Belladonna at Belstone (9781471126345)

by Jecks, Michael

  ‘Sister!’

  Seeing the bishop beckon, Denise ducked her head obediently, and made her way along the corridor towards them. ‘My Lord?’ She tried not to sound curt, but her belly was complaining, and she desperately wanted that wine.

  Baldwin looked her over. Above her veil she had intelligent-looking eyes, although they held a certain red-rimmed dullness which persuaded Baldwin that she habitually drank too much. ‘Sister, this death is terribly sad. It is dreadful to see so young a novice destroyed for no reason. Do you have any idea who could have been responsible?’

  ‘Me, sir?’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I can think of no one who could wish to harm her. Moll was very quiet . . . very devoted to the church.’

  ‘She had no faults?’ Baldwin pressed her gently. Denise opened her mouth but there was a tenseness about her. Baldwin smiled reassuringly and nodded towards Bertrand. ‘The good bishop will confirm that you should tell us anything which could have led to someone wanting to harm her. We are investigating her murder, not a simple matter of taking a sister’s serving of wine without permission.’

  As she reddened, he cursed himself for choosing so unfortunate a simile.

  ‘Moll was a good child, I am sure.’ As she spoke two other novices came past, one very fair and full-bodied, the other olive-skinned and with dark, flashing eyes. All three men noticed them, and Denise saw their attention waver. ‘Moll was like those two,’ she said. ‘Young and flighty. I think she was more fervent in her prayers, but she was a novice, and girls now aren’t like they were in my day. They don’t show the right reverence to the church and nuns.’

  ‘Was Moll irreverent?’ Simon asked.

  ‘She was . . . overconfident. She was convinced that she was superior to everyone else,’ Denise said, holding Baldwin’s gaze. Suddenly she found that she couldn’t keep from blurting out, ‘She would have been happier if she could have died with the stigmata after a life of telling others how to live.’

  ‘Ah! She was a zealot?’

  ‘Yes – a fanatic. She’d come and chastise us for what she saw as irreligious behaviour. As if she had any idea! She was too young to know anything about life or service.’

  ‘Did she try to talk to your sisters?’ Baldwin pressed mildly.

  Denise stiffened. His question appeared to imply that she had simply complained because of Moll’s words to her. ‘Sir Baldwin, Moll spoke to almost all of us – novices and sisters – even, to my knowledge, the treasurer. I don’t think she had the arrogance to try confronting the prioress, but no doubt she would have rectified that before long, had she lived.’

  ‘The other novices, how did they react to her?’ Simon asked.

  ‘They’re like girls the world over – they often have to be chastised for their indiscipline. Their behaviour leaves much to be desired.’

  ‘They misbehave?’

  ‘If I could have my way I’d have them thrashed! They bring dishonour upon the whole convent.’

  ‘In what way? Are they impious?’

  ‘Some have only an outward display of piety,’ she agreed primly. ‘Forgetting their place in the world, even forgetting their vows and—’

  Bertrand cleared his throat and Denise took his warning, snapping her mouth shut and glancing down at the ground.

  ‘I have heard talk of disobedience,’ Baldwin murmured understandingly.

  ‘It’s worse than mere disobedience, Sir Knight. Some of these young ones appear to have no belief in their calling. Take that girl, Agnes, the fair one. I see no proof that she has a vocation, only a lord who wishes to be shot of her . . .’

  ‘I think we should move on,’ said Bertrand quickly. He had no wish to have Sir Rodney’s motives in placing Agnes at the nunnery questioned.

  ‘Very well,’ said Baldwin. ‘Where were you on the night the girl died?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep, my Lord. I went to the frater for something to drink,’ she said.

  There was a brittleness to her smile that persuaded Baldwin she was often to be found down there, a pot of wine before her, long after she should have been in her bed. ‘Did you see anyone?’ he asked. ‘Was the prioress about, for example?’

  Her face reddening, Denise shook her head. ‘Lady Elizabeth wasn’t around, no. I heard her in her chamber.’ She hesitated, then continued more slowly. ‘I did see something, though. An awful apparition. A shadow which crept along the wall as if hunting me.’

