The Crown A Novel by Nancy Bilyeau

Author:Nancy Bilyeau
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Historical fiction
ISBN: 9781451626872
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 2012-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

31

It was only after Brother Edmund had wrapped me in blankets and given me ale to drink that I could put a sentence together.

After he had run into me in the passageway, he’d lifted me up, kicking and weeping, and carried me to the infirmary. I’d waited there while he searched the dark passageway, armed with a long stick from the infirmary.

“I didn’t find anyone, Sister Joanna,” he said. “Now tell me exactly what you saw.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t see a person,” I said. “I heard what sounded like . . . breathing.”

“Where was it coming from?”

I couldn’t answer. Now that I was in the infirmary, looked after by Brother Edmund, I feared nothing so much as for him to think me mad.

“Sister Joanna?”

I couldn’t meet his gaze. “It seemed as if the walls were breathing. As if the priory were . . . alive.”

He didn’t laugh or show alarm. “How long since you last slept?” he asked.

“God’s servants don’t require sleep,” I murmured.

“To best serve God, we require sleep and food and drink,” he said firmly. “I have known strong men to imagine fearful things when they are severely weakened. Now I want you to lie down on the pallet next to Sister Winifred’s.”

“Not here,” I said, alarmed.

“You must. I can’t enter the dormitories, so I’m unable to escort you, but I don’t want you walking around the priory alone again.” He steered me to a pallet. “You’ll get no more than an hour sleep, but you need it. I’ll wake you for Lauds.”

Brother Edmund was right. I was exhausted. I fell asleep less than a minute after I stretched out on the pallet. The last thing in my mind was a question: Why hadn’t Brother Edmund asked me why I left the infirmary in the first place? But then sleep pulled me down, and I puzzled over it no more.

True to his word, the friar woke me for Lauds. I hadn’t heard the bells. I went through the motions of our morning routine, heavy with tiredness and confusion. In the midmorning, I glanced outside the kitchen window and was startled to see Geoffrey Scovill walking alongside the barn, with Justice Campion stomping behind him, pointing at things with his cane.

Sister Agatha materialized next to me. “They’ve been here for hours,” she whispered. “The coroner met with Lady Chester. He’s questioning the prioress again; then they say they will go through all of the servants and get statements.”

As much as I hated to think any of our servants a murderer, I was relieved to see their suspicion move away from Brother Edmund or Brother Richard. By the end of the following day, they would hold their inquiry.

“Does the girl in the tapestry really look like Sister Beatrice?” I asked.

Sister Agatha nodded. “Oh, yes.”

“Why did she leave the priory?”

She looked around to make sure no one was listening, and then delivered up the history of Sister Beatrice to me. The onetime novice was the youngest child of a large family, her father a merchant.

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