Yet the man who dragged him from Giles had screamed “Sodomite!” and the dungeon where Thomas had soon found himself was a cold, foul, and brutal hell.
One of his jailers raped him, all had taunted him, but two took especial joy in loudly recounting tales of how Giles had spent his days since, tearing at his garments and howling like a wolf. He had been locked away in his father’s castle tower until he begged his father to take him to the chapel. Arriving at the door, Giles had ripped away his remaining rags and plunged naked into a bed of stinging nettles. The priest had exorcised Satan from the young man’s writhing body, after which Giles had fallen into a deep sleep and, when he awoke, claimed ignorance of all that had transpired in bed with Thomas.
Now cleansed of evil, Giles had walked barefooted to a nearby shrine in penance and in gratitude. Shortly thereafter, he was married to an old and wealthy widow of his father’s choosing. Thomas’ jailers recounted this last news in especially ribald detail just outside his prison door. The onetime rape he might have endured, swearing to castrate the man in good time. The tauntings were only words even his dulled wits could match, but these jailers could not have chosen a better torture than this tale to bring him to his knees, whimpering like a beaten dog, in grief for his friend.
Why Thomas hadn’t been burned at the stake was still a mystery to him. Perhaps it was his father’s doing. Perhaps it was some bishop who had benefited from his murmured advice. Whatever, he had wanted to die by the time he was finally wrenched from his prison bed of rotten straw, rat feces, and his own filth. The brightness of forgotten sunlight had seared his eyes, and the encrusted chains had rubbed his bloody ankles to a point beyond pain. He would have begged for death, had he not lost his voice in a world where darkness made a mockery of human speech.
Although the tonsure would suggest the man was from the Church, Thomas had no idea of the somber one’s identity as he sat in the warden’s room and silently examined the disgusting wretch Thomas had become. Whoever the man was, he had quickly ordered a stool brought for Thomas to sit on and some watered wine for his rusted throat.
“I have a proposition for you,” the black-robed man had said, his voice undistinguished by any particular tone.
Thomas had stared at him.
“A slow death at the stake and your soul condemned to Hell…”
Thomas blinked.
“…or your sins forgiven in return for becoming a priest with unquestioning obedience to a master whom you will never meet.”
Thomas said nothing.
“Do you hear me?”
Thomas dipped his head.
“Do you understand the choice?”
Thomas nodded.
“And?”
“The Church,” Thomas whispered. “I know Hell and wish no more of it.”
And so they had cut the chains from his flesh, bathed his filth-dyed and rat-bitten body, put poultices on the worst of his festering wounds and shaved a monk’s tonsure on his head. When he was strong enough, they trained him further in priestly rites and draped chastity, poverty, and obedience over his head with a monk’s rough habit.
But Thomas didn’t mind what he had been forced to swear.
He only minded forswearing Giles.
And who, with such sadistic humor, had chosen the penitential Giles to lead the ravaged Thomas to Tyndal Priory and leave him like an abandoned child to be encloistered with monks under the rule of women?
Thomas hoped he never found out.
***
Thomas rang the bell, then turned and looked down the road. There was nothing to see, not even settling dust, but Thomas continued to stare into the distance as tears slipped down his cheeks. Shamed at his weakness, he wiped them away but bowed his head as the ache of grief burst into his hollowed-out heart. The pain would linger for a long, long time.
The sound of the heavy wooden door opening on its metal hinges caused him to turn around. In front of him was a small monk of indeterminate age with deep blue eyes and a head so bald a tonsure was unneeded.
“Thanks be to God! And welcome to Tyndal Priory, brother,” the man said with ritual greeting and a deep bow. “I am Brother Andrew.”
Chapter Six
“We will, of course, handle the problem of our poor brother’s body, my child… ah, my lady. Please don’t worry yourself about it. A great shock it must have been for you to find him lying dead in your cloister. And a great tragedy for you to lose his counsel, to be sure.” Prior Theobald of Tyndal shifted in his ornately carved wooden chair, a slightly musty odor emanating from his dark robes with the movement. As he resettled, he grimaced, and in so doing brought his bushy gray eyebrows into brief collision.
He was a dour man of advanced years with an unusually large abdomen despite an otherwise skeletal frame. Resting on his stomach was a heavy gold cross, attached to a soft rope that looped around his birdlike neck. His long, bony fingers first clutched, then stroked the crucifix with a broken and irritating rhythm.
Eleanor lowered her eyes, not out of modesty but to prevent him from seeing her fury. The prior’s tone had been dismissive from the moment she arrived at his quarters, and he had just interrupted her in the middle of a sentence. Again. At this rate, it might be the midnight hour before she was able to tell him the exact and very serious nature of Brother Rupert’s death. Did he think she had nothing else of importance to do with her day as a result of it? She took a deep breath to calm herself.
She knew she had only herself to blame for his disrespectful behavior. Her aunt had given her good warning about what to expect at Tyndal. Although the clerical world, and indeed the secular one as well, found the idea of Eve leading Adam uncomfortable, the founder of Fontevraud had specifically declared that female leadership would be the rule in his Order of nuns and monks. The old prioress had not always been diligent in exerting her rightful authority over both men and women as the supreme head of a Fontevraud double house. Sister Beatrice had told Eleanor that she would have an upward battle to reestablish the rule.
“I am sure your assistance will be greatly appreciated, Prior,” she replied, unclenching her teeth.
Some would have argued that Eleanor’s first concern should have been to reestablish her authority immediately, despite the alarming circumstances and implications of the old monk’s death. She knew that. Of course she should have summoned Prior Theobald to her chambers where she could look down from her raised chair and enforce obedience from that symbol of her superior status. Instead she had chosen to go to his chambers, in the monks’ quarters to the south of the parish church, out of consideration for his advanced age and the effect she assumed the news would surely have on him. In going to him as if she were the inferior, she had committed a tactical error and further diminished her authority in the eyes of those who venerate form over substance.
Eleanor glanced up at the smug expression on the face of Brother Simeon. The receiver and sub-prior, who stood next to Theobald and idly stroked the grooves in the top of his prior’s chair, was one who appreciated the power of symbols. Perhaps even better than his master, she thought. Ideally, such worldly games should have no place in a house dedicated to God, but Eleanor was not so naïve as to think a religious vocation stripped men and women of ambition. She would have to learn to play the game of symbols far better if she were going to succeed here, or anywhere else.
She glanced over at Sister Ruth to see her reaction to the confrontation. The nun sat with hands folded in her lap and eyes staring in rapt concentration at the prior and Brother Simeon. Eleanor had no allies in this room, if, indeed, she had allies anywhere in Tyndal. Eleanor closed her eyes for just a moment. They burned.