Faithful Dead

2

The mood at Hawkenlye Abbey was far removed from its usual serenity.

It was a warm autumn day. Bright sunshine lit the ambers and oranges of dying leaves in the nearby Wealden Forest, making a pleasing contrast to the deep blue of the cloudless sky. And someone had just discovered a decomposing body.

They — or, more accurately, she, for the discovery had been made by the young daughter of a family of pilgrims visiting the Holy Water shrine in the Vale — had been drawn to the corpse by the smell. The girl was as well used to smells as any peasant child, living as she did so close to the rest of her family and to their animals. She probably would not even have noticed the stench of a festering midden, of a pile of cow dung, of ripe human sweat, of pigs in the sty.

But even a peasant child rarely came across the particularly sweet and disgustingly pungent odour of rotting human flesh.

Full of a six-year-old’s curiosity, the girl had literally followed her nose, pushing her way deep into a tract of thick bracken beside the path, hardly noticing the scratchy, brownish fronds as she brushed them aside. The smell had grown alarmingly so that, beginning to retch, she had been on the point of turning round and running for the safety of the group of little huts where the monks allowed visitors to the Vale to put up. Where, indeed, her mother was just beginning to wonder what had become of her youngest child.

But just then the girl had trodden on something. Something that squished horribly under her bare foot and emitted such a wave of stench that the girl’s piercing scream was abruptly cut off as she vomited up her scanty breakfast.

It was now noon. The child, now almost recovered from her horror, was actually beginning to enjoy all the attention.

She had been comforted, and her face — and, more crucially, her foot — had been bathed and cleansed. The infirmarer, large, kind and motherly, had attended to the girl herself. When repeated sponging with warm water had failed to rid the small, narrow foot of the clinging odour of dead meat, the infirmarer — her name was Sister Euphemia — had sent for an old nun with whiskers on her chin and very penetrating eyes. She — her name was Sister Tiphaine, and they said she was the herbalist — had brought a little pot of some sort of paste that smelt like summer flowers. She spread the paste on the stinky foot and mixed it with water, so that it frothed to a foam that at last got rid of the smell.

The child, with the suppleness of being six, kept sitting on the ground and bringing her foot up close to her nose. She didn’t think she had ever smelt anything so lovely as the herbalist’s flowery paste.

Watching the little girl now, hands tucked away inside the opposite sleeves of her black habit, was Abbess Helewise.

‘She is over the shock, do you think?’ she quietly asked Sister Euphemia.

‘Aye, I reckon so,’ the infirmarer replied. ‘The resilience of youth, you know, Abbess.’

Helewise glanced away up the track that led alongside the pond and, ultimately, out of the Vale. It was beside this track that the body had lain.

Earlier, two of the lay brothers had performed the ghastly duty of shovelling the rotting body on to a hurdle and bringing it out of the bracken. It now lay a short distance further down the track — where its penetrating odour could not drift back to disturb the living — still on its hurdle and covered by a piece of sacking.

‘We must look at the body, Sister,’ the Abbess said firmly to the infirmarer. ‘If there is any means by which we may identify that poor soul, we must find it. We cannot rest easy if we merely do as we wish to do and bundle him — her — into a hasty grave and try to forget him. Her.’

‘A man, they say, Abbess.’ The infirmarer kept her voice low.

‘A man? How so?’

‘Young Augustus went with Brother Saul to bring out the remains. And he-’

‘Yes.’ Helewise remembered all about young Augustus’s talents. He had been her valued and trusted companion on a mission that she had had to make earlier in the year, and she knew from personal experience that he possessed the knowledge to tell the gender of a dead body. In the course of that mission, the puzzle presented to the young lay brother had been a burned skeleton. He had explained, with a modest and reassuring confidence, how the shape of the pelvis and the quality of the bones themselves — sturdy and robust for a man, lighter and finer for a woman — usually gave away a dead person’s sex.

Now, if Augustus had declared a putrid corpse to be male, then the Abbess was prepared to believe that he was right.

