The Chatter of the Maidens

Chapter Twenty-one

Helewise was finding Bastian’s revelation quite hard to take in.

‘You mean,’ she said slowly, ‘that all this — Brother Bartholomew’s arrival, and his death, then your coming after him — has been purely to let Jerome know he is free to wed Meriel, and to give him the Templars’ blessings for a long and happy life?’

‘That was how it began, yes,’ Bastian agreed. ‘Although, of course, things took altogether a more desperate turn when we found out what Alba was capable of. When we guessed she had-’ He glanced at Berthe, then resumed. ‘When Felix went missing and our terrible suspicions dawned about what that child might really have witnessed, then there was another, more pressing reason to find the runaways.’

Josse, Helewise noticed, was studying the monk. ‘You really do care for Jerome, don’t you?’

‘I do,’ Bastian said. ‘He is, as I believe you know, my kinsman. But I should care for him anyway. He is a good lad. Headstrong and impetuous, perhaps, but still a good lad.’

Helewise pulled herself out of her reverie. ‘Sir Josse, Brother Bastian,’ she said, ‘we have stood here talking for long enough. I intend to keep Berthe close to me’ — she took firm hold of the girl’s hand — ‘but now, if you please, we must resume our search for Alba. Berthe, which path did you say she took?’

‘That one.’ Berthe pointed.

‘Then that is where we, too, must go.’

And striding out with firm steps, Helewise led her little party away.

The great forest was uncannily silent.

Helewise, walking ahead of Josse and Bastian, with Berthe clutching tight to her hand, felt a growing sense of oppression. We have introduced a discordant element here, she thought, a shiver of dread going through her. And the forest doesn’t like it. The birds have fallen quiet; the breeze no longer stirs the young leaves on the trees. It’s as if — as if the whole place is holding its breath. There is no air.

Panic fluttered in her. Then, with her free hand, she grasped the plain wooden cross that hung over her heart. This is still Your place, dear Lord, whoever else may live and worship here, she thought, comforted. This new harm that has been brought in is not of our instigation. Please, of Thy mercy, protect us as we try to redress it.

Berthe gave her hand a squeeze. ‘Are you praying, Abbess?’ she whispered.

‘I was, yes. I’ve finished now. I was just asking God for His help.’

‘Did He hear you?’

‘He always hears.’

‘And will he help us?’

Helewise looked down into the earnest little face. It was not really the moment to explain how God’s help sometimes takes an unexpected guise, and that we must have faith that what happens is always for our ultimate good. So she just said, ‘I hope so, Berthe.’

Behind them, Josse gave a muted gasp. Instantly turning to him, Helewise said, ‘What? What is it?’

Wordlessly, he pointed.

Ahead of them, the narrow track led into a small clearing. One or two ancient trees had died, and were lying at odd angles against their living neighbours. The space above, which had been opened up by their falling, had allowed new growth on the forest floor; a beam of sunshine lit up the glade, and the clearing was full of bluebells.

In one of the largest of the living oaks, astride a sturdy branch leading out from the wide trunk, sat Alba.

Her habit, stained and torn from her scramble up through the lower branches, was crumpled up around her bare thighs, but her coif and veil were neatly in place. In her hands she held her rope belt.

Helewise turned to Bastian, who was right at her shoulder. ‘Please, Brother Bastian,’ she said, very quietly. ‘I understand your urge to confront her, but please let me speak to her alone. At first, anyway.’

‘She may be violent,’ Bastian hissed back.

‘I do not believe she will be violent towards me,’ Helewise replied; she had no idea why she should believe that so strongly, but believe it she did. She stared into the Templar’s passionate face. ‘And if she threatens me,’ she added with a small smile, ‘then you have my full permission to come to my aid.’

For an instant he went on glaring at her. Then, grinning, he said, ‘Very well.’ He added something else, which she thought might have been, ‘God go with you.’

Gently pushing Berthe towards Josse, Helewise walked on into the glade alone.

Alba was humming softly to herself. She did not notice Helewise until she was standing right beneath Alba’s tree. Then, peering down, she said, ‘Abbess Helewise. Greetings.’

