Wild Justice

by Priscilla Royal

  This is truly a hopeless task, Anne thought with sorrow. “If only this problem would just vanish,” she prayed in a soft voice. “I want to return to our priory and heal the sick to the best of my ability in God’s name. I am weary of violence and safely uttered lies.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  When the door to the priory slammed behind them, neither priest nor monk said anything further to each other as they walked the short distance back to the men’s house.

  The temporarily displaced gloom resettled like a sharp rock in Thomas’ soul, and he felt no inclination to further joust wits with this priest. Yet he mulled over the information the man had given him and noted the priest’s own pensive expression.

  Perhaps Father Pasche regretted divulging as much as he had, or maybe he had simply grown weary with the effort to distract Thomas from seeking troubling facts. In any case, they shared a silence that was oddly companionable.

  When they reached the door to the commandery, Father Pasche seemed to remember the need for courtesy to a guest, no matter how unwelcome, and he turned to the monk with a rigid smile.

  But the door flew open, and an agitated lay brother burst out. “Father Pasche! Brother Thomas! You must go to the fishponds at once! Brother Martin has been found dead!”

  The man’s arms flapped about in consternation, and for a moment Thomas was reminded of a chick tentatively trying to fly.

  But then the words sank in. “Brother Martin is dead?”

  The priest glanced at Thomas with blatant incredulity, then back at the lay brother. “Both of us?”

  Gasping, the man recovered his breath and nodded with an emphatic vigor. “Brother Damian requires you both.”

  Thomas returned the priest’s look with an equal show of confusion. “We must go,” he said.

  With a wave of his hand for them to follow, the lay brother hurried off with Thomas close behind.

  Father Pasche hesitated, then joined them.

  ***

  Brother Damian knelt by the lifeless body of the young religious and sobbed. When he heard the sound of the men approaching, he tried to mute his groans, but tears stubbornly continued to flow.

  How ashen he is, Thomas thought. Despite the commander’s past stern demeanor, the monk could tell that he truly grieved.

  Rising to his feet, Damian ignored the priest but nodded to the monk and swiped at his cheeks in an unsuccessful effort to hide the evidence of his sorrow. “Thank you for coming so quickly, Brother,” Damian said, and angrily rubbed again at the remaining dampness. “I need your expert opinion.”

  Thomas was surprised. How inconsistent, he thought. The commander must doubt the death was accidental, but why assign the dead man to shadow me and then ask me to examine the spy’s corpse?

  He bit back a sharp retort and instead replied with gentleness. “Perhaps Father Pasche should first whisper comfort into Brother Martin’s ear while there is still time to give the peace of hope to his lingering soul.”

  The commander blinked as if he had forgotten the priest was even there. “Of course he should.”

  Keeping some distance from the dead man, Father Pasche stood motionless and stared at the body, his color as white as the corpse’s face.

  Thomas was puzzled by the man’s reaction. This would not have been the first body the priest had ever seen, and probably not the first who had died by misadventure. He would have done the ritual himself, but he was not of this Order. Pasche was.

  “Father Pasche?” Damian walked over to the man and put a firm hand on his arm. “His soul is in agony, and he did not deserve this fate.”

  The commander’s touch startled the priest, and he stumbled backwards.

  Damian grabbed him lest he fall, and then jerked the man forward. He gestured to the corpse with his stump. “Now!”

  With incredible slowness, Father Pasche approached the dead body, collapsed to his knees, and began whispering into the dead lad’s ear.

  Thomas watched him with astonishment, then felt the hot breath of someone standing too close.

  “Brother Thomas, I beg a favor of you,” Brother Damian muttered. “Please examine our brother’s body and tell me if this was murder.”

  Thomas bent over the dead youth and studied him. Martin’s head was wet, and his robes were drenched from his shoulders to waist. “Where was he found?” he asked, looking up at the three assembled Hospitallers.

  Father Pasche now stood many feet away from the others and stared into the tall grass toward one willow tree near the pond bank.

  The lay brother who had led them here pointed to the fishpond. “I found him lying over there.”

  “Show me.”

  The lay brother took him to the spot. “He was lying in the water, almost up to his waist. I pulled him out by his feet, but, as soon as I laid him down on the path, I knew he was dead.” Pushing a fist to his mouth, he tried to stifle a sob. “I went immediately to tell Brother Damian.”

  “And for what reason had you come here?”

  Damian had overheard and replied, “I sent him to seek Brother Martin. Earlier, I had ordered the lad to find a cat to hunt the rats in the chapel. When he never returned, I wondered why.”

  Thomas glanced back to the trembling lay brother. “Show me what you did after you pulled him out.”

  “It was here that I made sure he was not breathing.” He pointed to the spot on the path. “And then I took him by his feet and dragged him this way.” The man gestured as he walked to the place where the body now lay. “It was easier than lifting him…” He seemed embarrassed as if he had insulted, or even hurt, the dead boy by dragging him.

  “Was there any reason why you put the body there?”

  The lay brother bowed his head. “The grass looked soft and dry,” he murmured. “I thought he would be more comfortable.” Grasping the incongruity of what he had just said, he began to weep.

