She gave a shuddering sigh and hid her face in her hands. Luca stretched his hand towards her to comfort her and only a warning glance from Freize reminded him that she was still in holy orders and he should not touch her.
‘What will you do?’ Luca asked quietly.
‘I don’t know. My whole life has been here. I will serve as Lady Almoner until we come under the command of the Brothers. They will need me for the first months, no-one but me knows how this place is run. Then perhaps I will ask if I may go to another order. I would like an order that was more enclosed, more at peace. These have been terrible days. I want to go to an order where the vows are kept more strictly.’
‘Poverty?’ Freize asked at random. ‘You want to be poor?’
She nodded. ‘An order that respects the commands, an order with more simplicity. Knowing that we were storing a fortune of gold in our own loft . . . not knowing what the Lady Abbess was doing or what she intended, fearing she was serving the Devil himself . . . it has been heavy on my conscience.’
The bell tolled the call to chapel, echoing in the morning air. ‘Prime,’ she said. ‘I have to go to church. The sisters need to see me there.’
‘We’ll come too,’ Luca said.
They closed the door to the storeroom and locked it behind them. While Luca watched, she turned to Freize and held out her hand for his key. Luca smiled at her simple dignity as she stood still while Freize patted his pockets in a pantomime of searching, and then, reluctantly, handed over the key. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘If you want anything from the abbey stores you may come to me.’
Freize gave a funny little mock bow, as if to recognise her authority. She turned to Luca. ‘I could be the new Lady Abbess,’ she said quietly. ‘You could recommend me for the post. The abbey would be safe in my keeping.’
Before he could answer she looked beyond him at the windows of the hospital, suddenly paused, and put her hand on Luca’s sleeve. At once he froze, acutely aware of her touch. Freize behind him stopped still. She held her finger to her lips for silence and then slowly pointed ahead. She was indicating the mortuary beside the hospital, where a little light gleamed from the slatted shutters, and they could see someone moving.
‘What is it?’ Luca whispered. ‘Who is in there?’
‘The lights should be shielded, and the nuns should be still and silent in their vigil,’ she breathed. ‘But someone is moving in there.’
‘The sisters, washing her?’ Luca asked.
‘They should have finished their work.’
Quietly, the three of them moved across the yard and looked in the open door to the hospital. The door leading from the hospital ward through to the mortuary was firmly closed. The Lady Almoner stepped back, as if she were too afraid to go further.
‘Is there another way in?’
‘They take the pauper coffins out through a back door, to the stables,’ she whispered. ‘That door may be unbolted.’
Quickly, they crossed the stable yard to the double door to the mortuary, big enough for a cart and a horse, barred by a thick beam of wood. The two young men silently lifted the beam from its sockets and the door stood closed, held shut only by its own weight. Freize lifted a useful pitchfork from the nearby wall, and Luca bent and took his dagger from the scabbard in his boot.
‘When I give the word, open it quickly,’ he said to the Lady Almoner. She nodded, her face as white as her veil.
‘Now!’
The Lady Almoner flung the door open, the two young men rushed into the room, weapons at the ready – then fell back in horror.
Before them was a nightmare scene, like a butcher’s shop, with the butcher and his lad working over a fresh carcass. But it was worse by far than that. It was not a butcher, and it was no animal on the slab. The Lady Abbess was in a brown working gown, her head tied in a scarf, and Ishraq was in her usual black robe covered with a white apron. The two girls had their sleeves rolled up, and were bloodstained to the elbows, standing over the dead body of Sister Augusta, Ishraq wielding a bloodied knife in her hand, disembowelling the dead girl. The nuns keeping vigil were nowhere to be seen. As the men burst in, the two young women looked up and froze, the knife poised above the open belly of the dead nun, blood on their aprons, blood on the bed, blood on their hands.
‘Step back,’ Luca ordered, his voice ice-cold with shock. He pointed his dagger at Ishraq, who looked to the Lady Abbess for her command. Freize raised his pitchfork as if he would spear her on the tines.
