Heart of Ice

Chapter 21

Josse watched Joanna climb the path that led up to the Abbey. Her dark figure moved fast as, leaving the track, she strode off around the outside of the Abbey walls and disappeared from sight. Following her in his mind’s eye, he saw her hurry across the open ground and, finally reaching the safety of the trees, melt into the shadows of the Great Forest.

He was not sure whether or not she had noticed him standing there outside the Vale infirmary door as she hurried past. She had been staring straight in front of her, eyes narrowed as if fixed on some difficult goal that she might or might not achieve. He had so much wanted to reach out to her but there had been something about her — almost as if she wore invisible armour — that had stopped him.

So he had let her go.

Firmly putting her out of his mind, he turned and stepped inside the ward. Sister Euphemia was already hurrying towards him; she held a small flask in her hand and she was smiling.

‘You already know, don’t you?’ she said softly, taking him by the arm and leading him back outside again, where they sat down side by side on his bench.

Josse smiled. ‘Aye. I felt — oh, I don’t know.’ He scratched his head vigorously as if it might stir up his brains. ‘I had all but given up and then suddenly I had this picture of her with light on her face and she looked so happy, so beautiful-’ He broke off, not sure if he trusted his voice enough to continue.

‘Our prayers have been answered,’ Sister Euphemia said. ‘Her fever’s come down and she’s asleep. She’s still very ill,’ she added warningly, ‘and we shall have to take very good care of her.’

Josse looked at her anxiously. ‘But she won’t — she’s not going to die?’

‘No, Josse,’ Euphemia said gently. ‘I don’t think she is.’

Soon afterwards she stood up and announced she must be getting back to her patients. With the awful fear gone, Josse realised how tired he was; yawning, he stumbled away to his corner in the monks’ shelter, threw himself down fully dressed, huddled into his blankets and was soon soundly and dreamlessly asleep.

They did what they could for the man in the bed next to the Abbess’s recess. They washed him, bathed his hot face and tried to make him take some sips of the special water from Joanna’s flask. Sister Emanuel, who had the task of removing and folding his garments, found a small, wrapped parcel of some herbal mixture in the purse on his belt; Sister Euphemia thought it contained opium and, since the parcel only appeared to contain a small portion of what it had once held, they deduced that he had been dosing himself with it and decided that it could surely do no harm to give him the remainder. He was very close to death; anything was worth a try.

By morning, he had regained consciousness. Of a sort: the drug must have been strong, for he seemed to be in some waking dream that was indistinguishable from reality. But the spell of lucidity did not last long and presently he slipped back into a coma.

Two days later, the infirmarer, Sister Tiphaine and Sister Caliste got their heads together for a brief discussion. There had been a total of forty-six cases of the foreign pestilence at Hawkenlye, out of which twenty-nine had died not counting poor murdered Nicol — and sixteen had recovered. Within the Hawkenlye community, they had lost dear Sister Beata, the young monk called Roger and the quiet little novice; another nun who worked in the laundry had become ill but recovered. A dozen recovering patients still lay weak and querulous in the Vale infirmary, where there was also the Abbess Helewise, slightly stronger now, and the man brought in on the night she almost died. He alone was still giving grave cause for concern for his fever remained high and he only emerged from his deep coma on rare and very brief occasions. Whenever he did so he was given water from Joanna’s flask.

Since the night of his arrival, there had been no new cases of the sickness. The nuns hardly dared think it, let alone say it, but each was just starting to hope that the disease might just have run its course.

Inside the ward, Brother Firmin — who had recovered sufficiently to get up for an hour or so each day — went to sit by the unknown man’s bed. Waiting patiently until the man opened his eyes, he said, in the manner of one speaking to the deaf, ‘DO — YOU — KNOW — WHERE — YOU — ARE?’

The man gave a wry smile. ‘Not in heaven,’ he muttered.

Brother Firmin was faintly shocked. ‘Oh, dear, no!’ he said, wondering if he had just heard a blasphemy. Deciding that, if he had, then it was forgivable under the circumstances, he said, ‘You are at Hawkenlye Abbey, in the temporary infirmary that we have set up down in our Vale, where the holy water spring is situated, and our nursing nuns are doing their utmost to help you get better.’

Before he had finished his little speech, the man had closed his eyes and wearily turned away. Firmin put out a tentative hand. ‘Are you in pain, friend?’ he asked. ‘Is there anything that I can do for you?’

The man opened his eyes again. ‘I am dying,’ he said baldly.

