House of Shadows

ACT FOUR

July 1373

Geoffrey Chaucer fiddled with his pen. He peered at the other pens that were lined up to his right. He counted them, although he already knew how many there were. Did any of them need sharpening? With his left index finger, he touched the end of the one he was holding. The goose-quill did not need sharpening, not really. He put down the pen. He reached out and brought the ink pot an inch or two closer to his writing hand. Then he straightened the few sheets of paper on the table. This particular task didn’t need doing either.

He sighed. He was familiar with these little devices whose purpose was to delay the moment, the inevitable moment, when he’d actually have to put pen to paper and start writing. Anything to put that moment off.

He was sitting by an open window. Sounds of activity came from down below, from the area around the entrance to the gatehouse. On his arrival the previous evening, Geoffrey Chaucer had observed an excavated space in a corner between wall and buttress, a space large enough to hold a seated man. There was a neat pile of stone near the cavity, which was kept stable by stout wooden props. Water damage, Geoffrey supposed, looking up at the gargoyle that leered above his head. Rain pouring down over the centuries. Or perhaps water seeping up from an underground spring and slowly dissolving the mortar, for this was a marshy area.

Now there came the scrape of trowel on stone, or a shared joke or an inaudible curse as one of the workmen lifted an especially heavy block. Geoffrey considered shutting the window to keep out the sounds. After all, he’d come to Bermondsey Priory to get some peace and quiet. London bustled on the other side of the Thames, but you’d expect a silent order of monks to provide a bit of peace and quiet. The only noises should be the bells summoning the brothers to prayer. And, as if on cue, a bell rang at that instant. Closing the window would mean depriving himself of the soft airs and smells of a summer morning and breathing the stuffy air of the room. Chaucer glanced around at the room. It was barely furnished – a bed in one corner, a substantial chest in another, and the stool and table beneath the window where he was sitting. But, compared with the cells or dormitories that were reserved for the monks, it was like a chamber in a palace.

Geoffrey Chaucer knew something of palace chambers. His wife Philippa and their three young children had only lately left their private lodgings in John of Gaunt’s little place on the banks of the Thames. John of Gaunt’s little place was the Palace of Savoy. Geoffrey was sometimes employed by Gaunt – third son to King Edward – in private business or secret matters relating to the court, although that wasn’t the principal reason for his family’s residency at the Savoy. Geoffrey stayed in the palace from time to time when he wasn’t on his travels. But he had never felt at home in the Savoy. Unlike his wife Philippa, who was the daughter of a knight and who in her earlier life had been under the protection of the late queen of England. Philippa felt at home in palaces.

Whenever he could, Chaucer retreated to the gatehouse in the city wall at Aldgate, which he’d bought around the time of his marriage. That was home to him, that was where he kept his books and papers and his writing implements. And now, for various reasons, the Aldgate house had once more become the residence of Chaucer’s entire family, his wife, his children and servants. The city gatehouse, which had looked so spacious when he’d first seen it, was transformed into a cramped dwelling filled with domestic demands. So Geoffrey was spending a few days on the south bank of the river at Bermondsey Priory to get away from them. Neither husband nor wife had expressed it in those terms, but both of them knew that he was, temporarily, escaping his family on the pretence of work.

By chance, Geoffrey Chaucer was staying in a room in another gatehouse on this summer’s morning. It was a guest-chamber on the first floor of the inner entrance to the priory. It was where the more important lay visitors were accommodated or those to whom the abbot, Richard Dunton, wanted to show favour. Geoffrey had met Richard Dunton for the first time on the previous evening when he’d arrived at the priory. Geoffrey recalled with pleasure the prior’s words at their meeting. He was a handsome man, with a commanding presence which he combined with an easy air. He seemed genuinely glad to see Chaucer. He’d said…

But Geoffrey’s recollections of the prior’s words were interrupted by a shout from outside. Then an answering shout. Then another and another. Not good-natured banter this time but real insults flowing between the workmen who were repairing the crumbling stone at the base of the gatehouse wall. Whereas before the sporadic chatter hadn’t been audible, it was now all too plain. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that workers in a priory would have more respect for their holy surroundings? But no, it was all ‘hog’s turd’ this and ‘bull’s pizzle’ that. None of Chaucer’s business, but that was all the more reason to take a look.

Glad enough to be disturbed in his work – and at the same instant thinking, Work? What work? – Geoffrey rose from his stool and pushed the table slightly to one side so that he could get a clearer view out of the window. The downward angle was awkward, and he could at first see only a couple of workmen, hats pulled low over their brows to shield them from the sun, which was hot and high even this early in the morning. Chaucer could tell nothing more about them except that one seemed young, scarcely more than a lad.

The workmen were watching something out of Chaucer’s line of sight. They stood, tense and expectant. Geoffrey recognized the stance of people on the edge of an imminent fight, wondering whether to weigh in, wondering whether to get involved or to separate the participants. Then two more men, out of view until now, shifted further away from the base of the wall. They were facing each other, a couple of yards apart and at a half-crouch. From his position by the window, Geoffrey couldn’t see the expression on their faces, but their closeness to a fight was evident from their stance and the way in which each was clutching an ordinary tool – a chisel, a trowel – so as to turn it into a weapon if necessary. The man holding the chisel had the use of only one hand. The other one, his left, was withered and turned in on itself like the claw of a bird. Perhaps in compensation, all his strength and force seemed to be concentrated in the good hand and arm.

Geoffrey looked beyond the group of four. The area south of the gatehouse, the inner court, was empty apart from a black cat slinking through a patch of sun between the shadows. But there were no black-habited monks walking – or slinking – anywhere. Not surprising, since the bell that had just rung was for terce, already the fourth of the day’s devotional calls even though it was still early in the morning. Chaucer squinted into the sun-dazzled yard, willing someone to appear and intervene. Now the one-handed man raised his implement, the chisel. He was shorter than the other but looked the more dangerous. He shifted his weight on to his right foot, ready to attack.

Geoffrey leaned further out of the window. Without thinking, he shouted out. Not ‘Stop it!’ or ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Simply: ‘Hey!’

It was enough. The man wielding the chisel looked up. The sun was in his eyes. He squinted, but Chaucer must have been no more than a shadow in the window. The man’s mouth opened as if he was going to say or shout something in reply – it was a black hole of a mouth, with fewer teeth than he had good fingers. But whatever this individual had been about to say he thought better of. He lowered the chisel and shook his head, perhaps as a way of denying that he’d ever meant any harm. The second man, too, looked up before letting the hand holding his implement, the trowel, fall to his side. The two onlookers were also gazing in Chaucer’s direction.

He felt that something more was required of him but couldn’t think what to say. After all, an argument among the lay workers in Bermondsey Priory was none of his business. He was a guest in this place, with no authority over any of its occupants. It was enough if he had reminded these people that he was a witness to their goings-on and so managed to avert violence for the time being.

‘Good day to you,’ he said, withdrawing from his place at the window.

But Geoffrey stayed close to the window. He heard the beating of his heart. His breath was coming short, as if he had been on the verge of a fight himself. He strained to listen. Nobody was speaking as far as he could tell. It was the silence that follows a quarrel. After a few moments the sounds of work resumed, the scrape of the trowel, the thunk of a hammer.

He sat down at the table once again and picked up his pen. To work! Geoffrey Chaucer was supposed to be penning a report on some recent negotiations in the city of Genoa to do with the establishment of a trading centre for the Genoese on the south coast of England. The success of such diplomatic missions was measured by the amounts of paper they generated. But, in truth, the writing of the report was a pretext. What Geoffrey really wanted to do was to get back to writing his verses.

But the scene outside had unsettled him, and whereas before he hadn’t wanted to concentrate, now he wasn’t able to for thinking of the foursome by the gatehouse entrance. He hoped that the monks would soon finish their devotions in the great church and that one or two of them would appear, black-hooded strollers in the court. Their very presence would surely be a deterrent to any further trouble. If they noticed what was going on, that is. The Cluniac monks at Bermondsey Priory had a reputation for scholarship. They weren’t like some orders, taking pleasure in hard sweat and calloused hands. Rather, they left that to the lay workers, like the quarrelsome individuals outside the window. They were the only ones privileged to get their hands dirty.

And a thought occurred to Geoffrey. Wasn’t it rather odd that a man with a crooked hand should be employed as a mason, repairing a cavity in the fabric of the gatehouse? Although he might be able to use a trowel and perhaps shift blocks of stone, he could not wield a hammer and chisel (other than as weapons). Perhaps his continued employment was an act of charity on the part of the monks. Except that the last thing the crooked-hand man looked as though he’d require was charity.

Shrugging his shoulders, Geoffrey picked up his pen yet again and lifted a sheet of paper from the pile in front of him. Get going. You write verses, he told himself; you’re a maker. Well, make something. That was evidently the reputation he’d brought with him to this priory. It was with these words that the prior, Richard Dunton, had greeted him the previous evening. ‘Ah, Master Chaucer, the court poet.’

The court poet? Chaucer had never thought of himself like that before, or more precisely he had never heard himself referred to in that way. True, he’d written a piece in memory of John of Gaunt’s first wife, and from time to time he recited his work to some of the nobility at the Savoy or at Windsor. The ladies and gentlemen seemed to appreciate his words. At least they applauded politely when he’d finished. And his invitation to spend a few days at Bermondsey had come about because of Dunton’s links to the various royal households. But to be termed ‘the court poet’ now, as if it was an official title! Despite himself, he felt a little kick of pride.

Richard Dunton had personally escorted Geoffrey on a tour of the priory. This was an old foundation, he’d explained, dating from shortly after the Conquest. The conventual church loomed above the cloister, the upper reaches of it like a great cliff catching the declining rays of the sun. It had taken years, decades to build, and had been completed and dedicated within living memory, yet it might have stood on this spot for centuries. Dunton’s deep voice echoed as they made a circuit of the cloister. The area in the centre was in shadow, and martins threaded the air between their nesting places among the eaves and buttresses. Geoffrey soon realized that the prior had his own kind of quiet satisfaction. He was the first Englishman to be appointed to the position of superior. He was new, he was relatively young, and there was vigour in his words and movements.

Geoffrey was surprised to find how knowledgeable Richard Dunton was about outside affairs. The prior knew the latest news about King Edward’s health (declining) and that of the Prince of Wales (also declining). He was better informed than Chaucer on some of the most recent comings and goings at court. When Geoffrey commented, tactfully, on this, Dunton said: ‘You must not think, Master Chaucer, that because we spend our time thinking of a higher world we are somehow not of this one too. It is very necessary for the prior of a great place like this to be aware of what the king is thinking and feeling – and of the state of his health. It’s not so many years since we were taken under his protection on account of debt and other misfortunes.’

At one point, as they were rounding a corner in the cloister, a hooded figure almost collided with Geoffrey. The figure was carrying some books, which he dropped in his confusion. Another brother was following in his wake. This second monk busied himself retrieving the dropped books. After apologies had been exchanged, Richard Dunton said: ‘This is well met.’

He introduced the brothers. The first, who’d been carrying the books, was Brother Peter, who combined the posts of sacrist and librarian. The second, who’d picked the books up, was a moon-faced young man called Ralph. He was described as the revestiarius and the sacrist’s assistant. Chaucer was a little hazy on the responsibilities of the various posts in the order, but he had an idea that the revestiarius was in charge of the linen and vestments.

