Heaven's Fire (7 page)

Will chuckled. “Your ears are turning the most remarkable color...
Father
.”

Rainulf’s body reacted to her lewd suggestions, even as he sought some graceful way to extricate himself from her clutches. Hulda felt his grudging response. “Ah,” she murmured, lifting her skirt and placing his hand between her warm thighs, “this is what you need.”

“Yes,” said Rainulf, realizing how pointless it would be to deny what was patently obvious. Nevertheless, he withdrew his hand and lowered her skirt. “But I am obliged to resist.” Grinning, he nodded toward Will. “Perhaps my companion...”

“Him?” Hulda snorted in derision and rose from his lap. “That one never goes with any of the girls.”

“They’re diseased, most of them,” Will said.

“Liar!” Hulda spat out.

Ignoring her, Will lifted his tankard. “I seek my... diversion... elsewhere, and if you value your health, I’d counsel you to do the same.”

The girls dispersed in a huff, whereupon Will leaned across the table toward Rainulf and said, in a low voice, “If it’s a woman you want, I’ll find you a clean one.”

Rainulf swallowed down a goodly portion of his ale. “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. I’ve resisted the temptations of the flesh for eleven years now. I think I can manage to continue doing so.”

“But why should you? You’ve been released from your vow of chastity, have you not?”

“I’m sure you know that even lay teachers are, by custom, celibate.”

Will chuckled. “You and I both know that’s more a matter of appearances than practice. Half the teachers keep mistresses, and some are even married.”

“Aye, but they’re at a disadvantage for promotions.”

He smiled. “Ah, so you have ambitions.”

“I’ve been approached by the Bishop of Lincoln. He’s got ultimate jurisdiction over Oxford and any teaching that goes on here. Right now we’re just an informal little
studium generale
, loosely overseen by myself as Magister Scholarum, the Abbot of Osney, and the Prior of St. Frideswides. But Bishop Chesney thinks we’ll someday be a great university. He wants to speed that process by appointing a chancellor to organize the masters into a guild and oversee the growth of the schools.”

Will motioned for a refill of their tankards. “And he offered you this position?”

“Not yet, but I’m the leading candidate. It doesn’t even seem to much bother him that I’ve renounced my vows. He wants a man the teachers will respect, and since they’ve already elected me Master of Schools, he feels that man should be me.”

“They elected you Master of Schools after only... How long have you been in Oxford?”

“Just six months,” Rainulf said. “But I had something of a reputation in Paris.”
The most beloved teacher in Paris
, they’d called him.
A worthy successor to Abelard
. And now he could never go back. “Apparently that reputation preceded me. All the masters and Church officials here knew of me before I arrived.”

Will nodded. “I’m impressed. But what has the chancellorship to do with your celibacy?”

“As Chancellor of Oxford, I’d no longer be a mere teacher—in fact, I wouldn’t teach at all. I’d be an officer of the bishop, and therefore required to be chaste.”

“Parish priests are bound by the same requirement, yet everyone knows what goes on behind the doors of their rectories, and no one much cares.”

“Aye, but I’d be much more visible than your average parish priest. And I understand Bishop Chesney is especially uncompromising about the reputations of his officers. I’ll be watched constantly, my behavior carefully monitored.”

“But you haven’t been appointed to the position yet.”

“Nay, nor will I be for another five months. My lord bishop will make his decision at the end of the summer.”

Will brightened. “Ah! So in the meantime—”

“In the meantime, I must conduct myself as befits the position for which I’m being considered. Any hint of impropriety, and my chances are ruined. I have no intention of jeopardizing this opportunity, Will.”

“It means that much to you?”

“More than you can know.”

