Ashes of the Elements Read online

  And where was her veil? Her headband? Her wimple?

  Her movement had disturbed Ivo, who gave a grunt and wriggled himself into a more comfortable position. He was lovely and warm; she pressed her buttocks into the crook of his body and revelled in the comfort of him, dear old Ivo, and—

  Hurled into shocked wakefulness, she remembered. Ivo was dead, dead and buried years ago! Oh, dear God, then who was she cuddling up to?

  And, equally important, where was she?

  She made herself stop panicking, and thought back.

  And, soon, saw again that incredible scene in the clearing. Remembered running, running, as fast as she could, and remembered being sick. Feeling so ill, so dizzy.

  Remembered Josse.

  I must have hurt myself, she decided. And Josse, bless him, has looked after me. Tended me – she fingered the pad pressed to what seemed to be the source of the pain on her forehead – and lit a fire. Wrapped me up, Lain down beside me to keep me warm.

  It was, she knew, exactly the right thing, in cases of injury. Keep the patient warm.

  Well, he’d done that, all right. And the sudden hot blood she could feel rushing to her face was merely a side-effect of how warm the rest of her was. Wasn’t it?

  She let her eyes roam across the scene before her. The greyish light was growing – it must be a little after dawn – and she could make out the big clearing with the two fallen oak trees. She and Josse appeared to be lying on a bed of bracken, in a little hollow in the undergrowth.

  Oh, dear.

  She must have moved again, for she knew suddenly that she had woken him up. His body against hers had been relaxed in sleep, and now there was a tension in him.

  What on earth, she wondered, do we say to one another?

  It was he who broke the awkward silence. In a surprisingly normal tone, he said, ‘Good morning, Abbess. How do you feel?’

  ‘My head hurts,’ she confessed.

  ‘I’m not surprised. You ran full tilt into an oak tree.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He was, she noticed, lying absolutely still, as if any movement would make an embarrassing situation even worse. Despite herself, she had to suppress a smile.

  ‘I needed to keep you warm,’ he said in a rush. ‘I’m sorry, but it – this – lying behind you like this – was the best I could think of.’

  ‘I understand.’

  She felt him raise himself on an elbow, and then he was looking down at her, anxious face looming above hers. ‘You’re still pale,’ he said.

  ‘Mm.’ There was something slightly odd about him, too. She studied him for a few moments, then said gravely, ‘Your eyes are funny.’

  ‘Funny?’

  ‘The black bits – what do you call them?’ She couldn’t for the life of her think of the word.

  ‘Pupils?’

  ‘Pupils. Thank you. Your pupils are huge. So big that there’s hardly any brown round the edges.’

  He leaned closer to her, eyes fixed to hers. ‘So are yours,’ he said.

  Then, as if the discovery had exhausted him, he lay down again.

  After quite some time she said, ‘I think we’ve been drugged.’

  ‘I think so, too. I was just putting it all together, the dizziness, the sickness, and I don’t know about you but I’ve been having the most incredibly vivid—’

  ‘Dreams?’

  ‘Dreams.’ She could hear that he was smiling.

  ‘What was it, do you think?’ she asked. ‘The drug. Something in the smoke?’

  ‘I imagine so. That – that ceremony which we saw seemed to employ some fairly sophisticated potions and herbal concoctions.’

  ‘Mm.’ She hadn’t wanted to be reminded of the ceremony.

  He gave a great yawn, then said, ‘Sorry. I can’t seem to keep my eyes open.’

  She, too, was sleepy. ‘Nor I.’

  He said tentatively, ‘Shall we try to sleep again? For an hour or two, at least, until the sun rises and begins to warm the air?’

  ‘Yes.’ Absently she snuggled her hips against him, cradling her cheek on her hand. ‘Good night,’ she said, already dozy.

  He muttered something. She heard the word ‘chastity’.

  ‘What was that?’ she said sharply.

  ‘Oh. Er – nothing.’

  ‘Josse?’

  ‘I said, whatever happened to the nun’s vow of chastity?’ he said.

  She should have been angry, affronted, but for some reason she actually wanted to laugh. Controlling the urge, she said crushingly, ‘And who, may I ask, said anything about being unchaste?’ He began to make an apology, but she cut him off. ‘Sir Knight, do not presume!’

