The Winter King (7 page)

‘You speak as if you had seen it for yourself,’ Josse remarked.

She glanced at him. ‘I did visit, yes, but that was even further back in time, when I was wed to Ivo. Lord Robert was still in his prime then.’ She sighed. ‘As was I,’ she murmured.

Josse picked up the jug, leaning across to her. ‘Oh, you’re not so bad, even now.’ She gave a quiet chuckle. ‘Help me with the last drops,’ he said, sharing them out between their two mugs. ‘Then I reckon it’s time for bed.’

Sabin, offered a comfortable cot set close alongside Meggie’s, waited until the house appeared to have settled. Then she hissed into the darkness, ‘Are you still awake?’

She heard Meggie sigh and roll over. ‘Yes.’

‘Will you help me?’

‘You haven’t told me yet what you want me to do.’

Quietly, muttering so fast that she wasn’t entirely sure she was making sense, Sabin explained.

When she had finished, Meggie gave a low whistle. ‘Dear God, Sabin!’

‘Oh, I know it’s nothing to do with you, and I’ve no right to involve you,’ Sabin said, her panic rising again, ‘but I don’t know where else to turn. I thought you might be willing to give me the benefit of your experience, but if not, tell me, and I’ll—’

‘Stop,’ Meggie interrupted gently. ‘I
will
help you, Sabin.’

Sabin breathed a quiet prayer of thanks.

‘So, what do you suggest we do?’ Meggie asked.

Now that the moment had arrived, Sabin faltered. It was such a lot to ask, and, after all, she didn’t know Meggie that well. They were certainly not what could be called close friends. But she’d been over and over it, and had come to the conclusion that this was the only sure way.

She took a deep breath and told Meggie exactly what sort of help she wanted from her.

A
s darkness fell at Hawkenlye Abbey, Abbess Caliste sat in her great chair with her head in her hands, overwhelmed with troubles. Apart from the endless problem of how to run an abbey meant to
help
people when there was no money, she was deeply anxious at the frightening, unnerving rumours, which, just then, were all anyone seemed to want to talk about.

A soft tap on the door halted the long trail of her depressing thoughts. Relieved at the interruption, she called out, ‘Come in!’

Sister Liese stepped into the little room, closing the door quietly behind her. She did everything quietly, Caliste reflected absently, as if she was perpetually considering the comfort of a sleeping patient. ‘What can I do for you, Sister?’ she asked, smiling. ‘It’s late, and you should surely be abed.’

‘The same observation might be made of you, my lady abbess,’ Sister Liese replied, returning the smile.

Caliste sighed. ‘Yes. I will retire soon.’ She raised her eyebrows enquiringly.

Taking the hint, the infirmarer came a step closer. ‘There’s a new patient who I’m very worried about,’ she began. ‘I need your advice, my lady.’

‘
My
advice?’

‘Oh, not concerning the treatment, although, in the dear Lord’s name, I hardly know how best to help …’ She stopped and, with a brisk shake of her head, resumed. ‘The truth is, I am very afraid that this patient brings grave danger with her. If I may, I will tell you all about her, and why her presence here worries me so much.’

Concerned, for it was rare for Sister Liese to seek her out to discuss a patient’s care, Caliste indicated the visitors’ chair and, when the infirmarer had settled, said, ‘Now, please explain.’

Sister Liese paused, presumably arranging her words, then said, ‘Her name’s Lilas, she’s old and quite frail, and she comes from a village called Hamhurst that’s on one of the main roads leading up from the coast. Apparently she had some sort of a vision – or maybe a visitation, I don’t know exactly – and she stood on the village green shouting something about a Winter King who was doomed to early death, and how the evils in the land wouldn’t come right till he was gone, and that all the omens we keep hearing about are God’s way of telling us that we’re all cursed for generations to come.’ She paused, shaking her head again as if in dismissal. ‘I’m not sure of the details, but whatever old Lilas was saying, it was dangerous talk. The headmen of the village were apparently on the point of stopping her when she collapsed in a swoon.’

‘It sounds as if that was just as well,’ Caliste said. The thought of someone saying such things aloud, with witnesses, was highly alarming.