Will looked at Rainulf curiously, but questioned him no further, for which he was grateful. He had no desire to discuss the self-doubt that had made teaching—once the joy of his life—so painful. He still craved the excitement of
disputatio
, the thrill of imparting knowledge to eager young minds. But his pleasure in teaching was one he had no right to, inasmuch as he was unfit for the task. His students trusted him, even revered him, hanging on every word from his mouth as if it were Gospel, even those who clearly couldn’t fathom what he was talking about. They assumed he was a man of faith, a man sure of his convictions and fully qualified to guide them through the moral and intellectual complexities of logic and theology. In reality, he was a fraud. He didn’t even know what he himself believed; what right did he have to train young minds when his own was filled with doubt and uncertainty?

All he wanted was to retreat from his students—from everyone—into the safe and undemanding administrative position to which Bishop Chesney seemed disposed to appoint him. In the meantime, he must do nothing to cause the bishop to question his suitability—certainly not consort with a whore in a Pennyfarthing Street brothel. In truth, he should have left the moment he realized what this place was. He would have, had he not been waiting for an opportunity to steer the conversation toward the subject that had obsessed him for the past fortnight.

Seizing upon a moment of silence, he asked, “Have you been back to Cuxham since I saw you last?”

Will nodded. “Just yesterday. I’m there quite a bit. Sir Roger frequently calls upon my services.”

“How did you come to meet him?”

Will hesitated almost imperceptibly, as if weighing whether to answer the question, then cleared his throat. “‘Twas eight or nine years ago. I was traveling home through Cuxham, and I stopped by the manor house to ask for a bite of supper. Sir Roger seemed unusually glad to see me, when he discovered my profession. He told me he’d be happy to feed me if I’d set a villein’s broken legs afterward. I told him I’d do it right away—that such a job shouldn’t wait. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said, and he led me downstairs to the undercroft. He had a young man in irons—a young man who, it turned out, had tried to escape. I said, ‘But there’s nothing wrong with his legs.’ Sir Roger just laughed. Then he picked up a mallet and smashed both legs, one after the other.”

Rainulf lowered his tankard slowly to the table. “Good God.”

“Indeed. Sir Roger said, ‘Mind you do a good job on those legs. I want him back in the fields in time for the harvest.’ So I set the legs, and then I ate my fill of stag and turnips and went on my way.” He drained his tankard. “When I went back to take the boy’s splints off, Sir Roger had another job for me. I don’t remember what it was—probably someone had taken ill. And then there was another, and another... He sends for me when he needs me. I seem to be the only surgeon he trusts.”

Rainulf shook his head. “I wouldn’t be too pleased about that, if I were you. He sounds like a monster.”

Will laughed. “He’d love to hear you say so. He so desperately wants to strike terror in the breasts of all who know him. But the fact is, every man has his weakness, his secret fear—the thing that makes him vulnerable. In Sir Roger’s case, it’s Hell. He’s an evil and petty creature, and he knows it. He’s desperately afraid that he’ll die and roast for eternity in everlasting torment. So, despite his wicked nature—or because of it—he’s become something of a slave to the Church and her priests. It’s all a rather pathetic effort to save himself when the time comes. The only man in Cuxham who had his respect was that old rector, Father Osred, and he’s dead now.”

“Aye, God rest his soul.” Rainulf crossed himself and said, in a deliberately offhand way, “Do you happen to know what became of his housekeeper?”

“Housekeeper...” Will shrugged. “Didn’t even know he had one. Sorry.”

Rainulf sighed dejectedly. “Girl by the name of Constance. She had the pox, too. I was just wondering—”

“Constance, did you say?”

“Aye.”

“She’s dead.” Will drank his ale and held his hand up for another.

Rainulf felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. He sat perfectly still, watching Will accept a new tankard and start in on it. “Are you sure?”

Will nodded and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “I saw her name on the tombstone myself. They buried her right next to the priest. What’s wrong? You look pale.”

Rainulf couldn’t stop shaking his head. “But I don’t understand. Her fever had subsided.”

“Was it the first fever, or the second?”

Rainulf just stared at him.

“The first fever,” Will explained, “comes before the rash. If the victim survives it, he generally feels much better afterward. But then a secondary fever sets in after the pox arrive, and it’s just as deadly as the first. It must be this second fever that claimed the girl.”

Nodding numbly, Rainulf rose from his bench. “I... have to go.”

