In the darkness, he began to distrust what seemed so clear in the earlier daylight. Surely, Sister Ruth had told Simeon about Prioress Felicia’s last words. She told him everything, it seemed, everything in return for praise, the warmth of which must have filled her lonely heart like wine. Had the receiver’s contempt for women saved her life? And Sister Anne’s?
Perhaps the monk thought he could control one woman with flattery and the other with threats to expose some violation of her chastity vow, but Brother John was a man. His word might be given credence. He was a threat.
Thomas felt an uneasy pang of guilt. On the surface, Simeon was a man of the world, rough and jovial, a man he could understand in a world of monks. He had also befriended Thomas, aye, accepted him when he first arrived and understood him well. Simeon, it seemed, had cared for another before he had come to Tyndal and suffered for it too. If the prioress and Sister Anne were horrified at Simeon’s acts of sodomy, how would they feel if they knew of his own? Giles was no youth, but to those in the Church, or in the courts of kings, there was no difference. Indeed he and the receiver had a kinship here. Did he not owe Simeon something for that?
Thomas had hesitated about speaking up when he suspected John and Eadmund of being lovers. Why did he now turn on Simeon? Unlike the receiver, John was a strange man, hard on the outside but soft like a woman on the inside, especially in his dealings with the novices. Had Brother Rupert and Prioress Felicia suspected him, as Thomas had as well, of questionable relations with the boys? Was that what the old prioress had realized as she was dying? That they were wrong about Brother John? He hadn’t wanted to suggest such in front of Sister Anne or Prioress Eleanor. The shock of what Simeon had done was bad enough, but he did not want either of them to start asking if even more monks at Tyndal were guilty of sexual sins as well. With their quick perceptions, they might, in time, begin to look at Thomas himself.
He shuddered.
Nay, there was a great difference between what Simeon had done and what he thought John had, but was he right now about both men? Thomas had trusted what he’d known, distrusted the strange, and did not question his judgement. He did not, that is, until he realized he was beginning to enjoy the world this gray monastic place offered. Indeed, he was starting to understand how a warrior like Andrew might find peace here, a peace that Thomas longed for as well. And then there were the women like Sister Anne and the prioress, creatures he liked but did not desire. Tyndal was a world turned quite upside down from the one he had known. Neither world was perfect, for cert, yet nothing created by men ever was.
Thomas shifted with discomfort.
Simeon. Simeon had told him how gentleness had been battered from him with whips and mockery as a youth, and Thomas had seen the receiver burning to ash whatever had remained with his own anger and hot ambition.
Brother John. The novices respected and loved John, who loved them back with kindness and understanding. He was a tormented man, for cert, who beat all earthly passions into submission whenever the Prince of Darkness tempted him with whatever sins he longed to commit. Did the man love boys? Aye, love was there but Thomas no longer believed it was a dark lust.
There was much about both Thomas still did not comprehend. How could a man who had taken his hand in understanding, albeit in a drunken moment, so brutally kill two others? Might not John be more tortured and thus more likely to commit such a crime? Thomas cursed this doubting. He must be right about what had happened. He must.
Nonetheless, the question of whether or not the murderer was left-handed gnawed at him. If the guilty man was left-handed, John, or someone else, was guilty, Simeon innocent. Perhaps Sister Ruth had been right to cast doubt on Eadmund’s confession. The lad might have yet undiscovered reasons for casting such an accusation at the receiver. Had they all jumped to the wrong conclusions too quickly? Thomas groaned silently. The darkness pressed down on him with…
A faint light fluttered along the sides of the stone walls outside his hiding chamber.
Thomas tensed.
There was no sound at first, and then he heard the soft scraping of shoes on the steps. The light grew brighter.
Thomas held his breath.
For a moment there was absolute silence as the wavering torch flame threw twitching patches of light and black against the walls. Then Thomas heard the clink of a key, and listened as the door to Brother John’s cell swung open.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Wait!”
Thomas stood in the doorway, his hands resting on either side of the door as he pretended to catch his breath.
“What in God’s name are you doing here?” Simeon growled. Brother John was still struggling, but Simeon’s sheer weight and height had overpowered the novice master. The receiver stood, twisting the wiry monk’s hands with one large fist until John cried in agony. With his other, Simeon held a knife to the monk’s throat.
Thomas blinked. The knife was in Simeon’s left hand. “I never noticed you were left-handed, brother,” he said.
Simeon’s laugh was hoarse. “Using my left hand was another reason for my father to beat me. He tied it behind me until I learned to use my right as godly men do. I never quite did so but my writing was serviceable enough.”
Sweat began to drip down Thomas’ chest. “My lord, I came to help you.”
“If this is a trick…”
“Why would I trick you? Didn’t you befriend me when I first came to Tyndal? Didn’t you see that we two, of all men here, would have a special understanding? I knew that you should be the one to run the priory, not the new prioress, that unnatural woman, and I resented her arrogance but could find no way to show you my full loyalty until now.”
Thomas hoped the fluttering light from the torch behind the monk did not deceive him. Simeon seemed to relax his tense grasp of John ever so slightly. Thomas glanced at John’s face but shadows hid any expression, and he did not dare to give him a sign. He continued in hurried but hushed tones. “Brother Rupert did not understand your relationship with Eadmund as I do, did he? He must have…”
“He understood nothing!” Simeon whined like a kicked pup. “I loved the young man like a son, but the Prince of Darkness entered my body and transformed me into a lustful woman whenever I saw Eadmund working in the priory fields. I became blind with desire for him. I was under a spell!”
“And you…”
“…fell to my knees before the lad and asked him, begged him, to come to bed with me. Then I took him to the cave and threatened him, forced him to make me his whore. When he left, I beat myself with my whip and Satan fled. For a while.”
“Did Brother Rupert discover you?”
“Nay, Eadmund’s father did. He came upon us together in the cave, and he ran. Screaming. When I found him later, he swore he’d tell Prioress Felicia or Brother Rupert, but I bought his silence with threats and money. No one would listen to a villein’s word over the Receiver of Tyndal Priory, I said.”
“Why, then, kill Eadnoth?”
“He came to me and said that money was not enough. He had heard in the village that our new prioress would give as much credence to the word of a simple man as to one of better birth.” Simeon’s eyes glittered. “That wayward woman who now leads us would never understand that I was not willfully sinning, brother. She would not care that I might be burned at the stake for what the Devil made my body do!” His last words were spoken in a wail of agony.
Thomas winced. “Indeed, my lord, you are quite right.”
“I had to kill Eadnoth. You see, I had no choice.”
“Aye, I see that, but why kill Brother Rupert?”
“After the old prioress’s death, I saw him leave the priory one day, something he rarely did anymore with his old bones. I followed him. He went to see Eadnoth. I couldn’t hear their words, but Brother Rupert came to me soon after and told me there were rumors about a monk having sinful relations with a young man. He did not accuse me but said that the guilty man should be found out and brought to Church justice. At that time, Sister Ruth was elected prioress. She is a proper woman of good birth, one who knew her place in the world of men and would never believe a villein over me. I felt safe. Then a stranger replaced her, this Eleanor, a woman I did not know. I feared Brother Rupert would tell her tales before I could gain her ear, so I told him I had found the man he sought, that he should meet me by the cave so he could see for himself as the man committed the very sin. When he arrived, I stabbed him and hid his body in the cave until I could safely carry it to the nuns’ cloister. So I would get no blood on me in the transfer, I changed his robes and buried the bloody ones.” Simeon ground his teeth.