“What handmaid, Crowner?” Ivetta cried, suddenly aware of what Ralf was suggesting.
“Did Martin refuse to pay his entry fee when he found the doorway fouled?”
Ivetta flew at Ralf, her fingers bent like eagle talons.
Thomas grabbed her before she did damage to a king’s man. “Be still, woman! You were witness to what happened. We must hear the details from you.”
She pushed the monk away, then gestured at the man kneeling on the floor. “Do you think he will listen to a whore, Brother?”
“If you doubt he shall, then believe that I will.” Thomas reached out as if offering peace.
“Why are you not terrified of a woman like me?” She stared at him.
“The founder of my Order sought out women in brothels to spread God’s truth. In consequence, I fear you not and would hear what you have to say.”
“What does that matter if you do?” Ivetta shrugged. “He’ll hang me for this in any case.”
“Our crowner is a fair man.”
“You heard what he just said.”
Thomas glanced down at Ralf and wondered himself why this man, who had always shown more love of truth than anything else, had spoken so cruelly to this woman.
“I have naught to say,” the woman said. “Why waste the little breath I have left, talking to a man who has already condemned me.” Ivetta fell silent. The sulky expression in her eyes did little to mask the pallor of fear on her face.
“Go back to the priory, Brother. This murder has naught to do with you,” Ralf said as he rose and wiped his hands on his leather tunic. “It has all the common marks of a man’s act, not the Devil’s.”
“Then may I tell the crowd outside that Satan had no direct hand in this?” Thomas asked. If he could not serve God in this matter, he could at least do something for priory business since it was priory ale that the innkeeper bought.
“Aye, this is solely the king’s affair,” the crowner said, glaring at the woman in the corner.
Chapter Six
Signy sat down on the bench near the doorway to the cook shack and turned her face away. She was not pleased.
Ralf was scarlet with anger and frustration. “I only ask to learn what happened.”
“You have already made up your mind.”
“That is what Ivetta claims.”
“As you know, Ralf, I am no friend to the harlot, but I might agree with her in this.”
“I have not determined guilt!”
Signy looked heavenward as if seeking guidance or, more likely, patience. “Very well, the tale is simple enough: I took food and drink to Ivetta and Martin, both of whom were alive when I left.”
Ralf waited for more, then growled, “Did you see anything unusual?”
“Unusual?” she mimicked. “Perhaps you imagine that I stayed to watch them couple?” Her face flushed. “Do you think me the kind of woman who spies on such things? Or maybe you believe my uncle sent me as a third to increase their pleasuring?”
“I meant none of that,” Ralf roared. “Just answer my question. What did you see when you were in that room?”
“First, I knocked at the door,” Signy’s pitch dropped with mock gravity. “Martin opened it. I entered, laid the tray on the table, then left. Question Ivetta. She knows more than I could possibly.”
“She refuses to talk to me.”
“Do you blame her? Even I heard you shout at the woman, and I was below the stairs.”
“She was in the room where he died, and I can count the reasons why she might want to kill him.” Ralf rubbed his fingers as if feeling good coins.
“You have spent too much time with your brother, Crowner. I see that you will now take the easiest route and choose the simplest answer without further care for justice. Is Ivetta not a whore? Are her shameful ways not reason enough to condemn her for other crimes?”
Ralf slammed his fist against the side of the wall and cursed.
Signy jumped to her feet. “Methinks all women are whores to you. You certainly treated me like one. Why should I answer you either? I have no reason to suppose you would believe me any more than you do Ivetta.”
“You are no harlot! I wronged you. I confessed it then. I repeat it now. Is that not enough?”
Signy’s eyes flashed with anger.
“But you have recovered well enough if the tales I hear are true.”
“And what lies do you choose to believe?”
“That Tostig would marry you.”
“Have you heard this from him or, for that matter, from me?”
“What need have I of that, when all others speak of it?” he shouted.
