Sorrow Without End (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-six

“My lady, I am grateful you came so quickly.” Even in the wavering dark shadows of the hall, the young guard’s long face was pale.

“Is our brother ill?” Eleanor hid her hands in her sleeves so the man would not see them tremble.

“I do not think so, my lady, but he did ask with some urgency to speak with you.” The guard’s voice betrayed his nervousness. “Cuthbert left me with orders to watch Brother Thomas with kindness, but I did not know whether I should ask the crowner first…I did not know where to find him…if I have done wrong in calling you here….”

“You were right to call me first.” Eleanor stared at the wooden door behind which Thomas lay. “How did our brother seem when he made this urgent request?”

“
Seem
, my lady?”

“Was he anxious? Angry?”

“Neither, I think. He did beg your attendance with both calm and courtesy.”

“Yet you are troubled.”

The young man’s eyes widened with fear. “Although the good brother’s demeanor was tranquil, I have seen that kind of peace only on the faces of dead men!”

***

The cell door had opened with a loud creak, and the light of evening flooded the darker night of the cell.

Thomas looked up.

“You asked to see me, Brother?” Eleanor’s voice was gentle.

The shadows from the flickering cresset lamp played lovingly with her features, softening the iron will that Thomas often found there. In this light, her gray eyes may have been black in color but they had the softness of velvet. Earlier, when he had first returned to Tyndal, he sensed disfavor in her cold manner. Now he heard a sweetness in her tone. Once before he had chosen to trust her and he had been right. Once again, he decided to trust his instincts.

“I did, my lady, and I am grateful for your kindness in coming so quickly.” His throat was dry, and he coughed. “The time for these weak tears is done,” he continued with a stronger voice. “I would tell you the truth that caused our crowner to put me here.”

“Perhaps a priest should be called to hear you?”

“It is to you I must speak. As my prioress, you alone have a right to know the truth of this matter.”

“Nonetheless, if there is a need for confession…”

Thomas shook his head. “My lady, please be at ease. There is little to confess, although much to explain. For cert, I did not kill the man who lies in the chapel.” He took in a deep breath and waited.

“Do you know who he is?”

He exhaled. “I do not know this man at all.”

“Yet you behaved as if you did, or so I was told.”

Her gentle voice so caressed his ears that Thomas wanted to crawl like a small boy into her arms. Confessing the horrors he had suffered in prison, as he had done to the man in black before he entered the Order, should have brought him peace, but that priest’s perfunctory forgiveness had not returned any warmth to his heart. Instead, chill and pain remained there and often tore at him like carrion birds.

Thomas swallowed. Tempting though it might be, he would say no more than required. No matter how much his heart longed for human comfort, his mind must still rule. He might believe she should be told far more than she had been, but he had no right to make that decision on his own.

“He reminded me of a man I might kill,” he said slowly, “even now, were I given that chance.”

“Why?”

The quietly spoken question soothed him like a mother’s song. He would not weaken, he swore again. He must not! “The man I knew was my jailer in London.”

Eleanor said nothing.

“He was a man who loved cruelty, my lady. I was not the only one to suffer from his mercilessness.” Was she not a just woman? He must remember that, and, above all, he must stop his body from trembling. “I know it is wrong that I am unable to forgive, but surely there are sins so black that even God will not cleanse them white. If that is heretical, my lady, I will do my penance.”

“The man that lies in our chapel is not the man you hate?”

“He is not, but my hatred for the man I thought he was disrupted the balance of my humors when I saw his body.” He hesitated. “I pray that I never again see the man I believed him to be, for I fear what I might do.” Had he gone too far in what he said? Thomas bit the inside of his cheek and winced. His blood, like his memories, had a bitter taste.

“A hard admission from a man dedicated to God.”

