Sorrow Without End (5 page)

Chapter Nine

Thomas doubted he would ever be dry or warm again. His fellow monks had cheerfully greeted his return, made room for him near the fire in the warming room, then teased him about the amount of steam rising from his wet robe. After he had changed into dry garments, their jesting lapsed into a stream of questions about any news he’d brought from the outside world. Men might give up the secular life but not their curiosity about it. Thus Thomas satisfied his fellow monastics with a few good stories while he chased away the chill and, if truth be told, an uneasy sense that something was not quite right.

When he first came to Tyndal, he would have understood the feeling. He had hated this priory for its remote North Sea location, the pervasive smell of rot, and the deadening silence when wet fog rolled over the land. Since then, he had become fond of the place and now considered it home. Today he had been so eager to return that he had taken a shortcut through the dripping wood to the mill gate, a route that left him soaking wet, short of breath, but happy to be back within the priory walls. So why did he feel so uncomfortable?

“You have not told us how your sick brother fares.” A milky-eyed monk, his voice gentle with concern, rested a shaking hand on Thomas’ shoulder.

Thomas bent his head. “He did recover. For your prayers, I am most grateful.”

The other monks murmured joy at the good news.

Thomas swallowed hard. He hated lying to these gentle men, but he had no choice. When his raven-clad spymaster had ordered him to York last spring to discover the instigator of a series of attacks against cathedral clerks, Thomas invented a sick brother who required his prayers and attendance. The work took several months, but no one doubted that a serious illness would keep him away so long. Perhaps, he thought wryly, it was reasonable to claim that some figurative brother had been cured. After all, he had successfully found the man who had infected the peace of his religious brothers with a most feverish plot.

Thomas rose and, with proper grace, left the warm company of his fellow monks. As he entered the cloister, a gust of wet wind hit his face. He rubbed his eyes with the sleeve of his habit, then blinked. It had not taken long for the damp air to mist his dry robe.

He had just started down the path to the hospital when he stopped and looked back toward the mill. Few should be out in this weather, he thought, squinting into the drizzle. There was perhaps one lay brother near the stables? Nonetheless, the unease he felt earlier returned. Had he been followed?

Why would he have been, Thomas wondered? On the way to York, he had grown his beard, let his tonsure fill in, and then traded his cowl for the modest dress of a servant. Once the crime was solved, he had shed this disguise, and although his auburn hair was distinctive, he had covered his head when he left the city so early that next morning. No one should have recognized the bumbling servant in the clean-shaven Fontevrauldine priest.

Nay, this could have nothing to do with the work at York, he decided, for he had not even felt this discomfort until he left Tyndal village for the priory. Perhaps Satan had decided to taunt him for the lies he must tell on his return? That wind along the main road before he turned into the wood had certainly been unnaturally strong. Maybe it was the Devil who had been following him!

Thomas shivered, then continued on his way to the hospital. He wanted to see Sister Anne.

***

When he reached the courtyard, he stared in amazement at the long lines of sick waiting to be seen. He began to wend his way through the crowd, greeting several villagers he knew. There were women seeking advice on soothing babes whose first teeth were coming or curing children of rashes and scabs. One had brought her carpenter husband who must have gashed his hand. With sadness he noted a man and a woman with the pallor of death already on their faces, here to beg entrance for the peace of their souls.

In the past, all had been quickly seen. Today, despite the miserable weather, the line wound around the courtyard. Some of this increase must be due to the dampness that brought with it aching fevers and congested chests, he realized, but not all this crowd had come for ease of seasonal ills.

Sitting above the general throng, there were many on horseback. At the front of the line, Thomas could see three finely dressed men of King Henry’s court astride beasts with equivalent adornments and just as impressive bloodlines. The sight of the occasional courtier had not been unusual when Thomas first came to Tyndal, but perhaps it had now become rather more common? Equal all Christians might be in the eyes of God, but, in the world of men, these warranted the attention of the infirmarian herself.

To give her fair due, Sister Christina did not make these worldly distinctions and served all that needed her prayers. Thomas had concluded early on that, if anyone at Tyndal were headed for sainthood, it would be that round and ardent sister. Nonetheless, Sister Christina was most biddable, and the sub-prioress, Sister Ruth, had assigned one lay person to turn the nun’s attention, gently but promptly, to those arrivals of high secular rank.

Thomas turned his attention away from the courtiers and looked around for Sister Anne. She was not at the hut where the sick were first assessed. While her superior concentrated on praying for the greater wisdom of God, the tall sub-infirmarian did the more worldly work of supervising hospital care. Not that Thomas ever doubted the power of Sister Christina’s influence with the Almighty, but Sister Anne’s God-given talent with mortal medicine never ceased to amaze him and had done much to raise Tyndal’s reputation for healing. Perhaps she was tending someone inside the hospital, he concluded.