Richard Dunton explained the reason for Geoffrey’s presence in Bermondsey and once again made reference to the ‘court poet’. If Brother Peter had never heard of Geoffrey Chaucer, he made a good job of disguising the fact by nodding and saying: ‘Of course, of course, Master Chaucer.’ The librarian was old but with a stringy strength to him. He pushed his hood back and thrust his lined, spectacled face towards the newcomer as if to read Geoffrey like a book. The cloister was gloomy enough, but the gesture seemed like a lifelong habit, acquired from years of poring over texts. What little light there was reflected off Brother Peter’s spectacles, making it hard to interpret his expression, in fact giving an odd impression of blindness. Meanwhile, Brother Ralph stood smiling pleasantly in the background.

‘You remember that I wish to speak to you, Brother Richard?’ said the librarian to the prior. When the other did not respond, he said: ‘The matter cannot wait.’ His voice was, like his body, creaky but firm.

‘Come after compline,’ said the prior.

Peter seemed about to say something more but, tucking his books under his arm, he nodded to his assistant and the two men rounded the corner of the cloister. Chaucer and Dunton resumed their walk.

‘There is a man who does not live in the higher world or the lower one but only among his books,’ said the prior.

‘I can think of worse worlds,’ said Geoffrey.

‘No doubt his ceiling is leaking or a bookish mouse has chewed some manuscript.’

Geoffrey wondered that the prior needed to account for the librarian’s wish to see him. He thought there’d been a greater urgency in Brother Peter’s voice than would be justified by a leaking roof or a trespassing mouse. By now they had wandered out of the cloister and were walking near the chapterhouse. Beyond lay the monks’ cemetery, with its modest white stone markers, all identical in the dying light, sheltered by willows and oaks. Richard Dunton gestured at some more scattered buildings. Like all great establishments, Bermondsey Priory was, if not a world unto itself, at least a township. It contained a bakery and an infirmary and, at some distance, even a farm. Around them stretched the flatlands of Surrey rising to gentle hills in the distance. This was marsh country, at risk from high tides and protected by ditches and dykes.

But now the prior took Geoffrey Chaucer by the elbow and, saying that there was something very precious that he wished to show him, led him back in the direction of the great church. Perhaps because of the nearness of water – in the river to the north, in the very ground under their feet – Geoffrey suddenly thought of the church as a stone ship. An upturned ark. Passing down the slype, or covered passage, they entered the building through a door off the cloister.

The interior was deserted save for a couple of figures who were kneeling in prayer. It was between the hours for vespers and compline, the final prayers for the day. Inside, it struck chill after the warmth of the evening. The mighty stone columns seemed to pass into dusk as they climbed towards the vaulted roof. The stained glass in the great rose window at the end of the nave burned with the last of the day. The prior once again guided Chaucer by the elbow until they reached a side chapel. A small cross, made of brass or latten by the look of it and studded with little gems, stood in a niche behind a grille flanked by burning tapers. Richard Dunton unlatched the grille so that they could see the cross more clearly. It was delicately fashioned and stood scarcely more than the height of a man’s hand.

‘I have heard of this,’ said Geoffrey. ‘The Bermondsey cross. There is a story that goes with it.’

‘It was found during the time of the first King Henry by members of our order. You know the story, you say?’

‘Not the details of it,’ said Geoffrey, sensing Dunton’s eagerness to tell the tale. As the two men gazed at the crucifix, the prior recounted how three of the Cluniac monks had been walking and debating by the banks of the River Thames one morning all those centuries before. It was a cloudy, workaday morning. Of course, the brothers should not have been outside the bounds of the priory, nor should they have been engaged in a theological discussion – given their vow of silence they should not have been talking at all, in fact. But perhaps things were not so strict in those days. Legend had it that they were discussing miracles and whether any such wonders were possible in these late times. One of the three monks, Brother James, was especially vociferous in his belief that the age of miracles had passed. At that instant they heard a flap of wings and looked up to see a great bird passing overhead, flying towards the river.

Fear struck deep into their hearts, for it was a larger bird than they had ever seen in their lives, larger even than the largest eagle. They clutched each other in their fear and watched as the bird reached the river. Some object appeared to fall from its beak before it began to climb higher and higher until it was no more than a speck against the clouds. Where before the brothers had been disputing noisily, they were now struck dumb. They were about to return, silent and chastened, to the priory when a narrow ray of sun shot through a hole in the cloud – at the very spot where the bird had disappeared – and seemed to fasten on a muddy stretch of the foreshore. ‘Like a finger,’ said Richard Dunton. ‘That is how it is described in the account left by Brother James. Like a celestial finger directing him and his brothers to this particular point.’

Curiosity got the better of their alarm. They saw something glinting on the foreshore. They picked their way across the mud and muck of the shore until they reached the place. There, planted perpendicular in the mud, was the cross that now stood in front of Geoffrey Chaucer. The gems crusting its arms were untarnished, said Richard Dunton. There was no trace of mud or water on the cross. This, surely, was the very item dropped by the great bird. It was the strongest reproof to Brother James’s words about miracles. When the brothers had recovered a little from their astonishment, they left him to guard the cross and ran back to the priory to get the prior who, like the present librarian, went by the name of Peter.

‘Peter was an old man by then,’ said Richard Dunton, ‘but witnesses say that he ran to the spot. No one had ever seen him run before. And not just him, but the other brothers and the lay workers, too, since word spread fast that something remarkable had happened. Well, to shorten my tale, everyone agreed that this was a miraculous event beyond question. Brother James and the others were forgiven for their wilful wandering outside the priory, and they were even forgiven for breaking their vows of silence, since the results had been so happy…so extraordinary. The cross was retrieved from the mud. Even that part of it which had been sunk into the river mud emerged fresh and shining. It was as if the metal had been freshly beaten and polished and the gems newly cut. It was ceremoniously carried to this place, and here it has stood for more than two hundred and fifty years.’

As if to mark the close of his story, the prior reached out and latched the grille in front of the cross. While he’d been speaking, Geoffrey had been examining the crucifix more closely. If he hadn’t just heard this strange account, he probably wouldn’t have spared the cross a second glance. It was a handsome enough item but not much different from what you might find in any religious house or church.

‘You do not keep it locked away?’ he said. ‘Many people must wish to see this and even a priory may receive a thief unawares.’

‘We welcome many guests here and there may be thieves among them. But who would dare to take it?’ said Dunton, with a rare flash of unworldliness. ‘Besides, this place is always occupied. And the cross will guard itself.’

Geoffrey wasn’t so sure about that, but he said nothing. The two men turned away from the niche in the wall. The darkness in the nave had grown deeper, relieved only by the pinprick of scattered candles elsewhere and the embers of light in the western window. Geoffrey wasn’t sure either how far the prior believed in the story he’d just told. There had been no trace of doubt or irony in his tones. When it came to miracles, Geoffrey put himself in the sceptics’ camp. He didn’t think they happened nowadays, or at least not with such convenient timing.

It was easy enough to see how the legend of the miraculous Bermondsey cross might have developed. The object was small enough to be carried in the beak of a large bird, which had probably been attracted by its bright sheen. But a bird wouldn’t see much purpose in carrying it far and would soon drop it. By pure chance the cross had landed not in the water but on the Thames foreshore. Probably the monks had witnessed this straightforward event and, wittingly or otherwise, had transformed it into something wondrous. It couldn’t be denied that the cross, like any relic and quite apart from its religious significance, must be useful to the priory. With such a history, it would draw pilgrims and the devout to this marshy spot south of the river.

After the tour, Geoffrey shared the monks’ supper in the fraterhouse or refectory in the south cloister. The meal, simple but adequate, was eaten in silence while one of the brothers read from the Scriptures. Accustomed to the constant noise of his own house in Aldgate, Geoffrey relished the peace of it all. Even so, he suspected that after a few days such ordered calm would become tedious. He’d never been tempted by the religious life; he belonged too much to this world.

But, he reflected now, sitting in his guest-chamber on a bright summer’s morning, such a life would do very well for a while. And he wasn’t so much out of the world after all. The dispute among the artisans working at the foot of the gatehouse showed that. He dipped his quill in the ink pot and prepared himself to blot the white sheet in front of him. He’d had an idea!

All at once there was a violent shout from below, followed by grunts and the sounds of a scuffle. Geoffrey cursed under his breath, rose from his stool and went to the window once more. He was readying himself to call out when he saw that the situation had gone beyond that.

Again two of the masons were standing at a distance from the scene, but this time their faces registered not tension but horror. The man with the claw-like hand was crouching over the fellow he’d been exchanging words with earlier. This man was lying on the ground, and for an instant Geoffrey thought that the other was trying to help him to his feet, since his good hand seemed to be cradled about the other’s neck. Irrelevantly he noted that the man lying down had lost his cap. He had prominent black eyebrows.

The crouching man leaped back. In his fist was clenched the chisel he had been wielding before. Chaucer’s gaze flicked from the blood clearly visible on the chisel blade to the blood that was pooling on the ground beneath the fallen man’s head. He was shaking violently, his heels thudding against the dry earth. He had no implement in his clenched hands, not even the trowel. If he’d been equipped for a fight, then he had either dropped or been disarmed of his makeshift weapon. Geoffrey had seen enough of death in battle to recognize that this unfortunate person had only a very short time to live.

For some seconds nobody moved. The two onlookers stood transfixed by the shock of what they were seeing, and by fear of the individual with the chisel who remained at a half-crouch a couple of yards from the body whose tremors were even now subsiding. The man held the bloody chisel out as if to ward off an attack, but neither of the others was going to approach him. Though Geoffrey hadn’t moved or spoken, the killer must have sensed that he was being watched from the upper window. His covered head shifted upwards and he squinted as before. His black hole of a mouth widened in a type of grin, and Geoffrey felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. At the same time an inner voice told him that he must act, he must get down to the inner court and do something…Still he did not budge.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw flickers of black. The crooked-hand man must have noticed Chaucer’s gaze shift, for he turned his head. Half a dozen monks, fresh from their devotions, were rounding the corner of the kitchen, which lay on the eastern side of the court next to the refectory. As one, like soldiers given a command, they stopped when they saw the scene before them: a man on his back on the ground, another crouched with his arm extended and two more standing by stiff as statues.

Then, as if to make up for the absence of movement, everyone started to act at once. The monks began to pace rapidly towards the group, their habits flapping. Either they were brave or they hadn’t fully grasped what was happening. Simultaneously, one of the fellows of the dead man – he must be dead by now; he had stopped shaking, though the blood continued to flow from the wound in his neck – made to close in on the killer, but with great caution.

The claw-handed man was quicker. He darted through the tightening circle, lashing out to left and right with the chisel. Geoffrey turned from the window and left the room at a half-run. When he was halfway down the spiral staircase, which led to the ground floor, he realized he was still clutching the quill pen. For an absurd instant he debated returning to replace the pen on the table. Then he clattered down the stone steps, through the lobby and emerged blinking into the sun of the courtyard.

He skirted the pile of stones and wheelbarrows and leathern buckets and other equipment which was being used to repair the cavity in the wall. No one noticed him. Either they were staring at the corner of the yard by the kitchen or they were themselves moving in that direction. The murderer had evidently slipped around the corner moments before while Geoffrey was descending. A couple of the monks remained behind, together with one of the masons. No one had yet gone near the body.

As Chaucer came out from the shadow of the gatehouse, the mason glanced around, fear and shock on his face. He was little more than a lad, with a round, freckled face. An apprentice, no doubt. His eyes flicked down to Chaucer’s hand. He opened his mouth but no words would come. Geoffrey held up the quill as if to say, ‘Look, it’s harmless,’ but he wasn’t sure whether the lad really took it in. He placed the quill on a nearby block of stone. By now the two monks were bending over the body on the ground. Their black garb reminded Chaucer of crows in a field.