‘A man, then,’ she repeated, in the same low voice. ‘Did they discover anything else? His age, perhaps, or any article of clothing or personal possession to reveal who he was?’

Sister Euphemia hesitated. Then said: ‘He was mother-naked, Abbess. And nothing was found near him, although Brother Saul and Augustus are still searching through the bracken.’

Yes, so they were. Helewise could see one of them — Saul, she thought — as he stood up and, head raised, took a breath of the purer air above the thick bracken. Poor Saul. Poor Augustus. What a terrible task. She could only hope that, with the body now removed, the smell was decreasing in intensity.

‘They do think he was a young man,’ Sister Euphemia ventured, her eyes, like Helewise’s, on the distant figure of Saul, who, as they watched, bent down to resume his search and disappeared from view. ‘They have asked me to look at him, to see if I agree.’ She sounded less than enthusiastic.

‘How will you be able to tell?’ Perhaps, Helewise thought, the poor infirmarer’s professional curiosity would engage her and make the task slightly less repellent.

‘Oh — a youngster will show none of the bent and deformed bones that give to the ageing such pain,’ Sister Euphemia said. ‘The teeth, too, will be in better condition, with less wear and fewer gaps.’

‘Mm, I see,’ Helewise said encouragingly. ‘Anything else that you will look for?’

Sister Euphemia turned to her, faint amusement in her eyes. ‘I thank you for your kind interest, Abbess, but I am sure you do not really want to know.’ She cut off Helewise’s half-hearted protest with a smile and a gesture of her hand. ‘I think, with your permission, that it is time I stopped putting off the moment and went to study that poor fellow lying by the track down there. Then, as soon as it can be arranged, we can say our prayers for his soul and put him in the ground.’

Helewise, as eager for that ultimate step as her infirmarer, merely nodded and said, ‘Yes, Sister Euphemia. Thank you.’

In the wake of Prince John’s departure, it had occurred to Josse that the one place in the area where they might have heard of a stranger by the name of Galbertius Sidonius was Hawkenlye Abbey.

The Abbey, with its healing spring of Holy Water dedicated to the Virgin Mary, drew folk from near and far. The miracle of the cure of the fever-ridden French merchants who had first discovered the spring was now widely known; even the very poor would try to scrape together the funds for what was often a long journey, in the hope of curing injury and sicknesses of both body and mind in themselves or their loved ones.

Aye. Strangers a-plenty, at Hawkenlye. Maybe this Galbertius himself had visited — might even be there right now — and, provided he had revealed his identity, Josse could find out who and what he was simply by travelling the half-day’s journey over to the Abbey.

So it was that he rose one morning, dressed, and summoned Ella to prepare a quick breakfast and Will to prepare Horace, his horse.

Then, in the golden sun of a fine autumn day, he rode off to Hawkenlye.

The porteress, Sister Ursel, was standing in the road outside the Abbey gates when Josse rode up. Shading her eyes against the bright noon light, she was peering down the track, almost as if she were waiting for someone.

For him?

Her greeting — ‘Ah, Sir Josse, there you are, now! How glad I am to see you!’ seemed to underline this impression, if not to confirm it.

‘I am expected?’ he asked, slipping down from Horace’s back and returning the porteress’s welcoming smile.

‘Expected?’ She seemed to think about it. ‘Nay. But she will be highly relieved to see you, none the more for that.’

She. The Abbess? He wondered what might be the source of her relief at his presence. And whether, indeed, it would prove to be justified.

Leading Horace across to the stables — where, as both he and the horse knew from long experience, Sister Martha would care for the animal with a particular devotion that reflected the esteem in which she held its master — he said to Sister Ursel, ‘Any service that I may perform for the Abbess is for her to command of me, naturally. But-?’ He left the query hanging in the air, hoping the porteress would enlighten him.

She didn’t. Instead, turning to go back inside her little lodge by the gates, she said, ‘The Abbess is down in the Vale.’

A short time later, he was on his way to find her.

