Sorrow Without End

by Priscilla Royal

  “You could not tell our crowner this?”

  Thomas wiped the stinging sweat out of his eyes. “The Church chose to forgive me my past sins for reasons best known to God. In truth, my lady, I did not believe I could share this unique mercy with any man whose allegiance is to a secular lord, even though I call this man friend.” He forced himself to look at the woman standing before him.

  She seemed to study him for a long time in the gray light before saying, “I understand.”

  Had he won? If not, he was too feeble to fight his own weaknesses any longer.

  “Brother, I must ask you one question, to which I demand a truthful response.”

  “And thus shall I answer you.”

  “Did you commit any act of violence, treason, or cruelty that led to your imprisonment?”

  He took a breath. There had been only tenderness in his passion. As for treason, he saw no treachery in the love of one loyal subject of the king for another. What cruelty had he committed when Giles came willingly into his arms? “God may strike me if I lie, my lady,” he said firmly. “I committed none of those acts.”

  “Then I require one promise from you.”

  Thomas wanted to cry from the relief that now flooded through him. All he could do was nod.

  “Should you ever meet this jailer, you will not touch one hair on his body but will inform me immediately. In exchange,” her tone dropped deep with fury, “I swear that I shall make sure he suffers in kind for the sins he has committed.”

  Thomas fell to his knees, shaking with sobs. “My lady, I do promise it. Most willingly do I promise!”

  Eleanor called for the guard. As he unlocked the door to step inside, she laid her hand on the rough wood and thrust it open.

  “By my order, Brother Thomas shall now be freed,” she said. “Should any agent of secular justice dispute this, send him to me for I will be pleased to remind him that the law of God, not the king, rules at Tyndal Priory.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Were there any justice on earth, Ralf decided, he would be at the inn, getting roaring drunk, with buxom Signy wiggling on his lap and warming his very cold manhood. Instead, he was still at Tyndal, and his manhood was not the only part of him that was both chilled and shriveled.

  The incident with Sir Maurice had brought lay brothers racing to the chapel from all over the hospital. It had taken four to wrestle the man to the ground as he swung wildly at everyone with painful results. Although he had no weapon but his hands, he did wield them with the strength of ten demons until he finally collapsed, weeping like a baby. As the knight was led back to his bed, Brother Beorn’s rebuke was harsh enough, but Walter’s silent look was filled with mortal hatred.

  Surely that corpse was cursed. From the moment of its discovery, Ralf concluded, he had suffered only grief. Brother Andrew had made him feel the fool when he voiced his suspicion that an Assassin could be loose in Tyndal. The porter’s teasing was bad enough, but the crowner’s ever-weeping love wound for Sister Anne had reopened as soon as he saw her. As if the Devil was mocking him, Ralf was then seized with lust for Tostig’s young sister and had capped his betrayals by imprisoning a friend. Like the fool he might well be, he had ignored Walter’s warning, just because the man annoyed him, and freed whatever demons had settled in Sir Maurice’s soul. Worst of all, he had failed to find the killer. In sum, Ralf felt like an apple picked in autumn but not eaten until the Lenten season. He cursed, but even that did nothing to improve his mood.

  It was dark, and he had yet to talk to Sister Anne about the corpse. Although he dreaded facing her after the upbraiding she had given him, he needed her observations on the body, a discussion interrupted earlier by Thomas’ fainting fit. Afterward, he decided, he would go to the inn for some good ale. Even if he did not find a wench willing to bed with him, getting drunk was a fine idea.

  As he strode through the hospital seeking the sub-infirmarian, he looked over at the screened cells ranged against the wall. A tall, cowled figure stood near the one assigned to the dancing madman.

  Had Brother Thomas been released?

  Ralf stopped, started toward the man, then hesitated. Nay, he said to himself, no one would have done so without his permission. Despite his protestations, Brother Beorn must have found someone to keep the fellow in bed.

