Michael JECKS - Belladonna at Belstone

“I assume often. There are many conflicting demands on a…”

“I know that perfectly well, Sir Baldwin,” Bertrand said sharply, “but I saw how much wealth was being brought to the priory while I was there. I saw the money given to the treasurer by the bailiff of the priory’s lands at Iddesleigh – it was a tidy sum. And the allegation is that instead of paying for a roof, the prioress had given it to her new vicar, a man whom she sees regularly, alone, and at night!”

Constance reached the infirmary where she worked and had to blink to keep the tears at bay when she saw Moll’s empty bed, the palliasse rolled up neatly on top of the rope mattress, just as she had left it.

Her head hurt. She was unused to so much strong wine before Vespers, and now she felt slightly confused. It was odd to be drunk at this time of day, before Terce, but kind of Denise to take pity on her and sit for so long, listening to her tale of misery. Not that she could tell Denise all.

It was so hard. She had known that her weakness would lead to evil, but she had no idea how cruel the result could be. Yet now she was a murderer. All because of her very human frailty.

There was a faint cough from the corner of the room, and Constance forced down her guilt, crossing the floor to where Joan sat. The old nun stared at the flames, but when she heard Constance she turned to her with a smile.

“Ah, Constance – are you going to give me some more of your dwale? I think I may need some tonight. The pain is coming again.”

“Of course, if it will help you.”

“How’s Cecily?”

“She’ll be fine. No need to worry,” Constance said gently, pulling a woollen blanket over the older woman’s lap. “It’s cold out in the cloister today, isn’t it?”

“For these old bones, eh?” Joan grinned.

Constance smiled down at her. The infirmarer found it easy to like Joan. She was a permanent fixture of the convent: rather wrinkled now, and white-haired, with peering, weak blue eyes. She was the first sister whom Constance had come to meet, and had always been kind and understanding. When Constance thought about what she’d done, and what she’d almost done to poor Joan, she could have broken down into tears again.

Joan was speaking. “I’ll soon be gone anyway, and if the Lord decides to take me while I’m lying in my bed before I can rise for Nocturns, I’ll be happy enough.”

The young infirmarer shot her a quick look. There was an understanding expression on Joan’s face, and Constance felt the pit of her stomach sink as if a lead weight had fallen upon it. “Before Nocturns?” she managed to stammer.

“Oh yes, dear. It would be such a good time to die. Why, when could be better? It’s peaceful, you don’t have to get up early the next morning and make the effort of going to church. No, instead you get taken up by Christ after a pleasant night’s sleep. Much better.”

Constance tried to chat to her for a while longer, but all the time her mind was racing. It seemed so obvious the older woman was telling her that she knew.

She couldn’t stand there with the fear filling her body, the certainty that Joan had seen what she had done. Apologising, Constance left the old woman and went to her partitioned chamber. It was sparsely furnished: only a bed and a chest, within which were her medicines. She dropped to her bed and covered her face in her hands.

Guilt tore at her, although if she was honest, it wasn’t so much the guilt of the act that terrified her, it was the fear of being discovered. At least Joan could hold her tongue, Constance thought.

She forced herself to set aside her morbid torpor and lifted the lid of her chest. Carefully she measured the ingredients of her dwale into a jug of wine.

It wasn’t only for Joan, but for Cecily as well. Cecily was a notorious coward, and although Constance had tried to set and splint her wrist, it had proved impossible. The girl screamed and writhed uncontrollably, swinging her good fist at the novice helping Constance and using quite the foulest language the infirmarer had ever heard. Most of the nuns showed a stoic courage: they were content with a simple charm to grip and a leather strap to chew, but neither would suffice in this case. Constance had checked the makeshift dressing, but it clearly wasn’t working, and she knew she would need to reset the bones properly. For that the woman would have to be compliant, so Constance intended giving her a draught to make her peaceful.

Dwale was ideal for this. It was a mixture that Constance made up specially, of belladonna, hemlock, henbane and syrup of poppy seed. It tasted foul, very bitter, but it would certainly put the lay sister to sleep. Shaking the mixture, Constance stood near the window and gazed out.

From here she looked directly north, up towards the vill of Belstone, although it was concealed from view by a hill. Far beneath her, lay sisters worked in the dairy and out in the yard, hanging washing from lines. The wind was tearing at the clothes, pulling the lines taut as bowstrings, snatching clothes from the women’s baskets and whipping them over the mud if given an opportunity.

Despite her worries, she smiled as one sister reached desperately for a shift as it was caught by a freak puff of wind and flapped dangerously near a pool of ordure. The hapless laundress tripped and pitched into the muck herself. She sat up and screamed to vent her rage and frustration, slapping at the hands of others who came, laughing, to help her up.

Constance walked slowly back to the chest, intending to go through her bottles and see which draughts needed renewing, but soon she had to set aside her vessels. She felt oh, so lonely, as she went through it all again.

Moll was dead. She was unable to spread any more of her malicious tales now. She had been a malign little person. Nasty, vicious – cruel. And all concealed beneath that sweet, submissive exterior. It was here, in Constance’s own room, that Moll had come and spoken about the man she had seen. The one who had walked up the steps to this level, as if he was coming to visit a nun. Constance had laughed it off, saying that Moll had dreamed it all, although Moll very definitely asserted that she was awake and had seen the man very clearly. Then she had winked, saying she knew where he was going. And she hoped the nun involved would confess her sin in the chapterhouse, before the whole choir. It had made Constance sick to see her sitting there so smugly.

Feeling the tears rising, Constance rubbed at her face with the sleeve of her dress, and gazed up at the window once more her vision blurred as she was overcome by the enormity of what she had done.

Jeanne was supervising the cleaning of Baldwin’s wardrobe when she heard her husband’s horse pounding along the track towards the house. She was relieved, because it was already close to dusk, and she was anxious about him riding so far on treacherous roads.

Not that she’d had time to indulge herself in fears about her husband. Edgar was in many ways an almost perfect servant, but in some matters of hygiene she thought him hidebound. It had been quite a shock to her when, after only a short time in the hall, she had discovered the first fleas on her body. She could see that Baldwin himself was repelled by the creatures, and yet Edgar appeared to be almost untroubled by them, convinced that his traps – trenchers of bread smeared with glue, with a lighted candle sitting atop – were all that was necessary. He asserted that the fleas were attracted to the trenchers by the light, and then got stuck and died.

It was an interesting concept. On present experience, it was also utterly ineffective.

Only the previous week Jeanne had set up her own defences, just as she had learned in Bordeaux. The bedchamber had three large sheets laid on the floor which had remained there for six days, on which any fleas must fall upon leaving Baldwin’s clothing, her own, or their bed. These she had today ordered to be folded and carried out to the shed where the cider was made, and here the sheets had been placed in the great press. Next she had taken out all of Baldwin’s tunics and set them inside as well, with the bedlinen on top of the lot, before closing the press and ordering that it should be tightly squeezed.