Belladonna at Belstone aktm-8

by Michael Jecks

  “My Lord, you have come to look into that poor child’s death?”

  The visitor looked less appealing now than he had when he first came, she thought to herself. Then he had been all smiles whenever he met her. Now he wore a sour expression as if he trusted no one. She felt a shiver run down her spine – she suddenly realised he might suspect even her of having a part in Moll’s death.

  He gave her a cold smile and she turned her attention on the other two men. The one with greying hair she privately noted down as being some kind of clerical assistant at first, but the other was different. She didn’t like the way the bearded man surveyed her. He had keen, shrewd eyes that seemed to see through her to the political machinations within her mind.

  “I returned as you asked, and we have just been studying the girl’s body,“ Bertrand said. He introduced her to Baldwin and Simon. ”And I have to say, as you thought, she appears to have been murdered. We must establish who killed her.“

  Margherita inclined her head. “I understand.“

  Baldwin said, “Do you know what happened on the night this novice was found dead?”

  “I didn’t witness her murder, if that’s what you mean,“ she said sharply.

  “We have already heard that you were walking about that night, that you had a dagger in your hand. Why?”

  Margherita reeled inwardly but managed a smile although, had there been tool and opportunity, she could easily have stabbed Denise at that moment. Silkily she said, “I suppose you have been talking to our sacrist. Denise drinks more than she should, my Lord, and sometimes she sees things which aren’t there.”

  “You weren’t walking about that night?”

  “I did take a stroll, but when I saw Denise in the frater I told her to leave the wine for the night and go to bed. I went up as well.”

  “Why were you holding a dagger?” Baldwin demanded relentlessly.

  Margherita gave a small sigh. “If I wake in the night, I usually carry a small dagger with me: there are such awful rumours of murder and mayhem in convents these days, and the good prioress has allowed our walls to collapse in places; it would be easy for men to break in. I went down to the cloister to think, and while I was meditating there, I thought I saw a man slip from the church door and go to the dorter. Naturally I followed, and equally naturally I grabbed my knife to defend myself.

  “Denise said you were out in the yard behind the cloister,” Baldwin pointed out.

  Margherita froze a moment. “Ah, yes, she was quite correct. I had been here in the cloister, and saw the man there…” She pointed at the door to the church. “He slipped, as I thought, along the church wall and out along that alley.” Where the nun indicated there was a narrow way leading along the church’s outer wall, away from the cloister. “It gives out to the kitchen garden behind the cloister. From there a man can walk up, past the kitchen and out to the back of the frater here. It occurred to me that he would avoid the cloister itself, where he would be more likely to be seen.” She indicated another alley between the frater and the next building. “From there he could gain access to the dorter, where the nuns were all asleep in their beds.”

  “So you tried to ambush him?” Baldwin asked.

  “Yes. I went up this alley and waited at the top. When I didn’t see him, I walked along the outer wall of the frater, but still saw nothing. Then I noticed that Denise was sitting alone in there again with a pot of wine. I confess I was angry to see her awake so late, and ordered her to return to her bed. Soon after I went up to the dorter myself, wondering if the man had already got there somehow. I went up, but I saw no stranger.”

  “Does the door to the dorter lead to other rooms?” Simon demanded.

  “Yes – to the infirmary. But I knocked there and Constance, our infirmarer, told me no one had entered before me.” Margherita glanced down at her hands. The infirmarer had been quite rude about it, forcing the treasurer back from the room and closing the door behind them, snapping that Margherita should not trespass on her domain when she had the sick to protect.

  “By now Denise had gone to her bed, so I did likewise and soon I was asleep. I was very tired – I suppose it’s the work I do, making sure that the account-rolls are up to date.” She was keen to appear helpful to this serious-looking knight. “When the bell tolled, I woke and went to church.”

  “And at this stage there was no hint that Moll was unwell?”

