Tyrant of the Mind

Chapter Twenty-Five

The baron closed his eyes.

Eleanor watched him and frowned with concern. “Richard is getting the best care possible, father,” she said.

He looked at her in silence, eyes dark with fatigue and anxiety. The lines in his face had deepened.

“Sister Anne tells me that he has no fever and that he did take some watered wine this morning.”

“Lass, I question neither your judgment nor Sister Anne’s ability as a healer, but tell me, if you can, why God has chosen to curse me so? I have failed to protect my family, my retainers, and my guests. This castle has become not a fortress against unnatural death but rather a place to embrace it. The first was Hywel, a man I shall sorely miss, killed by misadventure. Then Henry is foully murdered under my very roof and my son stands accused of the deed. Father Anselm meets with calamity, and now my dear grandson lies in a sick bed once again. What horrendous sin have I committed? As a woman closer to God than this old warrior could ever be, can you answer that?”

“Job committed no sin.”

“Job was a saint. I am not.” Adam rubbed his hands across his eyes. There were circles the color of bruises under them.

“I have faith that Richard will recover and my brother found innocent. Hywel’s death was accidental. That could have happened to anyone and at any time. No one could predict that Henry would be stabbed to death, especially you, and we do not know exactly what happened to Father Anselm. It may have been an accident as well.” The latter she did not believe at all.

Adam slammed his fist on the table. “You may have your faith, Prioress Eleanor, but my charge remains a more earthly one: to protect all within the walls of Wynethorpe. In that, I have failed. As to the nature of my priest’s accident, do not insult me so. I have spoken to Brother Thomas, who seemed quite sure that the poor man’s head was pushed with force into a wall and his body tossed from a window to finish the deed.” He smiled grimly. “Surely, you do not now doubt the judgment of a man whose praises you sang to me so recently?”

Eleanor said nothing until the fires of her father’s exhausted anger had sputtered and dimmed. Silence was a woman’s wisest response until a man’s choler cooled and reason regained a seat in his soul, her aunt once said. It was man’s nature to swing at flies with an ax at such times, however much he might later rue the consequences. “Nay, I trust him implicitly,” she said at last, her tone gentle.

Adam snorted. “Good! While Sister Anne has been tending to Richard and Brother Thomas has been piecing together evidence with perceptive logic, I assume you have contributed to the search for justice by offering sufficient prayers so the murderer will be found before my son is taken away to be hanged?”

“Dare you suggest that prayer is not effective, my lord? Such would be heresy,” Eleanor snapped, but her pride was wounded. “Perhaps you might tell me what you have discovered from your questioning of those within the castle?”

For just an instant, she saw the fury she felt reflected back at her from her father’s eyes, then the fires were banked and he replied in a calm voice. “Every man in this fortress has been questioned about where he was the night of the murder by one of three under my command I trust the most. So far, all have either been where they should have been, passed out with drink, or with some woman, wife or no. Nor was there any indication that anyone did more than wish Henry’s soul a hotter fire in Hell for the accident he caused.”

As Eleanor began a question, he raised one hand and continued. “At your suggestion, I did approach Sir Geoffrey about his thoughts on the murder when he came to the dining hall this morning to break his fast. As I suspected, he is a most generous friend. He said he could not believe that my son could have done the deed and thinks someone else must have killed Henry. Robert simply came upon the body at the wrong time, he said. He would be most willing to present other possibilities at any trial. As the most likely event, he suggested that Henry ran into a drunken soldier in the halls of Wynethorpe and was murdered for no better reason than the discordance caused by too much wine or a gaming debt. Henry was known to play at dice and rarely won the rolling of them.”

A noble gesture but an indefensible supposition, she thought, considering the results of the questioning. “You told me none of this until I asked. May I know why?”

“Because I am lord of Wynethorpe!” he thundered. “The accused murderer is my son and the murder occurred in my castle. I have been far too tolerant of your involvement. None of this is woman’s business.”

“First you accuse me of doing little to help Robert and then you dismiss me as a weak woman who could do little if I tried. You may not have it both ways, my lord. As to what is woman’s business and what is not, may I remind you that I have full responsibility at Tyndal and there is no question there about what is and is not my authority. In addition, need I remind you that Robert is also my brother, whom I love as well as any sister can, and that Isabelle, Juliana, Henry and George are almost kin to me in my heart. Although you are, without question, lord of this place, I am your daughter. As such, I have the right to be involved and know what is happening by the love I bear for all concerned.”

