Michael JECKS - Belladonna at Belstone

She looked him up and down. “After last night, I suppose I have little choice. The alternative would be to leave you still more suspicious of me.” She led Simon to a bench at the northernmost wall of the cloister. “I didn’t kill any of them, you know.“

“But you have stolen money from the priory.”

“No!” she declared, her eyes flashing as she spun to face him. “I would never take money from this place. I saved it so it could be used to serve the community better.”

As she spoke she turned away from Simon and glowered over the garth towards the church. “Look at it, just look! Roof falling in, tiles smashed – it’s a miracle only one man’s been hit by falling slates.”

“If you’d not embezzled the funds, the prioress could have repaired them.”

“Oh, the prioress!”

Simon snapped. “If you hadn’t concealed the true state of the accounts, maybe she could have repaired the roofs and wouldn’t have been forced to resort to begging a local knight to give her more money – and don’t tell me you were acting in the priory’s interests! You were hiding it so you could produce it later, when you had won the prioress’s job, in order to make yourself look better in the other sisters’ eyes.”

As Margherita turned to face Simon, there came a terrible scream from the infirmary, which faded slowly to a whimpering sob. “Benedicite!” she said in horror.

“They’re taking her arm off,” Simon said relentlessly. “Because she slipped on the laundry stairs and broke her wrist. You said the stairs were rotten – don’t you feel guilt for what you’ve done?”

“No. I did it for God and for this community!” she gasped. “I have done nothing for my own benefit, only for that of the people about me.“

“Would that include killing the girls?” Simon pressed. “Were they enough of a threat to your community for you to seek to destroy them all?”

“You imagine that I could…” She stared at him once more, her attention drifting from his stern brown eyes to his forehead, then his mouth and chin, as if seeking confirmation of his seriousness. Sinking back against the wall, she looked drained of all energy. Silently she reached inside her tunic and flung a key at him. “Take it! It’s all in my chest, and on top you’ll find a parchment with the amounts scribbled down so that everyone can witness nothing is stolen.”

Simon picked up the key from where it had fallen. Margherita sat like someone shrivelled, as if she had lost much of her substance; her head bowed, shoulders hunched. She didn’t meet his gaze. Very slowly she lifted both hands to her face and covered it as she began to sob.

He was about to make his way to the dorter to fetch the hidden money when he heard the brazen call of a trumpet. Surprised, he spun around, but here in the cloister he could see nothing beyond the surrounding walls. Filled with uneasiness, he strode towards the communicating door in the church.

Bishop Stapledon looked at the main gate to St Mary’s, Belstone with a significant seriousness in his expression. It didn’t go unnoticed by Jonathan when he pulled the little side door open and gaped at the cavalcade before him.

“Open the gate in the name of your bishop,” ordered Stapledon’s ecclesiastical staff-bearer, his crosier, who sat before his master near the gate, his trumpet resting on his thigh.

Jonathan swivelled slowly to stare. “Which?” he squeaked.

Stapledon kicked his horse forward until its head was pushing Jonathan backwards. “This one, Canon. I am your bishop. Now open that damned gate!”

As he spurred his mount, Stapledon took in the state of the precinct, squinting shortsightedly. His eyes had been failing him regularly for some time now, and he felt the need for his spectacles, but even without them the sight was not one to please the eye.

For Bishop Stapledon, a man used to residing with the King in the best abbeys and halls, it was shocking to see a place so derelict. The entire area appeared so rundown as to be ready for demolition. Still worse was the attitude of the workers. Those who should have been in the fields stood gaping at the sight of his entourage; those who should have been indoors seeing to the horses, working in the dairy, or producing the ale upon which the whole priory depended, thronged the lane to the stables.

Stapledon clenched his jaw and carefully lifted himself from his saddle, his eyes squeezed tight shut, standing in the stirrups with a small shiver of exquisite pain, holding his breath. Then, giving a little sigh of pure relief, he opened his eyes and permitted himself a faint smile as he leaned forward and swung his leg over the horse’s rump to dismount.

It was something that he had tried to think of as a minor cross to bear in this vale of adversity, but most of all he thought of it as a damned irritating affliction. Piles! he thought to himself as he stood a moment, feeling for a second’s sheer bliss, the lack of the agony that was so like a dagger thrust between his buttocks.

“Bishop!”

Stapledon turned and smiled gently as Simon bent to kiss his ring. “Ah, Bailiff Puttock. Good of you to come and welcome me.”

“I had no idea you were to be visiting, my Lord.”

“Neither had I until a short while ago. Sir Baldwin’s wife sends him her love… but where is he?”

“I fear Sir Baldwin is in the infirmary. He was struck by a falling slate.”

“Good God!” Stapledon surveyed the buildings about him. “The Lady Elizabeth has a great deal to explain.”

“It wasn’t her fault,” Simon muttered, and explained about the three deaths while he led the bishop through to the canons’ cloister. Stapledon’s expression hardly altered as Simon told him of the catalogue of disasters since their arrival here with Bertrand. He only showed emotion when Simon mentioned the stabbing of Agnes.

“She is also dead?”

“I am afraid so, Bishop.”

“Dear God!” Stapledon shook his head, standing still for a full minute. He remembered Agnes: a cheerful young girl. That was at least seven years ago now, when he had last seen Sir Rodney. He could picture her in his mind’s eye, a young slip of a thing, fragile as a flower, pretty with her tip-tilted nose and freckles, and with an engaging smile. She had captured Sir Rodney’s heart too.

It was difficult to believe that the young woman was dead. Stapledon knew that her death could have an impact on the future of the convent, that Sir Rodney might change his mind and bestow his money and church on a different institution, but that was unimportant to Stapledon. The Bishop had plenty of money himself; he could make good any financial losses from Agnes’s death, but he could do nothing to bring her back from the dead. He murmured softly, “Godspeed, Agnes. Go with God.”

But a moment later the bishop shook off his mood. “Right, Bailiff. However Sir Rodney feels about this girl’s death, we have work to do. Take me to see the Lady Elizabeth. And tell me what else has happened here. How has that fool Bishop Bertrand been behaving himself?”

Simon filled him in on the letter from Margherita, but also mentioned the missing money and pressed the key into the bishop’s hand.

Stapledon looked at it, his lip twisted. “She took the money to make the place appear in the worst possible light, solely in order to justify her own claim to the leadership; at the same time as harming the reputation of the prioress. Such corruption! Somehow it feels worse to be confronted with deceit and betrayal here in a convent, although I should be used to it after the dishonest and thieving politicians who surround the King. Bastards! Crosier, come with me and the bailiff. The rest of you, see to the horses.”

And with these words he swept forward, the episcopal staff-bearer and Simon trotting along in his wake.