Chapter Three #2
Maybe the Inspector was afraid of ravens. Linnet knew some of the islanders spat when Isabelle and Pol went past. Ravens were supposed to bring death.
Oswyn saw the men talking and hurried over, eager to smooth away any impression of disorder and keen to take his moment.
‘I trust all is well with the inspection so far? The Prior has asked I show you my books tomorrow.’
The Prior looked irritated at Oswyn’s interruption but nodded.
‘And perhaps we can talk about Durham? And the Bishop? I hear he is making great changes there?’
The Inspector also seemed unwilling to talk, nodding equally abruptly.
The Prior nodded towards the novice, who had followed them out.
‘Brother Oswyn, take Brother Cassian to Father Thomas, he can help him with the garden until we need him again.’ And with that, the men went back into the Prior’s parlour and with a firm bang of the wooden door, that was that.
Oswyn looked after them thoughtfully and then turned towards Cassian. Their voices carried clearly over to Linnet as she stood there in the shadows.
‘Bit old to be a novice, aren’t you?’ he asked.
The novice flushed slightly, but stood his ground. ‘Aye, well God called me so I dinna complain to him he were late.’
Linnet wondered why he had become a novice now. Most men of his age had a trade, a family. He was her father’s age, she thought.
‘And you’re travelling with Father Nicholas? Did you not have a monastery to stay at and learn your lessons?’
‘The Bishop wanted him to have another monk with him, and couldna spare a full Brother.’
‘And we’ve to look after you while the Inspector does his duties? I’ve not got time to hold your hand while you do your lessons.’
‘Well no one was asking you to, I’m able to do my own learning.’
The flush on Cassian’s face had deepened and he was standing close to Oswyn.
‘Don’t speak to me in that tone, Brother!
’ Oswyn’s tone was sharp, but he took a careful step back.
‘Now follow Brother Maykin away to the gardens, you’ll find Father Thomas there and he can have you do some weeding.
’ He grabbed the young monk who was passing and pointed them both to the far corner of the outer courtyard where the gate led to the ground the monks tended.
Cassian didn’t move at once, staring at Oswyn with narrowed eyes, before he turned away and headed off.
Neither monk had seen Linnet, watching from the shadows.
The black cat slunk past Linnet’s ankles.
He was damp and smelled of outdoors, rain and smouldering fires.
The Prior and Oswyn might think they were in charge of the Priory but the cat had other ideas.
Linnet had been tempted to give the cat a name, Tibet or Mite maybe, but she’d stopped herself.
Names made you attached to things, and she needed to keep a little removed, on watch to keep herself safe.
The light had gone and Linnet was straining to see the words. She set her work aside and went to find food but it was too late, another evening when she’d missed the meal the kitchen provided for the Priory servants. She would have to ask Ann for any scraps that were left over.
Isabelle was sitting in a corner of the kitchen, laying out herbs and plants and stones covered in lichen around her, singing and counting on her fingers. Pol kept moving the herbs and hopping across her patterns until she lost patience and shooed him out.
‘What are you doing with those, Isabelle?’
The child didn’t answer, brushing Linnet’s question aside. She gave up trying to talk to her and finished her bread. It was stale, the hard end of a loaf, nothing to soak and soften it in. Ann showing again what she thought of her.
It was still raining. No one was lingering outside and no one was chatting.
Linnet didn’t want to go to bed yet, she felt restless and irritated.
Maybe she should think about moving on. If the Prior here could accept a female scribe, there would be other places she could work.
Or she could make inks and sell them at market as she’d done before.
Or she could thieve enough to keep herself fed.
She’d not got caught yet. She took pride in the fact she never thieved for profit, only for food, or those special items – the ones she felt deserved to be looked after properly – the ones neglected by others that she knew she would cherish.
There was a sudden hubbub of noise as a rowdy group of men fell into the kitchen.
They were covered in stone dust, the new masons here to finish the floor.
The usual babble of languages, only one or two were Englishmen, the rest from all over.
