A Dark Night Hidden (24 page)

Just at that moment, Meggie stirred, gave a little hiccup that brought up a mouthful of semi-digested milk, and let out a small, soft sigh.

He can’t have heard, Joanna told herself, he is too far away!

But the man had stopped. Turning with infinite slowness towards the yew tree, he raised his head and stared right up at the place where the platform sat hidden in the tree’s thick branches, still clad in their dark-green foliage. Only then, when danger really threatened, did Joanna fully appreciate the wisdom of her people in constructing the refuge in an evergreen tree.

Keep still! Joanna ordered herself. And, instantly disobeying her own command, she stretched out a hand to Meggie.

Who, not aware of the terrible drama being enacted around her, merely perceived her mother’s particular scent. And, as she always did when her mother came close, she gave a happy little gurgle.

Even as Joanna watched the man hurl himself along the faint track she thought, what an irony, to be betrayed by a baby’s delight.

There was still hope. Twisting round to give Utta a furiously intent look – stay still! – she put her eye back to the spyhole.

He was very near now, standing just outside the protective ring formed by the outer branches of the yew tree. It seemed almost as if he were reluctant to enter under the dense green foliage. Putting all her power into her thought, Joanna commanded him:
Keep away!

It was almost as if he heard her. With a low laugh – a truly horrible sound – he bent down and, coming forward in a crouch, straightened up again right beside the trunk.

But he could not get up to them, Joanna thought frantically, not without a rope! And if he went away to fetch one – to fetch more men too, probably – then she and Utta could escape while he was gone.

There was silence for so long that she thought he had already gone. But then, sounding frighteningly close, came his voice.

‘I know you are there, my pretty maid,’ he said. ‘And, by the sound of it, you have one of your accursed offspring with you, although they did not tell me that you had whelped. Still, the fires that consume you will accept your young, have no fear.’

Then there was a whisper of sound, quickly repeated once, then once again; he must have brought a rope with him, for he was trying to cast it over the lowest branch so as to haul himself up.

Joanna heard a muffled sound behind her: Utta, stifling her agony with a corner of a blanket. For an instant, Joanna met her eyes. Then she looked at Meggie, grinning gummily up at her from her little nest.

This was Joanna’s test. Suddenly she knew it, without any doubt. She heard the Domina’s words in her head:
When the time comes, remember that what you have done before, you can do again
.

Feeling her fear run out of her as resolve took its place, Joanna climbed off the platform and silently descended the rope ladder. She was thinking, as her bare feet effortlessly found the rough rungs, of that earlier time, that occasion – which the Domina must have known about – when once previously Joanna had acted out of love for another. What you have done before, you can do again. Yes. The Domina was quite correct. And if this was the task, and the Domina had known about it and prepared Joanna for it, then it must be the right thing to do.

The last of her doubts left her. Standing now on the branch from which the upper of her two ropes habitually hung, she uncurled its length and let herself down to the lower branch. She slid down the rope too quickly, burning her palms, but speed was now essential: he had managed to get his own rope over the lower branch and even now he was securing it.

Then he began to climb.

Three days after Father Micah’s death, neither Josse nor anybody else within the Hawkenlye community yet had any idea how he died.

Soon after noon of that day, Josse stood in the road outside the Abbey gates staring after the retreating figure of Gervase de Gifford. He was going over in his mind all that de Gifford had told him concerning the group of strangers. The heretics, as he now knew them to be.

He was trying to decide exactly how – indeed, what – he was going to tell the Abbess. Briefly it crossed his mind that he might not reveal the group’s identity; would it really do any harm if she did not know? He had given his word to de Gifford to respect the man’s confidences, although with the proviso that only if by so doing he did not compromise anyone else. Not telling the Abbess would certainly save the almost certain introduction of friction in his relationship with her for, no matter that he knew her to be a compassionate and fair-minded woman, she was also Abbess of Hawkenlye. And, as such, she was answerable to those above her in the religious hierarchy who decreed what the attitude to heresy and heretics must be.

