Chapter Five
She woke hard, sweating yet still somehow cold, reaching for her familiar cloak but of course it wasn’t there. Gasping she sat up, trying to clear the nightmare and calm herself.
The Priory at night was never truly quiet.
She’d slept through Nocturnes and the monks were walking back quickly to the dormitory to catch up on a few hours of precious sleep before Lauds.
She looked out of her window to watch. Her room overlooked the inner courtyard opposite the dormitory and the monks sometimes walked that way back from the Priory Church rather than take the inner staircase, which was damp, pokey and had treacherous holes in it.
The rain had finally stopped. She could see candles and hear a low murmur – had they forgotten about the Inspector and the Rule of Silence?
She counted them back, dark shapes with the odd flickering light, Godfreyd the tallest, following the others with his easy stride.
She pulled the rough blankets back over herself, disturbing the black cat who often crept into her room.
He resettled once she’d lain down again, leaning heavily against her.
She ran her hands gently over him, the soft fur contrasting with the coarse wool as her breathing returned to normal.
Tibet, she whispered softly and rebelliously to herself.
What had woken her? In the dark, Oswyn’s threat loomed harder and sharper.
What was she going to do? She had a feeling it had something to do with the secret scrolls her father used to carry, not always from monastery to monastery, but to men in inns and men on the road.
Men with their faces covered whatever the weather.
She remembered him poring over family trees, wills and landownership documents, much talk of who was related to whom and what that could mean.
Or could Oswyn have heard something about the work she and Guy had been doing?
Guy came back into her mind as if he were standing in a dark corner of the room.
She could remember when she first saw him, drunk and angry in that inn in Cambridge.
What had drawn her to him? The good paper careless in his pocket that she’d taken before he’d seen her, that was one thing, he’d never known she’d stolen it.
But then he’d seen her and thrown all his attention and gaze on her, talking up a storm and so interested in her and who she was.
She’d lost herself for a while. And then the forgeries, the illicit indulgences, the work for Warham.
Could Oswyn know about that? No, that wasn’t possible. No one would be talking.
Warham’s men wouldn’t gossip like fishwives.
They’d come in the night with knives. They’d act, not talk.
She shuddered as she remembered the body of the young scribe in Ely market.
His throat an open shout of red, the townspeople sure it was a drunken squabble gone wrong, but she knew he’d been working for Warham, he’d told everyone.
Not something Warham would have wanted. Would those men come here?
Did they still care about what she and Guy had done now that Warham was in London?
Or was Guy the bigger threat? She forced herself to be calmer.
The causeway was drowned as it often was at night.
They couldn’t come now. They couldn’t know she was here.
She was sure she had hidden any trace of her journey.
Oswyn was probably just toying with her to see what he could find out.
The Inspector would keep them all busy for now anyway.
She was falling asleep, with the cat purring and warming her, when something else woke her again. Two voices, quarrelling. Rising and falling, angry but trying to keep quiet.
She got up and crept down and out into the courtyard, the stones cold on her feet through her thin hose, as she tried to work out where it was coming from.
She liked walking around the Priory at night, there were often secrets to find and sometimes small things to take, and no one to see her, most times anyway.
But now, there were two monks outside the Chapter House, one was definitely Oswyn.
She got close enough, still hiding in the shadows, to hear some of what they were saying.
‘You’ve no right to come looking through my papers, none at all! I’ll be talking to the Inspector about you, and recommending he deal harshly with you.’
‘Dunna talk cack, man, you’ve nowt to tell him. ’Tis him that’s reporting on you all, not t’other way about. And—’
The other monk’s voice got lower here and Linnet couldn’t hear it without getting closer, which she dare not do.
She could dimly see him in the moonlight, leaning over Oswyn.
Was he holding his habit by the neck too?
The older monk seemed to shrink back as the novice (she was sure it was the novice, it seemed the shape of him), shook him off contemptuously and strode off.
