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  She looked around again. Although the elder monk’s attendance was not obligatory, it would have added some weight of legitimacy to her own presence at Tyndal had he come to her first chapter. He understood that she needed all the support she could get from those respected inside the priory and had pledged his loyalty last night. That the old priest had not shown up was therefore inexplicable. Although aged, he had seemed vigorous enough at table. The meal may have been one of the worst Eleanor had ever eaten, but surely it had not made the good monk ill. Perhaps an emergency had delayed him.

  Eleanor looked over at Sister Christina. “Did you see or hear Brother Rupert on your way from the church, sister?”

  The nun opened her eyes and blinked as if she had just awakened from a deep sleep. “No, my lady.”

  “Then we shall start without him,” Eleanor said, with what she hoped was a significant look at Christina. “Punctuality is a virtue without which we fail in our obligations to God as well as to man.” Her voice sounded sufficiently stern to her own ears, and she prayed it also sounded more mature and forceful than she felt.

  With that, Eleanor, duly appointed head of Tyndal Priory, clutched her staff of office with a firm hand, looked with steady eye across the granite slabs marking the graves of her noble predecessors, and began her first official act as prioress.

  Chapter Three

  From a small clearing at the edge of the forest, an auburn-haired young man mentally measured the distance over the diminishing hills as they rolled and slipped into the misty horizon to where he knew the North Sea lay. The late summer sun had warmed the trees, and he delighted in the tangy scent, but the sharp breeze from the ocean chilled his freshly tonsured head.

  He raised his hand to cover the round bald spot, then dropped it. He would have to get used to this strange lack of hair. With any luck the scalp was now properly weathered after the long journey from London to this forsaken part of the East Anglian coast. Certainly he did not want any questions from his soon-to-be Fontevraud brothers about his recent commitment to the cloistered life.

  He put his hand back on his horse’s neck, stroking the sticky, stiff brown hair gently, and looked to his left. Tyndal Priory sat in a small valley between two low hills. He could see the stone walls of the outer court, some outbuildings on the rise of the hill, and the dark, rectangular bell tower. To the right of the priory, a large stream curved lazily as if it was in no hurry to meet with the sea, and he could see where it disappeared into the same valley. A grove of trees hid where it passed into the priory grounds. A stream might mean Tyndal had a mill and fishponds, but those were hidden from view.

  The village was further to the left and beyond the priory. A fishing village, he assumed, and grimaced at the thought of how it must reek. London might not smell sweet to a countryman’s nose, but he was a city man and preferred the familiar stench of civilization to that of dead fish wafting in from the garden, sheep dung next to the porridge pot, and decaying seaweed everywhere else.

  His horse snorted, shook its head, and shifted with a definite but gentle show of equine impatience. He patted its neck and sighed.

  A man coughed behind him. “My lord, perhaps we should…?” Although the phrasing was polite, the tone was not.

  “Your ‘my lord’ was mocking, Giles. Please let us be done with that.”

  “Perhaps ‘your holiness’ then?”

  “May you roast in Hell for that sacrilegious remark.”

  Giles’ laugh was scornful.

  Indeed, the young man thought, it was he who should be roasting, if not in Hell today, then surely at the stake. He squeezed his eyes shut until they hurt and shook his head ’til the bones in his neck cracked in protest. He still feared he’d wake from this dream to the smell of his own crackling flesh and guts. He took a deep breath to keep from crying out.

  “Very well then,” he said in a choked voice. “Let us get on with it.”

  His companion grunted and shifted in his saddle. “You’ll find chastity does have merit, Thomas.”

  Surprised, Thomas turned. The man’s tone held a hint of compassion, perhaps even some leftover affection, and, for the first time since they had left London, his companion’s expression was not totally contemptuous.

  “Aye, I’ll not miss the pox,” Thomas replied with a hollow laugh. “I am pleased to leave you with the whores’ smiles.”

