Wine of Violence mm-1

by Priscilla Royal

  “Why castrate him?”

  Simeon laughed, his voice thin and high. “Wasn’t he a traitor to me, Thomas? Wasn’t the King’s enemy, Simon de Montfort, castrated after he was killed in battle? Should a traitor to me be treated any differently?”

  “Indeed.…” Sharp bile rose into Thomas’ throat. Simeon was quite mad, he thought, swallowing quickly.

  “And wasn’t it a clever thing to do! I thought of it after I had killed him. We all knew how close the priest and the old prioress were. A pious man so filled with guilt over his lust might well follow the example of some of our early saints and castrate himself in the cloister, the very center of his sin. Or, perhaps, a lustful nun might have killed him and done the deed out of revenge or guilt. Finding his body in the nuns’ cloister might suggest that too. So many reasons could be seen for such an act in such a place. It pointed everywhere. And nowhere.”

  “You are a clever man, for cert!” Then Thomas turned his head. “But hush, my lord!” he whispered. “I came to warn you. The prioress is planning to trap you. She has sent for the crowner, and his men may be surrounding us as I speak.”

  Simeon clutched Brother John to him more tightly. “This is loyalty?” he snarled. “To keep me here while they arrive? And how then did you find your way to me without them knowing it? And how did you propose we escape? I am no fool, Thomas.”

  “Nor did I think you one, my lord. There is an entrance unnoted…”

  “A man new to the priory knows an entrance I do not after all my years at Tyndal? Come, Thomas, I took you for an intelligent man. Surely you can lie better than that.”

  “Begging your pardon, my lord, but I would guess it has been some time since you have had to escape a lady’s chamber when her lord did unexpectedly return.”

  Simeon’s lips twisted into a smile.

  “The latrine is not a pleasant ladder to safety, but few men would suspect a monk of knowing that weak point in, shall we say, this castle’s defense.”

  Simeon’s throaty laugh cracked like fragile clay. “Thomas, you are a good man. Indeed, I must make up for striking you on the head that night. It was out of my own fear of what you might find out if you caught… But first we must be gone. After I dispatch this troublesome monk.…”

  “My lord!” Thomas’ eyes widened in horror as he pointed behind Simeon. “The torch!”

  For just an instant as he turned to look, Simeon loosened his hold on Brother John, the edge of the knife dropped slightly. John threw himself backward, knocking Simeon off balance. As the two men fell on their backs, Simeon’s knife flew out of his hand.

  “Yes!” Thomas shouted as he dove for the knife.

  John rolled just out of Simeon’s grasp.

  As he seized the knife, Thomas heard a strange whine above him, then a thud, and a grunt. When he looked up, he saw Simeon lying lifeless in the straw, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. A crossbow bolt stuck out of his chest.

  “How sad,” Ralf said with a half frown as he looked at the crossbowman. “I do believe the man is dead. You must learn better control of your weapon.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “The Church had the right to try Brother Simeon for his crimes, Ralf.” Sister Anne’s face was flushed with outrage.

  “Indeed, Annie, but my man fired the crossbow by accident. A steady fellow overall, but I did reprove him severely. He’s been ordered off for more practice. We cannot have deputies carrying weapons they don’t know how to handle properly. An innocent person might have been shot.” He bowed his head. “When I explained the accident to Prioress Eleanor, she did not condemn me as you have.”

  “I know you better, and you haven’t changed a bit. When you do not trust the authorities to conduct what you consider a proper hearing, you take justice into your own hands. Such an act was capricious and unworthy of a civilized man.”

  “That was unkind. Come, Annie, surely you know me to be fair and honest.” Pain was evident in Ralf’s eyes as he looked at the nun.

  Sister Anne looked down at her hands. “Aye, Ralf, you are that, but one of these days you will condemn a man for sins he did not commit. You are not God. Do not forget it.”

  Ralf turned his face from her and said nothing.