Signy’s blue eyes began to glow like sapphires in the hot sun. “Indeed you have just proven that you are no different from either of your brothers. Rumor becomes truth if it suits you. Otherwise, you might have asked yourself whether Tostig would even consider marriage to a woman like me.” Disloyal tears began to flow down her cheeks. “After all, is he not your friend? As such, he knows you bedded me, and, like all men, he wants his woman unbreached until he comes with his own lance raised.”
“I said nothing…”
“And the moment after a woman does open her gate to the brave knight, he calls her whore and mocks…” She turned away and, with one swipe of her hand, destroyed the tears that had cruelly exposed her vulnerability.
Ralf groaned. “This is getting nowhere. If you hate me still, I cannot blame you, but I must hear from you all you know of what happened tonight.”
Signy folded her arms. “I took food and drink up to the room for Ivetta and her customer, as I said. I shut the door and returned to serve those downstairs. We all heard Ivetta scream. You were there yourself as witness after that.” She turned around and glared at him. “Do you accuse me of murdering the cooper?”
“Did you?” he barked. Immediately both repentant and exasperated, he covered his eyes with his hand.
“I must have, hadn’t I? No one else poured the wine or took it up to the room.”
“This is murder, Signy. Do not mock or I must ask if that is a confession.”
“Mock?”
Ralf waited. A muscle twitched nervously in his cheek. “Why do you say it was the wine that killed him? I did not mention anything.”
“It matters not what I do or do not say, Crowner. Arrest me if you want. Chain Ivetta and me together and take us both off to dance in the air if that suits you best. You’ll hang whomever you wish on this no matter what the truth.”
Ralf pressed his fingers into the corners of his eyes as if to numb a very sharp pain.
Chapter Seven
A pottery jug shattered against the wall. Ale splattered across the stone floor, altar, and the prie-dieu. The orange cat flew from his nest on the narrow bed and raced toward the safety of the public rooms.
Prioress Eleanor was suffering from a most uncharacteristic rage.
“I hate him! God curse him!” Her hand shook, but she gripped her aunt’s letter from Amesbury with the force of one who would take it to the grave with her.
Gytha peeked through the entrance at her mistress, then very quietly slipped back from the prioress’ private quarters, and left the chambers.
“May his soul crackle and burst in the bubbling pitch of Hell!” With her free hand, she raised a pewter tray as if to send it after the broken jug, then dropped it, and collapsed to her knees.
Clutching the letter to her heart, the leader of Tyndal began to weep with a rare anguish. “Nay, I did not mean any of that. May God forgive me,” she sobbed. “I do not want him cursed!”
The prioress crawled to her prie-dieu. She laid the letter out as if to read it again and ran her hand over it most gently. Then she slammed her fist down and shoved the offending thing onto the floor. “How dare he do this to me?”
She pressed her forehead against the prie-dieu until the carving bit into her flesh. “My heart broke vows for him. My body suffered lust for him. At night, when Satan sent his imp d
ressed in the body of that cruel monk, I coupled with the incubus and took joy in it! Now I learn he is a spy, a viper at my breast!” With each phrase, she beat a fist against her heart.
With a cry of almost animal pain, Eleanor flung herself on the floor in front of her altar, covered her face, and howled for mercy and solace.
Comfort was slow in coming, but at last her sobbing did quiet, and reason tentatively slipped back from its brief and unexpected exile.
The prioress of Tyndal raised herself to her knees and sat back. “Should I not be grateful?” she sighed. “I might have learned this secret in any number of other ways.” Someone besides her aunt, some enemy who did not have Eleanor’s best interests in mind, might have used the knowledge against her. Sister Beatrice, however, not only understood the pain and anger her letter would cause but would also keep the revelation close to her heart.
As she knelt, her emotions teetering on the brink of another burst of despair, a soft body bumped against her and rubbed against her hands. Looking down, she did smile and picked up the large orange cat, holding him close to her heart. “Ah, sweet Arthur,” she sighed as he began to purr, “men may be cruel and faithless, but you remain my only perfect knight.” Rising to her feet, the prioress of Tyndal rubbed her cheek against the soft bundle of fur.
