Girl In A Red Tunic Read online

  She shot him a glance. Then, after a short pause, said, ‘All is well with us here, Sir Josse, and I thank you for the enquiry. My nuns and monks are busy, as always, but that is what they are here for. We have fewer pilgrims coming to take the holy water in the Vale, but that is on account of the cold and not, I am sure, because our shrine loses its attraction. Those who do brave the winter weather are greeted with extra rations of food and the luxury of a small fire at night. And, of course, the kind attentions of Brother Firmin and his companions. Otherwise’ – there was a vaguely panicky look in her face as she cast around for a way to complete her brief account – ‘otherwise, as I said, all is well.’

  He waited. After a moment, she looked up and met his eyes. Very gently he said, ‘Now why not tell me the truth?’

  Chapter 3

  She wondered why she had ever thought she would not confide in him; hadn’t Josse been the one person she had so much wanted to talk to when her dreams had troubled her so? Although her conscience still frowned at her inability to keep thoughts of her son and his family’s problems from intruding when her mind should be on greater things, she did not think it would be wrong to confide in Josse. She had, after all, prayed for God’s help in almost the same moment as she had wished for Josse’s presence, so maybe a part of God’s help had come in the form of sending him.

  Anyway, as soon as Josse spoke those words – so kindly, with such compassion for her in his brown eyes – she was lost.

  ‘You perceive what has not been put into words for you, Sir Josse,’ she said. ‘I ought not to burden you with my private concerns when you are so poorly but—’

  ‘Private concerns?’ he snapped, interrupting her. ‘Please, tell me straight away, my lady, what ails you?’

  ‘I am well, Josse,’ she said, putting her hand briefly on his. ‘Better than you!’ She tried to make a small joke.

  ‘Nothing much wrong with me,’ he said gruffly. ‘Sister Euphemia herself drew back the curtains which isolated me from everyone else and Sister Caliste assures me I’ll be on my feet tomorrow.’ He glared at her, but the fierce expression was denied by the tenderness in his eyes. ‘Now, what is the matter with you?’

  ‘It’s not me, it’s my son.’

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘Your son?’

  ‘Yes. You knew, I believe, that I was a wife and a mother before I came to Hawkenlye?’

  ‘Aye, my lady. I knew. But—’ He shrugged, as if what he was thinking could not be put easily into words.

  She did it for him. ‘But you cannot now imagine that one in my position was ever other than you now perceive her?’

  He muttered something that sounded like all too easily but she must have been mistaken.

  Wishing only to move the conversation on and spare them both further awkwardness – for he was giving a very good impression of an embarrassed man and her own composure was shaky – she said hastily, ‘Actually the problem really lies with my son’s wife, but such is his love for her that her problem is his, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I do. Please, go on, my lady.’

  ‘They were married three years past and in September of last year, Rohaise gave birth to their son, whose name is Timus. According to Leofgar – my son – Rohaise has suffered in a variety of ways since the birth.’ Noticing that Josse was looking even more embarrassed, she said frankly, ‘Sir Josse, I do not speak of that sort of problem. The illness, if that is what it is, is of poor Rohaise’s mind.’

  Josse had such an open face, she reflected, watching him with amusement despite the seriousness of the subject under discussion; when she reassured him that they were not going to have to talk about some bodily malfunction of Rohaise’s but, rather, a mental one, relief had swept through him, swiftly displaced by guilt that he should feel pleased that Rohaise’s difficulty probably amounted to something a lot more serious than some temporary disorder in her reproductive organs.

  ‘I am sorry for her,’ he said as the flush faded from his cheeks. ‘Sorry for all of you. She has seen Sister Euphemia?’

  ‘Indeed.’ Helewise nodded in the direction of the long infirmary ward. ‘Rohaise was exhausted after the journey and did not sleep well last night, so Sister Euphemia has brought her in here and is keeping her under observation. She – Sister Euphemia – had a long talk with the girl this morning and then gave her a sleeping draught.’

  ‘The girl is in the recess down there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded. ‘And you went to see her just now.’

