Fortune Like the Moon by Alys Clare Read Free Book Online Page A

We serve the community in other ways.’
    ‘As I was escorted in, I saw a sister helping a man to accustom himself to walking with a crutch,’ Josse said. ‘And I could be wrong, but I thought I heard a baby cry.’
    An observant man, this Josse d’Acquin, Helewise thought, to have noticed so much in the brief seconds it would have taken him to cross from the gates to the cloister. ‘You were not wrong. We run a hospital here, in the long wing beside the church. Sister Beata, whom you saw, has been caring for a poacher who lost his foot in a man trap. We also have a wing for the care and rehabilitation of penitential whores. It would perhaps surprise you, sir, to know how many former harlots are redeemed by motherhood into the wish for a purer life.’
    ‘I am happy to hear it.’ He appeared to have detected a reproof in her tone, which she had not intended, for he went on, ‘I did not wish to sound as if I were prying, Abbess Helewise, when I mentioned the baby – it was merely that the sound surprised me.’ In a convent, hung unsaid on the air.
    ‘Please, there is no need for explanations.’ She smiled at him again, this time more genuinely. ‘One of the girls in our care gave birth last week. We, too, are still sometimes taken aback at the sweet sounds of her baby.’
    ‘A hospital and a reformatory,’ he said, visibly relaxing now. ‘You have much work here at Hawkenlye.’
    More than you think, she thought. Would it appear prideful to tell him the rest? Perhaps. But then she would be speaking for her sisters, who did the hard work. Who deserved recognition. ‘We also run a retirement home for aged and infirm monks and nuns, and a small leper hospital.’ He reacted to the last, as people inevitably did, and she said what she always said by way of reassurance. ‘Do not be alarmed, sir. The leper house is isolated from the community, and we are fortuante in that three of our sisters elected of their own free will to be enclosed with the sick. They, and those of their charges who are able, join in with the spiritual life of the community by way of a closed-off passage leading to a separate chapel, which backs on to a side aisle of the church. You are no more in danger of contagion here than in the world at large, possibly less so, since our nursing sisters are expert at detecting the early symptoms of leprosy. If they have the least suspicion, the patient is put in a separate holding ward until—’ No. No need to go into the clinical details. ‘Well, until the sisters are sure.’
    He was shaking his head, had been doing so for the last few seconds of her speech. ‘Abbess, you misunderstand. My response to what you were telling me was not one of fear or horror.’ He paused, then amended, ‘Not entirely so, anyway. I cannot claim to be any more immune to the dread of the sickness than the next man. But actually what was passing through my mind was what a heavy burden of work you and your sisters bear. What a responsibility is yours.’
    She stared hard at him, but could detect no insincerity, no attempt to flatter her, win her over. ‘My nuns and I are greatly helped by the lay brothers, who live with the monks down beside the shrine,’ she said. Credit where it was due. ‘They are good men. Unlearned, but strong and willing. They remove from us the need to weary ourselves with hard labour.’
    ‘I did not know about them,’ Josse said. ‘I was only told of the monks, who care, I believe, for the spring where the holy water flows.’
    ‘Indeed they do.’ She was careful to keep her tone neutral. No need to reveal to this sharp-eyed visitor that one of her most persistent problems was with the fifteen monks in the vale, who appeared to think that living so close to Our Lady’s blessed shrine gave them an aura of holiness that everyone else ought to revere. A holiness that, so they seemed to believe, gave them immunity from hard work. They were, in Brother Firmin’s own words, the Marys,