The Nun's Tale: An Owen Archer Mystery Page 4

  Ravenser’s gut burned. How in God’s name had Will Longford’s man wound up in this grave? He rose. ‘Fill it back in, Dan, and say nothing to anyone. I must notify the mayor, the coroner, the bailiffs’ – he passed a hand over his eyes, sighed – ‘and the Archbishop of York.’

  As they walked away, Louth asked what Ravenser meant to do with Dame Joanna.

  ‘I shall ask my uncle to allow me to escort her back to her convent. Perhaps she will be more coherent with her Mother Superior, someone familiar. But after all this, the escort must be well guarded.’

  ‘I shall attend you. With my men.’

  ‘You, Nicholas?’

  ‘I feel responsible.’

  As well he should. Ravenser agreed.

  Two

  To York

  Five days later, Ravenser, Louth, and company set off on a slow journey to York. Dame Joanna was still weak, so she rode in a cart with two sisters who would see to her needs along the way. Travelling with a cart slowed them, but June had begun with fair, mild weather that almost made Ravenser glad of the excuse to go journeying. As the sun warmed him and the smells and sounds of the countryside cheered him, he grew more confident that the prioress of St Clement’s would find a way to reach Dame Joanna and learn her story, and that the archbishop’s men would soon discover who had killed Maddy and Jaro. The mayor of Beverley had been relieved to hear that Archbishop Thoresby had offered his aid.

  Ravenser fell back behind his companions, thinking about his uncle and the one-eyed spy he had met at Bishopthorpe. He wondered what sort of inquiries Archer made for a man as powerful as his uncle, Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England. Was he watching Alice Perrers and William of Wykeham? Or would Archer consider helping out on a matter such as this? Ravenser gazed about him, focusing on nothing, until a movement off to the side of the track, in a stand of trees, caught his eye: two horsemen, riding neither towards nor away from the road, but pacing Ravenser’s company. Ravenser reigned in his horse. So did the horsemen.

  ‘Ho, there!’ Ravenser called. Two of Louth’s men turned at his cry. Ravenser nodded to the still figures in the trees and Louth’s men took off. So did the horsemen, who had the advantage of their own plan.

  It was not long before Louth’s men came riding back to the shady knoll where the rest of the company waited. ‘We lost them,’ John, Louth’s squire, said, ‘but we did see that they had friends with them, waiting for them farther back. I counted five more. And well armed.’

  Dame Joanna stared about her, agitated, clutching at the tattered blue shawl she insisted on wearing over her habit. ‘Who? Who follows?’

  Louth lounged in the shade near her. ‘I thought you might tell us, Dame Joanna. Your lover, perhaps?’

  ‘My lover?’ She laughed, an odd, hysterical sound. Her eyes were wild, haunted. ‘Oh, indeed, if Death be now my lover. Yes. Death shadows me. Only my lover Death can come for me now.’

  Ravenser raised an eyebrow in response to Louth’s puzzled glance. So Dame Joanna saw her dilemma as a moral allegory. It did no harm. ‘Shall we continue?’

  Louth ordered his men to prepare to move on. They fell back to guard the rear of the party. It was a much subdued, anxious company, aware of the armed men behind them, unseen. The women did not protest the armed guard that accompanied them when they washed or relieved themselves.

  *

  The wind from the arrow’s flight ruffled Owen’s hair. Much too close for comfort. He’d seen the trainee’s aim go astray when the messenger entered the yard. Owen had stood his ground, wanting to make a point, that lives were at stake. But he had not meant to make it so dangerously – he had miscalculated the arrow’s trajectory. It had happened time and again since he had lost the use of his left eye.

  Gaspare yanked the bow out of the trainee’s hands and hit him across the stomach with it. ‘What are you, a dog after a hare? Captain Owen comes all the way from York to teach you how to save yourself in the field and you’d be killing him? Because a messenger caught your eye? What manner of cur has Lancaster sent us?’

  The young man clutched his middle and said nothing.

  Gaspare crossed the castle yard to retrieve the arrow, slapping Owen on the back as he passed. ‘You’ve not lost your nerve, that’s clear.’ He grinned crookedly because of a scar that puckered the right side of his face from ear to chin, creasing the corner of his mouth. ‘So what am I doing wrong, old friend? Why can’t the cur resist gawking at the world?’

