That opened a floodgate of complaint: “Mother, how are we to feed them all?”
“Mother, the mercenaries…I fear for our young women.”
“And our people-look how they beat the poor miller.”
“The courtiers are worse, Mother. The lewd songs they sing…”
Adelia was sorry for them. On top of their worries, here were two strange persons, who had arrived at Godstow in company with a murdered body from the bridge, now suggesting that another killer was at large within the abbey’s very walls.
The sisters did not-indeed, could not-blame them for either death, but Adelia knew from some sideways looks from under the nuns’ veils that she and Mansur had acquired the taint of carrion.
“Even if what Lord Mansur says is true, Mother,” said Sister Gregoria, the almoner, “what can be done about it? We are snowed up; we cannot send for the sheriff’s coroner until the thaw.”
“And while the snow lasts, King Henry cannot rescue us,” Sister Bullard pointed out. “Until he can, our abbey, our very existence, is in peril.”
That was what mattered to them. Their abbey had survived one conflict between warring monarchs; it might not survive another. If the queen should oust the king, she would necessarily reward the blackguard Wolvercote, who had secured her victory-and Lord Wolvercote had long desired Godstow and its lands. The nuns could envisage a future in which they begged for their bread in the streets.
“Allow Lord Mansur to continue his inquiries,” Adelia pleaded. “At least do not bury Bertha in unconsecrated ground until all the facts are known.”
Mother Edyve nodded. “Please tell Lord Mansur we are grateful for his interest,” she said in her fluting, emotionless voice. “You may leave us to question Dame Dakers. After that, we shall pray for guidance in the matter.”
It was a dismissal. Mansur and Adelia had to bow and leave.
Discussion broke out behind them almost before they’d reached the door-but it was not about Bertha. “Yes, but where is the king? How may he come to our aid if he doesn’t even know we are in need of it? We cannot trust that Bishop Rowley reached him-I fear for his death.”
As the two went out of the chapter house door, Mansur said, “The women are frightened. They will not help us search for the killer.”
“I haven’t even persuaded them there is a killer,” Adelia said.
They were skirting the infirmary when, behind them, a voice called Adelia’s name. It was the prioress. She came up, puffing. “A word, if I may, mistress.” Adelia nodded, bowed a farewell to Mansur, and turned back.
For a while, the two women went in silence.
Sister Havis, Adelia realized, had not spoken a word during the discussion in the chapter house. She was aware, too, that the nun did not like her. To walk with her was like accompanying the apotheosis of the cold that gripped the abbey, a figure denuded of warmth, as frozen as the icicles spiking the edge of every roof.
Outside the nuns’ chapel, the prioress stopped. She kept her face averted from Adelia, and her voice was hard. “I cannot approve of you,” she said. “I did not approve of Rosamund. The tolerance that Mother Abbess extends to sins of the flesh is not mine.”
“If that’s all you have to say…” Adelia said, walking away.
Sister Havis strode after her. “It is not, but it has to be spoken.” She withdrew a mittened hand from under her scapular and held it out to bar Adelia’s progress. In it were the broken necklet, the measuring cord, and the belt. She said, “I intend to use these objects as you have done, in investigation. I shall go to the cowshed. Whatever your weaknesses, mistress, I recognize an analytical soul.”
Adelia stopped.
The prioress kept her thin face turned away. “I travel,” she said. “Mine is the work to administer our lands around the country, in consequence of which I see more of the dung heap of humanity than do my sisters. I see it in its iniquity and error, its disregard for the flames of hell which await it.”
Adelia was still. This was not just a lecture on sin; Sister Havis had something to tell her.
“Yet,” the prioress went on, “there is greater evil. I was present at Rosamund Clifford’s bedside; I witnessed her terrible end. For all that she was adulterous, the woman should not have died as she did.”
Adelia went on waiting.
“Our bishop had visited her a day or two before; he questioned her servants and went away again. Rosamund was still well then, but he believed from what he’d been told that there had been a deliberate attempt to poison her, which, as you and I know, subsequently succeeded.” Suddenly, the prioress’s head turned and she was glaring into Adelia’s eyes. “Is that what he told you?”
“Yes,” Adelia said. “It was why he brought us here. He knew the blame would fall on the queen. He wanted to uncover the real killer and avert a war.”
“He set great store by you, then, mistress.” It was a sneer.
“Yes, he did,” Adelia hissed back at her. Her feet were numb with standing, and her grief for Rowley was undoing her. “Tell me whatever you want to tell me, or let me go. In God’s name, are we discussing Rosamund, Bertha, or the bishop?”
The prioress blinked; she had not expected anger.
“Bertha,” she said, with something like conciliation. “We are discussing Bertha. It may interest you to know, mistress, that I took charge of Dame Dakers yesterday. The female is deranged, and I did not want her roaming the abbey. Just before Vespers I locked her in the warming room for the night.”
Adelia’s head went up. “What time is evening milking?”
“After Vespers.”
They had begun walking in step. “Bertha was still alive then,” Adelia said. “The milkmaid saw her.”
“Yes, I have talked to Peg.”
“I knew it wasn’t Dakers.”
The prioress nodded. “Not unless the wretched female can walk through a thick and bolted door. Which, I may say, most of my sisters are prepared to believe that she can.”
“You may say, you may say.” Adelia stopped, furious. “Why didn’t you say all this in chapter?”
The prioress faced her. “You were making yourself busy proving to us that Bertha was murdered. I happened to know Dakers could not have killed her. The question then arose, who did? And why? It was not a wolf I wanted to loose amongst sisters who are troubled and frightened enough already.”
Ah. At last, Adelia thought, a logical mind. Hostile, cold as winter to me, but brave. Here, beside her, was a woman prepared to follow terrible events to their terrible conclusion.
She said, “Bertha had some knowledge about the person who gave her the mushrooms in the forest. She didn’t know she had it. It came to her yesterday, and I think, I think, that she left the cowshed to come and tell me. Something, or perhaps it was someone, stopped her, and she went back again. To be strangled and then hanged.”
“Not a random killing?”
“I don’t believe so. Nor was there any sexual interference, as far as I can tell. It wasn’t robbery, either; the chain was not stolen.”
Unconsciously, they had begun pacing up and down together outside the chapel. Adelia said, “What she told Peg was that it wasn’t a her, it was a him.”
“Meaning the person in the forest?”
“I think so. I think, I think, Bertha remembered something, something about the old woman who gave her the mushrooms for Rosamund. I think it came to her that it wasn’t an old woman at all-her description always sounded…I don’t know, odd.”
“Old women peddling poisoned mushrooms aren’t odd?”
Adelia smiled. “Overdone, then. Playacting. I think that’s what Bertha wanted to tell me. Not a her but a him.”