The Nun's Tale: An Owen Archer Mystery

by Candace Robb

  ‘Forgive me, Captain Archer, but that is impossible. His Grace is not to be disturbed.’

  A voice unfamiliar to Thoresby said quietly, ‘Leave it, Owen, just tell this man where they are and come away.’

  ‘Damn it, Lief, he’ll want to know. It’s why we’ve sped from Knaresborough, this nunnery business.’

  Thoresby had heard enough to be curious. ‘What is it, Michaelo?’

  The secretary hurried in, sniffing with indignation to find Archer and two other men, obviously soldiers, at his heels. ‘Captain Archer has news of Alfred and Colin, Your Grace. I tried to tell him you were not to be disturbed, but you see –’

  Owen pushed forward, his face grim. ‘We have taken them to St Mary’s infirmary, Your Grace.’

  ‘I take it they have been injured,’ Thoresby said quietly.

  A flash of anger in Owen’s good eye. ‘Both. Alfred has lost much blood from several wounds, but Wulfstan says he will mend quickly. Colin, however, is in God’s hands. He has a head wound and cannot be roused. Brother Wulfstan says there is little he can do for him.’

  The watcher must have bested them. But with help, surely. ‘How did you come upon them?’

  ‘Alfred and Colin were attacked down by the river. A good Samaritan saw Alfred dragging Colin into Skeldergate and took them up in his cart. We met them at the bridge and escorted them through the crowd.’ Owen gestured towards his comrades. ‘Lief, Gaspare, and the archers surrounded the cart and protected it.’

  Thoresby nodded. ‘I thank you for escorting them and bringing me this news. I shall go see them.’ He began to leave, then paused to add, ‘Lest you blame me for my ruthless use of my men, as you are wont to do, remember that it was you recommended them for this duty.’ He took satisfaction in seeing Owen’s anger doused. ‘Now go home to your wife, Archer. I shall send for you tomorrow.’ Thoresby nodded to Lief and Gaspare. ‘The chamberlain has prepared quarters for you at the castle. You should be quite comfortable.’

  When the three had departed, Michaelo asked, ‘You will bathe first?’

  ‘Later. Gilbert shall accompany me to the abbey. Call for him.’

  Owen escorted Gaspare, Lief, and the five archers to York Castle.

  Gaspare had been quiet and glum as they left the minster liberty, but once on the crowded streets he perked up, looking round at the bustling humanity. ‘Tell me again why you chose to serve Thoresby rather than Lancaster – honour, was it?’

  ‘Kind of you to remind me.’

  ‘Lancaster would treat you better than that bastard does.’

  ‘But he’s right. I did recommend Alfred and Colin.’

  Lief shook his head. ‘He had no cause to speak to you in that wise and you know it. Spiteful he is. Nasty.’

  Owen could not deny that.

  Lucie had closed the shop by the time Owen reached home. He opened the garden gate to walk round to the kitchen door, but stopped as he saw Lucie kneeling by the roses, weeding. She wore a simple russet gown with her hair tucked up in a kerchief, a red-gold tendril curling delicately at the nape of her long neck. Owen leaned against the gate, enjoying the quiet moment, the anticipation of their first embrace. Tildy appeared at the kitchen door, grinning broadly. As she opened her mouth to greet him, Owen put a finger to his lips. She giggled and ducked within. Melisende rose from a sunny spot and stretched, padded over to rub up against Owen’s legs and chatter, no doubt demanding some cream for her troubles. Lucie turned, saw Owen and gave a glad cry. She began to rise, one hand to her back. Owen hurried over, lifted her up for a kiss, then stood her on her feet.

  ‘Are you well, my love?’ he asked.

  Lucie smiled and patted her stomach. ‘We are both in good health. And better now you are home.’ She glanced behind him. ‘I expected your friends.’

  ‘They agreed to leave us in peace tonight.’

  ‘Tomorrow, then. They must come to supper. And now come within and wash away the road with Tom’s ale while you tell me of your travels.’

  The abbey infirmary was clean and redolent of herbs. A fire burned in the hearth and a small brazier warmed the air near the patients’ cots. Brother Wulfstan was bent over Colin when Brother Henry opened the door to Thoresby. The archbishop put his finger to his lips, silencing Henry’s greeting.

  Brother Wulfstan pried open Colin’s eyelids, brought a lit candle close to his eyes, moved it back. He called Henry over. ‘Watch closely.’ Once again the old monk moved the candle back and forth close to Colin’s eyes. ‘What do you see, Henry?’