  ‘You’re right to call him a dog after a hare,’ Owen said. ‘If he cannot ignore everything round him and see only the arrow and its target, he cannot be an archer.’

  Gaspare slapped the arrow shaft against his leg, a motion that the young man in question watched anxiously. Broad-shouldered and well-muscled, when Gaspare acted on his anger, he caused considerable pain. ‘I need to know. Is it me, or has Lancaster sent us a pack of fools?’

  Owen said nothing. The messenger, now within earshot, wore the livery of John Thoresby, Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England. What now? Owen wondered. Thoresby had encouraged Owen to take up his present task at the Queen’s castle of Knaresborough, helping two of his old comrades-in-arms, Lief and Gaspare, develop a strategy for training archers in a mere two weeks. The Duke of Lancaster was to sail for the Aquitaine in the autumn with one hundred trained archers if attempts at negotiating the restoration of Don Pedro to the throne of Castile failed. Meanwhile, Lancaster did not want to feed a hundred archers any longer than necessary; he sought a method for quickly training those already skilled with the longbow to fight efficiently in the field so that he might collect them in small increments. Thus this experiment in training seven men in a fortnight. They were to be presented to Lancaster at Pontefract after their training, where he would judge whether their skills were acceptable.

  ‘From His Grace the Archbishop, Captain Archer.’ The messenger handed Owen a sealed packet. ‘I’m to await your reply.’

  ‘Take yourself off to the kitchens. I’ll find you there.’

  Gaspare noticed his friend’s clenched jaw. ‘Likely to be bad news, coming from the mighty Thoresby?’

  ‘More likely to be orders.’

  ‘You’ve no love for him, that I can see.’

  ‘I do not like being his puppet.’

  ‘You did much the same work for the old Duke.’

  ‘Henry of Grosmont was a soldier. I understood him. I trusted him.’

  ‘Ah.’ Gaspare glanced over at the waiting trainee. ‘So. What am I to do with this “archer” who shoots his captain by mistake?’

  Owen scratched the scar beneath his patch with the archbishop’s letter as he thought. ‘We have not the time to change his character. Nor the one who swatted a fly earlier. Release them. Expend your effort on the other five.’

  Gaspare nodded. ‘With pleasure.’ He tapped the letter. ‘Think you Thoresby means to call you back so soon?’

  Owen looked down at the packet in his hand. ‘It is the sort of thing he would do. I had best go and read it.’

  Knaresborough sat on a precipitous cliff over the River Nidd. The trees that grew on the cliff were oddly twisted and stunted by their lifelong struggle to cling to the soil and sink in their roots. Owen stood atop the keep gazing down to the rushing river, remembering another precipitous cliff, another river. He had climbed the mountain with his father and his brother, Dafydd. At the top, Dafydd had dared Owen to walk to the edge and look down. Their father had laughed. ‘To look down is nothing, Dafydd, for your eyes can see it is far to fall, and you will not be tempted.’ Owen’s father had made them sit close to the edge and look down, then told them to shut one eye and look down. ‘You see how God protects us? He gave us two eyes that we might see the depths of Hell and seek to move upward.’ It was one of Owen’s best memories of his father, a rare moment when he had had time to take a day with his sons.

  But now Owen gazed down a precipice with but one working eye, and it looked as if he could reac
h down and scoop up the river water in his hands. Folk made light of his blinding, but as an active man, Owen felt the loss every day. Balance, his vision to the left of him, and judgement of depth, distance, and trajectory, were all crippled by it. And his appearance made people uneasy. Owen would like to teach his child things such as the value of two eyes. But hearing the words from a scarred and crippled man, would the child listen?

  Irritated with his self-pity, he tore open the letter from Thoresby, read quickly. The runaway nun from St Clement’s had reappeared. Odd, but no more than that. He read on. The rape and murder of Will Longford’s maid, and his cook buried in the nun’s grave with his neck broken – now those were more troublesome. Thoresby expressed an uneasiness about the business and ordered Owen to return to York. Owen could finish training the archers on St George’s Field; the archers could stay at York Castle. Meanwhile, Owen could begin inquiries into the matter. Meanwhile? What did he think, training archers occupied a few moments of his day?