  “Constance, our infirmarer, is a very diligent woman,” Margherita said in a voice that brooked no argument. “She saw that her charges were sleeping before going to church for Nocturns. She would hardly have missed the wound inflicted upon Moll.”

  “So it couldn’t have been a nun,” Simon exclaimed. “They were all at church.”

  Margherita tilted her head with a grimace. “Constance first went to the laver. She woke and realised that her hands were dirty, so between her leaving and the nocturn bell…”

  “I see,” said Baldwin. “Who was in the infirmary with the girl?”

  “Joan, one of our oldest nuns, and a lay sister, Cecily, who fell down a rotten stair and broke her wrist. And Constance herself, of course, in her cot next to the infirmary.”

  “Does she always sleep there?” Baldwin asked.

  “When she has patients to look after, yes. And in a place the size of this, there is usually someone who has been bled, or a lay sister who needs to recover from her efforts, so I suppose she spends much of her time out there,” Margherita said shortly, beginning to feel a trifle acerbic at his questioning. “When Matins were finished, she’d have gone back to her patients. That was when she saw Moll’s vein had opened again.”

  “Yet someone thought that there might be another explanation, rather than an accidental nick in an artery. Someone thought it was murder.”

  “Well, some of us wondered,” Margherita stumbled, looking to the visitor for aid.

  Bertrand tried to sound conciliatory. “Come, Sir Baldwin. We are concerned only with the death itself.”

  “Quite right, and to investigate that I need to know what suspicions people have, why they have them, and who else shares them.”

  “Why?” Bertrand asked.

  Baldwin turned to him, an expression of puzzled enquiry on his face. “My Lord Bishop, I am here to assist in this matter, but I really must be permitted to conduct my questioning in my own way.”

  “Oh, very well,” Bertrand agreed, and gave Margherita a smile as if in apology.

  “Now,” Baldwin said. “Why did you assume this was a case of murder?”

  Margherita gave the impression of being uncertain. She dropped her eyes and muttered as if unwillingly: “It’s the money.”

  The knight blinked with surprise, and she could see she had his attention. Before he could ask her any more questions, she clasped her hands before her and held his gaze, putting all the conviction she could into her face.

  “You see, our buildings are all in such a state. As I said, poor Cecily fell and broke her wrist because of the condition of the stairs from the laundry; look at the roofs of the church and dorter. Both wrecked. And it’s all because of the prioress.”

  “Explain,” Baldwin ordered.

  “We are a poor institution. Ten, maybe twenty years ago, we had some wealth, but then the rich families stopped sending their daughters to us, and how else can we get money? No patron will give us funds, for what would be the point? Any man would give his donations to the larger places, where it is obvious that there will be people for many years to come, to say prayers for his soul; and then he would only give money to male convents. Monasteries get the chantry money, not nunneries; nuns can’t hold services.”

  “What has this to do with the girl’s death?”

  “Sir Rodney of Oakhampton has seen the dire condition of the priory, and wishes to confer upon our convent the parish church of Belstone, in order that the priory can build a new Lady Chapel, providing the prioress will allow him to have his tomb erected within it, and providing that
she will also pay for a priest to celebrate Mass each day within the chapel and pray for Sir Rodney and his family.”

  “I presume that a parish church like Belstone would allow the convent to afford this?” Baldwin probed. In truth he had never had much understanding of finance, and had no idea how much a little church like Belstone’s would generate.

  “Oh, yes, Sir Baldwin. It’s a generous offer. He wishes nothing that need be overly expensive to the priory. Four candles to burn each day, and the priory’s own chaplain to celebrate a daily Mass for the Blessed Virgin. That was about all his demand. Oh, and he expects us to accept any young girl whom he desires us to take as a nun, or when he has died, any girl nominated by his heirs.”

  “I see no reason why you should thus assume the prioress to have been involved in the novice’s death.“

  “Sir, as a gesture of good faith the noble knight gave the priory the first instalment to help us in the short period while the church is being made over to us. That money has gone straight to the new priest.” She held Baldwin’s eye a moment, then looked at Bertrand, speaking primly. “It was intended for the roofs. Instead it has gone to this man.”

