Eleanor felt a chill shoot through her. Ranulf’s testimony suggested far more than a woman simply being in the general vicinity of the stable.
Mistress Maud briefly touched the steward’s arm, and he bent an ear to her whisperings.
Ranulf glared at Huet. “When I rise from my bed, my sins trouble me more than my bowels, but then I am more abstemious than certain sinners amongst us. I go to the chapel from my bed, not the privy because I have gotten drunk.”
And, of course, you would never stop in your rush to seek God’s mercy to eavesdrop on how others are progressing in their many lusts, Eleanor thought, disgusted at the man’s hypocrisy. She was not sure whether Ranulf or his wife was the more tiresome, but the former was no longer a minor irritant. Anyone who tried to shove a woman, possibly innocent of any wrongful act, to her hanging was a grave threat to justice. Yet was she so innocent?
“May I suggest a compromise, Sir Reimund?” Stevyn now asked.
“I always listen to a reasoned voice,” the sheriff replied, his teeth visibly clenched as if fighting a feverish chill.
“I do not believe my eldest son’s statements can be dismissed, yet we have all heard equally compelling stories that cast doubt on their precise accuracy.” He looked over to Eleanor. “Since we have the Prioress of Tyndal here as an honored guest, I would like to ask her permission to involve Brother Thomas in this matter.”
Well practiced in restraint, Eleanor did not visibly react. After delaying a suitable amount of time to suggest reflection, she nodded her agreement.
Stevyn bowed, then continued: “May we not keep our cook here under close guard and ask Brother Thomas to speak with Hilda about the future of her soul? A guard would make sure she did not escape, and you would have time to resolve any discrepancies between the statements given. If Hilda is guilty, she may well confess for the good of her soul or you may find a satisfactory resolution of the conflicts.”
The sheriff remained silent but glanced at Eleanor as if she were to blame for this.
“Your proposal holds merit,” she replied to the steward. How fortunate these people were, she thought, to have Master Stevyn to preside over the manor courts. The jury might decide the matters at hand in such situations, but his considered opinions would surely tilt them to a more just conclusion.
“Very well,” Sir Reimund replied. “Let me know where the cook will be housed, and I will set a proper guard.”
Stevyn pointed at a low hut nearby. “One door. No windows. It was storage, but we’ve just finished a larger building. This one is empty.”
Mistress Maud walked to the bedraggled cook, gently lifted her to her feet, and directed Hilda through the crowd.
Eleanor noted the kindness but then grew troubled. Her vague impression that the widow had left the chambers, where Mariota lay, on the night of the groom’s murder would not fade. Surely she was wrong and the memory false. Yet she could not set her question aside. If Ranulf had seen a woman with Tobye that night, a woman who was not Luce but bore a resemblance to Hilda, might she have been Maud? In truth, she hoped neither the cuckolded steward nor this healer was involved, but she knew she dare not base a fair judgment of either on such short acquaintance.
As everyone dispersed and the steward walked away with the sheriff, Brother Thomas made his way to Eleanor.
“Do you believe in Hilda’s innocence?” She kept her voice low enough that the guard, who was still talking to the woman next to him, would not hear.
“I do, my lady, but I am troubled.”
The prioress held up her hand for silence and walked over to her guard. “Brother Thomas has asked that we go to the chapel to pray for Hilda. Will you be kind enough to accompany us there? Afterward, I will make sure you get a good supper.”
A mother’s smile could not have been sweeter, but Eleanor did feel properly contrite over her use of prayer as deception.
Chapter Twenty
Mistress Constance drew back from the window overlooking the courtyard, but her legs trembled so that she could not stand. Slipping down to sit on the narrow stone step, she clasped her hands together and gnawed on her reddened knuckles.
“Cursed creatures,” she hissed and closed her eyes so tight that her head pounded and Hell’s scarlet flames danced against her lids. “Oh how the Devil rules here!”
And lust was surely the deadliest of his evils. Did she not see enough proof of that as a young girl? Her mother had screamed with each hard birth, until she finally died when the blood would not stop after the last dead babe. Yet she had heard her parents continue to couple like rutting goats after each childbearing. Why had they failed to learn what God was trying to teach? Giving in to lust with a man was the straightest path to death and Hell for a woman. At least she had understood that lesson.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled herself up, scraping her hands against the rough stone, and stared again down into the courtyard.
Her husband was still there, a man she hated. He pretended virtue, but she knew what he did in bed after she refused his vile demands. Payment of the marriage debt indeed! All her mother had gained from that was a very narrow grave.
And still standing in the courtyard beside Master Stevyn was Mistress Maud, a true Jezebel who wore the chaste and simple robes of widowhood while her body festered with abominable sin. That one was no better than Mistress Luce, a woman who would couple with Satan himself if a mortal man was not ready to service her.
As for Hilda, she felt no pity. Hanging was no more than the woman deserved. She had seen her pant shamelessly over Tobye. No better than a bitch in heat.
Fools! Constance snorted in contempt. They probably thought she was immune to lust and that chastity was an easy choice. But wasn’t she her mother’s daughter, hungering for a man between her legs just like any other wretched woman? She understood how longing twisted its way into the soul, turned it black with the gangrene of iniquity, and brought incubi to shatter a woman’s peaceful dreams.
How she wished her father had listened when she begged for entrance to a convent, but he suffered as much from avarice as lust. The chance to bind her to the steward’s eldest son was too tempting, and he had persuaded her to agree by suggesting that Ranulf would follow his own mother’s pious example and demand only an heir or two from the marriage bed.
Instead, Ranulf had thrown her on the rushes and rammed her like a bull despite her cries of pain the night after they took vows at the church door. The babe he seeded in her died in a rush of blood a few months later, but she had survived and soon learned that her husband was easily filled with guilt for the weakness of his flesh, if not completely persuaded to deny his too frequent need to satisfy it.
Thus God had revealed how compassionate He could be to those longing to remain chaste and had shown her the way to keep her body unsullied by Ranulf’s loathsome touch-at least most of the time. As for her dreams, they were minor failings compared to the brazen sins of others. She did not willingly allow any mortal man to touch her, even her husband, and kept a small whip for secret penance on those occasions when the incubi mounted her and she failed to awaken until she howled with bucking lust. Indeed, God was surely pleased enough with those atonements.
Until now.
She pressed her nails into her cheeks. Despite His patient mercy, was there anything she could do to keep Him from flinging her soul into Hell after what had happened that night?
Leaning back against the wall, she began to weep.
Chapter Twenty-One
The guard had taken Eleanor’s invitation to accompany them to the chapel quite literally and was now kneeling in ardent prayer only a few feet away.