Read Chapter 2: A Question of Poison

The knock came before the bell for Prime had finished its last echo. Brother Thomas looked up from the page he had not been reading—a psalm, though his eyes had traced the same line three times without seeing it—and found the novice, Aldric, shifting from foot to foot in the doorway of the scriptorium.

“The abbot requests your presence,” Aldric said, his voice barely above a whisper. “In the infirmary. Concerning Brother William.”

Thomas set down his quill. The ink had dried on its tip, a crust of black that would need cleaning. He had been sitting in the cold silence of the pre-dawn hours, waiting for the summons he knew would come, and now that it was here, his stomach tightened as though he had swallowed a stone.

He followed Aldric through the cloister. The rain of the previous night had passed, leaving the flagstones slick and the air heavy with the smell of wet earth. Thomas forced himself not to look at the corner where William’s body had lain crumpled, where the brothers had gathered in their terror, where Abbot Laurence had pronounced the judgment of God before the sun had fully risen.

The infirmary was warm. A fire crackled in the hearth, and the smell of herbs hung thick—lavender, rosemary, something bitter that Thomas could not name. Brother Cuthbert, the infirmarian, stood beside the trestle table where William’s body had been laid out, his face grey as old linen. Abbot Laurence stood at the foot of the table, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes fixed on the corpse with an expression that Thomas could not read.

“Brother Thomas,” the abbot said without turning. “You have a steady hand. I require a record of the death, for the chronicle.”

Thomas stepped forward. The body had been washed, dressed in a clean habit, the face composed. Someone had closed the eyes that had been wide with terror, and the jaw, which had been locked open in that silent scream, had been bound with a strip of cloth. The wounds—if they could be called that—had been partially cleaned, but the dark marks remained, a mottled bruising on the exposed skin of the hands.

“I will record what I see,” Thomas said carefully. “But I would examine him first.”

Abbot Laurence’s jaw tightened. “He has been anointed. Prepared for burial. There is nothing that—” He stopped, then gave a short nod. “Very well. Cuthbert, assist him.”

Cuthbert’s eyes met Thomas’s for a brief moment, and Thomas saw the flash of recognition there. The infirmarian knew something. But whether he knew the same thing Thomas knew, or something else entirely, Thomas could not say.

He approached the table. The body was cold, the skin waxy in the firelight. Thomas lifted the right hand, and his breath caught.

The fingertips were blackened.

Not stained with dirt or ink, but black at the tips, as though the flesh itself had been charred, though the skin was smooth and unbroken. Thomas turned the hand over. The strange cross-shaped mark on the palm was still visible, a pale brand against the grey flesh. He looked at the other hand. The same blackened tips. The same pale cross.

“What is it?” the abbot asked.

Thomas did not answer immediately. He thought of the passage he had read in a forbidden manuscript, one he had copied once for a bishop who had no business owning such a text, and which he had never been able to forget—

*Of the method of the royal poisoner: when arsenic is refined in the heat of the furnace, it gives forth a vapour that collects upon the fingers. The tips of the fingers become black, and the mark of the cross appears upon the palm of the one who has administered it, for the poison seeks itself out through the skin, and the body of the giver is marked as surely as the body of the receiver.*

He had dismissed it as superstition when he had first read it. But now, looking at William’s hands, he knew—knew with a certainty that made his heart pound—that the scribe had not been describing a superstition. He had been describing a forensic reality.

“The fingertips are blackened,” Thomas said, keeping his voice level. “This can happen when the body is poisoned. Arsenic, perhaps.”

Abbot Laurence’s face hardened. “I told you where this comes from, Brother Thomas. The Devil sent this punishment for William’s pride. He was ambitious, that one. He sought advancement beyond his station.”

“With respect, Father Abbot, the Devil does not blacken fingertips.” Thomas lowered William’s hand gently back onto the table. “He administers his poisons through mortal agents.”

The silence in the infirmary was absolute. The fire crackled. Cuthbert stood frozen, his hands white where they gripped his own sleeves.

“You speak beyond your place, Brother,” the abbot said, his voice ice.

“I speak what my eyes show me. You asked me to record the death. I cannot record it falsely, even to comfort the brothers. If this was murder, then there is a murderer within these walls, and the sin of it will not be washed away by burying the truth with the body.”

Abbot Laurence stared at him for a long moment. Thomas could see the war in the old man’s eyes—the desire for simplicity, for the comforting explanation of divine wrath, against something that might have been fear. Finally, the abbot turned away.

“Cuthbert, prepare the burial for tomorrow. No—the day after. Thomas, you will confine yourself to your cell until I have decided what is to be done with this… nonsense.”

He swept out without looking back. The door closed behind him with a soft click, leaving Thomas alone with Cuthbert and the dead.

Cuthbert exhaled, a long shaky breath. “You should not have said it so plainly.”

“The truth is not a sin.”

“It can be, in this place.” Cuthbert came to the table, his hands hesitating over William’s body as though he wanted to cover it again. “You are right, Thomas. I have seen this before. When I was young, before I came here, my master was called to a noble house where a man had died of a sudden sickness. The fingertips were black just like this. The physician said it was arsenic. He was paid to say nothing, but I saw him write the word in his journal.”

“And the cross on the palm?”

Cuthbert shook his head. “I do not know that mark. It is not a poison.”

Thomas looked at the body again. The cross was clean-edged, deliberate, as though pressed into the skin before death. Not a mark made by the hand reaching for something—it was too perfect, too intentional.

“Who had access to William?” Thomas asked. “Who was near him before he died?”

“Everyone and no one. He was a scribe, like you. He worked in the scriptorium. He took meals in the refectory. He was said to be proud—you heard the abbot—but he had no enemies that I knew of. A few resentments, perhaps, but that is the life of a monastery.”

Thomas recalled the previous evening, the moment of discovery. But the body had been in the cloister, in the rain, for hours. He had assumed William died there, but what if he had died elsewhere and been moved? What if the marks on his back had come not from falling but from being dragged?

“I need to see William’s cell.”

Cuthbert shook his head. “That would be a violation. The abbot has sealed it.”

Thomas met his eyes. “The abbot does not want to know what happened. But you do. I saw it in your face last night.”

Cuthbert was silent for a long moment. Then, slowly, he reached into his habit and withdrew a ring of keys. He held them out.

“The seal is wax. It is not yet fully set. If you go now, quickly, you can break it and reset it. I will not ask what you find.”

Thomas took the keys. They were cold in his hand. He wrapped them in his sleeve and moved toward the door.

“Thomas,” Cuthbert said. “There is one thing. The mark on the palm—I have heard of such a thing, from a brother who traveled once to the east. It is not a cross of the Devil. It is a cross of property. A mark made by a seal, pressed into the hand as a sign of ownership.”

Thomas stopped. Ownership. A slave mark. A brand.

In a monastery, no one was owned. But lands could be owned. Charters could be signed.

He left the infirmary without saying goodbye. The keys were warm now from his grip. Somewhere above him, the bell began to toll for Prime.