As he moved toward the hospital building itself, he saw men with faded and torn crusader crosses on their garments, some on foot, a few on horseback. In this late autumn of 1271, these soldiers were most likely returning from Outremer with far greater ills than they could ever have imagined when they first left England.

On his way back from York, Thomas had overheard some say, in hushed tones, that the crusade had been a failure. Others more loudly claimed victories. All concurred, however, that Jerusalem remained in infidel hands. Any conclusion on the success of Lord Edward should be left to those more knowledgeable than he, Thomas decided. In any case, he saw no joy shining from the eyes of the men returning from Outremer.

Those soldiers who had sought him out for words of religious comfort had most certainly lost their early zeal. The tales of the heat and how they had cooked in their chain mail under the desert sun were bad enough. The stories of how they had watched friends, fathers, brothers die of unknown plagues, their corpses melting quickly into a stinking mess within hours of death, both shocked and sickened his soul.

Perhaps it was his imagination, but Thomas also wondered if there were more lepers on the byways, their clappers shattering the calm of well-escorted travelers who had little reason to fear robbers but now trembled at the sight of these poor creatures. Once he had rounded a bend in the road to see some merchants taking whips to the suffering as if chasing them from sight would banish them from existence. He had shouted at the men to have mercy, but their fear deafened them. After the riders had passed on, the lepers swarmed back across the road, searching the earth for a coin or a bit of bread dropped from a kinder hand. That night, wracked with dreams and sleepless horrors, he had wept.

In the line today, he saw two men with possible signs of the disease, and Thomas wondered if there were truly so many sinners, cursed by God, or if the lepers were meant to warn England itself of her sins. Looking into the frightened eyes of these two, Thomas found himself hoping that such suffering was not the result of any man’s sin. Perhaps the clerics who claimed the disease was a blessing, one that brought the victim closer to Heaven, were correct. Somehow that seemed the kinder conclusion.

Some battle-mutilated common soldiers were waiting to be seen: one missing his nose, another with features melted by fire, a third without eyes and one hand missing. Would these die of starvation in the coming winter, their families too poor to feed them, Thomas asked himself? By all rights he should offer faith’s solace and kneel with them, repeating the required litany, but Thomas wondered if he would ever have words enough to comfort them. He did know he would never have sufficient tears to soothe their wounds.

Thomas shook these thoughts from his head and looked again without success for Sister Anne in the throng. Close by Sister Christina and the courtiers, he saw a familiar lay brother standing with two men dressed in secular garb. Brother Beorn was talking to the elder of the two, but the younger captured Thomas’ particular notice.

This man stood with arms folded, head bowed. He was dressed in a dark cloak, his hood tossed back despite the weather, and his hair blanched almost white. From others he had seen, Thomas recognized that as a familiar mark of Outremer’s blinding sun, yet the man did not bear the mark of a crusader.

Suddenly the man looked directly at Thomas, his eyes slowly taking him in from shoe to cowl. The monk felt his face turn hot, as if a woman had come upon him while he was naked. Then the man turned aside and stared toward the hospital entrance.

Thomas relaxed and studied the man’s face. He would have been most handsome once, but the wide purple scar that ran diagonally across his nose from forehead to jaw made a mockery of the beauty God had given him. How could the man have survived a blow that had almost cut his head in two, Thomas wondered?

The monk looked back at the older companion. Although he was still talking with Brother Beorn, the man glanced around the courtyard as if he were seeking an enemy hidden in the crowd. Once his look rested on Sister Christina where it lingered for a few seconds before restlessly moving on. The elder’s face was several shades darker than that of his companion, with lines cut deeply into his forehead and around his mouth. He was also shorter, and a scattering of gray in his black hair suggested he was older than his lean, muscular body would suggest. As he turned toward Thomas, the monk noticed that one eye socket was black and quite empty.

Unusual wounds for men who were neither dressed as soldiers nor carried the sign of crusaders, he thought. Surely they had been in Outremer. Rare was the Englishman with such a tan or a youth with such white hair unless both had been exposed to that barbaric sun. It was strange that they did not wear the cross. Even those returning with much reason for grief displayed their red badge with pride.

As he waited for Brother Beorn to finish with the men, Thomas continued to study the pair. The one bore a vague similarity to the other, he decided. They might differ in hair color and build, but there was a certain likeness of feature. Perhaps they were brothers born to different mothers? After all, Thomas, especially with his distinctive hair, little resembled his siblings. Not only had Thomas’ own father had more than one wife, he had casually coupled with a servant woman, the one who gave birth to Thomas. One of these two might have a similar parentage.

