A Demon Summer (35 page)

Max, who was still adjusting to this new view of Frank Cuthbert and his book as anything other than a huge village embarrassment, took a moment before he said, “I don't suppose you could lend the book to me?”

Her reluctance was palpable.

“I'm not quite finished,” she began. “I'm just getting to rather a good part.”

There's a good part?
“I promise I'll return it quickly. I'm only interested in the bits about Monkbury Abbey. The sections on Glastonbury and King Arthur's grave and so on probably aren't relevant.”

“Ah, but you see, it all ties together in a rich tapestry; it's all woven together so beautifully…”

My, she
was
a fan. “I promise,” said Max. “I will skip over anything not directly relevant.”

“Your interest isn't connected to the murder, is it? I mean, how could it be? Just a silly little book, after all,” she said.

Interesting, thought Max. She went rather quickly from “rich tapestry” to “silly little book.”

“It's one thread I'm following up on,” Max told her.

“I see.” Still, she hesitated. “He's rather a mystery writer, is your Frank Cuthbert. He leaves many unanswered questions, some having to do with old crimes.”

“Well, it's a mystery to many what he's writing about. That much is certain. And he's only ‘mine' in the sense that we share a village.”

She laughed, a light trilling sound. Max thought she probably had a lovely singing voice.

“What?” he asked her.

“Oh, just … what you said about mystery writers. I'm reminded of something I read recently. That the Bible authors were the original mystery writers.”

Max smiled. He had a nagging suspicion she knew more than she was telling him but that she would dance round the topic until the next bell rang. Thinking that drawing out her knowledge of the abbey's history might put her more at ease, he asked lightly, conversationally, “Did Monkbury Abbey play a key role in the Crusades?”

She paused, considering the question. “That depends on what you mean by ‘key.' Monkbury Abbey was always pivotal to the life of Temple Monkslip, which was rather a crusader magnet, and the residents of Nashbury Feathers were major patrons, too. You can see the tombs of some of them in the church—they were killed while on crusade and brought back here for burial. Time has not been kind to some of them; the brass nose of the fifth earl of Lislelivet has quite worn away. At one time, rubbing his effigy was thought to be lucky, you see.”

The fifth earl. When would that have been? Fourteenth century? Fifteenth? He asked her to describe what the place might have been like back then.

“Smelly,” she said succinctly. “Even though monasteries were models of cleanliness for the age, the stench must have been unbearable at times. They burned liquefied animal fat in lanterns, for example. And bathing was infrequent.”

She folded her small hands atop Frank's ghastly book.

“The nuns did have running water; they diverted water from the river into a sort of trough outside the refectory, so they could wash their hands before meals. There was some basic understanding of sanitation, although the hand washing may simply have been a religious ritual involving no particular bow to hygiene. Of course, the infirmary was built over the river, so the worst effluvia could simply be dumped untreated.”

Max smiled. “I saw a bumper sticker recently that said, ‘We all live downriver.”

“Isn't that the truth? As to diet—you really had to like fish—fish caught upstream of the infirmary, one hopes. Records show a ton of salted and dried fish being served with mustard sauce. As a special treat, they might have raisins or nuts.

“But they weren't as isolated as we are today. Men and women from Temple Monkslip would come to work the farm and help with the laundry and to work in the kitchen and the bakehouse. They were often paid in cloth.”

Max imagined cash may have been more welcome, but who knew? It was a different time.

A bell rang just then. Half expecting her to jump up from behind her desk and run off, Max rose from his chair.

“It's a bell announcing visitors,” she told him. “Poor Dame Hephzibah has been run off her feet with all the fuss about Lord Lislelivet's accident.” She added a perfunctory, “May he rest in peace.” Max nodded, thinking: So ‘accident' was to be the official explanation for now, was it? He wondered if that idea had come from the abbess.

