“Martin promised me more,” she sighed. But Martin was dead and she had nothing. Everything she ever earned on her back, or more often on her knees, went to him. In truth, he had fed and clothed her as well as he did himself and made sure she had a soft bed. When the bouncing got rough, she did not bruise as quickly. Standing, she rubbed her buttocks. With only this straw to buffer a man’s weight, there would be marks soon enough from that swineherd’s pleasures.
Pulling a loose gown over her head, Ivetta went to open the door. As she stared up at the twinkling stars, she felt her spirit plunge into melancholy. What was she going to do? Angry though she may have been over the swineherd’s insults, she knew her value as a harlot was lessening. Without Martin to bring clients who were willing to pay for special acts, she was reduced to serving the poor, maimed, the drunk, diseased or aged. Virile lads, who might even bring her a little joy, always seemed to find enough girls with taut maidenheads eager for bursting. She would never feel their muscular arms around her on that rough mat.
She turned, went back into the stifling room, and yanked the badly fitted door shut.
If only I could store this heat for the dark season when the babe is due, she thought. The damp cold will be so bitter then we shall both surely turn to ice.
She took a mouthful of the ale still left in the jug. “Fa!” she spat. The brew had turned foul.
She had nowhere to go. Her parents were dead, not that they would welcome such a wicked daughter back. When she had returned from the field, bleeding after Martin’s breaching, they had cast her out with one loaf of bread as a mercy and the gown she wore. The only living kin she had left was an elder brother, but his wife would refuse to let her in their house. That fine woman spent most of her waking hours and, if truth be told, most of the sleeping ones on her knees in prayer. Charity to sinners, especially those guilty of carnal wickedness, was not one of her reputed virtues.
Ivetta was very much alone.
“I’m sure the priory would take me in to do hard labor,” she muttered. “They hinted enough that I should repent, but I cannot confess guilt over Martin. I loved him.” Her mouth puckered as if she had bitten into sour fruit. “If I’m going to Hell, at least he’s there as well. We might as well burn together.”
Covering her face with her hands, she began to weep. “I am going to die, and the babe with me,” she moaned. “Curses on Signy! The blood of the three of us will be on her hands and she’ll just grow fat…”
There was a knock at the door.
Ivetta roughly ran fingers under her eyes to dry the tears. Who was this? she wondered, resentful that she could not be left in peace right now. Yet she did need the trade. If she were fortunate, it would be the swineherd with the other chicken. If not, it might be some lusty leper who knew she could not afford to turn anyone away if she were to survive.
As she opened the door, however, she drew back in shock when she recognized the dark figure outside.
“I have come to make peace,” the shadow said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Returning along the path to the priory, Thomas gazed up at the sparkling stars. Above him was the constellation of the cross and to the right was the lute in the shape of a heart. A faint white light shot between the two, then disappeared. Was that a soul traveling to God?
Perhaps it belonged to the man with the deep sore in his throat who had died tonight. In that suffering creature’s last moments of mortal consciousness, Thomas had knelt beside him and taken his confession, granting absolution quickly lest Satan find cause for rejoicing over the capture of another soul.
While Death pulled the throbbing soul away, the widow screamed in protest, throwing herself on her beloved husband’s still breast. Tears flooded down his own cheeks as Thomas watched the woman lying there and trembling with both irrational outrage and better understood grief.
Although he had reassured her that her husband should find sweet peace in heaven and would wait for her with open arms when her time came, he suspected none of this would be of comfort until her wild anguish had run its course. As she alternated between howled curses that her husband had deserted her and sweet pleadings for him to return to her arms, Thomas knew that her heart only begged God to keep the misery of her remaining life on earth very short, an existence that most certainly would be both difficult and forlorn.
“Cursed be the Devil’s darkness!” he growled, a profound loneliness weighing his spirit down like some dark and sodden cloak. Why had God not utterly destroyed men after Eden if human life was so wretched that only death held joy? And if death was man’s only pleasure, why deny him the right to claim that delight by calling self-murder a sin?
“Get thee behind me,” Thomas cried out, shaking his fist at the shadows, but Satan, with especial cruelty, now cast the image of Giles into his weakened soul. Until he had gone to Amesbury, Thomas had achieved some peace from this torment, but the events last year at the old priory had shattered that little calm and driven his spirit back into the stinking hole of despair he had suffered in prison.
Had Giles found peace with his older and quite wealthy wife, he wondered, and had he banished all thought of Thomas from his heart? Was it worse if Giles remembered him but only with hatred and disgust?
“I need sleep,” he groaned. “I need…” He fell silent, terrified of pursuing that ill-defined longing any further. If God ever answered his prayers for understanding, he might take courage and face the dreaded thing. Until then, his soul remained as firmly chained as his body had once been in prison with rusted and chafing irons.
“Sleep must come,” he muttered, shoving away all the prickling aches of body and spirit. “Then I can seek answers for my sins.”
As he thought more on that, he wondered if this lack of rest was meant to goad him to the chapel night after night-or even to seek out Sister Juliana. After all, what force had thrown him to his knees by her tiny window that night? Was it God’s hand?
