Chapter Thirty-Six
She slept through the morning hours and spent the rest of the day with the Prior, working on the Inspector’s letter to the Bishop, telling him he was going on a pilgrimage, and on the report.
She quickly grasped his cramped, untidy hand which she found easy to copy.
She used the quills he’d cut to make it more his.
Now she knew he had never been a monk, that was understandable.
No monk would have kept a hand like this, even as a novice.
He’d have had it beaten out of him. She’d thought it was to do with his time in France, he must have learnt it there, along with all he needed to pass as a holy man.
He was lucky the Bishop needed so many to carry out the inspections and hadn’t had time to look into him in more detail.
She could imagine the Inspector preaching to the visiting clergy, pushing himself to the front of the crowds, catching Bishop Foxe’s eye.
The Prior visited the Inspector’s room several times, making sure he was seen, talking loudly and pausing as if someone was replying.
He spoke to some of the senior monks about the masons’ work, and added that the Inspector had finished his report.
He wasn’t to be disturbed as he was at his devotions.
After Linnet had finished the letter, they read through the full report. It was no surprise to find many lines of raving about sin, and about the special purpose God had for him. He must have begun to unravel, the thread of his sanity plucked by Oswyn and then pulled on by the events that followed.
He was sloppy with filling the pages, so it was easy enough for Linnet to add more to temper his sterner conclusions.
‘It mustn’t appear too favourable or they’ll suspect something’s amiss,’ the Prior said.
They kept some mild complaints about the monks’ behaviour, about too many women working in the Priory, not enough piety.
But they took out the hateful page banning Linnet from the Scriptorium and added a page half-praising the Prior’s ideas and concluding that his design for the Scriptorium be allowed, or even encouraged.
Linnet made sure she didn’t appear in the report at all.
It was when she was reaching for her knife to scrape away a few of the Inspector’s words that she remembered where it was. Or where she’d last seen it, in the Inspector’s bloody hand at the top of the tower.
She had to get it. It was a good knife. She came into the Priory Church by the south aisle, seeing the masons laying the last of the floor tiles.
‘Where are you going then?’ Jack gave her a sharp look.
‘Prior asked me to get something from the top floor,’ she said, acting irritated, as if annoyed by the task. She walked past them to the tower stairs as he went back to tiling.
In the room at the top, she looked over the wooden floor, scuffed and worn, with a patch of dried blood she quickly turned away from. Would it be seen as blood if you weren’t looking for it? She didn’t think so.
There was no knife and little else – except a dead gull.
That put her in mind of Pol and Isabelle.
Why had she thought he meant Isabelle? It came back to her then – he’d said ‘she’, he’d wrung ‘her’ neck.
He’d not known that Pol was a male bird, at least in Isabelle’s eyes.
She had no doubt he would have killed the child next if he’d not been interrupted.
She came down the stairs slowly, searching every dark corner until finally, a few steps from the bottom, she found her knife. It was dull and smeared and she wiped it on her cloak.
The cloak had more blood on it too, she realised, but at least it was dark and didn’t show. Although the thought of walking around with the Inspector’s blood on her made her gorge rise, she knew she couldn’t wash it now, she had too much to do.
The Prior came down from the Inspector’s rooms for a final time, looking grim.
He told the stable boy that the Inspector would not need his horse tomorrow and to make sure she was comfortable.
He told Ann in the kitchen that the Inspector had no need of food tonight and was tending his own fire.
He told the gathered monks after dinner that the Inspector was at his devotions and wouldn’t be speaking to them this evening.
Several of the younger ones looked disappointed that they wouldn’t get their nightly dose of fanatical preaching.
Cassian looked as if he had questions but the Prior dismissed everyone to their rest.
Before the Prior and Linnet parted, they discussed the story again. The Prior would find the Inspector gone tomorrow morning. He would find a note saying he was going on a pilgrimage and the Prior was to have his report and letter sent back to Durham with the novice.
The tides would be in their favour, low just before the morning prayers so the Inspector could have left before then, and got to the mainland without trouble.
As Linnet was leaving, Ann knocked on the door and delivered a shivering and hiccupping Isabelle.
‘Excuse me, Father Richard, but she won’t stop crying. We know it’s sad about her bird but I’ve got my work to do.’
Ann wasn’t being unkind but she was clearly at the end of what she could do.
‘Now then, Isabelle,’ the Prior started, ‘you need to stop, child.’
But she just sobbed on, wretched. This was the death that she couldn’t absorb, her skinny child’s frame was full of grief. She couldn’t understand why Pol was dead.
‘You can help us, you know.’
That was enough to get her to pause.
‘Later tomorrow, we need you to tell people that you saw the Inspector leaving early in the morning, on foot and with all his things. Can you do that for us?’
She nodded, still bleak but determined to help them.
The Prior sat her in his lap and rocked her a little as he talked.
‘Once, when the saint was Prior here, long, long ago, he was building a house for visitors. But every time he had the roof laid with fresh straw, a pair of ravens would dance down and pluck, pluck, pluck it out.’
Isabelle let out a reluctant chuckle, but her face remained solemn.
‘So eventually, the saint, who loved all the animals and all the birds, he cried out, “In the Name of Jesu our Saviour, be gone from this place!” And the ravens, they heeded him, and off they flew.
‘But it wasn’t long after that they flew back again, and our saint, he was ready to bid them to leave again, when he noticed they were carrying a lump of pig lard, just for him. And he thanked them and blessed them, and they stay on the isle to this day, and never touch the straw no more.’
Isabelle looked up at this and nodded. A little mollified by the story, although Linnet could see questions forming that she knew the child would come back to.
‘Did you want to sleep in with me tonight?’ Linnet asked. Another small nod. She wouldn’t be parted from Pol, though, and they walked slowly back to Linnet’s room with the bird in her arms.
Sir Cyrus stopped them and Isabelle shrank back against Linnet.
‘Stupid girl, mourning a bird, it’s not Christian.’
‘He’s more than a bird, he’s Pol. And the saint himself loved ravens.’ It was enough to get Isabelle back, eyes flashing, and she was on the verge of spitting at the old man.
Linnet hurried her along, they couldn’t get caught in more trouble now, and closed the door of her room, relieved but utterly weary.
Finally she persuaded Isabelle to part with Pol, putting him in Tom’s wooden box, with a small piece torn from a blanket ‘to keep him warm’, Isabelle said.
She thought the child would disturb her sleep but they were both dead to the world in minutes.