‘Yes. Don’t worry, Josse, Mag taught me well.’
‘Aye, I’m sure.’ He fought with the sickness which seemed determined to rise. To take his mind off thoughts of her handiwork, he asked, ‘Where is de Courtenay? He was lying just there, and now he isn’t.’
‘Don’t worry about that, either. He’s taken care of,’ she said soothingly.
‘You didn’t manage that, all on your own!’ He’d noticed she was strong, but not that strong, surely! De Courtenay had been no weakling, no lightweight.
‘No, no,’ she was saying. ‘Josse, I’m not the only one with loyal friends. Your Will, now, would, I warrant, do anything for you.’
‘Will?’
‘Yes. Will. He and I took de Courtenay outside — we wanted to act now, under cover of night — and Will is burying the body in a ditch.’
‘Burying him?’
‘He is dead. You realise that?’
‘Of course! But-’
But what? But we must send for the Sheriff, report the murder, describe the circumstances, hope that, by so doing, we convince them that it was sell-defence?
And supposing they don’t agree? What then?
Then I, Josse thought — for no part of him could even contemplate letting Joanna take the blame — then I would go on trial for murder. And I might very well hang.
But to bury de Courtenay in a New Winnowlands ditch! Not even to bury the corpse himself, but to have Will do it!
Could his conscience ever rest easy again, bearing the stain of all that?
His conscience was, he quickly realised, going to have to do its best. The alternative was unthinkable.
He said, ‘Joanna, would you fetch Will?’
‘Of course.’
She came back quite quickly — presumably Will’s ditch was not far distant — and Will, looming behind her, said, ‘Sir? I hope I’ve done as you’d wish, but I’ve put him right at the bottom of that long trench I was digging down at the end of the orchard, where we was worrying about the tendency for that corner to flood. He’s down deep, sir, won’t nobody find him, leastways, not if they don’t know where to look.’
Will’s earnest face touched Josse deeply. He reached out his hand, and, after a small hesitation. Will put out his too and grasped it.
‘Thank you, Will,’ Josse said. ‘It’s more than I have any right to ask of you, but thank you.’
‘You didn’t ask.’ Will grinned briefly. ‘You wasn’t in no state to ask aught of anybody, sir.’ He glanced at Joanna. ‘And I couldn’t stand by and see the young lady here struggling all by herself with such a task, now, could I?’
‘But, Will, if there should ever be investigations about him, if anybody should ask you directly what you knew…’
Will waited courteously to see if he were going to finish. When he didn’t, Will said, ‘If anybody should ask about a body, I should say, body? What body?’
‘De Courtenay’s body!’ Josse said, beginning to feel fuddled again.
And Will, adopting a convincing expression of bovine dullness, said, ‘Eh? Who? Never heard of him.’
‘I won’t forget this, Will,’ Josse said.
Will was getting up. ‘I know that, sir. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a trench to finish backfilling.’
* * *
Alone again with Joanna, Josse said, ‘Is it safe? Do you think he’ll ever be found?’
She shrugged. ‘Who can say? But I doubt it. For one thing, Will has, as he said, buried him deep. For another, what is there to connect Denys de Courtenay with you or New Winnow-lands? I think we can safely discount the peasant who came here to summon you into Denys’s trap — it’s not likely that a wretch like him would speak out against a knight. What would be the point? Anything he said would be instantly dismissed.’
‘He wasn’t the only one,’ Josse murmured. ‘De Courtenay had another two outside with him.’
Joanna shrugged. ‘The same applies to them. Apart from them, who else but you and I know that Denys followed you here?’
‘Brother Saul,’ Josse murmured, ‘and the Abbess Helewise.’
‘Both of whom are your true and loving friends,’ she countered quickly, ‘and who, if you tell them the truth, will understand that this death is not on your conscience. That you fought bravely, but were overcome. That, holding out against threatened torture, your courage cannot be faulted.’ She paused, took a deep breath and said, ‘That another hand killed Denys de Courtenay.’
He said softly, ‘Never admit that again. Not to me, not to anybody.’
She stared deep into his eyes. And, after a pause, whispered, ‘No. I won’t.’
‘I will tell the Abbess,’ he announced presently, ‘that de Courtenay was stricken as we fought. That it was by pure mischance that he fell on to my blade-’
‘- which just happened to pierce his heart,’ she finished. There was a wry humour in her voice. ‘Josse, you won’t do that. Whatever explanation you choose to give, I should, if I might suggest, keep it brief.’
‘But she’ll want to know,’ he protested. ‘I’ll have to tell her something!’
Joanna put her hand on his brow, smoothing out the frown. ‘Dear Josse,’ she murmured. ‘You can’t bear to think of lying to those you love, can you?’
‘I-’ He stopped. She was right, it was something he could not contemplate. Helewise’s face sprang into his mind, frowning as she worried over some matter he had taken to lay at her feet, willingly putting all her intelligence and her experience at his disposal. Which, considering everything else constantly clamouring for her attention, was a gift indeed.
‘She’s-’ he began. ‘She’s a woman who-’
But he was attempting to explain Helewise to Joanna. And that, he realised, was something he would find difficult, even were he not suffering from a grievous wound.
‘It’s all right,’ Joanna said soothingly. ‘I understand.’
And, light-headed as he was, possibly seeing with a greater clarity than when he was fully himself, he knew that she did.
* * *
It was only when he woke the next morning that he remembered Brother Saul was also under his roof. Also under the care of Joanna.
He said, as soon as she appeared with a drink and a light breakfast of a bowl of thin gruel, ‘How is Brother Saul?’
She smiled. ‘Brother Saul is quite well. So well, in fact, that he left us soon after first light and is even now riding back to Hawkenlye to put his Abbess’s mind at rest.’
‘What’s he going to tell her?’ Josse struggled to sit up.
‘Don’t worry!’ She put out a restraining hand. ‘He will tell her the truth, but the truth as he has been told it.’
‘Which is?’
Her eyes widened into an expression of innocence. ‘Don’t you remember? Oh, dear, it must be because you’re still not yourself! Listen well, then, and I will tell you. There was a fight, between you and Denys, and you drew your dagger to defend yourself, and he fell against it when he tripped.’
He held her eyes. ‘That’s the truth?’
‘It is,’ she said firmly.
‘Can you live with that?’ he whispered.
And, raising her chin, she replied, ‘I can.’
* * *
It was two days before she would let him ride, and, even then, she told him crossly that he was daft even to think of it, and he ought to be abed still, building up his strength. By the time he was a third of the way to Hawkenlye, he was beginning to agree with her.
He had resisted her attempts to persuade him to let her go too. If he were going to have to lie to Abbess Helewise — which he knew he was — then it would be marginally better not to have a witness. Particularly if that witness were Joanna.
He made himself ignore his weakness. He urged Horace on, infected now with a sense of urgency. Even though he knew Brother Saul would have told the Abbess what had happened — the version he had been given, that was — still Josse longed to reassure her himself.
Clinging on as Horace increased his pace to a sprightly canter, Josse gritted his teeth and tried to work out what he was going to say.
* * *
Helewise had spent an awful few days.
Brother Saul’s return mid-way through the morning two days ago had given her the blessed relief of knowing he was alive and well, and apparently none the worse for his ordeal.