Priscilla Royal - Wine of Violence

Then the two men went back into Tyndal Priory, the late summer sun warming their backs as they walked.

***

Eleanor stood in her chambers, staring at the Mary Magdalene tapestry. Anne stood next to her, her head bowed.

“I grieve for Prior Theobald,” she said to the prioress. “He loved Simeon.”

“Simeon took good care of him, and the prior was incapable of seeing what sins were hidden in the man. I understand why he might mourn his loss,” Eleanor said, looking away from the tapestry. “Sister Ruth has gone to weep in the chapel as well, but her sorrow is mixed with guilt. She will do hard penance for her willful blindness.”

“Although the brother and I did not get along, I knew he had been a good steward at the priory for many years. His sins were grave, shocking, yet…”

Eleanor nodded at the hesitation. “Speak your thoughts.”

“Am I sinful to say he had some good despite his evil?”

“Being mortal, we are all flawed and can only pray to keep our wickedness balanced with our virtues. Simeon lost that balance at some point. Do you know why?”

“He was a man I thought I understood, yet I did not. For cert, his gift of stewardship should have been offered up to the glory of God, not to his own credit. In that he had a fatal flaw.” Anne looked at the prioress in silence, then said, “Others would say graver sins than ambition were his downfall, yet I cannot find it in my heart to so roundly condemn him.”

Eleanor raised her eyebrows. “What mean you?”

“Many would say he was evil, a heretic, because he was a sodomite.”

“You do not?”

“Have you not said yourself that love is not a sin?”

“I have. And someone much wiser than I has also said that love is sinful only when it leads a frail human to do evil in its name.”

“I recognize that thought, my lady,” Anne said, grasping her hands tightly.

“You should. It comes from Brother John. Continue.”

“Might not any love be acceptable in God’s sight if that love transformed a mortal into a better creature and thus closer to God?”

“I am no theologian, Anne, but, just between the two of us and for the sake of argument, let us say that I agree.”

“Fire is said to purify as well as destroy. Had Simeon denied himself consummation of his lust, might not the heat of his passion have transformed him into a more compassionate and understanding being? If he had chosen that way, I would never have condemned him. His sin, I believe, was in rejecting the redemptive aspect of a denied earthly love and thus he became a dark force of Satan.”

“You speak only of the denial of love’s carnal expression as redemptive, a concept with which we both might well agree in view of our vocation. The Church, however, does condone copulation between men and women vowed to one another; thus we cannot deny that there are good people who commit carnal acts. Therefore, within the privacy of this room, I do wonder this: what of a couple who falls into lustful acts, man and woman or man and man, whose union has not been blessed? Are they incapable of using that love they share to become better creatures?”

Anne paled. “Could such happen unless the union were blessed? For cert, I am not a theologian either, my lady, and I dare not speak to that. I await your instruction.”

“And kindly you do not suggest that I have spoken heresy, Anne. Nor do I mean such, but my heart tells me that there is so much enlightenment yet to be granted from a Wisdom far superior to our own. Perhaps it will be given to us at a time and place when we are most open to understanding. So I, too, shall leave my query to another day and await instruction.” Then Eleanor hesitated. “I have another question to ask. You have never told me why Brother John called you to the chapel the night Simeon attacked me. Nor how he came to have his own key so he could so freely come and go.”

Anne flushed scarlet.

“You gave him your key, did you not, long ago? And perhaps told Prioress Felicia that you had lost your own?” The prioress’s voice was gentle.

Anne nodded and covered her eyes. “You have guessed correctly, my lady, but he did not use the key for sinful purposes. Nor did I. We sometimes met. That is true, but never for carnal reasons. We love each other only as brother and sister and find a comfort in talking together as such.”

“I believe you, sister, but in giving him your key, you granted him rights that were not yours to give. Such a decision was rightly left to Prioress Felicia.” Eleanor raised her hand as Sister Anne began to speak. “Indeed, there may be good reason for the novice master and my confessor to have his own key, but Brother John must return it to me until I make that decision.”

“He will, my lady. You have been most generous to both of us.”

“Now tell me why he wanted to meet with you that night.”

“When Eadmund refused to tell anyone but John about Simeon, my hus…John wrote an anonymous letter to the mother house. In it, he suggested that our receiver had been committing vague but serious improprieties. Since he could reveal nothing about what the lad had said in confession, he hoped someone would be sent who could discover the truth."

“Then your husband had told you nothing about all this?”

“Nothing, but, when Eadmund told him he was coming to you with Tostig’s blessing, John decided you should be prepared to hear horrible things. He did not want the lad condemned.…”

“Nor shall he be,” Eleanor interjected. “Brother John will heal his soul, although I have doubts about whether his spirit…Forgive me. Do continue.”

“John wanted prompt and harsher action taken against Simeon, not the one who had been forced against his will. Since John did not want anyone else to hear what he had to say to me, he suggested we meet in the church.”

“But he never came.”

“He was late and I never met with him. One of his novices… well, no mind that. Just as he approached the sacristy door, he heard screams and saw a man rush from the nuns’ quarters. He gave chase but the figure disappeared into the monks’ cloister. When John entered himself, he saw a shadowy figure at the other end, thought it was the fugitive, and ran toward him. Then he heard Simeon shouting from behind that John was a murderer. That figure at the other end of the cloister was Brother Thomas, who pulled John to the ground. Simeon must have hidden in the shadows when he saw Brother Thomas at the other end of the cloister and hoped it would look as if he had chased John, not the reverse.”

“But Brother John told Ralf nothing of this.”

“John is an honorable man, my lady. To do so would have meant saying why he was where he had been and thus betraying Eadmund’s confession. He could not do so, even if it meant his own life. The boy had to be the one to tell you about Simeon first.”

And he was almost a very dead, honorable man, Eleanor thought. “Your husband is a brave man,” she said aloud. “You must have loved him well before you both gave up the world.”

Anne flushed.

“And you still do, do you not?” Eleanor said quietly. “Perhaps not always as a sister does her brother?”

Anne stood up and walked over to the tapestry. “I pray that you are right in saying there is no sin in love, my lady, and I swear to you that I sin only in my thoughts while John sins not at all in his feelings for me. We once had a son together, you see, a much-adored boy who sickened and died before his tenth summer. Each of us grieved but John’s pain was darkest. He believed God had taken our son to punish John for his lust in the marriage bed. Since then, his love for me has been chaste. I long to follow his example, but I sometimes fail.”