Read Online Belladonna at Belstone by Michael Jecks - Free Book Online

Bertrand would need and for how long. The good Bishop Stapledon had himself taken many of them to protect him while he travelled to see the King, and the dean could be expected to argue strenuously against any further depletion of the cathedral’s strength. Far easier, Peter said, for him to take all the spare guards from Crediton.
    Bertrand clattered up towards the stableyard. The house added to his feeling of glumness. It was a well-appointed place, obviously quite ancient, with solid cob walls to the hall at the centre, and two projecting arms at either side constructed of good timber, the plaster limewashed. The welcome sight it presented, with smoke rising from the louvre in the thatched roof and children playing with young dogs on the frosted lawn in front, only compounded his sombre spirits. It would be such a difficult place to defend, he thought, and with the news Peter had that morning received from Bristol, every man might soon be grateful for a place that was better protected.
    After Prime, Katerine the novice walked out of the church with her head cast submissively downwards as she had been taught, not speaking, but moving slowly and contemplatively. Not that anyone could give a damn, not now with all the chatter. Katerine privately considered she could have run naked through the cloisters and no one would have noticed, not even the mistress of the novices. Everyone was too busy assessing Margherita’s chances.
    They all knew the level of the antipathy between prioress and treasurer. In a place like this even the mildest arguments soon became common knowledge, but when the cause of the quarrel was the desire of one to oust the other from her post, the affair soon became vitriolic, and involved the whole community. Especially now Margherita appeared to have the upper hand. Lady Elizabeth herself seemed to have given up: she wore a perpetual worried, hunted expression.
    To Katerine their mutual dislike was amusingly intense. Like boiling poison it had bubbled away for ages, every word between them acting like additional powders tossed into the brew until the potion was complete. All it had needed was the death of Moll to bring it to boiling point, but now it was ready, and the venom was destroying the whole convent.
    For someone who knew who to use information, there could be opportunities, she thought.
    Katerine would never have described herself as unpleasant. She had been orphaned when young, and the lesson this had taught her was that she must look to herself for everything. She was entirely self-reliant. When she learned something that could be profitable, she used it. There was no guilt in doing so: it was simply a means of survival. Blackmail was not something she had heard of, but if it was explained to her, she would in all honesty have felt it a justifiable means of gaining wealth: no worse than owning land and forcing serfs to work it and making them pay for the privilege; no worse than a lord raping a man’s wife merely because he had an urge and the power to do so.
    Back in the cloister, she strode purposefully along the western corridor and up to the dorter, throwing a disgusted look up at the ceiling as she changed into her day shoes. The ragged hole allowed in so much water and wind it was a miracle none of the nuns or novices had frozen in their beds. As it was, Joan had escaped to the infirmary. The daft old sow couldn’t cope with the chill at her age.
    It was all right for the prioress, Katerine thought. She had her own area set apart from the others, divided by partitions which kept the arctic gusts from ruining her sleep. Not that she would necessarily keep it for much longer, if the rumours were true; if the visitor was about to return, surely the first thing he would demand would be that the recommendations he made at his last visit should be carried out, and one of the first was that Lady Elizabeth’s partitions should come down.
    Not that it would necessarily help much, Katerine