The Chatter of the Maidens Read online

  The boy noticed the irony – Josse could tell by the swift response in the dark eyes – but instead of taking offence, he said, ‘I know how you feel. You set a store by the Abbess, and you would give anything to be riding off instead of me. But you can’t, because nobody here will risk you opening up that cut again. They nearly lost you last time. I just wanted to tell you, Sir Josse d’Acquin, that I know exactly what I’m being entrusted with, and I understand the honour and the responsibility of being asked to go in your place.’ The dark eyes were fixed to Josse’s, and Josse found the boy’s gaze oddly compelling. The boy added softly, ‘I would die before I let any harm come to her.’

  Strangely, Josse was convinced by the quiet intensity with which the melodramatic words were spoken; he found that he entirely believed the boy’s sincerity.

  ‘I hope and pray that it will not come to that,’ he said, careful to make his own words sound equally sincere. ‘And thank you for coming to see me. I appreciate it.’

  ‘Do you feel better now?’ Brother Augustine asked.

  Josse knew he was not referring to his physical state. He thought about it. Did he?

  ‘Aye,’ he said eventually. He gave the boy a grin; it was the first time he had felt like smiling for some time. ‘I already knew that she – the Abbess – had a good and faithful companion in Brother Saul. Now that I have met you, Brother Augustine, I know that she will have two men with her with whom she’ll be as safe as if I myself were going with her to Ely.’ One of the boy’s dark eyebrows went up in faint enquiry. ‘Well, almost.’

  The boy smiled. His teeth, Josse noticed, were white and strong looking; combined with the boy’s tall, well-muscled frame, it seemed to suggest that his childhood on the road had been a healthy one. ‘We shall look after her,’ he said.

  Josse nodded. ‘Aye.’ He sensed that the boy wanted to be off, but he could not resist a final enquiry. ‘Now you do know the way? You’re quite sure? Because I can’t imagine that either the Abbess or Brother Saul could even guide themselves as far as London, or, even if once they could, they’ll have forgotten, and—’

  ‘I know the way,’ the boy interrupted. He did not offer anything to back up his statement, but, watching him, Josse didn’t think he needed to. The lad gave off an air of quiet confidence that was more impressive than a wealth of breathless assurances.

  ‘Then it remains only for me to wish you God’s speed, and a safe return,’ Josse said.

  ‘Thank you. We are to attend a special service in the Abbey church, then we set out.’ A flash of excitement lit the young face. ‘Abbess Helewise says to tell you she will come and say goodbye before we go.’

  Josse watched him walk away, long legs covering the ground in smooth strides. The he closed his eyes to add his own plea to the Lord to take care of the little party and bring them safely home again.

  For the first few miles on the road, Helewise’s pleasure in the sunny morning and the smooth gait of the chestnut mare were overshadowed by her memory of Josse as he said goodbye.

  She had almost cried out, ‘Oh, very well, we’ll postpone the trip for a fortnight, a month, however long it takes you to be fit again! Anything, but don’t look at me like that!’

  Of course, she had kept her peace. But it had cost her a lot.

  Brother Augustine was riding ahead, turning round from time to time to make sure that Horace’s sprightly pace was not too fast for the mare and the cob and their riders. Helewise could hear Brother Saul behind her, keeping up a constant flow of softly spoken chatter to the old cob. Both men, she realised with relief, were showing the tact to leave her to her thoughts.

  She decided to adopt Saul’s tactics, and began talking to the mare; even more important for me to do so than for Saul, she thought, since he and Baldwin are old friends, whereas this lovely mare and I are new to one another.

  She began, tentatively and self-consciously at first, to introduce herself to her mount. Honey’s ears twitched interestedly. Pleased to have a response, Helewise found it easier to find the words to say and, by the time they were descending the long slope down to Tonbridge and the river Medway crossing, she was chatting to Honey as if they had known one another for years.

  According to Brother Augustine’s reckoning, they covered not far short of twenty miles the first day. But then, he added, the horses were fresh and well rested, the weather was fine and warm, and the road good and firm under their feet. When he proposed that it was time to think about where they were going to stop for the night, Helewise almost urged him to go a little further; however, when she slid off Honey’s back to stretch her legs for the final mile or so, she was very glad she hadn’t.