There was a constant flow of workers keeping the Priory running, no wonder the Prior was so concerned with the accounts.
The different accents reminded Linnet about the ‘Dutch mouse’.
Was one of the masons Dutch? She listened carefully but the noise was too great to hear any individual voices clearly.
When she got the chance, she would have to find a way to speak to them and see what she could find out.
Despite the rain, Linnet left, there was little space in the kitchen now.
She held her skirts up as best she could but encrusted mud was dragging them down.
Her small room was damp and often the mud would stay for weeks, crusting but too wet to brush off.
Maybe she should think about becoming a nun after all, with someone else to keep her clothes clean and fresh.
She envied the monks who never had to think about such things.
She’d read the Rule of St Benedict and thought that back in time, the monks had done their own washing and cleaning and cooking. Maybe that was before the gentry started sending their sons into orders.
Outside she saw Oswyn heading towards the Priory Church to light candles for Compline. He came over to her at once. She readied herself for more baiting.
‘When were you at Durham, Linnet? I know you and your father spent some time there.’
She shrugged. ‘On and off when I was a child. We moved a lot.’
‘Your father certainly likes to travel. When did he tell you he’d be coming to the island?’
She flinched. ‘He said something a little while ago.’
‘I’m not so sure he did, did he, Linnet?’
He was right of course. She thought fast. ‘But what did you want to know about Durham?’
‘I’m not sure you’re old enough, what is your age?’
‘I’m twenty-five.’ She wasn’t entirely sure. Her mother had died when she was small and her father hadn’t cared enough to tell her.
‘Pity,’ he said, distracted as she had hoped. ‘Too young to remember.’
She chanced a question.
‘What were you talking about with the Prior this afternoon? I heard you from the Scriptorium.’
He looked at her sharply, did he realise she was also a watcher and a secret-gatherer? ‘We were talking about Bishop Foxe, a very important man. He has the ear of the King, you know. He wants everything catalogued and valued so he can account for the church’s property.’
She knew he couldn’t really know the Bishop but she was interested in what he was saying anyway.
The King had been on the throne for ten years or so, but some still thought of him as a new king.
No one was quick to make a lot of noise about a king these days, in case they were accused of treason a few short months later, when the tide had turned and the laws had changed.
The big families up here, in the north, they had felt the sting of this.
Henry Percy had been imprisoned by Henry VII, but released quickly afterwards and was now often seen in his court.
The Nevilles talked loudly about how Henry had a right of succession before the Battle of Bosworth, but everyone knew that swords and fighting men had spoken, rather than family trees and the right of kings.
She’d heard talk of one of the princes coming back to claim his throne, but she wasn’t sure what truth there was in that.
The talk in Bishop’s Lynn had been that they’d never been seen since their time in the Tower of London, and she felt sure that two small boys would have been no trouble for men of power to hide away, only to be seen as bones after that, if at all.
‘What business is it of the King’s what the church has?’
‘Everything is the business of the King.’
He lost interest in her again, turning to talk to Brother Marcus who had appeared behind him.
Marcus had been here since the turn of the year, just after her arrival.
He had moved from another monastery and come in ready to be the bursar, as his old Abbot had sworn he would be.
That was a promise that the Prior had no trouble breaking.
He might not like Oswyn – Linnet didn’t think any of the monks did – but he saw no reason to replace him.
Marcus had taken the news calmly, but persisted in behaving as if he were Oswyn’s senior apprentice, always trying to talk him through a new method of working, or with an idea for the books.
Oswyn flattered him from time to time, but more often dismissed him.
She went back out into the rain and kept walking.
Lost in thought, she found herself at the water’s edge down at the fishermen’s beach below the Priory buildings.
The fog had rolled in and she could see almost nothing around her.
Any moonlight was obscured by the clouds, the world around her a dark haze of rain falling and waves rushing in and out.
Wearily she trudged back up the small slope to her room, dim candlelight shining through the Priory Church windows over the fields showing her the way.