World Without End (108 page)

'Your wife?'

'Yes, rest her soul.'

'It's a long time to go without loving.'

'Yes.'

'But you're not the type to go with just anybody. You want someone to love.'

'I suppose you're right.'

'I'm the same. It's wonderful to lie with a man, the best thing in the world, but only if you love one another truly. I've only ever had one man, my husband. I never went with anyone else.'

Merthin wondered if that was true. He could not be sure. Bessie seemed sincere. But it was the kind of thing a woman would say anyway.

'What about you?' she said. 'How many women?'

'Three.'

'Your wife, and before that Caris, and...who else? Oh, I remember - Griselda.'

'I'm not saying who they were.'

'Don't worry, everyone knows.'

Merthin smiled ruefully. Of course, everyone did know. Perhaps they could not be sure, but they guessed, and they usually guessed right.

'How old is Griselda's little Merthin now - seven? Eight?'

'Ten.'

'I've got fat knees,' Bessie said. She pulled up the skirt of her dress to show him. 'I've always hated my knees, but Richard used to like them.'

Merthin looked. Her knees were plump and dimpled. He could see her white thighs.

'He would kiss my knees,' she said. 'He was a sweet man.' She adjusted her dress, as if straightening it, but she lifted it, and for a moment he glimpsed the dark inviting patch of hair at her groin. 'He would kiss me all over, sometimes, especially after bathing. I used to like that. I liked everything. A man can do what he likes to a woman who loves him. Don't you agree?'

This had gone far enough. Merthin stood up. 'I think you're probably right, but this kind of talk leads only one way, so I'm going to bed before I commit a sin.'

She gave him a sad smile. 'Sleep well,' she said. 'If you get lonely, I'll be here by the fire.'

'I'll remember that.'

They put Mother Cecilia on a bedstead, not a mattress, and placed it immediately in front of the altar, the holiest place in the hospital. Nuns sang and prayed around her bed all day and all night, in shifts. There was always someone to bathe her face with cool rose water, always a cup of clear fountain water at her side. None of it made any difference. She declined as fast as the others, bleeding from her nose and her vagina, her breathing becoming more and more labored, her thirst unquenchable.

On the fourth night after she sneezed, she sent for Caris.

Caris was heavily asleep. Her days were exhausting: the hospital was overflowing. She was deep in a dream in which all the children in Kingsbridge had the plague, and as she rushed around the hospital trying to care for them all she suddenly realized that she, too, had caught it. One of the children was tugging at her sleeve, but she was ignoring it and desperately trying to figure out how she would cope with all these patients while she was so ill - and then she realized someone was shaking her shoulder with increasing urgency, saying: 'Wake up, Sister, please, the mother prioress needs you!'

She came awake. A novice knelt by her bed with a candle. 'How is she?' Caris asked.

'She's sinking, but she can still speak, and she wants you.'

Caris got out of bed and put on her sandals. It was a bitterly cold night. She was wearing her nun's robe, and she took the blanket from her bed and pulled it around her shoulders. Then she ran down the stone stairs.

The hospital was full of dying people. The mattresses on the floor were lined up like fish bones, so that those patients who were able to sit upright could see the altar. Families clustered around the beds. There was a smell of blood. Caris took a clean length of linen from a basket by the door and tied it over her mouth and nose.

Four nuns knelt beside Cecilia's bed, singing. Cecilia lay back with her eyes closed, and at first Caris was afraid she had arrived too late. Then the old prioress seemed to sense her presence. She turned her head and opened her eyes.

Caris sat on the edge of the bed. She dipped a rag in a bowl of rose water and wiped a smear of blood from Cecilia's upper lip.

Cecilia's breathing was tortured. In between gasps, she said: 'Has anyone survived this terrible illness?'

'Only Madge Webber.'

'The one who didn't want to live.'

'All her children died.'

'I'm going to die soon.'

'Don't say that.'

'You forget yourself. We nuns have no fear of death. All our lives we long to be united with Jesus in Heaven. When death comes, we welcome it.' The long speech exhausted her. She coughed convulsively.

