The man walking beside Bernard was no fellow merchant, rather a laborer of some ilk by his dress. Was he one of the glover’s workmen? Nay, their easy manner with each other made her doubt that. Could it have been Sayer, cousin to his beloved Alys? If the latter, why did the glover deny knowing the man, and had the reason anything to do with murder?
Chapter Twenty-Six
Thomas winced as Brother Infirmarian cleaned his bleeding hand with some stinging liquid.
“I won’t ask why you were on the library roof, Brother, but I suggest that there are easier places to talk to God.”
Despite the throbbing in his wound, the monk chuckled. “Sayer was showing me some of the skills needed to repair the slate.”
The infirmarian raised an eyebrow. “Indeed,” he said, resuming with an application of salve. “Is your priory at Tyndal so poor that monks must be trained to do such work?”
“We have lay brothers enough, but, since Sayer is only rarely on the ground at this priory, I had to climb closer to Paradise to offer consolation for his father’s death. He continued his labors while I did.”
Brother Infirmarian reached for a binding. “His grief must be sharp. A sad thing to quarrel with your father and have him die before you can settle the matter.”
“Had it caused so deep a rift between them?”
The monk shrugged. “Sayer is a bit of a rogue, much like his father when he was younger, but I think Mistress Drifa would have forced them to make peace.”
“Then the dispute involved nothing that would cause either to harm the other?”
“Oh, you heard that Sayer swore he would kill Wulfstan?” The infirmarian laughed as he finished the binding and sat down beside Thomas. “I wouldn’t put much credence in that, Brother. I once told my father I would kill him and he survived four score!”
“And what was your disagreement about?”
The man’s eyes twinkled. “There was a girl I wanted to marry. My father was opposed. It was then I threatened him.”
“How did you resolve the matter?”
“My beloved died before we could wed, and I took the cowl. With a repentant heart, my father cursed his obstinacy and begged forgiveness. I promised him daily prayers, and we wept together in each other’s arms. Fathers and sons have ways of making peace. Had Wulfstan lived, I have no doubt that he and Sayer would have done the same.”
“Do you know the cause of their quarrel? If so, I could use that knowledge to bring a more effective comfort to the son.”
“Although I listen to gossip like any other wicked mortal, I put little faith in it. True or not, the stories are often entertaining, but I do not repeat what I hear. The Fiend loves those who spread scandal.”
Thomas hoped he hid his regret at the infirmarian’s admirable restraint. “You are wise not to repeat it,” he said. “I grieve that many are not so hesitant about telling tales and pray that no one has spread damaging lies about Sayer and his father.”
The monk looked away.
The gesture told Thomas that some story must be abroad. All he had to do was find a man willing to tell him what it was.
***
As he walked through the garden of the monks’ cloister garth, despondency dropped over Thomas like a sodden cloak even as questions raced through his mind. A cawing distracted him. Looking up, he saw the dark shape of a crow. It circled overhead before flying off, perhaps to the nest near the library.
Had Sayer returned to his work? Even if he had, Thomas knew he would not seek him out there. He could not. His face turned hot with an emotion he did not want to name, and he forced his thoughts back to the recent discussion with his prioress and Sister Beatrice.
He hoped he had not betrayed his shock when Prioress Eleanor suggested that someone might be trying to steal the Amesbury Psalter, yet he had also felt relief at her joining the pieces in that way. Even though he could not speak of his own commission from the Church in this matter, he could now count on her cleverness and support as he had longed to do. Of course, he was pleased that he had won this small victory over his spy master. He might owe the man gratitude for saving his life, but he did not always respect his judgement and resented the power the man wielded over him.
His small pleasure quickly soured. Was Sayer the thief Thomas had been sent to catch? Was Drifa’s deft-witted son a brutal killer? His heart still rebelled against any conclusion that Sayer might be involved, even though he knew there was cause enough to believe it. A man’s reason ordered him to acknowledge that the roofer was implicated in the crime. In this they had all agreed, but another emotion, devoid of logic, shouted otherwise to him.
