She looked. So, beside her, did Saul.
Directly ahead, on a long island that seemed to rise like a great ship out of the watery marshland around it, was a building. Tall, imposing, its symmetry was only marred by the wooden scaffolding poles around one end.
Despite the many people scurrying round it — from this distance they were tiny and featureless — there was a sense of peace about the place. As if, up there on its low rise, it looked down on the world and gave its blessing.
And, into their awed silence, Augustine said quietly, ‘That’s Ely Cathedral.’
Chapter Nine
Having seen Brother Saul, Brother Augustine and the horses on their way to the guest lodgings of the monastery, Helewise asked one of the monks to direct her to the superior.
As she followed the black-robed figure along a maze of narrow corridors, she was cross with herself for her nervousness. This abbey might be very grand and have its own vast cathedral all but completed, she told herself, but Hawkenlye is equally important to God. Detecting a certain amount of worldly pride in the thought, she crushed it.
The monk tapped on a large oak door and, when a cool voice said ‘Enter’, opened it and stood aside to usher Helewise inside the room.
The monk who sat within, evidently busy with the sort of endless paperwork with which Helewise was all too familiar, looked up. His unsmiling face was thin to the point of boniness, and the light eyes under pale, almost invisible eyebrows and lashes had no discernible colour. Nor did they have any discernible warmth. He said curtly, ‘Yes?’
She introduced herself. Trying to ignore the element of mockery in his incredulous ‘All the way from Hawkenlye? In Kent?’, she proceeded to state her business in Ely. Watching a hard, cutting smile spread across the thin face, she realised, too late, her mistake. ‘Naturally,’ she hastened to say, ‘I did not expect to find that Sister Alba had actually been here in Ely, but I did wonder if-’
But he was not listening. Too busy enjoying her discomfiture, he interrupted her: ‘We have no nuns here, Abbess. This is a monastery.’ The slow delivery of the word ‘monastery’ — as if she were a halfwit and incapable of understanding — was insulting.
Anger gave her dignity, and told her what to say. ‘I am aware of that,’ she said calmly. ‘I have come here merely to ask you to inform me of those foundations in the vicinity that are for women.’ He opened his mouth — no doubt to say something else cutting — but she did not let him speak. ‘Sister Alba was very sparing in giving details,’ she went on, ‘and so I must ask you, if it is not too much trouble, to give me a comprehensive list of all the convents you know of. Only when I am able to speak in private with her former superior is there any chance of my resolving this vexing situation, and so permitting my community to return to our duty of serving God as He has ordained for us.’
Her determination seemed to have some effect; the abbot’s supercilious expression relaxed slightly as he said, ‘I understand your position, Abbess.’ Then, after a pause as if to gather his thoughts, he said, ‘You should, I advise, visit the nuns of Chatteris, and those in the priory at Cambridge, those being the two houses closest to us at Ely.’ He frowned. ‘Although why anybody would say Ely when their foundation was in Cambridge, I cannot say.’ He was silent for some moments, apparently thinking. Then he said, ‘Perhaps you might do better to go first to the small Benedictine house near to the Templar preceptory at Denney. Denney is between Ely and Cambridge; I therefore opine that it is more likely that somebody might possibly have described that location as being at Ely.’ He gave a brief shake of the head, as if in incredulity at how anybody could be so ill-advised. ‘Yes, Denney,’ he repeated. Then, fixing hard and amused eyes on Helewise, added, ‘The nuns there run a madhouse.’
His faint sneer said all too plainly that he thought Helewise might well be admitted to it.
‘Is there no other convent nearer?’ she asked, ignoring the sneer.
The disdainful look intensified. ‘Nothing worth the name,’ he said coldly. ‘However, there is Sedgebeck.’
‘Sedgebeck?’
He did not answer. Instead, he said, ‘Your nun — this troublesome Sister Anne-’
‘Alba.’
‘- does not appear, you judge, to have absorbed the essence of the cloistered life?’
Untangling his pedantry, she said, ‘No. I do not believe she has.’
Now he was actually smiling, probably, Helewise thought, at the pleasant prospect of imminently seeing the back of her. ‘Then I would venture to suggest that, before Denney, to Sedgebeck you should go.’
She wasn’t going to risk allowing him to snub her by asking why; in all probability, he would say something annoying such as ‘That you must judge for yourself, Abbess, I could not possibly say’. Instead, she merely said, ‘I thank you for your time,’ and turned to leave the room.
He called out: ‘Do you not need me to give directions?’
Feeling a small and totally unworthy sense of triumph, she said sweetly, ‘Indeed no, Abbot, I shall ask someone who, unlike yourself, is not engaged in such all-absorbing work.’
She found her way back to the courtyard, where Saul and Augustine were waiting for her.
She said, ‘We have to find somewhere called Sedgebeck, then a place called Denney, where Benedictine nuns run a madhouse. Do you know of either, Augustine?’ The young brother shook his head. ‘Then we need to ask for directions,’ she continued. ‘Have you met any friendly, Christian soul who might provide them?’
Augustine raised an eyebrow, and exchanged a swift glance with Saul. Both, Helewise noted, were too well disciplined to enquire why the Abbot hadn’t told her which way to go.
‘I shall ask the stabler,’ Saul said. ‘He says he is a local man.’
Soon he was back. ‘For Sedgebeck, we have to go back the way we came, re-cross Wicken Lode, and go south towards a low isle that we’ll see directly in front of us. That’s Sedgebeck. Denney lies south-west of here, and it is a good road.’
Saul, Helewise noticed, looked pale. ‘Thank you, Saul,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, Abbess.’
‘I suggest, then, that we leave straight away,’ she announced. ‘We have several hours of daylight left, and if neither Sedgebeck nor Denney is the right place, then the sooner we establish that, the sooner we can get on with finding the one that is.’
Brother Saul’s mouth had dropped open. ‘Abbess, if we’re heading for Sedgebeck, I really think we would be better to set out in the morning,’ he said. Beads of sweat were standing out on his forehead.
‘Why, Saul?’ she asked gently, greatly surprised that her stalwart Brother Saul seemed to be showing all the signs of extreme terror. ‘What else did the stabler tell you about the place?’
‘Abbess, if it truly is where Sister Alba was, then it’s no wonder the poor lass is losing her wits!’ His voice dropped to a whisper, and he edged closer. Augustine, Helewise noticed, did as well. They must look, she reflected wryly, like a trio of witches.
‘Sedgebeck has an evil reputation,’ Saul murmured. ‘People have got lost there in the marshes, and gone clean out of their wits! And there’s shifting sands, too, in the waterways, that suck an unwary traveller in and don’t give up the body till he’s long dead and drowned! There’s things that live in the water thereabouts that no man wants to encounter, unholy things, things that creep up out of the ooze and steal livestock. Steal babies, too, so the stabler says.’
Helewise straightened up and said firmly, ‘Saul, you have been listening to superstitious gossip. Do you really think that Our Blessed Lord would allow such things on His earth, especially so near to the sanctified ground of one of His holy communities?’
‘But that’s just it, it seems they do say that Sedgebeck is not-’ Saul began.