Forsaken Soul

Chapter Twenty-Six

Returning along the path to the priory, Thomas gazed up at the sparkling stars. Above him was the constellation of the cross and to the right was the lute in the shape of a heart. A faint white light shot between the two, then disappeared. Was that a soul traveling to God?

Perhaps it belonged to the man with the deep sore in his throat who had died tonight. In that suffering creature’s last moments of mortal consciousness, Thomas had knelt beside him and taken his confession, granting absolution quickly lest Satan find cause for rejoicing over the capture of another soul.

While Death pulled the throbbing soul away, the widow screamed in protest, throwing herself on her beloved husband’s still breast. Tears flooded down his own cheeks as Thomas watched the woman lying there and trembling with both irrational outrage and better understood grief.

Although he had reassured her that her husband should find sweet peace in heaven and would wait for her with open arms when her time came, he suspected none of this would be of comfort until her wild anguish had run its course. As she alternated between howled curses that her husband had deserted her and sweet pleadings for him to return to her arms, Thomas knew that her heart only begged God to keep the misery of her remaining life on earth very short, an existence that most certainly would be both difficult and forlorn.

“Cursed be the Devil’s darkness!” he growled, a profound loneliness weighing his spirit down like some dark and sodden cloak. Why had God not utterly destroyed men after Eden if human life was so wretched that only death held joy? And if death was man’s only pleasure, why deny him the right to claim that delight by calling self-murder a sin?

“Get thee behind me,” Thomas cried out, shaking his fist at the shadows, but Satan, with especial cruelty, now cast the image of Giles into his weakened soul. Until he had gone to Amesbury, Thomas had achieved some peace from this torment, but the events last year at the old priory had shattered that little calm and driven his spirit back into the stinking hole of despair he had suffered in prison.

Had Giles found peace with his older and quite wealthy wife, he wondered, and had he banished all thought of Thomas from his heart? Was it worse if Giles remembered him but only with hatred and disgust?

“I need sleep,” he groaned. “I need…” He fell silent, terrified of pursuing that ill-defined longing any further. If God ever answered his prayers for understanding, he might take courage and face the dreaded thing. Until then, his soul remained as firmly chained as his body had once been in prison with rusted and chafing irons.

“Sleep must come,” he muttered, shoving away all the prickling aches of body and spirit. “Then I can seek answers for my sins.”

As he thought more on that, he wondered if this lack of rest was meant to goad him to the chapel night after night-or even to seek out Sister Juliana. After all, what force had thrown him to his knees by her tiny window that night? Was it God’s hand?

“Perhaps,” he murmured. “Aye, I think so.” After he had spoken with her, he had followed her counsel and filled his soul with silence the next night when wakefulness drove him out of his narrow bed. That night, an unfamiliar peace had caressed his soul, briefly but sweetly. Was it a sign that God was at last willing to grant him mercy?

When he arose afterward, his heart fluttering with hope, he had tried to seek for the meaning and cause of this perplexing experience. Instantly, the calm vanished as if God had once again deserted him. Or was He telling him, as the anchoress had suggested, that he must listen only with the stillness of his heart and reject mortal logic?

Surely the heart was the frailest of man’s organs, a woman’s refuge and most subject to sin. Yet hadn’t God spoken to Elijah in such a small voice that the prophet might only have heard Him in silence? A man’s mind stirred to debate and roaring speech; the feminine heart stayed still like a rabbit with a fox about. Might Sister Juliana be right in suggesting that God spoke more clearly from the organ condemned to silence by Adam’s imperfect sons?

Thomas stopped and glanced up at the moon. No longer full, it gave off a lesser light, and the man in the moon, Cain with his bundle of thorns, had a bleak aspect. The monk looked down the road and realized he had gone beyond the village and was near the gate by the priory mill. Perhaps he should visit the anchoress tonight, if no one was waiting to speak to her. Might she be able to explain the meaning of what he had experienced in the chapel and guide him further in his search for God’s wisdom? He quickened his pace, choosing the path that followed the fork of the stream flowing into priory grounds.

As he entered the forest, he suddenly hesitated. Something caught his attention, a thing that did not seem quite right.

Just to the right of the path was a crudely built hut almost hidden between two trees. Hadn’t it been long abandoned? he asked himself. Yet the door was open, and one guttering candle inside now cast a misshapen, twitching circle of light on the ground without. In the wavering shadows, Thomas saw a darker mound as if a dog had fallen asleep there, or else some person.

Thomas grew uneasy, sensing malevolence, but he felt compelled to draw nearer, albeit with caution. If this were a dog, even one of the hounds of Hell, surely the creature would have lunged at him by now.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he approached the strange object.

Falling to his knees, Thomas reached out and touched it. The familiar warmth convinced him this was no imp or hound but rather a human body. When he rolled it over to look more closely, he saw the face in the flickering candlelight.

“God have mercy!” he cried out.

Ivetta, the whore, was dead.