track in the forest that led off to the hut where Joanna had lived.
She had been gone for more than ten years now, but he still missed her. She was the mother of his two children, Meggie and Geoffroi, and also of his adopted son, Ninian. Her death — if, indeed, she really was dead — had left a hole in his life that had never been filled. That line of thought, too, made him sad.
Helewise had come to live at the House in the Woods. After waiting for her for so many years, finally she was there, under his very roof. She had arrived back in June — Good Lord, he thought, was it only four months ago? — and to begin with he had been so overjoyed that he had not noticed that all was not as he had hoped. She might have left the abbey, renounced her vows and become an ordinary woman, but the problem was — or so he saw it — that in her heart she was still a nun.
It’s only to be expected, he told himself as he rode along. She wasn’t just a nun, she was an abbess, and of a great foundation at that. Nobody can be expected to leave the religious life and all that it entailed behind in a few months!
It was some five years since Helewise had actually lived within the abbey. Soon after the death of Queen Eleanor back in 1202, Helewise had begun to implement the plans which had long been in her mind. She had quit Hawkenlye in stages, the first one being to stand down as abbess, witness the election and the installation of Caliste as her successor, and then go to live in the tiny little cell adjoining the new chapel on the edge of the forest. The chapel was dedicated to St Edmund and had been built on the orders of Eleanor in memory of Richard, the late king and her favourite son.
The pope’s action against King John had effectively closed the abbey to outsiders, and although Josse knew full well that Hawkenlye had done its best to go on being a place of refuge, help and succour, the task had been all but impossible. The attention of the king and his agents had always hovered over the abbey — it was just too important a foundation to be overlooked — and many were of the opinion that John would have robbed the abbey of all its treasures had he not feared the wrath of his formidable mother. Dead she might be, but apparently it made no difference.
The keen glance of the king, however, had slid over St Edmund’s Chapel and its little cell without pausing to look properly. Had he done so, he would have seen something quite surprising. The people, finding the church inside the abbey locked and barred, had quietly transferred their devotion to the chapel. Its door was always open, and there was usually a candle burning on its simple altar. Down in its hidden crypt it concealed a treasure known to very few, and it was perhaps the power of this secret that kept the chapel safe from those who wished it ill.
Whatever the truth of it, the people had a place where they could pray. Not only that, for the chapel had its own guardian, and she was a woman whose reputation went before her. She was always there for those in need, providing a smile, a kind word, a simple but nourishing plate of food, a warming drink; even, on occasions, a blanket on the floor for those too tired to make the journey home until morning. As the years passed, she also began to give remedies for the more common ailments, taught and helped in her work by both Tiphaine, the abbey’s former herbalist, and Josse’s daughter, Meggie.
In the summer, however, Helewise had implemented the second stage of her withdrawal from the abbey. The House in the Woods had grown in the decade since Josse had gone with his household to live in it, and there had been plenty of room for another resident. However, the sweet hopes that Josse had cherished of Helewise living in any sort of intimacy with him had been swiftly shattered. Quietly, she had explained what she needed: a small room readily accessible to visitors where she could receive and help those who came seeking her, with a little sleeping space leading off it. In effect, he had realized miserably, her desire was to reproduce her cell beside the chapel.
The trouble was, as Josse saw it, that the rest of the world still thought she was an abbess. Or, at least, the whole of the suffering, needy community in and around Hawkenlye did, which, as far as Josse was concerned, was the only part of the world that mattered.
It was all to do with the wretched interdict. Out in the forest, alone except for Alfred and unlikely to be overheard, Josse gave vent to his feelings and cursed the pope, the king, the interdict, the excommunication and everything else that was presently caused him distress.
The echoes of his angry shouts died away. Alfred twitched his ears sympathetically — he was growing on Josse, despite his stubborn nature — and Josse resumed his musings.
