A Dark Night Hidden (15 page)

‘That’s what I asked. De Gifford did not really answer, save to imply that Pelham had been promoted above his capabilities.’

‘We already knew that.’

‘Quite.’

‘What did he want?’ Josse was intrigued.

‘He said he had come because of Father Micah. He intends to visit again so that he can speak to you.’

‘To be told what I have discovered.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

Josse snorted. ‘The answer to that is nothing. Nothing that was not known from the first.’

‘Come, Sir Josse!’ she encouraged him. ‘You have a strong instinct that Father Micah was somehow involved in the punishment of that poor woman in the infirmary!’

‘Instinct, my lady! You use the word well, for there is no proof of the Father’s hand in that.’

‘But what of the Lord of the High Weald’s tale?’ She seemed quite determined to rid him of his pessimism. ‘It is surely more than coincidence that you hear of a priest’s threat to a woman he believes to be a sinner and the very next day you come across a woman who has been punished in exactly the way that was described.’

She was right, he supposed. But, all the same, it was not something he would have liked to put before this de Gifford. ‘When does he intend to return?’ he asked.

‘He did not say.’

‘Well, I’ll just have to make sure I have something more definite to report when he does.’ Filled with purpose, he gave the ambling Horace a kick and said, ‘Come on! Let’s get on to Father Gilbert and see what he has to tell us!’

He thought he saw her smile briefly. Satisfaction at an end achieved? It looked remarkably like it.

Inside the priest’s house, Josse noticed immediately that the temperature was considerably warmer than on his previous visit. There was a large stack of neatly split logs piled up a safe distance from the hearth and Father Gilbert, sitting up in bed and looking quite perky, was now covered with a thick, handsome fur rug and had consequently shed a few layers of clothing.

‘My lady Abbess!’ he cried as she preceded Josse into the little room. ‘And Sir Josse! What a pleasure to see you both.’

‘You’ve had another visitor,’ Josse said, pointing to the logs and to the rug. ‘One who, I would say, spent some time with you.’

‘Yes indeed. Lord Saxonbury’s son Morcar arrived this morning saying that he had heard I was in need of firewood. He also brought me this splendid fur, a dish of stew, which he heated up for me on the trivet, and a jug of ale.’

No wonder, Josse though, the priest’s pale face was flooded with colour.

‘Those were kindly deeds,’ the Abbess was saying. ‘They are good, Christian people up at Saxonbury, then, Father?’

‘Christian, perhaps. Good, undoubtedly,’ Father Gilbert said.

‘You know about his wife, I believe?’ Josse asked. ‘When I was last here you said something about the woman whom Father Micah referred to as the Lord’s mistress.’

‘Yes, yes, I know.’ Father Gilbert’s hands were fretting with his blankets, tangled beneath the fur rug. ‘Father Micah did not recognise any marriage to be lawful in the eyes of God other than one conducted by a priest. A priest of the Christian faith,’ he added firmly. ‘Since the Lord’s wife is a Muslim woman and their marriage was celebrated in her faith, Father Micah considered them to be fornicators.’

‘He was planning to flog her,’ Josse said neutrally.

Father Gilbert’s alcoholic flush faded. ‘Was he?’ he whispered.

‘Aye.’

Josse and the Abbess stood side by side looking down at the priest in his bed. After a moment, Father Gilbert broke the accusatory silence.

‘He would have been within his rights,’ he said. ‘The Church says that—’

‘That an elderly, frail woman can be dragged from her sickbed and whipped?’ Josse interrupted. He felt the Abbess’s cautionary touch on his sleeve but ignored it. ‘The Lord asked me, Father, what I would have done had it been my mother about to be flogged.’

Father Gilbert looked miserable. ‘I understand your emotion, Sir Josse. Father Micah was – that is, sometimes he—’ He shrugged. ‘We each serve God in our own way,’ he finished weakly.

‘Father, may I ask a question?’ the Abbess said, respect in her tone.

He turned gratefully to her. ‘Of course, my lady.’

‘Do you think that Father Micah was capable of flogging someone? Of, say, giving a delicate, slender woman twenty-five lashes?’

