Belladonna at Belstone by Michael Jecks

Author:Michael Jecks
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Simon (Fictitious character), Crime & mystery, Fiction, Great Britain, Great Britain - History - 14th century, Crime & Thriller, Murder, Puttock, Furnshill, 1307-1327, West Country (England), Great Britain - History - Edward II, Historical fiction, Mystery fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Detective - General, Detective and mystery stories, Historical, Convents - England, Mystery & Detective - Historical, Detective, Mystery & Detective, Fiction - Mystery, Nuns, General, Suspense, Sir (Fictitious character), Baldwin
ISBN: 9780747263616
Publisher: Headline Book Publishing
Published: 2000-05-31T03:00:00+00:00

“Course you were, young man, but there’s no need to act so oddly around Constance. She’s a good lass.”

“I am, am I?“ Constance said, reappearing in the doorway. ”And you’re a dreadful old woman, Joan.“

“Now then, Sister. Don’t forget, we nuns always maintain a polite distance in front of men,” Joan said disdainfully, and then laughed, slapping her thigh with delight at her witticism.

Joan gave Hugh a tolerant smile. It was easy to like Joan. She was known to all the nuns; for many her face was the first they would see on entering the cloister. Certainly she was fearsome, almost dragon-like to the younger entrants, but once the girls got to know her, they saw the warmth of her heart. Joan was a permanent fixture of the place, and she felt that she had the right to make jokes at the expense of any of the other sisters or of the institution itself, just as she saw fit.

Woe betide the fool who tried to join her in belittling the convent, however. That was tantamount to a felony in Joan’s view. She would tolerate making fun of the other sisters, but the place itself was sacrosanct. Joan had earned the right to have digs at the priory, but only as the reward for her life of service. There was no excuse, she felt, for youngsters taking the rise out of the place, and she would be quick to snap at them.

“Why in front of men?” Hugh said, glancing doubtfully from one to the other.

“Who knows what you men would make of us if you knew what truly went on in our minds, young fellow?” Joan chuckled.

Constance felt her face redden, and she busied herself with cleaning some pots and carefully drying them.

“People think nuns are religious and spend their whole time walking about with their hands in their sleeves, heads down, daydreaming about the life to come, don’t they? Or they think all women in convents are so starved of sex that any man who cuts a well-shaped thigh and ankle in hose would be exhausted after two seconds flat in a place housing so many lusty young women. That’s right, isn’t it?” she said, her voice suddenly louder.

Hugh was startled into a partial reply. “I doubt it. Most men think women in the cloisters are already part of the way to heaven, so they don’t figure much in our thoughts.“

“Ah, but why? Because the women are the Brides of Christ, or because it’s too much bother to walk all the way to their convents, and too much like hard work to go to the effort of climbing the claustral wall to get at them, especially when the precinct might have guards to defend the women’s innocence?”

Hugh was flustered by her questioning and shrugged again, his face growing darker with his suspicion that Joan’s conversation had a point, and that point was to belittle Hugh.

Joan watched him like a viper staring at a mouse, bolt upright, her watery blue eyes intent, but then she suddenly sank back.

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