Belladonna at Belstone aktm-8

by Michael Jecks

  Not that he wanted to help her. The Lady Elizabeth had not controlled the place as efficiently as she should have, and Paul, who although slightly eccentric was still enthusiastically religious, felt that her tenure had not served to honour God as it should have. He could see the advantage of another prioress taking over. Apart from anything else it would free him from that horrible old man Jonathan.

  Paul pulled a face as he recalled that Jonathan had asked him to go and walk with him in the garden. The very idea made his flesh creep, and Paul shuddered. If the prioress was doing her job, an ageing satyr like Jonathan would be controlled. Margherita wouldn’t allow Jonathan to try to seduce other canons.

  Suddenly, Paul realised there was another way to get a message to the prioress via the grille in the herb garden. He could call through it and ask a nun to fetch the Lady Elizabeth to come and hear Godfrey’s words.

  But arriving there, he saw Elias already at the grille, eagerly peering through it. Paul stopped and frowned. This was outrageous: didn’t the smith have any sense of wrongdoing? It was just one more example of the slack discipline at Belstone. The prioress was responsible; she was in charge. It was wrong! She shouldn’t permit such open communication between canons and nuns. If Elias was guilty, then so was she. It was high time the Lady Elizabeth was removed and someone else took over.

  All this passed through his head as he stood watching Elias at the grille. Paul tutted to himself. He had a message to pass on, and how could he do it now? If he was unable to speak to a nun, how could be bring the news to the attention of the prioress? Of course… he could tell someone else – someone who was known by all in the convent to be the implacable enemy of the prioress: Bishop Bertrand!

  If Paul told the suffragan, Bertrand would be bound to take action – and it must surely help remove Lady Elizabeth. Even she would find it hard to survive an apostate canon, a nun turned apostatrice, as well as two deaths and the near death of the knight.

  In confiding in Paul, Brother Godfrey had unwittingly ensured that his message went to the one man he wished to remain ignorant.

  Bertrand led the way through to the cloister and in at the frater’s door. Here Simon and Hugh found Baldwin unconscious lying on a trestle table. A perplexed Godfrey stood cleaning Baldwin’s scalp with a cloth damped in warm water; he gave the men a cursory once-over before returning to his work, utterly absorbed.

  “Baldwin? What has…?”

  “He was walking out in the cloister, when a terrible accident happened,” Bertrand said. He stared at Baldwin’s hideous wound; the sight of the long flap of flesh slashed away with such precision was horrible, but fascinating. “A novice was up on the church roof, and slipped. The poor girl fell to her doom, but as she toppled, she dislodged slates, and one of them did this to your friend. Only God’s own grace saved his life. If the slate had fallen an inch to one side, he would be dead.”

  “He’ll be fine, Bailiff,” Godfrey said, reaching for a pair of scissors and beginning to cut away the knight’s hair. “For so old a man, he’s healthy.”

  Simon nodded distractedly. To have woken from his nightmare to be presented with a real one was appalling, and for a moment he seriously wondered whether he was still dreaming. He took a step forward. “He will live?”

  “He’s fit enough. Leave him to me.” Seeing the fearful expression on Simon’s face, Godfrey’s voice became more kindly. “Don’t worry, Bailiff. I’ve seen to many similar wounds, and he’ll be all right.”

  “Thank you for your assistance,” Simon said, and made to walk out of the room, but then he stopped and gave a quick frown. “Hugh, you wait here,” he said in an undertone. “Stay with Baldwin and don’t let anyone near him if you don’t trust them.”

  “Why? He is perfectly safe here,” Bertrand said.

  Simon glanced at Godfrey. “You say a second novice has died?”

  “This has nothing to do with the death of poor Moll…”

  “Perhaps, but seeing my friend here like this, I am not prepared to take the risk. Baldwin was certain that Moll’s death was murder, and I find this ”accident“ to be suspicious. Now show me where this all happened.”

  Bertrand agreed with a bad grace, convinced that the bailiff was allowing his imagination to run on a light rein, but Simon didn’t care. He knew that accidents happened at the worst possible moments; a tile falling from a roof wasn’t rare even in better maintained places. All the same, he felt deeply uneasy.