For Thomas, the world had turned upside down since that night at the inn. Sister Beatrice and Prioress Eleanor bore women’s bodies, but their souls housed a man’s solid reason. He was afflicted with a woman’s perceptions. That these had served him well in the past did not soothe him now. Indeed, he cursed them. When had the Prince of Darkness stolen his manhood and given him a woman’s soul? If men became women and women men, he snarled, the end of the world must be close to hand.
Nay, it was his soul that was in disarray, not the world. The novice mistress and her niece were holy women, given strengths beyond their sex by their vocations. On the other hand, God had surely given him to Satan for his plaything.
Even Sayer had taunted him about suffering womanly fear when he sat on the roof. Womanly, was he? The monk uttered an oath. Yet he had reached out for the roofer’s hand like some maiden begging a knight to save her from distress. Thomas’ stomach roiled with disgust at himself.
That his logic was weak and he had shown cowardice at that great height were less terrifying than the betrayal of his body. He could argue that an incubus had put on Sayer’s features when he had swyved the roofer in his dream, but Thomas could not ignore how he trembled on the roof like a virgin on her wedding night, longing for the embrace while fearing the loss of her maidenhead.
“I am no man at all,” he cried out. “I am a creature made in the image of Satan with a man’s sex and a woman’s breasts!”
Amidst the bursting buds and flowering shrubs of that silent monastic garden, he fell to his knees, bent his forehead to the earth, and wept. His howls of pain were as sharp as the wailings of one damned beyond any hope of forgiveness, and he beat his head against the ground as if one torment could numb the other.
At last the roaring in his soul diminished and his sobbing subsided. Gulping air like a man who has almost drowned, he sat back on his heels and swiped angrily at his damp cheeks. “Why have You done this to me?” Thomas raised his eyes heavenward.
The light became too bright for his reddened eyes. He covered them.
“You cannot deny it,” he whispered angrily into his hands. “The Prince of Darkness may have sent this cruel affliction, but You allowed it. Did You not let Satan plague Job, jesting that he would never turn his face from You no matter what he suffered? Perhaps Job did not do so, but I am not he. I curse You for this!”
Thomas uncovered his eyes and bent down to touch the uneven particles of earth while he waited for God’s hot wrath to destroy him. Terror of eternal torture for his blasphemy numbed him, but he could not retract his words.
A hush in the gentle wind and a silence that held neither condemnation nor peace were all that greeted him.
Thomas looked up. He was alone in the gardens.
“Torment me as You will then,” he said in soft voice, “but surely You cannot hate me more than the one who murdered two innocent men, two unshriven souls howling for justice.”
That said, Thomas rose unsteadily to his feet and set off in the direction of the village.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A small shadow edged across the garden to the place where Drifa knelt, pulling young weeds from the dark earth. She jumped to her feet.
“My lady!”
“I did not mean to frighten you,” Eleanor replied. Was the pallor of the w
idow’s face the result of grief, or was another visit from the priory cause for fear?
Drifa rubbed the soil from her fingers as color returned to her cheeks. “Forgive me, but my thoughts had fled elsewhere. Your visit is most welcome.”
There was gratitude in her tone. Looking around and seeing no one else about, Eleanor guessed the reason. Solitude was often a traitorous fellow, eager enough to open Heart’s gate to the cruel assault of Sorrow.
“Please come away from the sun. The season may be spring, but the light can be harsh.” The woman gestured toward the door of the house. “I have but modest fare to offer you…”
“Brother Thomas praised your ale, mistress,” the prioress replied.
“Your monk is kind and a man of austere tastes, my lady.”
The two women studied each other for a moment, and when their expressions had shown satisfaction in what each had concluded about the other, they turned toward the dwelling.
