Down at the foot of the steps, sitting side by side on a bench that stood on the only flat area of floor, were Helewise and Olivar.
His instinct was to hurl himself forward; for some reason which he did not pause to analyse, he had the clear impression she was in danger.
He made himself stop. Stood perfectly still, listening.
Helewise had placed a heavily bandaged hand over Olivar’s hands, folded in his lap. She was leaning towards him, and Josse heard the tail end of what she was saying: ‘… try them and see if they do?’
Olivar didn’t respond for some moments, and, in the brief pause, Josse wondered wildly what he was doing there. Had he come to mourn Gunnora, in this the nearest place of worship to where she had been murdered? Or — frightening thought! — had he somehow discovered that Milon was responsible for the death of the woman he had loved, and was here to find him and extract his own vengeance?
Helewise, good woman that she was, seemed to have calmed him; Olivar was looking relaxed, Josse thought, perhaps persuaded by the Abbess into believing that praying for Gunnora’s soul was better than seeking out her killer, and that-
But just then Olivar began to speak, and Josse turned his full attention to listening.
‘We were to meet here, in the shrine, in the hour before dawn,’ he said. ‘She would attend Matins, then return with the sisters to the dormitory. But, as soon as she thought they were all asleep, she was going to get up and creep out. I said I’d wait from midnight onwards — I didn’t mind how long it was till she came, I just didn’t want her arriving first. I got here while you were at your devotions.’
‘You must have had a long vigil,’ Helewise’s soft voice said.
‘Yes, but I was so happy at the thought of seeing her again that I didn’t mind. It had been months since we’d had any contact — we’d only been able to make that tryst because of her silly cousin’s fun and games. I gave Elanor a letter for Gunnora, you see. I said a lot, wrote of my love for her. I wrote too much, perhaps. But I didn’t think it would matter — it was only for Gunnora’s eyes, Elanor couldn’t read. Nor could Gunnora, not really. At least, not very fluently. I suppose I was wasting my time.’ There was the smallest suggestion of amusement in the voice. ‘Then she — Gunnora — did as I suggested and left her brief reply hidden for me in a crack in the wall out there.’ He waved a hand towards the doorway; Josse, afraid that one or other of them might turn round, swiftly moved back out of sight.
‘That was how you knew she’d come,’ Helewise said.
‘Yes. I said in my message that the year was up, it was time for her to put our plan into operation and announce she was leaving the convent. I had hoped we would set a firm date, a time, even, then I could have been waiting at the Abbey gates for her and we could have found a priest straightaway and asked him to marry us. It wasn’t what I wanted, this secret meeting down here at dead of night. I didn’t want it to be so furtive. As if we were ashamed.’
‘So, you waited, and, eventually, she came?’ the Abbess asked.
‘Yes.’ Warmth flooding the bleak voice, he hurried on, ‘Oh, I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to see her again! I threw my arms round her, hugged her to me, tried to kiss her.’
There was a brief silence.
‘Tried?’ It was, Josse thought, exactly what he would have asked.
‘She wouldn’t let me, well, not on her lips.’ Olivar gave a small laugh. ‘She said she was still a nun, and that I must show due respect and only give her a brotherly peck on the cheek. And that was funny, because she didn’t look much like a nun — she was wearing her headdress, but it was loosely draped, and the wimple was tucked into the front of her habit, not secured round her throat. I pretended to find it funny, her not kissing me, but I didn’t really. I mean, it wasn’t as if we had been — well, you know — intimate, before, but we had exchanged kisses. Very passionate, thrilling kisses.’
Josse, knowing what he now knew of Gunnora, found that hard to believe. Passion, from a woman like that? Perhaps she had been good at simulating it.
‘Anyway, it didn’t matter,’ Olivar was saying, ‘because we’d be man and wife very soon, and then we’d be able to kiss, make love all night if we wanted to. So-’ his voice broke on a sob. Quickly bringing himself under control, he tried again. ‘So I said, “How soon can it be? When do you come out of the convent?” And then she told me. Said she’d changed her mind about marriage, didn’t feel that she wanted to be a wife after all.’
Helewise murmured something, but Josse couldn’t catch the words.
‘Yes, I know.’ Olivar was weeping openly now. ‘I couldn’t believe it, you’re right. I said, “Sweeting, it’s me! Olivar! You haven’t to be Brice’s wife, he’s married to your sister, remember?” I didn’t tell her what had just happened to Dillian — I know it was wrong, but I didn’t dare. Gunnora might have used that as further grounds for staying where she was — after all, she might have thought they’d have made her marry him, now that he was a widower. “It’s us that are to marry,” I said, “you and me, like we planned!” And’ — again, the break in his voice — ‘she just stood there, at the top of the steps’ — he waved his arm, indicating behind him — ‘and said she’d decided to stay in the Abbey a little longer. Or, failing that, she’d leave and get her father to reinstate her in his will, then live at Winnowlands on her own. Then she turned her back on me and made a dainty little curtsey to the statue of the Virgin.’
He paused briefly, collecting himself, then the grim narrative resumed. ‘I was standing beside her, and I tried to turn her round to face me. I don’t really know why — I think I thought that if I could just get her to kiss me — gently, you know, I didn’t intend to force her — then she’d get a bit aroused and remember how sweet it used to be for us, before, when we embraced.’
You poor deluded man, Josse thought. What an optimistic hope!
‘So — so — I took hold of her shoulder, and I said, “Gunnora, my dearest love, won’t you hug me? Please?” and she twisted herself out of my grasp and said, “No, Olivar, I don’t care to. I am going to pray.” Then’ — the weeping was loud now, each sob breaking out of him as if tearing him apart — ‘then she started to go down the steps, almost dancing, as if to say, see how happy I am? See how I love to be a nun, to pray before the Holy Mother?’
It seemed unlikely that he could go on.
But he didn’t need to; Helewise’s quiet voice took up the tale.
‘She danced down those slippery steps, and she missed her footing, didn’t she?’ Josse saw the young man nod. ‘It’s so easily done,’ Helewise said, ‘it’s the condensation from the spring, it settles on the stones and makes them as perilous as ice.’
There was another, longer, silence. Josse was beginning to wonder if either of them would finish the story — was there, indeed, any need, when both appeared to know perfectly well already what happened? — when Helewise spoke again.
‘You tried to catch her, didn’t you?’ Once more, the nod of agreement. ‘I knew. We saw the little bruises on the tops of her arms — we thought at first that someone had held her fast while another person — well, never mind that. Someone did indeed hold her, but the marks were from your hands on her, trying to stop her fall.’
‘Yes.’ Olivar’s brief monosyllable was so wracked with agony that Josse could have wept for him. ‘But it was no good — she was already tumbling forward, and I couldn’t hold her. She slipped out of my grasp, flew through the air, and then … then…’
‘She fell against the statue,’ Helewise finished for him. ‘By the most terrible ill fortune, the plinth caught her across the throat. Didn’t it?’
‘Aye.’ He rubbed at his eyes like a punished child crying at the injustice. ‘I leapt down the steps after her, to see if she was hurt. I don’t know what I expected — she was lying so still that I thought she’d bumped her head, knocked herself unconscious. Then I turned her over, and I saw.’