Ashes of the Elements Read online

  In the utter silence of the moon-bathed clearing, the woman led the girl to the log. It, too, had been decorated with flowers, and at its head had been placed a pair of tall candles, burning with a steady flame.

  It looked unmistakably like an altar.

  The woman helped the girl to lie down, making for her a pillow of flowers. Then, moving round to stand behind the girl’s head, she took hold of the girl’s outstretched hands in what looked like a gesture of kindly companionship.

  At first.

  Then, as the woman’s grip moved to the girl’s wrists, it became clear that she was making sure the girl could not escape.

  The singing began again. Now it was but a single voice, a woman’s, and it came from the altar.

  The girl, eyes closed, was chanting.

  As her voice strengthened, she began to move her body, writhing from side to side, knees bent, hips circling. Then, with a great cry, she arched her back and flung her legs wide apart.

  Another figure had emerged into the moonlight. Robed and hooded, it was only the height and the breadth of shoulder that revealed it to be male; the face was hidden deep within the cowled hood.

  He went to stand at the foot of the altar.

  The girl had moved downwards along it and, with her wrists still pinioned by the woman, her arms were now at full stretch. The movement had made her gown ride up, so that, from the full breasts to the bare feet, she was naked. Her spread legs flopped over the edges of the tree trunk on which she lay, and her exposed groin was at waist height for the standing man.

  Even as it became obvious what was about to happen, already it seemed to have begun. The man had raised the hem of his full robe so that it spread over the girl’s belly, concealing what it was that he did to her, but, visible or not, it was plain what act he was performing. Resuming her chanting, but abstractly now, with frequent breaks, she pushed herself upwards to meet him. Their movements swiftly becoming frenetic, suddenly it was over.

  Stepping back from her, covering himself with his robe, the man turned and, as the thick smoke plumed up around him, he seemed to disappear.

  The girl gave a small cry, a sound which, short though it was, yet contained a dread, desperate longing. As if in answer, another man appeared to take the first one’s place. Taking a little more time, he too came to a climax and then, like his predecessor, abandoned her.

  Another followed, and another.

  While the fifth one – a taller, stronger-looking man – was thrusting into her, meeting the savage upward push of her hips with an equal force of his own, at long last her need was met. Wrists still held firm by the woman who stood at the top of the altar, the girl raised her body, threw back her head, opened her mouth and emitted a long, piercing, triumphant cry that rang out through the oak grove and across the forest like the victory scream of some triumphant animal.

  As the echoes faded and died, the girl slumped back on her tree trunk. Spent, exhausted, her legs fell either side of its girth, and, had the woman not had firm hold of her arms, it seemed she would have slipped off and fallen to the forest floor. But the woman, solicitous now, was swiftly going into action, an arm round the girl’s shoulders, free hand pulling down the flimsy, flung-back robe as she helped the girl to stand.

  Then, supporting most of the girl’s weight – for her legs seemed suddenly powerless, and the little bare feet that dragged along the ground were barely moving – the woman bore her out of the brilliant moonlight and away into the black shade of the trees.

  * * *

  Josse, his mind and his body seething with a powerful force that he barely understood, put up his hands and rubbed hard at his face. Then, one hand still over his eyes as if, too late, he wanted to block out what he had just seen, he slid his back down the oak’s trunk and slumped at its base.

  After a moment, the Abbess sat down beside him.

  He couldn’t speak. Didn’t know what he would have said had he been able to.

  But, after a soft clearing of the throat, she said, ‘It wasn’t Caliste. Very like her, but not her.’

  And, saying the first thing that entered his head, he breathed, ‘Thank God.’ Then, after a pause: ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘The hair,’ she replied.

  He pictured the girl in her wild abandon. The garland had fallen off, and the thick dark hair had flowed like a black tide over the wood of the altar.

  Of course. No nun had abundant hair like that.

  ‘Not Caliste,’ he echoed.

  ‘No.’

