A Mortal Bane

by Roberta Gellis

  Magdalene lifted the latch of the back door and went in, only realizing after she entered that Bell had fortunately not relocked the door. She drew a sharp, anxious breath, then let it out when she saw the key to the front gate hanging on its usual hook; Ella had seen Buchuinte out and had locked the gate after him.

  By then, the women had heard her. Dulcie rushed into the corridor, her pan at the ready. Letice was right behind her, carrying the longest and most vicious-looking knife Magdalene had ever seen. Sabina followed, clutching her staff, and Ella cowered last, peering nervously around the corner.

  “What happened?” they all cried, almost with one voice.

  Magdalene sighed. “Unfortunately, Brother Paulinus did not suffer a mad fit. Brother Godwine was murdered. It was dreadful, but the bishop came back with Bell. He listened and said we were innocent. He even gave permission for us to help clean the church, which was desecrated—”

  There were various exclamations at this piece of news, but Magdalene gestured for silence and for a return to the common room. There she said, “I will tell you about it tomorrow morning. The cleansing is to begin at Prime, so we must all be up early. It will be best if you go to bed now and try not to think about this horror.”

  “Are you going to bed, too?” Ella asked. “Should not someone watch for the murderer? He could get in if the gate and the house are open.”

  “The murderer will not come here, love. He is not interested in us—you can go to sleep without worrying about it. I will douse the lights in here, but I will be awake in my own room awhile longer. I must write to William about the murder and hint to him that if Baldassare took the pouch with him and the murderer did not get it, then he must have hidden it in the church. And if the church is thoroughly cleaned, someone is going to find the pouch.”

  “How will William get the message?” Sabina asked. “You cannot go out in the middle of the night.”

  “Tom the Watchman will take it. He should be on his way home right now.” She caught Dulcie’s arm and said loudly, “You must catch Tom the Watchman before he gets to bed and bring him here—bring him to the stable. I will go there to give him a letter and explain what he must do.”

  ‘Tom the Watchman,” Dulcie repeated. ‘To the stable.”

  “Take the key to the gate,” Magdalene reminded her. “Lock the front gate behind you when you go out.”

  Dulcie nodded and left. Magdalene shooed the other women into their chambers, snuffed all the lights but the torchette over the front door, and hurried to her own room where she took a fair-sized piece of parchment from her drawer. At the top of the sheet she wrote.

  “From Magdalene la Bâtarde of the Old Priory Guesthouse to Lord William of Ypres. It is after Matins on the tenth day following Easter Sunday. If you are well, I am well also, but all is not well in the priory of St. Mary Overy.” She followed the warning with as succinct a description of the murder as possible—William would not be much interested in that or in the theft of church plate—and then moved on to the need for a purification of the church before it could be reconsecrated.

  “Because Baldassare had been found on the porch,” she wrote, “it has been assumed that he never entered the church, and I do not believe the monks ever searched there for the pouch. Also, they did not know until Sir Bellamy recognized the dead man that he was a papal messenger, and did not know they should look for a pouch. However, Baldassare did leave this house when the bells rang for the Compline service. If he entered the church quietly and slipped back into the darkness of the nave, he could have hidden the pouch during the service and no one the wiser.”

  She sat for a moment staring at the parchment. Perhaps she should not concentrate solely on the pouch. She frowned, passed the feather of the quill she was using between her lips, dipped it again, and then added, “I do not know whether you are interested in this murder or whether it would be worth your while to watch or join the cleansing of St. Mary Overy, but I felt you should know what was happening so you could decide for yourself out of knowledge rather than let matters slide, out of ignorance.”

  All the while she had been writing, she had had an ear cocked for the sound of Bell returning. Breathing a short prayer of thanksgiving because he had not, she folded and sealed her parchment. Her seal was unique; she used a small, very ancient brooch William had given her, engraved in low relief with a naked woman reclining on an odd-looking bed.