“Perhaps,” he murmured. “Aye, I think so.” After he had spoken with her, he had followed her counsel and filled his soul with silence the next night when wakefulness drove him out of his narrow bed. That night, an unfamiliar peace had caressed his soul, briefly but sweetly. Was it a sign that God was at last willing to grant him mercy?
When he arose afterward, his heart fluttering with hope, he had tried to seek for the meaning and cause of this perplexing experience. Instantly, the calm vanished as if God had once again deserted him. Or was He telling him, as the anchoress had suggested, that he must listen only with the stillness of his heart and reject mortal logic?
Surely the heart was the frailest of man’s organs, a woman’s refuge and most subject to sin. Yet hadn’t God spoken to Elijah in such a small voice that the prophet might only have heard Him in silence? A man’s mind stirred to debate and roaring speech; the feminine heart stayed still like a rabbit with a fox about. Might Sister Juliana be right in suggesting that God spoke more clearly from the organ condemned to silence by Adam’s imperfect sons?
Thomas stopped and glanced up at the moon. No longer full, it gave off a lesser light, and the man in the moon, Cain with his bundle of thorns, had a bleak aspect. The monk looked down the road and realized he had gone beyond the village and was near the gate by the priory mill. Perhaps he should visit the anchoress tonight, if no one was waiting to speak to her. Might she be able to explain the meaning of what he had experienced in the chapel and guide him further in his search for God’s wisdom? He quickened his pace, choosing the path that followed the fork of the stream flowing into priory grounds.
As he entered the forest, he suddenly hesitated. Something caught his attention, a thing that did not seem quite right.
Just to the right of the path was a crudely built hut almost hidden between two trees. Hadn’t it been long abandoned? he asked himself. Yet the door was open, and one guttering candle inside now cast a misshapen, twitching circle of light on the ground without. In the wavering shadows, Thomas saw a dark
er mound as if a dog had fallen asleep there, or else some person.
Thomas grew uneasy, sensing malevolence, but he felt compelled to draw nearer, albeit with caution. If this were a dog, even one of the hounds of Hell, surely the creature would have lunged at him by now.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he approached the strange object.
Falling to his knees, Thomas reached out and touched it. The familiar warmth convinced him this was no imp or hound but rather a human body. When he rolled it over to look more closely, he saw the face in the flickering candlelight.
“God have mercy!” he cried out.
Ivetta, the whore, was dead.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Yew,” Sister Anne said, then bent over the corpse again.
Those attending her remained silent as the sub-infirmarian continued her examination.
“Unless we find a witness, I should only make a tentative conclusion about the poison. Other evidence might point to another method.”
“I saw vomit inside the hut,” Thomas said, his voice low as if he feared humiliating the dead woman with what he had discovered. “Outside the door, her bowels had loosened. In the dark, I could not examine thoroughly, but the odor was strong. What I did not find was any potion. There was some ale in a jug, but it had turned and was probably undrinkable. I smelled it. Perhaps we can find more after the sun rises.”
Anne nodded. “I am grateful for your observations, Brother. Note, too, that her lips are blue, and, if you come closer, you will see that her pupils are enlarged. This poison takes effect quickly…” She hesitated, glancing at Eleanor, Ralf, and Thomas in turn. “She aborted. Either that was her intent, and she took more of the herb than was wise, or else she was murdered. The purpose is not evident in the results.”
In the flickering light of the hospital chapel, Ralf’s eyes narrowed, perhaps from the candle smoke or even from anger.
“I am troubled that two people, so well-known to each other, have died by the same method and with little time in between,” Thomas said, his words still softly spoken.
Eleanor watched her monk as if carefully considering his words, then turned away. Although the lateness of the hour should have cast the pallor of fatigue on the prioress’ cheeks, her color was high. “If she intended to abort, why was she found outside on the hard ground?” she asked, her voice trembling. “What woman would lie near a public road when she had the comparative ease of her pallet close by? Is it not strange as well that no evidence of the drink was found, if she deliberately took the poison?”
“I doubt she would have chosen to lie in the path as any form of penance,” Thomas said. “She had shown no inclination to atone for her sins. Thus I find her place of death most troubling.”
“Would we even question any of this if Martin had not been killed?” Ralf folded his arms in disgust.
“Why do you say that? Because she was a harlot?” Anne rested one hand gently on the corpse. “All mortals have souls, even if they are filthy with the Devil’s touch.”
The crowner did not reply.
“I incline to a presumption of murder,” Thomas said. “Were we to assume she intended to abort, I doubt Ivetta would have been ignorant of the dosage needed. According to old Tibia, whores are familiar with the methods, having the need and, as a consequence, the experience. Perhaps yew is one way to get rid of a quickening, but is it not a dangerous one? Surely there are safer means to accomplish that intent, and surely she would have known them. I do not think she would have taken too much of any remedy, and I doubt she would have used yew. Thus I suspect a foul motive.”
“There are safer methods, Brother, and she might well have been experienced with them. Nonetheless, I cannot agree that she would have known the correct dosage. When my husband and I were apothecaries, we treated enough women who thought they knew these matters well and almost died as a result.” Anne turned around to examine something on the body.
