Covenant With Hell (Medieval Mysteries)

by Priscilla Royal

  “A child, you say? What evil has she done to warrant such harshness?”

  The innkeeper shrugged. “The priest calls her a whore. There are rumors she has paid for food with her body, and perhaps that is true. I never saw her lure men but do not follow her when she leaves here. To my knowledge, all she does is sit quietly outside my inn with her hand outstretched. I pity her and let the girl be, most of the time.”

  “Has she no kin or does she beg for them as well?” The wine merchant took another bite and savored it with a sip of wine.

  “Her family was poor, but not beggars, and all but the girl died with last summer’s tragic fever. She has no one to take her in. The nuns of Ryehill struggle enough to feed themselves, and they hire no servants. The monks of Walsingham Priory are occupied with pilgrims and the tending of the sacred sites. They have no place for a girl.”

  “No one cares for orphans in Walsingham? That is most unusual.”

  “That fever killed many. The merchants have given shelter to their own so their charity is stretched thin. The religious have few scraps to offer compared to the number of mouths open for bread. Some poor boys with strong backs were taken in by Walsingham Priory to work, but most of the poor children became beggars and many of those died in the last winter.”

  Durant sipped his wine. “Yet she lived. Does she do so well at begging?”

  “She’s clever and must find places to stay warm.” He bent his head toward the stables. “I suspect the groom lets her sleep in the straw. He thinks I do not know, and I let him believe it. But she won’t live much longer even if she has gone as feral as a cat.” His expression darkened. “Most girls in her situation do sell themselves to men. I might have found some place for her here, but I have hired all I can of others whose families have died. Now that she has been accused of whoredom, I dare not or I would lose custom from pilgrims.” He bent his head toward Ryehill. “The nuns know I do not countenance the vice, and they send travelers here with that understanding.”

  Durant lifted the jug and refilled the man’s cup. “Father Vincent must have cause to accuse her.”

  “He claims he caught her lying with a merchant in that chapel where he houses his new relic.”

  “A fine acquisition of which he is rightly proud. I can understand why he was angered over such a sin committed there.”

  The innkeeper snorted. “There is a tale about that relic, but the priest would not be happy if he heard it.”

  Durant sipped his wine and winked. “You might tell me before I leave Walsingham. I swear to take the story far from the ears of townsmen.” He grinned and then said, “I hope the merchant of whom you speak was not Master Larcher. I had some pleasant conversation with him.”

  The innkeeper leaned forward and murmured, “I won’t mention the guilty man’s name, but he was not the badge craftsman. That one was too busy swyving a nun.”

  Swallowing a gasp of shock, Durant let his spoon fall into the bowl of stew.

  The innkeeper’s reddish face deepened in color, and he quickly changed the subject. “I take you for a kind man, Master. If you will, give the child a coin. She’s never caused trouble outside our door and is thin as Death. Even if the priest is right and she has gone down the Devil’s road, I would rather she find God’s forgiveness and live.”

  Someone called to the innkeeper from across the room, begging his attention. He downed what was left in his mazer, promised to tell the tale about the relic to the merchant later, and went to speak with the man who had summoned him.

  Durant slowly finished his meal alone, as he preferred it. Turning pensive, he considered what he had learned, drank a final cup of wine, and climbed the steps to his room.

  There he opened his shutters, stood to one side where he might remain out of easy sight, and looked down on the activity below.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Master Durant rubbed at his eyes. The sun was shining directly into them.

  He realized he had been watching by the window for longer than he had imagined. The sun may be weak, he thought, but it has greatly changed position since I first stood here.

  Although he had learned little of value from his spying, the time spent had been worth the effort for other reasons. As a good companion amongst men, he eagerly got needed information from carefully planned conversations, but he pondered the implications of it better in solitude.

  From the fewer voices heard below, he assumed the religious had finished their questionings and he could safely reveal himself. He peered down from the window.

  The small clusters had broken up and moved away. The monk was talking with animation to his prioress. An older woman of sober mien stood next to her.

  Durant walked away and sat down on his bed. Prioress Eleanor and Brother Thomas could be seeking Gracia for a Godly purpose, he thought. Had Sister Roysia not fallen from the bell tower, he might have assumed that was the case and questioned their intent no further. But considering that unfortunate death and the reputation of this pair, he was certain they had some other concern.

  What about this girl had caught their attention?

  She had certainly interested him. After his conversation with Larcher downstairs, she had followed him on his way to Walsingham Priory. Although she kept some distance behind him, she did little to remain hidden. This puzzled him. If Larcher or another had sent her with a message, she would have called out or run up to him. Had someone wanted to know who he might be visiting in the great priory, she would have been told to remain invisible, although choosing one so young to follow him was a clever trick if done with skill. He had decided to call out and beckon her to him, but Gracia had fled.

  She did not lack wits, and Durant dismissed the assumption that she had followed after him to acquire another coin from his pouch. When he gave her the last one, he had looked down into two unusually intelligent eyes. There was no reason to leave her lucrative place by the inn door where many pilgrims, inclined to charity, passed. This child might be young, but the street had educated her well. To live this long by herself, she must be a clever student. Following one merchant who had tossed her one coin was unwise.

