Текст книги "Bloodstone"

Автор книги: Paul Doherty

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

Item: No one entered that room. Sir Robert certainly never left it.

Item: No poisonous taint or potion could be found in the room, neither in the wine nor the sweetmeats.

Item: The door to that chamber had to be forced. Members of the household, very hostile to each other, had discovered Kilverby’s corpse. They were certain nothing had been interfered with or taken away.

Item: Nevertheless, Kilverby had been poisoned by some slow-acting potion, perhaps the juice of almond seed. Athelstan was well acquainted with that venom – even a few grains were deadly. Traces of a poison had been found on Kilverby’s lips and elsewhere on the corpse.

Item: After Kilverby’s two monkish visitors had left, the Passio Christi was placed back into its casket and made secure. Witnesses had seen the ruby returned to its casket, which Kilverby and Crispin had then taken to the chancery chamber. Kilverby surely would have personally assured himself of the bloodstone’s security? After all, he alone carried the keys on that chain around his neck. He would have certainly raised the alarm if anything was amiss.

Item: Sir Robert Kilverby was a very rich man who’d undergone some form of conversion. He intended to go on a life-time pilgrimage to Santiago, Rome and Jerusalem. All his business affairs would be left to his daughter and her husband. Kilverby’s widow was not his heir, so why should she kill her husband? She profited little except, perhaps, a closer intimacy with her strange kinsman Adam Lestral. Finally, Crispin appeared to be his master’s most loyal servant, who was leaving his service anyway. Kilverby’s secretarius certainly did not profit from his master’s death.

Item: The Passio Christi was, by contract of indenture, to be shown to the Wyvern Company twice a year. Yesterday the Feast of St Damasus was one of those days. However, Kilverby intended the bloodstone to be taken to St Fulcher’s not by himself but his trusted secretarius and beloved daughter. Why? Athelstan squinted up at the devil’s face on the painted window. Kilverby seemingly did not want to meet the Wyvern Company. Had he learnt something highly distasteful about them? That they had sacrilegiously stolen the sacred bloodstone?

Item: Was Sir Robert planning to leave the Passio Christi at St Fulcher’s just before he left on pilgrimage? Was this an act of reparation, for what the Wyverns had done? On the one hand Sir Robert avoided their company but, on the other, he liked to visit this abbey and mingle with its community. Was all this part of Kilverby’s conversion?

‘But in the end,’ Athelstan whispered to himself, ‘Kilverby was poisoned in his own locked chamber with no evidence as to why, how or by whom. The Passio Christi has been stolen, but once more without a scrap of evidence to show how this was done.’

Athelstan rose, stretched and paced up and down the chantry chapel, half aware of the distant echoing sounds. He breathed out noisily. Then there were the murders here at St Fulcher’s. Again, the friar tried to organize his thoughts.

Item: The Wyvern Company had been comfortably lodged here for about four years. Master bowmen, veterans, they had served the late King and his son the Black Prince. Both King and heir now lay cold beneath their funeral slabs. The crown had descended to the Black Prince’s young son Richard, under the care of his uncle the Regent, John of Gaunt, a prince of deep deviousness who wanted that bloodstone.

Item: The old soldiers were lodged here because the Crown generously patronized St Fulcher’s. Moreover, because the Passio Christi was held in trust by Kilverby it was he, not the exchequer, who paid for the sustenance of the old soldiers. However, once all the Wyverns were dead, the Passio Christi reverted to the Crown; Kilverby, or his heirs, receiving a generous grant.

Item: Both the Wyvern Company and Kilverby, whatever they thought about each other, were apparently content with this business arrangement. John of Gaunt, however, was desperate for bullion. Could that arrogant, handsome yet so sinister a Regent be assisting all those with claims on the Passio Christi into the darkness?

Item: Who had killed Hanep and Hyde, two experienced swordsmen caught out in the open and cut down? Had Hyde been killed by one or two assailants? Neither of the slain men had been able to defend themselves. Did this indicate the works of a paid assassin, someone either despatched in from outside or hiding deep within the abbey?