‘Step back from that body, and no-one will be hurt,’ Luca said. ‘Leave this – whatever it is that you are doing.’ He could not bear to look, he could not find the words to name it. ‘Leave it, and step against the wall.’
He heard the Lady Almoner come in behind him and her gasp of horror at the butchery before them. ‘Merciful God!’ She staggered and he heard her lean against the wall, then retch.
‘Get a rope,’ Freize said, without turning his head to her. ‘Get two ropes. And fetch Brother Peter.’
She choked back her nausea. ‘What in the name of God are you doing? Lady Abbess, answer me! What are you doing to her?’
‘Go,’ said Luca. ‘Go at once.’
They heard her running feet cross the cobbles of the stable yard as the Lady Abbess raised her eyes to Luca. ‘I can explain this,’ she said.
He nodded, gripping the dagger. Clearly, nothing could explain this scene: her sleeves rolled to her elbows, her hands stained red with the blood of a dead nun.
‘I believe that this woman has been poisoned,’ she said. ‘My friend is a physician—’
‘Can’t be,’ Freize said quietly.
‘She is,’ the Lady Abbess insisted. ‘We . . . we decided to cut open her belly and see what she had been fed.’
‘They were eating her.’ The Lady Almoner’s voice trembled from the doorway. She came back into the room, Brother Peter white-faced behind her. ‘The two of them were eating her in a Satanic Mass. They were eating the body of Sister Augusta. Look at the blood on their hands. They were drinking her blood. The Lady Abbess has gone over to Satan and she and her heretic slave are holding a Devil’s Mass on this, our sanctified ground.’
Luca shuddered and crossed himself. Brother Peter stepped towards the slave with a rope held out before him. ‘Put down the knife and put out your hands,’ he said. ‘Give yourself up. In the name of God, I command you, demon or woman or fallen angel, to surrender.’
Holding Freize’s gaze, Ishraq put down the knife on the bed beside the dead nun, then suddenly darted for the doorway that led into the empty hospital. She flung it open and was through it, followed in a moment by the Lady Abbess. As Luca and Freize raced after the two young women, she led the way, running across the yard to the main gate.
Luca bellowed to the porteress, ‘Bar the gate! Stop thief!’ and flung himself on the Lady Abbess as she sprinted ahead of him, bringing her down to the ground in a heavy tackle and knocking the air out of her. As they went down, her veil fell from her head and a tumble of blonde hair swept over his face with the haunting scent of rosewater.
The Moorish slave was half way up the outer gate now, springing from hinge to beam like a lithe animal, as Freize grabbed at her bare feet and missed, and then leaped up and snatched a handful of her robe and tore her off the gate, bringing her tumbling down to fall backwards on the stone cobbles with a cry of pain.
Freize gripped her arms to her sides so tightly that she could barely breathe, while Brother Peter tied her hands behind her back, roped her feet together, and then turned to the Lady Abbess, still pinned down by Luca. As Luca dragged her to her feet, holding her wrists, her thick golden-blonde hair tumbled down over her shoulders, hiding her face.
‘Shame!’ the Lady Almoner exclaimed. ‘Her hair!’
Luca could not drag his eyes from this girl who had veiled her face from him, and hooded her hair so that he should never know what she looked like. In the golden light of the rising sun he stared at her, seeing her fo
r the first time, her dark blue eyes under brown up-swinging brows, a straight perfect nose, and a warm tempting mouth. Then Brother Peter came towards them and he saw her bloodstained hands as the clerk bound them with a rope, and Luca realised that she was a thing of horror, a beautiful thing of horror, the worst thing between heaven and hell: a fallen angel.
‘The lay sisters will be coming into the yards to work, the nuns will be coming from church, we must tidy up,’ the Lady Almoner ruled. ‘They cannot see this. It will distress them beyond anything . . . it will break their hearts. I must shield them from this evil. They cannot see Sister Augusta so abused. They cannot see these . . . these . . .’ She could not find the words for the Lady Abbess and her slave. ‘These devils. These missionaries from hell.’
