by Mary Bale
‘Just like home,’ agreed the Abbess.
The wagon swung through the gates of Canterbury and through the bustle to the gatehouse of Christ Church. In the courtyard the Abbess checked on the health of Sir Gilbert and found someone to take him to the infirmary. Another servant was found to care for the mules and Sir Gilbert’s horse. The Abbess dismounted from the cart and Therese followed.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Therese.
‘I am going directly to obtain an audience with the Archbishop of Canterbury. We need his help.’ The Abbess pulled up her sleeve to reveal Bishop Odon’s ring back on her finger. ‘This will give me the power to open many doors.’
‘With the greatest respect, Abbess: Why do we need to ask him?’ Therese hopped and skipped to keep up with her superior, who’d suddenly started to stride away.
‘To get into St Thomas’s.’
‘But you are the Abbess of St Thomas’s Priory, you can enter there any time you please.’
‘I am, indeed, the Abbess. But it is not as simple as that.’ She said it in a way that meant she would answer no more questions.
So Therese hastened to follow the Abbess to the visitors’ hall and they were allowed in. The Abbess spoke with the servant who fetched a monk. She spoke to him and he fetched a further monk. Therese flicked her gaze over him and away before he thought her impudent. He was grey-haired and grey-eyed; his stoop was the sort worn by people who’d worked with books for many years and she thought she could smell recently drunk wine on his breath. He told them his name was Brother David. Abbess Eleanor gave him Odon’s ring and explained the urgency of her mission without mentioning any other details. He left by a door at the far end. Some time passed until yet another monk arrived bringing food and drink. This one informed them that there was an unavoidable wait for the great Archbishop Lanfranc and they might as well take sustenance. ‘The water is from a good source here, but you may have ale if you wish,’ he added.
The plain bread and water looked good beyond belief to Therese.
Abbess Eleanor thanked him for the provisions and Therese was eating before the blessing had been given.
‘Sorry,’ mumbled Therese through the crumbs and the Abbess tilted her head, accepting her apology. The older woman only picked at some of the food and sipped a little of the drink. Therese was concerned at her lack of appetite but said nothing.
The door at the far end opened. They looked up at the shadow in the doorway hoping and yet dreading to see the great Lanfranc, but it was only the grey, stooped monk, Brother David. He came over and held out the ring that had been given to him. The Abbess took it.
‘Archbishop Lanfranc is unable to see you today,’ he said.
‘Did you show him the ring?’ asked the Abbess.
‘Of course I showed him the ring.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Abbess, I cannot divulge the words or actions of the Archbishop outside of his chamber, unless he has specifically allowed me to do so.’
‘This is a matter of urgency. People have already died,’ blurted out Therese.
‘People die all the time,’ said the monk with a little, condescending, bow.
Abbess Eleanor took her arm saying, ‘We will return.’ She bowed slightly to the monk–who returned the gesture–and took Therese outside. In a hushed whisper she said to her, frowning: ‘You say too much, Sister Therese, and you will endanger us all. I think you already know more than you should. What do you know of people dying?’
‘There was the knight, who fell from the boat,’ said Therese, but she felt a wobble of guilt in her voice.
‘That could well have been an accident in the storm, you know that.’
‘There was Sir Gilbert?’
‘Sir Gilbert is not dead and with God’s help he will be fully restored in time. Thieves attacked him, nothing more. No sister, I think you know more than the Bishop or I have told you. I can tell you meant something else in there, Sister Therese. Do you know anything I have not told you?’ Abbess Eleanor’s voice rose to anger as she said, ‘You must tell me, Sister Therese, such knowledge can put us all at risk if you let it slip out in the way you did just now.’
‘But we were talking to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s clerk,’ pleaded Therese.
‘We must be totally discreet in these matters, and that means we divulge nothing.’
Therese slumped down on the ground and started to cry.
‘Oh child, I’m sorry. You are exhausted I should not have shouted at you. Two tired people are not a happy combination.’
