Chapter Twenty #2
Jack caught sight of her and raised his tankard in a mocking gesture. She ducked her head, meek Linnet, not fighting Mary, remember.
After a quick cup of mulled ale, she left and walked down to the fishermen’s beach.
It was cold but a clear night, so she sat, wrapped in her cloak.
She’d done nothing about Tom’s death but she felt more and more convinced he’d not killed himself.
He had black days – she could remember when he wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, hurrying from boat to house to tavern without a word – but he wouldn’t have done it.
She was sure. But was she just trying to make herself feel better?
She forced herself to think about what she’d said, like rubbing a lemon over a cut, letting the sting last.
‘What you musing on?’
Isabelle sat down and leaned against her. The journey had made her more comfortable around Linnet, happy to use her for warmth at least.
‘I’m thinking about Tom.’
Isabelle felt in her skirts and fished out a small rag creature to show Linnet.
‘It’s my mousie. He made it for us. I was to put it in his boat when we sent it off, but then I thought a stone would do as well.
I used to find good stones for him to keep, the blackest ones, and I found one looked like mousie. ’
So that’s what she’d taken over to the boat that day, and that was why Tom had those stones in his cottage. Linnet looked at the child’s face, bleak and resigned, and spoke on impulse.
‘I think someone killed him, Isabelle.’
The child didn’t move or speak. She sat, the rag mousie in her hand, turning over in her mind, like pebbles on the beach, what Linnet had said. Finally, she gave a slow nod.
‘You might be right there. If we find out who, I’ll kill ’em for it.’ Her eyes, bright button black in the moonlight shone with grim purpose.
Having said those words aloud, Linnet was finally sure she believed them. It was now clear to her. She had to find out who had killed Tom and why.
But she also had to keep an eye on the child and what she might say.
Linnet spent a long while schooling her on what she could and couldn’t say about their journey, leaving her clear to talk about the monkey (without flaming eyes), the wonders of the market (nothing about the ballad singer), the nunnery, and Lady Margaret’s incredible collection of silks.
That should keep the women on the island interested for a few days.
She would spend the next day illuminating as usual, but would also take time to look for Oswyn’s household book.
She thought the strips of paper she’d found might have been torn from it.
She’d not found words when matching them up with each other but maybe they matched the torn edges of the book.
Oswyn was such a keeper of secrets and there might be something in his notes to point her on the right path.
She wondered who had taken it and for what purpose.
She’d kept the scrap from Maykin’s hand too – but that couldn’t have been Oswyn, he’d drowned before the accident. If it was an accident, of course.
The Prior spent the morning in the Scriptorium with her and Brother Luke. He’d mixed up the lapis powder again but it still wasn’t working as it should. The colour would go on well, but even within minutes she could see it dulling and fading.
She used a little on St John’s page, carefully with a tiny horsehair brush, just to add stars around the border, but it was hard to keep her hand steady with him breathing over her.
At last he sat down with a scrap of parchment and started making notes. He looked up. ‘I’ll need more monks to start on copying the book from the nunnery. I’ll see who I can bring over from other duties.’
Luke sat up a little straighter. As if they were drawn on the parchment in front of him, Linnet could read his thoughts – him in charge of a set of scribing monks, the head of the Scriptorium.
The Prior would be taking them away from other duties though and there weren’t that many of them.
Maybe he’d ask for more from Durham, to build the Priory up to its former glory.
A shout from outside disturbed them. The Prior hurried out, then quickly returned.
‘It’s the Brothers on Inner Farne. They’ve sent up a beacon. I thought Brother Aldus wouldn’t last the winter. I’ll get Tom—’ he faltered, ‘a couple of the fishermen to take me over. Linnet, we shall need Brother Godfreyd too, perhaps it’s not too late and he can still help – go fetch him quickly.’
She went looking for Godfreyd. The Infirmary was empty but she soon found him near the stables. He scowled when given the Prior’s message.
‘You can come too – you can help with any cleaning and the like.’
An old, dying or dead monk was certainly too odious for Godfreyd. Linnet was curious about the cell on Inner Farne. Once the refuge for St Cuthbert, who’d died there, it was now a small cell of just two monks keeping his memory alive.
