Michael JECKS - Belladonna at Belstone

It was Moll who taught him that some novices were truly religious. Stupid bitch!

Denise was one of the first to arrive in the cloister after the service, and when she saw the three men still waiting, she felt her heart flutter within her. It was such a weird sight: males, and two of them in secular clothing. Entirely out of place. She felt the need of a pint of wine to settle her nerves.

“Sister!”

Seeing the bishop beckon, Denise ducked her head obediently, and made her way along the corridor towards them. “My Lord?” She tried not to sound curt, but her belly was complaining, and she desperately wanted that wine.

Baldwin looked her over. Above her veil she had intelligent-looking eyes, although they held a certain red-rimmed dullness which persuaded Baldwin that she habitually drank too much. “Sister, this death is terribly sad. It is dreadful to see so young a novice destroyed for no reason. Do you have any idea who could have been responsible?”

“Me, sir?” She shook her head slowly. “I can think of no one who could wish to harm her. Moll was very quiet… very devoted to the church.”

“She had no faults?” Baldwin pressed her gently. Denise opened her mouth but there was a tenseness about her. Baldwin smiled reassuringly and nodded towards Bertrand. “The good bishop will confirm that you should tell us anything which could have led to someone wanting to harm her. We are investigating her murder, not a simple matter of taking a sister’s serving of wine without permission.”

As she reddened, he cursed himself for choosing so unfortunate a simile.

“Moll was a good child, I am sure.” As she spoke two other novices came past, one very fair and full-bodied, the other olive-skinned and with dark, flashing eyes. All three men noticed them, and Denise saw their attention waver. “Moll was like those two,” she said. “Young and flighty. I think she was more fervent in her prayers, but she was a novice, and girls now aren’t like they were in my day. They don’t show the right reverence to the church and nuns.”

“Was Moll irreverent?” Simon asked.

“She was… overconfident. She was convinced that she was superior to everyone else,” Denise said, holding Baldwin’s gaze. Suddenly she found that she couldn’t keep from blurting out, “She would have been happier if she could have died with the stigmata after a life of telling others how to live.”

“Ah! She was a zealot?”

“Yes – a fanatic. She’d come and chastise us for what she saw as irreligious behaviour. As if she had any idea! She was too young to know anything about life or service.”

“Did she try to talk to your sisters?” Baldwin pressed mildly.

Denise stiffened. His question appeared to imply that she had simply complained because of Moll’s words to her. “Sir Baldwin, Moll spoke to almost all of us – novices and sisters – even, to my knowledge, the treasurer. I don’t think she had the arrogance to try confronting the prioress, but no doubt she would have rectified that before long, had she lived.”

“The other novices, how did they react to her?” Simon asked.

“They’re like girls the world over – they often have to be chastised for their indiscipline. Their behaviour leaves much to be desired.”

“They misbehave?”

“If I could have my way I’d have them thrashed! They bring dishonour upon the whole convent.”

“In what way? Are they impious?”

“Some have only an outward display of piety,” she agreed primly. “Forgetting their place in the world, even forgetting their vows and…”

Bertrand cleared his throat and Denise took his warning, snapping her mouth shut and glancing down at the ground.

“I have heard talk of disobedience,” Baldwin murmured understandingly.

“It’s worse than mere disobedience, Sir Knight. Some of these young ones appear to have no belief in their calling. Take that girl, Agnes, the fair one. I see no proof that she has a vocation, only a lord who wishes to be shot of her…”

“I think we should move on,“ said Bertrand quickly. He had no wish to have Sir Rodney’s motives in placing Agnes at the nunnery questioned.

“Very well,” said Baldwin. “Where were you on the night the girl died?”

“I couldn’t sleep, my Lord. I went to the frater for something to drink,” she said.

There was a brittleness to her smile that persuaded Baldwin she was often to be found down there, a pot of wine before her, long after she should have been in her bed. “Did you see anyone?” he asked. “Was the prioress about, for example?”

Her face reddening, Denise shook her head. “Lady Elizabeth wasn’t around, no. I heard her in her chamber.” She hesitated, then continued more slowly. “I did see something, though. An awful apparition. A shadow which crept along the wall as if hunting me.”

Baldwin nodded seriously. “Show us where this was, Sister.”

Nothing loath, she took them to the frater and showed where she had been seated. It was near the farther side of the room, by the screens which gave out to the buttery. “Here,” she said, indicating the door to the yard behind. “That door was open, and the shadow was flung against the wall before me.”

Where she was sitting, someone walking in the yard behind the hall, outside the cloister itself, would have had their shadow thrown against the wall in front of her. The wall to the cloister. Baldwin sucked at his moustache. “Was the shadow that of anyone you recognised?”

“It was a nun,” she admitted after a pause. When the silence which followed her words became too much, she burst out, “Margherita, our treasurer!”

Bertrand glanced at Baldwin, and then demanded impatiently, “What of it? Why on earth should you have been so fearful of a nun’s shade?”

“Because she had a dagger in her hand!”

As she swept from the church, Margherita saw the three men standing near the frater with Denise, and she caught her breath, unsure whether to take the boar by the tusks or not. As she wavered, she saw Denise move away, and then the visitor’s eye lit upon her. Stiffening her back, Margherita strode to him.

“My Lord, you have come to look into that poor child’s death?”

The visitor looked less appealing now than he had when he first came, she thought to herself. Then he had been all smiles whenever he met her. Now he wore a sour expression as if he trusted no one. She felt a shiver run down her spine – she suddenly realised he might suspect even her of having a part in Moll’s death.

He gave her a cold smile and she turned her attention on the other two men. The one with greying hair she privately noted down as being some kind of clerical assistant at first, but the other was different. She didn’t like the way the bearded man surveyed her. He had keen, shrewd eyes that seemed to see through her to the political machinations within her mind.

“I returned as you asked, and we have just been studying the girl’s body,“ Bertrand said. He introduced her to Baldwin and Simon. ”And I have to say, as you thought, she appears to have been murdered. We must establish who killed her.“

Margherita inclined her head. “I understand.“

Baldwin said, “Do you know what happened on the night this novice was found dead?”

“I didn’t witness her murder, if that’s what you mean,“ she said sharply.

“We have already heard that you were walking about that night, that you had a dagger in your hand. Why?”

Margherita reeled inwardly but managed a smile although, had there been tool and opportunity, she could easily have stabbed Denise at that moment. Silkily she said, “I suppose you have been talking to our sacrist. Denise drinks more than she should, my Lord, and sometimes she sees things which aren’t there.”