  Silence fell once more, surrounding them, suffocating them, as if someone had dropped a soft blanket on to them.

  I could sleep, Josse thought vaguely. My eyelids are so heavy, I could lie down here and sleep till daybreak. Far beyond daybreak. Sleep all day, and the night after that.

  He yawned hugely.

  He felt the weight of the Abbess as she leaned against him, and, making an enormous effort, he turned his head a little to look at her. She had closed her eyes, and, her lips slightly apart, was breathing deeply. She seemed to have dozed off.

  And why not? he thought. It’s as good a place as any. Quite comfortable, and …

  He slept.

  But not for long.

  As if some sense of self-preservation were working in him, some relic of his soldiering past that, even in these extreme circumstances, had not deserted him, he went straight into a vivid dream.

  He was in the clearing, right in it, exposed and standing alone in the moonlight. And, creeping up behind him, each carrying a spear whose tip was pointing straight at Josse’s back, stealthily came the grey-haired woman and the dark girl.

  Both now were naked.

  With a start and a snort, he was awake. Panting in terror, sweat breaking out all over his body, he spun round.

  And banged his nose smartly on the tree trunk.

  Thank God, thank God! He was not in the grove, was not about to be pierced to the heart by twin spears.

  Leaping up, grabbing the Abbess’s arm, he hissed, ‘Abbess, wake up! We can’t stay here! We—’

  His head began to spin. Faster, faster, until he had to turn away and vomit into the bracken.

  When he could stand up, he risked a gentle swivelling of the eyes to look at her. Awake now, she, too, was looking sick. ‘What is the matter?’ she whispered. ‘We should sleep, Josse! I’m so tired…’

  He took both her hands and hauled her to her feet, no easy task since she was not only tall and well-built but also a near dead weight. ‘Come on!’ He gave her a shake, and, reluctantly, she straightened up, instantly falling back to lean against the oak.

  ‘Oh, dear Lord!’ she whispered. ‘What…’ She frowned, then, appearing to recall where they were and what they had just witnessed, at once she seemed to come to herself. ‘We must get away,’ she stated firmly. ‘To a place of safety.’

  He hustled her off, back through the trees and towards the underbrush through which they had come, all that time ago – it seemed an eternity. Fine sentiments, he thought, but it was a shame she’d spoken them out loud in such a strong voice.

  Back along the overgrown path, back through the larger clearing with the fallen oaks, and well on the way to the path leading out of it. The path that would take them home.

  He should have realised. Should have foreseen that, whereas he had been sick and was already on the way to recovery, she had not. Was not.

  But the fact that she was hurrying along behind him must have fooled him into thinking she was all right.

  As they approached the relative safety of the trees on the far side of the fallen-oak grove, Josse heard the Abbess give a low groan. Spinning round, he watched helplessly as she doubled up and retched. Then, wiping her mouth with one hand and waving him on with the other, she said, ‘Go on! Hurry up and get under cover!’

  Picking up her urgency, he ran.

  Heard her running after him, one pace, two, three, four, her footfalls sounding hollow on the firm ground.


  Then, as he ducked his head and raced in under the trees, he heard a sickening thump.

  He stopped dead and spun round in a single action, to see her slumped on the ground under the very first of the circling trees.

  She had just been sick, and was probably feeling horribly dizzy. In no state, in any case, to run headlong through a forest where there were overhanging trees with low branches.

  Josse might have had the presence of mind to duck, but Helewise hadn’t. She had run slap into the stout branch of an oak tree, and she had knocked herself out.

  Josse, falling to his knees beside her, could see the blood already spreading out from under the starched white linen that bound her forehead. In sudden dread, roughly he pushed aside her wimple and put his fingers to her throat.

  For a terrible few seconds he could feel no pulse.

  But then he could. Irregular, and quite feeble, but still a pulse.

  Fervently he said aloud, ‘Thank God! Oh, thank God!’

