Belladonna at Belstone

Chapter Eight

Simon’s discomfort grew as the angry bishop walked to the door dividing the nuns’ cloister from the canons’. He could see that Baldwin was unaffected; the knight was perfectly used to wandering about religious grounds, and Bertrand was beyond any feelings other than his own pique at what he perceived as a slight from the prioress.

But Simon knew no such comfort. To him, walking about this place was almost sacrilegious. It was a place of worship for those who dedicated their lives to God; not somewhere for the likes of him to idle about unhindered.

It was a curious sensation for him. Usually the bailiff was hard-headed and impervious to such fine perceptions, a truly secular man. Raised and bred in Devon, living almost all his life out at Crediton, he had always prided himself on his commonsense. Not, of course, that that prevented him from a certain amount of what he thought of as sensible superstition.

But Simon knew that his place was in the towns and wastes of Dartmoor, not in a convent, and especially not one in which nuns lived. If he had any choice in the matter, he’d have left right now. He was an instrument of secular law, responsible, through his Warden, to the King himself; but if a nun had committed an offence – even murder – he had no authority.

That knowledge was frustrating in its own right. He knew, just as everyone did, that England’s stability was on a knife-edge, with barons up and down the realm joining forces to get rid of the upstart Despenser family. Simon was glad that he was entitled to leave his wife and daughter within Lydford Castle if they needed the security, for otherwise, with the country in the state it was, he’d not have left Lydford, suffragan Bishop Bertrand or no. If he had to leave Lydford, there were things Simon could have been doing to help secure the kingdom, raising money and assessing men-at-arms for the war which he had little doubt was shortly to come. Yet here he was, in a place where he could achieve nothing. Nuns fell under Canon Law; they were safe from prosecution in a civil court.

What was the purpose of his presence? Simon wondered as he trailed unhappily after the bishop.

Bertrand opened the connecting door Jonathan had used up near the altar and stalked through. Simon swallowed his feelings as Baldwin disappeared, and then followed them.

For the first time in his life he was in a nunnery; the experience wouldn’t fulfil the occasional erotic dreams he’d enjoyed as a youngster. There would be no pleasure for him here.

Hugh missed the table with his elbow, and carefully lifted it again, sure that no one would have noticed his slight clumsiness. It wasn’t as if he was drunk, after all; he was just drowsy. He needed refreshment after a long ride like that.

Elias leaned with his back against the wall opposite. He made no sign of seeing Hugh’s near tumble as Hugh rested his chin on his hand, frowning with concentration. “So she comes up here to visit each night?”

“Not every night,” Elias laughed. “Just now and then.”

“What – sort of once a week?”

“Yes, I suppose.” The smith nodded, then belched. “Last time I saw her was…” he went vacant a moment “… oh, when poor Moll died – yes, that was last week.”

Hugh absorbed this. “But why doesn’t the prioress stop her?”

“Prioress has better things to do,” said Elias, and tried to tap the side of his nose. His finger shot past without connecting.

“What could be more important than stopping a whore in a convent?” Hugh demanded.

“It’s more important she keeps it quiet,” Elias said knowingly, and grinned at his pot as if sharing a secret with it.

“You mean she’s…?”

Elias glanced up, and then gave Hugh a very old-fashioned look. “I won’t talk about the prioress.”

When Hugh studied him, he thought the lay brother could only be some twenty-five summers old, no more, and yet his expression was as forbidding as a moorland farmer who had lived forty years on the bleak and inhospitable land.

Elias continued, “I’m a lay brother. I may not be a priest, but that’s only because of my education. I’m not going to be disloyal to my prioress.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything,” Hugh said hastily. There was an edge of truculence to Elias’s voice that promised violence, and Hugh had no wish to be arrested for quarrelling in a convent. He hurried on soothingly, “Look, though – all those lads seem happy enough to take her. Are they all just unreligious or something?”

Elias glanced over Hugh’s shoulder to where other brothers sat drinking. Rose had gone into the little room at the back with one of her clients, out of view of the rest so that those who wanted to stick to their vows wouldn’t be quite so sorely tempted. “They’re religious enough,” he said sadly. “But you don’t realise how hard it is to obey the Rule all the time, every day. Sometimes the men who’ve been serving longest just have to break free. Don’t condemn them for being men.” He took a gloomy sip of his drink.

