The Chatter of the Maidens

Chapter Four

For the next week, Sister Euphemia battled against the infection in Josse’s wounded arm. Although his fever never again rose to a burning heat that threatened his life, the encroaching inflammation in the wound refused to give up.

Brice and Will returned to their respective homes, apparently only partially swayed by the infirmarer’s assurance that Sir Josse would live. Will, his face intent, said to the Abbess as he left, ‘Pray for him, Abbess. The good Lord’ll listen to you.’

And she did. All the sisters prayed, the nursing nuns tried potion after potion, and still the battle was not won. Sister Euphemia, knowing full well what the loss of his right arm meant for a fighting man, nevertheless prepared herself for what began to seem the inevitable.

Then, after a mysterious absence that led to her doing penance for three missed devotions, Sister Tiphaine appeared one evening in the infirmary, a small earthenware pot clutched in her hand.

‘Try this,’ she said, thrusting the pot at the infirmarer.

‘What is it?’ Sister Euphemia had removed the cloth cover and was sniffing the contents of the pot. ‘Hmm. Smells quite pleasant.’

‘Something we haven’t yet tried.’ Sister Tiphaine seemed reluctant to meet her Sister’s eyes.

‘All well and good,’ Sister Euphemia said, ‘but what is it?’

‘Secret remedy.’ Sister Tiphaine gave her a swift grin. ‘They do say some of the magic goes, if the secret’s revealed.’

‘Sister, really, we-’ the infirmarer began. Then she made herself stop, instead thanking Sister Tiphaine with a brief bow and promising to try the new potion on her patient without delay.

It was ever Sister Tiphaine’s way, she thought a little while later, watching the sleeping Josse as if the potion would announce its efficacy straight away. She knows her herbs; there is no doubting that; but sometimes, such an air of mystery hangs about her that one would almost suspect she keeps one foot in the pagan past. Magic, she said. The secret potion possesses magic, which would be lessened by revealing its constituents.

Stop acting like a superstitious peasant and remember who you are! Sister Euphemia’s conscience rebuked her firmly. Bowing her head, she crossed herself and offered up to God a brief but sincere apology for wondering, even for an instant, if her strange herbalist Sister’s words could possibly have any validity. .

And soon, whether because of the Sisters’ prayers, the herbalist’s potion, the infirmarer’s devoted care, Josse’s own fortitude, or a combination of all four, the infection began to retreat.

Waking up one afternoon from a pleasant doze, Josse opened his eyes to see an unfamiliar face looming over him. A pair of bright eyes stared unblinkingly at him; fringed with spiky, dark lashes, they were the misty, slightly purplish blue of early bluebells. .

The girl whose pretty face they adorned was dressed in a simple gown of an indeterminate buff shade; her head was uncovered, and her thick dark hair sprang up in wild curls which, it appeared, had resisted the girl’s attempt to restrain them in a fillet.

Her youth — she could not have been more than about thirteen or fourteen — and her style of dress indicated that she was not one of the Sisters; even postulants at Hawkenlye wore black and covered their heads. And, Josse thought, amused, no postulant he had ever encountered had that amount of naughtiness and high spirits in her expression.

He said, ‘Who are you?’

The girl gasped. ‘Oh! You spoke!’

‘Aye,’ he agreed. ‘Did they tell you I was stricken dumb?’

‘No, of course not! They said you had been grievously wounded, and were only just beginning to recover, and that I must sit here and watch you, and, when you woke up, I must hurry and tell Sister Euphemia or one of her nuns, so I’d better do so.’

She leapt up from her half-crouch beside his bed, but, just in time, he shot out his left arm and caught a fold of her skirt. ‘Don’t hurry away,’ he said. ‘Stay and talk to me.’

‘No, I mustn’t!’ She looked horrified. ‘Sister Euphemia was adamant. The very instant he wakes, she said. Oh, please, she’ll have me shut up and put on bread and water for a week if I disobey!’

There was, he noticed, a sparkle in her eyes as she spoke; he had a swift impression of a girl who obeyed when she felt like it, but who was perfectly prepared to do exactly as she pleased when she didn’t, and hang the consequences.

