The Nun's Tale (40 page)

Edmund leaned towards her, bringing his face so close to hers that she could not turn away. ‘Where is Stefan?’ he asked, pronouncing each word distinctly.

‘He destroyed my love,’ Joanna cried, her voice breaking. ‘And then I could not touch him.’

Edmund sat back a little. ‘Stefan?’

Joanna studied the medal with sad eyes. ‘Stefan was not steadfast.’

‘He loves you, Joanna.’

‘Noli me tangere,’
Joanna whispered, holding the medal to her face.

Suddenly Edmund rose, grabbed the medal and yanked. ‘So help you truth and God, you shall answer me!’ The chain broke.

Joanna screamed and lunged at him, raking his face with her fingernails.

Edmund grabbed Joanna’s shoulders and shook her. ‘Tell me!’

Lucie ran to them. Owen burst through the door, saw the two locked together and Lucie’s dangerous proximity and quickly pulled Edmund away. Joanna lunged for them. ‘Brother Oswald!’ Owen shouted.

The hospitaller, who hovered in the doorway, rushed over and grabbed Joanna’s hands, pressed her back against the pillows.

Owen, still holding Edmund by the shoulders, noticed the bloody streaks on his face. ‘What in God’s name, Edmund?’

Edmund stared at Owen for a moment, unseeing. He touched his face, brought away a blood-speckled hand, looked down at the medal in his other hand. He sank down in the chair. ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ he whispered, dropping the medal and covering his face with his hands.

Lucie did not know whom to attend to first – Edmund, with his bleeding face, or Joanna, who sobbed hysterically. But Owen resolved Lucie’s dilemma by asking for a damp cloth. He knelt down and dabbed at Edmund’s scratches. Edmund submitted with embarrassed silence.

‘Shall I stay?’ Oswald asked. He had let go of Joanna but remained at the foot of the bed, watching her closely. ‘She is not yet calm.’

‘And she will not be for quite a time, I fear,’ Lucie said. ‘But I do not think we shall have any more violence. Perhaps if you wait in the corridor.’

The hospitaller nodded and shuffled out.

Lucie knelt to Joanna, pulled damp strands of hair from her tear-streaked face. Owen handed Lucie the Magdalene medal and she placed it in Joanna’s hand. Joanna clutched it to her heart. Her sobs subsided into hiccups. Lucie helped her to wine. ‘Lie there quietly for a while,’ Lucie whispered. Joanna nodded, lay back against the pillows. The bandage about her neck was bloodstained. Lucie unwrapped it, cleaned the wound, put a salve on it, wrapped it in a clean bandage.

Owen leaned against the bedpost, looking down at Edmund, who dabbed his own face now. ‘We shall see to those scratches by and by. For pity’s sake, Edmund, what demon drove you to attack her?’

‘She teases me. She knows what has become of Stefan and she will not say.’ Edmund pressed the cloth to his hot face, then balled it in his fist. ‘But no. She means none of it. She is surely mad.’

Owen poured a cup of wine; Edmund took it gratefully and drank it down.

Joanna suddenly reached for Lucie’s arm. ‘We needed but the seal was all,’ she whispered, her eyes imploring. ‘Why should he be so cruel? Faith, they did not bury me. Not truly.’

‘Who, Joanna?’

‘Mother was right. She understood.’ Joanna glanced over at Edmund. ‘If Stefan loved me, why did he never offer marriage?’

Edmund, who held a cloth to his stinging scratches, shook his head. ‘How could he, Joanna? What of his wife and children?’

Joanna’s green eyes were heavy-lidded. The wine and her outburst on top of last night’s sedative were pulling her back down into sleep. ‘Wife and children? He never told me.’ She laughed weakly. ‘What a curse, to love so wrongly.’

Lucie thanked God Joanna was too sleepy to react emotionally, but she wished to ask one more thing before the eyes closed. ‘You mentioned a seal, Joanna. Tell me about it.’

Joanna sighed. ‘Such a pathetic thing, to waste so many arrows on a frail man.’ The eyes closed; the words slurred.

‘St Sebastian?’

Joanna smiled sleepily. ‘The captain is not so frail.’ She touched Lucie’s arm. ‘Edmund the Steadfast asks after his friend, does he not?’

Edmund rose, hopeful.

