“Don’t go in that room, Sister Joanna—stop!” shouted Prioress Joan behind me.
I didn’t stop. I disobeyed, yet again. I don’t know what drove me down that passageway, past Lady Chester, into the lodgings rooms. It was as if there were an answer I needed inside the rooms, and I would perish if I didn’t get it.
The second door, leading to the bedchamber, was ajar, and I ran inside.
I saw him at once. Lord Chester sat up partway in the bed. He, too, still wore his black clothes, his mourning wear for Queen Jane, but they were drenched in blood. The headboard and the wall behind him were spattered with it. The left side of Lord Chester’s head had been crushed. He had no left eye. It was just blood and bone and tissue. The right eye bulged in a fixed expression of sad surprise.
On the floor, next to the bed, lay the reliquary of Dartford Priory, in pieces. The fragments were also drenched in blood. A clump of Lord Chester’s brown hair was tangled in the two outstretched fingers of the reliquary hand.
28
I was the only novice in the tapestry room the following afternoon. I sat in front of the loom and wove in the white and light blue threads. Sister Helen and I worked in silence, just the two of us. Sister Christina was comforting her devastated mother in the locutorium, and Sister Winifred was still in the infirmary. I had no idea of Sister Agatha’s whereabouts.
I had to carry on with my duties today, until the arrival of the men.
During those first few minutes, after the discovery of the body, there was a great deal of crying and shouting. Prioress Joan and Brother Richard had dashed in after me and then retreated, aghast. The prioress had ordered the room sealed and guarded.
“There is a murderer loose in the priory!” Sister Agatha screeched in the passageway, hysterical. “The servants must search the priory. The man could still be anywhere.”
Brother Richard said, “You fool, he was killed hours ago. Do you think a murderer would strike and then linger here? He’s long gone.”
He whirled to confront Gregory.
“Did you lock all the doors last night?” he asked.
“Of course I did,” said Gregory, insulted. “That is my chief duty, to ensure that the priory is enclosed. No one could get into these guest rooms from outside of the priory—or from the cloister area, either. That door was locked, both sides, right after we carried Lord Chester to his bed, just as the prioress ordered. No one could get in, and no one could get out. I would swear to it before the king himself.”
“The windows?” asked Sister Eleanor.
Gregory shook his head. “I’ve checked them all. They are closed and secured.”
Sister Agatha whispered, “You’re not suggesting Lady Chester . . . ?”
“Do you believe she begged us to let him sleep here so she could murder him?” Brother Richard demanded.
“Silence yourselves!” shouted the prioress. “There will be no more speculation, or gossip, in this priory. We will alert the Bishop of Rochester immediately; this is a matter for the church courts.”
“The church courts?” repeated Brother Richard, incredulous. “This is a murder of a peer of the realm! And we may face the Star Chamber for it, if not the Tower.”
I couldn’t help but flinch.
“You’re wrong, Brother Richard,” said the prioress. “This crime was committed on church property. It is not a matter for the king’s court.”
Brother Richard shook his fists in a rage of frustration. “Listen to me, you must, for once, listen to the president and steward of your priory. I pleaded with you not to invite Lord Chester to Dartford, and you disregarded me. Last night I asked you to have him removed from our grounds, and again you showed disdain for my advice. But now, Prioress, it is more than just your pride at stake. It is the future of the priory, our very lives. Will you hear me out?”
Her lips trembled with emotion. And then, the prioress nodded.
Brother Richard took a breath. “If we attempt to make this a church investigation, and repel all outsiders, we will be destroyed. This crime will give our enemies an excuse to say monasteries are riddled with vice and crime and lies. That we operate in secret. But neither should we make ourselves vulnerable to the Star Chamber. Heretics eager for our dissolution rule there. No, we must open the priory to the men who investigate such crimes as their living. We must raise a hue and cry for the coroner and abide by his judgment in how to investigate and proceed.”
