Heart of Ice

Chapter 19

It was not until quite late in the day that Josse finally realised just who was the latest victim of the foreign pestilence.

He had been busy as Brother Erse’s temporary apprentice carpenter until well into the early afternoon — they’d had trouble fitting the top stanchion of the new handrail, there being nothing but virgin rock to which to fix it — and, by the time Josse was free to seek out the Abbess, he knew that she would already be on duty in the Vale infirmary. Although many nuns, monks and lay brothers were now on the nursing rosters and actively involved at close quarters with the sick, still the rule applied that nobody who was not nursing went anywhere near them. And it was thought that Josse, although he would have taken his turn if asked, was better engaged using his strength elsewhere.

Such as the endless task of water-carrying, which resumed at full capacity once Brother Erse finally announced himself satisfied with his brand-new safety measures.

As soon as Josse took the first load of full vessels over to the door of the infirmary ward, he realised that somebody important to the community was very ill. The faces of the nurses gave that away. And Sister Euphemia, back on duty after sleeping eighteen hours with only a couple of breaks to eat, could be heard from several paces away giving strings of orders to everybody working with her.

It was clear that somebody was close to death; in the late afternoon, Father Gilbert was sent for.

Josse wondered how the Abbess would feel, watching some poor soul that the nuns had not managed to save as he or she slipped away. Well, if whoever it was were sufficiently conscious to appreciate that she stood at their bedside, he told himself comfortingly, then what better farewell could they have to this earth?

He decided it must be dear old Brother Firmin who was dying. It was sad — the old monk had a kind and gentle spirit and a simple, loving heart — but then he was old, so perhaps it was merely that his time had come to be called back to God.

Trudging to and fro between the shrine and the infirmary ward, Josse kept a vision of the old boy in his mind’s eye and wished him well.

Early in the evening, when the short day had already begun to darken, Josse saw Sister Tiphaine and Sister Caliste returning to the Vale infirmary. He probably would not have noticed two more arrivals amid all the comings and goings, except for the fact that the two nuns were moving so quickly that they were all but running.

He was not the only one to notice the unusual flurry of their arrival; several of the monks and lay brothers on the chain of water carriers also stopped and stared.

Josse put down his buckets and followed the two nuns to the doorway of the ward and would have gone inside after them but for the looming figure of Sister Euphemia. Josse had just had the time to observe the quizzical, half-impatient look she gave to the pair and overhear her demand to know where they’d been all afternoon when, spotting him, the infirmarer gave him a quick, compassionate glance that he totally failed to understand and then politely but firmly shooed him away and closed the door.

Inside the Vale infirmary, Sister Tiphaine had taken Sister Euphemia aside to tell her that she and Sister Caliste had brought a new draught that they had good reason to believe might well prove to be efficacious in the worst cases of the sickness. The infirmarer looked dubious; remembering how often in the past the two of them had all but fallen out over the relative merits of herbal concoctions versus good, painstaking nursing care, Tiphaine said gently, ‘Try it, Euphemia. Just try it. We shall soon see what it can or cannot do.’

The infirmarer scowled and was about to make a caustic comment when suddenly it dawned on her what this strange new remedy might be. She guessed that Sister Tiphaine had been having another try at using the Eye of Jerusalem; while she admired the herbalist’s optimism — she did indeed seem to believe that this time the results might be different — Euphemia saw no reason why the Eye should now work when it had so dismally failed to do so before.

But, on the other hand, they had to do something. .

Sister Euphemia knew that, in fairness, she should treat her most badly off patients strictly in the order in which she came to them along the ward. But, with a quick and silent prayer for forgiveness, instead she went straight to the bed that stood apart in its curtained recess at the far end of the room. She remained closeted within for some time. Then she emerged, caught Sister Tiphaine’s eye and said, ‘We’d better try it on some of the others.’

‘Did it not make any difference?’ Tiphaine whispered as they proceeded to the next in line, an old man who was by now all but incapable of swallowing.