The main gates through which he had entered the Abbey lay to the east of the imposing Abbey church. Its great west door, with the magnificent tympanum of the Last Judgement above it, faced a second entrance, from which a path led down to the Vale. Here, a small and simple chapel had been built over the Holy Water spring. Beside it was a short range of wooden-framed, wattle-and-daub buildings where the monks who tended the spring and cared for the pilgrims were housed. There was also basic accommodation — clean, even if none too comfortable — for those pilgrims who lived too far away to make the journey to Hawkenlye and back in a day.

Old Brother Firmin was the most senior of the professed monks. Deeply spiritual, with a pure and sincere faith in the blessed Holy Water that he distributed with such love to the needy, he was inclined to keep his thoughts in Heaven and his hands in his sleeves. Although he had never admitted as much, the general view was that he considered practical work to be the realm of women — in this case, the nuns — while the monks devoted themselves to matters of the spirit.

The Abbess Helewise, however, had other ideas.

She maintained a gentle but firm pressure on the old monk, ensuring, as far as she was able, that he and his monks did their fair share of manual labour. Some of Brother Firmin’s monks were co-operative, some were not.

The Abbess’s great ally in the Vale, however, was her beloved Brother Saul. He was not one of the fully professed but a lay brother; he was also probably the most dependable, capable and handy man that the Abbess had ever known.

It was Brother Saul who Josse first noticed now, as he hastened down the path to the Vale. Saul was standing up to the waist in bracken and, as Josse raised an arm and prepared to call out, Saul seemed to take a deep breath, as if he were about to plunge into water, and disappeared beneath the thick, rusting fronds of the bracken. Turning his head to look down at the small clutch of buildings under the chestnut trees by the shrine, Josse saw two figures dressed in black, white wimples and coifs bright in the sunshine. One was round and stocky, the other taller, with broad shoulders. Despite the enveloping folds of their habits, it was clear that both were, even without the give-away white linen, female.

Breaking into a run, he went to join them.

‘Sir Josse!’ the Abbess exclaimed in surprise.

‘My lady Abbess,’ he said, giving her the formal bow reserved for a first greeting of the day, or after an absence.

‘Right glad we are to see you,’ Sister Euphemia said, grasping his hand in both of hers.

‘What has happened?’ he demanded. ‘How may I aid you?’

‘A body has been discovered,’ the Abbess said. ‘Badly decomposed, naked, nothing known save that it is that of a man, probably quite a young man.’

Against all reason — for why should it be, and, anyway, how would they know? — Josse almost asked, is it that of Galbertius Sidonius?

He restrained himself. Instead he said, ‘I saw Brother Saul, deep in the bracken over there. He is, I imagine, searching for anything that might help identification?’

‘He is,’ the Abbess said.

‘What would you like me to do?’ Josse asked. ‘Go to help Saul, or. .?’

‘Brother Saul has young Augustus to help him,’ the Abbess said. ‘More people in the bracken might be more of a hindrance than a help, do you not think?’

‘Aye. And I have big feet, with which I might tread some important find into the ground.’

‘I am sure you would not,’ the Abbess countered. ‘But, Sir Josse, an unpleasant duty awaits Sister Euphemia.’ She glanced at the infirmarer, whose face was impassive. ‘She is just now about to look at the corpse, where it — he — lies yonder by the path. Will you — may I ask you to go with her?’

‘You may, and I will,’ he assured her. ‘But whether I can aid the good Sister in her study of the body, I cannot say.’

‘I’d be glad of your company either way, Sir Josse,’ Sister Euphemia said bluntly. ‘Poor soul’s been dead a while, and his flesh is putrid and maggot-infested.’

‘Ah.’

A brief flash of humour crossed Sister Euphemia’s broad face. ‘Not had your dinner yet?’ she asked quietly.

‘No.’

‘All the better. Nothing for you to lose.’

With that encouraging remark, she bowed to the Abbess and led the way off along the track.

Josse was glad of those few preparatory remarks. Had he not expected the horror that lay beneath the sacking, he might well have disgraced himself. As it was, he took a deep breath as Sister Euphemia bent down to throw back the cover and, as the poor, purplish-black body was revealed, managed to retain his composure.

