Heart of Ice

Chapter 23

When Josse rode down into the Vale an astonishing sight met his eyes. The monks and lay brothers were laying into the temporary infirmary with mallets, hammers, sticks and even their bare hands and already one wall was no more than a great heap of plaster and splintered wood.

Tethering Horace at a safe distance, Josse approached the work gang. Brother Saul, noticing him, gave him a grin and said, ‘We’re ordered to pull it down and burn it, Sir Josse. The infirmarer says it’s the only way; she’s had us scrubbing the floors again and again but still the smell hangs on, and when we tried to wash down the walls, quite a lot of the daub came away.’ Leaning closer, he whispered, ‘There were all manner of insects and small rodents in that wattle and daub, you know; it fair turned some of the younger brethren’s stomachs, I don’t mind telling you.’

‘Not yours, Saul, I’ll warrant,’ Josse said, slapping him on the shoulder. ‘So there’s going to be a bonfire later?’

‘Aye,’ Saul said happily, eyes sparkling like a lad’s at the prospect. ‘We’ve only a few convalescents here now and they’ve been safely moved up to the main infirmary. Sister Euphemia, she’s arranged a curtained-off area for them.’ He leaned closer to Josse. ‘The Abbess was taken up there this morning,’ he confided.

‘She was strong enough to be moved?’ The sudden sharp anxiety took him by surprise.

‘Oh, yes,’ Saul said, looking at him kindly. ‘She wouldn’t have been moved otherwise, don’t you worry. Four of us carried her well wrapped-up on a litter, Sir Josse, and she was that light, it fair amazed me!’

Josse found that he was temporarily unable to speak, so he merely nodded.

Saul, who obviously sensed his emotion, tactfully picked up the conversation. ‘Now you may well be wondering just what we’re going to do without this here old place.’ He waved a mallet in the direction of the fast-disappearing shelter. Josse, who had actually been wondering nothing of the sort, smiled. ‘Well, there was a thatcher came in with his son,’ Saul was explaining, ‘and he thought — everybody thought — that the lad would surely die. But he was saved, Sir Josse! The lady Abbess, she tended the boy herself and knelt there by his bedside with his poor desperate father, and God heard her prayers and the lad got better!’

‘It was indeed a miracle, Saul,’ Josse said solemnly.

‘The thatcher — his name’s Catt, and that’s him over there up on the roof hacking away at the supporting beams — well, Catt, he promised the Abbess that if God spared Pip — that’s his boy — then he’d put new roofs on any of the Abbey buildings as needed them. Since our roofs are in good repair’ — there was a note of pride in Saul’s voice, quite justified since he it was who did most of the repairing — ‘Catt said that instead he’d build us a new shelter. He says it’ll be the best shelter we’ve ever seen, although as young Gussie pointed out, since most of us have only got the old one to judge by that’s not saying a lot.’ Saul chuckled.

‘A good man, this Catt, so to honour his undertaking,’ Josse remarked.

‘Oh, aye, he’s that all right.’ Catt, it was clear, had impressed Brother Saul. ‘Pip’s up in the infirmary with the other convalescents, being as how he’s still very weak, and until he’s well enough to get up, Catt’s going to get some of us to work with him.’ Saul looked down at his sandals. ‘Thought I’d offer to help,’ he said bashfully. ‘Got some thanks of my own to give.’

Josse knew exactly what he meant.

He found the Abbess in a bed at the end of the infirmary. He thought she looked a little better; there was a very small amount of colour in her face. He went to sit beside her on the stool that Sister Euphemia had supplied for people visiting the infirmary’s most important patient.

‘Hello, Sir Josse,’ the Abbess said faintly. ‘What have you been up to?’

There was no need to mention the visit to Tonbridge and what he had found out unless she specifically asked. She must put all her energy into getting strong and it would not help her to fret about problematic situations that were now over and done with. ‘I’ve just come from the Vale,’ he said with perfect truthfulness. ‘They’re getting on well with demolishing the old shelter.’

‘Good,’ she said.

