Wine of Violence mm-1

by Priscilla Royal

  “I have nothing to say, my lady. I do not know what troubled Prioress Felicia so.” Anne’s expression was both distressed and questioning.

  “When I looked over the account rolls myself,” Eleanor continued, “I found that harvests had been almost as plentiful as usual, but the incomes from them were not quite as high as they should have been. The discrepancy seemed minor and I told Brother Simeon that I planned to visit some of the nearby lands to ask some questions. It did not occur to me that the harvests had been greater and the rents properly paid but both improperly recorded. As far as I can tell, only he was guilty of this act. He was clever enough to modify the entries just enough so they’d appear reasonable to anyone looking for the obvious theft. I find no evidence of a second person being involved.”

  “In that I concur, my lady,” Thomas added. “He did not take me into his confidence on this matter and I know of no one else whom he so trusted.”

  “Perhaps we will never know what specifically led Prioress Felicia and Brother Rupert to their revelation,” Eleanor said.

  Sister Anne frowned in thought.

  Brother Thomas seemed lost in it. “I find it hard to believe that Eadnoth did not complain to anyone in authority at Tyndal,” he said. “How long could a parent turn his head in such a situation? To someone for whom hunger is so sharp that they will sell their child’s soul for a mouthful of food, money might buy silence for awhile, but such food would soon fill that mouth with worms.”

  “As Gytha explained to me, we are still the conquerors in the eyes of many. We may think we treat all with courtesy and fairness, but, when it is Saxon versus Norman, the village believes we protect our own first. There may be some validity in their view.”

  “And so they distrust the rulers of the priory.”

  “Yes.”

  “Although I do not dispute the boy’s story, my lady,” Thomas continued, “I find one thing strange. Eadnoth would have become a rich man if Simeon had given him all the money stolen from the priory. Yet he was dressed in rags, as is his son, while we must scrimp to have enough to buy food through the winter months.”

  “Eadmund said his father could not use what he was given. The lad says Eadnoth went to the cliffs above the sea, and he watched while his father tossed the coin into the waves, screaming that Satan could take it all back and return his son’s soul and manhood.”

  “Indeed, Eadnoth loved his son and would have lost his wits over these events,” Anne said. “Nonetheless, the sum does seem too vast for one bribe.”

  “Or perhaps there were others Simeon paid to be silent,” Thomas muttered absently. “Others who have not and may never come forward out of fear and shame. The penalties for sodomy are dire ones. Had Eadmund been younger, he would have been found innocent, but he is just man enough to have lost that protection, and all Simeon’s victims might be of like age.” Thomas winced with unwelcome memories. “Our receiver might have saved his own life by showing sufficient contrition to the right bishop, but those of no influence suffer greatly: public excommunication, an edict announced in every church in the kingdom; to be forever shunned by family and friends. Willing or not, those he committed sodomy with would face hell both in this life and in the hereafter.”

  Eleanor glanced at Thomas as he rested his chin on his fist, eyes closed. There was something odd in his tone, she thought. “Some probably went to worldly extravagance. Simeon is fond of fine plate and good wine. I have seen the gold goblets in the prior’s lodgings and the fine wines served, yet I use good pewter for my guests.”

  Thomas opened his eyes and smiled at her, a look that gave more joy to her heart than it should.

  “It seems the most influential visitors were entertained in the prior’s quarters by Brother Simeon,” Eleanor continued. “Prioress Felicia supped only with the wives and daughters, for whom fine red gold was not needed. But something else disturbs me. Brother Simeon is right-handed, yet you believe the murderer was left-handed, sister.”

  “I could be wrong, my lady.”

  “Or perhaps Eadmund’s father killed Brother Rupert?” Eleanor suggested. “He was left-handed and wild with grief at what he had allowed his son to suffer. Maybe he saw the good monk as the servant of Satan.”

  “Then who killed Eadnoth?” Anne asked. “And do not suggest Brother John! He is as sinful a mortal as any man, but one whom God has forgiven. No, it must have been the same man.” She glanced down at her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

  “Or not,” Eleanor replied, watching the nun’s hands nervously clutch at each other. Then she looked at Thomas. “You are deep in contemplation, brother.”

