The Winter King (12 page)

Symon
, Josse thought.
We know that about him: his given name. He is cousin to the man found at the sanctuary, and both were seeking Lord Wimarc at Wealdsend. Everything else remains to be discovered.

He sighed. Weary as he was, just then the task ahead was more than he felt able to contemplate. ‘Ninian and I will take him to Hawkenlye Abbey in the morning,’ he said, putting his arm round Meggie. ‘We can do no more for him tonight.’

Back inside the house, Meggie kissed him and slipped away to her bed. He wandered back to his chair by the hearth, accepting the mug of wine from Helewise with a murmur of thanks.

‘Who were those poor young men?’ she asked, although he knew she did not expect an answer. ‘Why were they looking for Lord Wimarc?’

‘I have no idea,’ Josse said wearily. He forced his tired mind to think. ‘I’m wondering why they ended up where they did, one at the sanctuary and this one – Symon – in the forest to the south of the abbey.’ He turned to meet Helewise’s anxious face. ‘I spoke today to the nun who saw them at Hawkenlye, and she repeated the directions for Wealdsend that she gave them. Why, I wonder, did they not follow those directions? Or, if they did, who made sure that their bodies were found elsewhere?’

‘It’s almost as if …’ Helewise began.

‘What?’

She shook her head. ‘Oh – nothing.’

‘Nobody visits Lord Robert Wimarc,’ Josse said slowly, breaking a brief silence. ‘He does not encourage it, and they say he keeps his fences high and his gates firmly barred.’

‘He does not venture out, either,’ Helewise added. ‘I have only once encountered him outside his walls – when he came to the abbey, as I told you – and I’ve never heard of anyone having seen him out in the world since then. He is,’ she added with a sigh, ‘a veritable hermit.’

‘Yet two young, handsome, wealthy young men were asking how to find him,’ Josse said, frowning. ‘Why?’

‘There’s something else.’ Helewise’s tone was sombre. ‘Whatever their reason – whatever their business with Lord Wimarc – someone went to extreme measures to make sure they did not reach him.’

M
eggie was awakened the next morning by Tilly, bending over her as she lay huddled beneath the bedclothes, shaking her by the shoulder and hissing, ‘You’ve got to wake up, miss! There’s someone here come to fetch you because they need your help.’

As soon as Tilly was sure that Meggie would not relapse into her warm bed and go back to sleep, she hurried away. Meggie forced herself out of her snug cocoon and, cracking a thin film of ice in the bowl of water beside the bed, splashed her face, neck, wrists and hands. It was the most effective way she knew to wake yourself up when you’d rather be asleep.

Tidily dressed, her hair arranged neatly, she made her way into the hall. It was quite common for people to seek her out and beg her help, for her reputation as a healer was spreading among those who lived on the forest borders. However, she was quite surprised to see who was waiting for her, warming hands pale with cold before the fire in the hearth.

It was a nun, clad in black with a white veil: a novice.

‘I’m Meggie,’ she said, striding towards the nun. ‘How can I help?’

The nun spun round, revealing a long, plain face smooth with youth. The girl broke into a smile, the parted lips showing large teeth with a gap in the middle. The resemblance to an amiable horse was unfortunate, and Meggie drove the image from her mind.

‘I’m Sister Maria,’ said the novice. ‘They sent me from Hawkenlye to fetch you. No!’ Her face flushed, and she threw up her hands to hide the flaming cheeks. ‘I mean, they sent me to
ask
you if you’d come to the abbey, my lady, as there’s a patient that Sister Liese – she’s the infirmarer – is worried about, and she reckons you can help.’

The nun had uttered her request without drawing breath, very fast, and now she was panting slightly. Meggie couldn’t suppress a chuckle. She reached out for the novice’s hand, giving it a squeeze.

‘I’m not
my lady
,’ she said. ‘I’m just Meggie. And of course I’ll come with you. First, and unless it’s a matter of life or death, warm yourself a little longer.’ She paused, studying the novice with a professional eye. ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.

Sister Maria’s eyes widened at the question, and Meggie had her answer. But, loyal to her abbey, and presumably not wanting to give the impression that she didn’t get enough to eat, the novice said, ‘I supped last night, thank you, my – er, Meggie.’

Meggie smiled. ‘I’m sure you did, but that wasn’t what I asked. Tilly – she’s the one who admitted you – will be cooking, I’m sure, since there’s always people to feed around here. Come on – we’ll go into the kitchen and see what we can scrounge.’