The baron turned pale, then sat down on the bench with a heavy thud. After a moment, he continued, his voice hoarse but calmer. “Let us make peace, daughter. I do not wish to argue with you.”

From the pinched look around his eyes, Eleanor realized that her father was in as much physical pain from his old wound as he was emotional pain from the accusations against his son. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Nor do I wish to argue with you, father. Please tell me all that Sir Geoffrey had to say.”

Adam stretched out his leg and began to massage it. “Little of help. He said he had never seen Robert strike in anger and he has known him from a time he was younger than my grandson. Of course, my son and his have never been close, but they were of different ages and temperaments. On the other hand, he said he had never known Henry to raise a sword or fist to anyone either, although he had seen a change in the lad recently.”

“His father mocked him cruelly in front of all at dinner the other night. Did he taunt Henry for his lack of manhood often?”

Adam snorted. “Geoffrey was sick of the boy’s whining. Henry had taken it into his head that he would wed the Lady Isabelle. When Geoffrey announced he would have her instead, the boy acted like a baby whose wet nurse had taken away the tit.”

“Surely Henry had reason to believe Isabelle would be his wife after all these years. Perhaps he had even grown to love her.”

“I would have agreed with you once, but, if I may be so blunt, a man does not rape the woman he loves. And he did rape Lady Isabelle, did he not, if we are to believe her and I understand that you do?”

It was Eleanor’s turn to be surprised at her father’s words. “Indeed, my lord, I do believe her tale if for no other reason than she did herself no favor in the telling.”

“Well reasoned. I would agree.”

“I must wonder, however, why Henry never told his father about his bedding of Isabelle. He might not have confessed to a rape as such, but the act would have prevented his father’s marriage with the lady and guaranteed the success of his own wishes.”

“According to Sir Geoffrey, Henry did swear that he had bedded the woman.”

“Yet…”

“There was blood on the sheets when Geoffrey awoke next to her. In her grief at losing her virginity, she pointed that out to him and he believed her.”

“Smearing a little chicken blood on the sheets to prove virginity when the gate had already been breached is an old trick. I wonder that a man of Sir Geoffrey’s experience could be duped with such ease.”

“By God’s right hand, whatever are they teaching girls in convents these days?” Adam laughed. “That you should know such a thing is…but never mind. If you have enlightened me about how much nuns know about worldly tricks, let me perhaps enlighten you about the nature of good men.”

“Do,” Eleanor said. The earlier tension between them had dissipated and she began to relax.

“My dear friend is a true innocent with women. Although he may have dallied as boys do before marriage, I know that he was never once unfaithful to his first wife after they took their vows at the church door, even when her pregnancies would have given him cause to seek relief elsewhere for his own health.”

“Yet surely he knew that women do such things…”

“He chose to believe Isabelle’s story and disbelieve that of his son. As I have said before, he is besotted with his ward or, since we are speaking unadorned truth here, besotted with the idea that he had regained his virility and that it was he who had gotten her with child.”

“Thus he also chose to believe that his son had lied. Men cannot be such fools, surely.”

“My child, we are all mortal, men and women alike. Fools we have always been and fools will we always be, especially when our greatest frailties breach the walls of our better sense.”

“I have learned from you, my lord. But please continue. I did not wish to interrupt.”

Adam smiled with gentleness at his daughter and continued. “Indeed, once Geoffrey married his whore, she was no longer available to Henry whether he loved or lusted for her. As my old friend said, a man, after being unhorsed, picks himself up and finds another horse to ride, but Henry whined and whined like a whipped pup. His father tried to make him see what a fool he was becoming and he mocked to press the point on him. That is all, but Henry continued to force his attentions on the lady and that angered his father even more. It is unnatural for a son to pursue his father’s wife like a lovesick pigeon.”

Eleanor shook her head. “If I may be so candid, father, Sir Geoffrey’s public ridicule of Henry was as excessive as beating an unweaned pup. Would you have so mocked either of your sons?”

“My sons have always known their duty. As a consequence, I have never been driven to treat either as Geoffrey did Henry. Still, I think I may say with some reason that both Hugh and Robert have gained respect amongst their peers. Henry had few friends and even fewer admirers. Have you forgotten that Henry so angered someone that he was killed? Someone, perhaps, who was less tolerant of his peevish manner than Geoffrey? He would have done well to take his father’s advice and behave in all ways as a man should. No matter how blind Geoffrey was about the woman he took to wife, he takes responsibility for his actions, something his son had yet to learn.”

