The Enchanter's Forest

Chapter 11

The body was brought to Hawkenlye Abbey because those who found it — three days after the murder and stinking to high heaven — did not know what else to do with it. The men whose unpleasant lot it had been to smell out the corpse were merchants; a trio of Essex men on their way back to the markets of London after a visit to northern France. They had heard of the new attraction in the forest close to Hadfeld and taken a brief detour to go and see it for themselves. People back home loved to hear tales of faraway places and the three men had congratulated themselves on their foresight in making sure that, this time, they would be returning armed with a story good enough to ensure that they would be stood drinks in the tavern on the day they reached home.

And that had been before they found the body.

The tomb they had found in a state of some confusion: queues of men, women and children of all ages and in all conditions stood in a line patiently waiting to be admitted through the gap in the fence, yet as the merchants’ turn approached they detected unease among the stoutly built and mean-looking men who guarded the place. And when the youngest of the merchants ventured a question concerning the discovery of those impressively large bones, one of the guards had shot a nervous glance at his companion and said not to ask him, he wasn’t the one with all the clever answers, to which the other guard had muttered something about their job being to safeguard the tomb, wait to be told what else to do and then collect their wages, and God alone knew when that was going to happen.

The three merchants had dutifully waited their turn and crept forward to look at the giant’s bones in their stony grave, each of them feeling the same sense of shock and, as one of them put it, ‘a sort of trembling on the skin’. All three of them were far from being cowards, each having had his share of the sort of dangers common to the life of a travelling man, yet to a man they were glad to walk away from the tomb and its silent, inert occupant, who somehow managed to emanate a sense of threat, of menace.

The men purchased bread, cheese and mugs of some reasonably tasty small beer. Then, as they finally set off, they decided that the weird things they had experienced might be exaggerated a little when the tale was told; with any luck, they might get their beer bought for them for more than one evening. .

Their noses had led them to the putrefying body quite soon after leaving the tomb. They had hacked their way into the huge clump of brambles and, not without damage to their hands, wrists and clothing, managed to extract it.

One of the merchants had unfolded a blanket out of his pack, which he had nobly sacrificed (nobody, not even a man without a sense of smell, would want to use that blanket again, with all those stains from where the dead flesh was seeping foul liquids) for the purpose of wrapping up the body. They slung the noisome parcel over the man’s horse — he opted for riding pillion behind one of his companions, close proximity to the corpse being best avoided as far as possible — and quickly got on the road. The three knew of Hawkenlye Abbey and, being God-fearing men, decided that it was the obvious place to deposit their unwelcome burden. One of the men half-heartedly suggested returning to the Tomb of Merlin that they had recently left — it was certainly closer — but the others were of the opinion that Hawkenlye was altogether a holier and therefore more honest and trustworthy place. The three men had each gained the impression that there was something distinctly odd about Merlin’s Tomb.

The merchants reached Hawkenlye in the mid-afternoon. The man who had wrapped the body slid down from his friend’s horse and, approaching the nun on duty beside the gate, asked to speak to the abbot.

‘You’re strangers,’ the old nun said, fixing him with sharp eyes.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘We know of Hawkenlye Abbey, Sister, but not a lot about it.’

‘Then,’ the porteress said grandly, ‘I shall excuse your ignorance and inform you that the person in charge here is the Abbess Helewise.’

The man made a graceful bow. ‘My apologies.’

‘No need for that,’ the nun replied. Eyeing the other two merchants and the blanket-wrapped body, she sniffed and added, ‘Follow me.’

Helewise, her work interrupted by Sister Ursel’s knock, listened to the merchant’s tale as she strode beside him back to the gate. Standing beside him, eyes on the body on the horse, she said quietly, ‘You found him on the southern fringes of the forest?’

‘Yes, my lady Abbess, in the middle of a bramble thicket. It was only the smell that gave him away.’

Helewise was thinking it was quite likely that other passers-by had smelt the corpse but, less Christian than these three merchants, had, in St Luke’s words, passed by on the other side. Turning to the man standing beside her, she said, ‘You could have left the body where it lay and avoided both the unpleasant task of bringing him here and also the delay it has afforded you.’

The merchant looked quite shocked. ‘But, my lady, he might have died unprepared! We could not have left him there to rot in unhallowed ground with his sins heavy on him.’

