Yet killing Martin solved nothing for Ivetta either. Now the woman was as bereft of support from her bawd as she would have been if he had cut her free of his control through some marriage. Was the murder done out of such strong passion that all reason fled? Was there something Eleanor had yet to learn that might make sense of why the death occurred when it did?
Why not kill Signy instead? Or was that too difficult to accomplish? Was Ivetta even competent enough to make the poison, let alone plan the murder? Surely she would have known that she would be the primary suspect? Why not arrange with Martin for a marriage to someone else as the better solution? Perhaps to Will, a man not known for his quick wits?
As the conversation with Signy now slipped into the ease of pleasant courtesies, the prioress sat back in her chair, more bewildered than ever. There were too many questions, and Ivetta might have at least some answers. The woman must be called back to the priory and soon, despite the loud protests sure to come from Sister Ruth who claimed Satan’s stench had almost killed her the last time Ivetta walked through the garth.
If God were kind, a second visit might even inspire the prostitute to seek redemption at Tyndal. If that miracle happened, Eleanor thought with wicked pleasure, she would make sure the sub-prioress was charged with any instruction.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The man fumbled with his braes.
Would he never get dressed? Ivetta thought. Even her skin crawled with impatience to push him out the door, but he must be made to pay first. With Martin dead, she had to worry about earning enough to feed herself—and the babe as well.
“There’s a chicken I laid just there.” He gestured drunkenly. “That’ll do it.”
“The price was two, as you well knew.”
“For riding an aged slut?”
“For performing a miracle. Did I not transform a drooping stalk into an iron rod?”
“I can get this free, you know.”
“From your pigs, for cert, and methinks you’ve tried. You stink enough of them.”
The man cursed and grabbed for the door but hesitated before opening it. “I’ll bring the other tomorrow,” he said, his voice suddenly gentle. “Sorry about the cooper.” Then he was gone.
Ivetta sat on her straw mat and began to twist a strand of greasy hair. Looking down at her naked belly, she smiled at the rounding. “I should give you to the priory if you’re a boy. They could use strong arms like your father had,” she said. “If you’re a girl, I must do so.” She nodded. “Other priories would sneer at a whore’s daughter, but Prioress Eleanor might take you on as a servant. She wouldn’t want you to follow my trade any more than I do, and someone has to scrub the hospital linen. You’d have food enough in exchange for reddened hands, lass, and that is more than I can provide.”
Her shoulders sagged as she gazed around the small space. This stinking place with drafty walls made of dung and straw was all she had now, a shelter her younger brother had made for them both before he died in the road, stabbed by another drunk in a fight over something long forgotten.
“Martin promised me more,” she sighed. But Martin was dead and she had nothing. Everything she ever earned on her back, or more often on her knees, went to him. In truth, he had fed and clothed her as well as he did himself and made sure she had a soft bed. When the bouncing got rough, she did not bruise as quickly. Standing, she rubbed her buttocks. With only this straw to buffer a man’s weight, there would be marks soon enough from that swineherd’s pleasures.
Pulling a loose gown over her head, Ivetta went to open the door. As she stared up at the twinkling stars, she felt her spirit plunge into melancholy. What was she going to do? Angry though she may have been over the swineherd’s insults, she knew her value as a harlot was lessening. Without Martin to bring clients who were willing to pay for special acts, she was reduced to serving the poor, maimed, the drunk, diseased or aged. Virile lads, who might even bring her a little joy, always seemed to find enough girls with taut maidenheads eager for bursting. She would never feel their muscular arms around her on that rough mat.
She turned, went back into the stifling room, and yanked the badly fitted door shut.
If only I could store this heat for the dark season when the babe is due, she thought. The damp cold will be so bitter then we shall both surely turn to ice.
She took a mouthful of the ale still left in the jug. “Fa!” she spat. The brew had turned foul.
She had nowhere to go. Her parents were dead, not that they would welcome such a wicked daughter back. When she had returned from the field, bleeding after Martin’s breaching, they had cast her out with one loaf of bread as a mercy and the gown she wore. The only living kin she had left was an elder brother, but his wife would refuse to let her in their house. That fine woman spent most of her waking hours and, if truth be told, most of the sleeping ones on her knees in prayer. Charity to sinners, especially those guilty of carnal wickedness, was not one of her reputed virtues.
Ivetta was very much alone.
“I’m sure the priory would take me in to do hard labor,” she muttered. “They hinted enough that I should repent, but I cannot confess guilt over Martin. I loved him.” Her mouth puckered as if she had bitten into sour fruit. “If I’m going to Hell, at least he’s there as well. We might as well burn together.”
Covering her face with her hands, she began to weep. “I am going to die, and the babe with me,” she moaned. “Curses on Signy! The blood of the three of us will be on her hands and she’ll just grow fat…”
There was a knock at the door.
Ivetta roughly ran fingers under her eyes to dry the tears. Who was this? she wondered, resentful that she could not be left in peace right now. Yet she did need the trade. If she were fortunate, it would be the swineherd with the other chicken. If not, it might be some lusty leper who knew she could not afford to turn anyone away if she were to survive.
