Wine of Violence by Priscilla Royal

was inconsolable for many months. We feared he would lose either his reason or his faith. Once in chapel I overheard him praying that the cup be taken from him. Apparently, God was gracious. The good brother has since regained his spirit and strength."
     
    "He does not seem happy with our new prioress." "Prioress Felicia was not a forceful leader. She was happiest working with the nuns or the hospital and let Brother Simeon run the estates as well as rule the monks and lay brothers on Prior Theobald's behalf. Prioress Eleanor seems more in the tradition of Fontevraud women. He will find the change difficult." "And what think you of being ruled by a woman?" Andrew chuckled. "Our new prioress, despite her youth, reminds me much of my own mother. Now there was a woman who knew how to order about the sons of Adam! And we all loved her, we did, including my father. This will be no change for me, brother. It is like going home."
     
    Thomas knelt in solitude on the rough stones of the darkening Jesus Chapel, the monks' private place of prayer on the left of the church nave. The boy's death earlier that day had dug into his soul like a dark-hued worm, and he needed a comfort no mortal could give.
     
    But he could not pray; his thoughts hugged the earth with a fierce tenacity. In truth, he had been unable to pray since the day he was thrown face down on the slimy straw of that rotting dungeon floor. After his release and transfer to Grovebury, a downy-cheeked priest had told him that failure at prayer proved Satan's hand clutched his soul. He advised Thomas to battle against such possession with the whip, the hair shirt and rejection of all earthly desires. Although he had smiled with some acidity at the young priest's naivete, he did feel as if some malign force was crushing all spark of light from his spirit. And so he did try them, the whip and hair shirt, but they had accomplished nothing.
     
    If Satan was offering bribes for his soul, he was doing it in a very unorthodox manner. Thomas no longer suffered from fleshly passions. He did not lust after women, either when he was awake or during the vulnerability of sleep. He ate because food was placed before him but did so with neither hunger nor eagerness, and he drank only to keep his throat from drying to dust.
     
    And as if some part of him was truly eager for it, he needed no awakening for prayer. Indeed he was grateful when they all shuffled down to the chapel for Matins. It was torture, lying motionless in his bed with neither thought nor action to pass the interminable black minutes before sunrise. Although his eyes burned and his body ached from lack of rest, it was during Matins when he felt nearest to prayer, surrounded by the warmth and breath of his brother monks.
     
    Now he was alone. His prayers swirled briefly in the air like lightly disturbed dust before drifting to the floor as soon as he had said them. He dropped his hands, leaned back on his heels, and turned his thoughts to more worldly things.
     
    Although he had been sent to Tyndal to test his investigative prowess in what would probably be a minor and temporary matter of priory insolvency, he found himself settling into the place as if it were a new home. Despite the desolate location, the inhabitants were much like the men he was used to, although some of those men now inhabited the bodies of women, he thought with a smile. An interesting twist on traditional views, for cert.
     
    However, if he wished Tyndal to be the place where he could lift his spirits and refresh his soul, God had played an ugly joke on him. Instead of granting Thomas peace and distance from his tortured memories, God had greeted him with the sight of Brother Rupert's horribly mutilated dead body before he had even spent a night within the priory walls. No matter that the murderer would be found eventually, Thomas would keep the image of Brother Rupert's obscenely mangled corpse forever in his collection of night terrors, which