There was a long pause while the priest considered the question. It appeared to Josse that he was struggling with whether to save his late fellow-priest’s reputation or to tell the truth. Finally he said, so quietly that Josse barely heard, ‘Yes. I know he was. I know he
did
.’

The Abbess said, ‘We have such a woman in our care at Hawkenlye. Was she, do you think, Father Micah’s victim?’

Father Gilbert raised moist eyes to her. ‘I cannot say, my lady, but I fear it may be so.’

‘In God’s merciful name,’ Josse burst out, ‘what had she
done
? She’s also got a brand on her brow, Father, which looks like the letter A. Was she another woman whose marriage Father Micah refused to recognise, who slept with a man without the Church’s sanction?’

Father Gilbert rubbed at his eyes with his hands. ‘Father Micah believed he was doing God’s work by such means,’ he said wearily. ‘Sinners are doomed to the eternal fires, Sir Josse.’ He removed his hands and stared fiercely up at Josse, the priest taking over from the guilt-ridden, compassionate man. ‘Do not forget that! Is it not better to suffer a little temporary pain here on Earth while the sin is burned away than to be condemned to damnation for the rest of time?’

‘A little temporary pain!’ Josse began, his voice strident with anger.

But the Abbess had hold of his sleeve again. More firmly now; her fist was clenched in the fabric like an iron clamp. She pulled him back towards the door. ‘Sir Josse will wait for me outside,’ she announced. Turning to him, he saw understanding in her eyes; she said under her breath, ‘He is sick and in pain, Sir Josse. Do not shout at him because of something that is not his fault.’

‘But—’

Not for nothing was she Abbess of one of the largest communities in the south of England; the habit of command was strong in her, and meekly he did as she ordered.

Outside, the icy air hit him as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over him. As his fast breathing slowed and grew quiet, he strained to hear what was being said within. But, except for the low, soothing tones of the Abbess and the occasional deeper rumble of the priest’s interjections, he could hear nothing.

After some time she came out, carefully fastening the door behind her. Immediately she came to stand beside him and said, ‘Sir Josse, forgive me for ordering you from the room. I have no more right to command you than you to command me. But I did genuinely fear for him, in pain as he is, and in addition I thought that perhaps he would speak more openly to me.’

He acknowledged her apology with a grunt. ‘And did he?’

‘Not really.’ She kicked at a stone frozen into the path. ‘One thing, though, that may be of use to us – he said that Father Micah had been gravely preoccupied of late with the problem of how to bring some souls back to the faith. He—’

‘Brother Firmin!’ Josse exclaimed. ‘He said that Father Micah mentioned two missions he had to pursue: one concerned a lord who had forgotten God’s ways, which, we can be fairly sure, meant the Lord Saxonbury. The other involved some lost souls who were destined for burning in the flames.’

‘Lost souls,’ she repeated dreamily. Then, eyes wide, ‘Sir Josse, what a frightful, haunting description! Oh, whatever it took, was not Father Micah right to try to bring the lost back into the love of God?’

‘My lady, think of that poor woman in the infirmary! Was that right, what he did to her?’

‘We cannot know that it was he!’

He smacked his hand against his forehead in exasperation. ‘You are thinking with your heart, not your head!’ he exclaimed. ‘First you suggest that Father Micah was right to flog a woman twenty-five times, then you say, oh, but it might not have been him! Do you approve or not, my lady?’

She kicked the stone again, more forcefully this time so that it was dislodged and rolled away. Following it, she kicked it again. Then she said quietly, ‘No.’

He knew better than to react in any way that might smack of triumph. Instead he said, ‘It’s time we were heading back. I’ll fetch the horses.’

He saw her back to her room and there bade her goodnight; it would soon be time for Vespers and he did not expect to see her again that day. As he turned to go, she said, ‘Sir Josse?’

‘My lady?’

‘I think that I should send for Gervase de Gifford. It seems very likely that Father Micah was responsible for the flogging of the woman in the infirmary, even if he did not himself wield the whip. If that is so, and it is also correct that she had companions, then one of them had a reason to harm the Father. We should, I believe, share this information with de Gifford.’

