Justice for the Damned

by Priscilla Royal

  Eleanor laid a sympathetic hand on Alys’ arm.

  Gaining solace from the supportive touch, the young woman continued. “My Bernard is the son of a glover in the village, one who had an established business when he died last year…”

  “…a man closer to your age who has not yet acquired much or any wealth?” The failure to add the word profitable had not escaped Eleanor’s notice.

  “But one who will in due course! Of that I am confident. If my parents had found him so unacceptable as a husband, why was he never discouraged, even barred from coming to court me? Surely our blushes must have spoken the truth of our desire to marry. We did nothing to hide our feelings. We had no cause. Yet, after my father’s death, my mother became obsessed with this vintner and now claims Bernard is unsuitable!”

  “Did your father never speak of this arrangement to you?”

  “No.”

  The prioress noted with curiosity that the girl’s eyes remained quite dry when she spoke of this recently deceased father. “Was his death sudden?” she asked softly. “Perhaps he did not have time…”

  Alys turned away from Eleanor. “He and I spoke together as little as possible. What he wished to convey to me, he usually did through my mother. You need not waste comforting words on me, Sister. Although I sought to obey the man’s will, as one must a sire, I bore no love for him. For that I shall gladly serve my time in Purgatory, but I cannot feel repentant.” She pressed tight fists into her thighs, before continuing in a hoarse whisper: “He beat my mother when he drank more than he ought and mounted her with as little tenderness as if she were a common whore rather than his wife. My first memory of them both was this.”

  The cruelty in the tale hit Eleanor’s heart with brutal force. She closed her eyes but could not stop herself from exclaiming, “You poor child!”

  When Alys turned back to face the nun, all adult defiance had faded from her voice, replaced with a child’s confusion. “When my father died, I thought my mother would see Bernard’s fine qualities and how kind he is to me. My mother is a loving woman, Sister! After she had suffered so, I was sure she would wish just such a sweet man as husband for her daughter, but I was mistaken. She holds to Master Herbert as if her very soul depended on our marriage. Had I not known otherwise, I would now think my mother, not my dead father, had chosen him for me.”

  The deep exhaustion, which Eleanor had tried firmly to will away, now returned with unavoidable force. Quickly, she gestured toward the stone seats. When they sat, Eleanor hid the trembling of her body by bracing herself on the stone and bending toward Alys as if encouraging the confidential talk. “What lack do you see in the man your mother is so set on?”

  “Oh, he has enough of his teeth left,” Alys said, her anger glowing in the bright spots on her cheeks, “and his breath does not reek of the grave!” She wilted into the seat with utter defeat. “I cannot explain my objections. When I am with him, he makes sure my mother is in attendance. He has never tried to dishonor me, yet he whispers things in my ears that I do not care for. When I protest, he claims I have misunderstood, and his reasons are well expressed. I often conclude I am misjudging him.” Her lips twisted as if she had just tasted something foul. “Nonetheless, I draw back from him and cannot bear even the touch of his robe. I am unable to explain further, Sister. Truly I cannot!”

  “What sort of things does he say?”

  Alys flushed, her face now completely scarlet. “He has suggested that Bernard and I have already bedded.”

  “Have you?” Eleanor asked gently.

  The young woman turned her head away as if she were confessing her sins. “I have fondled him most lovingly, and Bernard has kissed me in such a way that I have almost swooned. Yet, on my faith, I am still a virgin.” She glanced at the nun beside her as if to gauge her reaction.

  Eleanor compared one sweet summer eve at Wynethorpe Castle, before she took final vows, with her lustful dreams at Tyndal and knew just how innocent these two young people were of mortal sin. She nodded.

  With pleased surprise, Alys smiled.

  “Was the vintner married before?”

  “Aye, for some years, but his wife drowned. Master Herbert has always claimed she slipped. Others say she committed self-murder, for she was in much pain from a running sore in her womb that refused to heal. The crowner believed she had willfully drowned and so her soul was cursed and her body laid in an unsanctified grave.”