‘Very well,’ he said, ‘off you go, then. But make sure you come back again.’ It would actually be no bad thing to see the infirmarer; his sudden lunge to catch at the girl’s gown, even though he had used his undamaged arm, had made him feel dizzy, and sent an angry shooting pain from his wound up into his shoulder.

‘I will!’ the girl was saying as she sped away. He heard her light voice calling as she ran, ‘Sister Euphemia! Oh, Sister, he’s awake, and he’s talking!’ before the infirmarer’s strict tones interrupted her with a carrying, ‘Hush, child!’

The girl was as good as her word. Some time later, when Josse had spent a painful time with Sister Euphemia, she came back. Josse’s wound, despite the infirmarer’s infinitely gentle touch, was still sending out red-hot waves of pain from the re-dressing; he no longer felt quite as much like cheery conversation as he had done earlier.

And the girl, bless her, seemed to notice. Crouching down beside him, she gave him a sympathetic smile. ‘Did it hurt very much?’ she asked softly. Then, as if she knew he didn’t really want to talk, went on, ‘I fell out of a tree once and cut my shin open on a rock. You could see right down to the bone, it was horrid, dead white and sort of shiny. I used to cry out loud when it was time to change the dressing, and my mother gave me-’ She stopped suddenly, and a look of pain crossed the lively face. Leaning closer to Josse, she whispered, ‘My mother’s dead. She caught the sickness and she died.’

Josse reached out his left hand — awkwardly, since she was on his right side — and, after a moment’s hesitation, she took it. ‘It is terrible to lose your mother,’ he said quietly. ‘I am so sorry.’

She wiped tears from her eyes with her free hand. ‘My father’s dead, too,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t kind like my mother, but I’m sure he loved us in his way. Alba says he did, anyway.’ The girl looked suddenly glum, as if the mention of Alba, whoever she was, had depressed her.

‘Alba?’ Josse prompted.

‘My sister. My eldest sister, there’s Meriel as well. She’s sixteen — Meriel, I mean — she’s two years older than me. Alba’s much older than us. She’s a nun.’

‘I see,’ Josse said, although he wasn’t sure what he did see. ‘You still haven’t told me your name.’

‘Berthe,’ said the girl.

The pain in his arm, although lessening, was keeping up a steady throb. Thinking that a bit of a chat might take his mind off it, if he could summon the energy, Josse tried to think how he might encourage his enchanting companion to talk while he listened.

‘Berthe,’ he repeated. ‘Now, I can see that you’re not about to take the veil, and-’

‘Oh, I am,’ she interrupted, surprising him. ‘Not till I’m older, Alba says, but we’ve both got to, Meriel and me. Alba says we must, we’ve got no home, nowhere to live, now that Father is dead.’ She leaned closer and confided, ‘He didn’t own the farm, you see. It was all right for me and Meriel when he was alive, we looked after him and we didn’t mind, really, when he — well, we always had enough to eat and, as Father used to say, we had a roof over our heads and were warm and dry most of the time, which was more than many folks could say. We weren’t to complain, Father said, and when he heard me — I mean, we didn’t need to complain. He was quite right, I had disobeyed him, and it was his fatherly duty to — And then when Meriel met — I mean, there was — Anyway, we’re to be nuns, and there’s an end to it.’

She had, Josse thought, told him more by what she had left out than by what she had said. He had the strong impression that there were aspects of her young life that she had been ordered, under pain of some dreadful reprisal, to keep secret. Why else would there have been the abruptly cut-off remarks?

And why, when she had referred to the dead father several times, had there been no further mention of the mother?

Josse tried to plug the gaps and put the picture together. A tenant farmer, would-be master of his own few acres, making do but only just, head held high and woe betide anyone who pitied him. Heavy-handed in his punishments when his family complained, domineering, cowing a gentle wife to silence. Nothing put by, so that, when his daughters were suddenly orphaned, they were left both homeless and penniless.

And so they had come to Hawkenlye, where, without any consideration of whether or not they had a true vocation, they were all to be nuns.

This little thing, with her naughty eyes and her chatter, a nun?

Ah, but-

Josse had forgotten where he was. And, more importantly, which wise soul ruled this Abbey’s comings and goings. Abbess Helewise, he thought, with a rush of relief, would never admit a postulant because somebody else said she must. She, with her wise and perceptive eyes, would not force this child — Berthe — to take the veil unless Berthe was quite sure that God had called her, and that she wanted to answer His summons.

