Unholy Murder: The Janna Chronicles 3

by Felicity Pulman

  Janna looked at the abbess’s costly robes, her carefully draped wimple, and the gold cross that hung down the front of her habit. She wondered who called the abbess to account for any infringements of the Rule. The priest? The bishop? Remembering her interview with the formidable abbess the night before, she suspected neither of them would dare to reprimand her. They wouldn’t have the courage.

  A pair of bright eyes caught Janna’s attention, and she watched in disbelief as a mouse crept out from under the wimple of a nun sitting nearby. It perched on the nun’s shoulder and began to groom its whiskers. A hand snaked up and fondled it surreptitiously.

  “That’s Chester,” Agnes muttered out of the side of her mouth. “He belongs to Sister Ursel. She’s the—” Her words were drowned by a sudden furious barking. A small dog shot off the lap of a nun sitting a few seats along and jumped onto the bench, pawing at Sister Ursel’s chest in a desperate bid to reach the mouse on her shoulder. The nun’s hand closed protectively around her pet while she pushed the dog away with a panicky gesture. She quickly secreted the mouse safely within the folds of her habit, and sat with bent head while the abbess turned on the dog’s owner.

  “I’ve warned you before—I’ve warned all of you—not to bring your animals into the chapter house,” she hissed furiously.

  “But—”

  “Silence!” the abbess thundered. “Do not make matters worse with feeble excuses, Sister Catherine. Remove yourself, and your dog, at once! And, as penance for disobeying the Rule, you may go to your bed hungry for the rest of the week. You will sit at the table with your sisters, but you will content yourself with a diet comprised only of bread and water while you contemplate the Sin of Disobedience.”

  The hapless nun jerked to her feet. Flushed with anger, she pushed past her sisters on her way to the door. As she passed, Janna caught a glimpse of her baleful glance at the downcast face of the mouse’s owner, who stayed seated on the bench. Even here, in the company of good women, it seemed that spite and rage still flourished. And fear too, Janna thought, as she surveyed the quaking Sister Ursel.

  “Sister Anne!” The name caught Janna’s attention and she leaned forward, eager to identify the infirmarian who looked after Agnes. She hoped the good nun wasn’t in trouble, but it seemed she was only being called to give an account of those in her care who were too ill to attend this inquisition.

  Sister Anne was a small, round nun in her later years, with rosy wrinkled cheeks and a cheerful smile. Just looking at her warmed Janna’s heart, and quashed some of her trepidation. If such a woman, obviously kind and obviously knowledgeable, could live here by choice and so cheerfully, there must be some good things about the abbey. She listened to the infirmarian’s clear voice discussing the progress of her patients and then, to Janna’s relief, the meeting in the chapter house seemed to be over, for everyone stood up. The nuns in front filed out in orderly fashion, but the lay sisters sat down again.

  The abbess had led the nuns out, but Sister Grace and the prioress remained. Her gaze fastened on Janna, and Janna immediately lowered her eyes, not wanting to draw attention to herself.

  One of the lay sisters leaped to her feet. “I have a fault to report.” Janna recognized the sharp whine from the night before. “We have a new lay sister and, I regret to say, I saw her running toward our refectory this morning.”

  Janna’s heart sank. She’d forgotten about the Sin of Running. From the way this lay sister spoke of it, it was obviously a grievous sin, right up there with…Janna was hard put to think of anything bad enough. Murder? Adultery? Sister Grace stepped forward. “The lay sister is indeed new to our abbey and unfamiliar with our ways. I am also to blame, for I kept her in the storeroom and so she was late going to the refectory to break her fast. I crave the convent’s indulgence for this infraction of the Rule. I undertake to reprimand our new sister, and I will make sure to set her on the right path. This will not happen again.”

  Janna was grateful that Sister Grace had spoken up for her. Her glance flicked to the complainer, who met her eyes with a vindictive smirk.

  “And she broke the Great Silence. She talked after we’d all retired to bed last night,” the gnat said virtuously.

