Chambers of Death

by Priscilla Royal

  “Yet Jael, the wife of Heber, drove a nail into Sisera’s head…”

  “…with the strength of God’s hand to save Israel. Nonetheless, you may be right. Yet is it truly reasonable to conclude that a woman could strangle another, one who would fight back with equal vigor, and then pull her dead body…?” Eleanor gasped.

  “My lady?” Maud stretched out a supporting hand as if she feared the prioress had just been stricken with illness.

  “I am well enough, good mistress, but have reason to curse my slow wit! There is another I have never considered, one whose motives for the violent acts are becoming clearer now.”

  The door to the chamber crashed open.

  Both women whirled around.

  Master Ranulf was bolting the door shut behind him.

  Chapter Forty-One

  “Whores. The women were but whores,” he snarled. “I successfully sent all their souls to hell, with God’s blessing, saving only that cook who still breathes there and whom you have wickedly tried to save. I shall now finish my task.”

  “Does He not grant everyone the right to repent their sins?” Eleanor asked quietly, noting the knife he held in his right hand. “By what right did you assume God wanted any quivering soul condemned without the chance for mercy?”

  “God is wrathful and sends His fire down on all who defy Him like the foul creatures in Sodom and Gomorrah.” Ranulf’s eyes glittered. “What lusts do you hide?”

  The prioress winced at this accurate blow, then modestly lowered her eyes, hoping to cool his rage with meek humility while she concentrated on the more immediate problem of staying alive. “Being mortal, we all sin, but surely God wants us to recognize the evil we have done and strive never to repeat those errors.” Glancing to her left, she saw a jug and basin on a nearby table.

  “Women are Devil-spawned, bitches in heat!” Spittle flew from his white-flecked lips. “Adam would still be in Eden were it not for his fickle wife.”

  Theological debate with this man was clearly not the path to travel, and Eleanor prayed for the calmness needed to discover how best to protect Hilda, Maud, and herself from his frenzy.

  “Our cook was guilty as well?” Maud asked in a timorous voice. “Teach me, Master Ranulf, for I do not understand her sin.”

  “The Devil bought her soul and thus she lusted after the groom! The breath she exhaled befouled the air like some stinking mist and rotted the souls of other daughters of Eve when they came near her. Even the food she cooked for those at the manor was contaminated by her touch.” He gulped air. “The proof of that lies in the number of women who coupled with Tobye. She has to die.”

  “And when God sent an avenger to slay the groom, did her profane eyes witness the deed?” Maud clutched her hands together as if in prayer. “Did she also have to suffer because no one so foul should look upon the splendor of righteous vengeance?”

  The steward’s son frowned as he considered those words, and then nodded as if pleased to agree.

  Keeping a diffident silence, Eleanor backed toward the table.

  Suddenly, Ranulf spun to face the prioress and gestured at her with his knife. “You! You whited sepulcher that leads men into all manner of mortal error, daring to question the cook’s guilt when I spoke out on the side of virtue! What Order founded in God’s rule would allow a woman to rule over the sons of Adam? Satan hides in your robes.” He stepped forward. “I smell him.”

  Eleanor retreated another couple of steps, put her hands behind her, and felt the edge of the table.

  “Then it was you who wielded God’s sword against Tobye!” Maud’s cried out, extending her hands toward Ranulf in supplication. “But wasn’t he Adam’s heir, like you? Surely he deserved mercy. Why punish him when it was women who tempted him beyond endurance?”

  Ranulf turned away from the prioress, lowered the knife, and blinked as if he had not thought about that aspect.

  Eleanor took advantage of the moment and stretched a hand back in the direction of at least one of the items that lay behind her.

  “But you killed Tobye on God’s behalf, did you not?” Maud’s tone quivered with submissiveness, as if longing only to be taught and belying any accusatory intent.

  “Aye! He was low-born, yet all the women lusted after him while I…” The man began to swallow convulsively.

