Candace Robb - The Nun's Tale

Joanna turned back to Owen, looked at him, offended. ‘You cannot think I wished him dead.’

‘What should I think?’

‘The Devil wants me dead, too.’ Her eyes challenged him.

‘Who killed your brother?’

Joanna blushed. ‘I am thirsty.’

She played with them. Owen would have liked to withhold the wine, make her uncomfortable. But she needed the wine to speak. He sighed, lifted her up and Lucie helped her drink.

When Joanna was settled again, Owen tried another path. ‘You have spoken of someone buried alive. Who did you think was buried alive, Joanna?’

‘I was.’

‘Who else, Joanna?’

She frowned, dropped her eyes to her hands. ‘He used me.’

‘Who did?’

Joanna rocked her head back and forth on the pillow. ‘I should never have left St Clement’s.’

Owen touched her head gently, stilling it. ‘Why should you not have left? What happened to you while you were away?’

Tears again. ‘I am not worthy to be called Dame Joanna. I cuckolded my divine bridegroom.’

She moved away from Owen’s purpose. ‘It is Longford who was buried alive. But I am certain you know that,’ he said.

Joanna’s eyes changed, grew wary. She clutched the Magdalene medal. ‘Will Longford?’

‘He was buried beneath his servant, Jaro.’

‘No.’ Joanna turned away.

Owen grasped her chin, made her face him. Her neck was rigid with fear. Owen did not let that stop him. ‘Longford’s leg was crushed and his spine had been damaged. I think he could barely move from the waist down, if at all. His tongue had been cut out so he could not reveal his torturers if someone found him.’

Joanna’s head trembled in his hand. She gasped for air.

‘We must lift her chest and head, Owen,’ Lucie said, leaning over to help.

While Owen held Joanna up, causing a coughing fit, Lucie added pillows, then helped her sip some wine. Owen lowered her.

Joanna still clutched the medal. ‘Why do you tell me this?’

‘About Will Longford? Because you knew that he was not dead when he was put in that grave. How did you know, Joanna? Who told you? Who committed this careful, cruel murder?’

Joanna held the medal up to Owen. ‘Christ was cruel to Mary Magdalene.’

Owen bit back a curse. ‘You may rest now, Joanna. But I shall be back tomorrow.’ He went to the door, called for Dame Agnes.

But it was the Reverend Mother who came hurrying down the hall. ‘I have sent Agnes to bed. I shall stay with Joanna today.’

‘She is agitated, Reverend Mother. Perhaps someone should stay with you.’

Isobel peeked in the room, saw Lucie patting Joanna’s face with a damp cloth. ‘No doubt you are right, Captain. Would you ask Brother Oswald to send for Prudentia?’ As Owen turned to do so, Isobel stayed him with a touch on his arm. ‘But first, please tell me what has agitated her. Agnes said she had had a peaceful night.’

Owen told her of the news they had been forced to impart.

The Reverend Mother crossed herself, whispered a prayer, then tucked her hands in her sleeves, shaking her head. ‘This is a terrible business. I thought I was a strong woman, but this has given the lie to that. It is your wife who is strong. Called out so early in the morning, in her condition, to deal with the horror of what Joanna had done. All that blood. .’ Isobel took a step backwards. She had never noticed what a piercing eye Owen had. Perhaps that is why God took one away.

Owen trembled with rage. ‘Lucie was called in the middle of the night to tend Joanna?’ He worked hard to keep his voice low. ‘Do you realise that my wife is with child? And you called her out in the middle of the night to a woman around whom people have been dying in unusual numbers?’

Isobel crossed herself. ‘I make no excuse for my weakness, Captain Archer. But it was Abbot Campian who sent for Mistress Wilton, not I.’

‘He sent an escort?’

‘I do not know.’

Lucie would have been blind not to see Owen’s anger as they walked back to the shop. The expression on his face was murderous, the hand that did not support her was balled into a fist, his strides kept lengthening until she was forced to ask him to slow down, and all the way the ominous silence. It had not taken her long to guess what had transpired. Owen had returned to Joanna’s room with Dame Isobel. By then his temper had flared. The Reverend Mother must have told him of Lucie’s early morning visit. It was the very thing that would put him in such a temper, which was why Lucie had not told him. There was nothing for it now but to let him stew about it and finally burst out. To bring it up would only make things worse.

Lucie was perversely relieved when Tildy met her with the news that Thomas the Tanner was worse, and the physician, Master Saurian, had been called in. He had left a prescription for her to make up, a poultice to be applied after blood-letting.

‘I must do this at once, Owen.’

He nodded, turned on his heel, left the shop. Lucie and Tildy exchanged a look.

‘He’s in such a temper, Mistress Lucie.’

‘That he is, Tildy, but it’s naught to do with you, so don’t fret about it. I shall be in the shop.’

As Lucie scurried about the shop gathering the ingredients, she began to hum. When Owen was in such a temper, it was a blessed relief to be away from him.

Tom Merchet brought two tankards to the table in the kitchen where Owen stood. ‘Before you put one of those big hams through a wall, sit down and have your say. Bess is upstairs teaching Kit the proper scrubbing of a floor or some such. She’ll not bother us.’

Owen lowered himself onto a bench. ‘There are things I should be doing.’

Tom pushed the tankard under his friend’s nose, then paused, his hand hovering above it. ‘Pity, wasting good ale on one who is not of a mind to appreciate it.’ He shrugged, settled his hands about his own tankard. His round, pleasant face was creased with worry. ‘Though if it’s to do with the baby, I shall be of no use to you, having none of my own. As the babe gets older I might be useful. Bess came to me with little ones. I know what they’re about.’ Tom smiled into his cup. ‘As well as a man ever does.’

Owen finally looked up at his companion. ‘What did you say?’

Tom shrugged, took a long drink and nodded with satisfaction as he lowered his tankard. ‘Never you mind, just tell me what’s to do.’

‘Lucie went to the abbey in the middle of the night to take care of that nun.’

‘Last night? When you’d just come home?’

‘No. While I was gone.’

Tom pulled on his bottom lip, thinking. ‘Middle of night, you say? But abbeys have infirmarians and all manner of folk about. What did they need with Lucie?’

Owen shook his head, disgusted. ‘And in her condition, Tom.’

Tom made properly indignant noises.

‘Worse than that, Lucie did not tell me. I thought she had seen Joanna once she had been cleaned and bandaged. But Lucie examined her, Tom. Got her hands in all that blood. What will that do to the child, Lucie looking at all that blood? And the horror of it all? The nun stabbing herself.’ Owen put his head in his hands. ‘Dear Lord, Lucie is impossible.’

‘Drink up, Owen.’

Owen raised the tankard to his lips, stopped. ‘Do you remember when she took a boat over to the Riverwoman in the midst of the flooding last year?’

‘At night.’ Tom nodded. ‘I remember. Drink up, my friend.’ He smiled as Owen tilted the tankard and drank deep. Another good gulp like that and the man would feel a bit smoother. Tom knew just how Owen felt. Lucie and Bess were nothing alike and every bit alike. Stubborn, clever women. Bess’s sturdy body and loud mouth did not inspire quite the same protective feelings Owen had for Lucie though Tom had his moments of wishing Bess were not so forward with strangers. When Owen clanked the tankard down, empty, Tom reached for the pitcher and filled it again. ‘Now. Did Lucie go of her own accord, just having a feeling that something was wrong, or was she summoned?’