Page 30 of Laird of Smoke
“I can do sums,” Timothy protested.He proceeded to count on his fingers, finally giving up.“’Tis a long time, isn’t it?”
“Seven years.”
Timothy sighed.Then he gazed up at her.“How old were ye when ye took your vows?”
She scraped the board and picked up the stylus, considering what age to carve into the wax.
“Look!”Timothy hissed, elbowing his friend and pointing across the cloister.
She followed his gaze.The breath froze in her throat.Her fingers fumbled on the stylus and dropped it.
Two monks, led by Prior Isaac, were hauling Adam across the cloister.
“Gather, brethren!”the prior called.“In the chapter house.”
Other monks began to follow them.
“Us too?”Timothy murmured.
Edward nodded.
Timothy narrowed his gaze.“What are they goin’ to do?”
“That’s the monk who accosted a lady yesterday,” Edward said.
“What’s accosted?”
Eve’s heart was pounding.It was probably nothing.They were probably going to the chapter house to hear Prior Isaac lecture everyone on the sin of accosting ladies.
“Come on,” Edward said, grabbing Timothy’s hand and joining the mob.
It was a risk, following them.A traveling ascetic wasn’t necessarily welcome in a priory’s inner sanctum.But Eve could make herself invisible.She retrieved the stylus and managed to slip in to the chapter house with the last of the dozens of monks.
“Brethren,” the prior intoned when everyone had grown quiet, “ye are here to witness the penance of a fellow monk.”
Speculative whispers blew like an ill wind through the arched chamber.
Eve bit the corner of her lip.She’d been punished once for running away.The abbess had made her recite the Ten Commandments a dozen times in front of all the other nuns.The abbess had intended it as a humiliation.But it hadn’t been so bad.
Maybe that was what the prior intended.
“Carnal temptation,” the prior began, making Eve’s eyes roll, “must be resisted if ye are to be faithful servants o’ God.If ye do not resist, if ye succumb to the desires o’ the flesh, ye become servants o’ the Devil.”
He beckoned to the guards, who dragged Adam forward.
“This monk, this servant o’ God, fell to the Devil’s wiles.He weakened in his faith and shamed himself with a woman.”
Several gasps erupted.
Eve frowned.He hadn’t “shamed himself.”He’d only touched her about the waist.
“He shall be punished accordingly,” the prior announced, “to silence the voice o’ lust within him, and so ye may learn what happens to those who yield to the temptations of Eve.”
Eve sucked in a quick breath at the mention of her name.
Then she remembered.Genesis.ThatEve.
The prior gestured to the guards.They turned their prisoner round.With a rough yank, they wrenched the top half of his cassock down, baring his back.
