Free Sorrow Without End by Priscilla Royal Page A

perpetrators, she could not, as leader of this priory, remain passive in this matter. She represented the authority of the Church on these grounds. Thus she could not ignore any evil in her midst, even a criminal who fell under secular law.
    Suddenly she realized the direction her thoughts were going and stopped her headlong rush through the cloister garth. She found a dry spot on a stone bench just under the covered walkway and sat.
    “Must it take murder to chase lust from my loins?” she asked aloud with grim humor. Raising her eyes to the slate-dark heavens, she continued. “May You send me a kinder remedy, for my soul’s cure should not bring more bloodshed to an already violent world!” In truth, the news of this murder had seemed to burn away her woman’s softness, at least for the time being. She did not think any of them in the hospital had suspected her longing to take Thomas into her arms, nor noticed how she had studied his face for any sign of grief at a brother’s death. Once she had felt her face flush, but she believed she had hidden her feelings with a brusque tone and even discourtesy. Better she be condemned for insensitivity, even cruel indifference, than lust.
    With this foul murder to solve, she might be able to delay any decision on Thomas’ future at the priory. She did believe in a God of consummate compassion, and surely in good time He would give her guidance, some insight on what she must do with a priest who served Tyndal well but wracked her soul with longings she had once so willingly forsworn. Perhaps the answer would come when she spent her hour of penance on the chapel floor. “Thy will be done in this matter,” she said, head bowed as she rose from the cold bench.
    In the meantime, she would spend some hours with her account rolls, leaving time for Ralf to study the corpse with Sister Anne. Then she would return to the chapel herself and see what stories the victim might have to tell the prioress of Tyndal.

Chapter Thirteen
    The man from Acre slipped into the shadows and leaned his forehead against the rough wall. With a muttered curse, he slammed his fist against the stones.
    How dare they bring that hell-bound corpse into a chapel and lay it before the cross? It was blasphemy! They should have burnt the rotting thing in the forest at midnight, then left the ashes for Satan’s imps to dance in.
    He hit his head once against the masonry, then turned his gaze upward. Dust motes were falling slowly in the feeble beam of light from the window just above him. They reminded him of sand, of Acre, then of blood.
    “The man did take the cross,” he snarled, sliding into a crouch. “He is probably in Heaven now, laughing and enjoying God’s favor, while my wife jerks and twists with the flames of Hell.”
    His eyes burned with pain, and he longed to close them. His body cried out for rest. The empty place where his soul had once been ached like a festering wound. He wanted to die, but he could not.
    He had given his word not to commit self-murder when they took him off the ship in Sicily and said he must make peace with God. When they finally let him finish his voyage to England, there had been days that he regretted his promise, especially when he stared back across the ship’s wake toward the land where his wife had died. Nonetheless, he had sworn an oath.
    He leaned against the cold, rough-chiseled stone of the hospital wall. Turning his face away from the chapel, he watched the movement in the light from the window, his vision blurring as he stared. The specks of dust were now dancing with so much innocence and grace that he smiled in spite of the throbbing between his eyes. Nay, they were not bloodstained bits of sand, he thought. Might they not be tiny saints?
    Had it not been for the man who had been kind to him in the days when he rolled in the dust of Outremer, screaming for miracles, he would not have come here at all. It was that man who promised him God was good, that He