A Dark Night Hidden (6 page)

In the Vale was situated the miraculous Holy Water spring that was the reason for the Abbey’s having been sited where it was. The spring was housed in a simple little shrine, two of whose walls were formed from the rock out of which the magical waters ran. Beside the shrine was a rough and ready shelter where pilgrims who came to receive the waters could take their meals and, when necessary, put up for the night. A little way down the track was the dwelling where Hawkenlye’s monks and lay brothers lived. It, too, was rudimentary, with few comforts other than a roof, four rather insubstantial walls and some thin old mattresses and blankets.

What the monks’ dwelling lacked in amenities it made up for in the warmth of the brothers’ welcome. In particular, that of the two lay brothers, Brother Saul and young Brother Augustus, who were Josse’s particular friends. As Josse stuck his head in through the open doorway, Brother Saul saw him, got up and came over to embrace him, crying out, ‘Sir Josse! It’s good to see you! Come in, come in, and warm your toes by the fire!’

‘A fire! Great heavens, Saul, you’re getting soft in your old age!’ Saul was no more than thirty, at most.

‘Aye, we’re lucky, Sir Josse, and indeed it is a rare luxury. Only it’s been so cold, these last few nights, and’ – he lowered his voice diplomatically – ‘some of the older brothers do suffer so, and the Abbess, bless her good, kind heart, said we might light a blaze come evening.’

Josse smiled, giving Brother Saul a quick touch on the shoulder. ‘It’s a luxury that I shall enjoy to the utmost.’

He allowed himself to be led forward to a bench by the hearth. He nodded to the monks whom he knew, exchanging a few words of greeting with Augustus and old Brother Firmin. Presently, he was brought a bowl of broth and a hunk of rough bread, both of which he ate enthusiastically. The soft hum of male voices around him lulled him into drowsiness and, before the night was very old, Saul made him up a bed in the corner and he was soon asleep.

He awoke to the sound of hammering.

Getting up – he seemed to be the last man still asleep inside the monks’ dwelling – he went outside to see what was happening.

He noticed straight away that it was considerably colder this morning than yesterday. The sky looked . . . sort of
thin
, he decided, and the wind had dropped. The air, however, felt like solid ice.

A group of monks were standing in a rough semicircle around the doorway of the pilgrims’ refuge. A large branch had fallen down from one of the chestnut trees in the grove that sheltered the Vale’s buildings, and it had landed right on a corner of the refuge’s roof. The flimsy construction was not designed to withstand the impact of heavy branches and it had partially collapsed.

Saul and Augustus were trying to get the weight of the branch off the roof before it did any more damage. Brother Erse, the Hawkenlye carpenter, had a mouth full of nails and a hammer in his hand and seemed to be attempting to fix a strengthening truss under the sagging roof. All three were, quite obviously, failing.

What they needed was another pair of hands. Josse rushed forward and added his strength to that of Saul and Augustus. With three of them pushing, the branch gave a little. Then a little more. Then they managed to roll it right off the roof and there was a great crack as the now-unsupported branch tore away from the chestnut tree and fell to the icy ground.

There was a ragged round of applause from the audience of monks. Turning to grin at them, Josse noticed how cold they looked; they were, he noticed with compassion, mostly elderly, thin and shivering. Brother Firmin’s skinny old feet in the clumsy sandals were bare and rapidly turning blue.

He turned to Brother Saul, whom he had always considered the most sensible and wise of the Hawkenlye brethren. ‘Shouldn’t the old boys go back inside?’ he whispered.

‘I’ve been telling them so all morning, Sir Josse!’ Saul protested. ‘Only Brother Firmin, bless him, said they wanted to help.’ He gave a kindly laugh. ‘Help! Hardly likely, is it?’

‘Shall I try?’ Josse suggested.

‘Oh, Sir Josse, I wish you would!’

Josse’s powers of persuasion were clearly superior to those of Brother Saul, or perhaps the old monks had simply got too cold to persist; either way, they gave in without an argument and meekly shuffled back to their dwelling.

Saul watched them go with a smile, then turned back to the pilgrims’ shelter. And, eyes widening, said, ‘Dear Lord, but it’s ruined!’

