Read Online Justice for the Damned by Priscilla Royal - Free Book Online

with murders and had nearly died of
a fever herself. Could God not grant her some respite?
    Quickly,
her indignation had turned to shame. A man had been slain like a criminal and
his wife and children left to grieve. He was a laborer. Would they have food
and shelter now that he was dead? How could she put her own selfish concerns
first?
    For
this sin, she spent an hour in prayer, time she yearned to increase, but she
had grown too weak to concentrate longer on God.
    Despite
her mortal frailty, He had been merciful, sending both understanding and the
calm of forgiveness. With the peace she felt descending on her, Eleanor became
convinced that God had no quarrel with her longing to escape worldly violence,
nor had He deemed Amesbury Priory worthy of this foul assault. Even her wish to
turn her back on Death's grinning arrogance was innocent enough.
    Her
failure lay in not directing her anger against the Prince of Darkness. Death
had been a pawn of Satan in this murder.
    Was
it not her duty to deny the dark angel his pleasure in wronging the innocent?
She should find a way to bring justice to the bereaved family. In so doing, she
could restore order to priory life as well. Surely God would grant her the
tranquility she herself prayed for later.
    As she
had gripped the prie-dieu and painfully pulled herself from her knees, however,
she doubted her ability to do anything to resolve this issue. What a pitifully
weak creature she had become! Once seated, she shook her head in despair. Nay,
she did not have the strength to fight the Devil in this situation. Someone
else must do it.
    Suddenly
her foot grazed something next to her chair and she glanced down. The object
was a woven basket, fitted with a smooth cushion that was coated with
brindle-colored hair. It belonged to the greyhound Prioress Ida kept as
companion, a dog she had taken with her on her journey.
    Eleanor
studied the basket.
    Her
own creature, a great orange cat left at Tyndal to protect the kitchens from
pillaging rodents, would never tolerate such a soft thing, she thought.
Ignoring snow or wild storms, he went out each day to hunt vermin. Had he been
born a man, he would have been the perfect knight, embracing any hardship in
the performance of whatever his liege lord might require.
    "Dare
I be less dutiful than my cat?" she asked herself in a voice tinged with
both humor and self-mockery. "Here I sit, in the warm comfort of these
rooms, like a pampered pet. I should be ashamed!"
    She
rose from her chair and walked with determination to the chamber window.
Leaning to her left, she could see just a bit of the River Avon now flowing
with enthusiasm, free from winter's icy grasp. The Saxon cross was invisible
from here, as were those strange hillocks across the river that she remembered
from her youth.
    Were
the barrows sacred or profane? Opinions amongst adults were varied, but a
younger Eleanor and her childhood friends had loved frightening each other in
the dark with tales of pale spirits that danced on the mounds and longed to
capture a young Amesbury novice.
    Did
they really believe in such phantoms, Eleanor now wondered, or was it mostly
pretense? "Maybe it was both," she said aloud, "for there seems
to be a place in all mortal souls that longs for ghosts even as we fear them or
logic dismisses them."
    Now
she must seek the truth about wandering souls. Her aunt may have discounted the
current ghost as both playful and quite mortal earlier, but the murder of
Wulfstan had changed that. The spirit had been accused. It had ceased to be an
innocent thing.
    Had
an angry soul escaped from Hell and killed Wulfstan? Or was the specter the
diabolical creation of a mortal who wished to hide behind engendered fear to
slay with greater ease? If she succeeded in discovering the truth, would she be
faced with a nightmarish sight so horrible that no human could survive it, or
with a craven killer deserving of the hangman's rope?
    Her
grip on the window weakened. She turned away