  “I’d rather the smiles on the whores’ faces at my coming than their tears at my failure to properly attend them,” the man said with a return of his sneering tone.

  “You’re rude, knave.”

  “Neither, I think. A knave is a dishonest man. And of the two of us, I do not qualify as the dishonest man. And if I be not dishonest, then it must be equally true that I am not rude to speak the facts.”

  Thomas laughed in spite of himself. “I will miss your wit, Giles, and I grieve for what has come between us.”

  “And I grieve for the man I once believed you to be. What you are, I hate with all the passion of a true Christian.” He spat on the ground between them.

  “Then there is no more to be said. It is time.”

  With that, the two men turned their horses away from the small clearing and guided them with care back over the soft, thick ground covering of rotted wood, vines and woodland flowers, to the path leading from the forest. In silence they rode single file, a finely dressed courtier on an even finer horse, followed by a simple monk on his very plain mount.

  Chapter Four

  Eleanor burst through the chapter house door and into the open, covered walk that surrounded the tranquil and fragrant gardens of the cloister square garth. Her step was brisk but light, and her soft shoes made almost no sound on the smooth stones. The nuns had left to start their tasks. She had survived her first chapter. Now she needed to be alone, think in peace, plan her day, to walk, walk, and walk until the tension built up from pretending to feel little when she had in fact felt so much had dissipated.

  She entered a dark, narrow passage, cool even after a long summer’s warmth, which ran between the chapter house and the warming room, unlocked the thick wooden door that protected her encloistered sisters from the world, and stepped into the outer court of the priory.

  Beyond the carefully locked quarters where the monks and nuns lived, but still on monastic grounds, the charitable and practical businesses of Tyndal were conducted. The outer court was a largely public area. As Eleanor emerged, she looked to her left where the monks’ quarters, brewery, mill, fishponds, stables, barns and livestock lay. The warm and dusty smells of well-tended animals mixed with the sharp odor of fermenting ale were sweet scents to her. They reminded her of her younger years at Wynethorpe Castle before her mother’s death, when she and her two older brothers fought and played together with that fresh innocence of childhood. The memory brought both pain and joy to her heart.

  She stood for a moment. Although the details of these particular priory grounds were still unfamiliar to her, the general design of Tyndal was very much the same as that of any other monastic house. In the middle of everything, and separating the monks’ from the nuns’ quarters, was the parish church, a dark and dominating structure of wind-battered stone. To her right would be the nuns’ cemetery, then the gardens and orchards that provided food for the priory.

  She shut her eyes to picture what stood beyond her vision. Lying in front of the priory grounds would be the main gate, near which lay the primary charitable business of Tyndal, a hospital. Just outside that main gate was the almonry where alms and food were given to the poor. Immediately inside the gate was the porter’s cottage. The monks’ cemetery lay near the stables and just beyond the hospital. It was a respectable distance from that of the nuns and sited against the wall of the outer court.

  Eleanor turned right toward the gardens, and, after a short walk along the windowless wall of the nuns’ dormitory, she rounded the corner at the stone-enclosed garderobe and stopped to look at the orchard across one of the streams that passed
through the priory grounds. The trees were well established and properly pruned, she noted, and a gentle breeze carried the sweet scent of sun-warmed, ripening fruit. Even if the vegetables don’t survive the less than gentle touch of Sister Matilda, we should at least have dried fruit over the winter season, she thought wryly.

  Immediately in front of her and near the kitchen were the vegetable gardens. Just beyond them grew beds of both culinary and medicinal herbs, and further on was planted a garden growing flowers to adorn the altar. In a short while, lay brothers and sisters under the supervision of Sister Matilda would arrive to weed and harvest the raised beds. Sister Anne and a few of the nuns might also come to gather and tend the herbs, but for the moment all was quiet. Eleanor needed only a short time to concentrate her thoughts, relax her taut muscles.

