“Do most think either is guilty?”
“No one does, except our crowner. Why should they have killed Martin? The blacksmiths and the cooper have been like brothers since they were all lads.”
“And Ivetta, their sister,” Tibia muttered, her eyes glowing with anger. “Incestuous whore!”
“Well, she is dead in any case, and Will is gone. If he has any sense, he is on the road to the west. Of those our Ralf thinks guilty of murder, only Hob and I remain. I think he prefers me to Hob in this.”
“Why?”
“Because the weapon was poison, a woman’s instrument according to the crowner.”
“Most of the women in the village could poison a man if they wished. It’s a poor wife that doesn’t keep a good herb garden well tended for her family’s ills. There’s no reason for our crowner to set his mind on you in particular.” Tibia shook her head as color began to fade from her cheeks again. “Methinks no one will be arrested for murdering either Martin or Ivetta.”
Signy raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Satan owned their souls. If the crowner wants an arrest, he better try to set his chains on the Evil One for ‘twas the Fiend that called them to Hell.”
“Surely a mortal hand helped?”
Tibia lurched forward, groaning with a spasm of pain.
Signy cried out as she reached out to comfort the woman. “Please! Someone find Brother Thomas and tell him that old Tibia desperately needs his potion!” she shouted to a nearby table of men.
The herb woman began to cry out with agonized moans.
A young man rushed to help. Another ran from the inn in the direction of the priory.
“Carry her back to her hut,” Signy begged.
The man nodded, then carefully lifted the trembling old woman into his arms and took her home.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“I have failed,” Eleanor muttered. As the prioress walked back to her chambers, she was oblivious to the lush perfume of summer that drifted gently around her. Instead, her soul was heavy with thoughts of murder and disgust at her own imperfections.
Juliana’s cries of pain were still fresh in her ears. When Eleanor heard the source of her anguish, she had comforted her old friend but quickly left so Brother John could offer God’s consolation. The moment the door to the anchorage closed, Eleanor had fled out of fear that she might contaminate this wounded soul with her own foulness. Was she herself not guilty enough in this matter?
The good brother she had left behind was her confessor as well, to whom she would admit her worldly errors in due course, but now she needed time alone to let God know how much she understood her failings.
In fact, the anchoress had done little wrong. Eleanor herself often begged audience with God and listened with blank mind and in silence until she felt, more than heard, His voice. In this, Juliana’s advice to those who sought her out held no error. Where the woman may have failed was in not recognizing a killer seeking justification for revenge.
Could anyone else have seen the evil? Would she have done so any more than Juliana, a woman who feared the world and longed only to escape from it? On the other side of the argument, a reasonable person might say that a holy woman should have read the sinner’s heart even if a lesser mortal was incapable of it. Eleanor frowned, then dismissed the latter thought.
Others might cast blame on Juliana, but the prioress of Tyndal could not. Neither she nor the village was worthy to determine the blessedness of any other mortal. Meanwhile, all she could feel for the anchoress was compassion. Even though Juliana might continue to bring trouble to the priory, her questionable ways likely to invite criticism from those with Sister Ruth’s cast of mind, Eleanor knew her old friend well.
No matter how changed, Juliana was still the girl she had met as a child, a person with a kind heart who bore the world no malice even if she wanted nothing to do with it. Yet to atone for her one act of cruelty, God must have decided that Juliana should provide solace to many pilgrims filled with much grief and many sins. That would most certainly be a hard penance for the anchoress to bear.
Nay, the prioress thought, she had no cause to condemn the anchoress. Had she herself not been so concerned with the worldly reputation of Tyndal, she might have heard the begging in Juliana’s voice when she confronted her just yesterday. If she had not been driven mad with jealousy over Brother Thomas’ visit to her old friend, she might have listened instead of interrupting when the anchoress tried to tell her about the murderer’s visit to the anchorage window. Although Eleanor had never used the whip on her back, this was one time she felt she merited that extreme penance.
But who was the murderer? Juliana knew only that the voice belonged to a woman. That would eliminate both Will and Hob from the list of suspects. Since Ivetta was dead, surely she was innocent as well.
Or was she? Had the prostitute killed Martin, only to be poisoned by someone else as revenge? If Signy’s story was true about Martin’s methods of seduction, more than a few women in the village might have killed him-and killed Ivetta out of anger, jealousy, or even spite. After all, if a prioress dedicated to the pursuit of God’s perfection could grow enraged when her monk chastely sought the company of an anchoress, any other mortal should be more easily blinded by evil.
Eleanor shook her head with frustration. “There must be some clue that would solve this crime,” she said. “Why am I failing to see it? Why does my logic keep circling with such futility?”
Not wanting to go back just yet to her chambers, she turned into the cloister garth and began to pace amongst the flowers of the gardens. What had Gytha told her about the women rumored to have visited the anchoress for advice? Who amongst them might be the killer?
“I must look at each with dispassion. Surely logic may discount several as possible suspects, either because they or their kin have no obvious or serious quarrel with Martin. Try as I might,” she continued with a wry smile, “I cannot see that the baker’s wife would poison the man because her husband’s bread had not risen for three days after the cooper tried to put his hand up her dress. Would the fishwife do so after Martin jested about her husband’s infidelity? Perhaps, if she were not grateful he did bed others so she did not have to pay any marriage debt.”
Martin had enough enemies, but she did think Ralf was right in his conclusions. Most men would have settled any quarrel with the man by a blow. Some already had. Many women would have found brothers or husbands willing enough to retaliate on their behalf for any insult or wicked jest. The number of suspects was now considerably reduced to a woman who had no such man to strike a good blow for her and must seek revenge in another way.
Ralf had initially preferred Ivetta as logical choice for the killer. After her death, he assumed she had committed self-murder out of guilt. Eleanor never did agree with either conclusion. Was she wrong?
“Ivetta discovered she was with child,” the prioress said as she settled down on the stone bench she had earlier shared with Brother John. “True or not, she believed the father was Martin. Yet surely she had quickened before now with his seed, as well as others, and most likely had sought remedy to hasten the ending to any pregnancy. Why would she choose not to do so now?”
Ralf suggested she might have thought the cooper would marry her, Eleanor thought. Whether or not Martin had said anything in fact about this, the important point was that Ivetta might have thought he did or ought to have done so.
Had he mocked her for thinking he would marry a woman he had sold to others? Did she then poison him in hurt anger and soon after attempt a fatal abortion? Brother Thomas was right, as Sister Anne confirmed, that many women were aware that yew was a most effective poison. Mothers even warned their children not to climb the tree out of a fear of it.