‘Greetings, Alba,’ Helewise replied. ‘We have been worried about you,’ she went on, pleased to discover that her voice sounded almost normal. ‘Berthe told us that she had let you out. We were all wondering where you had gone.’

‘I had to get away, Abbess,’ Alba said dramatically, leaning down from her branch. ‘Brother Bastian would have me hanged.’

Not allowing herself to turn round and look towards where Bastian stood concealed, Helewise asked, ‘Did you kill the young man?’

‘I thought he was Jerome!’ Alba’s voice was indignant. ‘I thought I had killed Jerome! I only guessed that I hadn’t when I found out Meriel had run away — there was only one person in the world for whom Meriel would have abandoned Berthe, and that was Jerome. They tricked me back in Medely, my sister and her lover, and they made me kill an innocent man! Oh, Abbess, I have prayed and prayed for forgiveness. I didn’t mean to kill Felix — that was Meriel’s fault, Meriel’s and Jerome’s.’

‘But you wanted to kill Jerome,’ Helewise said. ‘Why was that, Alba?’

‘I couldn’t let my sister leave me.’ Alba gave a great, dry sob. ‘I have to keep them both close, Meriel and Berthe. While Father was alive, I knew they’d stay with him. He’d never have let them go. He only let me enter the convent at Sedgebeck because he had Meriel and Berthe to take my place. I was going to be an Abbess, just like you. I was doing really well, they all liked me. But then they told me Father was dead. I knew what would happen; I knew my little sisters would run away, even before his poor body was cold. And I couldn’t allow that. They have to be close!’ Her voice had turned shrill.

‘Why must you keep them close?’ Helewise felt a stab of compassion for the woman in the tree. Such a pathetic hiding place. .

‘People leave me,’ Alba said. ‘My mother left me, and I had to live with Father. Nobody liked Father, and so nobody would be friends with me. You see, Abbess? Meriel and Berthe are mine, they’re all I have.’

‘I do see, Alba,’ Helewise replied. Dear God, but there was a weird logic in Alba’s argument. ‘But you can’t keep them with you if the course of their lives takes them away. We’re all put here for a purpose. None of us may decide what another’s purpose is, no matter how much we love them.’

‘I must keep them close,’ Alba repeated doggedly. ‘Oh, Abbess, it was such a perfect plan to come here! I was to be a Hawkenlye nun straightaway — quite a senior one — and Meriel, then Berthe, would become nuns too. We’d all be together, I could tell them what to do, and they’d never leave me.’

There were so many points to argue with in that little address that Helewise didn’t even bother to start. Instead, reverting to something Alba had said earlier, she said, ‘Your mother didn’t leave you, Alba. She died. When you were born. She couldn’t help it, and I’m quite sure it wasn’t her choice. She must have wanted more than anything to live, because she had your father and you, and she would have been happy in her new home.’

But Alba was shaking her head; gently at first, the movement quickly became faster and more violent. ‘No,’ she hissed. ‘No, no, no!’

‘No?’

‘It wasn’t like that.’ Alba sat rock-still now. ‘She was in the whores’ home, with the nuns at Denney. They tried to beat her sins out of her. Did you know my mother was a whore, Abbess?’ She gave a dreadful laugh. ‘God alone knows why they were all so sure I was Wilfrid’s child, I could have been anybody’s.’ She fixed Helewise with a penetrating stare. ‘Can you keep a secret, Abbess Helewise?’

‘Yes.’

‘There was talk,’ Alba said quietly, ‘that I was begotten on my mother by one of the monks. One of the grand Knights Templar. They keep their pricks, you know, Abbess, when they take their vows. The great and the good, they reckon they are, but let a pretty, compliant whore flash them a bit of leg and they’re after her like any other man.’

‘Is this true, Alba?’ Helewise asked. Dear Lord, but if it were. .

Alba shrugged. ‘Maybe. How should I know?’ An expression of craftiness came over her face. ‘But if it’s not, then why did they work so hard to provide a credible explanation for me? I wasn’t the only bastard born in the whores’ home, believe me. But I was the only one pushed out and given to its father.’

