Wine of Violence (16 page)

"Perhaps he strayed into something similar to what Brother Rupert encountered? Not quite the same thing or he would have been killed, of course, but near enough to merit a warning?" Eleanor mused aloud as she looked down at the curled creature
now sleeping in her lap. "He was struck in a clearing in the forest
at night. Might he have ventured too near the meeting place of evil spirits?" She rubbed her weary eyes. Although she had no doubt that evil spirits existed and often lurked at night, she had never personally known any that did not come in a very earthly form. No, if Thomas had trespassed on land claimed by agents of evil, they were human ones.

She stood up and gently lowered the cat to the ground. Arthur had left a fine layer of orange hair on the skirt of her habit. Briefly, she brushed at it. What little she dislodged floated down and reattached to her hem.

"Well, my good friend, it seems I must carry some of you
with me as long as my gown lasts! Perhaps it will keep me warmer
come winter and I shall be most grateful."

The cat sat at her feet, rumbling softly, his green eyes round and his gaze intense.

Eleanor reached down and scratched him behind the ears. "It is time for you to go to work in the kitchen, fine sir. And it is time for me to take a walk, in the manner of our good Brother Thomas, to see what lies outside our priory."

It was a warm day, mellow as late summer days could be, a day that lulled mortals into forgetting the sharp sleet and chill sea winds which came with punishing force as the life-giving seasons slipped into the long months of damp gloom. As she walked into the grove to the clearing where Thomas had been found, Eleanor thought about the dark time ahead and could understand why her pagan ancestors had woven such vivid and often cruel tales to explain the changing of the seasons. It was easy enough to see how they could interpret the end of spring and the harvest season as a time of cruel devastation, hopelessness and, aye, even murder. What amazed her was their ability to rebound and find hope in the renewal of life long before they had ever heard of Christianity. Giving His man creature such resilience of spirit, even in the benighted days, spoke volumes about God's love. The thought gave her comfort as she walked through the trees where a man of violence had stalked not so
very long ago. Such love would surely bring this person to justice
in some way and soon.

Eleanor caught herself wanting to talk to her aunt about all that had happened; then she felt a quick pain. "Now it is up to me to answer my own questions, is it not?" she asked aloud in a quiet voice. "And it is certainly up to me to keep my mind to the mark and my eyes open for whatever there is to find," she added as she walked into the clearing.

The birds twittered as they flew in search of insects. The insects hummed as they went about their business in spite of the birds. And Eleanor stood with her hands tucked into her sleeves, looking about her.

The clearing looked innocent enough in the daylight. There were no signs of midnight fires or foul, rotting holes from which Satan's creatures might have burst forth upon the earth during the night. No, the evil that had skulked here so recently had had a mortal form.

Yet the crowner and his men still found nothing. If Lucifer's most monstrous deeds had been imperfect, and he had been one of God's highest-ranking angels, then surely no mortal man could commit a crime without leaving behind evidence of some kind. There must be something...

Eleanor turned slowly around. What might the crowner and his men have failed to notice? They were, after all, men. She smiled with both love and gentle amusement. The image of her solemn-faced but sweetly earnest brother Hugh came to mind. A warrior in the mold of his hero, King Richard, Hugh could always see where a castle's defense was weakest, but he would then trip over a sharp stone on the way to scale it.

The eyes of most men are more used to looking at the grander
plans of intrigue and battle, she thought, and, in so doing, they often miss some small thing, perchance a commonplace thing that an eye impatient with tiny detail would pass over. A woman's eye might be more useful here, an eye trained to the domestic and the mundane, and therefore more likely to note a simple object out of place. Indeed her own training had hardly been domestic, but, in learning to joust with the finer points of philosophers' arguments and in the minute study of her mortal fellows, she had found great pleasure in details of a sort. Hers was still a woman's mind trained to minutiae, she argued to herself, albeit somewhat different concerns than occupied most of her gentle sex.

As she walked passed the place, she looked down and saw the bloodstains in the grass where Thomas had lain. She recoiled slightly. Her feelings for him were still too tender and uncontrolled. Then she pressed her hand flat against her chest as if binding her heart with a bandage and walked away, up the slight hill toward the trees and the rushing sound of the nearby stream.

The brook was pretty in this season, the bubbling water flashing bursts of light where it flowed into the sun. After a storm, the
stream might become a dangerous torrent, but now the water was
low, although running swiftly. As it entered the priory grounds, it served to give Tyndal fresh fish and clean water for watering gardens, bathing, washing, and making ale, although few drank the water, knowing how dangerous it could be to their health. As it left the priory, it washed away the refuse from the latrines, and the kitchens, and carried all into the sea. Truly one of many gifts from God, Eleanor thought, as she started down the slope toward the banks.

Her foot slipped in the moist brown earth of the embankment, and she caught herself by grabbing an exposed tree root. A reminder that she was doing something she shouldn't, perhaps? Of course, she should not be here alone. Even a prioress was required to have proper and prudent companionship wherever she went.