  Most certainly she had not followed him to sell herself or she would not have run away when he summoned her. The innkeeper’s sense of her was probably right. Durant thought it unlikely that Gracia was a whore.

  His curiosity still included the question of whether or not her survival had been helped by someone who paid her for information. Since he learned from the innkeeper that she had no living kin, she was not working on behalf of a brother, father, or uncle. That did not mean that a stranger was not dangling food in exchange for tales.

  Durant dismissed the idea that she was an assassin. Had she been a young boy, he might have been more suspicious, but a dagger thrust from such weak hands as hers would do little harm to an alert man. And, no matter how clever, neither boy nor girl of such youth was old enough to have honed skills only those aged by years of treachery possessed.

  Nonetheless, she had followed him for a purpose, and he had not seen her since she ran from him. She could be in the pay of an enemy to provide something, even if he did not know what it was. As unlikely as that might be, Durant never deluded himself that his opposites lacked cunning.

  Now this monk and his prioress were seeking her. At least they did so openly, an argument against the conclusion that they were in someone’s pay themselves.

  He smiled. Others might believe that those vowed to God rejected worldly affairs. He knew differently. Bishops went into battle wielding maces, and priests used clubs against those they deemed enemies of God. Priors and abbots were expected to own and use skills to gain influence and wealth.

  The lords of heaven and earth had long wrestled together for a man’s allegiance. No man dared ignore the will of God, even kings who might blind themselves to it for a time, but men of the Church were no less able to turn with impunity from the demands of secular lords. The lesson of Thomas Becket was one well-learned.
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  Durant stood and began to pace. He must think more carefully about this pair. Might they be very clever, acting in plain sight so their true motives were better hidden? After all, the child had followed him on his way to visit his other spy in Walsingham Priory. Had they sent her to find out who this person was? What were their loyalties?

  He felt himself grow tense with fear and willed himself to calm so he might regain his reason.

  Assessing the allegiance of the Prioress Eleanor was easy enough. Her family had supported King Henry III when many thought that decision ill-advised. Around the time of that most recent barons’ war, it was irrelevant to most whether or not de Montfort secretly longed to take the throne from an inept king and his apparently feckless son. The Earl did not need a crown, only the skill to wield power effectively. But the prioress’ father, Baron Adam of Wynethorpe, had been fierce in his loyalty to an anointed king, whatever Henry III’s failures. It was even rumored that he actually liked the man.

  In hindsight, Baron Adam had been right, as had been the baron’s eldest son, Sir Hugh. The brother of Prioress Eleanor had followed Edward to Outremer where close acquaintanceship with death burned away their lush dreams of youth and made the pair leaner men in both body and spirit.

  Prince Edward had left for Jerusalem already aware that he must never allow the barons to believe he was a weakling like his father. King Edward returned to England with the same shifting gaze he owned as a youth but with a better knowledge of how to keep those barons from being a trial to kings. Thus Edward had become a deadly man, but he had also learned a warrior’s loyalty. Those who had fought by his side in Outremer were brothers. That included the prioress’ eldest sibling.

  No, Durant decided, Prioress Eleanor would join her family in their allegiance to this earthly king. In her loyalties, God would be foremost, but King Edward was his anointed ruler. Leader though she was of her priory, the prioress was also a woman and one who honored her father and loved her brother.

  The merchant peeked back down at the road. The monk was still talking to a burly man whose thick arms suggested he was a blacksmith by trade. The prioress and her attendant had left.

  Brother Thomas was a different problem. Durant need not ask if the monk’s faith was so profound that he only longed to pray, having fully embraced the priory walls that surrounded him. His efforts to hunt down murderers, rather than spend hours in a chapel, suggested that Thomas still clung to the world. The merchant had also heard how conscientious the monk had been in his covert work for the Church under the direction of Father Eliduc, a man with a reputation for choosing men with promising skill and proven cleverness. But was Thomas willing only to serve the Church and his prioress?

  When Thomas was released from his duties by Father Eliduc, the monk seemed content to follow the direction of his prioress. That suggested a man who took his vows of obedience seriously, an impressive submission considering the unusual Order to which he had been assigned.

  The merchant gazed at Thomas for a long time. Some mocked the tonsured men of Fontevraud’s Order, claiming they lost their manhood when they submitted to a woman’s rule, but this monk looked more like a knight with his broad shoulders and lean, muscular body. There was nothing womanish about him, unless his eyes, as gentle as a doe’s, betrayed some feminine weakness.

  Durant swiftly drew back from the window. Squeezing his eyes shut, he cursed himself for letting his thoughts wander from his purpose. “What are the monk’s loyalties?” he muttered, biting the ends off each word.

  Being a man who collected rumors and secrets, the merchant knew that Thomas was the bastard son of a man who unquestionably supported King Henry, but his mother was unknown and probably of little worth. The monk had never been close to his father, although the man had acknowledged his son’s talents and paid for the schooling needed to insure a comfortable future for the boy. Such a background led sons either to loyalty or to treachery.

