And, as he did so, pieces of the puzzle started to fit together.
He got up and walked back to the Abbess, beckoning to Brother Saul; it was safe for him to advance now. For any number of people to churn up the ground, as long as nobody obscured those tell-tale prints on the margin of the pond. Not, at least, until Josse had found some way to make a cast of them.
* * *
Helewise walked up the slope to the Abbey behind Josse and Brother Saul, neither of whom seemed to find their sad burden very heavy. They had lain her on a hurdle — was it, Helewise wondered absently, the one on which Gunnora had been carried? — and both Saul, at the head, and Josse, at the feet, seemed slumped in sorrow.
They entered inside the walls. Brother Saul turned to her. ‘To the infirmary, Abbess?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Wait, Saul, I’ll ask Sister Euphemia where we should put her.’
She walked ahead, and Sister Euphemia came out to meet her. With a brisk nod — Euphemia, Helewise was well aware, always coped with grief by an ostentatious display of efficiency — she indicated a little side ward, nothing more than a curtained-off recess. ‘In here, please,’ she said.
It was where she had laid out Gunnora.
The men carried Elvera’s body inside, and Helewise watched as they placed it on the narrow cot. They were turning to go when Helewise, removing Josse’s tunic from the corpse, silently returned it to him. For a moment he stared at her, and she could not read what was in his face. Then, with his usual brief bow of reverence, he was gone.
I do not deserve reverence, Helewise thought. Not this morning.
Guilt was still strong in her. She had a fierce need to put herself to some disagreeable task, force herself, in charity, to do something she hated.
Taking a deep breath, she said to Sister Euphemia, ‘It is not fair that you alone should bear the burden of the laying-out of a second young victim, Euphemia. If you will permit it, I will assist you.’
Sister Euphemia’s round eyes reflected her astonishment. ‘But, Abbess, you-’ Abruptly she stopped. She was too well-schooled to question her superior, even though, as Helewise well knew, she must be perfectly aware of Helewise’s squeamishness. ‘Very well,’ she said instead. ‘First thing is to get the poor lass’s habit off her — it’s wet almost as far as the waist. We’ll put her in a dry one for burial.’
Helewise made her reluctant hands get to work, unfastening the black gown, peeling it off the poor cold body as Euphemia propped the dead girl up. The bruises on the girl’s neck were livid now, showing up more clearly than they had done down by the water. As the garment came clear of the breasts, Euphemia made a small exclamation.
‘What is it?’ Helewise asked.
Euphemia didn’t answer. Instead she took the neck of the robe in both hands and, more swiftly than Helewise had been doing, pulled it right down to the girl’s thighs. Then she unfastened the undergarments and removed them too.
Then she put her hand on the girl’s belly, low down, just above the pubic bone. Frowning, she paused for a moment, her hand exploring the area. Then she said to Helewise, ‘Abbess, I must make an internal examination. I’m sorry, but it’s necessary.’
Helewise had opened her mouth to protest. But then she closed it again, and gave a quick nod.
She couldn’t bring herself to watch.
After a short time, Euphemia said, ‘You can open your eyes. I’m done.’
Helewise did so. She noted with relief that Euphemia had covered Elvera from shoulders to thighs with a piece of sheeting. Reaching beneath it, Euphemia stripped the dead girl’s clothes right off her body.
Then, without looking at Helewise, said, ‘She was pregnant. About three months gone, I’d say at a guess, maybe a little more. I thought she was when I saw her breasts — that darkening of the nipples is a fairly reliable sign, young girls usually have rosy pink ones, specially redheads like her. But when I felt her belly, I knew. I can feel the enlarged womb.’
Helewise, shocked to her core, stood staring at Euphemia in utter silence.
Mistaking this, Euphemia said, ‘I’m quite sure, Abbess. There’s no doubt about it.’
‘I wasn’t doubting you.’ Helewise had difficulty speaking with a suddenly dry mouth. ‘Three months gone, you said.’
‘Perhaps more. The womb’s just peeping above the pubic bone.’
Helewise nodded absently. A couple of weeks here or there didn’t really make a lot of difference. The crucial fact — from Helewise’s viewpoint, at least — was that Elvera had been pregnant before she entered the convent. By at least two months.
‘Did she — would she have known?’ she asked.
‘Oh, yes.’ Euphemia nodded for emphasis. ‘She couldn’t not have done, unless she was a total innocent, which somehow I doubt.’ She gave the body on the cot an affectionate look. ‘Little chatterbox, she was, and many’s the time I’ve had to reprove her for her light-hearted ways, even in the short time she’s been with us. But I’d not have said she was the sheltered sort of lass who didn’t know the facts of life. She’d have missed her courses, a couple or three times, her breasts would have been tender, she’d have needed to pass her water more than usual. She’d have been sick a few times, likely as not, and sometimes found herself suddenly bone-achingly tired.’
Helewise could well recall the symptoms of early pregnancy. ‘Quite so.’ Her brain was working hard, trying to remember the full details of the background Elvera had related on her admission to her postulancy.
A background, Helewise now realised, which was total fiction. For, although some aspects would not come readily to mind, the one thing she did remember — because Elvera had emphasised it by at least one repetition — was that she was not interested in men and could never envisage herself having children.
Both of which statements, in the light of this new and alarming discovery, were complete falsehoods.
Chapter Eleven
Josse, impatient to speak to the Abbess, knew that, out of respect, he must not disturb her in her laying-out of the dead. A task which, he had seen only too plainly, was not in the least to her liking. He understood why she was doing it. Understood her guilt. For didn’t he, who had been scratching his flea bites and restlessly sleeping not a hundred paces from where Elvera had been found, also feel the same burning emotion?
To occupy the time, he returned to the shelter in the vale and changed back into his tunic. Giving the robe back to Brother Saul, he thanked him and asked where he might find something with which to make a cast.
‘A cast,’ Saul repeated doubtfully.
Josse explained. Saul’s face brightened, and, with a touch on Josse’s sleeve, he said, ‘Follow me.’
He led the way to a small shed attached to the back of the shelter. In it was an assortment of cracked vessels, benches awaiting mending, objects left behind by visitors. And candles. Tall, votive candles. And, in a bin on the floor, dozens and dozens of candle stubs.
‘Brother Saul, you’re brilliant!’ Josse said. Picking up the bin, he was about to head off down the path when, again, Saul touched his sleeve. This time, without speaking but with a faint smile, he handed Josse a flint.
* * *
It was no easy task, Josse discovered, to make a satisfactory cast. It proved to be the very devil of a job acquiring enough molten wax to fill even the front half of a footprint, and, in the end, he’d had to light a small fire on the dry mud of the path. But at least he was done, and, having thoroughly stamped out his fire and returned the unused candle stumps in their bin to the little shed, he went up to the Abbey to report to Abbess Helewise. She had by now left the infirmary and, according to Sister Euphemia, would be found in her room. Carrying his carefully wrapped cast, he went to find her.
She was sitting at her table, hands folded before her and resting on the well-polished wood. There was no sign, now, of the pallid, stricken woman who had knelt by the dead girl and buried her face in her hands. She looked as she always did. Calm, controlled, slightly aloof. And as if, whatever the day threw at her, she would always remain so. But Josse, who had seen her in her distress, knew better. And found himself liking her the more for having seen her fallibility.