  Inquiries into what? Folk ran from unhappiness every day. So the nun stole a relic and went to Will Longford – that signified nothing unless he was a relic dealer. The fact that he had not sold the relic in a year suggested that he was not.

  Well then, that raised the question of why he had helped Joanna. No one had described her yet. Perhaps she had appealed to Longford. But why the two murders? And where was Longford?

  Owen shook himself. He was being drawn in.

  A hand clamped down on his right shoulder. ‘This place suits Lancaster, eh?’

  ‘A treacherous keep for a treacherous man, my friend.’ Owen would know that strong grip anywhere. How did Lief use those meaty hands to carve such delicate figures and sweet-voiced flutes?

  Lief shrugged. ‘I meant it in a more complimentary way, but no matter.’ He followed Owen’s gaze down the precipice. ‘Can you imagine the pitiful prayers of the poor souls who built this?’

  ‘Aye, that I can. I have heard some of the men say Gaunt lusts for this castle. He shall have it from our Queen in the end. No one stands in his way, not even his mother.’

  ‘And the tenants will be better for it.’

  Owen snorted.

  ‘The Duke is not the tyrant you think him. Neither is he the old Duke. There will never be Henry of Grosmont’s like again. But Gaunt is a fair man, and wants the best for England.’

  Owen had been captain of archers to the old Duke and would gladly have laid down his life for the great warrior and statesman. The present Duke had yet to win his respect. ‘Lief, you are a fool.’

  ‘Well, when you meet the Duke at Pontefract next week you will see I am right.’

  Owen shrugged.

  ‘What news from York?’

  ‘His Grace orders us to York, where we may continue training while I look into the tale of a runaway nun who leaves a trail of corpses behind her.’ Owen scowled. ‘Does the man think I live only for him?’

  Lief pressed Owen’s shoulder. ‘I am relieved to hear it is a summons from the archbishop, not news of trouble at home. With Lucie expecting a child …’ Lief sat down in a watchman’s alcove, patted the stone ledge beside him.

  Owen sat down. ‘He says nothing of Lucie.’

  ‘He’s stirring up trouble again that will take you from your home, eh?’ Lief drew a knife from a sheath at his waist and made the first cut in a block of wood he carried. ‘In my mind, that’s the trouble with forbidding priests to follow their nature. If they had wives and families, they’d understand.’

  Owen had an odd grin on his face.

  Lief frowned. ‘I’m happy to make you smile, but I’m damned if I know what I said to do it.’

  ‘My friend, you sounded philosophical just then.’

  Lief chuckled. ‘’Tis all the time I spend with you. You’re such a thinker. Worse than ever, you are. A regular worrier.’

  ‘Aye, you’re probably right about that.’ Owen had let the letter drop down beside him, and sat with his forearms on his thighs, his hands folded, his head drooping.

  Lief whittled for a while. ‘And so why is that, Captain? Why are you ever in such a dark study?’

  Owen shrugged. ‘I have more to worry about.’

  ‘The archbishop, you mean?’

  ‘Lucie and the baby.’

  Lief glanced over at his friend, surprised by the answer. ‘You cannot mean to say you are not happy to have a child on the way?’

  ‘I thank God that He has blessed us.’

  Lief frowned. ‘Then is it Lucie? You do not love her?’

  What were all these silly, wrong-headed questions? ‘I love her beyond measure.’

  ‘Then what ails you?’ Lief asked, exasperated.

  Lief would never change. Life was very simple to him, a handful of absolutes.

  ‘What if she dies in childbed? What if the child dies? What will a child think of me, scarred as I am? Will I frighten it?’

  ‘Good God, man, you do think too much. It’s ever been your problem. You have all the best in life – strength, honour, a beautiful wife, and soon the fruit of your union. Any other man would be puffed up with pride and giddy with joy.’

  Owen rubbed his scar beneath the patch. It was difficult to explain. ‘Lucie had a child once, a boy, Martin. He died before he could walk. Plague.’

  ‘Ah.’ Lief nodded over his energetic whittling. ‘So she’s gloomy and fretful, eh?’

