Belladonna at Belstone

Chapter Thirteen

The woman most on Bertrand’s mind was at that moment surprised, on opening her door, to find a nun, weeping piteously, waiting in her room.

“My daughter, what’s the matter?” she asked solicitously, crossing the room to Constance’s side. “Come – sit here, and tell me all about it.”

Constance allowed herself to be drawn away from the window, and rested in a chair, gratefully taking the cup of wine which her prioress thrust into her hands.

It was miserable, this existence. She had only wanted to do good and look after others, but now she thought she’d have done better never to have come to Belstone. She had never wanted to join a convent, and if she’d had any say, she’d have remained outside, living in peace, but when her brother Paul had insisted that she should find a husband, one with whom he could work, her life changed for ever. The only man to suit her, in Paul’s opinion, was someone who already had a good fortune or possessed a ship for trade. It was all Paul ever thought of – money and the means of securing more power for his family. There was never any consideration for his sister’s feelings: Constance was only a useful pawn to be swapped in exchange for suitable concessions.

It was that which led to her incarceration here. She would not have come to Belstone, except the only man whom Paul could find for her who possessed the right attributes was Master Gerald, a burgess in Exeter: a gross, fat man, with pendulous jaws and slack mouth, piggy eyes, and perpetually sweating brow. Master Gerald was certainly rich, but he was repulsive as well. The thought of his drooling mouth approaching her in their marital bed was repellent, and Constance had instantly spoken to the local priest, declaring her intention of joining a cloister.

That was over nine years ago, when she had been already old, at almost two-and-twenty. In truth she could say that she had never had any difficulty with her vows. She had made them in good faith, and intended to stick to them. When she came to the convent, she was a virgin and believed that she could keep to the claustral life. Celibacy was a small price to pay for the escape from Master Gerald, and as for poverty and obedience – well, poverty was her lot now that she was cut off from her family, and obedience was a feature of everyone’s daily existence. We all obeyed someone else, a lord, a king, an abbot – or a husband.

And then everything changed again – for she had met Elias.

Constance was tending to her tiny herb garden out at the western edge of the cloister, behind the lay sisters’ dorter, and picking leaves for a poultice when she had cut her thumb on her little sharp knife. She had been down at the southernmost corner of the garden, where the wall dividing the canonical side from the nunnery was a simple metal fence with iron bars to separate men and women without leaving all the nuns’ plants in the shade. As Constance stood, staring at her bloodied finger with dismay, Elias had appeared in the grille, and from that moment Constance had known love.

She felt the prioress’s arm about her shoulder, and drank again. Lady Elizabeth was a kind woman, Constance knew, though sometimes her advice was not useful.

Lady Elizabeth sat at her desk and gazed sympathetically at the weeping nun.

“I wondered why you did not attend Matins,“ she said softly. ”But I see you wouldn’t have been able to concentrate. Well and good. It is better that you should come to sing praises to Christ with a happy heart, not one which is downcast.“

“My… my Lady,” Constance stammered. “I have broken my vows.“

“You have made love with a canon?”

Constance stared up at the prioress. “You knew?”

“My dear, I know much of what goes on here, but it did not require great intuition to guess what you meant. It was a sin, but you could hardly have broken the oath of poverty without my knowing, and as for obedience, I have always found you most straightforward. What else could it be, then? Now, you are not the first to have done this. Are you with child?”

Feeling her face redden, Constance turned away in her shame.

“That is a pity, my dear – a child can be an embarrassment, and it is difficult to conceal something that can grow so large. Still, there are ways of keeping such matters quiet.”

“But it’s not the point! What of my promise to God?”

“He has many problems to look at, and I fear your lapse is only one of many, even among nuns. He has other, more serious issues to occupy Him.”

“But what about Moll? I killed her!”