  Eleanor was grateful that Ranulf had hesitated, showing more reluctance to attack the widow than he had her. Perhaps Maud had given him comfort when his mother’s pious demands were too much for the young lad to bear. Would that past mothering now save them both until Brother Thomas and the guard could arrive?

  Then fear chilled her heart as she stared at the wooden bar lying firmly across the door. Two men could not break through such reinforced thickness. Either she or Maud must somehow open that door from the inside.

  “And Mistress Luce? Why kill her later?” Maud’s question was ever so softly spoken.

  “Because she made me burn with lust for her,” he screamed. “While she wallowed like a sow in the stinking mud with that man, she had Satan send a succubus in her shape to torture me. Once Tobye was dead, I believed she would repent her sins and turn to me for comfort.”

  And what difference in transgression was there between a groom’s lust and that of a step-son, the prioress wondered as her fingers groped for basin or jug. Couldn’t the man see that adultery compounded with the sin of uncovering the nakedness of a near kin was even fouler in God’s eyes? No wonder Mistress Luce had not wanted to be widowed and left alone with Ranulf as her only protector.

  “And this she failed to do?” Maud glanced at the prioress.

  “I begged for her embrace, but she turned from me with pale disgust. It was then that my heart hardened with virtuous fury. If the whore could not see the difference between me, a man who honors God, and Tobye, I knew it was my duty to send her soul to Hell, along with that succubus.”

  “How did you draw her to the stable?” the widow continued.

  “I suspected that she lusted after my shameless brother, since wantonness is attracted by depravity, and thus used her wickedness against her. I told her that Huet wanted to meet her there that night. When she expressed doubt, I explained that he had good news for her but feared the steward’s anger if he saw them together. After all, he was not in our father’s favor after his sudden return home.” Ranulf smirked.

  “She believed your tale, kept the tryst, and discovered you instead.”

  He gnawed at his lips.

  Eleanor grasped the handle of the jug, hesitated, then recalled that God had never condemned David for battling against Goliath.

  “And once again rejected my offer. She was no different from all other women, preferring to lie with a baseborn man than me!” Ranulf shouted and spun around, pointing his finger at the prioress and raising his knife to strike. “Like you, she was the Whore of Babylon!”

  Eleanor flung the jug at him, striking him squarely on the side of his head.

  Maud swung her foot into Ranulf’s groin.

  As the man fell to the ground with a high-pitched howl, Eleanor leapt to the door and unbolted it.

  Thomas and Huet were but a few feet away when she swung the door wide.

  The monk ran to the squirming man, whipped the belt from the man’s waist, and quickly bound Ranulf’s wrists behind him.

  Stepping inside, Huet put his hands to his hips, in unconscious imitation of Mistress Maud, and grinned.

  “Well done, Mother!”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Although Sir Reimund was surely accustomed to horses, he shifted uncomfortably in the saddle.

  Standing beside him, in the company of Brother Thomas, Eleanor wondered if the sheriff had just bitten into something bitter when he winced, his eyes focused on the scene at the manor house door.

  Two of his men pulled Ranulf, hobbled and arms bound, through the entryway.

  Close behind strode the steward, his head bo
wed.

  Mistress Maud followed Stevyn, as he approached the sheriff’s horse, and gently touched his arm, the gesture so swiftly done that most in the courtyard would have missed it.

  The steward glanced down, his grim expression softening as he felt her comfort. “Hang him, Sir Reimund,” he said, looking back at the uneasy sheriff. “He may be the son of my loins, but I have cast him from my heart. Yet, when the day comes, I’ll be there. The only favor I ask is that my men be allowed to pull his legs so his neck will break and some family dignity retained. No one who bears my name should dance and buck for common amusement.”

  Eleanor looked at the pitiful creature to whom the steward referred. Surrounded by the sheriff’s men, Ranulf was ragged, bent, and reeking of his own filth. According to Thomas, Ranulf had been rolling naked in his excrement and howling like courtyard scavenger dogs when the monk visited him at dawn for prayer and confession.

