‘A — what?’ Great heavens, no wonder she was agitated! ‘You’re sure it was human? Not some animal caught inside when the place went up in flames?’
She was shaking her head. ‘No, no, that’s what I hoped. But Brother Augustine knows about bones. He insisted the skeleton was human. A man, he said.’
Again, Josse wished with all his soul for his usual speed of thought. A dead body, in an out-of-the-way location so close to the girls’ former home? What did this mean? ‘Perhaps the fire and the death happened years and years ago,’ he suggested.
‘No,’ she said again. ‘We discussed that on the long road home, and Brother Saul remarked that the small degree of regrowth of vegetation bore witness to the fact that the fire can have been but recent.’
‘I was afraid you’d say something like that,’ Josse muttered.
He met her eyes. She was looking at him with an almost compassionate expression, as if about to give him very bad news.
As, it proved, she was. ‘Sir Josse,’ she said very quietly, ‘we cannot even console ourselves with thinking that it was a dreadful accident. This was murder.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘The dead man had been tied to an iron stake set into the floor of the dwelling,’ she said dully. ‘Brother Augustine found what was left of the rope, knotted very securely around the bones of the wrist.’
And Josse, momentarily overwhelmed, dropped his head in his hands.
She let him be for a while, for which he was profoundly grateful. So much to assimilate! There was a pattern behind it all, there had to be, and he kept having the frustrating, nagging feeling that it was there for the seeing, if he could only think!
Presently he heard her get up and move round her table to stand beside him. ‘Sir Josse?’ she said gently.
He raised his head. ‘Abbess?’
‘Sir Josse, there is a further matter I should tell you about,’ she said, face creased in anxiety. ‘I hesitate to do so, since it is but a suspicion, without any real substance. But. .’ She did not continue; she seemed to be waiting for him to invite her to.
‘You had better tell me anyway,’ he said dully.
A fleeting smile lit her face, there and gone in an instant. ‘Try not to sound so eager,’ she murmured.
He managed a grin. ‘Sorry. Go on. What was this suspicion of yours?’
She straightened, took a breath and said, ‘I am almost certain that we were being followed.’
‘Followed? Where? When?’
‘I first sensed it when we were going to Medely — the girls’ old home. I was convinced somebody was watching us in the woods, where we found the body, although that was such a creepy, eerie place that it would have been surprising not to have thought someone was there, hidden away. Then there were times on the road home when I. . Oh, this is silly! I shouldn’t have mentioned it! When I stop to think, of course there were people following us! It’s a warm, sunny April, and the whole of England is probably on the move!’
He understood her sudden emotion. But knowing her as he did, he did not dismiss what she had just revealed. Weighing his words, eventually he said, ‘I’m glad you told me. Perhaps it was nothing, perhaps there really was someone following you. If the former is true, then there’s no harm done. If the latter, then sharing your suspicions with me means that now we shall both be on our guard.’
Her face fell. ‘Against what?’
He gave a helpless shrug. ‘Abbess dear, I have no idea.’
Chapter Fourteen
Staring at her old friend’s hopeless expression, Helewise had a moment’s urge to wave her arms and shout, We have to get to the bottom of this, right now! Two men are dead, a young girl is missing, and we two must go on thinking until we know why!
But he’s still convalescing, she told herself severely. I have no right to push him so hard when he has been so ill. And I, too, am exhausted. Neither of us is at our best at the moment.
She stepped away from him and, making herself move slowly and calmly, walked round her table until she was once more in front of her wooden chair. Raising her head so that her eyes met his, she said, ‘Sir Josse, I am sorry that I have kept you here for so long, tiring you out by talking. Please, go back now to Sister Euphemia, and surrender yourself into her care once more. We will speak again tomorrow.’
He raised an anguished face to hers. ‘There have been two deaths, Abbess! Two! We must — we ought to be. .’ But his resolve seemed to have run out.
‘To bed, Sir Josse,’ she insisted. Still he did not move; she realised that she was going to have to help him. ‘Come,’ she said, returning to his side, ‘I will walk with you to the infirmary. I shall confess to Sister Euphemia that it was I who exhausted her poor patient, and that you are not to blame.’
He stood up, managing a weak grin. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t go doing that, Abbess; Sister Euphemia’s like a mother hen with her patients, she’ll have you scouring out slop bowls for the next week as a punishment.’
‘One that I richly deserve,’ Helewise murmured.
She noticed, as they went across to the infirmary, that he was leaning on her. Deeply touched at this evidence of his physical weakness, she could not bear to linger; almost pushing him towards a surprised Sister Beata, she said somewhat gruffly, ‘I’ve tired your patient, I’m afraid. Please look after him.’
Then she turned abruptly on her heel and strode back to her room.
Soon afterwards, it was time for the evening devotions. Joining her voice with those of her sisters in the beautiful words and sounds of Compline, eventually she began to feel a little better.
The next day saw an end to the spell of warm, sunny weather. The sky was overcast, and a light drizzle was falling. The weight of clouds massing over the forest suggested that heavier rain was not far away.
Helewise’s mind was racing and, eager to implement the plan she had worked out while lying sleepless in the early hours, she had little appetite for breakfast. But she made herself eat; she knew that she would be less well equipped to face the challenge of the day on an empty stomach.
As soon as she could get away, she set off for the Vale to find Berthe.
The monks and the pilgrims were all in the little shrine that had been built over the holy water spring. They were in the middle of a service.
Helewise stood at the back of the shrine, at the top of the short flight of rough-hewn steps that led down to the pool. Even above the soft murmur of praying voices she could hear the gentle, steady sound of the water, falling from where it seeped out of the rocks into the pool below.
On a plinth, set into the rocky walls over the spring, stood a wooden statue of the Virgin. She was raised above the floor, so that her small, bare feet were at eye level. Her arms were outstretched and her hands were spread out with the palms uppermost; she seemed to be giving a constant gesture of invitation, and this benevolence was echoed in the gentle smile on the softly curving mouth.
Helewise, who was always moved by this beautiful image of the Holy Mother, breathed a sigh of pure happiness.
It was such a wonderful place, this shrine, she thought. For a few precious moments, she put her pressing preoccupations aside and opened her heart and her soul to the kind blessing that seemed to be present in the very air of the shrine.