Heart of Ice (4 page)

     Sister Euphemia put her hand on the tangled brown hair – it was still damp – and, closing her eyes, asked God to see His way to admitting this poor soul to Paradise.

     Then, worn out, very anxious and with aching feet and back, she left the recess, put the bar across its entrance that was the accepted signal for
do not enter
and, with dragging steps, made her way slowly to the dormitory and her bed.

Chapter 2

Josse had been both surprised and pleased to see Brother Augustus ride into his courtyard. More than pleased: he had found himself hurrying down the steps into the courtyard to embrace the young man as if he were a long-lost son, an action which, when Josse stopped to consider it some time later, suggested to him that he might just possibly be lonely.

     Darkness had fallen by the time Augustus arrived and the temperature had dropped. Before the lad could say much more than ‘Good evening, Sir Josse’, Josse had yelled for Will to come and see to the Abbey’s cob, to Ella to get something hot to eat as fast as she could and to Augustus himself to hurry on inside and warm himself by the fire.

     Augustus was wearing his customary sandals and his feet were so white that it looked as if they could not be part of a living human body.

     Josse tutted as he fussed round the young man. ‘Could the Abbey not have found you a pair of boots?’ he muttered. And, noticing the thin black fabric over the boy’s shivering back, ‘Would a winter cloak be too much to ask?’

     Ella brought a mug of hot, spiced, watered wine and thrust it into Augustus’s hands. He said a polite ‘Thank you’, to which the taciturn Ella responded with a sound that might equally well have been a reply or a brief attack of wind. Augustus looked up at Josse, an irrepressible grin spreading across his face, and Josse hurriedly despatched Ella back to her kitchen.

     ‘She’s rather shy,’ he whispered to Augustus.

     Augustus nodded knowingly, as if gauche serving women were his daily lot. ‘The wine’s wonderful,’ he said. His nose was in the mug and he seemed to be breathing in the spicy fumes. ‘It’s going straight to my toes.’

     ‘Ella will bring you food soon,’ Josse said confidently. ‘I’ll ask her to make a bed up for you, lad – it’s far too late to ride back to the Abbey tonight.’ Then belatedly he said, ‘What can I do for you?’

     Augustus grinned again. ‘Sorry, Sir Josse, I should have said straight away. The Abbess sends her compliments and asks if you could possibly come to Hawkenlye because there’s a young man been hit on the head and thrown in the lake in the Vale. It was frozen, you see,’ he added, ‘and the
cadaver
only came to the surface when the ice melted today.’

     Cadaver, Josse thought. The careful way in which young Gussie had pronounced the word suggested it did not form part of his day-to-day vocabulary and Josse decided he must have been listening to the infirmarer.

     ‘The dead man was hit on the head,’ he repeated. ‘He could not have tripped on a patch of ice on the path, perhaps, and done the damage accidentally?’

     ‘No.’ Augustus spoke firmly. ‘To hit himself where the wound is, he’d have had to be walking on his hands.’

     ‘I see.’ It did not seem very likely. ‘A young man, you said?’

     ‘Aye.’

     ‘What sort of a person?’

     Augustus shrugged. ‘I can’t say, Sir Josse. I helped get him out of the water and carry him up to the infirmary but you can’t accurately judge a man’s station in life when he’s soaking wet and dead.’

     ‘No, I suppose not.’ Josse was thinking. ‘Nobody knows who he is?’

     ‘No. I don’t think so.’

     ‘Hm.’

     ‘The Abbess has sent for Gervase de Gifford,’ Augustus offered. ‘Maybe he’ll recognise the body.’

     ‘Aye.’ Again, Josse hardly heard. He was busy with his conscience because, for quite a few moments, he had been so pleased at this summons back to Hawkenlye that he had quite forgotten to be sorry about its cause.

Josse and Brother Augustus rode through the Abbey gates in the middle of the following morning. Augustus offered to take Josse’s horse off to the stables and Josse made his way straight to the Abbess’s little room at the far end of the cloister.

     She got up to greet him, advancing towards him and holding out her hands to take his. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘Dear Sir Josse – what a friend you are.’

     Embarrassed, he dropped her hands as quickly as he could and waved away her gratitude. ‘Young Gussie said that Gervase de Gifford had been summoned,’ he said. ‘Is he here?’

     The Abbess frowned. ‘He intended to come up first thing this morning,’ she said. ‘However, he has sent word that another matter has called him away. Knowing you were to arrive, I believe he must have thought that this other matter took precedence.’

     Josse could not tell from her carefully neutral tone what the Abbess thought about this, so wisely he made no comment. ‘Gus told me about the dead man in the pond,’ he said instead. ‘Shall we go to see him?’

     ‘Of course.’

     He stepped back to let her precede him and she led the way around the cloister and across to the infirmary, where she turned to her left and, removing a bar that had been put across its narrow entrance, went into a small curtained recess. Wondering about the barrier – and why, indeed, they had just ignored it – he moved to stand beside her in front of the narrow cot.

     The body lying on the cot was covered with a sheet.

     Sister Euphemia must have seen the Abbess and Josse walk along to the recess; she appeared almost immediately and, with a brief bow to Josse and a deeper one for the Abbess, said quietly, ‘I’ll show you the wound, Sir Josse.’

     He watched as she folded back the sheet to expose the head; he noticed how careful she was that the rest of the body remained covered. He looked at the blow that had killed the man and he saw straight away what Augustus had meant. ‘Aye, the man was murdered,’ he muttered, half to himself. Glancing up at the infirmarer, he asked, ‘Any more marks on him, Sister?’

