Heart of Ice (2 page)

     Nevertheless, the disease continued to spread.

     The captain and his senior crew remained well but below, in the crowded conditions where the crew lived, ate, urinated, defecated and slept so close together, men continued to fall sick. The captain was a devout man as well as a clean and enlightened one; he made up his mind that, whatever the cost to himself and his crew, they must keep themselves apart from other men while the sickness lasted. He decided to drop the last of his cargo at the final destination – Boulogne – and then sail back to Genoa in ballast and hope that the disease would have burned itself out by the time he reached home. It was a sound and conscientious plan and it ought to have worked; unfortunately, despite the captain’s best efforts, one of the men slipped ashore at Boulogne.

     The captain faced a dilemma. Did he send other men to hunt for the fugitive and bring him back on board into the captain’s self-imposed quarantine? Or did he sail off and, praying that the man was not infected, leave him behind? After much agonised thought, the captain decided that to send more men ashore to search for the missing man would only increase the risk of infection. With a heavy heart and a guilty conscience, he ordered the ship to be prepared for sea and set sail for home.

     The fugitive watched his ship disappear into the misty night. Silently rejoicing – wasn’t he the clever one, getting away from both the ship and the awful secret it carried? – but his happiness was short lived. Soon he began to feel ill, and the faint symptoms escalated so quickly that he was unable to fool himself that it was merely a matter of his body adjusting to dry land after so long at sea. He tried to find help, knocking on door after door, but the people of Boulogne were used to importunate sailors begging for their help and they firmly turned him away.

     The sick man crawled off to die.

     He was found by a kindly Hastings merchant staying in the port while he waited to take ship back home to England with the large consignment of myrrh and frankincense which he had just bought. For a day or two the merchant tended the sick sailor as best he could, in his anxiety biting his nails and tearing at his cuticles until they bled, but any help he offered came far too late and the sailor died. The merchant, aware that the ship that would take him across the Channel had just docked and that he needed to make haste to see her captain, gave a local lad a few coins and ordered him to dispose of the sailor’s corpse. Then he hurried away. (The lad pocketed the coins and, as soon as the Hastings merchant had gone, tipped the body into the harbour.)

     The merchant made his way to an inn where he washed his hands (the sailor had been steeped in his own filth) and ordered food and drink for a swiftly consumed meal before joining his ship. Then he walked down to the quay, where, boarding the ship, he met up with a young man who was also returning to England. This man was the assistant and apprentice of a rich Newenden apothecary and he was on his way home with a parcel of rare ingredients that his master had ordered from the great fair at Troyes, in the Champagne country south of Paris. Believing themselves to be the only passengers, the two men settled down together to pass the voyage as comfortably as they could. It seemed to the Hastings merchant that the young man was scared out of his wits; kind-hearted soul that he was, he made up his mind to encourage his companion to unburden himself in the hope that he might be able to offer the younger man his help.

     Unseen by either man, nor by the captain or the crew of the small vessel, someone else crept aboard just as the ship slipped her moorings.

Elsewhere, the disease was already beginning to die out. The inhabitants of Eilat and Gaza, accustomed to plague and possessing the knowledge of how to restrict its spread, had quickly taken the necessary measures. In Genoa too, they had managed to contain the disease and only a handful had sickened and died; a lucky half dozen had fallen ill and later recovered. On board the Genoese ship, now sailing across the Bay of Biscay, there had been no new cases. The sailor who had jumped ship in Boulogne was dead and his body was at the bottom of the sea.

     But the well-meaning Hastings merchant had touched the sailor’s sores and blisters in his vain attempts to help the man’s pain; both the blood and the bodily fluids of the dying man had entered the merchant’s body through the small cut that he had made with his own teeth in the cuticle of his forefinger. Unbeknownst to the merchant, the deadly virus was even now multiplying in his system and soon it would make its presence felt.

     The terrible enemy was on its way to England.

Back in his comfortable home in Hastings, the merchant developed a high fever and a raging headache. His nervous and reclusive spinster sister took fright and locked herself away, ordering the household’s overworked maidservant to take care of the merchant as best she could. What care she was able to provide did the poor man no good whatsoever and he died within a matter of days.

     The apothecary’s assistant sickened four days after returning to Newenden, suffering from excruciating pains in the joints and a fluctuating fever. His master offered one or two remedies but soon came to the alarming realisation that this ailment, whatever it might be, was beyond his considerable skill. Lending the assistant his horse, he ordered the young man to get himself over to Hawkenlye and see what the good sisters and brothers made of him; the apothecary had a scientist’s scepticism about the benefits of the famous holy water spring at Hawkenlye Abbey but considered it was probably worth a try.

     And, he reassured himself, if his assistant went to Hawkenlye, the sickness would leave with him.

The apothecary’s assistant knew all about Hawkenlye. He had heard the tale of the dying merchant who saw a vision of the Blessed Virgin and, drinking from the spring that she indicated, promptly regained his health. As he rode, slipping in and out of consciousness, his head aching as if a fiend were hammering inside it with a red-hot hammer and his back so painful that he moaned at any variation in his horse’s gait, the young man prayed fervently that the Virgin would help him too. The weather was deadly cold; he had wrapped himself in his warmest cloak but sometimes, despite its thickness, found himself shivering so violently that it was all he could do to remain in the saddle. Then suddenly he would be hot, sweating, gasping for air that, when it entered his lungs, seemed to burn like fire.

