Ashes of the Elements Read online

  * * *

  For what remained of the night, he slept in a corner of the monks’ shelter down in the vale. There was a family of pilgrims also putting up there, comprising a couple, an elderly man and a child with a withered limb, all of whom were taking the holy water and attending the monks’ services in the shrine, praying for a miracle.

  Josse, knowing that they would be there, was careful not to disturb them.

  Settling himself as quickly and as quietly as he could, he made himself put aside images of the deep, mysterious forest and whatever secrets it held. His breathing growing steady and even, very soon he was asleep.

  * * *

  Brother Saul brought him bread and water for his breakfast. The family of pilgrims had gone; with a smile, Brother Saul informed Josse that it was mid-morning.

  Josse hurried to wash, dress and head up to the Abbey. He had news for the Abbess, and she might well be eager to hear how his venture had gone.

  Going up towards the rear gate that led into the Abbey from the vale, he saw a figure hurrying along in front of him, coming round from the other side of the Abbey. A woman, young, not wearing the habit of a nun. Increasing his pace, he noticed with some surprise that she was not actually running. She was dancing.

  And, as he heard when he was within earshot, she was also singing.

  ‘… and the sweet birds do sing,’ came her voice, light, happy, holding the notes purely.

  She became aware of someone behind her. Surprising Josse again, she said, without turning, ‘You should be gone! And don’t you go trying to make me jump, now, you—’

  At that instant she looked over her shoulder, saw Josse, and instantly ceased what she was saying. ‘Good morning, sir.’ She lowered her eyes, and, in a flash, her tone had altered. From being lush, warmly affectionate, now it was merely courteous.

  ‘Good morning,’ Josse replied. And just who, he wondered, did she think I was? ‘You’re bound for the Abbey?’

  She gave him a mischievous smile ‘Now, where else would I be going? Why, we’re almost at the gate!’

  He smiled back. It was hard not to. ‘You must be Esyllt,’ he guessed.

  ‘Indeed. And you, I imagine, are Sir Josse d’Acquin.’

  ‘Aye.’ He was just working out how he could phrase a question that might elicit from her where she had been when she preempted him.

  ‘Staying with the monks in the vale, are you, sir? I hear tell they offer a tasty breakfast.’

  ‘Well, I—’ No. She was teasing! ‘Indeed,’ he said instead. ‘Juicy beef fresh-carved and dripping gravy, the softest of bread, the finest of French wine.’

  She threw back her head and laughed. ‘Now why didn’t I think to join you?’ she said. ‘Me, I made do with the weak porridge we give the old folks. No teeth, you see.’ She bared her own, which were strong, white and even.

  ‘It appears to be doing you good,’ he observed.

  She laughed again. ‘Ah, it’s full of nourishment, really.’ She looked serious suddenly, as if she could only joke for so long about her charges. ‘We do look after them, you know, sir. It’s not just a matter of putting them in a corner and waiting till they die.’

  ‘I didn’t for one moment think it was,’ he said gently. ‘And I am reliably informed, Esyllt, that you are highly regarded in your work.’

  ‘Are you?’ She looked delighted. ‘Thank you, sir. I’m right glad to hear it.’

  They were through the gate now, and she turned off to the right, towards the aged monks’ and nuns’ home. He went with her.

  ‘Are you coming to see my old dearies?’ she asked.

  ‘I – no, Esyllt, not at the moment. I have to see the Abbess.’

  She actually looked disappointed, as if it had mattered to her that he go with her, that she had procured a visitor to brighten up her old dears’ morning. ‘Oh.’

  ‘I will come,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

  She smiled again. ‘I’ll hold you to that,’ she murmured.

  And, heading off for the door of her old people’s home, left him standing on the path.

  Wondering why, when her words had been so innocent, he was feeling as if a very lovely and seductive woman had just made him a not very well-veiled proposition.

  * * *

  Abbess Helewise had been expecting Josse for some time when he finally knocked on her door. Impatient to know what, if anything, he had discovered, she had managed to resist the temptation to send for him. For one thing, it was hardly the thing, to send for a man of Josse d’Acquin’s standing. For another, if he had been up for much of the night, then he had earned his rest.

  ‘Come in,’ she said in reply to his tapping.

