Wine of Violence (24 page)

A softened squeal of pain caused Eleanor to look up. Gytha was sucking on her finger.

"Are you all right, my child?"

 
"The knife slipped, my lady. It has almost stopped bleeding. I will bring the..."

"Come here and let me see."

Gytha hesitated, then came forward and gave her hand to Eleanor.

"The cheese will wait. Run to Sister Anne and let her bind your finger. The cut looks deeper than you thought."

"But..."

"I will brook no argument here, nor do I need your presence for decorum. Sister Ruth stands without the door."

Gytha left the room with a backward glance at her mistress.

"Perhaps it is just as well the child has left. Now I may ask whether you have shown the body to anyone in the village,
Ralf."

"Tostig. He claimed no knowledge of him but promised to ask others. No one has come forth."

"And you believe him."

"I trust most Saxons as much as most Saxons trust me."

"That is blunt enough. What have you in mind to get at the truth then?"

"Not what you might think I would do. I have never believed that torture brings forth the sound of truth, although it soon brings loud promises to say anything that will stop the pain."

"You have no paid friends then in the village?"

Ralf laughed. "You surprise me, my lady. How could you think such a thing?"

"My father is at court and my elder brother fights at Prince Edward's side in the Holy Land. I am naive neither about the mechanics of intrigue nor about how men retain power."

Ralf coughed.

"Lest you fear you have been too unguarded with a nun whom
you now find to be less unworldly and perhaps better connected than you thought, let me assure you that I like a plain-spoken man. And men who are blunt to hide a soft heart I like even better." Eleanor smiled, resting her chin in her hand. "So explain to me now why is it that you have no
paid friends?'

"I bent the truth, my lady. Although many Saxons do not trust me, nor I them, I have true friends in the village that are so because they have learned I will be equitable to all and keep good order. Tostig is one such. What troubles me is that none of the Saxons I have befriended have come to me about this new death."

"Then they are either afraid or have a higher loyalty than their friendship to you."

"Well observed."

"Tell me of Tostig's reaction when he saw the dead man. What did you note?"

"He is a man who does not allow the color of his thoughts to be painted on his face, but I did detect a blink of his eyes and a twitch at his jaw when he first looked on the man."

"Which suggested to you that his denial of any knowledge was false."

Ralf nodded.

"That would confirm my own suspicion. When I saw the man in the village, the day I purchased the donkey, Tostig claimed he had not, although he was standing immediately behind me when I cried out. He could not have missed seeing him. I believe he not only noticed the man, I think he knew him."

"Then he and the villagers do have reason either to protect themselves or him."

Eleanor leaned back in her chair, stared at the ceiling in silence,
then sat forward and sipped some wine from the goblet in front of her. As she put it down on the table, she watched the red liquid swirl and thought unpleasantly of blood.

"There may be another way to get at the truth of who this
strange man was. Since you were last here, Ralf, I have had some
discussion with the nun who used to pick mushrooms in the forest. She told me a strange tale of a demon that burst out of the earth in front of her near the bend in the stream where a
tree hangs nearly suspended in air. It is the same place, I believe,
where the cave of unknown purpose is."

"A demon?"

"A demon with disheveled clothes and a black, unkempt beard. Unusual for a minion of Satan, I'd say, but not unusual for a man. Since I first saw our dead man there, I wonder if he might have been the very same demon."

"Or it might have been a true son of Satan," the crowner suggested.

"My aunt at Amesbury once told me that the demons we are unable to see or recognize are of far greater danger to our souls than those we can. I will ask my nun to view the corpse, but I will have Brother Thomas accompany her lest she need protection from otherworldly dangers. Indeed I fear she may remember all too vividly the image of her terror in recognizing the cause of it. Would you come as well? You should note her reaction and not hear it second-hand from me."

"I will be there even if the corpse proves to be unholy and Satan himself comes to protect one of his own. Tell me, my lady, do you think there is a connection between this death and Brother Rupert's? I do, yet it is a question, the answer to which eludes me."

"And eludes me too. Something is indeed deeply amiss here. That something caused our dead man to both run in terror from the cave, yet be drawn back again; to run in fear from me at the village, yet come back to Tyndal, only to be found dead on the priory grounds as was our good monk."

"I would not dismiss Satan's hand in the incomprehensible, my lady."

"Nor I, good Crowner, but if Satan has sent his minion to Tyndal, he remains quite invisible to us all."

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Sister Matilda screamed.

Brother Thomas held the cross in a tight grip, both hands stretched rigidly in front of him. Ralf stood behind him, eyes as unblinking and dry as if they had been painted on his face.

Eleanor pulled the wild-eyed nun into her arms, pushing her head into the curve of her neck so she could no longer see the body.

"Hush, sister! There is nothing to fear. Brother Thomas has the Evil One at bay with the cross in his hands. We are safe."

"It is the very Devil who burst from the earth. He has found me!" The nun's cries were muffled, but Eleanor could feel her body shaking with terror.

