Belladonna at Belstone

Chapter Twenty-Two

Bertrand walked slowly to the church, anxiety clutching at his breast. All his plans had gone awry: he had intended Margherita to replace Lady Elizabeth and now Margherita herself appeared no better. For once he was prepared to accept his own limitations. Today he felt in desperate need of assistance from God.

There was no doubt: he had been over the figures time and again.

Only the one hand had written in the book – Margherita’s – but the figures she had entered for the bailiff from Iddesleigh were wrong. Seven-eighths of it were missing. Bertrand himself had witnessed the man giving the money to her, had seen the treasurer herself scribble down the amounts. Bertrand was left with the unpleasant certainty that the woman was embezzling money.

He had backed the wrong horse. While trying to get rid of the prioress, he had hitched his cart to another just as corrupt: the whole place was tainted!

Entering the choir, he walked to a quiet stall in a dark corner and bowed his head reverently. Surely there was a way out of this mess. He had the blackmailed Elias on his side. Elias would allege that he had been going to forswear his oaths because he was so disgusted about the running of the priory. That testimony, embellished and wisely used, could spell the end of Lady Elizabeth’s rule.

But if her replacement was a spendthrift or thief, things could only get worse.

If only Margherita had merely miscalculated. But she hadn’t. He had been there, he had seen the money. There was no chance of Margherita making an error.

Then there were the two deaths. One from a bleeding – the sort of thing that could have happened anywhere; the second girl had been messing about on the roof, probably, and just fell. The bailiff wanted a sensational story because his friend had been hurt, but these things were almost always pretty mundane.

Once the prioress had gone, the deaths would soon be forgotten. Much more important was the future good management of the priory, and Bertrand knew that one excellent way of seeing to its protection was to ensure that there was enough money coming in to keep the place going.

A thought struck him: if no one found out about Margherita’s stealing, all would be well. Lady Elizabeth could be removed, Margherita put in her place, and Bertrand could present a decisive and successful result to Bishop Stapledon – one which could only reflect well upon him and help him towards his own bishopric.

Sir Rodney would be pleased that the treasurer was in charge; Stapledon would be pleased that Bertrand had acted correctly in removing the prioress; and if any problems occurred later, Bertrand would be far away, hopefully already a bishop in his own right, with his own episcopal see. Safe.

As the service began, Bertrand allowed himself to smile.

Cecily almost leaped from the bed when the last bandage had been soaked from her arm, and then Constance set about cleaning the red, inflamed flesh with a cloth soaked in a refreshing infusion of herbs.

Hugh couldn’t watch. The whole limb was swollen and discoloured, covered with blisters weeping pus. Cecily was delirious, and each time the scrap of linen touched her forearm, she screamed and thrashed about, trying to escape the pain. He glanced at the old woman at Constance’s side.

While holding the basin in which Constance dipped her cloth, Joan mumbled prayers. She had taken up her place by Cecily’s bed on her return from the rere-dorter; in her eyes was a concerned sympathy, the expression of one who has witnessed many deaths in her life and to whom the passing of one more soul was of scant note, although there was a kind of measuring quality to her observation, as if she was assessing how different her own end would be – an end which surely couldn’t be far off.

At last the arm was bare and clean. Constance stared at it anxiously. She had no medicine adequate for a wound of this kind: the flesh was already putrefying.

“It should be cut off,” Hugh stated.

Constance looked up, startled. To her surprise Hugh was glowering down at the lay sister as if bitterly angry that Cecily had dared allow herself to grow so ill.

“It’ll never get better, that arm. Can only get worse. You need a surgeon.”

“We don’t have anyone near.”

“She’ll die, then. Surely there’s someone.”

It was Joan who answered. “Perhaps there is one.”

Simon walked from the church into the nuns’ cloister and stepped straight into a pile of faeces. He curled his lip as the smell struck his nostrils. Ugh! It was that damned bitch Princess, no doubt, crapping all over the place. Baldwin liked dogs, but as far as Simon was concerned terriers that spent their lives snapping at one’s ankles and shitting all over the place were among the most useless of all creatures.

In fact, the mutt’s deposits were all over the precinct, in the nunnery and the canonical half as well. There was no discrimination.

Simon wiped his boot on the grass of the garth and studied the sole. Almost clean. It would do. He set off for the door and climbed the stairs.

Since the nuns were all attending Vespers the place appeared deserted. With any luck the prioress had left the terrier in her room so it couldn’t disrupt the service.

Simon reached the landing and was about to turn in to the infirmary, his footsteps echoing crisply on the bare wooden boards, when he heard the terrier begin to snarl and yap. Simon recalled being told that the dog hated men and barked at them.

“Shut your row!” he muttered, continuing on his way, but at the door to the infirmary he stopped dead. In his mind’s eye he saw again the piles of dog mess in the canonical cloister and the nuns’ garth; he recalled Lady Elizabeth telling him that her dog had been unwell the night that Moll had died, and that was why she had been murmuring endearments when Margherita had listened outside her door.