  It was many years since she had ridden any distance. And, although the mare’s saddle was expensively made and comfortable, Helewise’s legs and thighs had stiffened up badly. Muscles she had forgotten she had seemed to squeal their protest, and she longed for the chance to rub on some of Sister Euphemia’s special mixture. Yes, it would burn like fury, but it worked. . . .

  ‘All right, Abbess?’ Brother Augustine called back to her.

  ‘Fine!’ she said, gritting her teeth and forcing a smile.

  ‘Not far now,’ the boy went on. ‘There’s a small convent I know of, up the road a way. They’re generous to travellers, and they know me. They’ll be honoured to receive the Abbess of Hawkenlye,’ he added gravely.

  Oh, dear, Helewise thought. Yes, I must present a suitably dignified demeanour. They have every right to expect that, from an Abbess.

  But it wasn’t going to be easy to be dignified, when the only way that she could walk was with her legs bowed out wide enough to circle a beer barrel.

  Chapter Eight

  The journey from Hawkenlye to Ely took a week.

  It had been, Helewise thought as, on the morning of the seventh day, they set out from Barnwell Priory northwards into the Fens, an illuminating experience. There had been moments of fear-tinged excitement, such as crossing the river Thames between Dartford and the Essex shore on what had seemed far too small a boat. And, one night, they had been delayed in finding the tiny priory where they were to put up and, on the dark fringes of Epping Forest, Helewise had convinced herself she had heard the lonely, spine-chilling howl of a wolf.

  She had noticed quickly that, each night, Brother Augustine chose a religious house for their accommodation. Sometimes this was a wise choice – the Benedictine nuns at Barking treated Helewise and her party as grandly as if they had been visiting royalty, and Helewise had been offered the extraordinary luxury of a bath to soothe her aching muscles. On the other hand, there was Latton; tiny, dark, very well hidden away – it was Latton which they were searching for when they had almost become lost in Epping Forest – the prior and his two canons had been able only to offer their guests a share of their own meagre soup and dry bread for the evening meal. Helewise had slept on a damp straw mattress in a corner of the chapter house, and the two lay brothers had slept in the tumbledown stable with the horses.

  She had asked Brother Augustine the next morning if there were any option other than staying with monks or nuns. Looking slightly abashed, he replied, ‘Well, not really, Abbess.’

  ‘Where used you to put up, when you travelled with your family?’ she persisted.

  Brother Augustine’s tanned face flushed slightly. ‘We knew of – places we were welcome.’

  ‘Could we not stay there, in those places?’

  The blush was deepening. Brother Augustine hesitated, then, apparently deciding that this awkward conversation would come to an end more quickly if he steeled himself to be forthright, said, ‘Abbess, it’s different now. Then, we used to pay our way with our skills. A chair mended, a charm against warts or a cure for an aching back, a good tale or two that nobody had heard before, a song and a dance. That sort of thing.’

  Intrigued, she ignored his obvious diffidence and said, ‘What used you to do, Brother Augustine?’

  Looking as if he wished he were anywhere bu
t there, he said, ‘I sang.’

  ‘And could you not sing for your supper now?’

  Brother Augustine’s embarrassment made him lower his head. Then, looking up and catching her eye, suddenly he grinned. ‘Not that sort of song I couldn’t, Abbess.’ The grin widened. ‘Not in this company, and wearing the habit of a lay brother.’

  ‘Oh!’ Of course! Why hadn’t she worked that out for herself! ‘I see, Brother Augustine.’

  No more had been said on the subject of their nightly accommodation.

  But as Augustine’s quite natural diffidence in the elevated company of his Abbess had abated, a great deal was said on many other subjects. Knowing that Saul would understand, Helewise had spent much of the first couple of days of the journey talking to the young man, trying to draw him out of his reticence.

