Then Eleanor said, ‘So where now, Sir Josse?’
‘I shall return to Hawkenlye Abbey and tell the abbess that-’ Too late he realized what he was saying; to reveal to the queen that he was going to relate the outcome of the matter to the abbess implied that he had told her about it, and Eleanor had sworn him to secrecy.
But she was laughing softly. ‘It’s all right, Sir Josse,’ she said. ‘I think I always understood that, for you, sharing a confidence with Helewise of Hawkenlye was almost the same thing as talking to yourself.’
He was not entirely sure what she meant, but there was no time to work it out. She had risen to her feet and, taking this as an indication that the interview was over, Josse began backing away, nudging Ninian to make him do the same.
Eleanor, however, had not quite finished. Reaching beneath her chair, she pulled out a leather bag. It was quite large and clearly very heavy. ‘You have no doubt been put to considerable expense in this mission,’ she said smoothly. ‘Allow me, if you will, to recompense you.’ She handed him the bag.
Josse took it, too taken aback to comment other than a muttered ‘Thank you, my lady.’
Then with one final, long look at Ninian, she dismissed them.
Josse reined in his impatience until he and Ninian were back in the stables, collecting their horses. Then, while Ninian stood guard, he untied the laces that fastened the leather bag. Within there were gold coins: a lot of gold coins. With shaking fingers Josse tried to count them, but he made a mistake. He must have done, for the total seemed to come to a sum that was sufficient to build a fair-sized house.
Part Four
Sixteen
H elewise had not realized just how disruptive it would be to have even a modest and simple chapel built so close to the abbey. She had imagined that an added advantage of siting the new building outside the walls would mean that the community could go about its daily round in peace; this, however, proved not to be the case. Everyone, from the most senior and dignified nuns down to the youngest, newest lay brother, was suddenly preoccupied with thinking up excuses that took them out beyond the gates and past the workmen hard at work at the top of the slope on the edge of the forest. They did not content themselves with a quick look to check on progress; instead, Helewise noticed, quietly fuming, they would stand there in what looked like a light trance, wide eyes fixed on the apparently fascinating sight of a mason chipping away at a chunk of stone.
She was not immune from the draw of the new chapel, but she forced herself not to waste time during her working hours; instead, she made a daily visit to the site just after vespers, when the workmen would be packing up for the day. Quite often she took Meggie with her, and the little girl seemed to enjoy the special time together as much as she did. Meggie appeared to be happy enough, although frequently she stopped and looked around, as if searching for Josse, or, indeed, Helewise thought with pain, for her mother. Everyone made a pet of the child, Helewise included, for she was easy to love and a cheerful companion, which made the evening visits to the new chapel all the more enjoyable. Helewise would exchange a few words with Martin and one or two of his team and then, once they had all gone, walk slowly around, seeing for herself the day’s progress.
Slowly, almost unaware of it, she fell under the spell of St Edmund’s Chapel. It was not large: perhaps twenty paces from the west wall to the rounded apse behind the place where the altar would stand, and a fraction over half that distance from the north wall to the south. Beneath the nave, a crypt had been hollowed out; it was there for a specific purpose. It was odd but every time Helewise thought about what that purpose was, something seemed to fudge her thoughts and she would find her mind had been turned to something else.
The chapel’s entrance was in the south wall, and the apse extended under the trees at the very edge of the forest. There would be three small windows glazed with plain glass set high up in the apse, so that the morning sun would shine down on the altar. The west end faced the abbey, which was wonderful because Helewise was to have her wish. Martin had told her that the two strong buttresses that would stand at either end of the west wall were there for support. She had looked blankly at him, not understanding. ‘We’ll strengthen that wall, my lady,’ he explained, ‘because then we can leave a great big space in it.’
‘But-’
‘And we’ll fill it with glass,’ he finished.
Not just any glass; Helewise discovered as Martin showed her the drawings that Queen Eleanor had been very specific. She must have seen for herself what was planned for Chartres and she wanted something equally beautiful for the new chapel built for her son. The west window in Hawkenlye’s St Edmund Chapel would have a huge stained-glass illustration whose central panel depicted the saint on horseback, sword raised to strike down the enemies of the Lord. If St Edmund was tall, auburn-haired and blue-eyed and bore a resemblance to the queen’s favourite son, then it would be a hard-hearted person who failed to sympathize and understand.
Helewise was amazed at how quickly the building was going up. June turned into July and the team made the most of the long sunny days. Construction always came to an end in October, she well knew, when any incomplete structures would be carefully padded with bracken or straw to prevent damage by winter frosts. Such a measure, she slowly came to realize, would not be necessary here, for unless some unforeseen setback occurred, the chapel roof ought to be on long before the autumn set in.
She talked at length with Martin concerning the chapel’s interior. They were in agreement that the walls should simply be whitewashed; anything else would detract from the glorious colours of the west window. Martin persuaded her to have a rood screen. The master carpenter produced a sketch of a plain structure made of local oak and consisting of a series of arches, two narrow ones on either side and a wider one in the middle, giving access to the choir. The altar was to be a large block of sandstone, quarried locally and dragged up to Hawkenlye on a massive cart drawn by a whole team of oxen. Martin’s masons were already working on it, shaping and smoothing it to form a rectangular cube.
Helewise readily immersed herself in every detail. Apart from anything else, it helped to take her mind off her abiding, gnawing anxiety about Josse.
She went into the abbey church very early one morning, following an almost sleepless night. Alone in the dim dawn light, she prostrated herself in front of the altar and begged the Lord to protect Josse and his young companion. They had been away for over three weeks and she was finding it very difficult to keep her fears at bay. They have gone after one man, she reminded herself again and again; the threat that they faced was no more than that. De Loup was from Aquitaine, and Josse might have had to follow him all the way there. Such a journey was not done quickly and, even having found de Loup, Josse would have to talk to him at length in order to persuade him to give up the black figure. It was foolish, she concluded, to imagine Josse and Ninian could possibly be safely back already. There really was no need to worry.
Yet.
And now, disconcertingly, Meggie had taken to keeping watch for her father by the abbey gates. It was as if she too felt that his return was sufficiently long overdue for it to be worrying. It might have been easier had the child expressed her fears in tears and demands for reassurance, or even in bad behaviour. Any of those would have been understandable; after all, both her mother and now her father had disappeared out of her life. Instead she kept up her vigil and barely said a word. It was heartbreaking.
Helewise dropped her face on to her folded hands and, for a few precious moments, let the Lord carry all her desperate anxiety. When presently she rose and slowly left the church, she thought that the burden did not feel quite so heavy.
Early in July, Hawkenlye Abbey received a visit from the kin of Sir Piers of Essendon. Helewise had sent word to them of his death and they had promised to come for his body once arrangements had been made. Since his death, Piers had lain in his sealed coffin down in the crypt of the abbey church; Helewise was well aware that several of the nuns who had nursed him often slipped away down there to sit with his gentle spirit.
