Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
If the Prior were the killer, who could judge him? He was the lord of this island, and she would never leave if she accused him – not if he were ready to kill. But there was the Inspector. He was the Prior’s superior. If she had evidence, she could take it to him and he could tell the Bishop.
There was a noise from the corner of the room, the duck. She’d completely forgotten about the duck. It looked around from the gloom and took a tentative waddle out.
‘Oh my Lord, a duck! What else do you hide here, Linnet?’ Father Thomas looked startled but then charmed.
She looked from the duck to the monk, they both had the same expression of contentment, confusion and general geniality.
Was she going mad now, thinking of it like a human?
It was just a duck. And of course it was hungry.
As the Prior’s pet, she’d been fed in her spot by the fire.
She’d neglected it but she had probably come out now for food.
She’d have been better treated by the Prior, but a man who could be so kind to a duck – could he really be a murderer?
She needed to know. Even if asking questions was dangerous.
‘Come in!’ His voice was sharp.
She walked into his parlour, carrying the duck. After its brief burst of activity, it was still again. She decided it would be the perfect reason for her to see the Prior.
‘Did you want the duck, Father? I found it in the Scriptorium.’
‘Found it?’ He raised one eyebrow and she looked steadily back.
‘Ah well, put her back by the fire, she will need some more bread before we can release her, although she’s looking better for her roving.’
He gathered his papers and headed out of the door, not waiting to see the duck settled. In his haste to leave, he’d dropped a page or two so she put them on his table. One felt very old and fragile, she took another look.
It was a simple thing, a list of names and some numbers.
The text was cramped, not a scribe’s best work.
He’d crossed out a few lines and written other words on top.
They weren’t in Latin but it wasn’t an English she recognised.
She could see the Prior’s hand on a few notes on the end of the page.
He’d put a query mark by the last line of the receipt – she was sure it was a receipt. She made out the words sur it gud.
Thinking hard, she realised what it might be. The missing lapis powder, the herbs and weeds Isabelle was always collecting for the Prior. The muddy blue she’d been trying out for him.
She put the page down and looked around. Under a small cloth she could see an ink steeping, the one that he kept bringing to her as a paste. She had a sudden thought, this might be enough to keep her here.
She took a little of the ink back to the Scriptorium, fetching a small pot to transport it, hiding it in a corner, but not before adding a little vinegar – it needed souring to keep the colour pure. She was sure that was what sur it gud meant – why would the Prior know what that meant? But she did.
Father Thomas came in so she started questioning him again.
He answered her with evident pleasure, giving her Latin words for English ones, and English for Latin, as she dragged up as many different words as she could remember.
She slipped in the other words as she could: neque obliviscaris in faciem Pulsante autem, occisor dic Priorus – sed mortuus est.
Obliviscaris – that was to forget. But neque meant never. So ‘never forget’. That sounded like Oswyn – always boasting about his memory. His frequent mentions about his memory could also have been veiled threats to those whose secrets he was hiding, if they were aware that he knew, of course.
So she had ‘never forget’, ‘face’, ‘killer say Prior’ and ‘dead’ or ‘death’.
But what were pulsante and autem? Father Thomas wasn’t sure – ‘pulsing’ or ‘throbbing’, he thought.
Autem meant however. She tried the sentence again, writing out the gloss below the Latin words: ‘never forget face’, ‘throbbing however’, ‘ killer tell Prior’ and ‘but he is dead’.
But was she putting the words together in the right way?
Although she didn’t have Oswyn’s book at hand, she remembered he scribed in the old style with very few signs or marks to show the sense of a sentence, apart from some spaces.
She thought back to the day before Oswyn drowned. Had he talked to the Prior?
She remembered him coming out of his room once, or was it twice? He tried to talk to the Inspector and the Prior but they had brushed him aside. Later, he’d asked her about her time in Durham and what she remembered but said she was too young.
There must have been something he’d realised. Something he’d ‘never forget’.
‘Knocked!’ Father Thomas sounded triumphant and his exclamation startled her. ‘Pulsante can be knocked.’
She thanked him and made a note. The words now read: ‘Never forget face knocking however, killer tell Prior, but he is dead.’
Another scrap of conversation came back to her now, when she was hiding in the parlour the first night the Inspector came.
What had Oswyn said? She’d noticed at the time he’d said something with heavy emphasis.
Something about how the Inspector should knock on the door. Had he paused before ‘knock’?
It was frustrating to be so close to answering another question, but not quite close enough.
The monks went out for Compline and Linnet followed them for some fresh air. Cassian held back, waiting to talk to her.
‘Ye haven’t told the Prior about – ye ken…’ he tailed off, looking miserable. He must be talking about the falling sickness.
‘No, does it happen often?’
‘Only when I be tired. Not much. It’s na’ worth saying about,’ and he grabbed her arm hard, to make his point.
She shook him off, scared by the naked threat in his eyes. ‘I won’t say anything.’ But her curiosity bubbled back up again and before she could stop herself, she was asking, ‘Why are you here with the Inspector? Does he always take a novice with him?’
She didn’t expect him to answer but he nodded carefully, fair to have a secret given for a secret kept.
‘The Prior at Durham, he knew me as a carpenter, afore I took orders. Asked me to go with him and keep an eye. He didn’t think that much of the Inspector, he can be—’ He waved in the air around his head.
‘I was ta keep him with his feet on the ground.’ He looked miserable.
‘And I canna get him to do his report and go, no matter what I say to him, he wants ta tell all the monks his ideas. The Bishop thinks the sun shines out of his arse for some reason—’
He cut himself off, obviously saying more than he’d meant to.
That must have been what the man was scolding him about.
So Cassian was spying on the monks for the Inspector, and on the Inspector for the Prior at Durham.
She couldn’t think of a man less able to spy and connive than this one, and he was spying twice over.
She would keep a distance from him, she didn’t know how dangerous he might be.