After a few moments, convinced that he had done what was required, the great tabby squirmed out of her arms, leapt to the floor, and returned to the aforementioned bed where his recent nap had been so abruptly interrupted.
Eleanor picked up her aunt’s letter, and then held the item at arm’s length. “He is still a traitor,” she said to the missive, her voice brittle with scorn. “I am a weak woman, Eve’s child, created as an afterthought from a mortal man’s rib. Brother Thomas, on the other hand, is Adam’s descendant, the creature He made first as His more perfect reflection. As the superior being, blessed with logic and reason denied women, shouldn’t Brother Thomas have understood that he could not serve two masters? Did he not understand when he came to Tyndal that he owed me protection and obedience just as the beloved disciple was commanded to do for Our Lord’s mother? He should have known better than to commit such a heinous transgression! How dare he be so deceitful?”
Or was he? And, if he was, should she assume that he was truly disloyal to her?
Eleanor carefully reread her aunt’s letter. Sister Beatrice had not, in fact, condemned the monk for duplicity. While praising him for his dedication to God’s work in ferreting out those who plotted against Church power, she had also carefully emphasized his loyal service to Eleanor and her family at Wynethorpe Castle and more recently in Amesbury Priory.
The prioress walked over to her window and stared out at her priory lands. Was her aunt suggesting that his fealty to any spymaster might be weaker than the oath he swore to her as the leader of this priory? To say so directly would be dangerous, lest the letter fall into the wrong hands. In fact, as she went over the phrasing again, she smiled. If a certain man of significant religious rank read this missive, he might have been quite amused by the naiveté of one woman finding joy in the discovery that her niece’s monk had such a high-ranking patron.
Eleanor chuckled with almost wicked delight. The man was a fool if he thought her aunt was no wiser than some wide-eyed child. But aunt and niece knew well enough how to read the other’s meaning in cautious phrasing. Surely Sister Beatrice had meant to give her practical solace to ease the news of Thomas’ deception.
“He has shown unquestionable loyalty,” Eleanor conceded, “especially at my father’s castle when he had no real cause to do so. If I handle this matter with wisdom, I may yet bind him more firmly to me. Although I’d be foolish to assume he would serve my interests first, should his spymaster’s demands conflict with mine, I have been forewarned in time to prepare for that trial of wills.”
Then she gazed down at the shards from the broken jug and sighed. “Meanwhile, I have sinned by letting the Devil infuse me with the flames of wrath, thereby melting all logic with searing rage. Of course I must choose carefully when it is best to fight and secure my right to his loyalty. There are times I shall concede defeat, but my brother Hugh used to say that any successful warrior will retreat if that means winning the ultimate victory.”
She cleaned up what pieces of the shattered pottery she could find and laid them on the table next to the reprieved platter. Gytha should not have to pick up what she had so wickedly destroyed, the prioress decided, and swore to do penance for this act.
Then Eleanor sat at the edge of her bed and rested her hand on the sleeping cat. “Nor should I let my ungodly lust for the man give the Fiend cause to prance about. My aunt’s advice last year at Amesbury should be burned into my soul. ‘Love and its chaste expressions are not the sins. Vice comes from the selfish greed of mortal flesh when a man and woman couple’,” she repeated. “Since then, when lust burns through me like hot metal, I have found some cooling comfort in her words-and in her assertion that Brother Thomas would ever be my liegeman.”
“My liegeman?” The pain from those words pricked tears in her eyes again, and she swallowed them as anger returned. “That he shall be, for cert! I may never bed him or bear his child, but I have the right to demand a far higher devotion from him than that of husband. He is my monk!”
“My lady?”
Startled, Eleanor spun around.
A pale-faced Gytha stood in the doorway. “Are you well?”
