Heart of Ice (37 page)

     It was clear that somebody was close to death; in the late afternoon, Father Gilbert was sent for.

     Josse wondered how the Abbess would feel, watching some poor soul that the nuns had not managed to save as he or she slipped away. Well, if whoever it was were sufficiently conscious to appreciate that she stood at their bedside, he told himself comfortingly, then what better farewell could they have to this earth?

     He decided it must be dear old Brother Firmin who was dying. It was sad – the old monk had a kind and gentle spirit and a simple, loving heart – but then he was old, so perhaps it was merely that his time had come to be called back to God.

     Trudging to and fro between the shrine and the infirmary ward, Josse kept a vision of the old boy in his mind’s eye and wished him well.

Early in the evening, when the short day had already begun to darken, Josse saw Sister Tiphaine and Sister Caliste returning to the Vale infirmary. He probably would not have noticed two more arrivals amid all the comings and goings, except for the fact that the two nuns were moving so quickly that they were all but running.

     He was not the only one to notice the unusual flurry of their arrival; several of the monks and lay brothers on the chain of water carriers also stopped and stared.

     Josse put down his buckets and followed the two nuns to the doorway of the ward and would have gone inside after them but for the looming figure of Sister Euphemia. Josse had just had the time to observe the quizzical, half-impatient look she gave to the pair and overhear her demand to know where they’d been all afternoon when, spotting him, the infirmarer gave him a quick, compassionate glance that he totally failed to understand and then politely but firmly shooed him away and closed the door.

Inside the Vale infirmary, Sister Tiphaine had taken Sister Euphemia aside to tell her that she and Sister Caliste had brought a new draught that they had good reason to believe might well prove to be efficacious in the worst cases of the sickness. The infirmarer looked dubious; remembering how often in the past the two of them had all but fallen out over the relative merits of herbal concoctions versus good, painstaking nursing care, Tiphaine said gently, ‘Try it, Euphemia. Just try it. We shall soon see what it can or cannot do.’

     The infirmarer scowled and was about to make a caustic comment when suddenly it dawned on her what this strange new remedy might be. She guessed that Sister Tiphaine had been having another try at using the Eye of Jerusalem; while she admired the herbalist’s optimism – she did indeed seem to believe that this time the results might be different – Euphemia saw no reason why the Eye should now work when it had so dismally failed to do so before.

     But, on the other hand, they had to do
something
  . . .

     Sister Euphemia knew that, in fairness, she should treat her most badly off patients strictly in the order in which she came to them along the ward. But, with a quick and silent prayer for forgiveness, instead she went straight to the bed that stood apart in its curtained recess at the far end of the room. She remained closeted within for some time. Then she emerged, caught Sister Tiphaine’s eye and said, ‘We’d better try it on some of the others.’

     ‘Did it not make any difference?’ Tiphaine whispered as they proceeded to the next in line, an old man who was by now all but incapable of swallowing.

     ‘No,’ Sister Euphemia said shortly. ‘But she is far away from us now. I fear that nothing can reach her any more.’

     Stifling her grief, Sister Tiphaine watched as the infirmarer began to administer small drops of the water to the old man.

The two jugs were soon emptied; Sister Caliste had been working her way from the opposite end of the ward and she and the infirmarer – with Sister Tiphaine at her shoulder – met in the middle.

     ‘I don’t know what you think you’ve got here,’ Sister Euphemia began in a cross whisper, glaring at the two nuns – acute disappointment had made her good nature temporarily quite desert her – ‘but it doesn’t seem to be doing any good whatsoever.’

     But Sister Caliste had her eyes on a young woman who was lying just inside the door and who had been the first person she had treated. ‘Wait,’ she murmured. ‘Just wait  . . .’

     Tiphaine and Euphemia, noticing where she was looking, also turned their attention to the young woman. As they watched, she opened her eyes and struggled to raise her head. The three nuns hastened over to her. She was still sweaty and hot but her skin had lost the burn of high fever; the rash that had mottled her chest and face seemed to have faded from dark red to pink and little scabs were forming on the open lesions.

     The woman’s eyes were wide with fear. ‘I was in the lane,’ she muttered, ‘calling for the children  . . .’

     ‘You are at Hawkenlye,’ Sister Caliste said gently, sitting down on the edge of the bed and taking the woman’s hand. ‘You have been very unwell but now you are going to get better.’

     ‘Am I?’ The woman frowned. ‘It doesn’t feel like it. Oh, I
ache
! All over!’ Then, panic crossing her face, she cried, ‘Where are my children?’

     ‘Hush, hush,’ Caliste soothed her. ‘They are here, but in a different room. They too were sick but both are recovering.’

     The woman looked as if she could hardly believe what had happened. ‘We’re not dead? Not dying?’

     ‘No.’ Sister Caliste smiled at her. ‘You will be very weak for some time, I fear, but eventually you will be able to go home again.’

     The woman’s eyes closed. ‘Very well, Sister. Whatever you say.’ The she gave a huge yawn and went to sleep.

The pattern was repeated in several of the patients for whom Sister Euphemia had all but given up hope. Afterwards, with the luxury of time to consider, she often asked herself whether that mysterious draught really had anything to do with their recovery or whether it was simply that the illness had run its course and at last left their racked bodies. As with all plagues, she reflected, there were always some who were stronger than the rest and who better withstood the ravages of the disease.

