Heart of Ice Read online

  Josse made himself walk slowly down the long ward. For over a week he had been imagining what was going on here and now he could see the aftermath with his own eyes. The floor was still damp from the latest scrubbing – Sister Euphemia’s nursing nuns had to be very thorough about scrubbing – but nevertheless, behind the aroma of lavender there was a lurking sickroom stench. Certain dark stains that refused to yield to the hot water and the brisk brush bore witness to where patients had uncontrollably voided liquids from the orifices of their weak, feverish bodies. Unoccupied cots had been stacked in a corner, stripped bare of their palliasses and of the covers. The remaining handful of patients were grouped around the middle of one side of the ward. One or two managed to give Josse a friendly smile as he passed by. All of them looked pale and frighteningly fragile.

  He passed the mystery man, who lay asleep; Josse was aware that Gervase de Gifford was waiting to question him and had undertaken the duty of informing the sheriff when the man was up to it. Trying to summon up righteous indignation – the man had probably killed Nicol and the Hastings merchant! – Josse’s resolve was undermined by pity.

  He had a fair idea of what to expect when at last he twitched aside the curtains around the Abbess’s bed and stared down at her.

  She was propped up on pillows and clad in a spotless white gown fastened chastely around the neck. Its sleeves extended to the wrist and her hands, emerging out of the smooth linen, lay folded upon the bedcovers. Her head was bare but for a simple white cap, beneath which he could see her reddish hair in short, soft curls. Her face was pale and her skin had a dryish look, as if any extreme expression might crack it clean open. Her eyes looked huge and were circled with dark rings.

  On seeing him, she risked everything and gave him a wide smile. ‘Dear Sir Josse,’ she said, and he noticed that her voice was weak and shaky, ‘how good it is to see you.’

  He knelt on the floor beside her bed. ‘My lady Abbess, I feared that this moment would never come.’

  ‘But it has,’ she answered. He felt her hand on his head – such a tiny, feeble touch! – and, raising his face, he looked up at her.

  ‘She came for me,’ the Abbess whispered. ‘I was on my way and she appeared at my side and asked me if I was sure I was ready to go. I saw – oh, I saw many things.’ She was studying him intently, something that he could not identify burning in the grey eyes. She was silent for a moment, then said, ‘What I saw ahead was so beautiful, Josse, that I could easily have slipped away and I am quite sure that I would have been happy. But I know now that it is not yet my time to go.’ Her smile was back. ‘So I came back.’

  He did not know what to say; either he must find the words to say all that was in his heart or else only the briefest response would do. Faced with the yawningly huge task of the former, he settled for the latter. He said gruffly, ‘I’m glad.’

  And he heard a sound he had thought never to hear again: she began to laugh.

  All too soon the curtain twitched back and Sister Euphemia appeared. ‘It’s very good to hear you laugh, my lady, but that’s enough for now. Sir Josse!’ She gave him a stern look.

  He raised the Abbess’s hand to his lips to give it a swift kiss and then, getting up, winked at her and followed the infirmarer out of the recess, letting the curtain fall behind him. Sister Euphemia, having assured herself that he had obeyed her and left the Abbess to rest, gave a nod and then hurried away up the ward to attend to a patient calling for water.

  Josse walked slowly after her. He glanced again at the stranger as he passed and noticed that the man was twisting from side to side in the bed, one hand reaching out as if in supplication. Going over to him, Josse said quietly, ‘What ails you?’

  The wavering hand appeared to have purpose in it; looking in the direction in which it pointed, Josse saw a jar on the floor. ‘Is this what you want?’ he asked, picking it up and holding it where the man could see it.

  ‘Yes!’

  Josse was unaccustomed to nursing but he had on occasion been nursed by others. Folding back the bedclothes, he raised the man’s gown, pushed the jar down between his thighs and helped him position himself so that the meagre stream of urine went in the right place. The small effort brought the man out in a sweat and Josse felt the fever burning in his skin; removing the jar, he helped him to settle back again and pulled the covers over him. He carried the jar outside, took it over to the privy and emptied it, then rinsed it and took it back to the man’s bedside.