Helewise felt her heart pounding. Was this the truth? She had wondered herself how, out of a whore’s many clients, those who had decided Alba’s future had settled on Wilfrid as her father. But if they had known who the real father was, known it was a man who could never claim paternity, for whom even a hint at involvement with a whore would be devastating. .

Suddenly she remembered Abbess Madelina at Sedgebeck. Saying of Alba, ‘She arrived with a generous endowment, including both money and goods’.

Wilfrid had been a poor man. He surely could not have provided so well for Alba.

Who had, then?

A Templar with a guilty conscience?

But there were far more urgent matters to worry about.

She stared up at the woman straddling the branch high above. ‘Alba, you must put all this behind you,’ she said firmly. ‘It is useless to speculate, and you only torment yourself with these thoughts. Wilfrid is dead, your mother died at your birth, and-’

‘That’s a lie.’ Alba’s voice spoke clearly, echoing through the glade.

‘A lie? But-’

‘They told me that, those warrior monks. It was easier for them if I believed she had gone beyond my reach. But she didn’t die.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘They said she was mad. There’s a madhouse run by nuns, close by Denney. In the same place where the whores’ hostel is. Whores and mad people, it’s all the same to the nuns. They shut her up in there, in the madhouse. I didn’t know, Abbess. For years, all the time I was growing up, she was in there. I could have gone to see her, talked to her. But oh, no. They couldn’t have that, could they? She might have revealed who my real father was.’ Tears were falling down Alba’s white face now. ‘So they told me she’d died at my birth, and I never knew her.’

‘Alba, I’m so sorry,’ Helewise said gently. ‘It must have been a terrible blow for you, when you found out.’

Alba nodded. ‘I wasn’t meant to know, even after she really was dead. Only one of the nuns in the madhouse wasn’t aware of the true story. She’d been looking after my mother, and apparently my mother had asked her to come and tell me.’

‘Tell you she was dying?’

‘No. Tell me after she was dead.’

‘Was your mother sick, then? So sick that she knew death was close?’

‘She wasn’t sick. She hanged herself.’ Alba raised the rope belt in one hand. There was a clumsy knot in one end, and she set it swinging gently. To and fro. To and fro.

Helewise watched the knot, hypnotised. Everything was beginning to feel unreal, unnatural. She gave herself a shake. ‘Oh, Alba,’ she whispered. But she didn’t think Alba heard.

‘This was hers,’ Alba said. ‘Her piece of rope. She stole it, and she hanged herself with it. The nuns gave me her poor, ragged robe, and this was wound up in the skirt.’ A wail of anguish soared up into the still air. ‘There’s nothing for me any more, Abbess! I’ve killed, I’ve been tracked down, there’s a mighty Templar hunting me to make me confess to my crimes, and they’re going to hang me!’

‘You will be tried, Alba,’ Helewise began, ‘and-’

‘They’ll hang me!’ Alba screamed. ‘Abbess, Abbess, I don’t want to die on the gallows, like some wretched thief, with the people all jeering and laughing! Not me!’

Suddenly she swung the rope out in a great wide arc. ‘I’ve been trying to hang myself, and save them the bother. I wanted to do it with this, just like Mother’ — the wailing had become sobs, loud, heaving sobs — ‘but I don’t know how to do the noose! Forgive me, oh, forgive me!’

She began to lean over, further, further. .

Helewise rushed forwards, arms outstretched. ‘Alba, no!’

But Alba ignored her. Leaning further and further over, she went past the point of balance.

And fell, headfirst, thirty feet or more to the forest floor.

Helewise heard Berthe scream, a sound so loud that it hurt her ears.

Slowly she crept towards the body on the ground.

Alba’s head was at a sharp angle to her shoulders; without even touching her, Helewise could see that her neck was broken. Blood was seeping from her ears, staining the starched white coif.

Helewise knelt down, already praying, and felt the wrist. No pulse.

Standing up, she finished her first, urgent prayer for the soul of Alba. Forgive her all her sins, dear Lord; of Thy mercy, show her Thy kindly face. .

Then, turning to the edge of the glade where, behind the poised figure of Bastian, Josse held Berthe tightly against him, she said, ‘I’m afraid she’s dead.’