  Baldwin nodded seriously. ‘Show us where this was, Sister.’

  Nothing loath, she took them to the frater and showed where she had been seated. It was near the farther side of the room, by the screens which gave out to the buttery. ‘Here,’ she said, indicating the door to the yard behind. ‘That door was open, and the shadow was flung against the wall before me.’

  Where she was sitting, someone walking in the yard behind the hall, outside the cloister itself, would have had their shadow thrown against the wall in front of her. The wall to the cloister. Baldwin sucked at his moustache. ‘Was the shadow that of anyone you recognised?’

  ‘It was a nun,’ she admitted after a pause. When the silence which followed her words became too much, she burst out, ‘Margherita, our treasurer!’

  Bertrand glanced at Baldwin, and then demanded impatiently, ‘What of it? Why on earth should you have been so fearful of a nun’s shade?’

  ‘Because she had a dagger in her hand!’

  As she swept from the church, Margherita saw the three men standing near the frater with Denise, and she caught her breath, unsure whether to take the boar by the tusks or not. As she wavered, she saw Denise move away, and then the visitor’s eye lit upon her. Stiffening her back, Margherita strode to him.

  ‘My Lord, you have come to look into that poor child’s death?’

  The visitor looked less appealing now than he had when he first came, she thought to herself. Then he had been all smiles whenever he met her. Now he wore a sour expression as if he trusted no one. She felt a shiver run down her spine – she suddenly realised he might suspect even her of having a part in Moll’s death.

  He gave her a cold smile and she turned her attention on the other two men. The one with greying hair she privately noted down as being some kind of clerical assistant at first, but the other was different. She didn’t like the way the bearded man surveyed her. He had keen, shrewd eyes that seemed to see through her to the political machinations within her mind.

  ‘I returned as you asked, and we have just been studying the girl’s body,’ Bertrand said. He introduced her to Baldwin and Simon. ‘And I have to say, as you thought, she appears to have been murdered. We must establish who killed her.’

  Margherita inclined her head. ‘I understand.’

  Baldwin said, ‘Do you know what happened on the night this novice was found dead?’

  ‘I didn’t witness her murder, if that’s what you mean,’ she said sharply.

  ‘We have already heard that you were walking about that night, that you had a dagger in your hand. Why?’

  Margherita reeled inwardly but managed a smile although, had there been tool and opportunity, she could easily have stabbed Denise at that moment. Silkily she said, ‘I suppose you have been talking to our sacrist. Denise drinks more than she should, my Lord, and sometimes she sees things which aren’t there.’

  ‘You weren’t walking about that night?’

  ‘I did take a stroll, but when I saw Denise in the frater I told her to leave the wine for the night and go to bed. I went up as well.’

  ‘Why were you holding a dagger?’ Baldwin demanded relentlessly.

  Margherita gave a small sigh. ‘If I wake in the night, I usually carry a small dagger with me: there are such awful rumours of murder and mayhem in convents these days, and the good prioress has allowed our walls to collapse in places; it would be easy for men to break in. I went down to the cloister to think, and while I was meditating there, I thought I saw a man slip from the church door and go to the dorter. Naturally I foll
owed, and equally naturally I grabbed my knife to defend myself.’

  ‘Denise said you were out in the yard behind the cloister,’ Baldwin pointed out.

  Margherita froze a moment. ‘Ah, yes, she was quite correct. I had been here in the cloister, and saw the man there . . .’ She pointed at the door to the church. ‘He slipped, as I thought, along the church wall and out along that alley.’ Where the nun indicated there was a narrow way leading along the church’s outer wall, away from the cloister. ‘It gives out to the kitchen garden behind the cloister. From there a man can walk up, past the kitchen and out to the back of the frater here. It occurred to me that he would avoid the cloister itself, where he would be more likely to be seen.’ She indicated another alley between the frater and the next building. ‘From there he could gain access to the dorter, where the nuns were all asleep in their beds.’

