The Winter King--A Hawkenlye 13th Century British Mystery Read online

  Every time he made the suggestion, rephrased a dozen ways, the response would be the same. His son would look at him, smile and say, ‘But I’m happy here, Father.’

  He was; any fool could see that. And, deep in his heart, Josse would recognize that Geoffroi was his mother’s son too, and Joanna had abandoned the world and almost everything in it to live out in the wildwood. It was, he had to admit, not all that likely that her boy would truly find satisfaction or joy in training to be a squire.

  Josse’s thoughts progressed to his adopted son, Ninian – also Joanna’s child, but not by Josse. Ninian and his new wife Eloise – known as Little Helewise until Ninian had returned from his long travels in the Midi and renamed her – had taken to married life with touching delight, first in each other and then, quite soon after their marriage, in their baby daughter, born at midsummer. They had named the child Inana. Josse, never having heard the name before, said innocently to the proud new father, ‘Is that really a name?’ To which Ninian, with a flash of hard steel in his bright blue eyes, had responded, a touch defensively, ‘My mother used to speak of someone very powerful and beautiful named Inana.’

  The child – who was indeed very beautiful, like her mysterious namesake – was, after all, Joanna’s grandchild; great-granddaughter to old Mag Hobson, who, if all Josse had ever heard about her was true, had been one of the most powerful of the forest people. Josse had said no more; it seemed more than likely the name was highly suitable.

  Ninian and his new family had set up home in a newlybuilt extension to the House in the Woods, affording them both the security of living close to an established household, and a degree of privacy. It was interesting, Josse mused as he rode out of the woods and into the sunshine, that nobody had suggested the newly-weds might care to live either with, or near to, the bride’s family. Not that her father, Leofgar Warin, was the problem. Helewise’s elder son was a rich and powerful man now, moving, it was said, on the fringes of court circles. His daughter loved him dearly, and Ninian appeared to like him well enough; it was clear that he respected him. No: the problem would have been Eloise’s mother. Rohaise had not yet forgiven her daughter for having ‘allowed Ninian to have his way’ and, before wedlock, ‘behaving like a married couple’. Rohaise was good at euphemisms. Useless for Eloise to try to explain that it had been her will just as much as Ninian’s, or to protest that, with England still under the interdict, you couldn’t marry there even if you wanted to; Eloise and Ninian had made their vows at Josse’s family home in northern France.

  Josse let out a sigh and, because he was alone except for Alfred, he vented his feelings by calling the increasingly stiff and starchy Rohaise a few choice names. It’s her loss, he thought sadly. It’s she who is robbing herself of the huge joys of grandparenthood, while we at the House in the Woods enjoy them more with every day.

  He sighed again. Living in contentment as he did, he preferred it when everyone he cared for was as happy as he was. Eloise, despite everything, often looked as if a shadow of sorrow was darkening her lovely face.

  Lingering with her, Josse sent her his love.

  His thoughts moved gently on, through his household – Will, Ella, Tilly, Gus and their children – then progressing to Helewise’s younger son, Dominic, and his family. Dominic, too, was steadily becoming a wealthy man (these Warin men have a talent for it, Josse thought) and in his case, the money was coming in through wool. Dominic farmed New Winnowlands, the manor that had once belonged to Josse, but prosperity had allowed him to expand his sheep pastures until he had all but doubled them. With young Geoffroi’s help, Dominic had instigated a programme of animal breeding that seemed to have resulted in the sheep best suited to New Winnowlands’ acres. The beautifully fine wool was much in demand among the weavers of the Low Countries, whose skill ensured that it was a particularly soft, strong and luxurious fabric that eventually made its way back to England.

  Dominic had never forgotten that his house had once been Josse’s. To show his gratitude, he encouraged Josse to graze his own growing flock on the same pastures. Situated on the edge of Romney Marsh, the New Winnowlands acres afforded land out on the saltmarsh for summer grazing, and up on the higher, drier ground for the remainder of the year. If nothing turned up to overturn the hay cart – Josse removed one hand from the reins and crossed his fingers – then, for the foreseeable future anyway, none of them need worry too much about money.