The other mason, the older man, returned. He was panting heavily from the chase, sweat running down his face. His shirt was torn at the shoulder and blood was seeping through. He took off his woollen hat and held it to the wound. He glanced briefly towards the freckle-faced lad but did not look at the body.

‘Scraped me, he did,’ he said to Geoffrey when he’d recovered his breath. ‘I left it to them to catch the bastard. They know the holes and corners of this place – God knows there’re enough of them.’ Chaucer wasn’t sure whether he was referring to the brothers who’d taken off after the one-armed fugitive or to the priory’s holes and corners.

One of the remaining monks made the sign of the cross over the body while the other kneeled down beside it. Chaucer heard the murmur of prayer.

‘What happened? Who did this?’ said Geoffrey.

‘Calls himself Adam,’ said the man. ‘Anyone can call themselves Adam, though, can’t they? Argumentative bastard, looking for trouble from the moment we started this job.’

Both men spoke almost in whispers. The freckle-faced apprentice kept silent but gazed in fascination, it seemed, at the monks, both of whom were now on their knees.

‘You didn’t know him, then? He’s a newcomer?’ said Geoffrey, indicating the direction taken by the fleeing man.

‘We were short-handed. Michael the cellarer wished Adam on us.’

The cellarer or bursar of the priory was responsible not only for provisioning the priory but also kept the office which oversaw the upkeep of the buildings.

‘Adam has only the use of one hand,’ said Geoffrey, reluctant to add that this might seem to disqualify the man from building work.

‘Cellarer said we should show charity. Adam came to him with a sob story of how his hand’d been crushed by some falling scaffolding when he was working over Lewes way. There’s another whatsisname over Lewes way.’

‘St Pancras of Lewes. It’s a Cluniac house,’ said Geoffrey.

‘That’s the one. St Pancras. You’re not a religious?’ said the man, looking at Chaucer’s clothes and apparently surprised at his knowledge of the Cluniac order. He continued to hold his cap over the wound in his upper arm.

‘I am a visitor to the priory. Geoffrey Chaucer is my name. You are…?’

‘I am Andrew. This here is Will and that there on the ground is John.’

He meant the freckled boy and the dead man.

‘Cellarer Michael says we should look after our own,’ continued Andrew, ‘so he takes this Adam on even though he only had the one good hand. Did enough damage to old John Morton, didn’t he, with that one good hand? Though you might say it was a bad hand.’

The two monks who’d been attending to the dead man were joined by other brothers and some lay workers. One of them had brought a makeshift carrier made of coarse cloth fastened to two poles. He placed it on the ground and unfurled it. Several of them half lifted, half rolled the dead man on to the stretcher. The irrelevant thought occurred to Chaucer that at least their black habits would not easily show the blood which must be staining them.

As they lifted up the stretcher holding the body, the apprentice gasped. It was the first sound Will had made.

‘John on the ground is Will’s uncle,’ said Andrew. ‘His father’s sick, which is the reason we were short-handed. Will’s a bit…you know…’

He rolled his eyes in his head. A bit simple, he meant. Geoffrey looked at the boy again. Will was watching as the group made its way towards the corner of the yard, presumably on its way to the infirmary.

‘You know why he’s simple?’ said Andrew.

Geoffrey shook his head. He didn’t know why the man was talking so much. Shock, he guessed.

‘It’s because his mother was sired by a priest. The boy’s state is God’s punishment for her father’s sin, though you wouldn’t know it from the way she carries on. Giving herself airs and all.’

Chaucer said nothing. The comments seemed out of place. He was familiar with the idea that the sins of the fathers might be visited on succeeding generations. It was not an idea that he liked very much, although, looking around at the world, there seemed to be a grain of truth in it. Rather than saying anything in reply, he continued to gaze at the retreating procession carrying the body of the mason. Before they’d gone far, Richard Dunton intercepted them. The carriers paused. The prior stood by the stretcher and bowed his head. His lips moved in silent prayer, then he strode briskly to where Chaucer stood with the mason and the apprentice.

‘This is a bad business, Geoffrey, very bad,’ he said. ‘Did you see it happen?’

‘Not altogether. This man was a witness.’

‘Andrew, isn’t it?’ said Dunton. ‘You are hurt, Andrew.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the mason, pleased to have been recognized despite everything. ‘It’s nothing much, sir. Just a scratch.’

‘It is your fellow that is dead? John Morton?’

Geoffrey understood that Richard Dunton had the knack, very useful in someone with authority, of knowing the names even of those in lowly positions.

‘The boy here is his nephew,’ said Andrew. ‘John is – he was – brother to the lad’s father.’

The Prior said: ‘I know.’ He reached out and grasped Will by the shoulder. The boy started and blinked as if he had been woken from a dream.

‘Has the villain been caught, sir?’ asked Andrew.

‘He will be,’ said the prior. ‘I understand that he arrived here only recently.’

Andrew nodded and Dunton said: ‘We will scour the grounds and buildings. He will find no home or sanctuary here.’

‘Must go home,’ said Will, picking up on the prior’s last words. The boy’s voice was surprisingly steady. ‘My father, he is sick at home.’

‘In the Morton house? I did not hear of any sickness,’ said the prior.

‘No reason you should hear, sir,’ said Andrew. He removed the woollen cap from his damaged arm. The blood was seeping more slowly now. As he’d said, it wasn’t much more than a scratch.

‘Go to the infirmary, man. Get that wound attended to.’

‘Home,’ Will repeated. He made as if to set off but did no more than walk in a half-circle, as if he’d forgotten his whereabouts.

‘Wait,’ said the prior. ‘You shall not go by yourself.’

Dunton’s glance shifted between Geoffrey Chaucer and Andrew, who hadn’t moved, despite being ordered to the infirmary. The prior said: ‘Geoffrey, would you mind accompanying Will? I must stay here. But the boy should not go alone. There is a bad man on the loose and, besides, it may be necessary to…to give an account…’

Chaucer understood. The prior did not wish the news of John Morton’s death to come from the mouth of the boy, even assuming he was capable of delivering it. Young Will would probably recover soon enough, but at the moment he was still affected by witnessing the mortal violence done to his uncle.

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘The family live outside the main gate, Master Chaucer,’ said Andrew. ‘There is a row of dwellings. Theirs is a house apart. It is Mistress Susanna’s you are looking for.’

Geoffrey indicated to Will that he should go with him. They walked through the gatehouse and turned left into the outer court. There was a second arched gateway at the end. Chaucer had been greeted here the previous evening by Brother Philip. Now a lay figure was lounging in the shadow of the gate. He was a hulky man. He was picking at his teeth with a twig. His face lightened when he saw Will but not in a pleasant way.

‘Morning, young Will,’ he said. ‘How are you this fine morning? How’s your mother?’

He cupped his hands under imagined breasts. The boy did not respond. Then the man seemed to notice Chaucer for the first time.

‘You keep this gate?’ said Geoffrey.

‘I help the brother who does. Who wants to know?’

‘Never mind that. What I want to know is whether anyone has passed through here.’

The large man pretended to think. He scraped between his teeth with the twig and examined the result with more interest than he was giving to his questioner. ‘Many people pass through this gate,’ he said finally. Then, seeing Geoffrey’s expression, added: ‘What’s happened?’

‘A workman is dead. Killed by one of his fellows. If the killer attempts to pass, you must stop him.’

The hulking man stopped lounging and stood up straight. Geoffrey took pleasure at the confusion and fear which settled on his face.

‘How will I know him? How can I stop him if there is only one of me?’

‘Then you are equally matched because there is only one of him. You should recognize him easily. He has a hand like this.’ Geoffrey held up his left hand like a crooked claw. ‘Oh, and he may be running away. Adam is his name.’

The gatekeeper started. He obviously recognized the description. Without waiting to see any further results of his words, Geoffrey ushered Will through the arch and into the street beyond. He didn’t really think that the murderous Adam would try to leave the priory by the main gate, but he was satisfied enough to have alarmed the deputy gatekeeper. The chances were that the fugitive would make his escape to the south or east where the priory’s grounds joined the flat countryside surrounding them. It wasn’t surprising that the insolent keeper had heard nothing. The scuffle and the murder had taken place in the inner courtyard a hundred yards away, behind thick walls and buildings that blocked the noise. Anyway, the monks did not go in for the uproar and the hue and cry which would have followed a similar attack in the city streets.

Outside the gate he paused. ‘Where is it you live, Will? Where is your home?’

The freckle-faced lad hesitated, then pointed to his right. The wall of the priory continued for a distance. They passed the entrance to another cemetery. The crosses and stone markers here were dotted more at random than their equivalents in the monks’ graveyard. Chaucer guessed this was where the lay workers would be buried. Quite a few of them, accumulated over the two hundred and fifty years of the priory’s existence. Never any shortage of the dead.

To their left the land stretched away to the muddy foreshore of the river, which glinted in the sun. The further bank was half-obscured by the haze of the morning, although the White Tower of the great castle on the northern bank was visible. The sails of a few boats stood prominent against the flatness. Gulls swooped and squawked above the water. It must be somewhere here that the miraculous little cross had landed, dropped from the beak of a bird that was larger than the largest eagle.

They came to a row of mean dwellings, more or less single rooms equipped with a door and walls and a roof with a hole to allow smoke out and a window-space at the front to let light in. Each house seemed to be leaning against the one next to it for support. If you took away the end one, they might all topple down. A couple of children were playing outside a doorway. One of them waved at Will and he waved back. Chaucer assumed that they were heading for the row, but Will wandered beyond it, in the direction of a house standing a little apart from the others.

At that instant a woman emerged from the door. She was carrying a leather bucket. She was about to throw its contents beyond the door but stopped when she saw Geoffrey and Will. Chaucer realized who she must be from her face. She was attractive, with an ample figure apparent even under a loose smock, but there was an echo of her looks in the boy. This was the woman, he remembered, who supposedly had a priest for a father. It was possible. Priests were human. They might not be allowed to marry, but they had female housekeepers and other servants.

‘What’s he done?’ she said to Geoffrey.

‘He’s done nothing. Are you Mistress Morton? Susanna Morton?’

‘Yes. What’s wrong?’

‘Is your husband here?’

‘Inside, sir.’

The woman moved from the door. She stood uncertainly clasping the bucket of water. Chaucer peered into the room. After the brightness of the day, he couldn’t see much. The remains of a fire sent up a spiral of smoke, some of which found its way through the hole in the roof. On the far side was a large bed, which took up perhaps a quarter of all the available space. A man was lying on it, a blanket pulled up to his chin. Next to him was a great bolster. Since the bed would contain the whole family, the bolster was probably used to demarcate areas of it. Even as Geoffrey watched, the sleeping man groaned and murmured some inaudible words. Meantime, Will ignored his mother and father. He brushed past Chaucer and went to a corner of the room. He crouched down and busied himself about some activity.

‘Have you come to report on him, sir?’ said Mistress Morton. ‘He’s sick. Celler knows he’s sick and cannot work.’

Celler? She meant the cellarer of the priory.

‘He tried to get up this morning but his legs would not stand him,’ continued the woman. ‘He was sweating and very feeble.’

‘What is the matter with him?’

She shrugged. ‘Fever. He has had it ever since he was down underground.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Geoffrey, not sure what the woman was talking about. ‘I haven’t come to check on your husband. Anyone can see he is too ill to work. Can we speak somewhere private?’

