Justice for the Damned

by Priscilla Royal

  Sayer stared across the room and drank his ale in silence. His fingers briefly stroked the monk’s leg with a light caress.

  Why had God so abandoned him? Sweat began to pour down Thomas’ sides. Was he not on a quest for His Church? With his last ounce of mortal will, the monk silently removed Sayer’s hand. All speech had turned to ash in his throat.

  Sayer’s expression did not change. A passing serving wench slammed a full tankard of ale in front of him. Without a word, he drained it dry and dropped it on the table. As the vessel tumbled onto the floor, the roofer swayed for a moment, then passed out.

  Thomas sprang from the bench and elbowed his way through the crowd, not caring what pain he might cause any man. He had to get as far from Sayer as he could. Although the inn was hot, Thomas knew the heated air was not the cause for the sweat that now bathed his entire body. Surely it was rage that filled him, he thought, but something within him laughed.

  Thomas rubbed his coarse sleeve over his face and leaned against a rough support beam. His humors were just out of balance. That was the reason for his strange mood tonight. He had had no time to mourn his own father, then Sayer’s had been murdered, and the roofer’s grief rekindled his own unhappiness. He had had too much to drink. Sayer had as well. Surely the man had been too drunk to know what he was doing. With God’s grace, he thought, Sayer would not even remember meeting him at the inn this night.

  As he pressed his back against the beam, Thomas breathed in the rank stench of inn air, finding comfort in the smell of living men. Satan had best take his imps back to Hell, he growled to himself, for he would not fall prey to them again. He had work to do and valuable time had been lost.

  With all that now firmly decided, he shouldered his way through the inn door and plunged into night’s restless and less-defined shadows.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was following the midday meal that Eleanor set off for Amesbury village.

  In the morning she had risen with an unusual eagerness to face the day, and, when she joined the others for prayer, she felt a fresh surge of strength. Like any mortal who has stood with one foot raised to step into the dark mouth of Death, she savored the sensation while likewise fearing it would recede. Thankfully the vigor remained and she gained hope. Besides, the weather was too sweet for bleak imaginings.

  As she walked through the cloister garth after Chapter, she had lifted her gaze to the blue sky and expressed gratitude to God for the warmth of this day so near to Saint Melor’s feast. Despite Death’s recent dance for her soul, as he pleaded to win it before her hair turned white, Sister Anne had dropped a portcullis on his grim supplication, and Eleanor had no wish to raise the gate.

  Lest the clattering creature hold onto any illusion that Eleanor might still be his, the prioress of Tyndal had sipped with determination her dark, meaty broth at dinner and even found appetite for the eel with herbs and onions. The religious in charge of Amesbury’s kitchens had done well with the dish, she had thought with appreciation, although she did prefer the defter hand of Sister Matilda at Tyndal.

  It was afterward she told Anne and her aunt of her plans to visit Alys’ mother. She should offer that family comfort considering their kinsman’s horrible death, she said. It was her duty, and, if she happened to find out anything about the ghost, Brother Thomas could pursue the details.

  The distance to the house of Mistress Jhone was not far, the novice mistress reluctantly confirmed, and Eleanor promised to stay only as long as her strength allowed. Needless to say, she would take two religious with her as proper attendants, but they could be from the priory. After all, the Prioress of Tyndal said with a playful smile, hadn’t her aunt just expressed concern about cankerworm in the fruit trees and wasn’t Anne planning to teach Brother Infirmarian how to make some of her most effective potions?

  As she kissed her aunt and hugged her dear friend, Eleanor felt a deep joy as if she had just been freed from some dark prison. Eternity in the embrace of God is a thing for which we all long, she thought, but surely it is not a sin to look upon the earth He made so sweet with particular delight after hearing the hushed and seductive voice of Death.

  Now outside the parish church, she turned to her attendants and asked to be given a moment alone. Bowing her head in reverence, she continued on a few steps and looked up at the ancient Saxon Cross, the wheelhead shape embracing the symbol of her faith like the arms of a mother about her child.