‘No,’ Sister Euphemia said shortly. ‘But she is far away from us now. I fear that nothing can reach her any more.’

Stifling her grief, Sister Tiphaine watched as the infirmarer began to administer small drops of the water to the old man.

The two jugs were soon emptied; Sister Caliste had been working her way from the opposite end of the ward and she and the infirmarer — with Sister Tiphaine at her shoulder — met in the middle.

‘I don’t know what you think you’ve got here,’ Sister Euphemia began in a cross whisper, glaring at the two nuns — acute disappointment had made her good nature temporarily quite desert her — ‘but it doesn’t seem to be doing any good whatsoever.’

But Sister Caliste had her eyes on a young woman who was lying just inside the door and who had been the first person she had treated. ‘Wait,’ she murmured. ‘Just wait. .’

Tiphaine and Euphemia, noticing where she was looking, also turned their attention to the young woman. As they watched, she opened her eyes and struggled to raise her head. The three nuns hastened over to her. She was still sweaty and hot but her skin had lost the burn of high fever; the rash that had mottled her chest and face seemed to have faded from dark red to pink and little scabs were forming on the open lesions.

The woman’s eyes were wide with fear. ‘I was in the lane,’ she muttered, ‘calling for the children. .’

‘You are at Hawkenlye,’ Sister Caliste said gently, sitting down on the edge of the bed and taking the woman’s hand. ‘You have been very unwell but now you are going to get better.’

‘Am I?’ The woman frowned. ‘It doesn’t feel like it. Oh, I ache! All over!’ Then, panic crossing her face, she cried, ‘Where are my children?’

‘Hush, hush,’ Caliste soothed her. ‘They are here, but in a different room. They too were sick but both are recovering.’

The woman looked as if she could hardly believe what had happened. ‘We’re not dead? Not dying?’

‘No.’ Sister Caliste smiled at her. ‘You will be very weak for some time, I fear, but eventually you will be able to go home again.’

The woman’s eyes closed. ‘Very well, Sister. Whatever you say.’ The she gave a huge yawn and went to sleep.

The pattern was repeated in several of the patients for whom Sister Euphemia had all but given up hope. Afterwards, with the luxury of time to consider, she often asked herself whether that mysterious draught really had anything to do with their recovery or whether it was simply that the illness had run its course and at last left their racked bodies. As with all plagues, she reflected, there were always some who were stronger than the rest and who better withstood the ravages of the disease.

Rational thinking was all very well, however; the other part of Sister Euphemia, the one which knew that she had observed not one but several miracles, put logic right out of mind and prompted her to go down on her knees and thank God for his mercy.

The Abbess Helewise did not respond to the miracle draught. She lay quite still, her body voided, so deeply unconscious that, when they tried to offer her water of any sort, it just rolled into her partly open lips and dribbled out again. The danger of some of it going down her inert throat and choking her was, Sister Euphemia decreed, too dangerous and so they had to stop. Sister Caliste, who had begged to be allowed to nurse her, had to content herself with bathing the Abbess’s face and forehead with a cloth wrung out in the draught.

They had clipped her already short hair closer to her head in the hope of thus lowering her alarmingly high fever and now Caliste repeatedly put the damp cloth on to the short, springy curls. She all but forgot that this woman was Abbess of Hawkenlye; deadly white face, red-gold hair darkened with sweat and water, eyes closed and already appearing to have sunk back into the skull, she could have been any woman brought in for the Hawkenlye nuns to care for.

Except, Caliste thought, tears in her eyes, I don’t necessarily love any of the others as I love her.

Gently she removed the cloth — it was quite hot in her hands — wrung it out yet again and replaced it on the Abbess’s forehead.

Tiphaine made another visit to the forest fringes. Without Caliste, she carried back both full vessels herself. When they were empty, she found a handcart and this time made the trip with three times as many jugs.