  He continued on his way and turned toward the chapel. “’S blood!” Ralf muttered. “Must I be reminded of Thomas?” He wanted to believe that the monk was innocent of any knowledge or involvement in the killing, but he could not ignore signs that suggested guilt of some kind.

  Thomas was not so womanish that he would sweat profusely, then pass out when he saw a corpse. The man had seen too much death, violent and natural, since his arrival at Tyndal and had shown only fortitude and courage. Something about this death had troubled the monk, and that Ralf could not set aside. Nonetheless, he hoped whatever his friend was hiding would be some minor thing. This was one of the few times he regretted being a crowner, but he was King Henry’s man and had an obligation to put justice over personal feelings.

  Taking Thomas into custody presented another problem. Those in the Church would certainly object to a secular man doing so with one of their own. With any luck, however, Ralf hoped he’d have found the killer, freed the monk, and made the issue as dead as the corpse in the chapel by the time the men of high church rank found out.

  On the other side of that argument, his brother might be satisfied that he had taken the action, leaving him alone to handle matters in the future without interference. Ralf snorted. How odd that he might have pleased his brother for once. In this one thing, however, they had always agreed. Monks and clerics should suffer secular justice when they committed worldly crimes. Their other brother, a man of rising religious rank, would vigorously disagree that the Church had always been far too lenient with its own. “For brothers, we are most certainly a contrary lot,” he said aloud.

  Yet he could not have put Thomas into custody without Prioress Eleanor’s concurrence. If the sheriff did leave him in peace to pursue this murderer, Ralf had her to thank. Whatever his feelings about religious and secular jurisdiction, he would never offend this woman, whom he did respect, to satisfy his brother, whom he did not. That the prioress had seen his plight and taken his side put him into her debt a second time in as many years. With anyone else, he would have feared what form reparation might take. With Prioress Eleanor, he had confidence that any repayment would be fair.

  Jurisdictional debates, favors owed, and a crowner’s duty all faded in the glare of one specific worry: the future of his relationship with Thomas. Perhaps he had had no choice but to put him in custody, but he hated doing so. If Thomas was found innocent of any involvement when the killer was found, Ralf knew that nothing might heal the wound he had inflicted on the man’s honor. In imprisoning the monk, he might well have lost a friendship he had grown to value. Ralf cursed, then kicked at something in his path.

  The hospital cat hissed and ran.

  “Satan’s balls! Can I do nothing right?”

  “Occasionally, Ralf. Occasionally.”

  Ralf spun around. Sister Anne stood just behind him. Her smile warmed him more than ale ever could. “I kicked the cat,” he mumbled, gesturing at the fleeing feline.

  “She must like you, else you’d be missing a chunk of your foot. Did you come to see your corpse?”

  He bit his tongue before he blurted out that the corpse could rot for all he cared and that he had come to see her. “Aye, and to hear your thoughts on it,” he said aloud.

  “Come then.”

  The crowner followed her through the chapel’s gated entrance. Why was it, Ralf wondered, that he could only talk with her over a dead body?

  ***

  They stood close to each other as Anne drew the cover back over the swelling body. “Not a happy death,” she said.

  “You are sure that he was gutted first?”

  “You saw
that mark on the back of his head, Ralf. Either he was hit from behind or he may have fallen backward, striking his head as he did. The skin is broken but I could detect no break in the skull. To bruise so, he was most likely alive when his belly was slashed open but I cannot tell how conscious he was.”

  “He could have bumped his head when he fell. The ground by the side of the road was rocky enough, but he was face down when we found him.” He pointed to the man’s chest. “What of the knife? What make you of that? Was he stabbed there first?”

  “After death, I think. There was little bleeding about the wound, and I do not think that knife you found was the same blade that spilled his guts.”

  “My suspicion as well, but tell me how you came by that conclusion.”

  “Look at the blade.” She handed it to him, hilt first. “It is so dull I could not cut myself if I tried. Another knife had to have been used. This one is more of an ornament than a weapon.”

  “Then why…?”