  ‘I did,’ she agreed. ‘She was deeply asleep and did not stir while Sister Euphemia quietly told me of their earlier discussion.’

  ‘Does the infirmarer detect the nature of this illness of the head?’

  She paused, collecting her thoughts. What Sister Euphemia had told her was still too fresh in her mind for her to have digested it. I shall share it with Josse, she decided, and see what he makes of it.

  ‘Sister Euphemia has had many years’ experience of new mothers,’ she said, ‘and has what can only be a divinely bestowed ability to gain a young woman’s confidence. She did not tell me the full story that Rohaise told her, but she assured me that what she did pass on formed the most important elements. Oh, Sir Josse, poor Rohaise! She has not smiled since Timus was six weeks old!’

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  It was an obvious question but had no clear answer. ‘Rohaise cannot say. She began to feel anxious about almost every facet of the baby’s well-being, doubting her own ability to protect him, to look after him, to love him, in short to mother him adequately. She started to believe that her milk would poison him and, despite the fact that she had milk in plenty and had previously been enjoying feeding him, she engaged a wet nurse and bound up her breasts to stop the milk.’

  ‘That is not unusual, is it?’ Josse asked.

  ‘No, not at all. It is Rohaise’s reason for her action that is unusual. And that isn’t all,’ she hurried on. ‘Sister Euphemia could get little more out of her, for she appears highly suspicious of us, as if she fears we are testing her fitness to be a mother. But what she did say before she fell back into her silence – she hardly speaks at all, Sir Josse! – was that she is in constant terror of someone coming to take Timus away from her.’

  ‘Has she any reason to think they will?’

  ‘I do not know. I can’t imagine that any decent soul would make such a threat but I will ask my son. He is with Rohaise at the moment, sitting beside her with Timus on his lap watching her as she sleeps, but I have asked him to come along to meet you presently.’

  ‘I look forward to that meeting with pleasure.’ He spoke courteously but he was frowning, apparently thinking hard. Then he said, ‘Does Sister Euphemia recognise the symptoms of whatever it is that affects Rohaise?’

  Helewise felt herself smile. ‘Yes. I am wrong, I’m sure, to take such comfort in her words, for in truth she urged me not to and said there was no certainty that she guesses aright. But she did admit that she had observed such irrational fears and such ongoing lowness of spirit in other mothers.’

  ‘Did those other mothers recover their serenity?’

  Trust Josse, she thought, to put the arrow in the bull’s eye. ‘Sometimes,’ she said. It was the very word that Sister Euphemia had used.

  As if he too found it unpromising, Josse just said, ‘Oh.’ Then, after a pause, he said, ‘In summary, then, my lady, your son has brought his wife here to Hawkenlye because she is unwell.’ He hesitated, as though not sure how best to speak his thoughts. Then he went on, ‘Forgive me if I speak too bluntly, my lady, but is it, would you say, Hawkenlye’s great reputation as a centre of healing that draws him rather than the identity of the person who is its Abbess?’

  It was a roundabout way of asking something that she had already asked herself. Modesty ordered that she meekly agree with him and say, Oh, of course it’s because of our healers, he didn’t come here with any wish to see me! But modesty had never been her greates
t strength and when, as in this case, it fought with maternal emotion, there could only be one winner.

  Staring down at her hands, lying still and folded in her lap, she said, ‘He was calling for me, Josse. I heard him in my dreams and I was so very troubled because hearing my son’s voice, even after so many years, took me straight back to my previous life. I felt so wretched when I could not concentrate on those things that make up my present existence, but I could not help myself. I’m a nun!’ she said in an angry hiss. ‘I’m Abbess here and all these people depend on me! I’ve no business returning to the sentiments of my past, it is surely wrong!’

  Apparently ignoring her little outburst, he said, his voice low and full of warmth, ‘Did you verify that your son really did call out to you in his trouble?’

  She found that she dared not risk speaking so she just nodded.

  After a time Josse said, ‘You once said to me, my lady, at a time when I felt myself to have been betrayed and was greatly distressed, that the act of childbirth turns a wife into a mother and there is no going back.’