From within, Brother Erse called out, ‘Not as bad as that, Saul. Not quite,’ and Augustus, up on the roof, added, ‘It’s close, though!’

The four of them collected in front of the shelter. The roof had caved in on one side, where a supporting post had given way. The wooden planks of one wall had deep cracks in them; another wall had developed a worrying outward curve.

After some time, Brother Erse said lugubriously, ‘Reckon we’ll have to rebuild the whole thing. Won’t be safe, else. We don’t want the risk of it coming tumbling down on top of a gathering of pilgrims.’ With a quick grin, he added, ‘The poor souls come here to have their hurts mended, not be given a whole lot more.’

‘Thank God nobody was inside last night,’ Saul breathed.

And they all said, ‘Amen.’

‘How long do you think it will take?’ Josse asked. He was thinking of Hawkenlye’s visitors, the sick, the injured and the needy who came to take the healing waters and pray with the monks for relief from their afflictions. What were those poor folk to do if they arrived in this bitter weather to find no shelter, no comfort, nothing but the cold, hard ground?

Brother Erse was eyeing the collapsed shelter as if it were a dangerous animal, rubbing his chin absently with one square hand and swinging the hammer in the other. ‘Won’t be an easy job,’ he remarked. ‘Ain’t no way we can ask the old ’uns to lend a hand – they’d be more of a liability than a help. Reckon a week, maybe more, with just the three of us.’

Several thoughts ran through Josse’s head. He pictured some poor family with a sick child making the fraught winter journey to Hawkenlye and finding nowhere to shelter. He thought of the welcome that the monks and the nuns always gave to everyone, him included. And he thought how long it was since he had thrown himself into a satisfying job of manual work.

Making up his mind – not that it took long – he said, ‘Not three of you, Erse. Four. If you’re prepared to put me up a while longer, I’ll stay and help.’

It was not long before Helewise heard about the new labourer working down in the Vale. Brother Firmin considered it his duty to inform her, which he did with his usual amount of conversational preamble. Was she in good health? Did she not find the very cold weather a trial? How good it was of her to permit the lighting of an evening-time fire in the monks’ home.

Trying not to show her impatience – there were at least twenty tasks that she had promised herself she would complete before midday – she interrupted him with a gentle, ‘How may I be of assistance, Brother Firmin?’

He had to scratch his head in thought before replying; even he, it seemed, had forgotten the purpose of his visit.

‘Ah, yes!’ he said after a moment. ‘The pilgrims’ shelter had been damaged, my lady Abbess. The branch of a tree fell on it, damaged, it is thought, by the hard frost. We are putting it – the damage, I mean – to rights. That is, Brother Saul, Brother Erse and Brother Augustus are. And Sir Josse has very kindly said he will help.’

‘Has he, indeed?’

‘Aye.’ Brother Firmin nodded eagerly. ‘We are, of course, offering him what hospitality we can, and he says he is well used to sleeping down in the Vale.’

‘We are lucky in our friends, are we not, Brother Firmin?’ she said quietly.

‘Oh, yes, my lady. Yes. Er . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘We – that is, I was wondering . . . Might you spare a moment to come down and see how work progresses? Your presence would, I am sure, spur our little workforce to yet greater efforts.’

‘I will, Brother Firmin. And I will take the chance to thank Sir Josse.’ She went on smiling at the old monk, feeling her cheeks begin to ache with the sustained effort. He went on smiling back. Finally she said kindly, ‘Was there anything else? Only I am rather busy . . .’

Bowing, apologising and backing out of the room all at the same time, he wished her good day and left her.

Helewise eventually went down to the Vale as the short afternoon was ending. As she descended the path she saw with dismay that the pilgrims’ shelter was all but demolished. Hastening her steps, she hurried towards the four black-clad figures working in its ruins.

Someone had found a monk’s habit for Josse to work in. It was a little too short; she had a rather disconcerting sight of strong, muscular, hairy calves above firmly tendoned ankles. She had not appreciated how broad he was; in his usual garb of padded tunic, it was impossible to tell where the man ended and the garment began. But, dressed in the single black woollen garment – which, she now perceived, strained across Josse’s shoulders as he worked – she saw just what a fine figure of a man he was.

Stop it, she ordered herself firmly. Stop looking at him like that.