  ‘Abbess, please, do not take offence, I merely—’

  But she was laughing now, and he, pressed so close to her, must realise it. She said, ‘It’s all right. I was teasing.’

  ‘So was I,’ he murmured.

  She closed her eyes. ‘I was a wife before ever I was a nun,’ she said drowsily.

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘Yes.’ She yawned, so widely that it made her eyes water. ‘What I remember with the most fondness is not the passion of the marriage bed, but the comfort.’ She wriggled again, settling into sleep. ‘And,’ she added in a murmur, ‘the companionship.’

  He said something, but she didn’t hear. She was already asleep.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When Josse next woke, the Abbess no longer lay in front of him. The sun was shining brightly down into the grove, and, a few paces away, a figure in a nun’s habit knelt in prayer.

  She was, he thought, watching her, probably saying the Office. Prime, would it be? Or Tierce? It depended on how long they’d been asleep.

  She was wearing wimple, headdress and veil. The garments sat a little awkwardly over the bandage round her brow, but she looked herself again. The laughing, curly-haired woman with whom he had shared his forest bed had gone.

  With a faint sigh, he bade her a fond farewell.

  While the Abbess was praying, he got up, folded the blankets and stowed them back into his pack, trying to move quietly so as not to disturb her. The fire was still glowing, but, now that the sun’s heat was reaching down to warm up the forest, there was no more need of it. He stamped out the last of the red embers, and then took out his knife and cut neat turves from the thinly growing grass on the outer fringes of the undergrowth, with which he covered the burned scar in the ground.

  He hoped his actions would be pleasing to the Domina.

  Then, with nothing else to do, he sat down and waited until the Abbess had finished.

  * * *

  As she walked towards him, he noticed that, for a moment, she could not meet his eyes. Remembering the night, remembering how he had not only removed quite a lot of her habit but had also lain with her, body close up against hers, he understood.

  We have to put that behind us, he thought. Just as if it had never happened.

  He stood up. With a bow, he said, ‘Abbess Helewise. I wish you good day. We should, I think, make our way back to the Abbey, as soon as you feel able to travel.’

  She shot him a look in which relief and gratitude were mixed. Then she said quietly, ‘Yes, Sir Josse. I am able to travel straight away.’

  He shouldered his pack and stepped out on to the path beside her. Together they turned towards the track that led to Hawkenlye.

  And saw, standing silently some ten paces off, the robed figure of the Domina.

  For a long moment, she stared at them, unmoving, deep-set eyes fixed first on the Abbess, then on him. He felt he should speak – felt, indeed, that he should apologise, although he was not entirely sure what for – but somehow her intent gaze kept him dumb.

  Eventually she said, ‘The woman is well?’

  The Abbess said quietly, ‘I am well.’

  The other woman nodded. ‘It is a long journey you have, for one who has been injured.’

  ‘I can manage,’ the Abbess said.

  The D
omina stepped closer. When she stood right in front of the Abbess, she raised a hand and touched the dressing on Helewise’s head, leaning briefly forward and apparently sniffing at the place where the cut was. ‘Clean,’ she observed. ‘The man has done well.’ She glanced at Josse.

  He bowed his head.

  The Domina was reaching into a leather pouch that hung at her waist, half-concealed by the cloak she now wore over her white robe. Taking out a small glass phial, she removed its stopper and held it out to the Abbess. ‘Drink,’ she ordered.

  Josse watched the Abbess. He could sense she was reluctant – which was more than understandable, bearing in mind how they had both suffered from the smoke they had inhaled last night – but at the same time she was also, he thought, hesitant to offend someone who was genuinely trying to help her.

  As if she read all of that, the Domina gave a brief laugh. ‘This will not make you see the dance of the creatures of the night,’ she said. ‘It will not make you feel you can fly, nor create the wild pictures inside your head. It is to help your pain.’

  ‘I have no—’ the Abbess began.

  The Domina gave a short tch! of annoyance. ‘Do not deny it,’ she said. ‘I can feel it.’