  She watched him move into the room. He looked much as usual, which was a relief. ‘Good morning, Sir Josse,’ she said.

  ‘Good morning, Abbess.’ He smiled, pulled up the stool and sat down. Without preamble, he said, ‘There is something in the forest. A pit, where a great oak has fallen, and signs that someone – maybe more than one person – has been excavating there.’

  ‘Ah! And you think that Hamm Robinson discovered it, whatever was hidden there?’

  He shrugged. ‘I can’t say, not for certain. Although poachers had been active nearby, and we know Hamm and his friends were poachers. But, Abbess, it seems something of a coincidence otherwise, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Indeed I would.’ She frowned as a sudden thought occurred to her. ‘Sir Josse, did you see – I mean, was there any sign of the Forest People? What I’m trying to say is—’

  ‘Was I scared?’ he finished for her, with a grin. ‘Abbess dear, I was terrified. At one point, I had quite convinced myself I was being watched, and I ran out of that strange grove as if all the demons in hell were at my heels.’ His smile widened. ‘Of course, it was all in my imagination.’

  ‘Of course,’ she echoed faintly.

  He was reaching inside his tunic. ‘I forgot – thank you for my talisman.’ He pulled at a length of leather cord fastened around his neck, threading it through his fingers until he found what he was looking for. ‘It was a thoughtful gift, Abbess. As you see, I took it from my pack and put it round my neck – it helped, to have it close by.’

  She gazed at the small object he was holding out to her. ‘But I didn’t give you that!’

  ‘What? But it’s a cross, and I thought that…’ He was holding it about a foot in front of his face, focusing on it. ‘It’s not a cross,’ he said tonelessly. ‘It looks more like a sword.’

  She leaned forward to have a better look. ‘May I?’

  He lifted the thong over his head and handed it to her. As well as the sword, there was a small gold crucifix on it. She held the sword in her right hand, staring at it. It was about the length of her palm, made of metal, exquisitely worked with a decoration of vivaciously swirling patterns all over the blade. Where the blade met the narrow hilt, there was a tiny head, bearing an expression of distinct ferocity.

  ‘What is it?’ For some reason, he spoke in a whisper.

  ‘It is, I think, an amulet. It’s not a real knife – too small. And the blade is dull. I imagine it is a protection against evil, to be worn when one is going into danger.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it before,’ he said.

  ‘It resembles the workmanship of old,’ Helewise murmured. ‘My father possessed an ancient brooch which he found in a stream-bed, and it was decorated with the same swirls and circles as this.’ She was absently tracing the biggest swirl as she spoke; it was odd, but, as she reached its heart, she seemed to feel a slight tremor go through her. There and gone in an instant, but it had felt … Stop it, she ordered herself. This is no time for fancies!

  ‘If you didn’t give it to me,’ Josse said slowly, ‘then who did?’

  She had been wondering that, too. ‘Someone who knew you were going into the forest. Someone, moreover, who wanted you to be protected.’

  She met his eyes. It was at the same time a thrilling concept
and a faintly alarming one.

  ‘Abbess, I shall have to go back,’ he said. ‘What I discovered last night is only the beginning. I have to see if there is anything still buried, and, although I fear to say so, I must seek out the Forest People.’

  ‘No!’ The denial was instinctive. ‘Sir Josse, they have already killed to keep their secret! If they find you digging under some fallen tree, they might—’ But what they might do was unthinkable.

  ‘I don’t believe they would harm me,’ he said gently. ‘For one thing, it will be me seeking them, not the other way round. And, for another—’

  ‘You intend to go back into the forest, stand in that clearing and shout, here I am, forest folk! Come and find me!’ she said incredulously. ‘Come and kill me!’ Absurdly, she felt a sob rise in her throat. Swiftly she controlled it.

  He was looking at her in faint surprise. ‘Abbess!’ he said softly. But whatever he had been about to say, he must have changed his mind. Shaking his head, he muttered something.

  ‘What was that?’ she asked, with some asperity.

  ‘Nothing.’ His eyes met hers. ‘Abbess Helewise, please believe me, if I felt there was peril in this venture, I would not be contemplating it.

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t you!’