"Indeed, that is true, but I am still too new at Tyndal to know whom I can fully trust and whom I cannot," she sighed. With a murderer possibly in their midst, she felt safer by herself than with someone who might be of danger to her, especially as she wandered around, looking for something to uncover that very culprit. Even the seemingly open and pragmatic Sister Anne had shadowy corners in her soul, although Eleanor felt increasing comfort in the company of the nun.

"No, I am safer alone," she said aloud to nothing in particular.

As she walked along the edge of the stream, she knew she hadn't the vaguest idea what she was looking for. She stopped and glanced around, in part to mark her path back to the priory and in part to look for something out of the ordinary.

The ground was rocky near the stream. No footprints surely.

As she looked up at the high banks, she imagined this charming little stream as it turned into a raging river and gouged this deep channel into the earth. Indeed, several of the trees, not just the one at her descent, extended tangled and naked roots into the space above her head. She would have to check whether the stream's course through the priory was sufficiently constrained when she got back.

With her mind distracted and her gaze turned upward, Eleanor stumbled and fell on the uneven, rocky ground. She cried out when her ankle turned and her hands scraped against the gravelly surface as she broke her fall. For just a moment, she shut her eyes tight against the sharpness of the pain; then she twisted herself around into a sitting position and concentrated on feeling her throbbing ankle.

"Not broken," she said with relief and considerable gratitude. It would be difficult enough to get back to the priory by herself with a sprain, let alone with a cracked or shattered bone.

She looked around for a broken branch close by that would be sturdy enough to support her. Nearer to the bank, there were
a couple of promising limbs. She half-crawled, half-pulled herself
toward the branches.

The first one was rotten and broke in half as soon as she put pressure on it; however, the second held, and she began to pull herself up. As she did, an intermittent breeze rose and fell, and she noticed the movement of something against the bank.

She eased herself back into a sitting position. Close against the bank lay a huge boulder, over which a netting of roots lay, attached to a large tree. The tree sat precariously balanced between rock and bank, some of its roots still bound deep into the earth. From one of the largest roots a woven grass mat hung down between rock and cliff. One edge of the mat was weighed down with a heavy stone, but the other, the one that moved in the breeze, had lost its weight.

Eleanor once again pulled herself up with her strong branch, and, grabbing the broken one as she did so, limped closer. The breeze moved the matting again. Behind it, there seemed to be a small gap.

"Is anyone there?" she asked.

Silence.

Cautiously, she extended the point of the broken branch and pushed the mat aside.

No one was there.

She pulled the mat away. It covered a narrow entrance between rock and bank to a cave, presumably gouged out by the stream and deep enough to provide shelter for two or three people. Had the boulder not been there to brace it, she thought, looking up at the huge trunk above her head, the tree would have fallen and the remaining roots would have ripped away the roof of the small cave, destroying the shelter entirely.

As she looked further into the enclosure, she could see marks
in the walls where nature's results had been deliberately enlarged.
There was no sign of a fire or utensils for cooking, but there was a narrow, raised, and sturdy wooden bed frame with a clean straw mat and some pegs jammed into the earthen wall. Over one peg was hung what appeared to be a small whip.

Eleanor hopped awkwardly up to the peg and looked with care at the object in the dim light. There was no question that it was a crude whip made of twigs bundled together. It was darkly stained. Was this blood?

"Whatever is this all for?" she asked quietly as she fingered the stiff switches and looked around the small space.

She shuddered, then spoke aloud to calm herself with the sound of a human voice. "This is something for the crowner to look at, not me. And, methinks, I would be wise to leave!"

She pushed the mat aside and hobbled into the feathered sunlight, but the shadows playing on the sparkling water were no longer beautiful and the utter silence of the birds was ominous.

Eleanor looked around quickly. There was no one and nothing to be seen. Bracing herself with her makeshift crutch, she bent and replaced the rock that had held the mat down. With the mat securely anchored and pushed into the shadows of the narrow opening, she realized that the cave entrance was barely visible.

As she straightened, adjusting the branch to support her weight,
she heard a rustling sound just above her and looked up.

Standing on the bank above her, a bearded and unkempt man stared at her for what seemed a very long time, a knife glinting in his hand. His left hand, Eleanor observed with the icy precision of fear.

Then he turned and ran. Eleanor stood frozen in place until the sound of his escape, crashing through the brush, had faded into the sound of the stream flowing beside her.

And in that instant, she understood what it meant to meet Death face to face.

Chapter Eighteen

Sister Anne stood up, hands on hips, and looked at her prioress with undisguised disapproval. "If I may be so blunt, my lady..."

"And you may, sister."

"You put yourself in unnecessary danger out there beyond the priory today. Although I agree that you may have found
something of interest, perhaps even of great value to our crowner
in his investigations, the risk you took was, well, rash."

Eleanor was sitting in her chambers with her injured foot bound and propped on a stool, a goblet of watered wine at hand and Arthur in her lap. She sighed.

"Blunt indeed, but tactful considering. Let me speak your true thoughts. I was reckless, thoughtless, and stupid to do what
I did."

Anne nodded, then smiled.

"And I have learned my lesson. I was quite happy to send word to our crowner and let him investigate the cave more thoroughly." Eleanor shifted slightly, and the cat meowed with instant feline annoyance.