“But earlier someone left a trail of water in the corridor leading to the infirmary,” Dame Olive was saying. “It often happens when the vases for the flower arrangements are overfilled. Dame Hephzibah got stuck with mopping it up, and she's got too much to handle already.”

It had sounded like any other bell to him, but clearly they had a system to help them differentiate. Throughout his time at Monkbury Abbey, bells had punctuated the silence. The women lived all their lives in a Pavlovian way, responding to the ringing of a bell. Dropping whatever they were doing, on the instant, in anticipation of future reward.

Or punishment.

“You don't have any particular theories as to why Lord Lislelivet met his end here, in this place? Who may have been responsible?”

“None whatsoever,” Dame Olive replied firmly. “And we have been forbidden to speculate.”

Max did not really believe her. The nuns might insist, as he had heard them do, that they didn't know each other well. That they were forbidden or reluctant to talk about their pasts. But he didn't for one minute believe you could live in a fishbowl like Monkbury and not develop a sense for the personalities surrounding you.

“Did anything—anything at all—strike you as out of the ordinary that night?”

She shook her head firmly. “Everything was as usual. Lentils for dinner. Dame Petronilla drying her herbs—she was using coriander to treat poor Dame Meredith. The warm weather brought us all outside more into the cloister garden, and I have wondered—”

She caught herself up short with the forbidden speculation.

“I'll have to own that in chapter,” she said, displeased.

Max gazed over her head, as if innocently perusing the shelves of books and folders, as if thoughts of murder were as far from his mind as could be. He wondered what Lord Lislelivet had found so fascinating about Frank's book, but was afraid she'd end the conversation if he approached the subject too directly.

“The Vikings,” he murmured, as if struck by a sudden thought. “Did they venture this far north?”

“Ah!” she cried, as though this very topic were never far from her thoughts. “Those were dark days. The Vikings were no gentlemen, and it was always feared they might attack. The nuns became rather clever in dealing with the threat.”

“How so?”

“They learned to hide the gold and silver valuables from the altar, things like that. They replaced the communion chalice with one of wood for as long as the danger lasted. And they were told to lie if need be—yes, they received a special dispensation for that from their abbess. She must have been a practical soul.” She laughed lightly. The small hands in their accustomed gesture flew to shift the oversize glasses. “We lived to see it all: the Norman conquest, the Crusades.”

By which time, Max thought, the nuns might really have mastered hiding places. Might they have become skilled in telling white lies where needed, too? For he was beginning to wonder how much of Frank's nonsense was nonsense. Was there treasure buried here somewhere?

“Not to mention fire and earthquake,” she went on. “Now, Father, if there is nothing more?”

There was a lot more, but Max could not formulate the questions that might tease out the truth. And he had the oddest feeling that she would only answer openly if he asked targeted and specific questions. She wasn't going to offer up abbey secrets on a plate.

Again he tacked the little wooden ship of conversation on which they sailed toward less dangerous waters.

“You have visited Glastonbury?” he asked her. He didn't know what made him ask. The famous landmark's physical resemblance to the mountain on which they sat, he supposed. Monkbury was like a large Glastonbury Tor, with foliage.

And hadn't Awena said something about Glastonbury, in summarizing Frank's book?

“Long ago,” Dame Olive replied. “And yes, I've heard the rumors. So, apparently, has your friend Mr. Cuthbert.”

Once again, Max's first urge was to deny this close affinity with author Frank Cuthbert. To deny, if need be, that he had ever met Frank Cuthbert. Instead he said, “Rumors?”

“That the Holy Grail of legend found its way from Glastonbury to here. Utter rubbish. Now, if you will forgive me, Father Tudor, I really must … erm … file these returned books. And some mice have found their way into some of the archives again. I can't bear to kill the poor things and it takes me most of the day to catch and release them.”

She hesitated, eyeing him warily. “You may borrow the Cuthbert book if you wish, Father. Just be sure to return it before you leave.”

