* * *
Some time later, she heard him enter the shrine. Heard the sound of boots on the steps, so it must have been Josse, for the monks and the lay brothers wore soft sandals.
‘You’re back,’ she said.
There was a grunt of agreement.
She opened her eyes and began to turn round to look at him, but it made her feel so sick that instantly she stopped. The shrine seemed to be whirling round like a spinning top, so she closed her eyes again.
She sensed him come close. Sit down beside her on the narrow form.
To her vague surprise — all her emotions seemed to be vague, she was discovering — she couldn’t remember for a moment where he had been. Then she thought she recalled a messenger … Yes. That was right. A boy had come, breathless from haste, his words tumbling over each other as he’d announced that he had to see Sir Josse d’Acquin, he brought a summons for him, an invitation to visit Brice of Rotherbridge. She wondered what that had been all about.
‘You found the Lord Brice in good spirits?’ she asked.
There was no answer for some time. Then a voice which she had never heard before said, ‘Aye, Brice is himself again. He has made his confession, done rigorous penance, and obtained absolution.’
There was such despair in those words that she felt her heart contract with compassion.
Opening her eyes again, very carefully she turned her head to her left and looked at him.
He was, she guessed from the unlined quality of his skin, in his late twenties, but looked far, far older. It wasn’t only the dramatic streak of white threading through the dark hair, nor the weary, defeated posture. It was the eyes. Those dark eyes, heavily hooded, whose lids were swollen and which were circled with grey, as if someone had filled in each entire eye socket with smudged black powder.
No wonder he spoke with such hopeless envy of Brice’s recovery; here, she was in no doubt, was a man suffering such torments, pursued by such devils of misery, that the happy state of absolution must seem as far distant as the moon.
Who was he? Someone, clearly, acquainted with Brice of Rotherbridge.
But first things first.
She said, very calmly and quietly, ‘Are you here to pray, friend?’
A brief light of hope entered his eyes at her form of address, but, as quickly as it had come, it was extinguished.
‘I cannot pray,’ he said flatly. ‘I have tried, others have tried with me. The monks in the holiest shrine in all England have done their best for me. But it is hopeless. I am beyond help.’
‘No man is beyond God’s love,’ she said, maintaining the same level tone. ‘That is Christ’s message to us, that, with genuine repentance, we are to be forgiven.’
There was a silence.
Since he did not seem about to break it, she said, ‘Will you pray with me, now? Our Blessed Lady is here, see? She will listen.’
It had worked with others at the very end of their endurance; Helewise had sat, up at the Abbey and down here in the shrine, with seemingly hopeless cases, talking quietly, listening to the outpourings that told of a life gone wrong, of one bad deed leading with dreadful inevitability to the next, until the downward spiral of sin upon sin spun away out of control. Then, when they were empty of words, cried out of tears, she would begin to help them back up the long and difficult slope.
Yes. She had seen men — and women — apparently far beyond God’s love, brought back into the precious fold.
She watched the dark-haired man.
Slowly he raised his head until his sore eyes looked up at the statue of the Virgin. For a moment a half-smile spread over the handsome features, but then it was gone. His face falling, he said hoarsely, ‘Here, of all places, I cannot pray. She — Our Lady there — is watching me, like she did that night. She knows what happened. She knows that, but for me, Gunnora would still be alive.’
He turned to Helewise, and his hands suddenly gripped at her shoulders with surprising strength. ‘She promised me!’ he shouted. ‘Promised! It was to be that night, she said it would, after all my years of waiting! I didn’t rush her, I didn’t try to persuade her out of coming here, for all that I felt it was wrong. You welcomed her, didn’t you? Believed she really had a vocation, wanted to make a good nun! When, all along, it was just a place to hide away till the heat died down and Brice was safely married.’
Helewise’s head spun with a dozen questions. But now, when this poor tormented soul was in the throes of spilling all the pain out of him, was not the time to ask them. She said, ‘Yes, we made her welcome.’
He dropped his hands. ‘I know, I could tell! You are good women. Too good for-’ Too good for Gunnora? Abruptly he stopped, as if pulling himself up short of that betrayal. ‘We should have told them, all of them at home, from the start,’ he went on instead. ‘It wouldn’t have been easy, when her father was set on her marrying Brice, but I believe we could have won him round. He was a decent father, according to his own lights. I don’t think he would have insisted on doing things his way, when everyone else involved wanted it to be otherwise. But Gunnora was not to be diverted.’ He glanced at Helewise. ‘For some time, at the start, I became very worried. I thought she might actually enjoy being a nun, and I was terrified that she’d decide to stay at Hawkenlye. That I’d lose her.’
As he spoke, Helewise noticed, his hands were gripping at a fold of his tunic hem, pleating it first this way, then the other, with such force that the material was crushed beyond recovery. There was a compulsiveness about the repetitive action that spoke of a deeply troubled man.
For the first time, she felt afraid.
Don’t think of yourself, she commanded her quaking soul. Think of him.
It helped.
‘She knew how much you loved her?’ she asked. The man hadn’t spoken of love, but she was quite certain she was right to assume it.
‘Of course! I told her, over and over again!’
‘And did she return your love?’
‘Yes! Yes!’ Then, after a pause, ‘I think so. She once said she thought she loved me. But it would have grown!’ He spoke very rapidly, as if he wanted to defend himself against a protest which he hadn’t given Helewise the chance to make. ‘It was enough, that she had the beginnings of love for me! Wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ It was the only possible response.
‘My brother said I was a fool,’ he went on. ‘Brice didn’t mind Gunnora not wanting to marry him, and he could never see why I loved her so much. But we’d grown up together, you see. I’d assumed, like everyone else, that she’d marry Brice, but I always hoped something might happen … God forgive me, but once I found myself hoping he’d die, then she’d marry me. My own brother!’ Tears sprang into his eyes.
‘We all have bad thoughts sometimes,’ Helewise said. ‘But we don’t mean them. Do we? You would never have turned your brief, private hope that your brother would die into reality, would you? Nor have failed to grieve deeply and honestly had he died?’
‘No! No, of course not.’
‘Well, then.’ She gave him a quick smile, hoping to reassure. ‘God sees into our hearts, you know. Give Him credit for that.’
The man nodded slowly. ‘Yes. That’s what the Canterbury monks said.’ Briefly he seemed to brighten, but then, as if some further dread thought took over his mind, he said mournfully, ‘But Christ and His Holy Mother won’t understand about Gunnora.’
Offering a swift prayer of her own, Helewise took a steadying breath and said, ‘I believe that I understand, now. Why not try them and see if they do?’
* * *
They told Josse up at the Abbey that the Abbess Helewise was praying. Not finding her in the church, he hurried on down into the vale and, for some unknown reason walking with exaggerated stealth, approached the shrine.
The door was ajar. Putting his face to the opening, he looked inside.