Chapter Thirty-Two
Candlemas had felt like a pause, a rest from her suspicions about Tom and Oswyn and from the thoughts that kept coming back to haunt her. Now the sun was up and the morning of the Priory’s daily business had begun.
Linnet was making her way to the Scriptorium, wondering if she were right, when the Prior saw her standing and told her to follow him.
She took the moment and asked him to follow her instead, running into the Scriptorium to get the little dish of the ink she’d been souring.
Displeased, he came in and was about to scold her for her boldness, when he saw her use her brush to make one clear blue sparkling mark on the rough piece of parchment she had there.
‘Is that…?’
She nodded. ‘It’s the ink you’ve been working on. I found the receipt and knew it needed souring to keep the colour pure. It’s your lapis, isn’t it?’
He looked carefully at her, weighing up what to say next.
She rushed on, ‘And it wasn’t me made an error in Brother Godfreyd’s book, it wasn’t.
I don’t make errors. It was his plan, he—’ Then she broke off again.
This was all she had. She could help him make this fake lapis, she could keep quiet about it as he charged the gentry for the foreign ink.
He could get more money than he was spending, and do with it what he wanted.
‘How did you get it so blue? I followed the receipt to the letter.’
She began to explain then cut herself off. What use would he have of her if he knew how to do it himself.
‘I had some ideas from when I was apprenticed to make inks, this and that and the other.’
He gave her a shrewd look, knowing why she wasn’t saying more, then clearly made up his mind.
‘We’re off to Inner Farne again. I need you to help me with manuscripts I’ve found. I’ve been taking back a few pages at a time so as not to start talk amongst the monks, but you can bring some too, hide them in your bag.’
This must be where he found the receipt from, and the gilt letters that Pol had hidden. For now at least, she could stay a little longer to help him with these finds.
She got into the boat with her pens and knife in the pouch she’d lifted from the pedlar, in case he wanted her to make copies. The fishermen were the ones who’d brought the old monk’s body back the other time. One nodded at her.
They pushed off from the shallow beach towards the sea, coming round the curve at the end of the island that looked for all the world like a flourish of penmanship to Linnet.
She gazed up at the granite rock at the end of the isle, and the small kilns beyond it on the land, the hamlets scattered about on the rough farming ground.
There was cattle here, but none grazing at this bleak time of year, just the rabbits scattered about, thin and jumpy, destined for skinning and the pot.
Was she being foolish, being on a boat out at sea with the Prior, now she knew it all? But she was almost certain he may have been a thief like her, but not a killer. His crimes were in the aid of making beautiful books, barely crimes at all by her thoughts.
The journey out was on calm seas, but the fishermen looked askance at the sky and told them they were to be quick.
The weather was on the turn. Linnet looked at the sky but saw nothing to worry about.
But the Prior thought the warning was more serious and he hurried her up the slope into the tiny chapel where the two monks were waiting for them.
Brother Adam had made a hot drink for them from the herbs on the island, and Linnet sipped it gratefully, not minding too much that it scalded her tongue. At least the pain cut through the fog that had descended over her thoughts, going over and over her suspicions with nothing to hold onto.
The Prior was talking to the monks. He told Adam he would return to the Priory soon, when other tasks had been allotted and a new monk appointed to the cell.
‘A bird lover I hope, Father,’ Adam suggested, and the Prior laughed.
‘I’d come myself but I have too much to do.’ The remorse in his voice was partly in jest but partly sincere. Linnet thought of the Prior’s duck, now recovered but still living in the parlour, competing with the cat for his attentions.
The Prior sent the monks back to their hut while he opened up the chest that Linnet had seen before, prising up the false bottom with the point of his knife to reveal more papers underneath.
She held the candle for him as he sifted through the fragile papers, asking her opinion of some and expressing his pleasure at what he was finding.
He’d brought a bag to put them in, leaving only the ones seriously damaged by mice and damp.
He gave it to her to hold, she could bring it back into the Priory without scrutiny, he would no longer have to travel to get a page or two at a time to hide in his habit.
Monks were curious and always watching their superiors closely to glean their moods.
If he carried papers, the Inspector might stop him and ask to see them. Linnet wouldn’t be noticed.