‘How do Alba and Meriel feel about being nuns?’ he asked.

‘Meriel doesn’t really show what she’s feeling, not at present, anyway, but Alba quite likes it,’ Berthe said. Ah yes, Josse remembered, Alba was already in Holy Orders. ‘Well, as much as Alba ever likes anything.’ A faint grin crossed Berthe’s face. ‘Alba says we are not put on this earth to enjoy ourselves, that we must work, and pray, and fight every moment to overcome original sin.’

‘And do you?’ Josse didn’t think it very likely.

‘I don’t really think I understand what original sin is,’ Berthe said, dropping her voice to a whisper, ‘but I’m quite sure Alba’s right, and we’ve got to be on our guard against it.’ The blue eyes stared intently at Josse. ‘Do you know?’ she asked, still in a whisper.

‘Er-’ Josse was not entirely sure that he understood any more than Berthe did. ‘Um — because Adam and Eve sinned,’ he said, thinking hard, ‘every one of us comes into the world tainted by that sin. Well, the same sin, sort of.’ He gave her a weak smile, hoping his paltry explanation would suffice.

Clearly it didn’t. ‘But what was the sin?’ Berthe persisted. ‘If Adam and Eve did it, then it was years ago, really ages and ages, and surely it’s not still lurking around trying to lure us into transgression now?’

Lure us into transgression, Josse thought. He didn’t imagine that little phrase was Berthe’s own. Who, he wondered, had been preaching at her?

‘Er — well, we can’t really help how we get here,’ he stumbled, ‘it’s nature, and it’s the same for all of us, king, knight and poor man, pope and saint. Oh, except the Holy Virgin Mary, because she was the Immaculate Conception.’ He was afraid he was entrenching himself more deeply and irrevocably into philosophical argument with every word. ‘See?’ he concluded hopefully.

Berthe shook her head. ‘No. Not at all.’ She was frowning. ‘What do you mean, how we get here? And what’s Immaculate Conception? I thought conceiving was when mares and cows are put with the stallion or the bull, when they’re going to bear young.’

But Josse, with a surge of relief, had noticed that his end of the infirmary had another visitor. One who, soft-footed, had arrived without his having noticed, and who, from the smile on her face, appeared to have overheard at least part of the conversation.

He grinned at Berthe. ‘I am not really the right person to ask,’ he said. ‘But, as luck would have it, this good lady is. Berthe, have you been presented to Abbess Helewise?’

Helewise had put off her visit to Josse until after Nones. It was not that she didn’t want to see him — far from it, she had been impatient to reassure herself that he really was on the way to recovery since first Sister Euphemia had told her of the sudden improvement in his condition.

It was, in fact, because of that impatience that she had forced herself to delay. She had, she was all too aware without her confessor having laboured the point, spent far too much time recently worrying about Josse. Oh, not to the detriment of her attention to her duties — she had made quite sure of that.

But it was, she had been discovering, quite possible to perform one’s duties convincingly while one’s mind and heart were engaged elsewhere. Even — and she was bitterly ashamed of herself — to recite the Office with her lips while her thoughts lay with that long, still figure in the infirmary.

She had already prayed for God’s forgiveness for that surely hurtful sin against His love, even before Father Gilbert had imposed his penance. Forcing herself to wait for almost all of the day before going to see Josse with her own eyes had been her idea; it had cost her far more than anything Father Gilbert had ordered.

Even having reached the infirmary, she did not allow herself to hurry immediately to Josse. Instead, she made sure that other patients received their due, stopping here by the bed of an amputee, there by a man newly recovered from the flux, and making a little detour to the area where two recently-delivered mothers proudly showed her their newborn babies. She also sought out and spoke to the infirmarer and her nurses with, as always, a word or two to each one.

It was hard, infirmary duty. The nursing nuns worked long hours, and refused to allow anybody to pass from this world into the next unless they were quite sure that God’s summons was not to be denied. Helewise, well aware that some of the tasks which Sister Euphemia and her nuns performed with horrible regularity would turn her stomach, wanted always to ensure that the infirmary staff knew how much their Abbess appreciated them.

Finally, she allowed her steps to follow the well-trodden path to Josse’s bedside.

