A Mortal Bane

by Roberta Gellis

  After a moment she heard Sabina laugh and her client exclaim over his own laughter, and she smiled and turned back to the common room. There she carefully put away her work and extinguished the candles on the table and the torchettes on each side of the room, replacing the one near the front door with a fresh one, which she left burning.

  There was light enough when she left the door of her room open to undress, fold her clothing onto the chest that stood against one wall, and slip into bed. Because the client seemed a good man and clearly desired privacy, she was troubled by her intention of mentioning him to William, but William was an old friend.

  Her doubts kept her wakeful until she heard soft voices in the corridor. After a while she heard the key scrape in the lock, but she did not hear Sabina’s footsteps returning. Surely he was not taking Sabina with him? Magdalene lay listening anxiously and then snorted gently at her own silliness. Probably his meeting place was close…even in the church itself, and he had told Sabina he would not be long away. The evening was mild. Likely Sabina had decided to sit in the garden and wait for him rather than chance she would fall asleep and not hear him knocking, which would cause him to ring the bell and wake the whole household.

  A meeting in the church and churchly opinions, Magdalene thought sleepily, and the very sober, but rich clothing. A church messenger? The idea was somehow satisfactory; her eyes closed, her breathing deepened.

  Chapter Two

  19 April 1139

  Old Priory Guesthouse, After Compline

  It seemed only moments later, but it could have been hours, when Magdalene was startled awake by a clatter, a thud, and then Sabina’s voice, thin with terror, crying her name. She sprang from her bed, grasping at the bed robe that hung from a peg nearby on the wall, but did not stop to draw it on.

  A shadow blundered into the wall, and the thin, breathless, despairing cry came again. “Magdalene!”

  She dropped her bed robe, caught at Sabina’s groping hands, and drew the girl into her arms. Sabina was panting and shaking, totally disoriented by fear.

  “He is dead,” she whispered. “Dead.”

  “Who?” Magdalene whispered in return. “Who is dead?”

  Sabina’s voice rose to a thin wail. “He. He. The man I lay with.”

  “Your client is dead?” Magdalene’s voice also rose. “He died in your bed?”

  A hand grasped Magdalene’s shoulder and squeezed hard. She only barely prevented herself from shrieking with shock, managing to swallow the cry because the hand had released her. Letice ran to shut Ella’s door.

  Magdalene closed her eyes and swallowed, whispered, “Thank you,” when Letice returned. But Letice put her hand on Magdalene’s mouth and drew her and Sabina from the corridor into the common room.

  There, where the still-burning torchette gave better light, her eyes widened and her mouth opened with shock. She touched Magdalene and then seized Sabina’s hands, which she raised into the light and held before Magdalene’s eyes. Magdalene drew a gasping breath. Sabina’s hands were covered with blood.

  “What happened?” Magdalene whispered, beginning to tremble herself. In her mind rose an image of her own hands also stained red with fresh blood. “Did he try to hurt you so that you had to turn the knife on him?”

  “No, no, I did not,” Sabina whimpered. “I did not. Oh, God help me. If you think I killed him, who will believe me?”

  “I will believe anything you tell me, Sabina—” Magdalene had reason enough to say that with passion; no one would have believed her, either. “But if the man is dead in your bed—”

  “No! Not in my bed. On the church porch.”

  “On the church porch?” Magdalene echoed.

  From Letice, standing beside them, came an audible sigh of relief. Then, as if released from a paralysis of fear, she dragged her eyes from the dark stains on Sabina’s hands and garments, snatched up a half-burned candle from the table and lit it at the burning torchette. Seeing her hurry down the corridor puzzled Magdalene, but not enough to draw her mind from the wonderful fact that the dead man was on the church porch, not in Sabina’s bed. There was no reason for anyone to associate him with her establishment.