Even as he said the words he realized that it was a foolish question. This was as private as they were going to get. Already the presence of an unfamiliar figure had caused the occupants of other dwellings to poke their heads out, perhaps alerted by the playing children. Geoffrey moved into the shadow of the Mortons’ doorway.

‘It is the wife of John Morton I wish to speak to.’

‘John’s wife? He has a wife over Chatham way. But they had a falling-out and so John has been living here with us for as long as there is work at the priory. He is brother to my Simon.’

She nodded towards the man in the bed. Then, realizing the drift of Chaucer’s words and picking up on his half-whispered tones, she said: ‘Something has happened, hasn’t it? Something’s happened to our John?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

Swiftly Geoffrey explained the circumstances of her brother-in-law’s death. He thought it best to give her an unvarnished account. A fight of some kind in the inner court of the priory – and even as he said this, he realized he didn’t know whether there had been a fight or a simple, unprovoked attack by the claw-handed Adam – which had resulted in a shocking death. In truth, there wasn’t very much more to say. Mistress Morton dropped the leather bucket, and dirty water splashed over their feet and leggings. She stood wringing her hands. She swayed against the doorpost. Will looked up at his mother from the corner where he was still crouched.

‘I knew it,’ she said.

‘Knew what?’

‘Ever since they were working down in that cursed place, in that cellar, and brought back-’

The woman stopped herself and put a hand to her mouth. Chaucer noticed that she was gap-toothed.

‘I don’t understand, Mistress Morton. What cursed place? Brought back what?’

‘They were down in the cellar last week. It is ghost-ridden. There are bones down there. Bad fortune comes to all those who go there. I wish I hadn’t picked out-’

Again the woman paused as if on the verge of saying the wrong thing. Then she went on: ‘My husband Simon has been afflicted with a fever and now you say that John is dead and, look, I scalded my arm only the other day.’ She rolled up the sleeve of her smock and displayed a stretch of raw, puckered skin. ‘The boiling water leaped out and took hold of my arm,’ she continued. ‘It has never done that before. And John is dead, too, God rest his soul.’

Geoffrey thought that, in her grief, the woman must be confused between an ordinary household accident and a violent death. By this stage some of the other women from the row had come bustling out, together with their children. There was a mixture of curiosity and pity on the faces of the adults, more curiosity than pity perhaps. All the same Mistress Morton stepped out from the shadow of the doorway and as if by instinct went towards her neighbours, who immediately surrounded her. There was a moment’s silence, which was broken by a babble of questions and exclamations.

Geoffrey was relieved. He reckoned he could leave it to the neighbours to comfort Mistress Morton, if comfort was what she required on hearing of her brother-in-law’s death. Nor was it his responsibility to stay and tell John’s brother, Simon. The sick man was surely incapable of understanding or, at the least, it would make the blow even worse to inflict the news on him in his current state. Simon Morton was well out of things.

Geoffrey began to walk back in the direction of the priory. He hadn’t gone far when he sensed someone behind him and felt a tug on his sleeve. It was Will, the dead man’s nephew. Looking at the smile on his freckle-filled face, Geoffrey grasped that the boy really was a little light in the head. He was all cheerfulness. It was as if he’d forgotten about the fatal violence he’d witnessed in the courtyard. Probably he had. He held out his clenched hands, the backs uppermost. He nodded at Chaucer, as if to say ‘you know what to do next’.

So Geoffrey tapped the boy’s right hand. Delighted, Will flipped it over to reveal a palm which contained nothing but grime. The boy put his hands behind him and, after a bit of fumbling, brought them round to his front once more. Wondering how much longer he’d have to humour the lad but unwilling to turn his back on him, Geoffrey tapped the clenched left hand, which the boy promptly opened. Chaucer had been half-expecting the left hand to be empty, either because Will had switched whatever he was holding to the other one or even because he wasn’t holding anything in the first place. So it was with a small thrill that he saw that Will had indeed been concealing an object.

Chaucer made no attempt to take it but bent forward to examine a ring, an old and dulled golden ring. It looked valuable.

‘Very good, Will. You had me fooled for a bit,’ he said. ‘You should take that back to wherever you got it from. Run along now.’

In the back of his mind was the thought that if the boy was caught with the ring he might be accused of stealing it. But Will seemed to have no intention of running along. His cheerful expression was replaced by a look of disappointment. He thrust the palm holding the ring towards Chaucer.

‘No, I do not want it. It’s not mine. It’s probably not yours to give away either, Will. Put it back where you got it, I say again.’

But Will would not budge. He stood opposite Geoffrey, insistently proffering the ring. Over the boy’s shoulder, Geoffrey could see the gaggle of neighbours still clustered about Will’s mother. He wondered whether the ring had come from the Morton house. It didn’t look like the kind of thing a mason’s family would have. He remembered that the sick man’s wife had said something about an item brought back to the house from…from where? The cellar she’d also referred to?

As if in confirmation, Will said: ‘Down among the bones.’

Once again he shoved his hand forward so that the ring was almost under Chaucer’s nose and repeated ‘down among the bones’ in a strange singsong, as if the phrase was part of a children’s rhyme. The simpler course would be to take the ring, Geoffrey decided. The odds were that it did not belong to the boy or to his mother or father. He could make enquiries inside the priory, without revealing how he’d come by the thing. He could pretend that he’d found it by chance (which was correct, in a way). He didn’t want to get Will or his family into trouble. Unless one of them really was a thief, of course.

Chaucer plucked the ring from the boy’s open hand, and the grin that split the other’s face told him he’d made the right move in the game they were playing. He slipped the ring into a pocket. Will moved a pace or two back, then turned and ran off in the direction of home.

Baffled, Geoffrey resumed his walk to the priory. Passing the lay cemetery, he reflected that his hopes for peace and quiet in this place had been destroyed and then rebuked himself: a man had just died, after all. His own hopes didn’t count for much against that. Passing through the outer gate he was unsurprised to see no sign of the hulking gatekeeper. With a murderer on the loose, the man had obviously decided to make himself scarce. The inner courtyard where the killing had occurred was empty too. There was still blood on the ground, already dried and fading in the sun. Chaucer noticed that his quill pen was where he’d left it on the block of stone. He didn’t imagine he’d be resuming a quiet morning of writing. He thought for a moment of his house in Aldgate and wondered what his family was doing.

He walked on past the cloister. Everywhere was deserted. It was eerily silent. His thoughts turning to the claw-handed man on the loose, he was startled to see a figure rounding the corner of the monks’ sleeping quarters.

But it was only Andrew coming towards him, the other mason. There was dried blood on his shirt from the cut he’d received as the killer escaped. Presumably he’d had the wound attended to in the infirmary.

‘Have they caught him yet?’ Chaucer asked.

‘I do not think so,’ said Andrew.

‘I have taken the boy home,’ said Geoffrey. ‘His mother knows now. Perhaps you can tell her more.’

‘Don’t know much more than you, Master Chaucer.’

‘What was the cause of the fight?’

‘It was no honest fight but a coward’s attack. Like I said, Adam was new to us. A surly bad-tempered fellow, out for trouble from the moment he started. Possibly he was bitter on account of his withered hand. He made fun of simple Will and then, when his uncle defended the lad, Adam turned on him. But if you ask me…’ Andrew’s voice tailed away.

‘Yes?’

‘…I can’t explain it, but it was as though Adam was looking for an excuse to go for John Morton. There’d been strong words before you stuck your head out of the window, Master Chaucer, and afterwards there was quiet for a bit while we got on with our work. Then Adam suddenly leaped on old John and did for him with a blow to the neck. With the chisel. I tell you one thing, though. No true mason would use his tools in that fashion. We masons are a peaceable bunch. He was no proper member of our guild.’

Geoffrey nodded. Andrew was right. You rarely saw a quarrel among the masons. Their work demanded skill and concentration and a kind of rhythm, a combination of head and hand. Perhaps the physical labour left them too tired for scraps and fights; perhaps the fact that they were frequently employed in building churches and other holy places sobered them. While Andrew was talking, a question had been running through Chaucer’s head. He decided to trust the other man and ask it.

‘Have you been working on a cellar recently?’

At once Andrew turned wary. ‘A cellar, sir?’

‘Mistress Morton told me that was where her husband caught his fever. She said it was a cursed spot.’ Chaucer said nothing about the ring in his pocket which might have been retrieved from the cellar.

‘Oh, that place,’ said Andrew. He seemed to debate with himself whether to elaborate, then said: ‘Yes, Master Chaucer, there are all sorts of tales told of it. I don’t believe the prior himself would venture down there after dark – though it’s always dark down there, of course. Yes, it’s true. John and Simon were sent down to do some repairs by the cellarer, Brother Michael.’

‘But not you or Will?’

‘Will is a delicate creature. In truth, he is not fitted for much. Me and the boy were seeing to another job – a boundary wall. I prefer to work outside.’

‘Not Adam either, the one-handed man? He wasn’t working down in this cellar?’

‘I tell you, Master Chaucer, Adam had been with us only a couple of days since Simon fell sick. I didn’t know him from, well, didn’t know him from Adam.’

Geoffrey sensed the mason’s unease – or perhaps it was simple impatience with his string of questions. And, indeed, he could not have said exactly why he was asking them.

‘Where is this, ah, cursed spot?’

‘It lies under the cellarer’s chamber on the other side of the cloister.’

Since the cellarer was the person in overall charge of provisioning, naturally there would be storage areas under his part of the priory. Geoffrey might have gone on to enquire exactly what ‘tales’ were told about the cellar, but at that moment there was a strange flurry of sound and Prior Dunton burst into view, accompanied by Brother Peter the librarian with other monks trailing behind. They were walking fast but turning to look behind them. At first Chaucer thought they were being pursued but, seeing him and Andrew, Richard Dunton changed direction.

‘You’ve caught him? Or he’s escaped, the murderer?’ said Chaucer. He could think of no other reason for the strained expression on the prior’s face.

‘Oh, he has been caught – or escaped if you like,’ said Richard Dunton. ‘He’s over there. In our cemetery. He’s dead, too, now. Come and see.’

At this point, or shortly afterwards, Richard Dunton became concerned at the two deaths at Bermondsey Priory, not so much because of the events themselves but because of their effect on the priory’s standing and reputation. Two violent deaths, with the second coming hard on the heels of the first. At least the claw-handed Adam had had the foresight to die in a cemetery. Or rather he had been struck down there. Or had struck himself down. He’d climbed a tree in the graveyard, wrapped one end of a rope about his neck and the other around a branch. Then he’d toppled off the branch and hung there, slowly throttling.

Dunton and Chaucer had stood looking up at the body suspended from the branch of an oak. The face was livid, and the man’s tongue poked like a stick out of his almost toothless mouth. His torso shivered and his feet swayed in the breeze. A few paces behind them stood Brother Peter, the librarian and sacrist. Chaucer had been surprised to learn that, in addition to his other duties, Brother Peter had charge of the burial ground. He was muttering and crossing himself at the sacrilege of a man committing suicide in the bounds of the cemetery. Keeping him company was the moon-faced monk who had the post of revestiarius.

‘Well, he has met a quick retribution,’ said Geoffrey.

‘It had been better to have him arrested and brought to trial,’ said the prior.

Geoffrey didn’t remark that the result would have been the same: a noose tightening about Adam’s neck until he expired. Nevertheless, Dunton was right. It would have been much better if the murderer of John Morton had been apprehended in the proper fashion. Now it rather looked as though the murderer had taken the law into his own hands. Geoffrey reached up and touched the trailing end of the black girdle wound about the dead man’s neck. It was similar to the girdles that the monks used to secure their dark garments.

