His heart beat with increasing joy. As for the monk, Brother Thomas had been accused of bedding his prioress, information he learned from his informant who had alerted him to Davoir’s journey here. Anything the monk did to look into the clerk’s death would also be deemed questionable. As for the local king’s man, Philippe assumed he would be as ignorant as any other without medical skills when it came to death by something other than a sword or rock.
“God wills it!” Philippe caught himself before he spoke above a dangerous whisper, but his self-assurance was growing rapidly.
With the sub-infirmarian safely locked away, another death would cast more blame on the prioress and perhaps on the monk as well. The resultant commotion would also allow him to escape, or so Philippe hoped. If any subsequent investigation proved all three innocent, so much time would have passed that he would be far away. Why should anyone suspect a poor pilgrim with an injured ankle to have any part in heinous crimes? All he had to do was discover the perfect way to achieve his desire.
He looked back toward the hospital. The darkness was now growing like a malignant shadow. Philippe knew he must return or leave himself open to questions by people who might remember that he had been gone far too long for brief exercise.
Crawling out of his hiding spot, he pretended he had fallen and dragged himself to his feet with appropriate grunts. With the sub-infirmarian gone, others might take her place in the apothecary, but he counted on them being less skilled than Sister Anne and unaccustomed to careful practices with the herbs and poisonous roots. If God truly blessed his efforts, Philippe hoped to slip into the apothecary and steal an especially fine poison to slip into Father Etienne’s food. Although he was no apothecary, he knew enough to recognize monk’s hood and make a lethal dosage.
“My mother taught me well enough,” he muttered with grim appreciation for the woman who had raised him with little love and a much-callused hand. If not monk’s hood, he thought with a smile, he would find something equally deadly.
Carefully limping back down the path to the hospital, completely distracted by his plans for another untimely death, Philippe did not see the person who stepped into the path behind him.
After briefly following the man from Picardy, the shadow stopped to watch until the purported invalid disappeared into the hospital grounds. Then the figure turned back and faded into the darkness.
Satan’s hour had come.
Chapter Fourteen
Gracia hurried to keep up with the long-legged woman who accompanied her to the hospital that next morning.
Although she said she did not need the assistance of Anchoress Juliana’s servant to get the information, Gracia suspected that Prioress Eleanor was right to involve the woman. Hiding the real purpose of visiting the apothecary with an alleged request from the anchoress was a good stratagem, and Juliana had agreed she might need a toothache cure. “If not now,” the anchoress had said to the prioress, briefly considering whether this qualified as a lie, “then surely someday.”
Nor would anyone question why Gracia had to come with the servant. The woman never spoke, although there was a rumor that she was not mute but stammered so badly she had given up all attempts to speak. The story might be accurate, for the woman bore a scar across her mouth. Pressing hot metal against the lips was a common attempt to cure the affliction.
When the anchoress’ servant visited Sister Anne, the sub-infirmarian understood the signs that the anchoress and her maid used to communicate between them. Their language was mostly gestures often employed by monastics during periods of silence, but some had been devised to meet the special needs of the anchorage. Because of the differences, others had not learned to read the meanings. Some did not want to.
Many, including a few who worked in the hospital, found the silent woman unsettling and avoided her when they saw her coming. Had she not served the unquestionably holy anchoress, they might have whispered that the Prince of Darkness lived inside her and that was why she was unable to utter words. Knowing that some villagers had already concluded this and that marriage for their daughter would be out of the question, her parents were grateful that the priory took her to serve the anchoress, a duty that seemed to please the daughter well.
The servant looked behind her and slowed her pace, realizing that Gracia’s legs were not as long as hers. Smiling at the young girl, she stopped and waited.
Although there were several years between their ages, they both lived on the edge of acceptance in a world that feared the different and deemed it evil. A growing sense of affinity was developing between the abused orphan girl, too knowing for her years, and the woman whose unsettling eyes, the color of a winter sky, and lack of speech caused many to sniff the air for the sulphurous reek of hellfire.
The servant took Gracia by the hand and they walked together down the path to the priory hospital.
***
The hospital was a formidable place, not because of the rough stone walls black with damp, but for the cries and stench that filled it. Most came here to die, comforted by the religious attendants and the symbols of their faith. But for the living, not yet ready to surrender their souls to eternity, the process of dying was a fearful thing, even for the most faithful.
It was not a place where Gracia went often. When she was sent to summon Sister Anne for her mistress, she ran through the aisles lined with the sick. Never once did she stop, as some did, to stare at cancer-eaten faces or other disfigurements suffered by mortals. Sometimes she put her hands over her ears to blunt the moaning and rattling breath. The latter reminded her too much of the sounds her own mother had made as she slipped into death from a fever.
On one occasion, a girl, not much younger than she, grabbed her robe, forcing her to stop. Instead of tearing her robe from the child’s grasp, Gracia knelt by her side and held her hand while the girl fought to pull breath into her useless lungs. After the girl had died, Gracia looked at her own hand and found the palm bloody from the dead girl’s nails. For the first time since her parents had died, Gracia prayed.
As was her wont, Gracia and the anchoress’ servant now hurried down the aisle and past the chapel to the door leading to the apothecary. When they reached the hut, they saw a young nun inside, busily grinding something with mortar and pestle.
Hearing a sound, Sister Oliva looked up, saw the servant with the maid, and smiled. “How may I serve?”
Gracia explained what had been troubling the anchoress.
The servant walked back toward the chapel.
With a mildly curious expression, the young nun watched the woman leave, then walked to the shelves lined with jars, woven baskets, and sealed, glazed bottles. She pulled down a large earthenware container, pried off the wooden stopper, and began to weight out what would be used in the simple cure.
“I am grateful you are here, Sister, but grieve over the burden laid upon you due to the absence of Sister Anne,” Gracia said, gazing at the markings on the stored items. She had just begun to read, a skill for which she found both aptitude and interest, and used every chance to hone her knowledge.
“No one at Tyndal questions her innocence,” Sister Oliva replied, securing the seal back on the jar with a thump of her fist.
Gracia tilted her head and frowned as she pretended not to be able to read the label attached to one woven basket. “Sister, would you mind telling me what that is? I can see a ‘b’ and a ‘k’…”
“That contains blackthorn flowers. As an infusion in wine, it opens the bowels for those who suffer a binding thereof.” She put the jar she had just used back on the shelf, ran her finger along the shelf, and selected another.