when he went out at night. This time this deeply ingrained habit would serve him well.
Two
They could not comfort Ella. When they discovered the stranger had gone, at first she kept her silence. But it was clear something was gravely wrong, for she bit her lips and frowned, muttering to herself under her breath, and she jumped at the slightest noise. Eventually she burst into tears, threw herself into the meagre comfort of Will’s scrawny arms and confessed what she had done.
Will decided to put the matter before his master.
‘Ella reckons she knows summat about the foreign fellow’s disappearance,’ he said to Josse, apprehending him on his way to the stables and firmly clasping Ella’s hand in case she decided to cut and run. ‘She says he’d gone from the outbuilding last night and his bed hadn’t been slept in.’ He turned to Ella. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ He gave her a shake, not ungentle. ‘Go on,’ he added in exasperation as her face crumpled, ‘Master won’t bite!’
‘Ella?’ Josse said, surprised. ‘Is this true?’ What on earth had she been doing out there in the darkness?
Ella raised her eyes to meet Josse’s. She nodded. Then, encouraged by his smile, she burst out, ‘I reckoned he were a spirit of the night, see. One of those shades that sleeps all day because they’re out a-haunting through the hours of darkness, and I just wanted to find out if what I feared was true because if so then we — then we-’ But, overcome, she pulled up her apron and buried her face in it, shoulders heaving.
Will, after a moment of staring at her in mystified incomprehension, put his arms round her thin body. ‘Come on, old girl,’ Josse heard him mutter.
But Ella seemed incapable of further explanation. With a shrug and a lift of the eyebrows in Josse’s direction, Will led her away.
He left Josse frowning and puzzling over the strange ways of women, in particular those such as Ella in whom the deep and unshakable superstition of the peasant was so strong. One of those creatures who haunted through the night and lay up all day? Well, that would explain John Damianos’s habit of sleeping the daylight hours away. And Josse realized there had been something slightly unearthly about the man… those unfathomable eyes, shadowed by the headdress so that it was impossible to determine colour or expression. His speech, sometimes just the few hesitant words of a man speaking an alien tongue and sometimes — very occasionally — fluent and grammatically accurate. And where had he come from? Josse had not gone beyond his initial assumption, that John Damianos was a native of Outremer brought to England by a returning crusader.
Why did I not ask him while I had the chance? Josse thought. Had I known his history, I could now be comforting Ella and telling her not to let her imagination run away with her, because our mysterious stranger was no more than a body servant from Acre brought home by Sir Somebody of Somewhere and released from his master’s service to find his own way home.
He wondered briefly whether to tell her this anyway; it would be a kind lie if it succeeded in removing her terrified anxiety. But he knew he was a poor liar, and if his brief explanation brought forth a torrent of questions he would soon be floundering.
No. Best to let Will take care of his woman. She’d soon forget all about John Damianos.
But she didn’t. Three days later, she was still afraid of her own shadow and she refused to go anywhere near the outbuilding. Since she had to pass it to get to the hen house, the root-vegetable store, the little shelter where Will stacked bundles of kindling and the earth privy, this meant life was becoming quite trying for everybody, especially Ella herself.
Summoning Will after overhearing yet another outburst of hysterical weeping, Josse asked wearily if there was any chance of Ella seeing sense.
‘None at all, sir,’ Will said bluntly. ‘Me, I’ve kept hoping the fellow would come back, then I’d have pinched him, punched him or snagged him with my knife to show her he was no spirit but felt pain and bled just like any other man.’ There was considerable vehemence in Will’s tone and Josse sympathized; it must be hell having to live cheek by jowl with a woman in Ella’s current mood, not to mention having to empty a daily bucket for her while she was incapable of using the yard privy. ‘But he’s gone,’ Will concluded. ‘Gone without a kiss my arse — er, gone without a word of thanks. We shan’t see him back here, sir, that’s my opinion.’
Josse had a suspicion that Will was right. He also suspected he knew just why John Damianos had vanished into the night: because he had seen Ella and knew his nocturnal habits were no longer a secret. If, that was, he had regularly gone out at night and the one occasion when Ella had gone looking had not been the exception.
‘I wonder,’ Josse said musingly.
Will voiced his indignation. ‘It’s not right, after we cared for him, just to vanish into the night. Is it, sir?’
‘No, Will.’ The odd thing was, Josse thought, that John Damianos had appeared better than to accept kindness and care without expressing his gratitude. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed likely that the stranger had intended to come back; that he would have returned before morning — just as in all probability he had regularly done — had it not been for Ella. With a flash of understanding, Josse realized that Ella must have worked this out too. A man had come to them for help and they had fed him, given him shelter and helped him recover his strength. The healing process was well under way but then through her own irrepressible curiosity, Ella had frightened him away.
What she was suffering from was not only superstitious terror but also a very human sense of guilt.
Poor Ella.
Josse waited another day and night, during which he prayed fervently that either John Damianos would return or Ella would come to her senses. Neither happened.
In the morning he went to the kitchen, stopped Ella’s weeping with an imperiously raised hand and announced, ‘Ella, you can’t go on like this.’ And nor can the rest of us, he might have added. ‘If there is nothing we can do to help you, we must take you to others who are skilled in such matters.’ Turning to Will, standing open- mouthed with the heel of an ageing loaf of bread in one hand and his knife in the other, Josse said, ‘Will, saddle Horace and prepare the mule and the smallest of the working horses. You and I are going to take Ella to Hawkenlye Abbey.’
The very act of riding out on the old mule in the clear morning air did a lot to restore Ella’s spirits. Twisting round to look at her, Josse observed that she was staring around with interested eyes as they rode along the track he knew so well. He realized that this was probably the furthest she had been in the years since she had come to the manor, and that must be… He did not know, for Will had been there in the days of the previous tenant and, for all Josse knew, so had she.
What a narrow world she inhabited.
They reached Hawkenlye Abbey in the early afternoon. Josse instructed Will to take the horses and the mule to Sister Martha in the stables. Taking Ella’s arm and giving her what he hoped was a reassuring smile, he led her across the wide courtyard.
He was very aware of her fear. As he opened the door and ushered her inside the infirmary, he tried to observe it with eyes that had never seen it before.
He saw a long room with windows set high in the walls. On either side were low beds, many of them occupied, and at each end were curtained-off recesses where treatments were carried out and where patients could be isolated. There were several nuns: all wore black habits, with white wimples that covered neck and throat and were drawn up around the face and across the brow. Some wore white veils and some black. Each wore a simple wooden cross around her neck. There must have been perhaps thirty-five or forty people yet the impression was of serenity. The nuns walked soft-footed, their pace unhurried so that they seemed to glide over the scrubbed flagstones. The patients — comforted, cared for, loved, perhaps — did not moan, cry out or complain, but instead lay passive and quiet, apparently well aware that the nuns were doing their best for them.
It was, thought Josse, a haven.
Beside him he sensed Ella relax. Then a big nun in a black veil, a crisp white apron tied over her habit, came towards him, a smile on her face and her arms open in welcome.
‘Sir Josse, how good to see you again so soon!’ she said, embracing him. ‘I am sure we can find some more leaves for you to sweep up!’
He returned her smile. ‘And right willingly I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘But I have come on a different mission. Sister
