Corruption Ch. 03

By the time the sun had risen a hand's span above the low hills, the convent was in sight, grey walls visible above the thick woods that covered the slopes below it.

"Looks quiet," Webster commented, looking around.

"Quiet before the storm," Gage countered, a prickle in the nerves along the back of his neck. "Look."

He pointed through an archway, lower on the slope and Webster's gaze followed. Through the barred gate, they could see the blackened and decomposing remains of a garden, catching a whiff of the slimy smell as the breeze shifted a little, a thick stench of rotting vegetables and decaying crops.

"Anything else that can do that in a few days?" Gage asked his partner.

Webster shook his head. "Poison, of course, acid over the plants or a toxin delivered through the water. It would take a lot."

If the Lady Eloise had been leading a coven, witchcraft could explain the blight to the gardens, Gage considered, following Webster up the narrowing cobbled path to the gates of the convent. But, by all the accounts that Donato had gathered, the coven, real or imaginary, had done no harm to its local inhabitants, not even a single report of a missing cow or pig.

Both men started as the bells of the convent began to peal, their deep, round tones filling the hillside and echoing down into the valley below. Gage glanced at the height of the sun, frowning.

"Lauds and Prime have passed, haven't they?"

"By my reckoning," Webster agreed. "It's still at least four hours till Sext."

"Maybe they just like the sound?"

"Maybe whoever's in charge now doesn't know the routine?" Webster parried, his expression drawn. "We've seen no one, yet this convent has lands and there would be work to be done."

Shrugging, Gage followed the narrow road in through the gates, and stopped at the broad, shallow steps in front of the arched doors.

"Sister," Gage called out. His partner turned in time to see a young woman hesitate by another gate, this one set into the interior wall of the convent.

"She's a novice," he hissed at Gage, turning to her. "Miss, do you know where the abbot is?"

Gage looked a little more closely at her as she took a few tentative steps toward them. The habit she wore was brown, not black, he realised. Under the concealing wimple, her face was young, no more than twenty. She was lovely, fresh as the breaking dawn, he thought, but not to his taste. When she raised her gaze to look at them, he heard his companion's indrawn whisper of breath and smiled inwardly.

"Father Martin is cloistered, my lords," she said, her voice clear but quiet and her gaze dropping again. "No one can see him until the morrow."

"Is there a Mother Superior here?" Webster asked, his normally pleasant tenor just slightly too high. Gage slid a sideways glance at his friend and ducked his head as he saw the tips of Web's ears glowing red.

"Everyone is in seclusion, sir," she told him. "Only myself and the other novices are tending to the work today."

"Perhaps then, you could help us. We are sent from Rome, here to investigate the possibilities of evil-doing in this region. My name is Gage, this is Webster," Gage said, smiling at her with every ounce of charm he possessed. "We've heard that there've been disturbances here?"

She looked from him to Webster, shaking her head slightly. "I cannot speak of -"

"Your gardens have died, miss," Webster said, moving slightly to one side and looking through the gate. "What happened?"

"I don't know," she admitted, turning to look over her shoulder. "They were fine at the new moon. Then they began to blight."

"Miss -?" Gage asked, wondering if the timing could be coincidental.

"Patience, sir, Patience Bower," she answered, a slight tint of pink coming to her cheeks.

"How long have you been here, Patience?" Web asked.

"For six months, sir."

Watching her, Gage noticed that she seemed unusually uncertain about the place that'd been her home for the last few months. He glanced at Web, wondering if it was due to a reciprocation of the interest his partner had in the girl, or if something else was troubling her.

"Have you seen anything else, Patience?" he asked. "Out of the commonplace, something you wouldn't expect."

Her cheeks coloured a little more deeply. "Uh, no, sir. Not really," she said, stumbling slightly over the denial. "The gardens - uh - we also found a number of dead birds and animals in the convent grounds?"

"Show me," Webster suggested, his gaze flickering to his partner, neither needing to speak to know what the other was thinking.

Blighted plants and dead wildlife, he thought, and the novice was withholding something else. His partner had seen it as well, despite the rush of unexpected feeling he was obviously struggling against.