Only just.

Sister Euphemia stood for a moment, head bent, over the corpse. Then she said, ‘Excuse me, sir, for what I am about to do, and I apologise. But it is necessary. I will be as swift as I can, then we will leave you in peace.’

Josse had assumed, at first, that she was addressing him. But he realised, as she closed her eyes in prayer, that her apology had been to the dead man.

Opening her eyes again, she picked up a short stick from the undergrowth, trimmed it with quick, strong hands to the required length, then, kneeling down, poked it in among the liquefying flesh and the maggots around what had been the man’s thighs.

‘Look here at the long bones, Sir Josse,’ she said. ‘Tidily rounded, no more growing to be done, I’d say. Means we’re looking at a man, not a boy. In his twenties, at a guess.’ The probing stick moved on down the length of the right femur. ‘Here’s the knee joint. Lower end of the upper bone, upper end of the lower one. See? Smooth, solid, no signs of wear. This man could have knelt all day in a puddle in a rock without much discomfort.’

‘Mm.’ Josse wasn’t sure he could yet trust himself to speak. Besides, talking involved opening the mouth and, just then, he preferred to keep his shut.

Sister Euphemia adjusted her position and now, with another muttered apology, she gently pushed her stick into the mouth of the corpse.

‘Quite good teeth,’ she observed. ‘One missing here’ — she pointed with the end of the stick — ‘but there’s no hole in the jaw bone such as you see when a man’s lost a tooth through infection. No. I’d say this fellow had been in a fight, and some other man’s fist put paid to this tooth.’

Leaning away as far as possible without making it obvious, Josse said, barely opening his mouth, ‘You would say, Sister, that the state of the teeth would confirm your estimated age? A man in his twenties?’

‘I would, Sir Josse.’ She glanced briefly at him. ‘And there’s no need to talk like you’ve a toothache yourself. Breathe as deep as you like, you’ll not catch anything worse than a bad smell from this poor man.’

That the body could be the victim of some dread and fatal disease had not so far crossed Josse’s mind. With an involuntary start backwards, he said, ‘Are you quite certain, Sister?’

‘As certain as I can be,’ she said gruffly. Her left hand, he noticed, had slipped round beneath the corpse’s shoulders. ‘Not unless he was already sick when someone slid this into his heart.’

There was a brief movement in the body — a sort of lurch — as, with some difficulty, she pulled on some hidden object. Then she held up what she had discovered.

It was a knife. It was short — handle and blade together were probably little longer than Josse’s extended hand — and the blade was narrow, with a slight upward curve at the tip.

Josse swallowed. ‘It was still in him?’

‘Aye. It was pushed in deep. It didn’t even fall out when Saul and Augustus carried him out of the bracken.’ She ran a thumb lightly along the curve of the tip. ‘Probably designed to hold tight,’ she muttered.

‘And it would have penetrated his heart?’

‘Aye.’ She was staring down at the blade. ‘Aye. It’s thin enough to have gone clean between the ribs. .’ The stick was busy again as she probed. ‘I can’t see any notching on the bones. This man’s killer knew exactly what he was about.’

A professional assassin, Josse thought.

And precisely why, he wondered, should that make Prince John spring instantly to mind?

‘. . because I don’t reckon there’s much more to be gained from studying him,’ Sister Euphemia was saying.

‘I’m sorry, Sister, what was that?’

She gave him a considering look. ‘Thoughts far away, Sir Josse?’ Before he could answer — although there was really no need, since her assumption was quite right — she went on, ‘I was just saying, we can take him up to the Abbey now and prepare him for burial. The Abbess is eager to pray for him. Poor chap’s lain out here long enough with nobody interceding with the Good Lord on his behalf.’ She gave the body a tender look. ‘But then I’m sure the Lord won’t hold it against him, since it was hardly his own fault.’

Something she had said caught Josse’s attention. After agreeing with her sentiments — his own view of God was of a stern but just figure, something like an awesomely authoritative but fair commanding officer — he said, ‘Sister, have you any idea how long he might have been down here?’