Aye. He gave a deep sigh. No matter what her own heart told her, she would obey the rules, as she had vowed to do. And he realised that he had to tell her; tempting though it was to leave her in ignorance, it might prove dangerous for her. It was quite possible that there were other priests as well as the late Father Micah out there on the heretics’ trail. If one of them came to Hawkenlye and found out that the Abbess and her nuns had tended a heretic woman in the Abbey infirmary, then she – and probably Sister Euphemia and Sister Caliste – would be severely punished.

To refrain from telling the Abbess that Aurelia was a heretic would certainly compromise her.

He sighed again, turned back inside the gates and went to find her.

Launching straight into his story, he told her what de Gifford had just told him. ‘They’re a band of heretics,’ he said baldly. ‘Some from the Low Countries, some from the south; some place in the Midi called Toulouse, or perhaps Albi. That’s why Father Micah treated them so savagely. And the letter on Aurelia’s forehead isn’t an A but an H.’

For some moments she just sat and stared at him. Then she said, very quietly, ‘She’s a heretic.’

‘Aye.’

He had expected her to be surprised – shocked, even – but nevertheless the pallor that spread over her face alarmed him. ‘My lady?’ he said anxiously. ‘May I fetch you water?’

‘Water will do me no good whatsoever,’ she snapped back. Then, eyes blazing, she cried out, ‘Heretics say terrible things, Sir Josse! They claim that Christ is not divine! They say that there is not the one true God but two deities, one good and the other evil, and that this world and everything in it is the creation of the Dark One! Dear Lord, but they claim our very existence here on earth is but an exile until our material bodies die and we are reunited with our souls!’

‘But—’ He tried to interrupt but she was in full flow, stung to fury by heresy’s terrible, hurtful slur on the loving Son of God she worshipped.

‘They reject marriage and baptism, they scorn the clergy and they say that each and every man and woman may address the deity personally!’ she stormed. ‘Just how, pray, is a man of the Church supposed to respond to
that
?’

‘Perhaps we should—’

Again she rode him down. ‘Think of the people, Sir Josse! What is to become of them if they do not have the strong, steady hold of the priesthood keeping their souls safe from temptation? If they fall into sinful ways and are not brought to confession and given God’s forgiveness, then when they die they will go to eternal damnation!’ She paused, panting from the effort, then, after a moment, said in a quieter tone, ‘That is why heresy must not be allowed to spread. Because it will lead directly to men and women dying in a state of sin, and I cannot believe that you would wish it on a fellow human being to appear before the terrible judge without having been reconciled by penance and fortified by Holy Communion.’ She sniffed, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘Even if you can accept that threat, I certainly cannot.’

‘What will you do, my lady?’ he asked frostily. ‘You now know that a heretic woman lies in your infirmary, where you yourself have looked down with pity on her wounds. Will you now go out and find whichever priest holds sway here in place of Father Micah and tell him? Watch as Aurelia is taken away, imprisoned, even burned, perhaps, simply because she views these vexed matters of faith differently from the way in which you and the Christian Church do?’

‘She will not be burned!’ the Abbess cried furiously. ‘She will be – they will . . .’ Her words petered out. ‘Well, they’ll probably just let her go.’

‘Aye, and just how long will she last, do you think?’ he demanded. ‘She’s badly hurt, her wounds are infected and she is weak with fever. The month is February, my lady, in case you have forgotten, and she will find no food and precious little to drink all the time the ponds and streams are frozen. If she approaches some far-flung hamlet and creeps into an outhouse for shelter, the inhabitants will denounce her for fear of having their dwellings burned down over their heads in punishment for harbouring a heretic!’

The Abbess had dropped her flushed face into her hands. Feeling a surge of pity for her, he stepped forward, about to offer to help her think up a solution to the dilemma in which she found herself.

But even as he did so she removed her hands and shouted up at him, ‘I cannot risk the safety and integrity of Hawkenlye! If I had a hundred heretics hiding here, I should have to report it, even if it meant they were all taken straight to the stake for their treason!’

