The Proud Sinner

by Priscilla Royal

  The innkeeper paled.

  Ralf winked. “I know miracles can happen. My wife is adept at such culinary wonders.”

  “To answer your question further,” the innkeeper hastily added, “there was no grievance about the quality of the food from anyone who spent the night here. Quantity, perhaps.” He glared. “When the abbots left the next day, a few other travelers joined them. I know nothing of their health. Most here were local men and would have sent word of any illness with a demand for the repayment of coin. A few strangers, stranded by the weather, remained, but had no complaints about my inn.”

  “Was anyone aware that an abbot was ill?”

  The man shook his head. “I certainly did not know of it. None of the abbots spoke much to me the next day, other than to give me a thin pouch of even thinner coin. The godly ones took hot barley loaves with them to eat on the road to break their fasts. I don’t think the fare here was of the quality they were accustomed to in their abbeys.” He snorted. “If an abbot was poisoned, it was done by someone in his service. Other than Betsy and the groom, my people avoided these religious. Was it the fat abbot who fell ill? He seemed most likely to suffer from over-indulgence at table. More of the extra slices of ox probably ended up in his belly.”

  “It was not him.” Ralf hesitated. “You mentioned that one of the abbots took his ease with that serving woman.” The crowner decided that the groom with his cropped ear would have spent little time with the abbots, preferring to stay closer to the horses.

  “Lest you think Betsy poisoned him, Crowner, she is not stupid. Even if she hated the man, she’d let him lift her skirt for enough coin. If he tried to beat her, she was just as likely to bite him in his manhood.” He rubbed at his nose. “Almost gelded a man once.”

  Finishing his ale and sopping up the last of the meat juices with bread, Ralf rose and thanked the innkeeper. When he tried to pay, however, the man pushed his hand aside.

  “Your word that you shall leave me in peace for my cooperation is sufficient, Crowner.”

  Ralf gave his oath, although he said he might have to come back for further details if the investigation warranted it.

  “Not too often,” the man replied. “Your face is known here and spoils the appetites of good men.”

  With that, the crowner left, well-contented with his meal and the information gathered. The ale might have lacked the robust taste of Tyndal’s, he decided, but the bread was better than the sour rye of the poor. The meat, suspiciously similar to venison, was good. Had his stomach been a cat, it would have purred. As he collected his horse from the nervous groom, his mood was sufficiently good that he flipped the man a small coin and grinned.

  As he rode back to Tyndal, pondering all he had learned, his mood changed. He should have known that Brother Thomas rarely grew suspicious without cause. His own conclusion that the abbots had suffered only from their sinful indulgences was too simple. Some malign force was at work here.

  Chapter Eleven

  The daylight was growing dim. So was the life of Abbot Tristram.

  Sister Anne slipped as close as she dared and watched him. His breathing was shallow, but that was a mercy after the delirium that caused him to scream and the painful seizures he suffered.

  At least they had decided he would be more comfortable in his own chamber in the guest quarters. Had he remained in the hospital, his howls of agony, as he imagined devils tearing his entrails out of his body, would have alarmed the fragile sick nearby. As a man approaches death, he must consider his sins and how to placate God, but each must look into his own fiery pit of Hell and not be confused by others and their special fears of damnation.

  The abbot’s breathing grew slower, and then he gasped, open-mouthed, with a short rasping sound deep in his throat.

  Unable to touch him, Anne asked the lay brother to put his hand with care just above Tristram’s lips and nose. He next put his hand on the abbot’s chest but quickly looked up at her with unmistakable sorrow.

  The body of Abbot Tristram lay silent and hollow. Death had taken his soul to his meeting with God.

  At least his earthly torment is over, Sister Anne thought.

  What most grieved her was the failure to cure or even ease the abbot’s final suffering. When she had first spoken to him after he was taken from the courtyard to the special bed in the hospital, she concluded that he had a gentle enough soul for a mortal. Perhaps he did expect the attending lay brother to do more for him than other men might have required, but he’d had no quarrel with her questions about his condition and let her try remedies she hoped would help.