She said instantly, ‘He was put here when the blowflies were still active — they laid their eggs in him. Also, the flesh wouldn’t rot as badly as this in a hurry, not out here in the fresh air. He’s been partially eaten — foxes, I’d guess — but they’re around all year.’ She paused, considering. ‘I’d say he was slain about five, maybe six weeks ago. We’re now in late September. . I’d guess mid to late August.’

Her guess, he thought, was the best he could hope for. Observant and experienced woman that she was, it was good enough for him.

She had stood up to talk to him but now, bending down again, she was tucking the sacking neatly around the dead man, with all the tenderness of a mother settling her child for a chilly night. When she had finished, she again bent her head and closed her eyes, and her lips moved silently as she prayed. This time, Josse joined in.

When, a little time later, they had both finished, they turned away and, without speaking, walked back along the track and up the path to the Abbey, to inform the Abbess that the burial could now go ahead.

Late in the evening, Josse went soft-footed along the cloister to the little room in which the Abbess conducted the business of the Abbey. He had been told she had gone there; she had not come to the refectory for supper but had remained on her knees in the church, beside the corpse in its hurriedly made coffin. Now one of the monks had relieved her, and she had retired to her private room.

The dead man was to be committed to the ground the next day.

The door to the Abbess’s room was slightly ajar, and a faint light shone out from within. Josse tapped on the door and she said, ‘Come in, Sir Josse.’

He did so. ‘How did you know it was me?’

She smiled briefly. ‘None of my nuns or monks wears spurs that jingle as they walk.’

‘And there was I trying to be so quiet and not disturb you,’ he murmured.

She smiled again, then nodded towards the small wooden stool she kept for visitors. Accepting her invitation to be seated, he pulled it out from its place by the wall and settled himself.

‘You bury him tomorrow,’ Josse said.

‘Yes. We cannot delay, Sir Josse, for all that we do not know who it is we bury.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Besides, it seems there is nothing further to be learned from his body.’

‘That is what I understand. No reason, then, to deny him Christian burial.’

‘Mm.’ Josse was frowning. ‘Brother Saul and young Augustus found no clue?’

‘No. And, knowing them both as I do, I feel that I may conclude that this means there is no clue to be found.’

‘I agree.’ Besides, he thought — although he did not say so to the Abbess — this murder appeared to be the work of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. Who stripped his victim of his garments and his belongings and who could surely only have made the blunder of leaving his knife behind because there was no alternative. Perhaps it was too soundly stuck in his victim’s body. Perhaps he was disturbed.

As if the Abbess read his thoughts, she said, ‘There is the knife.’

‘Aye.’

‘Sister Euphemia has it still,’ she went on quietly. ‘It is dirty and stained — she says with the poor dead man’s blood — and she has undertaken to clean it thoroughly before we examine it.’ She shot a look at Josse. ‘Before you examine it, if you will.’

‘I?’

‘You know arms, Sir Josse,’ she said gently. ‘More than any soul, man or woman, in this community.’

He had been rather afraid that was what she meant. ‘My lady, I-’ He began again. ‘It is a time since I was a man of war and, even then, no expert on weaponry.’ Her watchful eyes held disappointment. ‘But I shall do my best, nevertheless.’ He tried to look confident.

‘Your best,’ said the Abbess, ‘is all that anyone may ask of you. And now’ — she got to her feet as she spoke and, instantly, he did too — ‘I think it is time that I joined my sisters and retired.’

He stood back as she preceded him out of the room, and closed the door after them. They walked in silence across the cloister and, as she turned to the right to go around the church towards the dormitory, he went left towards the rear gate and the path down to the Vale. He had slept down there with the lay brothers before and Brother Saul, he knew, had prepared a place for him tonight.

‘Goodnight, Sir Josse,’ came the Abbess’s soft voice out of the darkness. ‘May God bless your sleep.’

On such a night, with the memory of a skilled assassin’s ruthless work fresh in his mind, the blessing was very welcome.