  The man’s eyes were open and he was studying Josse.

  ‘I never thought,’ he said, ‘to have my piss pot emptied by a knight. I thank you, whoever you are.’

  ‘Josse d’Acquin,’ Josse replied.

  ‘Acquin.’

  ‘You have heard of it?’

  ‘No. Is it in France?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Yet here you are in an abbey in England.’

  ‘My family lands are at Acquin. My own manor is here.’

  ‘You hold your land from the King?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘You are a King’s man?’

  ‘Aye.’ Josse wondered if it was right to go on answering the abrupt questions; might it not be better for the man to rest? But then he seemed agitated, as if he were working up to something important.

  The man was watching him closely. ‘A King’s man,’ he repeated softly. ‘The King that is or the King that shall be, I wonder?’

  ‘King Richard!’ Josse exclaimed angrily. ‘Beware of treason, sir, to speak of a future king while the present one yet lives and reigns!’

  The man waved his hand as if treason held no fears for him. Then, looking down the ward, he said, ‘They have promised to find a priest for me, Sir Josse, for I have much that I wish to confess before God and I stand face to face. There is no sign of the man as yet, so may I ask a favour of you?’

  Feeling that he could hardly refuse, Josse said, ‘Aye.’

  The man’s face twitched into a brief smile. Then he said, ‘Hear my tale, sir knight, and tell me, if you will, what you think this priest will say to me, for I would know for how long I must do penance for my many sins.’

  It was a strange thing to say. Intrigued, Josse said, ‘Tell me the tale, then, for I have no pressing duty.’

  ‘Very well.’ The man shut his eyes tightly for a moment, his lips moved, perhaps in prayer, then without any warning preamble he said, ‘I have killed many men. Some I slew in battle, engaged as I was in the squabbles of lordlings and counts. But I have also killed thirty-two men and two women in the role of hired assassin. I am good at my job, Sir Josse; they used to say that I was the best.’ A puzzled frown creased his white face. ‘I could not kill her, though. I stared down at the bed and I thought, what is the point? If she has revealed the secret, then I am too late; if not, then why should she not live? I am tired; I have had enough of death and there is too much blood on my hands.’

  There was a silence.

  Stunned, Josse brought to mind the matter that had been obsessing him before the Abbess fell ill and everything else was obliterated. He knew how this man had come to be arrested; had been told by Gervase de Gifford of the trap set and sprung, of the sick man extracted from it and brought up to Hawkenlye. ‘You broke into Gervase de Gifford’s house with the intention of murdering Sabin de Retz and her grandfather,’ he said sternly. ‘Before that you killed Martin Kelsey in his sickbed in Hastings and you struck down Nicol Romley here in the Vale.’

  ‘Those deeds I admit,’ the man said. ‘But I was not going to kill Sabin; I just told you that.’

  ‘You say you are a paid assassin,’ Josse pressed on, ‘and we have surmised that you came to England on a killing mission.’ The man smiled wryly at that but did not speak. ‘I would say that Sabin learned who it was that you were going after and, becoming friendly with Nicol Romley when the two met at the market in Troyes, she confided in him what she knew. You learned that your secret was out and you tried to kill Sabin by firing the lodg
ing house. Then you set out after Nicol to stop his mouth too, but by the time you caught up with him he was already travelling with Martin Kelsey who, for all you knew, had now also been told the identity of the man you were setting out to kill.’ A new thought occurred to Josse and, excited, he leaned forward and said, ‘You had to kill all of them in case they warned your intended victim! That’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘I am sorry,’ the man said courteously, ‘but I must correct you on one or two points. First, I was not coming to England to fulfil my mission; the victim, as you call him, is not in this land. So, although I hate to dampen your ardour, I must tell you that it was not to prevent them issuing a warning that I killed the apprentice lad and the merchant. It was, as you earlier suggested, with the intention of keeping the matter secret.’

  ‘What matter?’ Josse almost wailed the question.

  The man smiled; he seemed to be enjoying the game. ‘See if you can guess, Sir Josse. Think of what you have already worked out.’