  She rested the tips of her fingers against the weathered sandstone, closed her eyes, and imagined the countless monks or nuns that must have done the same, even before Queen Elfrida had founded Amesbury Priory. Had Edgar’s queen also touched this stone, her soul raw with guilt and grief? Or had Guinevere, weary with age and ancient lust, before she begged entrance to a religious house nearby?

  Eleanor’s fingers tingled. Was it a coincidence that each story involved a woman burdened by violence and passion? Might there be a message for her in their stories? Was she herself not a woman guilty of lust and sick of bloodshed. Did she not long for God’s peace too? A sense of comfort and understanding slowly filled her, and Eleanor began to believe that the invisible spirits of these two, long-dead women might be beside her. For just one moment, she wondered if her aunt could be wrong about ghosts.

  “I, too, have done this, my lady, but not since I was a lad. Do you think the cross was here when King Arthur rode to his death on the plain?”

  Eleanor swung around to face a well-favored man, well into his third decade of life, with eyes so brown they reminded her of good English earth. A merchant of some wealth, she decided after a brief inspection of the fur trimming on his very soft robe. Nor is he too modest to flaunt it, she concluded wryly.

  “You have the advantage of me, sir.”

  He bowed with grace. “Herbert of Amesbury, my lady, a wine merchant by trade.”

  Alys’ suitor? How providential, Eleanor thought. “I am…”

  “Prioress Eleanor of Tyndal.” His smile conveyed pleasant warmth. “News of your arrival has spread, my lady. Your reputation as prioress of a Fontevraudine daughter house is well-known in Amesbury. We are proud of you in the village as well as at the priory that nurtured you.”

  “Proud?” Eleanor raised her eyebrows with mock dismay.

  Herbert bent his head in courteous concession. “A sin and not a sentiment that your fellow religious would express, but we secular creatures, with more errant souls, indulge in it with frequency. Pride we may feel, but the priory gains greater honor as more tales of your competence reach us.” He noted her attendants with some curiosity. “You have business outside the walls, my lady?”

  “Sister Beatrice bade me visit the sister-in-law and niece of one Wulfstan, a laborer in this priory’s fields.” She gestured toward a house but a short distance away.

  “Ah! The young woman is my affianced.”

  Not as affianced as you would like to assume, Eleanor said to herself. Careful to conceal her thoughts, she quickly changed the subject. “You are a purveyor of wine, Master Herbert. Does your family supply the priory with its most excellent vintages?”

  He closed his eyes. “Nay, another has always had that honor. I pray that God has given my father’s soul peace, but I fear that he was not as clever at worldly business as he might have been while he lived. There were markets he failed to capture.”

  “I see that you have improved on the family fortunes, however.” The prioress inclined her head to indicate his fine attire.

  “Indeed.” Master Herbert bestowed on her a most dazzling smile.

  A man who does not wish to hide the light of his talents beneath any bushel, Eleanor thought. Alys had also been correct. The man did have a full complement of teeth.

  “Nonetheless, wine is a business that requires travel to my vineyards in Gascony, and I had hoped to settle more permanently in Amesbury once my dear Alys and I were married. Before her father’s death, he and I had agreed that some of my man
y contacts, acquired over the years outside of England, might be useful in improving his wool profits as well, but he knew men in London who could act on my behalf in those places.”

  Eleanor nodded. When she and her new prior had agreed to increase the number of sheep owned by Tyndal, he, too, had acquired such agents for the foreign trade.

  “After the marriage, I had planned to find another to run the vintner trade, perhaps a man without family, and spend more of my time closer to home and devoted to wool. After the sad death of Alys’ father, I feel compelled to avoid dangerous sea travel and remain in Amesbury, for he not only left my affianced but a widow as well. Both women need the security of my presence.”

  He might be a tradesman over fond of his success, Eleanor thought, but she liked his show of consideration for the needs of his new family. A man not without compassion, she decided, glancing up at him.

  “Were you coming to see Mistress Jhone and her daughter as well, Master Vintner?”