  As for owning a profound longing for the priory life, Durant knew why Thomas had become a monk at Tyndal Priory instead of an influential clerk in the service of a high ranking churchman or even the king. For this reason, he suspected Thomas owned only the common acceptance of Church teaching despite his willingness to follow his prioress’ orders. Her own adventures in pursuit of justice probably satisfied his desire for action and allowed him to make use of his singular talents as a spy.

  But were there to be another rebellion in the land, Durant had learned nothing about Brother Thomas to suggest where the man’s secular allegiance might lie. It was possible that Brother Thomas had no firm opinions on such worldly matters and would choose to follow his prioress in hers. It was equally possible that he might be willing to follow the direction of another, a man who could offer him a position that was not reliant on the whims of a woman or on a legitimate birth.

  Which possibility was the most likely? With no clear loyalties, Thomas made the wine merchant nervous.

  Durant walked to the sweating ewer placed near his bed and poured himself a mazer of bitter ale. It suited his mood better than wine.

  Savoring the taste, he set aside thoughts about monk and prioress for the moment. Master Larcher was another problem to consider.

  The man had discovered nothing of use. This might be due to Sister Roysia’s questionable and untimely death. Or perhaps Larcher’s failure suggested that a fatter pouch of coin had been pressed into his hand by the other side in this delicate matter of a king’s assassination.

  Durant put down the mazer and studied his hands. They trembled.

  He was paid to be the cleverest one in any war between men of opposing factions. But was he? He always feared he would lose these battles, even though he had yet to do so.

  Pride whispered that he must win. Humility suggested he would one day fail. His pounding heart longed to believe the former was right, yet feared the latter was more likely. To be the constant doubter was his most persistent weakness. He clutched his hands together to steady them, but his palms were sweating.

  He looked up and watched a lazy fly circle the room. On a whim, he dipped his fingers in the ale and flicked some at the creature.

  The drop hit his mark.

  Amazed, he watched the fly fall to the floor. Believing it would die, he felt an odd grief for this thing without a soul and hoped it would meet death in drunken peace. As he stared at the fly, it began to crawl, then suddenly rose into the air and flew out the window, steering a wobbly course.

  He laughed, relieved that he had not killed it, and then wondered if this was meant to be lesson for him.

  Like that creature, he could not foresee everything in any given situation. There would be surprises and uncertainties. Yet he need not fail if struck with the unknown. He must simply pause, gather his strength, and take off in another direction. It was paralytic fear that killed a man, not the arrival of the unforeseen. He must never forget that the man who survives is the one best able to cope with whatever comes out of the shadows.

  Picking up his mazer, he walked back to the window and looked down.

  Brother Thomas had left as well. Had he and his prioress learned anything that might lead them to the elusive and quick-witted Gracia?

  He sipped the ale as he stared at the quieter road. He should engage Brother Thomas in his own cause, he thought. That would be a bold measure, and it did not matter what the monk thought of King Edward. If carefully directed, Durant might use the man in place of the incompetent, perhaps treacherous, Master Larcher. If he was clever enough, he could obtain the information he needed and let the monk go on his way, none the wiser about the service he had performed for the merchant and his master.

  Durant smiled, feeling a rare contentment. It was a good plan.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Prioress Eleanor hesitated at the door leading to the bell tower, held her breath, and listened carefully. Looking over her shoulder, then down the hall, she confirmed there were no witnesses to what she was about to do.

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bsp; She grasped the looped rope that formed the handle on the door and cautiously opened it. The squeaking of the hinges was barely audible, but to Eleanor it was as loud as the squealing of angry pigs. Quickly slipping inside, she pulled the door closed and began climbing the stairs.

  Although the prioress was a small woman with tiny feet, the steps were too narrow for easy walking. It was a dangerous climb, and, despite her care, she slipped once. The coarse rope along the wall saved her from a nasty fall.

  How clever, she thought. Castle stairs were designed to keep an enemy soldier from effectively swinging his sword at a defender standing above him. This priory stairwell to the bell tower was equally well-planned to keep any man from climbing it unless he crawled slowly on his hands and knees. If another person had been with Sister Roysia in the tower, it was unlikely to have been a man, unless there was another entry besides these stairs.

  Halfway to the top, Eleanor stopped to catch her breath. For a moment, she suffered a twinge of guilt. As a guest in this priory, she had no right to abuse their hospitality by wandering about at will and prying into their affairs. It was rank discourtesy. If someone, especially Prioress Ursell, were to discover her in the tower and demand an explanation for her presence, she was unprepared to offer any.

  The justification that she had taken the wrong door, and then discovered the fine view of the Walsingham shrines from the height of the bell tower, was so feeble it was an insult to utter it. Not only did everyone in Ryehill know that Sister Roysia had fallen from this place, but they were probably aware that Eleanor and her monk had the reputation for involving themselves in questionable deaths. When the prioress of Tyndal chose to go to the bell tower, she might as well have announced to them all that she believed the death to be murder and that those who ruled Ryehill were either incompetent or entangled in the crime.