  ‘The pupil still responds to light and dark.’

  Wulfstan nodded. ‘That is good. He is yet with us.’ He sighed. ‘But only just.’ He set the candle down, dabbed Colin’s face with a cloth dipped in lavender water, and made the sign of the cross over him.

  ‘How does he?’ Thoresby asked, moving closer.

  Wulfstan heaved himself up with Henry’s help. ‘Your Grace, I will do my best with him.’ His pale eyes looked sad. ‘But I must speak plain, we are close to losing him. It is difficult with such an injury. I can clean the flesh, apply cool compresses, but the injury is deep within. I cannot smell it, touch it, measure its extent. I can only make him comfortable and try to keep him with us until God calls him.’

  ‘I trust you to do everything possible, Brother Wulfstan. Whoever thought to bring my men here did me a good deed.’

  Wulfstan acknowledged the compliment with a bow.

  ‘It was Alfred asked to be brought here, Your Grace,’ Brother Henry said. ‘He said Captain Archer has often spoken of Brother Wulfstan’s skill, and when he could not rouse his friend he knew he must come here.’

  Thoresby knelt beside Colin, examined the bruised and swollen forehead, the blackened eyes, the crooked nose, dried blood in the nostrils. ‘He broke his nose?’

  ‘I think he fell forward, Your Grace,’ Alfred said from across the way. His voice quivered with weakness.

  Thoresby signed a blessing over Colin and moved to Alfred’s bedside. ‘Tell me what you can, Alfred. Quietly. I can hear you.’

  Alfred raised himself up on his elbows. Brother Henry hurried over and propped him up.

  ‘We approached the watcher …’ Alfred described the man and the attack, pausing often to lick his split lip.

  ‘Can you guess how many attacked you?’ Thoresby asked. ‘Two? Ten?’

  ‘Half a dozen, I think, but it was dark. I could see nothing.’

  ‘Did they mean to kill you, do you think?’

  Alfred shrugged. Henry helped him sip some wine, then dabbed Alfred’s split lip with salve. Suddenly Alfred sat up straighter, remembering something. ‘A dagger. I found a dagger under Colin. Brought it with me.’ He looked round.

  Henry put a hand on Alfred’s shoulder. ‘It is over in the corner.’

  Alfred lay back on the pillow. ‘’Tis the dagger of Colin’s attacker. I mean to find him.’

  They both started as Colin gave a loud, shuddering sigh.

  ‘He goes deeper into sleep,’ Brother Wulfstan said with a worried shake of his head. ‘It does not bode well.’ He called Henry back over to Colin’s bed. ‘I want you to sit here and talk to him, Henry. Talk about anything. And every now and then, call to him, ask him to open his eyes, to wake up. I will send for a novice to take over in a while. I want to give him no peace. I want to wake him.’

  Thoresby turned back to Alfred, whose eyes were closed, lips moving in prayer. ‘Sleep now, Alfred, and rest in the certainty that you did all you could for your partner. God be with you.’

  Thoresby asked Wulfstan to see him to the door.

  ‘You have spoken with Dame Joanna?’

  Brother Wulfstan nodded. ‘A most confused child.’

  ‘So you could make little sense of her speech?’

  ‘Sadly, no. Neither can Dame Isobel. But Mistress Wilton had some speech with her that sounded lucid.’

  ‘Mistress Wilton?’

  Wulfstan nodded. ‘So much so that the Reverend Mother
thought she might ask Mistress Wilton to help her talk to Joanna.’

  ‘An interesting idea.’

  Wulfstan shook his head. ‘It is not Mistress Wilton’s responsibility.’

  ‘Mistress Wilton refused?’

  ‘I have not heard, Your Grace. But her father arrives in the city this week. And she is busy with the shop, Owen being away so often and Jasper here at the abbey’s choir school learning his letters.’

  But Owen was back. Would he object? Thoresby must think how to finesse this. ‘Thank you, Brother Wulfstan. And I thank you and Brother Henry for your care of my men.’

  Brother Wulfstan bowed. ‘God grant we may see them both recovered, Your Grace.’

  ‘Benedicte, Brother Wulfstan.’

  Joanna spun round again and again, looking for a way out of the stony wasteland. But the rock outcroppings rose high on all sides of the sandy spot in which she stood. Above her was a grey sky, featureless. No wind. No sound. Not even her spinning broke the silence. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came. The air was so heavy it seemed to suck her breath away when she opened her mouth. She clamped her hand over her mouth. Tried to breathe. Could not. She could not remember how to breathe. Or swallow. The walls began to close in on her. She clawed at her throat, trying to open it to the air. Trying to breathe.

