Wine of Violence mm-1

by Priscilla Royal

  Thomas lied to Sister Anne.

  Despite his aching head, he could not stand yet another full day of enforced rest. She had called it a miraculous recovery and let him go with a look that said she knew full well that he was more impatient than fully fit. Out of guilt he had promised not to overdo and to come back at once if he began to vomit or show other symptoms of ill health within the next few days.

  As he left the hospital, every muscle in his body cried to run for all he was worth or find a horse and gallop until he and the beast were too exhausted to go further. Then his head began to pound at the very thought, and he knew that Sister Anne was right. He would be cautious, he decided grudgingly.

  Still he wanted to be useful so he walked into the hut just outside the entrance to the hospital. There were few people awaiting treatment. A lay brother gave one such person something to treat what looked like a minor cut. Another man blushed as he pointed to his genitals and made a scratching gesture. Tomorrow, Thomas thought, his wife may be in for the same reason and the husband back as well with a cracked skull for sharing the ailment he most likely got from his whore.

  No one needed the services of a priest so he left and walked toward the church. As he reached the split in the path that would take him toward the sacristy, he heard the gravel crunch behind him and he turned.

  “How does your head feel, brother?” Brother Simeon’s expression was grave and his hand gentle as he reached over and touched Thomas on the shoulder.

  Thomas put his hand on the wound as if he had already forgotten about it. It was still sore. “Hardly notice it,” he shrugged.

  Simeon beamed with returned good humor. “Good! Then you’ll be back with the nuns soon. Brother John will be most grateful to return full time to his little novices and his music. He does so miss them.” He snorted with ill-disguised contempt.

  “He may do so today. I am on my way there now.”

  “Then I shall walk with you,” Simeon said and the two monks started back along the path to the sacristy. “Has your memory returned as well, or have you heard anything more about who might have attacked you?”

  “No, my lord. Neither. I am beginning to think it was some malevolent spirit whose nocturnal wanderings I interrupted.”

  “Or you got too close to the hiding place of some villein escaped from his master.” Simeon sighed. “Then you have heard nothing either about any progress in the hunt for Brother Rupert’s killer?”

  A loud laugh made both men spin around. Standing just a few paces behind them was Ralf. Fatigue edged the crowner’s eyes in black, but, as he looked down the path at the two monks, his grin was almost boyish. “Neither of you was ever in the army, for cert. Had you been sentries, you’d be dead by now. Never even heard me come up behind you!”

  Thomas watched Simeon’s face turn scarlet with rage. “It seems I must remind you that this is a house of God, not a military camp, Crowner. Your worldly skills have no value here.” Simeon almost spat the last words.

  “And if Brother Rupert, or our brother here, had had my worldly skills as you call them, the former might be alive and the latter might be without that bump on his head. And how is your tender pate, my saintly friend?”

  “Were I saintly, Crowner, I would feel it less. And if I had your thick skull, I might never have felt it at all,” Thomas replied.

  Ralf threw back his head and roared with laughter.

  Simeon looked at Thomas in surprise.

  “You missed your calling, monk,” Ralf said. “You should have been a Templar. From what Annie told me, you got quite the crack on your skull, yet your tongue is quick and ready despite your injured wits, and you’re walking around quite freely again. Had you been a warrior monk, methinks you’d be back on your horse and ready for battle. The Templars could use someone like you in the Holy Land.”

  The crowner brought his hand down on Thomas’ shoulder so hard the monk saw flashes of light and swayed ever so slightly. For an instant, Thomas’ mood darkened. Perhaps he would have been happier with the fighting monks. He was not suited to inconsequential investigations of account rolls, but then he hadn’t been given much of a choice. Still, this assignment had not been without its adventures, he decided. His mood brightened.

  “Enough childish waste of time, Crowner. Are you here because you finally have some news about Brother Rupert’s murderer?” Simeon drew himself up to his full height and stuffed his fists into his sleeves.