A little later, leaving word with Tilly to tell Josse where she was going – nobody else seemed to be about – Meggie and the novice set out for Hawkenlye Abbey, accompanied by the sturdy young lay brother who had escorted the nun on her mission. Sister Maria had saved some of her food to give him, and he accepted it with an eager smile. The novice rode a belligerent-looking mule, and Meggie felt quite guilty saddling up Eloise’s horse, which seemed particularly fine in comparison. In addition, the grey mare was full of lively energy, her dark, intelligent eyes wide with curiosity as she looked with interest at the world around her. Eloise had asked Meggie to ride her out whenever she could, since Eloise, her hands full with Inana, didn’t have the time or the inclination, but Meggie had rarely found the time.

She sensed that the novice and the young lay brother felt slightly awed by her presence and, after a few not very successful attempts to engage them in conversation, she let them ride a little ahead of her, slipping in behind. After a while, she heard them talking quietly to each other. Happily, she retreated into her own thoughts.

She had very much wanted to confide in her father what she had discovered concerning Benedict de Vitré’s death. Nearly two days had passed now, and still she hadn’t found an opportunity. The night she had returned from Medley Hall, with that alarming conversation with Sabin still echoing loud in her head, she had waited up for Josse, wanting above all else to confide in him, and ask him what she should do. But when he had finally come in, fresh from dealing with that gruesome death up at the sanctuary and clearly worried at having left Helewise there by herself with the dead man, she just couldn’t bring herself to add to his anxieties. And then last night, when he’d come in dirty and exhausted after hunting all day for signs of the dead man’s companion, there had been other, more urgent matters to address. She’d taken him to view the corpse in the undercroft, sensing his distress even though he tried to conceal it from her.
He is looking careworn and old
, Meggie thought with an ache in her heart,
and what I want so much to tell him would only add to his worries
.

It was, however, no reason
not
to tell him. Straightening her shoulders, she resolved to speak to him as soon as the two of them found a moment to be alone.

She left Eloise’s mare in the abbey stables, bidding farewell to Sister Maria; the lay brother – who said, blushing, that his name was Watt – asked her to summon him when she was ready to leave, since the abbess did not allow women to travel unescorted.

Oh, these wretched times
, Meggie thought to herself as she strode off to find Abbess Caliste. While she understood the necessity for a guard, she still resented with all her being the fact that she rarely got the chance to ride out alone any more.

Abbess Caliste answered her gentle tap on the door with a warm ‘Come in!’ then greeted her with a smile. ‘Thank you so much for coming, Meggie,’ she said, coming over to give her a hug.

‘What can I do for you?’ Meggie asked, settling down on the visitors’ chair.

The abbess was silent for a few moments, clearly thinking. Then – and her words were not at all what Meggie had expected – she said, ‘Your mother, I believe, studied with the learned men of the Brocéliande; those who study sickness of the mind?’

‘Yes, she did,’ Meggie replied, her mind reeling. What could this possibly be about?

‘So I thought,’ the abbess said. ‘And you: you too have travelled in those regions. Have you also had the benefit of their teaching?’

How does she know I’ve been there?
Meggie wondered wildly. In that first moment, it seemed all but unbelievable. Then she heard a soft, low voice speak inside her head:
Remember her ancestry
.

Of course. Caliste hadn’t always been a nun. She was born to the forest people, and her twin still dwelt with them. The abbess, it seemed, had access to at least a little of the knowledge that those mysterious people usually kept to themselves.

It was not for Meggie to question the abbess’s sources, however; she had far too much respect for her to do that. And, anyway, where was the harm in telling her what she wanted to know? Meggie knew instinctively that whatever confidence she shared with Abbess Caliste was utterly safe.

‘I have visited the place of healing where they specialize in sickness of the mind, yes,’ she said softly. ‘It lies deep within the forest, hidden from outside eyes, and it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to find, unless you have a guide. It is called Folles Pensées.’ She was back there, in her imagination. She saw once more the circle of simple dwellings, made out of the local rosy granite; she felt the soft grass under her bare feet as she trod the forest path up to the holy fountain; felt the clear, bubbling water urging up against her outstretched hands as she plunged them below the rippling surface.

‘Did they teach you?’ the abbess prompted.