Item: And why had they been killed? They’d apparently not alienated any of their confreres. And why should old comrades turn so viciously on each other? There was certainly no evidence of bad blood between them. . Athelstan paused in his pacing as a group of novice monks padded along the aisle and up into the choir stalls. Athelstan continued his reasoning.

Item: The Lord Abbot with his swan, his niece and the enigmatic Eleanor Remiet, was not exactly a mirror of monastic dedication. Was Isabella Velours his niece or something else? Athelstan was certain she was the former. Moreover, the abbot might be a priest consumed with lusts of the flesh. Some of his monks might frequent the pleasure pots of Southwark but, Athelstan smiled to himself, monks sinned, as did friars. Moreover, just because they were lecherous, did that mean the likes of Abbot Walter were murderers?

Item: More importantly, did Father Abbot go to All Hallows Barking? Was he secretly negotiating with the Upright Men and the Great Community of the Realm? What was really happening at the distribution of Marymeat and Marybread on a Sunday? Then there was Richer, the elegant, sophisticated Frenchman, certainly a man of mystery. Prior Alexander was much smitten with him. Athelstan pulled a face. Such a friendship, like that of David for Jonathan in the Old Testament, was common enough in monastic communities. Richer was the problem. Why was he really at St Fulcher’s? To secure the Passio Christi or was he a spy? Why did he, according to Fleischer, meet boatmen from foreign ships? What did he receive or give to these people?

‘Alleluia, alleluia, O Sapientia Altissimi– Oh Wisdom of the Most High.’ The lucid voices of the novices intoned one of the Christmas ‘O Antiphons’. Athelstan stood, heart thrilling at the sheer passionate beauty of the sound.

‘Come,’ the choir chanted, ‘and teach us the way of truth!’

‘Aye,’ Athelstan whispered, tears pricking his eyes. ‘Come Everlasting Beauty whom we all desire, and will have no peace until we find you.’

Athelstan stood transfixed as the choir moved on to the second ‘O Antiphon’. The words, the exquisite loveliness of the chanting evoked so many bittersweet memories of his past – and his present! Athelstan beat his breast. St Erconwald’s! His parishioners? The choir and the ‘O Antiphons’? The bustling business of preparing the church for Christmas?

‘We need more holly,’ Athelstan murmured absent-mindedly.

‘Pardon, Brother?’

Athelstan glanced sharply to his right. The anchorite stood in the doorway to the chantry chapel.

‘He has gone.’

‘And may God give him eternal rest,’ Athelstan whispered, crossing himself. ‘Poor Fleischer.’

‘He made a good end.’

‘Nobody makes a good end.’ Athelstan walked towards this cadaverous spectre of a man, ‘At least not when you’re hanged.’

‘He died quickly.’ The anchorite plucked at the rope belt around his waist, curling one end with his strong fingers, ‘It’s best that way. If you topple your victim from the highest rung of the ladder the neck snaps, or so I think. Other hangmen strangle their victims. You could say the office for the dead before it’s truly over. Anyway, you want words with me, Friar?’

Athelstan indicated the bench against the wall beneath the painted window. The anchorite sat down next to him. Athelstan noticed how the man’s fingernails were neat and cleanly pared, though stained with dashes of ink and paint.

‘You’re a scribe?’

‘I am a painter as well as a hangman.’ The anchorite shifted and stared at Athelstan with his strange blue eyes. ‘I’m also a listener. I sit in my anker house and the brothers slip by me. They often forget I’m there. I hear their chatter and gossip. You’re Brother Athelstan, the consummate hunter, a lurcher in Dominican robes who seeks out his quarry. So, what do you want with me?’

‘First, who are you? Why are you here?’

