Brother Thomas longed to weep, but his eyes remained dry. They stung as if he had rubbed them with salt. Had he no tears left, he asked himself, or had he become like the woman known only as Lot’s wife?
He had always assumed God had turned that insubordinate creature into a pillar of salt for defying Him. Now he wondered. Might He have forbidden Lot’s family to look back on the annihilation of their city out of mercy, knowing that mortals could not survive the grief such slaughter of loved ones would bring? If that was the truth of the tale, Lot’s wife had not turned to salt for her sin of disobedience. Instead, the cause was her infinite tears of unbearable sorrow.
As he now mourned his own bitter loss in utter silence and with no hope of comfort, Thomas was beginning to understand what this unnamed woman might have suffered. “Must it ever be so?” he whispered as he seated himself, cross-legged on the ground. Pounding his fist into the forgiving earth, he pressed the back of his head into the rough bark of a tree and shut his aching eyes.
***
He had not wanted to come to Amesbury Priory and had fought against doing so, but his black-clad spy master refused to yield or compromise.
“I cannot go to Amesbury!” Thomas had cried out, still gasping from the other news the man had brought.
If the priest had had lips, he might have smiled. “A change of scenery will do you good,” he said, sipping wine from a beautiful goblet that had once been used by a less than saintly Tyndal monk whose current residence was probably Hell.
Despite that small, gold cross attached to a silken cord around the man’s neck, Thomas wondered if the priest was one of Satan’s own. Surely he needed something larger to remind him that he was supposed to serve a Lord who exemplified compassion.
“First you tell me that my father is dead, and then you send me off to hunt manuscript thieves. Will you not leave me alone so I might grieve a while?”
The man in black shrugged. “Why such grief? Although your father might have been most generous to you, a bantling seeded in a serving wench, your choice of bedmate surely killed his little fondness. You are a sodomite, a sin much akin to murder in the opinion of some. Surely I need not remind you of that? I am kind to set a task for you, my son. Sorrow without distraction becomes an indulgence that festers into sin.” He let his words sink in as he swirled the wine in his goblet, then sniffed at it. “Your prioress has an exceptional wine merchant.”
“And what sick brother am I to visit this time?” Thomas spat. “If you continue to send me on these errands, even the Devil himself will find it hard to devise enough plagues to afflict my mythical family. Or,” he lashed out, “shall I tell Prioress Eleanor that my father has died at Berkhamsted…” He pointed to a hypothetical location on the table. “…which is why I must go to Amesbury?” He banged his fist on another location far to the west of the first. “Do you know that her aunt is novice mistress in that priory?”
The man in black said nothing, continuing instead to study the color of his wine.
“Wouldn’t Sister Beatrice find it odd that a monk from Tyndal had arrived and was showing much interest in the Amesbury Psalter when Prioress Eleanor did not even know he was there? Might I suggest that one of your other underlings be the wiser choice to catch the thief who wants this precious item? How do you even know…?”
“We received warning.” The man in black savored the last of his wine, then stared into the empty goblet with evident regret. When at last he looked up, he blinked, and his expression slowly developed into mild surprise. “Did I not tell you? Your prioress will be traveling with you,” he said. “It is all arranged.”
***
The raucous cawing of a large crow dragged Thomas out of his miserable reflections, and he glanced up to see the cause of such avian rage. What he witnessed brought him to his feet in horror.
Lying flat on the severely pitched roof of the priory library and scriptorium, a man clung by his fingers to some invisible groove in the slate covering. The great black bird swooped at him, circled, and flew once more at the man’s head.
“Help!” Thomas shouted, but there was no one near to heed his cry. He ran to the wall, searching the ground with frantic haste for some fallen ladder.
Above him, he heard a scrabbling sound and next a voice: “Thank you, Brother! You scared the fiendish fowl away. I am safe enough and most grateful to you.”
Thomas looked up.
The young man, now standing with both feet firmly planted on the narrow scaffolding, was lean, muscular, and dressed only in his braes. Although his naked chest was still heaving from the exertion and his long brown hair was dark with sweat, the fellow was grinning.