‘That fellow Catt is working like three men. No doubt he can’t wait to start on the new building.’

‘No doubt,’ she echoed.

‘The Abbey will gain something from this terrible episode, won’t it? The new shelter, I mean; it’s bound to be a great improvement on the old one.’

‘Oh, yes.’

I am tiring her, he realised. So, making himself as comfortable as he could, he patted her hand and then contented himself with sitting quietly at her side.

Presently she went to sleep.

The infirmarer came to check on her after a while. Josse discreetly moved out of the recess and quite soon Sister Euphemia came along the room to find him.

‘She is doing well, isn’t she?’

The infirmarer smiled. ‘She’s not doing too badly, Sir Josse. She’s just very, very weak and even speaking a few words tires her out.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Yes, and it was considerate of you to sit there quietly, not making her talk to you. Even though she seemed to be asleep, she may well have been aware that you were there.’

‘I will be able to talk to her properly again, though, won’t I?’ The question burst from him before he could stop it and he was ashamed of himself; he sounded like a child frightened by the dark pleading for reassurance.

But the infirmarer understood. Taking hold of his hand, she squeezed it and simply said, ‘Yes.’

He went up to the Abbey church for Nones to pray with the community. They gave thanks, in simple but very affecting terms, for the cessation of the pestilence, for the recovering patients and, in particular, for their beloved Abbess’s life. Leaving the great building afterwards, Josse thought suddenly that somebody ought to go and thank Joanna.

I will, he decided.

He left the Abbey by the main gate, crossed the open ground between the track and the forest and was soon following the track that he knew led to her hut. He was not very confident of finding his way — it was a long time since he had been there — but he knew he must try. After several false trails, suddenly he had the impression that someone was guiding his steps for, every time there was a choice of tracks, he unerringly took one or another. And he seemed to know he was going in the right direction.

Soon he came to the clearing that he remembered. There was the small patch of neatly tended earth where she grew vegetables and herbs. Over there, carefully kept apart, was the special place for the plants which, touched or nibbled at by the unwary, would have effects that, far from curing the hurts and ills of animals or humans, would actually do the reverse.

The hut stood over to one side and it was quite difficult to make out; it was as if it had been deliberately camouflaged to keep it secret from curious eyes. He found that he could see it better if he did not look straight at it but observed it out of the corner of his eye.

Just as he was pondering on this strange fact he heard voices. A woman’s voice, then a child’s happy laugh. The last was such a happy, musical sound and it put him in mind of something. . or someone. .

Then, as if she had felt his presence, the door of the hut opened just enough to allow Joanna to emerge. She closed it carefully behind her and walked slowly across the clearing until she stood before Josse.

So many things flashed through his mind. But he had come for just one reason. ‘Thank you, Joanna,’ he said, ‘for saving the Abbess Helewise’s life.’

Joanna watched him steadily for some time. Then she said, ‘She was not ready to go on.’

‘Perhaps not, but she’d have gone, ready or not, had you not intervened. Your skill saved her, and-’

‘Not my skill alone,’ Joanna interrupted. She paused as if trying to decide whether or not to speak. Then she said, ‘Your magic jewel played its part.’

Completely taken aback, he said, ‘You used the Eye of Jerusalem?’ Somehow he had not expected that.

‘Yes. Tiphaine told me that some of the nuns had tried and so had you. They — I imagine they thought it was worthwhile allowing me to have a go.’

‘With success,’ he said.

‘It is an object of power,’ she said simply. ‘Very old, extremely potent.’

‘I was told that one day a female of my blood would use it and be the first person to extract its full potential,’ he said. ‘That was why I gave it to the Abbess; I was afraid to put such an alarming burden on the girl children of my brothers.’

‘It is not an alarming burden in the right hands,’ she said calmly. ‘It is likely that your instant reaction to keep it well away from your nieces means that theirs are not the right hands.’

‘No, there’s no magic in my family!’ He spoke lightly, trying to alleviate the growing gravity that he sensed in the mood between them.