Elias walked into the frater just as the bishop hurried out, and Elias had to stand back as Bertrand shoved past, rude in his urgency. He left Elias standing at the doorway staring after him with surprise as the suffragan darted back along the cloister towards the church. When Elias peered into the frater, he saw Baldwin and Simon, both looking bitterly angry, and Godfrey sitting opposite them with an expression of resentment marring his normally pleasant features. Hugh sat close to his master, looking sulky.

Although he had no wish to be questioned by the knight or the bailiff, Elias was thirsty, and he also wondered whether he could learn anything useful about the investigation. He walked in and collected himself a jug of ale before wandering as if idly to a bench nearby. This early in the morning the frater was nearly empty. Elias sat as close as he could without looking conspicuous; he was at the next table with Jonathan, a man whom Elias usually tried to avoid, but today he had little choice if he wished to hear what the men were saying.

At first he could hear little, and what he did hear made no sense to him.

Baldwin: “What do you think, Godfrey?”

Godfrey, peevishly: “Me? Why do you persist in asking me? The good bishop has decided upon his actions. He’s wrong, though. My Lady Elizabeth is…”

Baldwin: “You know about Watton. Almost anyone in a double convent like this will have heard of the story. Could it have happened here?”

Godfrey, dismissively: “Oh, rumours! If you listen to half the gossip that circulates around a nunnery, you’ll believe that the Devil invented them for his own amusement.”

Baldwin: “Has the same crime been committed here?”

Godfrey: “Leave me alone, Sir Knight. I don’t know anything about this Watton.”

It was at this point that Jonathan nudged Elias. “I think that knight has got a shrewd idea what’s been going on here. You should watch yourself, Elias, eh?”

Elias could have hit him. The canon sat with a suggestive leer on his face, nodding knowingly when he saw his bolt strike the mark. Instead, Elias stared over the other man’s shoulder and spoke softly from the corner of his mouth. “You think so, Jonathan? If I were under any danger, it would be as nothing compared to what would happen to you if I were to tell our Lady the Prioress whom you have been trying to tup.”

Jonathan’s face changed. “Come, there’s no need for that. I only made a comment in jest, Elias.”

“So did I. Don’t make me have to repeat it in seriousness, will you?”

Jonathan gave him a fawning smile and moved further along the bench, leaving Elias fuming. He knew his behaviour was wrong, against the teachings of St Benedict, and ran utterly against the Rule designed for their convent; he was guilty of failing in two of his oaths – he had been neither obedient nor celibate – and still worse, he had tempted a nun to fail in her own oaths.

Yet that wasn’t the worst of it, he reminded himself. Far worse even than that was the fact that he was planning to remove Constance from the convent, leading her into the crime of apostasy.

“Watton!” Godfrey exclaimed. “You keep referring to it. I know nothing of the place.”

“Then allow me to inform you,” Baldwin said steadily.

Simon cast a look at Hugh. His servant was staring away, plainly bored by the conversation, and Simon could well understand why. Baldwin appeared to be talking about something that had no relevance.

“Watton,” the knight said, “was a small convent far from here, but it was not dissimilar to St Mary’s. It was Gilbertine, I think, which means it was a double convent, with the two cloisters, just like this one.”

Godfrey sipped from his pot and refilled it carelessly, Simon thought, as though slopping the drink over the table was proof that he was hardly paying heed to Baldwin’s words.

“But in this little place there was a great sin committed,” Baldwin continued. “Because in Watton it was discovered that a nun had been dallying with a monk, and the nuns were deeply shocked; more so still when they found that the girl concerned was now with child. Of course this sort of thing is common enough, isn’t it, Godfrey? We know how it can happen, but at Watton, the nuns took an extreme view. They condemned the girl and the man. They forced her to cut off his… let’s just say that he was gelded by her. And then the nuns locked her away in a cell. In chains. She was allowed to give birth to her child, I think, and the baby was brought up in the monastery, but the mother was never released.”