Thomas said nothing as he listened carefully to her words repeat in his head. Nay, there was no judgement there, only a statement and an observation. From the day he had first met her, he knew she was not one with whom he would ever want to match wits. He had seen men far cleverer than he severely bested. Despite his trust in her sense of justice, he still felt like a man caught up in night terrors, waiting for an unspeakable horror to enter the room from which he had no escape.

“Should I know what cruelties he committed? Indeed, as your prioress, I must. Many of us may fail to forgive another, as we are required to do by God, but few would so willingly violate the laws against murder, one of the most precious commandments given to Moses in that desert land.”

Could this woman, convent-bred as she was, ever understand the depth of his hate? Could any woman, who had chosen to reject all human passions, ever comprehend their extremes? Surely his iron prioress had never felt the power of love so joined to lust that rejection tore the heart out and left a mortal longing for death. Surely no one had ever so humiliated her, as he had been for one frail act of loving, that she would want to kill the perpetrator.

He shuddered, then realized she was still waiting for him to speak. He must choose his words with care and hope they were enough to gain his freedom while hiding his soul’s rawest wounds. “He let a man die of starvation, who could not bribe him,” he said, “then taunted him by placing a piece of maggot-ridden bread just outside his reach.”

“And how did you know this?”

“I shared the cell with the pitiful wretch and watched him die.” In the dim light, he saw her start.

“You could do nothing? Forgive me, Brother, for I have no wish to be cruel but I am naïve in like matters…”

“Few know of these things, my lady, and fewer still care to ask. For your questions, I do bless you. No, I could do nothing. Although I had my daily crumbs, he forced them into my mouth so I could not share even if I had been willing.” Stop there, Thomas shouted to himself. Stop there!

“Then you had food…”

“For a price.” He had gone too far. He had lost the battle over his heart.

“Surely, if you had the money for food, you had influence…”

“Neither influence nor money, my lady.”

“Then…”

Thomas shut his eyes as he felt himself begin to sweat. Could he find words with enough of the truth but not so much that she would ask for more? “That I was fed while the poor wretch watched was part of my torture as well as his. I can never forgive the jailer for starving the man, and I will never forgive him for making me a part of the foul deed.”

The silence in the room grew so heavy that Thomas gasped for breath. The blood pounded like ocean waves in his ears. He must not faint. Not now. Thomas slid to his straw bed as if weighed down with the chains he had worn in that London prison.

“You could not tell our crowner this?”

Thomas wiped the stinging sweat out of his eyes. “The Church chose to forgive me my past sins for reasons best known to God. In truth, my lady, I did not believe I could share this unique mercy with any man whose allegiance is to a secular lord, even though I call this man
friend
.” He forced himself to look at the woman standing before him.

She seemed to study him for a long time in the gray light before saying, “I understand.”

Had he won? If not, he was too feeble to fight his own weaknesses any longer.

“Brother, I must ask you one question, to which I demand a truthful response.”

“And thus shall I answer you.”

“Did you commit any act of violence, treason, or cruelty that led to your imprisonment?”

He took a breath. There had been only tenderness in his passion. As for treason, he saw no treachery in the love of one loyal subject of the king for another. What cruelty had he committed when Giles came willingly into his arms? “God may strike me if I lie, my lady,” he said firmly. “I committed none of those acts.”

“Then I require one promise from you.”

Thomas wanted to cry from the relief that now flooded through him. All he could do was nod.

“Should you ever meet this jailer, you will not touch one hair on his body but will inform me immediately. In exchange,” her tone dropped deep with fury, “I swear that I shall make sure he suffers in kind for the sins he has committed.”

Thomas fell to his knees, shaking with sobs. “My lady, I do promise it. Most willingly do I promise!”

Eleanor called for the guard. As he unlocked the door to step inside, she laid her hand on the rough wood and thrust it open.

“By my order, Brother Thomas shall now be freed,” she said. “Should any agent of secular justice dispute this, send him to me for I will be pleased to remind him that the law of God, not the king, rules at Tyndal Priory.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

Were there any justice on earth, Ralf decided, he would be at the inn, getting roaring drunk, with buxom Signy wiggling on his lap and warming his very cold manhood. Instead, he was still at Tyndal, and his manhood was not the only part of him that was both chilled and shriveled.