 

Chapter 30

THE CELLARESS

The Cellaress shall be a wise, sober, and stable person, not given to excess in food or drink or given to squandering resources. In her important task of caring for the abbey, she must never become puffed up with pride. She is in the final reckoning answerable to the abbess.

—The Rule of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy

Before he had another go at Frank's book, Max decided to interview the cellaress, the financial pillar of Monkbury.

He retraced his steps of yesterday and followed a sign pointing to the cellaress's office. He paused at the open door of one of the workshops where a nun was working with terra-cotta. The clay was of a deep red—he remembered from a label he'd seen in the gift shop that they were using a clay from Devon—and the nun was surrounded by shelves holding little pots and mugs and coffee cups with glazes of white and green and blue. He watched as she deftly avoided catching up her long skirts and apron as she went about her messy task. He could almost feel the weight of all that fabric dragging down his shoulders, and he thought how unbearable all those folds of cloth would be come August, if England were to endure another round of the heat waves that had become so commonplace. He and Awena had planned their ceremony for August, and while he would walk through fire to be with her, he rather hoped that metaphor wouldn't be too apt come the day.

He thought this must be the Dame Potter the bishop had mentioned. She looked up from her work with a gentle smile but said nothing, and he was content to watch her for a moment, deciding that his favorite hue for the slip glaze was the white, an off-white shade the color of parchment. He was consumed by a sudden, somewhat irrational desire to take up pottery making, to feel the clay between the palms of his hands—irrational only in that he had no artistic ability of which he was aware. But watching her he felt something of her contentment in this simple, ancient act of creating something both useful and beautiful from an element so ordinary as terra-cotta.

He moved on, down the flagstone hallway, and in the workshop next to the pottery he found a nun at work with a floor loom, her dark hands rhythmically guiding the threads, her veil pinned back out of harm's way. As before, he didn't attempt to interrupt but watched mesmerized as the patterned cloth emerged slowly from the machine. He knew from the gift shop that the nuns made scarves and throws and blankets and placemats in complex, mathematically precise textile designs. The colors here were muted, soft heathers and shades found in nature, tans and pale greens, the designs interlocking as with ferns and leaves.

There hung from a drying rack in one corner several altar cloths and vestments in various stages of embroidery. They put him in mind of something William Morris might have designed. Or of something Awena, with her love of colorful, intricately woven and embroidered clothing, might wear. He had a fleeting image of her, back home in Nether Monkslip, knitting some infinitesimal garment for the baby, a jumper with sleeves not much bigger than his thumb. The child would still be tiny in January, when even Nether Monkslip felt the blast of winter.

The nunnery was like a microcosm of Nether Monkslip in its population of industrious, resourceful, and talented inmates, plying homey trades that had never gone out of fashion and that were only recently gaining new recognition. Unfortunately, as in Nether Monkslip, murder had invaded this sanctuary of peace.

*   *   *

Not really expecting her to be there, he tapped lightly on the door labeled
CELLARESS.
“All praise be to God,” trilled a high, authoritative voice from inside.

The lights of a twinkling modem greeted him, and for a moment Max was transported back to the Bishop of Monkslip's spaceshippy office. But this setup was primitive by comparison. The cellaress had a printer that was a mate to Max's own unruly destroyer of paper and ink.

Dame Sibil looked up at him. She had large eyes and an intelligent countenance, her face flat, white and heart-shaped, like a barn owl's, and with the same alert stare. Round eyeglasses added to the effect. She followed his own gaze to the gadget on her desk and said, “It's not fast, but it often works. The telephone and cable companies want nothing to do with us—we're far too remote for them to bother with. Well, if we paid their exorbitant fees to install the infrastructure they'd be interested. But we won't. You, of course, are Father Max Tudor. The abbess told me to expect a visit from you. I must say I am surprised to see you here still.”

“Surprised, how?” Max asked her, smiling.

“Well, I rather thought your role might be, erm, reconsidered. I understand the presence of poison was confirmed, and now that someone has succeeded in killing the man, surely it's a matter for the police.”