Love? Ah, what a glorious but foolish thing it was, the novice mistress thought, turning her eyes toward a certain young monk nearby. Brother Thomas was a handsome man for cert, and she understood quite well why her niece had fallen in love with him. Were I in the first heat of my youth, she decided, I might well have done so myself.
Not that Eleanor had yet confided this passion to her, but she had seen the blushes, the averted eyes, and the gaze that shone with adoration when the monk's back was turned. It was a fever she had hoped her niece might be spared, but God seemed to give these burdens to those He deemed most precious.
Several in the Church believed that those who did not twist and groan with Job's afflictions could never be found worthy of Heaven. Indeed, suffering did infuse some with God's more absolute understanding. Others, however, it infected with bitterness, jealousy, and the longing to make happier souls suffer as well. She might hate that her niece was enduring this pain, but she knew Eleanor was not one to grow petty with her affliction.
My dear one is no longer a child, she reminded herself, but that cannot stop me from worrying about her. Although she had full confidence that Eleanor was sincere in her vows, she wondered whether this handsome monk felt quite the same about his.
When Sayer had come that night to warn her that the Amesbury Psalter might be stolen, she had alerted Prioress Ida, who relayed the message on to Church authorities. They had promised to protect the holy object and even capture the thief, but no one had come until Brother Thomas arrived with a marked enthusiasm to investigate ghosts. Her niece might have voiced the thought that there could be a link between spirit and theft, but the red-haired monk had concurred with remarkable speed.
She caught herself smiling at this monk who was staring at the earth beneath his feet like a scholar lost in thoughtful debate about the nature of the world. All she had heard from Sister Anne and her own brother suggested he was an honorable man, although one around whom some mystery drifted.
Had his mother been of low birth, seized in the dark staircase of a castle or in the open fields? Or was she a beloved concubine of some rank? In either case, Beatrice knew he must have been sufficiently cherished by a high ranking father, one who could demand placement of an intelligent but bastard son where the boy might rise by the strength of his wits.
Had Thomas come to the cowl with any calling? What ambitions did he now hold, and what would he be willing to do to gain them? To whom might he be bound? Which man's advancement would prove beneficial to his own?
As she looked back across the cemetery of the damned and watched Eleanor walk toward her with Jhone by her side, Beatrice knew she had a duty to perform on behalf of a dead sister-in-law, one who had never seen this beautiful daughter mature into such an incomparable young woman. In addition, she owed it to her own heart that had so joyfully taken on a mother's role.
Thus the novice mistress of Amesbury Priory resolved to learn more about this Thomas of Tyndal, a man with the power to destroy the creature she loved most in the world.