Heart of Ice

Chapter 6

Helewise did not know, when she awoke in the morning, that part of her desperate prayer had already been answered: Josse had arrived back in the Vale the previous evening, soon after the monks had settled for the night.

He presented himself in her room in the usually quiet time between Prime and Tierce and she had rarely been as glad to see anybody.

‘What news?’ she demanded, forgetting in her haste to greet him.

‘Some; not much,’ he replied, ‘although I believe that I begin to see a pattern in what was hitherto a mystery. My lady, unless there are matters about which you wish to speak with me, then, with your leave, I would set out what I see as a possible version of events.’

‘Yes, yes, do!’ she urged. Then, reminding herself that the poor man had been in the saddle for much of the past two days, she restrained her impatience and added more gently, ‘If you would, please, Sir Josse.’

His swift grin, there and gone in a flash, suggested he wasn’t convinced by her belated show of good manners. Then he said, ‘The foreign pestilence came to England with the Hastings merchant, Martin Kelsey, who had been on business in Paris and caught the sickness when he tended a dying beggar in Boulogne. Kelsey travelled back to Hastings on a ship called the Angel of Mercy in the company of the apothecary’s apprentice, Nicol Romley, who had been to the great market at Troyes buying supplies for his master. Someone followed the men on board the Angel, although employing such secrecy that nobody except an observant sailor spotted him. Kelsey went home and shortly afterwards fell sick; his spinster sister baulked at nursing him and delegated the task to her maidservant. Kelsey died and, with a cruel opportunism, that same night someone broke into the house and stole a few trinkets. The maidservant fell ill and went home to her family, whose surviving members are even now recovering here at Hawkenlye. Or so I pray?’ He looked at her with raised eyebrows.

‘The boy and the baby girl are better,’ she confirmed. ‘The simple uncle died yesterday.’

‘Ah.’ He muttered something under his breath; probably, she thought, a blessing on the poor man’s soul.

‘Go on,’ she said when she could no longer endure the wait; a matter of all of four heartbeats.

‘Nicol Romley fell ill soon after returning to Newenden,’ Josse said, ‘but there’s something else: the lad was mortally afraid that somebody was following him.’

‘You mean-’ she began, but stopped herself; Josse would tell his tale more succinctly and swiftly if she refrained from interrupting him.

With a quick nod, as if he understood her thought, Josse went on, ‘Nicol’s master tried to treat him but failed and instead sent the lad off to Hawkenlye. He got as far as the Vale, but then someone attacked and killed him. It’s unlikely that this was a simple case of robbery because, although it appeared that Nicol’s purse had been searched, the coins hidden at the bottom of it were still there when he was found.’

He waited to see if she wanted to comment but she shook her head.

‘So, my lady,’ he concluded, ‘a virulent and deadly pestilence has come by evil chance to our land. At the same time, some unknown assailant whose purpose we cannot begin to guess follows a young man home from France and kills him.’ With a helpless shrug, he said, ‘Would you care to propose a likely explanation?’

‘Not yet,’ she replied with a small smile. ‘Although one or two things occur to me. .’

‘Let’s hear them!’

‘Well, I am thinking about those coins that were overlooked in the apothecary’s purse. It seems that there is a similarity between this and the few trinkets stolen from the merchant’s house.’

‘Aye, that had crossed my mind too. In addition, the merchant’s sister’s best guess was that he died in the small hours, and she claimed that the ransacking of the house took place between the time that her brother died and when she found his body soon after daybreak.’

‘The house was ransacked?’ Helewise asked. ‘Did the sister not hear any sound?’

‘Apparently not, but I have an idea that she may have exaggerated the offence; my guess is that the intruder broke in, quietly looked into one or two rooms and, finding a dead man in one of them, took advantage of his good fortune and made a quick search, taking anything that caught his fancy and was small enough to carry away.’

‘Supposing,’ she said slowly, ‘good fortune had nothing to do with it?’

‘You mean-’ He stopped, had a think and then, as he realised exactly what she meant, said, ‘My lady, I had got as far as wondering if our mystery assailant had been watching Martin Kelsey’s house and, guessing that it would be an easy matter to search the house of a dying man, took his chance and by coincidence chose for his intrusion the very night that Kelsey died. But you, if I hear you aright, would go one step further?’

