Poison in the Prayer Book

The year was 1523, and the air in the Abbey of Saint Margaret was thick with the scent of incense and damp stone. Tucked high in the Cotswold Hills, the abbey had weathered the storms of kings and commoners alike. Within its cloistered walls, the brothers followed the Benedictine rule, their days marked by silence, prayer, and routine.

Brother Thomas, the youngest scribe of the order, had taken great pride in his work. His fingers were perpetually stained with ink, and he knew the sacred texts as intimately as his own breath. He was particularly proud of one book—the Book of Hours—a beautifully illuminated manuscript he had been entrusted to restore. It was a gift, or so the abbot said, from a wealthy widow named Lady Cecily Harrowden, recently arrived in the village.

But there was something about the book that disturbed Thomas. Its pages were pristine, too pristine for a volume supposedly hundreds of years old. The gold leaf looked freshly pressed. The ink shone oddly in the candlelight, as if it hadn’t fully dried. Still, he said nothing. The abbot had blessed the book and placed it in the chapel, where it sat open on a carved oak stand—an object of admiration for the pious and curious alike.

It was two weeks later when Brother Aldred, the abbey’s most devout elder, was found slumped over the Book of Hours. His lips were blue. His fingers curled unnaturally around the edge of the page.

“He must have suffered a seizure,” the physician murmured, examining the body. “His heart simply gave way.”

But Thomas noticed something strange. Where Aldred’s fingers had touched the page, the parchment was stained—subtly, a faint trace of oily discoloration. And Aldred had been healthy as an ox just the day before, walking the grounds and quoting the Psalms with booming cheer.

Two days later, it was Brother Julian. He too was found in the chapel, eyes wide, mouth ajar, collapsed beside the open book. The monks began whispering about a curse.

Thomas could no longer remain silent. That evening, beneath the flickering candlelight of the scriptorium, he examined the Book of Hours more closely. He carefully turned its pages using gloves made from lambskin. It was then he noticed that certain illustrations—particularly those adorned with red and green pigments—emitted a faint, bitter almond smell.

Arsenic. Or something like it.

He sought out Brother Matthew, a former apothecary who had joined the abbey years ago to escape the plague-ridden streets of London. Matthew was quiet but keen-eyed, and when Thomas showed him the book, he paled.

“Verdigris,” he whispered. “And perhaps orpiment. Pigments that can kill, if absorbed through the skin.”

“But why?” Thomas asked. “And who would poison a prayer book?”

They brought their suspicions to the abbot, who dismissed them as superstition. “You see specters in ink, Brother Thomas. These are old men dying of old age, nothing more.”

Yet a third death followed. Brother Simeon, a recluse known for his nightly vigils, was found face-down in the chapel. The Book of Hours was again the common link.

Enough was enough.

Thomas and Matthew devised a plan. One evening, Thomas pretended to doze off in the chapel, hiding in the shadows as the candles burned low. Midnight passed. The abbey was silent but for the creaking of timbers and distant hoot of an owl.

Then, footsteps. Delicate. Purposeful.

A figure cloaked in black approached the prayer book, carefully pulling something from a pouch—powder, which the figure began dusting along the edge of a freshly turned page. Thomas stepped forward and struck the torch alight.

“Lady Cecily,” he said, and the woman froze.

Her face, though veiled, was unmistakable.

“You’ve been poisoning the book,” Thomas continued. “You brought it here, crafted to kill. But why?”

She didn’t deny it. Instead, she smiled—a thin, bitter expression.

“My husband died in this abbey’s care,” she said. “Brought here after a hunting accident. But he never left. The monks took his confession, his last breath... and his estate. Said he’d gifted everything to God. To you.”

Thomas's heart pounded. “And so you crafted revenge.”

“I know herbs and inks,” she said simply. “I studied in Milan before I was married off to a man I hardly knew. I made the book to kill, slowly and silently, with grace and scripture.”

The abbot was furious when he learned the truth—but more furious at the scandal than the deaths. He ordered Lady Cecily turned over to the authorities, but she was gone by dawn. Vanished into the woods beyond the abbey walls.

The Book of Hours was buried that same day, sealed in lead and sunk into the deep well behind the chapel.

Brother Thomas returned to his scriptorium, forever changed. He still copied prayers, but with a quiet caution. In every drop of ink, he now saw the shadow of death—and in every prayer, the haunting echo of justice sought in silence.