The anchorite glanced away. ‘I was raised,’ the anchorite began slowly, ‘at the baptismal font in Sempringham as Giles, that’s my real name. My doting parents despatched me to the cathedral school at Ely. I sat with the other scholars in the north aisle with my horn book, ink pen and quills. I studied the Latin of Jerome as well as that of Cicero. I was meant to be a cleric but my sin,’ the anchorite bared his lips in a mirthless grin, ‘to quote the psalm, was always before me. I fell in love with the wall paintings, frescoes and coloured glass of that cathedral. I would wander to marvel at all that I saw. After my apprenticeship in Norwich I became a painter. I travelled the roads to this church or that chapel. God heaped even more blessings on me. I met my wife Beatrice and she became my helper. We had a child but we still continued to wander the kingdom. I earned very good silver and gold. I was in much demand, be it depicting the Biblia Pauperum– the Bible of the Poor for parishioners to learn from, or the single solitary scene, be it a sinner being carted off to hell by a demon in a wheelbarrow or the Assumption of the Virgin. We lodged in taverns and guest houses until the Apocalypse occurred. .’

‘When the waters swept over your head?’ Athelstan intervened, recalling the anchorite’s interruption of compline the previous evening.

‘Too powerful,’ the anchorite whispered. ‘Still too powerful – such memories! Let me tell you. We were crossing the Weald of Kent; it was early autumn. I left Beatrice and the child to go and buy paint, brushes and pigment. When I returned outlaws, wolfsheads, creatures from the stinking blackness, fiends from the dungeons of hell had attacked our cart, pillaged it, ravished Beatrice then murdered both her and our child.’ He paused at Athelstan’s sharp gasp.

‘Wickedness,’ the friar murmured, clutching at the anchorite’s arm. ‘God have mercy on them, and on you. I shall remember them at Mass.’

‘At the time,’ the anchorite continued, evenly lost in his own nightmare past, ‘I was too full of hatred and vengeance to mourn. I’d done good service for the sheriff of Kent in his castle chapel. I took my family’s corpses to him for burial. I also invoked the blood feud and he agreed to help. He raised the hue and cry and issued writs summoning up both the posse comitatus and the shire levies. The outlaws, five in number, were trapped in a wood outside Rochester. They were caught red-handed and immediately sentenced to hang from the Keep of Rochester Castle. You know it?’

Athelstan nodded.

‘I was their hangman. I took each of those wicked souls put the noose around their necks and tossed them over. I watched each do the dance of death. My reputation spread. Rochester hired me as its hangman.’ He laughed a short, bitter bark. ‘I painted their churches and hanged their wolfsheads until I met Alice Rednal.’

‘Alice Rednal – I am sure my Lord Coroner. .?’

‘I know Sir John Cranston, Brother; he hired me as Rednal’s executioner at Smithfield. I was given a chamber in St Bartholomew’s Priory which lies nearby. I didn’t just hang her but others. On execution days I would journey from Newgate to Smithfield in the execution cart with those condemned to die sitting at my feet. I also continued to do some paintings; you can see them in St Sepulchre’s which stands close to Cock Lane.’

‘Alice Rednal?’ Athelstan persisted.

‘Sorry, Brother,’ the anchorite paused, ‘you know I should go back to my cell. I want to. I always like to be alone after a hanging. However,’ he sighed, ‘Alice Rednal! She was the wickedest fiend from the darkest ward of hell. She murdered children, drowned them in the Thames. Sir John caught her and arraigned her before the Justices of Oyer and Terminer where she was condemned to hang. I collected her in the execution cart. No sooner were we out of the prison than she started to mock me. She whispered how, hanging or not, she’d taken quite a liking to me, as those others who’d murdered my wife had taken such a liking to her. I then realized, somehow, she’d been a member of their coven. She named their leader, a malignant called Wolfsbane. I challenged her, claiming she was lying, but it was obvious – she knew so much about them.’

‘What was she like physically?’

‘Oh, tall with wild, greyish hair. Harsh-faced with a full figure.’ The anchorite blinked furiously. ‘She also told me something else.’ He pointed at Athelstan. ‘Is this why I am being brought to the bar for questioning?’

‘What do you mean?’ Athelstan asked.

‘According to Rednal, after I left Beatrice, she and our child were resting under a shade of trees. Beatrice realized she was being watched by Wolfsbane and his coven and as she prepared to flee, a group of mounted archers journeying to Rochester galloped by. Beatrice tried to persuade them to help but they were in too much of a hurry. They mocked her fears and left her to herself.’