  “A message of some sort? I do not know.” She gestured at the body. “And this crusader has no more to tell me about it.”

  “Brother Andrew thinks that the knife may have come from Outremer.”

  “The script is Arabic. I believe our porter is correct, Ralf.”

  He looked at her with amazement. No wonder he had never stopped loving the woman. After all these years, she could still surprise him. “You recognize the design on the blade?” he asked.

  “We have had many crusaders come through Tyndal of late, most with things they have brought back to remind them of their days in Outremer. This is not the first time I have seen this script.”

  He fell silent, lost in adoring fascination as her brown eyes changed shade like shadows in the flickering candlelight. He coughed and looked down. “Aye?”

  “We have also heard many tales from returning soldiers about a sect whose leader sends men to kill, men who have no regard for their own lives. Assassins, I believe they are called. Had your corpse been a crusader of rank, I might have suspected that such a person had slipped into England to wreak vengeance for some perceived wrong. This soldier is of low birth, as Cuthbert did tell me. Surely this Old Man of the Mountain, as I’ve been told their leader is named, would not bother with a poor man.”

  “Might he not do so to spread fear amongst us? Might not this murder be an attempt to weaken our resolve in the Holy Land?”

  “Only a fool unleashes the storm winds of fear, Ralf. Since no man has the power to direct how they may blow, they could just as easily destroy those who hope most to benefit from them, although the innocent always suffer long before that happens. Nay, from the tales I have heard, the Old Man of the Mountain prefers to send his minions against the powerful only.”

  Although he might disagree with her about the effectiveness of fear, at least Anne had not dismissed his concern about the Assassins as casually as Brother Andrew. “Then I must still ask why this corpse was stabbed with an ornamental knife from the Holy Land after he was butchered like a wild boar for the table.”

  Anne put one hand on her hip. “Answer that, Ralf, and you have your killer for cert.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  He listened with affection to the staggered, harsh breathing of the dying around him. How could the living hate and fear these so as if they were the enemy? The dead would understand his fondness for them. Few of the living ever would.

  Was it a frightened man, then, who had screamed in the chapel where that gutted corpse lay? Nay, that was not the howl of fear, he replied in his soul’s silent place. That was the roar of rage. If God and Satan could bless one so wicked with hallowed death, then surely one who believed his sins might exceed those of the dead one could believe he deserved equal grace. Aye, it was fury in that voice, not fear. He, a coward that had led his beloved wife to slaughter, knew this to be so.

  He rubbed his forehead, then studied a watery streak of blood on his hand and grieved. A contemptible creature, he still twitched on the earth. Not all the living were so loathsome perhaps. In some he saw a bright ember of pain at the edge of their souls. For those he prayed it would burst into a tower of flames and send them to death without memory. The rest? A few he pitied, for they had been blinded by conjured joy. Others were Satan’s spawn.

  The praying nun was one. Unlike the tall one who had kindly found a quiet place for him to sit and listen to the sounds of dying men, this one babbled on and on, her voice grating like a rusty gate in his ears. How dare she jabber endlessly about the kindness of God? A God there might be, but He had neither ears nor eyes, yet she knelt with her hands raised and eyes closed, her body swaying as if she expected Him to notice.

  Whore! Did she think to seduce Him with her soft body and piteous cries? “God was not seduced by my wife when she raised her hands, begging to be saved from rape and an inconceivable death,” he muttered. “Why should He listen to you?”

  He began to sweat in the cold air, then snickered. Of course the nun might not know any better. She always shut her eyes while she whined her prayers. Thus she would fail to see God turn His face away. If she was to learn the lesson forced upon his wife, she must pry those lids apart and see all. His wife’s eyes were wide open when she died.

  He blinked. Perhaps the nun was no woman at all. If she were a demon, she could not bear to look upon God. Perhaps Satan’s whore, the one he should have slain in the chapel, had sent her to him. Or had God Himself ordered a spirit to distract him from his desire for Hell?

