Chapter Twenty-Nine
She was walking across the field behind the Priory on her way up to the Heugh when she heard a shout behind her.
‘It is Mary then! I knew it!’
Jack, puffing as he strode up towards her.
She looked around, fearful, but no one else was nearby.
The villagers didn’t like this field, said it was full of old bones from before the Priory.
Now full of rabbits and their burrows, it was a spread of holes and tussocks, hard to climb without spraining an ankle.
She hoped he would trip but he caught up with her easily enough.
‘Guy was talking to me afore he left. He’s not happy with you, is he? He wants his money back.’
‘It’s my money and it’s gone,’ she said, giving up all attempts at pretence.
‘It’s never your money. He earned it with his work, so why did you keep it, eh? Why would you have him put in prison like that?’
He looked genuinely offended that she could have betrayed his friend. She stopped trying to walk away from him and turned to face him
‘I earned that money. He never did most of the scribing, that was me – see what I’m doing now? He’s not doing any scribing is he? He’s prancing about on some horse, whispering sweet words to that Lady. I’m the one with ink on my fingers.’
Jack laughed. ‘Ah, you’re jealous are you? He told me you were that – and hot-blooded besides!’
She didn’t trouble to correct him. Let him think she was a jealous lover, cast aside and wronging Guy out of some womanish sense of vengeance. The question was, what was Jack going to do now and what did she need to do about it.
‘He’s told me to keep an eye on you, see what you get paid and take it from you,’ Jack continued. There it was.
‘And what’s he promised you, Jack? Why would you do his work for him?’
Jack smiled again, the fat smile of a man who thinks he’s got everything sewn up neat and tidy.
‘I’ll be getting my share, and he’ll be saying good things about me and my lads to the Lady and his Lord.
If the Lady gets a baby in her belly, the Lord will be wanting to build them a good stone house, safe from the Scots, and there we’ll be. ’
‘You could be waiting a long time and in vain for that. It’s been a couple of years and the Lord doesn’t seem willing,’ she replied.
‘It ain’t always down to one man is it, though?’ Jack made a lewd gesture. ‘Guy’ll do what’s needed sure enough!’
So that’s what Guy was scheming. However repugnant it was, she had to admire his boldness.
If he could get a baby for Lady Margaret, she would be safe in her position, as long as she could persuade her Lord to cover her too.
Then she’d never tell on Guy, he’d have the perfect hold over her forever.
Lord Edmund wouldn’t care. He’d have his heir if his sickly little boys from his first wife didn’t survive, and he could go back to neglecting her.
She smiled to herself. Of course Guy hadn’t given her any children when they’d been together. Perhaps she wasn’t barren, perhaps it was him. Maybe he’d fail because he was lacking.
‘Clever, ain’t he? So you don’t want to cross him, or me, mind.
’ Jack had enjoyed watching her piece it all together.
She nodded, as if in agreement, but she would think about this later.
He may think he had her pinned down but masons moved on.
She could put off being paid as she needed, and he’d be forced to leave the island soon enough, they’d nearly finished laying the floor.
She surprised herself by how much she wanted to stay here, even with the dangers that were evidently around her, even with the Prior telling her to go.
She’d begun to feel this was a place of some wild sanctuary, something from Cuthbert’s time was lingering in the grasses and the stones on the beach.
Jack drew a finger across his throat as a parting warning and lumbered off towards the Priory. She made her own rude gesture behind his back, for her own satisfaction, and spat after him with loathing.
She went back towards the Priory thinking about Luke. If he were awake, he could tell her what happened in the stable.
He was asleep and alone in the Infirmary, still looking very bruised but the blood and dirt had been wiped off him and he was clean at least. He’d had his hair washed too, and it was a small cloud of bright blond about his battered face, like a thistledown puff. He looked so young lying there.
She had been so irritated by him, in her Scriptorium, annoying her and lecturing her about her sins.
But looking at him lying there, she wished she’d been more merciful.
She feared this was Guy’s work. Hurting someone else to relieve his fury at her betrayal, and choosing Luke because he mistook their squabbling for affection.
This monk who shrank from the slightest accidental touch and who was constantly raving about the evils of womanhood.