‘You have done well,’ she said. ‘I will summon some of the lay brethren to transport the body to the infirmary, where the poor soul will be prepared for burial. As for yourselves’ — she glanced at the man’s scratched hands — ‘I will ask my infirmarer to arrange for your wounds to be treated. And will you take refreshment with us before you go on your way?’

The merchant glanced at his companions, then said, ‘Thank you, my lady, but, as you imply, we have already lost time. With your leave, we’ll have our hands bathed and then we will depart as soon as we can.’

‘Of course.’ Helewise caught Sister Ursel’s eye and, as the nun hurried to her superior’s side, quickly gave orders that Brother Saul and two or three of the others be summoned. Then, beckoning to the three merchants and leading them over to the infirmary, Helewise forced herself to gather her thoughts.

She was trying to work out what Josse would have done under the circumstances. A body had been found, on which there might or might not be means of identification. It had been concealed, which in all likelihood meant that the dead man had not met his end by natural means. Unless, of course, he had felt unwell and slipped unconscious from his horse. . But then he would hardly have crawled into a bramble thicket to die, now would he? she reminded herself crossly. The deep scratches on the hands of the merchants who had extracted him bore witness to how dense that thicket had been and, by a natural progression, to the unlikelihood of the body having been in there for any purpose other than concealment. Which meant that the poor soul had probably been murdered and that his killer had hidden the body.

Josse, she decided, would extract every scrap of information that he could from those who found the body. Especially since, in the case of these three merchants, it was likely that they would not be available for further questioning once they had proceeded on their way.

Entering the infirmary, she briefly told Sister Euphemia what had happened, alerting her to the fact that she was just about to have a very smelly dead body to deal with. She added that the three merchants required treatment for cuts to their hands and the infirmarer summoned one of her nursing nuns, who quickly fetched hot water and oils and clean linen cloths and set about her task.

Watching the veiled head bent over the first man’s bleeding wrist, Helewise said, ‘Now, my friends, please relate to me the whole story and omit no detail, however small.’

It sounded very businesslike — also quite dramatic — but for all that, once the three men had told their story, interrupting each other, butting in with additional observations, Helewise was really still no wiser than she had been to begin with. It boiled down simply to the merchants having left the Tomb of Merlin — one of the men offered the opinion that the guards on duty there had seemed ill at ease — and shortly afterwards, perhaps four or five miles along the track and still very close under the eaves of the forest, smelling the stench of death. They had quickly located its source and, with barely a glance at the body, hastily wrapped it up and loaded it on to one of their horses.

‘Sorry, my lady,’ one of the merchants said. ‘But that’s all we can tell you.’

She nodded her acceptance. ‘Very well. Thank you for what you have done and please rest assured that I shall summon our priest, who will do what he can for the poor dead man’s soul. We shall bury him here at Hawkenlye unless someone comes forward to claim him, and we shall pray for him.’

The man’s eyes filled with tears. ‘He could do no better than be buried here,’ he said. ‘I can think of nowhere finer nor more fitting to await the Day of Judgement than here with you and your good nuns.’

Helewise bowed her head. ‘Thank you. Now, if you are all ready, I will see you on your way.’

A short time later, Helewise was back in the infirmary, in a curtained-off cubicle at the far end of the long room. Hot water and lavender oil bubbled in a little pot over a candle flame, giving off a strong, cleansing scent, and Sister Caliste had prepared bunches of rosemary that now hung above the body on the narrow cot. She stood beside Sister Euphemia and Sister Caliste as the two nursing nuns first unwrapped the blanket and then set about carefully removing the corpse’s garments.

The dead man was dressed in a fine velvet tunic which, before his body had begun to leach discolouring fluids into the fabric, had been scarlet red in colour, trimmed with gold braid. His undershirt was of linen and he had clearly been wearing it for several days, for it was sweat-stained and grubby around the collar and cuffs. His hose were of good quality but, like the tunic, scratched and torn by the brambles. His boots had suffered similar damage, although even the mud, the scuffed toes and the deep scratches in the high-quality leather could not disguise the fact that the boots must have cost a goodly sum. His tangled hair had been recently trimmed and looked dark in colour, although as Sister Caliste began to wash it, it was revealed to be a reddish chestnut shade. At a nod from Helewise, Sister Euphemia gently lifted the right eyelid. The dead man’s eyes had been light grey.