“An interesting story, Sir Baldwin. But hardly relevant to our…”

“What I always wondered, after I heard that tale, was how had the two managed to meet?” Baldwin said, peering into his cup. “If they were in a double convent, then there would have been great controls over who could cross between the cloisters, wouldn’t there? Like there are here.”

“Of course. No one is permitted to go to the nuns’ area unless…”

Baldwin interrupted him once more. “Unless they have a good reason to. Like, for example, a doctor, a specialist in the arts of surgery.”

Godfrey avoided his eye. His hands were shaking slightly, like a man suffering from too much wine the night before, and his face was red. “I don’t think I understand you,” he managed after a few moments.

“I think you do, Godfrey,” Baldwin said quietly. “I think some of your colleagues have enjoyed visits over to the nunnery. Perhaps you yourself have made the trip occasionally, eh?”

Godfrey set his cup down and made as if to rise.

Baldwin grabbed his wrist. “Godfrey, the girl is dead.”

“May she rest in peace. I know nothing about that. I did everything in my power to save the poor child,” the brother said in a low voice.

“And what of her soul, Godfrey? Did you do all you could to save that as well?”

Suddenly exhausted, Godfrey dropped back down into his seat. “I didn’t touch her. Never! I only opened her vein that one time.”

“How is it done normally?” Baldwin said, his tone cold and relentless. “You tell the young nun or novice that she need not fear, that making love with a priest is no rejection of her vows to God. Is that not how it’s done? And then, of course, the priest gives absolution. He can confess her, so she need not even look to another man for forgiveness, which could be embarrassing. No, she can gain that from the man who serviced her.”

“It’s not like that!” Godfrey said, and now at last he looked up. He held Baldwin’s gaze a moment, then his eyes dropped again. “It’s not like that,” he repeated, and glanced over the room. Luckily the place was almost deserted, with most of the canons having gone about their duties, some to study, others to work. He didn’t see Elias, who sat behind him. “Sir Baldwin, I shall tell you all I know, but you must trust me when I say that I am innocent.”

“Tell us what you know.”

“I know that the connecting door between the cloisters is rarely locked. Men can cross from one to the other as often as they wish. I have to visit the infirmary regularly enough when Constance needs assistance. But I also go to talk to ladies whom I know.“

Baldwin nodded, but his face showed no compassion or sympathy. He had been a monk himself, and once he had taken the vows, he had never broken them. To him, an oath was itself sacred, and he knew perfectly well that breaking one of them meant breaking his own solemn word. If a man could do that, he was capable of anything. “What of the dead girl?”

“Moll? She never knew of my visits.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Easy, Sir Baldwin!” Godfrey gave a sheepish smile. “When she knew of any such affairs, she would instantly break with the nun concerned, and try to persuade her to alter her evil ways!”

“You mean that your ”friends“ never had such a conversation, so Moll never saw them with you. Would you say that Moll was a very religious young woman?”

“How should I know?” Godfrey said, taking a drink from his pot. “It’s hard to tell with these young novices. Some of them look ever heavenwards, others are always concentrating on the world here, professing their purity as a means to acquire power. When they’re playing that game, it’s hard to see what they’re really like,” he added gloomily. “I mean, they don’t react like real women. Look at that appalling woman, the treasurer. I wouldn’t trust Sister Margherita further than I could throw her. She’s determined to win power, and God Himself knows what she’ll do with it.”

“But Moll never gave you the impression that she was not honourable and devout?”

“She never gave me cause to doubt her sincerity, no. Others, maybe, but not her.”

“Who did?”

“That little Agnes. She’s been put here by Sir Rodney as the first of the women he claims the right to install here, because of his generous donation towards the Lady Chapel, but she is hardly chaste, from what I’ve seen. Perhaps that’s why Sir Rodney decided to have her imprisoned here.”

“You have seen her misbehaving with a canon?”

Godfrey gave him a twisted grin. “I appear to be talking more than usual, Sir Baldwin. Perhaps I have seen her, perhaps I haven’t – but I seem to recall the good suffragan telling you that you should consider packing your things. So why should I tell you any more?” He stood. “I shall leave you. If you want to know anything else, find another informer.”