  “It’s only right I tell your mistress first,” Ralf said, and, with an impish grin, watched the colors of frustration and anger rise and fall in the receiver’s face. “And I must confess I find your prioress a rare sort of woman. What think you of her?”

  “A woman is a woman. Whatever her titular position here, she can never be more than what God has made her, a ward in need of man’s firm direction.”

  The crowner winked at him, but Thomas decided silence was the wiser response.

  “She has a man’s stomach for all her delicate look and short stature,” Ralf said. “I would trust her to lead me into battle, I think.”

  “Then you are the greater fool.” Simeon’s laugh lacked even the hint of humor.

  “No, but perhaps you are. Have you heard nothing of what she found by herself yesterday?”

  Simeon glanced quickly at Thomas, who shrugged.

  “Ah, I see that neither of you has heard of your brave lady’s efforts to protect you all at Tyndal. It seems she was disturbed by this recent attack on one of her charges.” Ralf nodded at Thomas. “And decided to go off on her own to investigate.”

  “What feminine foolishness!” Simeon barked. “And what woman did she imperil by taking her along on this childish game? Since I have heard nothing of this, I know none of my monks went with her.”

  “She endangered only herself. Seems she went out to the clearing where our good brother was struck and wandered down by the stream he had heard in the distance.”

  “The woman needs a keeper!” Simeon’s face turned red again.

  “And there she found a cave.”

  “What cave?”

  “A place cut out by the stream in flood, methinks. Someone had built a bed there, of all things, yet there was no evidence of any fire. And then a strange man appeared…”

  Simeon gasped. “Surely one of Satan’s imps.” Then he leered. “Or else she has odd fantasies like women are wont to have. Did the man perchance have cloven hooves, hairy legs like a goat, and a proud member as well?” Simeon jerked his hips suggestively and winked.

  “Nay, monk. He held no lance ready for a lusty joust, but he did hold a knife in his hand.”

  Simeon hesitated and stared at the crowner in brief silence. “A knife? My jest was unseemly. Did he injure our lady by either word or deed?”

  “She had already turned her ankle, but the man harmed her not. He ran away as soon as he saw her.”

  “And did she describe him? Perhaps I have seen this man. He may be one of our villagers.”

  “She did not get a good look at him. I thought perhaps he was a holy man just come to the area and was using the cave for his hermitage. All she noted was that grime darkened the creases in his face, that his beard and hair were unkempt, that his clothes were torn and stained, and that he held the knife in his left hand.”

  “Not a bad observation for a frightened woman,” Thomas muttered.

  “Indeed,” Simeon said with a frown. “We have heard of no hermits in our area. Nor do I recognize the man’s description. It could fit many from the village.”

  “Aye. Her find did lead me to search the cave and the environs, however, and I have brought something to make our liege lady happy. You too, I think.”

  “A breakthrough in the foul murder of our brother?” Simeon asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “Ah, I might as well tell you, good monk, since I have yet to know a monastery without holey walls when it comes to gossip. Here is the broken hilt of a dagger, stained with blood, I believe.” He patted the leat
her pouch at his side. “One of my men found it buried under the rocks just outside the cave your prioress found. And also buried nearby, we found a bloody robe with a knife tear near where Brother Rupert’s heart would have been.”

  ***

  As soon as Ralf went off to speak with the prioress, Simeon left Thomas and hurried back to tell Theobald of the latest developments. Thomas continued on to the church.

  Thomas had never pretended that his faith was other than a thing of habit, unconsidered and at no point in his life profound. Even now he went through the motions of priesthood as a necessary daily ritual and suspected that the majority of others did the same. However, he was not such a fool as to deny the truth of what he practiced. Wiser men than he had said that Hell fire waited for unbelievers, and who was he to question them? He was no scholar and felt no unique connection with God that he might argue he had been granted special enlightenment. He was happy to leave the clarifications on the details of faith to the likes of Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.

