Although Eleanor knew no one could ever bribe God, she sometimes found herself reminding Him that He had allowed Abraham to bargain over saving Sodom and Gomorrah. Might He not allow Brother Andrew to win the election, thus keeping the hospital for the godly work it did? Surely the priory could find some other project to do solely for His glory, she argued prayerfully.
No matter which monk won the election, she would remain the head of Tyndal in this daughter house of the Order of Fontevraud, but her role as leader of both men and women was unique in a world that saw Eve as the lesser vessel. If Brother Matthew were elected prior, an eloquent man of strong opinions in direct opposition to hers, she would be hard-pressed to maintain her actual authority. She had little doubt she would succeed but resented the energy and thought the struggle would require when both could be put to better use in more profitable activities.
She sighed. Whatever the final result, the election must take place soon. The prior had a significant role in the daily running of the priory, especially amongst the monks and lay brothers. The anxiety of not knowing who would direct them and how their lives would be affected had fractured their usual peace.
She also needed the position to be filled by someone of competence. Problems cried out for immediate attention and she could not do everything. She had appointed a series of acting priors, who did provide some direction while avoiding any hint of partiality on her part, but temporary appointments did nothing for continuing efficiency.
Once the election was over, she would quickly decide how to handle whatever choice God gave her, but the current uncertainty was not beneficial to her priory. She might well prefer Brother Andrew, a man generally respected by all, but Brother Matthew had also demonstrated his ability to lead others. She might dislike the man, but she had to concede he was capable.
As she made the sign of the cross, Eleanor rose from her prie-dieu and listened to the rain’s rhythmic tapping against her wooden shutters. Tyndal’s lack of ease about its future direction was much the same as England’s, she realized. The rumors that King Henry III was gravely ill were growing apace, and his eldest son, Prince Edward, had yet to return from the Holy Land where he had gone on crusade.
In his last missive from Wales, her father had reported that the current mood at court was calm, but, he said with his characteristic sarcasm, only old fools like himself tried to predict the future. The heir had not yet safely returned to England, and, were he to do so before his father’s death, there were questions about Edward’s final position on the demands for baronial reforms when he became the anointed king. The prince had shifted between both sides of that issue with dizzying frequency. Nonetheless, Baron Adam wrote, Edward was a clever man and, although much like his dying father, unlikely to make the same mistakes. So the powerful were poised to leap whichever way would keep them in control; the powerless would remain frozen like prey in the fox’s path; and those on England’s borders would watch for the new twists emerging in the diplomatic games of thrust and parry. “As you must have learned as well as I, my beloved daughter,” the baron wrote in conclusion, “someone will shed blood when men joust for power.”
Thus Eleanor did wonder what the future would bring, not just to her small priory but to England itself.
Chapter Three
Ralf the Crowner knelt on the sodden ground and cautiously put a hand against the neck of the fallen man. The skin was still warm to the touch, but there was no pulse.
“Quite dead, Cuthbert, but not long so,” he said in low tones to his sergeant, then fell silent as they both listened for any noise from the surrounding forest. All they could hear was the birds’ dissonant rejoicing in the brief break from the interminable rain.
“Could a murderer still be close?” Cuthbert whispered.
Ralf nodded.
The sergeant stood, unsheathing his sword as he studied the brush bordering the road where the corpse lay. All din from the woodlands ceased. Cautiously, Cuthbert walked to the edge of the clearing, then slipped sideways into the dripping, vine-choked undergrowth, and disappeared.
Ralf listened for a moment longer, then turned his attention back to the corpse. The man was lying on his stomach. Could he have fallen from a horse, or had robbers attacked him?
The crowner felt the bones of the dead man’s neck. Not broken nor was there any horse nearby. The mount could have been stolen. He bent down to check the wear on the man’s boots. No horse for this one, he decided. Judging by the badly mended holes, this corpse had walked much while he still breathed, unless he had lucked upon a passing wagon.
The crowner grabbed the man by the shoulders and rolled him over. As he did, glistening intestines tumbled away from the body. Feces and blood seeped out as well, their stench as strong as that of a badly gutted deer. This was no accident. Unless the man had killed himself, this was murder.
“Ugly way to go,” Ralf said companionably to the dead man as he studied the jagged gashes in his belly. A few diligent insects had braved the damp and gone to work already in the raw wound. “And not the usual style of robbers,” the crowner continued, glancing up at the forest edge.
He could hear Cuthbert crashing through the branches and thick brush. When he and his sergeant had come across this man lying at the side of the road, the birds had been chirping with good enough cheer. Now they were silent.
Ralf rocked back off his knees into a squat. The victim could not have been killed long before they had discovered him, and these woods were far too thick for a man to escape quickly. Unless the murderer had been mounted, the crowner concluded, he could still be close by, although his sergeant’s failure to find a suspect by now argued otherwise.
Ralf glanced down the road. There was a small pile of greenish dung, but fresh horse droppings on a road leading to the priory hospital meant little. Murderer or no, a rider might well seek shelter at Tyndal for the night. Dark came quickly this time of year, and the everlasting rains made byways especially dangerous. Puddles hid deep holes, and one slip in the mud could break a horse’s leg. Since Tyndal was the last stop for dry shelter and a hot meal for many hours, a wise man would take advantage of monastic hospitality and avoid injury to his steed. Even a fool would have stopped for a bracing drink of ale, and Brother Andrew, the porter, might remember which strangers had just come by.