Richard Dunton was no fool. He nodded and said: ‘I can see where your thoughts are directed, Geoffrey. But it would not be so difficult to come by one of those cords. It is obvious what has happened here.’

‘It is?’

‘This man Adam, overcome by remorse, flees to the cemetery, where he plans to die. He is already equipped with the cord that will snuff out his wretched life. While we are searching the place for him, he is quietly preparing himself for death. Remember Judas the Apostate, who hanged himself from a tree after betraying our Saviour. Remorse can call on the most unlikely men, and call quickly and unexpectedly too.’

‘Judas had the use of his two hands, I believe,’ said Geoffrey, indicating the withered hand of the man swaying from the oak.

‘Men in despair can accomplish great and terrible things,’ said the prior.

Yes, thought Chaucer, but not impossible things like clambering up an oak, crawling along a branch, fastening one end of a cord about his neck and the other around the branch, all the time employing only one hand. However, he could not have said for certain whether the dead man did not have some limited use of his left hand, and the prior was surely correct when he claimed that men in desperation can do things they’d be incapable of in normal circumstances.

‘If only he had chosen some other place,’ said Brother Peter, speaking aloud for the first time. ‘Why did he have to choose this sanctified ground?’

‘Hush now, Brother Peter. The circle is closed,’ said Dunton. ‘This man killed another man and now he has done away with himself, God rest both their souls. We must cut him down.’

He beckoned to a gaggle of lay workers who’d been standing at a distance, out of respect for the prior or the dead man or both.

‘But why did he kill John the mason?’ said Chaucer as they left the cemetery while the murderer’s body was being cut down.

‘I do not know. You were there. A quarrel, wasn’t it?’ The prior suddenly broke off and said in a more anxious tone: ‘You intend to report on this back at court, Geoffrey?’

And Chaucer, who’d been thinking of no such thing, said: ‘You cannot keep it a secret.’

The reality was that, at court, no one would be remotely interested in a spat between a couple of artisans which had resulted in a murder and an apparent suicide. But it seemed to Geoffrey that Dunton had been too quick to declare the matter closed. If the prior hadn’t been worried for the reputation of his house, he began to show some concern now.

‘Very well, Master Chaucer, if you consider that there is anything…untoward…about this sad affair, then you are welcome to pry into it and ask questions. I know how much influence you have at court. Go where you like. Talk to whomever you wish. I shall even give the brothers dispensation if you need to speak to any of them. Ask away to your heart’s content and satisfy yourself that this case is exactly what it seems, a vicious man who hanged himself after being overcome by remorse. Meanwhile, the life of this place must continue as though nothing has happened.’

Chaucer noticed the coolness and relative formality in Richard Dunton’s tone. He thought that the prior was overestimating his influence at court but, of course, he didn’t say so. It was a touchy subject. Any influence was largely because of the connections between his wife Philippa, her widowed sister Katherine Swyneford and John of Gaunt himself. Officially Katherine was resident in the Savoy Palace as magistra to Gaunt’s children by his first wife, and unofficially she was there as Gaunt’s mistress. The magistra pretence was necessary for Katherine because Gaunt’s second wife – the noble Constanza, from the kingdom of Castile – lived under the same ample roof. It was because of her sister Katherine’s status that Philippa Chaucer and her family had been given choice lodgings on the south side of the palace overlooking the river, even though they’d recently moved back to Aldgate.

Chaucer wondered how far knowledge of the affair between John and Katherine had spread. Certainly it was whispered about at court. Had the rumours reached as far as Bermondsey Priory? Did people believe that Chaucer, because he was brother-in-law to the woman who was Gaunt’s lover, had to be humoured? Or was Richard Dunton’s belief in his ‘influence’ connected only to his reputation as a court poet? Whichever version was right, it was sufficient to open a few doors.

And opening doors was what Geoffrey Chaucer was about to do now. He slipped inside the entrance and peered at the precipitous flight of steps running down into darkness. This must be the place: the storage space under the cellarer’s area of the priory, the place where John and Simon Morton had been sent to carry out some repairs before one fell sick and the other died prematurely.

He’d waited until the next call to prayer (the life of the priory continuing as normal) before searching out the spot first described to him by Andrew. He had a kind of licence to wander and investigate, yet he preferred to do it more or less unobserved. He had a particular reason for descending to this subterranean chamber. It was as a result of the hints dropped by Mistress Morton and Andrew the mason and a conversation with the cellarer, Brother Michael.

The monk who went by the name of Michael was a significant figure in the life of the priory, responsible not merely for overseeing provisions and fuel supplies but also for the upkeep of the house. The individual who held the position of cellarer or bursar had to be capable – and preferably devout – since his job entailed frequent absences and therefore exemption from other monkish duties. He was out and about in the world, dealing with suppliers and carriers. Chaucer had noticed the cellarer at supper the previous evening. Brother Michael conformed to the traditional, slightly hostile picture of the monk. He had a generous shape and a round, cheerful face. Chaucer was reminded of a tavern-keeper he knew in Southwark, a man called Harry Bailey, who was all teeth and smiles on the surface but shrewd and watchful underneath.

Later in the morning and after the discovery of Adam’s body in the monks’ cemetery, Brother Michael had sought Geoffrey out, no doubt under instructions from the prior. It was wonderful, thought Chaucer, what having a foothold in court – or being related to a royal mistress – could do. People became so willing to help.

‘The prior says that you wish to know about Adam, Master Chaucer. I don’t know much but I will tell you what I can if you come with me.’

They entered the cellarer’s building on the western side of the cloister, and Brother Michael ushered Geoffrey upstairs to a well-appointed chamber. Chaucer was surprised to see there the lay person who’d been standing by the outer gatehouse and who had teased the simple Will. He was hovering in the region of a table piled with papers. He seemed about to speak to the cellarer when he observed Chaucer entering the room behind Brother Michael. The monk didn’t trouble to keep the displeasure out of his voice when he said: ‘What are you doing here, Osbert?’

‘I thought I dropped something when I was here earlier, master, but I must have been mistaken.’

Osbert brushed past Brother Michael and left the room, without looking either man in the eye. ‘Insolent fellow,’ said the monk. Then, without asking his guest whether he wanted a drink, he poured red wine into a goblet, which he passed to Chaucer, indicating that he should make himself at ease in one of the chairs. He filled his own goblet and sat down with a plump sigh opposite Geoffrey. Chaucer noticed a black cat extended on the windowsill, probably the one he’d seen earlier in the inner court. He waited. He was interested to see what approach Brother Michael would take.

‘Of course, I took the man on only as an act of charity,’ were the cellarer’s first words. ‘He said he had been working at one of our sister houses, St Pancras of Lewes. He said that his hand had been crushed by a falling block of stone.’

‘You say “he said”,’ said Geoffrey. ‘It sounds as though you didn’t believe him.’

Brother Michael shrugged and spilled some wine on his habit. He didn’t appear to notice. Like blood, the wine stain would hardly show. ‘Master Chaucer, I am not a man of the world as you are. If someone tells me something, I tend to believe it. If a man comes to me desperate for employment and claims to have received an injury while working in the service of our order at another house, then it is almost my duty to see that such a person is accommodated. He had already applied to me once and I had turned him down because, to be truthful, I didn’t much care for his looks. But when he asked again and since we were short-handed on account of sickness, I took him on.’

‘Shouldn’t it have been the responsibility of the Lewes house to show him charity in the first place, Brother Michael? And why did the dead man end up here in Bermondsey?’

‘I don’t know, Master Geoffrey, if I may call you that. The man hinted to me that he had a falling-out with someone in St Pancras, and in view of the tragic events that have occurred here I think that that is more than likely. As for why he finished up in the priory, well, some men prefer to wander where their feet take them…and his feet brought him to Bermondsey. Another drink?’

Chaucer shook his head. The cellarer poured himself more wine. His large fingers were loaded with rings. Geoffrey was reminded of the ring still in his pocket, the one handed to him by simple William together with the comment about bones. Something about Brother Michael’s story didn’t altogether convince Geoffrey. Whether it was the cellarer’s claim not to be a man of the world, a sure sign (in Chaucer’s eyes) that the speaker was the opposite of unworldly, or whether it was his defensive readiness to explain why he’d taken on Adam, he couldn’t say.

‘We needed another man, you understand. One of the masons – what’s his name? Simon – he was sick. Still is, I think.’

‘I understand that Simon Morton fell sick with a fever after working with his brother in a cellar below here,’ said Geoffrey. He was surprised, and gratified, at the change in Brother Michael’s expression at these words. The broad, cheerful face closed up. Chaucer was again reminded of the Southwark tavern-keeper, the way Harry Bailey’s expression would alter if there was a dispute over a reckoning. To conceal the change, Brother Michael carried the goblet to his full lips once more. When he brought it down again, he’d recovered.

‘That’s true. He caught a fever after working in the cellar. Post hoc sed non propter hoc, though. You understand me?’

‘It was a coincidence that Simon Morton got sick, and nothing to do with what he was working on in the cellar. Yes, I understand. What were he and his brother doing, by the way?’

‘Some stonework had given way down there. They were repairing it. They are masons, Master Chaucer. That is their job.’

‘I hear there are tales told about the place.’

‘This is an old foundation. It is built on dead men’s bones. Of course, there are tales told about every corner of the priory. There is nothing remarkable about the cellar, nothing at all. Is there anything more you wish to know? I have a heap of business to attend to.’

Brother Michael gestured towards the table laden with papers and parchment. At some point during their conversation the black cat had removed itself from the windowsill and settled itself among Brother Michael’s papers. Noticing this, the cellarer tut-tutted but made no move to shift the animal. Chaucer would have wagered heavily that the cellarer was not really concerned about the business he had to attend to. The cat would remain undisturbed as a paperweight. But he took the hint and got up to leave, thanking Michael for his time.

Yet when he was in the open air, he wondered what he’d achieved despite the undercurrents of the interview. The only help to an investigation was the ring which was still in his pocket and which might have been discovered in the underground room. So he armed himself with a lantern from his room and went in search of the entrance. It was easy enough to find on the western end of the cloister.

He descended the steep steps. At the bottom was a stout door. Half-hoping that it would be locked and so frustrate his search, he tested the iron handle. But the door wasn’t locked, and it opened smoothly and silently to his touch. He jumped when he felt something brush against his leg. But it was only the cat, the large black cat he’d recently seen stretched at ease on Brother Michael’s windowsill and among his papers. Now it was eager to get into the vault ahead of him. Be my guest, he thought. There’s no accounting for taste, especially a cat’s.

Holding up the lantern, Geoffrey emerged at one corner of what seemed by the uncertain light to be a long, rectangular chamber. Old sacking and fragments of wood were strewn along one side, while on the opposite side man-sized niches had been cut into the walls. Nothing at present seemed to be stored here, perhaps on account of the damp. It struck chill, and he could hear the drip of water. He should not stay down here long. The air was bad, bad enough to have put a man on his sick-bed. Geoffrey Chaucer felt uncomfortable. Was it because he felt like a trespasser even though the prior had given him permission to wander? Not just that, he decided. It was as if a weight was pressing on his shoulders. No wonder the masons didn’t enjoy working here.

