Free Girl In A Red Tunic by Alys Clare Page A

casual glance, Hawkenlye Abbey maintained its air of calm, each day slowly unfolding to revolve around the seven offices that punctuated the hours from dawn until dusk. But the calm was an illusion and maintained entirely by the discreet and silent hard work that went on without ceasing beneath the surface.
         The cold took a grip like a wolf’s teeth on the bones of a carcass. Helewise, observing the additional burden which this imposed on both her nuns and monks and on the wider community centred around the Abbey, ordered that fires be lit wherever there was – or could be contrived – a safe hearth in which to set them. The Abbey had a vast store of wood, gleaned by the industrious lay brothers over successive seasons from natural wastage in the huge forest right on their doorstep. Vowed as they were to poverty, the devout souls of Hawkenlye accepted shivering through the winter as part of the gift they offered to God. However, their Abbess was sensible as well as devout and appreciated that her nuns and monks would be little use to those they were there to help if they were all so cold that they could not function.
         Word spread, as word always does, that there was comfort to be had at Hawkenlye for those who went asking and there was an abrupt increase in the numbers who came to seek the various sorts of solace that the Abbey offered. Pilgrims arrived at the shrine in the Vale and at times the mood down there was more like a holiday than a self-denying and arduous experience for the sake of the visitors’ souls, with excited children slithering across the frozen pond and adults collecting around the braziers swapping tales of hardship as they drank their hot, thin soup. But Helewise turned a blind eye and suggested to Brother Firmin that he do the same. Her sanction was more than enough for the soft-hearted old monk, whose instinct all along had been to welcome the cold and the hungry in the true spirit of his master Jesus, even if it was patently obvious that, at this time anyway, the cold and the hungry had come for food and warmth rather than for the precious holy water so dear to Brother Firmin’s heart.
         Up at the Abbey, people began arriving at the infirmary with a variety of complaints ranging from coughs, colds and chills to damaged limbs caused by falls on icy paths. But the biggest problem was bellies that ached because there was nothing in them and hadn’t been for days. Hungry people, as the infirmarer observed with compassionate anger, all too readily fell victim to any ailment that tried to seek them out.
         Josse gave up his comfortable berth in the infirmary and moved to his usual lodgings down with the monks in the Vale, where he was welcomed like a long-lost brother and enjoyed a morning of informative gossip with several of his particular friends there. Brother Saul, working like three men to make room for all the visitors, was heard to mutter that God must have had His holy ear cocked Saul’s way because hadn’t Saul been praying as hard as he knew how for an extra pair of hands, particularly ones that belonged to someone as strong, capable and willing as Sir Josse?
         Rohaise seemed to be responding to Sister Euphemia’s dedicated attempts to help her, although whether it was the herbal remedies or the infirmarer’s store of wisdom and loving-kindness that was making her better it was impossible to say. But, away from one, at least, of the dark spectres that she had believed were stalking her back home at the Old Manor, her spirits lifted considerably and, as her terrors receded, her intelligence and practical good sense were able to come to the fore. Like Josse, she did not need prompting to realise that there were no beds now in the infirmary for the undeserving; she vacated her little recess, moved her few belongings to the guest room where Leofgar and Timus had been put up and announced to Sister Euphemia that she would really like to help and what could