A Bride for the Prizefighter - Alice Coldbreath Page 0,39

dark, stormy night.

“They must surely have had weak hearts,” Mina said with a shudder. “Or some other such predisposition?”

“Aye, mebbe,” Gus agreed, closing his teeth on his pipe stem.

Mina hesitated, dying to know what wickedness and sin the monks had indulged in during their lives, but maidenly decorum held her back. Gus’s eyes twinkled.

“The monastery had a relic,” he explained. “And so, became a popular route for pilgrims in those days. They flocked there, to touch the holy bones of St Grayking.”

“St Grayking?” Mina frowned. Surely, she had heard that name before.

“Aye,” he nodded. “The monks built an annex for the pilgrims to take their overnight rest in,” he continued comfortably. “There, for a handsome fee mind, they served them with roasted goose and plum pudding and all sorts of fine wines.”

“I see.” Mina picked up her tacking thread. “It does not sound like typical monastic fare.”

“No indeed,” Gus agreed heartily. “They was supposed to subsist on weak gruel and pottage, but they had grown used to rich foods and vice. But that’s not the worst of it.”

Mina threaded her needle and looked up enquiringly. “It wasn’t?”

He shook his head. “No indeed! Once these pilgrims was soused to the gills, they would lure the richest of them out to the headland on some pretext and fling them off the nearest cliff and help themselves to all his worldly goods.”

“How terrible! But surely some of these murdered pilgrims must have washed up on the shore?”

“Aye, that they did,” Gus agreed. “But their party would usually have moved on by then, so no-one knew whence they came. If anyone stayed on, the monks would say their victim must have gone out for a walk and been set on by thieves or else sleep-walked to his death.”

Mina considered this. “Yet you said the bishop punished them, so their secret must have been discovered eventually?”

“Aye, that it was,” Gus agreed, removing his pipe. “Too many dead bodies washed up and someone wrote to the bishop about all the unsavory rumors of wine, loose women and song. One time, they had the misfortune to pick out a wealthy merchant with powerful connections who wouldn’t let his disappearance lie. They found his gold ring on the beach and two witnesses who’d seen him take to his bed the night before, despite the monks denying they’d ever laid eyes on him. Kicked up a fuss they did, then one of the monks he confessed. Some say under torture and the rest was all hung on a gibbet on the harbor wall.

“The bishop had their monastery torn down and the annex burned to the ground.” Gus nodded with satisfaction. “So may all sinners be punished. It don’t stop ‘em walking though. Not on a moonless night. They’re doomed to tread their old path up to the cliffs and then back home again. Dragging their feet and rolling their cart with them.”

Mina looked up with a quick breath. “Rolling their cart?”

“Aye, for sometimes their victims was so dead drunk they had to be dragged from their beds and rolled up to the cliffs.”

Mina felt herself turn pale. That couldn’t possibly have been what she heard in the early hours, could it? She lowered her sewing and stared at Gus. “How horrible.” He nodded in solemn agreement. “I don’t suppose—? I mean, that you’ve ever—?” She couldn’t quite bring herself to ask it.

“No, Mrs Nye. I ain’t never seen hide nor hair of any ghostly monks. But you can bet if I did, I’d take to my heels so fast you wouldn’t see me for dust.” He chuckled, tapping his nose with his pipe. “Now, are you sure you won’t take a nip of this?” he said, picking his tin flask back up with a flourish.

“No, indeed thank you.”

“How’s them curtains a-lookin’ of?”

Mina broke her thread and shook out the folds of the one she was working on. “They’re all pinned and tacked now, ready to be sewn up. I shall finish them this afternoon.”

“That’s good, Mrs. Nye. You’ve an industrious nature and no mistake. Think Nye said as you was a schoolmistress in your past life?”

Mina was surprised. “Nye told you that?” For some reason, she had not thought Nye was the garrulous type.

“Oh aye. You needn’t look so shocked,” he chortled. “I knowed him since he were a boy, so I have.”

Mina frowned. “But I thought you said you only moved here ten years ago?”

She thought he blinked a moment, but then his ready smile returned. “Ah well,