The Nun's Tale Read Online Free PDF

scratching. ‘Now there’s the problem, you see. I can’t say as I remember the filling in, but I’ve been digging graves all my life and I’m sure I did it right.’
    ‘Did anyone help you? Longford, perhaps?’
    Old Dan shrugged. ‘To speak truth, I can swear to naught once I tasted that wondrous brew.’
    ‘You know what you’re to do now, Dan?’
    They spoke true, then? You want it dug up?’
    ‘It must be done. Have you the stomach for it?’
    ‘Don’t know till I do. But if it must be done –’ Dan shrugged. ‘Can’t say as I wouldn’t welcome company.’
    ‘I shall accompany you.’ Ravenser wished to keep this incident quiet if possible. ‘And Sir Nicholas, also.’
    It had rained in the night. The morning was dry but overcast, the air heavy. Old Dan and his son fell to the task in silence, but soon they cursed the saturated earth. As they dug, water seeped in to fill the hole and make the soil heavy to lift.
    Ravenser slipped into his own thoughts. What if they found the real Dame Joanna rotting in her shroud? Then who was the woman at Nunburton who claimed to be resurrected? The abbess of Nunburton had noted that the woman’s French was genteel and her clothes, though travel-stained and torn, were new, not mended, and of costly wool. She also noted that the supposedly ancient, sacred mantle looked like good Yorkshire wool. Why would someone claim to be a dead person? What was to be gained? Was she dangerous? Or just confused?
    ‘They have reached the body,’ Louth said quietly.
    Ravenser apologised for his inattention. ‘I have been pondering this strange case.’
    ‘Here we are,’ Old Dan called out. ‘Knotted up in her shroud, just as I remember. Shall we lift her out, Sir Richard?’
    Ravenser knelt down and slipped his knife through the upper knot, blinking back the tears the odour brought to his eyes. ‘I should think we can come to a conclusion with a peek.’
    ‘Lord ha’ mercy!’ Old Dan covered his mouth and nose with a dirty kerchief as Ravenser peeled back the sheet. ‘Don’t like the looks of ’em when there’s still flesh. Nor the stink.’
    ‘What have we here?’ Ravenser muttered. ‘Much too much flesh for a year-old corpse, and it is not Dame Joanna, but a man with a broken neck. A huge man.’
    Louth held a scented cloth to his plump face and leaned down, examining the face and body. ‘Unmistakable. That is Jaro, Longford’s man.’ Louth pointed to an amulet on the chest. ‘The tooth of an animal he killed in the Pyrenees. Proud of it, he was. But his girth is enough to identify him.’ He turned quickly away.
    Ravenser’s gut burned. How in God’s name had Will Longford’s man wound up in this grave? He rose. ‘Fill it back in, Dan, and say nothing to anyone. I must notify the mayor, the coroner, the bailiffs’ – he passed a hand over his eyes, sighed – ‘and the Archbishop of York.’
    As they walked away, Louth asked what Ravenser meant to do with Dame Joanna.
    ‘I shall ask my uncle to allow me to escort her back to her convent. Perhaps she will be more coherent with her Mother Superior, someone familiar. But after all this, the escort must be well guarded.’
    ‘I shall attend you. With my men.’
    ‘You, Nicholas?’
    ‘I feel responsible.’
    As well he should. Ravenser agreed.

Two
To York
     
    F ive days later, Ravenser, Louth, and company set off on a slow journey to York. Dame Joanna was still weak, so she rode in a cart with two sisters who would see to her needs along the way. Travelling with a cart slowed them, but June had begun with fair, mild weather that almost made Ravenser glad of the excuse to go journeying. As the sun warmed him and the smells and sounds of the countryside cheered him, he grew more confident that the prioress of St Clement’s would find a way to reach Dame Joanna and learn her story, and that the archbishop’s men would soon discover who had killed Maddy and Jaro. The mayor of Beverley had been relieved to