benoit, he nodded and kicked his sandalled feet into his horse’s sides.

And, quite a short time afterwards, the three monks had left their two charges safely ensconced in the inn at Tonbridge and were on their way back to Robertsbridge. Meanwhile Sabin, bemused and trying hard to understand everything that was said to her, had been met by an effusive Goody Anne delighted to have even two customers in these terrible times. Anne had led Sabin and Benoit along to her best guest chamber, sent for hot water and hot drinks, told them to make themselves comfortable and to come along to warm themselves by the fire as soon as they were ready, where she would cook them up something to take the chill out of their bones.

‘Where are we?’ came Benoit’s plaintive voice. ‘Is that woman a nun?’

‘No, Grandfather,’ Sabin said, lapsing with relief into her own language. ‘I told you, we couldn’t go to the Abbey at Hawkenlye because there’s sickness there. We’re in a town nearby called-’ No; she had forgotten. ‘Well, never mind what it’s called. But it’s big enough to have a castle and a sheriff, so as soon as we’ve eaten whatever that kind woman is going to prepare for us, I’ll say I want to speak to the sheriff and see if he can tell us anything about Nicol’s death.’

‘He didn’t die of the sickness,’ Benoit said mournfully. ‘That knight on the big horse said he’d been murdered. I heard him! Someone struck Nicol over the head and rolled him into a pond.’

‘I know, Grandfather,’ Sabin said gently, wishing in passing that there was some way to stop his unfortunate habit of creeping about and listening to conversations that were none of his business. But then, she could understand well enough why he did it. A man in his profession — he had once been at the very top of it, one might say — became accustomed to being important. How wretched it must be, she thought, to grow old, to develop shakes in those hands that were once so precise, to lose the keen eyesight that was so vital to one whose work involved such delicacy and accuracy. It is simply, she concluded with a sigh, that he does not wish to be shunted aside and ignored; his sly habit of hiding himself away and picking up fragments of other people’s private conversations is his way of keeping himself at the hub of what goes on around him. And those keen ears of his — she had noticed that Benoit’s hearing seemed to have improved as his eyesight failed — ensure that he picks up more than is good for him.

Far, far more. .

She studied him. He still looked half perished with cold; the tip of his nose had a large dewdrop about to fall from it and automatically she reached for a linen handkerchief, handing it to him. The handkerchief was spotlessly clean, as indeed was almost all of their personal linen; the enforced idleness at Robertsbridge had at least given her the opportunity to catch up with her domestic duties.

In addition to appearing to be cold, Benoit also looked miserable, confused, weary and hungry; his brow was creased in a pathetic frown and his lean cheeks seemed to be caving in on themselves. Well, hunger at least we can do something about, she thought, rousing herself to a smile. Taking hold of his thin arm, she said brightly, ‘Come on, dear Grandfather. That nice woman promised to prepare a meal for us — remember? — so let’s hurry off and see if English cooking is really as terrible as they claim.’

Her show of optimism must have convinced him. As they made their slow and careful way along to the main room — Benoit was confident enough on home ground, where he knew every room, hallway, corridor and little hidden passage, but everywhere else he trod with the nervous care of a man walking on glass — he was already cheering up. ‘Maybe,’ he said hopefully, ‘she’ll cook beef. They say the English are good at beef.’

Agreeing that it might be a possibility, Sabin led him into the tavern’s tap room, sat him down by the huge fire and, her own stomach growling in anticipation, sought out Goody Anne to ask her to bring their supper.

He was tired, hungry and cold.

He had followed them to Hawkenlye, waited in hiding as they had stopped for some sort of discussion, then had to back hurriedly deeper into the undergrowth on the skirts of the Great Forest as suddenly they had turned and ridden back towards him. He had thought for a puzzled moment that they were going to ride off back to Robertsbridge, but then they had turned off the road on to another that went away downhill in a roughly north-north-westerly direction. He had known the direction because the wind was coming from the north and for an uncomfortable time that seemed to go on for ever they had all been riding straight into it. The three monks had left the woman and the old man at an inn and then ridden away.

The man had waited for a while to see if either of his quarry might emerge again, but they did not. The light was fading fast and he had still to find somewhere to spend the hours of cold darkness; there was no point in watching the inn any longer that night, he decided, and soon he had quietly slipped out of his hiding place and set off out of town.

He had to get rid of them, he told himself. They still carried the secret and he could not allow them to live. But is there in truth any point in killing them? he wondered dismally. They have been with the monks at Robertsbridge, now they are presumably settling down for a convivial evening in a tap room full of people — he was not to know that Sabin and Benoit were Goody Anne’s only guests that night — and so how many more people are now privy to what should never have been overheard?

Where, he wondered, depression seeping insidiously through him like an ague, where will it all end?

No! It was no use thinking like that. It will end, he told himself firmly, when the old man and the young woman are safely dead and no longer a threat. Then he could leave this damp, foggy, cold and unwelcoming island, head back across the Channel, find his master in Paris, receive his fee and lose himself somewhere in the vast heart of France.

But he won’t pay up, he thought lugubriously. He’ll wriggle out of it and I’ll be left with nothing to show for all of this effort but a few more deaths on my conscience.

He could find no consolation to help him out of his misery. Riding on down the desolate and overgrown track that he had found and that seemed to lead to marshes, he looked around half-heartedly for some sort of shelter. He came to a wild bramble hedge and, beyond it, the slowly decaying shape of what had once been a dwelling. Thinking that even that was better than nothing, the man dismounted, kicked open the door, eyed the dank and dark interior and then, with a nod, went out again to see to his horse and set about finding some firewood.

Later, when he had eaten from his meagre and fast-dwindling supplies of dried meat strips and the hard heel of a loaf, he tried to get comfortable in his thick cloak and his blanket. He slept — he did not know for how long — and then woke to find that the fire had died down and he was shivering violently. He stoked the fire, wrapped himself up again and went back to sleep, to dream that he was back at the Troyes lodging house trying to dash into the raging fire because he had left his pack behind the door. . Waking, he found he was sweating, his skin hot, burning.

He rolled over on to his back, pushing back the blanket and feeling the relief of the cold night air on his face and his neck.

He realised that his head was aching.