Whiter than the Lily

19

For the third time, Josse rode down the track and across the marshland to Saltwych.

This time they knew who he was and they were waiting for him. Two of the guards who had apprehended him on his first visit rode out to meet him and, grim faced and silent, fell in on either side of him and rode with him into the settlement. There were few people about; the place appeared almost deserted. One of the guards took charge of the horses; the other man took him to the long hall. Josse expected to be faced with Aelle, but it was not the clan chieftain who waited for him across the hearth.

The strange silver eyes contemplated him for some moments before the man spoke. Then, in a neutral voice, he said, ‘You have returned, Josse d’Acquin. By day now and not sneaking through the dark on your belly like a whipped hound.’

Josse straightened his shoulders. ‘I was told quite definitely that the woman of whom I spoke, Galiena Ryemarsh, came from this community. I came back because I wish to establish the truth.’

‘The truth,’ mused the man with the silver eyes. ‘A dangerous commodity, Josse d’Acquin. Are you quite sure you wish to know it?’

‘I am,’ Josse replied.

‘Even more dangerous,’ went on the man, still in the same quiet, contemplative tone, ‘is your implication that the clan chief lied to you. Aelle does not care to have his word doubted.’

‘But I was told by Galiena’s family that this was where she was born!’ Josse said forcefully. ‘I believe that they spoke true.’

The man said nothing. He stood on the far side of the bright fire in the hearth, and Josse could not see him clearly. He wore a long robe of some light colour and its outline seemed to shimmer in the flickering light. Unaccountably, Josse felt heavy-eyed as he tried to focus on his adversary.

The man held up a long hand and beckoned. Josse stepped around the hearth and went over to stand beside him. ‘Aelle is away hunting,’ the man said softly. ‘He has taken the strong men of the clan. They will not be pleased to see you back here, asking your questions. Oh, no.’

‘Then tell me what I need to know and let me leave before they return!’ Josse urged. ‘I have come in peace, it is not right to threaten me in this way.’

‘You perceive a threat?’ The man’s eyes opened wide with false innocence. Or was it false? Josse could not decide. ‘Well then, we shall have to reassure you.’ He glanced around and, seeing that he and Josse were alone in the far section of the hall, stepped back to the far wall and, lifting the corner of a ragged hanging, revealed a small door. ‘Come,’ he ordered. ‘We shall sit in my own private chamber and I shall attempt to tell you what you wish to know.’

Josse hesitated. The guards had not relieved him of his weapons — perhaps because their chieftain was not in the hall — and he felt the weight of his sword at his side. The silver-eyed man gave a soft laugh. ‘You will not need your sword,’ he said. ‘You would not attack an unarmed man, and I, as you see, carry no knife or broadsword.’ He opened his arms wide and the long, full sleeves opened out gracefully. But he was right; as far as Josse could see, he bore no blade.

‘Will you come?’ he asked.

‘Aye,’ said Josse.

The man carefully closed the door after them and led Josse to a small building that he had not noticed before. It consisted of a shallow cave in the cliff face, out from which walls had been built so as to increase the space within. The man opened a low door in the outer wall and ushered Josse inside.

The chamber was in near-darkness, the only light coming from glowing embers in a small iron brazier. The man put some small pieces of wood on to the embers, blew up a flame and then added a bundle of what looked like dry, twiggy sticks and dead leaves. Then, having drawn up a simple stool for Josse to sit on, he said without preamble, ‘Galiena did come from here. She was known by a different name and she was of high birth among our people.’ Watching Josse closely, he murmured, ‘Iduna was her given name. She was called for the goddess who guarded the golden apples of youth, for it was hoped that her birth was an omen and that she would put new vigour into the chieftain.’

Goddess. Apples of youth. Good God above, Josse thought, these are pagan things.

‘She was the chieftain’s daughter,’ the silver-eyed man was saying, ‘begotten by him upon a woman of the bloodline and born to him in his dotage. We hoped she would heal him, for he was sick at heart and in despair.’

‘It cannot be that you speak of Aelle?’ Josse said.

