Covenant With Hell

Chapter Thirty-five

The crowd of happy pilgrims traveling back to Norwich was a noisy one. Some sang; others prayed aloud. The day promised to be warm, and a sweet-smelling breeze brought gladness to those souls, recently cleansed at the holy shrines.

Master Durant’s palfrey shared the general eagerness to return home, but its rider was more reluctant. The merchant slowed the pace until he and his mount dropped to the rear of the traveling band. Finally, he turned his horse around to look back at the town of Walsingham.

With an equine snort and shake of the head, his palfrey protested the delay but complied. After all, this master had always been kind.

The outline of the town was softened with a morning mist. Bells from the priories and churches rang the hour of the Office. The sound was haunting. To Durant, it was also bitter. He bowed his head and prayed, once more admitting to God that he did not yet regret all his sins and most especially those committed after his duty to King Edward was done.

The previous night, his last in Walsingham, he had slipped from the inn in the darkest hours to an alley off a narrow street and sought that place he knew well. There he and another man found each other. Each avoided the gaze of the other as they drew close. To see was to remember. To remember might bring madness-or perhaps the contemplation of questions displeasing to kings and bishops.

Their kisses had been hard and brief, the fondling desperate, but for an instant afterward they held each other as mortals do when both wish their act meant love. Then the man had fled, and Durant walked back to the inn, stifled moans from other dark corners echoing in his ears.

In the hazy light of this morning, he shook away the memory and patted his restless horse on the neck, letting the creature trot back to the pilgrims who had not traveled far down the road.

Promising that this would be his last look back, he gazed over his shoulder at Walsingham. His heart felt as if someone was carving bits of flesh from it with a dull knife, but his pain had nothing to do with what he had done last night. The cause was Brother Thomas.

Pressing a hand against his chest, he groaned and rode on, forcing his thoughts to think about what must be done on his return to Norwich and his wife who was waiting for him.

In truth, he loved her. Early in their marriage, they had agreed to lie together only to beget children, as the most pious often did. When their only babe died, his wife suffered more than he, and he had grieved deeply enough. Her dark moods seemed to descend when she was deemed most fertile, and she confessed she could not bear to couple with him for the pain it caused. Unlike most husbands, he had taken this news with gentle concern and never complained about her failure to pay the marriage debt. Over time they grew closer, except for the sadness of having no laughing children. That was a grief they shared.

Then she heard about the reputation of Tyndal Priory for healing. At her urging, they traveled there where she received herbs and a balm that eased her moods and numbed the pain of intercourse. Now she was eager for him to give her a child.

In part he shared her joy, relieved that she no longer suffered and that she might bear children. She was a good woman, competent in the house and business, faithful and dutiful, but he did not yearn to couple with her like other men did beloved wives. He had been happiest when they shared affection but not passion.

He sighed. In the past, he had found it easy enough to return to those necessary deceptions after his missions for the king had ended and he had his night of relief. This time, he dreaded it, in particular the joyful expression on his wife’s face. It would not be easy to lie with her, even to beget the child they both wanted. He would do so, but there was a difference now. Durant of Norwich, wine merchant and spy, had fallen in love with a monk.

He was also terrified. It was one thing to seek the occasional encounter with men he did not know, and even refuse to confess it until he must, but his soul howled at the blasphemy of wanting to lie with a man vowed to God. Yet he also knew that he might be willing to suffer an eternity of hellfire for one night in the arms of that auburn-haired monk. It was that truth which frightened him most.

Tears rolled down his cheeks, and he sobbed quietly, bowing his head to hide his agony. One night? He would prefer it be a lifetime.

A mother in the band of pilgrims heard his sobs and asked what comfort was needed.

He shook his head and tried to smile.

Now assuming his tears were joyous, she bent to her young son and pointed out that man who wept because he found God’s forgiveness and was cleansed of his sins.

Durant wiped his cheeks dry. If that explanation made her son hesitate before committing some cruelty, then let the boy believe it.

Whatever his heart wanted, his longing for Brother Thomas was doomed. Even if the monk shared his lust, if not his love, he would never lie with Durant. He had taken vows, oaths he honored, and had made it clear that he found solace in the priory. After all Thomas had suffered for the one time he had lain with a man named Giles, Durant also knew he would never try to seduce him. That would be an even graver sacrilege.

The merchant urged his horse to a faster pace. When he returned home, he would try to bury his sorrow with the reward from the king in that cracked vessel near the privy. Then he would lie with his wife, as they must do to bring forth the child they longed for.

But when I do, he thought, I shall imagine I am in the arms of an auburn-haired man, with no tonsure, who happens to go by the name of Thomas.

***

Thomas hurried down the street to meet Prioress Eleanor at Ryehill Priory. Although her arm would be long in healing, she had insisted they plan their return to Tyndal Priory as soon as possible. A cart must be found to carry her and the child, she said. Adam, her donkey, would be spared the burden of her weight on the journey back. As they imagined the beast’s expression of contentment when told the news, they had both laughed.

When he passed the inn, he hesitated, and then walked on. The merchant would not be there. He had told him that he was joining a large group of pilgrims returning to Norwich very early that morning. The thought that he would never see Durant again grieved him.

He looked back at the inn. Complex and troubling though Durant was, Thomas liked him. Were he to be honest, he felt something more, an emotion he could not quite define. Surely not love, he thought. He had felt that only once, a devotion for which he had suffered in prison and then endured mockery by that very person who had been as eager as he in the coupling.

But the pleasure he had found in Durant’s company was more than the simple enjoyment of working with him to save the king’s life, although that was part of it.

Did he long for a more secular life? He had not always liked spying for the Church, rooting out those who worked against the best interests of the proclaimed faith, but he did enjoy solving mysteries when he and his prioress were called to do so.

Although he still did not own a deep faith, he no longer regretted taking vows. Tyndal was his home, and he had friends who brought him joy, both inside the priory and without. Before this pilgrimage to Walsingham, he had married Crowner Ralf and Mistress Gytha, two people he loved far above himself, and he looked forward to baptizing their children. Whatever his initial reluctance in joining the Order, he had found some peace. He no longer looked at any woman with lust. In Prioress Eleanor, he had a worthy liege lord, and she was pleased with his service. Sister Anne gave him the love only an elder sister of the flesh could and had taught him much that helped in healing bodies.

No, he said to himself, I would not leave the priory to serve the king as Durant does, even if I were promised a rare forgiveness for abandoning my vows.

Meeting Durant, however, had changed something within him. He had lusted after other men, a few had even evoked tenderness in him, but he would never forget the kiss he had willingly shared with the merchant that night in the inn. The difference, undefined and insistent, between Durant and all those other men gnawed at him.

Suddenly Thomas stopped, frozen in amazement at what had just occurred to him.

With a sharp intake of breath, he realized that he no longer grieved for Giles.

Were he to meet him on this street, this man he had loved since boyhood, he would not weep, nor would he suffer. He might offer him a blessing, praying that he had found contentment and that his remaining years on Earth would be joyful, but he would not long for a kiss or an embrace. If Giles offered either, he would comply without grief or desire. Giles had become a memory, both pleasant and sad, but the festering wound was healed.

Gazing upward, Thomas asked God why this had happened. As usual, He remained silent, and yet the monk sensed, more than heard, a soft whisper in the light breeze caressing his face.

“It matters not if I fully understand,” he murmured. Although he had denied that he had found peace when Durant asked, he felt it now. With an inexplicable conviction, he also believed that his meeting with this merchant was the cause of it. Perhaps, he thought, he and I will meet again.

Then he hurried on to Ryehill Priory, as eager as his prioress to return home.