  Letter complete, she snuffed her candles and stepped out of her chamber, barely opening the door and closing it softly behind her. She could only hope that Bell would not come back before she did. If he saw the house all dark, he would likely lock the door and she would be locked out. Magdalene sighed. It would not be the first time in her life that she slept in a stable loft.

  That last sacrifice was not necessary, however. When Dulcie returned, the door was still open and the older woman slipped quietly inside after giving Magdalene the key to the front gate. At the stable, Magdalene gave her letter to Tom the Watchman, walked him back to the gate, and bade him deliver the missive to William of Ypres’s lodging in the Tower of London. She also gave Tom a silver penny, which made his eyes widen.

  “The quicker Lord William has this message, the better,” Magdalene said. “You know his colors?” The man nodded; he had delivered messages to William of Ypres before. “Be sure the letter goes into the hands of a man wearing William’s colors and that you tell him quietly his master needs to know what is therein before this morning’s Prime. You need not come back to say he has the letter. I expect to see Lord William himself or one of his men soon after Prime.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  27 April 1139

  St. Mary Overy Church

  It was William himself who came, striding through the main door into the church as if it were another of his own keeps. He was dressed in mail, his spurs making a soft metallic scraping against the stone floor. Magdalene, attracted by the sound, gave him one glance and then turned angrily away. To Sabina, who was kneeling about midway down the chancel near the wall opposite to that on which the St. Christopher high relief was carved, she said, “Can you feel the edge of the lowest course of the stonework? Just wash along it down to the nave. I will then ask the prior whether he wants us to continue down the nave or do the other side of the chancel.”

  “I feel it. I will not miss any places, I promise.”

  “I know you will not, love. Do you have your pillow to kneel on?”

  Sabina answered—Magdalene hoped in the affirmative, but she did not really hear her. She was furious with William. She had feared her letter would convince him that she had hidden the pouch in the church, but she had not expected he would appear dressed and ready to ride to the king as soon as it was found. Did he think she was going to fish it out and hand it to him?

  Without a second glance, Magdalene wrung a cloth out in a bucket of water, stepped up on a stool, and began to wash the wall as high as she could reach. Behind her, a young novice was perched on a ladder scrubbing even higher, to where the arches curved inward to support the roof.

  “Hey, chick!” William bellowed across the church. “Nother kind of good works, eh?”

  Magdalene turned her head and bowed it. “Lord William,” she murmured, but she did not step off the stool to move toward him.

  To her intense relief, he did not veer toward her either, or address her again. He continued straight through the nave, passing her without another glance, heading for the dais, where the bishop was watching the prior carefully scrubbing at the bloodstains on the floor and the altar, from which the cloth had been removed. The safe box, Magdalene had noticed earlier, was also gone.

  When William called out, the bishop abruptly stopped assuring Father Benin, for the fourth or fifth time, that no amount of scrubbing would completely remove the stains from the stone and that they no longer constituted a defilement. He looked out at the noisy newcomer blankly.

  “Ho, Winchester,” William shouted. “I was on my way to speak
to Hugh le Poer in Montfichet and I heard about the trouble Father Benin had here. It was only across the bridge, so I thought I would ride over and ask if he needed any help. I could send men over from the Tower.”

  Magdalene stepped off the stool and bent to wash the chosen strip of wall down to where Sabina had already cleaned the stone course that met the floor. She bit her lip, feeling a fool, as she so often did when dealing with William. Almost everyone in Southwark knew he frequented her house and was her protector. Naturally, he could not ignore her. It was necessary for him to greet her and then for him to pass her by as if she were just one more of the large number of men and women from the surrounding area who were cleaning as she was. And how could she believe he would not have a good and sufficient reason for being in full armor? Likely he had a full troop with him, too. That would be only natural if he was going to speak to Waleran de Meulan’s brother.

  William had reached the dais, and the prior sat back on his heels, lifting a swollen-eyed, tear-streaked face to him. “A thousand men could not remove the stain, I fear,” he said, his voice rough with weeping.