It wasn’t unknown for a draw-latch to poison a dog in order to remove a household’s most ferocious guard, but who could have got to Princess? Sadly, Simon realised that almost anyone could have. The little devil wandered between both cloisters, so Simon couldn’t even reduce the potential suspects to either male or female.

But it corroborated Lady Elizabeth’s story. And since the terrier only barked at men, it was a safe bet that only a man would have poisoned it.

Elias went to the church for Vespers but remained standing in his stall when the others left the choir. When all was still within he stepped forward to kneel before the altar.

He had no wish to be the agent of Lady Elizabeth’s destruction, but he couldn’t see how to escape. Bertrand had made the choice very clear: Elias could either refuse to implicate the prioress, in which case he would be accused of seducing a nun and attempting to persuade her to commit apostasy, or he could agree, in which case his own guilt and that of the nun herself need not come to light.

Elias covered his face with his hands. Was it so wrong to wish to see his own child? To want to honour his love as a husband should? Yet Constance had already rejected him, apparently. Lady Elizabeth had told him so.

Struck with a sudden desperation, he threw himself before the altar, arms outspread, praying to see Constance one last time.

At that moment he heard a sound. Quickly he pushed himself to his knees again, and peered about him. He saw the door to the nuns’ side of the church open and Luke slip through. Luke was with a nun, and from her slurred speech Elias guessed it must be Denise: all the canons knew her weakness for wine. Something made Elias slip backwards so that he was concealed behind a tall pillar, and there he listened as Luke negotiated.

“Look, three quarts of my best Guyenne red is almost all I have left. I’ll not be getting any more from my merchant for at least five weeks. I can’t offer you more.”

“I want them all,” she mumbled obdurately.

“Wouldn’t two be enough?”

“Three. You want to go and exercise your filly, you’ll have to pay.”

“All right, then, three.”

“And I want to see them when I let you back in,” she said greedily.

Luke gave an exasperated exclamation. “When you let me in? You think the prioress wouldn’t notice me coming into Compline with six pints of wine about me? Or perhaps you think you could hide them within your habit and drink during the service! Be sensible, woman – I shall bring them to you tomorrow once you have kept up your side of the bargain, and that is to let me in. After Compline, make a show of relocking this door, but in reality leave it open for me. Will you remember?”

Sulkily the woman repeated his instruction and when Luke nodded, satisfied, she pulled a sneering grimace and defiantly bit her thumb behind his back, making the nail crack against her upper teeth. Moving back a pace, she swung the door shut and soon after Elias heard the lock snap shut. Slowly he turned back to the altar, and wonderingly but fervently, offered his gratitude.

As night fell, Simon sat in the infirmary watching over his friend. Hugh had gone to fetch wine soon after Vespers, and since then Simon had heard the bell for Compline. The nuns had attended this last service of the day, and now all was silent in the place.

It was a relief, for Simon felt the need of time to review all he had heard. Especially since Hugh had grimly told him of Agnes and Luke.

Every now and again he glanced up as Cecily feverishly moaned and whimpered, but Constance had managed to drop a little of her magical syrup between the lay sister’s lips, so at least she slept. Joan had complained that she couldn’t sleep, and rather than use more of Constance’s precious dwale, she had returned to her old bed in the dorter.

Constance herself was asleep on a stool at Cecily’s side, her head resting on Cecily’s mattress and setting her wimple awry.

She looked like an angel in the glow of the candles, Simon thought. The light gave her features a pink tint, highlighting the high cheekbones, and making her lips appear more full and rose-coloured. With the movement of her headpiece, a tress of her hair had come adrift and now it moved with her breath, near her cheek. Although she was clearly a mature woman, her face seemed so innocent and youthful that Simon felt a paternal fondness for her, just as he did when he glanced over at the truckle-bed at home and saw his own daughter asleep. There was something incredibly attractive in a sleeping girl, he thought.

The door opened quietly behind him, and he heard Constance snort slightly, then wrinkle her nose before settling once more.

“Hugh?” he asked.

“Bailiff, I wish to speak to you alone.”

“Lady Elizabeth,” he said, leaping to his feet. “My apologies, I had no idea it was you.”

She held up her hand. “No apology is necessary. Your man is outside for a while. I would like to speak to you alone.”

“But of course, my Lady. Please, take my chair.”

She glanced at Baldwin, remaining standing. “How is he?”

“He moans often, and wanders a lot in his dreams, but I think – I hope – he will recover.”

“That is good.”

“The lay sister is not so well,” Simon said softly.

“I had heard,“ she said, her attention moving to Cecily and the sleeping nun at her side. ”She is so young, too,“ she added almost as an afterthought.

Simon didn’t know what to say. In his experience most people did die while young. It was rare for a child to grow to adulthood, still rarer for one to become old like the prioress. “She will not live with that arm,” he said.

“How can she live without it?”