“The coroner?” Prioress Joan was uncertain. “Where is such a person found? I don’t want to send to London. This can’t become a London matter.”
“You said that Dartford is under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rochester. That city is not a far distance, within a day’s ride, and quite large enough that it would have a coroner. Those are the men with experience in murder, in holding an inquiry, in examining a corpse. If we send out the hue and cry now, he should be here tomorrow.”
Prioress Joan looked back at the bedchamber, apprehensive, as if expecting that Lord Chester, with his crushed head, would lurch out of the room.
“Then let it be done,” she said dully. “Gregory, send a trustworthy man to Rochester with a message by fastest horse. Have the men search every inch of the grounds, to seek evidence of an intruder.”
She turned to face us, in a frightened cluster. “Until the inquiry begins, I want all of you to carry on with your usual work. Just be sure that no one is alone anywhere in the priory. We must stay in groups, or at least in pairs.”
We dispersed. After I’d helped to clean the refectory, I made my way to the infirmary, to check on the condition of Sister Winifred. She was in a sorry state: curled up on a pallet, lying on her side, her knees pulled up. It was the position of someone in a deep sleep, but when I drew close, I could see her eyes were open. “Sister Winifred,” I said. “Are you all right?” She shuddered and did not answer me.
I turned to Brother Edmund, alarmed. “Can you help her?”
“Time and prayer will help her,” he answered, his back to me. The friar was at his distilling apparatus, feeding a handful of herbs into the mouth of the mechanism, placed on a long table.
“Then is there anything I can do—right now? Fetch some food? Anything?”
He shook his head. I came around the table and got my first look at Brother Edmund’s face. New lines of exhaustion creased around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. I doubted he’d slept a minute.
I lowered my voice to a faint whisper: “Does she know of Lord Chester’s murder?”
“No, I don’t want to tell her yet.” He grimaced. “Oh, this is a terrible, terrible tragedy.”
“You grieve for Lord Chester?” I wondered.
Brother Edmund nodded. “He was a brutal man, dissolute and cruel, but he was one of God’s creatures. And now I have to live with my sin without his forgiveness.”
“Sin?”
“Anger,” he said bleakly. “It has haunted me since I was a boy. I have prayed, I have struggled . . . His voice trailed away. “I should have found a peaceable remedy last night. I’ll always regret this lapse.”
“Brother Edmund, you must not berate yourself, please,” I said.
The lines softened around his eyes. “You are very kind, Sister Joanna.”
“Kind?” I was taken aback. “No one ascribes that quality to me.”
“Then no one has been paying much attention,” he said.
His distilling apparatus hissed and spat. Brother Edmund turned to cope with the problem, and I slipped out of the infirmary. I was unused to compliments. My mother’s way was to correct, not to praise. The only two people to proclaim virtues in me were Prioress Elizabeth and, many years before, my cousin Margaret. Both of them were dead and buried.
The next day, there was a flurry of activity in the late morning. The coroner had arrived already, I heard. In the midafternoon, in obedience to my order, I went to the tapestry room. I sat at the loom and did my work. It was so quiet there, just Sister Helen and me, weavi
ng and tapping the pedals. There was much ugliness and violence in the world, and now it had crawled into our priory. We must do what we could to create beauty.
But the peaceful silence also allowed me to reflect on what had happened. Before long I was filled with uneasiness. The crown, assuredly dangerous, was hidden here at the priory. Lord Chester had bragged that he knew our secrets: “No one knows better than me the secrets of Dartford Priory.” Hours later he was murdered with vicious strength. For the first time I wondered if Lord Chester had been killed to protect the crown. But who here besides myself knew of its existence and its powers—and would take such swift action if the crown were threatened?
“Sis—Sis—Sis—”
The low, raspy stutter was a shock. I looked at Sister Helen. It was hard to believe, but the nun who had said nothing since her brother was hanged in chains at Tyburn now tried to speak to me. She seemed desperate to speak to me. Though it was a cool day, her face gleamed with perspiration.