‘I am thinking,’ she said, ‘that, for some reason, the man who slipped aboard the Angel of Mercy has need of total secrecy for his mission in England, whatever it is. Therefore he had to make sure that the two men who might have seen him — the merchant and the apothecary’s apprentice — could not live to give testimony to the fact of his having made the crossing from France to England. So he broke into the merchant’s house, put a pillow over his face and then, to make his crime look like theft and not murder, he picked up one or two items and made off with them.’ Leaning forward, she said eagerly, ‘It was to his advantage that the merchant was so ill! Why, the killer may not even have known that Martin Kelsey had the sickness! If he was still in the vicinity in the morning, he would have been amazed at his good luck when it was assumed that the merchant had died of the pestilence and not by another’s hand.’

‘Martin Kelsey died first,’ Josse said. ‘It is possible, my lady, that, having smothered the poor man, the assailant then hurried off to Newenden to hunt down the other passenger from the Angel.’

‘And Nicol Romley, already perhaps feeling the first symptoms of the sickness, also realised that somebody was haunting his footsteps. Then he set off for Hawkenlye, the assailant picked up his trail and followed him. .’

‘And slayed him right here in our Vale!’ Josse finished triumphantly.

For a moment they stared at each other, sharing the pleasure at having come up with a possible explanation.

But then Josse began to shake his head. ‘Oh, no. It won’t do, my lady.’

‘Why not?’ she demanded; she was not ready to see the tidy theory dismissed out of hand, even if he was.

‘Because we’re forgetting the captain and crew of the Angel of Mercy,’ he said dolefully. ‘If our hypothetical killer took such trouble to eliminate Martin Kelsey and Nicol Romley, why did he allow the seamen to live?’

She frowned, chewing her lip. ‘Unless he was quite convinced that none of them had seen him, then because. .’ she began. But it was no use: she could not think of a reason. Undaunted, however, she said, ‘Sir Josse, I am sure that we have stumbled on the truth behind this matter, albeit not the complete truth. Do not let us abandon the entire picture for want of one or two small details!’

‘Very well,’ he agreed. ‘Ignoring the small detail of the crew’ — he laid a slight ironic emphasis on the word small — ‘then perhaps we should proceed to speculate on what this killer’s mission in England might be and why he is driven to take such pains to conceal his presence here.’

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, aghast at the magnitude of the task. Then, with a rueful grimace, ‘Where do we start?’

Both Helewise and Josse concluded quite soon that trying to guess what an assailant’s purpose might be in coming in such secrecy to England was about as likely as guessing the number of grains of sand on a beach; with relief, they abandoned their speculation.

Helewise, who had been uneasily awaiting an opportunity, said tentatively, ‘Sir Josse, there is another matter about which I must speak to you.’

‘Please do, my lady.’

She looked down at her hands and then, after a pause, said, ‘Two sick men arrived yesterday, one of whom is close to death. Later a young woman arrived with her little girl, who was already dead. Now the mother sickens and’ — she controlled the urge to sob — ‘Brother Firmin has a fever.’

‘Old Brother Firmin? Oh,’ Josse cried, ‘but I spent the night in the Vale! Why did they not tell me? I must go to him!’ He made a move towards the door, abruptly curtailed. ‘Or perhaps not?’ He turned back to face her.

‘Sir Josse, we all wish to tend those whom we love who fall sick,’ she said softly. ‘But Sister Euphemia has ordered that we must not do so.’

‘For fear of spreading the affliction,’ he murmured.

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Two of the nursing sisters have already volunteered to work with Sister Euphemia in the temporary infirmary that she has set up in the Vale. She has undertaken to ask when she needs more help.’

I said when, she realised. Not if.

Josse must have noticed too. ‘There will be more sick and dying making their way to us, my lady?’ he asked gruffly.

‘I fear so.’ Rather than allow either of them to dwell on that terrifying prospect, she hurried on. ‘That is why I must make this request of you, my friend. May we have your permission to remove the Eye of Jerusalem from its hiding place and use it?’

