Ellis Peters - The Sanctuary Sparrow

“Should I leave you lone to your task, and you still hard at work so late? Such diligence! So strict in your accounting, and so careful in your providing!”

“Neither you nor she, grandmother, shall be able to claim that I left one measure of flour or one drop of honey unaccounted for,” said Susanna bitingly.

“Nor one grain of oatmeal?” there was a small, almost stealthy quiver of laughter from the head of the stairs. “Excellent housewifery, my girl, to find your crock still above half-full, and Easter already past! I give you your due, you have managed your affairs well.”

“I learned from you, grandmother.” Susanna had vanished from the chink of the door, taking a step towards the foot of the staircase. It seemed to Rannilt that she was now standing quite still, looking up at the old woman above her, and spitting her soft, bitter protest directly into the ancient face peering down at her in the dimness. What light the small lamp gave cast her shadow along the boards of the floor, a wide black barrier across the doorway. By the shape of the shadow, Susanna had wrapped her cloak about her, as well she might, working late in the chill of the night. “It is at your orders, grandmother,” she said, low and clearly, “that I am surrendering my affairs. What did you mean to do with me now? Had you still a place prepared for me? A nunnery, perhaps?”

The shadow across the doorway was suddenly convulsed, as though she had flung out her arms and spread the cloak wide.

After those bitterly discreet exchanges the screech that tore the silence was so terrifying that Rannilt forgot herself, and started forward, hurling the inner door wide and bursting into the hall. She saw Dame Juliana, at the head of the stairs, shaken and convulsed as the black shadow had been, the lamp tilting and dripping oil in her left hand, her right clutching and clawing at her breast. The mouth that had just uttered that dreadful shriek was wrenched side long, the cheek above drawn out of shape. All this Rannilt saw in one brief glimpse, before the old woman lurched forward and fell headlong down the stairs, to crash to the floor below, and the lamp, flying from her hand, spat a jet of burning oil along the boards at Susanna’s feet, and went out.

Chapter Ten

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Thursday night to Friday dawn

Rannilt sprang to smother the little serpent of fire that had caught something burnable and sent up a spurt of flame. Blindly, fumbling, her hands found the hard corner of a cloth-wrapped bundle, there on the floor near the wall, and beat out the fire that had caught at the fraying end of the cord that bound it. A few sparks floated and found splinters of wood, and she followed on her knees and quenched them with the hem of her skirt, and then it was quite dark. Not for long, for everyone in the house must be awake now; but for this moment, utterly dark. Rannilt groped about her blindly on the floor, trying to find where the old woman lay.

“Stay still,” said Susanna, in the gloom behind her. “I’ll make light.”

She was gone, quick and competent again as ever, back into her own room, where she could lay her hands instantly on flint and tinder, always ready by her bed. She came with a candle, and lit the oil-lamp in its bracket on the wall. Rannilt got up from her knees and darted to where Juliana lay on her face at the foot of the stairs. But Susanna was before her, kneeling beside her grandmother and running rapid hands over her in search of broken bones from her fall, before venturing to lift her over on to her back. Old bones are brittle, but it had not been a sheer fall, rather a rolling tumble from stair to stair.

Then they were all coming, clutching candles, gaping, crying questions, Daniel and Margery with one gown thrown hastily round the two of them, Walter bleared and querulous with sleep, Iestyn scurrying up the outdoor stairs from the undercroft and in by the rear door of Susanna’s chamber, which Rannilt had left standing open. Light on light sprang up, the usual frugal rule forgotten.

They came crowding, demanding, incoherent with sleep, and alarm and bewilderment. The smoky flames and flickering shadows filled the hall with changing shapes that danced about the two figures quiet on the floorboards. What had happened? What was all the noise? What was the old woman doing out of her bed? Why the smell of burning? Who had done this?

Susanna slid an arm under her grandmother’s body, cradled the grey head with her other palm, and turned her face-upward. She cast up at the clamouring circle of her kin one cold, glittering glance in which Rannilt saw, as none of them did, the scorn in which she held all members of her family but this spent and broken one on her arm.

“Hold your noise, and make yourselves useful. Can you not see? She came out with her light to see how I was fairing, and she took another seizure like the last, and fell, and the last it may very well be. Rannilt can tell you. Rannilt saw her fall.”

“I did,” said Rannilt, quivering. “She dropped the lamp and caught at her breast, and then she fell. The oil spilled and took fire, I put it out…” She looked towards the wall for the bundle, whatever it had been, that had offered an end of tow to the spark, but there was nothing there now. “She’s not dead… look, she’s breathing… Listen!”

Certainly she was, for as soon as they hushed their clamour the air shook to her shallow-drawn, rattling breath. All one side of her face was dragged askew, the mouth grossly twisted, the eyes half-open and glaring whitely; and all her body on that side lay stiff as a board, the fingers of her hand contorted and rigid.

Susanna looked round them all, and made her dispositions, and no one now challenged her right. “Father, and Daniel, carry her to her bed. She has no broken bones, she feels nothing. We cannot give her any of her draught, she could not swallow it. Margery, feed the little brazier in her room. I will get wine to mull for when she revives—if she does revive.”

She looked over Rannilt’s shoulder to Iestyn, standing dumb and at a loss in the shadows. Her face was set as marble and as cold, but her eyes shone clear. “Run to the abbey,” she said. “Ask for Brother Cadfael to come to her. Sometimes he works late, if he has medicines making. But even if he has gone to his cell, the porter will call him. He said he would come if he was needed. He is needed now.”

Iestyn looked back at her without a word, and then turned as silently as he had come and ran as she had bade him.

It was not so late as all that. At the abbey the dortoir was still half awake, an uneasy stirring in certain cells, where the brothers found sleep difficult or remembrance all too strong. Brother Cadfael, having stayed late in his workshop to pound herbs for a decoction to be made next day, was just at his private prayers before sleep when the porter came edging along the passage between the cells to find him. He rose at once, and went silently down the night stairs and through the church, to confer with the messenger at the gatehouse.

“The old dame, is it?” He had no need to fetch anything from the herbarium, the best of what he could give her was already supplied and Susanna knew how to use it, if its use was still of any avail. “We’d best hurry, then, if it’s so grave.”

He set a sharp pace along the Foregate and over the bridge, and asked such questions as were necessary as they went.

“How did she come to be up and active at this hour? And how did this fit come on?”

Iestyn kept station at his side and answered shortly. He had never many words to spare. “Mistress Susanna was up late seeing to her stores, for she’s forced to give up her keys. And Dame Juliana rose up, belike, to see what she was still about. The fit took her at the top of the stairs and she fell.”