‘Indeed, my lady. Anyway, it seems Lilas wasn’t quite right when she came out of her faint. Sometimes she spoke sense, but there were times when she apparently went back into her trance, and the villagers became frightened. They …’ Again, she broke off. ‘To cut a long story short – and, believe me, my lady, it is a
very
long story; probably the most exciting thing that’s ever happened in Hamhurst since Noah was a lad, and they’re all making the most of it – in short, the village elders decided Lilas needed help, and they’ve brought her to us.’ She smiled grimly. ‘It’s a long way to come from Hamhurst, but, even in the state to which these times have reduced us, apparently folk in grave need still follow their instincts and turn to Hawkenlye.’

‘Can you help her?’ Caliste asked.

‘We can feed her, clean her, tuck her up in a bed and keep her safe while she raves and rambles, but if you mean can we heal her, the answer’s no, my lady.’

Caliste, aware of her infirmarer’s generous heart and strong instinct to care for all those brought into her care, was surprised at her tone. ‘You sound … If I did not know better, Sister Liese, I would say you sound almost out of patience with this woman.’

Sister Liese sighed deeply. ‘I am sorry, my lady. The truth is, I cannot for the life of me decide whether or not these wild words come from a true trance, or whether old Lilas is playing a clever game.’

‘A dangerous game, surely?’ Caliste said. ‘To voice such harsh criticism of – of the current situation, without the excuse of being deeply disturbed in one’s mind, is tantamount to inviting arrest and imprisonment.’
At the very least
, she added silently.

‘Yes, I know,’ Sister Liese said, her face wrung with anxiety. ‘I keep telling myself that Lilas’s visions must be genuine. Then, when I’m with her, sitting holding her hand while the poor soul speaks all those dreadful words, her eyes wild with passion, sometimes I have the strange idea that she’s watching me – watching us all – and trying to gauge the effect she’s having.’

Caliste frowned. ‘I bow to your experience, Sister,’ she said, ‘and if you have doubts about this woman’s veracity, I will take them seriously.’ She stood up, and the infirmarer instantly did the same.

‘My lady?’ Sister Liese said. ‘Are you going to bed, at last?’

Caliste looked at her in surprise. ‘No, Sister! I’m coming with you to see your patient.’

The long infirmary was dark and quiet as the two nuns slipped inside. A nun sat at the far end, a single candle illuminating the area immediately around her. She stood up as Caliste and Sister Liese walked towards her, and the infirmarer motioned her to sit down again. Sister Liese led the way to a curtained recess at the far end of the room.

Caliste stood looking down at Lilas of Hamhurst. The old woman was awake, lying quite still with her eyes fixed on some point on the wall to her left. Caliste sat down on the edge of the bed.

‘What do you see?’ she asked softly. ‘Do your visions disturb you, Lilas?’

Lilas turned her head. ‘Who are you?’ she whispered. There was fear in her eyes.

‘My name is Caliste, and I am abbess here,’ Caliste said.

Lilas shot out a hand and grasped Caliste’s wrist. ‘I’ve been bad, my lady,’ she whispered. ‘I did have a vision – as God’s my witness, I
did
, I saw … I saw …’ Her face crumpled, and she whimpered in terror. ‘I saw terrible things, and the voices, they went on and on at me, telling me what would happen, saying the land was gone to the bad because we were all sinners, and the greatest of us were the worst sinners of all, and then – oh, I’m sorry, my lady!’ She pulled Caliste’s hand up to her face, kissing it over and over again.

I would send for a priest
,
if I could
, Caliste thought.
Here is a soul in torment, yet the solace of confession is not available to ease her suffering.

She would just have to do her best.

‘What have you done, Lilas?’ she asked quietly.

The old woman shot her a look. ‘I may have exaggerated a bit,’ she muttered. ‘I liked the attention, see. My neighbours, they all fussed round me, making me feel I was something special, and I thought, why not? I’d had one vision – I swear before God, I did! – and I reckoned that if I just repeated what I’d seen, and made as if I was under the spell again, the rest of the village would be impressed like my neighbours. Only … only …’ A sob broke out of her, shaking the narrow frame.

‘Only what?’ Caliste prompted.

‘Only, soon as I started on my pretend trance, the real one came back,’ Lilas whispered hoarsely, ‘and then it came on me, far worse than before, and I lost myself, my lady; I had no memory of who or where I was, nor what I was saying, and when they told me, afterwards, like, I didn’t recollect a word of it!’

Caliste held the bony old hand in both of hers. She glanced up at Sister Liese, standing quietly at the foot of the bed. The infirmarer gave a faint shrug.

