Read Chapter 17: The Accusation

The refectory stank of boiled cabbage and stale piety when Thomas slipped through the side door, the belladonna seeds heavy in his pouch. Brother John stood at the long wooden table, counting sacks of flour with the careful tedium of a man who feared arithmetic. His tonsure gleamed under the candlelight, and his hands—soft, uncalloused hands that had never turned soil—trembled as he marked a line on his tally sheet.

Thomas closed the door behind him. The latch clicked like a bone settling.

John looked up. His face drained of color, and the tally stick clattered to the table. “You’re supposed to be confined.”

“I’m supposed to be many things.” Thomas walked forward, boots echoing on the stone floor. He stopped an arm’s length from the cellarer. “I’ve been studying your records, Brother John. The ink purchases last month. Three separate orders of lampblack, gum arabic, and vitriol. All from the same merchant you’ve used for years.”

John’s throat worked. “Ink is ink. The scribes need it.”

“They needed it,” Thomas said slowly, drawing Anselm’s letter from his sleeve. “But they didn’t need it laced with dragon’s wort.”

The name hit John like a physical blow. He stepped back, his hip striking the table, and a bag of lentils spilled across the floor in a brown cascade. Neither man moved to pick them up.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” John whispered.

“Anselm knew.” Thomas unfolded the letter, holding it close enough for John to see the cramped handwriting. “He identified the poison before he disappeared. Dragon’s wort. Ground into a fine powder. Mixed into the ink when it was still wet. Slow enough that the first victims—the brothers who died of ‘divine sickness’—showed no marks until it was too late.”

“I never—” John’s voice cracked. “I never meant for them to die.”

“Then what did you mean?” Thomas moved closer, driving each word like a nail. “You supplied the poisoned ink. You knew Brother Aethelred would copy the Psalms with it. You knew Brother Cuthbert would use it for his homilies. And you knew what it would do to them.”

John’s hands came up, fingers splayed as if to ward off a blow. His face crumpled, and the first sob tore from his throat—an ugly sound, raw and wet. He sank onto the bench behind him, elbows on his knees, head in his palms.

“They threatened my sister,” he said, voice muffled. “Godfrey, the baron’s nephew. He came to me in the spring with a ledger. Records of debts my father left when he died. Debts I’d been paying off for years through the abbey’s accounts.” He looked up, eyes red and rimmed with grief. “Godfrey held them over my head. Said he’d have my sister seized as payment if I didn’t cooperate.”

Thomas kept his face neutral, but his stomach turned. “Cooperate with what?”

“The ink.” John’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “He gave me the powder himself. Told me to mix it into the next batch. Said it would cause confusion—argument among the brothers—nothing more. He promised no one would die.” A bitter laugh escaped him. “He said it would look like a pox. A punishment from God for the abbey’s sins. That the bishop would lose faith in Abbot Fulke and force a change of leadership.”

“Leadership,” Thomas repeated. “The abbot.”

John nodded, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “The baron’s family has wanted this meadow for years. The water rights, the grazing land, the old mill. But the abbey charter is ironclad. Only a scandal could break it—a scandal so great that Rome would step in and reassign the land to the baron’s control.”

Thomas began to pace, the pieces clicking into place like a lock finding its tumblers. “Godfrey needs the land to secure his inheritance. The second cousin waits in the wings. And the abbot—Fulke—he has to be discredited so the Church will intervene.”

“Yes.” John’s voice was barely audible. “Yes, that’s what I thought. But then I learned the truth.”

Thomas stopped. “What truth?”

For a long moment, John was silent. His fingers twisted in his habit, working the wool like a rosary. When he spoke, his voice was hollow.

“The abbot knows. He knew from the beginning.”

The words hung between them, heavy as incense smoke.

“Fulke came to me three days after Brother Aethelred fell ill,” John continued, staring at the floor. “He pulled me aside in the vestry and asked about the ink. I denied everything—God forgive me, I lied to his face. And he just looked at me. With those cold, patient eyes. And he said, ‘Good. Then we’ll let God sort the guilty from the innocent.’”

Thomas’s blood ran cold. “He wanted it to continue.”

“He wanted the deaths.” John’s voice broke. “He told me that if the abbey lost the meadow, the Church property would be redistributed—and he would take a position in Avignon, away from this damp valley and its endless complaints. He’d made a deal with Godfrey. The baron’s nephew gets the land, the abbot gets Rome, and I get to keep my sister alive.”

Thomas stopped pacing. The refectory felt smaller suddenly, the walls pressing in like a closing fist. Abbot Fulke. The man who led them in prayer each morning. The man who had preached so fervently about divine justice while his own hands dripped with poison.

“Brother Anselm,” Thomas said, his voice tight. “He confronted you. He knew.”

John nodded, tears streaming freely now. “He found the dragon’s wort in my stores. I didn’t want to hurt him—I swear it before God, I didn’t. I told him to run. I told him to go to the bishop, to the king, anyone. But the abbot’s steward was watching. He saw Anselm leave the abbey that night.” He swallowed hard. “They brought him back. I don’t know what they did to him. I only know he never left the abbot’s quarters again.”

Thomas felt the ground shift beneath him. Anselm was dead—or worse—at the abbot’s hand. Not a disappearance. Not a flight from shame. Murder, hidden behind the abbey’s stone walls and the abbot’s silver tongue.

“Why confess now?” Thomas asked. “Why not keep your silence?”

John looked up, hopelessness etched into every line of his face. “Because you’re not the one who came to the refectory last night. The abbot’s steward did. He said Godfrey had grown impatient. That they needed one more death—yours—to seal the deal.” He clutched Thomas’s sleeve. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t poison another innocent man.”

Thomas pulled his arm free. His hand went to the belladonna seeds in his pouch, a gift from a merchant who had trusted him with the truth. Now he understood why Anselm had left them. Not just as evidence of the poison, but as a weapon.

He turned toward the door.

“Where are you going?” John called after him.

Thomas paused, hand on the latch. “To midday office. The abbot demanded I attend, despite my confinement.” His jaw set. “He wants to watch me suffer as one of God’s punishments.”

He looked back at John, eyes cold as winter.

“I intend to give him a different kind of punishment entirely.”