Authors: Priscilla Royal
Andrew snorted. "My leg. It distresses me when the air turns chill or damp. I am used to it, although I still have little patience despite much prayer. Sister Anne has remedies which ease the aches."
"Surely you are too young for an old man's pains," Thomas said, grinning.
"They are from an old wound, brother, gotten in a battle for a cause which died with its leader but not, perhaps, in the spirits of men."
"You have returned from the Holy Land then?"
"Nay. I was with Simon de Montfort and should have died on the field from my wounds. Or else been hanged, drawn, and quartered as a traitor to King Henry."
"My apologies, brother. I should not have pried."
Andrew looked up at Thomas and laughed, eyes sparkling
with good humor. "Nor would I have told you except you remind
me much of the man who gave me this bad leg and then saved me from a traitor's death by granting my wish to retire from the world. He was an earl who fought on King Henry's side, but he showed a knight's compassion toward this humble man whom he deemed a worthy opponent in face to face combat. Oh, but
he was a fine fighter!" The monk smiled at the memory. "Indeed,
you have his voice, his look and his breadth, although not his coloring. Strange, that."
Thomas felt his face turn cold, then blazing hot.
"Methinks I, too, have pricked an old wound? But fear not, brother. You may keep your secrets. It is part of the human condition to have something buried deep in the heart, and we monks of Tyndal are no different from any other mortal man in that."
"Even Prior Theobald?" Thomas asked, his laugh harsh with
fear at the monk's quick perceptions. It would be wise, he decided,
to maneuver the conversation into safer and more profitable areas. Indeed, that earl might well have been Thomas' own father.
"Even he, although his more spirited sins must now be as
shriveled as ancient husks. We are used to his failings, yet respect
his office and, out of kindness, pretend that all orders are his rather than issuing from others with his voice. I am not alone in feeling only pity for him."
"Others
being Brother Simeon?"
"A man of great competence and perhaps even greater ambition, but the latter serves both the priory and God well. We may lose him one day to Amesbury. If God is kind, he may stay with us and become prior here when Prior Theobald is called to Heaven."
"Then surely Brother Receiver has no dark secrets." Andrew folded his arms and lowered his head. "His ambition for advancement within the Church is no secret, but he exercises a shrewd humility. Although Brother Simeon has long ruled us here at Tyndal, he gives credit for everything he does to our prior. Such humility will serve him well with others of higher rank who would profit from competence in underlings but wish the glory to fall on themselves. No, if our receiver has a
secret, it may be his grief. He once said that he admired his father
above all other men, but less than two years ago, his father died. Brother Simeon was inconsolable for many months. We feared he would lose either his reason or his faith. Once in chapel I overheard him praying that the cup be taken from him. Apparently, God was gracious. The good brother has since regained his spirit and strength."
"He does not seem happy with our new prioress." "Prioress Felicia was not a forceful leader. She was happiest working with the nuns or the hospital and let Brother Simeon
run the estates as well as rule the monks and lay brothers on Prior
Theobald's behalf. Prioress Eleanor seems more in the tradition of Fontevraud women. He will find the change difficult." "And what think you of being ruled by a woman?" Andrew chuckled. "Our new prioress, despite her youth, reminds me much of my own mother. Now there was a woman who knew how to order about the sons of Adam! And we all loved her, we did, including my father. This will be no change for me, brother. It is like going home."
Thomas knelt in solitude on the rough stones of the darkening Jesus Chapel, the monks' private place of prayer on the left of the church nave. The boy's death earlier that day had dug into his soul like a dark-hued worm, and he needed a comfort no mortal could give.
But he could not pray; his thoughts hugged the earth with a fierce tenacity. In truth, he had been unable to pray since the day he was thrown face down on the slimy straw of that rotting dungeon floor. After his release and transfer to Grovebury, a downy-cheeked priest had told him that failure at prayer proved Satan's hand clutched his soul. He advised Thomas to battle
against such possession with the whip, the hair shirt and rejection
of all earthly desires. Although he had smiled with some acidity at the young priest's naivete, he did feel as if some malign force was crushing all spark of light from his spirit. And so he did try them, the whip and hair shirt, but they had accomplished nothing.
If Satan was offering bribes for his soul, he was doing it in a very unorthodox manner. Thomas no longer suffered from
fleshly passions. He did not lust after women, either when he was
awake or during the vulnerability of sleep. He ate because food was
placed before him but did so with neither hunger nor eagerness, and he drank only to keep his throat from drying to dust.
And as if some part of him was truly eager for it, he needed no awakening for prayer. Indeed he was grateful when they all shuffled down to the chapel for Matins. It was torture, lying motionless in his bed with neither thought nor action to pass the interminable black minutes before sunrise. Although his eyes burned and his body ached from lack of rest, it was during Matins when he felt nearest to prayer, surrounded by the warmth and breath of his brother monks.
Now he was alone. His prayers swirled briefly in the air like lightly disturbed dust before drifting to the floor as soon as he had said them. He dropped his hands, leaned back on his heels, and turned his thoughts to more worldly things.
Although he had been sent to Tyndal to test his investigative prowess in what would probably be a minor and temporary matter of priory insolvency, he found himself settling into the place as if it were a new home. Despite the desolate location, the inhabitants were much like the men he was used to, although some of those
men
now inhabited the bodies of women, he thought with a smile. An interesting twist on traditional views, for cert.
