‘They were married three years past and in September of last year, Rohaise gave birth to their son, whose name is Timus. According to Leofgar — my son — Rohaise has suffered in a variety of ways since the birth.’ Noticing that Josse was looking even more embarrassed, she said frankly, ‘Sir Josse, I do not speak of that sort of problem. The illness, if that is what it is, is of poor Rohaise’s mind.’
Josse had such an open face, she reflected, watching him with amusement despite the seriousness of the subject under discussion; when she reassured him that they were not going to have to talk about some bodily malfunction of Rohaise’s but, rather, a mental one, relief had swept through him, swiftly displaced by guilt that he should feel pleased that Rohaise’s difficulty probably amounted to something a lot more serious than some temporary disorder in her reproductive organs.
‘I am sorry for her,’ he said as the flush faded from his cheeks. ‘Sorry for all of you. She has seen Sister Euphemia?’
‘Indeed.’ Helewise nodded in the direction of the long infirmary ward. ‘Rohaise was exhausted after the journey and did not sleep well last night, so Sister Euphemia has brought her in here and is keeping her under observation. She — Sister Euphemia — had a long talk with the girl this morning and then gave her a sleeping draught.’
‘The girl is in the recess down there?’
‘Yes.’
He nodded. ‘And you went to see her just now.’
‘I did,’ she agreed. ‘She was deeply asleep and did not stir while Sister Euphemia quietly told me of their earlier discussion.’
‘Does the infirmarer detect the nature of this illness of the head?’
She paused, collecting her thoughts. What Sister Euphemia had told her was still too fresh in her mind for her to have digested it. I shall share it with Josse, she decided, and see what he makes of it.
‘Sister Euphemia has had many years’ experience of new mothers,’ she said, ‘and has what can only be a divinely bestowed ability to gain a young woman’s confidence. She did not tell me the full story that Rohaise told her, but she assured me that what she did pass on formed the most important elements. Oh, Sir Josse, poor Rohaise! She has not smiled since Timus was six weeks old!’
‘Why? What happened?’
It was an obvious question but had no clear answer. ‘Rohaise cannot say. She began to feel anxious about almost every facet of the baby’s well-being, doubting her own ability to protect him, to look after him, to love him, in short to mother him adequately. She started to believe that her milk would poison him and, despite the fact that she had milk in plenty and had previously been enjoying feeding him, she engaged a wet nurse and bound up her breasts to stop the milk.’
‘That is not unusual, is it?’ Josse asked.
‘No, not at all. It is Rohaise’s reason for her action that is unusual. And that isn’t all,’ she hurried on. ‘Sister Euphemia could get little more out of her, for she appears highly suspicious of us, as if she fears we are testing her fitness to be a mother. But what she did say before she fell back into her silence — she hardly speaks at all, Sir Josse! — was that she is in constant terror of someone coming to take Timus away from her.’
‘Has she any reason to think they will?’
‘I do not know. I can’t imagine that any decent soul would make such a threat but I will ask my son. He is with Rohaise at the moment, sitting beside her with Timus on his lap watching her as she sleeps, but I have asked him to come along to meet you presently.’
‘I look forward to that meeting with pleasure.’ He spoke courteously but he was frowning, apparently thinking hard. Then he said, ‘Does Sister Euphemia recognise the symptoms of whatever it is that affects Rohaise?’
Helewise felt herself smile. ‘Yes. I am wrong, I’m sure, to take such comfort in her words, for in truth she urged me not to and said there was no certainty that she guesses aright. But she did admit that she had observed such irrational fears and such ongoing lowness of spirit in other mothers.’
‘Did those other mothers recover their serenity?’
Trust Josse, she thought, to put the arrow in the bull’s eye. ‘Sometimes,’ she said. It was the very word that Sister Euphemia had used.
As if he too found it unpromising, Josse just said, ‘Oh.’ Then, after a pause, he said, ‘In summary, then, my lady, your son has brought his wife here to Hawkenlye because she is unwell.’ He hesitated, as though not sure how best to speak his thoughts. Then he went on, ‘Forgive me if I speak too bluntly, my lady, but is it, would you say, Hawkenlye’s great reputation as a centre of healing that draws him rather than the identity of the person who is its Abbess?’
It was a roundabout way of asking something that she had already asked herself. Modesty ordered that she meekly agree with him and say, Oh, of course it’s because of our healers, he didn’t come here with any wish to see me! But modesty had never been her greatest strength and when, as in this case, it fought with maternal emotion, there could only be one winner.
Staring down at her hands, lying still and folded in her lap, she said, ‘He was calling for me, Josse. I heard him in my dreams and I was so very troubled because hearing my son’s voice, even after so many years, took me straight back to my previous life. I felt so wretched when I could not concentrate on those things that make up my present existence, but I could not help myself. I’m a nun!’ she said in an angry hiss. ‘I’m Abbess here and all these people depend on me! I’ve no business returning to the sentiments of my past, it is surely wrong!’
Apparently ignoring her little outburst, he said, his voice low and full of warmth, ‘Did you verify that your son really did call out to you in his trouble?’
She found that she dared not risk speaking so she just nodded.
After a time Josse said, ‘You once said to me, my lady, at a time when I felt myself to have been betrayed and was greatly distressed, that the act of childbirth turns a wife into a mother and there is no going back.’
She gave a small gasp; she remembered the conversation very well, and also the tense and emotional circumstances under which it had occurred. She whispered, ‘Yes.’
In the same gentle tone, he said, ‘Your words gave me great comfort then, Helewise. Hear them again, apply them to yourself and take the same comfort, for I am quite sure that God wouldn’t have bestowed on the world the immeasurable gift of maternal love had He not intended his children to benefit from it.’
She felt tears spill from her eyes. Trying to be discreet, she turned her head so that her coif hid her face while she wiped them away.
Josse said, far too bracingly, ‘And what of the little boy? Timus, was it?’
An absurd chuckle almost broke from her at the obvious distracting ploy. But then she thought about her grandson and no longer felt like laughing. ‘He is too quiet,’ she said. ‘He was never very vocal, my son says, but now he makes no attempt at speech.’
‘Is that not normal in so young a child?’ Josse looked as if he were trying to recall if it was; no doubt, she thought, he was envisaging all those nephews and nieces of his.
‘Children speak when they are ready and in some it is sooner than in others,’ she replied. ‘For sure, I never knew a child to speak proper words much before a year and a half to two years. But most little ones try out their voices, Sir Josse! They make sounds and begin to string them together and sometimes they make up what sounds like a language of their own, although of course it is nothing but nonsense.’
A vivid picture came powerfully into her head. She tried to dismiss it.
‘What of your own boys?’ Josse was saying. ‘I ask because I’m thinking that these matters of how soon a child walks and talks may be similar in the father and his son.’
Oh, he was trying to help and she was more than grateful to him, but his innocent question was making those remembered images from so long ago so lifelike that she could smell the sweet lilac blossom and feel the tiny hands clutching hers. ‘My sons were always noisy, the pair of them,’ she said. She noticed absently that she sounded as if there were something constricting her throat. ‘Dominic spoke early, but he had his talkative elder brother to copy.’