Priscilla Royal - Justice for the Damned

In happy silence, the two women continued to stroll along the river bank.

Suddenly, Eleanor pointed to a spot at the edge of the Avon. "Was it here that Wulfstan's body was found?"

Beatrice shaded her eyes against the strengthening sun and looked around. "I think this is the place, although my aged memory may be failing me. Brother Infirmarian described the place so."

"Aged indeed!" Eleanor's expression glowed with both love and humor as she bent over and parted the weeds with one hand. "Ah, here are marks in the mud. Someone slid just there and here they trampled the reeds. Unless Wulfstan was killed by several men, this must have been where his body was found." She looked up and followed her aunt's gaze. "Is that where the wall was broken?" Eleanor wended her way through the knee-high weeds in the direction of the stone fence.

"Aye," the novice mistress replied, following along.

The Prioress of Tyndal folded her arms as she studied the masonry. The silence was broken only by the harsh cry of a nearby crow.

"Did Prioress Ida have this done by the monks or did she hire the work done?" Eleanor ran her fingers over the mortar.

"She hired a villager, fearing that another weak monk might wish to preserve some way over the wall."

"Who was it?"

"Wulfstan, although he must have had help. The task was too quickly done to be finished by one man."

Eleanor frowned and turned to her aunt. "Please tell me what you think this is and if there are more like it. I cannot reach but believe there might be some…" She pointed toward two places higher up.

Beatrice ran her hand over the mortar, looked up, and touched another place, then another. "Were I younger and more agile, I might easily climb to the top here for these indentations in the mortar are sufficiently deep while the stones protrude enough for toeholds, methinks."

"I feared as much." The prioress walked slowly along the wall for several yards as she studied the mortar for like flaws.

Her aunt did the same in the opposite direction.

At last they turned to face each other, their expressions somber with growing uneasiness.

"We will check the other side of the wall as well," Beatrice said, "but I suspect I know what we will find."

Eleanor looked back to the spot where Wulfstan had died. "Might Wulfstan or one of the men working with him have been paid to leave this path into the priory?"

"I hope I have not been fooled by a fair pretense of honesty, yet I feel certain that Wulfstan was innocent of this."

"We must ask who worked on the repair with him." She touched the wall again. "I dread even to say this, but might he have seen someone who came over this wall, a man who so feared discovery that he killed Wulfstan?"

Beatrice looked back at the rising stonework. "Who in the priory could possibly have been that crazed with fear? The errant monks have been punished, but not cruelly. Their own souls suffered more than their bodies. Even if one monk had a mistress in the village… nay, the prior knew well enough to ask and none of the men confessed to that."

"Or else someone was in the priory who should not have been and did not wish to be seen coming from it. As you taught me, walls were never intended to keep us encloistered but to keep the world from disturbing our prayers. This wall may have failed in its purpose and, worse, Wulfstan might have been the unwitting instrument of his own death."

"Brother Thomas! What a pleasant surprise to see you again. Did you find lodging at the priory?" Bernard clapped his well-clad hands together in apparent pleasure at such an unexpected meeting.

In the brightness of day, the merchant appeared younger than he had in the dimmer light of an inn at eventide. The man's round cheeks wore the pink of youth, and his blond beard looked as soft as a lady's gloves. Although the expression in his eyes still had that sharp watchfulness of an older man, the sparkle of boyish enthusiasm was well mixed in. No wrinkles yet bothered his brow, and he had very white teeth. Thomas probed one of his own that felt a bit uncomfortable.

"I did," the monk replied, "and they have found use for me already. I have just returned from the house of Wulfstan's widow."

Bernard bowed his head with respectful solemnity.

"She is much grieved that her son and husband failed to make peace after their quarrel. It was a most troubling thing between the two." If Drifa would not tell him the details, perhaps this glover would. Thomas felt the bite of hope.

"Sons and fathers do argue," Bernard acknowledged. "Even my honored sire lost his temper with me from time to time, and he was slow to wrath." He hesitated as if considering his next words. "Nonetheless, I never said I wanted to kill him. My heart always knew he was right, and my mother, God bless her sweet soul, would have roasted me before the Devil got me if I had not obeyed him." A grin caught him up. "I think I feared her anger more than my father's!"

Even without wine, the fellow was talkative, Thomas noted happily. He continued. "I was dismayed to hear that Sayer had done so. Do you know the man? I wondered if he was a rebellious son or simply an imprudent one."

Bernard's smile faded quickly. "This is a small village, Brother. We all know each other, but I would not claim that Sayer and I are well acquainted. I cannot give you an answer to that question."

Thomas hoped his expression did not betray his surprise. Not only was he sure that Sayer and this man had been in close conversation at the inn door, but he wondered how the glover could not know the cousin of his beloved Alys. "Did you perchance overhear the argument at the inn?" he asked. "If I knew more about the quarrel, I might give greater comfort to Mistress Drifa, or even offer soothing counsel to her son."

Bernard frowned in thought.

Is he trying to remember the night, Thomas wondered, or is he making up some lie?

"I had just walked in. It would have been difficult not to hear the fight between the men. They bellowed like bulls and swung fists at each other like drunken bears."

"Over what?"

A shadow passed over the young man's face. "Wulfstan's widow is a good woman, and I would not spread stories to add to her sorrow."

"I do not seek gossip for idle reason. Mistress Drifa feared many heard the nature of their hot words and she is shamed. Of course, her son's arrangement with the innkeeper…"

The glover looked around to make sure no one stood close by, then bent to speak more privately into the monk's ear. "If you know that, I will not offend by confirming that Wulfstan liked not some of the things his son did to gain coin. Sayer was paid fairly by the priory for his work there, but many in the village knew that he had, at one time, arranged worldly pleasures for monks who climbed the priory walls." He straightened. "I repeat that only to point out the merit of Sayer's repentance. The man had not led monks into sin of late, and we all believed that he had reformed. His father might not have been so convinced."

That easy reply was but a simple rephrasing of the knowledge I suggested I have, Thomas thought. The man does not evade direct answers with much skill, but how am I failing to get the information I need? "Surely the father was not so virtuous himself?" he said, trying another path.

"I see the old tales are still about! My father claimed that Wulfstan was well rewarded for letting certain local men know when a fat mercantile purse would be riding through Amesbury, the owner of which he also made sure enjoyed much ale before departing the inn."

"How dare Wulfstan condemn his son so cruelly then when he had committed crimes himself? Sayer might have laughed at him for his belated discovery of virtue, but I find it hard to imagine he would have threatened to kill him for it."