  As she walked along the edge of the beds toward the flower gardens that lay just beyond the hut where the medicines for the hospital were made, she slowed her pace and took in a measured, deep breath. The morning air was still moist and chill from sea fog, but the sun was warm and soothing where it peeked through the light mist drifting above her. She closed her eyes and listened to the birdsong, the distant whoosh of ocean waves, and smelled the slightly tart scent of seaweed carried on the light breeze. She smiled. It was lovely here, she thought, but she was still homesick for Amesbury.

  After the death of Eleanor’s mother in childbirth, Sister Beatrice, her father’s elder sister and head of novices at Amesbury Priory, had taken the frightened six-year-old girl back with her to the convent. There Sister Beatrice had raised the child with warmth and kindness, and, having recognized the eager, intellectually curious Eleanor as a small version of herself, had wisely fed her niece’s mind with all her own learning as a complement to feeding the child’s soul.

  Sister Beatrice’s grandmother had come from Aquitaine as a lady in waiting to the equally famous and infamous Eleanor, wife of Henry II, and was known to suffer neither the ignorant nor fools gladly. As strong-willed and independent as her queen, she had no tolerance for intelligent women who pretended to be stupid and had taught her equally strong-minded daughters to use and be proud of their good wits. Thus, unlike most women of their class, they were taught to read and write not only in French and English but in Latin and Greek as well.

  And little Beatrice had learned the same from her mother, who also ensured that her daughter was comfortable with arithmetic. These skills served Beatrice well during her marriage. While her husband was away at war, she ran the estate with competence and kept good accounts. Thus she was able to turn profitable lands over to her eldest son after her husband was killed, and happily take the veil at Amesbury, dedicating the rest of her life to the training of young girls.

  It was true that Beatrice secretly hoped her niece would one day become Abbess of the entire Order of Fontevraud, a position that would assure great honor to the Wynethorpe family and secure places in Heaven for its more profane members. Such a worldly ambition she kept hidden in the deepest recess of her heart, and any such hope took second place to her love for her niece and concern for her happiness. Had marriage and children meant contentment for Eleanor, Sister Beatrice would have sent her back to the world, albeit shedding tears later in the privacy of her chamber. Meanwhile, before the child had to make her choice between the cloister and the hearth, Beatrice made sure little Eleanor learned and practiced the skills necessary to lead others and to manage priory assets in a profitable way. In a world of mortal men, wealth would always be the key to power, no matter whether the community be secular or religious.

  Beatrice need not have worried about losing her niece to the world. For Eleanor, happiness was the cloister, and when Baron Adam wanted to take his child back to Wynethorpe Castle and a good dynastic marriage, Beatrice had stood up on her behalf like a mother lion protecting her cub. After long arguments, Beatrice and Adam did come to a reasonable compromise: the girl would be sent back to the world for one year to test her vocation. After that year, Eleanor chose to return to her aunt’s welcoming arms at Amesbury and take her final vows. What Sister Beatrice understood and her brother did not was that the world and Wynethorpe Castle to Eleanor meant the sound of her mother’s screaming and the memory of her death from childbirth. The convent, on the other hand, was a home filled only with love and peace.

  Although she had rejected a marriage that would have gained her father both allies and land, Eleanor was not insensitive to the concept of familial duty. Indeed, she had wept bitterly in her aunt’s arms at the thought of leaving Amesbury when she was told of her appointment to head Tyndal Priory, then quickly washed the evidence of grief from her face, stood with dignity before the king’s messenger, and accepted the position with proper expressions of gratitude and modest joy. She knew full well the honor it had brought to her family, and she was determined to be adequate to the task.

  ***

  Eleanor stopped by a bed of Madonna lilies commingled with Apothecary’s roses, both grown in honor of the Virgin Mary, and happily breathed in their heady fragrance. This part of the priory gardens bordered on the plot containing plants used by the hospital for potions and other remedies.

  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.