  “That was kind of you,” Thomas replied and gripped the man’s shoulder in sympathy. Then he walked carefully around the area. The mud in the path was so thick it would never hold the imprint of a foot, he thought. Then he gazed at the edges of the pond, but all he could see was where the earth had crumbled. This could have occurred if Brother Martin had slipped and fallen in or when the lay brother had pulled him out. Now there was no way to tell if it had been intact before the lad had drowned.

  Yet if the earth collapses under a man, he will usually go into the water feet-first, he thought. If he is pushed, he is more likely to fall head-first. If he slips, however, he could fall either way. Perhaps the loss of this particular evidence was irrelevant.

  He could see the heavy weeds floating in the dark water. Were someone to fall head-first, he might have become entangled in them and unable to pull himself out. The mud would not allow purchase by feet or a desperate hand. And he noted the torn weeds where the lay brother said he had pulled the body out.

  Except for one fact, he might have reasonably concluded that the evidence suggested a tragic accident. That detail was the depth of the water. Although that might have risen far higher elsewhere, he doubted the depth here was greater than a couple of feet. To have drowned in so little water, the youth was either unconscious or terrified.

  Thomas turned toward the Hospitallers. “Could Brother Martin swim?” If he could, he would have been less likely to have panicked when he fell in.

  Pasche did not raise his eyes. “No,” he replied in a barely audible voice.

  Thomas turned back to examine the drag marks through the grass leading back to the body. He wasn’t certain, because the lay brother had been somewhat imprecise about the route he had taken after pulling the body out of the pond, but he saw spots in the nearby grass that might have been trampled down quite recently. The heavy rain had ceased and would not be the cause. In other places, slightly further away, the grass was unbroken. Trying not t
o step into the areas, he tried to peer around for any evidence but found nothing.

  “Why would he have come here if he was searching for a cat?”

  The lay brother shrugged.

  Brother Damian scowled. “I have no knowledge of cats.”

  “They sometimes come to eat dead fish,” the priest replied.

  Thomas went back and knelt again by the side of the body. If the lad had seemed innocent in life, he looked almost angelic in death—or would have, if his eyes were not staring as if he had just seen Satan. Gently, the monk ran his hands over the boy’s lids to close them.

  With sadness, he studied Brother Martin’s face. It was filthy with mud and littered with strands of pond weeds. There were a few scratches. Not deep. Any blood would have been washed away. But they could have been the result of pulling him over pebbles and bits of wood in the bank if he had been lying facedown.

  He sat back, then asked the lay brother, “Was he lying facedown or faceup when you found him in the pond?”

  “Down,” the man said, and gulped uncomfortably.

  Then the scratches were most likely the result of dragging him out of the pond and onto the path. Next, Thomas felt the chest, shoulders, and arms but found no broken bones. There were no tears in his robe that would suggest stabbing, and his neck was without mark. Strangling was not the reason the man had died.

  The monk next looked at the fingers and nails. They were free of mud. “Were his hands in the water?”

  “I don’t recall,” the man said.

  The hands were damp, so Thomas assumed the water might have washed them clean, destroying any evidence that the lad had struggled to gain purchase on the slippery bank. Sitting back, he regretted he did not have a private place to more thoroughly examine the naked corpse and also wished Sister Anne was beside him with her greater knowledge.

  Very gently, he turned the body over and felt the back of the head. As he did, he found the evidence he feared. The back of the youth’s skull had been shattered. The wound would have been fatal and could not have occurred in this soft earth by accident.

  Brother Martin did not drown. He had been murdered.

  He swallowed a groan and quickly gazed around but knew his wish had no hope of being granted. Any rock or other implement would have been tossed somewhere into the pond.

  The commander was instantly by his side with the priest close behind. “Is all well, Brother?”

  Thomas made a swift decision he feared he might regret later, but he had no cause to trust either of these men. With one questionable death already and the strange decision to keep him from speaking with his prioress, he didn’t know how the news of another murder would be greeted. Standing up, he brushed his hands free of dirt. “The most likely conclusion is that poor Brother Martin died by accident.”

  When Father Pasche exhaled an audible sigh of relief, and Brother Damian shot the priest a warning look, Thomas concluded that his choice to lie might have been the right one.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Sister Anne finished telling her prioress about her odd meeting with Brother Thomas in the cloister.

  “If he has been assigned a guardian, then we have one as well,” Eleanor said. “Janeta is clearly our watchdog.”

  “I know nothing about Brother Martin, but I sense that the maid does her assigned duty with some reluctance,” Anne replied.

  The window to the outside was firmly shuttered, and Eleanor glared at it once as she paced. Her impatience was palpable, and her frown was more eloquent than any words. Abruptly, she stopped. “What is your opinion of the lass?”

  “She seems genuinely devoted to Sister Amicia,” Anne said immediately, then stopped to think. “But her future is in doubt.”