  ‘Please, Dame Joanna, wake up. ’Tis but a nightmare you suffer. Please. You hurt yourself.’

  Joanna gasped for breath. It came. She used it to scream. ‘Hugh! Hugh!’

  ‘Please, Dame Joanna, wake!’

  All was darkness now. But there was sound and breath. A familiar voice. Joanna opened her eyes. It was the servant the Reverend Mother had sent to attend her, eyes round with terror. A scratch on the young woman’s arm bled slowly. Joanna looked down at her own hands, held down by the worried maid. Joanna’s fingernails were dark with blood. Something hurt. Burned. Her throat. She swallowed.

  ‘Are you awake now, Dame Joanna?’ the maid asked.

  What was her name? ‘Mary?’ Joanna whispered.

  ‘Praise be to God! I thought you would never wake.’ Mary looked back over her shoulder. ‘She is awake, Reverend Mother.’

  Joanna tried to move her hands. Mary let go, but stopped Joanna as she reached for the burning spot on her throat. ‘Let me clean it. You must not touch it. Let me clean you. Whatever were you fighting in your dream, Dame Joanna?’

  Joanna closed her eyes. Hot tears spilled down her temples, into her hair. ‘The grave,’ she whispered. Would she ever be free of the dreams?

  The Reverend Mother stepped forward, winced at the sight of the torn throat. ‘You are not in the grave, Joanna.’

  Joanna began to tremble. She hugged herself, trying to still the trembling. ‘No one deserves to suffer the grave before Death’s sleep.’

  ‘You said you had risen from the dead,’ Isobel said, trying to soothe her.

  Joanna shook her head, moaned at the pain, closed her eyes. ‘He should not have done it. No one should suffer the grave before Death’s sleep,’ she whispered.

  Isobel bent closer. ‘What did you say?’

  Joanna rocked her head from side to side, whimpering. ‘He pays. But so dearly. It is not right. To be put there alive. He did not deserve that.’

  Isobel stepped back, crossed herself. ‘What do you know of Jaro’s death, Joanna? Who killed him? Who put him in that grave?’

  Joanna opened her eyes, grabbed Isobel’s arm. ‘They opened my grave?’

  ‘You knew Jaro was buried in your grave. How?’

  Joanna squeezed Isobel’s arm so hard the prioress cried out and pulled away. The green eyes were wild. ‘Jaro? Jaro was buried alive?’

  Isobel rubbed her arm. ‘His neck was surely broken before he went in, Joanna.’

  The green eyes stared as the head snapped back and forth, back and forth. ‘No no no no no no no no no!’

  Both Isobel and Mary worked up a sweat binding Joanna’s hands to her sides, so she might not injure herself more. At last Isobel sent Mary for Dame Prudentia. While she awaited the infirmaress, Isobel sat as far from Joanna and her violent emotion as the room permitted.

  Michaelo met the archbishop with a note. ‘From the prioress of St Clement’s, Your Grace.’

  Thoresby took the note. ‘Follow me.’ The archbishop went into his parlour, poured two fingers of brandywine and drank it down. He opened the note, read it to himself and threw it on the table with a curse.

  ‘Your Grace?’

  ‘Our intriguing Dame Joanna is now frightening the Reverend Mother with her terror of the grave.’

  ‘An experience one would remember keenly.’

  ‘She is a melodramatic woman, and speaks either nonsense or riddles. Dame Isobel is frightened. The nun ripped her own throat with her nails and keeps saying’ – Thoresby picked up the letter – ‘ “No one should suffer the grave before Death’s sleep.” A pronouncement, no more. According to both Brother Wulfstan and the Reverend Mother, only one person has managed to make sense of Joanna or somehow inspire her to speak sense: Mistress Wilton.’

  Michaelo’s nostrils flared. ‘Captain Archer will not like us drawing her in.’

  Thoresby glowered at Michaelo. ‘ “Us?” You forget yourself, Michaelo. Go find out how long it will take them to warm my bath water.’ When he was alone, Thoresby picked up the letter and reread it. Dame Isobel begged him to use his influence to enlist Lucie Wilton’s assistance, mentioning her interview with Lucie that afternoon. Thoresby poured himself another brandywine, sat down by the window, and sipped the delicate liquid while he pondered how to speak with the apothecary away from her protective husband.

  *

  At supper, Tildy mentioned seeing the prioress of St Clement’s leaving the shop as she returned from market. ‘Was it not enough that you saw her this morning, Mistress Lucie?’