The girl sniffed and wiped her face on her habit. ‘I know Sister Ursula is dead.’
‘And how do you know that?’
‘I overheard you and Bishop Odon de Bayeux speaking to each other before I came in that night at home, in Normandy.’
‘The old door.’ The Abbess shook her head. ‘I thought I heard something. Sister Miriam was with you, I think?’
Therese said nothing.
‘There is no point in trying to protect her with silence now. What can I do to her here, in England?’
Therese tilted her head and looked at the Abbess Eleanor’s hands spread over her knees as she crouched next to her. It was an apology as well as an admission.
‘Did you hear anything else?’ asked the Abbess.
‘No, Abbess.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Certain.’
‘Ursula was a Prioress, not just a Sister,’ corrected the Abbess.
Therese noted a loneliness fill her companion as she spoke and she touched her sleeve.
The Abbess laid her hand on hers and said, ‘We need a little walk to calm ourselves I think. Let us go and watch the masons.’
* * *
Therese moved the dust about with her sandaled toe. The masons had not let them anywhere near the works and now she found herself in an area of the Anglo-Saxon abbey, which had already been demolished.
‘Why was this place pulled down?’ asked Therese: it seemed as if it had been grand enough from the remains.
‘There was a fire,’ said the Abbess sadly and then added: ‘The best stones will have been picked over and used,’ as if she were trying to point out the good things so as to push aside their tiredness. ‘All conquerors make the land their own, Sister Therese. You feel your Anglo-Saxon blood, I fear?’
Therese wanted the unspoken comfort Mother Abbess offered with her soft, kind tones but she felt as if she was slowly being pressed into a different shape. The Norman girl was being squeezed out of her and she didn’t know if there was anything to replace her with. She searched her mind for reason while pawing the ground with her foot. ‘It is not just that Abbess. I cannot deny that I am influenced by the story you told me when we were at sea, but I have come here to serve you as Bishop Odon asked me. Yet how can I hold my counsel, if I do not know what it is all about.’
‘You are right, Sister Therese. I thought your lack of knowledge would protect you. I have forgotten the ways of the young: the endless curiosity, the sudden movement, the desire to please and the impetuous enthusiasm. It can be a delightful, if dangerous, mix.’
Looking at her intently Therese asked, ‘How did Prioress Ursula die? And you asked me if I knew any more than that Prioress Ursula was dead. So how much more is there to know?’
‘Oh child,’ said the Abbess with a sigh. She took her hand and led her to a group of flat stones, which had once been the base of a pillar, and sat down. She patted the stone beside her and Therese sat next to her. The grief in the older woman pulled at her. ‘Prioress Ursula was a dear friend,’ continued the Abbess. ‘She taught me English, so I could teach you. In turn I taught her our language. I came over here to learn, so I could teach you the right accent and intonation. Bishop Odon wanted you to speak your own language well.'
Therese thought she saw a movement among the remains of an archway, possibly by the original entrance. She dismissed it as a bird.
‘They say Prioress Ursula wa
s a traitor,’ continued the Abbess. ‘That is what I cannot bear. She was Anglo-Saxon, but all the nuns at St Thomas’s are. They have been chosen for their ability at needlework. Prioress Ursula was a craftswoman and a woman of integrity. But not even Bishop Odon will believe me.’
‘Believe what?’ asked Therese, sure that she saw another movement among the ruins, this time some distance from the first – in the area where an altar might once have stood. Therese looked from the first place to the second. She and the Abbess were seated between them.
‘Believe me, Prioress Ursula would not have tried to destroy the great embroidery.’
‘Why should they think that she would?’
‘Because she was there when another woman tried to ink the work. I will call her the Impostor.’
‘What happened?’ Therese spotted, as she spoke, a movement in the same direction as the first one, by the entrance, but further down the aisle and much closer.
‘The Prioress and the Impostor fell together from a tower close to the embroidery room. They were covered in ink, which was clearly meant for the embroidery.’