  The Abbess’s mouth dropped open slightly. Then, as if making up her mind, she took the phial and drank its contents.

  ‘Good, good,’ said the Domina.

  The three of them stood, not moving, not speaking; Josse felt, as probably the Abbess did too, that, here in the Domina’s realm, they must take their cue from her. And she seemed to be waiting for something.

  After a while, the Abbess suddenly smiled. Looking both happy and surprised, she exclaimed, ‘The pain has gone!’

  And the Domina said, ‘Of course.’

  Then she turned to Josse. ‘I sense your impatience, man,’ she said. ‘You wish to take the woman back to her own place.’

  She appeared to be waiting for an answer, so he said, ‘Aye. I do.’

  ‘All in good time,’ the Domina said. ‘Before you depart from my domain, I will address you.’ She held out her hands towards Josse and the Abbess, and, as if pushing aside the branches of a tree, she moved them out of her way. Then, beckoning them to follow, she led them along a path which Josse had not previously noticed, one which wound away into the deep forest on the far side of the clearing with the fallen trees.

  Why, he wondered, did I not notice it before? He shook his head in puzzlement, for, now that the Domina was leading them to it, the track seemed all too obvious.

  The Domina glanced at him over her shoulder, gave him a strange smile, then turned back to face the way she was going. And, quite clearly inside Josse’s head, he heard the words, ‘You did not see this secret way before because I did not want you to.’

  Not for the first time, Josse had the alarming sensation that he was in the presence of something – someone – far beyond his experience or comprehension.

  As they left the clearing, the Domina said, waving a hand towards the dead trees, ‘This is the work of Outworlders. It is an abomination.’

  And Josse thought he heard the Abbess mutter, ‘I knew it!’

  * * *

  She did not take them far. After perhaps a quarter of a mile of negotiating the narrow path, it opened out into an open space, through which a small stream ran. Above the stream, on a bank which rose up above it, was what appeared to be a dwelling. Made of branches, bent and woven into a framework, it was roofed with leaves and turves. Inside was a stone hearth, on which a pot bubbled quietly.

  The Domina indicated that they should sit down on the bank above the rippling water.

  As they settled, Josse thought fleetingly how bewitching was the combination of the sounds – the stream rushing along its stony bed, the softly simmering pot – and the smells … some strong herbal scent, from the steam coming from the pot, the sweet smell of flowers and green grass, a sort of peatyness from the stream.

  Ah, but it was powerful, this atmosphere!

  The Domina did not sit down, but remained standing above them.

  After a moment, as if she had been waiting until she had their full, undivided attention, she began to speak.

  ‘Outworlders,’ she said, ‘are not welcome here.’ She looked down at Josse, then at the Abbess. ‘Outworlders do not understand our ways. They destroy and desecrate what we hold to be holy. Outworlders killed the sacred oak.’

  Josse nodded slowly. ‘In the grove where the old temple ruins are,’ he said. ‘They set traps for game, and disturbed buried coins.’

  ‘They burrowed beneath the oldest tree,’ the Domina said. ‘He had fallen of his own volition, for he was tired and no longer wished to live. Outworlders took what was not theirs to take, and, not content with what came readily out of the earth, they killed a second tree.’ Her face working, she said harshly, ‘He was young, with centuries of life ahead of him! Yet Outworlders hacked with their blunt weapons, hacked at him until he bled, until he wept, and they brought him to the ground!’

  ‘They did a grave wrong,’ Josse said quietly.

  ‘Outworlders trespass against us,’ the Domina said, more controlled now. ‘And we do not forgive.’

  ‘The man – the Outworlder – died,’ Josse said. ‘The spear was skilfully thrown, and he died cleanly.’

  The Domina nodded. ‘It is our way. We do not deliberately inflict pain.’

  ‘Did he die because he had killed your oak?’ Josse went on tentatively.

  The Domina gazed down at him for some moments. ‘The trees in the sacred grove bear the golden bough and the silver berry,’ she said. ‘Fruit of the sun and fruit of the moon, pure white seed of the god.’

  ‘Mistletoe,’ Josse murmured. No wonder the Forest People had taken the felling so seriously; mistletoe growing on oak was a rarity indeed, and now, in a very short time, they had lost two of those special trees. One had died, but the other had been deliberately felled. Purely to serve man’s greed.