  Owen shook his head. ‘No. That is not Lucie’s way. She is determined that all will go well. But it is not up to us, is it? It’s God’s game in the end.’

  Lief paused, studied his friend’s face. ‘Here’s another piece of philosophy, then. It’s no use worrying about what might happen. God’s will is unknowable to the likes of us.’

  How true. And how maddening. If ever there were something Owen would give all to control … ‘You are right. And you were right before when you guessed it was Thoresby making me worry. Before you sat down, I’d been wondering about the nun who ran away. She or someone else went to great lengths to make it look like she’d died. A man called Longford was involved – but was he her friend, her lover or her enemy? Why is Longford’s man buried in the nun’s grave, his neck broken? Why was his maid murdered? Why was she wearing a blue shawl like the nun’s?’

  Lief shook his head. ‘Is that what you do for the chancellor? Make up questions?’

  Owen laughed. ‘It amounts to that, indeed. But that was not my point. I was showing you how I must think to do Thoresby’s work. Of course I’m worrying about all that could go wrong with Lucie. I’ve trained myself to do that.’

  ‘No wonder you hate him.’

  Owen shrugged. ‘I don’t know that I do hate him.’

  Lief glanced over at Owen. ‘God’s blood, but you are a hard one to figure. Well, think about hating the archbishop for a while and give your family a rest, eh?’ He handed Owen the carving, a featureless figure in an archbishop’s robes.

  Owen laughed, slapped Lief on the back. ‘Good advice, my philosophical friend. And a clever reminder.’ He picked up the letter and rose from the stone ledge, stretching. ‘I should go back. Gaspare will think I’ve already ridden off to do battle for Thoresby’s new cause.’

  Lief nodded, already absorbed in another piece of wood. ‘I’ll join you later.’

  Owen stopped in the kitchen to inform Thoresby’s messenger that he would start out for York on the morrow with his men.

  Three

  Lady’s Mantle

  St Clement’s Nunnery was a small claustral establishment compared with St Mary’s Abbey, but the setting was pleasant, nestled among gardens, orchards, meadows, and small arable and pasture closes, separated from the west bank of the Ouse by a common. A Benedictine house, St Clement’s had the customary church and chapter house, cloister, guest house, and even a staithe on the Ouse. The priory’s church was the parish church of the residents of Clementhorpe; beneath its stones were buried not only nuns and their servants, but parishioners, and the nunnery was often reme
mbered in the parishioners’ wills. As prioress, Isobel de Percy strove to instil in the sisters, boarders, and their domestics the importance of the community’s respect. Even the smallest scandal might convince potential benefactors to take their largesse elsewhere.

  This present situation distressed the prioress. She was not fool enough to think Joanna Calverley’s story would not spread among the people of York, but hoped in time Joanna’s notoriety would fade. Isobel intended to keep close watch on Joanna from now on.

  She had given orders to be notified at once when the party from Beverley arrived. She meant to settle Joanna without fuss and with only the essential people knowing. As soon as word came, Isobel hurried to the gate to escort the company into the priory. She would announce the prodigal’s return at the evening meal; it would cause an unpleasant stir, she had no doubt, but the sisters must be told. She would savour these last few hours of peace. As Sir Richard de Ravenser and Sir Nicholas de Louth took seats in the prioress’s parlour, the sub-prioress and the infirmaress hurried in to help Dame Joanna to the infirmary.

  Isobel entertained Louth and Ravenser with the priory’s best cider. Louth graciously praised the cider, the pleasant aspect of the lancet windows that looked out on the orchards stretching down to the river, the fragrant breeze. He told her what he could of Dame Joanna, how they had found her at Will Longford’s, how little they could glean from her responses, her claim that she wore the mantle of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which had allowed her to rise from the dead, and her confession that she had stolen some of the Virgin’s milk from the priory church.

  Ravenser presented her with the stolen relic. ‘Beyond these facts, there is little we can offer you, Reverend Mother. The infirmaress at Nunburton wrote this down for you,’ he handed her a letter. ‘It is everything that she noted about Dame Joanna’s condition when she arrived.’

  Dame Isobel liked least the part about the Virgin’s mantle. ‘Does she speak freely about the mantle? Will anyone tending her be likely to hear this claim?’