“Aye, well enough.” Eleanor said, raising her chin with recovering dignity. After all, no matter what happened with Brother Thomas, she did still have a priory to run.
“Crowner Ralf begs an audience, my lady, but I will send him off if you…”
“Nay, bid him enter. I would never turn our friend away.” She glanced through her window at the position of the sun. “And bring something to hush his stomach for I do recall that its roaring often mutes any message he brings!”
***
When Gytha opened the door and gestured for Ralf to enter the public chambers, the prioress nodded for her to stay. The maid placed food and drink on the table and retreated to a distance sufficient to allow conversation but still provide proper attendance.
“I am grateful you would see me, my lady.”
“You are always welcome at Tyndal Priory and have been much missed.” The prioress’ eyes grew sad. “When we got word that you had buried a wife, we longed to offer consolation. I have prayed for her soul and that your heart may heal in good time.”
Ralf’s brow furrowed.
It was an expression Eleanor knew well. “I would love to see your daughter,” she said, quickly changing to a happier topic. “How is she?”
A grin broke across his face. “Fat, pink, and beautiful, my lady!”
“Then she is nothing like her father,” Gytha interjected, then flushed with embarrassment at her impertinence.
Ralf stiffened for an instant, and then turned to Eleanor’s maid with a softened look. “She has my lungs if not my face. In this way, my paternity has cursed her young life, but on balance she has found a most adoring father in me.”
“Then she has exposed the soft heart you have taken much care to hide,” Gytha replied, an impish glow in her eyes.
Ralf grinned like a boy.
“What do you call her?” Eleanor asked.
“Sibely. It was her mother’s name. I wished to honor my wife for bringing me such a joy at the sacrifice of her own life.”
As if remembering a task, Gytha jumped up and disappeared into the prioress’ private chambers but not before Eleanor noted moisture on her cheeks.
“I know you came to us for some reason, Crowner,” she said. “How may we help?”
“I have a corpse…”
Eleanor threw open her arms. “And when do you not? Ah, Ralf, I jest, but forgive this frail woman and give me your news.”
“A poisoning, methinks, a deed I need confirmed…”
“…by our sub-infirmarian who was once a
n apothecary.”
Ralf nodded.
“Should I know the dead one’s name? Perhaps there are kin in need of comfort.”
“Martin, the cooper, my lady.”
Eleanor frowned. “Without doubt, he was not a godly man, but neither did he have wife or children, or at least none that he would claim. Would you prefer to send the body with Cuthbert? I can report back to you on what Sister Anne observed.”
“Nay, I must hear what she says and ask what I need to know.” Ralf lowered his eyes. “My absence from this coast has been long, my lady. Much has changed.”
Eleanor considered his words for a moment, then nodded. “Very well, I shall let our sister know that you will be bringing her a body for examination.”
“I fear that the favor I beg is greater still.”
The prioress gestured for him to continue.
“As a former soldier, I know violent death well, but I have little understanding of poisonings, a form of murder more common amongst those of higher rank methinks.”
Eleanor struggled to contain her amusement. Crowner Ralf might be a man of rude manners, but his birth was not as low as he would prefer to suggest.
“I beg permission for Sister Anne to come to the inn and see the corpse where it lies. I have oft found that a knowledgeable eye recognizes important details in such situations. If we move the body, I fear we might destroy valuable clues.”
“Perhaps it would be best to send…” she hesitated, “… Brother Beorn?”
The crowner coughed, perhaps to keep himself from speaking his true mind about the lay brother. “As much as I respect his skills, they are not as fine as…I do not want anything missed out of ignorance.”
“Then I will ask Sister Anne if she is willing to venture forth. If she is, I will arrange for proper escort.”
“I am most grateful, my lady.”
“Something else is worrying you, Crowner.” Despite the warmth of the East Anglian summer day, the prioress hid her hands in the sleeves of her habit. “I pray that this priory is not involved this time.”
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