Ashes of the Elements Page 2

  ‘Back in 1147, it was,’ Eleanor said, a reminiscent smile on her face. ‘I had a wonderful time. Louis didn’t want me to go, but what he did or did not want was never of great relevance.’ She laughed aloud. ‘Do you know, Helewise, a rich young Saracen emir wanted to marry me? I might have accepted, too, had I not had Louis tagging along.’ She sighed. ‘What was I saying? Ah, yes! The crusading fervour. You see, my dear’ – she reached out to tap Helewise quite sharply on the shoulder, as if to make quite sure she was attending – ‘the way I see it, there are far more important things that Richard should be doing. Rescuing the Holy Land pales into insignificance when compared to the crucial matter of securing the accession.’

  ‘But King Richard now has a wife,’ Helewise said, ‘thanks to Your Majesty’s efforts.’

  ‘Yes, yes, indeed,’ Eleanor acknowledged. ‘What a journey it was!’ Then, as if one train of thought had led to another, she said, ‘Naturally, he couldn’t marry Alais of France, no matter how hard King Philip pressed his sister’s case. Betrothed they might be, but Richard couldn’t go through with it. Even if it did create all that unpleasantness, when Richard and Philip were setting out for Outremer.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Helewise said. There was no need for the Queen to upset herself recounting the reason why Richard could not marry Alais; Helewise already knew.

  But, ‘She was damaged goods, that Alais,’ Eleanor said. ‘My husband, the late King Henry, seduced her and impregnated her, although the little bastard that resulted had the discretion not to live.’ Furious indignation and hurt pride were very apparent in the old face. Oh, my lady, Helewise thought, do not distress yourself over matters so far in the past!

  ‘Not a fit bride for my son,’ Eleanor said, bringing herself under control with an obvious effort. ‘Despite the fact that a union between Alais and Richard would, I was told, have been permitted by the Church, nevertheless, for a man to marry his own father’s discarded mistress smacks, to me, of incest.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ Helewise said. Diplomatically trying to change the subject, she said, ‘But what of Berengaria of Navarre, my lady? Is she as beautiful as they say?’

  ‘Beautiful?’ The Queen considered. ‘No. She is rather pale and wishy-washy. When I arrived at her father’s court in Pamplona and first set eyes on her, I admit I was a little disappointed. But, then, what do looks matter? Besides, there was so little choice – Richard is related to most of the other royal young women of Europe, Berengaria is one of the few who were eligible. Anyway, he did actually express a favourable opinion of her, you know – he saw her at some tournament of King Sancho’s that he attended a few years ago, and he wrote her some pretty verses. And, even if she isn’t beautiful, she’s virtuous and learned.’

  There was a small silence. As if both women were thinking the same thing – that virtue and learning were hardly qualities to make a woman appeal to Richard the Lionheart – their eyes met in a brief glance.

  Eleanor spoke, too softly for Helewise to be sure of what she said. What it sounded like was, ‘I don’t care for passive women.’

  ‘Then you took her right across southern Europe to meet her bridegroom,’ Helewise said hurriedly into the awkward pause. ‘My goodness, what a journey! And you crossed the Alps in the depths of winter, I believe it is said?’

  ‘I did,’ Eleanor said, not without a certain pride. ‘And I’ll give Berengaria her due, not a word of complaint from her, even when the going got really bad. Snow, bitterly cold lodgings, bedding alive with lice, inadequately salted meat, all the dangers of the open road, she took them all with her head held high and her mouth buttoned up. Unlike most of our attendants, I might add, who, to a man, moaned like a group of sickly dowagers.’

  ‘And, when you finally met up with the King’s party in Sicily, it was Lent, and so the marriage could not take place,’ Helewise said, recounting what the Queen had already told her.

  ‘I handed Berengaria over into my daughter Joanna’s care, and told her to get the girl wedded to Richard at the next stop, which was Cyprus,’ Eleanor continued. ‘I am reliably informed that they were married in the spring.’

  ‘I wish them luck,’ Helewise said.

  ‘So do I,’ Eleanor agreed fervently. ‘So do I.’

  ‘And now you go back to France, Your Majesty?’ It seemed wise, Helewise thought, to turn Eleanor away from contemplation of the apparently slim chances of her son’s marriage being a successful one.

