The Winter King (6 page)

It was not, however, the moment to further depress poor Saul with such morbid thoughts. ‘You’ll be far more use to the abbey if you do as you’re told and stay here till you are fully well,’ he assured his old friend. ‘I am sure it won’t be long now.’

He was further reassured when the infirmarer, Sister Liese, confirmed that Saul truly was on the mend. ‘I’m only keeping him in here another day because I know full well he’ll go straight back to doing three men’s work,’ she whispered to Josse as he left, ‘and he’s not as young as he was.’

Which of us is?
Josse thought as he went to fetch Alfred. Brother Saul could not be much older than Josse; did that mean people saw Josse, too, as being on the brink of old age?

It was not a particularly welcome image.

There was a sure-fire way of recalling the happy mood of the morning: on his way home, he would make a detour and go to visit his daughter.

Meggie was enjoying a few precious days alone, in the little hut in the forest which had been her mother’s, and in which she had spent the first few years of her life.

Although she missed Jehan all the time, nevertheless it was wonderful to be back within the hut’s four stout wooden walls. It was so full of memories – of her mother, of course, and, more recently, of Jehan, for it was the place where they had met.

Stop thinking about him
, she told herself firmly. She was busy digging, turning the soil, pulling out a summer’s worth of weeds (nobody had tended the hut’s herb patch for months) and preparing the ground for the spring.
I must fetch a few sacks of chalk
, she thought. She did not know why, but the soil of the forest, consisting as it did almost entirely of leaf mould, did not nourish good growth in her herbs unless she dug in a good quantity of chalk. It had been one of the forest people who told her that, and, on the morning that he offered the advice, Meggie had experienced a sudden, vivid memory from early childhood: her own small, pudgy hands playing with a lump of chalk while Joanna dug. Exactly where Meggie was digging now.

Her back and shoulders were beginning to ache, and the faint hope that she’d had of subduing her body’s longing for Jehan by making it work like a slave seemed not to be working. She paused in her digging, wiping a hand across her sweaty brow. Those summer weeks in Brittany, deep within the secret forest of Brocéliande, just the two of them living out there alone, had been magical, and getting to know each other’s bodies, naked under the trees, had been like—

‘Meggie! Are you there?’

Hastily she dragged her thoughts away from making love on the soft green grass, pushed back her hair, straightened her robe and, with a smile of welcome, turned to greet her father.

He jumped down from his horse and came hurrying across the fresh-turned earth to put his arms round her and wrap her in a rib-creaking hug. Laughing, she hugged him back.

‘It’s lovely to be greeted so warmly, Father,’ she said, still grinning, as he released her, ‘but we saw each other only four days ago. Anybody would think it had been months!’

‘You were off carousing in Brittany for months,’ he pointed out reasonably.

‘Yes, I know, and
you
know I wasn’t carousing,’ she replied. ‘Jehan has agreed to come to England for my sake, because I don’t really want to go and live in his country, and I felt the least I could do was to accompany him while he went about severing his ties over there.’

‘Aye, my love, you explained your reasons to me before you went.’

She hesitated. There was something she wanted to tell him, but she feared it would open old wounds. She stared up into his eyes.

And, as he quite often did, he read what was at the forefront of her mind. Very softly, he said, ‘You went to the Brocéliande. I think you must have done,’ he added in a rush, ‘because I know that’s where Jehan comes from.’

‘I did,’ she agreed.

‘You know you’d been there before?’ He had turned away and she could not see his face. ‘With … with your mother and me?’

‘Yes, I know.’ She paused, thinking how to reply so as to give him a moment of remembered happiness, rather than the sudden sharp pain of lost love. ‘I’m not sure I really recognized any of the places Jehan and I went to,’ she said slowly, ‘but I had the strongest sense that it wasn’t the first time I walked under those huge, ancient trees, or lay snug on the leaves of centuries, inside the bend of a stream with the sound of the rushing water to lull me to sleep.’ She thought she heard him give a sort of gasp. ‘I felt there was something there that recognized me and welcomed me back,’ she whispered. ‘It was love, I believe; yours and my mother’s.’

She gave him a few moments. When he turned to face her again, his eyes were bright with unshed tears. ‘It was a good time,’ he said gruffly, ‘although not without considerable peril.’ Then, beginning to smile: ‘Your mother fought like a cornered bear.’