  Thomas’ faith might be mundane. His love of music was not. He had never shown skill on any instrument and his voice was toneless, but when choirs lifted their voices heavenward in the praise of God, it was the only time Thomas felt his soul had gotten a glimpse of Heaven. Thus, when he entered the sacristy and heard singing, he decided to slip out to see who was practicing the chants with such sweet sound.

  It was the novices of Tyndal.

  He was surprised to see Brother John leading the boys so skillfully. Thomas stood near a pillar just outside the nave and watched the monk rehearse them in their chants. Their youthful voices filled the air with a song so beautiful it was almost too painful to hear. Indeed, the sound was as powerful as that of a full choir of monks, although the mix of just broken and unbroken voices added a purity, indeed a uniquely innocent quality to it. In spite of himself, he lifted his eyes heavenward. At least the attitude of prayer was sincere enough even if no words came with it.

  Brother John waved his hand, and the chanting stopped. The monk then gestured and hummed with enthusiastic grace, demonstrating how he wanted them to sing a particular passage. The boys watched him, their expressions solemn and worried, their eyes unblinking. If Thomas hadn’t had less comfortable meetings with this troubling monk earlier, he would have warmed easily to him now. The novices certainly had or they would not have cared so much about following his instruction.

  This Brother John was a very different person from the one Thomas had first seen. That monk had frightened him with eyes as cold as frosted stones and mouth as stern as if he were sending a heretic to the stake. Perhaps that was what bothered him most about the monk, his icy aloofness. Then he had seen him with the young man in the church. That monk was not aloof.

  He quickly scanned the faces of the choirboys. None were of the right height or shape to match the young man he’d seen in the chapel that night. These were younger boys, just on the edge of manhood. The one Brother John had embraced with such tenderness in the pale moonlight of the chapel had crossed the line between childhood and a man’s world. When Brother John smiled at these boys, however, the love Thomas saw in the monk’s look came not from the loins but the heart.

  Nor could Thomas ignore the gentleness with which the monk had treated him when he found Thomas lying in the clearing. Nor could he deny the attentiveness with which this man had helped him walk to the hospital. Brother John had found him a comparatively quiet bed there and kept him company until Sister Anne came. He was even companionable, touching Thomas’ shoulder with tenderness and sympathy from time to time, asking meaningless and non-intrusive questions to distract him from his pain.

  Thomas folded his hands into his sleeves, trying to think back to the events in the clearing before he was hit from behind. Once again he asked himself if it could have been Brother John who struck him. He was the most likely person, but Thomas was almost certain he had heard more than one voice speaking across the clearing before he was struck down. If there were two ahead of him, wouldn’t they have been Brother John and the youth? He had seen no third person.

  Then who might it have been if it wasn’t the monk? Newcomer though he was to the area, he surely would have heard if the priory had been plagued of late with lawless men attacking those who came to the hospital. There were no prior tales of errant monks or wild hermits. Had there been a spate of troublesome strangers about, the crowner would have been a regular visitor to the priory, and the word was that Ralf had not ever come to the priory before the murder of Brother Rupert. Had the old man been the first victim of such a band?

  Thomas shook his head. Unlikely. Despite Prioress Eleanor’s snide comments, the old priest could not have been the first monk to wander beyond Tyndal’s perimeters, but, with the exception of Prior Theobald and his large gold cross, monks rarely had anything worth stealing to tempt the lawless. He smiled. Thomas rather doubted that the trembling prior was one likely to seek unholy solace to ease the holy life.

  Nor are men seeking coin or jewels prone to violating their victims, Thomas remembered with a wince.

  No, Thomas was convinced that Brother Rupert was not the victim of lawless men; however, he might have been the victim of someone who wanted his death to look like the suicide of a monk overwhelmed with guilt over lust.

  He shifted his weight against the pillar and watched the novice master demonstrating to one boy how a short passage should sound. The man had a pleasing voice, he thought.