‘No. Of Aethelfrith, the father of Aelle, who was chieftain before him.’ The man sighed. ‘Aelle saw the responsibilities of a chieftain differently. His father had encouraged us to look outwards, to mix with our neighbours and to end our long self-imposed and inward-looking isolation. He did not think it healthy for us to preserve our secret ways and to keep others away by the fostering and the propagation of frightening legends. That, he considered, was the old way. The unenlightened way.’

‘The old ways worked efficiently,’ Josse murmured, remembering the tale that had so distressed him as a child.

‘Yes, they did, didn’t they?’ The silver-eyed man looked pleased. ‘But then it is very easy to frighten uneducated and superstitious folk out of their wits.’

It was nothing to be proud of, Josse thought. But he did not say it aloud.

‘The baby girl whom we knew as Iduna was healthy and she thrived.’ The man picked up his tale. ‘But the name that we hoped would bring good fortune failed us, and her father died when she was but a few weeks old. With his death there was no choice but to hail Aelle as chieftain. He turned his back on the outside world, shutting out the light just as it had begun to penetrate our life here. And his first act as our chief was to send his little sister away.’

‘Why?’ Josse asked.

‘Why? For two reasons. One, because she too was the daughter of a chief and when she grew to adulthood, she might have thought as her father did and so challenged her brother’s rule of secrecy. For another-’ He paused. Then: ‘Josse, what did you think of Aelle? A clever man, would you say? A wise and worldly one?’

‘I cannot say,’ Josse admitted. ‘I did not study him sufficiently well to judge.’

‘A fair answer.’ The man gave him a nod of approval. ‘Aelle is wise, and also worldly, for all that he lives isolated out here on the marsh and has little contact with the world. But he understands power, you see. He wants power, as it is understood in the wide world. Therefore he placed his baby sister in a place where he believed power was to be found.’

‘But Raelf of Readingbrooke is but a country lord!’ Josse protested. Smoke from the newly stoked brazier was floating through the chamber and prickling his eyes. It had quite a strong smell; somehow it caught at the back of the throat. He coughed, then said, ‘He lives comfortably, aye, but his prime concern is for his family!’

‘Yes,’ the silver-eyed man said patiently. ‘But I do not speak of Raelf de Readingbrooke. I speak of Ambrose Ryemarsh. Wealthy, indeed, very wealthy, would you not agree? And of a certain influence with those who rule over us?’

‘Aye,’ Josse agreed, remembering Ambrose’s swift and generous response to Queen Eleanor’s ransom appeal and the implied closeness to Plantagenet power circles, ‘but-’ He was struggling with what he was being told. ‘But she was not placed with Ambrose, she was adopted by the family at Readingbrooke!’

‘Yes, but she was married to Ambrose Ryemarsh.’

Again, Josse felt incredulity. ‘You are telling me that Aelle knew she would marry Ambrose if she were to be adopted by Raelf?’

‘Aelle did not know. But I did. I saw it.’

Josse slowly shook his head. ‘I can scarce believe it.’ It was more than that; he actively disbelieved it, but it did not seem prudent to say so.

‘She married him, did she not?’ the man enquired. ‘You will have to take my word for it, Josse d’Acquin.’

Abruptly Josse stood up and began to pace up and down in the small space. His head was swimming and he was finding it hard to concentrate. The other man watched him, and his unusual light eyes following the restless movement held a hint of amusement.

‘I don’t know for sure that Ambrose has influence, not with the King,’ Josse said after a time.

‘He has already given a very large sum towards the Lionheart’s ransom,’ the man said. ‘He plans to give a great deal more. He is a stout supporter of the King and when Richard returns, those who gave most generously to his cause will not be forgotten.’

‘So King Richard will return?’ Josse demanded.

‘Yes.’

‘I suppose you’ve seen that, too?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said the man with silver eyes.

Josse threw up his arms in exasperated confusion. ‘I believe I must be dreaming!’ he cried. ‘I see nothing but confusion!’

‘It is quite simple,’ the man said. ‘Aelle wanted rid of a sister who might grow up to encourage the people in the old chieftain’s ways, with which Aelle strongly disagrees. But if he had to give her away, why not ensure that she found a place where she could influence the tides of men? If she bore Ambrose a child, what might not be that child’s future as the son of a man who stood high in a king’s favour?’

‘But in giving her away, surely all her ties with her people here were severed!’ Josse argued.