She glanced at his hands, they were indeed scratched as Isabelle had told her, and she was right – a horse couldn’t have done that. Her time with Guy was probably clouding her thoughts, but who else would have attacked Luke? Had he found something out?
Lavender was burning in the fire but a sour smell lingered above it. Luke was sweating and his bruises were yellow and black, standing out against his pale skin.
‘Who did this to you, Luke? It wasn’t a horse, was it?’
He groaned slightly and stirred in his sleep, but didn’t wake up.
‘Why are you here, Linnet?’
It was Brother Godfreyd, standing in the door.
‘I came to see if…’ Luke couldn’t tell her anything so what was she hoping to find? A signed confession attached to Luke’s habit? Some sort of signature that would show her who had done this?
‘There’s nothing you can help me with as yet, but I will call for you if you are needed, of course.’
Clearly he assumed she’d come to offer help. She nodded obediently, let him think she was cowed now by his actions with Isabelle, beaten down by him.
‘Is he going to wake up?’
‘Even if he does, a kick to the head from a horse can leave a man stupid. He may not be able to write again.’
Standing there with Godfreyd talking about Luke as if he were just anyone, Linnet found it hard to reconcile this lordly monk with what she’d seen in the stables.
Godfreyd didn’t look at all perturbed by Luke’s condition.
He was merely a thing for his pleasure, not what Tom had been to him.
She thought again of the look on Godfreyd’s face when he’d been watching Luke in the Chapter House.
A cat with a mouse it could toy with, perhaps even hurt, but a cat too well fed to want to eat it.
‘Anyway, be gone.’ He dismissed her and she went.
Back at the Scriptorium, the monks had gone to prayers again. Linnet pulled out Oswyn’s book to see if there was anything she might have missed. There were a few notes on the next page.
Durham Door, written in English. He’d underlined it heavily. It was not in his usual neat hand, or his ‘cramped secrets’ hand as she’d come to think of it, but hastily written and with a scattering of ink blots. It looked like something he would have crossed out later as he did throughout the book.
Durham Door? What was special about a door in Durham? He must mean the cathedral. There was nothing else on the page.
She put the book away and took out her inks and pens to work on the next illumination. As she started on the border, she traced the patterns she remembered from the pillars in Durham Cathedral, the chevrons and other markings.
In the quiet room, the fire sputtering and the candle flickering on her desk, Linnet felt as if she were dreaming, the repeating pattern coming out smoothly on the creamy parchment. Her mind wandered and she thought of Durham, a small child again.
She used to creep quietly around the corners and the out-of-the-way nooks of the cathedral, ducking into the shadows when a monk or two bustled past, but taking no notice of the throng of pilgrims. The monks knew her, of course, as the daughter of John-the-Lies, and they knew where she should and shouldn’t be.
The pilgrims neither knew nor cared, weary from their journeys and in a fervour at the thought of seeing Cuthbert’s tomb.
As her hand looped along the page, in her mind’s eye, she walked the outer edge of the cathedral, starting on the green in front of the immense solid building.
The field covered with stalls selling food and drink and tiny St Cuthbert medals and badges.
Occasionally someone of importance would ride in and force their way through the throng, pausing the frantic noise and bustle, before it washed back over the space again.
Most pilgrims came in by way of the Galilee Chapel, wanting to see the rose windows before walking the length of the cathedral. Some liked to press their foreheads to the stones every few paces along the aisle.
That wasn’t the biggest door, though. The north door took you straight into the nave and when it was open wide on feast days, twenty or so would come through together in one rush. But most of the time it was shut and the knocker on the giant door unused.
Linnet sat up with a start, spilling ink on a corner of her page.
The knocker! That hideous face that gave her nightmares as a small child.
The lion roaring with its glass blue eyes with the knocker held between its teeth.
‘Looks like that to scare the evil out of you,’ one of the older monks had told her with grim satisfaction when he’d caught her staring at it.
But it had a name. The Sanctuary Knocker.
Before she could think more about this, there was a scream and shouting from outside. She could see Isabelle, struggling to get away from the Inspector who had her in a firm grip around the elbow.
‘Get OFF me. I ain’t done NOTHING. Get off me NOW.’ Isabelle was shouting loudly and grimly determined to wriggle free but the Inspector seemed just as determined not to let her go.