Nevertheless, now he’d got himself down here he ought to have a proper look for…for what? After a few moments of investigation with the lantern, Geoffrey thought he’d discovered the spot where the Morton brothers must have been doing their repair work. Most of the niches in the wall were veiled in cobwebs but a couple were clear. The mortar appeared fresher in these recesses, and there were crumbs of stone on the ground. He wondered why repairs were necessary, since nothing of value was stored in this place, then supposed that there was a risk of ground water breaking through the skin of stone and rendering the chamber quite unusable in future.

Geoffrey walked the length of the chamber, which was solidly vaulted. The cat accompanied him, then lost interest and went to investigate something in a dark corner. As Chaucer drew towards the further end, the sense of oppression grew stronger, and by the time he’d reached the wall he was almost gasping for breath for all that the chill in the air was increasing. He gave a cursory inspection to the wall that closed off the room. Curiously, it appeared to be of a later date than the other stonework. No, not later, he decided, looking more closely by the lantern-light. But finished more quickly and carelessly – the blocks were not so neatly aligned and the mortar was slightly crumbled. Lantern in his left hand, he put the palm of his right to the wall and at once removed it, as though the surface was either very hot or very cold (but it was neither). It was curious that the masons had not been instructed to carry out repairs here as well as on the niches in the longer wall. The only reason could be that there was no danger from water seeping through from the other side, and that therefore whatever lay beyond this wall was not earth but a hollow space or cavity. Geoffrey might have confirmed this by rapping on the wall, but something kept his free hand by his side. In any case this was not the area of the chamber which concerned him. There was no more to see at this end.

Thankfully, he turned back towards the entrance. His eyes were absorbed by the circle of light as he picked his way across the flagged floor, but he was abruptly aware of a dark flicker in the area at the bottom of the steps by the half-open door. All at once it occurred to him that he’d been foolish in descending to this chamber by himself, apart from the cat. But it was human company he had now, not company inside the chamber but beyond the door, which thudded to with a draught of air. Chaucer ran towards the door, but it was firmly shut by the time he reached it. He heard the scrape of a key being turned on the other side and then feet – very rapid feet – ascending the steps.

He rapped on the solid wood and called out. The black cat joined him and miaowed loudly. One of the brothers or lay workers must have been making a tour of inspection and observed the open door to the crypt. Without bothering to check whether anyone was inside he’d closed it and turned the key. Yet even as this innocent explanation ran through Chaucer’s head, a more sinister one was keeping pace with it. This action was deliberate. Anybody coming to lock up would surely have glimpsed the light of the swaying lantern or heard the sound of steps within. But the decisive evidence was the running feet. No one honestly engaged on fastening doors would run away from the scene as if his life depended on it.

He tried the door again but it was well secured. Then he called out more loudly. Not a cry for help but ‘Hey!’ and ‘Is anybody there?’ He paused and waited for the sound of descending feet and rattling keys and the breathless apology that would follow.

No sounds came.

Geoffrey took a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm himself. He felt his skin crawling. Ever since childhood he’d had a fear of being shut in. He did not relish being imprisoned in this place even for a few minutes. For it would only be a few minutes, surely, before someone heard his cries?

Then he recalled the thickness of the walls, built to last, built as if to muffle sounds. No one knew he was down here either, no one except the individual who’d locked the door on him. Geoffrey’s absence would be noticed after a time, certainly. But would anyone come looking for him? And, if they did, would they trouble to explore a deserted, unused crypt? Wouldn’t it be assumed that he’d simply decided to quit the priory, perhaps unsettled by the day’s events? After all, he wasn’t bound by the rules of the place. He was free to come and go. If he didn’t appear at mealtimes, would Richard Dunton conclude that he had got fed up with his Bermondsey sojourn and returned to his wife and family across the river?

A sudden, grim vision flashed through Chaucer’s overactive brain. The discovery of a starved, desiccated corpse after some weeks. It was an absurd image, yet not so absurd as to prevent him breaking out in a sweat. He renewed his pummelling on the door and his shouting. He listened. Nothing, apart from the drip of water somewhere in the depths of the chamber and the bell for prayer resounding distantly – very distantly – outside. He might as well save his breath. There would be no one around to listen to him for the next half-hour or so.

He examined the candle in its socket inside the cylindrical lantern. It was reduced to a stub. It was the candle he’d been reading by in bed the previous night, transferred by him from a candleholder to the lantern in preparation for this little expedition. It would have been prudent to have equipped himself with a fresh candle. Too late now. Unpleasant as it was being stuck down here, it would be many times worse being without any illumination at all.

Well, no doubt someone would appear in answer to his calls sooner or later, but in the meantime he must explore his temporary prison. The door was immovable but perhaps there was some other way in and out of the chamber. If he hadn’t noticed it on his first inspection, then that would be because he hadn’t been searching for it. And if he was going to find it, he needed the few remaining minutes of light from the candle stub. He made a more thorough tour of the vault, running the light over the walls and fetching up once more at the end wall. Again the sense of airless oppression grew stronger even as the candlelight began to give ominous flickers. Geoffrey was on the point of giving up and returning to the main door – the monks must surely have finished their prayers by now – when he felt a draught at knee height.

Geoffrey dipped down with the lantern and his heart leaped to see what he hadn’t observed before, a small aperture at the base of the wall. He got down on hands and knees, observing that the black cat had rejoined him.

‘Is this a way out?’ he said to his companion.

Depositing the lantern beside him with care to keep it out of the draught, Geoffrey pushed his head into the opening. It was a little wider than his shoulders. A waft of dank, odorous air met his nose. The hole gave on to a kind of shaft, sloping down at an angle. He held the lantern over the hole to reveal ancient stonework. He could hear nothing but had the sense of water below. Probably the aperture gave access to the priory’s drainage system. Somewhere, the descending shaft would connect to a system of channels which would eventually emerge into the open. The prospect of slithering down the shaft and then making his way like a rat through a besmeared and confusing network of underground passages, perhaps for hundreds of yards, did not appeal.

He had a choice. He could make his way back towards the main door and resume his attempt to get noticed, or he could launch himself down the stone shaft. At that moment the candle in the lantern gave a final flicker and went out, and a blanket of dark fell on the chamber. Geoffrey was still on hands and knees, debating. He felt the whisk of the cat’s tail against his sweating face.

At the same instant, and to Chaucer’s overwhelming relief, he heard a banging on the door and a voice calling: ‘Is anyone there?’ He shouted in reply and there was a jingle of keys and the sound of the door swinging inwards. A figure stood at the entrance. It was one of the brothers.

Geoffrey levered himself to his feet.

‘Who’s there?’ said the monk.

‘Geoffrey Chaucer, a visitor to your priory.’

‘What are you doing down here?’

By now Chaucer had reached the door. He recognized the monk. It was the revestiarius, the young man who was assistant to old Peter and whose name was…what was it now?…ah yes, Ralph. The brother also recognized Chaucer as he drew closer to daylight, which reached the bottom of the steps.

‘Why, sir! I did not know it was you.’

‘A foolish error. I was exploring the place and stupidly got myself trapped in here somehow.’

The cat appeared and shot past the two men. Brother Ralph smiled and said fondly: ‘Magnus, you foolish thing.’

Chaucer reflected on the appropriateness of the Latin name. It was a black barrel of an animal, well fed on kitchen scraps. He’d been on the point of describing how he’d been deliberately locked inside but something checked him. Better to treat it as an accident.

The young monk stood fingering the bunch of keys. He said: ‘Someone reported shouting from down here. I dismissed his words, then thought I’d better make certain after all.’

‘I’m glad you did.’

Brother Ralph glanced at the lantern which Chaucer was holding. ‘You were searching for something?’ he said.

‘No, I was only curious to see this place. I have heard stories of it.’

‘Stories?’

‘Of spirits and hauntings and suchlike,’ said Geoffrey. He was truthful enough in claiming he had not been searching for anything in particular, but he grew a little uneasy to find himself blathering away about spirits. Brother Ralph said nothing but stood aside to allow Geoffrey to pass him and then secured the door to the underground chamber. They climbed the steps to the outside. It was early afternoon. The sun shone full into the inner court, giving Geoffrey a better glimpse of Brother Ralph. He was a short young man whose pale complexion was emphasized by his black habit. He had a bland, amiable look. Chaucer noticed the sacrist and librarian, Brother Peter, passing in the background. The sun caught Peter’s spectacles, making them glint under his cowl. It was hard to tell but he seemed to be looking with curiosity at Geoffrey and Brother Ralph.

‘Is that place down there your province?’ asked Geoffrey, indicating the steps they’d just climbed. ‘I thought the revestiarius dealt only in linen and hangings.’

‘You are right, Master Chaucer,’ said Brother Ralph. ‘This whole area is the cellarer’s and the sub-cellarer’s, but I could not find them so I took the keys from their office. I must return them now.’

‘My thanks, Brother Ralph. You saved me from an unpleasant stretch in the dark. I am well rebuked for my curiosity.’

What next?

For the second time that day Geoffrey passed through the outer court of the priory. The hulking gatekeeper was back in position. That is, he was leaning against the wall and picking at his teeth with a twig. Geoffrey wondered if it was the same fragment of wood as before. He halted opposite the man as though a thought had just occurred to him.

‘Did you find it, Osbert?’

‘Find what?’

‘Whatever it was that you had mislaid in Brother Michael’s chamber.’

As on the previous occasion, when he’d warned Osbert of the murderous fugitive, Chaucer was speaking more to discomfit the gatekeeper than anything else. Something about the man set his teeth on edge. But Osbert was ready to give as good as he got. Removing the twig from his mouth, he said: ‘Where are you off to, sir?’

‘To visit a grieving house.’

‘Prior Dunton gave orders that no one was to leave this place.’

‘That was when there was a murderer on the loose. Now he has done away with himself there is no more danger.’

‘Done away with himself! Believe that and you’ll believe anything.’

This chimed with Chaucer’s own opinion. He approached Osbert. The deputy gatekeeper was almost a head taller. Yet Geoffrey was accustomed to dealing with people like this, people with a little authority who turned into jacks-in-office.

‘What do you know, Osbert?’

‘I know what I know.’

‘I expect you do,’ said Geoffrey, turning away. He hadn’t gone more than a few feet before the other said: ‘Don’t you want to know what I know?’

‘If you wish to tell me, man, then do so. Do not waste my time with riddling utterances.’

‘You are going to visit a grieving house, you say. It is the Morton house you mean, isn’t it? But the grief will not be that of a living brother for a dead one. Simon will not be so sorry at the death of John. The only sorrow there will be Mistress Susanna Morton’s. Her you’ve seen?’

Again Osbert made the cupping gesture with his hands at chest height. Geoffrey nodded. The deputy gatekeeper licked his lips.

‘I’ve seen ’em too, all unbuttoned and loose.’

‘If I want dirty talk, Osbert, I can find better sources than you, more inventive ones.’

‘Wait, sir. Listen. I’ve seen Mistress Morton down by the river. I came across her and him one morning lately, going at it hammer and tongs behind some bushes. That woman and her husband’s brother, the one that’s dead and gone. She saw I saw too. He didn’t, he was too busy. But she saw me with her great goggle eyes over his heaving shoulder.’

‘Did her husband know?’

The gatekeeper shrugged. ‘He could smell it on her, I expect. She’s loose in the hilts, that one. For all that she gives herself airs. That’s on account of her parentage.’

Parentage? Chaucer recalled that Mistress Morton was supposed to be the daughter of a priest. But he wasn’t going to indulge Osbert by joining in the slurs on the woman, especially over something for which she bore no responsibility. Instead he said: ‘You’ve tried it on, too, haven’t you, Osbert? You’ve chanced your arm with Mistress Morton.’

