Threads of Treason by Mary Bale Read Free Book Online

Anglo-Saxon, but all the nuns at St Thomas’s are. They have been chosen for their ability at needlework. Prioress Ursula was a craftswoman and a woman of integrity. But not even Bishop Odon will believe me.’
    ‘ Believe what?’ asked Therese, sure that she saw another movement among the ruins, this time some distance from the first – in the area where an altar might once have stood. Therese looked from the first place to the second. She and the Abbess were seated between them.
    ‘ Believe me, Prioress Ursula would not have tried to destroy the great embroidery.’
    ‘ Why should they think that she would?’
    ‘ Because she was there when another woman tried to ink the work. I will call her the Impostor.’
    ‘ What happened?’ Therese spotted, as she spoke, a movement in the same direction as the first one, by the entrance, but further down the aisle and much closer.
    ‘ The Prioress and the Impostor fell together from a tower close to the embroidery room. They were covered in ink, which was clearly meant for the embroidery.’
    ‘ Prioress Ursula might have been trying to stop her,’ said Therese. Now there was a movement close to her second observation, by the altar. Still she could not catch the substance of it. Could it be beasts strayed from their pasture?
    ‘ The Prioress carries the key to the embroidery room,’ explained the Abbess. She slumped forwards and put her face in her hands. ‘The room was open. So you see, she had to be involved.’
    ‘ Surely there was an ink bottle, some ink stains in the room, something to show what had happened?’ asked Therese.
    ‘ I have only heard that the conspirators squabbled and that is how they fell.’
    Therese put her arm about the Abbess and looked around for inspiration. She was at a loss as to what to say to her superior in such a state and so far from home. Again a shadow moved in the corner of her vision. This time the movement in the aisle had substance. She thought at first it was a builder come for stone, as the Abbess had said. But his movements were darting and he kept looking at them from behind clumps of staggered stones.
    ‘ Bishop Odon would not have sent us if there was nothing to find out,’ said Therese a little hopefully.
    ‘ We are not here to clear Prioress Ursula, we are here to uncover the plotters.’
    ‘ That may be the same thing,’ said Therese keeping watch on the little man, who was getting closer all the time. ‘Abbess, I think we ought to go.’
    The Abbess looked up. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘ Look.’ Therese pointed him out with a nod. Now she could see he was little more than a beggar from his dirty, ragged clothes and his nosiness was a rude and possibly treacherous interruption to their conversation.
    Standing up the Abbess raised her hand and called out, ‘Halt, man.’
    The man halted. Therese saw that he wore a bandage about his head.
    ‘ Come here,’ said the Abbess.
    Therese wanted to slide behind the older woman, but resisted the urge, so that her body swayed one way and then the other.
    ‘ Stand still, Sister Therese,’ snapped Abbess Eleanor.
    The man came over. Folds of empty skin shook against his bones telling of the number of lean times he’d survived.
    ‘ Are you spying on us, little man?’ asked the Abbess.
    ‘ I am,’ he said without remorse.
    ‘ What do you want to know?’ asked Abbess Eleanor.
    ‘ If you are from Archbishop Lanfranc or Bishop Odo?’
    ‘ Who wants to know?’ asked the Abbess, her gaze rising and turning to a disturbance of rubble behind them.
    Therese turned too recalling the second set of movements she’d observed moments earlier. Her failure to warn Mother Abbess of such a danger struck her like a blow from a whip.
    ‘ I want to know who is your Lord,’ said another man in clear English. He walked towards them from an outcrop of ruins. He was barely any younger than the Abbess yet he was as straight in the back as she and built with the strength of a