  Lucie frowned and shook her head, a tiny motion, obviously meaning only Tildy to see it. But Owen caught the exchange.

  Tildy blushed and dropped her head, suddenly intent upon her soup.

  Owen was intrigued. ‘What business have you with Dame Isobel de Percy? Is it Joanna Calverley? Have you met her?’

  Lucie stirred her soup. ‘Briefly.’ She did not meet Owen’s eyes. ‘Archbishop Thoresby has ordered Dame Isobel to learn what she can about the young woman’s year away. Joanna has not been forthcoming. So Isobel thought I might suggest how to approach her.’

  Thoresby. Owen began to smell a rat. ‘Why you?’

  Lucie shrugged. ‘Wulfstan sent for me. He wished a woman to examine Joanna. St Clement’s infirmaress had done so, but when she was moved to the abbey Wulfstan wanted to be doubly certain of her condition.’ Lucie pushed her soup aside and rose. ‘Shall we have the meat now?’

  ‘Tildy can serve, Lucie. Go on.’

  Lucie sat back down with a sigh. ‘Isobel heard my discourse with Joanna, felt I had managed to get more sense out of her than she does. So she came to the shop this afternoon to ask my advice.’

  That sounded innocent enough. ‘You must tell me about her.’

  Lucie glanced up, saw that Owen had relaxed, grinned. ‘Poor Joanna. I of all people understand why she fled St Clement’s. And it must be all the worse now with God’s ferret in charge.’

  ‘Is that what you called her when you lived there?’

  ‘And worse! She was a sanctimonious informer.’

  Owen wished to hear more. Lucie seldom talked about her days at the convent. ‘And in what sinful acts did she catch you, my love?’

  Tildy placed a trencher between Owen and Lucie and slipped back into her seat, leaning her chin on her hand, awaiting a good tale.

  Lucie looked from Tildy to Owen and burst out laughing. ‘It was nothing so devilish, believe me. Snatching apples from the cellar, dancing in the orchard, climbing trees …’

  ‘Her post was looking after the little ones?’

  Lucie rolled her eyes. ‘Isobel is not that much older than I am. She simply took it on
herself to torment me.’ The playful look darkened. ‘I have always believed it was Isobel who spread the word that my mother was a French whore.’

  Tildy gasped. ‘Oh Mistress Lucie, that was never true!’

  ‘Of course it was not true.’

  Owen did not like the colour rising in Lucie’s cheeks. ‘What was wrong with climbing trees?’

  Lucie shrugged. ‘There were rules about everything. It seemed everything but prayer and work was a sin.’ Lucie suddenly laughed. ‘But Isobel now wears a silk gorget and carries delicately embroidered linen. I wish I knew to whom I might report her!’

  ‘I hope you sent her away with bad advice.’

  ‘There was little I could tell her. But I shall tell you all you wish to know when you tell me why you are home betimes. Has Thoresby called you back to help him discover Joanna’s story?’

  Owen had known she would guess. He had purposefully not said, watching how long it would take. ‘You have found me out, wife. But while I was on the road, the circumstances became even more disturbing. I do not want you involved with this any more.’ He told her about Alfred and Colin.

  When Tildy had gone off to bed, Lucie told Owen about Joanna’s condition and what she had learned from Isobel.

  ‘I want to speak with her tomorrow,’ he said as they climbed up to bed.

  ‘Shall I come?’

  Owen did not like the eagerness with which Lucie asked the question. ‘No. I have told you. People have been murdered round that woman. I want you to stay away from her.’ He stopped as they entered their bedchamber and turned to Lucie, tipping her chin up so she looked him in the eye. ‘Promise me you will stay away from Joanna Calverley?’

  Lucie smiled, reached up on her tiptoes and kissed him. ‘Let us speak no more of nuns this night, Owen. I want my husband’s full attention.’

  Much later, when Owen woke in the night with a full bladder, he shook his head at how neatly Lucie had side-stepped the promise. But, in faith, he loved her for that very wilfulness.

  Seven

  Subtle Manœuvres

  Thoresby sent for Michaelo on rising. Usually he gave his secretary his orders for the day while breakfasting, but with guests there was no privacy. While the servants dressed him, Thoresby listed Michaelo’s tasks, including summoning Owen Archer to the palace for a meeting. ‘Mid-morning should suffice.’ He had an elegantly simple solution to the problem of getting Archer out of the way while he engaged Lucie Wilton in the task of communicating with Joanna Calverley.