  ‘There is something else,’ the Domina said. She turned away from the stream bank, paced a circle between the water and the dwelling, and then, as if having collected her thoughts, returned to address them once more.

  ‘You saw our most secret ceremony,’ she stated. ‘It is not for Outworlders.’

  ‘We had no malicious intent,’ the Abbess said. ‘We came into the forest because I was concerned for two of my – for two young women who are my responsibility. We came across your – your activities in the grove by pure mischance.’

  The Domina stared at her. ‘No malicious intent,’ she repeated. ‘But yet you were witnesses to what it is forbidden for Outworlders to see.’

  ‘We did not—’ Josse began.

  But the Abbess and the Domina were still locked in each other’s gaze; Josse, watching closely, had the sudden sensation that there was an invisible thread between them, a thread which, against all odds, meant that they understood one another. The Abbess said softly, ‘Domina, what was it for?’

  And, with an almost imperceptible nod of acceptance, the Domina said, ‘Listen, and I will tell you.’

  She drew herself up, arms by her sides, and stared out over the rushing water to the dark forest beyond. Then she began to speak.

  ‘We are few, we who live with and within the Great Forest,’ she said. ‘We move from place to place, here for a season, there for the next, always the same pattern down through the years. We take what the forest freely gives, but we do not abuse her bounty. We limit our numbers, so that the Great Mother is not overstretched in supporting us.’

  She paused. Then the calm voice went on: ‘Under the bright night skies of summer, every two hundred moons, we assemble in the most ancient of the silver fruit groves for our sacred procreation ritual. A ripe virgin is chosen, who is the recipient of the seed of the tribe. If the Mother so decrees, the seed of the elders is successfully sown in the womb of the young woman, and, in time, the new child of the tribe is born.’ Briefly she closed her eyes, murmuring some soft invocati
on; it was as if the matters of which she spoke were so potent, so deeply ritualistic, that to describe them was both dangerous and exhausting.

  But, gathering herself, the Domina went on.

  ‘If the procreation ritual results in a live birth and the child is male, he in turn is schooled in the mysteries, and, in time, takes his place as an elder of the tribe, to engender new life as he was himself engendered. If the child is female, she is sequestered from the tribe until, in her sixteenth year, she is led forth to be fertilised with the seed of the tribe.’

  Josse, shaking his head in disbelief, could scarcely believe that here in this forest – its fringes only yards from Hawkenlye Abbey, only a few miles from roads, towns, villages – here in this forest, an ancient people still lived who worshipped the old goddesses and gods, whose lives were ruled by the moon and the sun. Who had not, it seemed, been touched by the least fingertip of late twelfth-century civilisation.

  It was all but incredible.

  He realised that the Abbess was speaking. Reverently, in the attitude of a supplicant, she was asking the Domina for permission to pose a question.

  ‘Ask,’ the Domina said.

  ‘The girl, last night,’ Abbess Helewise said. ‘She – Domina, she looked exactly like one of the girls in my care. One of the girls, indeed, about whom I have been so concerned.’ She smiled briefly. ‘Sufficiently concerned to trespass into your forest.’

  The Domina, eyes still on the Abbess’s, gave a curt nod of understanding. Then she said, ‘Selene. The girl you saw in the grove is called Selene. She was born sixteen years ago, in the silver fruit glade, but in bringing her into the world, her mother left it.’ The echo of an old sorrow crossed the Domina’s face, darkening her countenance; the deep, far-seeing eyes were narrowed to ominous slits, and the full mouth became a stern, hard line. For an instant, Josse saw the dread power of the woman.

  Then, staring once more at the Abbess, the Domina said, ‘The mother died because the birth was so hard. And the birth was so hard because she bore in her belly not one but two offspring. Two daughters, the one an exact copy of the other.’

  Twins, Josse thought. Some poor woman of these primitive forest folk had carried twins. Multiple births, God knew, were difficult enough at the best of times. But out here, on the forest floor, no comforts, no warmth, not even a village midwife to help, what must the wretched woman have suffered?