His expression would have made her laugh had the circumstances been less deadly. ‘The Eye?’ he echoed. ‘Oh, no, my lady Abbess! I gave it to you in the earnest hope of never having to catch sight of it again, for I fear it and would have no dealings with it!’

‘People are dying, Josse,’ she said quietly. ‘May we not even try to use this — this thing that has found its way to us?’

‘You may!’ he shouted, driven to discourtesy by the strong emotion. ‘You and your nuns may do whatever you like with it, only do not ask me to use it!’

‘I do not do so,’ she said, in the same soft tone. ‘I propose to give it to Sister Euphemia and see what she can make of it, and then to Sister Tiphaine, to see if she might be able to use it to make a febrifuge.’

Josse was already contrite. ‘My lady, I apologise for my rudeness,’ he said, ‘but you may recall why it is that I fear the Eye?’

‘Oh, yes I do,’ she agreed. ‘You shun it because you were told that it would be used by one of your female descendants, someome who would possess strange power, and you would not put this burden upon the girl children of your brothers.’

‘The progeny of my brothers are the only descendants that I have!’ Josse said. ‘The little girls are but children, my lady; I cannot make them take on this dreadful burden!’

‘No, of course not.’ She tried to soothe him, but it was difficult to sound adequately sincere when her mind was so preoccupied with another thought. . Pulling her mind away from that thought — not without effort, for it was something that had nagged at her and intrigued her for eighteen months or more — she said, ‘Sir Josse, what I ask is simply that you allow my nuns the opportunity to work with the Eye and see whether it can come to our aid in our desperate need. You told me that the Eye will only put out its powers for its rightful owner’ — oh, how can I speak in this way, she cried silently, I who have put my trust and my life into God’s hands and have no use for superstition! — ‘and my hope is that, if you lend it to us willingly and in good faith, then perhaps the question of rightful ownership may be overcome.’

‘You can have the wretched stone!’ Josse cried.

No, we can’t, Helewise said silently, for it is an heirloom of your family, my friend; it belongs to the women of your blood. But she did not speak her thought to him; for the moment at least, it remained a matter for her alone.

Instead she said, ‘Thank you, Sir Josse. I will take the Eye to Sister Euphemia and we shall see what happens.’

The infirmarer had been summoned from her patients inside the temporary infirmary and now she stood in the Vale with Helewise and Josse. In a brief, late-morning burst of February sun, she took the jewel from Helewise’s hand and held it up to the light.

The Eye was a large, round sapphire about the size of a man’s thumbnail. At some time in its past it had been set in a thick gold coin, whose centre had been softened in order that it could be moulded so as to hold the jewel securely. The coin and its precious stone hung on a heavy gold chain.

The Eye, or so they said, had the power to protect and defend its rightful owner. Dipped in a mug offered by a stranger, it could detect the presence of poison. Dipped in a draught of clear, cool water, its force entered the liquid and produced a medicine that stemmed bleeding and lowered fever.

And, according to its own history, it was a thousand years old. .

‘Aye, I remember this pretty thing,’ Sister Euphemia said after a moment. ‘I have seen it before and indeed I have used it before.’ She looked at Helewise. ‘We had some success, my lady, did we not?’

Helewise had never managed to make up her mind whether those particular patients had recovered because of the jewel or because of the infirmarer’s nursing skill and God’s help. But now, she thought, was not the time to say so. ‘Indeed we did,’ she agreed readily.

‘I’d give much to have a remedy that lowered fevers and brought a halt to bleeding,’ Sister Euphemia murmured, half to herself, ‘for most of our patients are delirious and burn as if with hell fire and not a few have begun to show ruptures and cracks in their skin, so that a constant and painful seepage of blood is added to their woes.’

‘How many lie sick at present, Sister?’ Helewise made herself ask, conquering her revulsion and trying to replace it with pity.