Caliste turned back to the old woman. ‘Lilas, I—’ she began.

But Lilas interrupted her. ‘Oh, my lady, help me!’ she whimpered. ‘I’m so frightened!’

‘You’re safe here,’ Caliste soothed. ‘We’ll—’

‘Not safe! Not ever safe!’ Lilas hissed. ‘
They
heard, see? And now – oh!
Oh!
Now they say I must go with them, I must repeat what I’ve been saying, and they’ll … they’ll …’

But what
they
would do was apparently beyond her. With a soft little cry, Lilas removed her hand from Caliste’s, turned her face to the wall and curled up into a tight little ball.

Silence fell.

Slowly Caliste rose to her feet. ‘She needs rest,’ she murmured. ‘Sleep, preferably.’

‘I will prepare a soporific,’ Sister Liese whispered back. ‘Don’t worry, my lady, we’ll look after her.’ She paused. ‘Do you think she’s putting it on?’ she said, her words all but inaudible.

‘I don’t know,’ Caliste admitted. ‘She is very disturbed, I believe.
Something
has happened to her, and, in addition, she is very afraid.’

She and Sister Liese walked slowly back the length of the infirmary. Caliste was thinking hard. By the time they reached the door, at the far end, she had made up her mind.

She did not know how to help someone as deeply distressed as Lilas, and, on her own admission, neither did Sister Liese. But Caliste believed she knew of somebody who might …

As she bade Sister Liese goodnight, she resolved that, as soon as she could spare someone, she would send for the one person who might be able to reach inside the damaged mind of Lilas of Hamhurst.

Helewise woke after a good night’s sleep, eager for the day’s work ahead. She was usually one of the first to rise, and today was no exception. Only Tilly had preceded her, and she was already warming water on the fire as Helewise went into the kitchen. A heavy pot, its base blackened from long use, hung beside it, steaming gently.

Tilly glanced over her shoulder. ‘Porridge is on, my lady,’ she said. ‘It’s dry but cold outside, and something hot will warm you for your walk out to the sanctuary.’

The household knows my daily routine well
, Helewise thought.
They all know that little short of death will keep me from what I feel so driven to do
.

Driven
, she reflected as she ate her porridge (delicious, as were most foods prepared by Tilly) was not really the right word, implying as it did something you didn’t really want to do. During her years as a nun, she had been taught that a good deed was not truly pleasing to God if the person performing it derived satisfaction and happiness from their action. Helewise had asked the priest who was instructing her if that meant it was pointless to do any good deed, a question that had earned her a rigorous punishment. It had been very early in her noviciate, and she had almost decided there and then to walk out of the abbey and never return.

Now, older and, she hoped, wiser, she thought about the conundrum again. She still didn’t know the answer.

The day passed swiftly. The weather was definitely getting colder, and the usual crop of cold-related illnesses was beginning. Cold-and also hunger-related, Helewise reflected, trying to feed a mouthful of gruel to an elderly woman so far gone in hunger and despair that she had all but lost interest in everything, including the food that might just save her life.

For much of the day, Helewise had worked alongside one of the others: first Ninian, who had carried over some supplementary supplies and stayed to help her with the first few visitors, and later Tiphaine, who had come armed with a precious supply of her special white horehound cough remedy. It was special because, aware that many of those needing it would be children, Tiphaine sweetened it generously with honey. As the afternoon began to darken and the evening advanced, however, Helewise found herself alone. She tidied the little building, rinsing out the wooden bowls and stacking them ready for the next day, and then did her best to sweep up the mud, the muck and the dead leaves trodden in by twenty or more pairs of feet.

It was fully dark inside the shelter now. She lit a taper from the fire in the hearth, setting it to the wicks of a couple of oil lamps. As the gentle light spread through the room, the outside immediately appeared blacker.
I am less than a mile from home
, Helewise told herself firmly.
My family know where I am, and, in any case, I have never once felt fearful within the sanctuary. It is a good place, and God protects those who visit and work here.

But she felt fearful now.

She went to the door, opening it further to peer outside. The sanctuary was set back from the track that ran round the bulge of the forest, secluded within a grove of trees, most of which were pine and yew. Even in the leafless months, the sanctuary was hidden from unfriendly eyes. All those who needed the succour it offered, however, somehow managed to find out where to go.