‘They reject marriage and baptism, they scorn the clergy and they say that each and every man and woman may address the deity personally!’ she stormed. ‘Just how, pray, is a man of the Church supposed to respond to that?’
‘Perhaps we should-’
Again she rode him down. ‘Think of the people, Sir Josse! What is to become of them if they do not have the strong, steady hold of the priesthood keeping their souls safe from temptation? If they fall into sinful ways and are not brought to confession and given God’s forgiveness, then when they die they will go to eternal damnation!’ She paused, panting from the effort, then, after a moment, said in a quieter tone, ‘That is why heresy must not be allowed to spread. Because it will lead directly to men and women dying in a state of sin, and I cannot believe that you would wish it on a fellow human being to appear before the terrible judge without having been reconciled by penance and fortified by Holy Communion.’ She sniffed, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘Even if you can accept that threat, I certainly cannot.’
‘What will you do, my lady?’ he asked frostily. ‘You now know that a heretic woman lies in your infirmary, where you yourself have looked down with pity on her wounds. Will you now go out and find whichever priest holds sway here in place of Father Micah and tell him? Watch as Aurelia is taken away, imprisoned, even burned, perhaps, simply because she views these vexed matters of faith differently from the way in which you and the Christian Church do?’
‘She will not be burned!’ the Abbess cried furiously. ‘She will be — they will. .’ Her words petered out. ‘Well, they’ll probably just let her go.’
‘Aye, and just how long will she last, do you think?’ he demanded. ‘She’s badly hurt, her wounds are infected and she is weak with fever. The month is February, my lady, in case you have forgotten, and she will find no food and precious little to drink all the time the ponds and streams are frozen. If she approaches some far-flung hamlet and creeps into an outhouse for shelter, the inhabitants will denounce her for fear of having their dwellings burned down over their heads in punishment for harbouring a heretic!’
The Abbess had dropped her flushed face into her hands. Feeling a surge of pity for her, he stepped forward, about to offer to help her think up a solution to the dilemma in which she found herself.
But even as he did so she removed her hands and shouted up at him, ‘I cannot risk the safety and integrity of Hawkenlye! If I had a hundred heretics hiding here, I should have to report it, even if it meant they were all taken straight to the stake for their treason!’
‘I do not believe that,’ he said flatly. ‘I have known you too long and too well to think you capable of such cruelty.’
‘They deny Christ!’ she cried. ‘They spit on the Cross and profane his holy name, he who suffered so for us!’
‘Who says they do?’ he shouted back. He saw that she had tears in her eyes, but was too angry to let it affect him.
‘The priesthood tells us,’ she said earnestly. ‘They know about these things — they find out, and it is their job to inform us.’
He knew there was a flaw in her argument — something to do with priests only passing on their own version of what they had learned — but just then he heard a faint sound from the cloister outside. He was about to go and investigate when she said, ‘Sir Josse, I have no choice. Do you not understand?’
He spun round to face her again. ‘Give Aurelia a few more days,’ he urged. ‘Let her receive the benefit of Sister Euphemia’s and Sister Caliste’s loving care a little longer, until she is strong enough to get away from here and out of immediate danger. Nobody is aware that you know her to be a heretic — I won’t tell anybody that I told you.’
‘But I do know,’ she said dully. ‘And it is not right that I should allow you to lie.’
‘Leave it to me to take care of my own soul,’ he said gruffly. ‘And if your conscience pricks you, you can do the hardest penance ever devised after she’s gone.’
She was staring at him and for once he could not read her expression. Sensing — hoping — that she might be weakening, he said softly, ‘What do you think the Lord Jesus would have done? Would he have turned a sick woman out to fend for herself and be hunted down by her enemies? Or would he have given her love and tended her hurts?’
‘She is a heretic woman who denies His divinity,’ the Abbess muttered.
‘She is still a human being,’ he insisted. Hoping that he had the words exactly right, he said, ‘“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you.”’
‘But-’ She stopped. It seemed to Josse, watching her so intently, that it had perhaps occurred to her that there was no ‘but’.
Deciding that it would be wise to slip away and leave her to think, he murmured, ‘I will leave you to your contemplation, my lady,’ and eased himself out of the room, closing the door gently behind him.
As he walked along the cloister, he sensed someone move in the shadows. He called out, ‘Who’s there?’
A black-clad nun stepped out from the dimly lit corner where two arms of the cloister met at a right angle. She gave him a graceful bow and, as she straightened up, he found himself looking into the bright blue eyes of Sister Phillipa.
‘Sister! How goes the Hawkenlye Herbal?’
‘Well, thank you, Sir Josse. Although I have had another task to do these last few days that has kept me from my work.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Yes.’ She looked doubtful suddenly. ‘I had thought that you might know of it.’
‘No. What have you been up to?’ He gave her an indulgent smile.
But then she said, ‘Sister Bernadine believed that someone had been going through the Abbey’s precious texts. I was ordered to help her to make an inventory and see if anything had been stolen.’
‘I had no idea!’ He wondered why the Abbess had not told him; theft of one of the manuscripts would be a dire blow for the Abbey. ‘And is any document missing?’
‘No, that’s the strange thing.’ Her straight brows knotted into a frown. ‘Everything that is meant to be there — everything on the inventory — is there, and undamaged, as far as I can tell. Nothing’s been stolen but, Sir Josse, something’s been put in.’
‘What sort of a something?’
From beneath her scapular she pulled a small parcel, wrapped in linen. It was rectangular in shape, about as long as a large man’s hand and perhaps two-thirds as broad. After looking in each direction to make sure that nobody was watching, Sister Phillipa unwrapped the linen and held out what it had concealed for Josse to see.
It was a book made from some eight or ten sheets of fine vellum, bound down the left-hand side with a narrow leather cord woven in an intricate pattern. The first page was densely covered in letters, but what they said, or even what language they were in, Josse had no idea.
‘There are some wonderful illustrations,’ Sister Phillipa whispered, right in his ear; she was so close that he felt the brusque touch of her starched headdress brush his cheek. ‘Look.’
Carefully she took the manuscript from him and turned a page or two. A lively picture leaped out at him, its style so vivid and its colours so vibrant that the tiny figures almost appeared to move. He studied them; they were dressed in long black robes and seemed to be standing in a circle and holding their arms up in an attitude of reverence.
‘What are they doing?’ he asked softly.
‘I have no idea,’ Sister Phillipa murmured back. ‘I have never seen anything like these pictures before. There’s a strange cross’ — she turned another page — ‘and there’s a really frightening picture of two worlds side by side, one all light and brilliant, one dark and seething with weird distorted beings. . There!’
He saw instantly what she meant. The dark world was a nightmare landscape of chaos and misery, with people in torment, wailing and tearing at their hair. Nature was distorted and corrupt, twisted and cruel. The light world, by contrast, was filled with fluffy cloud and bright sunshine, and yellow, gold and pink were the predominate colours. All was ethereal and with an almost unreal quality, and the groups of human-like figures were slightly vague and dream-like.