Priscilla Royal - Satan's Lullaby

“None of us should speak until Brother Thomas is done.” Ralf lifted his right hand as if repeating his oath.

“As we all agreed,” Conan added, also raising his hand.

Davoir was clearly annoyed but kept his thoughts unvoiced.

Thomas repeated his question with gentleness.

The clerk began to sob. “I did not mean to kill him.” The words were barely audible.

“Your master?” Thomas bent closer.

“Jean!”

Davoir struck a fist into his open palm. “I knew you were a minion of the Devil!”

Conan walked to the priest’s side. “Father Etienne, if the fear you suffered under the attack has so unmanned you that silence is impossible, I beg that you sit in that chair and have a mazer of wine.” He pointed to a place at the far end of the chamber. “You will take charge of this clerk when the questioning is over. At that time, you may say whatever you wish. Our needs will be satisfied, and we will have left.”

The priest seemed about to protest this insult, then chose the wiser course, walked to the chair, and sat down.

“Continue,” Thomas said softly to Renaud.

“I worked until my hands and knees bled to please our master, but the only good he ever acknowledged was what Jean did. Even when Jean sinned, Father Etienne praised the manner of his repentance. Yet if I so much as erred on a complex Latin verb tense, our master mocked me in front of all.” He raised his head and yelled. “You were unjust!”

Thomas patted the youth’s shoulder with a father’s touch and hoped the lad’s moment of lucidity would last long enough.

“I longed for Jean to be sent home in disgrace like the prior clerk. If he were, our master would look to me next and see my virtues. So I got Jean drunk in the inn the night before we arrived, but he again hid his disgrace too well.” Pulling back from Thomas, Renaud shouted at the priest. “Or else you were so stupefied by him that you mistook the signs of drunkenness for holy rapture!”

Davoir stood, turned his back to the clerk, and walked to his prie-dieu where he stared at the bejeweled cross. “This sacred gift was from the king’s brother in gratitude for my service to him,” he muttered. “No matter what demonic abuse is flung at me by this churlish youth, I shall still receive a bishop’s miter, an elevation that is my right as God’s devout servant and the son of a noble family.”

Thomas gently wiped spittle from Renaud’s lips. “When your master asked for a treatment to cure Jean, what did you do?” he asked, hoping to keep the lad within the boundaries of sanity for just long enough.

With hacking gasps, Renaud began to weep. “I went to the apothecary hut and hid outside until Sister Anne finished preparing a remedy for a nun. They were discussing a gout treatment. As soon as she was alone, I approached Sister Anne for Jean’s medicine, and she gave me something that I knew to be innocuous and suitable for uneasy stomachs.”

“Did you disguise your identity or did you tell the sub-infirmarian who you were?”

Ralf quickly knelt next to the monk, lest the clerk’s reply be inaudible.

“I hid my face and prayed that she would be called away. God blessed me. She was, and then the lay sister who had remained behind. Knowing something about herbs, I quickly read the labels on the shelves but found nothing to my purpose.”

Thomas put a restraining hand on the crowner. Proving the innocence of Sister Anne meant too much to Ralf, and the monk feared he would speak despite his agreement. “What was your intent?” he asked the youth. Thomas longed to free the nun, but he had his prioress to protect as well and wanted nothing to interfere with either cause.

“To make Jean sicker. That was all! Signs of dissoluteness had failed to move our master from his unjustifiable preference. I knew my fellow clerk must therefore choose to leave Father Etienne’s service. If Jean believed he suffered poor health, he would surely depart of his own volition.”

“And if Jean did abandon his service for Father Etienne?” Thomas watched the clerk’s eyes glaze as his mind slid from simple desire for approval to the madness of overweening ambition.

“When my brother clerk was no longer at his side, our master would choose me, and, when he became a bishop, my own fortune would rise higher because Jean would not be the recipient of all his munificence.” Renaud began a high-pitched laugh. It swept the room like a scythe.

Ralf winced and moved away.

Thomas put a calming hand on the clerk’s shoulder and whispered, “You were left alone in the apothecary hut. You had searched the shelves and found nothing you could use. What happened next?” The monk waited.

“I heard a voice and knew I must leave or be remembered too well. Then my eye fell on an open jar on the table. When I looked inside, I saw something that might be slipped into wine or ale. If it was the alleged gout treatment, so be it. I knew there was no such thing as a cure and assumed it was like most remedies, harmless in small amounts but upsetting to the humors if taken in larger quantities. Deciding it would have to serve my purpose, I took it and slipped away before anyone returned and caught me. ”

Ralf turned around. “The jar was brown and had an ill-fitting lid?”

Thomas put a finger to his lips and bent his head in the direction of the priest.

Fortunately, the man seemed lost in contemplation of the altar wall.

Renaud winked as if sharing a mutual joke.

Ralf walked to the chamber door, opened it, and briefly spoke to someone outside.

“Did it not say what it was on the jar?” Thomas asked the youth.

“When I got back to our quarters, I read the label but did not know what autumn crocus was,” Renaud wailed. “I assumed it might be a concoction to ease pain like poppy juice. If I used just a bit, I thought it would cause enough malaise that Jean would fear he suffered a mortal ailment.”

Conan looked disgusted. “So out of ignorance and lust for position, he killed a man,” he muttered.

Renaud shifted to stare at the guard captain, his mouth twisted into the rictus of a dead man’s grin. “You, a man of the world, claim to know the justice of an act better than a man devoted to God?”

With a supreme act of will, Thomas kept himself from rebuking the youth for rank discourtesy. That was, after all, only a comment Renaud might have learned from his master. But the youth was quickly losing touch with reason. He was not willfully evil, and the monk decided to let the remark pass without comment.

Unfortunately, Conan laughed

Renaud twisted in his bindings and howled as he flung curses on the guard captain. If the monk had had any doubts left about the clerk’s sanity, seeing this would have erased them.

“Stop this blasphemy!” Davoir rushed back from his prie-dieu, one fist raised, not at Renaud, but at Conan.

Thomas rose.

The clerk was now screaming words that were not in any language known to men.

Skidding to a stop and pointing to Renaud, the priest shouted, “He is talking to the Evil One!”

“Father, I must have peace to finish the few questions I have left,” the monk said, then turned to Conan. “Both the priest and the crowner wish to understand what has happened here. Both have sworn to remain silent until I have gotten the tale from Renaud. I ask the same courtesy of silence from you. When I am done, all of you may pose your particular questions.”

“You will learn nothing,” growled the priest. “He is lost in hellish gibberish.”

Ralf gestured to Conan.

The guard captain’s lips curled into a sneer, but he swore to obey the monk’s request and walked to join the crowner at the entrance door.

Renaud had ceased howling and began again to weep like a little boy with a scraped knee.