One day
, she vowed to herself,
one day when it doesn’t hurt him so much, I’ll ask him to tell me about it.

It was time for a change of subject. Slipping her arm through his, she walked him round the small clearing beside the hut, showing him what she was doing, and telling him what she was planning.

He nodded. ‘You’ll want to live here, when Jehan comes to join you?’ he asked.

‘Some of the time, yes.’ That was not strictly honest. ‘Well, most of the time, I expect.’ Quickly, before he should be hurt, she went on, ‘Jehan will need to work, and I told him about the spot beyond the old charcoal burners’ camp, where once there was a forge. There’s water there, where the stream runs down a short fall, and, of course, endless wood.’

‘It’s Hawkenlye Abbey land,’ Josse remarked.

‘Yes, it is. I’m going to see Abbess Caliste, to ask her what she thinks about having her own blacksmith on the doorstep.’

‘We could do with a forge here,’ he said.

She smiled to herself. She’d been rather hoping he’d see it that way. ‘So, if the idea is acceptable to the abbey, then Jehan will need to live close by, and I – we thought maybe we’d repair the old smithy’s cottage, and sort of divide our time between there and here. Oh, and of course we’d come often to see you all, at the House in the Woods.’

He was silent for quite a long time. Then he said, ‘I keep forgetting you’re not a girl any more.’

She guessed that was acceptance, in a way, of her right and her need to make her own life in her own home. She reached out for his hand, clasping it in both of hers. ‘I’m still your girl,’ she said softly. ‘Always will be.’

He was frowning, and she wasn’t sure if he had heard. ‘I still don’t like it that your Jehan let you come all the way back here from wherever it was you landed in England!’ he exclaimed suddenly. ‘It’s not safe on the roads nowadays for a woman on her own. He should have brought you back, before he set off on this – this – whatever it is.’

She felt the anger surge up inside her. She drew a breath, then another. She thought she heard a quiet voice in her head say:
He is your father. It is his right to be concerned for you.

She said calmly, ‘Jehan doesn’t
let
me do anything, Father. I have made him no promise of obedience, and he respects my ability to make my own decisions.’ Before he could reply, she hurried on. ‘As for not being safe on the roads, I totally agree, which is why I didn’t travel on the roads.’ His sudden intake of breath suggested he understood, but she explained anyway. ‘The route by which I travelled home, from the little port where our boat dropped us, passes largely through woodland and forest. For those who know the hidden ways, it’s easy. And I met friends along the route – so, you see, I was perfectly safe,’ she finished.

He grunted, and she decided to take it for assent.

They walked together back to where he had tethered Alfred. She sensed he was still not entirely happy, and wondered which of the things they had discussed was on his mind.
It hurts me when he’s sad
, she thought.

Acting instantly on the idea that had just popped into her head, she hurried over to her hut, checked briefly that all was in order inside, and grabbed her cloak. It was a present from Jehan, made of fine, soft wool, deep silvery-grey in colour, and the hood was lined with reddish-grey fur. Jehan had told her the fur was vair, and came from the squirrel’s thick winter coat. He also confessed that the garment wasn’t actually new, but had once belonged to his grandmother, who had missed the warmth of her native land. New or not, Meggie loved it.

She ran back to Josse. He looked at her enquiringly.

‘The sky’s clear, so it’ll be cold tonight,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got very much firewood till I have the chance to collect more. May I come back to the House in the Woods with you?’

His grin seemed to split his face.

Sabin had arrived at Josse d’Acquin’s house to be met with the distressing news that everyone was out. The glum-looking man who had given the information stood in the yard looking up at her, as if waiting for her to make the next move.

‘It’s really important!’ she said.

He seemed to consider the matter for quite a long time. ‘You’re the sheriff of Tonbridge’s wife?’

‘Yes.’ She had already told him, and surely he knew anyway?

‘You can wait within,’ he said eventually. Having made the momentous decision, he seemed to soften a little. ‘I’ll tend to your horse, Mistress. Go you on in, and I’ll get Ella to mend the fire.’

Quite soon, she was sitting in Josse’s hall, in a big carved chair that she guessed was his, with her feet in front of a blazing fire that was really too hot for the mild day and a mug of very good ale in her hand. Now, all she could do was wait.

