The Medieval Murderers - Sword of Shame

Michael said nothing, and allowed the two women to usher him through a door and into the convent, Bartholomew trailing behind. While Rose fetched the prioress and Pauline limped to the kitchens for something to eat, the physician looked around him.

The priory was tiny and clearly poor. The main part comprised a wooden chapel and a two-storeyed hall-the upper floor was a dormitory and the lower one served as refectory and chapter house. There was a separate kitchen block and a massive barn for storing grain, all enclosed within a double ditch and a bank. A bell rang for vespers, and the sound of chanting drifted towards them. The smell of newly cut grass and warm soil mingled with the scent of incense. It was a peaceful scene, and rather more what Bartholomew had expected when he had left Cambridge that morning.

It was not long before a woman with a grey face came scurrying across the yard. Worry lines bit deeply into her forehead and cheeks. ‘Rose tells me you know the Bishop,’ she said unhappily. ‘Are you here because I allow her out from time to time? Lymbury often demands her company-or he did, before his friends arrived from France. Now he summons her less frequently. She minds terribly.’

‘Lymbury used to spend time alone with Rose?’ asked Bartholomew, not sure what the prioress was saying in her gabbling rush of words. ‘But now he does not?’

She paled even further. ‘Oh, damn my loose tongue! I have just told you something the Bishop should not know, and I do not want to be deposed like my predecessor. Chaplain Dole is always telling me to think before I speak, but it is so very difficult. Do you not find, Brother?’

‘Not really,’ replied Michael, amused by the question. ‘Such a failing would be somewhat inconvenient in a scholar-it would see him savaged in the debating halls.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. I am Prioress Christiana. But you have already guessed that, I suppose. Rose tells me you are from Michaelhouse, which probably means you have come to demand the ten marks Lymbury gave me.’

‘We shall discuss it tomorrow,’ said Michael. ‘After a good night’s sleep, preferably in a decent bed. And we have been travelling all day, so a little bread and meat would not go amiss, either.’

‘You cannot have meat, Brother,’ said Christiana, startled. ‘It is a fish day.’

‘So it is,’ said Michael in a voice heavy with resignation. ‘I had forgotten.’

The guesthouse was a tiny cottage on the edge of the convent, separated from it by a line of apple trees. Birds trilled sweet and clear as the sun disappeared in a blaze of copper, and there was a contented lowing as cows were milked and settled in their byre. Bartholomew smiled at Prioress Christiana, who was distressed because the door had been left open and a goat had eaten the blankets.

‘This is a lovely place,’ he said sincerely.

She wrung her hands. ‘It is a grave responsibility, and my predecessor’s fate is never far from my mind-Dame Pauline sees to that. She is always talking about what happened to Alice Lacy, and how she was sent to the priory at Chatteris in disgrace.’

‘Chatteris,’ said Michael in a sepulchral voice. ‘A dreadful place, set deep in the desolate wilderness of the Fens. I have never been, mind you, but I have heard tales of its bitter weather and the way snakes lurk in its mattresses.’

‘Oh, really, Brother,’ said Bartholomew, watching the prioress’s eyes open wide in shock. ‘It was rats in the bedding, not snakes.’ He saw he had not helped when Christiana’s hands flew to her mouth in horror. Rodents were apparently held in greater terror than reptiles.

‘I do my best,’ said Christiana in a wail. ‘But it is not easy when there are women like Rose and Pauline under my care. The others are good, devout souls, but those two are a trial, and Pauline is always challenging my authority because I cannot read. She objects to managing the accounts, but she also complains when I try to relieve her of the burden. I can do nothing right. And now there is trouble with a powerful Cambridge College and a monk who knows the Bishop. What shall I do?’

‘We shall talk tomorrow,’ said Bartholomew kindly. ‘I am sure we can reach some arrangement that suits us both.’

‘Such as you giving us our ten marks,’ muttered Michael. He spoke a little more loudly. ‘Did you like Lymbury, Mother?’

‘Pauline said he was murdered today,’ Christiana’s eyes filled with compassionate tears. ‘He was a difficult man, but generous in his way. He was fond of Rose, and I felt compelled to let her go to him when he asked, because we need the eggs he always let us have. Rose was always happy to oblige.’

Michael’s eyebrows rose. ‘I am sure she was.’

‘But I did fear he wanted her for immoral purposes,’ confided Christiana unhappily. ‘Especially later, when I learned he only invited Rose to the manor-house at times when Lady Joan was visiting her mother. What would the Bishop say if he found out? But, of course he will find out now-you will tell him, because I have just told you. Damn my clacking tongue!’

‘We already knew,’ said Michael. ‘Rose is not discreet. How long has this been going on?’

‘For about a year. But it faltered in the spring, when Askyl, Dole and William arrived. I suppose Lymbury was too busy with his friends for romantic dalliances.’

‘Did Joan know about her husband and Rose?’ asked Bartholomew.

Christiana shrugged. ‘She might have done-perhaps she was relieved that he had foisted his attentions on another woman, because she did not love him herself. But I must go and say prayers for his soul, or he may come and haunt us. And he had a nasty sword that he liked to show off. I would not like to meet a ghost wielding such a vicious, sharp blade.’

It was soon too dark to do anything except go to bed-the cottage was not supplied with candles. Bartholomew lay on a mattress near the window, enjoying the cool breeze that wafted in. It was a sultry night, and he felt thunder in the wind-Dame Pauline’s predictions had been right. Michael complained about the fleas in the bedding and the meagre supper he had been served. Then he moaned about the open window, claiming that a dangerous miasma might enter during the night and poison him.

‘I am not sleepy,’ said Bartholomew, waiting for a break in the litany of grumbles. He settled with his hands behind his head, staring up at the stars and thinking about Ptolemy’s notion that the universe comprised a series of spheres. ‘What do you think of the contention in the Almagest that eccentric and epicyclic circles account for the observed variations in the distances of the planets?’

Michael sighed. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about, and it sounds vaguely heretical to me. Does God have any place in these spheres?’

‘I do not envy you your position,’ said Bartholomew, concluding the monk was not in the mood for scholarly debate. ‘Rose and Pauline were right when they said their priory is poor, and they are fellow Benedictines. But Michaelhouse is equally desperate and you owe us your loyalty, too.’

Michael sighed a second time. ‘That is why I have decided to take you up on your offer and let you decide the issue. I do not want my colleagues at Michaelhouse or my brethren at the abbey clamouring favouritism at me, so I am passing the responsibility to you. I wash my hands of the whole affair.’

‘Very well-as long as you do not argue with me once I have made up my mind.’

‘I shall argue if I feel like it-you may do something foolish. Langelee said we were not to return without his money, and he may not let us back in if you are generous to a handful of penniless nuns.’

Bartholomew laughed. ‘You say I am free to make the decision, but in the next breath you tell me what to do. You are abrogating the responsibility, without relinquishing the power.’