Michael JECKS - Belladonna at Belstone

At last he stood and peered down at her face, candle held nearby.

“Nothing, is there?” Simon said softly.

“No,” said Baldwin, but as he spoke his eye caught sight of what looked like a swelling on her lip. He leaned closer, then crouched, staring at her profile. There was no discolouration so it didn’t look as if she had been punched or beaten, but her upper lip protruded too much on one side.

Baldwin held the candle to her face and lifted her lip gently. He stood peering at her teeth and the inner surface of her lip. The teeth had been mashed into the lip, puncturing it in places, and weakening the teeth themselves, as if someone had held something over her face.

“Well?” Bertrand demanded. “Can you see something there?”

Baldwin set the candle back in its holder and stood lost in thought. Then he raised her eyelids and peered at her eyes. The irises were very small, something he had seen before in men who were drugged. Baldwin went over each of her limbs once more, but this time more slowly and methodically. When he reached her upper arms he slowed, going from one to the other, peering closely.

At the front of each of her biceps was a yellow-brown bruise. Baldwin wondered whether a cord had bound them, but rejected the idea. There would have been a circular mark all around the arm if she had been tightly bound. He stood back: bruising; swollen lips; her teeth beneath slightly loose, as if she had been stifled; the cut in her arm from the blood-letter…

Baldwin took the candle up again and looked carefully at the slash, pulling the edges apart gently, probing into it. A phlebotomist always made one cut, a quick slash over the vein. This girl had suffered two cuts: one over the veins, the second at a slight angle to the first, and deeper.

There could be no doubt.

“She was murdered,” he breathed.

It was twilight when Agnes left the treasurer’s side and made her way out to the cloister nearest the church. Here she hesitated, agonising whether to enter or not, but her caution was overwhelmed by her recollection of Luke’s face and she quietly opened the door and slipped inside.

Her heart started pounding with mixed nervousness and excitement when she saw him.

Luke knelt alone before the altar, palms joined, the fingers of both hands meeting all along their lengths, and held up high in the pose of submission, just as a knight placed his hands together before his lord and held them aloft so that his master could place his own hands outside and accept the oaths of loyalty. Luke’s head was bowed, his whole posture that of a devout penitent, and the sight pulled at Agnes’s heart.

Rather than interrupt, she glided softly along the wall, away from the candlelight. He looked so vulnerable, she thought; like a saint about to be martyred for his faith, offering up his last prayers before execution. It must have been like this when St Thomas a Becket was murdered: the gentle cleric at the altar, performing his duties honourably when the King’s assassins got in. The thought gave Agnes a most undevout and yet pleasurable thrill. She wanted to call out, to make Luke start and turn around with that fear in his eyes, like a frightened stag held at bay by the hounds.

Luke finished his prayer and stood slowly, his eyes filled with what Agnes thought was almost a beggarly fixedness at the altar’s cross. He dropped his head as he turned from the symbol of his religion, and as he did so, Agnes chuckled. Instantly his face went from one point to another, seeking the source of the sound.

She let him stew a moment or two before stepping into the light. “I thought you’d be able to tell where I was.“

Luke gave a short grunt and rushed to her, holding her in his arms and kissing her nose, her brow, her eyes, her mouth.

The bell rang and the community stirred, all the obedientiaries leaving their work; nuns in their offices set aside herbs, food, books, inks; lay women sighed and dropped their laundry back into the water or into their baskets, others stood slowly, arching backs that ached from scrubbing floors, or reluctantly turned from the fires that promised warmth and comfort and instead made their way towards the cold church. In the men’s area, canons carefully closed their books and lay brothers put their ales down or dropped their tools before heading for the church.

Denise was suddenly aware again of the pressure in her bladder.

She turned an agonised face to the visitor. “I have to go, my Lord Bishop – that’s the call to Vespers.”

“Yes, of course,” he said.

His tone of voice surprised Baldwin. There was a generous quality, like an avuncular man talking to his favourite niece, and Baldwin shot him a glance. Bertrand was standing still, apparently watching Denise as she walked away, but Baldwin was sure Bertrand’s mind was elsewhere. Once again, he wondered about the bishop’s motivation. Most priests would have been only too happy to discover that there had not been a murder, that the convent was free from that stain on its reputation – but Bertrand seemed relieved to hear the death pronounced as murder.

Baldwin covered the corpse once more, tugging the linen sheet back over Moll, gazing down at her reflectively. When he was done, he was surprised to find Bertrand had moved to his side. The visitor stood shaking his head for a while, but then went out to the cloister.

“Baldwin,” Simon said, jerking his head after Bertrand, “if I was a cynic, I’d think that bastard was happy the girl was murdered.”

“He is,” said Baldwin. “But forget him for a while: this girl was suffocated, I think, and then had her artery opened to make it appear an accident. Let the good bishop seek whatever he wants. We shall find this poor child’s killer.”

After the service Luke watched the nuns file from the church like a line of saints. He felt the mixed calm and boredom he always experienced after a service, but today there was a particle of excitement. The visitor was here to conduct an inquest, Agnes had told him breathily, as she held him close and writhed her hips against him, grinning up at him wickedly as she felt his response. He went from the altar to the door connecting the two churches, the two cloisters. Carefully pulling it shut behind him, he walked through the canonical church to the outer door and leaned against it a moment.

So the bishop wanted to find out what had happened to Moll, did he? He’d have to dig deep – and if he wanted any help from Luke, he’d have a long wait.

Luke was a most straightforward lover. He knew that his robes excited lust in a lot of women, and he’d always made the most of the fact. Living in a convent gave him a higher probability of success, for the women here only ever saw him, and no other men.

Not that competition would have worried him. He was content that his sharply defined features, grey eyes, red-gold hair and easy smile would win him lovers wherever he went. His experiences generally proved him right.

But for every ten who accepted him greedily, there was sometimes one who rejected him.

From the look of her, Moll was as lusty as any other novice. She seemed to know how to excite a man without even touching him; she’d managed that with Luke. He could recall the first time he’d seen her, the vixen. She’d given him a cheery smile, head back coquettishly so she was looking at him low over the top of her veil, just like so many girls he’d known, sucking her veil against her face, emphasising her lips, when she knew he was watching her. She couldn’t have done all that by accident. It was obvious from the start that she wanted him. And he wanted her, too.

In some ways Luke had a blind spot: he assumed all women desired him. The idea that one might only see his cloth and wouldn’t consider him in a sexual light never occurred to him.