The Rose of the World Read Free

man had glared at her, and then his face had twisted into an unpleasant sneer. ‘Your church is closed, Abbess Caliste,’ he said. ‘Nobody will come here any more. As to you and your community . . .’ He had looked round at the assembled monks and nuns, all of them thin, clad in broken sandals and patched, threadbare habits, and shivering in the chilly October air.
    Leaving his sentence unfinished, he had turned back to Caliste and shrugged. Then he and his men had ridden away.
    She looked down at her notes, trying yet again to reconcile the tiny allowance with the minimum she knew she needed to keep the abbey alive. It could not be done. Resisting the overriding urge to drop her head on her hands and howl – a waste of time that would be – she closed her eyes, folded her hands together and forced her weary, desperate mind to think.
    So many people depended on her, one way or another. She had to find a way to help them. She sat up straight, squared her shoulders and went back to her calculations.
    The House in the Woods had a new name: it was officially called Hawkenlye Manor. Few people referred to it in that way. The country people had long memories, and they did not like change. The House in the Woods had been good enough for their parents and their grandparents – probably their great-grandparents too – so why go altering it?
    On that late October day, Josse was returning home after a long ride. His old horse Horace had finally died, at an age so advanced that Josse could no longer calculate it, and now he rode a lighter horse that his young son Geoffroi had insisted be called Alfred. Josse and his family had known Alfred from when he was newborn, for he was descended from a golden mare called Honey who had once belonged to Geoffroi’s mother, Joanna. Alfred had inherited his grand-dam’s golden coat, but his dark mane and the luxuriously long tail were all his own.
    As was his intractable temperament; Josse had been riding him for two years now, but his manners still left quite a lot to be desired. Today’s excursion had been to remind Alfred who was in control, and Josse was feeling sore and tired. He was also feeling maudlin, for almost without his volition he had found himself riding past the track in the forest that led off to the hut where Joanna had lived.
    She had been gone for more than ten years now, but he still missed her. She was the mother of his two children, Meggie and Geoffroi, and also of his adopted son, Ninian. Her death – if, indeed, she really was dead – had left a hole in his life that had never been filled. That line of thought, too, made him sad.
    Helewise had come to live at the House in the Woods. After waiting for her for so many years, finally she was there, under his very roof. She had arrived back in June – Good Lord , he thought, was it only four months ago? – and to begin with he had been so overjoyed that he had not noticed that all was not as he had hoped. She might have left the abbey, renounced her vows and become an ordinary woman, but the problem was – or so he saw it – that in her heart she was still a nun.
    It’s only to be expected, he told himself as he rode along. She wasn’t just a nun, she was an abbess, and of a great foundation at that. Nobody can be expected to leave the religious life and all that it entailed behind in a few months!
    It was some five years since Helewise had actually lived within the abbey. Soon after the death of Queen Eleanor back in 1202, Helewise had begun to implement the plans which had long been in her mind. She had quit Hawkenlye in stages, the first one being to stand down as abbess, witness the election and the installation of Caliste as her successor, and then go to live in the tiny little cell adjoining the new chapel on the edge of the forest. The chapel was dedicated to St Edmund and had been built on the orders of Eleanor in memory of Richard, the