‘These mounted archers?’ Athelstan felt a coldness creeping through him as if from the hard stone around him.

‘Rednal claimed they were the Wyvern Company on garrison duty at Rochester.’

‘The same who now lodge here?’

‘I presume so, Friar.’

‘So why did Rednal tell you that?’

‘She said they were on duty when I hanged Wolfsbane and his coven. She claimed I should have executed them as well.’

‘Is that why you came here, hangman, to pursue vengeance?’

‘No, no, let me finish. Rednal, sitting on her own coffin, continued to ridicule me. She pointed out how the world was truly cruel and no one really cared. I slapped her face and told her to shut up. She replied that we would certainly meet again. Anyway, I hanged her at the Elms. I kicked her off the ladder and watched her struggle and twist, then I went my way. Oh yes, thoughts of further vengeance on those archers who refused to help Beatrice curdled and boiled, but then Rednal’s ghost intervened.’

‘Pardon?’ Athelstan turned on the bench.

‘I was lodged in my chamber at St Bartholomew’s. The door had a small grille at the top which could be opened. One evening, about a week after Rednal’s hanging, I heard a knocking. I thought it was a servitor. I crossed and opened the grille. I swear I saw this: Rednal’s face all liverish, eyes glaring, stared in at me, her full foul lips moved. “I told you”, she whispered, “we would meet again”. I slammed the grille shut yet when I opened the door I saw nothing but shadows. Since then I have seen her face again and again peering at me through a dusty, latticed window or from a crowd. .’ His words trailed away.

Athelstan crossed himself.

‘Do you believe in ghosts, Brother Athelstan?’

‘Yes,’ the friar answered. ‘Some you see and some you don’t.’

‘Do you think I am madcap, fey and witless?’

‘No, my friend.’ Athelstan tapped the man’s wrist. ‘But you are a painter,’ he smiled, ‘with wild imaginings, who saw his family slaughtered. You yourself were cruelly baited about this. In the end what is real enough to you is also the truth to you.’ Athelstan paused. ‘You must anticipate my next question as you would if you faced a magister in the schools. I have asked it once, I do so again. Did you come here to seek vengeance on the Wyvern Company?’

‘No, no, Brother, here in this church I swear. I arrived here a broken man. I fled to escape from the ghost of Alice Rednal, to atone for my many sins. I arrived at St Fulcher’s to execute certain paintings in the south aisle. Abbot Walter had three prisoners waiting to be hanged. No one would do it so I performed the task.’ The anchorite got to his feet, visibly agitated. ‘One thing led to another. I told Father Abbot my story. I expressed my desire for peace and he granted me the anker house.’ He turned to face Athelstan. ‘I continue both to paint and to hang.’ He laughed drily. ‘Look at me, Brother – do I look like a swordsman? Despite my wild imaginings I’m no fool. You do not confront, challenge or cross the likes of Wenlock and Mahant – cruel men, professional killers who fear neither heaven nor hell. Oh yes, I could tell you more about the dire events here but,’ he strode as if in a panic towards the entrance to the chantry chapel then glanced over his shoulder, ‘I have much more to say,’ he whispered, ‘much more to judge, much more to condemn but not for now.’

For the rest of that Advent week Athelstan kept to himself. Cranston did not return but sent a message with Flaxwith that all was well. The coroner had even visited St Erconwald’s and announced how ‘that coven of sinners’ were walking the path of righteousness. Benedicta also despatched Crim the altar boy with similar reassurances. Athelstan truly missed his parish. He thought of appealing to Blackfriars but he knew John of Gaunt, the silver-tongued Regent, would have already convinced Athelstan’s superiors that the friar’s presence at St Fulcher’s was vital for the Crown’s interests. Accordingly Athelstan distracted himself, becoming immersed in the daily horarium of the abbey. He stayed well away from those he intended to investigate later: the Wyvern Company, Richer, the abbot and his niece, that anchorite and his grim paintings in the south aisle. Athelstan closely studied these even as he was aware of that eerie soul staring at him through the aperture of the anker house. He also stayed away from the watergate and the nearby gallows where poor Fleischer’s corpse was to hang for three turns of the tide. Athelstan did attend the felon’s hurried burial in the Field of Blood, that deserted derelict stretch of the cemetery reserved for the corpses of malefactors and vagabonds.