  On his imaginary rosary, he had now reached the bead dedicated to Meggie. She had recently returned from Brittany, just as she had promised. ‘I’ll be back in the autumn,’ his beloved daughter had said, and, of course, she was.

  Josse had missed her sorely and worried about her constantly, yet he’d recognized that she was old enough to live her own life and, hopefully, sensible enough to live it wisely. Or, if not wisely, then at least without too much risk to her safety and happiness. Moreover, she had gone off with her dark-skinned Breton blacksmith, Jehan Leferronier, and within only a few days of meeting the man, Josse had sized him up as tough and resourceful. He was also, Josse couldn’t help but notice, deeply in love with Meggie.

  It had given him quite a shock when Meggie had turned up without Jehan at the House in the Woods – he had believed theirs was a relationship set to last – but Meggie had swiftly explained. Jehan, she said, had received word of friends of his who had come to England the previous year and, before coming to join her, he was going to see if he could track them down.

  Josse was trying very hard not to think about that. He knew what Jehan’s friends had had in mind when they’d set sail for England; knew, if it came to it, what Jehan too had been planning …

  ‘Don’t dwell on it,’ Helewise had advised. ‘What Jehan does or does not do is quite beyond your influence or your control. Do not spoil your happiness at Meggie’s homecoming by entertaining worrying thoughts which are probably quite without foundation.’

  Now, her words echoing in his ears, he did his best to heed her wise advice. Aware suddenly that Alfred’s pace had slowed to an amble, he tightened the reins, put his heels to his horse’s sides, and broke into a smart trot.

  I am a very lucky man, he told himself – as, indeed, he told himself most days. And, as the crown on his good fortune, there was the very woman he had just been thinking about: Helewise.

  They had come to an understanding, over in France earlier in the year. Josse had kept his word, and thrown his efforts behind her as she set about building the little sanctuary she had dreamed of. It was situated a hundred paces or so off the high road that curved around the forest; hidden away behind the outlying trees, yet easily found by those who had been instructed how to find it. According to Josse’s sole stipulation, it was some distance from the House in the Woods. ‘We are secluded here,’ he had said to Helewise, ‘and largely overlooked, since only ourselves, our kin and our close friends know of our existence. I am more than willing to support you in your new endeavour, but not at the cost of putting at risk our precious privacy.’

  She had bowed her head and agreed.

  The sanctuary had been in operation since the summer. Word had quickly spread, and now most days people in desperate need found their way to the place where help would be given. Tilly and Ella prepared bread and nourishing soup, and several times a week Will drove a cart loaded with food and firewood from the House in the Woods to the sanctuary. Tiphaine frequently turned up, bearing herbs and potions, ready to prepare remedies for the sick and the ailing. Helewise admitted to knowing full well that the herbs came from Hawkenlye Abbey, where Tiphaine had long been the herbalist, and she suspected it was with the knowledge and approval of Abbess Caliste. One day, Josse believed, Helewise was going to overcome her scruples about going back to the Abbey; she and Abbess Caliste were, after all, working for the same thing, and he thought it would help both women to discuss how best to help the vast and increasing numbers of England’s poor, destitute, sick and desperate.

  Many who came to the sanctuary th
ought Helewise was still a nun. Her dark robes and veil, and modest white headdress, tended to support the illusion. For the eyes of the world, perhaps, she was still abbess of Hawkenlye. For him, she had slipped into a different identity.

  Even his own household did not know the truth, for he and Helewise were extremely discreet.

  Without being aware of having covered the distance, all at once he found himself at the point on the road where it diverged, the right-hand track leading down the hill to Tonbridge and the left to Hawkenlye Abbey. A smile on his face, he urged Alfred to a special effort for the last couple of miles.

  Both for courtesy’s sake and because he was very fond of her, Josse went first to see Abbess Caliste to exchange the latest gossip.