‘A little, yes,’ Meggie answered, still half in her dream memory. ‘What they tried to explain to me accorded with things I had already learned, so that it did not feel that I was starting right at the roots of it. It is, of course, a vast subject, and I was only there a short while. I … they explained how to reach inside another’s mind,’ she said in a rush, instinctively dropping to a whisper. ‘In order, you see, to understand what is amiss.’

The abbess nodded. ‘I have heard tell of this,’ she murmured. Then, her bright eyes fixed to Meggie’s: ‘Were you not afraid?’

Meggie grinned. ‘I was terrified. But I could see, just a little, what the aim of it was. How it could help. After that, it wasn’t so bad.’

Firmly she shut down the recollection of the poor young man she’d tried to help. How, tentatively extending her consciousness into his, she had seen such, horrifying things …

The abbess must have been aware of her momentary distress, for she gave her a little while to recover herself. Then she said, ‘Would you, Meggie, be prepared once more to attempt this reaching-out into another’s mind?’

Meggie realized that she’d known this was coming. She looked within herself.
Do I have the strength? Am I ready, perhaps, to see such abominations again?

Then she remembered who was asking for her help. Slowly she nodded. ‘I’ll try.’

And Abbess Caliste leaned close and told her all she knew about a strange old woman by the name of Lilas of Hamhurst.

Tentatively, aware that the presence of yet another stranger might be disturbing to one already in distress, Meggie followed the infirmarer’s pointing finger and approached the woman sitting on the bed at the end of the long ward. She had been placed in a recess, and the curtains had been parted sufficiently to enable her to look out. Or, more probably, Meggie reflected, to allow the nursing nuns to keep an eye on her.

Meggie went into the recess, drawing the curtains closed. She stopped just inside them, looking at the occupant of the bed with a smile. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Meggie.’

The old woman’s pale blue eyes had been staring fixedly at her throughout her approach. It was unnerving; Meggie had the feeling that Lilas saw further and deeper than most people. Meggie studied her, taking in the white hair, braided and twisted in a coil under a plain white cap, and the fine bones of the thin face. Lilas was dressed in a simple gown, of old and well worn, yet clean, fabric, in an indeterminate shade between brown and grey.

She looked exhausted and anxious, and she was far too thin.

For those reasons alone, Meggie felt her heart soften. Walking up to the bed, she gently eased Lilas’s legs over a little, making a space to sit down. ‘Is that all right?’ she asked.

‘It’s fine, lass,’ Lilas muttered. Then, frowning, she whispered, ‘Have you come to punish me?’

‘No,’ Meggie said. ‘That’s not what I’m here for. Anyway, what have you done that needs punishment?’

‘I lied,’ Lilas said with a whimper.

‘We all lie,’ Meggie said gently. ‘Personally, I don’t believe anyone who claims otherwise.’

The shadow of a smile stretched Lilas’s thin lips.

‘What was your lie about?’ Meggie asked. ‘Something big or something little?’

Lilas hesitated. Then, holding up her hands, she stretched a gap between them, widening it until she could reach no further.

Meggie laughed. ‘That big?’

Lilas nodded.

‘I’m told,’ Meggie said in a whisper, leaning closer, ‘that once you had a vision, and, enjoying the attention, you pretended to have some more. Is that it? Is that your big lie?’

‘Aye,’ Lilas croaked. Her eyes held Meggie’s, eloquent with appeal. ‘But then, while I was pretending, the true vision intruded, and I was out of control, helpless …’ She broke off, making a choking sound.

‘You must have been very frightened,’ Meggie said, taking one of the twisted, work-worn old hands in hers. ‘I know a bit about visions,’ she added confidingly. ‘I have them, too, and sometimes I deliberately induce them.’

Lilas shook her head, her expression reproving. ‘You don’t want to go doing that, my girl. That’s dangerous.’

‘I know,’ Meggie agreed. She hesitated, weighing her words, then said, ‘The abbess told me you’re scared of something beside the visions. Do you want to tell me? I really do want to help.’

Lilas was watching her closely, and Meggie saw shrewdness in her eyes. ‘A girl who can have visions sounds like a useful ally,’ she muttered and, briefly, she smiled. Then abject fear replaced the smile and, putting her mouth up to Meggie’s ear, she said, ‘They
know
about me, and what I saw. I don’t know how, but somehow they found out about the visions, and they want me to repeat them and go on repeating them, and I’m scared half to death because it’s not safe, not safe, not even here with all the nuns and that, because … because …’