And not succeeded, he thought. Otherwise you would not be talking about the woman in quite these terms.

‘So what if I have?’ said the other.

‘What has this to do with anything, though?’ said Geoffrey. Then an idea occurred to him. ‘Are you saying that Simon Morton wanted to harm his brother because of his wife’s infidelity?’

‘He wouldn’t have the guts to do anything himself,’ said Osbert. ‘Little shrimp of a man who could only sire a half-wit. Could’ve been her, couldn’t it?’

‘Why would Mistress Morton want to get rid of her brother-in-law?’

‘Perhaps she got tired of his great hands wandering all over her-’

At that moment a monk came out of the gatehouse door. It was Brother Philip, who had official charge of the outer gatehouse. He dipped his cowled head on seeing Chaucer. Osbert had the grace to look uncomfortable. He said to Geoffrey: ‘And a good day to you, too, sir.’

Chaucer went through the shadow of the gate and turned right towards the artisans’ dwellings. He pondered over what he’d heard from the gossipy, lascivious porter. He wondered whether Osbert was telling the truth about what he’d witnessed behind a bush on the river bank. Chaucer recalled something revealing that Mistress Morton had said when he had brought the news of John Morton’s death. She’d referred to ‘my John’. So was this whole business to be explained by domestic jealousy? Was that what Osbert was hinting at? Had Simon Morton discovered that his wife was carrying on with his brother (‘He could smell it on her’) and, lacking the nerve to take action himself, did he persuade…suborn…bribe someone else to do the job for him? Adam of the crooked hand? How would a poor mason have paid for such a desperate task? With a valuable ring, perhaps? Or was it Mistress Morton, trying to get rid of an importunate lover? She’d find it easier to pay Adam, and not with a gold ring either.

Geoffrey tried to get the sequence of events clear in his mind and almost straightaway dismissed the hypothesis. Because Adam had not been taken on at the priory until after Simon fell sick.

But wait: hadn’t Michael the cellarer said that Adam had earlier approached him in the quest for work and been turned away? Was it possible that at some point before he fell ill Simon had gone to Adam and urged him to assail his brother, perhaps even to kill him? Andrew the mason had claimed that Adam seemed to be looking for an opportunity to go for John Morton. But if Simon – or even his wife – had hired Adam, then the murder had been carried out in a strangely public manner. Perhaps Adam had intended to provoke an attack, to pass the whole thing off as a brawl with unintended, if fatal, consequences.

This string of hypotheses seemed too vague. And anyway, they would never know the truth of it now that Adam was dead.

Geoffrey had mentioned to the insolent gatekeeper that he was planning to visit a grieving house. The idea hadn’t entered his head until he’d spoken the words. But now he found himself re-passing the lay cemetery on the far side of the priory church. The somnolence of an afternoon in mid-summer extended itself across the scene. The far shore of the river was obscured in the heat haze. There were no boats visible nor was anyone there to observe his progress towards the door of the Morton dwelling. He knocked but did so gently, mindful of the sick man within. The door was unfastened and gave slightly under his hand.

Chaucer peered around the corner. The fire smouldered in the centre, a thread of smoke twining up towards the hole in the roof. The interior was hot and airless. It smelled of the sickroom, and of something else besides. The large bed contained the diminished figure of Simon Morton. Of Mistress Morton and Will there was no sign.

Geoffrey pushed the door further inwards. He called out, but in a muted way. There was no word or movement from the bed. But then Simon was a sick man, a feverous one. He must be asleep, still. Yet Geoffrey feared the worst. He advanced across the uneven floor of the chamber. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could see Simon Morton lying on his back, outstretched beneath a thin, patched blanket. Whether he looked peaceful and at ease, as the dead are sometimes said to look, Geoffrey would have been unable to say. For the great bolster that he’d noticed earlier was now lying crosswise over Morton’s face. That someone had deliberately placed it there and then held it down was shown by the deep indentations on either side. Chaucer wondered how long it would take a man to die under such circumstances. Not long, probably, given Morton’s feeble state.

Geoffrey lifted the bolster off Simon Morton’s face. It was heavy enough almost to stifle a man by its own weight. Morton’s mouth gaped, but otherwise he did look as though he might have died in relative peace. Geoffrey was glad at that. He’d never seen Simon at close quarters, but he would have known him for John’s brother by the prominent stripe of his eyebrows. The man had been murdered. There could be no question of suicide here.

Chaucer’s first thought was that this deed might have been carried out by Susanna Morton. Easy enough to kill a weakened man, and with the nearest weapon to hand, the great bolster. Somehow this seemed too obvious an explanation, like the self-killing of Adam. Yet, if it had not been Mistress Morton (or her simple son), then it must have been an outsider. And if a stranger had come through the door, he surely ran the risk of being observed by someone from the other dwellings. There was no other way in.

But, Geoffrey suddenly noticed, there was another means of access to the Mortons’. In the back wall was a low entrance, covered by a piece of sacking that shivered slightly in the afternoon air. He had to stoop to make his way outside. At the back of the house lay a strip of land, planted with a few vegetables wilting in the heat. Each dwelling in the row had a similar patch of ground, no doubt tended by the women while their menfolk were off working.

On Geoffrey’s right hovered the bulk of the priory church. As he was gazing at the central tower, the bell rang. He had lost track of the canonical hours. There was no one in sight on the patches of land, which were roughly delineated from their neighbours by rows of sticks or a few rags of washing.

A raised path ran along the back, parallel to the line of dwellings. It would not have been difficult for someone who knew which house they were searching for to gain access from this side, once they’d checked that the coast was clear. The Morton house was easiest to find since it stood alone.

Chaucer was reluctant to enter the dead man’s house again. He did not need to gaze on Simon’s gaping mouth for a second time. Nor did he want to emerge by the front door like a regular visitor. Instead he walked past the flattened stems of leeks and battered cabbages and turned eastwards on to the path, with the priory at his back. He was gripped by the desire to get away from this place. He regretted that he’d ever come here. For peace and quiet, ha! There had been two – no, three – suspicious deaths in the course of a few hours. An air of gloom and menace seemed to hang over all.

The area beyond the houses was flat and empty, save for a few clumps of trees and the odd, even more ramshackle hut or hovel. The tide was coming in, and the river seemed to be on the verge of spilling over on to the adjoining land. Geoffrey wondered who had taken the decision to site the Cluniac house here all those hundreds of years before. And why. Because of the remoteness of the spot? For its closeness to the river? Or was it for the great expanse of sky, which might inspire pious thoughts?

He saw two figures walking along the river foreshore. They were hand in hand. A young couple, he thought at first, but as they drew closer he recognized Mistress Morton and Will. The mother was leading the lad. They must have been out fishing, for the boy was carrying a kind of net attached to a pole, which he toted on his shoulder. In her other hand the mother was grasping a bucket, perhaps to hold whatever they’d caught or scavenged on the foreshore. Cockles or winkles perhaps. Tuneless sounds were borne through the air. The boy was singing.

They had not noticed Geoffrey Chaucer and he turned inland off the track, putting the rise of the ground between himself and the mother and son. He felt a pang at the thought of what they’d discover when they returned to the house. He debated for a moment warning them, but the fear of being the bearer of bad news for a second time that day – and the stronger fear that he might be implicated in Simon Morton’s death (hadn’t he been first on the scene following the murderer?) – held him back.

If he’d had the suspicion that the wife could have disposed of her husband by pressing the bolster over his face, then it was dispelled by what he’d just seen, mother and son returning innocently from a fishing expedition.

No woman could murder her husband and then go for a walk with her son, surely? He had thought Mistress Morton impatient with her Will, but here she was escorting him by the hand and he was singing.

Geoffrey felt guilty even for suspecting her. And with the guilt came anger. He determined he would get to the bottom of whatever it was that was happening at Bermondsey Priory. He owed that to the woman who’d lost both husband and brother-in-law within the space of a few hours. He hastened back in the direction of the priory. He would squeeze the truth out of the one man he’d talked to who seemed to know more than he’d let on.

‘You have one last chance to tell me what you know, Osbert. After that, I shall go to the justice.’

Chaucer spoke more in regret than with menace. He’d already hinted at his position at court and implied that he had the power to have Osbert summarily dealt with. He even gestured vaguely towards the other side of the river and dropped a reference to the white-towered castle which stood there, as if he had the authority to whisk Osbert across the water. He hadn’t, of course, but how useful those connections with the Savoy Palace could be!

The two men were in a kind of cubbyhole off the outer gatehouse. There was an unglazed slit of a window, which did nothing to dispel the stale, sour air. This was where Osbert lived, as was shown not only by the smell but by the palliasse in one corner and a small chest in the other, doubtless containing a spare shirt and leggings. For a deputy gatekeeper in a religious house must look presentable. Not that Osbert would be entrusted with the task of ushering in important visitors. That would be left to Brother Philip, who’d welcomed Chaucer the previous day. But Osbert would do to receive – or turn away – the flotsam who always wash up at the doors of a great institution like the priory.

Now Chaucer was attempting to put the fear of God or of the law and the royal court into Osbert. It seemed to be working. He’d said nothing about the latest death, that of Simon Morton.

‘Come on, man. Your story about Simon Morton wishing to do away with his brother was balderdash, wasn’t it? There was no such plot.’

‘I said only what I thought.’

‘You said what you’d like to think, maybe. But the truth is that you wanted Mistress Morton for yourself. You claimed you’d seen her and her husband’s brother together-’

‘Oh, I did, sir. See them, see them going at it hammer and tongs.’

‘You told her what you’d witnessed, didn’t you? You said she’d seen you. You probably said that if she didn’t, ah, do what you wanted, then you’d expose her.’

Osbert’s grudging silence showed Geoffrey that he was on the right lines. He pressed home his advantage. ‘So what was her reply?’

‘She laughed in my face. That woman has the dirtiest laugh this side of Gravesend, sir. Laughed and said that no one would believe me.’

‘So to get revenge on Mistress Morton or just to cause mischief, you insinuated that her husband had cooked up some plot to hire a killer for his brother. And then for good measure you said she might have done it.’

‘Insinuated, sir? I don’t understand the word.’

‘But you get my drift. You invented a plot where none existed.’

‘There is a plot, all right. I admit I made up what I said about Simon Morton. Fellow wouldn’t hurt a fly. But there are funny goings-on here in the priory.’

‘There are funny goings-on everywhere. You’re telling me nothing.’

‘Ask Brother Michael.’

‘The cellarer?’

‘That’s the one. He knows what’s going on. All I know is that a few days ago I was in here and heard the Morton brothers as they were passing through the gateway. They were arguing. Not about Mistress Morton but about something they’d found during their work. They stopped right outside that window there. I was lying on my bed and I heard it all.’

‘What had they found?’

‘A parchment with writing on. And something else of value. I couldn’t tell what from their words. It might have been a brooch or a ring.’

Despite the stuffy air inside Osbert’s room Geoffrey felt a chill. A ring? Like the one that still nestled in his pocket?

‘What would a parchment mean to the masons? They wouldn’t be able to read it.’

‘No, sir. But they knew it was important because it had a seal attached and it was old.’

‘So why were they arguing?’

‘Over what to do with the items they’d dug up.’

‘Dug up? You’re sure of that?’

‘They had been working in a cellar somewhere. They were having words about whether to keep what they’d found or to hand them over to one of the monks. Perhaps there’d be a reward, one of them said. It was John’s voice, I think.’

‘How does Brother Michael come into this?’

‘You’d better ask him.’