  “That was my doing,” Agnes spoke up quickly. “Our new sister came late in the night and had nowhere to sleep. I offered to share my pallet with her, and I also explained to her some of our Rule for she knows nothing about how we live here in the abbey.”

  “That was kindly done, Sister Agnes,” Sister Grace said briskly, before the prioress could open her mouth.

  “And her hair is showing under her veil,” the gnat continued.

  Janna raised a hand and quickly tucked away an offending curl. She’d kept her hair cut short while masquerading as a youth. It was now just long enough to be untidy, but not long enough to be tied back and brought under control.

  Sister Grace frowned at the gnat. “I thank you, Sister Martha, for sharing your concerns with us,” she said, forestalling any further complaints. “You are always very quick to point out our faults and give us the chance to rectify them, and we are grateful, but in this case you should know that our new Sister Johanna has not lived within a religious community before, and therefore has much to learn. My hope is that we will all go out of our way to make her transition into our community as smooth and as pleasant as possible.”

  Effectively silenced, a frustrated Sister Martha sat down.

  “Laborare est orare,” the prioress said briskly, drawing all eyes in her direction once more.

  “To work is to pray.” Agnes’s lips hardly moved as she obligingly translated St Benedict’s injunction for Janna.

  “Silence!” The prioress glared at them both. “Today you will all join the lay servants at the home farm, for harvest is about to begin and your labor is needed there. The bailiff will meet you beside the barns. He will give you the implements you need, and explain which tasks he wants you to do. I’m sure I have no need to tell you that I expect your greatest care in harvesting our grain, for our livelihood, the very bread we eat, depends on you. A poor harvest means we all go hungry.”

  “Go with God and with a cheerful heart, in the knowledge that God cares for us and will provide for all our needs,” Sister Grace added with a cheerful smile. Janna wondered if she took pleasure in deliberately contradicting the prioress.

  She was about to rise and do as she’d been told when she realized that the prioress was now uttering a prayer, presumably entreating God for success in their endeavors. She settled back and waited for the prayer to be over.

  “Harvest!” Agnes sounded gleeful as the lay sisters poured out of the chapter house and once more threaded their way around the corridors of the cloister. “It’s hard work, cutting and binding the wheat, and tying it into sheaves. I’m often in great pain—” Agnes touched her scarred shoulder, “—but it’s worth it just to escape from the confines of the abbey for a time.” She skipped aside to avoid several children and young nuns, all of whom sat on the stone flagging on the south side of the arcade. They had wax tablets upon their laps, and were laboriously forming letters on the surface with a pointed metal stylus. Janna immediately stepped closer to watch. One of the sisters had settled herself at a small table at their head. She, too, had a tablet and she held it up for all to see while she demonstrated the letters she wanted them to copy. Sister Grace came to stand beside her, keeping an eye on her young charges. On noticing Janna, she smiled. Janna wanted to thank her for intervening on her behalf. She hadn’t expected such kindness from anyone. But Agnes had caught hold of her sleeve and was urging her on.

  “Can all of us learn our letters with Sister Grace and that other sister?” Janna asked eagerly.

  “Oh, no!” Agnes sounded shocked at the very idea. “Rich merchants pay to have their children taught their letters by our chantress, Sister Maria. That’s her sitting with Sister Grace over there. And some of those children are oblates. They’re given by their families to the church.
It’s Sister Grace’s task to look after them, that’s why she’s there.”

  “What about those nuns?” Janna gestured at the black-clad older students, who seemed to be about her own age.

  “They’re not nuns, they’re postulants or novices. They’ve paid a dowry to the abbey just to be here. So have the families of the oblates. You can’t just come in here without payment, Janna, not if you want to become a full member of the convent.”

  Depressed at having her hopes of learning to read and write crushed so quickly, Janna wondered what would happen if she cast herself on Sister Grace’s mercy, and begged to join the students. The nun had already shown that she was kind; perhaps she might agree. But the brief flare of hope was extinguished as she remembered the abbess’s command to work hard and earn her keep.

  “What about you? Are you going to become a nun?” Janna asked Agnes as they left the abbey precinct and walked on toward the fields rising in the distance.