  He pretended not to hear that. ‘I am quite sure that, if I make an open approach and appeal to these people’s sense of honour, they’ll respond. Perhaps it’ll be a question of my assuring them that we’ll do our best to stop people like Hamm Robinson meddling in their affairs, perhaps then they’ll—’

  But whatever nonsensical thing he had been going to go on to say, Helewise didn’t hear it. At that moment, after a perfunctory knock at the door, Sister Euphemia burst in.

  ‘Abbess, Sir Josse,’ she panted, red in the face, ‘forgive my interruption, but it’s Sister Caliste. She’s disappeared!’

  Chapter Eight

  Sister Caliste had, it transpired, been missing for some time.

  They established this fact, over the course of the next hour, by working out who had seen her last. She had been present at Tierce, that was quite certain; a lot of the nuns remembered that. She had then gone about her morning’s work in the infirmary, including a visit to Sister Tiphaine for some white horehound; Sister Euphemia needed to make more syrup for an elderly woman suffering from chest pains and a racking cough.

  ‘I know she came back here with the herbs,’ Sister Beata said, clearly suppressing tears of distress. ‘I remember telling her to take them straight to Sister Euphemia, who was anxious to have them and who really had better things to do than twiddle her thumbs waiting for some novice to get a move on!’ The threatened tears spilled down Sister Beata’s cheeks. ‘Oh, do you think I upset her? Do you think I made her run off?’

  ‘Not for a moment.’ Helewise briefly touched Sister Beata’s hand. ‘If you did issue a reprimand, then I’m perfectly certain it can have been but a mild one.’ She gave the worried nun an encouraging smile. ‘You are not capable of unkindness, Sister.’

  Sister Beata looked a little more cheerful. Then, her face falling again, ‘But Sister Caliste is still missing. Whoever’s fault it was.’

  ‘Quite,’ Helewise agreed. ‘However, Sir Josse and I are questioning everyone, and we’ll soon know where she’s gone.’

  She gave Sister Beata an encouraging smile; whether its chief aim was in fact to encourage the sister or herself, she didn’t stop to think.

  Helewise searched out the remaining sisters who could possibly have useful information. There was, for instance, little point in talking to the Madeleine nuns who lived in the Virgin Sisters’ House, since they hardly ever left it, nor to the sisters who devotedly, and in total isolation, cared for the lepers. But, these nuns apart, she consulted all the rest. Nobody had anything useful to tell her on the subject of Sister Caliste.

  * * *

  The afternoon was well advanced by the time she had finished. Josse, in the meantime, had been down in the vale, and had even, so she had been told, gone riding off after some pilgrim family who had left that morning, just in case they could shed light on Caliste’s disappearance.

  He returned looking dejected; there was no need to ask if he had met with success.

  The two of them were discussing what they should do next when, again, Sister Euphemia came in search of them.

  This time, she looked not so much disturbed but annoyed. ‘Abbess Helewise,’ she said, her face tight, ‘would you please come with me? One of my patients’ – she almost spat out the word – ‘has something to tell you. And for the life of me I can’t think why she didn’t speak up earlier,’ she added in a mutter as she led the way over to the infirmary, ‘truly I can’t!’

  She marched through the door and along the length of the room, stopping at the foot of the cot occupied by the old woman with the cough.

  ‘Hilde!’ she said, in a loud voice. ‘I have brought Abbess Helewise and Sir Josse d’Acquin.’ If she had hoped to cower the old woman by announcing Helewise and Josse so loudly and grandly, then, Helewise observed, Euphemia was in for a disappointment.

  ‘Oh, aye?’ Hilde said hoarsely. ‘Nice, it is, to have visitors! Good day, lady! Good day, Sir Knight!’

  Sister Euphemia was shaking her head in annoyance. ‘Never mind all that! Hilde, kindly tell the Abbess here what you just told me! Right now, if you please!’

  The three of them waited while Hilde shifted first to the left, then to the right, punched the straw-filled pillow a couple of times, coughed, then settled herself comfortably. Clearly, she was intending to make the most of the brief attention. ‘Well,’ she began slowly, ‘I heard you’re looking for that sister, the pretty blue-eyed one with the white novice’s veil?’

  ‘Yes!’ Sister Euphemia said crossly. ‘Do get on with it!’