‘Yes,’ Lucie said, ‘he asks only that. Where is Stefan, Joanna?’

‘Adrift on the sea. Adieu, sweet Stefan.’ The fingers on Lucie’s arm went limp.

When Edmund stepped into the sunlight, Lucie shook her head at the welts rising round his scratches. ‘We must take you to Brother Wulfstan. A night in the infirmary would do you no harm.’

Edmund kept glancing back at the guest house. ‘Did you hear her? Stefan is dead.’

‘ “Adrift on the sea” might mean many things,’ Owen said. ‘Are you in pain?’

‘It does not matter.’

Owen and Lucie exchanged a look, nodded and headed Edmund to the infirmary.

After the night office, Wulfstan stopped in the infirmary to check on Edmund. Henry had done an excellent job of applying the plaster to the scratches and Edmund appeared to sleep peacefully. Sleep was the best restorative. Since Edmund had shivered as the sun set, the result of his refusing food rather than a result of the scratches, Brother Henry had built a fire in a small brazier. The infirmary was now much cosier than Wulfstan’s cell. Begging God’s patience with his self-indulgences at his advanced age, Wulfstan pulled a chair near the brazier, settled down and fell asleep.

He was awakened by Brother Oswald. The hospitaller shook Wulfstan’s shoulder and explained in a loud whisper, ‘The Reverend Mother asks you to attend her. Dame Joanna thrashes and cries out in her sleep. The Reverend Mother wishes to sedate her, but fears she might do harm.’

‘Where is Dame Prudentia?’ Wulfstan asked and yawned sleepily.

‘She is abed at the nunnery.’

Wulfstan rubbed his eyes. ‘In a moment. I shall come in a moment.’ He muttered to himself as he dashed water on his face and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

He did not notice, as he hurried out after the hospitaller, that he had gained a second shadow.

Joanna truly did thrash about. The scent of her sweat hung about the bed. And yet her eyes were closed, her motions those of one dreaming.

‘Can you calm her?’ Dame Isobel asked with an anxious wringing of the hands. ‘I fear she will hurt herself.’

Wulfstan stood back from the bed, his hands tucked up his sleeves. He shook his head. ‘I do not like to give her more. Not until she wakens.’

Dame Isobel moaned. ‘Sweet Jesu, what am I to do with her?’

Wulfstan leaned over Joanna, touched her forehead with the back of his hand. ‘She is so warm.’

Suddenly Joanna’s eyes opened. She placed her hand on Wulfstan’s and moved it down to her mouth, kissing the palm.

Wulfstan tried to pull his hand away from the unseemly closeness, but Joanna tightened her grip. In her other hand she held the Magdalene medal.

‘Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of repentant sinners,’ Joanna said.

‘Indeed she is, Dame Joanna. May St Mary watch over you.’

Joanna gripped his hand ever tighter, her eyes pleading. ‘I wish to confess to you, Brother Wulfstan.’

‘My child, I am but the infirmarian. Let me send for Abbot Campian.’

‘No! I cannot. I do not know him. You have been kind to me.’

‘He, too, is kind. And a just man, Dame Joanna. I fear –’

She shook her head adamantly. ‘You must shrive me.’

Blessed Mary and all the saints, how did she come to choose him? ‘Why now, child? Why have you left it so late?’

‘I cannot rest, Father. Now that I know my error. I cannot rest.’

Brother Wulfstan turned to the Reverend Mother for assistance, but she waved him on from her seat near the door. ‘If it will bring her peaceful, healing sleep, Brother Wulfstan . . .’

‘God bless you for coming this night, Father,’ Joanna said, releasing his hand and making the sign of the cross. She folded her hands.

The elderly monk, unwilling confessor, sat down beside her, blessing her.

Joanna’s expression was that of an innocent child, hoping to escape punishment with a promise to behave. ‘If I confess, and if I am truly repentant, might I save myself from damnation?’

Wulfstan did not like the sound of that. ‘What is the error of which you speak?’

‘I trusted in the Evil One. I did not know. Not until I heard how Will Longford died. I meant to take it to the grave with me. But if by speaking I may save myself from the eternal flames . . .’ Joanna pressed her hands to her mouth and began to weep.

Wulfstan turned again to Isobel, but she sat with her head bowed, praying. The flame of her oil lamp flickered in the breeze coming from the door, slightly ajar.