  It was ironic that this should happen just as Baldwin and he had been ordered home. Home! With an inward groan, Simon thought of Jeanne: she must be told – but not until later. For now, Simon must concentrate on how Baldwin had been wounded.

  “He was here,” Bertrand said, motioning towards a thick sprinkling of slates on the grass. Thin snow had been trampled, but two clotted spills of blood stood out distinctly.

  Simon peered upwards. The cloister roof had been wrecked, but it was a good twenty or thirty feet from the church roof in a direct fall, and a body weighing some stones would have dislodged them without difficulty.

  “Did anyone see what happened?” he asked.

  “There was a canon here called Paul: him.”

  Simon followed his pointing finger and saw a gawky young canon entering the cloister. Walking up to him, Simon asked, “You saw my friend hit by the slate?”

  Paul forgot Elias at once. Seeing Simon’s serious expression Paul was reminded of Katerine’s body, her wide, scared eyes, the way her head rested at such an impossible angle. It was enough to make him want to weep with sadness. When that tile had fallen, he had been in the middle of copying a book, trying to ensure a perfect replica of the writing, but it was a dull treatise, and when he saw Baldwin in the cloister, Paul had been distracted and had watched him. It took little time for Paul to tell Simon what he had seen. While he spoke, Simon was aware of Bertrand joining them. Paul’s attention went to the suffragan while he talked.

  “So my friend was out there looking upwards?” Simon asked.

  “Yes, but then he turned away, and rubbed at his eye, and a moment later the slate struck him. Then there was an awful crash, and the next thing I knew, something was rolling down the roof above me, and fell almost on top of Sir Baldwin.”

  “How do I get to the roof?”

  There was a stone staircase inside the church. Soon Simon was hurrying along the cloister towards it.

  When he was gone, Paul turned to Bertrand. “My Lord, may I speak to you a moment?”

  It was very windy on the roof and Simon had to take a good breath before he dared approach the edge. He was afraid of heights. Looking down, he found himself staring at the upturned face of Bertrand, who remained standing in the quadrangle with Paul.

  To take his mind off the suffragan, Simon peered straight down on to the roof of the cloister. Some twenty yards farther along, he could see the point where the novice’s body had struck it. Not only was there a roughly circular pattern of dark, wrecked slates showing through the snow, which corresponded to the place where she had apparently fallen, there was a broad red stain. He’d heard Katerine had broken her neck. Hitting headfirst, she must have wrecked her skull.

  Simon was aware of an overwhelming sense of inadequacy. Usually he could rely on his native intelligence to solve local mysteries, but today, with his best friend unconscious and unable to aid him, he felt all at sea.

  From the corner of his eye he saw movement, and when he glanced down he saw the suffragan walking with Paul towards the stables. The sight of the two men drew Simon’s attention back to the present, and he found he could concentrate once more.

  Very well, the girl had fallen from the church roof. Either she had slipped – in which case what was she doing here? – or perhaps she had jumped and it was pure mischance that she happened to land on Baldwin, dislodging a slate on the way…

  Simon caught his breath. The canon had said that he saw Baldwin look up, saw him turn away, saw the slate strike, and then heard the girl
hit the roof.

  His confidence returned. He marched along the roof until he was in a line with the mark on the grass and the ruined slates on the roof. Here it was maybe fifteen or twenty feet to the cloister roof, Simon guessed. A light dusting of snow clung to the vertical stonework of the church. A line showed where the snow had been swept clear as the girl fell down the wall. Simon had a vision of her toppling headfirst, her skull grating down the stone and losing the flesh.

  Struck by vertigo, Simon had to close his eyes and lean away from the terrible drop. Rather than gaze down, he decided to survey the roof.

  There was no lead here. The convent had not enough money to fully waterproof the place; only the greater houses could afford that sort of luxury. Instead, like the cloister roof below, this one was slated. Each slate had a pair of holes drilled through it so that oak pegs could be thrust through, hooking the tile to the lathes beneath. There were no slates missing nearby, but Simon had hardly expected to see any gone. If someone had done as Simon suspected and thrown one at Baldwin, it would have been an act of extreme stupidity to pull one from the roof. That would prove ill-intent.

