Chapter Ten
She heard a commotion outside the kitchen. Jack and the other masons were standing around Tom who had his hands up as he tried to talk his way out of trouble. Their voices had carried across the inner courtyard into her Scriptorium and roused her from her writing.
‘Come now, man, you owe us the coin you lost to us.’ The masons were pressing in on him, weighing their stone-hammers from hand to hand.
‘Of course, of course, I gave my word, it’s solid, you can ask anyone around here.’ But Tom was shifting from foot to foot as he spoke and she could tell he was desperate to be away.
‘Tonight then? At the inn?’ It was Jack who spoke.
‘What’s this then?’
Brother Cassian strode into the middle of the men, used to taking the centre of a space, and something of that authority remained, even though he was only a novice.
Jack looked him up and down, contemptuous of a man in a habit. ‘Nothing to concern you – Brother.’
But the other masons were walking away. The monks paid their wages, they didn’t want any trouble with them.
Linnet had seen men undone by their debts before. Tom could have been undone by the masons arriving, with their wages from their last job hanging heavy on them. They had looked like ripe fruit for the plucking but it had turned sour.
She went to go after him but thought again. There was Tom by the harbour wall, thoughtful and kind Tom, and then there was gaming Tom.
Cassian turned to Linnet. ‘He’s like me brother was. He’s beholden to the gaming, is he? Perhaps I can pray with him, turn him to the light?’
Linnet didn’t say anything to that. What could she say.
She looked at Cassian more closely now. He didn’t move like the Brothers, used to their habits and their sandals, she could see him now, shifting his shoulders as if the rough material was itching him.
It would be, she knew, unless you were lucky enough to have money like Godfreyd, and the choice of softer cloth.
She wondered again what had led him to become a monk, but she wouldn’t ask.
There were better ways to find things out.
As she walked back to the Scriptorium, Cassian followed her.
She hoped he wasn’t going to question her now, but he didn’t seem to have a purpose, just drifted in after her.
He took out his worn copy of the Rule and sat down at one of the other chairs.
She could see his mouth moving and his finger moving slowly across the page as he struggled to make out the words.
Eventually he threw the book down in a fit of temper, and stood up.
She picked up the book and gave it back to him. ‘It gets easier you know. The more you work at it. You must have taken time to become a carpenter, it didn’t happen a day to the next, did it?’
For a moment she thought he was going to hit her. His face had darkened and she could see his hands tense, but he turned and left instead, hissing, ‘There’s nothing a woman like you can teach me.’
The noise from the tavern was greater than usual that night, and Linnet could hear loud shouts from across the square. She went in to see if she could talk to Tom but he was sat with the masons.
‘More ale for my good friends here!’ he shouted, waving his tankard at Beth who was serving.
‘I’ll see your money first, Tom,’ she said, giving him a straight look.
In reply he just scattered coins at her, turned away and roared with laughter at something one of the masons said.
Jack looked up and caught Linnet’s eye and made a coarse gesture, which had her blushing. She left the inn, wishing she could be Mary again and gesture back, not the quiet Linnet who kept her head down and her tongue clean.
The Prior’s parlour was lit up with many candles, the good ones. The Inspector and the Prior were talking loudly, the desk piled high with manuscripts and books. Seeing her passing, the Prior called her in.
‘Linnet, we need you to order these.’ He gestured at the piles of old accounts, some of which had mildew on the bindings. How far back was the Inspector going?
She fetched her pen from the Scriptorium to make marks as she worked and sorted.
Marcus was working on one of the books, splattering ink as he wrote.
He had his arm bent around the book, hiding it from Linnet’s view, hoarding the numbers.
From time to time, he would look up to see what she was doing and sigh and shake his head, but she ignored him.
If the Prior thought Marcus could do it all, he wouldn’t have called her in.
As she worked, the men forgot she was there and resumed their conversation.
‘The Bishop is looking for more revenue?’
‘Yes, the King is a man who watches the pennies, wherever they fall in his kingdom. The Bishop is one of his most trusted advisers so he is wanting to prove how strict he can be with his houses.’
‘But the King himself won’t concern himself with the likes of us, surely?’
‘The Bishop tells me that the King reads all the documents that pass across his desk. He’s not a man who likes to rely on others to know what is happening. He checks it all himself.’
Linnet could see the Prior stroking his upper lip as he thought.
‘I have hopes, Father Nicholas. I have big hopes for this Holy Island.’ He leaned forward, the better to capture the Inspector’s attention.
Linnet kept her head down and listened quietly.
‘This is the heart of St Cuthbert, our Priory here – is it not? I know some say the saint’s bones should return here, not stay at Durham, but of course that is not what I think.’
The Prior gestured politely to the Inspector, and through him to Durham. The Inspector acknowledged the courtesy with a wave of his hand.
‘But we could become a centre of learning, of scribing, a centre for books.
We only produce a few poor chapter books and prayer books now but we could start a full scriptorium, dedicated to St Cuthbert.
A pilgrim could come on from Durham, walking across the dangerous sands to the place where the saint drew his comfort, to the Inner Farne to see where he passed his last days and lay their hands on his resting place?
‘We’ve still got the pilgrim’s door into the Priory, and that resting house at Beale – we could open it up again. I think it slept fifty pilgrims a time before.’