Gage indulged in another inward grin and nodded. Web would keep the young lady occupied for some time, and hopefully use the little-exercised charm he had on the girl to get whatever information he could from her. He should've realised the man's preferences would run to orphaned fawns and delicate flowers, he thought, watching them walk away toward the gate. Took all kinds, he reminded himself and turned, moving fast across the half-cobbled courtyard to the corner of the building.

The new moon had been three weeks before. When Donato said the coven's leader had been found in pieces, left just outside the village wall.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Walking beside Webster, Patience played nervously with the cross hanging around her neck as they passed through the gate. "Father Martin told us we must pray, that there was sin here," she said, her gaze brushing him from beneath her lashes and returning to the path.

"So there might be," Webster said absently, stopping and kneeling beside one of the beds and using his knife to dig into the soil around a blackened plant. On the surface, the dark loam looked normal enough, he thought, lifting the blade. The crumbly earth came up in a clod and he frowned as he saw the veins of white and yellow running through the dirt a few inches down. Lifting the knife to his nose, he caught two distinct scents from the soil adhering to the blade.

Salt. And sulphur.

It was little wonder the damned garden had died. Getting to his feet, he looked around. The walled garden held nothing but death from one side to the other.

"Do you know what happened?" Patience asked.

He turned back to her, trying to meet her gaze without looking into her eyes. They had an effect on him, he admitted reluctantly to himself. She had an effect on him. He had no idea how or why that had happened, but he wasn't any better at lying to himself than he was to anyone else.

"Poisoned," he told her, glad of the chance to look back at the garden bed. "You see the white, there in the soil?"

She nodded, her gaze following his hand. Had she leaned a little closer to him, he wondered, almost forgetting what he was about to say. A vagrant air moved in the walled space, and he caught the scents of meadowsweet and sandalwood, rising in the morning warmth from her hair and habit.

"That is salt," he said, abruptly aware that he'd been standing there silently. Get your mind back to the case, he berated himself, turning away from her and running a hand over his face.

The mythology had been around for centuries, or longer. He recalled the dry voice of Father Perrin, lecturing in the stone halls. Earth protected itself from the incursions of the unnatural with the pure elements found in the ground. Salt. Iron. Copper. Even gold and silver had their places.

"What is the yellow soil there, that twists among it?"

He looked back down at the soil. "The yellow powder is sulphur. Brimstone."

"How did it get here?"

"Salt rises when evil touches the land," Webster said. "Sulphur is a taint carried by those of the underworld."

He saw her mouth open, shock fill her eyes. "The un- you speak of - Hell?" she asked, her voice falling to a whisper on the last word.

"I do," he said. "Have any new priests or nuns joined the convent recently? Strangers? Or even guests?"

She shook her head. "No, there are none like that."

"In the time you've been studying here, Patience, have you noticed, uh, changes, in any here? A sudden cruelty or, uh, lasciviousness?"

Her gaze dropped. "I - I - no, sir, I haven't seen changes in anyone."

A lie, he wondered? She seemed not to be the type.

"When do you take your vows, Patience?"

"At midwinter's eve," she told him. "It takes a year."

He nodded. "I am sorry to pry like this," he said, his gaze cutting away. "My partner and I - we were called to this place, to find this evil that has risen. You've heard of what happened in the village, of course."

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Patience looked up at him, her thoughts befuddled. His eyes were like the pools in the forest, shadowy and still, green and grey and brown combined, and they drew her like those pools, tempting her to drown in them. She wanted to push the thick fall of chestnut hair back from his forehead. She could feel, faint but insistently, a tingle in her nipples as she stared at his mouth. What would it feel like if it were this man giving her the instruction the abbot had begun?

"You have not heard?" The question broke through both thought and sensation and she dropped her gaze instantly, heat flooding up her chest and into her cheeks at the way her thoughts had stirred her.

"Heard what?" she asked, staring at his shoes.

"Heard of -"

She looked up as he stopped. He was staring at her and she wondered guiltily if her thoughts had shown on her face.

"Uh, you - uh, you haven't left the convent grounds?" he asked.

Shaking her head, she said, "Not since summer's end. What happened?"

"A lot," he said, his voice dropping. "You've seen nothing here? No lights or noises in the night?"