  Thomas blinked as if suddenly awakened and looked up. “My lady, forgive me, but while I have been listening to all you both have said, I was thinking further on Brother Simeon and Brother Rupert.”

  “And?”

  He turned to Anne. “Besides telling Brother Rupert about Prioress Felicia’s dying words, did you tell anyone else?”

  “Brother John.”

  “Did anyone know that you had told him?”

  “Sister Ruth was with me…”

  Thomas looked over at Eleanor, his face gray with fear. “My lady, if you would take my advice, I would urge that you call the crowner and his men quickly. If you do not, I fear Brother John will not be alive when you go for your announced visit with him tomorrow.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “I like it not, monk.”

  Crowner Ralf scowled at Thomas and shifted uneasily with impatience. He and one of his men were armed with knife and sword. The other carried a small crossbow. All were dressed in leather armor.

  “We have logic on our side, man. Brother Simeon knows that only one other man may know his secret about the theft of funds as well as the reason for it, and that is Brother John. If he kills him, there is only the word of Eadmund. And who credits the tales of villeins against the word of a Norman, a man of good family and well respected for his stewardship of the priory at that? Our only hope is to catch him trying to kill Brother John. Your brother is sheriff, Crowner. Your witness and testimony would be respected.”

  “So you want Brother John to be bait. I think we should be more concerned with saving his life.”

  “The souls of one, quite possibly two slain men cry out for justice. If we do nothing, Brother John may be murdered tonight and his body arranged to look like a suicide. Of course I could be wrong and Brother John might live to tell his tale, but I doubt Simeon would take the chance that the monk’s tale will be believed over his own. Even if it is not, Simeon may fear that his hope for future advancement will be diminished with the taint of the accusation. Certainly Simeon will never confess to the murders or the attempted murder of our good prioress. If Brother John seems to have taken his own life, surely most will conclude he did so out of guilt for the murders, and Simeon will be exonerated. Eadmund’s story will have no credence. Even if you set men to guard him and Brother John survives the night, there is a chance Simeon’s word will still be taken over his, a former apothecary, but not if the receiver tries to kill the monk and we witness it.”

  “You ask me who is most likely to be believed in this ugly matter: Eadmund, the villein, and John, a man of uncertain birth; or Simeon, the son of a man of rank? Satan’s tits, monk! The noble brothers in the Church will protect their own. The cleric who literally got away with murder during the reign of our second King Henry was not unusual. Justice has little room to swing her balances in courts ruled by highborn priests.” Ralf snorted, then smiled. “You continue to amaze me with your understanding of the real world, monk. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were only acting a monk’s part. ”

  “The tonsure is real, Crowner,” Thomas said, lowering his head to hide his flushing face. “You do agree we have little choice but to follow my plan?”

  Ralf grunted. “I never acquired a taste for gambling. Your plan could lose us both Annie’s former husband as well as you and still leave Simeon free.”
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br />   “And you as a witness to it all, remember. Trying to get Simeon to confess otherwise is impossible and would leave us with an innocent man who might be found guilty of crimes he did not commit. And I think John would rather die in a fight to save him than die alone like a trussed chicken at Simeon’s hand.”

  “Aye, but if he died, would he care about the difference?”

  Thomas laughed. “Now there, Crowner, is where it pays to be a man of faith. Indeed, in the afterlife, he’d care that we believed him to be innocent.”

  “Your humor is not like that of any other monk I have ever met either, brother, but I will grant you the logic of your plan.”

  “And you and your men will not enter unless I give the sign?”

  Ralf looked at his two lieutenants and smiled. They nodded. Their eyes never blinked.

  ***

  As the quartet reached the top of the stairs to the passage, which led on one side to the monks’ dormitory and on the other to the latrines, two of them slipped into the shadows. Ralf and Thomas stood looking at the door of one of the small storage rooms that lay along the narrow way to the latrines. All was silent from the room where Brother John lay a prisoner.