They were good people, Josse’s household, she realized some time later. The servants had made her welcome – a woman who said to call her Tilly had brought her some cakes, and a man called Gus, whom Sabin was sure she recognized, appeared from time to time to make sure she was all right. Then the family began to return: Josse’s son, Geoffroi; Ninian and Eloise; Helewise. Each of them greeted her warmly.

None of them was the person she was so desperate to see.

When at last Josse came into the hall, he was speaking over his shoulder to someone following him in. Forgetting her manners in her huge relief, Sabin leapt up, gathered up her skirts and rushed over. Virtually ignoring Josse’s courteous welcome, she took Meggie’s hands in hers and hissed, ‘I’ve got to talk to you! I think I’ve done something
terrible
.’

‘What do you think she’s doing here?’ Josse said.

The rest of the household had retired for the night. He and Helewise were sitting beside the hearth, sharing the last of Tilly’s jug of spiced wine.

‘I have no idea,’ Helewise replied calmly. ‘To be honest, I’m not really much concerned.’

‘Not like you,’ he observed. ‘Usually you want to know every last thing about everyone’s comings and goings.’

She smiled. ‘Perhaps I’m learning to be less nosy.’

He considered that. ‘I wouldn’t say you’d ever been
nosy
.’ He glanced across at her. ‘Bossy and inclined to believe you knew best, maybe.’

‘Ah, when I used to be an abbess, yes. Now that I’m not, I no longer have to be omnipotent.’

A companionable silence fell. A log settled in the huge hearth, sending up a glitter of little sparks. ‘You did right to get Gus to ride down to Tonbridge when you discovered Sabin had turned up,’ Helewise said after a while. ‘I don’t know why,’ she went on, lowering her voice, ‘but I have the distinct feeling that, until he got your message, Gervase wouldn’t have known where his wife was.’

‘I thought that, too,’ Josse murmured back.

‘It was Meggie she was so keen to see,’ Helewise mused. ‘You weren’t here, but, without being actually rude, Sabin managed to make it perfectly clear that the rest of us were of no more use to her than the flags of the floor.’

Josse thought about that. ‘They both follow the same calling,’ he said. ‘In all likelihood, Sabin wants Meggie’s advice as a fellow healer.’

‘If so,’ Helewise said slowly, ‘then it must surely be a difficult or an important case – perhaps both – for Sabin to have come hurrying up here to seek out Meggie, without being sure she would even
be
here.’

‘You’re right,’ Josse said, frowning. ‘In fact, had I not decided, on a whim, to call and see Meggie, and had it not promised to be a cold night, Sabin’s mission would have been in vain, because Meggie would have been at the hut.’ He paused, then said, very quietly, ‘I wouldn’t dare tell even a friend such as Sabin de Gifford where Meggie’s hut is, unless Meggie told me I could.’

‘Oh, neither would I!’ Helewise agreed. ‘Goodness, I’m not even going to imagine her reaction if we did!’

They sat for a while, happily silent. Then, remembering his conversation with Abbess Caliste, Josse said, ‘A name cropped up today that is not often spoken: Lord Robert Wimarc of Wealdsend. You know of him, I believe?’

Slowly Helewise nodded. ‘Indeed. Many years ago, I even met him briefly. One of his kinsmen was treated in Hawkenlye’s infirmary – by Sister Euphemia herself – and the man must have been important to the old lord, for he rode down to the abbey to thank the nuns for their good care.’ She smiled. ‘He gave a generous donation, too.’

‘What did you think of him?’

‘Oh, Josse, we only exchanged a handful of words, and it was, as I said, a long time ago. He was stern, unsmiling, with little joy about him, yet I had the impression that he was a man of strong morality. A …’ She paused, frowning. ‘A straight man, if that makes sense?’

‘Aye, it does,’ Josse said. ‘How did he come by his manor?’

‘They say his forefather fought with the Conqueror, and, like so many, was rewarded with a house and estate that had formerly belonged to one of the conquered. There had long been a stronghold at Wealdsend,’ she went on, more fluently now as memory returned, ‘right back into the ancient past, for it is well placed, on the northern edge of the High Weald. The prudent men who originally built a dwelling place there sited it wisely, for, whilst it is itself sheltered in a fold of the hills, its tower commands a view right over the valley.’