‘Oh, you must not say that!’ Firmin told him. ‘There is always hope, and God is merciful.’

The man’s eyes fixed on to Firmin’s in a stare so intense and blank that Firmin shrank back. ‘Is he?’ the man demanded. ‘Is there mercy even for one such as me?’

‘There is mercy for everyone,’ Firmin assured him. Then, made nervous by what he read in the man’s eyes, ‘Would you like me to send for a priest?’

After a long pause, the man nodded. Then, as Brother Firmin made to call out to one of the nuns to fetch Father Gilbert, he caught the old monk’s sleeve. With an attempt at a smile, he said, ‘Better find one with time on his hands, Brother, for I have much to confess.’

The infirmarer had decided that she could no longer put up with Josse’s constant demands to be allowed in to see the Abbess. Almost sure now that the danger of infection was past, she put her head out through the doorway of the Vale ward, saw him in his usual place on the bench and told him he could come in. She did add, ‘But you can only stay with her for a few moments’; however, he had already leapt to his feet and rushed in past her and she was quite sure he could not have heard.

Josse made himself walk slowly down the long ward. For over a week he had been imagining what was going on here and now he could see the aftermath with his own eyes. The floor was still damp from the latest scrubbing — Sister Euphemia’s nursing nuns had to be very thorough about scrubbing — but nevertheless, behind the aroma of lavender there was a lurking sickroom stench. Certain dark stains that refused to yield to the hot water and the brisk brush bore witness to where patients had uncontrollably voided liquids from the orifices of their weak, feverish bodies. Unoccupied cots had been stacked in a corner, stripped bare of their palliasses and of the covers. The remaining handful of patients were grouped around the middle of one side of the ward. One or two managed to give Josse a friendly smile as he passed by. All of them looked pale and frighteningly fragile.

He passed the mystery man, who lay asleep; Josse was aware that Gervase de Gifford was waiting to question him and had undertaken the duty of informing the sheriff when the man was up to it. Trying to summon up righteous indignation — the man had probably killed Nicol and the Hastings merchant! — Josse’s resolve was undermined by pity.

He had a fair idea of what to expect when at last he twitched aside the curtains around the Abbess’s bed and stared down at her.

She was propped up on pillows and clad in a spotless white gown fastened chastely around the neck. Its sleeves extended to the wrist and her hands, emerging out of the smooth linen, lay folded upon the bedcovers. Her head was bare but for a simple white cap, beneath which he could see her reddish hair in short, soft curls. Her face was pale and her skin had a dryish look, as if any extreme expression might crack it clean open. Her eyes looked huge and were circled with dark rings.

On seeing him, she risked everything and gave him a wide smile. ‘Dear Sir Josse,’ she said, and he noticed that her voice was weak and shaky, ‘how good it is to see you.’

He knelt on the floor beside her bed. ‘My lady Abbess, I feared that this moment would never come.’

‘But it has,’ she answered. He felt her hand on his head — such a tiny, feeble touch! — and, raising his face, he looked up at her.

‘She came for me,’ the Abbess whispered. ‘I was on my way and she appeared at my side and asked me if I was sure I was ready to go. I saw — oh, I saw many things.’ She was studying him intently, something that he could not identify burning in the grey eyes. She was silent for a moment, then said, ‘What I saw ahead was so beautiful, Josse, that I could easily have slipped away and I am quite sure that I would have been happy. But I know now that it is not yet my time to go.’ Her smile was back. ‘So I came back.’

He did not know what to say; either he must find the words to say all that was in his heart or else only the briefest response would do. Faced with the yawningly huge task of the former, he settled for the latter. He said gruffly, ‘I’m glad.’

And he heard a sound he had thought never to hear again: she began to laugh.

All too soon the curtain twitched back and Sister Euphemia appeared. ‘It’s very good to hear you laugh, my lady, but that’s enough for now. Sir Josse!’ She gave him a stern look.

He raised the Abbess’s hand to his lips to give it a swift kiss and then, getting up, winked at her and followed the infirmarer out of the recess, letting the curtain fall behind him. Sister Euphemia, having assured herself that he had obeyed her and left the Abbess to rest, gave a nod and then hurried away up the ward to attend to a patient calling for water.

Josse walked slowly after her. He glanced again at the stranger as he passed and noticed that the man was twisting from side to side in the bed, one hand reaching out as if in supplication. Going over to him, Josse said quietly, ‘What ails you?’