“I can’t blame them,“ Hugh agreed. ”How could I? She’s a lively little thing, that girl. She could tempt Christ Himself with those bright eyes of hers.“

Elias nodded. It was hard suffering the torments of lust, especially as a man who had sworn his life to the service of his God. Whether a man could love his Lord so perfectly when he desired a woman – well, the answer was easy, wasn’t it? The Rule said that any fornication was wrong, and the lay brothers must put aside lecherous thoughts. Not that it was easy when every day they knew that just a few yards away, over the wall that ran down the centre of the church, were women: some old, some young, and surely several of them as lusty as any of the men on this side.

“You must be very God-fearing to be able to resist her charms, that’s all I can say,” said Hugh affably. He rose unsteadily. “Well, I’d best be getting back to my master’s room. Thanks for the ale.”

“You’re most welcome.”

Elias watched Hugh walk slowly and cautiously to the door, and then out into the darkening yard. And as he watched the servant, Elias could feel tears prickling in his eyes.

“Who are you?” Bertrand barked.

Denise dropped her broom and fell back a step, her mouth working with alarm.

Baldwin touched Bertrand’s arm and stepped around him, smiling reassuringly. “Do not worry, Sister. This is the visitor, here to speak to your prioress about the death of the novice. My friend and I are both assisting him.”

“I am the sacrist, My Lord Bishop,” Denise said breathlessly. “I am sure that Lady Elizabeth would…”

Bertrand waved his hand dismissively. “I’ll see her later. For now, tell us where the poor girl’s body has been put.”

Baldwin walked at Simon’s side a short way behind the visitor. Bertrand was rushing at this affair like a maddened boar, he thought. The man had no idea of subtlety. Even now he moved along at a cracking pace, hands clasped behind his back, withered left hand grasped in his right as if there was need for urgency. Baldwin was convinced that there was not. As far as he was concerned, the first thing to clear up was whether or not there had been a murder. No matter what the treasurer’s letter to Bertrand had said, deaths could often look suspicious. Especially if someone wanted things to look odd, and from the allegation the treasurer had made, she clearly thought something strange was going on. No, Baldwin hoped the whole matter had come up because of an accidental death; if so, then so much the better, for then they could all return to their homes.

But if the treasurer was right and there had been a deliberate killing, Baldwin wasn’t sure the hot-headed bishop would want to solve the crime. He felt no personal animosity towards Bertrand, other than the automatic dislike for a Frenchman of the cloth based upon his Order’s destruction, but he had a wish to get back to Furnshill as quickly as possible in case war should break out. In any event, no matter what Peter Clifford had told the bishop, enquiring into a murder in a convent was work for a priest, not a Keeper.

Denise brought them to the eastern wall of the cloister, and now she hesitated at the door to a small room. Baldwin thanked her before he stepped inside. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, and then he saw the body lying wrapped up on a trestle at the far side beneath a window.

“Could you fetch us light?” he asked, and Denise gave him a doubtful look before she nodded and went back to the church.

“Come, Simon.”

The reluctant bailiff followed him to the body and the two men began unwrapping the linen shroud. Simon disliked this task; he always found it unpleasant but this case was particularly difficult, for the girl was only a little older than his daughter Edith, and she had a similar build. As he helped pull her yielding body over to tug the shroud from her, he found himself contemplating his feelings, were he to see a man do this to his own little Edith. His imagination took hold of him, and for a moment he almost believed that when the covering was lifted he would see Edith’s sightless face looking up at him. The superstitious vision conjured in his mind almost made him stop and step away.

Moll was naked. Her tunic had been saved for another novice. It was a relief to see that the woman they were exposing was a brunette and not a blonde like Edith.

“Here’s the surgeon’s mark,” Baldwin said. There was a small cut in the arm, just as any blood-letter would make. “It is hard to believe that so small a scar could cause death.”

“It’s like I said, Sir Baldwin. The phlebotomist is known to me. He wouldn’t make an elementary mistake like that.”

