[An excerpt from the the mystery novel Nun Too Clever, which looks at what life as a queen was really like for the fairytale maiden who landed the prince.]
“You discovered a body, Your Excellency?”
“Indeed I did.”
“Where?”
“At St. Wihtburh’s.”
Had the bishop been saving this news to spring on me? Everyone knows that the abbey is under my protection. My mother was its founder. The thing that most unsettled me, though, is that a childhood friend is cloistered there. “What happened?” I asked.
“I came across her in the stable. The nuns were at prayer—I had to take my own horse. They really don’t have enough servants there. So very disturbing.”
“The lack of servants or the death, Your Excellency?”
“Surely Your Royal Highness has been informed?”
Was His Excellency gloating? He was one of those people who believes that information is power, and he wasn’t eager to lose his edge. I was too rattled to care. “Who?” I asked.
“Her name was Elfwinne. A fairly recent arrival. From Mercia, they said.”
I could breathe again. I hadn’t met the girl. Or thought I hadn’t, at the time. At least it wasn’t Athelflad.
Death is ordinary enough, but not the way he described it. Stumbling across a body in a stable is unusual. It must have been an accident. The bishop agreed, although he couldn’t say for sure. Whatever the cause, short of murder, the matter could have waited to receive my attention. Nevertheless, it provided an excuse to get away from a tiresome evening. “Forgive me, Your Excellency. My lord,” I said, nodding to my two nearest table companions. “I must leave. St. Wihtburh’s—”
“No need to burn your wits on my account,” said the old warrior.
“It is my Christian duty,” I said, “to offer the sisters my support in view of this tragedy.”
Was the girl’s death a tragedy? Probably not. The bishop knew this as well as I did. I hoped his vanity would shield him from realising I wanted to escape. It didn’t. He raised an eyebrow. He was offended. Before he could protest, I commanded a lad to saddle my horse. I cantered from the hall to gallop for the abbey.
It was not a long ride, and I knew the route well, but hearing of a death had unnerved me. The fitful moonlight flickered on the woodland’s gnarly trees, bringing to life fearsome creatures. Ghouls writhe and monsters lurk in a forest at night. When I got to the abbey, shaken by my imagination, I wandered the grounds looking for Athelflad. I wanted my friend to fill me in on the sister’s death before I talked to the abbess. I’ve learned from sitting at the centre of power for the past ten years to get all the information I can get before I talk to anyone in authority. Stakeholders have more to lose and, therefore, more to hide.
It took a while to find Athelflad. Candlelight in an outbuilding tipped me off. My friend was sitting at a writing table in the dilapidated little scriptorium, long neglected. The sisters found medicine more interesting than writing. Athelflad bent over a scrap of parchment scratching out letters. Had I been blindfolded, I could have recognised my friend by the subtle fragrance of incense that surrounded her. I knew she hadn’t come here to write; she wasn’t a writer. She came to the scriptorium and doodled when she wanted to be alone. Her face was drawn; her normal sparkle had dimmed like the December sun. The unsteady candlelight made it hard to read her expression. Without preliminary—we’d been friends too long for that—I asked her about the death.
“It was shocking, Cynethrith. It was so unexpected.” Athelflad couldn’t quite collect her thoughts.
“Tell me about the sister you lost.”
“She was a gentlelady named Elfwinne. She had recently come to us. You might remember her from the old court. I heard she was a favourite before Egbert was crowned.”
I remembered an Elfwinne, and not fondly. At first I didn’t believe that Athelflad was talking about the girl I had known, a malevolent little imp. The one I remembered had spent her days toadying to our previous queen, a poisoner who had dispatched her own husband with one of her concoctions. Accidentally, some thought. And it probably was, because the morning after her husband’s death the queen disappeared, Elfwinne in tow. It took years for Egbert and me to put the kingdom back together after King Beorhtric’s disastrous reign.
“You say she was a gentlelady and a nun? That’s not the Elfwinne I remember.”
“Don’t speak ill of the dead,” sniffed Athelflad, who never stops trying to make me a better person. The way she chided me this time, though, reminded me of a parent telling a child not to be too greedy at dinner. It was something said without thought. She toyed with her quill. Her mind was elsewhere.
(To be continued)