To cheer himself up he thought about the beloved people who would be waiting for him at home. His daughter Meggie, he knew, wasn’t there. He had actually been quite close to her earlier that day, when he had ridden past the track leading to Joanna’s hut. Meggie went over there quite often, and she kept both the tiny dwelling and its herb garden tidy and cared for. Sometimes she would not return for several days. Over the years, Josse had learned to curb his anxiety. She was, he knew, more than capable of taking care of herself and, just like her mother, she seemed to cherish the quiet, secret hut and its almost magical setting.
It was hardly surprising that even someone whose big feet were as firmly planted on the good earth as Josse’s should sense the magic, even if he did not understand it. Joanna had been one of the Great Ones of the strange forest people, as had her mother Mag before her. Both Mag and Joanna had left much of their power within the hut and its little clearing, and now Meggie — who, according to her people’s predictions, would be the greatest of them all — was adding to what they had so freely bestowed.
Meggie had been absent now for a couple of days. Josse hoped she would soon return. He never dared tell her how much he missed her when she was away but, being the woman she was, he probably didn’t need to.
With a happy smile, Josse remembered that Geoffroi would be waiting for him, eager to hear how Alfred had behaved. Geoffroi was now eleven, a strong, robust boy who was tall for his age and already showing the broad shoulders and sturdy build that he had inherited from Josse. Geoffroi loved all living things, and his knowledge of the natural world was wide and profound. For all that there were plenty of people considerably older than Geoffroi living at Hawkenlye Manor and working with its sundry livestock, it was Geoffroi who was the ultimate authority when it came to animal husbandry. Which was quite surprising, his father reflected, considering the boy could barely read or write. Still, as Geoffroi always said, you didn’t need book learning to understand why a ewe was limping or to judge which combination of mare and stallion would produce the finest offspring.
Geoffroi himself rode a dark-brown mare called Bruna, the offspring of Horace. It was nice, Josse often thought, that in this way the old horse lived on.
Josse’s thoughts rambled on. Everyone else would be home, too. He smiled as he pictured them. Ninian — half-brother to Geoffroi and Meggie, and Josse’s adopted son — would be there, his presence all the more treasured because he was so often away. Ninian was in love with Helewise’s granddaughter, Little Helewise. She adored him too, and were it not for the interdict, they undoubtedly would have been wed a year or more ago. Little Helewise lived with her family at the Old Manor, the ancestral home of the Warins, which her father Leofgar, being the elder of Helewise’s two sons, had inherited. Ninian spent as much of his time as he could with her and, privately, Josse reckoned the young people had already become everything to each other.
Aye, Ninian. Josse smiled as he contemplated the lad. Others, too, awaited Josse — Gus, Tilly and their children, Will and Ella too, servants in name but more like family to Josse — and their faces flashed one by one across his mind. It would be good to get back.
He realized he was hungry. The household at the House in the Woods ate well, even given the current circumstances, for virtually everything that went on their table came from their own land. Over the year, Josse and his small workforce had gradually cut back the trees surrounding the house, and now several acres were under cultivation. Their sheep grazed on the pastures of New Winnowlands, Josse’s former home, with the flock belonging to the manor’s present occupants. Given the constant, greedy demands of the king, they were fortunate, Josse well knew, to live in such an out-of-the-way spot. Outside those who lived in the immediate vicinity, only a handful of people knew the House in the Woods even existed.
What would Tilly have prepared for the evening meal? He was almost home now, and he kicked Alfred to a canter. He would soon be finding out.
Helewise was having a lovely day. The autumn weather was pleasantly warm, and she had spent most of the time out of doors, reason enough to make her happy. In addition, for much of it she had had the company of her youngest grandchild, whose father had left her that morning in Helewise’s care while he rode on to Tonbridge. He had business with Gervase de Gifford, who was the sheriff.
Helewise didn’t enquire, as once she would have done, what that business was. It wasn’t that she did not care; it was more that her priorities had changed. The outside world was less important to her now than her family and her loved ones.