  “I asked her about what she might do when her mistress can no longer keep her in service. She replied that God would decide. A worthy conclusion, but He has given us latitude to find our own paths. I wonder if she has thought about that, and, if so, what she has concluded.” Eleanor resumed her pacing.

  “I have never noticed her laugh, yet rarely has she been sullen while assigned to us. If serving us is not pleasing to her, she has never been less than obedient.”

  “Any unhappiness is probably due to her uncertainty about her near future. But do you trust her?” Eleanor stopped and waited for her friend to think about this.

  The answer was almost immediate. “No.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “We are in agreement that she is not the one we might entrust to take Brother Thomas a message?” Briefly, the sub-infirmarian smiled.

  “Not unless we wanted it to pass through Prioress Emelyne’s ears or eyes first, for she must be the one who assigned Janeta to watch us.”

  “So there is a deliberate plan to keep Brother Thomas from communicating with us, and we are equally denied contact with him. Why? Do they not believe you injured your ankle and that is the sole reason we have remained here longer than planned?”

  Eleanor sighed. “Either my artifice was believed or it doesn’t matter. We do enjoy some reputation in solving crimes, and that can make those suffering guilty consciences grow uneasy if we remain near them too long.”

  “You suspect either or both Prioress Emelyne and Brother Damian killed Mistress Hursel?” Anne was shocked.

  “I cannot say that, but they must have some purpose in keeping us apart and assigning us guards.”

  “If they killed Mistress Hursel, they are dangerous, and our own lives may be in peril.”

  “Even if Prioress Emelyne or Brother Damian were involved in the death of Mistress Hursel, why would Prioress Emelyne harm us and endanger her current position? If two or more murders were to occur now at Mynchen Buckland, the Prior of England would swiftly send a delegation to investigate the calamity.” She touched her friend’s arm. “I think we might have some confidence in our safety.”

  Anne shivered. “I would rather we not be the cause for such an investigation by Clerkenwell.”

  Eleanor agreed. “Nor do I have any intention of letting such a thing happen. Our ability to find the actual killer is limited, even if we had the right to freely question people here. Our best hope is to prove that Sister Amicia cannot be guilty, or even that the crime should be more thoroughly investigated before she receives a final sentence. I fear we can do little more.”

  “And thus you could keep your word to the former prioress. Will it allow us to leave here unharmed?”

  “Sister Amicia is dying. Had the murder not occurred, it is likely, from what you have learned, that Prioress Emelyne would have been chosen after her death by the nuns to lead them. Why would she want to harm us if all we do is convince her that her former leader is innocent or likely so?” She tilted her head and watched her friend, then added, “And why would the new prioress want to kill Mistress Hursel and make sure Prioress Amicia is found guilty if her eventual election was so certain? It is unlikely that she had any doubt in the matter. Election results are rarely a surprise.”

  Anne looked at Eleanor for a long time before asking, “You don’t want to uncover the murderer?” Her tone revealed her skepticism.

  “Of course I do! But we must be prepared for a lesser conclusion to our search.” Eleanor sat down on the bed. “To make sure none of us becomes the next victim of this murderer, we might consider whether or not we should allow Prioress Emelyne and her brother to understand that our only wish is to show that Sister Amicia is highly unlikely to have committed the crime.”

  “You would take the woman into your confidence?”

  “Only if required. It is always wise to plan for more than one road to the destination lest one is blocked.”

  “Since it is clear that we cannot speak with Brother Thomas, nor he with us, what other path can we take?” Anne threw up her hands in frustration.

  “You have said that Sister Richolda
is trustworthy?”

  Anne nodded.

  “She is the only infirmarian here. That means she provides salves and potions to the men’s house. If she does, and is willing, we might ask her to take a message to Brother Thomas with her next basket of herbs. Perhaps there is a way she can set up a meeting between you and him?”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Father Pasche sipped his wine, but his sour expression suggested he found little pleasure in it.

  Brother Damian slammed his cup down on the table. “What is troubling you?”

  “Why did you ask the monk to examine the corpse? Do you trust him or not? And if you do, why bother asking me to act as a barrier to any communication with his prioress? I am not the king’s fool and here only to amuse you, Damian.”

  “You do not have the sense of a king’s fool! Do you not realize there is a murderer out there?”

  Pasche’s hand trembled, and a splash of wine dampened his black robe. “What do you mean?”

  “We thought the former prioress killed Mistress Hursel. Now Brother Martin is dead. The killer is still free.”

  Pasche stared at him. “Brother Thomas said the death was an accident.”

  “The monk lied.”

  “If so, and I have my doubts about that, then we urged the conviction of an innocent woman?” The priest’s face was ashen.

  Damian shrugged.

  “This is no casual matter! It was you, not I, who first insisted Prioress Amicia killed the woman. It was you who said she had cause to murder her because of dark secrets in her past. Dark secrets. Your words, not mine.”

  “I did not say she had, only that we might as well accept a guilty verdict. Why contest the accusation when there was no proof anyone else did it, she was the most likely suspect, and she is dying anyway? We all agreed to beg the Prior of England for a merciful incarceration here since her death was imminent.”

  “Et cetera! Et cetera!”