When the corpse had been stripped, thoroughly washed and covered up to the chest with a linen sheet, the three nuns stood looking down on the dead man. The body was already bloating and the veins were prominent and slightly greenish in colour. The face had swelled a little but, despite the disfigurement, it was still perfectly obvious that he had been a very handsome man.

Helewise was staring at a large bruise on the front of the neck. Pointing, she said quietly, ‘Sister Euphemia, could this be what killed him?’

The infirmarer bent closer. Then, with a soft exclamation, she beckoned to Helewise. ‘Look, my lady,’ she whispered. ‘There, on the right side of the throat beside the main area of bruising. Can you see?’

Helewise leant over the corpse. Sister Caliste tapped her gently on the hand and offered a sprig of rosemary; she had been squeezing it to make it release its fragrant oils and now Helewise, giving the young nun a grateful smile, held it to her nose. It helped, a little.

She made herself concentrate, forcing down the nausea. I must help this poor soul, she thought, and I will not be able to do so if I am crouched outside the infirmary vomiting up my midday meal. Now, let me see if I can make out whatever it is that Sister Euphemia’s sharp eyes have spotted. .

After a moment she said, ‘Yes. There are faint marks like a plait, or a braid. Of course!’ Straightening up, she stared triumphantly at the infirmarer. ‘A rope.’

‘Aye, that’s what I’m thinking,’ Sister Euphemia agreed.

‘Was he hanged, then? Throttled?’ Helewise could not help but envisage both possibilities, harrowing though the visions were.

‘I think not, my lady.’ Sister Euphemia frowned. ‘If either were the case, the rope marks would extend far further around the neck. No, what I reckon is that he’s run at some speed into a taut rope, perhaps stretched across a path, and the force of it hitting his throat broke his neck.’ Glancing down at the dead man with compassion in her face, she added quietly, ‘He’d not have known much about it. Quicker than the hangman’s noose, that would have been.’

‘There is some comfort in that,’ Helewise agreed. She was thinking hard, trying to decide what to do next. A well-dressed young man, found murdered close by the new venture of Merlin’s Tomb, and- Suddenly she recalled something that one of the merchants had said. The guards at the tomb seemed ill at ease, were his exact words.

Why should that have been? Did they know about the dead man lying in the bramble thicket just a few miles away? Good Lord, had one of them killed him? Had he been a visitor to Merlin’s Tomb who had somehow annoyed one of the guards, done something, said something, that had earned him his death warrant? But what, for goodness sake?

Oh, she thought, oh, how I wish that Josse were here!

But he’s not, the cool part of her mind replied. You have brains, you’ve worked together with Josse many times to work out the solution to puzzles more complex than this one. And what do you always do when at a loss? You search out more information.

‘I shall ride out to Merlin’s Tomb tomorrow,’ she announced. ‘Sister Euphemia, can you spare Sister Caliste?’

‘Aye, my lady, for we are quiet just now and I have enough pairs of hands to do all that is necessary without her.’

‘Thank you. Sister Caliste, you will accompany me. We shall take Brothers Saul and Augustus. Oh.’ Belatedly she realised that, with Joanna’s mare absent in France, they only had three mounts, the Abbey cob, a pony and a recalcitrant old mule who went by the name of Mole.

Sister Caliste must have appreciated the difficulty. ‘You and I could ride together on the cob, my lady,’ she suggested. ‘It is not far to the tomb, I believe, and neither of us is very heavy.’

A kind remark, but inaccurate, Helewise thought, hiding a smile; Caliste was slim and lightly built but she herself was a broad-shouldered, tall woman.

‘I think, Sister, that instead we will dispense with one of the lay brothers,’ she said. ‘Go and find Brother Augustus, please, and tell him to prepare the cob, the pony and the mule after Tierce tomorrow morning and be ready for an early start. You can ride the pony, Augustus must do what he can with the mule, and I shall ride the cob.’

Sister Caliste bowed low in compliance. Not quite quickly enough, Helewise noted, to hide the lively excitement in her eyes engendered by the prospect of the outing.

The weather the next morning was all that an English summer day ought to be. Sister Martha had helped Brother Augustus prepare the mounts and now the three animals stood ready, Augustus holding the mule and Sister Martha the pony and the cob. Helewise stepped forward and the nun gave her a leg up on to the cob’s back. ‘We call him Baldwin,’ she said. ‘Sometimes he responds to his name, sometimes not.’