‘I do not believe that,’ he said flatly. ‘I have known you too long and too well to think you capable of such cruelty.’

‘They deny Christ!’ she cried. ‘They spit on the Cross and profane his holy name, he who suffered so for us!’

‘Who says they do?’ he shouted back. He saw that she had tears in her eyes, but was too angry to let it affect him.

‘The priesthood tells us,’ she said earnestly. ‘They know about these things – they find out, and it is their job to inform us.’

He knew there was a flaw in her argument – something to do with priests only passing on their own version of what they had learned – but just then he heard a faint sound from the cloister outside. He was about to go and investigate when she said, ‘Sir Josse, I have no choice. Do you not understand?’

He spun round to face her again. ‘Give Aurelia a few more days,’ he urged. ‘Let her receive the benefit of Sister Euphemia’s and Sister Caliste’s loving care a little longer, until she is strong enough to get away from here and out of immediate danger. Nobody is aware that you know her to be a heretic – I won’t tell anybody that I told you.’

‘But I do know,’ she said dully. ‘And it is not right that I should allow you to lie.’

‘Leave it to me to take care of my own soul,’ he said gruffly. ‘And if your conscience pricks you, you can do the hardest penance ever devised after she’s gone.’

She was staring at him and for once he could not read her expression. Sensing – hoping – that she might be weakening, he said softly, ‘What do you think the Lord Jesus would have done? Would he have turned a sick woman out to fend for herself and be hunted down by her enemies? Or would he have given her love and tended her hurts?’

‘She is a heretic woman who denies His divinity,’ the Abbess muttered.

‘She is still a human being,’ he insisted. Hoping that he had the words exactly right, he said, ‘“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you.”’

‘But—’ She stopped. It seemed to Josse, watching her so intently, that it had perhaps occurred to her that there
was
no ‘but’.

Deciding that it would be wise to slip away and leave her to think, he murmured, ‘I will leave you to your contemplation, my lady,’ and eased himself out of the room, closing the door gently behind him.

As he walked along the cloister, he sensed someone move in the shadows. He called out, ‘Who’s there?’

A black-clad nun stepped out from the dimly lit corner where two arms of the cloister met at a right angle. She gave him a graceful bow and, as she straightened up, he found himself looking into the bright blue eyes of Sister Phillipa.

‘Sister! How goes the Hawkenlye Herbal?’

‘Well, thank you, Sir Josse. Although I have had another task to do these last few days that has kept me from my work.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Yes.’ She looked doubtful suddenly. ‘I had thought that you might know of it.’

‘No. What have you been up to?’ He gave her an indulgent smile.

But then she said, ‘Sister Bernadine believed that someone had been going through the Abbey’s precious texts. I was ordered to help her to make an inventory and see if anything had been stolen.’

‘I had no idea!’ He wondered why the Abbess had not told him; theft of one of the manuscripts would be a dire blow for the Abbey. ‘And is any document missing?’

‘No, that’s the strange thing.’ Her straight brows knotted into a frown. ‘Everything that is meant to be there – everything on the inventory – is there, and undamaged, as far as I can tell. Nothing’s been stolen but, Sir Josse, something’s been put
in
.’

‘What sort of a something?’

From beneath her scapular she pulled a small parcel, wrapped in linen. It was rectangular in shape, about as long as a large man’s hand and perhaps two-thirds as broad. After looking in each direction to make sure that nobody was watching, Sister Phillipa unwrapped the linen and held out what it had concealed for Josse to see.

It was a book made from some eight or ten sheets of fine vellum, bound down the left-hand side with a narrow leather cord woven in an intricate pattern. The first page was densely covered in letters, but what they said, or even what language they were in, Josse had no idea.

‘There are some wonderful illustrations,’ Sister Phillipa whispered, right in his ear; she was so close that he felt the brusque touch of her starched headdress brush his cheek. ‘Look.’