The incident with Sir Maurice had brought lay brothers racing to the chapel from all over the hospital. It had taken four to wrestle the man to the ground as he swung wildly at everyone with painful results. Although he had no weapon but his hands, he did wield them with the strength of ten demons until he finally collapsed, weeping like a baby. As the knight was led back to his bed, Brother Beorn’s rebuke was harsh enough, but Walter’s silent look was filled with mortal hatred.

Surely that corpse was cursed. From the moment of its discovery, Ralf concluded, he had suffered only grief. Brother Andrew had made him feel the fool when he voiced his suspicion that an Assassin could be loose in Tyndal. The porter’s teasing was bad enough, but the crowner’s ever-weeping love wound for Sister Anne had reopened as soon as he saw her. As if the Devil was mocking him, Ralf was then seized with lust for Tostig’s young sister and had capped his betrayals by imprisoning a friend. Like the fool he might well be, he had ignored Walter’s warning, just because the man annoyed him, and freed whatever demons had settled in Sir Maurice’s soul. Worst of all, he had failed to find the killer. In sum, Ralf felt like an apple picked in autumn but not eaten until the Lenten season. He cursed, but even that did nothing to improve his mood.

It was dark, and he had yet to talk to Sister Anne about the corpse. Although he dreaded facing her after the upbraiding she had given him, he needed her observations on the body, a discussion interrupted earlier by Thomas’ fainting fit. Afterward, he decided, he would go to the inn for some good ale. Even if he did not find a wench willing to bed with him, getting drunk was a fine idea.

As he strode through the hospital seeking the sub-infirmarian, he looked over at the screened cells ranged against the wall. A tall, cowled figure stood near the one assigned to the dancing madman.

Had Brother Thomas been released?

Ralf stopped, started toward the man, then hesitated. Nay, he said to himself, no one would have done so without his permission. Despite his protestations, Brother Beorn must have found someone to keep the fellow in bed.

He continued on his way and turned toward the chapel. “’S blood!” Ralf muttered. “Must I be reminded of Thomas?” He wanted to believe that the monk was innocent of any knowledge or involvement in the killing, but he could not ignore signs that suggested guilt of some kind.

Thomas was not so womanish that he would sweat profusely, then pass out when he saw a corpse. The man had seen too much death, violent and natural, since his arrival at Tyndal and had shown only fortitude and courage. Something about this death had troubled the monk, and that Ralf could not set aside. Nonetheless, he hoped whatever his friend was hiding would be some minor thing. This was one of the few times he regretted being a crowner, but he was King Henry’s man and had an obligation to put justice over personal feelings.

Taking Thomas into custody presented another problem. Those in the Church would certainly object to a secular man doing so with one of their own. With any luck, however, Ralf hoped he’d have found the killer, freed the monk, and made the issue as dead as the corpse in the chapel by the time the men of high church rank found out.

On the other side of that argument, his brother might be satisfied that he had taken the action, leaving him alone to handle matters in the future without interference. Ralf snorted. How odd that he might have pleased his brother for once. In this one thing, however, they had always agreed. Monks and clerics should suffer secular justice when they committed worldly crimes. Their other brother, a man of rising religious rank, would vigorously disagree that the Church had always been far too lenient with its own. “For brothers, we are most certainly a contrary lot,” he said aloud.

Yet he could not have put Thomas into custody without Prioress Eleanor’s concurrence. If the sheriff did leave him in peace to pursue this murderer, Ralf had her to thank. Whatever his feelings about religious and secular jurisdiction, he would never offend this woman, whom he did respect, to satisfy his brother, whom he did not. That the prioress had seen his plight and taken his side put him into her debt a second time in as many years. With anyone else, he would have feared what form reparation might take. With Prioress Eleanor, he had confidence that any repayment would be fair.

