‘No!’ Milon protested. ‘Oh, no!’
‘Between the pair of you,’ Josse continued relentlessly, ‘Gunnora’s brutal death was planned and executed. When I arrived, Elanor took fright and, fearing she would give you away, you strangled her.’ Holding Milon in his grip, so close to a man who had ruthlessly done away with two defenceless women, suddenly Josse’s temper boiled over. Shaking Milon like a terrier with a rat, he shouted, ‘You bastard! You foul, murdering bastard!’
Screaming with the agony of having both arms twisted up behind his back, Milon wriggled like a hooked fish and wrenched himself out of Josse’s grip. Turning a furious face on him, he screeched, ‘Don’t call me that!’
Then he collapsed, weeping, on to the ground.
Chapter Fourteen
For some moments Josse and Brother Saul stood staring down at him in stunned silence. Then Saul said, ‘I suppose we’d better get him up to the Abbey, sir. There’s nowhere down here in the valley where we can secure a prisoner.’
A prisoner. Aye, Josse thought, that’s what he is, from now on. And, once he has been tried and found guilty, his imprisonment will only have one end.
‘Let’s get him to his feet,’ he said, and he and Saul each took hold of one of Milon’s arms. As they dragged him up, Josse heard the thin, fine cloth of the young man’s shirt start to tear. Again, Josse felt the painful mixture of emotions surge through him; so proud, Milon had been, of his appearance, so careful of his fashionable clothes. And now look at him. In the pale pre-dawn light, he was revealed as a sorry figure, dirty, stinking, the daringly cut tunic stuck with burrs and covered in grass stains, the shirt with a sleeve all but ripped out …
Cross with himself — the youth was a double murderer! — once again Josse found that he was having to fight down his compassion.
And, with Milon as silent and unresisting as if he were walking in his sleep, they made their way up to the Abbey.
* * *
Dawn was breaking when they closed the door on Milon. Saul had suggested putting him in an end chamber of the undercroft beneath the infirmary, which was empty but which had a stout lock.
The young man kept up his silence until they were descending the steps into the undercroft. Then, as the dank darkness wrapped itself around them, he started to emit a thin, high screaming. An awful sound: Josse felt the hairs on the back of his neck start to prickle.
‘A light, Brother Saul,’ he commanded gruffly. ‘We cannot pen him down here in the pitch dark like an animal.’ Saul fetched a flare and lit it, sticking it in a bracket on the wall of the passage.
But the door to Milon’s cell had only a small grille, up at eye level. Little of the warm, comforting light would penetrate inside to him.
‘Is it clean?’ Josse asked as Saul turned the heavy key on the boy.
Saul said, with a slight suggestion of reproof, ‘It is indeed, sir. Abbess Helewise, she does not allow slack housekeeping, not anywhere within the Abbey.’
Josse touched his arm in mute apology, both for having suggested the cell might be dirty, and for the underlying accusation that Brother Saul would have put a prisoner in there if it had been.
Prisoner.
The word kept reverberating in his head.
‘If you have no further use for me, sir,’ Saul said as they left the undercroft, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a yawn, ‘might I be allowed to go and catch a few hours’ sleep?’
‘Eh?’ His voice brought Josse back from the disquieting paths where his mind had been walking. ‘Aye, Brother Saul. And my thanks for your company and your help this long night.’
Saul bowed his head. ‘I’ll not say it was a pleasure, sir, but you’re welcome none the less.’ He paused, and Josse was certain he had more to say. Then: ‘He is guilty, Sir Josse? Without any shadow of a doubt?’
‘It’s not for me to judge him, Saul,’ Josse said gently. ‘He will go to trial. But me, I have no doubts.’
Brother Saul nodded. He said dolefully, ‘It’s as I feared. He will hang.’
‘He almost certainly killed two young women, Saul! Nuns, who had done him no wrong except prevent him getting a fortune!’
‘I know that, sir,’ Saul said with dignity. ‘It’s just that…’
He didn’t finish. Sighing, as if all this were far beyond his comprehension, he lifted a hand in valediction and set off back to the shelter in the vale.
And Josse, after a moment’s indecision, went into the cloister and sat down to wait for the Abbess.
It would be, he was well aware, a long wait. But then he had nothing better to do.
* * *
Helewise saw him as she went to her room after Prime.
He was slumped in a corner, wedged in the angle formed by the junction of two walls. He looked hideously uncomfortable, but, notwithstanding that, he was fast asleep.
His craggy face was pale, and there were deep lines running from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth. The heavy brows were drawn down as if, even asleep, he was troubled and frowning. Poor man, she thought. What a night he has had.
Word had been brought to her of Milon d’Arcy’s arrest as she went into church for the Holy Office. Brother Saul had spoken to Brother Firmin, who had taken the tidings straight to the Abbess.
It had taken most of her reserves of self-control to proceed with her devotions, when everything left in her that was worldly — and there was quite a lot — was telling her to go straight to the undercroft and start demanding some answers from the murderer.
Now, though, she was glad she had made herself go to pray. The dignity, power and atmosphere of the Abbey church was always most moving, for her, in the early morning, and the solace and strength she derived then was the greatest. And, perhaps because of that, it was at the first service of the daylight hours that she felt closest to the Lord. It was, she often thought, as if God, too, was enjoying the innocence of the world as another new day began. Was, perhaps, like the Abbess — if the comparison were not sacrilegious — revelling in the purity of the morning, before the concerns of those who peopled their two domains, God’s so vast, her own so small, had a chance to sully it.
Feeling uplifted, strong from having come fresh from communion with the Lord, she crossed the cloister, approached Josse and gently touched his shoulder.
He shot into wakefulness, hand going to where, no doubt, he usually carried a sword, eyes glaring up at her.
Seeing who it was, he relaxed.
‘Good morning, Abbess.’
‘Good morning, Sir Josse.’
‘They’ll have told you.’ It was a statement, not a question.
‘Indeed. You and Brother Saul did well. And my congratulations on the accuracy of your prediction. You said Milon would come back for the cross. And he did.’
‘We don’t know for certain that’s what he came for.’ Josse was stretching in a huge yawn as he spoke, remembering only half-way through it to cover his mouth with his hand. ‘Sorry, Abbess.’
‘It’s all right. When do we speak to him?’
Josse got to his feet, scratching at a day’s growth of beard. ‘Now?’
She had been unaware she’d been holding her breath. Overwhelmingly relieved — she didn’t think she could have borne delay — she said, ‘Very well.’
* * *
She sensed a new tension in him as they went down the steps to the undercroft. She was about to speak, but just then she became aware of the noise.
Was it what had disturbed Josse? She would not have been surprised if it was. It was a dreadful noise, like that of an animal in a snare, containing both pain and, predominantly, despair.