Michael JECKS - Belladonna at Belstone

Simon listened carefully while the priest told him of Margherita’s birth and the disappearance of her mother. It struck him how similar Margherita’s story was to that of Rose. “I wonder if she knows,” he muttered aloud, and when Luke glanced at him, he waved a hand dismissively. “Nothing. Thinking out loud. But tell me, do you think Margherita could help save the convent? It seems to me that everywhere I look the place is falling apart.”

“Which I suppose reflects badly upon the prioress,” Luke said off-handedly. “I mean, Margherita could hardly do a worse job, could she?”

“Do you think Margherita could have prevented the murders?”

Luke looked at him coldly. “Bailiff, if those two poor girls really were murdered, surely it must be due to the innate sins of the convent.” Luke was rather proud of his words. His pronouncement sounded stern and pious, just as a cleric’s statement should. “If Margherita was in charge, I am sure many of the sins would not have occurred, which would mean that the murders would not have happened.”

There was the ringing of the bell calling the obedientiaries to the next service, and Luke stood abruptly. “I’ve got to prepare for Vespers – and you will have to return to the canonical side of the church Bailiff.”

“Thank you for your help. I am most grateful. And now I am going to visit my friend,” Simon said, and set off towards the door. However it opened before he arrived and the prioress walked in. She smiled at him politely, but then she noticed the priest. Simon saw that in her hand, Lady Elizabeth held a large key.

While he waited near the exit, she walked to the door separating the two halves of the church and tested it. When it wouldn’t open, she stared at Luke, but the priest ignored her, and merely went to the sacristy to prepare for the service.

Bertrand walked slowly to the church, anxiety clutching at his breast. All his plans had gone awry: he had intended Margherita to replace Lady Elizabeth and now Margherita herself appeared no better. For once he was prepared to accept his own limitations. Today he felt in desperate need of assistance from God.

There was no doubt: he had been over the figures time and again.

Only the one hand had written in the book – Margherita’s – but the figures she had entered for the bailiff from Iddesleigh were wrong. Seven-eighths of it were missing. Bertrand himself had witnessed the man giving the money to her, had seen the treasurer herself scribble down the amounts. Bertrand was left with the unpleasant certainty that the woman was embezzling money.

He had backed the wrong horse. While trying to get rid of the prioress, he had hitched his cart to another just as corrupt: the whole place was tainted!

Entering the choir, he walked to a quiet stall in a dark corner and bowed his head reverently. Surely there was a way out of this mess. He had the blackmailed Elias on his side. Elias would allege that he had been going to forswear his oaths because he was so disgusted about the running of the priory. That testimony, embellished and wisely used, could spell the end of Lady Elizabeth’s rule.

But if her replacement was a spendthrift or thief, things could only get worse.

If only Margherita had merely miscalculated. But she hadn’t. He had been there, he had seen the money. There was no chance of Margherita making an error.

Then there were the two deaths. One from a bleeding – the sort of thing that could have happened anywhere; the second girl had been messing about on the roof, probably, and just fell. The bailiff wanted a sensational story because his friend had been hurt, but these things were almost always pretty mundane.

Once the prioress had gone, the deaths would soon be forgotten. Much more important was the future good management of the priory, and Bertrand knew that one excellent way of seeing to its protection was to ensure that there was enough money coming in to keep the place going.

A thought struck him: if no one found out about Margherita’s stealing, all would be well. Lady Elizabeth could be removed, Margherita put in her place, and Bertrand could present a decisive and successful result to Bishop Stapledon – one which could only reflect well upon him and help him towards his own bishopric.

Sir Rodney would be pleased that the treasurer was in charge; Stapledon would be pleased that Bertrand had acted correctly in removing the prioress; and if any problems occurred later, Bertrand would be far away, hopefully already a bishop in his own right, with his own episcopal see. Safe.

As the service began, Bertrand allowed himself to smile.

Cecily almost leaped from the bed when the last bandage had been soaked from her arm, and then Constance set about cleaning the red, inflamed flesh with a cloth soaked in a refreshing infusion of herbs.

Hugh couldn’t watch. The whole limb was swollen and discoloured, covered with blisters weeping pus. Cecily was delirious, and each time the scrap of linen touched her forearm, she screamed and thrashed about, trying to escape the pain. He glanced at the old woman at Constance’s side.

While holding the basin in which Constance dipped her cloth, Joan mumbled prayers. She had taken up her place by Cecily’s bed on her return from the rere-dorter; in her eyes was a concerned sympathy, the expression of one who has witnessed many deaths in her life and to whom the passing of one more soul was of scant note, although there was a kind of measuring quality to her observation, as if she was assessing how different her own end would be – an end which surely couldn’t be far off.

At last the arm was bare and clean. Constance stared at it anxiously. She had no medicine adequate for a wound of this kind: the flesh was already putrefying.

“It should be cut off,” Hugh stated.

Constance looked up, startled. To her surprise Hugh was glowering down at the lay sister as if bitterly angry that Cecily had dared allow herself to grow so ill.

“It’ll never get better, that arm. Can only get worse. You need a surgeon.”

“We don’t have anyone near.”

“She’ll die, then. Surely there’s someone.”

It was Joan who answered. “Perhaps there is one.”

Simon walked from the church into the nuns’ cloister and stepped straight into a pile of faeces. He curled his lip as the smell struck his nostrils. Ugh! It was that damned bitch Princess, no doubt, crapping all over the place. Baldwin liked dogs, but as far as Simon was concerned terriers that spent their lives snapping at one’s ankles and shitting all over the place were among the most useless of all creatures.

In fact, the mutt’s deposits were all over the precinct, in the nunnery and the canonical half as well. There was no discrimination.

Simon wiped his boot on the grass of the garth and studied the sole. Almost clean. It would do. He set off for the door and climbed the stairs.

Since the nuns were all attending Vespers the place appeared deserted. With any luck the prioress had left the terrier in her room so it couldn’t disrupt the service.

Simon reached the landing and was about to turn in to the infirmary, his footsteps echoing crisply on the bare wooden boards, when he heard the terrier begin to snarl and yap. Simon recalled being told that the dog hated men and barked at them.

“Shut your row!” he muttered, continuing on his way, but at the door to the infirmary he stopped dead. In his mind’s eye he saw again the piles of dog mess in the canonical cloister and the nuns’ garth; he recalled Lady Elizabeth telling him that her dog had been unwell the night that Moll had died, and that was why she had been murmuring endearments when Margherita had listened outside her door.