‘I see,’ said Helewise. The cob shifted beneath her and she patted his thick neck. He was an inelegant horse, nothing like as enjoyable a ride as the mare Honey, but then, Helewise reminded herself sternly, I am not going on a pleasure jaunt.

Caliste and Augustus were now also mounted; with a nod, Helewise kicked the cob’s sides and led her little party through the gate and off on the road that led around the forest.

There was no need to ride in silence and Helewise let her two younger companions chatter away to each other, although in the main she did not join in. She was very aware that she had an important role to play today and she was trying her best to convince herself that she was up to it.

They reached the track that branched off into the forest glade where Merlin’s Tomb was to be found and joined the queue of people waiting to file past it. But only until they reached the first of the barriers; here Helewise, suppressing her surprisingly intense desire to go on and catch a glimpse of those bones, addressed the heavily built man on guard duty and asked to speak to whoever was in charge.

The man looked her up and down, only belatedly according her, in an awkward and grudging bow, the respect that as a habited nun was her due. Then, with a sniff, he rubbed at his broken nose with the back of his hand and said, ‘Reckon that’s me. What d’you want?’

‘I am not prepared to discuss the matter out here in the open where we may be overheard,’ she said quietly. ‘Is there somewhere more private where we might go?’

He glanced around. Then, evidently spotting whatever he was looking for, he called out, ‘Jack! Oi, Jack, come over here.’

A man in a stained leather jerkin walked unhurriedly across to them. ‘What?’

‘Watch the gate here for me. I’ve got to talk to the nun here. She wants a word in private.’

The man in the jerkin gave Helewise an assessing look. Then, turning to his companion: ‘All right, Hal, but don’t be long about it. I’m meant to be off duty and I’m about to get myself something to eat.’

‘I’ll take what time I want,’ the first guard said, swiftly rising anger turning his fleshy, deeply scarred face an unhealthy shade of purplish-red. ‘You answer to me, Jack, and don’t you go forgetting it!’

Then, puffing out his chest like a cock in the barnyard, he said grandly to Helewise, ‘Follow me, if you will, Sister.’

He led the way back along the track for a short distance before taking a narrower path off to the left. There was just about room for Helewise and her companions to ride, although she felt the undergrowth scratch against the fabric of her habit and once a branch of hazel pushed quite hard into her leg.

The path opened out into a clearing where cut widths of tree trunk had been set out, presumably to serve as seats. The litter of hard crusts of bread, rinds of cheese and one or two coarse, cracked earthenware mugs lying around on the trampled grass suggested that it was the place where the guards went to take their refreshment breaks.

‘Now,’ the guard said, looking up at her through calculating, narrowed eyes, ‘will you dismount, Sister, so that we may speak?’

Brother Augustus slipped off the mule’s back and, keeping hold of the reins, said, ‘Friend, this is the Abbess of Hawkenlye. You must address her as my lady Abbess.’

The guard looked quite impressed and his thin lips twisted in a gap-toothed grin. ‘Sorry, my lady Abbess, didn’t know who you were.’

‘It’s quite all right,’ Helewise said.

‘Right. Now, then. What can I do for you?’

‘A body has been brought to the Abbey,’ she said without preamble. ‘It is that of a well-dressed and handsome young man and it was found in a bramble thicket some four or five miles from here. A party of merchants found it, locating its place of concealment by the smell; the victim had been dead for some days. Since the body was found quite close to Merlin’s Tomb, I must ask you if anyone corresponding to this description has recently visited the tomb.’

The guard had heard her out in silence, his face unreadable. When she finished speaking he said, ‘What was he wearing and what did he look like?’ Helewise told him. ‘Did he have a horse?’

‘No mention was made of a horse.’ She had been careful not to say how the man had died, just as now she made sure not to offer the suggestion that any horse the dead man might have been riding would surely have eventually made for home when its owner failed to remount and kick it on again.

The man was frowning. Then he said neutrally, ‘Our master is missing. Hasn’t been seen for four days now.’