  This would be Mistress Eda, Eleanor thought. The other ghost. Yet she could see no way to turn her questions to restless spirits when this girl needed a compassionate ear. “Might the vintner be unaccustomed to wooing after years of marriage? Could he have meant well and intended only to show that he understands the passions of youth?”

  Alys shrugged. “As I have said, I cannot explain why his words trouble me. When he murmurs in my ear that he is capable of riding me until I scream with joy, I should conclude that he means to convey how skilled a lover he will be. Yet I hear only that I will scream. In that prospect, I find neither comfort nor joy.”

  Surely the man was not cruel, Eleanor thought, and is unaware of the violent mating between the girl’s parents. Yet there was something in the way Alys had repeated the man’s words that troubled her. “This Master Herbert may not possess skilled phrasing, but surely… Was he not acquainted with your father?”

  “Aye, and must have known full well what manner of a husband he was to my mother. Only she believed that she hid the bruises from the neighbors, and, if I could hear her piercing cries outside the house, they did as well. Master Herbert cannot be ignorant of any of this.”

  After hearing this tale, I shall always be grateful that I knew how tenderly my parents loved each other before my mother’s cruel death, Eleanor thought. Children are not without ears or eyes, although many seem to think they are.

  Alys looked up at the sky in shock. “Sister, I did not hear the bells, but the time must be past None! I promised my mother that I would accompany her to prayers, and she will be worried.” She reached out her hand and grasped Eleanor’s much smaller one in hers. “I thank you for listening to my woes.”

  The prioress squeezed the hand that held hers. “Should you wish to speak further, ask Brother Porter to summon Eleanor of Tyndal.”

  Watching the girl rush away along the path to the gate, Eleanor knew she had not served her well. She must seek the young woman out on the morrow, before fatigue had dulled her wits, and provide wiser and more comforting advice.

  Anne helped her rise, and the two walked slowly back through the gardens. Alys’ sadness over the death of her uncle reminded Eleanor of the black humors cursing Brother Thomas.

  He should go into the village to seek the truth behind these apparitions, she decided, and do so tonight. The sub-infirmarian had been right about the eagerness that had returned to his eyes when Sister Beatrice suggested he find meaning behind the ghost. If she did not have to snatch that joy from him, she would not. A crowded inn was safe enough. The task should not pose any danger.

  Before Wulfstan’s death, the hauntings had been benign. Why would they have suddenly turned deadly? She could see no apparent reason, which surely suggested there was no connection between some jape and murder. The sooner the two things were separated, the better. Cautious fear of a mortal killer was reasonable, but rumors of ghosts often allowed Dread to let loose her most foul child, Panic.

  She had already warned the monk to take care lest the spirit turn out to be a man or imp with malicious intent. Now she would order him to leave the inn if he began to suspect that the phantom and slayer were the same, or if he learned something that pointed to the murderer’s identity. Under no circumstances was he to investigate further. She would not allow it. That was the work of the sheriff.

  After all, Wulfstan had been killed outside religious walls. Once the ghost had been revealed as a man, the sheriff would no longer have his pretence of an argument and must drag himself back from h
is boar hunting.

  Eleanor brightened at the thought. Then she might consider her own duty to Wulfstan’s family done and retreat to her sanctuary from the world’s violence with a clear conscience. She grew eager to resolve this matter quickly.

  Chapter Eleven

  Thomas waited for Brother Porter to open the massive wooden gate and wondered what the old monk thought of this strange command to let him go into the village when he should be at prayer.

  “God be with you,” the porter whispered.

  “Pray for me,” Thomas replied with sincerity, noting only benevolence in the old man’s eyes. With a sigh, he wondered if he would ever be capable of such unquestioning obedience.