  ‘They say Lord Benedict de Vitré is dead,’ Josse said, settling comfortably on the chair which Abbess Caliste kept for visitors. It was, in Josse’s view, a vast improvement on the little stool that her predecessor had deemed quite sufficient.

  ‘Yes, so I heard,’ the abbess replied. She glanced up and met Josse’s eyes, but discretion kept her from speaking further.

  Well, after all, she’s a nun, Josse thought. He decided to say what he was sure they were both thinking. ‘The man was a vicious bully who abused his position and preyed on the weak,’ he stated firmly. ‘While I would not have actively wished him dead, I cannot truly say I regret his passing.’

  The abbess closed her eyes briefly. Then, presumably indicating the closure of that particular topic by a firm change of subject, she said brightly, ‘We seem to be honoured just now with many important visitors to the area, Sir Josse. The de Clares, down at Tonbridge, are reported to have a clutch of the great and the good of the realm within their walls, and only yesterday a couple of very well-dressed young men, riding expensive mounts, stopped at our gates to ask directions to the dwelling of Lord Wimarc of Wealdsend.’

  ‘Lord Wimarc?’ Josse queried. ‘I understood he was a recluse.’

  ‘So did I,’ Abbess Caliste agreed. She smiled. ‘He will not thank those bright young men, for advertising the fact that they were bound for his manor, and thereby reminding us all of his existence.’

  Josse, barely registering her remark, grunted agreement. He was thinking; trying to piece together what he knew of Lord Robert Wimarc. The total did not amount to much. The old man was rarely seen outside his own stout walls, and was reputed to repel would-be visitors with total ruthlessness. Josse resolved to seek out Helewise and ask her if she could add to these sparse facts, since it had been she who had told him of the old man in the first place.

  He glanced up, to see that Abbess Caliste was watching him. The look in her eyes surprised him: he could have sworn she was nervous. Frightened, even. He had known her a long time and, although she bore a heavy burden, he had rarely known her to be distracted out of her usual serenity.

  He leaned towards her. ‘What is it?’ he whispered.

  She shook her head. ‘Oh, probably nothing.’ She managed a small laugh. ‘I should not listen to idle tongues with nothing better to do than spread alarming rumours!’

  He dropped his voice still further. ‘What rumours?’

  She frowned, began to speak, then stopped. Abruptly she got up, came right up to him and, leaning down to whisper right into his ear, breathed, ‘They do say that those who congregate with the de Clares in Tonbridge Castle are no great supporters of … of …’

  He put up a hand to stop her. ‘Do not speak it, my lady,’ he advised. ‘Safer that way, for both of us.’

  They went on to speak of mundane matters. But presently, as Josse took his leave, he caught a shadow of something in the abbess’s expression. He might have dismissed it, except that the same emotion was fighting to make itself felt within himself.

  Both of them were apprehensive, and the apprehension was deep enough that it bordered on fear.

  It was not easy, after that, to go on to see Brother Saul with the appropriately cheerful demeanour for visiting the sick. He was, however, much encouraged to find his old friend propped up in bed and clamouring to be allowed up and back to work.

  ‘I shouldn’t be lying here abed, Sir Josse,’ Saul said, fretfully pleating and re-pleating the fresh bed linen. ‘Not when there’s so much work to be done, and all too few hands to do it.’

  He was right, Josse knew. Another pernicious effect of the interdict was the absence of young men and women asking to enter the abbey as novice monks and nuns, or even, like Saul, as lay brethren. It was all too understandable, Josse reflected, but the abbey was suffering, nevertheless.

  It was not, however, the moment to further depress poor Saul with such morbid thoughts. ‘You’ll be far more use to the abbey if you do as you’re told and stay here till you are fully well,’ he assured his old friend. ‘I am sure it won’t be long now.’

  He was further reassured when the infirmarer, Sister Liese, confirmed that Saul truly was on the mend. ‘I’m only keeping him in here another day because I know full well he’ll go straight back to doing three men’s work,’ she whispered to Josse as he left, ‘and he’s not as young as he was.’