‘You forget one thing: she carries our blood, and so would her son. You overlook the bloodline.’

The bloodline. Stunned, Josse sank down once more on to the stool.

Was the man telling the truth, or was it all an elaborate story told by a master whose words convinced even as he spoke them? Josse could not decide. There was a certain logic to it, he had to admit, assuming that Galiena would have been open to an appeal by her blood kin for assistance of some sort in this future time when she and Ambrose — and their son — were to ride high in Plantagenet favour. Ambrose had indeed given generously towards the ransom, or so he had told Josse, and apparently intended to go on doing so. Was he close to the King? If he were, Josse was not aware of it, which was not to say that it was untrue …

But Galiena is dead, he thought suddenly. So all this careful planning, all this miraculously accurate foresight, has been for nothing.

He was about to say as much to the silver-eyed man when the man spoke. Very softly, he said, ‘It will not help to make you believe what I tell you, Josse, but Iduna was not the first child to be given away. The same thing was attempted before, when Aelle gave away his dead sister’s daughter.’

‘And what became of her?’

‘She married … unwisely. Her husband turned out to be a man who did not care much for those circles of power which rule our destinies, preferring the quiet life of the country.’

‘So you failed there, too.’ It was a provocative comment and, as Josse had expected, it was met with a shaft of anger.

‘Failure is not a term I like to use,’ the man said, the cool tone denying the sudden heat in his eyes. ‘The matter was dealt with.’

Dealt with. There was a sinister quality to that. ‘There is a girl chained in one of your outbuildings,’ Josse said. ‘Is she too to be given to a powerful husband?’

‘She?’ The anger was gone and the man was smiling. ‘Oh, no.’

‘Will you let me see her? She has been drugged, I believe.’

‘Yes, she has. No, I will not let you see her.’

The man was staring at Josse. His fascination for the tale that had been woven for his benefit wavered for an instant and for the first time Josse felt fear.

He put a hand down to his sword but with a snort of laughter the silver-eyed man raised his arms. Josse’s sword hand suddenly felt as heavy as if it were tied to a solid block of iron and it fell uselessly to his side.

Still holding Josse’s eyes with his, the man said, ‘The smoke that you have been inhaling has, I believe you will find, robbed you of your resistance. It used to have the same effect upon me, but long usage has inured me to its powers.’ Gripping Josse’s wrist with a firm hand, he added, ‘Come with me.’

And, hypnotised, unable to stop himself, Josse followed him out of the hut.

In Hawkenlye Abbey, the sunny day was nearing its end.

As Helewise emerged from the Abbey church after the penultimate office of the day, she set out on the first of the two missions she knew she must complete by the end of the day. It concerned Galiena’s serving woman, Aebba, and they had told Helewise three days ago that she was missing. Nobody had reported whether or not she had turned up and Helewise, preoccupied by so many other matters, had forgotten to ask.

She asked now. Aebba was still missing.

The only person who seemed the least concerned was the young lad who had arrived at Hawkenlye with Ambrose and Aebba. When Helewise ran him to ground — behind the stables, where apparently he spent most of his time — he said Aebba hadn’t even said goodbye and he was worried about her, even more worried that nobody had given him any orders for ages and perhaps it meant he had been dismissed from the lord Ambrose’s service and so didn’t have a home any more.

‘What is your name?’ Helewise asked him gently; he seemed a pathetic boy and none too bright.

‘Arthus,’ the boy replied.

‘Well, Arthus, I will remind your master that you are still here and I will ask him if he would care for you to attend him. Would you like that?’

Slowly the boy nodded. ‘But Master don’t know ’oo I am, not really,’ he said, looking at Helewise with childlike eyes.

‘He will remember that you rode here with him,’ she said.

‘Don’t reckon ’e will,’ Arthus said. ‘’E’s normally pretty sharp, if you take my meaning, specially for one as don’t see too well. Ain’t comfortable, sometimes, and that’s the truth. But ’e were proper poorly when we came ’ere.’

His naive comment set off a vague alarm in Helewise’s mind. It recalled something that someone else had said, someone with a more enquiring, acute brain than poor young Arthus …

She thought about it. Then she remembered. Clear as day, she saw Josse, face wearing a deep frown, saying, I do not understand this talk of Ambrose as a doddering dotard.