He looked back at the corpse. This was definitely not a local man. Since he had grown up here, Ralf took pride in being able to call each villager, monk, nun, and lay brother or sister by name. “Unlike my brother, the sheriff, who rarely visits his shire,” he muttered. “He that frets only about wine stains on his fine robes and the latest turn of the political worm at the king’s court.” To offset his eldest brother’s overweening ambition, Ralf had always worked hard to bring local justice to those he called friends.
“And not long ago I would have heard straight away about strangers like you,” he complained to the corpse. “But that was before so many began coming to Tyndal’s hospital and soldiers started returning from Outremer. Now men arrive and go before I even see their faces.” This man was one who had escaped Ralf’s notice. Although that had become frequent now, he was still not resigned to it. He shifted to look more closely at the man.
“With that broken nose and thinning hair, I doubt many would call you a handsome fellow, but perhaps some woman did and you have now left a host of orphans to mourn you.” The crowner lifted the man’s upper lip with the tip of one finger. Several teeth were missing. A couple jagged off at different angles. “Bit hard to chew your meat with those,” Ralf said, then sighed. “Nay, corpse, I know you not.”
Sticking just above the neck of the man’s cloak was the high collar of a quilted but stained and torn buckram, suggesting the man was a foot soldier. His kettle helmet had rolled off to one side and lay like a tilted kitchen bowl in the grass. Above the hacked belly, a dagger protruded from the man’s bloody chest. The evidence argued much against any conclusion of a grisly self-murder.
“Odd,” Ralf commented aloud. “Stab a man, then disembowel him? Or disembowel him, then stab him in the chest for good measure? Why?”
He felt around the man’s waist. Any purse the man might have attached to his braies was gone. Someone had taken it either because robbery was the point of the attack or because the murderer had wanted whoever found the victim to think just that. Given this corpse was a stranger, the easy conclusion was that the murder was a chance act by unknown thieves, preferably ones just passing through Tyndal. In the past, his brother had always liked effortless answers. As a consequence, or at least in part, Ralf never did.
Cuthbert emerged from the sodden brush. Great patches of damp dotted his shoulders and chest. As he walked toward the crowner, his broad feet squashing the wet and rotting forest floor, he wiped bits of vine and leaf from his sword. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” he grumbled. “Not a footprint, although one would be hard to find with all that standing water, nor any torn clothing caught on a bramble or branch. Nothing dropped.” The man turned pale and glanced over his shoulder. “You don’t think one of Satan’s followers did this, do you?”
“How many bodies have we ever found killed by demons?” Ralf grunted as he stood up and shook the stiffness from his legs. Although he might still be a man of reasonable youth, few on this damp coast escaped the stiffening of the joints for long. Perhaps Sister Anne at the priory would have a remedy? He quashed that thought before painful longing clutched his heart with its familiar, stubborn grip.
“This could be the first…”
“Hold your tongue!” Ralf barked, then gave his sergeant a sheepish look. He had not meant to take his vexation out on the man. “If Satan’s imp was after this one,” he continued in a more civil tone, “he used a mortal man to do the deed.”
The expression on Cuthbert’s face suggested he might still think otherwise.
“Smell anything strange?”
The sergeant gave him a weak grin. “Other than our corpse here, just your sweet self.”
Ralf gave him a friendly shove. “No smoke? No stench of Hell? No other signs of the Evil One?”
“Still…”
“Besides,” Ralf said, pointing down the road, “with our holy brothers and sisters at the priory just there, would the Devil or any of his court dare come so near?”
“Aye, well, you might have the right of that.” Cuthbert exhaled with some relief. “Do you think this is our relic seller?”
Ralf shrugged and gestured at the intestines spilled on the ground. “That was an act of great anger. If this were our relic seller, I’d say he asked too much for a fake splinter from the True Cross, then got even more than he expected for it.” He knelt back down and fingered the knife. “Nay, the man we are looking for was not described as a soldier like this poor fellow.” He bent closer to study the knife. “But do take a look at this, Cuthbert. It is passing strange.”
Cuthbert knelt near enough to the crowner but at some distance from the pungent corpse. “What is?”
Ralf ran his fingers over the handle. It was wooden and bore a strange, cursive design on one side. Taking hold of the hilt with a firm grasp, he wrenched the weapon out of the body.
A cold sweat broke out on his forehead as he looked at the blade. This was not like any knife he had ever seen. It was short, wide, made of bronze, and had the same cursive design running down the bloody surface. This was no English weapon.
He reached over and touched a fold of the man’s cloak. Odd, too, that a common soldier would wear something made of such good cloth. Perhaps he had stolen it, or… He flipped the fold over. Hidden there was a carefully sewn red cross.
“The man’s not just a soldier, he’s been on crusade, Cuthbert,” Ralf said, then showed him the pattern on the blade. “I do not like what this suggests at all.”