  Sister Anne reached over and briefly squeezed his arm. “You are still a good man. Brother Simeon was not. Indeed, your sentence on him was kinder and quicker than he would have gotten from any other earthly court.” She smiled at him. “Now he is in the hands of God, who will be harsher on him than any mortal man, I think.”

  “Annie, you know how much I care about what you…” Ralf reached for her hand, but she withdrew it quickly.

  “Hush, Ralf, and go. You saved John, for which I am deeply in your debt. I shall keep your secret, but do not think you have fooled our prioress with your story. She is wiser than her youth would suggest, and I suspect she knows as well as I do that you ordered your man to kill Simeon. Still, she will keep her own counsel about it. I think she knows you for the decent man you are.”

  Ralf opened his mouth, then shut it as he watched Sister Anne walk away from him. After she was gone, he bowed his head and wept, his hand pressed against a heart that ached with a very old sorrow.

  ***

  Thomas stood at the entrance gate, straight-backed and hands folded into his sleeves, as he watched the man in black ride slowly away. When the rider had disappeared into the dusty distance, Thomas slumped against the rough walls of the priory and did nothing to stop the flood of his tears.

  “I have made a bargain with the Devil,” he muttered. Indeed, he was beginning to wonder if the man who had saved him from the stake was no man at all, but one of Satan’s minions or even the Prince of Darkness himself. “Nay, with that tonsure, he is surely a man of the Church,” Thomas muttered, but in his anger he refused to concede that such a man could be godly.

  He shook his head to clear his thoughts. The man in black had been contented with Thomas’ handling of Simeon. Quite clever, he had said, when he heard about the scene in the storage room, and the man’s thin lips had even twitched into a shadow of a smile. Dead men could not testify to dark sins; the creditable living could be trusted not to speak of scandal; any rumors would be quelled. Yes, the demon messenger had said, it was all quite satisfactory. He looked pleased, even happy, if one could interpret anything at all from the man’s colorless face and faded gray eyes.

  And that was the end of the visit. Or nearly so. After the man had taken a final sip of reddish wine and stood to leave, Thomas had jumped up and demanded to know what else he had in mind for him and when his next assignment would be. He would not be played with like a mouse by a cat, he snapped.

  The man had smiled at Thomas’ anger and asked in return if he was comfortable at Tyndal.

  “This forsaken pile of moldering rocks? This place where the air stinks of rotting fish and slime? What do you think? Of course I am pleased with this place. Who would not be content to stay in such bitter exile?” Thomas had virtually spat at the man, but he had spoken the truth, hidden in the abusive words. He wanted to stay. And he did not want this cursed shadow of Satan to know it.

  “Then you shall, good monk. For a while. And when you are needed for some other task, I will come again. Needless to say, I cannot promise when or the circumstances. Nor, I might add, do you have any right to demand anything. You have life, after all, and now…” he waved his hand around the room gracefully, “a comfortable enough haven, despite the smell of the sea.”

  With that, the man had gestured at the door, and Thomas had led him to the gate where a handsome gray horse waited.

  “Brother?”

  Thomas started and looked around. Brother John was standing behind him at the entrance gate, his green eyes soft as young meadow grass on a spring afternoon.

  “I was looking for you.” John lowered his head. “I’m not sure there are words enough to thank you for saving my life.”

  Thomas looked at the man he had not tr
usted, a man he still did not fully understand, and was humbled by John’s gratitude. “There is no need to thank me, brother,” he mumbled and bowed his head.

  John reached out and put his hand gently on Thomas’ sleeve. “You did not like me, yet you risked your own life to save me. You distrusted me, but you treated me with fairness. There is much to thank you for.”

  With John’s touch, Thomas began to feel an unfamiliar peace flow through him, and the tension he had felt with the visit of his tormentor started to dissipate. He looked up at his brother monk and said, “Can you forgive me for my thoughts? That would be thanks enough.”

  John smiled. “There is no need to forgive what never hurt me.”