“Sister . . . Joanna?” she managed to get out.
“What is it?”
“Must t-t-t-tell you.”
The door opened, and Sister Agatha bustled in. She beckoned for me, her face pink with excited nerves.
“You’re needed now,” she said.
“Where?” I asked.
“In the prioress’s chamber,” she said. “The men arrived from Rochester two hours ago, and they want to question you.”
A cold wave of fear rippled through me.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you are one of the few who saw Lord Chester dead.”
I turned to look at Sister Helen, but her mouth was closed tight. She shook her head, very slightly, and she rubbed her arm, as if it hurt her.
I followed my novice mistress out of the cloister area and back to the front of the priory.
“Why did you say ‘men,’ not ‘man’?” I asked.
“The coroner has brought two others with him, because of the seriousness of the crime. An old man and a young one.”
To be interrogated by men reminded me of the Tower. I bitterly hated the prospect. It was important that they not learn of my months of imprisonment in the Tower; I prayed that the prioress had not told them. It would shed doubt on my character and lead to questions about why I had been allowed to come back. The last thing Bishop Gardiner would want would be for me to be drawn into a murder investigation.
Sister Agatha ushered me inside but then did not stay. She took a place on the bench, next to a grim Sister Eleanor and an even grimmer Brother Richard. The door shut between us.
Prioress Joan sat tall at her table, and three men clustered by the window. The one who stood out most immediately was a tall, stooped man wearing long, full black robes, not unlike a physician’s. There was a string around his neck, attached to a mask that hung just beneath his chin. I guessed him the coroner. A second man spoke to him in a low voice; he was gray-haired and heavyset. The third man looked out the window, his hands clasped behind his back.
Prioress Joan pointed at the chair across from her, and I sat down, consumed with dread.
The gray-haired man looked me over. He had an open, kind face, like a grandfather. “This is the novice, Joanna Stafford?”
“Sister Joanna,” corrected the prioress.
The man at the window turned around. He was in his twenties, with light-brown hair. The afternoon sun was bright in his face; it revealed a faint red mark on his forehead, a months’ old wound that was hardening to scar.
It was Geoffrey Scovill.
29
Leaning on his cane, the gray-haired man said, “Sister Joanna, I am Justice Edmund Campion. I am the justice of the peace of the city of Rochester. Coroner Hancock requested my involvement, due to the sensitivity of this inquiry. We have certain questions for you to answer today. After I am finished with my questions, you will write out a statement. I’ve been told you are able to read and write. Is that true?”
“Yes, Master Campion,” I said.
I looked at Geoffrey, waited for him to give some sign he recognized me. He did not. He showed a polite, expectant face.
Campion followed my gaze to Geoffrey. “This is Master Scovill, a constable in Rochester. He has a fine mind and a strong pair of legs”—he rattled his cane—“and so I’ve borrowed him from the chief constable for the length of the investigation.”
“Yes, I see,” I said.
Geoffrey bowed, his expression blank.
Campion continued, “Now, Sister Joanna, I will ask you about what you saw, this morning, in the guest lodging room. Lord Chester’s body was, unfortunately, moved, as was the murder weapon—”
The coroner groaned and held his temple in his bony right hand.
“This makes our proceedings a bit difficult, you see,” continued Campion. “We are forced to re-create the circumstances of the death through careful questioning.”
He broke off and turned to the prioress. “It is quite cold in this room, Prioress. You have no means of making a fire?”
Prioress Joan raised her eyebrows. “This is a religious house, not a palace. Our winter warming house, our calefactorium, is south of the chapter house. If you wish it, we can have a fire lit now and you can be escorted there.”
I noticed the prioress did not mention that the infirmary, too, had a fire lit for warmth.
Justice Campion tightened his grip on his cane. “Never mind.” He turned back to me. “Let’s continue. I’d be most gratified if you would answer our questions in every detail.”
