see the dead novice’s body; then the place where she died. Only when we have done that can we sit and relax.”
“Of course, sir.”
Bertrand glanced at Baldwin, then at Simon, who maintained a diplomatic silence. “Oh, very well! But you will inform your prioress that I am most unimpressed by her lack of attendance.” He lowered his head bullishly. “You will say that to her: I am most unimpressed.”
Denise heard his words with a thrill of excitement. She had been about to leave the church, for her bladder was full, but when she heard the angry voice of the bishop she hurriedly threw her cloth and wax back into the aumbry and picked up a broom, posting herself near the door where she could eavesdrop better.
The door slammed and Jonathan sped past. Denise tried to smile engagingly at him, but he ignored her, and soon his hurried steps had faded in the cloister outside.
Denise sighed to herself. She would have liked the opportunity to ask him what was happening. Noticing the altar, she made an absent-minded obeisance in apology for allowing her mind to wander again, then belched.
Her thoughts gravitated to the election again. To her mind, Margherita would be the better prioress, guaranteeing that the Rule would be enforced, but she could be a bit of a tyrant, and that might not be all to the good. Many nuns had their little foibles – not necessarily vices, of course, just little lapses – like her own. Denise knew she wasn’t wicked, but now she came to think about it, the treasurer might prove intolerant.
There was nothing in the Rule to say a nun shouldn’t have a cup of wine or two, especially in winter to keep the chill out. Yet Margherita had presumed to try to tell her she was drunk that day; the night Moll died.
Well, it was a lie. Denise knew she could hold her drink, and for Margherita to suggest she couldn’t was villainous.
Pausing and leaning on her broom she recalled the scene. She had been sitting at the far end of the frater where she often settled when she couldn’t sleep. At such times she would drink a bottle or two. It was pleasant there, and when the weather was very brisk the warming room was only a short walk away, so there was always somewhere to ease her chilled limbs.
When Margherita appeared that night Denise had only had the one bottle and was considering fetching a second when she saw the shadow pass on the wall opposite. At first she was struck cold with fear. All the novices were told hideous stories of the devils who lived on the moor, and no girl who had ever lain awake in the middle of a night, cold, lonely and homesick, who had heard the breeze mournfully groaning as it circled around the cloisters, or howling down the chimneys, or shrieking as it squeezed around doors, could ever quite forget the terror.
There, sitting all alone in the frater, she had felt the force of the tales return, and as she watched the massive black shadow leap across the wall, she couldn’t restrain a squeak of horror: it was coming for her!
Instantly she heard the reassuringly angry voice of Margherita. “Denise? Is that you?” She strode closer and wrinkled her nose. “Have you been drinking again? Yes, you’re drunk, aren’t you?”
“I’m not, I was just having a little wine to keep the cold out. It’s so bitter in the dorter.”
“You’re drunk, Denise, and you should get straight to bed. What would the novices think if they found you asleep down here snoring in your cups as they came back from Matins? No, not another word: go to your bed!”
Cowed, Denise had obeyed. After all, obedience was one of the threefold oaths, together with poverty and chastity.
Yet she couldn’t quite forget the sight of that shadow, not even now in the daylight. It wasn’t the petrifying, creeping movement it had seemed to make, nor the attitude, as if preparing to pounce, that got to her.
Denise shivered and began sweeping more urgently as if trying to sweep away her memory. No, it wasn’t the shadowy figure itself; it was the sharp outline she had seen. The pointed outline of a long dagger in one hand.
Chapter Eight
Simon’s discomfort grew as the angry bishop walked to the door dividing the nuns’ cloister from the canons’. He could see that Baldwin was unaffected; the knight was perfectly used to wandering about religious grounds, and Bertrand was beyond any feelings other than his own pique at what he perceived as a slight from the prioress.
But Simon knew no such comfort. To him, walking about this place was almost sacrilegious. It was a place of worship for those who dedicated their lives to God; not somewhere for the likes of him to idle about unhindered.
It was a curious sensation for him. Usually the bailiff was hard-headed and impervious to such fine perceptions, a truly secular man. Raised and bred in Devon, living almost all his life out at Crediton, he had always prided himself on his commonsense. Not, of course, that that prevented him from a certain amount of what he thought of as sensible superstition.
But Simon knew that his place was in the towns and wastes of Dartmoor, not in a convent, and especially not one in which nuns lived. If he had any choice in the matter, he’d have left right now. He was an instrument of secular law, responsible, through his Warden, to the King himself; but if a nun had committed an offence – even murder – he had no authority.
That knowledge was frustrating in its own right. He knew, just as everyone did, that England’s stability was on a knife-edge, with barons up and down the realm joining forces to get rid of the upstart Despenser family. Simon was glad that he was entitled to leave his wife and daughter within Lydford Castle if they needed the security, for otherwise, with the country in the state it was, he’d not have left Lydford, suffragan Bishop Bertrand or no. If he had to leave Lydford, there were things Simon could have been doing to help secure the kingdom, raising money and assessing men-at-arms for the war which he had little doubt was shortly to come. Yet here he was, in a place where he could achieve nothing. Nuns fell under Canon Law; they were safe from prosecution in a civil court.
What was the purpose of his presence? Simon wondered as he trailed unhappily after the bishop.
Bertrand opened the connecting door Jonathan had used up near the altar and stalked through. Simon swallowed his feelings as Baldwin disappeared, and then followed them.
For the first time in his life he was in a nunnery; the experience wouldn’t fulfil the occasional erotic dreams he’d enjoyed as a youngster. There would be no pleasure for him here.
Hugh missed the table with his elbow, and carefully lifted it again, sure that no one would have noticed his slight clumsiness. It wasn’t as if he was drunk, after all; he was just drowsy. He needed refreshment after a long ride like that.
Elias leaned with his back against the wall opposite. He made no sign of seeing Hugh’s near tumble as Hugh rested his chin on his hand, frowning with concentration. “So she comes up here to visit each night?”
“Not every night,” Elias laughed. “Just now and then.”
“What – sort of once a week?”
“Yes, I suppose.” The smith nodded, then belched. “Last time I saw her was…” he went vacant a moment “… oh, when poor Moll died – yes, that was last week.”
Hugh absorbed this. “But why doesn’t the prioress stop her?”
“Prioress has better things to do,” said Elias, and tried to tap the side of his nose. His finger shot past without connecting.
“What could be more important than stopping a whore in a convent?” Hugh demanded.
“It’s more important she keeps it quiet,” Elias said knowingly, and grinned at his pot as if sharing a secret with it.
“You mean she’s…?”
Elias glanced up, and then gave Hugh a very old-fashioned look. “I won’t talk about the prioress.”