     Rational thinking was all very well, however; the other part of Sister Euphemia, the one which
knew
that she had observed not one but several miracles, put logic right out of mind and prompted her to go down on her knees and thank God for his mercy.

The Abbess Helewise did not respond to the miracle draught. She lay quite still, her body voided, so deeply unconscious that, when they tried to offer her water of any sort, it just rolled into her partly open lips and dribbled out again. The danger of some of it going down her inert throat and choking her was, Sister Euphemia decreed, too dangerous and so they had to stop. Sister Caliste, who had begged to be allowed to nurse her, had to content herself with bathing the Abbess’s face and forehead with a cloth wrung out in the draught.

     They had clipped her already short hair closer to her head in the hope of thus lowering her alarmingly high fever and now Caliste repeatedly put the damp cloth on to the short, springy curls. She all but forgot that this woman was Abbess of Hawkenlye; deadly white face, red-gold hair darkened with sweat and water, eyes closed and already appearing to have sunk back into the skull, she could have been any woman brought in for the Hawkenlye nuns to care for.

     Except, Caliste thought, tears in her eyes, I don’t necessarily love any of the others as I love her.

     Gently she removed the cloth – it was quite hot in her hands – wrung it out yet again and replaced it on the Abbess’s forehead.

Tiphaine made another visit to the forest fringes. Without Caliste, she carried back both full vessels herself. When they were empty, she found a handcart and this time made the trip with three times as many jugs.

     Eventually, of course, someone asked her what she was doing; with a shrug, as if it was not that important, she muttered something about a preparation she had made up in her little hut. The explanation was accepted and soon everyone was aware that the herbalist had come up with something that really seemed to work.

     Tiphaine knew that she could not go on taking the credit. But all that, she decided, ignoring her aching back as she pushed the handcart back up the track towards the Abbey for the third time, would just have to wait.

Josse sat outside the Vale infirmary waiting for the Abbess to come off duty. It was the hour for Vespers and he thought he might accompany her up to the Abbey church, attend the office with her and then persuade her to go along to her room so that he could tell her all about Sabin de Retz, her grandfather and his own musings as to what might lie behind the mystery.

     He waited.

     She did not come.

     Finally Sister Euphemia came out. She took Josse’s hand and led him a short way off along the path that bordered the lake. Then she halted, turned and looked him in the eyes.

     ‘Sir Josse, the Abbess Helewise has the sickness.’

     There was an instant in which his whole soul rejected the news. Then, as it began to sink in, he felt a vast wail of grief well up inside him. No, oh, no!

     He contained it. His voice harsh with emotion, he said gruffly, ‘Will she live?’

     ‘I do not know,’ the infirmarer said steadily, ‘although I fear the worst.’

     ‘Why did you not tell me sooner?’

     ‘We hoped –
I
hoped – to avoid it and save you this pain,’ she confessed. ‘I went on believing that she would suddenly take a turn for the better. But . . .’ She held out empty hands, palms uppermost, in a hopeless gesture.

     ‘What can we do?’ He began pacing to and fro. ‘We must fetch the Eye from the Abbess’s room!’ he cried. ‘We’ve tried it once, I realise that, but perhaps—’

     ‘Sister Tiphaine has already done that,’ the infirmarer told him.

     ‘And?’

     She hesitated. ‘In some cases, the dying appear to have been brought back.’

     He knew the rest without her having to say it. ‘But not the Abbess.’

     ‘No. Dear Sir Josse, no.’

     ‘Should I have another try?’

     Knowing how he loathed the Eye and everything to do with it, Sister Euphemia realised what the offer must have cost him. ‘I fear it would not help, for she is beyond swallowing any of the water.’

     His eyes wild, he tore at his hair and then shouted, ‘
What
, then? Do we just let her die?’

     And Sister Euphemia said, very quietly, ‘I have just sent for Father Gilbert again.’

Much later that night, when in almost every place except for Hawkenlye Abbey all activity had ceased for the night and the world was deeply asleep, a dark shape crept from its lair out on the marshy land beside the river and made a quiet, unseen way into the town.

     He had felt sick earlier and the headache had developed until the very daylight had been like a flaming, searing torch held up to his eyes. He had slept on the rotten straw-filled mattress that he found in the corner of the hovel, wrapping himself in his thick cloak and pulling the filthy sacking up to his neck when the shivering began. He had slept and, on waking, felt a little better. He found kindling and firewood and got a small, hot blaze going in the hearth in its circle of stones. Then he had prepared a hot drink and made himself eat – sparingly – from his dwindling supplies. The drink had, he reflected, probably done him more good than the food, for he carried a variety of remedies in his pack and this one had been sold to him by a stallholder in Paris who swore it would ease the worst headache and stop an incipient fever dead in his tracks.

     Perhaps – the man gave a brief, grim smile – the stallholder had not after all used the word
dead
.

     But the drug was strong – he thought he detected the bitterness of opium – and his depression of earlier in the day quickly gave way to an uplifting sense of elation.

     Now, setting out on the faint track that led back along the river to Tonbridge, the man felt new energy coursing through him, a firm new resolve to finish the job and get out. He had packed up his belongings and fastened his pack behind his horse’s saddle, then worked hard for a short time to ensure that he had left no sign of his brief occupation of the hovel for others to find and question. He would leave his horse hidden nearby, he thought, slip into the house, do what he must do and then, before anybody had realised what had happened, be on his way south to the coast and home.