Outside the room, Wulfstan’s shadow crouched, as close to the door as he dared stay.

Brother Wulfstan sighed, bowed his head, and prayed that God might help him through this. When he was finished, he blotted Joanna’s forehead with a scented cloth. ‘I shall hear your confession, Joanna. Tell me of this sin that terrifies you.’

Joanna closed her eyes. ‘I have lived as the Magdalene.’

Wulfstan lowered his eyes from the earnest, tear-streaked face.

‘I gave myself to Stefan because he was beautiful and kind. He lifted me from the grave. He took me to Scarborough. He promised to find my brother Hugh. I loved Stefan. Until he lied to me. And for that I –’ Joanna shook her head. ‘No. Not for that.’

Wulfstan hoped that might be the extent of the confession. He raised his hand above Joanna’s head. ‘For your sins of the flesh, I absolve thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.’

Joanna grabbed Wulfstan’s upraised hand. ‘No! That is the least of it. You must hear it all.’

Wulfstan gently retrieved his hand, tucked it up his sleeve, bowed his head. ‘Continue, my child.’

‘He seemed to me everything best in God’s creation. Strong, brave, fair, free. I did not understand that he was evil. Even after he returned and told me he had buried Will Longford alive.’ Wulfstan raised his head sharply, amazed at what he heard. Joanna met his astonished eyes. She nodded. ‘Oh yes. He and his two men. Because I told him how frightened I had been in the grave. I woke. I woke and knew where I was. It was but a moment, but so horrible. No air. No light. My limbs were bound in the shroud to keep me rigid, like a corpse. Stefan said they lowered me in and the gravedigger shovelled some dirt over me before Jaro distracted him. But Stefan did not know I had awakened to feel the earth raining.’

Wulfstan frowned. ‘Yet Stefan waited so long to avenge you?’

Joanna shook her head impatiently. ‘Not Stefan. Hugh.’

‘You told Hugh.’

‘But I did not tell him that Longford could not have known I would awaken.’ Joanna clutched Wulfstan’s arm. ‘Would he have been so cruel had he known?’

‘Your sin was telling your brother and making Longford seem more guilty than he was?’ Wulfstan could feel the iciness of her hand through the cloth of his habit.

‘My sin was far worse. While Hugh was gone . . . Oh, sweet Heaven, if he had only told me.’ Joanna closed her eyes on tears that rolled down her face, withdrew her hand to wipe her eyes. ‘I thought Hugh had deserted me again, as he had the first time we went to Beverley. We were to go on a great adventure. But all at once I was sent off to my aunt’s house.’

Brother Wulfstan fidgeted on the chair. Where was the sin in this?

‘While Hugh was away, I told Stefan I had seen my brother in Scarborough. So Stefan followed me when Hugh returned.’

Wulfstan shook his head. ‘I do not understand. I thought Stefan had taken you to Scarborough to find your brother.’

‘No.’ Joanna spoke impatiently, as if she thought she had already told him this. ‘Stefan warned me against seeing Hugh. He said that he and Hugh were sworn enemies.’

Despite himself, Wulfstan was being drawn into the story. ‘But he had promised to find your brother for you.’

‘He lied.’

Wulfstan closed his eyes, took a deep breath. ‘Go on.’

‘Stefan followed me to Hugh’s house and killed him.’

Dear Lord, no wonder the child seemed mad. ‘Because Hugh murdered Will Longford?’

Joanna bit her lip. ‘That must be why.’ It was the frown of uncertainty.

Wulfstan hoped this was the last of it, though wherein was her sin? ‘And then you ran away?’

Joanna nodded. ‘We ran. Stefan and I. And then –’ She turned away and was silent.

Wulfstan waited.

In a tiny voice, almost inaudible to Wulfstan, Joanna cried, ‘I could not let him live.’

The sorrow in those words made Wulfstan cross himself. He knew what was coming. He knew now the sin. But she must say it. He could not say it for her. ‘What do you mean, Joanna?’

She turned back to him, her eyes frightening in their pain. ‘I led him to his death.’ She reached out for Wulfstan. ‘Help me! Help me ask Him for forgiveness. I did not know. I did not see what Hugh had done. How horrible it was. And Edmund says that Stefan did love me. He did love me.’ She broke down, weeping hysterically.