Chapter Five #2
He sighed. ‘I don’t think there’s a Rule against swimming but if there is, I don’t want the Inspector to add it to his report. I’m having Oswyn taken to the Infirmary and we’ll say he’s sick for the next few days.’
It made sense. Oswyn’s odd daily swimming habit could only attract attention, especially now he’d drowned.
‘But, Prior Richard, what about his account books? Didn’t the Inspector need to see those?’
The Prior looked shrewdly at Linnet for a moment.
‘You can go and get them ready for him. He’ll need them set out in my room.’
They left the beach. Linnet looked at Isabelle wondering if she should try and comfort her in some way but the child wasn’t crying.
She looked so much smaller without her raven with her, just a child, nothing different about her.
The thought conjured the bird, and he swooped in, coming to land a few feet away from her.
Isabelle gave a small cry of delight and Pol echoed her, bobbing his head up and down and puffing up the ruff of feathers at his neck before solemnly following her as she skipped away, hopping sedately in her wake.
Linnet hurried to Oswyn’s cell to get his books.
He had his own private room, set aside from the dormitory with its cubby holes for each monk.
Only the Bursar and the Prior had their own places to sleep and she’d never seen into the Prior’s sleeping place.
Oswyn’s room was clean and tidy, a plain bed and a few neatly folded clothes on a stool, an old wooden chest, nothing out of place apart from several candle stubs on the floor.
He’d hoarded the best blankets, she noticed, wondering if she could borrow one or two while the Priory was in disarray.
Not that she intended to give them back.
She opened the chest at the bottom of the bed.
More good woollen blankets, he was making sure he would not be cold whatever the weather, and a dozen candles.
And his account books. Like most bursars, he kept two sets of accounts.
One was just the figures, the other was the household book that he would put all the information in daily for him to calculate later.
She hesitated. Which would the Prior want her to bring?
She opened both books. She could tell they had been bought in for him to write in, poor quality paper and plainly bound, she’d seen their like for sale before.
The account book was clear, neat Latin in a careful hand.
The household book was more carelessly kept.
She noticed the bottoms of several pages were ripped and torn, with text scribbled anyway. Well then. Only the account book.
But on an impulse, she took also the household book for herself, to look at later. Perhaps the Prior would need the figures Oswyn hadn’t copied over. She could easily make it look as if it were his hand.
She felt deep unease being in his cell, as if at any moment the door would open and he’d be upbraiding her for being there. She told herself off. He was dead. He couldn’t shout at her.
Defiantly, she decided on the dark brown blanket from the chest, shaking it to fold it properly.
A small cloth bag flew out of the folds.
Curious, she opened it up but there were merely tiny screws of paper, covered in ink but no words, just scribbles again.
She folded it back into the blanket, gathered up the books and, for good measure, added the good candles and candle stubs to the top of her pile.
No one would notice her carrying a blanket, women’s work to be doing that. She refused to feel bad about the candles. Oswyn couldn’t use them anymore. A little voice echoed in her head ‘once a thief always a thief, Linnet’ but she shook it off. She may as well make the most of this moment.
‘What are you doing?’ It was Marcus, he was always on the lookout for anything and maybe he was already having a look around the room he would hope to be moving into.
She’d forgotten about him. She stepped back, dropped her head to make herself shorter than him, shrinking into herself a little, and muttered her reply. The Prior, the books, to the study.
She risked a quick glance at his face, but saw no speck of grief. She supposed he would have an easy path to the position of bursar now. At least he would think so. She wondered if Oswyn had enjoyed his daily swim partly because Marcus would never have joined him for that.
‘Well carry on then.’ As she thought, the blanket and candles hadn’t attracted his notice at all.
The account book left in the Prior’s room, and the blanket and candles, the household book and the curious little bag of paper twists all safely hidden in her own room, she took a moment to sit outside in the graveyard of the squat village church opposite the Priory.