  However there was a pile of unfitted slates near the low parapet, as if the builders had left them for use as spares as and when needed, or perhaps the canons thought this was the best place to leave them, rather than taking up storage space in the undercrofts.

  When Simon examined them, he was struck by their new appearance. All looked unused. Even the top one was perfectly cut, its surface a smooth blue-black colour.

  Simon turned slowly back from the pile and stared down at the roof at his feet. The girl had obviously been up here a while, for the snow had been swept clear of much of the area, and where she had clambered over the parapet she had cleared a small space of snow.

  He froze; utterly immobile for a moment, he held his breath. It was so obvious, so clear that someone had tried to murder Baldwin that Simon was unable to turn and confirm the proof for a moment, fearing to find his recollection was wrong.

  Slowly he swivelled around and walked the two steps back to the pile of new slates.

  The slates which had no snow upon them.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Constance returned to the infirmary and found Joan sitting before the fire. Pouring her a cup of spiced wine, Constance stood back to watch the older woman drink. It was peaceful now that Cecily was asleep again, this time drunk on wine rather than dwale and poppy seed, and Joan was clearly enjoying the quiet.

  There was no such peace for Constance. She was confused, anxious and scared. It was while she was still talking to the prioress that the message had arrived that poor Katerine was dead, fallen from the roof, almost braining Sir Baldwin en route.

  Everyone had heard stories of nuns who lost their faith and believed that they had the right to end their lives, denying God’s own supreme responsibility for choosing how and when to call His people to Himself, but Constance would never have believed that of Katerine. Especially since she had always appeared so full of life. She was the last person to look for death. Constance privately thought the girl must have slipped – but that begged the question of what Katerine was doing on the roof in the first place. Spying on the canons?

  It was a thought. The girl was always happy to use information to her own advantage, as Constance knew only too well, although what she could have hoped to have seen up on the roof was a puzzle.

  Constance left the jug by the fire and walked back to the little chamber, standing in the doorway and staring about her.

  Only a few nights ago, when Moll died, she had told Elias of their joint parenthood, while they lay naked in each other’s arms on her mattress. At first he had not wanted to believe it, his face registering shock, but that was only for a moment. Then his expression changed. His eyes had creased, his mouth broke into a wide smile and he had pulled her towards him, embracing her fervently.

  It was his idea to leave the convent. How could they stay? he had demanded, his strong, muscled arms wrapped about her, talking softly into the side of her neck while she stared up at the ceiling, tears filling her eyes.

  He still wanted her to go with him, she knew; he would be waiting for her down at the iron grille that separated the nunnery from the canons. Waiting for her answer.

  And she would have gone, if Katerine hadn’t accosted her. That had forced her to decide: Elias or the convent. At least the prioress had been kind; understanding. There were rumours that she herself had once fallen in love, and had only come to this convent after being thrown from another in disgrace. Perhaps that was why she was less harsh with her nuns and novices: because she knew what it was to hold a man in her arms, to feel doubt and dual loyalties, one to God, and the other to a man.

  Constance stared at her belly with near revulsion. It had never occurred to her that she could come to this. Elias had been a flirtation, an amusement snatched between services and the routines of claustral life. She had enjoyed flirting so much that one day she had shamefully passed near the grille, and when he made to catch at her robe, she made a show of sweeping it away, casually allowing her hand to pass so close to his that he could hardly help but catch it.

  As soon as his fingers gripped hers, she felt the blood stop in her veins. She was frozen in time; her eyes transfixed by his powerful fingers; scarred, grime-ingrained fingers they were, but to her they were beautiful. She imagined how they would feel upon her body, scratching slightly as the nicks and calluses scraped over her. She pulled away, scared of her own emotions, and for the rest of that day she had lived in a dream, a wonderful dream in which Elias held her hand and smiled at her.