‘Do you have a secure room for them?’ Brother Peter asked. ‘They will have to stand trial. We’ll have to send for Lord Lucretili. He is the lord of these lands. This is outside our jurisdiction now. This is a criminal matter, this is a hanging offence, a burning offence; he will have to judge.’
‘The cellar of the gatehouse,’ the Lady Almoner replied promptly. ‘The only way in or out is a hatch in the floor.’
Freize had the Moorish girl slung like a sack over his shoulder. Brother Peter took the tied hands of the Lady Abbess and led her to the gatehouse. Luca was left alone with the Lady Almoner.
‘What will you do with the body?’
‘I will ask the village midwives to put her into her coffin. Poor child, I cannot let her sisters see her. And I will send for the priest to bless what is left of her poor body. She can lie in the church for now and then I will ask Lord Lucretili if she can lie in his chapel. I won’t leave her in the mortuary, I won’t have her in our chapel. As soon as they have cleaned her up and dressed her again she shall go to sanctified ground away from here.’
She shuddered and swayed, almost as if she might faint. Luca put his hand around her waist to support her and she leaned towards him for a moment, resting her head on his shoulder.
‘You were very brave,’ he said to her. ‘This has been a terrible ordeal.’
She looked up at him, and then, as if she had suddenly realised that his arm was around her, and that she was leaning against him, he felt her heart flutter like a captured bird and she stepped away. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I am not allowed . . .’
‘I know,’ he said quickly. ‘It is for you to forgive me. I should not have touched you.’
‘It has been so shocking . . .’ There was a tremble in her voice that she could not conceal.
Luca put his hands behind his back so that he would not reach for her again. ‘You must rest,’ he said helplessly. ‘This has been too much for any woman.’
‘I can’t rest,’ she said brokenly. ‘I must put things to rights here. I cannot let my sisters see this terrible sight, or find out what has been done here. I will fetch the women to clean up. I must make everything right again. I will command them, I will lead them, out of error into the ways of righteousness; out of darkness into light.’ She smoothed her robe and shook it out. Luca heard the seductive whisper of her silk shift, and then she turned away from him to go to her work.
At the door of the hospital she paused and glanced back. She saw that he was looking after her. ‘Thank you,’ she said, with a tiny smile. ‘No man has ever held me, not in all my life before. I am glad to know a man’s kindness. I will live here all my life, I will live here inside this order, perhaps as the Lady Abbess, and yet I will always remember this.’
He almost stepped towards her as she held his gaze for just a moment and then was gone.
Freize and Brother Peter joined Luca in the cobbled yard. ‘Are they secure?’ Luca asked.
‘Regular gaol they have there,’ Freize remarked. ‘There were chains fixed on the wall, handcuffs, manacles. He insisted that we put everything on them, and I hammered them on as if they were both slaves.’
‘Just till the Lord Lucretili gets here,’ Brother Peter replied defensively. ‘And if we had left them in ropes and they had got themselves free, what would we have done?’
‘Caught them again when we opened the hatch?’ Freize suggested. To Luca he said, ‘They’re in a round cave, no way in or out except a hatch in the roof and they can’t reach that until it is opened and a wooden ladder lowered in. They aren’t even stone walls, the cellar is dug down into solid rock. They’re secure as a pair of mice in a trap. But he had to put them in irons as if they were pirates.’
Luca looked at his new clerk and saw that the man was deeply afraid of the mystery and the terrible nature of the two women. ‘You were right to be cautious,’ he said, reassuringly. ‘We don’t know what powers they have.’
‘Good God, when I saw them with blood up to the elbows, and they looked at us, their faces as innocent as scholars at a desk! What were they doing? What Satan’s work were they doing? Was it a Mass? Were they really eating her flesh and drinking her blood in a Satanic Mass?’
‘I don’t know,’ Luca said. He put his hand to his head. ‘I can’t think . . .’
‘Now look at you!’ Freize exclaimed. ‘You should still be in bed, and the Lord knows I feel badly myself. I’ll take you back to the hospital and you can rest.’
Luca recoiled. ‘Not there,’ he said. ‘I’m not going back in there. Take me to my room at the priest house and I will sleep till Lord Lucretili gets here. Wake me as soon as he comes.’
