Joanna could see little of him but the top of his head — he appeared to be bald — and his slight shoulders. He was dressed in some dark garment that might have been deliberately chosen to make him hard to spot in the dim light. As she stared intently down at him, he straightened up and began to creep on down the path.
Stay on that track, Joanna willed him, follow it wherever it leads you, and do not turn aside.
It seemed as if he would obey. Turning his head to look from side to side, he paused for a moment to stare at the animal track leading off towards the yew tree — Joanna felt her heart stop — but then, apparently losing interest, he made as if to go on.
Just at that moment, Meggie stirred, gave a little hiccup that brought up a mouthful of semi-digested milk, and let out a small, soft sigh.
He can’t have heard, Joanna told herself, he is too far away!
But the man had stopped. Turning with infinite slowness towards the yew tree, he raised his head and stared right up at the place where the platform sat hidden in the tree’s thick branches, still clad in their dark-green foliage. Only then, when danger really threatened, did Joanna fully appreciate the wisdom of her people in constructing the refuge in an evergreen tree.
Keep still! Joanna ordered herself. And, instantly disobeying her own command, she stretched out a hand to Meggie.
Who, not aware of the terrible drama being enacted around her, merely perceived her mother’s particular scent. And, as she always did when her mother came close, she gave a happy little gurgle.
Even as Joanna watched the man hurl himself along the faint track she thought, what an irony, to be betrayed by a baby’s delight.
There was still hope. Twisting round to give Utta a furiously intent look — stay still! — she put her eye back to the spyhole.
He was very near now, standing just outside the protective ring formed by the outer branches of the yew tree. It seemed almost as if he were reluctant to enter under the dense green foliage. Putting all her power into her thought, Joanna commanded him: Keep away!
It was almost as if he heard her. With a low laugh — a truly horrible sound — he bent down and, coming forward in a crouch, straightened up again right beside the trunk.
But he could not get up to them, Joanna thought frantically, not without a rope! And if he went away to fetch one — to fetch more men too, probably — then she and Utta could escape while he was gone.
There was silence for so long that she thought he had already gone. But then, sounding frighteningly close, came his voice.
‘I know you are there, my pretty maid,’ he said. ‘And, by the sound of it, you have one of your accursed offspring with you, although they did not tell me that you had whelped. Still, the fires that consume you will accept your young, have no fear.’
Then there was a whisper of sound, quickly repeated once, then once again; he must have brought a rope with him, for he was trying to cast it over the lowest branch so as to haul himself up.
Joanna heard a muffled sound behind her: Utta, stifling her agony with a corner of a blanket. For an instant, Joanna met her eyes. Then she looked at Meggie, grinning gummily up at her from her little nest.
This was Joanna’s test. Suddenly she knew it, without any doubt. She heard the Domina’s words in her head: When the time comes, remember that what you have done before, you can do again.
Feeling her fear run out of her as resolve took its place, Joanna climbed off the platform and silently descended the rope ladder. She was thinking, as her bare feet effortlessly found the rough rungs, of that earlier time, that occasion — which the Domina must have known about — when once previously Joanna had acted out of love for another. What you have done before, you can do again. Yes. The Domina was quite correct. And if this was the task, and the Domina had known about it and prepared Joanna for it, then it must be the right thing to do.
The last of her doubts left her. Standing now on the branch from which the upper of her two ropes habitually hung, she uncurled its length and let herself down to the lower branch. She slid down the rope too quickly, burning her palms, but speed was now essentiaclass="underline" he had managed to get his own rope over the lower branch and even now he was securing it.
Then he began to climb.
Part Three
15
Three days after Father Micah’s death, neither Josse nor anybody else within the Hawkenlye community yet had any idea how he died.
Soon after noon of that day, Josse stood in the road outside the Abbey gates staring after the retreating figure of Gervase de Gifford. He was going over in his mind all that de Gifford had told him concerning the group of strangers. The heretics, as he now knew them to be.
He was trying to decide exactly how — indeed, what — he was going to tell the Abbess. Briefly it crossed his mind that he might not reveal the group’s identity; would it really do any harm if she did not know? He had given his word to de Gifford to respect the man’s confidences, although with the proviso that only if by so doing he did not compromise anyone else. Not telling the Abbess would certainly save the almost certain introduction of friction in his relationship with her for, no matter that he knew her to be a compassionate and fair-minded woman, she was also Abbess of Hawkenlye. And, as such, she was answerable to those above her in the religious hierarchy who decreed what the attitude to heresy and heretics must be.
Aye. He gave a deep sigh. No matter what her own heart told her, she would obey the rules, as she had vowed to do. And he realised that he had to tell her; tempting though it was to leave her in ignorance, it might prove dangerous for her. It was quite possible that there were other priests as well as the late Father Micah out there on the heretics’ trail. If one of them came to Hawkenlye and found out that the Abbess and her nuns had tended a heretic woman in the Abbey infirmary, then she — and probably Sister Euphemia and Sister Caliste — would be severely punished.
To refrain from telling the Abbess that Aurelia was a heretic would certainly compromise her.
He sighed again, turned back inside the gates and went to find her.
Launching straight into his story, he told her what de Gifford had just told him. ‘They’re a band of heretics,’ he said baldly. ‘Some from the Low Countries, some from the south; some place in the Midi called Toulouse, or perhaps Albi. That’s why Father Micah treated them so savagely. And the letter on Aurelia’s forehead isn’t an A but an H.’
For some moments she just sat and stared at him. Then she said, very quietly, ‘She’s a heretic.’
‘Aye.’
He had expected her to be surprised — shocked, even — but nevertheless the pallor that spread over her face alarmed him. ‘My lady?’ he said anxiously. ‘May I fetch you water?’
‘Water will do me no good whatsoever,’ she snapped back. Then, eyes blazing, she cried out, ‘Heretics say terrible things, Sir Josse! They claim that Christ is not divine! They say that there is not the one true God but two deities, one good and the other evil, and that this world and everything in it is the creation of the Dark One! Dear Lord, but they claim our very existence here on earth is but an exile until our material bodies die and we are reunited with our souls!’
‘But-’ He tried to interrupt but she was in full flow, stung to fury by heresy’s terrible, hurtful slur on the loving Son of God she worshipped.