  “It would be wiser if I came later,” he replied, his lips twitching with presumed humor. “My purpose was to woo, but I fear that might not be seemly when the Prioress of Tyndal visits. Would you not agree?”

  With grace, Eleanor laughed.

  Herbert bowed, accepted the blessing of the young monk in attendance, and dropped something into his hand. A moment and he was gone.

  Eleanor slid her hands into the sleeves of her robe and watched him walk away. Their meeting had been too brief for more than a hasty assessment, although she acknowledged that she had enjoyed the man’s clever and blunt speech. What she found troubling was his attire: a soft woolen robe, with nap so new it was still long and had never been brushed; fur-trimmed, and decorated with gold pins. All this suggested vanity and excessive pride in worldly gain.

  She was a nun, of course. Having rejected even the simplest feminine ornament, she knew that she might be disposed to see sin in any blatant display of wealth; but she had also learned to distrust men, when it came to business matters, who preened like peacocks. Unlike Tostig, her direct-dealing partner in the ale trade and a man who cared more for the beasts he also bred than any personal adornment, these well-clad merchants often tried to hide less than honorable practices behind the blinding light of their gold jewelry.

  Nevertheless, there were always exceptions to any rule amongst mortal men, and Master Herbert had jested about pride himself, a quality she found refreshing. There was something else she liked about the vintner: his desire to care for what was left of a sadly bereaved family. That had touched her heart. Maybe the man truly was just a new widower, awkward in his courting of a girl not much more than half his age who he must know was in love with another man.

  To Eleanor, albeit an old woman of twenty-two summers and not of the merchant class, Master Herbert was agreeable in appearance, with a head full of dark hair and lean enough in body to suggest he did not spend too long at table. Besides excellent teeth, he had taut, clear skin on his face that argued against a greater fondness for his wares than was wise. Eleanor realized with mild surprise that she might not have minded giving her troth to such a man had she been the affianced.

  The image of a certain red-haired monk now flooded the prioress’ heart with dulled but still palpable pain. Nun she might be, she said to herself, but she was a daughter of Eve and knew how reason melted in the flames of a woman’s passion. Nay, had she been told to marry this vintner when her heart and body longed for another, she would be as distraught as Alys. A more rational man might find it easy to view this situation with cool logic, but Eleanor of Tyndal understood all too well how the young woman felt in this matter.

  The prioress leaned against the house and vigorously shook the image of the handsome monk from her head.

  “Are you ill, Sister?”

  Eleanor jumped away from the wall and quickly turned to face the speaker.

  Standing in the doorway was a gray-fleshed woman, dressed in robes of equal drabness, who looked much as Alys might when she had reached near two score years.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Thomas strode to the library, his expression cheerless, his gaze determined, and his tongue thick as if wrapped in rough cloth. Not only did his head hurt but he ached all over after spending the night on the other side of the priory walls, passed out on the damp ground with only a grass nest for bedding.

  Upon first awakening, he had kept his eyes tightly shut while images from the previous evening danced through his mind with the mocking gracelessness of gangly imps. When he dared to squint at the sky, the sun’s angle confirmed his suspicion that he had missed several of the Offices. Briefly he considered whether he might still join the other monastics for Sext if he hurried, but the contents of his stomach pitched into his throat when he rose. Easing back down on his hard bed, he closed his eyes and decided a quiet musing on his transgressions might be wiser than running off to prayer. He would fast today in expiation for his wrongdoings.

  The wine drunk last night was a small enough sin. When he had shed his monastic robes and grown a beard to solve a problem in York last year, his thin-lipped spy master had ordered but one full day of prayer for any sins he might have committed on God’s behalf. His cause last night was a godly one as well, and he might even claim that visiting a place so full of tempting worldly pleasures was a worthy test for his soul. Robert of Arbrissel, Fontevraud’s founder, would surely have approved the attempt.

