Then, looking at them both with a strange excitement in her eyes, she said, ‘I know where it is.’
‘What?’ Josse and Leofgar said together.
‘Benedict Warin’s proof.’ So eager that the words raced out of her, she said, ‘Benedict told Sirida that he would hide the document in his table and she told Arthur, who sent Walter Bell to the Old Manor. Walter looked but presumably could not find the hiding place.’
‘Neither could Arthur and neither could I,’ Josse agreed. ‘De Gifford and I searched every inch and came up with nothing.’
Now the Abbess was smiling. ‘That was because,’ she said, ‘it was the wrong table.’ Patting the wide oak surface in front of her, she said, ‘This is Benedict Warin’s table. Benedict left it for Ivo’s use when he moved from the Old Manor to his new home, shortly before Ivo and I were wed. It became Ivo’s possession permanently after Benedict died, although in truth I had more use of it than ever did Ivo.’ She looked down fondly at the table and added softly, ‘I became rather attached to it, and it was the only item from my home that I brought here to Hawkenlye with me.’
But neither Josse nor Leofgar were giving her their full attention; at her first words, both had shot forward to start examining the table, feeling over its surface, underneath it, up and down its stout legs. ‘Where’s the hiding place?’ Leofgar demanded. ‘Where is it?’
Josse, his hands flat on the table top as he ran his fingers over the smooth wood, was watching the Abbess. Frowning, she murmured, ‘I am not sure …’ Then she knelt down and her head disappeared under the table.
Suddenly she exclaimed, ‘Yes! I do believe …’ Grunting with effort, her voice coming from under the table and strangely muffled, she said, ‘Help me, Leofgar, the catch is stiff,’ and he too knelt down so that only his rump and legs were visible. There was a grating sound, then suddenly Leofgar shot backwards and sat down heavily.
The Abbess straightened up. In her hands was a small wooden box, dusty and dirty. ‘It was fixed to the central support of the frame,’ she panted. ‘You would never have found it unless you knew where to look.’
‘And even then it did not come away without brute force,’ Leofgar added. Getting up, he came to stand beside Josse. Then, voicing the question that Josse burned to ask, he said, ‘Is there anything in it?’
The Abbess had raised the lid, whose hinges gave a screech of protest. As Josse watched her face, she put her hand inside and extracted a piece of parchment, rolled up tightly and bound with frayed, faded ribbon.
She put the box down and, resting the parchment on the table, gently began to unroll it. There were a few lines written in brownish ink in what Josse thought was a cleric’s hand; silently the Abbess read through them, moving her lips as she digested the words.
Then slowly she raised her head and looked at her son. ‘Benedict Warin was not his father,’ she breathed. Then, joy spreading over her face, ‘Oh, dear God, but I am so relieved!’
Leofgar was picking up the parchment. But Josse, still watching the Abbess, said softly, ‘Why such relief, my lady? It is not that rare for a man with a barren wife to lie with another woman and beget a child on her.’
But she shook her head. ‘No, I know that. It is not the reason for my reaction.’ She paused as if weighing her words. Leofgar, Josse thought, casting a glance at the young man, was too enthralled in his inspection of the parchment to listen. Then the Abbess said, ‘Sir Josse, I loved my father-in-law. I knew him to be flawed, for he was in truth a womaniser. But had he known that Sirida had borne his child and yet done nothing to help her, that I should have found hard to forgive.’
‘Aye, and-’ Suddenly Josse caught sight of Leofgar’s face. ‘What is it, lad?’
Leofgar looked at Josse, then at his mother. ‘Before you exonerate my grandfather,’ he said slowly, ‘I think you had better look at this.’ He held out the parchment. ‘There’s more written on the reverse side. My Latin is not as good as it should be and neither is my skill in reading’ — he gave the Abbess a swift and rueful grin — ‘so perhaps you would be kind enough to read it for us, Mother.’
For all the courtesy of his words, Josse observed, there was authority in his voice; Leofgar was in truth very like his mother.
The Abbess picked up the parchment again and read what was written on the other side. Her expression altered and hardened. When she had finished there was a short pause. Then she said, ‘So that is how it was.’ Glancing at Josse, she added, ‘The first side of the parchment states simply that Benedict is not the father of the child borne by the woman Sirida. But this,’ — she lightly tapped the other side — ‘this is rather more expansive.’
Then she began to read.
‘“I, Benedict Warin, confess my sin and record it so that after my death the truth be known. Ivo, my legitimate son, is and remains the one true fruit of my loins, for the damage I suffered when I was dragged by my horse robbed me of my manhood and I was never more able to satisfy a woman. In my pride and my shame I told no man of my condition save my faithful Martin, who acted as my substitute in those actions that I could no longer perform for myself. Being full of pride at my reputation as a man who loved women, I could not bear for the shameful truth to be known and so I continued to pursue pretty girls and persuade them to come with me to my shelter in the forest. It was dark there and they did not know that it was not I but another who serviced them. It was of no great import; for Martin was a considerate and I believe a skilful lover and the girls were not heard to complain. The subterfuge was, I believed, harmless and it allowed me to retain that part of my former identity that I could not bear to give up.
‘“But then there was Sirida. She told me that she had conceived that day in the shelter and she asked for my help. The material things she requested I would gladly have given her but to do so would have acknowledged that she had a just claim on me and this would have meant that I accepted her son as a Warin. This was impossible. The Warin blood runs true and goes back far; to accept the son of my body servant, fine man though he be, as my own flesh I simply could not do.
‘“I am truly sorry for what I have done. I offer in mitigation the fact of my accident, which caused me to suffer every day for the rest of my life. Physical discomfort I endured without complaint; what I could not bear was men’s pity for a eunuch. May God have mercy on my soul.”’
The Abbess looked up. ‘It was written by his confessor,’ she said softly. ‘The date at the bottom is April 1172, a month or so before Benedict died.’
Nobody spoke for some time. Then Leofgar said, quietly but vehemently, ‘I knew Arthur was not one of us.’
The Abbess turned to him. ‘So you said in Sirida’s hut and it all but cost you your life.’
There was, Josse thought, a reprimand in her tone and Leofgar must have heard it too, for he had the grace to look ashamed. ‘Yes, I know. But the thought of him as a kinsman became too much. He has caused me and mine far too much grief, the jumped-up fool!’
Josse repeated the last three words silently to himself. Compassion flowed through him; poor Arthur, he thought, for he has been struggling all his miserable life towards one impossible end only to be dismissed in such demeaning terms. As if, all along, he had been no more of a threat than an importuning beggar or an over-eager puppy.
But the Abbess was speaking and he made himself listen.
‘I sympathise with you for your trouble,’ she was coolly saying to Leofgar, ‘and indeed I am more relieved than I can say for matters to have been concluded as they have. But, son, can you find no pity in your heart?’
‘No,’ Leofgar said. Josse could well understand the young man’s firm denial.
But the Abbess had not finished. ‘Well, I can,’ she said firmly. ‘Arthur Fitzurse had been told he had a fine, noble, wealthy man as father, yet through no fault of his own he has lived the life of the outcast.’ Flinging out her hands, she cried, ‘Are you not touched at the sight of him in his cheap clothes that he wears as if they were fur and fine linen?’