  ‘I do. But not until the morrow. This night I stay with my dear friend Petronilla de Severy. Petronilla Durand, I must now call her, for she has a new husband.’ The Queen paused. ‘A new young husband. And, Helewise, I have to admit, although it pains me equally much to do so, that there is as little chance of this being a good marriage as there is of my son’s.’

  Helewise’s surprise and discomfort at receiving the Queen’s confidences had disappeared. Now, she felt honoured. Deeply honoured. Hadn’t Eleanor said earlier that Hawkenlye was one of her favourite places? If she felt that way because it was only here in the privacy of the Abbey that she was able to speak of private concerns, then Helewise could do no better than offer a discreet and sympathetic ear. ‘You emphasise the youth of your friend’s new husband,’ she said. ‘Is that a factor in the marriage’s chances of success?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Eleanor said. ‘Petronilla is a rich woman – her father left her extremely well provided for – but even those of us who love her couldn’t call her beautiful. She is tall, thin, with an indifferent complexion and those narrow lips which, when a woman grows old, appear to fold in on themselves. And dear Petronilla is old.’

  ‘What is the age difference?’ Helewise asked.

  ‘Petronilla is, I think, forty-two. Possibly more. Tobias Durand cannot be much over thirty, and I believe I have heard that he is even younger.’

  Involuntarily Helewise said, ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘Oh, dear, indeed,’ Eleanor agreed. ‘And he is a handsome man, by all accounts, of good height, well-built.’

  ‘But impoverished,’ Helewise guessed. There seemed no other reason for such a man to have married a plain woman so much older than himself.

  ‘Again, you guess right.’ The Queen sighed. ‘I doubt she will keep him. She is probably too old to bear him a son, which alone might have ensured the continuance of his attentions. As it is, once he has access to her wealth…’ She did not finish the sentence. There was, Helewise thought, no need.

  What sorrow can be ushered into people’s lives by marriage to the wrong partner, she reflected. And, at the opposite end of the scale, what joy when the choice is good. Briefly she pictured her own late husband. Ivo had been a good-looking man, too, tall and broad in the shoulder like this opportunist Tobias. And what a sense of humour he’d had.

  Out of nowhere a memory flashed into her head. She and Ivo, enduring an apparently interminable visit from one of Ivo’s distant cousins, had crept out of their own house and, packing up food and drink, gone to spend a few blessedly private hours in a secluded spot by a stream. Ivo had stripped off and waded into the water, and, drying off on the bank, been stung on the left buttock by a bee.

  ‘What is amusing you, Abbess?’ The Queen’s chilly tones brought her abruptly back to the present.

  Recalling what she and Eleanor had been talking about, Helewise hastened to explain her laughter. Fortunately, the image of a dignified knight of the realm lying face down while his wife extracted a bee sting from his bottom appealed to Eleanor’s sense of humour, too.

  ‘I recall that you mentioned your marriage at the time I appointed you as abbess here,’ Eleanor said. ‘It was clearly a happy union.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘And you had children, I seem to remember?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Daughters?’

  ‘Sons. Two.’

  ‘Ah.’ The Queen fell silent.

  The two of them, Queen and Abbess, sat for some time without breaking the silence. Helewise wondered
if, as she were, Eleanor also was thinking about her sons.

  After some minutes, there was another tap on the door. Getting up to open it, Helewise was greeted by the sight of the porteress. Craning round Helewise to catch a glimpse of Queen Eleanor, Sister Ursel said, ‘Abbess, a party has arrived for the Queen. A man who says he’s Tobias Durand, and he’s come with a retinue to escort Her Majesty to his house.’

  ‘A retinue,’ the Queen murmured. ‘Does he not realise I already have one? Two retinues will only serve to double the dust.’

  ‘Perhaps the lady Petronilla has sent him,’ Helewise remarked shrewdly, ‘eager to impress Your Majesty with the sight of her handsome young husband in all his finery, at the head of a band of his own men.’

  Eleanor glanced at her. ‘How right you are,’ she observed.

  Sister Ursel was watching them from the doorway. ‘Go and tell Tobias Durand that we shall join him directly,’ the Abbess ordered.

