Fortune Like the Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

scenes. Had Richard wanted a public investigation, he wouldn’t have given the task to an outsider like Josse, he’d have sent word to the Clares to sort it out.
    Josse put down his empty mug and got to his feet, nodding a goodnight to the few remaining drinkers. Climbing up to his room, he was relieved to find that the two other cots remained empty. He pulled off his boots and stripped off his clothes, slipping naked into bed and pulling up the light cover.
    Then he blew out the lamp and closed his eyes.
    He knew what he was going to do in the morning. He would ride up on to the ridge and locate Hawkenlye Abbey. One of the convent’s nuns had been murdered, and he was ready, now, to go to the scene of the crime.
    The men he had talked with and listened to that night had, although he was sure they didn’t realise it, raised a number of questions, for which their hasty and simplistic version of what must have happened hadn’t supplied answers. Josse let the questions float in his head for some minutes, turning them over, conjecturing a few possible solutions.
    But it was too soon – far too soon – for solutions.
    Deliberately emptying his mind, he turned over and was very soon falling asleep.

Chapter Three
    The dead nun was named Gunnora. Her body had been taken back to Hawkenlye Abbey, and the infirmarer had done her best to disguise how she had died. With the wimple back in place, the dreadful slit throat was no longer visible, but it would have taken greater skill than the infirmarer possessed to do anything about the dead woman’s terrified expression.
    Abbess Helewise, emerging from the abbey church after her third session of kneeling in vigil beside the cadaver, wished the dead girl’s family would hurry up and send word as to what should be done with the body. The coffin lid had been sealed now – thankfully – but, in this hot weather, the whole church, indeed the whole abbey, seemed to be corrupted with the stench of death.
    It is not, Helewise said firmly to herself as she crossed the courtyard with brisk steps, good for morale. I shall have to do something about it.
    It was all very well treating a grieving family with sympathetic tact – always assuming they were grieving, which was, Helewise had concluded, by no means certain. She had detected some strange attitudes there, in her dealings with them over Gunnora’s admission to the convent. I have refrained from pressing them for a decision, Helewise thought, for possibly they themselves, in shock at this sudden death, do not yet know what they want to do. Whether it would be best to take their daughter home or leave her here with her sisters in God.
    But there were others to consider. Helewise had a convent of living nuns in her charge, not to mention the monks in their nearby establishment and all those unfortunates of various stations who, for whatever reason, were temporarily accommodated at Hawkenlye, and she could not go on indefinitely allowing the very air they all breathed to be corrupted by the dead. And, when one looked at it practically – Helewise was very good at looking at things practically – the sooner Gunnora was decently buried, the sooner everyone could get over the horror of her murder and proceed with ordinary life.
    Helewise ducked her head and left the bright sunshine of the courtyard, crossing the shady cloister and entering through the door in the corner that led to the small room where she conducted the business of the convent. Of Hawkenlye Abbey in its entirety, for she was not only the superior of her nuns, but also of the small group of monks who lived beside the holy spring a quarter of a mile away, down in the little valley beneath the convent.
    She had held the post now for five years. She knew she suited the Abbey – false modesty was not one of Helewise’s character traits – and she also knew that the Abbey suited her.
    Frowning, she sat down at the long oak table which, at considerable effort and cost, she