first that seemed the best plan, but then I turned against it. If the person who wrote it wanted the information to go directly to the investigators, then why give it to me? No, this was placed in my bed. There had to be a good reason.
My instincts told me it was Sister Helen. The message was about a tapestry. She’d tried to speak to me earlier in the day, but we had been interrupted. The other sisters saw her moving around the priory, in agitation. She must have secured parchment and quill, written this message, and then placed it in my bed.
It was not welcome. I did not like to see the name “Howard” or be told to seek out an old tapestry, presumably woven at Dartford and then sold to this family. How was such a search to be accomplished? And if found, what could it tell me?
My mind went round and round until Sister Rachel shook my shoulder. “Wake up, it’s your turn to go to the infirmary,” she said. I didn’t tell her I hadn’t slept a minute. I followed her downstairs, clutching the paper in my sleeve.
“This isn’t necessary,” Brother Edmund said when I arrived. “They’re both quiet, so there’s no aid needed. You should rest.”
I insisted on staying, until at last Brother Edmund relented. My mind was so weary, I had to seek answers from the friar, who was so learned and perceptive and often understood human nature better than I.
As soon as Sister Rachel had gone to her own bed, I produced the paper.
“Who wrote this?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but I think it was Sister Helen.” We both glanced at her slack face; she could tell us nothing.
I waited for Brother Edmund to comment, to explain the message to me. His face was preternaturally still in the candlelight.
“What do you think it means?” I finally asked.
“I don’t know,” Brother Edmund said, “but I think it possible that Sister Helen observed a great many things here, things that other people did not realize she observed.”
Such as the existence of a hidden crown? I thought, my throat tightening. Lord Chester bragged of knowing a secret, and he was murdered. Sister Helen also possessed some sort of knowledge of something that had happened in the priory and may have relayed it through her design of a tapestry. Something that involved a novice named Sister Beatrice and our own dead Prioress Elizabeth. But now Sister Helen lay senseless.
I said no more to Brother Edmund. I couldn’t confide in him any further; it might have been a mistake to have said as much as I had.
We worked in silence. The friar moved back and forth between the two women in his care, while I prepared linens and ground herbs for poultices. He sat in a chair next to Sister Winifred, his elbow propped on the bed. After a few moments his shoulders drooped. He slowly sagged onto the bed, his head resting next to her thin shoulder. He was definitely asleep.
I lit a small candle and ran down the passageway. I must do what I could before he woke.
With all that was going on in the priory, I prayed that locking the library door would have been forgotten. For once, my hopes were answered. I pushed open the door and made my way straight to the section that once had contained the book that could reveal all to me.
It was there. From Caractacus to Athelstan stood on the shelf, sticking out half an inch farther than any of its neighbors, as if it had been replaced in haste.
I hurried to the last chapter, where I had left off two weeks before.
Athelstan brought many other smaller kings and lords under submission to him and built a great kingdom. He established new laws in England. He honored his family, his half sisters and half brothers. His sisters were the most beautiful princesses in all of Christendom. Hugh the Great, Duke of the Franks and Count of Paris, sought the hand of Eadhild, the fairest of all of the sisters. Duke Hugh was a Capet, and his son would become the King of France and father to the race of French kings that had continued on in an unbroken line for centuries.
To make an alliance with Athelstan and become the husband of Eadhild, Hugh Capet made over fine gifts to Athelstan. He had in his possession the relics of Charlemagne, for he was direct descended from that great Christian ruler.