Pausing to arrange her face into a suitably nun-like and innocent expression – none of the men had noticed her approach – she folded her hands in the opposite sleeves of her habit and glided up to the shelter.

‘How goes the work, brothers?’ she called.

Saul and Augustus were fixing the vertical planks of the outer wall to the horizontal supporting beams; Josse and Erse were working one each end of a large saw and appeared to be preparing more planks. All four men stopped what they were doing and, as best they could given that they were clutching either a large piece of wood or the end of a saw, gave her a courteous bow in greeting.

‘We have strengthened the basic structure of the shelter, my lady,’ Brother Erse said, panting from his recent exertions, ‘and now we are replacing the walls.’

‘You have all worked hard,’ she observed. Appreciating, now that Erse had explained, just what a task they had set themselves, she thought that ‘hard’ understated the case. ‘You must be exhausted!’

Josse wiped a hand across his brow. ‘No, my lady. And the advantage is that the effort has kept us nice and warm!’ He gave her a happy grin.

‘We are in your debt, Sir Josse.’ She returned his smile. ‘Once again, you lend us your strength in our time of need.’

‘I do so gladly,’ he said simply. Then, the grin once more breaking out, ‘I can’t recall when I spent such a satisfying day!’

She was moved by him. By all of them, these four good men who threw themselves so honestly into this hard and exacting job. Not wanting her sudden emotion to show, she said brightly, ‘How long until you finish?’

‘We hope to have the new shelter built in another two or three days, my lady,’ Brother Saul said. ‘We’re not receiving many visitors just now – too cold for travel – and those few who decide to make the journey and need a place to stay can come in the monks’ house along with all of us. By the time this cold snap takes itself off, we’ll be ready.’

‘Good, good.’ She nodded. She wondered what she could do to help; an idea occurred to her. With a private smile, she nodded again and bade them farewell.

As the monks, lay brothers and Josse settled down for a bite to eat before turning in, they were surprised – and very pleased – to receive, along with the soup and the bread, a large jug of hot, spiced wine. ‘With the Abbess’s compliments,’ said the young cookhouse nun who brought it, ‘and she hopes there’s enough for the workers and the rest of you and all.’

Sleep, Josse reflected drowsily as he lay down on his straw mattress and arranged the blankets around him, came a good deal more readily after a hard day’s work, a hot meal and a mug of good, strong wine . . .

Two days later, in the early afternoon, the shelter was all but finished. Brother Erse was putting the final touches to the roof, Brother Augustus was giving the beaten earth floor a good sweeping, Saul and Josse were preparing the small amount of furnishings, making them ready for being replaced in the shelter as soon as it was ready. They had thoroughly scrubbed the rickety table, and Erse had done what he could to make it a little less rickety. They had given the long benches similar treatment, and now were engaged in beating the dust and dirt of years from the thin palliasses and the much-mended blankets. Augustus had earlier taken the old, worn trenchers and mugs away and washed them ready to be put back on the freshly scrubbed shelf where they were habitually stored.

Folding the last of the blankets and adding it to the neat pile, Saul said, ‘You know, Sir Josse I reckon that there old branch did us a favour. We’ve had to rebuild the shelter, aye, but in doing so we’ve given it a clean and a tidy-out the like of which it hasn’t seen in years.’

Josse glanced at him, noting the smile of satisfaction. ‘Aye, Saul,’ he agreed, ‘a job well done, eh?’

‘And a job completed just in time,’ Augustus added, emerging from the shelter and coming to stand beside them. ‘There, if I’m not mistaken, come the first occupants.’

Josse and Saul turned to look where he was pointing. A party of five was making its way along the track that ran beside the lake, frozen now into deep winter stillness. A man led the way, holding the rein of a donkey. Perched on the animal was a woman holding a small child in her arms, and walking along behind was an older woman and a boy of about seven.

Someone inside the monks’ dwelling must have been keeping lookout. Three monks emerged, walking out to meet the visitors, taking the donkey’s rein from the man, helping the woman to dismount and relieving her of her burden. There was the sound of enquiring voices, tired answers. One of the monks turned to look towards the shelter; Saul called out, ‘It’s ready. Give us a moment and the visitors can come in and make themselves comfortable.’