Wine of Violence (23 page)

"She would not know a mushroom from a toadstool, my lady.
She would never be in danger of stumbling over that hidden hole to Hell."

Eleanor smiled at this little hint of pride still exposed in Sister
Matilda. "Nor has she ever done so. But tell me, sister, do you remember anything else about the demon or where you found this secret path?"

"The demon came from the earth near the bend in the stream, just below the tree whose roots were exposed by the flood two winters ago. Of the demon, I remember little other than what I have said. He was dressed much like a man, but very ragged." She hesitated. "Indeed, Satan does not provide for his minions quite as well as I had thought he would."

"For cert," Eleanor said, as she remembered the wild-haired man looking down at her as she stood by the cave entrance hidden with matting near the bend in the stream.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Thomas watched the nuns of Tyndal file out to chapter after Mass. Prioress Eleanor had not requested his attendance this morning, for which he was most grateful. He hated the inactivity of just sitting and trying to look stern over one more confession of petty vanity or inattention at prayer.

After Sister Anne had released him to normal activity, he had volunteered to work in the stables, a task he actually looked forward to. Keeping the stables clean was too much for the elder monks and had lately fallen to two younger lay brothers, but Thomas was fond of anything equine and had extended that feeling to the new donkey. He quickly proved that mucking out
this stable was satisfying exercise for just one young man, yet not
sufficiently absorbing that it cut into time needed to comfort the sick, hear confessions, and do whatever else was needed at the hospital. Much to their disgust, the two lay brothers had been quickly assigned to other duties where their diligence to the task assigned was more closely supervised.

The priory had always had a couple of horses, Brother Andrew
told him. Recently the prioress's donkey had been added, and only a few days after its arrival, a stall for a second donkey was being prepared. This beast had been purchased for whoever would accompany Prioress Eleanor on journeys abroad. Thomas smiled. The prioress was spreading humility over them all, albeit slowly and with gentleness. He liked that.

As long as he could stay active physically, Thomas was finding
his work as a priest much more satisfying than he had originally thought, the hospital especially. Taking individual confessions from the nuns might be boring but had proven less onerous than he had feared. Most of the women at Tyndal suffered but minor sins. If only they knew what real sins were, he thought grimly. Theirs were but laughable ones, although serious enough to them, he supposed. For their sakes, he listened courteously and passed out due penance with a properly somber face.

Thomas walked into the sacristy and began to change into the worn and rough robe he used to muck out stables.

On occasion, however, he did hear rumblings of deeper ills in the confession booth. One skeletally thin young novice had wailed for an hour over her unconquerable lust for food and had begged him to let her whip herself in penance since vomiting had failed to purge gluttony from her. Thomas shuddered in horror at such an extreme reaction and had refused to allow her to punish herself so. At such times he wished he were a wiser priest and feared he knew nothing of a young woman's tribulations. Instead, he had ordered her to talk to the nun in charge of novices who, he assumed, would be better able than he to cope with the problem.

And then there was Sister Ruth, who still felt rage toward the woman she believed stole the position of prioress from her. How naive she was, he thought. Men made such decisions about who ruled whom. Sister Ruth must have spent most of her life with the foolishly simple if she thought any woman could attain priory leadership if the court of kings had other notions. Her reasoning was feeble indeed.

Thomas left the sacristy and looked out toward the sea. It was a clear day, although wispy clouds did drift high above him. The morning sun warmed the naked spot on the top of his head. Life here could be pleasant, he decided.

Although he was still inclined to believe that most women,
like the elder sister, were incapable of sustained logic, he excepted
both Prioress Eleanor and Sister Anne and did so with delight.

He quite enjoyed discourse with such intelligent, competent creatures, and, he thought with a slight smile, he had always wanted to please women. Now that he no longer pleasured their bodies, he found it just as satisfying, if not more so, to pleasure their minds.

It was something he could not do with Sister Ruth, whose hatred of the new prioress was so unbalancing her humors that she seemed to find no pleasure in anything. Indeed, Prioress Eleanors recent decision to appoint her sub-prioress angered her even more. Nor did Brother Simeon help matters any with his remarks to the former porteress about the injustice she had suffered and with his praising of her superior abilities over those of the woman who had supplanted her at Tyndal. Satan had a fertile field in the older nun. Thomas had oft been tempted to suggest she scourge herself for her less than charitable thoughts. To order a nightly penitential whipping, however, would satisfy his own dislike of the woman more than it would help banish the Devil, so he had resisted. Not surprisingly, she had expressed no desire herself to perform such a penance.

He crunched along the path that led from the church and listened to the soft wind whispering through the tall grass, dry after the long summer.

None of the other nuns had cared much for the method of choosing Eleanor either, he'd heard, but he was seeing a slow change in their view of her. Her youth still bothered most, although he now heard more about her kindness, modesty, and willingness to listen. The extensive changes they feared would be made had not occurred. The small ones that had been made seemed to please them.

He had even heard some compliment her on being more in their midst, something the old prioress had rarely done. When she was obliged to entertain, they learned that the food served
was what they themselves ate. And rumors had come from Ames-
bury kin of a couple of the Tyndal nuns that the new prioress had spent a year in the world before making her final vows, a fact that argued somewhat against the inexperience which had troubled many.

