Bridget showed a thumb red and swollen about the pulp.
“There was a thorn twig in a faggot, Sister,” she said. “I laid my hand to the sticks, and the thorn went into my thumb. It has kept me awake o’ nights with the pain of it.”
Then Sterility had a hearing, and while Denise bent over her, for the woman chose to whisper, Thorn-in-the-Thumb nudged Warts with her elbow, and stared Denise over from head to foot.
Lastly, Warts displayed her imperfections, looking most meekly into Denise’s shadowy eyes. And when Denise had touched them all and given them her blessing, the three women departed, walking very circumspectly till they gained the road. Then Thorn-in-the-Thumb flung her arms about the necks of her neighbours, crumpled them to her, and laughed gross laughter that was not pleasant to hear. And they went up the hill together, gaggling like geese, blatantly exultant over the thing that they had discovered.
Very soon hardly a man or woman in the five boroughs of Battle had not heard what Bridget and her neighbours had to tell. Rumours had been rife of late, but this last cup was spiced with the palatable truth. The women spoke more loudly than the men, were more strenuous and vindictive, more self-righteous, more eager to have the hypocrite proclaimed. Mightily sore were some of the worthy folk who had gone on their knees for nothing before Denise’s cell. They were quick to cry out that they had been cheated, more especially those who had left an offering to bribe the Blessed Ones in Heaven. The insolence of this jade, setting herself up as a virgin and a saint! “Out with her,” was the common cry. As for Dom Silvius he was little better than a fool.
With all these hornets humming even in the midst of winter, some of the older burghers and the head men of the boroughs went secretly to speak with Dom Silvius, and to show him discreetly how matters stood. Such an open sore needed healing; it was an offence and an insult to St. Martin, and the saints. Old Oliver de Dengemare was their spokesman, a man with a wise eye and a sagacious nose. Dom Silvius kept an imperturbable countenance, and heard them out to the bitter end, though inwardly he was aflame with wrath and infinite vexation. “The jade, the impudent jade.” His brain beat out such imprecations while the old men talked.
No sooner had they gone than he crept off to whisper it all to Reginald the Abbot. Now Reginald was a man of easy nature, bland, kindly, one who chose a suave word rather than a sour one. Silvius came to him, cringing yet venomous, slaver dropping from his mouth as he stuttered and spat his wrath. He took the thing as infamous towards himself; the greed, the self-love, and the ambition in him were tugging at the leashes.
“Let them hound her out and spit upon her,” he said, driving the nails into the palms of his hands, the muscles straining in his pendulous throat. “Let them spit upon her.”
Abbot Reginald placed the sponge of his placidity over Dom Silvius’s mouth.
“Brother,” he cautioned him; “such things should not be spoken till the anger is out of one. A hot head at night calls for penitence in the morning.”