They went to say farewell to the monks in their hut, the Prior leaving more candles for them, a jar of winter honey, and his blessing, before he and Linnet slid and scrambled down the slope to the boat.
The clear skies had darkened and the rain had begun, gusts of wind shoving them off balance as they clambered into the boat. The fishermen gave them a look of satisfaction at being proved right, but they were too busy fighting the waves to keep it up for long.
The journey back took twice as long. She tried to ask the Prior if she would be able to keep scribing for him, but the wind tore her words away before they reached him, and he shrugged, clearly in his own world.
Linnet clung fast to the side of the boat, watching the wild waves and the darker grey of the skies, all the while wondering what she could do.
They were back too late for food but Ann had kept some back for the Prior, next to the fire in his parlour.
He did not invite Linnet to share. He gave her the manuscript pages to lay out in the Scriptorium, ‘in a dark place mind, so they’re not seen’, to dry out in front of the embers of the fire there.
Once she’d finished laying them out, her hands beginning to warm a little as she did it, she went out to see if she could find something to eat.
The inner courtyard was still busy with the masons gathered around a young apprentice, mocking him about his work or his love for one of the kitchen girls. Linnet tried to get past but Jack stopped her, shouting above the gathering wind, which was whipping clouds across the dark skies.
‘Now this is who you need, eh?’ he yelled at the apprentice, who was blushing sullenly. ‘A real woman with a bit of experience who knows what to teach you! Isn’t that right then, Mary – oh it’s Linnet, ain’t it?’
She looked around but no one else had taken notice of his deliberate mistake. She needed to find Cassian, to prove what she knew about the man now. She tried to free herself from Jack’s grip but he strengthened it, with a cruel look of satisfaction.
‘I ain’t what you should start with, son,’ she said to the apprentice, playing the part, the sooner to get away. ‘You want a nice, shy girl you can frolic with.’ Damn, she was back thinking like she was Mary again.
The masons roared with laughter, enjoying her reply, surprised by the quick wit from the quiet scribe, and she took advantage of it to slip away.
Cassian was walking towards the stables. She went up to him, shivering from cold and the rain which was beginning to spit down.
‘I’ve questions to ask you,’ she said, surprising herself with her own bravery.
‘Aye?’ He raised one eyebrow and smiled curiously. ‘I’m off to get some more hay from the stables, make my bed more easeful. Hard enough to get rest in that dormitory.’
‘What happened with your wife? And her brother?’ She glanced around as she asked, was she foolish to just confront him like that? But she had to know – was he the man Oswyn thought was dead, but had come back somehow, ready to atone?
Winded by the question, Cassian sat heavily on the wall outside the stables, heedless of the rain which was driving down now.
‘Her brother? She had none. She died, Linnet. Of childbed. It were our fourth child, none had drawn breath, and this little lad no different. I shoulda stopped asking it of her, we could ha taken in another’s bairn, safer for her, not put her through it.’
‘But you said you were the cause of her death?’ Was she wrong? Had she put the pieces together all wrong somehow?
‘Aye. You do ken how a babby comes about?’ He gave a wry smile through the rain on his face, and his tears.
‘Is that why you’re a monk now?’
‘The falling sickness, it came on me after her death and I thought it a sign from the Lord, telling me to atone. So here I am.’
And a desolate place to end up, Linnet thought. But if he wasn’t the man in the story – then there was only one other man it could be.
She left Cassian sitting with his thoughts outside the stables, as if he welcomed the rain coming down on him.
The inner courtyard was quieter now, and there was a lull in the storm.
She could see Isabelle, picking her way with Pol flying around in a lazy loop around her, letting out odd cries and caws.
She needed to ask her more but before she could reach her, the Inspector called the child and spoke briefly to her.
Isabelle nodded and followed him up the short stairs into the guest room, Pol now hopping behind her.
She felt a sudden chill that came from inside, not the quickening winds.
She started across the courtyard and up the stairs to the guest room, standing undecided by the door, trying to think of what to tell the Inspector, how to explain coming in, unsure of her suspicions even now.
Then she heard a scream and a thud, and then a silence.