Elias watched him go with waves of relief washing over him. For an instant he had thought Godfrey would give Constance away. It was fortunate that this knight was about to leave: his questions were approaching the truth. However, as a secular man, Sir Baldwin was potentially dangerous. What if he told others?

Elias chewed his lip as he considered the unpalatable results of Baldwin’s letting slip rumours of what was happening within the convent.

Lady Elizabeth squatted before the weeping infirmarer and used the end of her sleeve to wipe away her tears. “Constance, don’t trouble yourself in this way. What do you mean, you killed her?”

“It’s true, my Lady,” Constance said, and the tears flooded down her cheeks as she stared hopelessly at her prioress. “I gave her dwale so that she wouldn’t hear me or see me with my lover. I killed her as surely as if I’d stabbed her – I poisoned her.”

Lady Elizabeth opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it. The woman before her clearly believed what she had said, and although Elizabeth herself didn’t, she should give Constance an opportunity to explain why she was so convinced of her guilt. Elizabeth returned to her desk, and nodded seriously. “Go on.”

Constance closed her eyes and allowed her head to fall at an angle. She took a shuddering breath, then, “My Lady, I mixed dwale for Cecily, the lay sister, because she had broken her wrist and would not otherwise sleep. I gave her a strong helping. The infusion of poppy seed acts as a good soporific, and… and I wanted to ensure that Joan and Moll were peaceful as well.” She looked up at the silent prioress. “I did it so that I could enjoy my lover alone, without fear of discovery by one of my patients.“

“Especially Moll, I imagine,” Elizabeth smiled tightly.

“Especially her, yes,” Constance agreed dolefully. “She always stuck her nose… Well, you know. Anyway, I gave all three a generous draught. Cecily drank hers down and was soon asleep. Joan is old and reacts quickly to dwale: I saw the drug overcome her almost immediately. I watched Moll drink a little of hers and left the rest of the jug at her side. It was not long before my lover arrived and we went to my chamber.”

“I see,” said the prioress. “And this was some time before Nocturns?”

“Yes, my Lady.”

“Would you have heard someone entering?”

“Margherita tried to,” Constance said. “I heard her and pushed her from the room, she made so much noise.”

“She woke Joan or…”

Constance shook her head. “All three were still asleep. I had given them enough dwale to sleep through anything.”

The prioress gave a fleeting frown. “The door to the infirmary opens very quietly, doesn’t it? Why should Margherita have made so much noise?”

“It was almost as if she wanted to make sure everyone could hear her.”

Now she thought about it, Lady Elizabeth herself could recall having been woken by something. At the time she had assumed it was Princess, feeling poorly and wanting to join her mistress in the bed.

Lady Elizabeth fixed Constance with a firm stare. “And the man was?”

Constance covered her face with her hands in a moment’s indecision, before meeting her prioress’s stern expression. “My Lady, I cannot tell you that. I can answer for my guilt, but I cannot take another’s decision for him. How can I accuse him without redoubling my guilt? If I speak of him, I force you to judge him. Better that he should have the opportunity of admitting his guilt before his confessor. It must be enough for you to know that I was there, I committed this sin, and I am to pay the price for my stupidity and… and lust.”

Lady Elizabeth was about to speak when her door opened, and the red face of Bertrand, breathless after climbing the stairs two at a time, appeared. “Lady Elizabeth, I would have a word with you,” he began.

For the second time in twenty-four hours the cloister rang to the bellow of a raised voice, but this time the astonished nuns and canons heard the distinct, precise enunciation of their own prioress.

“Who do you think you are, to thrust yourself in upon the confessional? Do you dare to assume the right to interrupt a nun in solemn declaration? Remove yourself this instant!”