However, if he wished Tyndal to be the place where he could lift his spirits and refresh his soul, God had played an ugly joke on him. Instead of granting Thomas peace and distance from his tortured memories, God had greeted him with the sight of Brother Rupert's horribly mutilated dead body before he had even spent a night within the priory walls. No matter that the murderer would be found eventually, Thomas would keep the image of Brother Rupert's obscenely mangled corpse forever in his collection of night terrors, which visited him on those rare occasions when he actually slept.
Would that the murderer be quickly found! The idea that he might strike again in such a blasphemous way was a thought too macabre to live with. Despite the astute observations of Sister Anne and Thomas' own discovery of the dead monk's crucifix outside the sacristy, however, Crowner Ralf had yet to find more evidence and apprehend the culprit, secular or religious.
If only Thomas knew why the monk had been so treated, perhaps he could await the murderer's capture with less terror, knowing how to protect himself from a similar fate. But he did not, and his imagination, colored with abnormal fatigue, sometimes let loose images of such ghoulish morbidity that he started at strange, demonic shapes he thought materialized in the shadows of his restless nights.
Thomas heard himself mewl like a babe in fear and he ground
his hands into his eyes, forcing himself to turn his thoughts to the mundane task he had been sent to investigate. He took in a deep breath and just as slowly exhaled. With an exasperating sluggishness, calm returned to his overburdened soul.
Brother Simeon. He was, without doubt, a vain man, even pompous, but he was also competent. That reputation was known at Grovebury, and Brother Andrew had confirmed the general opinion. Thomas had also found the receiver vigorous and jovial, the kind of man who drew boys, just on the brink of manhood, to him. A man who'd stand, legs splayed, with a waster in hand, one of those blunt wooden practice swords, and invite the lads to fight with him. Afterward he'd cuff them like a great bear; show them skills to save their lives, which he'd call little tricks; praise them for their recklessness, which he'd call courage; and then slip them treats like the children they still were. Thomas had known a man like that when he was a boy and the memory warmed him briefly. Of course a man like Simeon would emerge a leader in this world of sometimes childlike monks.
That aside, someone had obviously thought there was a problem with Simeon or Thomas would not be here. An anonymous
message with vague suggestions of even vaguer improprieties had
been sent to the Abbess at the mother house in France. Thomas suspected some monk atTyndal had become jealous of Simeon's growing reputation, but so far he had neither heard nor seen anything suggestive. Perhaps someone was just trying to blacken Simeon's name, or at least tarnish it a bit, so his promotion to prior at either Amesbury or Tyndal might not be considered such a foregone conclusion.
Thomas shrugged. He had yet to persuade Simeon to show him the account rolls. In fact, despite the receiver's frequent invitations to join him in a cup of good Gascon wine and talk about the new priest's day with the nuns and at the hospital, Simeon seemed disinclined to take Thomas on as his apprentice as Thomas had hoped. It would have made the task of investigating the lost income so much simpler. Now Thomas would have to wait until the prioress ordered the receiver to bring his accounts to her and trust she would invite Thomas to the meeting as a man familiar with law and with contracts and grants.
So far, she had not done so. The discovery of the mutilated corpse well within the sanctity of the priory gardens had profoundly terrified all at Tyndal. Not only did the prioress have to calm them, she had to question each, on the crowner's behalf, to discover anything that may have been seen on the day Brother Rupert's body was found. All this had delayed any review of revenues.
Perhaps the postponement was just as well, for Simeon had shown no dread of presenting his accounts. This suggested that the whole problem rested, not with the receivers incompetence or even malfeasance, but rather with a resentful troublemaker who only wished to throw a little sand in Simeon's face.
Who might that be? In Thomas' opinion, the use of anonymous and vague accusations was a weak man's weapon. Could Theobald have finally rebelled against the man who had dominated him for so long? It would not surprise him. He had met a few others like Theobald in the higher orders. For the most part, they were harmless and vacant men, although often personable, who had been raised to positions that bewildered them. Indeed their advancements so far exceeded their abilities that even those more experienced in Church politics were often mystified by their elevation. The reason for their prominence usually involved the accident of high birth in combination with the ambition of men of lesser rank who used them as a shield to push themselves forward into positions of influence they could never otherwise reach. Such men then taught the Theobalds to say the words they themselves had no authority to speak, and if the ambitious men were competent and wise, well then, there was no harm and perhaps even some good done in the name of those who held the title. If they were not wise or were tainted with malevolence, however...
Was Simeon a wise man as well as a skilled administrator? Thomas did not doubt the monk's intelligence, but Simeon seemed uneasy with the new prioress and had treated her in a disrespectful manner at their first meeting. That was a surprising mistake for such a worldly and ambitious man. Perhaps it was a mere stumble. After all, the prioress had just arrived and he had had no chance to learn how to deal with a woman of will, something the Prioress Felicia had not apparently been.
Willful women! He smiled. In truth, Thomas had met more such in the house of God than he had ever encountered in the world of men, but he rather liked at least two of them. Even the crowner, a blunt, rough man and no courtier in his dealings with either monks or women, had shown respect for Sister Anne's logic.
And Thomas himself liked the evident but understated intelligence of the youthful prioress. She listened to others, a tactic the wise man learned quickly if he wished to survive into old age. Those high in the Church who had successfully kept their positions over decades of endless, sometimes daily, contradictory political storms would probably agree. That she had already learned it made him feel more confident about her strength and
permanence as a leader. Perhaps that was why he chose to tell the prioress about finding the wooden cross and not Brother Simeon,
about whose skills Thomas was still unsure. Choosing to show her the crucifix he had found was his way of aligning himself with the prioress and whatever faction of power she represented outside Tyndal. An unorthodox choice to be sure. Had he made a mistake? Thomas had honed his instincts on who was best to follow since he was a child. He had to trust himself.