The wavering hand appeared to have purpose in it; looking in the direction in which it pointed, Josse saw a jar on the floor. ‘Is this what you want?’ he asked, picking it up and holding it where the man could see it.

‘Yes!’

Josse was unaccustomed to nursing but he had on occasion been nursed by others. Folding back the bedclothes, he raised the man’s gown, pushed the jar down between his thighs and helped him position himself so that the meagre stream of urine went in the right place. The small effort brought the man out in a sweat and Josse felt the fever burning in his skin; removing the jar, he helped him to settle back again and pulled the covers over him. He carried the jar outside, took it over to the privy and emptied it, then rinsed it and took it back to the man’s bedside.

The man’s eyes were open and he was studying Josse.

‘I never thought,’ he said, ‘to have my piss pot emptied by a knight. I thank you, whoever you are.’

‘Josse d’Acquin,’ Josse replied.

‘Acquin.’

‘You have heard of it?’

‘No. Is it in France?’

‘Aye.’

‘Yet here you are in an abbey in England.’

‘My family lands are at Acquin. My own manor is here.’

‘You hold your land from the King?’

‘Aye.’

‘You are a King’s man?’

‘Aye.’ Josse wondered if it was right to go on answering the abrupt questions; might it not be better for the man to rest? But then he seemed agitated, as if he were working up to something important.

The man was watching him closely. ‘A King’s man,’ he repeated softly. ‘The King that is or the King that shall be, I wonder?’

‘King Richard!’ Josse exclaimed angrily. ‘Beware of treason, sir, to speak of a future king while the present one yet lives and reigns!’

The man waved his hand as if treason held no fears for him. Then, looking down the ward, he said, ‘They have promised to find a priest for me, Sir Josse, for I have much that I wish to confess before God and I stand face to face. There is no sign of the man as yet, so may I ask a favour of you?’

Feeling that he could hardly refuse, Josse said, ‘Aye.’

The man’s face twitched into a brief smile. Then he said, ‘Hear my tale, sir knight, and tell me, if you will, what you think this priest will say to me, for I would know for how long I must do penance for my many sins.’

It was a strange thing to say. Intrigued, Josse said, ‘Tell me the tale, then, for I have no pressing duty.’

‘Very well.’ The man shut his eyes tightly for a moment, his lips moved, perhaps in prayer, then without any warning preamble he said, ‘I have killed many men. Some I slew in battle, engaged as I was in the squabbles of lordlings and counts. But I have also killed thirty-two men and two women in the role of hired assassin. I am good at my job, Sir Josse; they used to say that I was the best.’ A puzzled frown creased his white face. ‘I could not kill her, though. I stared down at the bed and I thought, what is the point? If she has revealed the secret, then I am too late; if not, then why should she not live? I am tired; I have had enough of death and there is too much blood on my hands.’

There was a silence.

Stunned, Josse brought to mind the matter that had been obsessing him before the Abbess fell ill and everything else was obliterated. He knew how this man had come to be arrested; had been told by Gervase de Gifford of the trap set and sprung, of the sick man extracted from it and brought up to Hawkenlye. ‘You broke into Gervase de Gifford’s house with the intention of murdering Sabin de Retz and her grandfather,’ he said sternly. ‘Before that you killed Martin Kelsey in his sickbed in Hastings and you struck down Nicol Romley here in the Vale.’

‘Those deeds I admit,’ the man said. ‘But I was not going to kill Sabin; I just told you that.’

‘You say you are a paid assassin,’ Josse pressed on, ‘and we have surmised that you came to England on a killing mission.’ The man smiled wryly at that but did not speak. ‘I would say that Sabin learned who it was that you were going after and, becoming friendly with Nicol Romley when the two met at the market in Troyes, she confided in him what she knew. You learned that your secret was out and you tried to kill Sabin by firing the lodging house. Then you set out after Nicol to stop his mouth too, but by the time you caught up with him he was already travelling with Martin Kelsey who, for all you knew, had now also been told the identity of the man you were setting out to kill.’ A new thought occurred to Josse and, excited, he leaned forward and said, ‘You had to kill all of them in case they warned your intended victim! That’s it, isn’t it?’

‘I am sorry,’ the man said courteously, ‘but I must correct you on one or two points. First, I was not coming to England to fulfil my mission; the victim, as you call him, is not in this land. So, although I hate to dampen your ardour, I must tell you that it was not to prevent them issuing a warning that I killed the apprentice lad and the merchant. It was, as you earlier suggested, with the intention of keeping the matter secret.’