Bertrand had expected an apologetic, slightly anxious woman, a prioress anticipating removal prior to the installation of her replacement. To be met with this icy blast of rage was almost physically blinding. He blinked and took a step backwards. Rallying his forces, he managed to point out, “But you cannot take confession. You’re no priest, you’re a woman.”

“Be silent!” Lady Elizabeth stormed, rising from behind her desk. “How dare you question my rights in my priory. Get out of here before I have the canons remove you from the whole of the precinct and bar you from ever returning. And be assured that if you force me to take this action, I will immediately write to my Lord, the Bishop of Exeter, and demand that you be advised never to come here again. Now be gone!”

The man licked his lips, glanced swiftly from the prioress to the nun then back again. Lady Elizabeth appeared to have grown to fill the room. Her unblinking stare was appallingly compelling. It was hard not to meet it. And once he had, he was mesmerised by her sheer fury. He wavered, but only for a moment, then withdrew, quietly closing the door behind him.

As soon as he had gone, Lady Elizabeth let out her breath in a long, disapproving sigh. “Stupid little man,” she muttered under her breath. “Now, then, Constance, where had we got to? Ah yes, you were saying that you felt the guilt of your action. You need not worry yourself about that.”

“But I killed her!” she wailed. “My dwale overheated her and caused her artery to burst!”

“No. Did you smother her or cut open her arm?”

“Her arm?”

“She was murdered. Someone went into the room and suffocated her then opened her artery to make it look like an accident.” Lady Elizabeth was suddenly silent. “But tell me, when you met your lover before, did you also give the inmates dwale to keep them asleep?”

“Yes.”

“So he was aware your patients would be quiet?” Lady Elizabeth asked.

“Well, yes, I suppose so.”

“Then surely you weren’t responsible for her death in any way. Your lover wouldn’t have killed Moll either, for her knew Moll would be asleep.”

“I am still guilty.”

“Why, Constance?”

“I should have been there to protect her.”

Bertrand stopped at the bottom of the stairs, trying to gain some composure. He had never been shrieked at like that before, and the shocked cleric put a hand to his breast, feeling the thundering of his heart as he took some steadying breaths.

The church door was before him. Keeping his eyes fixed on the ground in a solemn imitation of meditation, he slowly walked along the cloister and went inside. All was still and he made his way swiftly to the connecting door into the monks’ section, sighing with relief when he could shut it behind him.

Lady Elizabeth was no better than a fishwife, he thought. Screeching in that manner – she was obviously brought up to behave like a villainous peasant. With such reflections to soothe his ruffled feelings, he walked to the men’s cloisters, but before emerging on to the grassy quadrangle, he let his feet take him away from the gaze of all the brothers. Before he knew where he had gone, he was near the grille, where he saw Elias hanging around.

The sight made Bertrand curl his lip with contempt. That a lay brother should lurk, waiting for an opportunity to ogle the sisters was deplorable. He was tempted to shout at the man – but something made him stop. A brother so debauched was surely past redemption.

Bertrand turned on his heel and went back to the cloister. He was almost there when he heard the shouting and the loud cry.

In the guestroom, Simon dropped onto his bed and gazed speculatively at Sir Baldwin. “So you think that this place is rife with rampant clerics, and somehow that’s why young Moll got herself killed?”

Baldwin made a small, futile gesture with his hand. “It sounds perfectly stereotypical, doesn’t it? The nuns all repressed and suppressed within the cloister, a number of men living alongside; inevitably the two mix. Stereotypical, and yet so often it proves true.”

Simon knew of Baldwin’s past as a Knight Templar and didn’t need to ask how Baldwin knew so much about the deeds of religious people. “You reckon Moll herself was having an affair? It was another nun, a jealous one, who killed her?”

“It could have been, certainly, but it could equally easily have been a canon. Don’t forget, it was ridiculously easy to cross between the cloisters when we wanted to, wasn’t it?”

“It’s all very well to say that, but remember how the nuns gawped at us when we asked for a drink? It was as if they’d never seen a man before.”