At least Bernard had told the truth about one thing, Eleanor concluded as she stepped over the threshold. Wulfstan had spent whatever coin he might have earned from lawless men on items that would benefit his family, not on luxuries. Many squawking chickens were outside, and a hairy goat had greeted her with impudent gaze, one green weed drooping from the side of its mouth. The house was quite large, with three windows, but inside she saw little difference between this place and the home of any other poor man.
As Drifa poured amber liquid into a crudely carved wooden cup, Eleanor noted the freshly laid rushes on the earthen floor as well as the absence of clutter. Whatever his faults, Wulfstan had won himself a diligent wife and one who seemed to have loved him.
“You have been blessed with a large family,” Eleanor said conversationally after expressing appreciation for the sharp-tasting but refreshing ale.
“Most of our children have lived and flourished.” The widow fell silent.
“Your eldest works most diligently at whatever the priory requires.”
“When my husband told Prioress Ida that Sayer could offer many skills for the wages of one man, she was pleased to hire him.”
A woman of modest speech and much caution, Eleanor noted. Like many wives who have little time for chatter, Drifa’s restraint was sired by thrift, not fear as had been true of her sister, Jhone.
“To have such a talented son must have given you and your husband much joy.”
The widow nodded.
“I have heard that the son resembled his father in many ways.” Eleanor laughed to give her words a lighter meaning. “The two must have been very close.”
The widow leaned back against a pillar.
“Yet I believe they quarreled just before your husband died?”
“The whole village seems to have heard the story, my lady.”
“What heavy grief that must bring you.”
The sharp intake of breath might have been a sigh or a sob.
Eleanor reached out a comforting hand. “Each of us has sons, mistress. Although you got yours from your husband, God gave me mine. In our Order, a prioress may suffer as the Virgin did when she saw her child dying on the cross, yet strive to see the purpose beyond the misery of mortal flesh. Although I endured no physical pain in the bearing, God commands me to love all men under my rule as if they were truly sons of my body. With that love, I suffer as much as any mother when they fall ill or sin. You and I have some sorrows in common.”
Sayer’s mother said nothing.
“Please sit beside me,” Eleanor said, her voice dropping into a soothing tone, “and let me offer solace as one woman to another. Are men and boys not foolish in their heated words over things that are fleeting? I, too, have grieved deeply when my monks rage on and on about some petty matter. As you yourself have done, I bear the blame when they strive one against another until their humors cool, and peace comes slowly. Thus I understand how deeply you mourn over this bitter quarrel.”
Hot tears burst from Drifa’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks in a flood. As she slid down onto the bench, Eleanor gently embraced her. The woman’s sobs could have not been more despairing if she had just seen her child tumble into Hell’s flaming maw. Stirred by the bleakness of Drifa’s suffering, Eleanor herself began to weep. For an unmeasured time in that smoke-stained room, the two women clung together, finding a small amount of succor from worldly pain.
At last Eleanor whispered: “Take comfort. In death our souls lose mortal blindness and learn a more godly compassion. Your husband is wiser now and has surely pardoned your son’s errors.”
Drifa drew back, her red-rimmed eyes still haunted with inconsolable despair. “I pray that he has, my lady, for he claimed the lad was the Devil’s spawn.”
“Surely not for leading willing monks into the arms of tavern wenches? Your son repented of that, and Prioress Ida had punished the men who strayed. The wall was repaired. All that was in the past.”
“Wicked though that had been, it was not the reason my husband said our son was cursed.” The widow rubbed the corners of her eyes dry with the tips of two fingers. Her cheeks still shone with dampness.
“What was the cause?”
Drifa covered her face.
The prioress’ touch on the widow’s arm was gentle. “There is no sin Sayer could have committed that God would not wash clean. We mortals are so quick to condemn, but God is perfect love.” Eleanor chanced a smile. “And I do think He grants the Queen of Heaven, a mother herself, the right to bless other mothers with some of that perfection, don’t you?”
