Sorrow Without End by Priscilla Royal Page A

to him, the elder put an arm around his shoulders and directed him, much as a father would his small son, toward the hospital entrance.
    How sad, Thomas thought. Was the world truly so disordered that older men must care for younger ones when youth should be tending to their elders?
    Then he shrugged the thought away. Since Brother Beorn was too occupied to give directions, he would continue to hunt for Sister Anne on his own.

Chapter Ten
    “Brother Thomas!” Sister Anne cried out with obvious joy, dropping her basket of herbs and extending her arms as if to gather the monk into a loving embrace. Suddenly mindful of her vocation, she lowered them, but the affection in her eyes remained. “Welcome home. We have missed you so.” The fondness of her tone defied any monastic rule.
    Thomas bent down, quickly tossed the herbs back into the basket, then handed it to the nun. “I have longed to return to Tyndal as well,” he replied with a smile that matched her warmth. Had this humble and gentle woman not accepted him as the hospital priest, a morose man with an unknown past, he might well have continued to consider Tyndal no better than a prison. As a consequence of her unquestioning kindness, he had not only found a home but also learned to love and respect Anne as if she were a sister of the blood, not just of the faith.
    As if of one mind, the two walked toward the hospital dormitory.
    “We have had no word of you since you left. Has your brother recovered or…” A dark shadow drifted across the nun’s eyes.
    Thomas turned his face away so she would not see his discomfort. Of all people, he most especially hated to lie to Anne, but his work as a church spy was something no one at Tyndal could know. Not Anne. Not even Prioress Eleanor.
    “You are kind to ask,” he said quickly, fearing that she would mistake his hesitation for grief. “Time and God’s grace were needed to cure the ill, but all is now well.” If he must lie, he thought, he could at least phrase it with some ring of truth.
    “God be praised! I prayed it would be so.” Her tone was soft, but her eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
    Thomas wondered if she suspected he had lied to her. “I do thank you.”
    She hastily bowed her head with proper reverence, but he had already caught her expression of doubt. He grew more certain that she was not convinced that his tale of the supposed family illness was true, but, as had been the case from the beginning of their work together, she remained silent about suspicions.
    “Tell me what has happened at Tyndal since I left while you show me the patients I should attend,” he asked, as they started down the two rows of beds in the dormitory part of the hospital.
    At the bed of one fretfully sleeping old man, Anne stopped and laid the back of her hand softly against his sunken cheek, then shook her head. “Despite all our prayers for the recovery of Prior Theobald, they were not enough,” she said in a low voice.
    “May God be merciful to his soul,” Thomas replied and was surprised that he felt sincere regret at the tidings. “He had taken to his bed before I left, but I did not know that death would be certain. Did he suffer long?”
    Anne stopped and spoke briefly to a lay brother about the elderly man whose fever still raged, then continued: “He suffered like a saint. At the end, he had little flesh upon him except where his stomach had swollen almost to the bursting point. I do believe it was a malign tumor that killed him. I tried everything but, in the end, gave him only what would relieve the pain until God saw fit to release his soul.”
    “He may have been a weak man but not, I think, an evil one. Nor, I fear, did he ever recover from Brother Simeon’s death.”
    “And he is buried next to him, as he begged just before he died. He said his sins were too great for his bones to rest with his predecessors as Prior. The prioress honored his wish and he rests at the edge of the cemetery next to