‘There is, Josse.’ Her voice was low, strangely compelling. ‘You have an ancestor, a forebear of your mother’s, whom we recognise as one of our Great Ones.’

‘I-’ Astounded, he did not know what to say. ‘I am not sure that I want to know about her,’ he muttered.

She shrugged. ‘That is your choice.’ But the smile around the corners of her mouth suggested that she was well aware that he did; was avid, in fact, for details, although he was never going to admit it.

He tore his mind away from his own bloodline. ‘You are a Great One now, Joanna,’ he said.

‘No!’ Quickly qualifying the denial, she said, ‘I have only just begun, Josse.’

‘But I can feel the power in you.’

‘Oh, the power is there, although we are taught that we are but channels through which it passes to do its work. That is certainly the way with such healing skills as I possess.’

‘They sufficed for the Abbess,’ Josse said.

Joanna was watching him and he saw a question in her eyes. Abruptly she spoke. ‘They — Josse, I had been given to understand that there would be two people for me to heal at Hawkenlye and the night I sat with the Abbess Helewise, I left some of the especially potent water for one of the nursing nuns to give to a man lying in a bed near to the Abbess’s. I — well, I wondered if you could tell me what happened to him?’

‘He died, Joanna,’ Josse said softly.

Her face fell. ‘Oh. I see.’ Now she was frowning, clearly puzzled.

‘But I think you did save him, for all that,’ Josse went on.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Joanna, he had a great deal on his conscience. Your healing talent gave him the precious time to make his peace so that he died shriven of his sins. So, in a way, although you did not heal him in this life, you gave him hope in the next.’ She did not speak, merely sat hanging her head. ‘Or do your people not believe in the promise of eternal life?’

Now she looked up at him and she was smiling faintly. ‘Oh, yes, Josse. In our own way we certainly do.’ She nodded slowly. ‘Thank you for that. Now I think I understand.’

There was silence for several moments. Then, as if she were bracing herself to raise some other matter, a flash of emotion crossed her impassive face and she said, ‘Josse, they told me something while I was away on my travels. Do you remember what I told you about my parents?’

‘Er — you told me very little. Your father was a son of a minor branch of the de Courtenay family. Your mother, you said, was rather weak and not in the best of health.’

Joanna smiled. ‘That sums the poor soul up very well.’ Then: ‘She wasn’t my mother.’

‘Your people told you that? But how on earth did they know?’

‘They knew about me long before I was aware of them. My parents wanted children, as most married couples do, and my elder brother was born sickly and he died in infancy.’

‘Aye, you told me that.’

‘They tried time after time for another baby but without success. Then they had the idea that my father might beget a child on someone else and bring him or her up as their own. There was a woman they knew whom they admired and trusted. Although mature, she was still of childbearing age and she was fit, strong and intelligent. They approached her.’

‘Was she not insulted, to have friends ask her such a thing?’

‘No, Josse. She wasn’t exactly a friend; she worked for my mother’s uncle and his wife.’

‘The people who left you the manor house in the woods?’

‘Yes.’

He was beginning to understand. ‘Go on.’

‘The woman was one of ours; one of the best, or so they tell me. She had foreseen the approach from my father; she had foreseen my birth and what I would become. She made him have the idea, Josse, because she knew it all had to happen so that — so that I would be born. My father lay with her just once and I was conceived. When I was born the people whom I believed to be my parents took me in, although the woman was always there to keep an eye on me. She was my wet nurse and she remained a very important part of my life all through my childhood.’

She paused, eyes looking out across the clearing to the pond, now rimmed with a thin fringe of ice. ‘She died for me, Josse. Here in this very place, she was tortured to make her reveal my whereabouts but she would not tell. Then her head was pushed under the water and she drowned.’

Then Joanna was in his arms, the sweet sensation accompanied by the bitterness of her dry sobs. Smoothing the braided hair, he said, ‘I know, my love, I know. I saw her.’

She pulled away from him, staring up into his face. ‘You — yes! Of course you did!’

‘She was brave and she very obviously loved you very much,’ he said, trying to comfort her.