Eventually, of course, someone asked her what she was doing; with a shrug, as if it was not that important, she muttered something about a preparation she had made up in her little hut. The explanation was accepted and soon everyone was aware that the herbalist had come up with something that really seemed to work.

Tiphaine knew that she could not go on taking the credit. But all that, she decided, ignoring her aching back as she pushed the handcart back up the track towards the Abbey for the third time, would just have to wait.

Josse sat outside the Vale infirmary waiting for the Abbess to come off duty. It was the hour for Vespers and he thought he might accompany her up to the Abbey church, attend the office with her and then persuade her to go along to her room so that he could tell her all about Sabin de Retz, her grandfather and his own musings as to what might lie behind the mystery.

He waited.

She did not come.

Finally Sister Euphemia came out. She took Josse’s hand and led him a short way off along the path that bordered the lake. Then she halted, turned and looked him in the eyes.

‘Sir Josse, the Abbess Helewise has the sickness.’

There was an instant in which his whole soul rejected the news. Then, as it began to sink in, he felt a vast wail of grief well up inside him. No, oh, no!

He contained it. His voice harsh with emotion, he said gruffly, ‘Will she live?’

‘I do not know,’ the infirmarer said steadily, ‘although I fear the worst.’

‘Why did you not tell me sooner?’

‘We hoped — I hoped — to avoid it and save you this pain,’ she confessed. ‘I went on believing that she would suddenly take a turn for the better. But. .’ She held out empty hands, palms uppermost, in a hopeless gesture.

‘What can we do?’ He began pacing to and fro. ‘We must fetch the Eye from the Abbess’s room!’ he cried. ‘We’ve tried it once, I realise that, but perhaps-’

‘Sister Tiphaine has already done that,’ the infirmarer told him.

‘And?’

She hesitated. ‘In some cases, the dying appear to have been brought back.’

He knew the rest without her having to say it. ‘But not the Abbess.’

‘No. Dear Sir Josse, no.’

‘Should I have another try?’

Knowing how he loathed the Eye and everything to do with it, Sister Euphemia realised what the offer must have cost him. ‘I fear it would not help, for she is beyond swallowing any of the water.’

His eyes wild, he tore at his hair and then shouted, ‘What, then? Do we just let her die?’

And Sister Euphemia said, very quietly, ‘I have just sent for Father Gilbert again.’

Much later that night, when in almost every place except for Hawkenlye Abbey all activity had ceased for the night and the world was deeply asleep, a dark shape crept from its lair out on the marshy land beside the river and made a quiet, unseen way into the town.

He had felt sick earlier and the headache had developed until the very daylight had been like a flaming, searing torch held up to his eyes. He had slept on the rotten straw-filled mattress that he found in the corner of the hovel, wrapping himself in his thick cloak and pulling the filthy sacking up to his neck when the shivering began. He had slept and, on waking, felt a little better. He found kindling and firewood and got a small, hot blaze going in the hearth in its circle of stones. Then he had prepared a hot drink and made himself eat — sparingly — from his dwindling supplies. The drink had, he reflected, probably done him more good than the food, for he carried a variety of remedies in his pack and this one had been sold to him by a stallholder in Paris who swore it would ease the worst headache and stop an incipient fever dead in his tracks.

Perhaps — the man gave a brief, grim smile — the stallholder had not after all used the word dead.

But the drug was strong — he thought he detected the bitterness of opium — and his depression of earlier in the day quickly gave way to an uplifting sense of elation.

Now, setting out on the faint track that led back along the river to Tonbridge, the man felt new energy coursing through him, a firm new resolve to finish the job and get out. He had packed up his belongings and fastened his pack behind his horse’s saddle, then worked hard for a short time to ensure that he had left no sign of his brief occupation of the hovel for others to find and question. He would leave his horse hidden nearby, he thought, slip into the house, do what he must do and then, before anybody had realised what had happened, be on his way south to the coast and home.

Where was home? He asked himself the question as he trudged along, waiting until the path was more clearly defined before he mounted; it would be folly to risk his horse putting a foot into some hidden hole in the rough ground and pulling up lame. Home. .

