Heart of Ice (40 page)

     Josse managed an even smaller smile in response. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, getting to his feet.

He found that, as he and Sister Tiphaine approached the forest fringes, he was holding his breath.

     ‘Do you know where she is?’ he said in a very audible whisper to the herbalist. ‘Will we be able to find her hut in the darkness?’

     Sister Tiphaine did not reply. Half turning, Josse saw that she had stopped a few paces behind him so that, beneath the first great oaks of the forest, he stood alone.

     He seemed to know what was required. His heart hammering, he strode on.

     There was a narrow clearing some dozen paces within the forest where the undergrowth was thin and where low hazel trees were interspersed with holly. As Josse stepped into it she emerged right in front of him. In the moonlight shining down on the clearing, he could see her quite plainly.

     He stared at her.

     She was Joanna, of course she was. But oh, how she had changed!

     He stood and drank her in, from the glossy brown hair above the high forehead to the feet in their gold-clasped sandals. The wide folds of the cloak that she wore disguised her body but he had the overriding sense that she looked . . . stronger, was the only way to describe it.

     Her face had a new serenity that enhanced her strange beauty. The eyes, dark under the arching brows, were fixed on his and, as he stared at her, she gave him a smile.

     ‘Hello, Josse.’

     ‘Joanna, you look—’ He shrugged, grinning. ‘I can’t begin to describe it.’

     ‘Don’t worry,’ she said kindly, ‘I think I know what you are trying to say.’

     ‘What’s happened to you?’ he burst out. ‘Where have you been and what have you been doing? Tiphaine says you’re a great healer now?’ He could not prevent the remark turning into a question; he wondered if she knew how much hung upon her answer.

     She was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘It is true that healing is my destiny and I have already put my feet upon the long path that will allow my powers to emerge.’ Observing his puzzled look, she laughed softly. ‘Josse, I apologise – in short, the answer is, yes, I am a healer. Of sorts.’

     ‘You have been taught by – er – by your own people?’

     ‘My own people,’ she repeated, half under her breath. Then, again picking up that he was not following her, said, ‘Yes, that’s right. I have been far afield, Josse, and I have seen sights that have frightened, inspired and greatly affected me.’

     He wanted more than anything to ask if she was prepared to try to help heal the Abbess, but somehow it did not seem diplomatic, on seeing a former lover for the first time in two years, to ask almost immediately if she would go with him to help another woman.

     But the other woman is the Abbess, he told himself firmly. He opened his mouth to speak but Joanna got in first.

     ‘Of course I will come, Josse,’ she said.

     He glanced back at Sister Tiphaine; the herbalist was no more that a vague dark shadow, some distance away. ‘Has she already asked you, then?’ he demanded. ‘She said not, she—’

     ‘No, Tiphaine has not spoken. I read it in your mind, dear Josse.’

     ‘You – is
that
the sort of thing they’ve been teaching you?’ Even to his own ears, he sounded like a shocked and prissy old woman.

     Now she was laughing and, despite everything, he found himself joining in. It was impossible not to: she carried a joy in her that was irresistible. ‘Anyone could pick up what preoccupies you at the moment,’ she told him, ‘especially one who was aware of your deep love of the Abbess Helewise.’

     ‘I don’t—’ he began. But why deny it when it was true? Saying the first thing that came into his head, he asked, ‘Do you mind?’

     ‘That you love her? Josse, why should I?’ Joanna sounded genuinely puzzled.

     Trying to set aside the bewildering swirl of emotions that the brief exchange had sparked off, Josse spun round, said, ‘Let’s be away to her, then,’ and stomped off out of the forest.

     He was quite sure that he heard Joanna’s soft laughter behind him.

Marching along behind Josse’s broad shape – Sister Tiphaine was trotting at his side – Joanna tried to overcome her surprise at what the reunion with him had done to her. Ever since she had realised that the meeting was inevitable – Tiphaine had told her that the Abbess was dying and she had known Josse would come, sooner or later – she had been dreading it.

     Now, most of her mind already thinking ahead and seeking out the Abbess’s spirit in order to try to call her back, Joanna reflected briefly that, while she had known she still loved him, she had never expected the surge of sheer happiness that his appearance in the clearing had given her.

     But it was no time to think of herself or of him; she had a job to do and she knew it was going to be a tough one. Sending out a fleeting thought to Meggie – the child had been taken home to the hut by Lora, who would look after her until Joanna returned, whenever that might be – she turned her thoughts to what lay ahead.

They must have realised that she worked alone. The large nun with the kind eyes showed her to the recess at the end of the ward and then, with the curtain pulled behind her, it was just the Abbess and Joanna.

     Joanna studied the statue-still figure lying on the narrow cot, taking in the visual signs. The prospect of bringing this woman back from where she now was seemed all but impossible; the Abbess was burning hot, deadly pale and the infrequent, shallow little breaths barely lifted the chest beneath the white sheet.

     Joanna stood quite still and closed her eyes. She concentrated on her breathing, turning her full attention to each deep intake and outlet of air. She felt them come to her almost instantly, as if they knew her need and were just waiting for the chance to join her.

