‘It is,’ Helewise agreed. ‘We shall say a mass for her soul.’
‘I do not think-’ de Gifford began. Then, abruptly breaking off, he bowed briefly and murmured, ‘A charitable thought.’
‘Go on, now,’ Josse urged. ‘Father Micah brought about this Frieda’s downfall. What else?’
‘He was also responsible for the imprisonment of the two men, and he was beside himself in his rage when he learned that they had escaped. He went through that village with the force of an attack of the pestilence, cursing them for their evil ways, telling them that they were Satan’s own and in league with the Evil One, that they should have kept their accursed eyes open and prevented two of the devil’s minions from escaping.’
‘If the villagers were Satan’s own and the prisoners were his minions, then they were on the same side and it’s no wonder the men were allowed to escape,’ Josse observed.
‘Quite so,’ de Gifford agreed. ‘But then Father Micah was never strong on logical thought, especially when he was in a thundering rage and about God’s work.’
‘You speak of a priest,’ Helewise said coldly. ‘Whatever his faults, Father Micah did his duty to God as he saw it. His methods should not be open to the criticism of ordinary people.’
‘No?’ De Gifford’s tone was soft. ‘Well, my lady, if you will excuse me, I must disagree. The Father’s methods included burning down the houses of those he suspected of contravening the Church’s edicts, and he did not care whether the inhabitants were inside or not. He also confiscated the meagre food of the poor in order to ensure that they fasted when he ordered them to, and he had been known to beat a man so badly that the poor fellow never worked again. That man had five children.’
Helewise opened her mouth, found she had nothing to say and closed it again.
De Gifford turned to Josse. ‘You spoke just now of a little boy in the village who was terrified of the black man, Sir Josse,’ he said. ‘Did you have any idea who he meant?’
‘I wondered if some friend of the prisoners had got them out,’ Josse said, ‘and I thought that he might have been foreign, like them, perhaps from the lands of the distant south and with a black skin.’
De Gifford smiled, shaking his head. ‘Fanciful but inaccurate,’ he said. ‘The Black Man has become known to quite a lot of folk around here by now. He was feared wherever he went because he had a violent temper and he descended on the poor and the weak like a fury against which they were powerless.’
He looked from Josse to Helewise, making sure he had her full attention. Then, once more addressing Josse, he said, ‘The Black Man is what they called Father Micah.’
While the Abbess, de Gifford and Josse were preoccupied with the drama of the Sheriff ’s account, Sister Phillipa sat by herself in the small, peaceful room that housed the manuscripts. She had been steadily working through the precious documents on and off for the last three days, slipping away to her pleasant and undemanding task whenever she was not required for other duties. To begin with, Sister Bernadine had helped her, but the two women had found that checking each script off against the inventory and inspecting it for damage was a job that one person could perform quite well alone. Sister Bernadine appeared to find the task stressful; Sister Phillipa guessed that she went in constant fear of discovering that something valuable had been stolen and of the punishment she might receive for her carelessness if this were so. The younger nun had kindly offered to proceed with the inventory alone, and Sister Bernadine gratefully accepted.
‘But I must know if you find — if you find-’ She had been unable to put the cause of her distress into words.
‘If I discover that anything at all is missing or damaged, then I shall report first to you,’ Sister Phillipa promised.
To her surprise, tears had welled up in Sister Bernadine’s eyes. She had muttered something about Sister Phillipa being a good, kind girl, then hurried away.
Now, the only slight drawback to the work was that it kept Sister Phillipa from her herbal. At first she had itched to return to her painting and her lettering; they were deeply absorbing in themselves but, in addition, there was the thrill of the new knowledge of herbs and their uses that she was learning from Sister Tiphaine and Sister Euphemia. Both nuns were natural and gifted teachers and, even when very busy in their own departments, always strove diligently to make quite sure that Sister Phillipa understood exactly what they were telling her and would not make a mistake. However, regret for time lost for her herbal had gradually faded; as she had thrown herself into her careful examination of the Abbey’s precious manuscripts, she had soon realised that this task in fact provided a lucky and perfectly timed opportunity for her to study the work of some of England’s greatest artists and craftsmen.
This morning she was so happy that she hummed softly as she worked.
She found it just before the summons to Sext called her away.
She had been staring intently at a page in a glossed Bible; the page had an extract from the Book of Leviticus and the writing hand was so beautiful, so even, that it quite took Sister Phillipa’s breath away. Putting it carefully back — I have a job to do, she reminded herself, and I ought not to waste time in rapture over another’s fine penmanship — she noticed something bright lying on the base of the book chest.
It was pure chance that the small patch of colour caught her eye. Had she not had to push two scripts carefully aside to make room for the Bible pages, it would have remained hidden. She took out several scripts and placed them carefully on the floor. Now, in the much larger gap that she had made, she could see that another document had been placed on the floor of the chest. Once all the other scripts had been replaced upright on top of it, it had been totally hidden.
Now what, she wondered, removing the script, is this doing down there?
She studied it. The letters appeared to make words, but she did not know what they were. They were not in Latin nor, she thought, in Greek. Leaving aside the writing for a moment, she looked at the first page of illustrations.
She realised instantly that they were like nothing she had ever seen before. There was a wonderfully vivid, affecting little painting of a group of people with their hands held aloft and their ecstatic faces raised to the sky, out of which there shone a fiery sun with orange, yellow and gold rays. There were strange animals gambolling around the people, arranged like a sort of living frieze. Sister Phillipa did not recognise any of the beasts; she wondered if they might be symbolic, like the winged lion representing St Mark and the eagle St John, but of whom or what she did not know.
The second illustration was of a golden, bejewelled cross. But it did not look like the familiar cross that Sister Phillipa knew and loved; there was something strange about it, something unfamiliar. Getting up, she went to check on the inventory to see what this alien document might be.
There was no mention of it.
She read through the inventory again, but the strange manuscript was not on it.
In a flash of insight Sister Phillipa realised what had happened. She called to mind why she was doing this exacting task: she was meant to be checking whether or not anything was missing from the chest or the cupboard. So far — and she had almost finished — nothing was. None of the manuscripts had been taken.
Instead, one had been added.
Josse walked with de Gifford out to where Sister Martha was looking after the Sheriff ’s horse. They had stayed only a little longer with the Abbess. Josse had perceived her struggle between standing up for Father Micah because he was a man of the Church and joining in with their condemnation because he was also cruel, perverted, narrow-minded and took advantage of the weak and the powerless, and he had opted for a swift departure so as not to prolong her suffering.
‘She’s a good woman,’ Josse said when they were out of earshot of the few people out and about in the Abbey on that chilly morning. ‘She has-’