Chapter Eight
She went to find Isabelle, to see if the child was happier than the day before.
She was sitting sullenly outside the scullery door, idly tossing a stone from hand to hand as Pol watched over her.
The shadows under her dark eyes showed she’d not slept well either, probably still fretting despite Linnet’s attempts to cheer her.
‘Come on.’ Without waiting to see if she followed her, Linnet went in to see Ann who was busy kneading dough.
‘Can Isabelle sift the flour for weevils for you this morning?’
Ann nodded, distracted, and gestured towards the barrel, ‘but get her clean first,’ she added with a quick glance at Isabelle’s filthy hands and nails.
It was arranged. Linnet helped her bring the barrel out into the sunshine where she could see the black mites more clearly. Isabelle protested loudly as she was scrubbed with cold water and a sliver of Ann’s ordinary soap but submitted nonetheless.
She watched as the child sifted and gently shook the flour, showing a grim satisfaction when she found the creatures. Pol was nearby, ready to swoop whenever Isabelle threw one out his way.
When he caught one in mid-air, the child burst into delighted giggles and Linnet realised again that she really was a child, not just an annoyance, and she wondered who was looking out for her.
The raven could move with great care for such a large bird.
When she’d first seen him following Isabelle, she’d thought for a brief, horrifying moment he was after hurting her, before she’d seen him settle on her shoulder, claws light on her, huge against the child’s small frame, but balancing carefully and crooning in her ear.
The Prior walked past, smiling as he watched what the girl and the bird were doing, then, his face darkening on seeing Linnet, snapping at her, ‘You should be getting on with the prayer book, Linnet, not sitting here playing with the girl.’
He turned back and whispered something to Isabelle. She looked intent and then nodded, the flour sifting now just a task to be done before some work for the Prior.
What did he want the little girl for? He’d been spending more and more time with her lately, barely interested when first Linnet arrived on the island, but always talking to her now.
A thin trickle of unease moved down her spine as she thought of it.
She dismissed it as she went to the Scriptorium. There was too much to think about.
Hours later she was stiff and her head hurt from too much time peering at the text she was copying.
The light was fading so she lit one of the candle stubs she’d taken from Oswyn’s room.
It gave her another hour of careful scribing before it finally flickered and went out.
She knew that a proper scriptorium had strict rules against using candles but this was far from a proper scriptorium.
Anyway, she was more careful than most monks and there was no way she would set fire to hours of work by recklessly flinging her hands around or leaving it lit when she left the room.
In the last gentle cream glow, she remembered the bag of paper scraps she’d taken from Oswyn’s room.
She’d brought them with her in her kirtle to have a closer look at when she had the time.
Now she smoothed them out on the writing desk.
Each was a small piece of paper. There was writing on them but nothing she could decipher, not complete letters.
They didn’t look like practice notes though – the script flowed too much for that. She put them away again, no clearer.
Hungry, she headed to the kitchen. She could see the Prior talking to Isabelle again in the inner courtyard, just outside his parlour.
She was giving him a handful of items, like an offering.
Linnet was too far away to see what the items were.
The Prior patted the child on the head and she skipped off towards the kitchen too.
‘What were you giving the Prior, Isabelle?’ she asked as she caught up with her.
‘It’s our secret,’ the child replied with great importance and wouldn’t be drawn any further.
They ate in silence at the back of the busy room again, Linnet keeping an eye out for the masons who were sometimes fed with the other workers, squeezing in around the edges of the busy room as Ann and her servants chopped and basted and rushed about.
This had to be how Oswyn had discovered one of her secrets.
One of the masons talking perhaps – they travelled a lot so had much to say, she knew.
Was it Jack? No – Oswyn wouldn’t have just taunted her if he’d known she was hiding from Guy, he would have told the Prior straight away.
And Jack had only known who she was after Oswyn drowned. That wasn’t it.
As if thinking about him had conjured him, Jack appeared at the table. Sober now but still leaning too close and too loud.