‘There’s the two merchants — one, the elder man, is close to death and will not last the day, but the other begins to recover. There’s the woman who brought in the dead child; she takes a little water and all may be well with her. There’s dear old Firmin, bravely trying not to complain but beside himself with fever most of the time.’ Glancing at Helewise, she added quietly, ‘And there’s the five who arrived just before you came down here, plus their three relatives who are making their way to us.’

‘Are all the victims from Newenden?’ Josse asked quietly.

Sister Euphemia turned to him. ‘The merchants had called in at the town,’ she said. ‘They sold a bunch of basil leaves to the woman with the dead baby. Today’s arrivals come from a village to the east of Tonbridge.’

‘It lies between Newenden and Hawkenlye?’ Josse asked in a pressing whisper.

‘Aye, it does,’ the infirmarer agreed.

Josse let out a gusty sigh of relief. ‘Then let us hope and pray that our two merchants came straight from that village to Hawkenlye,’ he said. ‘If they paid a visit to Tonbridge first, then. .’

He did not finish his sentence, for which Helewise was very grateful; she did not even want to think about what would happen if the pestilence broke out in the narrow, dirty and crowded streets of the town.

She sensed Josse’s sudden restlessness. ‘I shall ride down to see Gervase de Gifford,’ he announced abruptly. ‘I must report to him of my discoveries concerning the young man who died here,’ he added, explaining himself to the infirmarer, ‘and in addition I shall be able to gain up-to-date news as to whether — well, I’ll see how things are down there,’ he finished lamely.

Helewise caught at his sleeve as he made to leave. ‘Be careful,’ she said, although she could not have said quite why.

‘I will,’ he promised. Then, with a smile, he hurried away.

Sister Euphemia sent for the herbalist, and for most of the afternoon they busied themselves preparing what they hoped would be a miracle cure for the sickness. Sister Tiphaine fetched several flasks of the precious healing water from the natural spring that bubbled up out of the sandstone rocks in the Vale; the very water whose discovery had led to the foundation of the Abbey. Sister Euphemia carefully washed the sapphire in its coin in a pot of warmed water, scrubbing off as best she could the grime of centuries. Then she and the infirmarer, heads together as they muttered quietly to each other, set about dipping the Eye into the flasks of spring water.

‘How long should we give it, d’you think?’ Sister Euphemia asked.

The herbalist shrugged. ‘I couldn’t say. If it’s magic, then a brief moment ought to suffice. If there’s some element in the stone that’s leaching out into the water, then we ought to leave it for quite a lot longer.’

When they thought and hoped that the jewel had had enough time to do its work, Sister Euphemia tucked it away inside her scapular and took the first flask of water into the shelter. Sister Tiphaine went with her but the infirmarer stopped her at the door. ‘Best not,’ she said shortly. The herbalist nodded her understanding.

Of the nine people who were given the new medicine — the group who were making their way to the Abbey had yet to arrive — five were very sick. The dying merchant was beyond making any attempt at swallowing and so Sister Beata, who was nursing him, contented herself with using the water to bathe the suffering and delirious man’s hot face. The woman who had brought in her dead child — and who had appeared to be recovering — had taken a sudden turn for the worse; the rash on her skin had begun to take on the appearance of fine scales, which were falling off to leave a weeping, bloody mess. She too was no longer sufficiently aware to take in fluid and instead Sister Caliste gently bathed the lesions in her skin.

Two of the five who had arrived that morning — an elderly man and his middle-aged son — were also close to death and neither of them managed more than a mouthful of water.

Brother Firmin was slipping in and out of consciousness. On being told by Sister Euphemia that she had brought him some of the holy water and would he like a drink, he had given her a beautiful smile and said he’d try a sip, but that he’d really prefer to leave the blessed remedy for others.

His sip was minuscule. Then he slumped back on to his pillow.

Down in Tonbridge, Josse sought out Gervase de Gifford and told him what he had found out in Newenden and in Hastings. De Gifford’s interest was aroused at the idea of a man making his way in secret into England for some unknown and clandestine purpose and, with the air of someone thinking out loud, he expounded on the subject.

‘They say the King was to be freed early this month,’ he mused, ‘and I reckon someone, somewhere, will know the truth of that. But, sooner or later, we’ll have our Richard back home again. He’ll have some sort of a new crowning ceremony, no doubt about that, if only to take away the taint of captivity.’