  Agnes shrugged. “I have no dowry.”

  “Yet you’ve lived here since you were a child.” A thought occurred to Janna. “The abbess seems so greedy for money, I’m surprised she agreed to take you in. Or…” She was suddenly confused. “I beg your pardon, I mean no disrespect. Perhaps your parents paid for the infirmarian to take care of you?”

  “Not they.” Agnes gave a quiet chuckle. “They are poor peasants, tenants of the abbey. I believe I came with nothing more than a plump fowl as a gift. Fortunately for me, the old abbess was here then, although she died shortly after my arrival. I don’t remember her very well, but she is spoken of as if she were a saint. Everyone loved her, not like Abbess Hawise. Sister Anne once told me that as soon as our new abbess was elected, she tried everything to get my parents to take me back. But our dear infirmarian spoke up for me, and so did the other nuns, and for once, the abbess didn’t get her way.”

  “And are you glad about that? Do you like living here?” Looking at her new friend, Janna surmised Agnes to be some years older than herself. For certes she was of an age to be wed had she lived in a village and not an abbey. For once, the talkative Agnes was silenced. “Actually, I’ve never really thought about it,” she said finally, sounding surprised. “I’ve always taken my life here for granted.” She was silent a few moments more. “I know I said I’d like to marry and have children, but in truth I am content to stay here. This is my home; the nuns who live here are my family. Besides, I-I don’t wish to show my face outside the abbey. I prefer to stay where I’m known, where people are used to my appearance.”

  Janna nodded in understanding, but Agnes was not yet finished.

  “I’m used to the life here,” she said. “I work hard but I love the Lord so it is no burden. Indeed, my work gives meaning and purpose to my days. And it is a joy to hear the chants and singing of the nuns, and to join in with their worship.” She turned to Janna with a sudden smile. “Thank you,” she said simply.

  “For what?”

  “For making me realize I accept what has happened to me, and to know that, given the way I am, I’m happy to be here.”

  Happy? With all the sins that could be committed so unknowingly, and the confession and punishment that must follow thereafter? Janna shook her head in wonder.

  “But I still love harvest time, and the freedom of being out in the fields—and not having to observe the Great Silence,” Agnes confessed as they forded the river and crossed water meadows toward a number of roughly built wattle-and-daub barns.

  Freedom? Janna kicked out at her habit, irritated by its clinging folds when she’d become used to striding about in a man’s breeches. Yet Agnes spoke what was in her mind for she, too, relished being in the open space of the fields even after such a short time within the confines of the abbey.

  “Who lives over there?” She pointed to a cluster of small cots set around a pond.

  “The lay servants. They live here at the home farm with their families and they tend the abbey’s beasts and fields. Our work usually lies within the walls of the abbey itself but, as you see, our labor is called upon at busy times like haymaking and harvest. It’s always such a pleasure to be out in the open!” With a broad smile, Agnes pushed her way through the crowd gathering around a heavyset man in his middle years.

  “Good day to you, Master Will. God be with you,” she called cheerfully.

  “Sister Agnes. Welcome!” He smiled down at her, his countenance reflecting the pleasure of their re-acquaintance rather than registering her disfigurement. Janna thought he must be the bailiff, and his words confirmed it.

  “Those on my right will split into groups and walk in front to cut the wheat.” The sweep of his hand encompassed Janna, Agnes and several other lay sisters and laborers. Some of the laborers already carried sickles, which Janna thought they must own for their personal use. She followed Agnes to one of the sheds, where the bailiff’s underling handed her a small, curved blade and a pair of heavy gloves. She moved back and made an experimental stroke to slice through an imaginary plant. She and her mother had grown some wheat in their small patch, but it had never been enough for their needs and they’d been obliged to trade precious honey in return for bags of coarse flour from the miller. Still, she knew how to cut wheat, even if she’d never had a full field to practice on before.