In the cellar, the two young women were shrouded in darkness as if they were already in their grave. It was like being buried alive. They blinked and strained their eyes but they were blind.
‘I can’t see you,’ Isolde said, her voice catching on a sob.
‘I can see you.’ The reply came steadily out of the pitch blackness. ‘And anyway, I always know when you are near.’
‘We have to get word to the inquirer. We have to find some way to speak with him.’
‘I know.’
‘They will be fetching my brother. He will put us on trial.’
There was a silence from Ishraq.
‘Ishraq, I should be certain that my brother will hear me, that he will believe what I say, that he will free me – but more and more do I think that he has betrayed me. He encouraged the prince to come to my room, he left me no choice but to come here as Lady Abbess. What if he has been trying to drive me away from my home all along? What if he has been trying to destroy me?’
‘I think so,’ the other girl said steadily. ‘I do think so.’
There was a silence while Isolde absorbed the thought. ‘How could he be so false? How could he be so wicked?’
The chains clinked as Ishraq shrugged.
‘What shall we do?’ Isolde asked hopelessly.
‘Hush.’
‘Hush? Why? What are you doing?’
‘I am wishing . . .’
‘Ishraq – we need a plan, wishing won’t save us.’
‘Let me wish. This is deep wishing. And it might save us.’
Luca had thought he would toss and turn with the pain in his neck and shoulder, but as soon as his boots were off and his head was on the pillow he slipped into a deep sleep. Almost at once he started to dream.
He dreamed that he was running after the Lady Abbess again, and she was outpacing him easily. The ground beneath his feet changed from the cobbles of the yard to the floor of the forest, and all the leaves were crisp like autumn, and then he saw they had been dipped in gold and he was running through a forest of gold. Still she kept ahead of him, weaving in and out of golden tree trunks, passing bushes crusted with gold, until he managed a sudden burst of speed, far faster than before, and he leaped towards her, like a mountain lion will leap on a deer, and caught her around the waist to bring her down. But as she fell, she turned in his arms and he saw her smiling as if with desire, as if she had all along wanted him to catch her, to hold her, to lie foot to foot, leg against leg, his hard young body against her lithe slimness, looking into her eyes, their faces close enough to
kiss. Her thick mane of blonde hair swirled around him and he smelt the heady scent of rosewater again. Her eyes were dark, so dark; he had thought they were blue so he looked again, but the blue of her eyes was only a tiny rim around the darkness of the pupil. Her eyes were so dilated they were not blue but black. In his head he heard the words ‘beautiful lady’ and he thought, ‘Yes, she is a beautiful lady.’
‘Bella donna.’ He heard the words in Latin and it was the voice of the slave to the Lady Abbess with her odd foreign accent as she repeated, with a strange urgency: ‘Bella donna! Luca, listen! Bella donna!’
The door to the guest room opened, as Luca lurched out of his dream and held his aching head.
‘Only me,’ Freize said, slopping warmed small ale out of a jug as he banged into the room with a tray of bread, meat, cheese and a mug.
‘Saints, Freize, I am glad that you waked me. I have had the strangest of dreams.’
‘Me too,’ Freize said. ‘All night long I dreamed that I was gathering berries in the hedgerow, like a gipsy.’
‘I dreamed of a beautiful woman, and the words bella donna.’
At once Freize burst into song:
‘Bella donna, give me your love –
Bella donna, bright stars above . . .’
‘What?’ Luca sat himself at the table and let his servant put the food before him.
‘It’s a song, a popular song. Did you never hear it in the monastery?’
‘We only ever sang hymns and psalms in the church,’ Luca reminded him. ‘Not love songs in the kitchen like you.’
‘Anyway, everyone was singing it last summer. Bella donna: beautiful lady.’
Luca cut himself a slice of meat from the joint, chewed thoughtfully, and drank three deep gulps of small ale. ‘There’s another meaning of the words bella donna,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t just mean beautiful lady. It’s a plant, a hedgerow plant.’