‘What matter?’ Josse almost wailed the question.

The man smiled; he seemed to be enjoying the game. ‘See if you can guess, Sir Josse. Think of what you have already worked out.’

With an effort, Josse thought back to the evening three days ago — only three days! God’s boots, but it felt like a lifetime — when he had hurried back to Hawkenlye to tell the Abbess his thoughts on Sabin and Benoit de Retz. Recalling his impressions, he said, ‘I was summoned by Gervase de Gifford to speak with Sabin. I was aware that she was careful to give little away but I noticed a few interesting things. One, when I spoke to her in French she said it was not her native tongue. I listened carefully after that and it occurred to me that she is a Breton.’ If he had expected confirmation from the man, it was not forthcoming. ‘Then I noticed a faint scent on her which I recognised, for I have smelt it on others who habitually work with herbs. Added to the fact that she spoke of visiting the fair at Troyes for purchases needed in her work, I guessed that she is an apothecary, for I know that Troyes market is an excellent source for the rare and the exotic. Later in our conversation she said that she had to buy particular ingredients in order to treat her employer. Here again, I made a guess, and this time it was indeed an outrageous one.’

‘What was it?’ The man sounded amused, indulgent.

‘I am probably wide of the mark.’

‘Never mind! Let me hear your outrageous guess.’

Josse went over the small clues that had seemed to point in the same single direction. ‘I would say that Sabin and her grandfather are the private apothecaries of some rich man, for she at least, whom I have seen, I know to dress in plain but costly garments of fine quality. In addition, she rides a good mare. She has, or perhaps I should say they have, rare skills that have earned them their employer’s respect and indulgence, for he was willing to have them ride off to Troyes to fetch whatever it was they claimed to require. I would further surmise’ — here he was on shakier ground, for he was basing this guess on the flimsy foundation of a piece of gossip picked up some months ago when on the fringes of court circles — ‘that the master who pays so much to have Sabin and her grandfather’s discreet and expert care suffers from a disease of which he is ashamed. I was told,’ he lowered his voice to a whisper, ‘that Philip of France has syphilis and my guess is that Sabin and her grandfather have the care of him.’

To his dismay, the man burst out laughing. After a moment, he controlled himself. ‘I am sorry, Sir Josse, for my laughter. You reason so well, right up to the last, and my amusement was simply because, in the matter of the French king, I fear you have been listening to barrack-room gossip. He is, I am sure, as free of the shameful disease that you ascribe to him as the good infirmarer over there.’

‘Oh.’

‘But in all other respects, I believe I underestimated you,’ the man said. ‘Sabin and her grandfather are indeed Bretons and they practise the profession of apothecary, as you say, in the employ of a wealthy and important patron. My mission was to kill a member of this patron’s household and I was on the point of making my strike when my master called me off. By an ill stroke, Benoit heard the exchange between my master’s messenger and myself; the old man may be blind, Sir Josse, but he has keen ears and misses little. He must have overheard the identity of the person I had been sent to kill and it would not take a genius to work out from that the man it was who had sent me and who wanted the victim dead, and why they wanted it. Benoit had therefore to be stopped, for if the secret were to get out, then my master would have had me killed instead; be in no doubt of that. But before I could apprehend the old man, he and his daughter disappeared, and it was some time before I knew where they had gone. I tried and failed to kill them in Troyes, by which time they had also revealed the secret to Nicol Romley, who, or so I feared, passed it on to Martin Kelsey. Two of the potential leaks have been stopped for good; two now remain.’

‘Yet when you thought Sabin lay defenceless before you, you stayed your hand.’

‘Yes.’ The man sighed. ‘As I said, I have had enough.’

‘Will you not tell me the secret?’ Josse said after a moment.

The man stared at him for some time. Then he said, ‘No. I do not think I will.’

He closed his eyes. The exertion of the conversation had brought him out in a sweat, and his deadly white face was beaded over the forehead and across the upper lip. Two hot spots of red burned in his cheeks.

‘Will you take a drink?’ Josse asked softly.

The man’s eyes opened. ‘No,’ he said with a smile, ‘for it has already done its work for me. To take any more will possibly bring about the wrong outcome.’

Josse was about to ask him what he meant — although in truth he had a fairly good idea already — but the man had turned his face away.

Later that morning, Father Gilbert arrived and, so they said, sat with the stranger for a long time. Not long after he left, the man slipped into a deep coma from which he was not to emerge.