  Nor had he merely indulged frail mortal curiosity when he listened to Master Bernard’s tales of Amesbury and the people who lived there. Fortunately, he had remained sober enough in Bernard’s company to remember the details of what he was told. If nothing suggested anything of true merit now, it might later as he thought more on the stories with a sober mind. One conclusion had become apparent. If there were no strangers who had spent any time here or shown any specific interest in the priory, the source of the proposed theft must be local.

  And what of the ghost? He could be truthful enough about his failure to find Queen Elfrida’s spirit innocent of this most recent murder, but Prioress Eleanor might see something of note in the villagers’ belief that demons hid amongst the stones on Salisbury Plain. She often saw things he could not, although time and again she generously asked for his observations.

  Thomas rubbed at the grit in his eyes. His prioress was a rarity amongst women, a sex many claimed was plagued by illogic and uncontrolled lust, yet the power of her reason was surpassed by few, in his opinion, and only when she was angry had he seen her gray eyes turn hot like glowing ash.

  “In this last, she is a better man than I,” he muttered. He envied her ability to stand apart from the sins common to most of Adam’s progeny and maintain the masculine balance in her humors while others suffered from their frailties, joyfully selling their souls in exchange for relief from the relentless agony of such weaknesses as lust. “I have not yet made a bargain with the Devil, but I understand why some do,” he groaned.

  This morning, when Thomas had risen from his grass bed, he had gone to the river and washed himself. Had he not rinsed away the sweat of the night, he could not have faced either Sister Anne or Sister Beatrice, both of whom had bedded men often enough in their youth. He might explain the sourness of wine on his breath, but he could not so easily dismiss the unchaste smell of sex. Therein lay his greatest sin, the least forgivable one, from his evening at the inn.

  While the other monks of Amesbury had been singing the Morning Office, Thomas had been deep in dreams. In the past, when Satan’s incubus came to seduce him in his sleep, it had always donned the shape of Giles. The caresses Thomas exchanged with that image of his boyhood friend were founded in honorable love, so when his flesh hardened, Thomas cursed the Lord of Fiends and did not condemn himself in the morning for any greater wickedness than a common failing of a man’s sex.

  Last night, however, the Devil had introduced a disquieting variation in his cruel sport. The incubus who drew the monk into his arms may ha
ve worn the body of Giles, but the face was that of Sayer. When Thomas awakened, bursting out of this dream with a rare orgasmic joy, he had lain on the ground, grateful for the physical release of dammed-up seed but terrified by feelings he did not understand.

  Why had he been cursed with this strange new affliction? Were his lonely walks through the dark silence of the monk’s cloister, when his sleepless nights gave fetid birth to his black humors, not penance enough for the one act of sodomy he had committed with Giles?

  Other monks, when they suffered similar dark longings, took the flail to their backs to keep their souls from falling into Hell. That he knew. Some fasted until their manhood was too weak to sin. Nothing, however, had ever spared Thomas from his dreams, even when he was in prison, after he was raped, and when he once beat his back bloody.

  He stopped, uncomfortably aware that he stood near the library walls. Cautiously he looked up. Sayer was not there. At least God had been kind enough to grant him that reprieve. The roofer was one he did not want to see again for a very long time.

  He slammed his fist against his chest.

  The smaller limbs of the tree above him moved gently in the breeze.

  “If You scorn me, why give me any peace? If You do not, why scourge me with this new and fiendish apparition?”

  Thomas leaned his head against the bark, but the only thing he heard was the pounding in his head. “Very well,” he said, pushing away from the tree, “since God deigns no answer now, but I feel no hot breath of Hell on my cheek, I shall see to the Amesbury Psalter.”

  ***

  The library was tiny and combined with the scriptorium. Although there were books stacked neatly in a wood-lined recess near the door, and others presumably stored in the wooden chest nearby, Thomas saw only two tonsured heads bent over their work, their left hands holding the parchment flat while they labored to create the text with their right.

  Amesbury Priory was not renowned for illuminated work, but the monastery had wealthy patrons whose educated daughters, and sometimes widows, came here as nuns. These were women who prayed with more piety in the presence of God-inspired beauty, and the priory would set any talented monk to the task of filling such a need. It was a pity, he thought, that there were only two.