There were seven of them in the boat in the end, the Prior, Godfreyd, Linnet and another monk, Brother Adam, and two fishermen rowing.
Cassian offered to come to help with the rowing, anything to keep him away from his lessons.
The Prior would leave Adam there if they took Brother Aldus back. The cell had to be maintained.
They were all silent, the fishermen and Cassian concentrating on the journey. It was a long rough trip and Linnet was soon lost in her thoughts, huddled in her cloak as the sea-spray splashed around them.
She was thinking back to her life with Guy when she was startled by the sound of Godfreyd vomiting copiously over the side of the boat.
He had been going green since they left Lindisfarne and eventually succumbed.
The Prior looked disgusted, drawing his robes about him and glancing away.
Brother Adam tried to help, offering him water from a flask until Godfreyd swore at him and knocked it away.
At last they reached Inner Farne. Barely an island, more a small outcrop in the dark and gathering sea. What had made St Cuthbert pick this tiny pile of rocks, rather than the other few dotted about within sight?
The boat moored at the bottom of a pile of rough stones, just below the little chapel, tying up at a post there. Linnet was startled by how dark everything seemed, the stones, the ground, the sky. Edwin, the other monk, stood at the top of the small slope, his face serious.
They scrambled up to the chapel, slipping on the moss and the dank stones and the bird shit.
The island was littered with ducks and puffins, their orange beaks adding a flash of colour.
None looked worried by the strangers coming up the path, grudgingly shifting out of the way just in time if needed.
‘Thank you, Prior. He’s still breathing and waiting for you to hear his confession and anoint him.’
They went into the dark chapel where Brother Aldus was lying, the light from the candles making his white hair the only bright spot in the gloom. Linnet could hear his rough breathing, he kept pausing for longer and longer gaps. The Prior bent over him to hear his confession.
Aldus’s voice was thin and light, almost childlike. Linnet looked away, distressed to be seeing him at the end of his life like this. She took a few steps back, away from the dying monk, and almost fell over a small wooden chest. She opened it slightly and looked inside.
Candles, cassocks, some bundles of kindling, but at the bottom, half a page from an old manuscript.
She looked more carefully, the initial letters glowing a little in the dark but it was too gloomy to see what was written.
A sharp cough made her shut the chest as quietly as she could.
Cassian was looking in her direction. Had he seen her with the open chest?
Godfreyd briefly examined the monk and shook his head.
‘I think he’ll not survive the crossing back to Lindisfarne, Father.’
The Prior nodded and led everyone outside. Brother Edwin looked calm now that he’d seen Aldus’s confession.
‘I don’t think he’ll last much longer, Father. Thank God you’re here for his end.’
Linnet walked around the rest of the island as the monks were speaking. There was a small hut above the chapel where the monks lived. As well as the birds, she saw rabbits hopping about, food for the monks, and the small kitchen garden they had grown next to the chapel.
She sat on a rock and shut her eyes, trying to imagine St Cuthbert here, hundreds of years before, battling demons and hiding from the world.
They heard a cry from Edwin inside the chapel and went in. Brother Aldus had died. The Prior led the others in prayer for the soul of their brother monk. They would be able to bring Aldus back now, rather than having to make another trip.
The fishermen were keen to start back. They were talking about tides and the like, which Linnet could tell meant nothing to the Prior but he nodded like it did.
Brother Adam got the winding sheet from the boat and Godfreyd gestured to Linnet and Cassian to come and help.
They wrapped the frail old man, and carried him down the path slipping and sliding and struggling to carry him safely, but finally laying him in the bottom of the boat.
His body was still warm, but so old and frail it was the last gasps of warm wax in a candle freshly put out.
The trip was calmer on the way back. Godfreyd didn’t vomit this time but had his eyes shut all the way. The Prior was intoning prayers over Aldus, but his mind was clearly elsewhere.
Home on Lindisfarne, monks came to get the body out of the boat and Aldus was taken to the Priory.
Free from the boat, Linnet had time to think about what she’d seen in the chest. Was it more of what Pol had brought her? She went up to the Scriptorium but Luke had gone to help the others and then it would be evening prayers.
She carefully uncovered Pol’s hiding place, but there was only a dead vole this time, and nothing else of value.