  ‘Yes, Abbess.’ With one last look, Sister Ursel hurried away.

  Helewise went to stand beside the Queen, trying to be ready to help her up if necessary, but without making it too obvious.

  But Eleanor said, without any apparent attempt to conceal her need, ‘Give me your arm, Helewise, I’ve become stiff from sitting too long.’

  As they made their slow way out of the room and across the cloister to where Tobias and his party could be seen, mingling with Eleanor’s own escort despite their best efforts not to, Eleanor leaned her head close to Helewise’s and said softly, ‘Thank you, Abbess.’

  There was no need to ask, for what? Instead Helewise replied, ‘The thanks are mine, my lady.’

  ‘I shall come back,’ Eleanor said, ‘and, if my arrangements permit, I shall stay with you for rather longer than a day and a night.’

  ‘The Abbey is at your disposal,’ Helewise replied. ‘Nothing could give us more delight, than to have Your Majesty as our guest.’

  ‘Nothing could give me more delight,’ Eleanor muttered. ‘But it is not yet time for me to do what pleases me.’

  As the two of them approached the waiting ladies, men and horses, Helewise was quite sure she felt the Queen give her arm an affectionate squeeze.

  Chapter Two

  Helewise stood for some time, watching the Queen’s party disappear down the road. As Eleanor had predicted, all those mounted men had indeed made an almost intolerable amount of dust. Thinking that a breath of clean air would be pleasant, Helewise delayed her return within the Abbey walls, and set out instead for a brisk walk along the track that led off towards the forest.

  The warm air of early June was bringing the wild flowers into bloom, and a soft, sweet perfume seemed to fill the air. Somewhere nearby, a blackbird sang. Ah, it was good to be alive! Straightening her shoulders and swinging her arms, Helewise increased her pace and marched towards the first of the trees. She would not go far into the forest, she decided, because it was always dark in there; even in June, the sun did not seem to penetrate, so that the atmosphere always struck chill. She would just take a brief turn around the perimeter of the woodland, a mile or so, no further, then—

  She almost trod on him.

  Hastily stepping back, twitching the full skirt of her habit away from the blood pooled on the fresh green grass, she pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle the horrified reaction.

  He was dead. He had to be. He was lying face down, and the long shaft of a spear protruded from his back; from the angle, it appeared that the point, buried deep in the torso, must have penetrated the heart.

  He was dressed in the rough clothing of a peasant. The hose were coarse and ill-fitting, and the tunic had been patched and darned. Neatly; someone had taken care with those tiny stitches. He must have had a wife, Helewise thought, or maybe a loving mother. Some poor woman will be grieving, when she learns of this. If she were his wife, it will mean loss of husband and loss of breadwinner. A bad day for her, whoever she is.

  As the initial shock receded, it occurred to Helewise to wonder what the man had been doing on the fringes of the forest. And had he been lying there long? Had she and her nuns been going about their business for some days, while, all the time, this poor wretch lay dead not half a mile from the Abbey?

  She bent down and touched the back of the man’s neck; it was, she couldn’t help but notice, filthy dirty. There were lice active in his greasy hair; would they not have left the corpse, had the man been dead for any length of time? Surely such little blood-suckers only supped on fresh, uncongealed blood … The flesh retained some semblance of warmth, although, Helewise realised, that could be because he was lying at least partly in the sun. Tentatively she picked up one of the man’s outflung arms: the limb was getting stiff. The rigor that came to the dead was beginning.

  Had he died, then, during the past night?

  Helewise stood over the corpse, a frown deepening across her brows. Then, abruptly, she turned away. Hurrying back towards the Abbey, she thought, I must get help. I must send word to the sheriff. This is a matter for him.

  Breaking into a trot – not a dignified mode of locomotion for an Abbess, but she didn’t notice – she reflected that it was just as well this death – this murder – hadn’t come to light during Queen Eleanor’s visit. Had it done so, then everyone would have been far too preoccupied for the Queen and the Abbess to have had their calm and private little tête-à-tête.

  Hard on that thought came another: that it was scarcely appropriate to be pleased about such a thing when a man lay dead, brutally murdered. Her shame at her own musings adding haste to her progress, Helewise gathered up her skirts and sprinted down the track to the Abbey gates.

