“My lady!”
Gytha stood in the open door.
Eleanor turned pale at the urgent tone. “What is wrong?”
“Please, my lady, you must come quickly! It is about Brother Thomas.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Brother Beorn glared at the crowner. “Sister Christina is praying with Sir Maurice, and his one-eyed servant refuses to leave him,” he snapped. “Although I will bring others to see your corpse, I shall not interrupt our infirmarian. The young man’s spirit is in pain, and if anyone can draw God’s healing beneficence to a troubled soul, she can. Question them when she is done.”
Ralf shrugged. Although he was suffering from a most contrary mood, he knew there was little merit in countermanding Beorn’s suggestion. The half-blind man and the youth with the shattered face could wait a while longer.
“Very well. Bring me other strangers who might have seen and remembered something.” The crowner hesitated. Had he seen just the briefest sparkle of malice in the lay brother’s eyes? “Barring the leper,” he quickly added. “Of course, I shall want to know which ones you have omitted and the reasons for doing so.” Both can play at that game, Ralf thought, not even trying to hide the spite in his voice.
Brother Beorn strode off without reply.
“I should not vex him so,” Ralf muttered. “He is a good man, and there are others more worthy of my bad temper.” Nonetheless, there was no one else at hand, and after all the pain and embarrassment he had suffered since the discovery of the corpse, the crowner was not in a charitable mood.
In fact, Brother Beorn should not be overly burdened, he reminded himself. Most villagers would have avoided the main road entirely and arrived at the priory gates by locally known shortcuts instead. These, and any strangers coming from the opposite direction, would not have any knowledge of the killing. Perhaps the man of rank and his one-eyed servant had also come from some other route and need not be troubled beyond asking which road they had traveled.
From Brother Beorn he had learned that the stout men of the king’s court had come from an unsuccessful journey to the Norwich shrine of Saint William and therefore would have seen nothing. Depending on his mood, he might question them anyway, more for his own amusement than information. Doing this would surely irk his brother, something the sheriff deserved for all the trouble his newly found concern was causing Ralf.
The crowner had also established that only local villagers, or else the dead, had left the hospital today. Those living he knew well enough: women with their children, a few elderly, none likely to commit murder. Nor would any have traveled that road. Ralf was confident that the killer had not yet left the priory. Although that might be good news, Ralf knew he had little time to waste. If the murderer had come here for shelter, he would not stay long.
He cursed. If Cuthbert had not been out hunting wandering sheep, he could have helped, thus allowing the innocent to return more quickly to their beds and thus suffer their mortal ills in peace. Then the crowner shook his head with frustration. Perhaps it would not matter that his sergeant was unavailable. Only so many could crowd around the corpse to stare. This viewing would take time, time that was becoming ever more precious.
***
As Ralf had expected, there was much shaking of heads from those travelers well enough to hobble into the chapel to see the dead man. Their failure to recognize the corpse seemed honest enough. Most did study the face with dutiful concentration, and the crowner had made sure the grisly wounds were well hidden to protect the sensitivities of the innocent. Many of these men would have gone with anticipatory pleasure to a hanging or a quartering, but few cared to see similar sights against their will.
Only once did Ralf feel hope that the victim might be recognized. An old man, barely able to walk, had spent some time looking at the face, then touched the lank hair with a trembling hand. When the crowner asked him, with as much gentleness as he could, whether he knew who lay on that cold trestle table, the man had merely shaken his head and said there was something about the man that reminded him of his long-dead brother.
“Very well,” Ralf said to Brother Beorn, as the last man was taken back to his straw bed. “We have eliminated most. Let us have your man with his one-eyed servant. Surely your infirmarian’s healing prayers are long over and the pair improved enough to come speedily.”
Brother Beorn cast a glance at the crowner that would have fried a lesser man, then turned abruptly on his leather heel and left the chapel. As he watched him leave, Ralf once again swore to limit his irreverent comments out of courtesy. He also knew that he most probably would not. Since boyhood, he and Beorn had always pricked each other.
***
The two men, who returned with the lay brother, did so without assistance. As he studied them, Ralf found it hard to believe that the younger was even alive, let alone able to walk. The sword blow that left such a deep scar from forehead to jaw would have killed most. Perhaps Sister Christina’s prayers had worked a miracle. He vowed to remember this should he survive the nun and she became a candidate for sainthood.
The crowner bowed, his gesture perfunctory. “My lord,” he said to the younger man. “I am Ralf, crowner for this shire…”
“I know.” The young man’s voice was deep, his eyes restless as a falcon’s, hungry for a killing.