  At least the air was mild tonight, he noted, as he walked toward the bridge leading to the inn. Had God tempered it as a kindness, wishing to remind all mortals that the season of life was upon them despite Wulfstan’s cruel death?

  Looking around, the monk saw nothing that resembled any ghost. He felt a momentary disappointment, almost as if he had been found unworthy of some crucial test. Reasoned arguments may have proven that no such spirit could exist, but he, Thomas, was troubled by Sayer’s fears and even by the merchant’s suggestion. Men of accepted wisdom have been wrong before, he thought with some irreverence, although he would not voice his fleeting doubts about wandering souls to either Sister Beatrice or her niece.

  When he reached the bridge, he stopped. He would have no problem finding the inn. Even at this distance, he could hear the laughter, shouts, and snatches of song. A memory flashed through his mind of another inn, one in London where he and Giles had often found a woman to share for an evening. Something twisted painfully inside him. He struck his heart with his fist, and the image shattered like some fragile object.

  “I should never have decided to go to this inn as a traveling monk,” he muttered aloud as he started across the Avon. Belatedly, he realized that he had been wrong about a disguise. He should have hidden his tonsure with a hood and dressed as a farmer on pilgrimage. In religious robes, he would stand out in the crowd, and the sight of monks at an inn either shut men’s mouths or opened them with rude jests. It was too late to return, and he strongly doubted that either his prioress or her aunt would approve of a secular disguise.

  He ground his teeth in frustration. Was he wasting his time tonight? He would certainly try to discover what was behind this haunting of the priory, but his real purpose was to find out anything he could about threats to the Amesbury Psalter. His prioress was troubled over Wulfstan’s death, but she had no idea that the man was reputed to be a thief or at the very least had associated with robbers many years ago.

  When he told her about the conversation with Mistress Jhone and Master Herbert, he had omitted that bit of information. He understood her clever mind well. After all, he was forbidden to tell her of his mission, and he feared she might begin to ask too many questions if she knew this detail. Although it was unlikely she would conclude the Psalter was in peril or guess his involvement in its protection, he could not chance it. Her mind was capable of amazing leaps of logic, an observation he had had frequent opportunities to make during the last two years.

  Fortunately, Prioress Eleanor seemed most concerned that Wulfstan’s death was being linked to the phantom and shared his own suspicion that the ghost was but a boy’s sport, a mischievous act beginning to turn nasty. As for murder, she had forbidden him to pursue any such thread on the reasonable assumption that it was the sheriff’s job to do so, despite the man’s blatant disinclination to investigate much of anything.

  Thomas was grateful that Amesbury’s sheriff had decided to go off hunting. This gave him time to look into any possible relationship between the murder and this manuscript theft. It troubled him that he would be disobeying his prioress. Had he been able to explain what he had been sent to do, she might well have approved and aided him in his task. Once again, he cursed his spy master for refusing to inform her of his role for the Church.

  Even if he resolved the ghost issue tonight, Thomas decided he must keep this knowledge to himself, at least for a short while. If he claimed that someone, who might know the facts about the jape, would be at the inn the next evening—or even the next—he could provide reason for being outside the priory again if need be. The deceit would be innocent enough, but he did hate lying to Prioress Eleanor, whom he held in such high regard.

  Thomas spat. He could do little as he willed in this matter. Had he been able to choose what action to take first, he would not be on the way to the inn. He would be visiting Jhone for answers to some questions without the presence of Herbert, a man he strongly disliked.

  A loud splash startled Thomas, and he stopped by the side of the bridge to peer into the darkness. Had a dead limb from some winter-damaged tree fallen into the river, or was the cause something more sinister? Seeing nothing, he shuddered and continued on.

  Of course he did not trust the man. Herbert was of the prosperous merchant class, a greedy lot as far as the monk was concerned, demanding prompt payment of debts from those for whom coin was scarce. No student or poor clerk liked them, and Thomas had been both. As far as he was concerned, the fellow would say anything to make a profit. When Herbert mentioned the ghost, Thomas could not imagine what gain a wandering spirit might bring, but he would not dismiss his belief that there might be something.