   
You are a channel
, they had told her.
You do not heal; healing is bestowed through you. It is we who heal
. Who are
we
? she had asked.
We are the collective spirit of the people. We are the consciousness that was ancient even when the first stones were set up; the consciousness that awoke and greeted the first day. We are always here for those who seek us with the right mind; you have but to learn what that mind is and how to achieve it
.

     Joanna had spent a year doing just that. She was a rank beginner, she well knew it; a green sapling among mature, majestic oaks, birch and beech. She had undergone the exacting, alarming and sometimes downright painful initiations; she had experienced her first spirit journey. She had the supreme soul friend in the Domina and this was, Joanna was well aware, an important factor in having achieved the progress she had managed.

     Now, standing in the recess where the Abbess lay dying, Joanna drew on all that she had been taught and sent out a silent cry to the spirits clustering around her to help her find the swiftly receding soul and try to bring it back.

     She did not know how long she stood there; time as a phenomenon of the earth ceased once she had entered the trance state and walked with the spirits. Presently she saw that she was in a little hollow beside a stream; it was a lovely place, bright and shining with spring greenery and with the scent of growing things on the soft air. Helewise sat before her on a narrow strip of sandy shore that formed a beach by fast-rushing, shallow water.

     Joanna sat down beside her.

     ‘Helewise,’ she said after a while, ‘you are on the brink of passing from this world on to another.’

     ‘Yes.’ Helewise sounded dazed. ‘I guessed that might be the case.’

     ‘Are you sure that you truly wish to go?’ Joanna kept her voice low, hypnotic; nothing in that dream-like place was loud or discordant.

     Helewise considered. ‘I thought I saw Ivo waiting for me,’ she murmured. ‘This is where he and I first met. Where, not very long afterwards, my first son was conceived.’ She laughed, a sound of such happy remembered joy that it touched Joanna’s heart.

     ‘Will you go on to him now?’ she asked.

     Helewise hesitated. ‘I – a part of me is so tired and in such distress that I long to lie in his arms again and find my comfort in him, as once I did.’

     ‘But?’ Joanna prompted. She knew there was a but; there usually was.

     ‘But I feel that my road in this earth—’ She stopped, turning puzzled eyes to Joanna. ‘
Are
we still within this earth?’

     Joanna smiled. ‘Our bodies certainly are. As for our spirits . . .’ She shrugged.

     Helewise appeared to accept that. ‘My road on earth goes on,’ she said simply. ‘I can see it sometimes if I try
not
to look, if you see what I mean.’

     ‘I do,’ Joanna assured her. ‘What is on your road? Can you see?’

     Helewise broke into a lovely smile. ‘Oh, very many things! My son and his wife are there . . . my grandson Timus . . . Oh! And a baby girl too and she’s called Little Helewise! Isn’t that delightful? And . . . yes, there’s my younger son and his skin is so deeply tanned – whatever has he been doing? There is a look about him that I . . . And there’s—
Oh!
’ The last vision, whatever it was, affected her very much.

     ‘What is it?’

     But Helewise turned to her, still with that happy smile, and said, ‘I will not tell you, if you don’t mind.’

     Joanna could have been mistaken but she thought there was a slight emphasis on
you
; as if Helewise were saying, anyone else I might tell, but not you.

     ‘What is your decision?’ Joanna asked. ‘Will you go on or will you let me help you return?’

     For a long time Helewise did not speak. She sat there smiling, face turned up to the sun so that brightness shone on her,
from
her; as if some wonderful, blessed light beamed down and she felt its power and its benevolence.

     Eventually she said simply, ‘I would like to go back, please.’

Joanna swayed on her feet as the healing force of her people surged through her and out through her hands, extended over the Abbess, and into the dying body. The power came in waves; one at the start was so strong that she felt as if a great jolt had flowed through her, jerking her like a puppet dancing on its strings.

     She heard them; sometimes she thought she could see them. They chanted – quietly, hypnotically, continuously – and they wore white. In their hands they held rods tipped with quartz that looked very like her own. But the mighty strength that came pulsing out from them was as far removed from anything she had yet achieved as a puddle is from an ocean.

     Humbly, more aware than ever in her life of her smallness and her unimportance, Joanna stood and let them use her until they were done.

Much later – or was it only a matter of moments? – Joanna opened her eyes. Something had woken her; listening, she heard quiet sounds from the ward beyond the curtain – booted feet on the floor; the sound of a cot being dragged across the stone; hushed voices – and she wondered absently whether yet another victim had just been brought in.

     She was bone weary, so exhausted that she could barely stand. The agonising headache that followed trance work was just beginning; like the distant sound of a hammer on an anvil, the thumping pain was faint as yet, although it carried within it the full menace of what it would soon become.

     Instantly aware of her patient, she fell to her knees beside the still, pale figure in the bed, reaching out her hand to touch the one that lay like a marble sculpture on the bedcovers.

     The Abbess was breathing deeply. She was relaxed and her fever had gone down.

     Joanna felt a painfully dry sob break from her. Pressing her face into the bed, she suppressed it. Then, looking up at the Abbess’s face, she whispered, ‘I think you chose right, Helewise. Welcome back.’