Heart of Ice (5 page)

     ‘It eases pain, although take too much and you’ll never feel pain again.’

     As she spoke the herbalist was deftly dividing the little sack’s contents into two piles, one containing those items that she had already identified and described, one containing nothing except some small, shrivelled flower heads, some withered leaves and some coarse grains of a bronze-coloured substance.

     ‘What are those?’ the Abbess asked.

     ‘The granules are ground resin of myrrh. It relieves pain, especially in the muscles and in the stomach. These flowers are marigolds and these’ – she pointed to the cracked, crumbling leaves – ‘are vervain. The vervain is unusual because it’s a magical remedy and I am surprised to find it included in this potion.’

     ‘Magical?’ the Abbess and Josse said together.

     ‘Aye. Folks say it has the power to protect a fighting man. Also lads and lassies put it in love potions.’

     ‘What is it doing here?’

     ‘I cannot say, my lady, other than to tell you that it is said to have another purpose. As do the marigolds.’ Sister Tiphaine frowned, almost as if she was reluctant to go on.

     ‘What purpose?’ the Abbess’s voice was barely above a whisper.

     The herbalist looked up, first at the Abbess and then at Josse. Then she said, ‘Both are said to ward off the foreign pestilence that folks call the plague.’

   
‘Plague?’
Josse’s horrified cry seemed to echo in the small room. Turning to the Abbess, he said, ‘My lady, there is no time to waste, we must—’

     But she was not looking shocked or frightened; she was staring at him with kindness and compassion in her eyes. He thought about how strange she had seemed, how detached. And then he thought about the body on the cot, covered carefully right up to the forehead. And about the barrier that had been erected across the entrance to the recess where the dead man lay.

     ‘This was no surprise,’ he said wonderingly. ‘You already knew the dead man was suffering from the pestilence. Didn’t you?’

     And yet you brought me here, he wanted to shout, led me right up to where the victim lay and deliberately kept me in ignorance as to what killed him!

     But he kept the flare of anger under control. And he thought, no, that is not right; the pestilence did not kill him, for the man was murdered.

     The Abbess seemed to be waiting until his train of thought ran its course. When at last she spoke, it was to say, ‘Sir Josse, it is true that I suspected. Sister Euphemia told me today that when she studied the dead man’s body last night there were signs of a rash, although when she looked again first thing this morning, it had faded. Now we cannot say for sure what the sickness was, for, as Sister Euphemia points out, many diseases bring spots and not all are fatal.’

     Josse tried to cheer himself up by trying to think of a few non-fatal rash-producing diseases but the attempt was a dismal failure. ‘Were there—’ He started again. ‘Did the infirmarer observe any other marks on the body to suggest the pestilence?’

     The Abbess shook her head. ‘Not those that I suspect you have in mind. The eyes were bloodshot and inflamed; there were strange spots inside the mouth.’ She put out her hand and briefly touched Josse’s arm. ‘No black swellings,’ she said softly. ‘Thank the Lord.’

     ‘Amen,’ Josse said fervently.

     For some time there was silence in the herbalist’s hut. Then Sister Tiphaine spoke. ‘I would suggest,’ she said slowly, ‘that a dead man with the pestilence in his body is less of a danger than a living one. Unless you’re planning on eating him,’ she added, quite mystifying Josse, who could not see the relevance of the remark.

     Neither, it seemed, could the Abbess. With a look of faint distaste at Sister Tiphaine – who noticed and, observed by Josse but not by the Abbess, gave a quick grin – she pointed at the contents of the little bag and said, ‘Where, Sister, do you think the victim could have acquired this remedy?’

     Sister Tiphaine began gathering the ingredients together, pushing them carefully back into the bag. ‘Not from some village wise woman, that’s for sure,’ she said, ‘for there are things here that even Hawkenlye Abbey doesn’t keep.’

     ‘But we have to be careful to—’ the Abbess began, apparently sensing a criticism. Then she stopped. ‘Please, Sister,’ she said majestically, ‘go on.’

     ‘My lady, the things I refer to are not necessarily the costly items,’ the infirmarer said gently, ‘although for sure I would hesitate to use as much myrrh as this in any remedy unless I could be sure of getting my hands on some more. Wasteful, I call it,’ she added in a mutter. ‘I was thinking of the vervain.’ With a swift look at Josse – which he failed to understand just as thoroughly as he had done the Sister’s remark about eating bodies – she said, ‘I could understand the vervain if this were a potion produced by the Forest Folk, but it isn’t. I can be quite certain of that because they don’t use mandrake.’

     ‘Ah, I see,’ the Abbess said. ‘You mean that vervain is not used at Hawkenlye because of its magical associations?’

     ‘Aye. Which I reckon suggests our dead man wasn’t given his remedy in any convent or monastery.’

     ‘Where, then?’ asked Josse.

     ‘I would say that this’ – Sister Tiphaine held up the little bag, whose neck she had tied up with a length of string – ‘was purchased from an apothecary. A good one, I’d say, and probably an expensive one. No man would put so much mandrake and myrrh in a potion and then give it away.’

     Asking the question more in hope than expectation, Josse said, ‘Do you know of such an apothecary hereabouts, Sister?’ The infirmarer shook her head. ‘And what of you, my lady?’

     ‘No,’ the Abbess said reluctantly. ‘I have never consulted an apothecary and I would not even know how to go about finding one. What shall we do, Sir Josse?’

     Feeling at that moment quite bereft of any sensible suggestions, Josse held his peace. Then gradually an image began to form itself in his mind: a dead body on a narrow cot, a vicious, crushing blow in its skull.