“You are called…?”
The older, one-eyed man stepped forward. “Sir Maurice of Carel is my master. I am Walter.”
“I addressed Sir Maurice.” The man might lack an eye, Ralf thought, but there was enough insolence in his look for two.
“I speak for him.”
Ralf looked back at the scarred face. The young man’s gaze was now frozen as if his eyes had turned to ice.
“You will understand why I do,” the servant continued.
Surely this man must have known his place better when his master had had his wits about him, Ralf thought. The not-so-quiet arrogance in the older man’s manner vexed him, yet he knew the servant probably spoke the truth. No matter how strong the master’s voice might sound, his eyes reflected a hollowed-out man.
“I wish you to look upon a corpse,” the crowner said to Walter. “Perhaps you have seen him.”
The man shrugged. “We have not seen any dead men.”
“Alive perhaps?”
“What reason would we have to remember if we had?”
The crowner’s patience was diminishing with celerity. “I could ask the innkeeper whether you rested the night there and which direction you took when you left…”
“There is no need,” Walter replied. “We did stay at the inn and traveled to Tyndal by the main road.”
Ralf decided there was a steadiness of truth in the man’s voice. “The dead man was found on that road you traveled yesterday. You may have seen him and perhaps any companions he might have had. We seek his identity.”
“And who killed him.”
“I did not say he had been murdered.”
“You did not have to, Crowner. Your interest in this does not suggest the man died from old age.”
Ralf raised one eyebrow. “I investigate any unexplained death, not just murders.”
“Unless he bears an untoward wound, crowner, I doubt you would order this pilgrimage of the sick to view him.”
This Walter showed too much boldness for a man who had supposedly spent his life serving the whims of the mighty. Whatever his bond to the man he called master, Ralf doubted Walter was any servant. “You have the right of that,” he said with a mollifying tone. If their true relationship became significant in his investigation, he would question them further. If not, he would let them keep their secrets in the shadow. “Come with me, then. I would have you see the corpse.”
Walter hesitated. “I will do so gladly, Crowner, but I beg you excuse my master.”
“Why?”
“He is unwell.”
“Others have been sick or wounded, y
et they have come.” Ralf gestured for the pair to follow him.
“I cannot allow…”
“Allow? Then I order it. In the king’s name.”
Walter reddened. “Do you know who my master is?”
“A knight home from the crusades, if I might guess, although neither of you wears the crusader’s badge,” the crowner snapped. “From the brown color of your faces, I would say that you have both recently spent much time in sunnier lands than England.” Ralf watched the man’s look grow guarded and wondered what he feared.
Then Walter shrugged, his gesture suggesting that any man with a full complement of wits could see that Sir Maurice was not a crusader. “A man who is close to Prince Edward,” he answered, as if Ralf had asked.
“Not from Outremer, then?”
“We have traveled to the continent for my master’s health. As even you must know, there are shrines there.”
“And are you suggesting that your master has friends currently at court, not just the Lord Edward who is far from England, friends that this rough-edged country crowner might not wish to offend?”
“You show some astuteness, Crowner.”
“More than you would be advised to ignore, Walter of wherever-you-are-from. Lest you blunder further in this badly stitched guise of a servant, I would suggest that you bring your master now. A good servant would not hesitate to do so at the command of a man standing for our king. Thus, out of kindness, I teach you how to play this strange game and leave you to hope that I do not press for any explanations about why you have chosen these ill-fitting robes.”
The older man blinked, then looked over at the man he claimed to serve. A look of pity softened his features and, for just a moment, Ralf thought he saw tears rise in his sighted eye.
“I beg pardon for my rude manner, Crowner. I wished only to protect my master from grief. As you must realize, he suffers profoundly.”
“The visage of death is not strange to any of us.” Ralf gestured toward the chapel. “It should not disturb him more than any other man.”
“When we leave our mother’s womb, we may all come dressed with the flesh of mortality, but Death’s features shine with an especially fierce light for some,” Walter replied, taking Sir Maurice’s elbow and leading him forward. “For these, the light may be both unbearable and blinding.”
“He has you to aid him.” Ralf walked to the corpse and laid one hand on the sheet covering the head. “Do you wish to view the man first?”
Walter shook his head. “We traveled together, Sir Maurice and I. What one saw, the other did as well.”
Ralf whipped the sheet off.
Sir Maurice screamed.
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.
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