  “Good luck,” Ralf mouthed before he too stole deep into the darkness of the corridor.

  Thomas walked quietly into another empty room and crouched along a wall. He could not see the moon from this windowless stone storage chamber and thus could not mark time. It might have been an hour he waited. Or only a minute. It felt like the rest of his earthly life.

  In the darkness, he began to distrust what seemed so clear in the earlier daylight. Surely, Sister Ruth had told Simeon about Prioress Felicia’s last words. She told him everything, it seemed, everything in return for praise, the warmth of which must have filled her lonely heart like wine. Had the receiver’s contempt for women saved her life? And Sister Anne’s?

  Perhaps the monk thought he could control one woman with flattery and the other with threats to expose some violation of her chastity vow, but Brother John was a man. His word might be given credence. He was a threat.

  Thomas felt an uneasy pang of guilt. On the surface, Simeon was a man of the world, rough and jovial, a man he could understand in a world of monks. He had also befriended Thomas, aye, accepted him when he first arrived and understood him well. Simeon, it seemed, had cared for another before he had come to Tyndal and suffered for it too. If the prioress and Sister Anne were horrified at Simeon’s acts of sodomy, how would they feel if they knew of his own? Giles was no youth, but to those in the Church, or in the courts of kings, there was no difference. Indeed he and the receiver had a kinship here. Did he not owe Simeon something for that?

  Thomas had hesitated about speaking up when he suspected John and Eadmund of being lovers. Why did he now turn on Simeon? Unlike the receiver, John was a strange man, hard on the outside but soft like a woman on the inside, especially in his dealings with the novices. Had Brother Rupert and Prioress Felicia suspected him, as Thomas had as well, of questionable relations with the boys? Was that what the old prioress had realized as she was dying? That they were wrong about Brother John? He hadn’t wanted to suggest such in front of Sister Anne or Prioress Eleanor. The shock of what Simeon had done was bad enough, but he did not want either of them to start asking if even more monks at Tyndal were guilty of sexual sins as well. With their quick perceptions, they might, in time, begin to look at Thomas himself.

  He shuddered.

  Nay, there was a great difference between what Simeon had done and what he thought John had, but was he right now about both men? Thomas had trusted what he’d known, distrusted the strange, and did not question his judgement. He did not, that is, until he realized he was beginning to enjoy the world this gray monastic place offered. Indeed, he was starting to understand how a warrior like Andrew might find peace here, a peace that Thomas longed for as well. And then there were the women like Sister Anne and the prioress, creatures he liked but did not desire. Tyndal was a world turned quite upside down from the one he had known. Neither world was perfect, for cert, yet nothing created by men ever was.

  Thomas shifted with discomfort.

  Simeon. Simeon had told him how gentleness had been battered from him with whips and mockery as a youth, and Thomas had seen the receiver burning to ash whatever had remained with his own anger and hot ambition.

  Brother John. The novices respected and loved John, who loved them back with kindness and understanding. He was a tormented man, for cert, who beat all earthly passions into submission whenever the Prince of Darkness tempted him with whatever sins he longed to commit. Did the man love boys? Aye, love was there but Thomas no longer believed it was a dark lust.

  There was much about both Thomas still did not comprehend. How could a man who had taken his hand in understanding, albeit in a drunken moment, so brutally kill two others? Might not John be more tortured and thus more likely to commit such a crime? Thomas cursed this doubting. He must be right about what had happened. He must.

  Nonetheless, the question of whether or not the murderer was left-handed gnawed at him. If the guilty man was left-handed, John, or someone else, was guilty, Simeon innocent. Perhaps Sister Ruth had been right to cast doubt on Eadmund’s confession. The lad might have yet undiscovered reasons for casting such an accusation at the receiver. Had they all jumped to the wrong conclusions too quickly? Thomas groaned silently. The darkness pressed down on him with…

  A faint light fluttered along the sides of the stone walls outside his hiding chamber.

  Thomas tensed.

