Michael JECKS - Belladonna at Belstone

All this passed through his head as he stood watching Elias at the grille. Paul tutted to himself. He had a message to pass on, and how could he do it now? If he was unable to speak to a nun, how could be bring the news to the attention of the prioress? Of course… he could tell someone else – someone who was known by all in the convent to be the implacable enemy of the prioress: Bishop Bertrand!

If Paul told the suffragan, Bertrand would be bound to take action – and it must surely help remove Lady Elizabeth. Even she would find it hard to survive an apostate canon, a nun turned apostatrice, as well as two deaths and the near death of the knight.

In confiding in Paul, Brother Godfrey had unwittingly ensured that his message went to the one man he wished to remain ignorant.

Bertrand led the way through to the cloister and in at the frater’s door. Here Simon and Hugh found Baldwin unconscious lying on a trestle table. A perplexed Godfrey stood cleaning Baldwin’s scalp with a cloth damped in warm water; he gave the men a cursory once-over before returning to his work, utterly absorbed.

“Baldwin? What has…?”

“He was walking out in the cloister, when a terrible accident happened,” Bertrand said. He stared at Baldwin’s hideous wound; the sight of the long flap of flesh slashed away with such precision was horrible, but fascinating. “A novice was up on the church roof, and slipped. The poor girl fell to her doom, but as she toppled, she dislodged slates, and one of them did this to your friend. Only God’s own grace saved his life. If the slate had fallen an inch to one side, he would be dead.”

“He’ll be fine, Bailiff,” Godfrey said, reaching for a pair of scissors and beginning to cut away the knight’s hair. “For so old a man, he’s healthy.”

Simon nodded distractedly. To have woken from his nightmare to be presented with a real one was appalling, and for a moment he seriously wondered whether he was still dreaming. He took a step forward. “He will live?”

“He’s fit enough. Leave him to me.” Seeing the fearful expression on Simon’s face, Godfrey’s voice became more kindly. “Don’t worry, Bailiff. I’ve seen to many similar wounds, and he’ll be all right.”

“Thank you for your assistance,” Simon said, and made to walk out of the room, but then he stopped and gave a quick frown. “Hugh, you wait here,” he said in an undertone. “Stay with Baldwin and don’t let anyone near him if you don’t trust them.”

“Why? He is perfectly safe here,” Bertrand said.

Simon glanced at Godfrey. “You say a second novice has died?”

“This has nothing to do with the death of poor Moll…”

“Perhaps, but seeing my friend here like this, I am not prepared to take the risk. Baldwin was certain that Moll’s death was murder, and I find this ”accident“ to be suspicious. Now show me where this all happened.”

Bertrand agreed with a bad grace, convinced that the bailiff was allowing his imagination to run on a light rein, but Simon didn’t care. He knew that accidents happened at the worst possible moments; a tile falling from a roof wasn’t rare even in better maintained places. All the same, he felt deeply uneasy.

It was ironic that this should happen just as Baldwin and he had been ordered home. Home! With an inward groan, Simon thought of Jeanne: she must be told – but not until later. For now, Simon must concentrate on how Baldwin had been wounded.

“He was here,” Bertrand said, motioning towards a thick sprinkling of slates on the grass. Thin snow had been trampled, but two clotted spills of blood stood out distinctly.

Simon peered upwards. The cloister roof had been wrecked, but it was a good twenty or thirty feet from the church roof in a direct fall, and a body weighing some stones would have dislodged them without difficulty.

“Did anyone see what happened?” he asked.

“There was a canon here called Paul: him.”

Simon followed his pointing finger and saw a gawky young canon entering the cloister. Walking up to him, Simon asked, “You saw my friend hit by the slate?”

Paul forgot Elias at once. Seeing Simon’s serious expression Paul was reminded of Katerine’s body, her wide, scared eyes, the way her head rested at such an impossible angle. It was enough to make him want to weep with sadness. When that tile had fallen, he had been in the middle of copying a book, trying to ensure a perfect replica of the writing, but it was a dull treatise, and when he saw Baldwin in the cloister, Paul had been distracted and had watched him. It took little time for Paul to tell Simon what he had seen. While he spoke, Simon was aware of Bertrand joining them. Paul’s attention went to the suffragan while he talked.

“So my friend was out there looking upwards?” Simon asked.

“Yes, but then he turned away, and rubbed at his eye, and a moment later the slate struck him. Then there was an awful crash, and the next thing I knew, something was rolling down the roof above me, and fell almost on top of Sir Baldwin.”

“How do I get to the roof?”

There was a stone staircase inside the church. Soon Simon was hurrying along the cloister towards it.

When he was gone, Paul turned to Bertrand. “My Lord, may I speak to you a moment?”

It was very windy on the roof and Simon had to take a good breath before he dared approach the edge. He was afraid of heights. Looking down, he found himself staring at the upturned face of Bertrand, who remained standing in the quadrangle with Paul.

To take his mind off the suffragan, Simon peered straight down on to the roof of the cloister. Some twenty yards farther along, he could see the point where the novice’s body had struck it. Not only was there a roughly circular pattern of dark, wrecked slates showing through the snow, which corresponded to the place where she had apparently fallen, there was a broad red stain. He’d heard Katerine had broken her neck. Hitting headfirst, she must have wrecked her skull.

Simon was aware of an overwhelming sense of inadequacy. Usually he could rely on his native intelligence to solve local mysteries, but today, with his best friend unconscious and unable to aid him, he felt all at sea.

From the corner of his eye he saw movement, and when he glanced down he saw the suffragan walking with Paul towards the stables. The sight of the two men drew Simon’s attention back to the present, and he found he could concentrate once more.

Very well, the girl had fallen from the church roof. Either she had slipped – in which case what was she doing here? – or perhaps she had jumped and it was pure mischance that she happened to land on Baldwin, dislodging a slate on the way…

Simon caught his breath. The canon had said that he saw Baldwin look up, saw him turn away, saw the slate strike, and then heard the girl hit the roof.

His confidence returned. He marched along the roof until he was in a line with the mark on the grass and the ruined slates on the roof. Here it was maybe fifteen or twenty feet to the cloister roof, Simon guessed. A light dusting of snow clung to the vertical stonework of the church. A line showed where the snow had been swept clear as the girl fell down the wall. Simon had a vision of her toppling headfirst, her skull grating down the stone and losing the flesh.

Struck by vertigo, Simon had to close his eyes and lean away from the terrible drop. Rather than gaze down, he decided to survey the roof.

There was no lead here. The convent had not enough money to fully waterproof the place; only the greater houses could afford that sort of luxury. Instead, like the cloister roof below, this one was slated. Each slate had a pair of holes drilled through it so that oak pegs could be thrust through, hooking the tile to the lathes beneath. There were no slates missing nearby, but Simon had hardly expected to see any gone. If someone had done as Simon suspected and thrown one at Baldwin, it would have been an act of extreme stupidity to pull one from the roof. That would prove ill-intent.