Michael JECKS - Belladonna at Belstone

“Where were you?”

“Me?” Jonathan asked sadly. “I was alone in the orchard, waiting for a friend to meet me, but I fear he didn’t come.“

Simon saw his mood, but he had no time to worry himself about the reason’s behind it. “Did you see anyone there?”

“I did see the smith, Elias. He was hanging around by the wall to the nunnery, but I saw no one else.“

“There was a girl here last night. A whore servicing the canons – is that right?”

“Yes. So what? Even canons have desires, you know.”

“But… chastity?”

“God’s bones! What of it? Do you think all those who live in cloisters are capable of meeting each and every strict demand of the Orders we serve? I doubt whether God could be so cruel.”

“Does the prioress know?”

Jonathan took a deep breath. “My dear fellow, there is next to nothing ever happens in this place without her knowledge. She is the spider, sitting in the middle of her web, with strands reaching into every nook and crevice of the priory, and when a canon sneezes or coughs, she knows. Did she know that a girl was here yesterday, you ask? Well, I answer, yes. She not only knew, she probably spoke to the girl.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“Bailiff, I retract my suggestion that you are not so foolish as you look. Have you not heard of the prioress’s sin? The girl is Rose – Lady Elizabeth’s daughter.”

The hardest part for Jeanne was admitting that she had no idea why the suffragan had demanded that Simon and Baldwin should go to Belstone. As far as Bishop Stapledon was concerned, it was ridiculous that two secular men should be sent to a convent for nuns, and strange indeed that the reason for their mission should be concealed. With Jeanne’s permission, he had sent one of her grooms to Crediton on a fast horse, with a request that Peter Clifford should tell him the cause.

Now he paced up and down, the reply gripped tightly in his hand, chewing at his lip and scowling. Walter Stapledon was no fool, and he could easily understand the urgent desire of Bertrand to squash any rumours – especially in a case like this, where the treasurer of the priory had alleged that the murderer was…

He stopped that line of thought. Lady Elizabeth was well-known to him. There was no possibility of her being guilty of this crime. Surely not. Stapledon’s frown deepened; there was that story in 1300, before Stapledon became bishop, that she had given herself to a man… but Stapledon shook his head with decision. That a woman could lapse was not evidence that she could murder. The two crimes were utterly different. Lady Elizabeth was too urbane and refined for murder. No, it must be someone else, and Stapledon could only hope that she had not taken umbrage at Bertrand’s less than subtle manners. Stapledon pursed his lips. There was little likelihood that she would have suffered Bertrand gladly. Stapledon knew both reasonably well and the thought of Bertrand standing before her pointing an accusing finger and declaring her to be a murderer – the bishop winced at the thought.

The only thing that mattered was keeping news of this away from the general public. If it should become common knowledge, the nunnery could be closed, and that was a horrible prospect.

Very well, Stapledon thought to himself with resignation. I shall have to go and make sure that any ruffled feathers are soon smoothed.

Yet when he announced his intention, Jeanne was aghast. “Look at the weather! You can’t go out in this – think what it could be like in an hour or so! And getting to Belstone is not so straightforward as riding to Crediton. It’s much farther – you couldn’t get there before nightfall even if it was summer.”

Going to the door, Stapledon was forced to agree. The snow was light, simply a thin scattering of tiny flakes so far, and the road was not hidden; the air was too warm and the snow melted as soon as it landed, forming a thin, muddy sludge, but Stapledon knew only too well how different the weather could be on Dartmoor, for he was a Devonshire man, born and bred. He gauged distances in his mind and decided. “You’re right. We’d not make it to Belstone today; we shall need to travel as far as possible, though. We should be able to reach Bow before nightfall, and it would be a short enough journey from there. Yes, that would be all right,” he said.

He turned to the buttery and ordered his men to prepare to continue. When he returned to the hall, Jeanne saw his mood had not improved.

“My Lord, please sit and finish your wine,” she said gently.

Stapledon thanked her and sat down in Baldwin’s chair, but he glanced through Peter Clifford’s message once more and then muttered what Jeanne thought must be a curse. “Bertrand!” he exclaimed, and struck the arm of the chair.

As Jeanne watched in horror, the arm fell to the floor. Stapledon forgot his anger and stared at it, but even as he realised what was happening, he felt the rocking, heard the ominous creak. His eyes met Jeanne’s as there was a loud report, and then the seat collapsed.

Simon Puttock sat gaping after the doorkeeper long after the man had left the room. When a lad, Simon had been taught by the canons at Crediton. It had been drummed into him that the Church had a sacred duty to save souls; for them to achieve their duty, all clerics were men of integrity, led by their most responsible and honourable representative. It had been rammed into him while he was a boy, and he had never quite lost the conviction that those who wore religious robes were somehow different from others.

It was hardly incredible that a nun should be guilty of giving birth to a child – Simon was no fool, and news of such incidents were all too common, if regrettable – but that the prioress of a convent should do so had never occurred to Simon. It disgusted him, as if she had openly offered herself to all the men of the village.

Simon took a deep gulp of his wine and then grinned to himself. What was more astonishing was his reaction, he realised, leaning back in his seat. The woman was hardly young, and yet she presumably had only been a prioress for a few years, since her lapse – if the story of her lapse were true. When she had been younger, she had taken a lover, perhaps only the once, and had fallen pregnant. To fail was human; surely since then she must have proved herself to be devout, and that was why she had been elected to lead her community.

Although whether they would do so again was a different matter, he thought, remembering the holes in the roofs of the main buildings and the freezing wind that whistled around the dorter.

He stood. The girl was not here. He would go and try to speak to the prioress. If Jonathan was right and the Lady Elizabeth had spoken to the girl, she herself might have heard something.

About to seek her, he hesitated, remembering Bertrand. He’d last seen the visitor hurrying towards the stables. Bertrand was supposed to be sorting out the trouble here; it was Simon’s duty to tell him about Rose. Simon was torn. He didn’t want to give Bertrand another excuse to proceed against the prioress, but at the same time didn’t feel he had the right to warn Lady Elizabeth.

Simon fretted but his duty was clear; he walked out to find the suffragan.

Baldwin groaned as the pain shot through his skull like a red-hot bolt from a crossbow. He half-expected to smell the singed hair and cooked flesh, and cried out as he tried to move his head again, but his mouth was oddly quiescent, as though it had been bound with velvet cords.

He tried to sit up, but his arms wouldn’t obey and it was only with an effort that he could force his eyelids open.

The room was red, warm, safe. He stared directly ahead of him, feeling the massive weight of his body; it felt so gross, he was sure the bed upon which he lay couldn’t support him. He felt as if he was slowly falling through the mattress, and the panic rose in his breast: he would suffocate! The bedclothes would rise up on either side and swallow him, smothering him in their warm embrace.