A Mortal Bane(134)

“I feel it. I will not miss any places, I promise.”

“I know you will not, love. Do you have your pillow to kneel on?”

Sabina answered—Magdalene hoped in the affirmative, but she did not really hear her. She was furious with William. She had feared her letter would convince him that she had hidden the pouch in the church, but she had not expected he would appear dressed and ready to ride to the king as soon as it was found. Did he think she was going to fish it out and hand it to him?

Without a second glance, Magdalene wrung a cloth out in a bucket of water, stepped up on a stool, and began to wash the wall as high as she could reach. Behind her, a young novice was perched on a ladder scrubbing even higher, to where the arches curved inward to support the roof.

“Hey, chick!” William bellowed across the church. “Nother kind of good works, eh?”

Magdalene turned her head and bowed it. “Lord William,” she murmured, but she did not step off the stool to move toward him.

To her intense relief, he did not veer toward her either, or address her again. He continued straight through the nave, passing her without another glance, heading for the dais, where the bishop was watching the prior carefully scrubbing at the bloodstains on the floor and the altar, from which the cloth had been removed. The safe box, Magdalene had noticed earlier, was also gone.

When William called out, the bishop abruptly stopped assuring Father Benin, for the fourth or fifth time, that no amount of scrubbing would completely remove the stains from the stone and that they no longer constituted a defilement. He looked out at the noisy newcomer blankly.

“Ho, Winchester,” William shouted. “I was on my way to speak to Hugh le Poer in Montfichet and I heard about the trouble Father Benin had here. It was only across the bridge, so I thought I would ride over and ask if he needed any help. I could send men over from the Tower.”

[page]Magdalene stepped off the stool and bent to wash the chosen strip of wall down to where Sabina had already cleaned the stone course that met the floor. She bit her lip, feeling a fool, as she so often did when dealing with William. Almost everyone in Southwark knew he frequented her house and was her protector. Naturally, he could not ignore her. It was necessary for him to greet her and then for him to pass her by as if she were just one more of the large number of men and women from the surrounding area who were cleaning as she was. And how could she believe he would not have a good and sufficient reason for being in full armor? Likely he had a full troop with him, too. That would be only natural if he was going to speak to Waleran de Meulan’s brother.

William had reached the dais, and the prior sat back on his heels, lifting a swollen-eyed, tear-streaked face to him. “A thousand men could not remove the stain, I fear,” he said, his voice rough with weeping.

“Why do you wish to remove it?” William asked, looking astonished. His harsh voice was loud above the soft sounds of rags on stone and splashing, dripping water. “Surely you have already cleaned away the pollution of murder. You should not want to wipe away the memory of the good brother’s death also. Was he not a martyr because of the sin of greed? The spilled blood of war makes the earth rich and fruitful. Will not the stains in the stone make more fervent your prayers for escape from temptation and for the grace of mercy?”

Father Benin blinked, then stared up at William of Ypres’s coarse-featured face with its hard mouth and cold eyes. Slowly his terror, his oppression of hopeless grief, diminished. He had not been comforted by the statements of the Bishop of Winchester, who knew the rules of the Church as a scholar knows the rules of mathematics but had little faith and little love of God. But this! Such a sentiment could not come from so brutal a man unless it was God-inspired. A question rose to Father Benin’s lips, but Lord William had already transferred his attention to the Bishop of Winchester. The prior swallowed what he had wished to ask. Whatever had inspired Lord William was gone now.