Despite his pounding heart, Thomas returned the man’s infectious smile. “A miracle!” he shouted back.
“One peril of my occupation, Brother, but one to which I have become accustomed. King Henry may have given the priory ten cartloads of lead, but this roof has too steep a pitch for that and the slate was badly installed. Nails have rotted. Leaks occur. There are manuscripts within that could be damaged. I do my best to keep that from happening.” He put his hands on his hips and gestured with his head in the direction of a nearby tree. “The crow has a nest there. I had come too near her young. When she flew at me, I lost my footing.” He bent backward and fell. The scaffolding groaned, and the wooden walkway bent alarmingly.
Thomas cried out, instinctively raising his arms as if he might truly and safely catch a man falling from such a height.
The roofer jumped up, laughing like a boy caught in an innocent lark. “That slip was but a jest. The monks lead such dull lives. I do them some service with a harmless scare from time to time. Something must be done to keep their humors from growing too sluggish.”
“I fear that kindness was lost on me, friend, for I am not from Amesbury.”
“I did not think I had recognized you. I beg pardon, Brother…?”
“Thomas of Tyndal. And you?”
“Sayer.” As a gust of wind shook the scaffolding, the man kept his balance like a sailor on a ship. “Were you to slip over these walls for a bit of joy in the town, as some of the religious in this priory have been wont to do, you would hear me called anything from a fellow most fond of japes to an irresponsible and heartless knave. You may believe most of that but never that I am heartless.” He slowly tightened his braes around the waist. “And might you be a monk who finds he prays more diligently after refreshing his sense of sin?”
A feeling, akin to that of a virgin boy alone for the first time with a girl, inexplicably hit Thomas. A lump formed in his throat. He swallowed. “And if I am?” he asked as an idea forced the discomfort aside.
“I must warn you that the Saxon queen, who founded this priory as penance for her own misdeeds, has returned to torment the monks here. Some say that the wicked ways of the religious have angered her, and she roams the path from priory to village on many a night, bringing the fear of Hell to all she meets.” He shrugged. “Now the monks stay inside and pray for her earlier release to Heaven as they were paid to do.” Sayer’s grin destroyed any righteous meaning to his speech.
Either this Sayer was only repeating gossip or else he was telling him that he knew how to provide men, weary of hot dreams, with soft flesh for pleasuring. Might he also know something about men who lusted after precious manuscripts as well? “Yet she might not trouble strangers to the priory for these would not be beholden to her.” Thomas wondered what the man would say.
“You may be correct, Brother, for her quarrel should only be with those who promised to stay on their knees praying for the peace of her soul. If that is the case, a stranger could seek me out at the inn without fear of her wrath. I can be helpful—and discreet.”
“Especially if graced with a flash of the king’s face?”
“I love King Henry, Brother. He looks most noble on silver.”
“Such loyalty is no sin,” Thomas replied and smiled back in spite of himself. If Sayer provided whores for monks, he might well know others who worked outside the law. Thomas groaned in silence. Such a man would be useful if he could ever determine how to get outside the walls without provoking either suspicion or gossip that might get back to the ears of Prioress Eleanor. Coin would also be needed. Once again he cursed his spy master. The man was a fool to think a monk in the company of his prioress was suited to this sort of investigation.
“In the meantime, do not worry about me, Thomas of Tyndal. The fog might make this surface slippery, but God must love those who repair priory roofing. I have yet to fall to my death.” Sayer tossed his head, his hair falling back to frame his beardless face.
Somewhere beyond the priory walls, a man shouted, his words lost in the breeze.
The sound made Thomas blink, and he realized he had been staring at Sayer. A handsome fellow, one that would have little trouble finding women to bed, he thought, then felt his face grow hot with embarrassment. He should not make such an assumption. After all, the roofer might well have a wife.
He quickly raised his hand to bless the man in farewell. As he walked away, his neck began to prickle as if someone was watching him. He spun around and looked up at the roof.
Sayer was carefully removing a piece of slate.