“So you say,” Baldwin agreed absently. He was pulling the linen away from the corpse’s face. As the last of the covering came away, he stood a moment studying her carefully.

It was clear that she had been a pretty little thing. Here in the dimly lit chamber, she appeared to have almost a pale glow about her, and in the cool atmosphere there was none of the unpleasant stench that was the usual concomitant to death. Even Simon was little affected, Baldwin saw. Baldwin was used to Simon retreating as a corpse was revealed, his stomach rebelling. With her eyes shut, this dead novice had the appearance of a girl asleep, and as Baldwin surveyed her, he was almost persuaded that there was a smile upon her face.

“Surely this child wasn’t murdered. She seems so relaxed,” he said.

Bertrand gave him a sharp glance. “You sure?”

“No, I am only going on my first impression, but her face shows no signs of fear or pain.”

Denise returned carrying a large stand with three fat candles, only one of which was alight. “They all blew out,” she said anxiously. “I had to return to light one.“

Baldwin smiled his thanks, and used the one still burning to relight the others. Then he set the stand by Moll’s head. “Her features are definitely relaxed, but we have to see that there is no other wound on her body, if you want to be certain.” He looked enquiringly at the bishop, who waved his withered hand in assent.

Holding the candle high over her body, Baldwin surveyed the whole of her torso, her limbs and face. There was no obvious wound. With Denise’s and Simon’s help he rolled the corpse over, but her back displayed only the darkening to be expected on a dead body left to lie. Blood, as Baldwin knew, tended to drain downwards in a corpse. Then he went to her head and squatted down, carefully feeling the whole of her skull, parting the locks in his search for any sign of blood, broken bones or bruising. He had once missed a crushed skull, proof of murder, on a child, and was keen not to repeat that error.

At last he stood and peered down at her face, candle held nearby.

“Nothing, is there?” Simon said softly.

“No,” said Baldwin, but as he spoke his eye caught sight of what looked like a swelling on her lip. He leaned closer, then crouched, staring at her profile. There was no discolouration so it didn’t look as if she had been punched or beaten, but her upper lip protruded too much on one side.

Baldwin held the candle to her face and lifted her lip gently. He stood peering at her teeth and the inner surface of her lip. The teeth had been mashed into the lip, puncturing it in places, and weakening the teeth themselves, as if someone had held something over her face.

“Well?” Bertrand demanded. “Can you see something there?”

Baldwin set the candle back in its holder and stood lost in thought. Then he raised her eyelids and peered at her eyes. The irises were very small, something he had seen before in men who were drugged. Baldwin went over each of her limbs once more, but this time more slowly and methodically. When he reached her upper arms he slowed, going from one to the other, peering closely.

At the front of each of her biceps was a yellow-brown bruise. Baldwin wondered whether a cord had bound them, but rejected the idea. There would have been a circular mark all around the arm if she had been tightly bound. He stood back: bruising; swollen lips; her teeth beneath slightly loose, as if she had been stifled; the cut in her arm from the blood-letter…

Baldwin took the candle up again and looked carefully at the slash, pulling the edges apart gently, probing into it. A phlebotomist always made one cut, a quick slash over the vein. This girl had suffered two cuts: one over the veins, the second at a slight angle to the first, and deeper.

There could be no doubt.

“She was murdered,” he breathed.

It was twilight when Agnes left the treasurer’s side and made her way out to the cloister nearest the church. Here she hesitated, agonising whether to enter or not, but her caution was overwhelmed by her recollection of Luke’s face and she quietly opened the door and slipped inside.

Her heart started pounding with mixed nervousness and excitement when she saw him.

Luke knelt alone before the altar, palms joined, the fingers of both hands meeting all along their lengths, and held up high in the pose of submission, just as a knight placed his hands together before his lord and held them aloft so that his master could place his own hands outside and accept the oaths of loyalty. Luke’s head was bowed, his whole posture that of a devout penitent, and the sight pulled at Agnes’s heart.

