A Mortal Bane(16)

“Murder is a crime anywhere!” Brother Paulinus roared.

“Murder!” Magdalene did not try to hide the shudder that traveled over her. “Why do you speak of murder?”

“A man has been murdered on the north porch of our church, only feet away from desecrating the holy precinct.”

“How dreadful!” Magdalene breathed, tears coming to her eyes as she remembered the pleasant man who was dead. But she could do nothing for him now and quickly found an excuse for the tears. “How sad, that one should come to harm so near God’s sanctuary. I am sorry, but why carry this news to us with such urgency that you wake us near dawn?”

“Because it is your doing!”

“No!” Magdalene’s lips thinned to a narrow line. “In this house there is no violence. True, we cause the ‘little death,’ but that brings joy and both man and woman rise from that ‘death’ refreshed.”

“Blasphemy! How dare you speak of rising from death in terms of fornication?”

He waved his staff in rage, and Magdalene backed away down the corridor. He followed, but the staff struck a wall and he set it upright before him with a curse.

Before she could speak, he shouted, “No! I know your tricks. I will not let you distract me. The murdered man came from your house and he died on the porch of mine. We are men of God. We do not kill. You are creatures of the devil, so corrupt that it drove you to madness when the man you had soiled with sin wished to cleanse himself. You crept out and stabbed him—and doubtless stole his purse, too.”

Magdalene shook her head. “I do not know what you are talking about, Brother Paulinus. No man who visits this house ever comes to bodily harm through me or my women. We would soon be ruined if those who came here were robbed or died. Nor do we corrupt. A guest comes to us of his own free will. We do not sit by the gate or hang from the windows tempting passersby. I grieve that a man is dead, but it is nothing to do with me or mine.”

“The man had to come from your house! The porter did not recognize him. Brother Godwine swears that the dead man never came through the gate, nor his horse, either. So he must have come from the back gate—from your house. Someone from your house followed him and stabbed him to death.”

“No one went to the church from this house last night,” Magdalene said calmly. “And it is impossible for a horse to pass through the gate. It is too low and narrow. Last night was a night like any other. Sabina sang; Letice, Ella, and I embroidered. No one even went out after dark.”

“You forget.” Sabina’s rich voice came from behind Magdalene. “I went out just around Compline. I sat in the garden and listened to the singing from the church.”

Magdalene’s heart leapt into her throat and choked any protest. Was Sabina still so shaken that she felt she had to confess? She turned to face her woman and saw that Letice was standing beside Sabina, holding her sister whore’s arm.

“You must have seen the man leave the house and go to the church,” Paulinus snapped, smiling in triumph. “You must have seen someone follow him. Which of the women was it?”

Sabina gently removed her arm from Letice’s grasp and came closer, close enough for Paulinus to see her sealed eyes and that there was nothing behind the closed lids. He gasped and recoiled. Sabina smiled.

“I saw nothing. I am blind. But my ears are very good. No one came out of the house while I sat in the garden, and certainly no horse passed me.”

Magdalene let her breath ease out, but carefully. She did not want Paulinus to suspect she had been holding it.