  That was better than being cursed as the Whore of Babylon and ordered away, although she knew there was likely little she could have done for Abbot Ilbert even if he had permitted it. At least he had died in the comfort of knowing he had rejected any contamination by a daughter of Eve, but she regretted he never told her, or one of the hospital brothers, if he was taking anything as a remedy against some ailment. That might have helped her identify or reject the cause of his illness.

  Sister Anne slipped to her knees near Abbot Tristram’s bed and prayed. Brother Thomas, who had arrived just in time to give the man the last rites, bowed his head in silence. The attendant lay brother murmured softly.

  There is nothing quite so still as death, Anne thought. Her breath caught and tears stung. The face of her young son came to mind, as it often did when she stepped aside to let Death take away a soul. Her boy might have died many years ago, but the memory of his lifeless body remained fresh. She longed to reach out for the comforting touch of her husband’s hand, a man now known as Brother John. But he had chosen God to console him in his grief and never touched her hand again.

  “Let us look at him,” Brother Thomas said in a hushed voice.

  She was grateful he had not seen her reaction to this death and rose quickly to her feet. “You are right, Brother. If he could not give us answers when he was alive, perhaps his body will in death,” she said and quickly sent the lay brother to the hospital to prepare a place by the altar for this corpse to rest until burial arrangements could be made.

  But any hope of revelation quickly dimmed. Brother Thomas was thorough in his examination of the corpse, but, apart from the yellowed color of the man’s skin and eyes, there were no other untoward signs present. The only thing of interest he noted was that the abbot, although thin, was flabby compared to most men his age. He pointed that out.

  “As knowledgeable medical men say, we should eat, drink, and exercise in moderation.” Anne said. “Perhaps he exercised less than was advisable.”

  “His yellow coloring. Might that have been caused by a poison?”

  “Men die with that hue, and there is no question of murder, Brother.” Her tone was flat. “I cannot dismiss your concern, but I cannot confirm that his death was hastened by someone who hated him.”

  Gracia appeared at the door to the room. “Crowner Ralf has arrived back safely from the inn,” she said, “and Prioress Eleanor asks you both to join her in her chambers to hear his news.” Her gaze suddenly fell on the motionless man lying on the bed but realized there was no need to ask questions. Murmuring a prayer for the abbot’s soul, the maid left with Brother Thomas close behind.

  Sister Anne remained just long enough to take a final look at the corpse. At least, she thought, the other abbots had not been nigh to hear his screams. They had fled the guest quarters to pray in the church for their companion’s soul. Or else, she thought with less charity, they did not want to be reminded of Death when the man from Rome awaited them and brought hope of future earthly rewards.

  She hurried to catch up with Gracia and Brother Thomas.

  ***

  As she approached them on the path, the sub-infirmarian forced her mind from her treatment failures to consider Prioress Eleanor’s worries over Gracia’s future.

  The maid has never
lost her wariness of others, even if she has learned to laugh, Anne thought. Perhaps she would be wise to remain at the priory and take vows. The world had never been kind to her.

  Anne knew that Gracia did not have the dowry needed to allow her to become a nun, yet she was also too well-educated to enter as a lay sister. The sub-infirmarian shook her head and then realized that she had fallen further behind the maid and monk.

  She began to run.

  Gracia looked over her shoulder and stopped to wait for her. As if realizing what Sister Anne was thinking, her bright expression dimmed into something inscrutable.

  ***

  Ralf threw out his arms in irritation. “I think the innkeeper was telling the truth, my lady. He knew I could easily find out if I came back with enough men to question everyone. And, no, he could not pay everyone off to lie to me before I did.”

  Eleanor smiled.