  ‘So you tried to ambush him?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘Yes. I went up this alley and waited at the top. When I didn’t see him, I walked along the outer wall of the frater, but still saw nothing. Then I noticed that Denise was sitting alone in there again with a pot of wine. I confess I was angry to see her awake so late, and ordered her to return to her bed. Soon after I went up to the dorter myself, wondering if the man had already got there somehow. I went up, but I saw no stranger.’

  ‘Does the door to the dorter lead to other rooms?’ Simon demanded.

  ‘Yes – to the infirmary. But I knocked there and Constance, our infirmarer, told me no one had entered before me.’ Margherita glanced down at her hands. The infirmarer had been quite rude about it, forcing the treasurer back from the room and closing the door behind them, snapping that Margherita should not trespass on her domain when she had the sick to protect.

  ‘By now Denise had gone to her bed, so I did likewise and soon I was asleep. I was very tired – I suppose it’s the work I do, making sure that the account-rolls are up to date.’ She was keen to appear helpful to this serious-looking knight. ‘When the bell tolled, I woke and went to church.’

  ‘And at this stage there was no hint that Moll was unwell?’

  ‘Constance, our infirmarer, is a very diligent woman,’ Margherita said in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘She saw that her charges were sleeping before going to church for Nocturns. She would hardly have missed the wound inflicted upon Moll.’

  ‘So it couldn’t have been a nun,’ Simon exclaimed. ‘They were all at church.’

  Margherita tilted her head with a grimace. ‘Constance first went to the laver. She woke and realised that her hands were dirty, so between her leaving and the nocturn bell . . .’

  ‘I see,’ said Baldwin. ‘Who was in the infirmary with the girl?’

  ‘Joan, one of our oldest nuns, and a lay sister, Cecily, who fell down a rotten stair and broke her wrist. And Constance herself, of course, in her cot next to the infirmary.’

  ‘Does she always sleep there?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘When she has patients to look after, yes. And in a place the size of this, there is usually someone who has been bled, or a lay sister who needs to recover from her efforts, so I suppose she spends much of her time out there,’ Margherita said shortly, beginning to feel a trifle acerbic at his questioning. ‘When Matins were finished, she’d have gone back to her patients. That was when she saw Moll’s vein had opened again.’

  ‘Yet someone thought that there might be another explanation, rather than an accidental nick in an artery. Someone thought it was murder.’

  ‘Well, some of us wondered,’ Margherita stumbled, looking to the visitor for aid.

  Bertrand tried to sound conciliatory. ‘Come, Sir Baldwin. We are concerned only with the death itself.’

  ‘Quite right, and to investigate that I need to know what suspicions people have, why they have them, and who else shares them.’

  ‘Why?’ Bertrand asked.

  Baldwin turned to him, an expression of puzzled enquiry on his face. ‘My Lord Bishop, I am here to assist in this matter, but I really must be permitted to conduct my questioning in my own way.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ Bertrand agreed, and gave Margherita a smile as if in apology.

  ‘Now,’ Baldwin said. ‘Why did you assume this was a case of murder?’

  Margherita gave the impression of being uncertain. She dropped her eyes and muttered as if unwillingly: ‘It’s the money.’

  The knight blinked with surprise, and she could see she had his attention. Before he could ask her any more questions, she clasped her hands before her and held his gaze, putting all the conviction she could into her face.

  ‘You see, our buildings are all in such a state. As I said, poor Cecily fell and broke her wrist because of the condition of the stairs from the laundry; look at the roofs of the church and dorter. Both wrecked. And it’s all because of the prioress.’

  ‘Explain,’ Baldwin ordered.

  ‘We are a poor institution. Ten, maybe twenty years ago, we had some wealth, but then the rich families stopped sending their daughters to us, and how else can we get money? No patron will give us funds, for what would be the point? Any man would give his donations to the larger places, where it is obvious that there will be people for many years to come, to say prayers for his soul; and then he would only give money to male convents. Monasteries get the chantry money, not nunneries; nuns can’t hold services.’

  ‘What has this to do with the girl’s death?’