Whatever the truth there, their bearing proclaimed them men of some status, Thomas concluded. As one raised somewhere between the world of servants and that of the nobility, he recognized the stance. Men of rank inevitably stood firmly on the earth as if it were made of stone. Those of lesser birth shifted cautiously, their ground made of a more unstable substance perhaps.

The older man now turned away from Brother Beorn and touched the young man’s arm with a poignant tenderness. When the latter turned unblinking eyes to him, the elder put an arm around his shoulders and directed him, much as a father would his small son, toward the hospital entrance.

How sad, Thomas thought. Was the world truly so disordered that older men must care for younger ones when youth should be tending to their elders?

Then he shrugged the thought away. Since Brother Beorn was too occupied to give directions, he would continue to hunt for Sister Anne on his own.

Chapter Ten

“Brother Thomas!” Sister Anne cried out with obvious joy, dropping her basket of herbs and extending her arms as if to gather the monk into a loving embrace. Suddenly mindful of her vocation, she lowered them, but the affection in her eyes remained. “Welcome home. We have missed you so.” The fondness of her tone defied any monastic rule.

Thomas bent down, quickly tossed the herbs back into the basket, then handed it to the nun. “I have longed to return to Tyndal as well,” he replied with a smile that matched her warmth. Had this humble and gentle woman not accepted him as the hospital priest, a morose man with an unknown past, he might well have continued to consider Tyndal no better than a prison. As a consequence of her unquestioning kindness, he had not only found a home but also learned to love and respect Anne as if she were a sister of the blood, not just of the faith.

As if of one mind, the two walked toward the hospital dormitory.

“We have had no word of you since you left. Has your brother recovered or…” A dark shadow drifted across the nun’s eyes.

Thomas turned his face away so she would not see his discomfort. Of all people, he most especially hated to lie to Anne, but his work as a church spy was something no one at Tyndal could know. Not Anne. Not even Prioress Eleanor.

“You are kind to ask,” he said quickly, fearing that she would mistake his hesitation for grief. “Time and God’s grace were needed to cure the ill, but all is now well.” If he must lie, he thought, he could at least phrase it with some ring of truth.

“God be praised! I prayed it would be so.” Her tone was soft, but her eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

Thomas wondered if she suspected he had lied to her. “I do thank you.”

She hastily bowed her head with proper reverence, but he had already caught her expression of doubt. He grew more certain that she was not convinced that his tale of the supposed family illness was true, but, as had been the case from the beginning of their work together, she remained silent about suspicions.

“Tell me what has happened at Tyndal since I left while you show me the patients I should attend,” he asked, as they started down the two rows of beds in the dormitory part of the hospital.

At the bed of one fretfully sleeping old man, Anne stopped and laid the back of her hand softly against his sunken cheek, then shook her head. “Despite all our prayers for the recovery of Prior Theobald, they were not enough,” she said in a low voice.

“May God be merciful to his soul,” Thomas replied and was surprised that he felt sincere regret at the tidings. “He had taken to his bed before I left, but I did not know that death would be certain. Did he suffer long?”

Anne stopped and spoke briefly to a lay brother about the elderly man whose fever still raged, then continued: “He suffered like a saint. At the end, he had little flesh upon him except where his stomach had swollen almost to the bursting point. I do believe it was a malign tumor that killed him. I tried everything but, in the end, gave him only what would relieve the pain until God saw fit to release his soul.”

“He may have been a weak man but not, I think, an evil one. Nor, I fear, did he ever recover from Brother Simeon’s death.”

“And he is buried next to him, as he begged just before he died. He said his sins were too great for his bones to rest with his predecessors as Prior. The prioress honored his wish and he rests at the edge of the cemetery next to Brother Simeon and at some distance from Brother Rupert.”

“I understand.”

“We all did, Brother.”

Thomas felt the sharp twinge of sadness in his heart, then felt something softer brush his leg. He looked down and met the round yellow eyes of the large tabby cat that kept the hospital free of vermin.

“Now we must choose another prior,” Anne said.

He bent to scratch the purring bundle of fur between its pointed ears. “And who are the strongest contenders amongst the monks?”

“Would you refuse consideration?” she asked, raising one eyebrow.

“Aye, without hesitation, but the community would not consider one who has come so recently to the religious life. Were the circumstances different, I would still refuse. I am not suited to administration.” In fact, he had no ambition to rise beyond his current status, which was wise as well as true. Thomas knew his dour spymaster would find some way to make sure he never became prior at Tyndal even if he were selected.

Anne smiled. “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.”

“God knows full well that I am not humble, but do tell me which amongst our brothers are sufficiently meek that one might inherit the position of Tyndal’s prior?”