  Nay, she must be a demon. In her dress and manner, she resembled most her evil mistress. Besides, God mocked with silence, not with buzzing babble. Chattering was the Devil’s tool, but one he would no longer tolerate.

  With eyes burning, he stared at the masonry in a wall. The cracks wiggled like worms as the pain in his head grew worse. Which should he send back to their dark master first, he asked himself, the false prioress or her feigned nun?

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The day had dawned as dark as night. Eleanor rose before the call to Matins and knelt at her prie-dieu in reverential prayer. Despite the disloyalty of her body, her soul once again willingly pledged fealty to the God she had sworn to serve.

  The air had been so chill with coming winter that she had very quickly splashed herself with water from the basin near her bed. Perhaps, she thought with grim humor, she should wash herself twice daily in the colder seasons if doing so numbed her body this well.

  When the bells did ring for Matins, she joined the nuns for prayer, then led them to Chapter. Yesterday she had given them the tidings about the murder in the forest. Unlike their response to that killing the summer she had first arrived, her nuns did not greet this news with wide-eyed terror, and the monks had responded more with grief at worldly violence when the acting prior told the tale on the other side of the priory.

  Today, her flock remained calm. No matter how grieved the religious might be over this latest tragic act, they had received the news with relief, feelings some might call selfish but which most mortals would share. In either case, they did have cause for gratitude. This time the murderer had not broached their gates. God had kept their walls strong against the violent storms of worldly sins. Armageddon was not yet coming. They were safe.

  Or so Eleanor allowed them to believe. The possibility that the murderer might be hiding within their walls was not a suggestion she wanted to voice. Panic would help no one in this matter, but the success of her deliberate silence was dependent upon a quick resolution of the crime. With the crowner roaming the hospital and questioning all, Eleanor knew that her flock would surely realize, before another night had passed, that danger skulked in the shadows of their passageways.

  Although she had full confidence in Ralf’s abilities, the crowner was not leader here nor was he ultimately responsible for the safety of the religious at Tyndal. Yesterday she had been unable to send her own wits as hounds to the hunt. After freeing Thomas, she had been summoned to s
ee the cracked masonry in the parish church that threatened to fall on the faithful. By the time she had arranged for repairs, night had put an end to any questioning of men, mad or not. Today she would broach no further delay. After telling Gytha that all problems, except the most dire, should be directed to Sister Ruth, Eleanor took the path to the hospital.

  Although the day was dismal and many shared the mood, Eleanor felt at peace. Her patient prayers last night had been rewarded with a balm of tranquility that had eased her into a soothing sleep. Thus she had risen quite refreshed. With some small degree of calm, she turned her thoughts back to Thomas.

  She had believed his tale. How could she not? It was hardly a story a man would make up when the details could be so easily confirmed. At least by establishing both his innocence and ignorance of the crime, she had eliminated one unprofitable path to finding the killer.

  Eleanor bent forward as a strong gust hit her. The raindrops stung her eyes and face. Should she have demanded more details of the crime that had placed Thomas in that brutal place, she asked herself? He had sworn it was neither a violent nor a political act, and she knew the Church must have forgiven him whatever sins he had committed. Last night she had decided the knowledge of that absolution must suffice for her as well.

  Today, she was not so sure. Had her curiosity been idle, Eleanor would have set it aside. It was not, however. Unlike the other members of her priory, she had been given almost no information about Thomas’ background since his arrival at the priory. Nor had he been exactly forthcoming himself. Even Anne, with whom he worked most closely, knew little about him. Perhaps, she thought, her questions had less to do with Thomas’ past and more to do with why the abbess in Anjou had told her so little of this man.

  She shook her head. This was not the time to worry over this. Whatever crimes Thomas may have committed, the Church had chosen to forgive him and accept his vows as a priest. Of equal importance, he had proven his worth to her many times over, but his melancholic moods and troubled sleep suggested that there was much in her monk’s past, details that were probably irrelevant at the moment. Nonetheless, she remained troubled that someone had decided she should be kept ignorant of it.