‘I just wish,’ Joanna cried, ‘that I had known she was my mother!’

‘She knew,’ he said.

‘Yes. Yes.’ Joanna was standing apart from him again, brushing away her tears. Giving him a brave attempt at a smile, she said, ‘To have Mag Hobson as my mother was very special and being her daughter remains true, I know, even thought I was not aware of it until very recently.’ She took a shaking breath. Then: ‘Josse, because I know what it feels like not to know that someone very wonderful is one’s parent, there’s something I must show you.’

She grabbed his hand and strode away towards the hut, marching fast as if she had to act quickly before she changed her mind. She opened the door wide, then gave Josse a nudge and said, ‘Go in.’

He stepped cautiously into the hut. It was quite dark inside; it was only afternoon and as yet, no candle flame had been lit to brighten the corners of the little room and the small fire had died down to golden embers.

On the floor by the hearth sat a child. Dark-haired, very pretty, she was playing with a little figure made of sticks that was dressed in miniature garments made of sacking and wool. She looked up at Josse and he saw his father’s eyes gazing up at him with a most interested expression from under the thick, glossy hair.

He knew then why the sound of this child’s laughter had been familiar; the little girl laughed as musically as her grandmother had done.

‘She’s mine?’ His voice was all but inaudible.

‘Yes.’

‘You did not think to tell me you carried my child?’

‘Josse, I — no.’

‘But you-’

‘Kneel down beside her,’ she whispered. ‘Make friends with her. Her name’s Meggie.’

Josse crouched, knelt and finally sat on the clean-swept floor of the hut. He stared at his daughter and her dark eyes did not look away. ‘Hello, Meggie,’ he said gently. ‘What have you got there?’

Trustingly she held out her stick doll. ‘She’s very pretty,’ he said. ‘What is she called?’

‘Ba’ee,’ the child said promptly.

‘Baby? Oh, I see. Your little baby.’

‘Ba’ee,’ the child agreed. She put the doll into Josse’s large hands and he jiggled it up and down as if to soothe it to sleep. Then he pretended to drop it, catching it at the last minute with a great show of relief and his daughter laughed in delight. Taking the stick doll back again, she thumped its head on the floor a couple of times then gave it back to Josse, who kissed the stuffed head better.

Meggie seemed to like that. She clambered on to Josse’s legs, clutched at a fold of his tunic to lever herself up and, when she could reach his face, gave him a kiss just like the one he had given the doll.

Very slowly he put his arms around her. She snuggled against him as if she had known him all her life.

For the remainder of the day, until it was time for Meggie’s bedtime, Josse and his daughter were not parted for a single moment. He let her lead him outside, where she showed him how she could leap across the stepping stones that allowed Joanna to cross the little stream without getting her feet wet. Meggie made Josse do it and then he watched her while she did it another eleven times. Then she showed him her favourite places in her small domain, all the while babbling away in her own infant language in which Josse recognised about one word in ten.

Joanna came to stand beside him as he watched Meggie throwing stones into the shallow, rushing water of the stream. ‘She will be talking fluently soon,’ she said.

‘She’s doing that now.’

Joanna smiled. ‘I meant that soon she’ll be talking comprehensibly.’

‘I rather like the nonsense.’

There was a rather awkward pause. ‘Josse,’ Joanna began, ‘I should explain-’

But Meggie needed her father’s help to lift a heavy stone and, with a haste born out of relief, for he was not yet ready to talk to Joanna in any depth, Josse hurried to assist.

Later Joanna made a simple supper for the child and she ate it sitting on Josse’s lap, with him spooning the thick soup into her mouth. Joanna watched indulgently; Meggie was quite capable of feeding herself if one did not object to quite a lot of mess. Then Josse washed the child’s face and hands in water that had been warmed a little over the fire and Joanna stripped the child down to her shift for bed.

Josse tucked her up in the covers that were neatly folded on top of the sleeping platform’s straw mattress. Meggie put her thumb in her mouth and around it she said, ‘Sto’y.’