“Many, in the beginning, but Brother Andrew and Brother Matthew are the only remaining candidates.”

“That Brother Andrew is striving for the position surprises me. I never thought he was an ambitious man.”

“Nor is he, but others are on his behalf. When he realized that many here wished him to be our next prior, he said that the final decision was up to God and he would honor His choice.”

“Then may God grace us with Brother Andrew. Were He to choose Brother Matthew, I might wonder what sins we had committed to be so cursed. How could anyone even consider a self-righteous and shallow man like Brother Matthew for the position of prior? Have we not learned…”

“Hush! He is sincere in his beliefs and has far more ability than our last prior. Nor is he without thoughtful followers. There are many that would prefer Tyndal become a pilgrimage site, thus diminishing or even stopping our charitable work with the hospital. He has become the leader of that group.”

Thomas looked around. “Cease this work? Diminish it? Do we not serve God when we ease mortal pain and help the dying into Man’s inevitable fate? What quarrel could he or anyone have with that?”

“A relic cures men by faith and the good will of the saint alone. When we treat the suffering with remedies made by frail mortals, some do believe that we are going against the will of God.”

“God would either stop us from finding the remedies or would at least wreak vengeance upon us for doing so if He found these things sinful.” Thomas raised one eyebrow. “I confess that I suspect Brother Matthew had more reason than a theological disagreement when he joined this contest.”

“I do agree, Brother, and suspect the underlying issue with him is authority. Two sisters lead the hospital. A shrine would require the oversight of the prior and an increase in the number of lay brothers who would be needed to guard the relics. His power in our woman-ruled priory would be enhanced.”

“Surely those who agree with him are few.”

Anne did not reply but instead gestured for him to come to one patient’s bedside. The child’s eyes glowed when he saw the monk, and Thomas greeted the boy with joy. After a horrible fall, he had suffered an amputation in the days before Thomas had left for York. All had feared for his life. Now he saw the lad healing and almost ready to return to the family, who had spent days holding his hand, their eyes dark with fear that they would lose their beloved child.

“A happy sight, that,” he said as they continued through the maze of patients. “How could anyone doubt that God blesses our work here if they saw the smile on that child’s face and the joy of the family who thought they would lose him so young?”

“Few would close the hospital, Brother, but many would love to have a holy relic.”

“Who could not see that a shrine would take away people needed to care for the sick?”

“Sister Ruth is one. She agrees that we should keep the hospital but does not look unkindly on our good brother’s other ideas.”

“Our sub-prioress is often sotted by monks who speak eloquently but have little else to recommend them.”

“Have you never been deluded by a fine speech yourself?” Sister Anne cocked her head to one side.

“Aye, you have the truth of that.” Thomas shook his head. “I was as blind as Sister Ruth in that matter of Brother Rupert, but she and I have parted company on Brother Matthew.”

“And our brother has just strengthened his position significantly.”

“Is there no hope for us? I almost fear to ask what he has done!”

“He has found a relic for sale and has been trying to convince our prioress to buy it.”

“Will she stand firm?”

“Have you ever known our prioress to do otherwise?”

Thomas nodded. “Have you no good tidings for me?”

Anne gestured at the yellow-eyed tabby that had been following them. “Our hospital cat was safely delivered of three healthy kittens.”

“Now that is news indeed!” Thomas looked down at the great tabby. In their staring contest, however, he blinked first. “Did we not think the cat was male with so much fur and great size? Surely a birthing male is a miracle, or perhaps a sign that the end of the world is nigh?”

“Would that the end of war might be nigh! I do ask God sometimes whether men might think twice about ending life if they birthed it, then held it to a breast to feed.”

“But surely wars against infidels are holy ones?”

Anne turned away.

Thomas sensed he should not delve into the meaning of that silent answer. “Are there not more soldiers at Tyndal’s doors?” he asked instead.

“You are right.” She gestured toward the courtyard. “You saw the number just today.”

“Perhaps Prioress Eleanor’s eldest brother will be coming home as well.”

“She has had no word from him for some time, Brother. She says naught, but I know she is worried. When she comes here to comfort those men from Outremer, their grievous wounds to both body and soul break her heart, and I know she thinks the Lord Hugh may suffer similar ills. No one has any recent news of him, however.”

“I grieve for her worry. Is she otherwise in good health?”

“Yes, but she also hoped for some word from you. She cared about any grief you might have faced…” Anne hesitated, then added, “On your family visit.”

Thomas looked down at his feet. His shoes were still muddy from his journey. “There was no one coming here who could bring a message.”

“I understand, Brother.”

That she well might, Thomas thought, and, if she did suspect that he had lied, he hoped she was the only one at Tyndal who did.