  She drew a breath of relief so deep that it stretched her chest and abdomen, which made her aware of a stiffness on her skin. A glance showed her that she was marked with splotches of drying blood. Her eyes fixed with loathing and horror on the marks, and a scream struggled in her throat, but at that moment Letice came back. Magdalene realized Letice had come from the kitchen with water for washing the sticky mess from Sabina—and from herself, too. She pushed away the memories that were twisting her mind.

  “Come,” Magdalene said softly, leading a shaking and sobbing Sabina to the bench at the head of the table. “Sit down before you fall. How did you come to find the poor man?”

  Sabina drew a deep breath, straightened her back, and released the hold she had kept on Magdalene. “He asked to be let out just after the bells rang for Compline,” she said, “and of course I closed the door behind him so he would not think I was trying to hear where he went. But he had told me he would not be long, that his meeting place was near, so I thought I would wait in the garden. It was lovely, not cold, and I could hear the service being sung in the church. So after all was quiet and I was sure the brothers had gone to bed, I thought I would just step in and say a prayer.”

  She had been speaking quietly, but suddenly she huddled in on herself and began to shiver. “It is forbidden! So I was not allowed—”

  “Sabina,” Magdalene interrupted sharply, “do not be such a goose. Do you think God would have a man murdered just to warn a whore away from a church? That is the work of the devil, not of God. Besides, you pray in the church all the time and the place was never before strewn with dead bodies.”

  Sabina, who had been crying quietly, sniffed and lifted her head. “No. But it was so horrible. I was laughing, you see. I had heard the sacristan cry out ‘Who is there?’ and then someone running and I thought it was a pair of lovers Brother Paulinus had frightened away. After I heard him close the door, I went to the porch, and…and….”

  She shuddered and began to cry again, and Magdalene patted her shoulder comfortingly. After a few moments she asked, “Are you sure he was dead?”

  Sabina sobbed harder. “There was a knife sticking out of his neck, and blood, so much blood, a whole pool….”

  She started to raise her hands to her face, but Letice seized them and pushed them into a basin she had set on the table. The bottom was black with wood ash, and Letice used one hand to rub that over Sabina’s and the other to prod Magdalene and point to the candles. Magdalene nodded but went to check the shutters before she lit the candles. She knew the Watch kept an eye on her house and did not want them to notice lights glinting from the windows on this night.

  When the candles were lit, Letice examined Magdalene carefully and helped her wash away any spot of blood that Sabina’s hands had transferred to her body. Magdalene then put on her bed gown, and she and Letice went over every inch of Sabina, her gown, her under-tunic, her cloak, her shoes, her staff, which Letice had found lying in the corridor, even the tips of her hair, cleaning all as well as they could.

  “There, love, there,” Magdalene soothed. “You are clean. Your clothes are clean. Forget this. Forget the man. No one will ever know he lay with you. We are not to blame if the person he met killed him, and we must not be called guilty so that the real killer can escape.”

  “But—”

  “No. Put it out of your mind. There is no way for anyone to connect him with this house at all, unless by misfortune he was seen leading his horse—oh, my God, his horse! It is still in our stable.”

  The three women froze. The horse. All realized that the horse could not simply be led out into the street and driven away. The clattering hooves would surely wake someone and attract the Watch.

  “The beast cannot be loose in the streets while the body is on the church porch,” M
agdalene said slowly. “We will have to get it into the churchyard.”

  “How?” Sabina cried, shaking more than ever. “It is impossible! Oh, forget me. Let me confess that I found him and let them do what they will to me.”

  Magdalene slapped her gently and then shook her. ‘This is no time for hysterics, even though you have cause enough. First of all, we do not abandon our own. Not in this house! Secondly, no one will do anything to you if you obey me.”

  Letice sat down beside Sabina and put an arm around her, but with the other hand she pointed toward where the stable was, then cupped her hand and blew into it.

  “Yes,” Magdalene said. “As Letice points out, even if you sacrificed yourself, you silly girl, the horse would not disappear into thin air. It would still be in our stable.” She stared at the floor for a moment, then said, “Letice, go wake Dulcie. She will have to stay with Sabina while you and I move the horse.”