  It had not been easy for him to get to her room. She had tutored him carefully, and had given her patients dwale to ensure their silence. The only risk had been that he might be seen entering the dorter, and then, once inside, that Princess might hear him. The little dog barked whenever she heard a man in the nuns’ area. It was because of her that Constance had given Elias a bottle of poppy syrup. Princess often went to the men’s cloister, and there would steal any food available. Elias lured her into eating marrow bones, and fed her small pieces of bread soaked in poppy syrup.

  Each time Elias had gone to see Constance the dog had been unconscious. In fact, the poppy juice worked so well that when Elias proposed that they should leave together, Constance hadn’t quibbled when he asked for a larger bottle, this time to ensure that the gatehouse was still as they passed through; they wouldn’t have to concern themselves with over-inquisitive gatekeepers.

  But now Constance couldn’t leave. Partly it was the talk she had had with Lady Elizabeth. The prioress made her feel she was wanted. Oh, she’d made it clear enough that Constance would be committing a sin by leaving, but Constance believed that conceiving her child already put her beyond the pale. No, it was Elizabeth’s understanding that had struck Constance. She truly appeared to understand Constance’s confusion and fear.

  There was another reason why she wasn’t sure about running away. She thought Elias might be the murderer.

  Simon took a pace back from the parapet. It was a hideous drop, made still more repulsive by that revolting smear. Now he knew what he was looking for, he could see the traces of red on the wall itself. Not on the roof below – that puddle was perfectly clear. No, now he could see the vertical path cleared in the snow was not merely an area remarkable by the absence of snow, but also by a smear of red.

  He was as sure as he could be that Katerine had been murdered: these traces of her blood up on the roof of St Mary’s meant that she had already been hurt before falling. Simon felt his stomach churn but not now with squeamishness. A hot, focused rage was guiding him – a rage composed of the desire for vengeance on whoever had tried to assassinate his closest friend, plus requital for the slaughter of two young women.

  It was not that the two were novices, but rather that they were girls just like his own daughter Edith and the thought that someone had taken it into his or her head to kill them wa
s so atrocious that Simon was determined to repay the debt on behalf of the two victims.

  How could he prove Katerine had been murdered? Obviously if someone had heaved her over the parapet, either they had carried the dead girl up here or they had attacked her when she was already here – but if she had been conscious she would have screamed as she was pushed.

  Simon was no expert, but he would have thought that carrying a girl up so many stairs would be difficult. He crouched by the door in the tower to see if there was blood on the top stairs – either drips from a bleeding wound, or smear-marks on the circular tower walls from a wounded body touching its surface as it was carried up over someone’s shoulder. There was nothing in the area around the door.

  He turned his attention elsewhere. The church had one shallowly pitched roof, and from the door he could see that the peak was only a short climb. Swallowing his desire to return to solid, safe ground, he gingerly stepped up and peered over the other side. There was nothing lying around that looked as though it might have been used to kill, nothing lying in plain view. Gloomily, Simon returned to the door. He had to accept that he had failed. There was no sign of someone having been attacked, and no sign of blood on the stairs.

  Walking through to the top of the stairs, he turned to pull the tower door shut behind him when he noticed the smear on the door itself, and if the sight hadn’t been so sombre and doleful, he would have given a whoop of joy.

  Hugh sucked, but no matter what he did the small sliver of meat wouldn’t budge from between his teeth. He looked around to make sure no one was watching and drew his knife. Lips pursed in a low, innocent whistle, he dragged the blade along the edge of the table to peel a long, thin splinter from it. It was the perfect size.

  Sir Baldwin lay still. Godfrey had bustled about collecting a bowl and knife, and asked Hugh whether he would help bleed the knight, but Hugh refused to let him go near Baldwin with a blade until the bailiff returned and gave his permission. It wasn’t that Hugh had any objection to bleeding: he was bled at least twice a year, because everyone knew it was the best way to cleanse the blood of impurities, but Hugh wasn’t taking responsibility for Sir Baldwin’s health – especially with the man whom Hugh suspected could have had a part in the first novice’s death, and especially since Hugh couldn’t know whether Godfrey could have his own reasons for killing, say, an over-inquisitive Keeper of the King’s Peace.