something, but had never achieved his value.
He sighed, stood, and began to unpack the bag. It was rare for him to feel so strong a melancholy. He resolved to seek a pot or two of ale when he was done up here.
Sir Baldwin and Simon walked with the enraged suffragan to meet the prioress.
Simon had a compulsion to laugh out loud at Bertrand’s expression, in which frustration vied with pure fury. It was plain that Bertrand had realised his relative impotence in the face of the prioress’s disregard of his instructions. The bishop was controlling his temper only with extreme difficulty; his anger was so apparent Simon thought Bertrand would have been incandescent if it had been dark.
The reason for his mood was obvious. Their path led them past the nuns’ cloister to the southern side of the buildings. Here, at the canon’s side, they entered an unguarded doorway. Even here, within the monastic clearing, Simon was struck by how shabby and filthy the place was. The buildings were in a bad state, but the problems lay deeper than that. As they passed the square of grass in the middle of the canonical cloister, he saw that a dog had been there: excrement lay on the grass. At one point Simon clearly smelt vomit, as if a monk had drunk too much and thrown up on the grass.
There came the sound of running feet, and when Simon glanced behind them, he saw the canon from the gate running to catch up with them, a younger one trailing in his wake. The cleric called out in a voice near breaking from his exertion: “My Lord Bishop, my Lady Elizabeth will be so pleased that you are here. Let me go and tell her…”
Simon saw the bishop stop dead in his tracks and turn slowly.
“Pleased, Jonathan?” Bertrand hissed. “I am surprised you could think my return would be in any way pleasurable. When I see that none of my commands have been obeyed, I find it hard to anticipate any damned pleasure!”
Whatever his words, Jonathan himself didn’t look joyful at the reunion. He was a scrawny man, perhaps fifty years old, although Simon always found it hard to guess the age of men who wore the tonsure. Anxious eyes flitted over Simon and Baldwin, as if Jonathan was trying to assess the reason for their presence.
“Bishop, I know the circumstances of your return…”
“You mean the death of this novice?”
“It was merely an accident, Bishop.”
“Perhaps, but nothing would surprise me here: this priory is a pit of lust and degeneration – just look at this!” He held up his tunic, showing the cow’s mess. The smell was noticeable and he winced, then shook with rage. “Just look at it! I ordered that the courtyard should be cleaned and I find it worse than when I left; I ordered that the cloisters should be kept tidy and there’s dog shit all over the place! What is there in the church?” he demanded, quivering with emotion. “The cloisters are no better than a stable – I suppose you’ve got the oxen stored in there! Just look at the state of the buildings! Has anything been done to repair them as I told you? Eh?”
“My Lord, I…”
“No! I will not listen. Tell Prioress Elizabeth I will see her whether it is convenient or not. Go!”
Going to the rear of the church Denise fetched rags and beeswax from her aumbry, the chest where she stored all her cleaning things. She began polishing the woodwork.
Her arms had ached awfully when she had first taken on this duty, but now she found the hard effort rewarding. It was tiring, but required little thought, and she found her mind ranging over all the priory’s troubles while she rubbed, burping every so often from the wine she had drunk.
Denise wasn’t happy. At forty-three she was one of the senior nuns; not that she ever got the respect she deserved. She knew she would not have a chance of competing for the prioressy. Not enough potential supporters. Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the machinations an election would entail.
The place seemed to be falling apart around her. The discipline that a nun should have shown, the dedication, was missing with these new girls. They seemed to look upon their life as some sort of holiday. Denise blamed the prioress: she hadn’t instilled the right level of reverence. She didn’t seem to care about the observances – letting nuns sleep through and even bringing her dog into church.
That was the great difference between Margherita and Lady Elizabeth. The former was sincere, upstanding, and would bring solemnity to the place. Even to those dratted novices.
Novices! Huh! If Denise could have had her way, she’d have thrown most of them out. They were no good to man nor beast. Dishonest, unchaste, and sly. Nasty little girls, all of them. Katerine, Agnes – and Moll.
“Poor Moll!” Denise sneered.
The slut had deserved her end. She was no better than the prioress, all outward piety and strict devotion, while inside she was a dirty little hussy. That was what Margherita had told her anyway, and Denise had no reason to doubt her. Not after Denise’s own experience: the girl had dared to accuse her of being drunk – not only that, Moll had suggested that Denise should confess to her drinking in the chapter. As if a brat like her had any right to browbeat an older nun! If Denise had dared, she’d have demanded to have Moll beaten, but that would have meant repeating what Moll had said. And Denise couldn’t do that.
She spat on a recalcitrant mark and rubbed harder, her lips a thin white line. They were all so shallow: laughing and murmuring behind her back, just because she liked her wine.
Perhaps Moll’s death would teach them a lesson.
Unknown to Bertrand, not that he would have cared, his voice carried clearly in the chilly air. In the canonical frater the men stared at each other, shocked to hear such rage; the grooms and stablemen near the cloisters stopped their work and gazed towards the church; in the nuns’ cloister the sisters exchanged horrified glances; up in the dormitory, the prioress recognised Bertrand’s bellow and gave a cold smile.
Taking a deep breath she closed her eyes. Bertrand’s voice signalled that the attack upon her was about to start. His roar was like the first shot fired by a siege engine, loud and terrifying. It demonstrated that there could be no quiet negotiation, no subtle solution to protect her. Bertrand was like the King’s own artillery; ponderous and slow, but once pointed in the direction of a target, he was as resolute as a machine. And here at the nunnery, Elizabeth was confident that her treasurer Margherita would enthusiastically load him with ever heavier boulders for his assault.
She looked down at her papers and winced. Even that boorish fool Bertrand in a fighting mood was preferable to more paperwork. She stood slowly, an elderly woman with a back that ached from long hours on uncomfortable wooden chairs, but as she straightened she was already planning. The death of the novice had led directly to this confrontation, and Lady Elizabeth was determined to win it. She intended keeping her post.
The visitor was here to seek an answer to Moll’s death, but he would also be sure to want to place himself in the best possible light: this was an opportunity to enhance his own status.
Lady Elizabeth was old, and people sometimes mistakenly saw in her sagging jowls and slightly weak blue eyes the proofs of feminine frailty. This very Bertrand had assumed her to be an irrational woman, a broken reed – harmless, perhaps, but vulnerable. He had thought her a titular head, someone without real power.
Yet that was to underestimate her. “So he wishes me removed, thinking to accuse me of murder,” she hissed.
It was Rose from the tavern, sitting on a bench at her window, who had helped her come to that conclusion. From Bertrand’s conversation in the tavern Lady Elizabeth was to be made a scapegoat and forced to resign. Her treasurer was behind it. Well, Lady Elizabeth was not of a mood to resign. It would take a stronger man than this French idiot to remove her.
“He will not say that I am accused of murder,” she stated, peering through the dirty panes of glass to the moors.
“No. He said that they were all to keep quiet about the treasurer’s letter.”
“Well, I am warned,” Elizabeth said thoughtfully.
Rose was silent, watching her at the window. The prioress stood frowning out shortsightedly, her hands clasped before her breast, but then she whirled around and faced the girl.
“You are sure, Rose – quite sure – that he said he had received a letter saying that I was the girl’s murderer, and that this letter came from Margherita?”