I told the men what I could remember: Lord Chester’s position in bed was of great interest to them, as was the exact placement of the reliquary pieces. The coroner sat in a chair and questioned me about the color and texture of the blood, and, though it made me squeamish, I did my best to describe it. He wrote my answers on a sheet of parchment paper. Campion smiled at me, pleased every time I came up with a new detail. “Ah, very good,” he’d exclaim. Geoffrey did nothing but listen.
“What was the humor of his intact eye?” demanded the coroner.
I shook my head, unsure what he meant.
“Was it melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, or choleric?” he asked.
I thought back to the expression in that eye. I had formed an impression when I saw it, but now it was hard to articulate. “It was closest to melancholic,” I said finally.
“Not choleric—he was not angry or fearful?” the coroner asked, his thick graying eyebrows twitching in concentration.
“No,” I said. “He was . . . surprised. But not shocked.”
For the first time, Geoffrey spoke.
“As would be the case if Lord Chester died while looking at someone he knew?”
Yes, it was the same voice. He was the same man: Geoffrey Scovill.
I shook my head. “I do not wish to speculate, sir,” I said in the same polite tone.
Justice Campion smiled. “Ah, but we require you to speculate, Sister Joanna. You have an acute eye. You have given us the most detailed descriptions of his lordship so far.” He turned to the prioress. “I commend you for having such an observant and intelligent young woman in your priory.”
Prioress Joan said nothing.
“I was taken aback to see such large quarters for guests in the priory, since you are so adamant about keeping out the world,” mused Justice Campion.
The prioress answered, “The point of the domus hospitum—”
“The what?” The older man squinted at her.
“A house of hospitality,” spoke up Geoffrey.
So Geoffrey Scovill knew Latin. I had not realized.
The prioress explained that special permission was given for certain guests. Widows longing for spiritual comfort had boarded here. Also, in times of war, a local noble might make request that his wife and daughter stay in the guests’ rooms of the priory. When Henry the Fifth led his army to France, the rooms had been full.
Nodding, Justice Campion thought for a moment, then his attent
ion turned back to me. “So please, Sister, your thoughts. You must have formed an idea.”
I swallowed. “Sir?”
He walked across the room, poking the floor with his cane. “Lord Chester comes to the requiem feast. He eats and drinks a great deal, so much so that he loses consciousness and is taken to the front of the priory. I remain surprised that he would be served so much wine that he would lose himself completely.”
Eager to defend Dartford, I said, “He came to the priory drunk.”
“Did he? How do you know that? No one else made note of that.”
“I smelled it on his breath.”
Justice Campion’s eyebrows shot up. “I see.” He glanced over at Geoffrey. “Tell us about Sister Winifred. He attacked her?”
I winced. “Yes.”
“And so Brother Edmund, who is in fact her own older brother, defended her by striking Lord Chester so hard he fell to the floor?”
I nodded.
“And Brother Richard?”
I exchanged a look of confusion with the prioress.
“What do you want to know about him?” asked the prioress.
“Brother Richard himself said that he did not desire Lord Chester’s presence, that he resisted the idea for the feast. That he did not consider it seemly.”
Shifting in her chair, the prioress admitted, “That’s true.”
“So both of these friars, here at Dartford Priory for a month, felt some form of hostility toward Lord Chester.”
Prioress Joan said, “Your inquiry is misguided. These are friars. They would not commit such an act.”
“But Brother Edmund did commit an act of violence against Lord Chester, just hours before he was killed,” Justice Campion said, his voice hardening. “And last night he was in the infirmary, not in the friars’ lodgings, which is a separate building.”
In a panic, I jumped to my feet. “He wouldn’t do such a terrible thing as murder,” I cried. “It’s impossible. Brother Edmund is a good, kind person, a true man of God. He helps people.”
A thick silence filled the room. The coroner stopped writing, and the three men looked at one another. Justice Campion nodded at Geoffrey Scovill, and the younger man hurried out of the prioress’s chamber.
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