Josse had perceived him quite differently when the two men had met previously. And now here was Arthus, implying that, when he came to Hawkenlye, Ambrose had temporarily lost his usual keen perception. They were right, both of them, she realised. Ambrose had been deeply affected by his young wife’s death, yes, but, despite his grief, he had never again reverted to being the dazed, uncomprehending, vague old man that he had been when he had arrived.

So why had he been like that?

Her next mission might well provide a clue. Thanking Arthus, reassuring him once more that he would not be either forgotten or homeless, she set off down to the Vale to look for Ambrose.

He was sitting on a low bank that jutted out over the lake that filled the Vale’s lower reaches. He had a small pile of stones beside him and he was skimming them across the flat surface of the water.

She sat down beside him. ‘Seven,’ she remarked, counting the bounces. Reaching for a stone, she had a try.

‘Eight,’ Ambrose said. ‘I cannot in truth see that well, but if I listen intently I can count the splashes. You win, my lady Abbess.’

Helewise returned his smile. ‘My sons taught me,’ she said. Then, addressing the matter uppermost in her mind, she said tentatively, ‘Ambrose, you are a different man from the one you were when you rode into the Abbey. You have lost your wife, but that is not what I mean. I refer to your own health and, I confess, I am at a loss to understand how it was that you were so weak when you arrived and yet now you are strong.’ She looked at him, willing him not to take offence at her enquiry.

He did not. Instead he frowned, as if the question puzzled him, too, and said, ‘My lady, I have thought long and hard about the same thing. I conclude that probably I had picked up one of those brief summer fevers that are there and gone swiftly but, while they rage in the blood, can turn a strong man into a mumbling fool.’

‘I do not believe,’ she said carefully, ‘that you were febrile.’

‘Well, then, the only other explanation is that my late wife’s serving woman, who was then attending to my food and drink, had drugged me,’ he said lightly.

Helewise was uncertain whether he spoke in jest. ‘Why should she do that?’ she asked.

And, with a shrug and an unreadable look in his face, he answered, ‘You tell me.’

There seemed little more to say. In the silence that followed she studied him. Ambrose’s face wore clear signs of his grief, but behind them she sensed that the man was returning to himself. ‘Ambrose, would you like to go home?’ she asked gently. ‘I will ride there with you, if it is that you dread returning to an empty house. I will stay for a time, if it would help.’

Ambrose looked down at his hands; he was flipping a stone from one to the other, catching it deftly each time. Then, raising a hand to rub at his nearsighted, slightly watering eyes, he said, ‘It is a kind thought, my lady, and it is true that I long to go home. But-’

She waited, but he did not go on. So she said, ‘You are welcome to stay with us here as long as you wish. Many folk do, when they lose the person they love best in the world. Sometimes by staying here, where they perceive themselves to be watched over by God who loves them, they believe they have found a heavenly replacement for the one they have lost.’ Thinking of one monk in particular — Brother Erse, the carpenter — she added, ‘Some even hear the call of God and decide to spend the rest of their lives in His service as monks or nuns.’

Ambrose was looking at her, an intelligent interest in his eyes. It struck her that he was a powerful man and, despite his years, still a handsome one; Galiena, she thought, had been a young woman with a mature and a discerning eye.

He was asking her a question: ‘Was it that way for you, my lady? You spoke just now of your sons; did you lose your husband and seek solace with the Lord?’

It was a very long time since anyone had asked Helewise that. Pausing to gather her thoughts, she said, ‘Not exactly. Ivo and I–I loved my husband dearly, Ambrose, and grieved when I lost him. But-’ Should she say what was in her heart? She had never done so before, not in this matter, but somehow she felt it was not only right but also actually quite important to do so now, with this sympathetic and generous-hearted man beside her.

‘I had grown used to a position of authority in my marriage,’ she said quietly. ‘My husband was a man of some influence and he delegated many of his concerns to me.’

‘A man is lucky indeed if he has an accomplished and educated wife,’ Ambrose observed.