How could she answer that, she wondered? There were noises, but Father Martin and Mother Superior had told everyone that they were wild animals, being hunted through the forest and fields by the village men. They sometimes hadn't sounded like animals, she'd thought, being awoken by them several times. But she didn't know if an animal could scream in pain the way a person did. She hadn't questioned the explanations.

"We - the novices, I mean - we are to bed early, and we rise early," she said, not sure if that would answer his question. She hadn't seen strange lights. For a second, when he'd asked her about changes in anyone at the convent, the differences in the abbot and some of the older nuns had flashed through her mind. She dismissed them. She hadn't been here so long that she knew any of them well. People were always kind when first met, their true character appearing much later. She couldn't be sure that what she'd perceived as changes in Father Martin were real, or simply her ignorance in the deeper ways of the Church.

A sacrifice is only worthy if one knows what it is one is giving up. The priest's words returned to her. She couldn't deny that.

"Patience, things are happening here - I think you'd be safer in the village," the tall man in front of her said, reaching out to take her hand gently.

The touch of his fingers on hers sent a dazzling shock through her skin and flesh and for a second, she ached fiercely to close her hand around his. She repressed that fledgling desire, letting go and pulling back slightly as she looked up at him.

"I cannot," she told him. "My duty is here, my - my life is here now."

The bells pealed from the tower again, and she turned to look back at the gate.

"I must go," she said, her face suddenly filled with doubt. Under her habit, a strange thread of feeling was spreading, curling in reaching tendrils of heat along her thighs and around her breasts. Father Martin would be waiting. She wasn't sure if the feeling accompanying that thought was fear or anticipation.

"Patience -"

"I'm sorry, I must go."

She turned away, hands gathering up the folds of her habit as she hurried out of the gate and started to run along the stone-flagged path to the convent. She didn't want to be late. Between her legs, she felt hot and moist.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Webster stood in the gardens, watching her leave. His partner had been right, he thought. There was something here, something central to what was happening. He could've sworn that the girl had exhibited at least a vague sign of being under a compulsion, in the seconds before she'd turned and hurried away.

He looked around the dead beds. Salt rising and sulphur through the soil. Something had come to this place. It could be lurking in the grounds, he thought, starting to walk slowly between the garden beds toward the gate. Could be hiding, waiting for the unwary to pass through the forest nearby. Or, he considered, stopping as he saw the stiff body of a squirrel, lying on the path ahead of him, it could be in the building, in the fabric of the stone and wood - or in one of the people living there.

The thought brought an unexpected flush of fear to him. She was so young, so innocent and naïve. So very beautiful, another, less altruistic, thought murmured at the back of his mind.

Staring fixedly at the squirrel's corpse, he noted distantly that it had been dead for at least two days, the hair dropping from the creature's stomach as the flies had buried in, a squirming nest of maggots feeding from its organs.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Patience stood at the door, her hand raised to knock. She took a stumbling step backward as it opened suddenly, Father Martin standing there and looking at her.

"I am glad to see your punctuality has not been mislaid, Patience," he said, stepping to one side and opening the door more widely. "Come in."

Walking past him, she felt her heart begin to race in her chest, the thudding beats shaking her narrow ribcage. The room was dim, thick, heavy curtains drawn over the windows, candles burning steadily on the desk and from the wax-laden sconces around the walls.

"Take off your clothes, my dear," Father Martin said, closing the door and turning to her. "And we shall begin with the instruction."

Was it easier now, she wondered? Easier to slip the wimple and coif from her head, to allow the habit and her shift to puddle around her feet on the floor? She gathered up her garments and set them on a chair in front of the desk.

His eyes devoured her, she thought, dropping her gaze in the face of that intense hunger. Between her legs, her sex was pulsing, slowly and heavily, in time with her heart. She felt a trickle of liquid slip down the insides of her thighs.

"Come here."

Stepping toward him, she risked a glance at his face. He looked greedy, she thought nervously. His eyes feasted on her breasts, on her waist and hips, on her thighs.

He raised his hands as she came within his reach, and she trembled as his fingers grazed over and around her breasts, brushing her hardening nipples and sliding down the smooth curves of her waist. He moved a little closer and slid a hand between her legs, fingers and palm cupping her for a moment, then stroking her moist folds and pushing into her.

