A small woman, Eleanor had to stand on her toes and stretch to look over the lilies at the raised beds of healthy medicinal herbs, some still glistening with drops of morning dew. Sister Anne’s ability to coax plants from the dank earth was impressive. As opposed, Eleanor thought with bitter amusement, to Sister Matilda’s abuse of innocent vegetables.
She reached out, gently touched a silky white petal of the Madonna lily where it was lightly marked with gold from the stamens, and pulled her thoughts away from Amesbury and back to her problems at Tyndal.
She knew the priory was having financial difficulties. Prioress Joan of Amesbury had told her so before Eleanor left for her new home. Until she could study the problem in adequate depth and make more far-reaching plans to regain solvency, one of her first undertakings had to be a review of the assignments of tasks within the priory to make sure that Tyndal at least was run as efficiently as possible. So far, Eleanor had been amazed at Prioress Felicia’s reasoning behind matching nun to occupation. The former prioress’s decisions appeared arbitrary and without merit, at least on the surface. Talent for the task did not seem to have weighed with the old prioress, Eleanor thought, as she reviewed the responsibilities assigned to the Sisters Christina, Edith and Matilda, in particular.
She had to be careful not to change things quickly, and not to change anything without understanding why the previous decision had been made. Prioress Felicia had been revered. Eleanor was not. However efficient changes might be, she knew they had to be done slowly and with diplomatic skill. Any changes made without full agreement of the community would be undermined out of sheer resentment, and Eleanor was painfully aware of both her inexperience and youth compared to her predecessor. She would and must show due respect to the former prioress.
It was regrettable that she could not turn to Prior Theobald for advice and insights. He had been in charge of the monks and lay brothers at Tyndal for many years and would have been a logical mentor for her. However, after Sister Beatrice had consulted with one of her vast number of knowledgeable contacts, she had warned Eleanor against him. The prior, it seemed, was a man uncomfortable with detail, one who avoided the effort of well-considered decisions and left the day-to-day work to others. Thus he rarely knew what was happening amongst those he supposedly oversaw. Instead, her aunt had advised her to seek out Brother Rupert, a man known to be quiet but competent and who had worked closely with the former prioress.
At their initial meeting, Eleanor had gained some valuable insights into the priory overall, but she needed to question Brother Rupert in detail about much. The good brother had still not appeared, a perplexing failure that filled her with a growing concern. She closed her eyes against the tender beauty of the gardens and turned back to her quarters. She must find him without further delay.
As Eleanor walked back along the pathway between stream and gardens to the narrow passageway leading into the vine-covered trellised arches and flower-lined paths of the cloister garth, she tucked her hands into her sleeves for warmth against the sea breeze and bowed her head. Mentally, she started a list of the most pressing questions she had for the monk.
As she emerged from the walkway, however, something caught her eye. Eleanor stopped in shock. Near the fountain, a very tall nun knelt in the grass. Half-lying on the ground in front of her was a man in monk’s garb. With one arm she embraced his shoulders, holding him close to her body. Her chin rested on the top of his head and she caressed his neck with great tenderness. Eleanor could not see the man’s face.
“Sister!”
Sister Anne gently lowered the man to the ground and rose. As the woman turned to face her, Eleanor noted the dark streaks on the arms of her habit, the stains of grass and damp earth about her knees, and the tears streaming down the cheeks of the habitually sad nun.
“My lady,” Sister Anne said, her voice shaking, “Brother Rupert is dead.”
Chapter Five
Giles rode away. Thomas stood in the dark shadow of the priory walls; his hand raised to ring the gate bell; his back turned from the road. He knew there would be no backward glance from the rider, only a swirl of dust kicked up by the horses’ hooves.
Brother Thomas, as he now must call himself, pressed a hand against his chest. Pains of longing and grief stabbed equally and unmercifully at him. Both the lack and the loss of loved ones were all too familiar to him, yet he had never been able to inure himself to either.
Thomas was a by-blow. His servant mother had died of some fever soon after his birth. His father, an earl, had taken him up, tossed him into the arms of a wet nurse, fed and clothed him with some decency, and then mostly forgot about the boy as he habitually dismissed all his offspring, whatever their legitimacy. In both war and bed, the earl was a man of passionate action. Consequences merited a more limited interest.
The earl’s presence in Thomas’ life was just frequent enough, however, that the boy could neither forget nor ignore him, and he longed for his father’s rare attention and even more infrequent praise. Thus the lad searched out the men most favored in the earl’s circle and began to study how they spoke, stood, and gestured, so that he too might catch his father’s eye and approval. This may have started as a boy’s desperate attempt at attention, but Thomas soon developed a talent for shadowing older men, eavesdropping on their bragging tales, and watching them do the things men do when they do not know they are being watched. And with the precocious intelligence of a parentless child, he quickly figured out the significance of what he overheard when secrets were whispered.
One day, the boy begged an audience with his father and imparted something of such import into his ear that the earl developed a true, albeit belated fondness for him. As a reward for warning him of the malicious plot being brewed, the earl gave Thomas a thump of genuine affection and sent him off to cathedral school.
Thomas might have preferred more direct forms of affection and, from the beginning, made it clear he had little taste for the Church. At his father’s insistence, however, he did take minor orders. The earl told him with well-intentioned candor that Thomas’ birth precluded inheriting either title or lands and that taking such orders would give the boy a fine future with men in high places who would value his talents. Indeed, as he began his sometimes less than strictly clerical duties for some of the more ambitious men of the Church, Thomas learned to enjoy assisting in the earthly power games played by his priestly masters.
Sharing this love of intrigue had been his boyhood friend, Giles, who was also sent to cathedral school as the proper place for a younger, and in this case legitimate, son of one of the earl’s barons. Giles was more than just a childhood friend. They had been brothers in toddler mischief, adolescent buffoonery, and finally the more serious sports of wining and wenching.
Then one bright spring morning, after a night of sharing the lush favors of a serving maid from a pilgrims’ inn near Saint Edward the Confessor’s shrine at Westminster, Thomas was awakened from a sweet but unremembered dream by church bells ringing out with their particular joy. He looked at Giles’ naked body next to him and had begun to caress him with an inexplicably tender longing. Indeed, never before had Thomas felt so unreservedly happy nor had he ever been able to show love so freely.
Giles later claimed he knew nothing of what had happened before the maid began to scream and a horrified pilgrim ran to fetch the archdeacon’s chief clerk, but Thomas knew better. He remembered how ardently Giles had returned his kisses and fondling, how Giles had begged his friend to thrust his sex into him. And as he began to do so, Thomas felt an almost holy joy.