“Most of them, yes, were taken aback to see us there – but that means nothing. An individual nun finding a man somewhere she expected him to be wouldn’t react in the same way. Godfrey implied he could get to the infirmary whenever he wanted; others could probably do so just as easily.”

“So we’re probably lucky to be told to go home,” Simon said.

“Yes,” Baldwin answered with a sigh. “You could say so. If we were to remain, we would have to question all the nuns and all the canons – not forgetting the lay brethren.”

“Then thanks be to God that we can return home,” Simon said with feeling and allowed himself to fall back on his mattress, closing his eyes. “I don’t know about you, but I will be glad to get back to my Meg and Edith. The thought of leaving them both while the Despensers are trying to start another war is not pleasant, even with the castle for them to run to. You must be relieved, too.”

“Hmm?” Baldwin looked up, a faintly confused expression on his face.

“I said it’ll be good to get home and make sure that the Despenser armies don’t destroy our houses,” Simon said with his eyes closed. “Although for now, I’ll be glad to take an hour or so to snooze. Rising in the middle of the night doesn’t do much for me.”

Giving a half-hearted grin, Baldwin walked to the window. The ever-glum Hugh was already lying on his bench, with every appearance of being dead to the world, and Simon was soon breathing quietly, always guaranteed to be the prelude to loud snoring.

Baldwin threw open the shutters, catching them before they could slam against the wall, and stared out. South of the cloister, the weather was gloomy and threatening. Dark, steel-grey clouds hung apparently motionless in the sky, and when Baldwin leaned out and peered at the hill to the east, the whole of its summit was hidden. The snow which had fallen overnight had melted, but the air was sharp with the promise of more to come.

He pulled the shutters to. Getting up for Nocturns and Matins had not affected him so severely, for his experience as a monk had inured him to being deprived of his sleep. He felt fine now, although he had a sneaking suspicion that he would feel worse later.

It was hard to concentrate. He was used to action, and to have come here with a specific purpose which he had now been told to leave felt oddly anticlimactic: he was at a loose end, and had no idea how to fill the time until their departure.

On a whim he pulled on a cloak and went out, walking along the cloister. The frater was on his right and he stepped into the garth, crossing the grassed quadrangle to approach the church.

Something struck his cheek and he glanced upwards. The clouds were unleashing their burden and fresh snow began to drop. It was a curiously peaceful sight. The breeze had died away and snowflakes were falling in a continual stream, not dancing or eddying, but drifting down in great numbers, like the feathers of thousands of geese. Baldwin closed his eyes and inhaled with delight. Snow meant that war was all but impossible. Armies could not fight when the clean white covering smothered the landscape.

Opening his eyes, he stared up and suddenly caught a flicker of movement on top of the church roof. It was a huddled, robed figure. He screwed up his eyes to focus better on the strange sight, but with the swift-falling snow and the distance, it was impossible to see whether it was male or female, let alone recognise who it might be.

His curiosity stirred, Baldwin wandered to the church’s wall and stared upwards. He stood near the cloister’s roofed corridor, trying to see who it could be. Then a huge snowflake hit his eye, and he blinked, turning away, wiping at it with his palm, bending down and inclining his head.

Thus it was that the slate did not hit his head directly, but caught him a glancing blow, a sharp edge raking along the back of his skull and slicing off a long strip of his scalp. He fell, eyes wide, his head filled with the thundering roar of his blood, and was aware of the cold white snow covering the grass beneath his face. A loud whistling in his ears seemed to be deafening him, and he blinked slowly. Then, realising he had been struck, he rolled to one side, and found himself staring up at the cloister’s covered walkway.

It was at that moment that the body struck the roof of the cloister and he saw the slates shatter with the force of the blow before the figure rolled down the incline and crashed on to the grass surrounded by shards of ruined slates. Baldwin had enough energy to throw himself out of the path of the shower, but as he moved the pain in his head expanded to cover his whole body. Even as he cried out, his vision clouded and he fell unconscious.