Nor are men seeking coin or jewels prone to violating their victims, Thomas remembered with a wince.
No, Thomas was convinced that Brother Rupert was not the victim of lawless men; however, he might have been the victim of someone who wanted his death to look like the suicide of a monk overwhelmed with guilt over lust.
He shifted his weight against the pillar and watched the novice master demonstrating to one boy how a short passage should sound. The man had a pleasing voice, he thought.
“So why carry him into the nuns’ cloister?” he muttered under his breath. Why not just leave the man where he had been killed? And how could the murderer fail to notice that the genitals were in the wrong hand but still have the composure to change the dead monk’s clothes? And what was the intent of the murderer? There were just too many questions.
Thomas scratched the bristling hair in his tonsure. It would need shaving again soon. “The man must have known that his attempts to disguise the murder as a suicide were rudimentary at best. How stupid did he think we all are here?” He looked up nervously, hoping his words had not been overheard, then fell back to silent thought.
He…well, it must have been a man surely. A woman could never castrate a man, even after death. Surely, women were too delicate. The young ones, anyway. Thomas gave a mirthless snort. The lasses he had known in his old life might have been too delicate. He wasn’t so sure about these nuns.
Sister Anne, for one, was as tall as many men. She had shown no timidity about examining the dead monk, nor had she shown any hesitancy about looking at his horrible wounds. No man, himself included, could have looked upon that brutal mutilation with the calm detachment she had shown. A strange woman indeed, Thomas thought, as strange in her way as Brother John was in his. Had she been plump with age and gray-haired like several of the female servants he had known in his father’s house, he would have had no difficulty imagining her indifference over a man’s body, but Sister Anne was neither beyond the child-bearing age nor had she gray hair. Her reaction was not womanly, not natural. Could she have killed the monk?
Nay, he thought with a smile. Despite her odd manner, he liked Sister Anne. He felt no evil or anger in her, only compassion and a sorrow with which he felt a certain kinship.
Then there was Prioress Eleanor. He could probably eliminate her as a suspect because she was as new to Tyndal as he was. Besides, she was far too little to stab a man in the heart, unless she was standing on a stool to do it. The image of the small religious leaping upon a bench and flailing away with a knife too big for her two tiny hands even to grasp made him grin in spite of himself.
No, he couldn’t see the prioress killing a man, whatever his frailty or age. She might be capable of poisoning, he thought grimly, but she didn’t have the heft to wield a man’s weapon. Nor did he think she would castrate a man. Despite her religious profession, there was an earthly side to the prioress. He suspected she might not only enjoy the company of a man but might also prefer his manhood to be quite functional. In fact, he wondered how well she kept her vow of chastity. Thomas laughed quietly. If she was looking to lose her virginity at Tyndal, she was in the wrong place. The monks he had met here were too old, too disinclined, or too frightened by women to satisfy any such lusty inclinations. Brother Simeon might be the exception, but that one was far too ambitious to damage his chances for advancement by having an affair with the prioress of a minor house like this.
As a female suspect, Thomas rather fancied Sister Ruth. He disliked the gruff woman. She was exactly the type he preferred to find locked safely away behind the stone walls of a convent, but he doubted even she would have killed Brother Rupert. Perhaps the aged monk had been a threat to the chastity of young nuns when he too had been a youth, but the good priest was far too old to be of interest or danger to any woman at the time of his murder.
Could Sister Christina have done it? No, that one was bound for sainthood if he was any judge.
***
Brother John was finished running each of the novices, separately and in groups, through the segments of the chant that needed polishing. They were ready to start again. Thomas looked at the novices and back at the monk, then shook his head. The poignant vision of Brother John with the young man in the chapel would not leave him. If I were a wagering man, Thomas thought, I’d say this monk was a bit too fond of boys.
When the chant began, the beauty of the voices excelled anything Thomas had ever heard before and drove the more earthy thoughts from his head. With a soft cry of mixed pain and joy, he slipped slowly down on his knees to the chapel floor as tears flowed inexplicably down his cheeks. If he had just heard the voice of God, he could not have felt more awe.
And had tears not blinded Thomas, he might have looked up to see Brother John turn and gaze at him with a slight smile and widening green eyes.
Chapter Twenty
Gytha had just finished tossing out the old rush mats and was sweeping the floor in preparation for laying fresh ones when there was a knock at the door of the private chambers. She stopped in mid-sweep, rested against the broom, and looked over at her mistress.
“Enter!” the prioress called out from her chair, her foot still propped and wrapped.
“My lord Prior begs an audience, my lady.” Sister Ruth entered, and, as she glanced down at her prioress, her face curdled into puckers of disapproval.
Eleanor looked up in surprise. The purpose of the prior’s visit momentarily escaped her. She knew she had planned to spend this day in comparative quiet. The sprain was a bad one, and Sister Anne had ordered her to avoid the long, narrow steps into the cloister until the ankle was stronger. Gytha had even spent the night in her mistress’s chambers, rather than returning to the village as she usually did, in case Eleanor needed assistance.
That quiet day had included some plans the sub-infirmarian would have forbidden, had the prioress mentioned them. Eleanor hoped to talk to Sister Matilda about her mushroom hunting forays during her kitchen days, and she thought she might also walk to the chapel for daily prayers with the assistance of Gytha. Other than that, however, she had decided to listen to Sister Anne. If nothing else, obeying the sub-infirmarian in part would allow her an hour to indulge in reading from the copy of Wace’s Geste de Bretons which her aunt had loaned her from Amesbury. That book might have been the cause of Sister Ruth’s scowl this time. Or not. Eleanor shrugged. The nun never seemed to view anything Eleanor did with any approval.
“Of course,” she said, closing the book carefully so it lay flat on the lectern shelf in front of her. “Why is he here?”
“He didn’t say and I didn’t ask, my lady.” Sister Ruth sniffed.
Gytha rested the broom against the wall and sprinted over to the corridor door, opening it just enough to stick her head out. Sister Ruth closed her eyes in utter disgust.
“He has that big monk with him,” Gytha said, puffing out her cheeks and patting her stomach. “And Brother Andrew, the tiny one, is behind, lugging a box and rolls of something under his arms. The rolls are dropping and rolling around in the corridor, and he’s running back and forth after them. The big monk is just standing there and not doing anything. Does that help?”
“Do not make fun of others, child. It isn’t kind.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“At least I now remember why they are here. Please let them into the parlor before poor Brother Andrew exhausts himself. Some wine for our guests, perhaps slightly more for our Brother Andrew after his heavy work, and then I shall attend them.” Eleanor winked at the girl, who smiled broadly.