The high building cast its shadow over the stones, but she sat where there was a hint of warmth in the winter sun.
She shut her eyes, thinking again of the body on the shore. The white of the clothes and the man’s skin surrounded by the black of the monks clustered on the shore, and the clear green of the water washing up on the stones.
‘Linnet, are you sleeping?’
She felt his breath on her face before she opened her eyes.
Hot but not unpleasant. She looked at Godfreyd bending over her.
He was so tall that he must spend all his time bending within the cramped rooms of the Priory.
She wondered idly if his back hurt him. She doubted it.
He was well made, like the forms of wooden statues she’d seen in some of the cathedrals, all in proportion, strong arms, even features.
Money shaped bodies as well as houses, she knew. Even illness seemed to glance off them more lightly, leaving fewer scars and blemishes.
‘I heard you saw Oswyn on the beach.’
She looked around for the Inspector cautiously, then nodded.
‘The Prior’s brought him to me in the Infirmary. I’ve got him covered up so that no one would know, you know…’
‘That he’s dead?’
Godfreyd flinched slightly then nodded. ‘We’re saying he has the bloody flux, no one wants to be around that. I know we have to keep him there for the Inspector but there’s only so long I can keep up the pretence. He’ll start to smell bad soon.’
The monk’s well-made nostrils flared with disgust.
‘They’ll think it’s the flux making him smell so bad,’ Linnet pointed out.
He didn’t look convinced.
‘Anyway, what happened? What did you see on the beach?’
‘I just saw him lying there, already drowned.’
Linnet felt the scrutiny of the man’s gaze and shifted a little.
But she’d done nothing – this was not her death.
This was purely Oswyn with his mania for his daily swim in the freezing waters across the harbour, always talking about how his healthy body informed his healthy mind, quoting something in Latin and displaying his shivering and not so healthy-looking body on his way back to the dormitory before Lauds, dripping on the clean floors while the servants rolled their eyes.
She’d seen him in the water a few times, head up and full of his own importance, while the curious seals watched him from a safe distance, mockingly, she liked to think.
He used to swim from the beach where the fishermen gathered, round the Heugh, and come out at Cuddy’s Isle, never stopping to pray there as some did, but merely passing it.
As she thought on it, she remembered the argument she’d seen last night, Cassian threatening the Bursar, leaning over him. She went to say something but bit it back; none of her business to talk to Godfreyd about it.
Godfreyd was mulling on something. He’d lost his usual sleek, arrogant look.
‘He was definitely dead when you saw him, Linnet?’ he asked insistently.
‘I didn’t see him breathing if that’s what you’re meaning.’ It came out sharper than she meant. She needed to remember to keep civil, even with the monks she didn’t like. She was free to be herself here on the island, but only a meek, quiet version of herself.
Godfreyd didn’t usually spend time talking to her.
The only times in the past were when he wanted a recipe copied into his leech book ‘and quickly, woman’.
She hadn’t realised he even knew her name.
Now as he stood there, he ran his eyes up and down her, getting the measure of her and finding her wanting.
She flushed under his close attention, colour coming to her usually sallow cheeks.
She didn’t get looked at these days, she was judged to be nothing special, which only worked to suit her.
She’d hated it when she was just grown, all the glances and the sly pats and touches.
Plaiting her long dark hair back severely and wearing only the drabbest clothes had helped make her more invisible, habits she had kept up.
It hadn’t stopped the odd grab at her in the dark corridors, from a monk or a novice in the shadows, someone feeling safe enough to threaten her without fear of consequence, but it felt routine, no real interest in her but a marking of territory, a reminder not to become complacent in this place where she was an outsider.
She’d heard Godfreyd was the eldest son of his family, not the one normally given to God, but that there’d been some reason they wanted to get rid of him.
He’d arrived at the monastery with a carriage full of goods and even a servant, although the man had returned with the carriage.
Ann gossiped that he had his own good linen to sleep on, nothing that the other monks could manage.