Ralf winced and moved away.
Thomas put a calming hand on the clerk’s shoulder and whispered, “You were left alone in the apothecary hut. You had searched the shelves and found nothing you could use. What happened next?” The monk waited.
“I heard a voice and knew I must leave or be remembered too well. Then my eye fell on an open jar on the table. When I looked inside, I saw something that might be slipped into wine or ale. If it was the alleged gout treatment, so be it. I knew there was no such thing as a cure and assumed it was like most remedies, harmless in small amounts but upsetting to the humors if taken in larger quantities. Deciding it would have to serve my purpose, I took it and slipped away before anyone returned and caught me. ”
Ralf turned around. “The jar was brown and had an ill-fitting lid?”
Thomas put a finger to his lips and bent his head in the direction of the priest.
Fortunately, the man seemed lost in contemplation of the altar wall.
Renaud winked as if sharing a mutual joke.
Ralf walked to the chamber door, opened it, and briefly spoke to someone outside.
“Did it not say what it was on the jar?” Thomas asked the youth.
“When I got back to our quarters, I read the label but did not know what autumn crocus was,” Renaud wailed. “I assumed it might be a concoction to ease pain like poppy juice. If I used just a bit, I thought it would cause enough malaise that Jean would fear he suffered a mortal ailment.”
Conan looked disgusted. “So out of ignorance and lust for position, he killed a man,” he muttered.
Renaud shifted to stare at the guard captain, his mouth twisted into the rictus of a dead man’s grin. “You, a man of the world, claim to know the justice of an act better than a man devoted to God?”
With a supreme act of will, Thomas kept himself from rebuking the youth for rank discourtesy. That was, after all, only a comment Renaud might have learned from his master. But the youth was quickly losing touch with reason. He was not willfully evil, and the monk decided to let the remark pass without comment.
Unfortunately, Conan laughed
Renaud twisted in his bindings and howled as he flung curses on the guard captain. If the monk had had any doubts left about the clerk’s sanity, seeing this would have erased them.
“Stop this blasphemy!” Davoir rushed back from his prie-dieu, one fist raised, not at Renaud, but at Conan.
Thomas rose.
The clerk was now screaming words that were not in any language known to men.
Skidding to a stop and pointing to Renaud, the priest shouted, “He is talking to the Evil One!”
“Father, I must have peace to finish the few questions I have left,” the monk said, then turned to Conan. “Both the priest and the crowner wish to understand what has happened here. Both have sworn to remain silent until I have gotten the tale from Renaud. I ask the same courtesy of silence from you. When I am done, all of you may pose your particular questions.”
“You will learn nothing,” growled the priest. “He is lost in hellish gibberish.”
Ralf gestured to Conan.
The guard captain’s lips curled into a sneer, but he swore to obey the monk’s request and walked to join the crowner at the entrance door.
Renaud had ceased howling and began again to weep like a little boy with a scraped knee.
Davoir waved his hand at Thomas. “You do reach above your authority in this matter, and I am showing remarkable tolerance only out of deference to your prioress.”
Thomas bowed his head. “You show a saintly patience, Father. I am humbled by your example.” Not wishing to waste more time humoring the man, the monk quickly knelt at the clerk’s side.
Renaud’s eyes were tightly closed, and he repeatedly muttered, “I did not know I was killing him. I swear I did not know.”
“But when Jean died, you hoped to take his place.” The monk’s voice was as soft as a feather.
The clerk’s body jerked like one suffering a seizure. “Father Etienne mocked me! After I had risked my life to protect him, he told me that I could never replace his beloved Jean, that he had planned and still planned to dismiss me!” He began to strike his head on the floor. “Tell me where my reward is. The master is no master. He was sent by the Devil to torment me! Was it not right that I send him back to Hell like I sent Jean?”
Thomas grabbed the clerk before he reopened the wound in his head.
Renaud tried to bite him.
Ralf shouted at the priest. “If he is your creature, take responsibility for him!”
Stepping back in horror, Davoir cried out, “But he is possessed! His demon will attack us!”
“Pray?” Conan called out from the doorway. “Isn’t that your chosen weapon?”
Suddenly, Renaud collapsed into Thomas’ arms. “I didn’t want to kill Jean! But he has come back as a damned soul to torment me. I saw him in the courtyard before he struck me down. I was sure his soul was cleansed before he died. I tried to tell him that. I did not mean to condemn him, but something went wrong.” The clerk began to squirm in agony. “He is in Hell, and it is my fault!”
Thomas looked up at the trembling priest. “We have a confession from Renaud that he did kill your clerk, although I doubt there was any clear intent or malice in it. I witnessed his attempt to murder you. There was no accomplice. Tonight proves Sister Anne is innocent of all wrong, and we may free her and use that cell for Renaud.”
The clerk began to scream that Jean was in the room and wearing a fiendish tail.
“Send for clerks from the monks? quarters,” Davoir said, his voice hoarse with terror.
“I have just done so,” Ralf replied.
“And agree to Sister Anne’s release,” Thomas added before the crowner had a chance to demand it.
Swallowing what must have been bitter bile, Davoir agreed.
Renaud went limp in his restraints and wept like a whipped child.
“Are there any more questions?” Thomas asked. “Quickly, if you do, and be brief. His wits are fleeing.”
“I shall ask mine when the Evil One is beaten out of his body,” Davoir said.
“One,” Ralf said. “Who was Brother Imbert?”
The monk bent over the wretched clerk and asked.
“I made him up,” Renaud mumbled, then grinned as his eyes again grew unfocused. “Wasn’t I clever?”
Thomas frowned. “You have said it was Jean who struck you down. Was it only…?”
Renaud twisted his head around and screamed, “It was Jean! I saw his spirit in the shadows, waving his arms and howling that he had come from Hell.” The clerk began to foam at the mouth. “Ask him yourself! The hellish minion is there, standing by his priest!”
Conan looked uneasily at Davoir, shook his head, and then shrugged at the crowner.
Ralf raised an eyebrow at the monk.
“If Renaud truly believed he saw the ghost of his fellow clerk coming for vengeance,” Thomas said, “he might have fainted from shock and struck his head on the stones of the path. That might have caused the wound.”
The two men nodded.
Thomas was not convinced by his own argument, but he decided that the cause of the injury no longer mattered as much as he once thought it might.
In the distance, the church bell sounded for the morning Office. The men dutifully bowed their heads, but the call to prayer brought little peace to any and most certainly none to the guilty one who now lay still in a pool of his own urine.
Chapter Thirty-three
After that early morning prayer, Father Etienne reluctantly swore to his agreement that the sub-infirmarian be released, and Ralf left to take the news to Prioress Eleanor. Even faced with the indisputable fact of her innocence, the priest struggled against the truth. “Surely,” he had muttered, “the woman is guilty of something.”