  “I wish the outcome of these crimes had been otherwise,” Reimund said, carefully looking at a spot over the steward’s head.

  “No less than I,” Stevyn retorted. “But he killed three people, three whose sins were God’s to punish, not his.”

  “Three?” Reimund blinked.

  “His wife,” Maud said, her voice catching. “We found her corpse in the chapel, stabbed through the heart.”

  “A deed that Ranulf admitted with some glee as we locked him safely away,” Thomas added, his eyes narrowing as he nodded at the trussed man. “All the ones he slaughtered cry out for justice, but one murder is crime enough in God’s eyes.”

  “Perhaps the total will be four. Hilda’s fate is still in God’s hands,” Eleanor said. Indeed, she offered many prayers for the cook last night, and Hilda’s eyes had opened this morning. Nonetheless, there was no recognition in the woman’s gaze, nor had she spoken. The prioress lowered her eyes to hide the tears they held. If God took Hilda’s soul, He would most surely treat it with infinite mercy and pull it gently enough from this world. Yet mortals will grieve, and her laughter would be sorely missed.

  The sheriff nervously cleared his throat.

  Startled out of her thoughts, she looked up at this man, who weighed the cost of justice in the scales of ambition, and found she was not yet capable of forgiving him.

  “My lady, if the guard I set to protect you offended in any way, please let me know. I shall punish him accordingly.”

  Eleanor swallowed her anger. That he was so willing to cast blame on another, one who had no choice but to obey orders, meant this wretched sheriff had learned nothing. “He was most courteous, Sir Reimund, and, most worthy of reward for his care. I am sure that a larger bit of land from you, so he might marry again and support a growing family, would not go amiss. When I tell my father of the events here, I will mention his name.” Thus you dare not treat him ill for the kindness and good service he did render me, despite your spiteful intent. With a pleasure she knew was wicked enough to require confession, she fell into a pointed silence.

  “Then I hope you bear me no malice, my lady, for my wish to keep you safe with a killer about.”

  She tilted her head and smiled but said nothing more.

  A flush rose from Sir Reimund’s neck and bathed his face with a scarlet hue. He waited for a very long minute, then bowed his head. “You are most kind, my lady,” he muttered, willing her indifferent smile into a sign of favoring grace to him.

  Quickly, he gave the order for his contingent of men to leave. When the sad party moved toward the manor courtyard gate, a man poked at Ranulf to indicate he must walk on as well. Staggering forward, the elder son of Master Stevyn neither cried out, nor did he turn to give any farewell to his father.

  As she watched the small procession, Eleanor realized she was saddened by the thought of hanging this man. Without doubt he had murdered several people, but Satan had so blinded him with obscene obsessions that he could not see it was Evil who had directed his hand against those victims, not God. According to Brother Thomas, the man’s wits had fled, leaving him utterly possessed by madness, and thus rendered incapable of repentance or confession.

  Would Ranulf ever be able to feel the horror of his crimes and beg forgiveness, even when the hangman draped the rope around his neck? Shouldn’t all men have the chance to cleanse their souls? Perhaps she should not grieve for him, murderer that he was, but her heart was not easily silenced on the matter. To distract herself from the murmurings of that womanish organ, she turned to consider whether there had been a lesson in the events of the last few days for her.

  She thought back on all the times she had involved herself in mortal crime and wondered if she had committed the same error as Ranulf when she decided she knew better than others what God’s justice meant. Had the Prince of Darkness blinded her to the dangers of her own arrogance?

  In this case, her motive for interfering with a matter of justice, which belonged under the jurisdiction of an earthly king, was not pure. The sheriff had treated her with disrespect, and her pride in rank had been offended. Had she been less concerned with thwarting the sheriff, might she have saved Mistress Luce’s life, perhaps even that of Ranulf’s wife? Had her failure to discover the truth in time been due, at least in part, to her own sinful motivations?