Jurisdictional debates, favors owed, and a crowner’s duty all faded in the glare of one specific worry: the future of his relationship with Thomas. Perhaps he had had no choice but to put him in custody, but he hated doing so. If Thomas was found innocent of any involvement when the killer was found, Ralf knew that nothing might heal the wound he had inflicted on the man’s honor. In imprisoning the monk, he might well have lost a friendship he had grown to value. Ralf cursed, then kicked at something in his path.

The hospital cat hissed and ran.

“Satan’s balls! Can I do nothing right?”

“Occasionally, Ralf. Occasionally.”

Ralf spun around. Sister Anne stood just behind him. Her smile warmed him more than ale ever could. “I kicked the cat,” he mumbled, gesturing at the fleeing feline.

“She must like you, else you’d be missing a chunk of your foot. Did you come to see your corpse?”

He bit his tongue before he blurted out that the corpse could rot for all he cared and that he had come to see her. “Aye, and to hear your thoughts on it,” he said aloud.

“Come then.”

The crowner followed her through the chapel’s gated entrance. Why was it, Ralf wondered, that he could only talk with her over a dead body?

***

They stood close to each other as Anne drew the cover back over the swelling body. “Not a happy death,” she said.

“You are sure that he was gutted first?”

“You saw that mark on the back of his head, Ralf. Either he was hit from behind or he may have fallen backward, striking his head as he did. The skin is broken but I could detect no break in the skull. To bruise so, he was most likely alive when his belly was slashed open but I cannot tell how conscious he was.”

“He could have bumped his head when he fell. The ground by the side of the road was rocky enough, but he was face down when we found him.” He pointed to the man’s chest. “What of the knife? What make you of that? Was he stabbed there first?”

“After death, I think. There was little bleeding about the wound, and I do not think that knife you found was the same blade that spilled his guts.”

“My suspicion as well, but tell me how you came by that conclusion.”

“Look at the blade.” She handed it to him, hilt first. “It is so dull I could not cut myself if I tried. Another knife had to have been used. This one is more of an ornament than a weapon.”

“Then why…?”

“A message of some sort? I do not know.” She gestured at the body. “And this crusader has no more to tell me about it.”

“Brother Andrew thinks that the knife may have come from Outremer.”

“The script is Arabic. I believe our porter is correct, Ralf.”

He looked at her with amazement. No wonder he had never stopped loving the woman. After all these years, she could still surprise him. “You recognize the design on the blade?” he asked.

“We have had many crusaders come through Tyndal of late, most with things they have brought back to remind them of their days in Outremer. This is not the first time I have seen this script.”

He fell silent, lost in adoring fascination as her brown eyes changed shade like shadows in the flickering candlelight. He coughed and looked down. “Aye?”

“We have also heard many tales from returning soldiers about a sect whose leader sends men to kill, men who have no regard for their own lives. Assassins, I believe they are called. Had your corpse been a crusader of rank, I might have suspected that such a person had slipped into England to wreak vengeance for some perceived wrong. This soldier is of low birth, as Cuthbert did tell me. Surely this Old Man of the Mountain, as I’ve been told their leader is named, would not bother with a poor man.”

“Might he not do so to spread fear amongst us? Might not this murder be an attempt to weaken our resolve in the Holy Land?”

“Only a fool unleashes the storm winds of fear, Ralf. Since no man has the power to direct how they may blow, they could just as easily destroy those who hope most to benefit from them, although the innocent always suffer long before that happens. Nay, from the tales I have heard, the Old Man of the Mountain prefers to send his minions against the powerful only.”

Although he might disagree with her about the effectiveness of fear, at least Anne had not dismissed his concern about the Assassins as casually as Brother Andrew. “Then I must still ask why this corpse was stabbed with an ornamental knife from the Holy Land after he was butchered like a wild boar for the table.”

Anne put one hand on her hip. “Answer that, Ralf, and you have your killer for cert.”