  Between signs and words repeated several times, though not so loudly as to wake Ella, the situation was explained to the maid. Dulcie did not seem surprised or frightened, and Magdalene suddenly wondered if the cookhouse she had come from was in a place where dead bodies were not uncommon. The question seemed answered as Dulcie calmly examined Sabina’s clothes and said they would need washing or the stains Letice’s wiping could not remove might set. Not to worry, she said to Magdalene, she would make sure no one knew she was washing clothes. The garments would soak well under pots and dishes, and dry hidden behind herbs near the fireplace. Then she gave the half-fainting girl a rough hug and led her away toward her room.

  One problem solved. Magdalene told Letice to put on shoes and take a cloak, and followed that advice herself. Then she found a dark lantern on the bottom shelf. She lit it, but the thread of moon and starlight was enough and they did not need it to find the stable. Carefully closing the door, Magdalene unshuttered the lantern completely and then stood stock-still, staring openmouthed at the disorder.

  The horse was there, calmly lipping up some of the oats that had fallen from the bin in which they were stored. Clearly, someone had been searching through the feed for something hidden beneath it. Around the beast’s feet was fresh hay strewn from bales broken when they had been tossed here and there. The saddle was hanging half off the rack on which it had originally been placed, and the saddlebags now lay on the ground open, their contents scattered over the floor.

  “Oh, heaven,” Magdalene whispered, raising the lantern and looking around. ‘The murderer must have been here searching for….”

  Letice cocked her head on the side.

  “For what?” Magdalene asked the question aloud for her in case she had guessed wrong, and when Letice nodded, answered it. “I have no idea. I wonder if…no, this is no time for wondering. Let us gather up everything that belongs in the saddlebags and rid ourselves of this sign of guilt.”

  As Letice gathered, Magdalene stowed as neatly as she could manage, although her hands began to shake from time to time. She did not waste any effort over excessive neatness however, partly because she did not know how neat the guest had been but more because she wanted the bags to seem to have been searched. When she had closed them and was about to lift the saddle to the horse’s back, Letice stopped her, pointed to the horse, and made an arch with her hands. Then she walked the fingers of the left hand into the half arch that her right hand maintained and showed them getting stuck.

  “You are right,” Magdalene said. “I think we can get the horse through the gate, but certainly not wearing the saddle. You will have to carry the saddle while I lead the horse.”

  It was strange, Magdalene thought as she slipped the bit between the animal’s teeth and fastened it to the halter, how everything tonight conspired to bring back memories of her life as Arabel de St. Foi. First the blood…. She pushed that thought away. And now the more pleasant memories of being mistress of her own small farm, of saddling and riding, dealing with horses….

  Silly beasts, she thought affectionately, so beautiful but so brainless. Everything frightened them. She paused as she was about to set the lantern down in a clear corner and close its shutters so she could open the stable doors. It would be hard to persuade a horse to pass through that low, narrow gate, especially in silence. It might balk or whinny. Magdalene bit her lip and then unwound the scarf that she had automatically used to cover her wealth of honey-gold hair. What a horse could not see would not cause it to balk. With soothing words and slow motions, she put the scarf over the horse’s head so that its eyes were covered.

  Except that Magdalene kept glancing at the moon and cursing herself for not remembering when it had risen and what hour its present position indicated, they had no trouble. The horse followed the pull on its halter docilely, and once Magdalene had pulled its head down level with its shoulders, passed through the gate without difficulty. On the other side, she removed her scarf and led the willing animal, who smelled fresh grass, into the graveyard. There she resaddled it, Letice helping as she could, leaving the girth somewhat loose, as a man might do who wished to ease his horse when he dismounted for some time but intended to continue his ride later.

  Then Letice handed her the saddlebags. Magdalene gave Letice the rein and started to lift the bags—and a light appeared in a window in the second-story dorter. Magdalene dropped to the ground, pulling Letice with her but keeping hold on the horse so it would stand still. Both huddled down on the ground, praying that if a monk on his way to the privy saw the animal, he would be too sleepy to do anything about it.