As she opened the door, however, she drew back in shock when she recognized the dark figure outside.
“I have come to make peace,” the shadow said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Returning along the path to the priory, Thomas gazed up at the sparkling stars. Above him was the constellation of the cross and to the right was the lute in the shape of a heart. A faint white light shot between the two, then disappeared. Was that a soul traveling to God?
Perhaps it belonged to the man with the deep sore in his throat who had died tonight. In that suffering creature’s last moments of mortal consciousness, Thomas had knelt beside him and taken his confession, granting absolution quickly lest Satan find cause for rejoicing over the capture of another soul.
While Death pulled the throbbing soul away, the widow screamed in protest, throwing herself on her beloved husband’s still breast. Tears flooded down his own cheeks as Thomas watched the woman lying there and trembling with both irrational outrage and better understood grief.
Although he had reassured her that her husband should find sweet peace in heaven and would wait for her with open arms when her time came, he suspected none of this would be of comfort until her wild anguish had run its course. As she alternated between howled curses that her husband had deserted her and sweet pleadings for him to return to her arms, Thomas knew that her heart only begged God to keep the misery of her remaining life on earth very short, an existence that most certainly would be both difficult and forlorn.
“Cursed be the Devil’s darkness!” he growled, a profound loneliness weighing his spirit down like some dark and sodden cloak. Why had God not utterly destroyed men after Eden if human life was so wretched that only death held joy? And if death was man’s only pleasure, why deny him the right to claim that delight by calling self-murder a sin?
“Get thee behind me,” Thomas cried out, shaking his fist at the shadows, but Satan, with especial cruelty, now cast the image of Giles into his weakened soul. Until he had gone to Amesbury, Thomas had achieved some peace f
rom this torment, but the events last year at the old priory had shattered that little calm and driven his spirit back into the stinking hole of despair he had suffered in prison.
Had Giles found peace with his older and quite wealthy wife, he wondered, and had he banished all thought of Thomas from his heart? Was it worse if Giles remembered him but only with hatred and disgust?
“I need sleep,” he groaned. “I need…” He fell silent, terrified of pursuing that ill-defined longing any further. If God ever answered his prayers for understanding, he might take courage and face the dreaded thing. Until then, his soul remained as firmly chained as his body had once been in prison with rusted and chafing irons.
“Sleep must come,” he muttered, shoving away all the prickling aches of body and spirit. “Then I can seek answers for my sins.”
As he thought more on that, he wondered if this lack of rest was meant to goad him to the chapel night after night—or even to seek out Sister Juliana. After all, what force had thrown him to his knees by her tiny window that night? Was it God’s hand?
“Perhaps,” he murmured. “Aye, I think so.” After he had spoken with her, he had followed her counsel and filled his soul with silence the next night when wakefulness drove him out of his narrow bed. That night, an unfamiliar peace had caressed his soul, briefly but sweetly. Was it a sign that God was at last willing to grant him mercy?
When he arose afterward, his heart fluttering with hope, he had tried to seek for the meaning and cause of this perplexing experience. Instantly, the calm vanished as if God had once again deserted him. Or was He telling him, as the anchoress had suggested, that he must listen only with the stillness of his heart and reject mortal logic?
Surely the heart was the frailest of man’s organs, a woman’s refuge and most subject to sin. Yet hadn’t God spoken to Elijah in such a small voice that the prophet might only have heard Him in silence? A man’s mind stirred to debate and roaring speech; the feminine heart stayed still like a rabbit with a fox about. Might Sister Juliana be right in suggesting that God spoke more clearly from the organ condemned to silence by Adam’s imperfect sons?
Thomas stopped and glanced up at the moon. No longer full, it gave off a lesser light, and the man in the moon, Cain with his bundle of thorns, had a bleak aspect. The monk looked down the road and realized he had gone beyond the village and was near the gate by the priory mill. Perhaps he should visit the anchoress tonight, if no one was waiting to speak to her. Might she be able to explain the meaning of what he had experienced in the chapel and guide him further in his search for God’s wisdom? He quickened his pace, choosing the path that followed the fork of the stream flowing into priory grounds.
As he entered the forest, he suddenly hesitated. Something caught his attention, a thing that did not seem quite right.
Just to the right of the path was a crudely built hut almost hidden between two trees. Hadn’t it been long abandoned? he asked himself. Yet the door was open, and one guttering candle inside now cast a misshapen, twitching circle of light on the ground without. In the wavering shadows, Thomas saw a darker mound as if a dog had fallen asleep there, or else some person.
Thomas grew uneasy, sensing malevolence, but he felt compelled to draw nearer, albeit with caution. If this were a dog, even one of the hounds of Hell, surely the creature would have lunged at him by now.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he approached the strange object.
Falling to his knees, Thomas reached out and touched it. The familiar warmth convinced him this was no imp or hound but rather a human body. When he rolled it over to look more closely, he saw the face in the flickering candlelight.
“God have mercy!” he cried out.
Ivetta, the whore, was dead.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Yew,” Sister Anne said, then bent over the corpse again.