‘You mean Florian of Southfrith?’ Helewise tried to keep the shock out of her voice. Was the body at Hawkenlye that of Florian? Unbidden she heard in her mind the Domina’s voice: There are things that could be done. But the guard was speaking; stamping down the whirling thoughts, she made herself listen.

‘The very same,’ the guard said. Now he sounded like a gossip avid to impart news. ‘He was busy in the afternoon and early evening four days back counting his takings. He was going to bag up the money and take it home after the last visitors had gone. Well, other than the few who stopped over. If we had any that night, that is. I could check,’ he offered. He was, Helewise noted, being considerably more co-operative now that he knew who she was. Rank does indeed have its uses, she thought wryly.

‘Was it generally known that he was to ride home with the money?’ she asked. ‘If indeed he rode?’

‘He rode all right. Had a fast-paced bay gelding that must have set him back a tidy sum,’ the guard said. ‘And as to it being known, aye, I reckon it was. It’s no secret how much he’s taking here, my lady Abbess, nor, I reckon, that he usually takes the money home two or even three times a week. People have eyes to see the coins changing hands and brains to do the adding-up.’

‘He was in the habit of taking the money away with him unescorted?’ she asked. It seemed very foolhardy.

The guard shook his head. ‘No. It was more usual for one of us guards to go with him, and he picked us special like, on account of we all know how to handle ourselves in a fight and have no qualms over bearing arms and using them if we have to. But that night, nobody could be spared. I remember now’ — he nodded enthusiastically — ‘we’d been busy and there were a party of seven staying over. Florian, he said we had to help out. He didn’t want folk going away and saying they hadn’t got their money’s worth, see, so Jack and me and the others, off we went to the accommodation huts to dole out food and shake up mattresses.’ His look of disdain told her what he thought about that.

‘So quite a lot of people would have known that he was to take a large sum of money home with him but with no bodyguard,’ she mused.

‘I can guess what you’re thinking, my lady, but it weren’t as risky as it sounds on account of that bay of his,’ the guard said. ‘It went like the wind and Florian said he could outrun anyone as tried to apprehend him and rob him.’

‘I see.’ What, Helewise wondered, became of the horse? Had it indeed returned to Florian’s home? But if so, then why had nobody raised the alarm? A riderless horse coming in late at night must surely have sent Florian’s wife and her mother into a veritable panic of alarm.

Perhaps it did, Helewise thought. Perhaps they sent for help and even now a search party is out looking for Florian. A search party that for some reason has not yet got as far as Hawkenlye Abbey. Which, considering the Abbey’s fame hereabouts, must be a very odd search party indeed.

Her next move was now clear. ‘Thank you for your help,’ she said to the guard. ‘Now one last request: tell me, if you please, how I may find Florian of Southfrith’s dwelling place.’

The directions were easy to follow and presently Helewise was leading her companions through the gate and into the courtyard of Florian’s Hadfeld manor house. There was a row of tethering rings set in the wall and, dismounting, Helewise tied her mount’s reins. Brother Augustus and Sister Caliste did the same. Then, turning slowly to look about her, Helewise took in the scene.

There was a new extension under construction and the half-built walls were keeping a team of men busy. She could hear them talking; occasionally someone would call out a request for some tool or item of building material, to which there would be a cheerful response. A happy work force, she thought, doing a skilful job in fine weather for good wages.

She crossed the courtyard to the steps leading up to the main building, sensing Augustus and Caliste falling in behind her. Mounting the steps while her companions waited at their foot, she knocked on the stout door. After quite a long wait — she was just about to knock again — the door opened.

The woman who stood on the step staring out at Helewise with hostile eyes and an arrogant tilt to her chin was dressed entirely in black. Her hair was drawn off her face and covered with a little close-fitting black silk cap, over which was pinned a long, dark, semi-translucent veil which fell forward over her forehead almost as far as her eyes. In a voice that had the harsh timbre of a cawing crow, she said in heavily accented English, ‘Yes? Who are you?’

Helewise announced herself. Then, feeling her way cautiously, she said, ‘I wish to speak to the wife of Florian of Southfrith, whom I understand to be master here.’

The woman made a sound that sounded as if she did not think much of this understanding. ‘He’s — not here,’ she said.

‘As I say, it is his wife to whom I wish to speak,’ Helewise repeated politely.

The woman studied her, dark eyebrows drawn down. Then: ‘You can’t. She has taken to her bed.’

