Free Sorrow Without End by Priscilla Royal Page B

would heal him of his pain and guilt. Nonetheless, he still wondered if he might not have found a greater peace, sitting at the grave of his wife until the sun baked his body into a brittle shell and released his soul to join hers.
    A tall nun walked by. She looked over at him with a questioning glance, but he shook his head and she went on into the chapel. Might she be the one who was supposed to heal him? Or was it the round one, the one with closed eyes who twisted her fat, white hands as she spoke to those soft-robed cokenays on horseback? It could not be the short one, the one who claimed she was prioress of this place.
    He shuddered.
    That woman’s eyes were the color of hot ashes. When she had looked at him, her eyes had reflected hellfire, burning through him with searing pain. She was no healer. He doubted that she was even prioress here. Nay, she was one of Lucifer’s minions hidden in this cloistered place to fish for weak souls. The heat of that gaze would cause any monk’s chaste vows to shrivel and his forsaken manhood to swell!
    He bit his thumb and felt a chill sweat break out on his forehead. Had they lied to him? If God would let Satan send such a creature to seduce him, then He was no kinder here than He had been in Outremer. The memory of the hot-eyed woman pounded in his head like the banging of a condemned man’s fists against his prison door.
    Ah, but had he not struggled well in their silent wrestling match in the courtyard? God may have given him up to be the Devil’s plaything, but he had won the fight, despite his weariness, even when she had summoned the naked apparition of his wife.
    “A woman’s body is but a supper for worms,” he had roared at the hellish phantom of his wife. “Even yours,” he had howled as tears of longing fell from his burning eyes. It was then that the fiendish creature had stepped back, and his wife’s spirit had vanished.
    Memory of that conflict now melted into a haze of pain. He yearned to weep, but he had no more tears to shed. Although he had triumphed over Satan’s forces, his exaltation was short-lived, and a profound sadness darkened his heart.
    He knew that the vision of his wife, with her yearning look and out-stretched arms, was only the Devil’s painted fantasy. Yet he had hungered to hold her body against his, to join with her in loving passion just one more time. That had been denied him. Despite her ghostly touch, his body had remained cold, his manhood as dead as the woman he had loved.
    Twisting with impotent longing, he cursed. For stealing that little comfort from him, he would never forgive that demon, the one who dared call herself the prioress of Tyndal.

Chapter Fourteen
    Thomas and Ralf walked along the row of small, screened rooms just behind the dormitory beds in the hospital. The only sound, besides the moans of the suffering and the whispering of the lay brothers, was the soft crunching of their leather shoes on dried and scattered herbs.
    “I owe you an apology,” Ralf said at last. “I meant nothing by my harsh-spoken questions. Surely you know that.”
    That I did not, Thomas thought, then replied with greater composure than he felt. “I did not think you were accusing me of murder, Ralf, or of lying for that matter.” He had imagined just that, of course, but the crowner need not know why this thought had leapt to mind.
    The two men continued on without speaking until a scream from a man nearby startled them. The force of another’s most mortal agony chased Thomas’ own fears aside, and he realized there was something else that had troubled him about the crowner’s remarks, something perhaps more important than his prison memories. He laid a hand on his friend’s sleeve.
    “May I be frank with you, Ralf?”
    “We are both honest men, monk. There is no need for evasion.”
    “When you asked if I was returning to the hospital to hear a confession, whose did you think I came to hear, and what did you think it would be?