Those attending her remained silent as the sub-infirmarian continued her examination.
“Unless we find a witness, I should only make a tentative conclusion about the poison. Other evidence might point to another method.”
“I saw vomit inside the hut,” Thomas said, his voice low as if he feared humiliating the dead woman with what he had discovered. “Outside the door, her bowels had loosened. In the dark, I could not examine thoroughly, but the odor was strong. What I did not find was any potion. There was some ale in a jug, but it had turned and was probably undrinkable. I smelled it. Perhaps we can find more after the sun rises.”
Anne nodded. “I am grateful for your observations, Brother. Note, too, that her lips are blue, and, if you come closer, you will see that her pupils are enlarged. This poison takes effect quickly…” She hesitated, glancing at Eleanor, Ralf, and Thomas in turn. “She aborted. Either that was her intent, and she took more of the herb than was wise, or else she was murdered. The purpose is not evident in the results.”
In the flickering light of the hospital chapel, Ralf’s eyes narrowed, perhaps from the candle smoke or even from anger.
“I am troubled that two people, so well-known to each other, have died by the same method and with little time in between,” Thomas said, his words still softly spoken.
Eleanor watched her monk as if carefully considering his words, then turned away. Although the lateness of the hour should have cast the pallor of fatigue on the prioress’ cheeks, her color was high. “If she intended to abort, why was she found outside on the hard ground?” she asked, her voice trembling. “What woman would lie near a public road when she had the comparative ease of her pallet close by? Is it not strange as well that no evidence of the drink was found, if she deliberately took the poison?”
“I doubt she would have chosen to lie in the path as any form of penance,” Thomas said. “She had shown no inclination to atone for her sins. Thus I find her place of death most troubling.”
“Would we even question any of this if Martin had not been killed?” Ralf folded his arms in disgust.
“Why do you say that? Because she was a harlot?” Anne rested one hand gently on the corpse. “All mortals have souls, even if they are filthy with the Devil’s touch.”
The crowner did not reply.
“I incline to a presumption of murder,” Thomas said. “Were we to assume she intended to abort, I doubt Ivetta would have been ignorant of the dosage needed. According to old Tibia, whores are familiar with the methods, having the need and, as a consequence, the experience. Perhaps yew is one way to get rid of a quickening, but is it not a dangerous one? Surely there are safer means to accomplish that intent, and surely she would have known them. I do not think she would have taken too much of any remedy, and I doubt she would have used yew. Thus I suspect a foul motive.”
“There are safer methods, Brother, and she might well have been experienced with them. Nonetheless, I cannot agree that she would have known the correct dosage. When my husband and I were apothecaries, we treated enough women who thought they knew these matters well and almost died as a result.” Anne turned around to examine something on the body.
“I suspect she either killed herself deliberately, maybe from despair,” Ralf suggested, “or else wished to rid herself of the child and died accidentally. Maybe she took the poison in the ale, not caring how it tasted. Does a sweet drink matter when someone commits self-murder or wishes to abort quickly?”
Eleanor stared at the face of the corpse which was frozen in gape-mouthed horror. “I agree with Brother Thomas, Crowner, and fear we have not one, but two, murders to solve. I do not think this woman died by accident because of an abortion attempt, nor do I believe she committed self-murder. Ivetta loved the quickening life inside her, as she loved the man she named father to this new soul. In this, I think she told the truth, although I have doubts about other things she said and had planned to call her back for questioning.” She glanced up at Anne “Was there any sign of struggle? Might she have been forced somehow to take this poison?”
“There is minor bruising
on the buttocks and arms, but none of that recent, my lady,” Anne replied. “In her profession, such marks would not be unusual.” Her tone was subdued.
“When I looked around her dwelling, I found nothing to suggest violence, other than what I mentioned.” Thomas hesitated. “There was a freshly killed chicken by the door, yet she kept no fowl. I point that out because it seemed odd.”
“Perchance that was her fee for relieving a man of his pent-up seed,” Ralf said. “Had she suffered blows, I would look for a fellow who quarreled with the value he got for that price. Considering the method of death was poison, that possibility seems unlikely.”
The group fell silent. All eyes, except for those of the prioress, turned away from the corpse.
“We have failed you,” Eleanor said to the dead woman. “This should not have happened.”
“Do not blame yourself, my lady,” Ralf said. “Sister Anne has stated there is no reason to believe this was murder.”
“I said I could not be certain without more evidence.”
The prioress tapped her heart. “Illogical woman that I am, Crowner, this tells me it was.”
Ralf bowed. “Your heart holds more reason than most men’s minds.”
“Might not the killer be the man who had just lain with her?” Anne sounded almost hopeful as she reached for a rough cloth and covered the corpse.
“Were we to assume murder, and she had been killed by another method, that would be the obvious explanation,” Ralf replied with some reluctance. “I still argue that we do not use poison as a common weapon in this place. That was true with Martin’s death, and I see no reason to change my mind for this one either.”
“Both Martin and Ivetta, it now seems, have been killed by yew poisoning,” Eleanor said.
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