‘Is she sick?’

‘She is. .’ The formidable woman hesitated. ‘Sick, oui.’

‘I am sorry to hear that,’ Helewise said. ‘Perhaps we can help? Sister Caliste here is a nursing nun and skilled in the healing arts.’

‘My daughter can see nobody,’ the woman said firmly. ‘She is. .’ Again, she seemed to be searching for the right words. It could be, Helewise thought, because she was unaccustomed to speaking English. Alternatively, it could be because she was weighing what she said extremely carefully so as not to give too much away. .

I am not going to stand here on the doorstep like some pedlar trying to sell his wares, she decided. She drew in a breath and then said quietly, ‘The body of a young man has been brought to Hawkenlye Abbey. I have just come from Merlin’s Tomb, where I was told that Florian of Southfrith has not been seen for four days. The description that I gave to the guard there at the tomb appears to match that of your son-in-law and so I am very reluctantly forced to inform you that I believe the young man lying in our infirmary awaiting burial is indeed Florian.’

The woman’s face might have been carved from marble for all the reaction the features displayed to this terrible news. After a moment, the thin mouth opened and, lapsing into her mother tongue, she said, ‘It is as I feared, then. Primevere keeps saying that I am foolish to worry, that it is merely that he stays for more days out at the tomb in the forest — he is in the habit of remaining there for several days at a time, so eager is he to ensure that everything runs well — but me, I say we should send men to look for him. Now, alas, it seems I was right to be concerned.’

Helewise, trying to follow the rapid French — a language that nowadays she spoke infrequently — silently gave her brain a sharp nudge and replied in the same tongue. ‘Perhaps it would be wise for someone from your household to view the body to make quite sure it is that of Florian,’ she suggested. ‘If your daughter is already sick, then it would be unkind to risk upsetting her for nothing if the dead man proves to be someone else.’

The woman in black considered this for some time and then gave a curt nod. ‘It is sensible,’ she conceded. She thought further, frowning. Then: ‘I shall come myself. Wait here.’ Then she closed the door.

Helewise turned and slowly descended the steps. ‘That is Florian’s mother-in-law,’ she muttered to Augustus and Caliste. ‘She is going to return to Hawkenlye with us to view the body. She seems certain it’s Florian but we will wait for proof before she breaks the news to his wife.’ Dropping her voice still lower, she added, ‘The girl’s name is Primevere.’

‘Primrose,’ Sister Caliste breathed. ‘How pretty.’ Her face fell into dismay. ‘Oh, the poor girl! It’s dreadful for her, isn’t it, my lady? And she doesn’t even know yet that he’s dead!’

‘Indeed not,’ Helewise agreed, ‘for the mother says her daughter is still making herself believe that nothing is amiss; that Florian is merely staying on for a few more days at the tomb in the forest. And already Primevere lies sick in her bed, although what ails her I do not know. Perhaps it is anxiety about her husband. That would be readily understandable, for all that she may profess not to be concerned.’

‘Did you ask about the horse, my lady?’ Augustus asked softly.

‘No, Gus, I didn’t. Do you think I should?’

‘Oh!’ The young man seemed surprised and embarrassed to have his opinion sought. Then, sensibly, he put the reaction aside and answered the question. ‘Well, seems to me as if the horse can’t have turned up, else the alarm would have been raised.’

‘Quite so,’ she said.

‘If on the other hand the horse came home alone and nobody thought to wonder what had become of the rider,’ Augustus went on, ‘then that might very well be something we ought to investigate. Why, I mean, did nobody go out looking for him?’

‘How would we know if the horse did come home?’ whispered Helewise.

Augustus glanced around him. ‘Stable block’s over there, I reckon.’ He pointed to a long building that went away at right angles from the far side of the house. ‘While we’re waiting, I might just go and stretch my legs before we set off for the Abbey. A fast bay gelding, didn’t the guard say?’

Helewise found herself smiling. ‘Yes, Gussie. I believe he did.’

She watched as, with a convincing air of nonchalance, Augustus strolled off in the direction of the stables. He stretched, gazed around him, even plucked at the rear of his habit to pull it away from where the perspiration of the ride had made it stick to his buttocks. He’s very good, she thought.

Presently he disappeared around the corner of the stable block. As Helewise waited to hear what he would find out, she discovered that her hands were sweating.