  “Then there is peace between us,” Thomas heard himself say and realized he truly meant it.

  “Peace, aye, and even understanding in time, for I do believe we have some things in common. The love of fine music, for one.” John put his arm around Thomas’ shoulder. “The novices are ready to practice, and the sound of their sweet voices might give both our souls a needed balm.”

  Then the two men went back into Tyndal Priory, the late summer sun warming their backs as they walked.

  ***

  Eleanor stood in her chambers, staring at the Mary Magdalene tapestry. Anne stood next to her, her head bowed.

  “I grieve for Prior Theobald,” she said to the prioress. “He loved Simeon.”

  “Simeon took good care of him, and the prior was incapable of seeing what sins were hidden in the man. I understand why he might mourn his loss,” Eleanor said, looking away from the tapestry. “Sister Ruth has gone to weep in the chapel as well, but her sorrow is mixed with guilt. She will do hard penance for her willful blindness.”

  “Although the brother and I did not get along, I knew he had been a good steward at the priory for many years. His sins were grave, shocking, yet…”

  Eleanor nodded at the hesitation. “Speak your thoughts.”

  “Am I sinful to say he had some good despite his evil?”

  “Being mortal, we are all flawed and can only pray to keep our wickedness balanced with our virtues. Simeon lost that balance at some point. Do you know why?”

  “He was a man I thought I understood, yet I did not. For cert, his gift of stewardship should have been offered up to the glory of God, not to his own credit. In that he had a fatal flaw.” Anne looked at the prioress in silence, then said, “Others would say graver sins than ambition were his downfall, yet I cannot find it in my heart to so roundly condemn him.”

  Eleanor raised her eyebrows. “What mean you?”

  “Many would say he was evil, a heretic, because he was a sodomite.”

  “You do not?”

  “Have you not said yourself that love is not a sin?”

  “I have. And someone much wiser than I has also said that love is sinful only when it leads a frail human to do evil in its name.”

  “I recognize that thought, my lady,” Anne said, grasping her hands tightly.

  “You should. It comes from Brother John. Continue.”

  “Might not any love be acceptable in God’s sight if that love transformed a mortal into a better creature and thus closer to God?”

  “I am no theologian, Anne, but, just between the two of us and for the sake of argument, let us say that I agree.”

  “Fire is said to purify as well as destroy. Had Simeon denied himself consummation of his lust, might not the heat of his passion have transformed him into a more compassionate and understanding being? If he had chosen that way, I would never have condemned him. His sin, I believe, was in rejecting the redemptive aspect of a denied earthly love and thus he became a dark force of Satan.”

  “You speak only of the denial of love’s carnal expression as redemptive, a concept with which we both might well agree in view of our vocation. The Church, however, does condone copulation between men and women vowed to one another; thus we cannot deny that there are good people who commit carnal acts. Therefore, within the privacy of this room, I do wonder this: what of a couple who falls into lustful acts, man and woman or man and man, whose union has not been blessed? Are they incapable of using that love they share to become better creatures?”

  Anne paled. “Could such happen unless the union were blessed? For cert, I am not a theologian either, my lady, and I dare not speak to that. I await your instruction.”

  “And kindly you do not suggest that I have spoken heresy, Anne. Nor do I mean such, but my heart tells me that there is so much enlightenment yet to be granted from a Wisdom far superior to our own. Perhaps it will be given to us at a time and place when we are most open to understanding. So I, too, shall leave my query to another day and await instruction.” Then Eleanor hesitated. “I have another question to ask. You have never told me why Brother John called you to the chapel the night Simeon attacked me. Nor how he came to have his own key so he could so freely come and go.”

  Anne flushed scarlet.

  “You gave him your key, did you not, long ago? And perhaps told Prioress Felicia that you had lost your own?” The prioress’s voice was gentle.

