A Mortal Bane(133)

“Take the key to the gate,” Magdalene reminded her. “Lock the front gate behind you when you go out.”

Dulcie nodded and left. Magdalene shooed the other women into their chambers, snuffed all the lights but the torchette over the front door, and hurried to her own room where she took a fair-sized piece of parchment from her drawer. At the top of the sheet she wrote.

“From Magdalene la Batarde of the Old Priory Guesthouse to Lord William of Ypres. It is after Matins on the tenth day following Easter Sunday. If you are well, I am well also, but all is not well in the priory of St. Mary Overy.” She followed the warning with as succinct a description of the murder as possible—William would not be much interested in that or in the theft of church plate—and then moved on to the need for a purification of the church before it could be reconsecrated.

“Because Baldassare had been found on the porch,” she wrote, “it has been assumed that he never entered the church, and I do not believe the monks ever searched there for the pouch. Also, they did not know until Sir Bellamy recognized the dead man that he was a papal messenger, and did not know they should look for a pouch. However, Baldassare did leave this house when the bells rang for the Compline service. If he entered the church quietly and slipped back into the darkness of the nave, he could have hidden the pouch during the service and no one the wiser.”

[page]She sat for a moment staring at the parchment. Perhaps she should not concentrate solely on the pouch. She frowned, passed the feather of the quill she was using between her lips, dipped it again, and then added, “I do not know whether you are interested in this murder or whether it would be worth your while to watch or join the cleansing of St. Mary Overy, but I felt you should know what was happening so you could decide for yourself out of knowledge rather than let matters slide, out of ignorance.”

All the while she had been writing, she had had an ear cocked for the sound of Bell returning. Breathing a short prayer of thanksgiving because he had not, she folded and sealed her parchment. Her seal was unique; she used a small, very ancient brooch William had given her, engraved in low relief with a naked woman reclining on an odd-looking bed.

Letter complete, she snuffed her candles and stepped out of her chamber, barely opening the door and closing it softly behind her. She could only hope that Bell would not come back before she did. If he saw the house all dark, he would likely lock the door and she would be locked out. Magdalene sighed. It would not be the first time in her life that she slept in a stable loft.

That last sacrifice was not necessary, however. When Dulcie returned, the door was still open and the older woman slipped quietly inside after giving Magdalene the key to the front gate. At the stable, Magdalene gave her letter to Tom the Watchman, walked him back to the gate, and bade him deliver the missive to William of Ypres’s lodging in the Tower of London. She also gave Tom a silver penny, which made his eyes widen.

“The quicker Lord William has this message, the better,” Magdalene said. “You know his colors?” The man nodded; he had delivered messages to William of Ypres before. “Be sure the letter goes into the hands of a man wearing William’s colors and that you tell him quietly his master needs to know what is therein before this morning’s Prime. You need not come back to say he has the letter. I expect to see Lord William himself or one of his men soon after Prime.”





Chapter Eighteen



27 April 1139





St. Mary Overy Church



It was William himself who came, striding through the main door into the church as if it were another of his own keeps. He was dressed in mail, his spurs making a soft metallic scraping against the stone floor. Magdalene, attracted by the sound, gave him one glance and then turned angrily away. To Sabina, who was kneeling about midway down the chancel near the wall opposite to that on which the St. Christopher high relief was carved, she said, “Can you feel the edge of the lowest course of the stonework? Just wash along it down to the nave. I will then ask the prior whether he wants us to continue down the nave or do the other side of the chancel.”