     The man carried nothing with which we might identify him, Josse thought, except for this little remedy in its cloth bag. Sister Tiphaine, bless her for her skill, has told us far more about it that I for one could have hoped for, including the very useful fact that it was put together by a master in the apothecary’s art. None out of the three of us knows of such a man, but this man, whoever he is, must be located because, once shown the remedy, he will be able to tell us for whom it was prescribed.

     Or at least let us hope that he will  . . .

     ‘My lady,’ Josse said, with more confidence that he felt, ‘we must, I believe, await the arrival of Gervase de Gifford. We shall ask him whether there is a skilled apothecary in Tonbridge or anywhere else in the vicinity, and if such a man exists and cannot help us, then we must broaden our search until the right man is found. Then we will  . . .’

     ‘. . . ask the identity of the man for whom he prescribed this potion so that, provided the purchaser did not give the potion to someone else, we shall then be able to put a name to our dead man,’ the Abbess finished for him. ‘Yes, Sir Josse, I fully understand your reasoning.’

     Of course she did. ‘Aye, my lady.’

     But, as they thanked Sister Tiphaine and left her to her bunches of rosemary, Josse wondered if the Abbess had extended that reasoning as far as he had. What he was thinking was that being given the dead man’s name and circumstances was a very good start in discovering who had killed him.

     And why.

Gervase de Gifford arrived shortly after Josse and Helewise had returned to her room. Helewise experienced a moment’s regret; she had hoped for a few moments alone with Josse in which to apologise for having summoned him into danger. She also had the feeling that she had been distracted when he knocked on her door and wanted to explain that it had not been through any lack of pleasure at seeing him again; quite the contrary.

     It had been simple fear.

     She asked Josse to describe to de Gifford what had happened, which he did. There was a brief pause while de Gifford assimilated the information, then he said, ‘My lady, it would seem that if there is even a remote possibility that the dead man carries the pestilence, then the sooner he is buried, the better.’

     ‘I agree,’ she said. ‘Do you wish to view the body, Sheriff de Gifford?’

     De Gifford looked at Josse. ‘Is there anything that I should see?’

     ‘There is but the one wound, to the top of the head. Done, I would suggest, with a club or something of the type. Other than that  . . .’

     ‘My lady, I take it that your infirmarer has examined the corpse?’ De Gifford asked.

     ‘She has.’

     ‘Then I bow to her medical skill and Sir Josse’s knowledge of killing blows. I will not view the body’ – Helewise had to admire his judgement – ‘and, if I may make a suggestion, it is that the dead man be buried by those who have already come into contact with the body.’

     ‘You make sound sense,’ Josse said.

     ‘Indeed,’ Helewise agreed. ‘We cannot say whether or not there is a risk of infection, but let us assume that there is and take what measures we may to contain its spread.’ She got to her feet. ‘I shall send word to Father Gilbert. The dead man will be buried today.’

     Josse gave her a nod of acknowledgement. ‘That is wise, my lady.’ He glanced at de Gifford. ‘If Gervase and I might be excused from attending the interment, then I propose that we set off straight away and begin trying to locate the apothecary who sold the potion to the dead man.’

     ‘There is no reason for either of you to witness the burial,’ she said. ‘By all means, set off on your search – the sooner we can make some progress in identifying our poor victim, the better for all of us.’

     She watched as the two men bowed and took their leave. Only when the door had closed behind them did she allow her shoulders to slump. She sat down heavily in her chair, buried her face in her hands and, for the first time, made herself face what would be the probable consequences if it proved to be true that the pestilence had come to Hawkenlye.

     These consequences were so awful that, after a very short time, she made herself stop. Then she left her room, slipped quietly across the cloister to the Abbey church and, falling on to her knees, began to pray as hard as she could that Sister Euphemia was wrong.

Chapter 3

As Josse and de Gifford rode down to Tonbridge, the sheriff racked his brains to think of anybody in the area who could have sold the victim a sophisticated and costly remedy that included an element commonly regarded as magical. Thinking out loud, he narrowed the possible Tonbridge candidates down to one, ‘and I’m almost sure we’ll be wasting our time with
him
.’

     In the absence of any other place to start, de Gifford led the way to the business premises of the town’s one reasonably renowned apothecary. As soon as Josse understood that the shabby-looking dwelling tucked away between two others – in slightly better repair – was actually the residence of their quarry, he silently began to agree with de Gifford.

     The apothecary’s house was towards the end of a narrow, muddy and rubbish-strewn street that led away from the river and the wealthier parts of the town and off south-eastwards in the direction of the boggy, marshy, ague-ridden areas where nobody lived unless poverty and desperation drove them there. The stench was appalling; human waste mixed with melted frost ran in a gully in the middle of the road and rats scrabbled among the rotting heaps of rubbish that had collected at regular intervals. The dwellings were of poor construction and their timbers had warped; here and there walls looked on the point of collapse and several of the roofs had gaping holes. Hoping that he was not about to breathe his last and suffocate beneath a mixture of wattle, daub, rotten vegetables and shit, Josse drew rein behind de Gifford’s horse and watched as de Gifford dismounted and – with an expression of disgust and stepping carefully in his highly polished boots – approached a low door over which had been hung, in touching optimism, a bunch of very ancient lavender to advertise the herbalist’s presence.

     While they waited to see if there would be any answer to de Gifford’s knock, the sheriff looked up at Josse and said, ‘He does most of his business at a market stall. I would imagine he’ll not expect callers at his door and he may well not—’

     At that moment there came the sound of bolts being drawn back. There were several of these, and Josse suppressed a smile at the thought of anyone bothering to fit so many when the flimsy fabric of the door would surely yield to one determined kick from a booted foot. A gap appeared between the door and the lintel and, with the air of a tortoise poking out its head, an old, creased and unshaven face peered out.