  * * *

  Sheriff Harry Pelham of Tonbridge was an odious man.

  Helewise, sitting listening to his pronouncements on the murder, had to bite down her irritation. At having to listen to his opinions – grandly stated, as if he alone could be right, as if she, a mere woman, could not possibly have any valid contribution – and at having to tolerate his very presence in her room.

  He was a big fellow. Solid, squat, a chest like a barrel, and short legs which seemed barely up to the job of supporting the rest of him. He was dressed in a well-worn leather overtunic, and, when he performed his frequently repeated mannerism of flinging out his chest, it was as if his intention were to draw attention to the battle scars which criss-crossed the tough leather. As if he were saying, look! See what perils my duties take me into! See what cudgel blows and broadsword thrusts I have fended off!

  It had apparently been quite a job to make him leave his own sword and knife at the gates. Sister Ursel, so Helewise had been informed, had stood her ground like an aggravated hen with her feathers ruffled out, and told Harry Pelham that, sheriff or not, nobody bore arms into God’s holy place.

  The same observant nun – it was Sister Beata, who, as a nurse, was always observant – also reported to the Abbess that Harry Pelham’s sword was stained, and his knife looked as if he’d recently used it to carve his meat.

  And it is this careless man, Helewise now thought, listening to his booming voice, who is our sole protector of law and order. Efficient he might be – he must be, she corrected herself, for he was appointed by the Clares of Tonbridge, and they surely did not tolerate slackness in their officers – but, oh, what an oaf he is!

  ‘Of course,’ Harry was saying, leaning back on the little wooden stool so that its rear legs squeaked a protest, ‘of course, Hamm Robinson was a well-known felon. Me, I’m not in the least surprised someone’s done him in, no, no, not at all, ha, ha, ha!’

  Unable, for the life of her, to see why that was funny, Helewise said in a cool tone, ‘Felon, Sheriff? What was the nature of his crime?’

  Harry Pelham leaned towards her, as if about to confide a secret. His fleshy nose had semicircles of little blackheads in the creases where the nostrils met the cheeks, and there were oily-looking creamy flakes in his eyebrows and at his hairline. ‘Why, Sister, he was a poacher!’
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  ‘A poacher,’ she repeated. ‘My word, Sheriff, a dangerous man.’

  Entirely missing the mild irony, Harry Pelham nodded. ‘Aye, Sister, dangerous, desperate, all of that.’ He hesitated, and she had the strong conviction he was wondering how far he dare exaggerate the details of what he was about to say. Leaning close again – she wished he wouldn’t, he didn’t smell any too fresh – he said, ‘Come near to apprehending him, I have, on several occasions. Tracked him, see, through those old woods.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the vague direction of the forest. ‘Ah, but he was a sly one! Wormed his way through that undergrowth like some wild animal, he did, all silent and swift, like. Reckon he knew the lie of the land like the back of his hand.’ Harry Pelham shook his head. ‘Never could quite lay my fists on him.’

  ‘Perhaps he heard you coming,’ Helewise remarked neutrally.

  The sheriff shot her a quick glance. ‘Aye, that’s as maybe. And it’s also maybe my good fortune that I never did catch him, desperate man like him! Why, maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here now talking to you, Sister, if I had of!’

  ‘Yes,’ Helewise murmured, ‘he’d have put up a rare fight, of that I’m quite sure.’ Deliberately she stared at Harry Pelham’s broad shoulders. ‘Was he a big man, would you say, Sheriff?’ she asked, raising innocent eyes to his. ‘I only saw him dead, and it was hard to tell.’

  The sheriff went, ‘Humph,’ and ‘Ha!’ a few times, then grunted something barely audible.

  ‘What did you say, Sheriff? I didn’t quite catch it.’

  ‘I said, he was big enough,’ Harry Pelham growled.

  ‘Ah.’ Helewise bent her head to hide her smile. Then, straightening her face, she said, ‘He was killed by the spear thrust, and, when hit, he was running from the forest. Yes?’

  Another grunt. Then, grudgingly, as if he resented her awareness of even such bare facts, ‘Yes. That’s how it was.’

  ‘And from that, you hazard the guess that he was killed by – what did you call them, Sheriff? The Forest People?’