  She gave a small gasp; she remembered the conversation very well, and also the tense and emotional circumstances under which it had occurred. She whispered, ‘Yes.’

  In the same gentle tone, he said, ‘Your words gave me great comfort then, Helewise. Hear them again, apply them to yourself and take the same comfort, for I am quite sure that God wouldn’t have bestowed on the world the immeasurable gift of maternal love had He not intended his children to benefit from it.’

  She felt tears spill from her eyes. Trying to be discreet, she turned her head so that her coif hid her face while she wiped them away.

  Josse said, far too bracingly, ‘And what of the little boy? Timus, was it?’

  An absurd chuckle almost broke from her at the obvious distracting ploy. But then she thought about her grandson and no longer felt like laughing. ‘He is too quiet,’ she said. ‘He was never very vocal, my son says, but now he makes no attempt at speech.’

  ‘Is that not normal in so young a child?’ Josse looked as if he were trying to recall if it was; no doubt, she thought, he was envisaging all those nephews and nieces of his.

  ‘Children speak when they are ready and in some it is sooner than in others,’ she replied. ‘For sure, I never knew a child to speak proper words much before a year and a half to two years. But most little ones try out their voices, Sir Josse! They make sounds and begin to string them together and sometimes they make up what sounds like a language of their own, although of course it is nothing but nonsense.’

  A vivid picture came powerfully into her head. She tried to dismiss it.

  ‘What of your own boys?’ Josse was saying. ‘I ask because I’m thinking that these matters of how soon a child walks and talks may be similar in the father and his son.’

  Oh, he was trying to help and she was more than grateful to him, but his innocent question was making those remembered images from so long ago so lifelike that she could smell the sweet lilac blossom and feel the tiny hands clutching hers. ‘My sons were always noisy, the pair of them,’ she said. She noticed absently that she sounded as if there were something constricting her throat. ‘Dominic spoke early, but he had his talkative elder brother to copy.’

  ‘And Leofgar?’

  She could no longer fight her memories. ‘It was Leofgar of whom I was thinking when I spoke of the nonsense language,’ she said. ‘He was so eager to speak that he even made sounds in his sleep. Ivo claimed he was snoring but I said he was trying to communicate with us. Oh, and he used to make every other sort of sound, too – he’d laugh at almost anything, he was such a sunny, cheerful child.’

  The nun that she now was commanded enough, and abruptly she stopped.

  As if he were reluctant to bring her from the happy past to the distressing present, Josse waited a moment before he spoke. Then he said, ‘What does Sister Euphemia have to say about your son’s child?’

  She went back to studying her hands. ‘She says he is afraid.’ She looked up hastily and met his compassionate face. ‘And before you ask, afraid of what, I have no idea!’ Then she shot to her feet and said, ‘Wait here. I will fetch Leofgar and the child and you can judge for yourself.’

  Josse watched her tall figure stride away down the infirmary. He lay back on his pillows, momentarily exhausted by the tension. She’s feeling very guilty because she’s putting a mother’s natural instinct to care for and help her child above her duty as a nun, he thought, trying to make sense of it all, and in addition to that she’s frantic with worry about her daughter-in-law’s fragile mental state and her grandson’s dumbness.

  Great God, he reflected, no wonder she’s so distressed.

  He was just making a solemn promise to himself that he would do all that he could to help her when he saw her coming back. Now there was a tall young man walking beside her, carrying a small child dressed in a short blue tunic and thick hose.

  As they approached, he wondered if anyone else had had the same thought: that these three people were so alike that, even had you not known them, you would have guessed that the same blood just had to run in their veins. Leofgar was taller than his mother but shared her broad shoulders and her upright bearing; his hair was dark (and Josse knew full well that Helewise’s was reddish-fair) and his skin had the same golden glow. The little boy’s colouring was light, like his grandmother’s, and the well-shaped mouth, although now set in a solemn line, looked as if it were made for smiles and laughter.

  What pointed them out as close relatives, though, was their eyes.

