“I suppose she could have done some sketches down by the river after she left here. We still don’t know exactly when or even where she was killed.”
They picked their way across the ruined interior of the church, to an opening that led to what would once have been the cloisters. Substantial sections of the chapter house, refectory, and dorter that had once clustered around the cloisters remained, along with sections of the cloister’s exquisite fan vaulting.
The monastery might have been founded in the eleventh century, but it appeared to have undergone a massive rebuilding during the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with little of the earlier Norman work remaining. The steady stream of pilgrims attracted by the miraculous powers of St. Hilary’s Virgin had brought great wealth to the once humble priory. For the greater glory of their God and as an inspiration to his followers, the monks had rebuilt their church to soaring new heights and adorned it with magnificent carvings and frescoes and glorious stained-glass windows. They’d filled their library with illuminated texts and adorned their altars with precious plate of silver and gold. And for the old and sick, they had built a two-story infirmary and a lepers’ hospital.
Sebastian’s own belief in the religious instruction of his youth hadn’t survived the ugly realities of war. But that didn’t alter his respect for the centuries of tonsured men who’d once devoted themselves to a spiritual life of contemplation and prayer and service. And he found himself wondering what it must have been like for those nameless, humble men to stand and watch, helpless, while those who claimed to worship the same God destroyed everything they’d worked so hard to build up in his name.
Much of what was valuable—starting with the lead from the roofs—would have been stripped and sold. But far more would have been left to the destruction of the elements. The beautifully carved wooden rood screens and misericords had probably been broken up for firewood by the poor, while the library’s ancient, beautifully illuminated manuscripts were hauled off by the cartload to soapmakers or torn up to line workmen’s boots and furnish a bountiful supply of rare, soft rags for the village jakes.
That’s what haunts this place, he thought. It’s the despair and anguish of the monks who poured their energy and joy, their very lives, into this monastery, only to see it destroyed. And he wondered, when they watched the windblown rain ruin the frescoes and carvings left open to the sky, when they heard the screams of their brethren burned alive for choosing devotion to God over duty to king, did they still believe in their god? Somehow, he suspected they did.
But he couldn’t help but wonder about the greedy, powerful men who’d torn the lead off the monastery’s roofs and sold it. How could they still claim to be good Christian men even as they pocketed their ill-gotten silver? And he found his gaze straying up the hill, to where the massive Tudor chimneys of Northcott Abbey rose high above the leafy treetops of its vast park.
Hero said quietly, “I thought I’d feel her here. But I don’t.”
“No. The past is too strong here,” he said, conscious of a welling of frustration tinged with what he recognized as anger directed toward himself. Nearly three days had now passed since Emma Chance’s death, and he was no closer to understanding what had happened to her than he had been standing in the water meadows on that first misty morning.
What he needed, he realized, was to talk to someone who knew the village well yet remained apart from it. Someone who combined an insider’s knowledge and understanding with an outsider’s perspective.
Someone like Ayleswick’s new schoolmaster.
Daray Flanagan was sitting on his front stoop when Sebastian walked up and introduced himself.
The Irish schoolmaster’s feet were bare except for his darned socks, and he had an apron tied over his clothes as he worked at blacking a pair of worn boots.
“You’ve caught me at a most ungentlemanly occupation,” said Flanagan, grimacing down at his dirty hands.
“Boots are important,” said Sebastian.
“That they are.” Flanagan reached for a rag and began polishing his left boot. “You’re here about the murders, I take it? Don’t know how much I can help you. Only spoke to the unfortunate young gentlewoman briefly when I saw her painting one time. And I can’t say I recall encountering the fellow from London at all.”
Sebastian propped one shoulder against the cottage’s dark, half-timbered framing. “Why do you think they were killed?”
Flanagan shook his head as he blew out a long, sorrowful breath. “I’d have said I understood this place and the people in it fairly well by now. But . . . it’s obvious I was mistaken.”
“Any chance it could have something to do with the presence here of Lucien Bonaparte?”
Flanagan slanted a sideways look at him. “Never tell me you’re thinking Bonaparte killed them.”