Caris wiped blood from her chin. 'Yes, Mother Prioress. But those who are left behind may weep.' Tears came to her eyes. She had lost Mair and Old Julie, and now she was about to lose Cecilia.

'Don't cry. That's for the others. You have to be strong.'

'I don't see why.'

'I think God has you in mind to take my place, and become prioress.'

In that case he has made a very odd choice, Caris thought. He usually picks people whose view of Him is more orthodox. But she had long ago learned that there was no point in saying these things. 'If the sisters choose me, I'll do my best.'

'I think they'll choose you.'

'I'm sure Sister Elizabeth will want to be considered.'

'Elizabeth is clever, but you're loving.'

Caris bowed her head. Cecilia was probably right. Elizabeth would be too harsh. Caris was the best person to run the nunnery, even though she was skeptical of lives spent in prayer and hymn singing. She did believe in the school and the hospital. Heaven forbid that Elizabeth should end up running the hospital.

'There's something else.' Cecilia lowered her voice, and Caris had to lean closer. 'Something Prior Anthony told me when he was dying. He had kept it secret until the last, and now I've done the same.'

Caris was not sure she wanted to be burdened with such a secret. However, the deathbed seemed to overrule such scruples.

Cecilia said: 'The old king did not die of a fall.'

Caris was shocked. It had happened more than twenty years ago, but she remembered the rumors. The killing of a king was the worst offense imaginable, a double outrage, combining murder with treason, both of them capital crimes. Even knowing about such a thing was dangerous. No wonder Anthony had kept it a secret.

Cecilia went on: 'The queen and her lover, Mortimer, wanted Edward II out of the way. The heir to the throne was a little boy. Mortimer became king in all but name. In the upshot, it didn't last as long as he might have hoped, of course - young Edward III grew up too fast.' She coughed again, more weakly.

'Mortimer was executed while I was an adolescent.'

'But even Edward didn't want anyone to know what had really happened to his father. So the secret was kept.'

Caris was awestruck. Queen Isabella was still alive, living in lavish circumstances in Norfolk, the revered mother of the king. If people found out that she had her husband's blood on her hands, there would be a political earthquake. Caris felt guilt just knowing about it.

'So he was murdered?' she asked.

Cecilia made no reply. Caris looked harder. The prioress was still, her face immobile, her eyes staring upward. She was dead.

60

The day after Cecilia died, Godwyn asked Sister Elizabeth to have dinner with him.

This was a dangerous moment. Cecilia's death unbalanced the power structure. Godwyn needed the nunnery, because the monastery on its own was not viable: he had never succeeded in improving its finances. Yet most of the nuns were now angry about the money he had taken from them, and bitterly hostile to him. If they fell under the control of a prioress bent on revenge - Caris, perhaps - it could mean the end of the monastery.

He was frightened of the plague, too. What if he caught it? What if Philemon died? Such flashes of nightmare unnerved him, but he succeeded in pushing them to the back of his mind. He was determined not to be distracted from his long-term purpose by the plague.

The election of the prioress was an immediate danger. He had visions of the monastery closing down, and himself leaving Kingsbridge in disgrace, being forced to become an ordinary monk in some other place, subordinate to a prior who would discipline and humiliate him. If that happened he thought he might kill himself.

On the other hand, this was an opportunity as well as a threat. If he handled things cleverly he might get a prioress sympathetic to him who would be content to let him take the lead. And Elizabeth was his best bet.

She would make an imperious leader, one who would stand on her dignity. But he could work with her. She was pragmatic: she had proved that, the time she had warned him that Caris was planning to audit the treasury. She would be his ally.

She walked in with her head held high. She knew she had suddenly become important, and she was enjoying it, Godwyn realized. He wondered anxiously if she would go along with the plan he was about to propose. She might need careful handling.

She looked around the grand dining hall. 'You built a splendid palace,' she said, reminding him that she had helped him get the money for it.

She had never been inside the place, he realized, although it had been finished a year ago. He preferred not to have females in the monks' part of the priory. Only Petranilla and Cecilia had been admitted here, until today. He said: 'Thank you. I believe it wins us respect from the noble and powerful. Already we have entertained the archbishop of Monmouth here.'

