The next few minutes were a trial for them all. Sister Euphemia was calm in the midst of the furore, despite having to think of three things at once; in addition to Josse, she was supervising the delivery of a badly-positioned baby and administering a pain-killing sedative to a man who was about to have his gangrenous left hand removed.
She made room for Josse at the far end of the infirmary, in an area which, although its position gave him privacy, meant that his four bearers had to carry him the length of the long ward. Despite their best efforts, between them they managed to upset a pail of water, knock over a small table containing herbal potions and crack Josse’s head against the doorframe. The last accident caused their patient finally to break his silence; the howl of pain that emerged from him made Helewise’s blood go cold.
With a barely perceptible gesture, Sister Euphemia had summoned two of her nurses. And as, with polite but firm insistence, they made their way past Helewise, Brice and Will, the Abbess and the two men found themselves excluded from Josse’s bedside.
The infirmarer caught her eye; Sister Euphemia briefly turned down her mouth in an anxious expression. Oh, dear Lord, Helewise thought. I am very afraid that this is as serious as I feared.
Then Sister Euphemia turned back to her patient. As Sister Beata and Sister Judith began their first task — stripping the patient of his shirt and removing the bloodstained dressing on his arm — Helewise had a brief glimpse of Josse’s face.
I cannot bear to see him like this, she thought.
Then, putting aside her personal feelings and assuming once more the mantle of Abbess of Hawkenlye — rarely could she recall a moment when it had been so hard — she said to Brice, ‘Please, come with me. I will order something to eat for you and Will, and, if you wish it, we offer you the Abbey’s hospitality while we see if he is going to — that is, until there is word of Sir Josse’s condition.’
Brice and Will, she noted, looked as stunned as she felt. They seemed to be waiting for her to make the first move away from the bedside and out of the infirmary; with a brief bow to Brice, she led them off, back down the ward and out into the bright sunshine outside.
The long wait was easier for Helewise than for the two men. She was in her own environment, and she had the daily round of duties to occupy her mind, preventing it from dwelling constantly on that white-faced, agonised figure in the infirmary.
She also had the vast solace of prayer. The hour for Sext had come and gone, and it was almost time for Nones, and still there was no word from the infirmary save only, ‘He lives’.
On her way to the Abbey church, Helewise caught sight of Brice and Will. They were sitting on a stone seat by the gate. Brice was tracing patterns in the ground with a stick, Will sat with folded arms staring straight in front of him.
She went over to them. They stood up as she approached and, impetuously holding out her hands to them, she said, ‘Will you not come to pray with us? When we have said the Office, we shall be asking God that He look kindly on Sir Josse, and that He lessen his pain.’
‘I will come, thank you, Abbess,’ Brice said.
Will stood mutely, staring at the ground; Helewise thought she saw him briefly shake his head.
But later, when some small movement caused her to turn round and look down from her position near the altar towards the entrance to the church, she noticed that Will had crept in and was kneeling by himself, just inside the great door.
Somehow, to have Josse’s devoted manservant adding his pleas to those who prayed so hard for Josse seemed, to Helewise, oddly comforting.
It was at dusk that Sister Euphemia finally came to Helewise with definite news.
Helewise was in her room; as the infirmarer came in and made her reverence, Helewise wondered if she should summon Brice and Will.
As if Sister Euphemia read her mind — it quite often happened between them — she said as she straightened up, ‘I’ll tell you first, Abbess, if you will allow it. Then may I ask that you tell the others, Sir Brice and what’s-his-name?’
‘Of course,’ Helewise said. Euphemia was, she realised, totally exhausted; it would be far less exacting for her to explain everything to just one person than to three. ‘Please, Sister, come and sit here, in my chair.’
Sister Euphemia looked quite shocked at the suggestion. ‘Indeed I will not, Abbess!’ She squared her shoulders. ‘Thank you all the same,’ she added.
‘How is he?’ Helewise asked quietly.
Sister Euphemia nodded. ‘He will live. And, with God’s help, I believe that we have saved his arm. He’s strong, very strong, else he’d have been dead by now. That servant of his has been doing his best, but I suspect that he and his woman haven’t any real skill. Probably knew to keep his master drinking, and to sponge that fearful wound occasionally — and I must admit, the dressing was fairly fresh and neatly applied — but I wouldn’t imagine either of them knew of any specific for a violently rising fever.’
‘But you do,’ Helewise said, deliberately making it a statement; she could not bear there to be any doubt.
‘I do,’ Euphemia agreed. ‘Sister Anne and Sister Judith got down to cleaning and dressing the arm, soon as you left us, and I got Sister Tiphaine to help me with the strongest medicine we could think of. Thank the good Lord, it’s spring, and the plants we needed are green and potent.’ She paused, frowning, as if going over in her head what she had done and wondering if she had forgotten anything. ‘Anyway, seems we did right. The fever’s broken and is receding.’
‘God be praised,’ Helewise said softly.
‘Amen.’ Euphemia was still frowning.
‘Sister?’ Helewise prompted. ‘What is it?’
Sister Euphemia shook her head, as if to drive away whatever thought was bothering her. ‘Nothing, leastways, nothing very relevant.’ She smiled briefly at Helewise. ‘Don’t you fret, Abbess dear. Like I said, he isn’t going to die, I’m as sure of that as I can be. I don’t think the good Lord is impatient to call him home just yet awhile.’
‘I was only-’ Helewise began. But she couldn’t think how to continue. Anyway, was there any point in denying, to the observant and perceptive Euphemia of all people, the special place that Josse occupied in her heart?
Euphemia gave her another smile, one that brimmed with kindness and understanding. ‘Me, I’m puzzling over why a man with a severe wound in his arm should take it into his head to go riding his great horse at large obstacles, that’s all.’ She sighed. ‘Didn’t we tell him he was lucky to keep the arm, when the wound was first inflicted? Did we really need to say, make sure you don’t put it to the test until it’s fully healed?’ She shook her head, tutting under her breath at the ways of men.
‘Apparently we did,’ Helewise said. ‘He’s a man of action, Sister. It must have been hard for him, having to sit around like an invalid.’
The infirmarer gave her a shrewd look. ‘Especially when there were things on his mind,’ she said. ‘Things he was brooding over. A man of action, like you say, would look on a good gallop and a few challenging ditches to jump as a good way of taking himself out of himself. Yes?’
Helewise nodded. She, too, remembered how dejected Josse had seemed, back in the early spring. Joanna de Courtenay might have worked her magic to save his arm, but there were other legacies of that brief time in February which were not so readily healed.
But it was wiser, she thought, not to speak further of things best forgotten.