  Anne nodded and covered her eyes. “You have guessed correctly, my lady, but he did not use the key for sinful purposes. Nor did I. We sometimes met. That is true, but never for carnal reasons. We love each other only as brother and sister and find a comfort in talking together as such.”

  “I believe you, sister, but in giving him your key, you granted him rights that were not yours to give. Such a decision was rightly left to Prioress Felicia.” Eleanor raised her hand as Sister Anne began to speak. “Indeed, there may be good reason for the novice master and my confessor to have his own key, but Brother John must return it to me until I make that decision.”

  “He will, my lady. You have been most generous to both of us.”

  “Now tell me why he wanted to meet with you that night.”

  “When Eadmund refused to tell anyone but John about Simeon, my hus…John wrote an anonymous letter to the mother house. In it, he suggested that our receiver had been committing vague but serious improprieties. Since he could reveal nothing about what the lad had said in confession, he hoped someone would be sent who could discover the truth."

  “Then your husband had told you nothing about all this?”

  “Nothing, but, when Eadmund told him he was coming to you with Tostig’s blessing, John decided you should be prepared to hear horrible things. He did not want the lad condemned.…”

  “Nor shall he be,” Eleanor interjected. “Brother John will heal his soul, although I have doubts about whether his spirit…Forgive me. Do continue.”

  “John wanted prompt and harsher action taken against Simeon, not the one who had been forced against his will. Since John did not want anyone else to hear what he had to say to me, he suggested we meet in the church.”

  “But he never came.”

  “He was late and I never met with him. One of his novices… well, no mind that. Just as he approached the sacristy door, he heard screams and saw a man rush from the nuns’ quarters. He gave chase but the figure disappeared into the monks’ cloister. When John entered himself, he saw a shadowy figure at the other end, thought it was the fugitive, and ran toward him. Then he heard Simeon shouting from behind that John was a murderer. That figure at the other end of the cloister was Brother Thomas, who pulled John to the ground. Simeon must have hidden in the shadows when he saw Brother Thomas at the other end of the cloister and hoped it would look as if he had chased John, not the reverse.”

  “But Brother John told Ralf nothing of this.”

  “John is an honorable man, my lady. To do so would have meant saying why he was where he had been and thus betraying Eadmund’s confession. He could not do so, even if it meant his own life. The boy had to be the one to tell you about Simeon first.”

  And he was almost a very dead, honorable man, Eleanor thought. “Your husband is a brave man,” she said aloud. “You must have loved him well before you both gave up
the world.”

  Anne flushed.

  “And you still do, do you not?” Eleanor said quietly. “Perhaps not always as a sister does her brother?”

  Anne stood up and walked over to the tapestry. “I pray that you are right in saying there is no sin in love, my lady, and I swear to you that I sin only in my thoughts while John sins not at all in his feelings for me. We once had a son together, you see, a much-adored boy who sickened and died before his tenth summer. Each of us grieved but John’s pain was darkest. He believed God had taken our son to punish John for his lust in the marriage bed. Since then, his love for me has been chaste. I long to follow his example, but I sometimes fail.”

  Thus your grief is doubled, Eleanor thought, the loss of an adored child begetting the loss of a beloved husband.

  Anne reached out and gently touched the embroidery in the face of Mary Magdalene. Her fingers slipped down the cheek of the saint. “It has been said by some that Prioress Felicia and Brother Rupert were closer than nun and priest should be. Knowing both, I never believed there was any impropriety. Yet when I first saw this tapestry, I wondered if our former prioress had once been tempted by lust, perhaps for her good priest, and had this made to remind herself that we can choose to let love either transform or destroy us. I found strength in that thought.”

  Eleanor looked up sharply and studied the sad, but almost peaceful expression on Anne’s face. “Thus you teach me once again, Anne,” she said and reached out to touch the nun’s hand. “Are we not two sisters together, equal in so many ways before God? Anne and Eleanor, not sub-infirmarian and prioress? Indeed, I need a sister to be my conscience and I have none, either here or in the world. Will you act as that for me?”