  “If the one abbot was poisoned, it must have been done cleverly and by one of the servants. No one else at the inn has sickened, nor, except for Abbot Tristram, have any others in the party of religious.” He looked at Sister Anne and Brother Thomas. “And the second abbot has since died? Were there any signs that matched those you noted on the first one’s body?”

  “They both suffered convulsions and frothing,” Anne replied. “Other symptoms were quite different, but we know little enough about their prior conditions or anything else that might help.”

  “Yet the coincidence of illness remains troublesome,” Thomas added.

  “I concur, but is that truly questionable by itself without symptoms that are more alike? A poisoning seems unlikely to be the cause of Abbot Tristram’s death. He had been ill, then recovered, and yet later began to exhibit more dire afflictions before he gave up his soul in agony.” Sister Anne frowned. “But because the facts suggest nothing was ill-prepared at the inn…” She rubbed at her eyes in frustration. “I am missing something or lack the knowledge to identify the cause!”

  Ralf murmured sympathy and reached out for her hand, but remembered her vocation and drew back.

  “My father was the physician, not I,” she continued. “He had the education I so profoundly lack, as well as the skill to read medical treatises in languages I cannot.”

  “But he taught you from the manuscripts he had. No son could have learned any more.”

  “You are kind, Ralf,” Sister Anne replied, but his words did not comfort. She often grieved that her father was left with only a daughter to whom he might pass on his great learning. He never once said he would have preferred a son, and never stinted in his lessons to her, but conventional wisdom was adamant that women remained inferior creatures even when a father chose to be indulgent. When she later failed to save her own son’s life, she felt the full weight of her inadequacy and ignored the truth that her apothecary husband had also failed to keep their boy alive.

  “It is almost as if God has struck these men with some new plague,” Eleanor said, shivering at the thought. “May He have mercy on the innocent, if such is the case.”

  The thought did cross Ralf’s mind that God might have had good reason to strike these two abbots down if they were anything like his hypocritical brother. And well they could have been, he thought. Another had broken his vow of celibacy at the inn, apparently with a practiced vigor. That was one sin he never thought festered in his brother’s benighted soul, even if there were other evils which probably lay rotting there.

  “Although I did not think it true before,” he chose to say, “I now side with Brother Thomas in the belief that at least the first death was murder. And if the first, then we must consider the second to be suspect.”

  “Poisons are hard to identify if they are not common ones,” Anne said. “The symptoms exhibited by Abbot Tristram could be caused by any number of ailments. If his body was weak, as his corpse suggests he might have been, a lesser disease could have overcome him, even if it might not a stronger man.”

  Eleanor looked at the two monastics. “Do you both concur with Ralf that the two deaths might be unnatural?”

  “I do,” said Brother Thomas and glanced at the sub-infirmarian.

  “It is possible,” she added, “although I am not convinced about Abbot Tristram’s.”

  “Your questioning of the abbots did not produce enlightenment?” Ralf’s tone suggested no hint of criticism.

  “Much jesting about flatulence in which your brother was judged an expert, yet I learned nothing that struck me as relevant except that not one of the abbots liked any of his fellows. But since you have talked to the innkeeper, I should question the abbots’ servants,” Thomas replied. “One of them might have noticed something untoward. One of them apparently took responsibility to act as a shield against the secular world.”

  “Or, if God is merciful to us, one will exhibit a murderous dislike of the two dead men,” Ralf said. “We can only hope that a guilty soul might tremble before a monk who speaks with God, and confess.”

  “It is too late tonight to talk to the men, but I shall tomorrow after I take the medicines to those who need them in the village,” Thomas said.

  “How is Signy’s girl? And are there many others suffering there?” Eleanor had long ago approved Sister Anne’s suggestion that Thomas carry some remedies to the sick who were unable to travel to the hospital. It had become a popular charity, not only because it allowed the frail to receive treatment without the hardship of moving from their beds, but because Brother Thomas was loved for his kindness and wise counseling.

  “Signy’s daughter is almost well. There are only two others: an elderly man, who may not last the winter, and a woman who still suffers pain after her seventh birthing.”