‘Aye, I agree.’ He paused; he was reluctant to say what was on his mind.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘I was just thinking that what you just said equally applies to our large friend Benedetto. I wonder if we should at least question him?’

She nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I see. And perhaps find some way of confining him until de Gifford arrives? If Benedetto is innocent it will do no harm, and if guilty, we shall have restrained him so that he may face justice.’

Thinking that she seemed to be placing a great deal of trust in this de Gifford’s ability to know guilt from innocence, Josse said, ‘May I speak to him first before there is any question of confinement? It is merely that I do not like to think that we might send a man to trial who was guilty of nothing more than devotion to his mistress.’

‘And you have no proof of de Gifford’s efficiency as an official of the law,’ she added. ‘Yes, Sir Josse. Please, go and speak to Benedetto now. I will be guided by you as to whether or not we should then turn him over to de Gifford.’

‘Thank you, my lady. Shall I report to you after the office?’

‘Yes. Please do.’

But he was back before she had even set out for the Abbey church.

He went to the infirmary, expecting to find Benedetto sitting in vigil with the woman, Aurelia. He was not there; Sister Caliste, preoccupied with tending her patient, trying to dress the wound on her forehead while the semi-conscious Aurelia writhed and moaned in pain, said that she thought he might have gone off to pray for her. But Benedetto was not in the church, nor, when Josse ran down to check, in the shrine in the Vale. He was not in the pilgrims’ shelter, nor anywhere else in the Vale.

Racing now, feeling his heart pumping hard, Josse explored the entire Abbey. With the exception of the small leper house – which was a separate, isolated unit within the foundation and which nobody entered if they expected to leave again – he looked everywhere. He even searched the curtained cubicles of the nuns’ long dormitory. Apart from the simple beds and some small personal effects, nothing.

Unless Benedetto had made himself so small that he could creep into a tiny, hidden corner, which hardly seemed likely, then there was only one conclusion: he had gone.

Feeling as if he were the bringer of very bad news, Josse went to find the Abbess.

In the middle of the morning of the next day, Helewise sat at her table and studied Josse and Gervase de Gifford as they took one another’s measure. They were, she thought irreverently, like two large dogs in the market place, each suspecting the other of invasion of personal territory.

Despite the wariness, however, she sensed a similarity between the two men. Not a physical one; Josse was brown-eyed and dark, tall, broad-framed and, despite his rough-featured face, he habitually wore an expression that suggested he expected to like people rather than condemn them. Gervase de Gifford on the other hand was slim and elegant, and his green eyes had a look of detachment and slight amusement. No. The likeness between him and Josse was merely that they shared a sort of power, an indefinable something that sat on them like a garment. It was as if both had been put to the test, survived and consequently believed in themselves and their own ability to cope with whatever life might subsequently throw at them.

She became aware that de Gifford was speaking to her.

‘ . . . thank you for summoning me here, my lady.’

‘It is my duty,’ she said piously. ‘Besides, I promised that you should be informed of any intelligence that Sir Josse managed to glean concerning the late Father Micah.’

‘Indeed you did,’ de Gifford said blandly. ‘As Sir Josse has just been explaining, it is nothing definite, but every small pointer can be of use. Is it not so, Sir Josse?’

‘Aye.’ Josse, she noticed, was not yet ready to waste more than the basic civilities on this newcomer.

‘To recapitulate,’ de Gifford said, turning to Helewise to include her in his summation, ‘you suspect that the woman Aurelia, brought here to your care gravely injured, may have been the victim of Father Micah’s religious zeal. You think this because her wounds are similar to those with which the Father threatened another woman, the wife of this Lord of the High Weald. Yes?’

‘Yes,’ Helewise said, adding, ‘It is, as you just implied, rather vague and we really should be trying harder to discover the truth but—’

‘My lady,’ de Gifford interrupted with an apologetic smile, ‘I believe you may be accusing yourselves falsely. You have here someone who may have been flogged by Father Micah and, through Sir Josse’s good offices, you have come to hear of someone who would have been a possible future candidate for the same treatment. It may interest you to hear that I know of others.’

‘Really?’ Helewise sat up straighter in her chair. Josse, she noticed, was scowling at de Gifford in concentration.