Eleanor held her breath for a moment before saying what was on her mind. However angry it might make her father, she had to speak the thought. “You do not think that Sir Geoffrey might have done the deed himself?” she said at last, not daring to look her father in the eye. “You do not think that he might have been so outraged at his son’s rape, real or purported, that he killed his own son in revenge or even to silence him from forcing an annulment of the marriage by claiming prior sexual knowledge of his father’s wife?”

Adam snorted. “Nay, I do not, daughter. For all his blindness about his wife, he is a man of mature years who has suffered and overcome trials severe enough to test the limits of any mortal man. Henry, on the other hand, had no iron in his backbone. It is more likely, therefore, that Henry would have killed his father for taking away the sugar teat.”

“Then I must ask this, father: Although both you and I believe in Robert’s innocence, do you think he might have been bedding the Lady Isabelle? Could Henry have come upon them that night and attacked my brother out of a jealous rage…”

The baron smiled. “Ah, Eleanor, do you remember how shocked we were when Hugh brought that babe to us and confessed it was his?”

The prioress nodded.

“Know then that Robert confessed to me, as I proposed the marriage with Juliana to him, that he has had no knowledge of women except in his dreams when Satan sends his whores to tempt us all. Although he would swear otherwise, I think he would have found a monkish vocation quite suitable if you had not already taken vows.” He stopped and studied his daughter’s face for a long moment before continuing, “Now, however, although he might have made a fine abbot, he will be, as he always has been, a loyal son and will do as I ask, even to marriage.”

“You are truly blessed in your sons, my lord, if not in your daughter.”

“One of my children had to take after me,” replied the baron as he rose, leaving Eleanor to wonder which he meant.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The woman had been standing immobile near the stones of the parapet for so long that miniature drifts had formed against her feet. Oblivious to the chill, the Lady Juliana continued to stare into the gray void filled with swirling flecks of snow.

Thomas shook with the cold. Even the thick cloak and decent leather boots, loaned to him by his prioress from clothes left behind by Lord Hugh, were barely sufficient to keep the wind’s ice from his bones. How the woman in front of him could endure the bitter cold in lighter attire was beyond his imagination. Was she in a trance, he wondered, possessed perhaps, or simply mad?

“My lady,” he shouted into the wind. “Should you not seek shelter?”

When she finally turned to him, her face was without expression and her eyes blank of recognition.

“Fear not! I am Brother Thomas of Tyndal. I came with Prioress Eleanor and Sister Anne. Will you come inside for some spiced wine to chase away this cruel chill?”

She continued to look at him in silence. Although the falling snow obscured her features, her eyes glowed black amidst the pale flakes and Thomas felt uneasy under their unbroken gaze. Shifting his weight to keep his feet from growing numb, he found himself thinking that the woman could not be possessed, for surely Satan preferred fire to this ice when he tortured souls.

“Wine?” she asked at last in a tone that suggested his offer was some fantastic thing.

The snow continued to whirl in the wind. Thomas watched one snowflake, delicate as lace, land on his sleeve and slowly blend with its fellows. Beauty can be so fragile, yet so deadly, he thought, remembering how the snow had nearly frozen Anselm to death last night.

“If you will come inside,” he said, stepping forward with hand outstretched to pull her from the castle wall if need be, “we have much to discuss.”

“You wish to question me on my desire to enter Tyndal as an anchoress,” Juliana said as she started to walk slowly toward him.

“Aye,” he replied, “and perhaps more.”

“If you wish to speak of death, we should remain here, brother, where we are closer to it.” She stopped and gestured toward the parapet.

She was quite mad. Thomas was now sure of it.

Then she smiled with such warmth that even her grim words were melted into a jest. “I will come with you, brother,” she said as she pulled her cloak more closely around her and hurried to his side. “You have no need to stand in the cold waiting for this foolish woman to come out of it. I did not mean to make you suffer for your courtesy.”

***

Despite the warmth of the hearth and the heaviness of his borrowed garments, Thomas could feel his hands and feet just now begin to sting with returning feeling. The woman who sat on the other side of the table with a cup of spiced wine looked untouched by her time in the freezing storm.