Athelstan merged like a shadow into the rule of the black monks. He woke with them when the sub-prior rang the cock-crow bell in the dormitory and joined the sleepy, lantern-lit procession into the choir. Once there he’d watch the sacristan lay out the purple and gold vestments of the Advent season, trim the great lantern horn above the lectern and go round the brothers in a glow of candle light to ensure none of them had fallen asleep during matins. Sometimes he joined the brothers in their stroll around the cloisters. He learnt a little of their sign language when talking was forbidden, though he was never invited to their chapter where duties were assigned, notices proclaimed and corrections carried out. The food in the refectory was good: fish, vegetables, fruit, cheese, spices, figs and ale with pork pies, capon pastry, apple tarts and all kinds of blancmange being served. On occasions he played nine pins and provoked laughter due to his clumsiness, though he soon retrieved his reputation at the chess board.

At other times Athelstan wandered that forest of stone, constantly aware of arches, columns and pillars all intricately decorated. Statues of saints, sinners, gargoyles and babewyns peered down at him from finely sculptured bushes, trees and foliage where mystical animals such as the salamander and unicorn sheltered. Athelstan became accepted as a fellow brother, though one to be wary of as the purpose of his visit became more widely known. Increasingly however, especially as daylight faded, Athelstan locked himself in his own chamber and tried to make sense of the jumbled bloody events which had occurred since St Damasus’ eve. He searched for the root, for the prime cause, to unpick all this tangle, a seminal event which would explain and clarify. Athelstan grew certain of one truth. Kilverby’s murder and those of the Wyverns were connected probably through the bloodstone, the Passio Christi. Yet, what was the prime cause of all this slaughter? The radix malorum omnium– the root of all evil? Kilverby’s pilgrimage to Outremer? But why should that open the bloody gate to the meadows of murder? The only person who might be affected would be John of Gaunt should the Passio Christi be handed over to St Fulcher’s but Gaunt, at least according to the evidence, had no knowledge of what Kilverby intended.

Athelstan’s puzzlement deepened. On the Saturday before the third Sunday of Advent he locked himself in his own chamber and pretended to be Kilverby. The merchant had sat at his desk poring over manuscripts, just thinking. He’d never left, not even to relieve himself. Athelstan had examined the covered jakespot in the far corner of the chamber. Kilverby had already supped and suffered no ill effects from that. The wine he’d carried in proved to be untainted as had the sweetmeats brought from the abbey. The Passio Christi was securely locked in its casket with the keys around Kilverby’s neck. No one had entered that chamber, yet by morning Kilverby was murdered and the Passio Christi gone. How? Why? Athelstan heard a noise, a tapping on the shutters. He rose and walked across to the lantern window. He pulled back the shutters and looked out over the frozen flower garden, its shrubs and rich soil gripped in a harsh frost. Warming his fingers over a nearby chafing dish, Athelstan glanced around and dismissed the tapping as a mere flurry of ice in the snapping breeze. He was about to turn away when a flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye made him start. A cowled figure moved from his left into full view – one of the brothers? The figure knelt as if studying the frozen ground. Athelstan caught the glint of metal as this sinister apparition brought up the arbalest. The friar sprang back, stumbling to the floor as the barbed quarrel whirred angrily above him, smashing against the plaster on the far wall. Athelstan murmured a prayer, sprang to his feet, unlocked the door and hurried out. He almost crashed into Wenlock coming into the guest house.

‘Brother,’ Wenlock gripped the friar’s arm with his maimed hand, ‘are you well? What is the matter? You look as if you are going to shout harrow and raise the hue and cry.’

Athelstan caught his breath as a cold sweat broke out.

‘Nothing.’ He breathed in deeply. ‘Nothing for the moment.’