  “So why carry him into the nuns’ cloister?” he muttered under his breath. Why not just leave the man where he had been killed? And how could the murderer fail to notice that the genitals were in the wrong hand but still have the composure to change the dead monk’s clothes? And what was the intent of the murderer? There were just too many questions.

  Thomas scratched the bristling hair in his tonsure. It would need shaving again soon. “The man must have known that his attempts to disguise the murder as a suicide were rudimentary at best. How stupid did he think we all are here?” He looked up nervously, hoping his words had not been overheard, then fell back to silent thought.

  He…well, it must have been a man surely. A woman could never castrate a man, even after death. Surely, women were too delicate. The young ones, anyway. Thomas gave a mirthless snort. The lasses he had known in his old life might have been too delicate. He wasn’t so sure about these nuns.

  Sister Anne, for one, was as tall as many men. She had shown no timidity about examining the dead monk, nor had she shown any hesitancy about looking at his horrible wounds. No man, himself included, could have looked upon that brutal mutilation with the calm detachment she had shown. A strange woman indeed, Thomas thought, as strange in her way as Brother John was in his. Had she been plump with age and gray-haired like several of the female servants he had known in his father’s house, he would have had no difficulty imagining her indifference over a man’s body, but Sister Anne was neither beyond the child-bearing age nor had she gray hair. Her reaction was not womanly, not natural. Could she have killed the monk?

  Nay, he thought with a smile. Despite her odd manner, he liked Sister Anne. He felt no evil or anger in her, only compassion and a sorrow with which he felt a certain kinship.

  Then there was Prioress Eleanor. He could probably eliminate her as a suspect because she was as new to Tyndal as he was. Besides, she was far too little to stab a man in the heart, unless she was standing on a stool to do it. The image of the small religious leaping upon a bench and flailing away with a knife too big for her two tiny hands even to grasp made him grin in spite of himself.

  No, he couldn’t see the prioress killing a man, whatever his frailty or age. She might be capable of poisoning, he thought grimly, but she didn’t have the heft to wield a man’s weapon. Nor did he think she would castrate a man. Despite her religious profession, there was an earthly side to the prioress. He suspected she might not only enjoy the company of a man but might also prefer his manhood to be quite functional. In fact
, he wondered how well she kept her vow of chastity. Thomas laughed quietly. If she was looking to lose her virginity at Tyndal, she was in the wrong place. The monks he had met here were too old, too disinclined, or too frightened by women to satisfy any such lusty inclinations. Brother Simeon might be the exception, but that one was far too ambitious to damage his chances for advancement by having an affair with the prioress of a minor house like this.

  As a female suspect, Thomas rather fancied Sister Ruth. He disliked the gruff woman. She was exactly the type he preferred to find locked safely away behind the stone walls of a convent, but he doubted even she would have killed Brother Rupert. Perhaps the aged monk had been a threat to the chastity of young nuns when he too had been a youth, but the good priest was far too old to be of interest or danger to any woman at the time of his murder.

  Could Sister Christina have done it? No, that one was bound for sainthood if he was any judge.

  ***

  Brother John was finished running each of the novices, separately and in groups, through the segments of the chant that needed polishing. They were ready to start again. Thomas looked at the novices and back at the monk, then shook his head. The poignant vision of Brother John with the young man in the chapel would not leave him. If I were a wagering man, Thomas thought, I’d say this monk was a bit too fond of boys.

  When the chant began, the beauty of the voices excelled anything Thomas had ever heard before and drove the more earthy thoughts from his head. With a soft cry of mixed pain and joy, he slipped slowly down on his knees to the chapel floor as tears flowed inexplicably down his cheeks. If he had just heard the voice of God, he could not have felt more awe.

  And had tears not blinded Thomas, he might have looked up to see Brother John turn and gaze at him with a slight smile and widening green eyes.

  Chapter Twenty

  Gytha had just finished tossing out the old rush mats and was sweeping the floor in preparation for laying fresh ones when there was a knock at the door of the private chambers. She stopped in mid-sweep, rested against the broom, and looked over at her mistress.