Should he, he wondered as he walked slowly across to the cloister, send for Will? Have a talk with him, make sure all went well at home?
No, he decided finally. Will was quite used to managing without his master. In fact, Josse accepted ruefully, Will probably only ever made a show of consulting him out of kindness.
Ah, but it was good to be out in the fresh air again! He stood still for a moment, flinging out his arms in a wide stretch, but the sudden movement caught him unawares; as the dizziness swept through him, hastily he moved to the stone bench that ran along inside the cloister and sat down.
I am, he concluded, far from fully fit yet.
He tried not to dwell on it. Instead, settling himself comfortably so that he could keep an eye on the main gate, he ran through the additional small facts which he had managed to pick up from his conversations with Berthe.
They were mainly to do with her family. Alba, she said, was a lot older than her two younger sisters — which, Josse imagined, those at Hawkenlye who had seen all three would already have known — and the girls’ mother had been afraid of her.
‘She’s very like Father,’ Berthe had told him. ‘Like him to look at, and like him in her hot temper and her tendency to fly into rages and go bright red in the face.’
No wonder, Josse had thought, the poor, gentle mother had been afraid.
And, on another occasion: ‘Alba’s terribly proud, Sir Josse. She’s always on at me and Meriel about the good name of the family, which she drags into the argument whenever she wants to give us orders. Like not to laugh and shout in public, not to go out in less than perfectly clean and mended clothes, not to associate with this person because they’re beneath us, whatever that means.’
To that, Josse had been prompted to ask why the father and the mother hadn’t been the ones to discipline the younger girls. Berthe had replied, a remembered anger and hurt making her pretty face flush, ‘Father said we were like an army. He gave orders to Alba; she gave them to us. As for Mother’ — the girl’s expression softened — ‘she never interfered. It sometimes seemed as if she were another sister, kinder, more loving, who left the bossing about and the issuing of punishments to Alba. Who was, after all, far better suited to it.’
Once, Josse asked her whether Alba had left home to enter the convent before or after the mother had died.
‘Oh, after,’ Berthe replied.
‘I wonder whether your mother’s death prompted her to take the veil?’ Josse mused aloud.
‘Oh, no, I shouldn’t think so, she. .’ But, with a perplexed frown, Berthe trailed off. Josse waited, and after a moment she said, ‘You know, it’s strange, but, now I come to think of it, I think you might be right.’ She was staring at him, her face intent as she tried to put a vague idea into words. ‘She was — Mother and Alba were — well, it was Alba, really. It always felt as if she was sort of vying with Mother for control. For who was head of the household after Father. But, of course, when Mother died, that left Alba with nobody to vie with.’
‘Didn’t that make her happy? After all, the way was then clear for her and your father to rule between them, which you imply was what they wanted?’
‘It ought to have made her happy.’ Berthe sounded puzzled. ‘But having nobody to fight with didn’t seem to suit her at all. I remember that, when she made up her mind to enter the cloister, she said something about having won her battle, so there was no need for her to stay at home.’ She shrugged. ‘I really have no idea what she meant.’
Berthe had sought him out in the cloister this morning. She came bearing a cushion and a warm woollen blanket; when he protested that he had no need of either, she ignored him as completely as Sister Euphemia would have done, and made him stand up while she placed the folded blanket beneath him and put the cushion between him and the rough stone wall. He had to admit he was far more comfortable like that.
He glanced at her face, trying to judge if she was up to a little gentle teasing. Her serene expression suggested that she was, so he said, ‘You know, Berthe, you really are picking up infirmary ways. If I hadn’t known it was you, I could have sworn that commanding voice and that refusal to listen to my protests was pure Sister Euphemia.’
To his delight, Berthe burst out laughing. ‘I’m delighted, Sir Josse!’ she said. He watched the dimples appearing and disappearing in her cheeks. ‘I have been modelling myself on her, but I had no idea I was doing so well!’
She had brought some needlework with her. Settling herself beside him, she took some garment in soft white cloth from an embroidered workbag and, threading her needle, began to repair a seam.
They made the occasional comment to one another but, in the main, sat in a happy, companionable silence.
She sat with him for much of the day. She was quite radiant, Josse noticed; he was now as sure as he could be that she knew perfectly well that Meriel was safe. And, probably, that the two were in contact. Berthe, he observed, never spoke to him of Meriel’s disappearance. He liked to think it was because she was now too fond of him to tell him lies.
For the fifth time, he made her put aside her sewing and hurry across to the gates, to look out along the road and see if there were any sign of three weary riders approaching the Abbey. The first four times, she had come hurrying back shaking her head.
This time was different.
He could tell by the way she stiffened as she looked down the road that she had spotted something. Watching, he saw her put up a hand to shade her eyes. Then, when she was certain, she started jumping up and down, waving her arms and shouting, ‘It’s her! It’s Abbess Helewise! She’s back!’
He did not push forward to greet the Abbess straight away. Others had precedence. From his seat in the cloister, he watched her go through what appeared to be a routine, as if, in this regimented life of devotion, there was even a prescribed way for an Abbess to return to her community.
He saw the senior nuns go in turn to see the Abbess in her room, and he assumed that they were reporting to her all that had happened in their particular departments during her absence. Some, it appeared, were more succinct than others; or perhaps less had happened in their areas of convent life.
Then there were the Offices; she would naturally be eager to attend those with her sisters.
All in all, it was dusk before she put her head out of her doorway and said, ‘Sir Josse? Will you come and speak with me?’
When the door was closed behind him, she came towards him with her arms open and said, ‘I am so happy to see you looking well! You have been in my heart all the time I have been away, and I have prayed for your recovery.’ She gave him a wide, beaming smile. ‘Sister Euphemia tells me you have been a model patient, listening to her advice, working with her, and with God, to bring about your healing. And now we see the result! Up and about all the long day, so I hear, and you look fine!’
He was responding to her delight, a smile spreading over his face. ‘I thank you for your concern, Abbess. Aye, I am well on the way to recovery.’ He studied her; she looked tired. ‘But what of you? Did you find Sister Alba’s convent? Were they able to answer your questions?’
She went to sit down in her chair, motioning him to be seated on the wooden stool that she kept for visitors. ‘We found the place, yes. And, although the good nuns did indeed provide some answers, those in turn posed more questions. Such as, why did Alba describe a totally different background to the Abbess of Sedgebeck from the one she revealed to me? According to that Alba, she was a spoiled, only child of an indulgent father.’ She sighed. ‘A very different woman from the one who tore herself from the place where she was so happy, in order to take her grieving, poverty-stricken, homeless younger sisters away to a new life.’