“You say you wish to enter Tyndal as an anchoress, my lady,” Thomas began, his teeth still chattering. “There is no enclosed cell for you next to the church. Would you not come to us as a nun instead?”

“I do not require a hermitage enclosed with stone, brother. I know of no rule, beyond current custom, that requires someone of my stern calling to anchor in a space surrounded by stone and mortar. A cave or hut in the forest would suit me as well as it did men and women in times past. Amongst God’s verdant gifts, He has given us many quiet places where we may find the solitude to contemplate and hear His voice with greater clarity. It has never mattered whether those who seek Him retreat into the burning wilderness of the desert fathers or England’s dark woods.”

“My lady, please understand that it is not I who will decide whether or not to approve your plea or the details thereof. The bishop and our prioress will do that.” Thomas poured more hot, spiced wine into her cup as well as his own. Perhaps women did dwell in forest huts long ago, he thought, but such a request by members of the weaker sex was quite unusual now. Still, she was right about one thing. Removal from the joys of London to the more austere East Anglian coast had given him more time for contemplation, as had the new joys of his work in a hospital and listening to the novice choir’s simple lyricism whenever he wished. His new sea-scented residence might not be as dour as a desert, the wind-pruned forest near Tyndal might not match the grim darkness of others less buffeted, but surely the reek of fish and rotting seaweed held some position of merit in God’s eyes.

Thomas glanced up and caught Juliana smiling at him. The look was not mocking, but it unsettled him. “Since I am the confessor to the nuns of Tyndal,” he quickly explained, “your welfare would be my responsibility; therefore, Prioress Eleanor thought it wise that I question you on the basis for your decision to become an anchoress.”

“Ask what you will, brother.” Juliana crossed her hands and leaned back in her chair.

Indeed, Thomas had little to ask, but when his prioress requested that he question Juliana on her vocation, he had had no good reason to refuse. Surely he was the least qualified to judge if someone were suited to any form of monastic life since he had not chosen such himself with whole-hearted willingness. On the other hand, some might say that the choice of life over being burned at the stake by an admirer of that exquisite punishment, a concept regaining strong popular support amongst clerics, might be deemed whole-hearted enough. Perhaps he should be flexible about her reasons for finding her vocation as well.

Thomas cleared his throat and asked the obvious first question: “Why do you want to enter a monastic life?”

“You ask me an easy question first.” Juliana smiled. “The simplest answer is that I feel called to it.”

The change in Juliana from the person he had coaxed from the castle parapet was dramatic. Unlike that deathly pale creature with eyes like burning coal, this woman positively glowed with a most womanly warmth. Had he been wrong to think her mad? Might she not be that rare creature who was filled with grace, perhaps even gifted with visions? “Why?” Thomas asked. Indeed, he truly wanted to know.

Juliana leaned forward. This time her steady gaze comforted rather than unsettled him. “I think we might understand each other in this, brother. I feel called to it because worldly things no longer give me joy. In my case, I have enjoyed the love of good parents. My brothers were a happy trial when I was growing up.” She laughed and Thomas watched a memory dart across her eyes. “In addition, I have felt the pain of lust, and, if I may repeat a secret I told in confession, I have experienced the joy of it as well.” Her brown eyes twinkled with a comfortable sensuality.

Thomas realized his bones no longer ached with cold. “Our Lord…”

“…does not require virgins as brides. As I recall, he not only saved the life of Mary Magdalene but also honored her. It was to her, after all, that Jesus announced his resurrection at the tomb, not to Peter or John.”

“I was about to say much as you did.”

“Then you are wiser than many priests.” Juliana fell silent for a moment, her eyes unashamedly examining the auburn-haired monk. “Not to say I questioned the choice of Tyndal for my hermitage, but knowing that you are there is further sign of its merit.”

Thomas felt his face flush.

“Be at peace, brother. I have no more designs on your very fine body than I believe you have on mine.” She shook her head. “Do not protest, for you did think that was my meaning. But do answer this for me: am I right that you did not come to the monastic life as a child?”

Thomas nodded, deciding it was best to see where her questions led before saying anything further.

For a moment Juliana said nothing, then closed her eyes as if profoundly weary. “I find comfort in the knowledge that I shall confess to a priest who had a full taste of the world but was wise enough to reject its corruption for a peace that only God can bring.”

He waited.

