‘You’re telling us that you and your wife — her own cousins, damn it! — found her, lying with her throat cut, yet did nothing for her?’
‘She was dead! What could we do?’
‘You could have run for help! Gone searching for the brothers at the shrine, come up to the Abbey and alerted the Abbess! Covered the poor lass up! Anything!’
‘But you’d have thought we killed her,’ Milon protested.
Suddenly Helewise had a mental image of Gunnora’s body, as they had found her. The skirts, so neatly folded. Without thinking, she said, ‘Elanor arranged her. She tidied Gunnora’s skirts, just as a nun is taught to fold her bedding, and then smeared the blood on her thighs. Didn’t she?’
Milon turned to her. He seemed to have gone a degree more ashen. His eyes held some sort of appeal; he said, ‘Yes, Abbess. She felt bad about it. We both did. But she said if we made it look like Gunnora had been raped, then even if anyone did start to think we’d killed her, they’d soon stop again, because we’d just have wanted her money. If she’d been raped and then killed, it couldn’t have been us.’
Helewise nodded thoughtfully. ‘Thank you, Milon. I understand.’
Josse was shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Elanor did that?’ he said incredulously. ‘Gunnora’s own cousin? Turned back the poor woman’s skirts and spread her own blood on her? Dear God, what sort of a girl was she?’
‘A desperate one,’ Helewise murmured. Who, remembering the instruction she was being given in convent life — always fold your bedcovers like this, fold back, fold back again, just so — had, in some gesture of appeasement, tried to be neat in the arrangement of her dead cousin’s habit.
‘What of the cross?’ Josse demanded. ‘It wasn’t Gunnora’s own, and it wasn’t Elanor’s; hers was smaller. Did you drop it by her body?’
‘Yes.’
‘You brought it with you? Where on earth did you get hold of it?’
‘I didn’t bring it! It was Gunnora’s! It must have been, she was wearing it — she had it round her neck. Elanor said she’d have it, since the rubies were better than the ones in her cross, but I wouldn’t let her. Well, she realised, soon as I said, that it’d be a daft thing to do, it’d lead people straight to us if Elanor was seen with Gunnora’s cross. So we just dropped it.’ He sniffed. ‘That’s what I came back for. Elanor’s cross. She didn’t have it on her when I — She didn’t have it that night, or, if she did, I couldn’t find it. I was going to have another look down near our secret place, then follow the path she’d have taken down from the dormitory, searching all the way. Not that I had much hope of finding it there. I was going to come into the Abbey and try to get into the dormitory, then have a look in her bed.’ He seemed to slump suddenly. ‘I had to get it,’ he said wearily. ‘You’d have known who she was, if you’d got your hands on her cross. And then you’d have come straight for me.’
Josse turned away from him then, paced back to the door of the little room and stood, arms folded, shoulder leaning against the wall, staring down at the dusty floor.
Helewise watched Milon. He seemed surprised at the sudden cessation of the questions. Looking from Helewise to Josse and back again, he said, ‘What will happen to me?’
Helewise glanced at Josse, but he did not seem about to answer. So she said, ‘You will remain here until the sheriff and his men can be summoned. Then you will be taken under escort to the town jail, and, in due course, you will be tried for murder.’
‘It wasn’t murder,’ he said, hardly above a whisper. ‘I didn’t mean to kill her. I loved her. She was carrying our baby.’
Then, once again, he began to weep.
Chapter Fifteen
Josse and the Abbess walked side by side back to her room. Neither, it seemed, wanted to be the first to break the silence.
Josse wondered if she was experiencing the same feelings that he was. From what he could see of her face, and from the slump of her normally squared shoulders, he guessed so.
He was feeling — he was at a loss to name the emotion searing through him. It was a mixture, and, indeed, a mixture of elements which did not normally go smoothly together. There was anger — yes, anger was still there. But also an undermining, growing pity. And, to his distress, guilt; although he fought it, reminded himself again and again of those two pathetic dead bodies, he had the unwelcome sense that, by manhandling Milon up to the Abbey and throwing him in that cell, he had acted like a bully.
It was the lad’s weeping that was so disturbing, damn it! You couldn’t even call it that, really — it was like no crying that Josse had ever heard before. It was a quiet, high-pitched keening sound, like the wind blowing through thin reeds.
And, although the cell and the undercroft were now a considerable number of paces behind, it seemed to Josse that he could still hear it.
As much to drown out the echo of the sound as for any other reason, he said to the Abbess as they approached her room, ‘I still think he did it. Killed Gunnora as well as Elanor, I mean. Whatever he says.’
He heard the Abbess’s small tut of impatience. ‘He didn’t,’ she said firmly. ‘Whilst I am the first to agree that it would be a tidy solution were he responsible for both deaths, he isn’t.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ Josse demanded angrily. God, she was a stubborn woman!
‘I-’ Slowly she went round to the far side of her table, as slowly seating herself and indicating for him to do the same. He had a suspicion she was using the time to gather her argument together, which was quite a daunting thought. ‘It’s all wrong,’ she said eventually. ‘I can imagine him putting his hands round Elanor’s neck and gripping just that bit too hard. He’s frightened, let’s say, desperately worried because the careful plan seems to be falling apart. And, by his own admission, he’s cross with her. He’s not entirely in command of himself. They have just made love, and that can leave people in a vulnerable emotional state, especially the young.’ He was surprised that she should speak so matter-of-factly on the subject. Equally surprised that she should speak so accurately.
He realised she was watching him, a slight suspicion of irony in the large eyes. As if she knew exactly what he was thinking. ‘But,’ she went on, ‘no matter how I try, I cannot believe he coldly drew a knife across Gunnora’s throat and made that appalling cut.’
‘I can,’ Josse said heatedly.
But could he really? Now that she was making him look at it rationally, he began to wonder. Did he believe in Milon’s guilt, or was it merely convenient for the youth to have killed both women? Because it would save Josse looking any further for a second murderer?
Interrupting his thoughts, the Abbess said, ‘Have you the stomach for food, Sir Josse? It is the hour for breakfast.’
He looked at her. ‘Have you?’
The clear grey eyes met his. ‘No, but I intend to make myself eat.’ The wide brow creased momentarily. ‘We need our strength, you and I, and going without food will not supply us with it.’ She gave a faint sigh. ‘This business is not yet over.’
* * *
He went down to his quarters in the vale after the meal, and, stretching out on his hard bed, went almost instantly to sleep. He was awakened by a tap on his shoulder; Brother Saul stood over him, and beside him, looking somewhat grubby and travel-stained, stood Ossie.
‘I am sorry to disturb you, Sir Josse,’ Saul said, ‘but the messenger here said it was urgent.’
Josse sat up, rubbing at his eyes. It felt as if someone had thrown a handful of small, sharp grit into them. ‘Thank you, Saul,’ he said, getting stiffly to his feet. ‘Ossie, good morning.’
‘Sir,’ the boy muttered, grabbing the floppy cap from his head, and twisting it between his hands.
‘You have a message for me?’ Josse prompted.
Ossie’s face closed down into a frown of concentration and he said, ‘My Lord Brice of Rotherbridge sends word to Sir Josse d’Acquin, presently residing with the sisters at Hawkenlye.’ He paused, then went on, ‘My Lord says Sir Josse called on him twice while he was from home. Will he try a third time, now that my Lord is here?’ The frown deepened. ‘Now that he is there,’ he corrected himself.