Wine of Violence

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The wooden door to the prioress’s chambers creaked on its hinges, then slammed shut, the wooden panels shaking quite visibly from the force.

Eleanor raised one eyebrow.

“I swear that woman hates me,” Ralf the Crowner said as he stared at the still quivering door.

“Sister Ruth shares the concerns of many over yet another death in our priory.” Eleanor gestured toward a stool, and Ralf sat.

“I join with your charges in that concern, but I have found no traces of the person who murdered Brother Rupert. I suspect there is a link to this second death, but I have not found it. I am not used to being so thwarted, my lady, yet thwarted I surely am.”

“Have you identified who the poor man was?” Eleanor watched as Gytha carefully poured a goblet of wine for the crowner, then put the ewer down and began to cut some cheese.

“No one has come forward and claimed knowledge of him, nor do I know him.”

“Well, he is certainly from here. I saw him by the stream that day I turned my ankle and once again in the village when I was buying a donkey. No one else did, however.”

A softened squeal of pain caused Eleanor to look up. Gytha was sucking on her finger.

“Are you all right, my child?”

“The knife slipped, my lady. It has almost stopped bleeding. I will bring the…”

“Come here and let me see.”

Gytha hesitated, then came forward and gave her hand to Eleanor.

“The cheese will wait. Run to Sister Anne and let her bind your finger. The cut looks deeper than you thought.”

“But…”

“I will brook no argument here, nor do I need your presence for decorum. Sister Ruth stands without the door.”

Gytha left the room with a backward glance at her mistress.

“Perhaps it is just as well the child has left. Now I may ask whether you have shown the body to anyone in the village, Ralf.”

“Tostig. He claimed no knowledge of him but promised to ask others. No one has come forth.”

“And you believe him.”

“I trust most Saxons as much as most Saxons trust me.”

“That is blunt enough. What have you in mind to get at the truth then?”

“Not what you might think I would do. I have never believed that torture brings forth the sound of truth, although it soon brings loud promises to say anything that will stop the pain.”

“You have no paid friends then in the village?”

Ralf laughed. “You surprise me, my lady. How could you think such a thing?”

“My father is at court and my elder brother fights at Prince Edward’s side in the Holy Land. I am naïve neither about the mechanics of intrigue nor about how men retain power.”

Ralf coughed.

“Lest you fear you have been too unguarded with a nun whom you now find to be less unworldly and perhaps better connected than you thought, let me assure you that I like a plain-spoken man. And men who are blunt to hide a soft heart I like even better.” Eleanor smiled, resting her chin in her hand. “So explain to me now why is it that you have no paid friends?”

“I bent the truth, my lady. Although many Saxons do not trust me, nor I them, I have true friends in the village that are so because they have learned I will be equitable to all and keep good order. Tostig is one such. What troubles me is that none of the Saxons I have befriended have come to me about this new death.”

“Then they are either afraid or have a higher loyalty than their friendship to you.”

“Well observed.”

“Tell me of Tostig’s reaction when he saw the dead man. What did you note?”

“He is a man who does not allow the color of his thoughts to be painted on his face, but I did detect a blink of his eyes and a twitch at his jaw when he first looked on the man.”

“Which suggested to you that his denial of any knowledge was false.”

Ralf nodded.

“That would confirm my own suspicion. When I saw the man in the village, the day I purchased the donkey, Tostig claimed he had not, although he was standing immediately behind me when I cried out. He could not have missed seeing him. I believe he not only noticed the man, I think he knew him.”

“Then he and the villagers do have reason either to protect themselves or him.”

Eleanor leaned back in her chair, stared at the ceiling in silence, then sat forward and sipped some wine from the goblet in front of her. As she put it down on the table, she watched the red liquid swirl and thought unpleasantly of blood.

“There may be another way to get at the truth of who this strange man was. Since you were last here, Ralf, I have had some discussion with the nun who used to pick mushrooms in the forest. She told me a strange tale of a demon that burst out of the earth in front of her near the bend in the stream where a tree hangs nearly suspended in air. It is the same place, I believe, where the cave of unknown purpose is.”

“A demon?”

“A demon with disheveled clothes and a black, unkempt beard. Unusual for a minion of Satan, I’d say, but not unusual for a man. Since I first saw our dead man there, I wonder if he might have been the very same demon.”

“Or it might have been a true son of Satan,” the crowner suggested.

“My aunt at Amesbury once told me that the demons we are unable to see or recognize are of far greater danger to our souls than those we can. I will ask my nun to view the corpse, but I will have Brother Thomas accompany her lest she need protection from otherworldly dangers. Indeed I fear she may remember all too vividly the image of her terror in recognizing the cause of it. Would you come as well? You should note her reaction and not hear it second-hand from me.”

“I will be there even if the corpse proves to be unholy and Satan himself comes to protect one of his own. Tell me, my lady, do you think there is a connection between this death and Brother Rupert’s? I do, yet it is a question, the answer to which eludes me.”

“And eludes me too. Something is indeed deeply amiss here. That something caused our dead man to both run in terror from the cave, yet be drawn back again; to run in fear from me at the village, yet come back to Tyndal, only to be found dead on the priory grounds as was our good monk.”

“I would not dismiss Satan’s hand in the incomprehensible, my lady.”

“Nor I, good Crowner, but if Satan has sent his minion to Tyndal, he remains quite invisible to us all.”