He had been born in a small town in Normandy, the product of a liaison between the daughter of a tanner and a man who had been a soldier under old Geoffrey Plantagenet, Henry II’s father, but who had lost his right hand and, no more use as a fighting man, spent the remainder of his life haunting inns, taverns, tap rooms. . anywhere, in fact, where someone would sell — even better, buy — him a drink. He had the patter down to a fine art and the hideous stump that was the end of his right arm evoked sympathy and revulsion in equal parts; people often stood him a mug of small beer or of thin, sharp wine purely to make him cover it up again.

This unlikely couple remained together for the duration of the woman’s pregnancy and for a further five or six years, when the foul odours of the tannery finally got the better of the one-handed soldier and he took off in the middle of the night, never to be seen in his home town again.

Surprisingly, he took his little son with him. The boy — he had been christened Gilles — had shown a precocious intelligence and a talent for mimicry and it was quite possible that the father saw the lad as a likely source of income. A spot of entertainment, a clever little trick that amused men halfway to drunkenness and made them laugh, and the sous would roll in.

Gilles soon found out how to talk himself out of trouble; in his father’s habitual haunts, not every broken man wanted female company for the fumble in the straw after the lamps were extinguished, and young Gilles grew up handsome of face and slim of body. As he entered adolescence he added fighting skills to his repertoire. He killed his first victim at the age of fourteen, a man unwise enough to corner him and hold a knife to his throat until he gave up his purse. Gilles had got his own knife unsheathed and into the man’s heart before the assailant had even finished his hoarsely whispered demands.

His father died when he was fifteen. Not that the demise of his parent made much difference to Gilles, for by then his father had sunk deep into alcoholism and barely recognised his son except when, as he often did, he tried to touch him for money. Gilles was already planning his own future and without the burden of his father — it was strange but, for all the old man’s faults, Gilles had loved him in a way and had never managed to persuade himself to abandon him — he was now free to pursue the path he had set. He knew of a certain local lord who, engaged in a quarrel with a neighbour, was in need of mercenary soldiers to support his cause. The lord laughed at Gilles when he presented himself as a potential fighting man, for he was still slightly built and had the face of an angel. But the graceful young body was strong as steel: Gilles, undeterred, drew his sword and showed the lord what he could do with it. He was engaged on the spot.

But Gilles did not intend to be a rank-and-file soldier all his life. The local lord was but the first step on the ladder that would win for Gilles the life he wanted and he used his position in that household ruthlessly, advancing his own cause to anyone with the slightest influence in higher circles who was prepared to listen to him. Within a year he was working for a minor duke; within five he had been engaged by a particularly aggressive bishop who needed the discreet removal of a persistent but prominent troublemaker. That murder was the first of the efficient and totally clandestine killings which were to become the trademark — although a bare handful of people knew it — of Gilles de Vaudreuil.

The rumour of an efficient and highly professional killer spread quietly and steadily through the ranks of Norman, Angevin and Plantagenet aristocratic circles; it was quite amazing, Gilles often thought, just how many rich, ruthless and influential men with their eyes firmly set on some personal goal required the disappearance of somebody else in order to achieve their ambition. As Gilles’s experience grew, so did the fee that he demanded; such was his reputation that they always paid him what he asked. By the time he was thirty he had lodged a small fortune safely away with the Knights Templar; their discretion was as assured as his own and he knew his money was safe. One day, he told himself, one day when I grow tired of killing, I shall return to that pretty little river deep in the hills of Normandy, buy myself a modest manor and some land and live a life of ease and comfort until I die.

This present mission had come as no great surprise. When his current paymaster had sent for him, Gilles had guessed that the target victim must be one of two men, both of whom stood between this master and where he wanted to go. One target Gilles dismissed as unlikely; the man was just too famous, especially now, and the attention currently surrounding him and his entourage and following every move that he made would make it very difficult, although not out of the question, to kill him. But when Gilles’s new master asked him if he thought it possible to kill the other person, who in fact turned out to be the intended victim, Gilles had already begun to consider ways and means. ‘Oh, yes, Sire,’ he had calmly replied. ‘It is not only possible but achievable.’