  From the profound shadows beside the path, someone said, ‘Amen.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  His head flew up. Staring around him, trying to peer into the gloom beneath the trees, at first he couldn’t see anybody.

  Then she was there. It was like that: one moment he could see nothing but the trunks of the trees and the tangling undergrowth, then, like an apparition, suddenly a figure was standing there.

  His head felt muzzy. Josse didn’t really know if he was awake or dreaming.

  The robed figure moved closer, seeming to float as if she rode on a cushioning cloud of sweet-smelling smoke. Leaning over Josse and Helewise, her long silver hair brushed against his face. She smelt as sweetly as the smoke. Of flowers, and fresh green things.

  A long-fingered hand stretched out, touched the Abbess’s cheek, was laid flat across her forehead. ‘She is injured,’ a calm voice said.

  ‘She hit her head,’ Josse said, his own voice sounding strangely distant. ‘As we ran in under the trees, she banged her forehead on a branch.’

  No answer.

  The robed figure had vanished. Then, some time later, she came back. He knew she was coming because she held a light in her hand, and it was the light that he saw.

  She held it out to him.

  ‘Make a fire,’ the voice intoned. ‘It is forbidden here in the forest, except by my decree, but, for this need, I allow it. Keep the woman warm.’

  She was, Josse noticed then, carrying something in her other hand: it was his pack. He must have left it by the smaller grove, where they had witnessed that incredible ceremony. The light from her flare caught a glitter of response from the pack, and he remembered pinning his talisman on the pack’s flap, before he and the Abbess had set out.

  He said, having to force out the words as if his mouth were full of wool, ‘Thank you, lady.’

  The woman stood staring down at him for a few moments. Then she said, ‘I am Domina.’

  Watching her float off across the clearing and disappear away under the trees, Josse thought absently that he would bet money on ‘Domina’ being as much a title as ‘Abbess’.

  * * *

  The moon had set.

  In the utter darkness of the pre-dawn, the temperature went down sharply.

  And Josse gave thanks all over again to Domina, and her fire.

  * * *

  Left alone with the unconscious Abbess, Josse had hastened to make some sort of shelter for her; clearly, there was no question of trying to move her very far until she awoke. If that had not happened by daylight, then Josse would have to think about leaving her there in the deep forest and going for help.

  It was a disturbing thought.

  Using the Domina’s flare, he went in under the trees and, in the thick bracken, found a shallow dell with an earth bank at its back, overhung with hazel and holly trees. Stamping down the green fronds of bracken, he took one of the blankets out of his pack and laid it down, putting the other one ready beside it. Then he went back for the Abbess.

  Had he been fully himself, then he probably wouldn’t have found carrying her the short distance to the shelter such a task. As it was, he still felt sick and dizzy, and the exertion of carrying a well-built woman a dozen or so paces almost made him black out.

  As he was settling her, trying to arrange her habit around her legs so as to keep her warm before tucking the blanket round her, he wondered briefly why he felt so ill.

  But then he remembered the wound on her forehead, and, in the rush of anxiety which that recollection brought, the thought went out of his mind.

  He rammed the flare into the crook made where a low branch of the hazel tree met its trunk, and, by its steady light, bent down to examine the Abbess’s head. There was a wash of blood over her eyebrows now, and a thin trail had run into her right eye. Through the fuzz in his brain he thought: water. I need water to bathe her face.

  It took him quite a long time to remember that he had put a flask of fresh water in his pack.

  He needed a cloth of some sort, preferably clean … Rummaging in the pack, he came across the dagger which he had hidden away right at the bottom, wrapped in a square of linen. The cloth was not all that clean, but it would serve. It would have to.

  He washed her eyes and her forehead, noticing with dismay that the blood had turned the stiff, pristine white of her linen headdress to scarlet.

  I must see the wound, he decided. Hesitantly he pushed back the black veil, and untied the tapes which fastened the linen cap covering her head and her forehead, experiencing as he did so the shameful sensation that he was violating her. But I must, he told himself firmly, because the wound might still be bleeding, and, if so, I need to staunch the flow before—

  Before what?