‘. . What’s Immaculate Conception?’ a light young voice was demanding. Berthe, Helewise thought, beginning to smile. Oh, dear, Josse seemed to have got himself into rather a pass. And was he really up to discussing the niceties of theological philosophy, convalescent as he was? Resisting the urge to chuckle, Helewise stepped forward.

The relief on Josse’s face as he saw her — and instantly dumped his little problem into her lap — suggested she had been right. He wasn’t up to it.

Berthe had shot to her feet and was making Helewise a passably graceful bow — ‘Thank you, Berthe,’ Helewise murmured — and Josse had relaxed, with evident relief, against his pillows.

‘Young Berthe has been cheering me up with a nice chat,’ Josse said.

‘Yes, so I heard,’ Helewise replied; the mild irony had been intended only for Josse, and only he gave a brief smile in recognition.

‘Abbess, am I allowed to ask you about Original Sin and that?’ Berthe demanded. ‘Josse says-’

‘Sir Josse,’ Helewise corrected.

‘Sorry, Sir Josse says you can explain better than he can. .?’

Helewise took a breath. ‘Original Sin refers to the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, a disobedience which, because we are all descended from the first parents, we inherit,’ she said. She shot Josse a glance of mock reproof. ‘The Virgin Mary may indeed be the one Holy soul born without inheriting this sin, or so our eccelesiastical teachers would say, which is why we refer to our Blessed Virgin as the Immaculate Conception.’

‘But-’ persisted the irrepressible Berthe.

‘Berthe, dear, this is neither the time nor the place for theological instruction,’ Helewise insisted gently.

‘I’m sorry, Abbess, only Alba says-’

‘I am well aware what Alba says.’ The words had emerged more harshly that Helewise had intended; it was unfair to be angry with Berthe because of Alba’s shortcomings. ‘Off you go, now, Berthe,’ she went on, much more kindly. ‘Your visit has obviously done Sir Josse good’ — Josse nodded enthusiastically — ‘but I wish to speak to him now.’

Berthe had flushed with pleasure at the compliment. ‘Have I really done you good?’ she enquired, looking from Josse to Helewise and back again.

Helewise’s ‘Yes’ and Josse’s ‘Aye’ sounded together like a chorus.

Berthe’s smile spread until it encompassed her whole face. ‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ she exclaimed. Then, impetuously, ‘I wish Alba would let me be a nurse instead of a nun, I’d really much rather. Goodbye!’

Helewise watched Josse’s eyes following the girl as she hurried away. Then he turned to her.

She knew what he was going to say. As he opened his mouth to speak, she said, ‘No, Sir Josse. Before you do me the injustice of even asking, let me assure you that I will not be accepting Berthe as a postulant, not until she herself wants me to.’

Josse gave her a rueful smile. ‘Sorry, Abbess.’

‘No need for that,’ she said shortly. Indeed, she should not be impatient with him; the poor man’s recent state of health had surely made him deaf and blind to the subtleties of what had been going on in the community.

Just when she could have done with his wise counsel, too.

She studied him. He was still very pale, but then that was only to be expected; he had been shut away inside for so long, as well as having been so desperately ill. She glanced at the wounded arm. The dressing seemed to be smaller than when she had last visited. Was that a good sign?

He had followed the line of her glance. He, too, was looking down at his arm. ‘It is healing, Abbess,’ he said. He managed a grin. ‘Only hurts now if I try to throw a punch.’

‘I am quite sure there is no call for that here,’ she said primly. Then, unable to hold back the question any longer: ‘Sir Josse, was Berthe confiding in you just now?’

‘Before we got going on Original Sin, you mean?’ The old humour was back in his eyes.

‘Yes.’

He sighed. ‘Aye, that she was. Not a happy tale, is it?’

‘That’s just it! I don’t know what the tale is, not really.’ She hesitated. Was it right to suggest that a nun had been deliberately misleading her? Not one of her own nuns, perhaps, but, nevertheless, one that Hawkenlye had taken in. .

Making up her mind — this was Josse, her friend! How many times before had she confided in him and been glad of it? — she said, ‘All I know of Sister Alba, Meriel and Berthe is what Alba has told me.’ She kept her eyes steadily on Josse’s. ‘And, although it pains me to say it, I have become increasingly certain that Sister Alba is lying.’