Michael JECKS - Belladonna at Belstone

“Sir Bailiff, the man has been seen here before. The evening Moll died wasn’t the first time. Just two nights earlier I couldn’t sleep, and went to fetch water. As I returned, I saw a figure ahead of me, entering the door and climbing the stairs to our dormitory. I hurried after but lost sight of him.”

“You don’t sleep very well, do you?” Simon observed.

“Is your dorter so vast a man could hide in an instant?” Baldwin asked.

“Our prioress has a partitioned room near the staircase. The man must have entered it to satisfy his lust – and hers.”

“That is a strong allegation.”

Margherita drew a deep breath. “I am not fanciful; I saw someone. The night Moll died I was convinced I had seen a man. If he wasn’t a ghost, where could he have gone? Before I went to my bed, I… I must confess, I allowed myself to succumb to curiosity. I listened at the wall to the prioress’s chamber. That was where I heard heavy breathing – it wasn’t a woman’s breathing, my Lord. And…”

“Do other nuns sleep so poorly?” Simon interrupted.

Bertrand held up his hand and nodded for her to continue.

She drew herself up to her full height. “My Lord, I also heard kissing and the prioress’s voice, moaning, and calling very quietly to her ”love“. That was when I left and went to my bed. I couldn’t listen to any more.”

“You did not actually see her with this man?” Baldwin asked.

“No, sir. But the next day I overheard Agnes, another novice, saying that she had heard odd noises. And that’s a great problem: Agnes is the girl Sir Rodney wishes us to look after. If she should tell her master what has happened here, I fear his reaction. He is a godfearing man, devout and honourable. If he were to come to believe that our priory was tainted, he would refuse to give us the church, and then we would be in worse financial trouble.”

“So no one has seen your prioress in flagrant or promiscuous congress with this priest?” Bertrand demanded severely.

Margherita hesitated. “No, sir.”

“And you saw nothing to indicate that your prioress so much as visited Moll that night, let alone killed her?”

“No, sir.”

“And yet you accuse her of murdering Moll, even though you have no evidence to show that she had any motive?” Baldwin asked with disbelief. “Sister, if this were an ordinary investigation, you could be jailed for making such a malicious accusation without evidence.”

“Moll saw him.”

Baldwin turned upon her a suspicious look. “She saw whom – and when?”

“Moll saw a man only the night before she was sent to the infirmary. She told me so, although I confess I hardly paid any attention at the time. I don’t listen to the novices’ gossip.”

“I see. What exactly did the girl say?”

“That she had seen a man walking up the stairs, just as I did on the night she died. He was dressed in a priest’s or canon’s robes; she couldn’t tell which because it was dark and the two are so similar.”

“What was she doing? From what you say, your entire sisterhood seems unable to sleep,” Simon commented drily. He hadn’t taken to the treasurer.

It was mutual and she gave him a cold look. “Some of us, when we are concerned for the future of our convent, will waken. I daresay Moll was of that temperament. Perhaps she went to pray for the security of our nunnery.”

“I see. So what else did she have to say?” Baldwin asked.

Margherita took a long breath as if to control her impatience. “Sir Baldwin, she told me that she saw a man going up the stairs, and yet when she followed, there was no man in the dorter. Where else could he have gone, but into the prioress’s private room?”

“I still don’t understand what this has to do with the death of the girl,“ Bertrand put in.

“Moll liked confronting her sisters with their failings. I think she told the prioress what she had seen, and Lady Elizabeth killed Moll to hide her guilty secret.”

Luke walked slowly across the grass of the cloister-garth, and at the middle, he turned to look back the way he had come. He always enjoyed this view. From here, within the quadrangle of the southern, canonical side, the church rose upwards majestically. It had no great tower, but it was rather wonderful in its simplicity.

He stepped sideways to avoid a pile of dog’s turds on the ground – damn the prioress’s terrier! – and surveyed the eastern side. The first little block was that of the chapterhouse, where the canons held their morning meetings; next was the calefactory, in which a fire was kept roaring all through the day; then the dorter block at the cloister’s south-eastern corner, with storerooms beneath and latrines behind, their chutes dropping down into the pit which was washed by the stream flowing from the kitchen’s leat.

Southwards was the frater and more storerooms; the kitchen hidden beyond, far enough away to ensure that stray sparks couldn’t set light to other buildings. Last, on the western edge, was the lay brothers’ dorter and storerooms.

All was enclosed and secure from the outside world, and was practically a mirror image of the nuns’ precincts. It gave Luke a sense of belonging, seeing all these buildings designed simply to protect the inhabitants from the brutal realities of the world outside – not that anywhere was overly safe any more. The news of war brewing on the Welsh March had reached Belstone, and Luke knew only too well that when armies began to move, they would often invade nunneries for their pleasure – being places holding both women and stores of food; in the mind of the common man-at-arms they could hardly be surpassed.

Luke shook his head. He knew how even modern men could become brutes when there was money or when there were women to be had, and warfare meant that all the usual rules were discarded. If that were to happen, if it looked likely that an army could come here, he would leave, he promised himself. He wasn’t going to run the risk of being murdered just to protect a bunch of nuns.

But for now there was no need to worry. And his life here was supremely comfortable. He had services to hold, but they weren’t a burden, and there was always the compensation of the younger nuns and novices.

He had not come to this benighted spot through choice. If he’d had his way, he’d have taken a position as priest in a little church somewhere, so that he could get the benefit of the annual income, and then pay a pittance to some impoverished fool to actually see to the souls within that parish while he went back to Oxford to study.

Oxford. A great city – he’d loved it there, he recalled glumly. He’d enjoyed a flirtation with a merchant’s daughter, but the silly wench had allowed herself to be caught while trying to meet Luke. Her father was a patron of the college, so Luke had been thrown out. The bishop, Walter Stapledon of Exeter, was unimpressed by what he heard of Luke’s behaviour, and removed him from Oxford, writing to Bertrand suggesting Luke should be sent far away.

Luke had expected to be pushed off into the wilds, and indeed that was what Stapledon had intended; but the clerk who supervised such postings was a friend of Luke’s who, even if he didn’t approve of Luke’s whoring, was happy to alter the instructions dictated to him by Stapledon’s suffragan in exchange for a small barrel of wine. There were many similar areas of confusion which the good Bishop of Exeter would have to sort out when he retired from his position as Treasurer of England; cases where the bishop’s clear instructions became muddled and were interpreted wrongly.

Luke wondered how Stapledon would react when he found out that Luke had been given the position of priest in a nunnery. The thought that he, who had been driven from college for his womanising, should be placed in charge of young and impressionable girls in a convent, would make the good bishop furious. And the beauty of it was that the clerk who took dictation would blame Bertrand; it was Bertrand, he would say, who gave dictation. If the visitor had intended Luke to be sent to a small monastery on the wild, wretched coast of Cornwall, surely the name of the place would have been in the document which was sent to Luke? And because the document read ‘Belstone’, and the document was signed by Bertrand, Bertrand himself must surely have said that Belstone was the place to which Luke should be sent.