“I suspect she either killed herself deliberately, maybe from despair,” Ralf suggested, “or else wished to rid herself of the child and died accidentally. Maybe she took the poison in the ale, not caring how it tasted. Does a sweet drink matter when someone commits self-murder or wishes to abort quickly?”
Eleanor stared at the face of the corpse which was frozen in gape-mouthed horror. “I agree with Brother Thomas, Crowner, and fear we have not one, but two, murders to solve. I do not think this woman died by accident because of an abortion attempt, nor do I believe she committed self-murder. Ivetta loved the quickening life inside her, as she loved the man she named father to this new soul. In this, I think she told the truth, although I have doubts about other things she said and had planned to call her back for questioning.” She glanced up at Anne “Was there any sign of struggle? Might she have been forced somehow to take this poison?”
“There is minor bruising on the buttocks and arms, but none of that recent, my lady,” Anne replied. “In her profession, such marks would not be unusual.” Her tone was subdued.
“When I looked around her dwelling, I found nothing to suggest violence, other than what I mentioned.” Thomas hesitated. “There was a freshly killed chicken by the door, yet she kept no fowl. I point that out because it seemed odd.”
“Perchance that was her fee for relieving a man of his pent-up seed,” Ralf said. “Had she suffered blows, I would look for a fellow who quarreled with the value he got for that price. Considering the method of death was poison, that possibility seems unlikely.”
The group fell silent. All eyes, except for those of the prioress, turned away from the corpse.
“We have failed you,” Eleanor said to the dead woman. “This should not have happened.”
“Do not blame yourself, my lady,” Ralf said. “Sister Anne has stated there is no reason to believe this was murder.”
“I said I could not be certain without more evidence.”
The prioress tapped her heart. “Illogical woman that I am, Crowner, this tells me it was.”
Ralf bowed. “Your heart holds more reason than most men’s minds.”
“Might not the killer be the man who had just lain with her?” Anne sounded almost hopeful as she reached for a rough cloth and covered the corpse.
“Were we to assume murder, and she had been killed by another method, that would be the obvious explanation,” Ralf replied with some reluctance. “I still argue that we do not use poison as a common weapon in this place. That was true with Martin’s death, and I see no reason to change my mind for this one either.”
“Both Martin and Ivetta, it now seems, have been killed by yew poisoning,” Eleanor said.
Thomas’ forehead furrowed with doubt as he turned to the crowner. “So you think she died accidentally from taking too much yew, perhaps in an attempt to rid herself of the child if not to commit self-murder?”
The crowner nodded.
“I still cannot believe Ivetta would choose to abort her child,” Eleanor said.
“I concur.” Anne moved slightly closer to her prioress.
The crowner did not reply but instead walked over to the body and lifted the cover to expose the face.
Thomas whispered what sounded like a prayer.
“May I be blunt?” Ralf asked, still studying the body.
“Were you otherwise, I might fear you were sickening.” The prioress’ lips turned up with a brief smile.
“Few men pay to swyve a woman big with child. How, then, would the whore live if she had no means to feed herself? To my knowledge, she was not one to hide coin in some hole under her straw pallet for the day she must earn her meat other than on her back.” He dropped the cloth back over the dead woman’s face. “That said, I shall assume I am wrong and she was more prudent. Even then, I must ask how she could care for the child with neither family nor maid to help while she plied her trade. There are few women in a village as small as Tyndal who would be willing to serve a harlot.” His expression flickered with pity. “Maybe she did love the child bu
t realized both of them would die if she birthed it-and chose to save herself.”
“Once a woman holds life within her, she does not let go of it effortlessly.” Anne’s words were sharply spoken. “Never so casually dismiss the depth of love a mother holds for her child.”
“A woman of Ivetta’s profession does not commonly debate moral questions,” Ralf retorted.
Anne’s face turned scarlet. “You were not her confessor, nor were you the one drenched with the tears of those women John and I saved from death when they tried aborting.” She took a deep breath. “If you condemn Ivetta because she was but a wretched common woman of the village, go back to court, Crowner, where whores come in finer dress and eat enough in one day to keep any poor but honest mortal content for a week!”
“I have never thought a woman more virtuous just because she dresses in brighter colors and softer cloth, Annie. That you should know.” Ralf’s eyes softened. “I have no argument against anything you have said, but surely you must agree that some women do not rejoice when they quicken with child. I meant only that Ivetta was such a one.”
With obvious reluctance, Anne nodded. “Yet even among those who willfully rid themselves of the quickening, because they believed there was good reason for their act, most bewailed the loss far more than the sin. Motherhood holds a woman’s heart with a fierce hand, Ralf. I have known women to smile at the sight of their new babe while they lay dying of the birth.”
“Forgive me, Annie,” Ralf whispered. “I should have thought on my wife before I spoke so cruelly.”
“I think we might consider a different way of looking at this situation,” Eleanor interrupted.
“We are getting nowhere as it is.” Ralf nodded, his expression betraying hope that the conversation would move in another direction.
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