Priscilla Royal - Chambers of Death

“Women are Devil-spawned, bitches in heat!” Spittle flew from his white-flecked lips. “Adam would still be in Eden were it not for his fickle wife.”

Theological debate with this man was clearly not the path to travel, and Eleanor prayed for the calmness needed to discover how best to protect Hilda, Maud, and herself from his frenzy.

“Our cook was guilty as well?” Maud asked in a timorous voice. “Teach me, Master Ranulf, for I do not understand her sin.”

“The Devil bought her soul and thus she lusted after the groom! The breath she exhaled befouled the air like some stinking mist and rotted the souls of other daughters of Eve when they came near her. Even the food she cooked for those at the manor was contaminated by her touch.” He gulped air. “The proof of that lies in the number of women who coupled with Tobye. She has to die.”

“And when God sent an avenger to slay the groom, did her profane eyes witness the deed?” Maud clutched her hands together as if in prayer. “Did she also have to suffer because no one so foul should look upon the splendor of righteous vengeance?”

The steward’s son frowned as he considered those words, and then nodded as if pleased to agree.

Keeping a diffident silence, Eleanor backed toward the table.

Suddenly, Ranulf spun to face the prioress and gestured at her with his knife. “You! You whited sepulcher that leads men into all manner of mortal error, daring to question the cook’s guilt when I spoke out on the side of virtue! What Order founded in God’s rule would allow a woman to rule over the sons of Adam? Satan hides in your robes.” He stepped forward. “I smell him.”

Eleanor retreated another couple of steps, put her hands behind her, and felt the edge of the table.

“Then it was you who wielded God’s sword against Tobye!” Maud’s cried out, extending her hands toward Ranulf in supplication. “But wasn’t he Adam’s heir, like you? Surely he deserved mercy. Why punish him when it was women who tempted him beyond endurance?”

Ranulf turned away from the prioress, lowered the knife, and blinked as if he had not thought about that aspect.

Eleanor took advantage of the moment and stretched a hand back in the direction of at least one of the items that lay behind her.

“But you killed Tobye on God’s behalf, did you not?” Maud’s tone quivered with submissiveness, as if longing only to be taught and belying any accusatory intent.

“Aye! He was low-born, yet all the women lusted after him while I…” The man began to swallow convulsively.

Eleanor was grateful that Ranulf had hesitated, showing more reluctance to attack the widow than he had her. Perhaps Maud had given him comfort when his mother’s pious demands were too much for the young lad to bear. Would that past mothering now save them both until Brother Thomas and the guard could arrive?

Then fear chilled her heart as she stared at the wooden bar lying firmly across the door. Two men could not break through such reinforced thickness. Either she or Maud must somehow open that door from the inside.

“And Mistress Luce? Why kill her later?” Maud’s question was ever so softly spoken.

“Because she made me burn with lust for her,” he screamed. “While she wallowed like a sow in the stinking mud with that man, she had Satan send a succubus in her shape to torture me. Once Tobye was dead, I believed she would repent her sins and turn to me for comfort.”

And what difference in transgression was there between a groom’s lust and that of a step-son, the prioress wondered as her fingers groped for basin or jug. Couldn’t the man see that adultery compounded with the sin of uncovering the nakedness of a near kin was even fouler in God’s eyes? No wonder Mistress Luce had not wanted to be widowed and left alone with Ranulf as her only protector.

“And this she failed to do?” Maud glanced at the prioress.

“I begged for her embrace, but she turned from me with pale disgust. It was then that my heart hardened with virtuous fury. If the whore could not see the difference between me, a man who honors God, and Tobye, I knew it was my duty to send her soul to Hell, along with that succubus.”

“How did you draw her to the stable?” the widow continued.

“I suspected that she lusted after my shameless brother, since wantonness is attracted by depravity, and thus used her wickedness against her. I told her that Huet wanted to meet her there that night. When she expressed doubt, I explained that he had good news for her but feared the steward’s anger if he saw them together. After all, he was not in our father’s favor after his sudden return home.” Ranulf smirked.

“She believed your tale, kept the tryst, and discovered you instead.”

He gnawed at his lips.

Eleanor grasped the handle of the jug, hesitated, then recalled that God had never condemned David for battling against Goliath.

“And once again rejected my offer. She was no different from all other women, preferring to lie with a baseborn man than me!” Ranulf shouted and spun around, pointing his finger at the prioress and raising his knife to strike. “Like you, she was the Whore of Babylon!”

Eleanor flung the jug at him, striking him squarely on the side of his head.

Maud swung her foot into Ranulf’s groin.

As the man fell to the ground with a high-pitched howl, Eleanor leapt to the door and unbolted it.

Thomas and Huet were but a few feet away when she swung the door wide.

The monk ran to the squirming man, whipped the belt from the man’s waist, and quickly bound Ranulf’s wrists behind him.

Stepping inside, Huet put his hands to his hips, in unconscious imitation of Mistress Maud, and grinned.

“Well done, Mother!”

Although Sir Reimund was surely accustomed to horses, he shifted uncomfortably in the saddle.

Standing beside him, in the company of Brother Thomas, Eleanor wondered if the sheriff had just bitten into something bitter when he winced, his eyes focused on the scene at the manor house door.

Two of his men pulled Ranulf, hobbled and arms bound, through the entryway.

Close behind strode the steward, his head bowed.

Mistress Maud followed Stevyn, as he approached the sheriff’s horse, and gently touched his arm, the gesture so swiftly done that most in the courtyard would have missed it.

The steward glanced down, his grim expression softening as he felt her comfort. “Hang him, Sir Reimund,” he said, looking back at the uneasy sheriff. “He may be the son of my loins, but I have cast him from my heart. Yet, when the day comes, I’ll be there. The only favor I ask is that my men be allowed to pull his legs so his neck will break and some family dignity retained. No one who bears my name should dance and buck for common amusement.”

Eleanor looked at the pitiful creature to whom the steward referred. Surrounded by the sheriff’s men, Ranulf was ragged, bent, and reeking of his own filth. According to Thomas, Ranulf had been rolling naked in his excrement and howling like courtyard scavenger dogs when the monk visited him at dawn for prayer and confession.

“I wish the outcome of these crimes had been otherwise,” Reimund said, carefully looking at a spot over the steward’s head.

“No less than I,” Stevyn retorted. “But he killed three people, three whose sins were God’s to punish, not his.”

“Three?” Reimund blinked.

“His wife,” Maud said, her voice catching. “We found her corpse in the chapel, stabbed through the heart.”

“A deed that Ranulf admitted with some glee as we locked him safely away,” Thomas added, his eyes narrowing as he nodded at the trussed man. “All the ones he slaughtered cry out for justice, but one murder is crime enough in God’s eyes.”