     The infirmarer exchanged a look with the Abbess. Neither spoke for a moment; then the Abbess said, ‘Come with me, please, Sir Josse. I will show you the dead man’s clothing and his pouch. They are back in my room.’

     Increasingly mystified, Josse followed her out of the infirmary.

‘Here,’ she said, picking up a dark bundle from the floor and depositing it on her table, ‘are his garments. Sister Euphemia has been drying them by the fire but they are still a little damp.’

     Josse inspected the hose, the tunic, the undershirt and the cloak. The items were cheap; the linen shirt was of poor quality and the underarm seams had split. Its hem, he noticed, was stained. Both the hose and the shirt smelled unpleasant.

     ‘He suffered a flux of the bowels,’ the Abbess said. ‘Despite his immersion in the lake, the odour is still detectable.’

     Josse nodded. He was looking at the cloak – it was of heavy wool and, he thought, would have dragged the body down as it soaked up water – and unpleasant images were filling his mind of dark water and a sheen of ice forming. But, he reassured himself, the poor lad would have known nothing about all that, not with such a frightful wound. He’d have been dead before he hit the ground.

     ‘There is also this.’ Josse looked up to see that the Abbess was holding out a leather pouch. ‘It was attached to his belt and it, too, we have dried as best we could.’

     Josse took it from her. ‘Is there anything inside it?’

     ‘See for yourself.’ She sounded unlike herself, Josse thought; she was distant, almost aloof  . . .

     He turned his attention to the pouch. There was a small pocket sewn inside and it looked as if someone had searched it with a rough hand, for the stitching had been torn. Had robbery been the motive for this death, then? Josse put his hand right down inside the pocket and his fingers touched something hard, cold and round. More than one thing; extracting what he had found, Josse looked down on five heavy coins.

     ‘If he was killed for the contents of his pouch, then the assailant did not make a very thorough search,’ he said. ‘See, my lady? These coins were tucked away right at the bottom of the pouch’s pocket.’

     She looked. ‘I see.’

     Josse put his hand back inside the pouch. There was something else . . . it was cold and slightly damp and felt like a little bag made of waxed cloth. Carefully drawing it out, he put it down on the Abbess’s table.

     ‘What’s this?’ he asked, not really expecting an answer; the Abbess’s strange mood was worrying him.

     She leaned close to him, studying the bag. She sniffed then, bending down so that her nose was right over the bag, sniffed again. ‘I believe,’ she said slowly, ‘it may be a potion. A remedy.’ Eyes on Josse’s – and for the first time she began to look like herself – she added, ‘I’ve smelt this stuff, whatever it is, before; I’m sure I have.’ She frowned. ‘It’s used for . . .’ Giving up, she shrugged, smiling at him. ‘I don’t know. Come on!’

     He turned to watch her as she scooped up the little bag and strode out of the room. ‘Where are we going?’

     The Abbess did not answer but then she didn’t really need to because Josse had guessed. Pacing along behind her – she was almost running – he followed her along the path that led round in front of the Abbey church and along inside the wall to the herb garden where, cosy in her small and fragrant little hut, the herbalist was sitting peacefully tying bunches of dried rosemary.

     The herbalist got to her feet and bowed to the Abbess, giving Josse a quick smile and what could have been a wink. Barely pausing to acknowledge the greeting, the Abbess thrust the small bag at Sister Tiphaine and said, ‘Can you tell us what this is?’

     Sister Tiphaine took the bag in careful hands and went to stand outside the hut, so that the full daylight fell on to it. She did as the Abbess had done and sniffed at it several times. Then she pinched one corner of the bag between finger and thumb and sniffed again.

     ‘Smells of lemon balm and vervain,’ she observed. ‘That’s interesting . . .’ Glancing up at the Abbess, she said, ‘May I open it?’

     ‘Yes.’

     The herbalist spread a clean piece of linen on her work bench and then took up a small knife and sliced through the string that held the neck of the bag closed; the string, Josse had noticed, was suffering from its time under water and appeared to have shrunk, making the knot quite impossible to untie. Then Sister Tiphaine gently shook the bag’s contents on to the piece of linen, picking them over and inspecting each item.

     After quite a long time – Josse could sense the Abbess restraining her impatience – Sister Tiphaine spoke. ‘This is a remedy,’ she announced.

     ‘That much we have already surmised. What is it for?’ demanded the Abbess.

     ‘There is a mixture of herbs here,’ Sister Tiphaine replied. ‘They are used to treat a variety of symptoms.’

     ‘Well?’

     If Sister Tiphaine had also noted the Abbess’s unusual asperity, she gave no sign. Calmly she began to list the ingredients in the bag and to describe the sickness that they treated.

     ‘Lemon balm, that calms and helps soothe a headache. There’s yarrow, that’s for flux of the bowels.’

     ‘Yes, yes, we know full well he suffered from that.’

     With a quick glance at the Abbess, the herbalist continued. ‘There’s wormwood; now that’s good for treating gripes in the belly and they do say it brings down a fever, although me, I find the bitter taste puts folks off swallowing it down. Rue, now, that’ll help calm a headache, as will this’ – she held up a tiny stem of some withered plant – ‘which is wild marjoram. And here’s a piece of mandrake; expensive, that is, and it’s hardly surprising given how folks fear it and don’t dare handle it.’

     ‘So this remedy is for the flux, fever and headache?’ The Abbess, Josse thought, was trying to hurry the herbalist along.

     But Sister Tiphaine would not be hurried. ‘Hmm,’ she murmured, still picking over the bag’s contents. ‘Here’s water mint and peppermint – both for the bowels – and quince; now that’s normally saved for when the bowel leaks blood. And here’s henbane; that’s a strong remedy and few use it.’

     ‘What does it do?’ Josse asked.