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.
10
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.
‘Really,’ de Gifford echoed. ‘I am not certain where the boundaries of the Father’s influence were set; he was a replacement for your Father Gilbert, I am aware, and Father Gilbert made but rare visits down to us in the Medway valley. He had his own concerns up here and, besides, our souls are adequately catered for by our own Father Henry. But, whether or not Father Micah should have been carrying out his mission of salvation in our vicinity, the fact remains that he was.’ He studied Helewise for a moment, as if deciding whether he should proceed with what he was about to say. Apparently deciding that he would, he added, ‘Father Henry understands our — er, our ways. Father Micah did not. We did not welcome him and Father Henry, I believe, resented him. Neither reaction had the least effect in keeping Father Micah away.’