  “Why do you wish to remove it?” William asked, looking astonished. His harsh voice was loud above the soft sounds of rags on stone and splashing, dripping water. “Surely you have already cleaned away the pollution of murder. You should not want to wipe away the memory of the good brother’s death also. Was he not a martyr because of the sin of greed? The spilled blood of war makes the earth rich and fruitful. Will not the stains in the stone make more fervent your prayers for escape from temptation and for the grace of mercy?”

  Father Benin blinked, then stared up at William of Ypres’s coarse-featured face with its hard mouth and cold eyes. Slowly his terror, his oppression of hopeless grief, diminished. He had not been comforted by the statements of the Bishop of Winchester, who knew the rules of the Church as a scholar knows the rules of mathematics but had little faith and little love of God. But this! Such a sentiment could not come from so brutal a man unless it was God-inspired. A question rose to Father Benin’s lips, but Lord William had already transferred his attention to the Bishop of Winchester. The prior swallowed what he had wished to ask. Whatever had inspired Lord William was gone now.

  “What happened?” Ypres asked. “Got a crazy story of a gang of thieves that came to rob the church and killed a monk while they were getting the plate. Did they get it all? I could help with a chalice and an offering dish.”

  “It is not so bad as that,” Winchester said. “We do not actually know whether anything was taken. What we do know is that some of the pieces that were solid silver and gold have been replaced by plated copies.”

  “Plated copies?” William repeated. “How can that be possible? The real piece would have had to be taken to whoever did the copying. I am no metalsmith, but if the plate of St. Mary Overy is anything like that of my church, it is ornate and could not be copied in a candlemark or two. Would not the sacristan have noticed that a piece was gone before the copy could be substituted?”

  “I had not thought of that, but you are quite right, Lord William,” the bishop said.

  “God have mercy on us!” The prior sighed as he got to his feet. “That means it must be someone in the priory, someone who would be able to remove the pieces, then return them while the goldsmith created the copies, and then bring the copies to replace the originals.”

  Stepping up on the stool again to begin washing another section of the wall, Magdalene had to struggle to keep her expression indifferent. That William! He had turned so he could see both Winchester and the prior; his back was to the church. No one could seem less interested in the cleaning process or expect less that anything would come of it. Moreover, she suspected he had about as much interest in what had happened to the church plate as he had in what the monks would have for dinner. It was the subject of primary interest to the bishop and the prior, however, and one they would be unable to resist talking about and speculating over. And if that topic failed to keep their interest long enough, she was quite sure that William would have another one ready.

  Fortunately, providing another topic was not necessary. Father Benin would not have noticed, but Winchester might well have smelled bad fish if William lingered after discussion of the theft ended. As she began to wash another strip of wall, Magdalene found herself mentally urging more speed and less scrupulous care on the part of the workers on the other side. Probably that had not the smallest effect; however, before the prior had fully described the discovery of the fakes, the novice washing the opposite wall moved his ladder beside the St. Christopher relief. He wrung out his cleaning cloth, climbed three rungs, and cried out with surprise that something was lodged between the Christ Child and His bearer.

  Magdalene could have cheered when William only looked from the prior, who had been speaking, to Winchester. It was the bishop who turned swiftly, stepped down from the dais, and as he saw what the boy was drawing from the hollow behind the Christ Child, almost ran to the foot of the ladder. By then, everyone in the church had stopped work to look, and it was safe for Magdalene to turn and stare with the others.

  The prior and William had followed Winchester and were beside him as he reached up to take the pouch from the boy’s hand. Winchester was staring at the complex knot of the cords that bound the pouch, and the prior bent his head toward it, too, sighing, “Sealed. It is still sealed.”

  Over their heads, William’s eyes met Magdalene’s for a brief, meaningful moment. Then he laid a hand on Winchester’s arm and asked, “Have we any right to open this? Should it not be taken to the king?”