‘Story?’ Josse echoed, as if it were the most outlandish request in the world. Meggie laughed.

‘Once-upon-a-time-there-was-a-little-girl-called-Meggie-and-she-went-to-sleep-the-end,’ Josse said very quickly.

Meggie laughed again, although Josse thought it was more at his sudden burst of rapid speech than because she understood what he had said. ‘Sto’y,’ she repeated firmly.

So he began again.

‘There was once a man called Geoffroi,’ he said softly, ‘and he went a very long way away to fight in a great battle in a foreign land. There he saved the life of a little princeling and as a reward the boy’s grandfather gave him a very precious jewel. This jewel was deep blue, like the summer sky at the end of the day, and it was set in a very old coin that was made of solid gold. .’

He heard Joanna give a faint gasp from where she was sitting on the floor behind him. Smiling to himself, he proceeded to tell his daughter the old family tale that his own father used to tell him of the Eye of Jerusalem and how it came into the family. For she is my family, he thought as the tale wound to its conclusion; she is as much the grandchild of my parents as those beloved nephews and nieces in Acquin.

Meggie had been drowsy even when she was put to bed and she was already asleep when Josse kissed her goodnight and returned to sit down beside Joanna.

‘I don’t think she heard the end of the story,’ he said softly. ‘Not that she’d have understood the part she did hear.’

‘Oh, I shouldn’t be so sure,’ Joanna replied. ‘But, with your permission, I’ll tell her the story again, many times. It is important that she knows it.’

‘Because the Eye is her inheritance,’ he said. ‘Aye. I had worked that out for myself.’ It was not the only thing he had worked out; between the shock of being presented with his daughter and the opportunity to talk about it, he had had time for a great deal of thinking.

There was a pause, heavy with unspoken things.

Then Joanna said, ‘It was Meggie who held the Eye into the water.’

‘I thought it might have been.’

As if she felt the need to defend herself, Joanna hurried on, ‘They’d asked me before, Josse, and I refused. Even when they told me about the prophecy and I knew it must mean Meggie, I wouldn’t let her do it. I was afraid for her safety, with a fatal sickness affecting the Abbey and those within it. But beyond that, I was afraid of seeing you again.’

She paused as if to allow him space to comment, but he was not ready yet. ‘Go on.’

‘It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see you; it was that I felt I’d managed to make my life without you and I guessed you had done the same. Seeing each other would only open old wounds.’

‘And has it?’

She turned her eyes to his. Her eyes were much darker than her daughter’s — almost black in the dim light — and he felt a surge of unexpected pleasure at this confirmation that Meggie’s eyes were indeed like his father’s and not like Joanna’s. There will always be something of the d’Acquins in her, he thought, whatever her life brings to her.

But then Joanna said very quietly, ‘Of course it has.’

Hastening away from treacherous ground, Josse said, ‘I asked you earlier why you did not tell me that you were pregnant with her but now I think I know. Joanna, you do not want to live the life that I lead, do you? Even if I promised you all the freedom you needed, you were not born to be somebody’s wife.’

She reached out and took his hand, pressing it to her face. ‘No, Josse. I know now what I was born for and it isn’t that. But don’t let that fact make you think I do not love you for, in my way, I certainly do. Meggie was conceived in love and now, seeing you again, I realise that love is still there.’

Was it in him too? He watched her, head bent over his hand, and the answer soon came. ‘As is mine for you,’ he said gently. ‘What, then, are we to do?’

She straightened up and edged closer to him and he put his arms round her. ‘I may not want to share your life as your wife,’ she said tentatively — perhaps, he thought with a wry smile, she’s just realised that I haven’t in fact asked her to marry me; not recently, anyway — ‘but that doesn’t mean I never want to see you again.’

‘I’m glad. I should not like to think that this was the last time.’

‘Apart from our feelings for each other, there’s Meggie,’ she went on. ‘She has a father as well as a mother and it is your right, if you so choose, to influence her upbringing.’

