The most troubling fantasy came later. Again he had dreamed that he had opened his eyes. And, again, all was dark. He could hear only the steady or irregular breathing of the other sick and wounded. This time there were no candles or ghostly figures, but he did hear a soft rustling. A mouse or rat, he remembered thinking, and closed his eyes. At that moment, he felt a presence next to him, the movement of a garment against his arm, and the sound of breathing above him.
Instinctively, he kept his eyes shut and waited, wary but oddly not unnerved by the quiet figure. It was a man, he was sure. He could smell his sweat, an acrid scent, not the sweetish, sometimes metallic smell of a woman.
The man did nothing. He just stood there. Then, with a stroke as soft as a feather brushing against his face, he touched Thomas. A lay brother perhaps, he thought, tensing ever so slightly. Someone checking for the dead amongst the quick? Then the robe swept across his arm once again as the man turned and moved away. He heard the man’s feet crush the floor rushes with that whishing, rodent-like noise he had heard before.
Thomas opened his eyes. He would have sworn that the bulky shadow moving away from him was Brother Simeon, but as he fell back into a profound sleep that lasted until the morning bells for prayer, he decided he must surely be mistaken.
Chapter Seventeen
Ralf the Crowner had been the first to leave, shaking his head with frustration over this additional complication and at the unexpectedly slow pace of his investigation into Brother Rupert’s murder. As he marched down the length of the hospital, he had muttered curses at himself, and the young lay sister accompanying him must surely have blushed at some of the things she overheard.
Soon after, Anne returned to her treatment of the earthly pains of mortal bodies while Sister Christina soothed whatever ailed the trembling souls of those seeking to be healed at Tyndal. Thomas was left under strict orders to do nothing more strenuous than wander in the safety of the monks’ cloister gardens.
Eleanor went back to her chambers and was grateful to be alone at last. Picking up the orange cat, she sat staring at the tapestry of Mary Magdalene with Jesus.
“I am furious with myself,” she muttered. “I was harsh to the wounded brother, not because of his lies, although I might have had the right in that, but out of fear of my own frailty. In that, I was wrong.” Tears stung her eyes. To keep herself from one sin, she had committed another. Indeed, she had longed to reach out to soothe his pain with gentle caress, not only to comfort him but also to satisfy her own hunger to touch him.
The previous night she had slept little, and, when she had, the dreams were so violent she had awakened, sweating in terror. Some of her night horrors were about Thomas. The attack on him had frightened her, and not beyond reason, but it were not the sole cause.
“There is a brutal and twisted wickedness loose, not just in the world outside Tyndal’s walls but, I fear, within the priory itself,” she said aloud, looking down at the contented bundle of fur on her lap. “Evil in some form has invaded this house dedicated to peace and to God.”
And that house was her house. Ultimately, it was her responsibility to protect everyone within these walls, and she was failing.
“Against my better judgement, I have allowed myself the same easy comfort I have encouraged amongst the brothers and sisters here. For cert, I may hope Brother Rupert’s murder was a chance thing and the murderer some common outlaw, but for the safety of us all, I may not assume it.”
She shifted. Arthur, the cat, looked up at her and expressed a mild complaint. “Hush, sweet one. I have recovered my wits.” She smiled as he resettled in her lap. “When I awoke from my nightmares in the harsh green moonlight of the midnight hour, a manly reason did prevail over my weaker self.”
Eleanor looked away from the tapestry and toward the window that looked down on the priory grounds. “No purposeless killer would drag a body, not only into the outer court of the priory grounds but further into the walled nuns’ quarters. That had to have been a deliberate act, meant to send a specific message, and thus most likely the murderer has a close connection with Tyndal.”
Was the slayer a monk? Was he a lay brother? Could it have even been a woman? Perhaps one of the village people who used the mill or had other commerce with the priory and knew their habits well? The idea that any religious would do such a thing to another was not beyond her comprehension, but she prayed it would not be so. Besides, what could an old man like Brother Rupert do to anyone in this priory, or what would he know, for that matter, that would make that person choose murder to quiet him? A murder, moreover, committed in such a horrible way? There were few sins so abhorrent that confession would not remove both the shame and the sin. Monks knew that best of all. Or should. Surely the killer was from outside the priory, perhaps the village. Surely from the village.
“Then there is the attack on Brother Thomas,” she said, rubbing the cat’s forehead. “The crowner suggested that the killer of one monk might be the attacker of yet another. Thus the reasons for the more heinous crime become twisted and complex. No, this is no easily caught, ordinary malefactor. This is someone with the cleverness of Satan himself.” She hesitated. “However, even the Prince of Darkness did not escape punishment for his defiance of God’s supremacy. Neither will the killer of Brother Rupert,” she said emphatically. Like her nuns and monks, she, too, had to believe that God would render justice, whatever form it might take. To believe otherwise was heresy. And madness.
“The crowner continues to be thwarted by lack of evidence, however, and Brother Thomas is still not telling the truth.” She had no good reason for thinking the latter, none that any man would find reasonable, but her instincts knew well what those little twitches in his face meant after his long pause and the quick glance to the side before he began his new tale. Some of his most recent story might be true. He had been found in a clearing near where the large stream ran toward the priory, and most certainly he had been struck from behind.
“Nay, I do not believe his tale of the need for a walk any more than the call of nature story, but for whatever reason he left the priory, he must have seen something he wasn’t meant to see. Did he accidentally walk to a place he shouldn’t have been, at a time he shouldn’t have been there? Could the reason he left the priory grounds be related to why he was attacked? In that case, who or what was he protecting?” She shook her head in puzzlement. Surely a man so new to Tyndal could not have formed such strong bonds of loyalty so soon with anyone.
“Perhaps he strayed into something similar to what Brother Rupert encountered? Not quite the same thing or he would have been killed, of course, but near enough to merit a warning?” Eleanor mused aloud as she looked down at the curled creature now sleeping in her lap. “He was struck in a clearing in the forest at night. Might he have ventured too near the meeting place of evil spirits?” She rubbed her weary eyes. Although she had no doubt that evil spirits existed and often lurked at night, she had never personally known any that did not come in a very earthly form. No, if Thomas had trespassed on land claimed by agents of evil, they were human ones.
She stood up and gently lowered the cat to the ground. Arthur had left a fine layer of orange hair on the skirt of her habit. Briefly, she brushed at it. What little she dislodged floated down and reattached to her hem.