‘Prioress Ursula might have been trying to stop her,’ said Therese. Now there was a movement close to her second observation, by the altar. Still she could not catch the substance of it. Could it be beasts strayed from their pasture?
‘The Prioress carries the key to the embroidery room,’ explained the Abbess. She slumped forwards and put her face in her hands. ‘The room was open. So you see, she had to be involved.’
‘Surely there was an ink bottle, some ink stains in the room, something to show what had happened?’ asked Therese.
‘I have only heard that the conspirators squabbled and that is how they fell.’
Therese put her arm about the Abbess and looked around for inspiration. She was at a loss as to what to say to her superior in such a state and so far from home. Again a shadow moved in the corner of her vision. This time the movement in the aisle had substance. She thought at first it was a builder come for stone, as the Abbess had said. But his movements were darting and he kept looking at them from behind clumps of staggered stones.
‘Bishop Odon would not have sent us if there was nothing to find out,’ said Therese a little hopefully.
‘We are not here to clear Prioress Ursula, we are here to uncover the plotters.’
‘That may be the same thing,’ said Therese keeping watch on the little man, who was getting closer all the time. ‘Abbess, I think we ought to go.’
The Abbess looked up. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Look.’ Therese pointed him out with a nod. Now she could see he was little more than a beggar from his dirty, ragged clothes and his nosiness was a rude and possibly treacherous interruption to their conversation.
Standing up the Abbess raised her hand and called out, ‘Halt, man.’
The man halted. Therese saw that he wore a bandage about his head.
‘Come here,’ said the Abbess.
Therese wanted to slide behind the older woman, but resisted the urge, so that her body swayed one way and then the other.
‘Stand still, Sister Therese,’ snapped Abbess Eleanor.
The man came over. Folds of empty skin shook against his bones telling of the number of lean times he’d survived.
‘Are you spying on us, little man?’ asked the Abbess.
‘I am,’ he said without remorse.
‘What do you want to know?’ asked Abbess Eleanor.
‘If you are from Archbishop Lanfranc or Bishop Odo?’
‘Who wants to know?’ asked the Abbess, her gaze rising and turning to a disturbance of rubble behind them.
Therese turned too recalling the second set of movements she’d observed moments earlier. Her failure to warn Mother Abbess of such a danger struck her like a blow from a whip.
‘I want to know who is your Lord,’ said another man in clear English. He walked towards them from an outcrop of ruins. He was barely any younger than the Abbess yet he was as straight in the back as she and built with the strength of a knight.
If the shadows in the ruins, so impossible to follow, were those of two men, could there be more? These men spoke English in the manner of natives, so could they be another Anglo-Saxon gang? From their words they were not thieves, but they could easily be traitors to King William’s crown. Already she and the Abbess were flanked on either side. Therese looked around for others, and, suddenly, she felt very Norman.
Chapter 4
Abbess Eleanor’s face brightened at the sight of her tall straight questioner, but this reaction was quickly followed by a hardening of her expression. Therese wondered why she should hide her liking for this man.
‘Alfred,’ said the Abbess.
‘Abbess,’ said the man dropping his head in recognition of her status.
His cloak was of good quality cloth although his leggings and shirt were plain and of a serviceable nature. The brooch holding the cloak was ornate with a dragon formed into a silver roundel. There were no jewels or gold on it. She placed his occupation as that of reeve or merchant – he was certainly not Norman. His hands were broad but not rough enough for him to be presently involved in agriculture.
‘You spy on us as if you do not trust us, Alfred,’ said Abbess Eleanor. ‘You even use this little man as your agent.’
‘I do not trust your master,’ said Alfred.
‘But you do not know who that is,’ countered the Abbess.
‘I trust you, Abbess. So I see that you are alone with your novice before I approach you. But still I need to know who you answer to.’
Abbess Eleanor’s face softened. ‘We all only have one true master, Alfred. I answer to Him.’