Will stood, too, his manner solemn. “Sorry. I didn’t realize you’d formed an attachment.”

“I didn’t,” Rainulf said quickly.

“Was she pretty?”

“Nay.” Then he remembered her eyes, full of laughter and wonder, and her smile “Yes. Listen... I have to go.”

Will grabbed for his arm, but he pulled away. “I have to go,” he insisted as he bolted out the door.

*   *   *

“Can’t you dig any faster?” growled Roger Foliot to the two villeins, visible only from the shoulders up as they steadily deepened the hole.

Hugh Hest drew in a calming breath and let it out slowly. “Patience, Sir Roger,” soothed the reeve. “It won’t be much longer now.”

“Little bitch...” the fat knight muttered. He ceased his relentless pacing and flicked his horsewhip against his leg, his porcine eyes fixed on the block of stone inscribed with a cross and a single word: Constance. “Little bitch.”

His lapdog ran toward him, yipping and dancing about his heels. “Not you, Detinée,” he purred, gathering the ratlike creature in his arms. “Another little bitch.”

Drifting clouds shrouded the full moon, immersing the Cuxham churchyard in darkness. Hugh wished he had a lantern. He wished it weren’t so chilly. But most of all he wished he were anywhere—
anywhere
—than in this damn graveyard in the middle of the night, overseeing the exhumation of poor Constance’s body.

He’d thought Roger Foliot’s fixation with the girl would die when she did, but he’d been wrong. During the past few weeks, he’d become obsessed with her to the point of derangement, culminating in this determination to unearth her corpse. What point he hoped to prove was quite beyond Hugh’s ken. He prayed that the nasty business would be done with quickly, so that he could get home to Ella and his warm bed.

“Sir Roger,” said one of the villeins in a coarse English accent; Hugh recognized the voice of the larger of the two men, a slack-jawed giant named Frick. “This may be it.”

Hugh and his master approached the edge of the open grave as the moon emerged from cloud cover, illuminating a patch of unbleached linen peeking out from the dirt.

“Get out! Get out!” Sir Roger set Detinée down and whipped the two men frantically as they clambered out. The smaller one, Wiley, yanked the whip from his hand and raised it as if to strike him back. His hulking companion snatched it from him and tossed it aside, whispering a warning in English. Of the two men, Frick was by far the more obedient and hardworking. Little Wiley hadn’t ceased to cause trouble since his arrival in Cuxham the previous fall.

Roger Foliot, usually alert to any form of impertinence, seemed barely aware of the incident, so preoccupied was he with the task of lowering his vast bulk into the grave. Once there, he unsheathed his sharp little eating knife and began hacking away at the partially buried shroud. Frick and Wiley exchanged a look and, crossing themselves, backed away from the appalling sight.

“
Aha!
” Grabbing the linen in his meaty fists, Sir Roger ripped it open. “Look, Hugh! Look! I knew it! I knew it!”

Steeling himself, Hugh leaned over to inspect the contents of the shroud.

It was filled with straw.

“What... ?”

“I knew it!” Even in the shifting moonlight, Hugh could see Sir Roger’s face darken with fury, turning the color of an overripe plum. In a frenzy of rage, he stabbed at the straw-filled shroud, slicing it to ribbons. “You bitch! You little bitch! Make a fool out of me, will you?”

“But how... ?”

“She tricked me!” he exclaimed breathlessly. “She faked her death, the little strumpet! And I’ll wager she had help doing it.”

Ella had told Hugh that she’d been the one to bury Constance. She hadn’t, of course; she’d buried a sack of straw instead. She’d lied to him, then, but he found he could summon no ire over it. It was a clever plan, and it had almost worked.

“Who filled in this grave?” Sir Roger demanded, clutching two quivering fistfuls of straw.

Hugh would be damned if he’d point the finger at his own wife. “I wouldn’t know, sir. Someone traveling through, perhaps? Or perhaps Constance herself.” Desperate to change the subject, he asked, “What made you suspect that this grave was empty?”