He chose an indirect approach: “How many brothers do you have here at the monastery, Abbot Turold?”
If this beginning surprised the monk, he didn’t show it.
“Twenty-two,” Turold replied.
“And are any other monasteries in your order?”
“Not anymore,” Turold said with a frown. “If we ever really had an order. We were founded by King Oswig, and as I’m sure you know, Peterborough was originally founded by King Peada.”
Winston nodded.
“Who was Oswig’s son-in-law,” Winston said.
Sometimes he surprised me. How did he come by his knowledge of the northern royal houses?
“Yes, so I’m sure you see that when Edmund and his abbot claim we should be subordinate to them and their monastery, it’s a bunch of hogwash,” Turold said, flushed with emotion.
“Because Oswig was Christian, whereas Peada didn’t convert until he married Oswig’s daughter,” Winston stated. He must have illustrated a book about these long-dead kings.
“Yes, yes,” Turold nodded.
“And you’ve never belonged to an order?” Winston asked, bringing the abbot back on topic.
“There weren’t any orders back then. A monastery was a community of men—and women—who wanted to live a life of prayer and work.”
“But now you’re just men.”
Turold nodded.
“Who pray and work?”
“We run a hospital.”
“And own the village out there?”
“That village and another four,” Turold said. “We’re a rich monastery.”
“That isn’t readily apparent,” Winston said, smiling to take the sting out of his words, which he needn’t have done.
Turold’s response was self-confident. “Our wealth does not go to splendid adornment or magnificent buildings.”
“It goes to the sick?”
Turold nodded.
“I don’t understand,” I interrupted. “Why is the hospital outside the palisade, where the sick will be in danger?”
“The palisade isn’t there to defend against external enemies,” Turold said, distractedly scratching at the gray stubble inside his tonsure. “It’s a reminder to all who come here that the monastery and church must be separate from the world, a place of peace. That’s also why we demand that everyone lay down their weapons.” There was my answer to my musings on the usefulness of the palisade as a defensive structure.
“And if the brothers from Peterborough succeed in convincing whoever decides these matters that you should be subordinate to them, will that have any consequence for the hospital?” Winston asked, and then drained his mug.
“To begin with, no,” Turold said, and then made a face. “People will say that the hospital should remain. But eventually more and more of our profits will be siphoned off to the northeast and wind up in their coffers.”
Just as Edgar had told me the previous night at dinner, it was all about money.
“And Brother Godfrid?” Winston asked, getting to the point.
The corner of Turold’s eye quivered very faintly.
“Yes, Brother Godfrid.”
“Had he been doing hospital work for long?”
“Are you asking me questions you already know the answers to?” Turold asked, suddenly angry.
“I’m asking questions we think we might be able to guess the answers to,” Winston admitted. “So, he hasn’t been with you long.”
“A little more than a year,” Turold said and then exchanged glances with Edgar, who still hadn’t said anything.
“Perhaps,” Winston said with a sigh, “perhaps it would be easiest if you told me about that.”
Turold glanced at Edgar again, then pushed himself forward in his chair and began: “He came just before the harvest month. He stayed in the guesthouse for a few days at first; then he started lending a hand with various tasks, and after a few weeks he asked if the monastery would admit him.”
“Which you allowed?” Winston asked, watching Turold.
Edgar was the one who responded: “In a monastery like ours, decisions are made communally. Father Turold is our abbot, chosen to lead us in the sense that he makes sure our communal decisions are carried out. He is not an abbot like in a Benedictine monastery, a king whose word is law.”
“Right,” Winston said. “So you all allowed him to enter the monastery. Just like that?”
“Of course not,” Edgar said.
“But,” Winston said, furrowing his brow, “you said he’d been with you a year. That’s not enough time for him to have completed his prescribed novitiate period. Was he already a monk when he arrived?”
Edgar shook his head and said, “Any adult man who declares that his true intention is to enter our monastery can take the monastic vows if he has no unfulfilled obligations and is willing to accept the rules we live by.”
“So you allowed a man you knew nothing about to enter as your brother?” Winston asked, his forehead wrinkled in skepticism.
“Oh, we certainly knew the most important thing,” Edgar said, his voice like honey.
I sat up straighter and noticed Winston also preparing himself to finally learn something tangible.
“We knew that he wanted to become a monk,” Edgar said.
We scowled at him. I stood up halfway but stopped when Turold leaned over the table and quietly said, “And we knew he was running from his past.”
“What past would that be?” Winston asked in a voice as sharp as a freshly sharpened scythe.
“That was and will remain his secret,” Turold replied, shrugging his shoulders apologetically.
“You mean,” I asked dejectedly, “that none of you ever asked him about it?”
“Of course we didn’t,” Turold said, sounding offended. “If a man wants to start over again in life, we must respect that. Here we live for God, who judges each of us. We face His judgment alone, and none of us can bear another’s burdens.”
“And yet Saint Paul says we must.”
All three of us looked at Winston in astonishment. He merely looked placidly back at us.
“True enough,” Turold replied after a pause. “And perhaps… perhaps it is conceivable that I could have helped him bear his yoke if he’d shared it with me.”