"He is powerless against you, bound as he is in the chapel near the altar, sister." Eleanor gestured to Thomas to follow her out, then turned and pulled the trembling nun away with great gentleness. "We shall leave, and I promise you will never see him again."

Sister Anne was waiting outside the door as the four emerged
into the fading light. She helped Eleanor seat Sister Matilda, then
gave the nun, whose eyes were now tightly shut against the sight of
any further horrors, a drink from a cup she had close at hand.

"She needs to sleep, my lady," Sister Anne whispered. "I will have someone sit with her tonight in case she wakes from evil dreams, but with this potion I think she will sleep well."

Eleanor, short as she was, took the sitting nun's head and pulled it close to her breast and gently rocked her. "You did a brave thing tonight, Sister Matilda. I believe you will rest now, and, in the morning, we will walk together in the garden after chapter and speak of your return to grace from this penance you have endured."

Sister Matilda turned to look up at the prioress, her eyes already unfocused from the draught the sub-infirmarian had given her. "Penance, my lady? I did penance?"

"You did indeed! Remember? It was for your pride. Now that you have done this thing tonight, I believe you may be relieved of your work in the garden."

The nun sat up and swayed, her face filled with blissful relief and joy.

"Say nothing more, my child. It is your duty now to sleep. We will speak in the morning."

Sister Anne gestured, and a lay sister came out of the shadows. They whispered together for a moment, then the lay sister and Sister Matilda wobbled away in the general direction of the hospital.

"I will stand just there until you need me," Sister Anne said, gesturing to a yew tree a little distance away.

Eleanor turned to Brother Thomas. "You look shaken yourself, brother." She meant it kindly, but she saw him stiffen. "It is one thing to cross swords with a human enemy, but yet another to face Satan himself," she added quickly. "Your courage was impressive."

"I faced a corpse, not Satan, my lady." His expression was unreadable.

"You did not know that when I asked you to protect us against a possible demon." Eleanor wanted to reach out, take his hand, and clutch it to her as she had the terrified nun. The sweet pain she felt at the thought of his hand on her breast was less than chaste. She dropped her gaze, and there was silence between them.

"As you will. I am here to serve and am pleased if I served as you wished."

"You served well, brother." Eleanor took a deep breath and looked up. "I have one thing more to ask of you."

Thomas bowed his head in silence.

"Should you see or hear anything of note in the matter of this death as you perform your tasks, I would hear of it, and hear of it first. Anything unusual. Anything out of place. We are both new here, but I have learned that you are a thoughtful and observant man. Crowner Ralf can only search the outside world for signs of this murder and that of Brother Rupert. I need your skills for noting anything untoward within our priory, especially amongst the monks and lay brothers."

"Aye," Ralf said. "I concur, good brother."

Had the light not so failed that his face was in shadow, Eleanor might have seen Brother Thomas turn pale before he nodded agreement.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The rock bounced off the stone walls of the priory, and the curse spat after it was quite Anglo-Saxon.

"Who knows me here? Who is her spy?" Thomas snarled, as he threw another rock in impotent rage at the priory. "And what fool gave a woman the right to order men around? Unnatural, it is. This whole place is fucking unnatural!"

This rock shattered. Thomas sat down on the ground and put his head in his hands. He was shaking, but rage no longer masked his fear. Indeed, he had been afraid when the prioress had told him to come to the chapel and hold a cross against any demon still residing in the corpse of the man he had found.

And when Sister Matilda screamed, he thought he had seen a Son of Darkness rise from the body, smelling of smoke, his
grinning image flickering in the candlelight. Thomas would have
sworn to that. And when he held the cross in front of him, for cert he had heard the thing sigh before it disappeared, then all he heard was the calm prioress crooning to the nun in her arms as if she held a baby there, not an adult woman. Truth to tell, there was a instant when Thomas wished she would soothe him as well, but, along with the innocence of childhood, he knew he had also lost the right to such a comfort for himself.

Thomas began to sob, his body shaking uncontrollably. He had wept little since he was a small boy, yet in this place dedicated to peace and God, tears came to him easily and often.

"Aye!" he cried into his hands. "She is a better man than I. I hate her for it!"

In truth, he did not hate the prioress. Had she been a man of the world, he would have admired her coolness. Had she been a prior, he might have sat at her feet and begged to learn how she blended her piety with pragmatism. Had she even been a saintly woman, he could have worshiped her holiness. She was none of those, but rather a young and earthy woman who was so very different from all the others he had ever known. He did not understand her at all, but he did respect her.

Whatever could he tell her? What was pertinent and what
would be the betrayal of secrets with no relevance to these crimes?
As Brother Andrew had said, many inhabitants of Tyndal had secrets buried in their hearts. Those were things between them and their God, as far as Thomas was concerned, and of no moment to mortal men, even to prioresses. Someone had a very dark secret, however, and that secret must have led to murder.