Rather than interrupt, she glided softly along the wall, away from the candlelight. He looked so vulnerable, she thought; like a saint about to be martyred for his faith, offering up his last prayers before execution. It must have been like this when St Thomas a Becket was murdered: the gentle cleric at the altar, performing his duties honourably when the King’s assassins got in. The thought gave Agnes a most undevout and yet pleasurable thrill. She wanted to call out, to make Luke start and turn around with that fear in his eyes, like a frightened stag held at bay by the hounds.

Luke finished his prayer and stood slowly, his eyes filled with what Agnes thought was almost a beggarly fixedness at the altar’s cross. He dropped his head as he turned from the symbol of his religion, and as he did so, Agnes chuckled. Instantly his face went from one point to another, seeking the source of the sound.

She let him stew a moment or two before stepping into the light. “I thought you’d be able to tell where I was.“

Luke gave a short grunt and rushed to her, holding her in his arms and kissing her nose, her brow, her eyes, her mouth.

The bell rang and the community stirred, all the obedientiaries leaving their work; nuns in their offices set aside herbs, food, books, inks; lay women sighed and dropped their laundry back into the water or into their baskets, others stood slowly, arching backs that ached from scrubbing floors, or reluctantly turned from the fires that promised warmth and comfort and instead made their way towards the cold church. In the men’s area, canons carefully closed their books and lay brothers put their ales down or dropped their tools before heading for the church.

Denise was suddenly aware again of the pressure in her bladder.

She turned an agonised face to the visitor. “I have to go, my Lord Bishop – that’s the call to Vespers.”

“Yes, of course,” he said.

His tone of voice surprised Baldwin. There was a generous quality, like an avuncular man talking to his favourite niece, and Baldwin shot him a glance. Bertrand was standing still, apparently watching Denise as she walked away, but Baldwin was sure Bertrand’s mind was elsewhere. Once again, he wondered about the bishop’s motivation. Most priests would have been only too happy to discover that there had not been a murder, that the convent was free from that stain on its reputation – but Bertrand seemed relieved to hear the death pronounced as murder.

Baldwin covered the corpse once more, tugging the linen sheet back over Moll, gazing down at her reflectively. When he was done, he was surprised to find Bertrand had moved to his side. The visitor stood shaking his head for a while, but then went out to the cloister.

“Baldwin,” Simon said, jerking his head after Bertrand, “if I was a cynic, I’d think that bastard was happy the girl was murdered.”

“He is,” said Baldwin. “But forget him for a while: this girl was suffocated, I think, and then had her artery opened to make it appear an accident. Let the good bishop seek whatever he wants. We shall find this poor child’s killer.”

After the service Luke watched the nuns file from the church like a line of saints. He felt the mixed calm and boredom he always experienced after a service, but today there was a particle of excitement. The visitor was here to conduct an inquest, Agnes had told him breathily, as she held him close and writhed her hips against him, grinning up at him wickedly as she felt his response. He went from the altar to the door connecting the two churches, the two cloisters. Carefully pulling it shut behind him, he walked through the canonical church to the outer door and leaned against it a moment.

So the bishop wanted to find out what had happened to Moll, did he? He’d have to dig deep – and if he wanted any help from Luke, he’d have a long wait.

Luke was a most straightforward lover. He knew that his robes excited lust in a lot of women, and he’d always made the most of the fact. Living in a convent gave him a higher probability of success, for the women here only ever saw him, and no other men.

Not that competition would have worried him. He was content that his sharply defined features, grey eyes, red-gold hair and easy smile would win him lovers wherever he went. His experiences generally proved him right.

But for every ten who accepted him greedily, there was sometimes one who rejected him.

From the look of her, Moll was as lusty as any other novice. She seemed to know how to excite a man without even touching him; she’d managed that with Luke. He could recall the first time he’d seen her, the vixen. She’d given him a cheery smile, head back coquettishly so she was looking at him low over the top of her veil, just like so many girls he’d known, sucking her veil against her face, emphasising her lips, when she knew he was watching her. She couldn’t have done all that by accident. It was obvious from the start that she wanted him. And he wanted her, too.

In some ways Luke had a blind spot: he assumed all women desired him. The idea that one might only see his cloth and wouldn’t consider him in a sexual light never occurred to him.

It was Moll who taught him that some novices were truly religious. Stupid bitch!