  “Then I shall send word to the abbots that you will be talking to their servants before the midday meal.” Eleanor needed only to look at Gracia for the maid to begin serving ale.

  For once, Ralf refused refreshment and said he longed to return to his family instead.

  Prioress Eleanor said he must do so and sent her love and a blessing to Gytha and the children.

  The others, who remained with the prioress in her chamber, chose, in the growing darkness of that winter night, to talk about anything except murder.

  Chapter Twelve

  Two young women walked in companionable silence and then laughed like innocent children when the crisp snow gave way under their feet with a crackling sound. A fresh layer had fallen overnight, covering their route from the hospital apothecary hut to the anchorage attached to the Lady Chapel. The air was brisk, but the morning sun shone with a bold light as if celebrating its arrival after banishment by mists as sharp as dagger-points on mortal flesh.

  Gracia tried to take shallow breaths because the cold hurt her chest and throat, but she reveled in the warmth of her thick cloak and snug winter gloves. Others might choose to forget the time when they suffered from ice and hunger, but she refused to do so. Instead, she greeted each new day as a blessing from God that put the grief of her sad days further behind.

  From time to time, she still had nightmares in which her parents gasped for breath before they died, their eyes wide with panic as they suffocated. And she had other moments when the smell of food from the priory kitchen revived her terror of hunger and her certainty that the time of starvation must come again. But all that could be set aside when her prioress sat her down, held her hand, and taught her the lessons of kindness, or when Brother Thomas looked at her with his astonishing understanding and proved to her that men could be gentle.

  A hand tapped her shoulder, and Gracia looked up at her companion.

  Eda, Anchoress Juliana’s maid, smiled and pointed toward the path that led to the mill.

  A line of young lay brothers was being led to the assigned work for the day. At their head marched Brother Beorn, a man of grim demeanor and strict rules, who was respected and hated in equal measure by his charges.r />
  Gracia remembered her mistress telling her that the youths might, after they grew older, appreciate that he understood mercy and was always fair. In that moment, they would learn to love him. Now they only saw his intolerance of any laxity in the labor of serving God, and they winced under his sharp rebukes. Gracia kept that lesson her prioress taught firmly in mind.

  Eda pointed with her fingers as if counting the ones in the line until she reached the one she wanted to indicate for her friend. Then she put her hand over her heart, fluttered her eyelashes, and grinned.

  “I see Brother Anthony,” Gracia said with an uncomfortable laugh and knowing that her face was turning red. The young lay brother was often at the apothecary when she came for things needed by her prioress or with Eda. When he shyly looked into her eyes, a bewildering warmth crept through her body.

  Was this lust?

  Her emotions confused her. He was gentle and appealing, but she also drew back from him, honoring his vocation. But if she could desire to lie with him, might she feel the same for another man?

  The world outside Tyndal Priory did not tempt her. Unlike the woman who first served Prioress Eleanor, she never went beyond the walls unless sent on an errand. Here she felt safe with food, warmth, and love that never threatened to hurt her. Why, then, had her own body chosen to attack her? Was God telling her she was too wicked to remain on His holy ground?

  Eda touched her friend’s shoulder again and began to move her hands rapidly, her expression more serious. She pointed toward the guest quarters and raised her steepled hands to heaven.

  After a few more gestures, Gracia indicated she needed more information to properly reply. She might have given voice to her question but spoke with her hands as much as she was able. Although Eda understood speech, the prioress’ maid chose to respect her manner of communication as proof of their loving friendship.

  Eda had seldom alluded to the torment that left the horrific scar that cut through her mouth and a subsequent infection that almost killed her. Gracia had only briefly mentioned her parents’ deaths or the man who had violated her. Their individual experiences of the world’s cruelty had initially drawn each to the other, but the bond between them strengthened as Gracia and Eda became like sisters, a kinship neither had enjoyed before.