Michael JECKS - Belladonna at Belstone

Luke sighed and made his way to the frater, feeling the need for a drink before he went to conduct Compline, the last service of the day.

If he was to meet Agnes as he had promised, he would need to keep his strength up, he thought, and grinned to himself.

The door lay in the eastern side of the cloister. The sleeping hall was a two-storeyed building separated from the church by a narrow alley which led to a dead end, and which had once been roofed to create a small storage area. Now the little lean-to had lost its roof, which had been deposited on the floor to form a mess of broken spars and slates.

Baldwin gazed at the dorter. The nuns slept on the first floor; the entire ground area was given over to a large storage room. Inside were barrels of wine, salted meat and fish, haunches of meat and sacks and boxes. The smell was wholesome and spiced, not at all musty, although there was a slight tang in the air – probably rats. A solitary cat stood and arched its back at him from its vantage point on a tun of wine. From the look of this place, no matter what privations the nuns suffered, with the loss of roofs, the damp and so on, at least they wouldn’t starve.

Simon suppressed a grin when he saw Baldwin graciously motion the visitor towards the dorter’s entrance. Bertrand glowered, but jerked the door wide and stepped inside. From his expression Simon felt sure that he was beginning to regret having asked Peter Clifford to advise him on whom he could bring to Belstone.

When Simon trailed after them, he found that just inside the doorway was a staircase, roughly formed of square-hewn blocks of wood which had been sawn on the diagonal to give a triangular section, then fitted to planks at either side to produce uneven steps. It was the sort of arrangement Simon had been thinking of putting into his home for some time – for he and his wife still depended upon a ladder to reach the bedchamber in their little house.

At the top of the stairs, Simon found Baldwin staring at a heavily built partition. Simon himself had eyes only for the ceiling and the hole in it. While outside in the cloister, Simon had thought the breezes almost unnoticeable, here within the sleeping quarters there was a constant low moaning as if the souls of the damned were filing through in an unending procession.

It was only with difficulty that he dragged his attention away and studied the room. The dorter was perhaps sixty or seventy feet long, and all along it, on either side, were wooden screens, each open to the hallway, which separated the sleeping cubicles one from the other. He took a few paces forward and peered into one. It contained a rough mattress and pillow, covered with a blanket and some sort of coverlet, and a three-legged stool at the side. By the wall stood a large chest, its lid down and apparently locked. Certainly the hasp was firmly shut.

Idly he wandered along the corridor formed by the outflung partitions. Some beds were made, but equally many were not; some had chests, and those with the more ornate ones had chairs. A few of the beds appeared not to have been slept in, and when he looked up he could see why. Directly above was the hole. Beyond, several of the partitioned areas seemed more heavily used, and Simon rightly guessed that here nuns and novices shared beds to keep away from the rain or snow that fell in.

At the far end was a billowing curtain, and he was about to haul it aside and glance behind it when Bertrand coughed. “No! You don’t want to… That’s the rere-dorter, Bailiff!”

Simon quickly drew his hand from the curtain. Thank God Bertrand had warned him. It would have been appallingly embarrassing to have entered the nuns’ toilet and encountered one of them in a – in a compromised position. He turned and made his slow and thoughtful progress back along the dorter to join the others. They were still standing at the partitioned area near the door. “What is it?”

“You are not aware of the strictures of the Rule, of course, Bailiff,” Bertrand said stiffly. “No nun – and that includes the prioress of a convent – should divide up the dorter so as to give herself more space than other nuns.”

“Especially,” Baldwin added, “when that nun intends to shut herself off from her sisters. This is almost sacrilege. You see, she is not superior to her sisters, just an elected leader.”

“This is not the worst, Sir Baldwin,” Bertrand intoned “That was one of the points I was forced to include in my report to the Bishop of Exeter, but so was the fact that the prioress has seen fit to permit her nuns to keep their own possessions. She allows them to keep personal items locked away in their own chests.”

Simon could see that Baldwin was surprised by these revelations, but the knight was determined not to jump to conclusions. “Fine. Now, we were going to see whether the man Margherita saw could have gone anywhere else other than into the prioress’s chamber, weren’t we?”

Returning to the top of the stairs, Baldwin looked about him. There was a small landing, created by the prioress’s partition and a large board which was evidently designed to limit the draught that howled through the room. Beyond the prioress’s wall was a small doorway.

“The infirmary,” Bertrand confirmed.

“Margherita said that the infirmarer prevented her from entering, didn’t she?” Baldwin mused. He made as if to walk towards it, but then gave the visitor a quick look. “What else was in your report, Bishop?”

“About the prioress? Well, I had to comment that she keeps a pet dog…”

“That is hardly a crime.”

“… and takes it to Mass with her.”

“I see,“ Baldwin murmured. Being fond of his own hounds, he was not prepared to condemn the woman for that, but he could see that the visitor was working himself into a fine fever. To stem the flow of outrage, Baldwin held up his hand and smiled soothingly. “We were told that the lady would see us after Vespers, were we not? Shall we see whether she is here now?”

Bertrand shut his mouth and nodded. Half-heartedly he knocked on the door to her room but there was no response. She hadn’t yet returned. “Where can she be?” he muttered.

“Perhaps while we are here, we should take a short look at the infirmary?” Baldwin suggested.

Bertrand agreed ungraciously. There was little point, he felt, in going to take a look inside, not when the treasurer had already told them that the prioress had been making love with a man. Wasn’t that enough?

A good oaken door on well-greased hinges opened silently, and they walked inside quietly. The infirmary was a small hall, but warm and comfortable. A fire burned steadily in the grate, the glowing logs throwing out a golden light that invited drowsiness after the chill, wind-swept atmosphere of the dorter. Baldwin felt as if his face was absorbing the whole of the heat from the flames.

Down the left wall three wooden partitions jutted into the room, making four units in all, each holding a large bed so that eight invalids could be accommodated with ease.

At one end was a small altar with a cross so patients could always see the symbol of their faith; at the other was a screen with a curtained doorway. The only noise was a snoring from the bed nearer the curtain.

“Is it time for Compline?”

The reedy voice came from an old nun huddled near the fire. They had not seen her at first because she was so low in her chair that her head hardly rose above the bed between her and the three men.

Bertrand made no effort to speak; he was still furious that the prioress was not attending to him, and so Baldwin answered. “Not yet, Sister. Compline will be a while yet. What is your name?”

“Who are you?” she asked in a quavering voice. “What are you doing here? Men aren’t permitted inside the nuns’ cloister.”