Quickly, she returned to her room before she could be seen. By the time she woke again, it was hours later. The cat had gone and the day was long started. A bright, cold day washed clean by the rain of the day before. She threw water on her face to shake off her night fears. She had work to do.
She liked working on the great works but the tiny prayer books and commonplace books helped her better her skill.
A mistake on a large letter for a bible that stood on an altar could be turned into a beautiful curl of text, or a sparkle of gilt.
There was no room for error in the little books.
Her text was even, looping sweetly across the page as she counted spaces and margins in her head, the Latin words echoing in the sparse room.
When it was just her in the room, it felt spacious – ready for a cluster of monks to be sat there scribing.
It was clean in the middle of the room with four plank desks and stools, but dusty and neglected in the dark corners around the edges, piles of discarded papers and some crumbling stone.
‘Brother Oswyn is drown’d.’
Startled yet again by that child. Isabelle was out of breath, she’d run in, full of a story to tell.
‘That’s a terrible thing to say about one of the Brothers.’ Linnet assumed Isabelle was playing a game of some sort. She was impatient to be rid of her again, she had a lot to write today and it would take her precious time to get her rhythm back.
Isabelle tugged on her sleeve. ‘He is so drown’d.
Tom is with him on the beach. The Prior’s going down there now.
’ Her stubborn little face was setting into a familiar defiant scowl but Linnet could also see fear in her eyes.
She’d probably seen a lot of death in her short life, a small child during the last bout of plague the island had suffered, and the usual sickness and accidents that culled the islanders.
They left the Scriptorium and Isabelle led the way, full of the importance of knowing the news.
They came down from the slight hill of the Priory onto the fishermen’s beach where the boats were pulled up when they came back from the catch.
A curve of stony land that looked up to the Heugh on one side, which overlooked the Priory, and the rocky outcrop on the other end, hiding the lime kilns that the monks used to use from time to time.
The beach was largely empty now apart from a small crowd of men on the shore.
Oswyn was lying on the ground. He was clad in his white undershirt, his habit neatly folded a few yards away on a rock. He could have been resting from his daily swim, but he was so still.
Linnet couldn’t quite understand what she was looking at.
She found herself seeing the scene in little flashes, like drawings around the edge of the page.
The calm sea with the sun sparkling off it.
The dead man’s hand lying on the cold stones, white – almost blue – so clean against the dirty ground.
The sandals of the monks standing over him, shifting as they talked and gestured and prayed.
Brother Maykin’s voice rose above the others, she could hear him telling all around him that he had told Oswyn not to go swimming as he did, that the older monk hadn’t listened to him but had thanked him kindly for his concern.
Lies floating up already as the dead lay there, unable to speak up.
Oswyn had never spoken kindly to anyone, finding Maykin an annoyance if anything.
She was shocked at his death, but also, she realised, with a stab of guilt, so relieved.
He wouldn’t be telling her secret now, whatever one he had got hold of.
She sent up a quick prayer to St Gertrude, asking her saint to forgive her for her wickedness, and to keep her safe from this dangerous sea.
‘Tom said he weren’t to swim,’ said Isabelle. ‘No one should be swimming. The sea’s too cruel he says.’
Tom heard his name and came over to them.
‘Take the girl away from here,’ he urged Linnet.
‘She brought me here,’ she replied stupidly.
‘Told you he was drown’d,’ Isabelle muttered crossly. Linnet’s disbelief had not been lost on her.
‘What happened to him?’ she asked Tom now, her head buzzing with questions.
He shook his head slightly, turning away from her hard gaze. If he had anything to say, he wasn’t going to say it to her now.
The Prior was organising some of the men to carry Oswyn up to the Priory when he caught sight of Linnet and Isabelle. He hurried over.
‘Linnet, and you, little one, we are not talking about Brother Oswyn to the Inspector – do you understand? He’s at private prayer at the moment so he won’t have seen this.’
Linnet thought about where the guest room was, it didn’t have a window that looked out of the Priory, just into the passageway, so he wouldn’t see anything while he prayed.
They both nodded instinctively then Linnet asked, ‘But why?’