“But I’m sure you guessed,” Winston said.
Turold looked down at the table.
“It was obvious, for example, that he was a nobleman,” Winston continued.
“He tried to hide his aristocratic behaviors,” Turold said, rubbing his forehead.
“Well, they were certainly on display yesterday,” Winston said relentlessly.
“Whenever he encountered arrogance, well, yes… then he would forget he was a monk and revert to being a nobleman.”
Winston leaned forward. “But you had no doubt that he bore some burden?”
Turold and Edgar both nodded their heads in affirmation.
“Hmm,” Winston said. He looked at me, and I nodded in response to his unspoken question.
If we learned what that burden was, it would point us to his murderer.
Chapter 14
Winston stood up. He raised his shoulders for a moment, as if he were about to say something, then relaxed them again and turned toward the door. But I had more questions, so I cleared my throat, which made him hesitate.
“You said several times, Father, that you are all equals here in the monastery,” I began.
“It’s been like that from olden times,” Turold said. “We are a community of brothers who worship God by tending the sick. We discuss everything here in the chapter house and reach our decisions together. Each brother is entitled to speak and has an equal say when a decision needs to be made. After that it is my duty to see that we comply.”
“And,” I pointed out, “as Edgar just said, your word isn’t law as it would be with the brothers in Peterborough.”
“It is as he said,” Turold acknowledged.
I saw a
twinkle in Turold’s eye—he suspected where I was going with this.
“Godfrid obeyed you yesterday when you sent him to the church,” I said. “So you have some authority, even though you deny it.”
“I have never denied that I have authority,” Turold said. “But that authority arises from the community.”
I remembered the previous day, when Turold had told Godfrid to go pray. There had been an inscrutable snap in the abbot’s voice. Was the dearly departed Godfrid a man who would bend to the community’s representative?
Perhaps the answer was self-evident: yes, once a man like him accepted someone else’s superior rank, he would fall in line. Noblemen bind themselves by oath to their superiors. Godfrid was a nobleman and he had taken his monastic vows. In his eyes, that bound him to obey just as much as if he’d placed his hands between a king’s hands and sworn allegiance to him.
All the same, I continued: “But the community did not say that Godfrid had committed an offense.”
“Because that wasn’t necessary,” Edgar said, sounding a little sanctimonious. “Of course we cannot allow the harassment of guests—no matter how impolite their own behavior may be. Some things are so obvious that even a soldier like yourself ought to realize them.”
I flashed Edgar a grin. Apparently the arrogant Benedictines weren’t the only ones who could get on the nerves of these charitable brothers.
“My thought was simply that a nobleman like Godfrid wasn’t used to being sent away like any other oaf,” I said.
Winston shot me a look. I was getting closer to something he had forgotten, and he nodded for me to proceed.
“So the sign of the cross was not a challenge to your authority, Father?”
Turold bit his lip. I saw the corners of his eyes glistening but held my ground, awaiting a response.
“I’ve been giving that a lot of thought,” Turold said, and although his voice quavered, it also took on a sharp edge. “I’m not dumb, my young friend, and I do realize the significance of the severed hand.”
Edgar was mad. He scowled at me and said, “Are you accusing the abbot of having killed and mutilated a brother as punishment for abusing the Lord’s benediction?”
I didn’t respond. My eyes were locked on Turold, who sighed and said, “I suppose the truth is that if the gesture wasn’t meant for me, then the murderer is obvious.”
“Did you do it?” I asked quietly, but urgently.
“Of course not,” Turold said, shaking his head sadly.
I believed him and could tell from Winston’s face that he did, too.
“Would Simon commit murder as revenge for an affront?” Winston asked calmly.
“Simon?” Edgar’s lower jaw dropped in surprise. I smiled in sympathy. Not everyone can figure out what’s important in cases like these. “Do you think he did it?” Edgar asked, dismayed.
No one answered.
Winston and I watched Turold, who sat for a moment in silence, and then sighed and said, “I shouldn’t like to think so.”
“But you can’t rule it out?” Winston’s voice was still calm.
“I don’t know him that well,” Turold conceded, and to my amazement, Winston didn’t push any harder. Instead he asked me if I had anything else. I nodded.
“He’d been here a little more than a year, you said. Where did he come from?”
“I asked him,” Turold said, “but he never told me.”
If only Turold had even a fraction of the kind of authority Prior Edmund wielded. I was certain the good Benedictines wouldn’t have accepted a brother’s refusal to provide information about his past.
“And you didn’t pressure him to respond?”
Was that a slight hesitation? Winston cocked his head—he’d noticed it as well.
“We believe men must be allowed to put their pasts behind them,” Edgar said. Why did Edgar keep jumping in instead of allowing Turold to respond?
“I was so preoccupied with everything that was going on yesterday, I can’t say that I really paid attention to Godfrid,” I continued. “So I don’t remember how he spoke. But you must have had plenty of opportunities to hear him speak. Did he have an accent? What kind? Where was he from?”
