He looked up again. “God may tempt us, too. He may order us to perform acts which seem wrong. Perhaps he will tell us to do something that appears to be a sin. When that happens, we must remember Abraham.”

Godwyn was speaking in what he knew was his most persuasive preaching style, rhythmic yet conversational. He could tell that he had their rapt attention by the quiet in the octagonal chapter house: no one fidgeted, whispered or shuffled.

“We must not question,” he said. “We must not argue. When God leads us, we must follow – no matter how foolish, sinful or cruel his wishes may seem to our feeble human minds. We are weak and humble. Our understanding is fallible. It is not given to us to make decisions or choices. Our duty is simple. It is to obey.”

Then he told them what they had to do.

The bishop arrived after dark. It was almost midnight when the entourage entered the precinct: they had ridden by torchlight. Most of the priory had been in bed for hours, but there was a group of nuns at work in the hospital, and one of them came to wake Caris. “The bishop is here,” she said.

“Why does he want me?” Caris asked sleepily.

“I don’t know, Mother Prior.”

Of course she didn’t. Caris pulled herself out of bed and put on a cloak.

She paused in the cloisters. She took a long drink of water, and for a few moments she breathed deeply of the cold night air, clearing her head of sleep. She wanted to make a good impression on the bishop, so that there would be no trouble about his ratifying her election as prioress.

Archdeacon Lloyd was in the hospital, looking tired, the pointed tip of his long nose red with cold. “Come and greet your bishop,” he said crossly, as if she ought to have been up and waiting.

She followed him out. A servant stood outside the door with a burning torch. They walked across the green to where the bishop sat on his horse.

He was a small man in a big hat, and he looked thoroughly fed up.

Caris said in Norman French: “Welcome to Kingsbridge Priory, my lord bishop.”

Henri said peevishly: “Who are you?”

Caris had seen him before but had never spoken to him. “I am Sister Caris, prioress-elect.”

“The witch.”

Her heart sank. Godwyn must have already tried to poison Henri’s mind against her. She felt indignant. “No, my lord bishop, there are no witches here,” she said with more acerbity than was prudent. “Just a group of ordinary nuns doing their best for a town that has been stricken by the plague.”

He ignored that. “Where is Prior Godwyn?”

“In his palace.”

“No, he’s not!”

Archdeacon Lloyd explained: “We’ve been there. The building is empty.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” the archdeacon said irritably. “Really.”

At that moment, Caris spotted Godwyn’s cat, with the distinctive white tip to its tail. The novices called it Archbishop. It walked across the west front of the cathedral and looked into the spaces between the pillars, as if searching for its master.

Caris was taken aback. “How strange… perhaps Godwyn decided to sleep in the dormitory with the other monks.”

“And why would he do that? I hope there’s no impropriety going on.”

Caris shook her head dismissively. The bishop suspected unchastity, but Godwyn was not prone to that particular sin. “He reacted badly when his mother caught the plague. He had some kind of fit and collapsed. She died today.”

“If he’s been unwell I should have thought he was all the more likely to sleep in his own bed.”

Anything might have happened. Godwyn was slightly unhinged by Petranilla’s illness. Caris said: “Would the lord bishop like to speak to one of his deputies?”

Henri answered crossly: “If I could find one, yes!”

“Perhaps if I take Archdeacon Lloyd to the dormitory…”

“As soon as you like!”

Lloyd got a torch from a servant, and Caris led him quickly through the cathedral into the cloisters. The place was silent, as monasteries generally were at this time of night. They reached the foot of the staircase that led up to the dormitory, and Caris stopped. “You’d better go up alone,” she said. “A nun should not see monks in bed.”

“Of course.” Lloyd went up the stairs with his torch, leaving her in darkness. She waited, curious. She heard him shout: “Hello?” There was a strange silence. Then, after a few moments, he called down to her in an odd voice: “Sister?”

“Yes?”

“You can come up.”

Mystified, she climbed the stairs and entered the dormitory. She stood beside Lloyd and peered into the room by the unsteady light or the burning torch. The monks’ straw mattresses lay neatly in their places along either side of the room – but not one of them was occupied. “There’s no one here,” Caris said.

“Not a soul,” Lloyd agreed. “What on earth has happened?”

“I don’t know, but I can guess,” said Caris.

“Then enlighten me, please.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” she said. “They’ve run away.”

Part Six. January 1349 to January 1351

63

When Godwyn left, he took with him all the valuables from the monks’ treasury and all the charters. This included the nuns’ charters, which they had never succeeded in retrieving from his locked chest. He also took the sacred relics, including the bones of St Adolphus in their priceless reliquary.

Caris discovered this on the morning afterwards, the first day of January, the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ. She went with Bishop Henri and Sister Elizabeth to the treasury off the south transept. Henri’s attitude to her was stiffly formal, which was worrying; but he was a peevish character, so perhaps he was like that with everyone.

The flayed skin of Gilbert Hereford was still nailed to the door, slowly turning hard and yellow, and giving off a faint but distinct whiff of rottenness.

But the door was not locked.

They went in. Caris had not been inside this room since Prior Godwyn stole the nuns’ one hundred and fifty pounds to build his palace. After that they had built their own treasury.

It was immediately obvious what had happened. The flagstones that disguised the vaults in the floor had been lifted and not put back, and the lid of the ironbound chest stood open. Vaults and chest were empty.

Caris felt that her contempt for Godwyn was vindicated. A trained physician, a priest and the leader of the monks, he had fled just at the moment when the people needed him most. Now, surely, everyone would realize his true nature.

Archdeacon Lloyd was outraged. “He took everything!”

Caris said to Henri: “And this is the man who wanted you to annul my election.”

Bishop Henri grunted noncommittally.

Elizabeth was desperate to find an excuse for Godwyn’s behaviour. “I’m sure the lord prior took the valuables with him for safekeeping.”

That stung the bishop into a response. “Rubbish,” he said crisply. “If your servant empties your purse and disappears without warning, he’s not keeping your money safe, he’s stealing it.”

Elizabeth tried a different tack. “I believe this was Philemon’s idea.”

“The sub-prior?” Henri looked scornful. “Godwyn is in charge, not Philemon. Godwyn is responsible.”

Elizabeth shut up.

Godwyn must have recovered from the death of his mother, Caris thought, at least temporarily. It was quite an achievement to persuade every single one of the monks to follow him. She wondered where they had gone.

Bishop Henri was thinking the same thing. “Where did the wretched cowards go?”

Caris remembered Merthin trying to persuade her to leave. “To Wales, or Ireland”, he had said. “A remote village where they don’t see a stranger from one year to the next.” She said to the bishop: “They will be hiding out in some isolated place where no one ever goes.”