Wine of Violence

Chapter Thirty-Six

“I like it not, monk.”

Crowner Ralf scowled at Thomas and shifted uneasily with impatience. He and one of his men were armed with knife and sword. The other carried a small crossbow. All were dressed in leather armor.

“We have logic on our side, man. Brother Simeon knows that only one other man may know his secret about the theft of funds as well as the reason for it, and that is Brother John. If he kills him, there is only the word of Eadmund. And who credits the tales of villeins against the word of a Norman, a man of good family and well respected for his stewardship of the priory at that? Our only hope is to catch him trying to kill Brother John. Your brother is sheriff, Crowner. Your witness and testimony would be respected.”

“So you want Brother John to be bait. I think we should be more concerned with saving his life.”

“The souls of one, quite possibly two slain men cry out for justice. If we do nothing, Brother John may be murdered tonight and his body arranged to look like a suicide. Of course I could be wrong and Brother John might live to tell his tale, but I doubt Simeon would take the chance that the monk’s tale will be believed over his own. Even if it is not, Simeon may fear that his hope for future advancement will be diminished with the taint of the accusation. Certainly Simeon will never confess to the murders or the attempted murder of our good prioress. If Brother John seems to have taken his own life, surely most will conclude he did so out of guilt for the murders, and Simeon will be exonerated. Eadmund’s story will have no credence. Even if you set men to guard him and Brother John survives the night, there is a chance Simeon’s word will still be taken over his, a former apothecary, but not if the receiver tries to kill the monk and we witness it.”

“You ask me who is most likely to be believed in this ugly matter: Eadmund, the villein, and John, a man of uncertain birth; or Simeon, the son of a man of rank? Satan’s tits, monk! The noble brothers in the Church will protect their own. The cleric who literally got away with murder during the reign of our second King Henry was not unusual. Justice has little room to swing her balances in courts ruled by highborn priests.” Ralf snorted, then smiled. “You continue to amaze me with your understanding of the real world, monk. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were only acting a monk’s part. ”

“The tonsure is real, Crowner,” Thomas said, lowering his head to hide his flushing face. “You do agree we have little choice but to follow my plan?”

Ralf grunted. “I never acquired a taste for gambling. Your plan could lose us both Annie’s former husband as well as you and still leave Simeon free.”

“And you as a witness to it all, remember. Trying to get Simeon to confess otherwise is impossible and would leave us with an innocent man who might be found guilty of crimes he did not commit. And I think John would rather die in a fight to save him than die alone like a trussed chicken at Simeon’s hand.”

“Aye, but if he died, would he care about the difference?”

Thomas laughed. “Now there, Crowner, is where it pays to be a man of faith. Indeed, in the afterlife, he’d care that we believed him to be innocent.”

“Your humor is not like that of any other monk I have ever met either, brother, but I will grant you the logic of your plan.”

“And you and your men will not enter unless I give the sign?”

Ralf looked at his two lieutenants and smiled. They nodded. Their eyes never blinked.

***

As the quartet reached the top of the stairs to the passage, which led on one side to the monks’ dormitory and on the other to the latrines, two of them slipped into the shadows. Ralf and Thomas stood looking at the door of one of the small storage rooms that lay along the narrow way to the latrines. All was silent from the room where Brother John lay a prisoner.

“Good luck,” Ralf mouthed before he too stole deep into the darkness of the corridor.

Thomas walked quietly into another empty room and crouched along a wall. He could not see the moon from this windowless stone storage chamber and thus could not mark time. It might have been an hour he waited. Or only a minute. It felt like the rest of his earthly life.

In the darkness, he began to distrust what seemed so clear in the earlier daylight. Surely, Sister Ruth had told Simeon about Prioress Felicia’s last words. She told him everything, it seemed, everything in return for praise, the warmth of which must have filled her lonely heart like wine. Had the receiver’s contempt for women saved her life? And Sister Anne’s?

Perhaps the monk thought he could control one woman with flattery and the other with threats to expose some violation of her chastity vow, but Brother John was a man. His word might be given credence. He was a threat.

Thomas felt an uneasy pang of guilt. On the surface, Simeon was a man of the world, rough and jovial, a man he could understand in a world of monks. He had also befriended Thomas, aye, accepted him when he first arrived and understood him well. Simeon, it seemed, had cared for another before he had come to Tyndal and suffered for it too. If the prioress and Sister Anne were horrified at Simeon’s acts of sodomy, how would they feel if they knew of his own? Giles was no youth, but to those in the Church, or in the courts of kings, there was no difference. Indeed he and the receiver had a kinship here. Did he not owe Simeon something for that?

Thomas had hesitated about speaking up when he suspected John and Eadmund of being lovers. Why did he now turn on Simeon? Unlike the receiver, John was a strange man, hard on the outside but soft like a woman on the inside, especially in his dealings with the novices. Had Brother Rupert and Prioress Felicia suspected him, as Thomas had as well, of questionable relations with the boys? Was that what the old prioress had realized as she was dying? That they were wrong about Brother John? He hadn’t wanted to suggest such in front of Sister Anne or Prioress Eleanor. The shock of what Simeon had done was bad enough, but he did not want either of them to start asking if even more monks at Tyndal were guilty of sexual sins as well. With their quick perceptions, they might, in time, begin to look at Thomas himself.

He shuddered.

Nay, there was a great difference between what Simeon had done and what he thought John had, but was he right now about both men? Thomas had trusted what he’d known, distrusted the strange, and did not question his judgement. He did not, that is, until he realized he was beginning to enjoy the world this gray monastic place offered. Indeed, he was starting to understand how a warrior like Andrew might find peace here, a peace that Thomas longed for as well. And then there were the women like Sister Anne and the prioress, creatures he liked but did not desire. Tyndal was a world turned quite upside down from the one he had known. Neither world was perfect, for cert, yet nothing created by men ever was.

Thomas shifted with discomfort.

Simeon. Simeon had told him how gentleness had been battered from him with whips and mockery as a youth, and Thomas had seen the receiver burning to ash whatever had remained with his own anger and hot ambition.

Brother John. The novices respected and loved John, who loved them back with kindness and understanding. He was a tormented man, for cert, who beat all earthly passions into submission whenever the Prince of Darkness tempted him with whatever sins he longed to commit. Did the man love boys? Aye, love was there but Thomas no longer believed it was a dark lust.

There was much about both Thomas still did not comprehend. How could a man who had taken his hand in understanding, albeit in a drunken moment, so brutally kill two others? Might not John be more tortured and thus more likely to commit such a crime? Thomas cursed this doubting. He must be right about what had happened. He must.

Nonetheless, the question of whether or not the murderer was left-handed gnawed at him. If the guilty man was left-handed, John, or someone else, was guilty, Simeon innocent. Perhaps Sister Ruth had been right to cast doubt on Eadmund’s confession. The lad might have yet undiscovered reasons for casting such an accusation at the receiver. Had they all jumped to the wrong conclusions too quickly? Thomas groaned silently. The darkness pressed down on him with…

A faint light fluttered along the sides of the stone walls outside his hiding chamber.

Thomas tensed.

There was no sound at first, and then he heard the soft scraping of shoes on the steps. The light grew brighter.

Thomas held his breath.

For a moment there was absolute silence as the wavering torch flame threw twitching patches of light and black against the walls. Then Thomas heard the clink of a key, and listened as the door to Brother John’s cell swung open.