“Forgive me, Brother Thomas. Please continue to ask me your questions, and I shall reply, as is meet, with more modesty. Playing the hare to your hound is contemptible in a woman who longs to become an anchoress.” Juliana’s face paled as her smile disappeared. “Although that day of peace seems as far away as the softness of spring is from this bleak winter.”

As he watched the light fade from her eyes, Thomas felt the unease returning that he had experienced with her on the walls. “You have wearied of this world then?” he asked with a gentle tone.

“Wearied? Perhaps. Once I reveled like a child in earthly pleasures. Now they stink in my nostrils like night soil in the summer sun. Once I believed that anyone with a good and faithful heart could remain pure. Now I know that all mortals are tainted with violence and evil. Should I stay in this world, I fear I would try, time and time again, to reclaim the lost Eden, something no mortal will do. Thus my desire to leave a world that rots under my hand may be as much due to fear of my own sinful nature as it is to weariness. I long to seek God’s wisdom and all-forgiving love, something I can only find in the solitary life.”

“A solitary life is possible in a monastic setting. You would be shut away enough from the rest of the world. Why ask for the more severe life of an anchoress, closeted in a isolated cell and separated even from the comfort of other nuns?”

“Because the company of women would be a burden to me. I seek a place where I will hear only the sound of God’s voice singing in my ears. I cannot bear the voices of the children of Adam and Eve.”

“People may come to beg wisdom from you. Many anchorites and anchoresses are judged to be closer to God than most religious.”

Juliana’s eyes sparkled in brief amusement. “Fear of the strange woman in the glade will frighten most away, I trust, and Tyndal will protect me should that not be sufficient. In the meantime, I promise that your visits to shrive me will be welcomed, and Eleanor’s voice will never intrude on my contemplations. Your voices I shall bear.”

“What caused you to so turn against the world?”

“God.”

Thomas sat back and stared at her. “God does not hate His creation.”

“God has willed this.”

“His voice? A vision?”

“If you will.”

“Could it not be Satan who spoke to you, not God?”

“Satan loves his comforts, brother. He would be happier with me if I followed the lusts of my body rather than the harsher ones of my soul.”

“You have been candid with me, my lady, but now I must be blunt with you in return.”

“You may be as forthright with me as need be. It will make your task and mine easier.”

In spite of himself, Thomas smiled. “Might not your weariness with the world be grounded more in disappointment than in a true belief that mortal joys are shallow ones?”

“That was not plain enough speech! If you mean to ask whether I am jealous because my dearest friend married before I did, then the answer is no. I must differ with my father on this.”

“Nonetheless, you and the Lady Isabelle have quarreled much since she married with your father.”

“We have fought less than my father has suggested. She and I are not suited to the roles of stepmother and stepdaughter. That is true, but the memory of our youth together remains strong in our hearts.”

“Yet I have seen your sorrow and silence in her presence. You did quarrel. Why?”

She sat back in her chair and sighed. “Do you not remember when the innocence of childhood fled? Each of us is doomed to repeat that bite of apple given by the serpent in Eden, I think. One day we laugh together in play; the next we look at each other and raise our hands to strike those very loved ones. Is there a reason or is it the nature of our mortal sin?”

“I am a simple man, my lady, and have no easy answer to that…”

“You are neither simple nor prone to facile answers, brother. One day, perhaps in the peace of my forest chapel, we will speak further on that subject, and you will share your own experiences with me.” She shook her head as Thomas was about to respond. “Forgive me. We were talking of my calling, not yours. Yours was a direct question that should be answered in an honest fashion. No, I am not running away because my dearest friend married before me. I do not, as has been suggested, fear marriage and its pains, although I confess I feel unsuited to that state. Yes, I wish to escape the world, but my reason is a longing to fold myself completely into God’s love and forgiveness much as a child does into her mother’s arms. Compared to that, all worldly joys are flawed and feeble things to me. Does that satisfy you, brother?”

Thomas looked at the woman sitting peacefully across from him and felt the sharp stab of regret. If only he had her clear-eyed vocation, perhaps he would rest with contentment. “You speak convincingly, my lady.”

Juliana reached out her hand. “Then let us try to become friends, for I do believe we share a special kinship found only amongst those who reject earthly things.”

Although he did not understand why, Thomas felt peace at her touch. It was not until after she left the dining hall, however, that he realized she had never answered his question about the specific reason for the quarrel with the Lady Isabelle.