Wine of Violence

Wine of Violence Read Free

Book: Wine of Violence Read Free
Author: Priscilla Royal
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would remain in the world, the old prioress could leave it with an easier spirit. She smiled.
     
    Still sitting by the convent bed was Sister Anne. The sub-infirmarian to the priory was pale with fatigue and her shoulders hunched as she bent over the hollow body that the prioress had just quitted. The old prioress shook her head. No, good sister, she thought, now is the time for prayer, not your concoctions.
     
    And with that, the world turned black.
     
    His heart pounded. His lungs hurt as he gulped cold ocean air through his open and toothless mouth. Stinging sweat trickled down his reddened, unevenly shaven face, and Brother Rupert rubbed the sleeve of his rough robe across his age-dulled eyes.
     
    Once he could have walked the familiar path between town and priory with ease. Now his legs ached with the effort of climbing and he had to will himself to the top of the sandy, scrub-grass covered hill.
     
    "I'm getting old. I am getting old," he muttered, as the moist wind stabbed each one of his joints.
     
    At the hilltop, he stopped to rest and looked back into the distance. The morning sun of early spring had burned off the thickest fog, but the walls of Tyndal Priory, a double house of priests and nuns in the French Order of Fontevraud, were mere shadows in the drifting haze.
     
    It didn't matter. He could have shut his eyes and seen each stone of every building clearly. Since the winter of 1236, when Eleanor of Provence had come to England as the now aging King Henry's wife, Brother Rupert had been chaplain, scribe, and administrating secretary to the recently deceased Felicia, Prioress of Tyndal. He had lived at the priory long before that, however, indeed from a day in his thirteenth summer when his rich merchant father proudly dedicated him to this woman-ruled Order so favored by kings, queens, and other elite of the realm. His father might have given him to the religious life as an oblate, but the boy came as a willing and eager offering. The monastic walls provided a secure refuge from a world he found frightening, a world filled with violence and lust.
     
    Suddenly his eyes overflowed with tears, and he wiped his gnarled fingers across them hurriedly. "Ah, but I loved you, I did, and I miss you," he said, watching as a swirling gust of mist seemed to lift his words into the sky and scatter them. "And for the sake of all our souls I will put the matter right, my lady. I promise you that."
     
    His words were fervent with an almost prayerful intensity.
     
    Then he sighed, stretched the stiffness from his legs and started down the hill, tentatively at first, unsure in his footing. Once protected from the sea breeze, he could feel the warmth of the sun, and his steps quickened.
     
    His mood improved and he smiled. Indeed, in the warmth he now felt he could almost sense that the eyes of God were upon him.
     
    They were not. They were human.
     
    Chapter Two
     
    "Sister Christina will be here in due course, my lady." A scowling nun, of middle years and pockmarked face, bowed with perfunctory courtesy in Eleanor's direction. Despite the warmth in the crowded chapter house, Sister Ruth's words fell with a chill on the prioress's ear.
     
    Eleanor of Wynethorpe, recently named the new head of Tyndal Priory, sat with stiff spine in her high-backed chair, looked down at the forty-odd wimple-encircled faces in front of her, and knew she was not welcome.
     
    Nor could she blame them. Her appointment to the position of prioress had nothing to do with competence. It had all to do with her father's unwavering loyalty to King Henry III during Simon de Montfort's recent rebellion, her oldest brother's close friendship with Prince Edward, and her mother's devoted support of the queen during a crucial time in the royal marriage. As each one of the nuns sitting in front of her well knew, none of these things meant Eleanor was personally qualified for the high office she now held, only that her family was in favor at

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