Drifa dropped her hands and looked at Eleanor in amazement, before her eyes softened with hope. “My son may have seen twenty summers, but he is still a boy, my lady. Satan has made merry with him for cert, but he is not wicked. I told Wulfstan that Sayer need only marry and earn a man’s status to return to more godly ways. I thought my husband had agreed but he only hid his anger!”
“Boys do foolish things…”
The mother began to cough, her face turning scarlet as she tried to catch her breath. “Wulfstan came home in a rage one night,” she gasped. “He had seen Sayer near the river. Another man was swyving him like a whore.”
Speechless with shock, Eleanor could only nod.
“That night I calmed him, but soon after he and Sayer got drunk at the inn. The following morning, my husband confessed that he had told our son he would geld him if he ever did such a thing again. My son had shouted that he would kill him first.”
As the prioress prayed for words to soothe this woman, she begged God for an understanding she herself lacked. She was not so unworldly as to think some young monk at Tyndal might not suffer the same weakness, but she knew of none. If presented with such a man, would she face him with a mother’s love like Drifa, or would she curse him as Wulfstan had Sayer?
Her thoughts raced on. Sodomy was a most unnatural vice, one akin to murder, or so the Church taught. If Sayer was guilty of this sin, might he be equally capable of killing his own father?
Eleanor took a deep breath. There was one powerful argument against this conclusion. Sister Beatrice was not a woman to suffer evil, or be deceived by it, and she had shown much tolerance for the man. Did she not know that Sayer was a sodomite? What if she did? Her head spun with bewilderment.
God must have given her tongue comforting words despite her own swirling confusion. Eleanor could not remember what she had said to Drifa, but the widow’s gaze had shone with weary peace when they parted.
As she turned her steps back to the priory, Eleanor knew she would spend much time tonight on her knees, begging for understanding from the Queen of Heaven.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The smell of sizzling fat made Thomas’ stomach growl. As his growing hunger began to temper the anguish he had felt in the garden, he found himself amazed at the resilience of a man’s belly. God would surely punish him for his blasphemous insolence in time. Of that, he had no doubts. Meanwhile, he accepted the gift of a hot,
dripping pastry from a tradesman. The first bite of that pie was a joy.
The weather for this market day was fine, a balm to the spirit, and the bounty in the stalls was a miracle to behold. To his left was a mound of purple and white carrots just picked from the garden. Fresh yellow onions, causing less torture to sensitive stomachs than those stored over winter, lay next to cream-colored turnips. Although the steam of hot fruit tarts spread a most appealing scent of spice mixed with sweet, Thomas’ hunger was now satisfied.
Something brushed by his leg, and he glanced down to see a lean, red cat in pursuit of something small and gray. The sight reminded Thomas that he had his own prey to hunt, a man who had sent two souls to earlier deaths and greater torture than they deserved. Even though he did not have the slightest idea where to start looking, he felt spurred to the task. If he resolved these murders with speed, God might even grant him a little mercy for his own wickedness.
As he pushed his way through the crowd, a thought burst into his mind, the memory of something he had ignored at the time and since forgotten. When his spy master told him of his assignment regarding the Psalter theft, the man mentioned that the Church had received warning about the danger to the manuscript. Now Thomas asked himself who had raised this hue and cry. Was the detail significant?
“I should have had the wits to inquire,” the monk muttered, stepping back to avoid a rumbling cart filled with precariously stacked barrels. “But I would have been told if the fact mattered to the quest.” Men might be fair sport for the priest, but surely that thin-lipped creature considered the Psalter too valuable to deliberately hide crucial information. In any case, Thomas had not asked, numbed as he was by grief over the news of his father’s death.
Important or not to this undertaking, the identity of the informant was provoking his curiosity. Might it be Sister Beatrice? That would not surprise him, and, considering her inquisitive study of him earlier, he thought she suspected more about him than she chose to reveal.
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