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longer had to pay the midwife for her treatments, and she might well give him a boy—one disinclined to monkish ways, like his other two sons, because this lad would be bred in good, hot lust.

Chapter Six
    “No tasting ‘til it’s done!” The red-faced cook raised her wooden spoon with exaggerated ferocity as if threatening to strike, but her broad grin belied any such intent.
    Folding his hands most prayerfully, Brother Thomas bowed. “But the aroma already tempts. Even a saint would weaken, and I am only a sinful mortal.”
    “’Tis but a simple pottage of winter roots, Brother. Nothing that a monk of your high rank would find pleasing.”
    “Rank, Mistress? In God’s kingdom, there is no greater title than
servant
, and I am honored to bear nothing else on earth
.
”
    “Fa! I have been in my lord’s service for enough years and cooked for men who have spoken to the king himself. Your speech does not belong to any man of common birth.” Turning her broad back to him, she resumed stirring the soup in the iron cauldron, which was attached to a sturdy but adjustable pot hook over the fire. The contents bubbled with hearty vigor.
    Thomas’ nose twitched at the piquant scent. “You are wrong! The smell from that pot is so ennobling that it would free a villein and raise a king to sainthood!” He might have broken his fast an hour before, but his mouth was truly watering. “What spices do you use? The nuns in our priory kitchen would add your name to their daily prayer if you would share the secret.”
    The cook laughed with joy like a young girl and was about to reply when a woman’s voice, brittle with disapproval, rang out.
    “You spend too much time in idle chatter, Hilda. Last night, supper was cold and late. Get back to work!” The source of the complaint stood at the kitchen entrance, rigid as a stick, arms tightly folded across her breasts.
    The cook turned away and gripped the wooden spoon with both hands. Her sole response was to flush a far darker red than the heat of the kitchen might justify.
    Thomas studied the angular, sallow-faced woman in the doorway. His instant impression of her was not favorable. “I beg pardon, Mistress, and ask that you blame me alone if there has been any failure worthy of rebuke.”
    Her tiny eyes narrowed as they swept over the monk from tonsure to foot and back again, but somewhere in between her expression softened. “I am Mistress Constance. My husband is the eldest son of Master Stevyn, steward to Henry de Lacy of high rank and renown.” She began to lick her lips. “And who are you?”
    Thomas wondered if he had somehow been transformed into a sizzling chunk of roasted venison.
    A young man slipped quietly out of the shadows behind her and bent to her ear. “The monk is no wandering mendicant, Mistress.”
    Startled, the heir’s wife yelped, her thin arms flailing wildly as she lost her balance.
    The man laughed but quickly caught her before she fell. “He is Brother Thomas, and his prioress occupies the earl’s chambers.”
    Shaking herself free of his grasp, she hissed at the young man. Although her exact words were incomprehensible, they were uttered with the vehemence of a curse.
    “As I heard the tale, the late meal was your fault. Had you not been fluttering around Prioress Eleanor like some oversized moth, instead of getting her to a warm fire, she might have been less chilled and you might have had the supper when it was still hot.”
    Her look hard as granite and her yellowish complexion reddening to a dark orange, Mistress Constance grimaced as if she had just smelled sulfur from Hell. Then she directed a more honeyed gaze at Thomas. “Oh,” she murmured, “it is your prioress who has sought shelter with us?”
    “That is true.”
    “God has answered my prayers twice over! This house of sin has long needed a cleansing presence.” She shot a malevolent glance at the young man behind her. “And now the evil has increased enough to require