‘My sister, Ursula…’
‘I know about your sister, Alfred. I pray for her constantly.’
‘No you don’t. You only know what has been said about her. None of it is true.’ Alfred frowned and caught Abbess Eleanor’s hand up in his. He looked at her ring and kissed it.
‘It is not my ring of office,’ said the Abbess. Therese was amazed that her superior did not tell him the ring belonged to Bishop Odon. The older woman just gently lifted his hands from hers and asked Alfred, ‘Can you explain what has been going on at Saint Thomas’s?’
‘Agid,’ he addressed the bent old man with the bandage about his head, ‘guard us from the rear.’ Turning to the Abbess he said, ‘I can take you to someone who can explain everything.’ Before any consent or otherwise could be given to this he turned and set off across the rubble. Abbess Eleanor followed.
‘Is this not dangerous?’ Therese asked her.
‘Extremely,’ said the Abbess producing one of her little shrugs, as if such things could be shrugged off.
Behind her Agid followed in her footsteps.
* * *
The kitchener at St Augustine’s Abbey was arguing with the cellarer about the number of chickens needed for a feast, so he waved Therese, Abbess Eleanor and Alfred through to the great hall. Agid though was too filthy even for his distracted eye. He barred the door with his burly body and sent him out with, ‘I’ve seen cleaner things come out of a midden.’
The Abbess accused Alfred with, ‘The gate keeper let you through with a nod and now you gain access to this place without question?’
‘The abbey here has no notion that I am connected in any way to the scandal at St Thomas’s, most of which has been hushed up to protect the embroidery. The secrecy surrounding it is as great as any wall a mason could build.’
‘You seem to know about it,’ said Abbess Eleanor sharply. ‘And these people show you exceptional trust.’ She looked directly into his eyes. Therese knew this look. The senior woman was testing his soul. It was as if she had an invisible probe that could check its purity. This look always made Therese uncomfortable but Alfred did not flinch.
‘Much has changed since you saw me last. I was just a boy then. I am a freeman, Abbess. You know I hail from East Anglia, but I have already given my l
ands to the monastery at St Edmundsbury, in turn they will look after me in my old age. In the mean time I make my living by the wool trade. I buy Abbot Scotland’s fleeces and sell them on for carding and spinning.’
Therese was bursting with questions but she glanced at the Abbess and knew she must hold her counsel.
They took seats at an oak table and broth was brought to them in wooden bowls. Therese barely glanced at the woman stooped over her burden of hot liquid, but she noticed that Abbess Eleanor could barely keep her line of sight averted in the manner required by her position.
The servant sat down and pulled back the curtain of shawl she’d used to cover most of her face to reveal a woman well into middle age with pink translucent skin and deep, laughing blue eyes.
‘Prioress Ursula!’ exclaimed Abbess Eleanor with surprise and pleasure.
‘You are meant to be dead,’ said Therese.
‘Hush,’ said Ursula. ‘And do not call me Prioress, for I no longer hold that position.’ They all hunched down and pulled closer to each other. She kept her voice low as she said, ‘There is treachery in every thread of that embroidery. I have had to hide myself against my accusers, here among those that are never noticed.’
‘They say you are a traitor,’ said Abbess Eleanor as she looked about the room for any corners that might conceal snoopers, but they were alone and the doors were shut. These words did not sound like an accusation to Therese; it was more a statement of fact mixed with a question of validity. But she thought she knew the answer.
‘You tried to stop the Impostor, didn’t you?’ she asked more loudly than she expected.
‘I am not one of the treacherous ones. I have hidden away with the protection of my dear brother because I can trust no one.’ Ursula looked carefully at Therese. ‘You are right, Sister, I did try and stop her.’ Then she turned to Abbess Eleanor and asked: ‘Is she?’
‘Yes,’ the Abbess replied. She said it with pride, but her pride was tinged with sadness when she added, ‘She’s the baby from Romney.’
‘You’ve told her? Were you not forbidden to tell her?’ asked Ursula frowning.