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.”
“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.”