He had been hired — for a huge fee — and then he had disappeared. He had made his way to the abode of his victim, paid for one or two pieces of information, then sat patiently and simply used his eyes for a few days until he had completed his observations and his arrangements were in place. Then he had climbed a wall erroneously believed to be unscalable, crossed a stable yard as silently as a shadow and been on the very point of slipping through a doorway to the private, secret passage that led to the heart of his victim’s quarters when the unthinkable had happened. Someone had caught up with him and, barely able to speak for the pressure of Gilles’s hand at his throat, forced out the message that the mission was off.

In the terrible rush of emotions that surged through him as the adrenalin ebbed away, one thing annoyed Gilles perhaps even more than his master’s last-minute cancellation of the job: the fact that the messenger had been able to pick up his trail and follow him right to the very door of the secret passage. When the two men were once more outside the castle walls — Gilles had been required to half-carry the messenger, who had sprained his ankle in getting over the wall — Gilles had demanded how the young man had achieved it. The fellow had said with a shy grin that, unable to find Gilles, he had instead hidden away to watch the one place where he reckoned Gilles could achieve access to the victim.

The fact that another man seemed to possess his own abilities, which he had hitherto regarded as unique, shook Gilles de Vaudreuil to the core.

And this unwelcome realisation was, although he had not yet fully admitted it to himself, the prime reason why his thoughts were suddenly turning more and more to that dream house in Normandy.

He had reached the town. Dismounting, he led his horse along the road that led to the sheriff’s house. The secret was out that the girl and the old man were now lodged there; Gilles had observed the sheriff fetch the old man from the tavern and, even had he missed that, the talk in the tap room had been of the pretty young ’un and the old granddaddy under protection at Sheriff’s house.

He took to the rough ground on the left as he passed the last of the town’s dilapidated and stinking dwellings. He walked on for a quarter of a mile or so, and the sheriff’s house loomed up as a dark bulk on his right, on the other side of the track. He walked on, wraith-quiet; he had bound the metal parts of his horse’s bridle and stirrups so that the horse too moved all but silently. When he was some distance past the house, he tethered his horse to a tree, checked that his dagger, fine garrotte rope and short stabbing sword were in their accustomed places, and then crept back the way he had come.

He saw the four men outside the sheriff’s house almost immediately. Clearly they were not used to mounting an invisible guard; two of them were actually talking to each other, albeit in whispers. Nobody could have told them, Gilles thought, that the sibilant, whispered s sound carried further than virtually any other on a still, cold night. He began to feel almost sorry for the sheriff if these men were the best he could find, for they were evidently bored and cold and, as Gilles watched, patiently waiting his moment, the other two moved from the side of the house and came to join the whispering pair. One of them said something, all four chuckled and then the man who had spoken drew something from under his cloak. It was a flask of some liquid — probably alcohol, which gave the temporary illusion of warmth — and Gilles observed all four men take turns at swigging from it.

They seemed in no hurry to separate and return to their own posts; two, indeed, were now leaning comfortably against the wooden posts either side of the entrance to the courtyard. Gilles simply crept round the side of the house, keeping his distance, and climbed the courtyard wall. He dropped down inside and approached the house from the side, where it was totally unguarded. Then, in the shadows of the house, he tiptoed round to the door. The guards stood in the gateway, all four of them huddled together, but now the flask was on its third round and they had forgotten all about guard duty.

The stab of pain hit him as he slipped the heavy blade of his short sword in the narrow gap between the door and the lintel, with the intention of easing up the latch that fastened it from the inside. So acute was the headache that for an instant he could think of nothing else. It passed as quickly as it had come; swiftly he returned to the task and soon the door gave before him. He opened it the merest crack, slipped inside and closed it again, although, thinking ahead to his escape, he lowered the latch only as far as was necessary to hold the door shut.