  “Who has seen her with the priest?” Simon demanded.

  “Sir Bailiff, the man has been seen here before. The evening Moll died wasn’t the first time. Just two nights earlier I couldn’t sleep, and went to fetch water. As I returned, I saw a figure ahead of me, entering the door and climbing the stairs to our dormitory. I hurried after but lost sight of him.”

  “You don’t sleep very well, do you?” Simon observed.

  “Is your dorter so vast a man could hide in an instant?” Baldwin asked.

  “Our prioress has a partitioned room near the staircase. The man must have entered it to satisfy his lust – and hers.”

  “That is a strong allegation.”

  Margherita drew a deep breath. “I am not fanciful; I saw someone. The night Moll died I was convinced I had seen a man. If he wasn’t a ghost, where could he have gone? Before I went to my bed, I… I must confess, I allowed myself to succumb to curiosity. I listened at the wall to the prioress’s chamber. That was where I heard heavy breathing – it wasn’t a woman’s breathing, my Lord. And…”

  “Do other nuns sleep so poorly?” Simon interrupted.

  Bertrand held up his hand and nodded for her to continue.

  She drew herself up to her full height. “My Lord, I also heard kissing and the prioress’s voice, moaning, and calling very quietly to her ”love“. That was when I left and went to my bed. I couldn’t listen to any more.”

  “You did not actually see her with this man?” Baldwin asked.

  “No, sir. But the next day I overheard Agnes, another novice, saying that she had heard odd noises. And that’s a great problem: Agnes is the girl Sir Rodney wishes us to look after. If she should tell her master what has happened here, I fear his reaction. He is a godfearing man, devout and honourable. If he were to come to believe that our priory was tainted, he would refuse to give us the church, and then we would be in worse financial trouble.”

  “So no one has seen your prioress in flagrant or promiscuous congress with this priest?” Bertrand demanded severely.

  Margherita hesitated. “No, sir.”

  “And you saw nothing to indicate that your prioress so much as visited Moll that night, let alone killed her?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And yet you accuse her of murdering Moll, even though you have no evidence to show that she had any motive?” Baldwin asked with disbelief. “Sister, if this were an ordinary investigation, you could be jailed for making such a malicious accusation without evidence.”

  “Moll saw him.”

  Baldwin turned upon her a suspicious look. “She saw whom – and when?”

  “Moll saw a man only the night before she was sent to the infirmary. She told me so, although I confess I hardly paid any attention at the time. I don’t listen to the novices’ gossip.”

  “I see. What exactly did the girl say?”

  “That she had seen a man walking up the stairs, just as I did on the night she died. He was dressed in a priest’s or canon’s robes; she couldn’t tell which because it was dark and the two are so similar.”

  “What was she doing? From what you say, your entire sisterhood seems unable to sleep,” Simon commented drily. He hadn’t taken to the treasurer.

  It was mutual and she gave him a cold look. “Some of us, when we are concerned for the future of our convent, will waken. I daresay Moll was of that temperament. Perhaps she went to pray for the security of our nunnery.”

  “I see. So what else did she have to say?” Baldwin asked.

  Margherita took a long breath as if to control her impatience. “Sir Baldwin, she told me that she saw a man going up the stairs, and yet when she followed, there was no man in the dorter. Where else could he have gone, but into the prioress’s private room?”

  “I still don’t understand what this has to do with the death of the girl,“ Bertrand put in.

  “Moll liked confronting her sisters with their failings. I think she told the prioress what she had seen, and Lady Elizabeth killed Moll to hide her guilty secret.”

  Chapter Ten

  Luke walked slowly across the grass of the cloister-garth, and at the middle, he turned to look back the way he had come. He always enjoyed this view. From here, within the quadrangle of the southern, canonical side, the church rose upwards majestically. It had no great tower, but it was rather wonderful in its simplicity.