  Just a few months ago, after Martin the Cooper was poisoned, she had been blinded by her jealousy and failed to see events with needed clarity. If she finally succeeded in conquering her own lusts and pride, would she not serve God’s justice better?

  Yet the mortal heart had much to teach, especially about the power of love. From old Tibia last summer, she had learned the force of a mother’s love. Even Ivetta the Whore had demonstrated loyalty, albeit to a man who little deserved it. This time, Stevyn and Maud had lessons for her. But finding the jewel of love amidst the dross of sin required a craftsman’s skill, and Eleanor felt so pitifully ignorant.

  She folded her hands, closed her eyes for a moment, and begged God for forgiveness. When she returned to Tyndal, she promised to ask a hard penance from her confessor for her failings. In the meantime, she would pray for Ranulf, as difficult as that would surely be. When the steward’s son died and his quaking soul discovered that his true master had been Satan, might God still grant him at least some mercy for having lost all reason? Or was that a blasphemous hope?

  She looked up. The gates to the manor were closed. The sheriff’s party was well along on the road with their prisoner.

  Eleanor turned away, pressed a hand against her heart that ached with unhappiness, and walked back to the chamber she shared with Mariota. During those days and years of prayer she owed God, there would be many questions for which she would seek answers. The truth of this particular situation was one, relegated to that shadowy corner of her mind where it would await His enlightenment.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The cold air nipped their cheeks, but there was enough promising blue in the sky to suggest that this journey home to Tyndal would have a good beginning.

  Eleanor and Maud stood next to each other, the shared regret at the parting tinged with additional sadness that the bond of their emergent friendship had been forged in such tragic circumstances.

  “Would you give me your blessing, my lady?” Maud bowed her head and eased herself down on her knees.

  “With a heart most willing,” the prioress replied.

  As the widow rose, they both began to weep and drew each other into a warm embrace of farewell.

  “I shall never forget what you have done for my charge,” Eleanor said, standing back and wiping her tears away. “Nor will I cease to be grateful to you for saving my life.”

  Maud folded her arms, her expression amused as if she had just won a friendly argument. “My lady, had you not struck the man with such force and accuracy, I would never have had the chance to fell him so. Methinks it was your vigorous attack that saved us both.”

  “This weak creature?” the prioress replied, looking at her hands with m
ock amazement. “I believe we must thank God who gave my arm an unwomanly strength. Did He not do so for Jael, the wife of Heber, when she drove the nail into Sisera’s head?”

  “This manor is but a sparrow compared to the eagle that is the land of Israel…” Maud’s words began as a jest but her abrupt silence suggested she had been overcome with uneasiness.

  “I pray that He brings comfort to you and Master Stevyn.” The prioress grasped the woman’s hand. “Violence has claimed too many here, and the pain must be intensified by the identity of the killer.”

  The widow turned her head away. “I fear this scourge has been the result of our sin.”

  “Some would concur, and I should not presume to counter those deemed far wiser than I,” Eleanor replied, “yet my woman’s imperfect heart stubbornly rebels against the conclusion. That you sinned is indisputable, but you saw the error of your ways with clarity and repented with sorrow. Ranulf did not and howled so loudly over the wickedness of others that the noise drowned out the cries of his own soul. Then he bathed in their blood as if violence would somehow make him a less tainted mortal. I cannot see that you and Master Stevyn were to blame for all that.”

  “Then I must ask this question, my lady. Is it sinful for us to marry? We hoped to do so after a proper mourning for Mistress Luce.”

  Perhaps she should confirm Maud’s fears that some in the Church might argue against that comfort, Eleanor thought, falling silent as she watched servants help Mariota into a cart and arrange blankets to keep the girl warm. Yet de Lacy was a powerful man, and Stevyn had found favor with his faithful, competent stewardship. Were there a problem with the union, a priest to marry them would be easy enough to locate. After all, he might conclude they had vowed themselves to each other in a marital bond many years ago and thus any subsequent marriage by each was defective. The prioress was well aware that the donation of a valuable chalice would help cast such logic in a strong light.