‘It is Mary, I knew it was!’ He clapped the table triumphantly and began to sit down. Linnet shrank back and arranged her face in the most perplexed expression she could manage.
‘I’m sorry, I’m not Mary. I’m Linnet.’
Isabelle looked up, her mouth still full of bread but always happy to correct someone, anyone. ‘She is Linnet. She scribes here. She’s not Mary. There are four Marys on the isle and she ain’t one of them. She’s not from the isle, mind.’
Jack smiled and turned to the child. ‘Where is she from then, your Linnet?’ He was treating this as a huge jest, Linnet realised, not accepting her denial.
The girl sat up straight, ready to give Jack all the particulars. Was there anything Isabelle knew that could put Linnet in danger? She didn’t think so. She’d been so careful on the isle, only telling what would fit her story. Was a child going to unravel all that now?
‘She’s a roll-bearer’s daughter, you know John-the-Lies?’
Like most of the island people, Isabelle assumed that all mainland folk knew each other.
Jack smiled but looked puzzled. Linnet thanked herself yet again that she’d never talked about her father when with Guy. Isabelle took his confusion for ignorance.
‘A roll-bearer takes the rolls. From one priory to the next. And the monks and that, they write on the roll to say how sorry they are that someone important died, and they put prayers on, and sometimes pictures—’
‘Yes, child, I know what a roll-bearer is.’
Isabelle shrugged. ‘Anyways, she came here to wait to meet him, and she can scribe so the Prior is making her do prayer books while she waits.’
Linnet nodded as Jack turned back to her. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know you.’
Deliberately she shrank back a little further and looked down and mumbled as she spoke. As Mary, she’d been used to looking men in the eye, taking her space in the room and holding her ground. And look where that had got her.
He muttered something and got up, not before another sharp look at her.
The scribing was a connection of course but not so rare as to be a sure link.
Anyway, no one had ever seen Mary scribe, Guy taking all the credit for her hard work.
She was known only as an ink-maker. Isabelle came over to sit next to her, full of questions, but Linnet stopped her with a glance.
They finished eating in silence and went out together. Pol hopped over to Isabelle as if he’d been waiting for her outside the kitchens.
‘Why do you call him Pol?’ Linnet asked. ‘You say he’s a male bird?’
Isabelle shrugged. ‘’Tis his name. I don’t know why.’
Almost everyone at the Priory knew his name too, from Isabelle calling him day and night.
The bird looked at Linnet with his bright black eyes, head cocked.
She shuddered slightly – she’d seen him hunt and kill a baby rabbit once and not forgotten it.
The flash of the bright black feathers with their purple and blue tones swooping down on the terrified creature, the quick shake of the rabbit’s neck and then the gorging on the blood and the innards like a fat nobleman with grease smeared over his face, lording it over his peasants.
The girl and the bird left together, on another mission, heading out of the Priory gates onto the island, full of secrets, the girl singing and the bird croaking and purring back at her. No wonder they thought she was a witch – or a witch’s brat.
Linnet went in search of Tom again. She liked spending time with him, more so during the day. At night it was another story when he was feverish with the need to play the dice and spend his money. He would be brisk and dismissive, looking right through her.
The monks were coming out of the Refectory, going to the Chapter House for the last reading of the Rule before the Great Silence.
It wasn’t the Great Silence here on the island, the Prior normally encouraged them to talk and learn together in the Chapter House.
She wondered if they were quieter now the Inspector was here.
Linnet tried to think of a monastic house where they had been truly silent and couldn’t.
The monks didn’t count the sign language they all used either, she thought they were hardly keeping the Rule of Silence if they simply substituted hands for voices.
She’d learnt that language early, fascinated by the quick movements of the men’s hands and how they could make a tiny gesture mean a whole word.
The Inspector lagged behind, deep in conversation with the Prior, on their way to the Prior’s chamber.
Godfreyd went past the Chapter House to the Infirmary talking loudly about examining Oswyn.
Linnet considered slipping in again to have another look at him but decided not to.
It was risky, and besides, he’d be smelling quite bad by now.