In addition, Eleanor had been seen in conversation with the crowner. It was noted that this older man, a representative of King Henry, showed her due respect despite her youth. This pleased the nuns. When respect was shown to their leader, honor was bestowed on the priory.

Thomas stopped just at the rise of the hillock near the monks' quarters and breathed in the salty air. Bracing, he thought. Perhaps he was growing accustomed to it. He walked on toward the small bridge leading to the stables.

Nonetheless, Brother Rupert's murder had still not been solved, a reality that cast a long shadow over both nuns and
monks at Tyndal. Although lay brothers visibly watched the gates
and walls of Tyndal and the prioress was observed overseeing such efforts, Thomas still heard voices turn hoarse in terror as nuns recounted awakening during the night after dreaming that some demonic creature was standing over them, bloody blade in hand. It troubled Thomas as well that nothing had come to light since the discovery of the knife hilt and bloody garment. The murder seemed no closer to being solved.

Thomas looked down from the bridge and watched the sparkling stream flow beneath. It had a soothing babble, and the occasional dark shadow wriggling through the clear water suggested there were fine fish to be caught for dinner. He turned away and crossed to the other side.

Truth be told, however, his concern over the murder had been momentarily diminished by another decision just made by the prioress. All nuns at Tyndal came to him for confession
except Prioress Eleanor. Of course he was used to those in power
choosing their own priests, but it seemed strange that a prioress, noted for being more with her flock than prioresses were wont to be, should behave in only one respect as he would have expected her to do in all others. What bothered him most, however, was that Brother John was her choice for confessor.

Thomas continued up the path that led to the stables and smiled. At least the smell of horseflesh was the same, he noted, whether in London or in the country.

Nay, he was not jealous of Brother John. After what he had survived in his London prison, ambition and competitiveness dwindled to insignificant passions. No, the problem lay in his opinion of the man. Thomas was of two minds about him. The monk's eyes could be as cold as green ice or as warm as gem fire in the sun. He had treated Thomas both with disdain and with gentleness, neither of which seemed contrived. Indeed he was a curious man, intriguing enough that Thomas had followed him on occasion and had even spent more time in his company.

Just two nights ago, Thomas had seen the monk slipping quietly out of the dormitory and he had followed him, once again into the clearing in the woods. This time no one attacked Thomas, but he watched as Brother John stripped off his habit and spent an hour whipping his naked body in the moonlight while praying in a quiet voice for unspecified forgiveness. As the monk stood with arms raised to the sky after his strange penance, Thomas found himself inexplicably seized with lust for the first time since he had arrived at Tyndal, but in the few moments it took him to quiet his own unruly flesh, Brother John had disappeared. Thomas had spent the rest of that night troubled by sporadic and now forgotten dreams.

The next morning, the monk had greeted Thomas with good
cheer and asked if he would like to accompany him when he took
the novices fishing after Mass. The man he had seen caressing a lad in the chapel behaved properly during the fishing trip, and Thomas noted no hesitation on the part of any boy to be close to him or to join in the physical roughhousing usual between elder and younger males. Although no man had ever groped him as a youth, he knew other boys who had been, and one who was raped by some knights in his father's company. Those boys had
tried to avoid the men thereafter. Brother John, however, seemed
genuinely loved. A puzzle, Thomas thought, for he was sure the monk had shown more than brotherly love for the youth in the chapel that night of his attack.

Thomas walked into the stable, stopped, then looked around. His pitchfork was not where he had left it yesterday. Had one of the two lay brothers he had replaced hidden it out of spite? He chuckled. He hoped they liked slopping hogs and cleaning up after the chickens better than stable work.

He kicked around at mounds of hay and checked in the stalls. It had neither fallen nor been put elsewhere. Perhaps someone had taken it up for some task and hadn't thought to return the tool where Thomas had propped it.

He walked outside and around the back into the shadows of the stable building. There, sticking out of a mound of filthy straw, was the pitchfork. As Thomas tugged at it, he realized it was stuck on something. He grabbed the handle with both hands, then pulled with a sharp jerk.

The tines emerged from the straw. For cert, they were quite stuck. Deep into a man. He was dressed in ragged, stained clothing; his beard was black and unkempt. His eyes stared fixedly at Thomas. He did not blink.

Indeed, the man was quite dead.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The wooden door to the prioress's chambers creaked on its hinges, then slammed shut, the wooden panels shaking quite visibly from the force.

Eleanor raised one eyebrow.

"I swear that woman hates me," Ralf the Crowner said as he stared at the still quivering door.

"Sister Ruth shares the concerns of many over yet another death
in our priory." Eleanor gestured toward a stool, and Ralf sat.

"I join with your charges in that concern, but I have found no traces of the person who murdered Brother Rupert. I suspect there is a link to this second death, but I have not found it. I am not used to being so thwarted, my lady, yet thwarted I surely am."

"Have you identified who the poor man was?" Eleanor watched
as Gytha carefully poured a goblet of wine for the crowner, then put the ewer down and began to cut some cheese.

"No one has come forward and claimed knowledge of him, nor do I know him."

"Well, he is certainly from here. I saw him by the stream that day I turned my ankle and once again in the village when I was buying a donkey. No one else did, however."