It was Gilles’s misfortune that the shaft of pain had hit when it did. Had his full concentration been on the task in hand, it might have occurred to him to wonder why the heavy bolts at the top and bottom of the door had not been shot. But, on the other hand, the hall was dark — the only light was from the embers of the fire — and not every door had bolts as well as a stout latch.

Lord, but it was cold! The dying embers gave out no heat, at least, none that he could feel, and he was shivering violently, his teeth chattering. Making himself ignore the fast-growing discomfort, he crept across the floor, feeling the icy cold of the stone penetrating the rushes that covered it. His soft boots made no sound. He could make out an archway in the opposite wall and, approaching it, he saw some steps leading upwards. He climbed them, his breath steady; he was quite calm. At the top of the short stair there was a doorway and another low arch; where, Gilles wondered, was the sheriff? Orientating himself, he recalled in which direction the front of the house was; would the largest chamber be there or at the rear? Standing stone-still, ears alert for any sound, he peered into the shadows and, after a moment, realised that a pair of boots stood outside the door to his left, the one beyond the archway.

The boots were scuffed and stained with the mud of travel. They appeared to be quite large; surely too large for a woman? Then either the sheriff or the old man — probably both — were to be found in that direction.

Killing two together was naturally more difficult than one alone, especially when that one was a woman. Making up his mind, Gilles quietly opened the door before him and slid into the room beyond.

At first he thought that there must be a fire in the room, for he was assailed with a sudden surge of heat throughout his entire body. Blackness overwhelmed his sight and he was suddenly blind; he felt as if a knife had been thrust into his forehead above his left eye. Nausea rose up from the pit of his stomach; taking a deep breath, he swallowed it down.

Get on with it!

By the moonlight coming through the high window he made out the dark shape of a bed, on it the outline of a body. He could smell a faint scent — lavender. Yes, that would be her, for she must surely use the plant so often that its fragrance must have penetrated all her garments. There was the suggestion of white on the pillow; a woman’s small night cap, he thought, modestly covering her fair hair. Yes, she was a neat, clean woman; just the sort to maintain her personal standards even as she slept. On a bench under the window was spread a cloak. Hers.

Knife or garrotte? Or should he simply smother her with her pillow, as he had done the merchant in his bed in Hastings? But the merchant had been feeble with illness; she, as far as he knew, was strong, fit and healthy.

He drew the garrotte out of its place in the pouch on his belt. Running his hands along the fine rope, he felt for the toggle of wood that he used to wind the rope tight. Yes, there it was, just as it should be.

He crept closer to the bed.

The heat scored through him again as if someone had doused him in boiling water. He let out a small moan as pain swelled in his joints. Was this, a part of him wondered, what it felt like to be torn limb from limb? The black shapes spread across his eyes again and suddenly he was weak, so terribly weak; his legs gave out and he sank to his knees.

The nausea was back, undeniable now, and, trying to make as little noise as possible, he retched and a pool of foul liquid splattered on to the rushes on the floor.

The thought came to him quite unexpectedly that he was probably going to die.

I shall kill her first, he decided. Struggling up, he stepped closer to the bed. Then he thought, why should I? There is little point if I am not to be paid. Will he pay me, though, even yet, if I kill her and the old man, or will he say that the necessity to ensure their silence was my own fault for having allowed them to uncover the secret in the first place?

He shook his head. Sick, in agony, fever raging through him and with the urgent need to void his bowels, his brain did not seem to be working and he could no longer think it all through with his usual cold rationality.

She is young and she has a bright future, he mused. I think — yes, I think that I shall spare her.

Smiling at the pleasure that his own magnanimity was giving him, he turned and tiptoed back towards the doorway. In the bed, the body-shaped hump beneath the bedclothes did not move.

As the pestilence took him, Gilles de Vaudreuil fell down the steps.

At the bottom of which Gervase de Gifford was waiting for him.