  The bailiff indicated those remaining in front of him. “You will follow behind, to pick up the wheat and bind it into sheaves. Tomorrow you will alternate your tasks, taking it turn and turn about to either cut or bind. The stooks will then be piled into the wagon and carted to the barn.” He scanned the villeins in front of him, then beckoned to a couple of brawny youths. “I want you two to get out and cut gorse. Bring it to the barn. We’ll stack the wheat on a bed of it so that the prickles will keep out the rats.”

  The two chosen groaned loudly, obviously not relishing their task. The bailiff grinned briefly, then hailed a group of youngsters who were playing catch around the sheds. “Children! Listen to me. You are to follow behind everyone and glean the fallen grain. Make sure you get to it before the crows! I won’t have them getting fat while we go hungry!”

  A gust of laughter followed this injunction, and the bailiff beamed.

  “Before you go!” His words stopped the flow of workers toward the fields. “While harvesting takes place you will work until dinner time, after which you will be free to go to your own fields. As is the custom, you will receive your dinner from the abbey, and there will be a great feast when at last the harvest is safely in.”

  A hearty cheer went up. The hayward sounded his horn, and the bailiff held up his hand for silence. Janna noticed that he clasped a small straw doll. “The horn will sound at the start of each day of harvest,” he said, and solemnly handed the straw doll to the hayward.

  Janna listened, intrigued, as the hayward uttered a prayer. This prayer she could understand, for the man spoke in the Saxon language, asking God to bless the harvest and make it bountiful, and to keep the rain away until all the wheat was safely reaped and stored.

  “Amen,” the workers uttered with great fervor. They moved to the edge of the first field. There the hayward knelt and intoned another prayer while burying the straw doll. “Go to work, everyone,” he shouted and, in accordance with the bailiff’s instructions, Janna’s group began to cut the wheat.

  Janna had been toughened during the time she’d spent working the fields at the manor farm. Along with Edwin, the outlaw whom she’d first encountered in the forest, she had been expected to do a man’s labor every day. Although her muscles had initially almost seized up in protest, over time she’d become accustomed to the labor. Now she worked with a will, moving along in a line with the others, while the second group followed.

  Beside her, Agnes toiled without complaint, but there were beads of sweat on her pale forehead. She switched the sickle from her right hand to her left, and made an awkward attempt to keep on cutting the wheat. After a short time, she switched back again. She did this several times, and her movements b
ecame slower and her gestures more feeble. She winced each time she swung the sickle.

  “Why don’t you take a rest?” Janna urged.

  Agnes paused and straightened up with a groan. “No. If the hayward believes I’m not fit to do the work, I’ll be sent back to the abbey.” She flung her hand out to the sky, which arced blue and blazing above them. “I love to be out here. Smell the air! And the flowers! They’re so pretty!” She picked up a red deadnettle from among the cut wheat and sniffed its fragrance.

  “They’re weeds. They may be pretty, but they’re a nuisance—and some are poisonous.” Janna remembered her backbreaking weeks at the manor farm wrestling with just such weeds as these. Scratchy purple thistles, yellow flowering charlock, the white daisies of corn chamomile, bright blue cornflowers and pink corncockle. They lent color to the wheat fields but some were poisonous enough to kill.

  “How can you say they’re a nuisance when even our Lord loved wild flowers?” Agnes closed her eyes the better to remember. “‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these,’” she quoted triumphantly.

  “Who was Solomon?”

  “A famous king. It doesn’t matter. What matters is what the priest told us about the lilies of the field, and all that. Do you know that the big white ones are sometimes called Madonna lilies, after our blessed Virgin Mary? We have them in our church for feast days; they’re very beautiful. But they don’t smell as sweet as little wild violets.”

  “So you’re interested in plants?”

  “I don’t know much about them, but I always volunteer to work in the abbey gardens when I can. I love to look at the flowers. They’re so—so perfect.” Agnes’s tone was wistful.

  Janna wondered if she was reflecting on her own damaged face. “Just as well we’re not all lilies,” she commented briskly, anxious to distract her friend. “Who’d do all the toiling and spinning at the abbey then? Who’d bring in the harvest?”