Simon held his tongue. The prioress shook her head with resignation. “You are right,” she said at last. “But I hate having to ask a man to exercise his skills when the Pope has commanded him not to.”

“Your surgeon?”

“Godfrey, yes.” While she spoke, she woke Constance, and led her to her bed. Returning, she said, “He’s tried to stick to dressing wounds, but every now and again something like this happens.” She sighed heavily. “I shall ask him to come and look at the girl as soon as it is light. But that is not why I am here. Sir Bailiff, you and your man are welcome to stay here for the night so that you can protect your friend, but I have to ask that you both remain within this room.“

Simon bridled. “There’s no need to suppose that Hugh or I would attempt to…”

“Oh, Bailiff, you shouldn’t jump to conclusions!” she said, laughing silently, but with evident delight. “I wouldn’t suggest any such thing, but you can waken my nuns easily without trying by waking Princess. If she should hear you, she would bark. As you have seen, she doesn’t like men.“

“That was one thing I was going to speak to you about,” Simon said. “If someone in the canons’ cloister gave a tidbit to Princess, would she eat it?”

“Oh, I expect so. She can be quite horribly greedy,” she said, but then caught sight of his expression. “You mean – you think someone deliberately poisoned my little Princess?”

“It’s possible. There seems to be enough dwale floating about this convent to sink all of you into a stupor.”

Unconsciously Lady Elizabeth gripped her prayer beads. “Good God!”

Hugh had gone to sit out in the cloister, but even though he wrapped himself up in a rug he had removed from a chest in the frater, it was bitter cold. Although he wriggled and squirmed, although he resolutely shut his eyes and tried to imagine a roaring fire before him, the vision alone couldn’t warm him. It was a relief when the door to the dorter opened. Framed in the doorway he saw the prioress, who stood peering about her shortsightedly. Hugh hastily clambered to his feet.

“Come inside and close the door behind you. Brrr! It is chill, isn’t it? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it turned to snow again.”

Hugh entered, but as he turned to pull the door to behind him, he caught a glimpse of something. He was going to put it from his mind, but before he let the latch fall, he frowned, then opened it a fraction and peered out once more. There, darting from one pillar to another in the cloister passage by the church, he saw a figure. Hugh stood stock-still. He was not particularly afraid of any man, but there was something unwholesome and melancholy about this apparition. Raised and bred on the moors, Hugh had a healthy respect for ghouls and the devil, and in a place like this, where the religious folk all appeared to consider their vows as irrelevant, Hugh wondered now whether a devil might wander the cloisters at night. His scalp crept.

“Hurry up, man!”

At the sound of the prioress’s voice, Hugh quickly pulled the door shut behind him and ascended the stairs to the infirmary. As he stole past the door to the prioress’s chamber, Princess snarled, and Hugh hurried on to the security of the infirmary.

Denise snored, mouth wide, and it was only when her pot rolled from her hand and fell from the table, smashing on the floor, that she snorted, groaned, and at last blearily gazed about her. Realising she was alone in the room, she put her hands to her eyes, rubbing with the heels of her palms and yawning.

It was hard to sleep on the table-top like this. She always had a crick in her neck when she awoke, and felt unrefreshed, as though the sleep had been of no benefit whatever.

She rose, stretching, and walked out. When she had entered it had been late afternoon, and she had intended only one quick drink before returning to her duties, sweeping the floor after Compline, but now she saw it was already late, and she felt a short stab of guilt.

“The door!” she exclaimed. Luke had been there when she had gone to unlock it, without, as he had said, the wine, but he had winked at her, and she had sat moodily all through the service, knowing that what she was about to do at the end was wrong and against all her vows, taking wine for herself without sharing it among the other members of the community, allowing a man into the cloister so he could take his carnal pleasures with a nun, and the nun herself, of course, for Denise would be helping her to break her vows.

It was all very confusing, and Denise fingered the little medal of St Mary that she always wore about her neck. As usual the Virgin Mary comforted Denise, and the nun took up her jug and emptied it, smacking her lips with gusto. It was good wine, but she would prefer Luke’s best Bordeaux.

Luke! The vicar should be in the cloister by now, with his little novice. If not, he was leaving it late. When he’d made her the offer, he’d said she could lock the door again once he was past, Denise remembered, chewing her lip. Was it late enough for her to go and lock up now, or should she wait a little longer? Denise wasn’t prepared to leave the cloister unprotected all through the night; she wanted to make sure at least that Luke was already in the nuns’ cloister.

She made her way to the church. If he was still within the cloister, all he need do was rest in the church somewhere, and first thing in the morning, when Nocturns began, he could slip on his vestments and appear just as normal, as if he had only just been allowed in.

That was what made his affair with the girl such a thrill, Denise deduced sourly. No doubt the fool found that the risk of discovery added to his pleasure; continuing his affair beneath the prioress’s very nose appealed to his twisted sense of humour. And the novice was no better.

Satisfied with her logic, Denise went to the connecting door, and turned the key in the lock.