  With an effort, Josse thought back to the evening three days ago – only three days! God’s boots, but it felt like a lifetime – when he had hurried back to Hawkenlye to tell the Abbess his thoughts on Sabin and Benoît de Retz. Recalling his impressions, he said, ‘I was summoned by Gervase de Gifford to speak with Sabin. I was aware that she was careful to give little away but I noticed a few interesting things. One, when I spoke to her in French she said it was not her native tongue. I listened carefully after that and it occurred to me that she is a Breton.’ If he had expected confirmation from the man, it was not forthcoming. ‘Then I noticed a faint scent on her which I recognised, for I have smelt it on others who habitually work with herbs. Added to the fact that she spoke of visiting the fair at Troyes for purchases needed in her work, I guessed that she is an apothecary, for I know that Troyes market is an excellent source for the rare and the exotic. Later in our conversation she said that she had to buy particular ingredients in order to treat her employer. Here again, I made a guess, and this time it was indeed an outrageous one.’

  ‘What was it?’ The man sounded amused, indulgent.

  ‘I am probably wide of the mark.’

  ‘Never mind! Let me hear your outrageous guess.’

  Josse went over the small clues that had seemed to point in the same single direction. ‘I would say that Sabin and her grandfather are the private apothecaries of some rich man, for she at least, whom I have seen, I know to dress in plain but costly garments of fine quality. In addition, she rides a good mare. She has, or perhaps I should say they have, rare skills that have earned them their employer’s respect and indulgence, for he was willing to have them ride off to Troyes to fetch whatever it was they claimed to require. I would further surmise’ – here he was on shakier ground, for he was basing this guess on the flimsy foundation of a piece of gossip picked up some months ago when on the fringes of court circles – ‘that the master who pays so much to have Sabin and her grandfather’s discreet and expert care suffers from a disease of which he is ashamed. I was told,’ he lowered his voice to a whisper, ‘that Philip of France has syphilis and my guess is that Sabin and her grandfather have the care of him.’

  To his dismay, the man burst out laughing. After a moment, he controlled himself. ‘I am sorry, Sir Josse, for my laughter. You reason so well, right up to the last, and my amusement was simply because, in the matter of the French king, I fear you have been listening to barrack-room gossip. He is, I am sure, as free of the shameful disease that you ascribe to him as the good infirmarer over there.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But in all other respects, I believe I underestimated you,’ the man said. ‘Sabin and her grandfather are indeed Bretons and they practise the profession of apothecary, as you say, in the employ of a wealthy and important patron. My mission was to kill a member of this patron’s household and I was on the point of making my strike when my master called me off. By an ill stroke, Benoît heard the exchange between my master’s messenger and myself; the old man may be blind, Sir Josse, but he has keen ears and misses little. He must have overheard the identity of the person I had been sent to kill and it would not take a genius to work out from that the man it was who had sent me and who wanted the victim dead, and why they wanted it. Benoît had therefore to be stopped, for if the secret were to get out, then my master would have had me killed instead; be in no doubt of that. But before I could apprehend the old man, he and his daughter disappeared, and it was some time before I knew where they had gone. I tried and failed to kill them in Troyes, by which time they had also revealed the secret to Nicol Romley, who, or so I feared, passed it on to Martin Kelsey. Two of the potential leaks have been stopped for good; two now remain.’

  ‘Yet when you thought Sabin lay defenceless before you, you stayed your hand.’

  ‘Yes.’ The man sighed. ‘As I said, I have had enough.’

  ‘Will you not tell me the secret?’ Josse said after a moment.

  The man stared at him for some time. Then he said, ‘No. I do not think I will.’

  He closed his eyes. The exertion of the conversation had brought him out in a sweat, and his deadly white face was beaded over the forehead and across the upper lip. Two hot spots of red burned in his cheeks.

  ‘Will you take a drink?’ Josse asked softly.

  The man’s eyes opened. ‘No,’ he said with a smile, ‘for it has already done its work for me. To take any more will possibly bring about the wrong outcome.’