  “This is Church business,” Winchester replied immediately. “What has it to do with the king? If the archbishop—” He sounded as if he wished to spit, but his voice smoothed as he added, “—were here, it might be his right, but likely he is still in Rome—”

  “Whatever must be done were better decided in private,” Father Benin interrupted.

  William and the bishop agreed at once. Each, Magdalene knew, had his own plans for the contents of the pouch, but both realized that their arguments had best be made out of public hearing. She returned to her scrubbing as the prior led the others not to the monks’ entrance, but out the main door. Her surprise lasted only a moment before she realized that the prior wished to avoid the chapel where Brother Godwine lay—as Baldassare had lain before him.

  The thought brought a pang of regret into the relief she felt over the discovery of the pouch. Her hope that the killer would betray himself either by searching for it in her house or trying to discover whether she knew what had become of it had not been fulfilled. No one had searched after the stable had been turned over…except Bell.

  Magdalene swallowed and scrubbed harder. No. That was mad. Even if the bishop and Bell were both monsters, what reason could Winchester have to order Baldassare’s murder? The messenger would have delivered the bull to him in any case. And neither of them could have any reason to kill Brother Godwine or meddle with the church plate.

  William? No, she knew him well. He was likely enough to order a murder without a second thought, but she was ready to swear on her life that he had not known when Baldassare would arrive and had hoped, until she sent him news of the messenger’s death, that Baldassare would come to Rochester and accept his escort to the king. And William would have no more reason than Bell or the bishop to attack Godwine.

  She reached the bottom, moved her stool, rinsed and wrung out her rag, and began to wash a new area of wall. She hardly realized what she had done. All she could think of was that Godwine’s death might have nothing at all to do with Baldassare’s. Or it might. Godwine was the porter at the gate. He might have recognized someone who had come in that night and not left, or had done some other suspicious thing. Had not Brother Patric said Godwine wished to pray over something that troubled him? But how did that fit with the open safe box? The faked plate? The candlestick used to kill him? Surely Brother Godwine had surprised a thief and died of it.
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  By dinnertime, Magdalene had got no further in her thoughts, but more than half the church had been purified and more townsfolk were coming in to help clean. Magdalene gathered her women and took them home to eat, rest, and welcome the day’s clients. They found Bell waiting for them, tired and frustrated.

  “We still have not laid hands on Beaumeis,” he said to Magdalene as soon as Dulcie had disappeared into the kitchen and the other women into their chambers. “He did not show his face once at his lodging, nor in the cathedral, nor to any friend, nor in those haunts known to his friends.”

  “Maybe for good reason,” Magdalene said, sinking down on the bench and wearily placing her elbows on the table. “He may have given up on getting the pouch when he did not find it in Buchuinte’s house and fled, but one thing troubles me. I cannot imagine how he could have gotten hold of the keys of the priory. No one trusted him enough to lend them to him or, probably, to allow him even to touch them to do an errand.”

  “That may be true, but his absence from his lodging last night is very suspicious. And Godwine may have let him into the priory. How would we know now that Godwine is dead? Most significant is that he had the most compelling reasons to want Baldassare dead, for if Winchester did not get the bull, surely Baldassare would have spoken out about having carried it to England.”

  “But how could Beaumeis have gotten the candlestick?”

  “I can guess that. Say Godwine went to look at the candlesticks because he had noticed something different about them. Remember he told Brother Patric he was troubled. Say he took the candlestick out and was examining it and Beaumeis came in with the intention of searching for the pouch. If Brother Godwine had been kneeling behind the altar, Beaumeis would not have seen him—whatever light he carried would have mingled with that of the altar lamp—and Godwine might not have noticed Beaumeis. If Brother Godwine then rose and saw Beaumeis, he could have challenged him, asked what he was doing, possibly even remembered that he had seen Beaumeis after Vespers on the night Baldassare was killed.”