  He stepped sideways to avoid a pile of dog’s turds on the ground – damn the prioress’s terrier! – and surveyed the eastern side. The first little block was that of the chapterhouse, where the canons held their morning meetings; next was the calefactory, in which a fire was kept roaring all through the day; then the dorter block at the cloister’s south-eastern corner, with storerooms beneath and latrines behind, their chutes dropping down into the pit which was washed by the stream flowing from the kitchen’s leat.

  Southwards was the frater and more storerooms; the kitchen hidden beyond, far enough away to ensure that stray sparks couldn’t set light to other buildings. Last, on the western edge, was the lay brothers’ dorter and storerooms.

  All was enclosed and secure from the outside world, and was practically a mirror image of the nuns’ precincts. It gave Luke a sense of belonging, seeing all these buildings designed simply to protect the inhabitants from the brutal realities of the world outside – not that anywhere was overly safe any more. The news of war brewing on the Welsh March had reached Belstone, and Luke knew only too well that when armies began to move, they would often invade nunneries for their pleasure – being places holding both women and stores of food; in the mind of the common man-at-arms they could hardly be surpassed.

  Luke shook his head. He knew how even modern men could become brutes when there was money or when there were women to be had, and warfare meant that all the usual rules were discarded. If that were to happen, if it looked likely that an army could come here, he would leave, he promised himself. He wasn’t going to run the risk of being murdered just to protect a bunch of nuns.

  But for now there was no need to worry. And his life here was supremely comfortable. He had services to hold, but they weren’t a burden, and there was always the compensation of the younger nuns and novices.

  He had not come to this benighted spot through choice. If he’d had his way, he’d have taken a position as priest in a little church somewhere, so that he could get the benefit of the annual income, and then pay a pittance to some impoverished fool to actually see to the souls within that parish while he went back to Oxford to study.

  Oxford. A great city – he’d loved it there, he recalled glumly. He’d enjoyed a flirtation with a merchant’s daughter, but the silly wench had allowed herself to be caught while trying to meet Luke. Her father was a patron of the college, so Luke had been thrown out. The bishop, Walter Stapledon of Exeter, was unimpres
sed by what he heard of Luke’s behaviour, and removed him from Oxford, writing to Bertrand suggesting Luke should be sent far away.

  Luke had expected to be pushed off into the wilds, and indeed that was what Stapledon had intended; but the clerk who supervised such postings was a friend of Luke’s who, even if he didn’t approve of Luke’s whoring, was happy to alter the instructions dictated to him by Stapledon’s suffragan in exchange for a small barrel of wine. There were many similar areas of confusion which the good Bishop of Exeter would have to sort out when he retired from his position as Treasurer of England; cases where the bishop’s clear instructions became muddled and were interpreted wrongly.

  Luke wondered how Stapledon would react when he found out that Luke had been given the position of priest in a nunnery. The thought that he, who had been driven from college for his womanising, should be placed in charge of young and impressionable girls in a convent, would make the good bishop furious. And the beauty of it was that the clerk who took dictation would blame Bertrand; it was Bertrand, he would say, who gave dictation. If the visitor had intended Luke to be sent to a small monastery on the wild, wretched coast of Cornwall, surely the name of the place would have been in the document which was sent to Luke? And because the document read ‘Belstone’, and the document was signed by Bertrand, Bertrand himself must surely have said that Belstone was the place to which Luke should be sent.

  Luke sighed and made his way to the frater, feeling the need for a drink before he went to conduct Compline, the last service of the day.

  If he was to meet Agnes as he had promised, he would need to keep his strength up, he thought, and grinned to himself.

  The door lay in the eastern side of the cloister. The sleeping hall was a two-storeyed building separated from the church by a narrow alley which led to a dead end, and which had once been roofed to create a small storage area. Now the little lean-to had lost its roof, which had been deposited on the floor to form a mess of broken spars and slates.