  Remembering what Saul had told her of the boy’s devotion to his mother, she had first asked Augustine about his family. The question uppermost in her mind was did he miss them, and the itinerant way of life; after one or two preliminary pleasantries, she asked him.

  ‘I do miss them, my mother and my father and my brothers and sisters,’ Augustine replied after a moment’s consideration. ‘And I can’t say as sometimes I don’t hanker for the excitement of being on the road – you know, new sights every day, the pleasure of going back a year later to some favourite place and having the same warm welcome.’ He paused. ‘But I know Ma’s well now, and she loves the life she leads. She understood when I explained to her about the Lord, how I heard Him calling to me, and she gave me her blessing over entering Hawkenlye.’

  Helewise, riding beside him and watching him closely, noticed that his gaze had shifted, and that he was contemplating something distant. Not wishing to intrude on his thoughts, she said nothing.

  After a while, he turned to her and, with a disarming grin, said, ‘Sorry, Abbess. I’ve forgotten what it was you asked.’

  Smiling in return, she said, ‘Don’t worry, Augustine. I think you have already answered me.’

  But her curiosity was far from satisfied. As they rode on and the long days passed, she was increasingly impressed by Augustine’s ability to find the way; how did he manage it? Had all those years as a traveller given him some enhanced sense of direction so that, always knowing which way was north, the rest followed automatically? And how did he manage always to find provisions when they needed them and pure water when their gourds were nearly empty?

  She asked him, but he seemed not to understand his abilities, nor even to believe they were anything out of the ordinary. When pressed, he merely shrugged and said, ‘We could all do it, all of us. I suppose we sort of pick it up from each other.’

  In addition, as the lad’s confidence grew, he began to entertain his two companions with tales from an apparently inexhaustible supply; here the legend of a giant whose footfall made a pond; there a chilling story of a black dog whose appearance heralded the spectral apparition of his headless master; here a poignant tale of a little boy slaughtered by brigands who, despite having had his throat cut, managed to sweetly sing the ‘Ave Maria’ until his pathetic little body was discovered.

  Augustine was, Helewise noted, a fine storyteller; when he had finished the tale about the little boy, she observed Saul wiping a surreptitious tear from his eye.

  The weather stayed fine; there was always enough to eat and somewhere to shelter for the night. Helewise, riding through the beauties of the countryside in April, wondered if she had ever felt more content. She had to keep reminding herself of her serious purpose; at times, it was very easy to forget all about it.

  Now, leaving Barnwell with the joyful sound of the Augustinian canons’ morning worship still ringing in her ears, Helewise looked around her eagerly at the changing landscape. First, we had the green, wooded hills of Kent, she reflected; few surprises there, she had spent most of her life in Kent and, in her youth and during her married life, had travelled her home county extensively. Then into Essex, where the great tracts of forest of Epping and Waltham had thinned as they went north and, for many miles, had travelled on what, according to Brother Augustine, was an ancient Roman road. Traffic had been heavier then; they had shared the track with carters, parties of merchants, and the occasional pilgrim band.

  Augustine had told the Abbess that, once they reached the Fens, the landscape would change. His brief words of preparation had been enlarged on alarmingly by one of the monks at Barnwell who, on hearing that they were bound for Ely, had paled, shaken his head worriedly and tried to dissuade them.

  ‘But you’ll have to cross the Fens!’ he exclaimed. ‘And ’tis a terrible place! Black, oozing mud, dark, dangerous waters hidden under the mists, and there’s no folk living there but have webbed feet and the ague. And they do say there’s monsters and demons, living on the islands!’

  Monsters and demons, she had thought, smiling at the man’s superstitious dread. Dangerous waters, indeed. But, as the day’s ride continued and they progressed northwards, she realised that the old man might have been right after all. . . .

  The sodden soil, for one thing, was indeed so dark as to appear black. And there was water everywhere, perilously concealed, just as the monk had said, by sudden curls and swirls of mists that seemed to come out of nowhere and disappear just as mysteriously. Sometimes there would be a small ‘pop!’ and then a sudden foul smell, as if some unimaginable subterranean thing had briefly put its dreadful head above the surface and exhaled a mouthful of filthy breath.