  His strongest reason for disliking the tradesman was the indisputable fact that he had bested Thomas in their battle of wills. His honor had been befouled, and he was disinclined to let that pass. “I should turn the other cheek as a monk with a true calling would,” he muttered aloud, “but I likely shall not and, without question, not tonight.”

  He was falling into a black mood and disinclined to benevolence. Satisfying his pride must wait, of course, until he had pleased his masters in the Church, but he would make sure the eventual restitution would be even sweeter for the delay. In the meantime, he had been granted freedom by Sister Beatrice that allowed him to look into the Psalter theft. For that he would have to be grateful even if he was annoyed by the restrictions placed on him.

  He shrugged his shoulders. He would make the best of the situation, discovering what he could. If he listened with discretion, he might still hear something of use. Maybe he would learn more from ale-loosened village tongues in gossip as the night wore on than from anything Mistress Jhone might tell him. After all, the shock of seeing her brother-in-law’s headless corpse was surely cause enough for horror. The merchant’s snide comments aside, Thomas had no wish to increase the poor woman’s pain.

  Deep in thought, the monk arrived at the village side of the river and headed toward the inn. Suddenly a movement caught his attention, and he paused to peer into the shifting patches of shadow.

  Two men emerged from a gloomy lane just in front of him. One he did not recognize, but the other he most certainly did.

  Keeping a safe distance, he slowly followed.

  The men leaned toward each other in earnest but whispered conversation before stopping some yards away from the inn door.

  Thomas slipped into the darkness between two houses.

  “It would not be wise if we were seen together,” he heard Sayer say to the plump young man beside him.

  “Aye, you have the right of that. This matter is too important to have anyone suspect we are in it together. Yet are you sure…?”

  “I am your man on this and shall not fail you, but let us not seem friendly or be seen to speak together in public.”

  “Aye. Go into the inn, although I shall follow in a while and find myself a quiet corner. This talk of plots and plans has made me thirsty.” He put something into Sayer’s hand. “Something for your thirst as well, my friend.”

  As the roofer opened the inn door, enough light fell on the other man’s face for Thomas to note his features well.

  A merchant by his dress, the monk thought. If this one had some guilty secret he wanted no one else in the
village to discover, he might welcome the distracting company of a stranger. Were Thomas particularly fortunate, the man might even find some comfort for his troubled soul in talking to a man of God.

  Chapter Twelve

  A spotty-faced serving woman gaped when Thomas walked in, licked her lips, and tossed her head in the direction of the rooms upstairs. He lowered his gaze and inched into the mass of sweating men.

  One burgundy-cheeked fellow, a wooden tankard of brown ale in hand, stared pointedly at the monk’s tonsure, poked him in the ribs, and made a lewd gesture. Feeling his face turn hot, Thomas transformed his blush of outrage into an expression of sheepish unworldliness. The man snorted but let the monk edge by.

  If God were willing to grant him just a little grace, Thomas thought, He would lead him to the plump merchant and keep him away from Sayer. If He were truly merciful, He would let him get answers to his questions and allow him to escape this place before he broke some lout’s jaw.

  When he had at last untangled himself from the milling crowd, Thomas found himself in a comparatively quiet corner of the hostel. At a small table, next to a large pitcher of wine, sat the round young man with dimpled pink face.

  He was in luck.

  The man rested his cup against his lips as if interrupted by a thought in the act of drinking. Something heavy crashed overhead and he blinked, raising his pale brown eyes and studying the ceiling, fearing perhaps that those carousing above might fall into his lap.

  Thomas smiled. “May I join you in what passes for solitude in this worldly place?”

  The young man’s eyes came to rest on the monk’s tonsure. “You are new to the area, Brother?”

  “Aye,” Thomas replied, happy to answer this one question with truthfulness.