He had used the last of the nuns' florins to buy tapestries showing scenes from the lives of the prophets. She studied a picture of Daniel in the lions' den. 'This is very good,' she said.

'From Arras.'

She raised an eyebrow. 'Is that your cat under the sideboard?'

Godwyn tutted. 'I can't get rid of it,' he lied. He shooed it out of the room. Monks were not supposed to have pets, but he found the cat a soothing presence.

They sat at one end of the long banqueting table. He hated having a woman here, sitting down to dinner as if she were just as good as a man; but he hid his discomfort.

He had ordered an expensive dish, pork cooked with ginger and apples. Philemon poured wine from Gascony. Elizabeth tasted the pork and said: 'Delicious.'

Godwyn was not very interested in food, except as a means of impressing people, but Philemon tucked in greedily.

Godwyn got down to business. 'How do you plan to win this election?'

'I believe I'm a better candidate than Sister Caris,' she said.

Godwyn sensed the suppressed emotion with which she uttered the name. Clearly she was still angry that Merthin had rejected her in favor of Caris. Now she was about to enter another contest with her old rival. She would kill to win this time, he thought.

That was good.

Philemon said to her: 'Why do you think you're better?'

'I'm older than Caris,' Elizabeth said. 'I've been a nun longer, and a priory officer longer. And I was born and brought up in a deeply religious household.'

Philemon shook his head dismissively. 'None of that will make any difference.'

She raised her eyebrows, startled by his bluntness, and Godwyn hoped Philemon would not be too brutal.
We need her compliant,
he wanted to whisper.
Don't get her back up.

Philemon went on remorselessly. 'You've only got one year of experience more than Caris has. And your father, the bishop - rest his soul - will count against you. After all, bishops aren't supposed to have children.'

She flushed. 'Priors aren't supposed to have cats.'

'We're not discussing the prior,' he said impatiently. His manner was insolent, and Godwyn winced. Godwyn was good at masking his hostility, and putting on a facade of friendly charm, but Philemon had never learned that art.

However, Elizabeth took it coolly. 'So, did you ask me here to tell me I can't win?' She turned to Godwyn. 'It's not like you to cook with costly ginger just for the pleasure of it.'

'You're quite right,' said Godwyn. 'We want you to become prioress, and we're going to do everything we can to help you.'

Philemon said: 'And we're going to start by taking a realistic look at your prospects. Caris is liked by everyone - nuns, monks, merchants, and nobility. The job she does is a great advantage to her. Most of the monks and nuns, and hundreds of townspeople, have come to the hospital with ailments and been helped by her. By contrast, they rarely see you. You're the treasurer, thought of as cold and calculating.'

'I appreciate your frankness,' Elizabeth said. 'Perhaps I should give up now.'

Godwyn could not tell whether she was being ironic.

'You can't win,' Philemon said. 'But she can lose.'

'Don't be enigmatic, it's tiresome,' Elizabeth snapped. 'Just tell me in plain words what you're getting at.'

I can see why she's not popular, Godwyn thought.

Philemon pretended not to notice her tone. 'Your task in the next few weeks is to destroy Caris,' he said. 'You have to transform her, in the nuns' minds, from a likeable, hardworking, compassionate sister into a monster.'

A glint of eagerness came into Elizabeth's eye. 'Is that possible?'

'With our help, yes.'

'Go on.'

'Is she still ordering nuns to wear linen masks in the hospital?'

'Yes.'

'And wash their hands?'

'Yes.'

'There is no basis for these practices in Galen or any other medical authority, and certainly none in the Bible. It seems a mere superstition.'

Elizabeth shrugged. 'Apparently the Italian doctors believe the plague spreads through the air. You catch it by looking at sick people, or touching them, or breathing their breath. I don't see how - '

'And where did the Italians get this idea?'

'Perhaps just by observing patients.'

'I have heard Merthin say that the Italian doctors are the best - except for the Arabs.'

Elizabeth nodded. 'I've heard that.'

'So this whole business of wearing masks probably comes from the Muslims.'

'Possibly.'

'In other words, it is a heathen practice.'