  There were few signs of human habitation. They passed one or two rough-looking settlements on isolated islands, and from one a large dog came running, barking ferociously until stopped with a hard cuff from a man dressed in what looked like a sack. Augustine waved and called out a friendly ‘Good day!’ but the man responded with a shake of his large fist.

  The track meandered its way around the wetlands, but sometimes, when the sheet of black water seemed to extend endlessly on either side, they would have to proceed along a raised causeway.

  Trying to calm her apprehension, Helewise called out to Augustine, ‘Who built these raised tracks? Do you know, Augustine?’

  He turned in the saddle and said, ‘No, Abbess. They do say they were always here.’

  Always here. A shiver of atavistic fear ran up the Abbess’s spine. Perhaps they were built by demons and monsters. . . .

  From behind her, Saul said sensibly, ‘Maybe it were the same folk that built the old roads. Eh, Gus?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he called back. Then, when the causeway had carried them on to the next stretch of wider track, he added, ‘My grandfather found a sword, once, not far from here. Somebody told him to put it back where he found it, because it was an offering. To the spirits of the place.’

  ‘An offering,’ Helewise breathed. I should not be listening to this pagan talk, her conscience told her firmly. Only she didn’t seem to be listening. ‘Did he put it back?’

  Augustine smiled. ‘Not at first. But then he had a dream, in which black hands came snaking up out of the water, sliding round his neck and choking the life out of him. Next morning, he picked up the sword, ran back to the spot where it had lain all those years, and flung it in.’

  She felt her heart begin to thump with fear. But then Saul, chuckling, said, ‘My, but you tell a fine tale, Gus!’ and she thought, with relief, yes. It’s only a tale. And the dread went away.

  Their progress that day was slow. Helewise thought that, on occasions, they seemed to double back on themselves; however, Augustine was a confident leader, and she did not think she should question his decisions.

  They crossed a clearly defined waterway, which Augustine said was Wicken Lode, and, on the far bank, stopped to eat a light meal from their dwindling provisions. Augustine, Helewise noticed, was looking about him as he ate, apparently searching for something. He exchanged a few words with Saul, then, approaching her, said, ‘Abbess, we have to find one of the big causeways that lead up to Ely. There’s three of them and, as far
as I recall, one’s not far from here. But I suggest I go and look, while you and Brother Saul stay here with the horses – I’ll be best off on my own two feet.’

  There seemed nothing to do but agree.

  He was gone for some time. But he reappeared with such a pleased expression that Helewise and Saul knew without asking that he had been successful.

  ‘I’ve found it!’ he called out, waving both hands for emphasis. ‘It’s quite near, we shall be over it and arriving at Ely in no time.’

  Arriving at Ely. As she mounted the mare and followed Augustus off towards the causeway, Helewise remembered, for the first time that day, what she was doing there. Now that they had almost reached their destination, she would soon have to take over the leadership from Augustine. She would have to find Alba’s convent – and, she suddenly realised, how sketchy was the information telling her how to go about that! – and then she would have to find a diplomatic way of informing Alba’s former superior that her erstwhile nun was now incarcerated in a cell in Kent. Quite a comfortable cell, admittedly, but incarcerated nevertheless.

  Help me, oh, Lord, she prayed with silent fervour as, with careful feet, Honey picked a path behind the reassuring bulk of Horace. I cannot do this alone.

  They followed the causeway for some miles, and Helewise continued her praying. Then a sudden cry from Augustine made her raise her head.

  ‘Look!’ he shouted, pointing in front of him. ‘Look!’

  She looked. So, beside her, did Saul.

  Directly ahead, on a long island that seemed to rise like a great ship out of the watery marshland around it, was a building. Tall, imposing, its symmetry was only marred by the wooden scaffolding poles around one end.

  Despite the many people scurrying round it – from this distance they were tiny and featureless – there was a sense of peace about the place. As if, up there on its low rise, it looked down on the world and gave its blessing.

  And, into their awed silence, Augustine said quietly, ‘That’s Ely Cathedral.’