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has had many years’ experience of new mothers,’ she said, ‘and has what can only be a divinely bestowed ability to gain a young woman’s confidence. She did not tell me the full story that Rohaise told her, but she assured me that what she did pass on formed the most important elements. Oh, Sir Josse, poor Rohaise! She has not smiled since Timus was six weeks old!’
         ‘Why? What happened?’
         It was an obvious question but had no clear answer. ‘Rohaise cannot say. She began to feel anxious about almost every facet of the baby’s well-being, doubting her own ability to protect him, to look after him, to love him, in short to mother him adequately. She started to believe that her milk would poison him and, despite the fact that she had milk in plenty and had previously been enjoying feeding him, she engaged a wet nurse and bound up her breasts to stop the milk.’
         ‘That is not unusual, is it?’ Josse asked.
         ‘No, not at all. It is Rohaise’s reason for her action that is unusual. And that isn’t all,’ she hurried on. ‘Sister Euphemia could get little more out of her, for she appears highly suspicious of us, as if she fears we are testing her fitness to be a mother. But what she did say before she fell back into her silence – she hardly speaks at all, Sir Josse! – was that she is in constant terror of someone coming to take Timus away from her.’
         ‘Has she any reason to think they will?’
         ‘I do not know. I can’t imagine that any decent soul would make such a threat but I will ask my son. He is with Rohaise at the moment, sitting beside her with Timus on his lap watching her as she sleeps, but I have asked him to come along to meet you presently.’
         ‘I look forward to that meeting with pleasure.’ He spoke courteously but he was frowning, apparently thinking hard. Then he said, ‘Does Sister Euphemia recognise the symptoms of whatever it is that affects Rohaise?’
         Helewise felt herself smile. ‘Yes. I am wrong, I’m sure, to take such comfort in her words, for in truth she urged me not to and said there was no certainty that she guesses aright. But she did admit that she had observed such irrational fears and such ongoing lowness of spirit in other mothers.’
         ‘Did those other mothers recover their serenity?’
         Trust Josse, she thought, to put the arrow in the bull’s eye. ‘Sometimes,’ she said. It was the very word that Sister Euphemia had used.
         As if he too found it unpromising, Josse just said, ‘Oh.’ Then, after a pause, he said, ‘In summary, then, my lady, your son has brought his wife here to Hawkenlye because she is unwell.’ He hesitated, as though not sure how best to speak his thoughts. Then he went on, ‘Forgive me if I speak too bluntly, my lady, but is it, would you say, Hawkenlye’s great reputation as a centre of healing that draws him rather than the identity of the person who is its Abbess?’
         It was a roundabout way of asking something that she had already asked herself. Modesty ordered that she meekly agree with him and say, Oh, of course it’s because of our healers, he didn’t come here with any wish to see me! But modesty had never been her greatest strength and when, as in this case, it fought with maternal emotion, there could only be one winner.
         Staring down at her hands, lying still and folded in her lap, she said, ‘He was calling for me, Josse. I heard him in my dreams and I was so very troubled because hearing my son’s voice, even after so many years, took me straight back to my previous life. I felt so wretched when I could not concentrate on those things that make up my present existence, but I could not help myself. I’m a nun!’ she said in an angry hiss. ‘I’m Abbess here and all these people depend on me! I’ve no business returning to the sentiments of my past, it is surely wrong!’
         Apparently ignoring her