  He decided it was better for his peace of mind not to dwell on that.

  The wimple was tied at the top of her head, the ties normally sitting beneath the headdress. With that last item removed, the Abbess was bareheaded, and at last Josse could see her injury.

  There was a huge bruise on the left side of her forehead, starting just under the hairline and extending almost to her eyebrow. In the centre of the bruise – which had swelled up to the size of a child’s fist – was a deep cut, the length of the top pad of his thumb. Blood was slowly welling out of it.

  He wiped away the steadily seeping blood, then squeezed out his cloth until it was as clean as he could make it. He tore a long strip off one edge, folding the rest into a pad; he pressed the pad against the wound, and tied it firmly in place with the strip of cloth.

  He said softly out loud, ‘That, my dear Helewise, is the best I can do for you.’

  He looked down at her, frowning. Was it his imagination, or was she even paler? Perhaps it was just that her face seemed more pale, now that it was framed by her hair and not by the black veil on top of the white linen band and wimple.

  Her hair, he noted absently, was reddish-gold, cut short and curling round her face, a little grey at the temples. The skin of her neck and throat, normally hidden beneath her wimple, was smooth and unlined; somehow, seeing her like this, he thought she seemed younger …

  Looking down at her when she could not return his gaze was making him uneasy. And besides, he thought, he could be of more use to her than merely standing there gawping with his mouth open. He could, for example, do something about trying to warm her.

  He made a swift search for dry and well-seasoned kindling and firewood – both of which were abundant in these wild, uninhabited depths of the forest – and, touching the Domina’s flare to the base of his fire, he soon had a small but intense blaze going. He put a stack of branches within reach beside it. Then, having stared at the still-unconscious Abbess for some moments, he gently turned her on to her right side, the front of her body to the fire, and lay down behind her.

  She was well wrapped-up, in her own clothes and, outside them, the blanket; there must be, he was sure, a good four or five layers of various materials between her body and his. Nevertheless
, he felt that he was committing a sin.

  ‘I’ve got to keep her warm,’ he said aloud to nobody in particular. ‘I’m doing it the best way that I can, by building the fire and by the heat of my own body. But I—’

  What? But I swear I’m not enjoying it?

  He grinned into the darkness. Well, perhaps he was, just a little.

  Putting his arm round her waist and drawing her towards him, he closed his eyes and tried to relax. Even if he couldn’t sleep, at least he could rest, try to build up some reserves of strength.

  Whatever happened, he was probably going to need them.

  * * *

  Helewise was dreaming.

  She was young again, dressed in a flowing silk gown of sunshine yellow, and someone had put a garland of flowers on her hair. It was too tight, biting into her forehead and making her head ache. But there was singing and dancing, and she was sitting on a grassy bank beneath a vast, spreading willow tree, and her sons, both babies together, were at her breast. She was plump with milk, breasts running with it, abundant, earthy. Then Ivo was there, smiling his joy, kissing her, calling her his Flora, his Queen of the May, and she was laughing too, telling him that she could only be Queen of the May for a day, for then she must return to the Abbey.

  And, in the instant way of dreams, she was back in Hawkenlye Abbey, kneeling at the altar in the Abbey church, eyes closed, hands folded as she prayed, and Sister Euphemia was plucking at her sleeve and saying, Abbess, Abbess, what has become of your habit? Looking down at herself, she saw she was still wearing the yellow silk. And the garland of flowers, heavy on her brow, was making her headache worse …

  Helewise opened her eyes.

  She lay quite still, trying to work out where she was. It was dark, and, judging from the smell – of earth and greenery – and from the cold, she guessed she was out of doors. In front of her were the remains of a small fire, little more than glowing embers now, although there was a neat pile of branches beside the fire. It could be rekindled quite easily, she thought dreamily.

  Her head gave a throb, and she put up her hand to ease the pain. There seemed to be something tied around her brow.