‘I don’t know.’ Josse frowned. ‘What am I and what have I to offer her, against the world you now occupy? You’ve just told me you’re the daughter of one of your people’s most powerful women and that your birth, and presumably Meggie’s, were foreseen because the child was somehow predicted.’

‘That is how I understand it, yes.’

‘Then, Joanna, what influence can a man like me have on such a one as she?’

‘Do not underrate yourself, Josse. If Meggie’s birth was foreseen, then what happened between us that led to her conception was also part of the prediction.’

It was a shock. His mind instinctively tried to reject the thought that his role in the advent of this wonder child had been preordained. He was about to ask why me? but, deciding it would sound too like an invitation for her to list his virtues — and that would be a short list — he didn’t.

It was all too much to take in.

As if she realised this — which would not surprise him as she seemed to pick up virtually everything else — she said, ‘Josse, there’s no doubt that Meggie has some special touch. The Eye changed the water instantly and we all saw it. And the charged water did seem to possess a unique healing power.’

‘The Abbess is doing well,’ he said, aware that his thoughts had gone off at a tangent. ‘But then the water was only the second form of treatment; you had already brought her back.’

‘You asked me to save her life,’ Joanna said gently. ‘I could not refuse. Not only for her sake — and I know full well she is a good woman — but also for yours. Josse, you would be lost without her.’

‘I did nearly lose her,’ he mused. For a dangerous moment he allowed himself to imagine life without her. He’d have gone back to New Winnowlands, probably returned to Hawkenlye now and again, but with the Abbess in her grave every inch of the place would have been nothing but an agonising reminder that she was no longer there.

The cumulative emotional shocks of the recent past seemed to gather themselves together and rush at him. He felt Joanna’s compassion wrap around him like a warm, soft blanket. It was the easiest thing in the world to drop his head into her lap and weep.

Later, lying side by side beneath the covers up on the sleeping platform, he said, ‘Joanna, this is what I suggest. I will return to my life at New Winnowlands’ — such as it is, he almost added — ‘and you, naturally, will pursue the path that has been set for you, developing your healing skills and guiding Meggie’s steps along her own destined path. I trust you to protect her and do your best for her; I do not think you would allow any harm to come to her.’

‘I won’t,’ Joanna said quickly.

‘With your permission, I will visit you here from time to time. If you are away or do not want to see me, then I’m quite sure you will find a way to ensure that I do not find you.’

It sounded hard and she must have thought so too. ‘I would only do that if there were some pressing reason,’ she replied. ‘There are certain times of the year when we-’

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said swiftly. He did not think he could bear to know the details of this strange other life that Joanna lived and into which his only child had been born.

‘Very well.’ She hesitated. ‘It is — beneficial, Josse. The power is frightening sometimes but nobody is made to handle it before they are ready.’

‘A sixteen-month-old child may wield a magical healing stone, however.’

It was unkind and he immediately regretted it. But she said evenly, ‘Meggie is a special case.’ Then, quickly: ‘But you have my word that I will never allow her to do anything that I believe to be beyond her.’

And with that, he realised, he would have to be satisfied.

They lay in each other’s arms. He very much wanted to make love to her — of course he did — but his child lay beside him and it did not seem right. Eventually he slept.

He left her early in the morning while Meggie was still asleep. Quickly, with no words of farewell and no turning back. He hurried through the forest, just waking to the first light of the new day, and was back at the Abbey in time for Prime.

Then he went straight to the infirmary and took his seat on the stool by the Abbess’s bed. She was asleep but that was where he needed to be.

When she’s better I’ll tell her, he resolved. I’ll tell her that when we were first thrown together, Joanna and I were lovers and that she conceived my child. I’ll describe Meggie to her and I’ll tell her how beautiful my daughter is. I might even tell her that it was Meggie’s strange power that made the Eye of Jerusalem work as it was intended to.

He watched the Abbess’s sleeping face. With only the simple cap in place of her coif and veil, she looked like any other woman and it was sometimes quite difficult to recall that she was far from being that.

Joanna.

Helewise.

Meggie.

On the other hand, he thought with a grin, maybe I won’t tell her anything at all.