  Struggling to sit up, Josse held out a hand to this sad man who was the son of his dearest friend and said, ‘I am in my infirmary bed and you are troubled, young Leofgar. This is no time for lengthy and formal introductions – I shall only say that I’m Josse and I’m delighted to meet you.’

  Amusement filled Leofgar’s eyes – making him look even more like his mother – and, taking Josse’s hand, he said, ‘The delight is all mine, sir. My mother has told me all about you.’

  Not all, Josse hoped. That would be too much for anyone to absorb in a few hours and anyway he fervently hoped that the tenderest parts of all remained his own secret.

  ‘And this is Timus?’ Josse turned to look at the child.

  ‘Yes. Timus, say hello to Sir Josse,’ Leofgar commanded.

  But the little boy was timid and hid his face in his father’s tunic, turning his head only a fraction so he could look at Josse out of the corner of his eye.

  Josse remembered a trick that had once amused one of his nephews. Making sure that Timus was still looking at him, he raised both hands and, with an expression of deep concentration, pretended to wrench off his left thumb, tucking it down into the palm of that hand. Then he put his right hand behind his left and, sticking up the thumb, slid it up and down as if it were the detached left thumb.

  Timus had come out of hiding now and was openly staring, eyes wide with fascination. Then, as Josse looked with exaggerated and horrified amazement at his wayward thumb, suddenly the boy laughed.

  The sound was so sweet and so infectious that, almost without realising it, the three adults began to laugh too. But then Leofgar said, ‘You are a magician, Sir Josse. That is, I believe, the first time in a week that my son has laughed.’

  Josse gave him a vague grin; he was busy with the next trick. As once more he held up his hands, Timus struggled round in his father’s arms to get a better view; Leofgar, with a raised eyebrow at Josse, who nodded, carefully placed the child down on Josse’s bed. Josse caught Timus’s eye and said softly, ‘Watch.’

  Frowning and narrowing his eyes as if he were having trouble seeing, Josse threaded an imaginary needle. Then, wincing in pretend pain, he stuck the imaginary needle through each of the fingers of his left hand, starting with the little one and ending with the thumb. He gave the invisible thread a twitch, which brought all his fingers snapping together, then, pushing hard and going ‘Ouch!’, he pretended to
push the needle into his left ear and pull it out of his right. Then, as if a thread really did run from his bound left hand through his head to his right one, he pulled his right hand down and simultaneously raised his left, repeating the manoeuvre several times and beaming broadly in triumph.

  Timus, who had been watching open-mouthed, clumsily copied the gesture. Then, pointing at Josse, who had now stopped, he said quite clearly, ‘More!’

  Josse was smiling again, and one glance at Helewise and her son – whose mouths had dropped open just like Timus’s entranced by the trick – made him laugh aloud. ‘This is the child who does not speak?’ he said quietly; Timus was kneeling on his lap now and trying clumsily to make Josse’s hands do the trick again. Looking down at him, he added, ‘Well, whatever ails him that makes him opt for silence, it is not because he can’t speak.’ Staring up at the mother and son before him, he said, ‘Is it?’

  And as Helewise quietly shook her head, Leofgar’s face took on an expression of deep joy as he said, ‘No. Oh, I must tell Rohaise as soon as she wakes!’ Looking over his shoulder down the ward, it was clear to Josse where he wanted to be. Josse said, ‘Off you go. Timus will be quite safe with me. If his grandmother’ – he shot a look at Helewise – ‘has to be off and about her duties, I shall be glad of this little man’s company. I have a few more tricks yet and, if I remember children’s ways aright, the first two amusements may bear a repetition or two.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Leofgar gave him a graceful bow, then turned and hurried away in the direction of his wife’s bedside.

  Josse knew she was looking at him even before he raised his head to check. ‘How did you do that?’ she breathed.

  ‘It’s quite easy really, you only pretend there’s a needle and thread and—’

  ‘Sir Josse, do not joke!’ But she was smiling as she spoke. ‘You have a rare gift with children; your brothers’ sons and daughters are fortunate in their uncle and you would appear to be a natural—’