     He rode down into Hawkenlye Vale as the short January light was failing. The path wound along beside what seemed to be a lake or a pond, presently covered with a thin layer of ice that he thought he could hear creaking, as if complaining about the steady increase in its own weight. His sight was fading but he could just make out what seemed to be a huddle of low buildings some distance off. One of them, he fancied, had a cross on its roof.

     He slipped off the horse’s back and tried to run towards the little chapel. Stumbling, he cried out in what he thought was a loud voice to the Blessed Virgin to come out and find him, take him in her loving arms, give him her healing waters.

     His prayers were answered.

     Ahead of him a figure stepped out on to the path. His fever-filled mind made his eyes see what he wanted to see and he thought the figure was a woman in a blue robe with a kindly smile on her beautiful face. Lurching towards her, he said the words of her special prayer, eager, hands held out to her, confident that she would help him, heal him.

     But the dark figure was not smiling. Was not, indeed, a woman and as far away from being the mother of God as it was possible to be.

     The apothecary’s assistant had no time to be afraid. A blissful expression on his face, he knelt with open arms before the figure in expectation of a cool hand descending on his hot forehead in blessing.

     It was not a cool hand. It was a club, wielded with such force and such skill that one swift blow was all that was necessary to end the young man’s life.

     After checking to make sure he was dead, the dark figure quickly went through the contents of the pouch attached to the young man’s belt, then rolled him across the path and over the frosty grass that edged the pond. Breaking the ice with the heel of his boot, he slid the corpse into the black water. Then he mounted the apothecary’s horse and rode away.

The temperature plummeted that night. By morning, the pond and its deadly secret were covered in a thick sheet of ice.

Part One

The Enemy

Chapter 1

The mood at Hawkenlye Abbey was festive. A short spell of very cold weather had covered the pond in the Vale with almost a hand’s breadth of ice and, in the spirit of turning an affliction into a gift, the monks and lay brothers were trying to teach themselves to slide across the ice on their sandalled feet without falling over. Brother Augustus recalled having once been told that tying deer-bone blades to the feet increased the speed at which it was possible to glide across the ice and he was busy experimenting; so far he had only a sore thumb and a large bruise on his backside to show for his troubles.

     Word spread quickly that there was fun to be had in Hawkenlye Vale and soon others, at first children but then their older sisters and brothers and their parents as well, began to arrive and clamoured to be allowed to join in. The local people were in the middle of a cold, miserable and desperately poor winter, there was never enough to eat and Christmas was a dim memory; nobody needed any encouragement to stop what they were doing and remember what it was to be playful and carefree. Old Brother Firmin, who felt it was one thing for the brethren to risk life, limb and death by drowning but quite another for outsiders to do so, cast suspicious looks at the ice and shook his head dubiously. Brother Saul, observing the disappointed faces of the onlookers, said he would test the ice by walking the Abbey’s hefty cob across it once or twice. With the eyes of the growing crowd upon him, he did so; once, twice across the pond and two or three times along its length, he led the patient horse and listened somewhat nervously for the first sound of cracking ice.

     No such sound came. With a grin, Saul called out, ‘The ice is strong. Come and try your skills!’

     Catching the air of celebration, Brother Erse asked permission to make a fire and, using birch shavings and some seasoned odds and ends of wood from his carpentry bench to get it started, soon had a good blaze going. Brother Augustus abandoned his experiments with the bone skates and, with Brother Adrian, set about preparing a large pot of thin but nourishing broth whose chief ingredients were the carcases of three or four fowl scrounged from the Abbey’s kitchen, some onions, some garlic, several large handfuls of barley and a big bunch of dried herbs. They suspended the pot over Brother Erse’s fire and soon an appetising smell was wafting out over the pond; very quickly a line of hungry children (and not a few of their parents) formed beside Erse’s fire. More monks came to help and the broth was ladled into the rough earthenware mugs that the brethren kept for the use of pilgrims coming to the shrine in the Vale. The monks imposed order on the queue and started handing out the broth to the visitors. Sounds of laughter and merriment floated up to the Abbey; before long, some of the nuns came down to the Vale to find out what was going on.

     Among them was Sister Caliste, who worked in the infirmary under Sister Euphemia, one of the most senior of the nuns. Sister Caliste reported back to the infirmarer, who in turn told the Abbess Helewise. Just as the sun was setting, the Abbess went to see for herself.

     Brother Firmin, watching her face as her grey eyes looked slowly from one end of the pond to the other, taking in the cheerful, red-cheeked people struggling to keep their balance and laughing loudly when inevitably they failed, waited apprehensively for her to speak. ‘I am sorry, my lady Abbess, not to have asked for your permission,’ he began, ‘but in truth—’

     She held up a hand and, with a smile, interrupted him. ‘No need to apologise, Brother Firmin,’ she said. ‘I do not think any permission was necessary; there is nothing wrong with making people happy on a cold winter’s day.’ Her glance lighted on the remains of the broth in its blackened pot. ‘And, in charity, how could the sternest heart object to the provision of hot broth to hungry people?’

     Brother Firmin decided her question was rhetorical and kept his peace.

     The Abbess put a light hand on his arm. ‘Sister Euphemia will not thank us if there are too many broken limbs to be treated,’ she said, ‘but, otherwise, you and the brethren have done splendidly. Carry on, Brother Firmin.’ With another smile, she gave him a quick nod of approval and, turning, set out along the path that led back up to the Abbey.

     Brother Firmin could not be sure – his eyesight was not what it had been – but he saw his dignified superior stop and turn as she left the pond’s shore and he was pretty sure she gave the frozen water and the happy revellers a very wistful look.