  There was no sound at first, and then he heard the soft scraping of shoes on the steps. The light grew brighter.

  Thomas held his breath.

  For a moment there was absolute silence as the wavering torch flame threw twitching patches of light and black against the walls. Then Thomas heard the clink of a key, and listened as the door to Brother John’s cell swung open.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “Wait!”

  Thomas stood in the doorway, his hands resting on either side of the door as he pretended to catch his breath.

  “What in God’s name are you doing here?” Simeon growled. Brother John was still struggling, but Simeon’s sheer weight and height had overpowered the novice master. The receiver stood, twisting the wiry monk’s hands with one large fist until John cried in agony. With his other, Simeon held a knife to the monk’s throat.

  Thomas blinked. The knife was in Simeon’s left hand. “I never noticed you were left-handed, brother,” he said.

  Simeon’s laugh was hoarse. “Using my left hand was another reason for my father to beat me. He tied it behind me until I learned to use my right as godly men do. I never quite did so but my writing was serviceable enough.”

  Sweat began to drip down Thomas’ chest. “My lord, I came to help you.”

  “If this is a trick…”

  “Why would I trick you? Didn’t you befriend me when I first came to Tyndal? Didn’t you see that we two, of all men here, would have a special understanding? I knew that you should be the one to run the priory, not the new prioress, that unnatural woman, and I resented her arrogance but could find no way to show you my full loyalty until now.”

  Thomas hoped the fluttering light from the torch behind the monk did not deceive him. Simeon seemed to relax his tense grasp of John ever so slightly. Thomas glanced at John’s face but shadows hid any expression, and he did not dare to give him a sign. He continued in hurried but hushed tones. “Brother Rupert did not understand your relationship with Eadmund as I do, did he? He must have…”

  “He understood nothing!” Simeon whined like a kicked pup. “I loved the young man like a son, but the Prince of Darkness entered my body and transformed me into a lustful woman whenever I saw Eadmund working in the priory fields. I became blind with desire for him. I was under a spell!”

  “And you…”

  “…fell to my knees before the lad and asked him, begged him,
to come to bed with me. Then I took him to the cave and threatened him, forced him to make me his whore. When he left, I beat myself with my whip and Satan fled. For a while.”

  “Did Brother Rupert discover you?”

  “Nay, Eadmund’s father did. He came upon us together in the cave, and he ran. Screaming. When I found him later, he swore he’d tell Prioress Felicia or Brother Rupert, but I bought his silence with threats and money. No one would listen to a villein’s word over the Receiver of Tyndal Priory, I said.”

  “Why, then, kill Eadnoth?”

  “He came to me and said that money was not enough. He had heard in the village that our new prioress would give as much credence to the word of a simple man as to one of better birth.” Simeon’s eyes glittered. “That wayward woman who now leads us would never understand that I was not willfully sinning, brother. She would not care that I might be burned at the stake for what the Devil made my body do!” His last words were spoken in a wail of agony.

  Thomas winced. “Indeed, my lord, you are quite right.”

  “I had to kill Eadnoth. You see, I had no choice.”

  “Aye, I see that, but why kill Brother Rupert?”

  “After the old prioress’s death, I saw him leave the priory one day, something he rarely did anymore with his old bones. I followed him. He went to see Eadnoth. I couldn’t hear their words, but Brother Rupert came to me soon after and told me there were rumors about a monk having sinful relations with a young man. He did not accuse me but said that the guilty man should be found out and brought to Church justice. At that time, Sister Ruth was elected prioress. She is a proper woman of good birth, one who knew her place in the world of men and would never believe a villein over me. I felt safe. Then a stranger replaced her, this Eleanor, a woman I did not know. I feared Brother Rupert would tell her tales before I could gain her ear, so I told him I had found the man he sought, that he should meet me by the cave so he could see for himself as the man committed the very sin. When he arrived, I stabbed him and hid his body in the cave until I could safely carry it to the nuns’ cloister. So I would get no blood on me in the transfer, I changed his robes and buried the bloody ones.” Simeon ground his teeth.