  ‘Didn’t ought to be a nun, that one,’ Hilde said. ‘Too pretty, like I says. Ought to be warming some fellow’s bed at night, eh, Sir Knight?’ She shot a look at Josse and cackled with laughter, which brought on a violent fit of coughing.

  Sister Euphemia, at once the caring nurse, sat down beside her, supporting the thin shoulders while Hilde coughed and choked. Then, when the fit began to subside, she gave her first some sips of water, and then a measure of some light-coloured syrup from a stoppered glass bottle.

  ‘Aaagh,’ Hilde said, lying back again, ‘I reckon I’m not long for this world!’ Having closed both eyes, she opened one again, just a slit, to take stock of how her performance was being received.

  ‘Do you think you could stay with us long enough to impart this vital information?’ Helewise said gently, smiling down at the old woman.

  Hilde opened her eyes again. Grinning a gap-toothed smile in reply to Helewise’s, she said, ‘Aye, Abbess. Reckon I could.’ Abandoning her delaying tactics, she said, with admirable brevity, ‘If you want to know where Sister Caliste’s gone, I can tell you. She’s gone into the forest.’

  ‘Into the forest?’ Helewise and Josse spoke together, with the same surprise. Although, Helewise thought, I don’t know why I, at least, should be surprised. Not after I witnessed the girl emitting that weird humming. As if she were calling out to the great tract of woodland.

  Or – which was even more unnerving – answering its summons to her.

  ‘What did Sister Caliste say, exactly?’ Josse was asking Hilde.

  ‘She said she weren’t going far,’ Hilde said, which was reassuring. ‘Said something about the other sister what was in there.’

  ‘Another sister?’ Helewise queried. ‘Are you quite sure, Hilde?’ She could think of no other nun who had ever expressed the least interest in entering the forest; quite the contrary, she often felt they were too in awe of it, too reluctant even to let the shade of its trees fall upon them. Superstition! Ignorant, stubborn superstition, that was what it was, and it ought to have no place in the minds of women who had given themselves into God’s holy care! In Helewise’s opinion, such sentiments demonstrated a distinct lack of faith in t
he Heavenly Father’s protective powers.

  But: ‘I’m quite sure, Abbess Helewise,’ Hilde was saying firmly. ‘Like I says, I didn’t really catch the full story, but I heard the young ’un say that about the other sister.’

  ‘Could it have been Sister Tiphaine?’ Josse muttered to Helewise. ‘Gone in to pick mushrooms, or fly agaric, or belladonna?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Helewise agreed. ‘After all, Sister Beata did say that Caliste had been sent to Sister Tiphaine for supplies. Perhaps Caliste thought Sister Tiphaine would be in the forest.’ She frowned. ‘But it makes no sense! Even if that had been so, Sister Caliste wouldn’t have known, surely, that Sister Tiphaine was in the woods? And, even more to the point, Sister Caliste would have been back by now!’

  Josse put a hand briefly on the back of Helewise’s. A swift light touch, but, she found, reassuring. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Now that we’ve been given a clue as to where she was going,’ he glanced down at Hilde and grinned, ‘I can go after her. I’ll find her, Abbess.’

  Helewise and Hilde watched as he strode off down the length of the infirmary, heavy boots making a dull thump, spurs ringing out melodiously.

  ‘Aaah,’ said Hilde. ‘Fine fellow that, eh, Abbess?’

  ‘He is an honourable and courageous man,’ Helewise replied somewhat stiffly.

  ‘Wish I were a dozen years younger,’ the old woman sighed. ‘Well, twenty years, mebbe.’ She sighed again. ‘What I wouldn’t have got up to with a man like that! Abbess, don’t you—’

  Whatever Hilde was about to say, Helewise decided it was probably better not to hear it. ‘Thank you, Hilde,’ she interrupted, ‘you’ve been most helpful. Now, if you will excuse me, I have things to see to.’

  ‘Off you go, Abbess.’

  Helewise couldn’t help but notice that, as she turned to go, the old woman gave her an exaggerated and very suggestive wink.

  * * *

  As Josse made his way back into the forest, along the same tracks and paths he had taken the previous night, he had a sudden thought. As he played with it, mentally trying it out, his conviction grew until he was tempted to return to the Abbey and discuss it with the Abbess.