“But what of the illness? You must be careful. They say if you breathe through a satchel of herbs, you won’t catch the plague.” She looked helplessly at the garden around them.
He patted her hand. “The illness is the least of my concerns,” he assured her.
She thought him exceedingly brave. “There is one more thing, Your Grace. Lord Christian wrote Alec a letter in which he offered to return Alec’s inheritance to him. Would you ask him if he received the letter and whether he has considered the offer?”
The good abbot’s eyes narrowed with sudden comprehension. “Do you hope that he will take up arms on your behalf?”
“I have nowhere else to turn,” she admitted, feeling suddenly forlorn, though her chances of getting word to Alec had never been higher.
The abbot frowned in confusion. “I thought perhaps Christian would help you now that you’ve told him the truth of your plight. Perhaps since you care for his son, he would be willing to reclaim your father’s home for you. Have you asked him?”
She looked down at her knotted hands. “I’ve already asked,” she replied, willing herself not to blush. “He refuses to help.”
A thoughtful silence followed her words. She glanced up to find his keen gaze on her face. “Would you like me to speak to him?” he offered kindly. “Perhaps I can convince him—”
A hot wave of mortification crested in her cheeks. “Nay, thank you,” she refused, not wanting the abbot to know of her humiliating choice. “If you can get word to Alec, you’ll have done more than enough.”
The abbot nodded gravely. “Then, I’ll do my best,” he promised.
“When will you go?” Desperation made her bold. She feared the Slayer would try again to persuade her. The thought made her heart race and her mouth go dry.
“Shortly after none’s prayers today.”
Good. If there was any recourse to the Slayer’s proposition, she would know it soon. “Thank you,” she told him. “How can I repay you?”
He winked at her as he tightened the sash around his waist. “I was headed to the abbey anyway,” he said.
Clarise’s spirits rose a notch. “I must go now. Simon is mine for the afternoon.”
“A blessed burden,” said Ethelred.
He is indeed, thought Clarise. Because of Simon, she was actually thinking of accepting the Slayer’s proposition. She had loved the infant from the first. She could not bear the thought of leaving him when the time came to leave Helmesly.
If she left. She refused to accept that the Slayer’s touch might influence her. Yet whenever the memory of her ecstasy replayed itself, her bones seemed to melt like butter, and a delicious shudder overtook her. Humiliation could not defeat desire. There was a part of her that would secretly revel in becoming his mistress. A part of her that found the Slayer exciting and fascinating. Only she refused to acknowledge it.
Clarise DuBoise had been born a lady, and a lady she wished to remain. She owed it to her bloodlines to discover if Alec would trade his cleric’s robes for a sword. Alec, she thought, would never demand such a price as the Slayer had demanded. He was far too honorable for that.
Abbot Gilbert crushed the purple berries in the large marble mortar, heedless of the juice that spurted stains onto his vestments. The beauty of being an abbot was that no one could take him to task for soiling his clerical garb.
At Rievaulx no monk dared question the things that he did or said. Anyone foolish enough to try was shut away in a dark cell, with Horatio visiting in short but painful interludes. These unfortunates rarely survived to speak of the horrors they’d endured.
Gilbert chuckled and reached for one of the glass vials on a shelf above him. Of all the chambers in the abbey, this cellar chamber was the most cluttered and unkempt. He preferred it that way. The lack of order encouraged him to think creatively. As he ground the seeds of the fruit into the pulp, he looked about his cellar herbal with satisfaction.
In addition to the shelves of corked vials, all of them unmarked and known only to him by their smell, the room contained a long table where he performed his masterpieces. On the table were various instruments for heating, mixing, and separating his creations. Squares of parchment were scattered across his work area. Now and then he jotted down the ingredients and quantities of his experiments.
Behind him, crates were stacked as high as the wall. These contained various beasts that snuffled and stirred in continual despair. Their animal odor blended with the herbs’ perfumes. A pair of foxes lived in one box, a pig in another—the gluttonous creature. It had knocked its slop out of the bowl, so that it dribbled through the slats of the crate onto the stone floor.
The smaller boxes held animals ranging from a mouse to a poisonous lizard. These were the recipients of his experiments. Some of them were wounded or ill when they came to him. He had healed a few with his herbal remedies—pure happenstance, he admitted. He had killed the majority.
I will let them go, Gilbert decided with uncharacteristic magnanimity. In truth, their noise intruded on his thoughts so often that he would be better off without them. He uncorked a vial and added a careful drop of anise infusion to his mixture.
He had no use for beasts anymore. He was skilled enough to work with humans. As soon as word of the scourge reached Clairvaux in France, he would dazzle the world by healing his monks. He savored the vision of his acclaim. No longer would he be considered a rustic priest, doomed to obscurity in the fells of Yorkshire. Nay, he would have as much fame or more as his colleague Ethelred. And that little man would finally show him some respect!
The familiar beating of a bird’s wings caused him to drop his pestle and pivot toward the single window. It was just a narrow vent that filtered the sunlight and kept the room in gloomy illumination. In the aperture at level with the ceiling paced a pigeon, bobbing its iridescent head.
“My clever one!” Gilbert exclaimed, stepping on a stool to reach the sill. “What have you brought me today?” he asked. He reached with stained fingers to free the cord looped over the bird’s neck. From the reed that was strung along the cord, he pulled out a tiny piece of parchment.
Archbishop Thurstan denies interdict at Helmesly, he read. Ethelred comes today to make inquiry.
Gilbert balled the minuscule letter in his fist and hurled it with fury across the cellar room. “Cursed, meddling man!” he railed, bounding off the stool.
Ethelred had once been a brilliant monk at Rievaulx. Several times during his years as a master novice, Gilbert had been tempted to cast him into the Cell of Castigation. But Ethelred was looked upon favorably by Bernard of Clairvaux. The Augustinian leader had encouraged the master novice’s writing to such an extent that Ethelred was released from his rigorous schedule and left alone for hours. Now that he was the Abbot of Revesby, he was Gilbert’s social equal. Was there no such thing as justice in the world?
Gilbert trembled with irrational fear. If the interdict were found to be a fake, then his integrity would be called into question.
Wouldn’t the illness keep Ethelred away? He paced the length of the cramped chamber, then back again. A thought occurred to him that soothed his anxiety.
He could get rid of the meddling Ethelred once and for all! He would explain to Archbishop Thurstan that Ethelred had fallen ill and died of the scourge. He envisioned the little priest chained to the cellar wall. Horatio would force a liquid laced with malignant herbs down his throat, and that would be the end of him.
The abbot smiled outright and rubbed his hands with anticipation. Aye, Ethelred would get what was coming to him. But that did not prevent the matter of the interdict from coming up again.