  Josse was about to ask him what he meant – although in truth he had a fairly good idea already – but the man had turned his face away.

  Later that morning, Father Gilbert arrived and, so they said, sat with the stranger for a long time. Not long after he left, the man slipped into a deep coma from which he was not to emerge.

  Part Five

  Victory

  Chapter 22

  In the morning Josse rode down to Tonbridge to Gervase de Gifford’s house to tell him that his prisoner was dead. He also explained that, the previous day, the man had told Josse that he was a hired killer; also that Sabin and Benoît de Retz had somehow learned the identity of his prominent victim, that he had killed both Nicol Romley and Martin Kelsey and that he had tried to murder Sabin and her grandfather, all in the interests of keeping the secret safe.

  It seemed to Josse, however, watching the younger man’s reaction, that he was almost glad of the news; deciding that he knew de Gifford well enough by now to query this, he did so.

  De Gifford ran a hand across his smooth hair and for a moment his suave manner deserted him and he looked almost bashful.

  ‘The lady – Sabin de Retz – will, I think, be relieved that the man is not to come to trial and hang,’ he said. ‘I saw her with my prisoner, Josse, and her pity for his abject state overrode her hunger for revenge.’

  ‘But he killed her young man and tried to burn her and her old grandfather alive as they slept!’ Josse protested.

  ‘Nicol Romley was not her young man,’ de Gifford said rather too promptly. ‘She said he – er – that is, I am given to understand it was just a fleeting attraction.’

  Appreciating which way that particular wind blew, Josse forbore to remark that this fleeting attraction had been strong enough to make Sabin travel all the way to England with her blind and elderly grandfather in tow in order to warn Nicol that he was in danger. ‘I see,’ he said instead.

  ‘She will be relieved that the matter is over,’ de Gifford was saying. ‘Now she’ll be able to put the sad episode behind her and she’ll – that is, she can return to her normal life.’

  ‘Aye,’ Josse agreed absently. He was thinking. Then he said, ‘Gervase, what is her normal life? Now that this man who threatened to kill her to keep her silent is dead, is there any chance that she will tell us what all this has been about?’

  De Gifford regarded him for some moments. Then he said, ‘I will invite her to come down – she is in the upper chamber with the old man. Let’s ask her.’
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br />   When de Gifford escorted Sabin and the old grandfather into his hall, Josse guessed by the young woman’s face that de Gifford had already told her the most important piece of news. Her face had lost the look of strain and she looked arrestingly handsome. She met Josse’s eyes, gave him a quick smile and then busied herself helping her grandfather to sit down on a bench close to the hearth. Moving over to help her – the old man wanted the heavy bench moved closer to the welcome blaze – Josse said quietly in her ear, ‘Ever the healer, lady, thinking of the welfare and comfort of others.’

  ‘How did you know?’ she hissed.

  ‘I guessed that you are an apothecary; yesterday I had it confirmed.’

  Straightening up, she said, with a touch of haughtiness, ‘It may be an unusual profession for a woman, but nevertheless I am proud of what I do.’

  ‘With justification, my lady.’

  She stared at him as if searching his face for sincerity. Apparently finding it, she smiled. ‘Thank you.’

  De Gifford invited her to sit down beside her grandfather. Then he said, ‘Sabin, now that the man who wanted you dead is no more a threat to you, will you tell us exactly why he wanted to kill you? We know it was to ensure that a secret was kept; could you, do you think, enlighten us as to what that secret was?’

  She looked at de Gifford, briefly at Josse, then had a short, muttered conversation with her grandfather. ‘I do not know that I can,’ she said eventually, ‘for it is a secret about which, did you know what it concerned, both of you would, I am certain, urge the utmost discretion.’

  Josse spoke up. ‘My lady, I have surmised from what little I already know that this business into which you have stumbled involves some very well-known, important and influential people, although I am not aware of their identities. Would it reassure you if I were to tell you that I am reasonably well accustomed to such circles and that, if you could see your way to unburdening yourself, you would have my solemn oath that what you tell me will go no further?’