  In a moment the light winked out. Magdalene jumped up and swung the saddlebags over. With shaking hands, she tried to fasten the straps to the loops on the saddle. One was half tied when she heard a bell. It was a faint, small bell, but she feared it might be the bell that woke the ringer to sound Matins, or worse, that the monk who made the light had seen them and was summoning others. She and Letice fled, silent, clinging to each other until they had latched the gate in the church wall behind them.

  When they came near the back door, Letice pulled very gently on Magdalene’s hand. Although she was shaking with fear and fatigue, Magdalene shook her head. “I am sorry, love,” she murmured. “I know you are tired, but we must put the stable to rights. You know some of the monks wish to be rid of us. If Brother Paulinus decides he could accomplish that by saying the poor man came from this house, the stable must not look as if any animal had been there.”

  Letice sighed but followed without any further urging. Together they heaved the displaced bales into position, raked the hay and any soil in it out to the manure heap at the side, and swept the grain from the floor. When they were sure no one would guess that an animal had been stabled there that night, Magdalene took up the dark lantern, blew out the candle in it, and they returned to the house. Dulcie was waiting. She had emptied the wash water and put the bowl away, dried the table, straightened the benches, and put out the candles, so there was no sign of disturbance or disorder.

  “Poor creature’s asleep,” Dulcie said. “Cried herself t’ sleep. A strange sight it be t’ see tears oozin’ out from under those closed lids. Poor child. As if she didn’ have enough trouble of her own.”

  “She will have no more from this,” Magdalene said, facing her maid and speaking as slowly and clearly as she could. “You never saw that man here. We knew nothing of him.” When Dulcie nodded, she sighed and added, “Since Sabina had nothing to do with it, I hope she will soon forget.” With lips thinned to a hard line, she went to put away the dark lantern, then came back to take the maid’s hand. “Thank you, Dulcie. You can go back to bed now.”

  The old woman bobbed her head. “No need of thanks. You done fer me. I do fer you. This be my house much as anyone else here.”

  When she had stumped away to her pallet in the kitchen, Magdalene put her arms around Letice. “Thank you, love. I do not know what I would have done without you. Is there anything else you can think of that we have left undone?”

  Letice started
to shake her head, then made her sign for Ella.

  “I do not know what we can do about her.” Magdalene sighed. “Pray that she will have forgotten the stranger or not remember what time he was here. To say anything to her will only fix his presence in her mind.” She sighed again. “I am almost too tired to breathe. Let’s go to bed and pray that we will have time to think and clean up any loose ends in the morning.”

  That prayer was not answered. Soon after Prime, the bell by the back door began to ring and ring, and went on ringing until it pierced Dulcie’s deafness. She crawled from her pallet, unshuttered a window a crack, and peered out. A tall, lean monk with ascetic hollows in his cheeks and dark circles under his eyes, carrying a staff, was yanking on the rope as if he wished to tear it down. Dulcie opened the shutter all the way.

  “It be too early,” she cried. “The ladies be asleep.”

  He shouted something at her, but Dulcie was sleepy and angry and did not try to make sense out of what was a dull cacophony to her. She shook her finger at him. “You should be ashamed ‘f yourself, monk that y’ are, t’ carry on so. If y’ be so hot y’ cannot wait till th’ ladies wake, hold it in yer hand or go down th’ street t’ th’ common stews.”

  The monk’s face turned crimson and his eyes bulged from his head with fury. He rushed toward the window, waving his staff as if he would strike Dulcie with it. She drew back and was about to slam the shutter shut when Magdalene came into the room.

  “Who is—”

  By then, the monk was leaning in the window, holding the shutter back with one hand, and screaming that he had never touched a whore and never would.

  “Brother Paulinus!” Magdalene exclaimed. “What is wrong? Wait. You will hurt yourself. Let me open the door.”