Chapter Four
“You are deep in thought, my lady?”
Prioress Eleanor was lightly tracing the semi-circle of ox-blood red in the very first letter of the intricately illustrated text. The manuscript on the table in front of her was a copy of the Epistles of Saint Paul on loan from her aunt at Amesbury.
“These details are so carefully done,” she said to Gytha, the Saxon girl who had served her for over a year now. “Look at the tiny lines on the face of this elderly man and the clarity of leaf green in his clothing.” It was a pity she knew no one with the talent to do this kind of work at Tyndal. Beautifully decorated manuscripts were unquestionably honorable work for any monastery and could even be quite profitable...
Gytha stooped to look carefully at the figure in the manuscript. “Pretty enough, my lady. God must surely be pleased with such work done to His glory.” Gytha tossed her blond braid over one shoulder. “Although few men except bishops can read Latin.”
Eleanor held back a laugh. She had grown so fond of this young woman who spoke with blunt honesty but had a kind heart. “You could have learned it but decided to become skilled with numbers and writing instead. Quite skilled, if I am to believe Sister...”
“I’d rather learn skills that will help my brother in his business. Latin would do little good there.”
Skills that would also assist a merchant husband, Eleanor thought. Gytha was now of marriageable age and several men had already approached her brother, or so Tostig had told the prioress when he came to discuss their ale partnership. Although two had been landowners of sufficient rank, Tostig had rejected them. Eleanor suspected neither had been to Gytha’s taste, and her brother would never agree to a marriage she did not want. When a suitor did come who met with Gytha’s approval, Eleanor knew she would lose her maid. She might well find another competent woman to serve her, but she could not so easily fill the empty place Gytha’s departure would leave in her heart.
“Did I offend, my lady?”
Eleanor shook her head and patted her maid’s shoulder with affection. “I was just thinking that Brother Matthew has argued one point well. Tyndal should not be just a manor house with profitable sheep and a religious vocation. We should gain esteem from things with a holier purpose.”
Glancing back down at the cursive letter, the prioress knew that Gytha’s comment about the limited audience for this work had merit. As glorious as the manuscript might be, these things were for the few, and she did believe that Tyndal had a duty to all mortals. Perhaps performing instructive liturgical plays would be better?
“You won’t bring some relic here, will you, my lady?”
Eleanor raised a questioning eyebrow. Did her maid have some useable objection to the relic? Although their Order did not approve of turning their religious houses into pilgrimage sites, she could not use this as an argument against those who preferred the relic. Most Fontevrauldine houses did not have hospitals either. Tyndal had been an exception. When it was still a Benedictine monastery, it had had a long tradition of serving the sick and dying. Later, after the Order of Fontevraud resurrected the priory, the abbess had agreed to allow the hospital to remain because this had been the desire of the benefactor’s wife, who became the first prioress. If one argument had been successful on behalf of the hospital, surely another could be made for a relic.
“You seem opposed to the idea, Gytha. Why?”
Gytha reached for the broom she had set aside, then rested it over one shoulder. “My brother believes they lure criminals and told me about the self-styled pilgrims who swoon over the sainted bones only to bite or pinch off bits of the relic, hide them in their mouths with cunning skill, and then sell the stolen parts elsewhere at extraordinary profit. He has heard many such stories from our crowner and passing travelers from Norwich.”
“Your brother is well-informed.” The prioress fell silent as she put the manuscript away with great care. “Has Brother Matthew’s desire to purchase a relic become common knowledge in the village?”
“The good brother and his opinions have become familiar to all on market days. There are many who wish he show
ed some modest hesitancy about expressing his views.”
Particularly on the new inn, Eleanor thought, something he most especially hated. She pictured Brother Matthew just outside the door to the place, preaching on the fires of Hell to those who had just enjoyed warmth of a more worldly nature. According to Tostig, who sold priory ale to the inn, a handsome young woman named Signy not only served pots of the brew to inn guests but was also rumored to offer other comforts. Eleanor chuckled. How this must enrage Brother Matthew!
Gytha giggled as if she had read the prioress’ mind.
Eleanor felt her face turn warm. Was she so tolerant of men’s lust because she was equally guilty of carnal longings? And might others recognize the cause of her blindness to this sin? If Brother Matthew did, he would surely use it without scruple to win support for his cause and eventual control of the priory. “You have ceased to be a child, Gytha,” she said with a smile to hide her thoughts. “As to the purchase of a relic, what do the villagers think?”
“Most agree that the hospital should stay. There are few that have not benefited from the prayers and potions. If you chose housing a relic over keeping the hospital, many might say that Tyndal would need more cats than even your fine red fellow can sire to catch the two-footed rats we would attract.”
“Honest words, Gytha, for which I thank you. Do tell your brother that I will consider what you have said with due care.”
Gytha picked up her broom and bowed with courtesy, then skipped through the door into the public chamber. Eleanor was pleased to note that the child had not completely deserted the nascent woman.
***
Eleanor walked over to her window and breathed in the brisk autumn air. Gytha’s comment about Arthur, her cat, fathering enough kittens for rat catching might have amused her, but another problem now deeply troubled her.
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