So this was his purpose, a holy place to rival Durham, a way for him to become a great prior, his name recorded in all the books they produced. But was it dangerous of him to tell the Inspector this? Would he feel the Prior was setting up the Priory to challenge Durham?
‘You’d need more than a woman scribe for that though, wouldn’t you?
’ The Inspector sounded doubtful and the two men turned to look at her.
Not forgotten after all. She kept her head down, smarting a little from ‘poor chapter and prayer books’.
Her work was better quality than that drunken scribe had been making before she arrived.
‘Linnet could train some of the younger monks. Brother Luke is learning how to stitch quires together. He could learn a good hand too, don’t you think, Linnet? And maybe Brother Maykin?’
She nodded. Luke did have a steady hand and he could read and write well. It was the first she’d heard of a plan to train him though. Maykin, however, they’d have a hard job keeping him still enough to write for any time.
The Prior began to talk about the cattle and the tanner and the prices of skins but the Inspector interrupted him.
‘Well the Bishop would look favourably on a profitable scriptorium, I’m sure.’ He looked tired and stood up to leave. ‘Enough for tonight though, don’t you think? The real business is this report. The rest can wait.’
The Prior nodded courteously but Linnet caught his irritation as he looked down. He’d wanted to talk more about his great hopes and was offended by the Inspector’s lack of interest. Seeing Linnet watching him, he snapped at her to leave too.
‘Get gone, Linnet, you’ve no need to be here any longer.’
She wasn’t tired so she went to the stables, the masons were sleeping in the outhouse next to them.
Maybe she could find Jack and persuade him she really wasn’t Mary.
Or would it be more dangerous to pay him attention?
She wanted to find the Dutch mason if there was one too, to hear what he might have told Oswyn.
She paused in the doorway, unsure what to do.
She could hear low voices in the stalls and crept in, curious, her back against the rough wood, feeling the splinters prickling through her clothes, her feet in damp straw that she tried not to rustle.
‘Did anyone see you coming here?’
That was Godfreyd.
‘No, everyone’s abed.’
Wait. That was Tom. Why was he meeting Godfreyd? She peered round the edge of the stall. They were standing close. She couldn’t see their faces, just their shapes in the dim moonlight. Godfreyd was taller than Tom, and broader. Tom touched Godfreyd’s cheek but Godfreyd pushed his hand away.
‘Not now. I wanted to talk to you about Oswyn, were you there when they pulled his body out?’
‘Yes. He swam every day. We all thought him mad for it but every day, there he was, walking out of the sea again as if he’d been paddling in the shallows.’
‘Did anyone question it? That he drowned?’ Godfreyd’s voice was urgent, scared maybe.
‘No, no one else swam. Why are you asking about it?’ It was clear Tom was uneasy talking about it.
‘He hated me, Tom, he really hated me, but I can’t believe he’s gone.’
‘He did like folks’ secrets that’s for sure. Did he know about—’
‘No. Not this. Just what I was sent away for.’
Godfreyd turned away and Linnet caught sight of his face, now ugly with grim satisfaction.
‘I’m glad he’s dead, I’m glad he’s rotting in the Infirmary.’
Tom sighed. ‘Come now, Godfreyd. The man was a prick for sure, but no one deserves to drown.’ But she could hear something else in his voice, something he wasn’t saying.
‘I wouldn’t go talking about it anyway,’ he went on. ‘You weren’t the only one who hated him. Linnet is glad he’s dead too, and—’
But Godfreyd spoke over the other names he was saying. ‘Linnet? The scribe woman?’
‘She said he was threatening her with telling her secrets.’
Godfreyd’s face must have said something because Tom laughed at the idea.
‘No, she wouldn’t have killed him. I saw her face when his body was on the shore and she were as astounded as anyone else.’
Linnet was frozen with fear and rage. How could Tom tell Godfreyd what she’d said?
She was angry with herself too, a fool for thinking she could start talking.
They were talking too quietly now so she didn’t hear what else was being said, although she thought she heard ‘Warham’, jumping only as a loud croak interrupted them.
Could he be talking about the indulgences too? How dare he!
Meanwhile, Pol had flown into the stable and Linnet took advantage of the noise to creep away again, back to her room, her mind busy with what she’d seen and heard.
As she left, she thought she saw another figure, also hiding in the shadows, but when it didn’t move, she wondered if she were mistaken.
It wasn’t the first time she’d seen men touch each other, but she’d not known Tom was that way.
Godfreyd was different. She must have been right about him and Benedict then.
Who on earth thought punishment for lusting after men was best served by sending him to a monastery?
No one who had ever been to a monastery, that was for sure.
If Godfreyd had wanted Oswyn dead, had he helped that happen?
Perhaps they’d quarrelled. The cut on Oswyn’s face could have come from being struck by a ring.
Godfreyd wore one, his family’s seal that he’d managed to keep despite becoming a monk.
Who else did Tom mean – who hated him? Would Godfreyd have told Tom if he had killed Oswyn?
They were talking to each other about everything it seemed, no secrets there.
Anger kept her warm as she returned to her room.
She didn’t care about Godfreyd, she’d not liked him and she’d known there was something wrong about him.
But Tom? Her friend Tom was a sinner and a sinner with a man she despised.
Even worse, he would casually use her secrets, throwing her words about as if they were nothing to him.