She shot him a grateful glance for the implied compliment. ‘When I was widowed, the options were few and little to my liking,’ she went on. ‘I had not thought to take the veil, for I had no desire for the limited life that I believed would be my lot behind convent walls. But then I heard of Hawkenlye Abbey, and I learned about the principles upon which it was founded, and I thought that it was where I wanted to be. I was admitted to the congregation, I grew to love the place, I learned the meaning of a truly satisfying day’s work.’ She smiled suddenly, a wide, happy smile that seemed to well up straight from the joy in her heart. ‘I discovered that God had had a plan for me all along,’ she finished, ‘and ever since I have done my utmost to follow it.’

‘With no small success,’ he remarked, and she smiled again at his lightly ironic tone.

‘I never expected this,’ she said softly. ‘To become abbess.’

‘No. I understand that.’ Then: ‘You are not the first to speak in this manner to me. But I do not wish to become a monk, my lady. Although I am grateful for the kind thought behind the suggestion.’

‘I did not in truth believe that you would see your future with us,’ she agreed. ‘That was, in fact, what I was leading up to. I wanted to say that I do not think, Ambrose, that you are destined for this life; I think you are, and must remain, a man of and in the world.’

He sighed heavily. ‘I cannot but agree, since what prompts me to go home is the thought of the promise I made to our sovereign lady, Queen Eleanor, concerning the King’s ransom. I have already given what I could immediately give, but I must do more. We must all work without cease until we obtain his release.’

Helewise, who did not quite share his fervour, nevertheless was not surprised to hear him express it. ‘Then will we ride to Ryemarsh together, you and I?’ she asked. ‘Your wife’s serving woman appears to have left us, but up behind the Abbey stables there is a forlorn and forgotten lad named Arthus who is homesick and longing to be of service to you again. Shall we ask him to ride back with us?’

Ambrose studied her. ‘You are subtle, my lady, so to remind me of my obligations,’ he murmured.

‘I meant no reproof,’ she said quickly.

‘I did not detect one,’ he replied. Then, with a surprisingly boyish grin, ‘And had I done, it probably would have been justified.’

In the sudden closeness between them, she ventured to say something that she might otherwise have kept back. Putting aside the vague dislike that she had felt for Galiena, she reminded herself that it was Ambrose whom she now must comfort. She reached out to touch his arm lightly and said, ‘The house will be empty without her, Ambrose, but you will learn to deal with your loss, of that I am certain, for you are a strong man.’

He put a hand on hers and gave it a squeeze. ‘I am grateful for your confidence, my lady, for I confess that mine is at a low ebb. She — she-’ But whatever image of his wife he held in his heart was too much for him and without warning he began to weep.

‘She was so young, too young to die!’ he sobbed. ‘And still we do not know how it happened! That in itself would be a comfort, of sorts, and yet the matter appears insoluble.’

She took his hand in both of hers. ‘It may be that we shall never know,’ she said gently. ‘If that is the case, you will have to find a way to accept it.’

‘I know.’ He wiped his eyes with his free hand and took a deep breath. ‘I know. I shall try, my lady.’

They went on sitting there on the bank, side by side, hand in hand. Helewise, open to the message that all her senses seemed to be sending her, was thinking that, if it transpired that Galiena had indeed been killed by another’s hand, then there was one person who Helewise was quite certain was innocent.

Josse, she remembered, had wondered if Ambrose, the cuckolded husband, might have poisoned his young wife. Josse had been suspicious because Ambrose had failed to mention the objection that Raelf had made to the possible explanation that Galiena had accidentally poisoned herself by eating berries or fungi in the forest, yet the girl’s husband must have known as well as her father of her skill with herbs and plants.

Well, Josse was an astute man but in this case he was wrong. Helewise knew that Ambrose Ryemarsh had not killed his wife; he had not been himself at the time of Galiena’s death, which would explain why he had not challenged the poisonous berry theory, and his sadness was genuine, she was quite sure of it. So, thank the kind Lord, was his ignorance that she had been pregnant.

Tomorrow, she thought, we shall set out for Ryemarsh and Ambrose will take the first steps in resuming his life at home. I will help him if I can, and I will ask God in His mercy to support him as he learns to live without her.

With a sort of peace descending on her which she prayed that Ambrose felt too, she stared out at the setting sun’s reflections in the quiet water.