Wages of Sin by Kate Benedict Page B

was seated again Jane lifted her spoon and surreptitiously examined him from the corner of her eye.
    He was tall and lean, his plain black robe distinguished only by the richness of the cloth. As he sat at the high table his silver hair caught the sun from the stained glass window, creating a nimbus of light around his head, enhancing the almost saintly impression given by the narrow face and high cheekbones of a confirmed ascetic. Long fingers toyed with a morsel of white bread as if their owner was above mere mortal appetites. He sipped sparingly from a goblet of heavily watered wine.
    She breathed a sigh of relief. He was everything she had imagined him to be. This was no complacent priest to tolerate sin in return for a rich table and comfortable life. This was a soldier of the Church Militant who would take up arms on her behalf, against Mother Ursula’s hidden wickedness.
    Her gaze drifted to his companions and a pang of uneasiness ran through her. The contrast between them was unsettling. The monk on his left was shovelling food into his mouth as if his very life depended on it, washing each greedy mouthful down with copious amounts of unwatered wine. His ruddy complexion, bulging belly and the stains on the front of his habit suggested that this self-indulgence was nothing new. As she watched a belch escaped his greasy lips and he grinned and wiped his soiled fingers down his robe before reaching again for his goblet. Jane’s mouth twisted in a moue of distaste.
    The one on his right was even worse. A parody of his master, he was scrawny where his superior was lean, and whereas Father Peter’s thin face suggested aristocratic good breeding, his companion had the narrow skull and darting eyes of a rodent. His thin lips parted to reveal pointed teeth and Jane was unpleasantly reminded of a weasel or a ferret. She shivered. He was like some cheapjack imitation of his master - but she reminded herself that Father Peter was a priest, subject to the rules of the church, and as such, had no say in the choice of his companions. It was hardly his fault they were so repulsive.
    She suppressed a smile. Despite Father Peter’s unprepossessing companions, Mother Ursula fluttered round all three, dancing attendance on them as if they were the Holy Trinity itself. A wave of triumph lifted her spirits further. The Reverend Mother could dimple and defer as much as she liked, but once Father Peter knew the magnitude of her sins, no amount of cozening smiles would save her from retribution.
    Â 
    Jane’s duties took her to the still room that morning, for which she was grateful. The air was heavily perfumed by the bunches of herbs hanging to dry, and there was something intensely satisfying about pulverising them to dust beneath her pestle - as if she was grinding Mother Ursula’s smirking face. It was a chance to escape into a more ordered world, away from the hidden depravity lurking at the centre of the convent. Woundwort for cuts. Marigold for bruises. Poppies for sleep and to soothe pain. Each with its place and function.
    She looked at the serried ranks of flasks and jars filled with unguents and tinctures, and sighed. Even here there was a dark side. Too generous a dose of poppy syrup could ease, not to sleep, but to death. Instead of aiding a failing heart, foxglove could force it to bursting point and still it forever. Pennyroyal could cleanse a womb of an unwilling burden. For a moment a vision of Mother Ursula raising a goblet, freighted with death, to her lips flashed through Jane’s mind and she was horrified by her own wickedness. She sighed again. Yet another sin to confess.
    A timid tap at the door interrupted her gloomy thoughts. She opened it to find an anxious woman, clutching a grey-faced child in her thin arms. A yawning cut gaped from the boy’s knee to his ankle and the stench of decay hit Jane like a blow. Her own troubles were forgotten as she cleansed and stitched the wound, the