  Which of us is? Josse thought as he went to fetch Alfred. Brother Saul could not be much older than Josse; did that mean people saw Josse, too, as being on the brink of old age?

  It was not a particularly welcome image.

  There was a sure-fire way of recalling the happy mood of the morning: on his way home, he would make a detour and go to visit his daughter.

  Meggie was enjoying a few precious days alone, in the little hut in the forest which had been her mother’s, and in which she had spent the first few years of her life.

  Although she missed Jehan all the time, nevertheless it was wonderful to be back within the hut’s four stout wooden walls. It was so full of memories – of her mother, of course, and, more recently, of Jehan, for it was the place where they had met.

  Stop thinking about him, she told herself firmly. She was busy digging, turning the soil, pulling out a summer’s worth of weeds (nobody had tended the hut’s herb patch for months) and preparing the ground for the spring. I must fetch a few sacks of chalk, she thought. She did not know why, but the soil of the forest, consisting as it did almost entirely of leaf mould, did not nourish good growth in her herbs unless she dug in a good quantity of chalk. It had been one of the forest people who told her that, and, on the morning that he offered the advice, Meggie had experienced a sudden, vivid memory from early childhood: her own small, pudgy hands playing with a lump of chalk while Joanna dug. Exactly where Meggie was digging now.

  Her back and shoulders were beginning to ache, and the faint hope that she’d had of subduing her body’s longing for Jehan by making it work like a slave seemed not to be working. She paused in her digging, wiping a hand across her sweaty brow. Those summer weeks in Brittany, deep within the secret forest of Brocéliande, just the two of them living out there alone, had been magical, and getting to know each other’s bodies, naked under the trees, had been like—

  ‘Meggie! Are you there?’

  Hastily she dragged her thoughts away from making love on the soft green grass, pushed back her hair, straightened her robe and, with a smile of welcome, turned to greet her father.

  He jumped down from his horse and came hurrying across the fresh-turned earth to put his arms round her and wrap her in a rib-creaking hug. Laughing, she hugged him back.

  ‘It’s lovely to be greeted so warmly, Father,’ she said, still grinning, as he released her, ‘but we saw each other only four days ago. Anybody would think it had been months!’

  ‘You were off carousing in Brittany for months,’ he pointed out reasonably.

  ‘Yes, I know, and you know I wasn’t carousing,’ she replied. ‘Jehan has agreed to come to England for my sake, because I don’t really want to go and live in his country, and I felt the least I could do was to accompany him while he went about severing his ties over there.’

  ‘Aye, my love, you explained your reasons to m
e before you went.’

  She hesitated. There was something she wanted to tell him, but she feared it would open old wounds. She stared up into his eyes.

  And, as he quite often did, he read what was at the forefront of her mind. Very softly, he said, ‘You went to the Brocéliande. I think you must have done,’ he added in a rush, ‘because I know that’s where Jehan comes from.’

  ‘I did,’ she agreed.

  ‘You know you’d been there before?’ He had turned away and she could not see his face. ‘With … with your mother and me?’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ She paused, thinking how to reply so as to give him a moment of remembered happiness, rather than the sudden sharp pain of lost love. ‘I’m not sure I really recognized any of the places Jehan and I went to,’ she said slowly, ‘but I had the strongest sense that it wasn’t the first time I walked under those huge, ancient trees, or lay snug on the leaves of centuries, inside the bend of a stream with the sound of the rushing water to lull me to sleep.’ She thought she heard him give a sort of gasp. ‘I felt there was something there that recognized me and welcomed me back,’ she whispered. ‘It was love, I believe; yours and my mother’s.’

  She gave him a few moments. When he turned to face her again, his eyes were bright with unshed tears. ‘It was a good time,’ he said gruffly, ‘although not without considerable peril.’ Then, beginning to smile: ‘Your mother fought like a cornered bear.’

  One day, she vowed to herself, one day when it doesn’t hurt him so much, I’ll ask him to tell me about it.