"You look forward to your lesson, Patience?" he asked, his voice low, his breath slightly rancid against her mouth.

"Y-yes, Father," she said. She wasn't sure if that was true, but his touch was something she couldn't stop thinking about, so it seemed true.

"Turn around," he told her, pulling his fingers out of her and lifting them to his mouth. As she turned away, she heard the sounds of him licking and sucking them, wet sounds that sent a shiver down her spine.

She felt his hands slide down her back, both cupping her bottom and parting the soft flesh there for a moment. Her skin felt cool when he removed his hands, cool and bereft of the touch, nerve endings tingling.

"Lie on the bench, Patience," the priest said, gesturing languidly toward the long, wooden settle in front of the cold hearth. "Legs to either side, if you please."

Obeying him seemed very natural, and she turned and crossed the room, sitting and then easing herself back to lie on the hard surface, an awareness of the fact she was exposing herself to the priest completely only gradually seeping in. The skin of her chest and neck flushed with heat as she thought of what it was he was seeing.

"You are beautiful, child," he said, following her and moving to the end of the bench, his gaze inching up her bared body. "Beauty is a rarity in this world. Like innocence."

He straddled the end of the bench and leaned forward, and her eyes fluttered closed as his fingertips slipped up the insides of her thighs, swirling in tiny circles over her skin, drawing sensation along her nerves that made the muscles there jump.

"Would you be the Bride of our Lord, Patience?" he asked her, his voice low and throaty, almost a growl.

"Yes, Father," she answered unthinkingly.

"And will you, as every good bride should, give your Lord whatever he desires, perform whatever tasks he ask of you?"

"Yes, Father."

"Lift your legs, child," he told her, sliding his hands under the backs of her thighs to guide them. "Lift them high and hold them apart."

She complied, hands curling around her knees, her face and neck flaming a deep red as she did it. Her knees were level with her breasts, spread wide to each side of her body and she could feel the cool air, caressing her hot skin, her sex and the crease between the cheeks of her bottom.

"So good," Father Martin crooned. His fingers slipped along the wet folds of her vagina and Patience set her teeth together, trying to hold back an involuntary moan of pleasure.

"No, no," the priest said, his hand freezing close to the small nub of flesh. "Express yourself, Patience. Let all you feel out. This is your offering, child, this is what you will give up for Him, and it must be Seen by Him and Heard by Him and Felt by Him. Do you understand me, Patience?"

She nodded, her breath gusting out in a subvocalised groan. "Yes, Father."

"Good," he said, trailing his fingertips along her folds again. "Our Lord must see and hear all."

His thumb touched the throbbing, sensitive nub and circled it slowly, his fingers stretching out to push into her, just a little, and Patience moaned loudly, her hips jerking against the touch.

"Do you like that, Patience?"

"Oh, yes, yes, Father," she whispered breathlessly, the ache in her loins deepening as his fingers slid into her a little further.

The sensations were overpowering, flooding her with need, with an excruciating yearning for more. Every part of her body was trembling, it was so hard to breathe, to catch her breath, and she moaned again when his fingers thrust more forcefully into her, curling up and straightening, brushing over something inside of her that shuddered and flowered with their fleeting touch.

She flinched violently when she felt his tongue touch her, a wet lick along the inside of her thigh. It couldn't be right, the thought dashing against the jagged rock of her desire. Nothing that felt like this could be right ...

"Oh, but it is, little one," Father Martin murmured, turning his head to lick up the other thigh, his breath hot over her. "It is more right than you could possibly imagine."

Had she said her crazed thought aloud? The question vanished as his tongue slid past his fingers, along the inner silk of her vagina, and her breath exploded from her when he flicked his tongue over her painfully erect clitoris, a cacophony of sensation drowning her.

For a second, the face of the young man in the garden filled her mind's eye, and she arched up against the priest's fingers, imagining it was that man's tongue and fingers, touching her, licking her ... playing with her.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Father Martin paused in his ministrations, the blue of his eyes darkening as he caught a glimpse in the girl's mind, a flash of another's face. He probed deeper, pushing through the thick, chaotic fog of her desire, searching through memory. None had touched her. Nor had she touched herself. Everything he was doing was as new and fresh to her as the dawn to a new day.