‘Such a ceremony would also serve to remind anyone who might be tempted to forget that Richard is still God’s anointed and our king,’ Josse put in.

‘Yes indeed,’ de Gifford agreed.

‘How will the King’s party travel home, think you?’ Josse asked.

‘They will be coming from Mainz,’ de Gifford replied, ‘so they’ll probably come by boat up the Rhine into the Scheldt estuary and take ship for England at Antwerp. If I were the King,’ he added, ‘I wouldn’t set sail without a strongly armed escort fleet.’

‘You fear the French?’

‘I do. King Philip and John Lackland are as thick as thieves and Philip would not be above sending his ships to intercept our King’s passage back to England. Should the King fall into Philip’s hands, I fear that it would not be a question of merely a year or two spent in captivity.’

‘You think it would come to that?’ Josse asked, although in his heart he knew that de Gifford’s comment was no exaggeration. ‘King Philip and our Richard’s own brother in league to keep him prisoner?’

‘I have heard tell,’ de Gifford said quietly, ‘that the negotiations for the King’s release were brought to a standstill last month because John and Philip outbid his mother’s offer.’

‘I heard that too,’ Josse said glumly. He did not add that his first reaction had not been a prayer for the King’s safe release but a sudden and very urgent hope that England would not be in for yet another tax demand to augment the ransom. ‘My guess,’ he continued, turning from that thought, ‘is that John and Philip would give much to have Richard remain a prisoner until they can consolidate the gains they’ve made together in Richard’s French territories.’

‘Yes, that would make sense,’ de Gifford agreed. Then, as if suddenly recalling what had begun the discussion, he went on, ‘But what any of that has to do with the matter in hand, I cannot begin to guess.’

‘If, indeed, it has anything to do with it,’ Josse added.

‘And yet,’ de Gifford said softly, ‘I wonder. . A spy sent by John or Philip to discover how the land lies here in England? To set about rallying opposition to Richard with a view to setting John on the throne in his place?’

‘One man, to do all that?’ Josse asked wryly. ‘Gervase, I think that is more a task for an army.’

‘Armies do not make good spies,’ de Gifford murmured. Then, with a small frown as if he were working something out which, at present, he chose not to share with Josse, he fell silent.

But there were, Josse realised, more urgent things to speak about. With apprehension making his heart beat faster, he asked de Gifford if anyone in Tonbridge had fallen sick of a strange illness.

By the time all those in the community not engaged in vital and life-saving work assembled for Vespers, the sicker of the two merchants, the elderly man and the woman were dead. The three reported as being on their way had arrived; one of their number, a strong young woman, had pushed a handcart on which lay her father, who had apparently been lucid when he was carried out of his home but was now very sick. The father had been clutching a crippled boy who was almost at death’s door.

Each of the sick had, in one form or another, been given some of the water that had been treated with the Eye of Jerusalem; not one was showing any improvement.

Helewise sat in her room late into the night. Compline was long over and, down in the Vale, Josse had returned from Tonbridge and, presumably, had settled down for the night. One bright spot in the day had been the welcome news, relayed to her by Brother Augustus soon after Josse had got back, that nobody in Tonbridge was sick of a mysterious foreign pestilence.

Josse, Helewise thought. Oh, Josse. What shall I do for the best?

She knew what she ought to do, for her first — indeed, her only — duty was to fulfil her role as Abbess of Hawkenlye and care as best she could for those who came to her in need. That meant doing all she could to cure the sick, which, in turn, meant using each and every tool put into her hands for that purpose.

She had resigned herself to ordering the employment of the Eye of Jerusalem and, she had to admit, she had been bitterly disappointed when it had not worked. Not only for the poor victims and for Sisters Euphemia and Tiphaine, but also for herself; because she knew that, if the first attempt failed, then there was something else that, dislike it as she may, she was duty-bound to try.

Even if in so doing she was forced into an action that would have a potentially devastating effect upon someone who was very dear to her. .

Now, in the night-time quiet of the Abbey, she made herself face up to what she knew she had to do.