  ‘Sir Rodney of Oakhampton has seen the dire condition of the priory, and wishes to confer upon our convent the parish church of Belstone, in order that the priory can build a new Lady Chapel, providing the prioress will allow him to have his tomb erected within it, and providing that she will also pay for a priest to celebrate Mass each day within the chapel and pray for Sir Rodney and his family.’

  ‘I presume that a parish church like Belstone would allow the convent to afford this?’ Baldwin probed. In truth he had never had much understanding of finance, and had no idea how much a little church like Belstone’s would generate.

  ‘Oh, yes, Sir Baldwin. It’s a generous offer. He wishes nothing that need be overly expensive to the priory. Four candles to burn each day, and the priory’s own chaplain to celebrate a daily Mass for the Blessed Virgin. That was about all his demand. Oh, and he expects us to accept any young girl whom he desires us to take as a nun, or when he has died, any girl nominated by his heirs.’

  ‘I see no reason why you should thus assume the prioress to have been involved in the novice’s death.’

  ‘Sir, as a gesture of good faith the noble knight gave the priory the first instalment to help us in the short period while the church is being made over to us. That money has gone straight to the new priest.’ She held Baldwin’s eye a moment, then looked at Bertrand, speaking primly. ‘It was intended for the roofs. Instead it has gone to this man.’

  ‘Who has seen her with the priest?’ Simon demanded.

  ‘Sir Bailiff, the man has been seen here before. The evening Moll died wasn’t the first time. Just two nights earlier I couldn’t sleep, and went to fetch water. As I returned, I saw a figure ahead of me, entering the door and climbing the stairs to our dormitory. I hurried after but lost sight of him.’

  ‘You don’t sleep very well, do you?’ Simon observed.

  ‘Is your dorter so vast a man could hide in an instant?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘Our prioress has a partitioned room near the staircase. The man must have entered it to satisfy his lust – and hers.’

  ‘That is a strong allegation.’

  Margherita drew a deep breath. ‘I am not fanciful; I saw someone. The night Moll died I was convinced I had seen a man. If he wasn’t a ghost, where could he have gone? Before I went to my bed, I . . . I must confess, I allowed myself to succumb to curiosity. I listened at the wall to the prioress’s chamber. That was where I heard heavy breathing – it wasn’t a woman’s breathing, my Lord. And—’

  ‘Do other nuns sleep so poorly?’ Simon in
terrupted.

  Bertrand held up his hand and nodded for her to continue.

  She drew herself up to her full height. ‘My Lord, I also heard kissing and the prioress’s voice, moaning, and calling very quietly to her “love”. That was when I left and went to my bed. I couldn’t listen to any more.’

  ‘You did not actually see her with this man?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘No, sir. But the next day I overheard Agnes, another novice, saying that she had heard odd noises. And that’s a great problem: Agnes is the girl Sir Rodney wishes us to look after. If she should tell her master what has happened here, I fear his reaction. He is a godfearing man, devout and honourable. If he were to come to believe that our priory was tainted, he would refuse to give us the church, and then we would be in worse financial trouble.

  ‘So no one has seen your prioress in flagrant or promiscuous congress with this priest?’ Bertrand demanded severely.

  Margherita hesitated. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And you saw nothing to indicate that your prioress so much as visited Moll that night, let alone killed her?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And yet you accuse her of murdering Moll, even though you have no evidence to show that she had any motive?’ Baldwin asked with disbelief. ‘Sister, if this were an ordinary investigation, you could be jailed for making such a malicious accusation without evidence.’

  ‘Moll saw him.’

  Baldwin turned upon her a suspicious look. ‘She saw whom – and when?’

  ‘Moll saw a man only the night before she was sent to the infirmary. She told me so, although I confess I hardly paid any attention at the time. I don’t listen to the novices’ gossip.’

  ‘I see. What exactly did the girl say?’

  ‘That she had seen a man walking up the stairs, just as I did on the night she died. He was dressed in a priest’s or canon’s robes; she couldn’t tell which because it was dark and the two are so similar.’