Michael JECKS - Belladonna at Belstone

“How did you know about her? You saw her there, didn’t you!” he accused. Then his frown of incomprehension faded. “Then you were there before me. You must have killed Agnes!”

“Don’t talk bollocks like that to me,” she said, but retreated as he stalked towards her, his face white. “After the scream I saw poor little Agnes there, dead, and I realised immediately it had to be you.”

“It was me who screamed – when I found her body,” he protested.

“Only a man could slaughter a nun like that – and who else but the very one who enjoyed corrupting the young wenches in here? Only one man had an opportunity to get in here and chat to the novices regularly, didn’t he? You, Father. You enjoyed all three of the dead girls, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t!” he shouted.

“Oh, I suppose that righteous little madam Moll refused your advances, and that was why you decided to kill her, so that she couldn’t let on. And Katerine – why did you do away with her? Was it that she was annoyed when you transferred your affections to Agnes?”

Luke gawped, standing still. “Why should I hurt them? I couldn’t hurt them.”

Margherita was relentless. “You had Agnes help you, didn’t you? You had her drop extra dwale into Moll’s cup, and then you killed the girl. Katerine was easy – you knocked her out down here and then tossed her from the roof like a sack of grain. And Agnes knew all about Moll, so as soon as you realised you couldn’t ensure her silence by using her as your concubine, you decided to murder her as well!”

“You’re talking nonsense! This is a pack of lies, all lies, to hide your guilt, you murderous bitch!”

“Me?” she squawked.

“Yes, you! Moll found out about your little game with the money, didn’t she? You never knew before, that your assistant could read and add up. Your precious Lady Elizabeth can’t, but a poor novice saw through your schemes and ruined your plans, so you killed her. Murdered her to cover up your own guilt! But you never realised Moll had shared the story with other novices, did you? That never occurred to you, oh no! And I guess that Katerine came to you with a demand for money and that was when you murdered her.”

“Please enlighten me,” Margherita said coldly. “What moronic reasoning can you use to explain my murdering little Agnes?”

“Yes, please continue.”

Luke felt the ice enter his bones at that voice; in the doorway stood Lady Elizabeth, the bailiff at her side, sword sheathed now, his hand on Elias’s shoulder, and all the novices and nuns filling the space behind. It was a sight to freeze the blood of a saint, and Luke felt the resolution fade from him at the expression on Lady Elizabeth’s face. A sob caught at his breast, making his shoulders jerk. He threw a look at the jewel-encrusted cross on the altar, feeling a desperate desire for a moment’s calm in which to pray and make his peace.

Turning to the prioress, he tried to hold his head up, but couldn’t meet the steely contempt in her eyes. “Ask her where she was, my Lady,” he said hoarsely.

“Lady Elizabeth, I was walking in the orchard when I heard the scream. I immediately rushed back and saw Agnes’s body. At once I realised that I must see whether someone could have entered from the men’s cloister and came here. I found the door locked, but a moment or two later this man appeared and tried to escape.”

Luke protested, “Lady Elizabeth, I had found Agnes’s body and didn’t want to be thought of as her murderer so I fled.”

“And it took you so long to get here that Margherita had time to find Agnes’s body and get to the church?” Simon said disbelievingly.

“Yes, Bailiff. As soon as I screamed I…”

“It was you who screamed?” Simon pressed.

“Yes. It was horrible to find her like that. I wanted to get away, but there were feet coming from every direction.”

“Margherita, you mean? Everyone else was asleep.”

“Someone was coming through the frater, there was someone from the orchard…” he threw a baleful look at Margherita as he realised he had confirmed her story “… and someone else coming the way I had, from the church.”

“Who was that?”

Luke went blank. “I don’t know. They never appeared.”

Simon eyed him. “Could the steps have been running away?”

“They might have been – I don’t know.”

“Tell us all that happened,” Simon said.

“I admit I came to see Agnes; I had just got to the cloister when I heard steps and saw Denise. She was drunk, so I left her, and when she returned to the frater I went up the alley to meet Agnes, but there was a noise behind me. It worried me and I hurried to the chamber and tripped. When I realised…” Luke paused, scarcely able to go on, then: “I screamed and ran out, but I heard people coming. I didn’t know what to do! I went to the frater’s wall and hid behind a buttress. When you sent to question Denise I slipped away.” He faced the prioress. “Lady Elizabeth, Moll had told Katerine about Margherita embezzling priory funds. That was why Margherita killed them both. Agnes found out too.”

“She told you this?” Margherita demanded. “It is not true!”

“Prove it! Swear it before God, on the gospels, on His cross.”

Margherita stepped to the altar and rested her hand on the book. Meeting Luke’s gaze, she declaimed loudly so all could hear: “I had nothing to do with the death of the novice Moll, the novice Katerine or the novice Agnes. I had no part as an accomplice, nor as the instigator of any one or all of their deaths.”

“Bitch!” he swore, making the sign of the cross. “You dare lie on God’s own book?”

“Enough!” Lady Elizabeth snapped.

Simon had remained silent, surveying the pallid priest. Now he nodded towards Luke. “Do you dare declare your innocence in the same way?”

Luke immediately stepped up to the altar. As he did so, Margherita moved quickly out of his reach. So that there could be no doubt of his conviction, Luke picked up the book reverently and kissed the symbol of the cross on its calfskin cover, then rested it on his left palm, his right hand flat over the top. “I declare my innocence of the killing of any of these novices. I affirm my innocence in the sight of this congregation and in the sight of God, and if I am guilty in any way of any of these deaths, if I knowingly or unknowingly took any active part in them, if I persuaded or incited or aided or abetted any person in these murders, may God strike me dead here and now. As I believe in the resurrection and the life to come, I had nothing to do with these deaths.”

“And that,” Simon observed grimly, “leaves us much better informed, doesn’t it?”

Bertrand was called to the cloister as soon as the convent had finished Prime. Simon left him closeted with the prioress, and strode off to the infirmary to allow Hugh, who was nodding with the effort of standing guard, to take his own rest. Simon was happier spending his time mulling over the events of the evening while sitting next to Baldwin. For some strange reason, Simon was sure his friend was in danger. Intuition told him so.

Meanwhile, he could come to no logical conclusion about the trio of murders. No matter how he reviewed the affair he could see no connection between the dead girls that made any sense. Moll was ultra-religious, a bit of a pain, by all accounts, who took everyone else’s guilt on her own shoulders and informed them of their offences to make them confess and gain forgiveness; Katerine was nosy, pushy, keen to get on, and unscrupulous, prepared to use blackmail to achieve her ends; Agnes appeared unconcerned by the priory and the people within it, she was simply a child who probably shouldn’t have been put there in the first place. Certainly she wasn’t religiously driven.