“Mercian,” Turold said, but he was contradicted by Edgar, who responded with equal certainty that Godfrid was from the north.
Then the two of them looked at each other.
“He was a Viking,” Edgar said.
“A Viking?” I protested. “But he spoke English yesterday.”
“He spoke English flawlessly when it suited him,” Turold said. “With a West Anglian accent. But Edgar is right now that I think about it. That first day, he spoke Danish like a Viking.”
Winston cleared his throat, and I knew what he was wondering. Was the abbot hiding some deeper knowledge about the murdered monk by conceding so quickly that Edgar was right? Or was he just an honest old man, whose memory occasionally failed him?
“We’d like to thank you for your time,” Winston said, walking to the door. I followed, wondering why Winston suddenly seemed to be in such a hurry. As soon as we were alone on the grass outside the hall, I asked what the sudden rush was about.
“Are you convinced Turold told us everything he knows?” Winston asked in response.
“Definitely not.” I shook my head.
Winston watched a flight of geese cross the sky high over our heads. The harvest was drawing to a close.
“Me neither. I think he knows more about Godfrid than he wants to tell us. And his lips are shut with a seal we cannot break.”
“The confessional.”
“Yes,” Winston replied. “We might have been able to entice a regular monk or priest into revealing secrets confided to him, but the good father abbot’s faith and will are too strong for that.”
“And did he try to mislead us by suddenly agreeing with Edgar about Godfrid’s accent?”
“Possibly,” Winston mused, tugging at his nose. “Or maybe they were both telling the truth. Maybe Godfrid was a Viking who learned to speak English with a Mercian dialect. Whatever the facts may be, we have just learned an important piece of information about him.”
Before I had a chance to ask what he meant, we heard hoofbeats coming from the stable. Winston scowled at me, as if I somehow had any control over the fact that Ælfgar had had his horse saddled and now rode toward the gate followed by two mounted spearmen.
I grinned innocently back at Winston and followed him when he stepped in front of the thane.
“I’d hoped to have a word with you, Ælfgar,” Winston said. He raised his hand to grab the beast’s reins but dropped it again when he saw the dismissive look on Ælfgar’s face.
“You can have your word,” Ælfgar said politely, “when I return.”
“So your errand is urgent?” Winston asked, fishing for information.
The nobleman’s horse stamped impatiently, blowing and tossing his head. He was obviously eager to get moving after having spent the night and most of the morning in the stable. The sun glistened off the horse’s sleek black coat as Ælfgar forced him to remain still.
“You asked me to let you work, Winston the Illuminator. And I have been waiting patiently since then, as politeness dictated. Now you must permit me to exercise my horse.” He forced the stallion forward with his heels.
Winston stepped aside, as did I, realizing that Ælfgar would just ride me down if I were foolish enough to try to stop him. We watched in silence as the riders disappeared out the gate. Then we heard the hoofbeats thundering away outside the palisade.
As my brother Harding said: Common people make plans; noblemen just do what they feel like.
“Well, maybe we’ll go have a chat with Simon first after all?” I teased.
Winston ignored me. We walked toward the guesthouse, but I stopped abruptly when I thought of Winston’s comment that we’d learned “an important piece of information” about Godfrid. I asked him what he meant.
“I’m sure
you see it, right?” Winston said, teasing me back.
Great. I glared at him and thought feverishly as we strolled across the grass. Just before the door to the guesthouse, I gave up and stopped him by putting my hand on his arm.
“Nope,” I admitted.
“Nope?”
“As in ‘Nope, I don’t see it.’”
“You don’t? Why would a Viking hide in a monastery when the biggest Viking of all is king of the land?”
“Because…,” I began.
Winston looked up and watched another flight of geese pass overhead. He had that smug look on his face, the one that said he would give me the answer if I couldn’t figure it out on my own.
“Because he’d had a falling out with the king, of course,” I finally responded.
“Of course,” Winston said, his voice mocking. “A Viking who’d had a falling out with the king or a northerner who was only pretending to be from Mercia.”
“But King Cnut sent us here to ferret out whether any Mercians were plotting against him.”
Winston laughed. “Godskalk said Mercia. We were the ones who assumed he meant Leofwine. But—”
“You mean maybe Godskalk and the king knew that one of their enemies was hiding in the monastery here?” I concluded.
“Exactly.” Winston took another step toward the door and then stopped again. “So we’ve just gained yet another motive for the murder. Let’s hope we can get Simon to break down and confess to the crime.”
I’m sure Winston didn’t think that was any more likely than I did.
Chapter 15
While Winston and I shared a bedroom in the guesthouse with some of Ælfgar’s spearmen, Edmund and Simon had a room all to themselves.
Neither Winston nor I had noticed which room the Benedictines occupied, so we knocked on the one directly across from our own to begin with. We obeyed a sleepy “Come in” and opened the door to find a drowsy-looking Wulfgar, who’d just swung his legs out of bed. He gave us a goofy grin as he rubbed his mustache.
“I figured I might as well catch up on a little of the sleep I didn’t get last night,” he confessed sheepishly.
Oathbreaker (The King's Hounds series) Page 11