‘That’s what you were doing in his chamber today, wasn’t it? You were going to see what you could get out of him.’

Osbert shrugged. ‘He won’t talk to me but he’ll talk to a gentleman like you. All I know is that I saw Brother Michael talking to John and Simon Morton. Saw them talking in a quiet and private place one evening.’

‘Quiet and private.’

‘As the grave. They were in the graveyard.’

Osbert nodded his head in the direction of the cemetery that accommodated the lay folk, the one beyond the main gate.

‘You were spying on them.’

‘A man may be out and about for an evening stroll and see things. You can’t blame his eyes for seeing.’

‘What did his eyes see?’

‘They saw money change hands between the monk and the masons. A purse was given by him to them. Why, I ask myself? If you want to know more, you must ask Brother Michael.’

In the event Brother Michael was willing enough to tell Geoffrey why he had been having surreptitious dealings with the Morton brothers. It seemed that the cellarer of the priory had decided that it was less dangerous to reveal things than to attempt further concealment, particularly after Geoffrey told him that Simon Morton had also died. He implied that it was from sickness and not murder. He hinted, too, that he’d heard of dealings between Michael and the dead masons. Hearing of the second death, Brother Michael crossed himself and sat in silence for a moment. But it was only when Chaucer produced the ring, given him by Will, that Michael sighed, leaned back in his chair and nodded. He reached for the ring, which Chaucer held out. It was perhaps not as splendid as any of the ornaments circling his own fingers, but the monk scrutinized it for a long time.

‘Where did you get this?’

‘I believe it came from the vault beneath this place.’

‘Most likely it did. It is old, like the testament.’

Geoffrey waited. He reckoned that if Brother Michael was going to say more, then he would do so unprompted. The cellarer held the ring between thumb and forefinger and peered through it, as if it were a keyhole.

‘Most likely, this, too, belonged to Brother James.’

‘Brother James? I have not met him but his name is familiar.’

‘No more have I met him, Master Chaucer, since Brother James has been dead two centuries and more. He was buried down there in the vault all those years ago. I had no idea he was there when I gave orders for the stonework to be made good. The masons discovered some bones when they went to repair the recesses in the wall. There were bones and a skull together with fragments of monkish garb, and evidently this ring, which I have not seen before. The Morton brothers must have kept it back. It doesn’t matter now. The remains didn’t matter either. They were what you might expect to uncover in any holy site which is old and which has lain undisturbed for centuries. I gave instructions that the bones and cloth fragments were to be resealed in the wall. What mattered was the testament which was found with the bones. From the seal and the signature we knew that it belonged to Brother James.’

‘He died violently?’

‘I do not believe so. There were no marks of violence on the skull or other remains. And, in fact, his testament shows that he was expecting to die a natural death very shortly after he wrote it. He was more than seventy years old.’

Geoffrey suddenly recalled where he had heard the name of Brother James before. He was one of the monks who’d been walking on the banks of the river and witnessed the miraculous appearance of the Bermondsey cross, dropped from the beak of a giant and mysterious bird. Hadn’t the prior, Richard Dunton, mentioned an account or testament that Brother James had left? Was it this, or a copy of it, to which Michael was referring?

‘The masons informed me of their discovery, as was their duty. But they held back two items. This ring, it seems. And the document. No doubt they were wondering how to profit by it.’

‘The document was in Latin, surely?’ said Geoffrey. ‘How could they know its contents. They would not have been able to read.’

‘You are right, more or less. One of them, Simon, could read a little but only words in English. Somehow, though, the two men had got hold of the idea that Brother James’s testament contained matter that was both valuable and dangerous. A day or two after the discovery of the bones, they came to tell me what else they’d found, half in the spirit of discovery, half in the desire to see what they could gain by it. They did not produce the document but merely hinted at what it contained. I told them it was all nonsense, that they should at once hand over what they’d found. It was the property of the priory. I think that Simon Morton might have been persuaded. He already looked sick and feverish and he said the vault was a cursed place. But John Morton wasn’t so easily swayed. He is an outsider from Chatham way. “What’s in it for us?” he kept on saying. So in the end I agreed to give them something in exchange for the testament.’

‘You gave them money?’

‘Yes. I met them in the lay cemetery. They had visited this office once too often, and I preferred to see them outside the priory. Simon Morton looked sicker than ever. I don’t think he came back to work after that. Much good the discovery did him or his brother, and now they will both finish in the place where we met.’

‘You have the parchment still?’ asked Geoffrey, glancing at the pile of papers on Michael’s desk.

‘It is destroyed. I burned it on instructions from the prior. But I would have burned it anyway without his say-so.’

‘Whatever it contained must have been…“dangerous” was your word.’

‘It was dangerous, in its way. I do not mind telling you, Geoffrey, as a man of the world. But I would be obliged if you did not spread the story abroad. If you did, then it would be denied by us.’

‘Us?’

‘The Cluniacs of Bermondsey, the few who know what was contained in Brother James’s testament.’

‘As long as it is nothing seditious or connected to wrongdoing, I’ll keep quiet,’ said Chaucer. ‘And since the man who wrote it is long dead, I don’t see how his words can be seditious or criminal.’

‘They were not. Rather they were righting an old wrong – as Brother James saw it.’

‘Where is the harm, then?’

‘You’ve been to Winchester, Geoffrey? You have seen the great table which is in the castle there?’

Geoffrey shook his head, but he understood what the monk meant by the Winchester great table. It was reputed to be the very board at which King Arthur and his knights had sat in the ancient days of romance and chivalry, a table that was circular so that none of those sitting at it would be able to claim precedence over the others. However, he wondered what Brother Michael meant by raising the subject.

‘The round table is supposed to be many hundreds of years old,’ the monk continued. ‘Supposed by the ignorant, that is. But I have heard that it was made much more recently and that our present king, Edward, is glad enough to bask in the reflection of its lustre. For chivalry is all his care, or it was during his days of health and vigour. You must know this, Geoffrey, you who spend so much of your time in the royal courts.’

‘I do know this. What I don’t understand is how it’s connected to the testament of a dying monk.’

‘I mention the round table to show how things are not always as they appear. Objects may be thought old or hallowed when they are nothing of the kind.’

‘You are referring to the Bermondsey cross, are you not?’ said Chaucer, sensing Michael’s reluctance to get to the quick of the matter. ‘Brother James was one of the monks who witnessed its miraculous appearance on the Thames shore. He left an account of it, according to the prior.’

‘Brother James left two accounts of the discovery of the cross. One of them is in our library even now, the story of the great bird and the precious object dropping from its beak and the shaft of sunlight and so on. It was dictated and signed by the three monks who witnessed the miraculous, ah, descent of the cross. This is the story that is enshrined in the history of our priory.’

‘Richard Dunton told it me only yesterday evening,’ said Geoffrey. ‘He spoke as if it was the undisputed truth.’

‘I’ve no doubt the prior says only what he believes,’ said the cellarer. ‘Men are able to convince themselves of what they need to believe. Yet it was only days earlier that Brother Richard instructed me to burn Brother James’s testament – his second testament, that is, the old parchment that was found in the vault. You can guess what it contained, Geoffrey?’

‘I have a good idea by now.’

‘The story of the Bermondsey cross was a fiction from beginning to end. There was no great bird, the cross never fell from the sky, there was no shaft of sunlight pointing like a celestial finger to the spot where they discovered it. If you’ve seen the cross, then you’ll know that there is nothing very remarkable about it. Only the circumstances of its appearance give it meaning. One of the three brothers probably had it already in his possession. However they came by it, they planted it on the river shore then concocted the legend of the bird and all the rest.’

‘In God’s name, why?’

‘Not for profit, not for fame either. Remember that these were the early days of the priory. We were an obscure foundation, hundreds of miles away from our origins over the sea in France. What better way to put the place on the map than to chance across a miracle that sanctified the place? And Bermondsey did become famous on account of its cross. Not for that only, of course. We have achieved much over the past two centuries and by God’s grace survived and prospered. But the devout are still drawn here by the miraculous cross. It has served its purpose and it will do so in the future. And who can say that, by this time, the cross has not acquired some sacred tinct, whatever its history.’

‘But Brother James told the truth in his dying testament? He described how the cross had actually been found – or planted.’

‘Yes. Before he died he wanted to set the record straight. His conscience pricked him as he was preparing for his deathbed. I do not know whether he wished the testament to be sealed up with his bones or whether it was done on the orders of the prior at the time – or, indeed, whether it was no more than chance that everything was buried together. But the secret rested with him until it was uncovered by two masons carrying out some workaday repairs.’

‘How many others know of the testament?’

‘A handful. Brother Peter, who keeps the library. He has been agitated about it and keeps badgering the prior. Prior Dunton himself, of course. But this is not something to share with the brotherhood at large. We should not disturb belief without good reason. Those who know will say nothing. I am relying on you to say nothing, Geoffrey.’

‘And the Morton brothers cannot speak for they are both dead.’

‘Coincidence. One was killed in a brawl by a reprobate who has done away with himself, pricked by his conscience.’

Chaucer raised his eyebrows. Seeing his scepticism, Brother Michael said: ‘Who can tell what a man in extremis will do, except that they will be great and terrible things? And the other brother has died of natural causes, you say. He was a sick man. I saw him white and shivering in the graveyard. For sure, he caught his death in that vault beforehand.’

He did catch his death on account of that place, thought Chaucer, but perhaps not quite in the sense that you mean. He remembered the man on the bed, the great bolster pressed down hard over his gaping mouth. It was…convenient…that all those lay persons who were aware of Brother James’s testament were not around to blab of it. But to Brother Michael he said nothing of his suspicions.

‘So the matter is closed now?’ said the cellarer.

‘It seems so.’

Brother Michael sighed again, this time with satisfaction. He clenched his fist around the ring, which, throughout the conversation, he had been rolling between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. Then he held out his right. Geoffrey extended his. The monk might have been plump and somehow soft-looking, but he had a strong grip and held Geoffrey’s hand for a fraction longer than necessary as if to reinforce his words. Then the cellarer said that they would no doubt meet at supper in the refectory, and Geoffrey took his leave.

When Geoffrey agreed with Brother Michael that the matter was closed, he did so because there seemed to be no prospect of discovering any more from the cellarer. Chaucer regarded himself as a fairly shrewd judge of people and considered that Michael had given him all that he knew, after an initial show of reluctance – the monk’s reluctance understandable because the affair of the false cross – or, more precisely, the false legend of its appearance – did not reflect well on the priory. There was an irony, however, in the fact that even if the ‘truth’ became widely known it would probably make little difference to the value and attraction of the relic. Why, the prior himself already seemed to have reverted to the legend, judging by what he’d told Geoffrey the previous day. In the same way he’d jumped to the convenient conclusion that the death of the claw-handed Adam was a suicide.

As Brother Michael had said, people convince themselves of what they need to believe.

All of this, however, did not necessarily clear up the three deaths – of the Morton brothers and Adam. If Chaucer hadn’t witnessed for himself the stifled corpse of Simon, he might have accepted that the business was finished. It was like a tapestry in which each of the threads was neatly woven to make up a picture, albeit a crude one. Adam had killed John because he was a violent, bad man, and then done away with himself in contrition. Meanwhile, Simon had died from natural causes – an impression that Chaucer had done nothing to counter. In reality, the tapestry wasn’t finished. There were some loose threads.

One of the threads was to do with the circumstances of Adam’s ‘suicide’. Geoffrey didn’t accept that the man could have hanged himself. He could not have assembled the noose and slipped it over his neck with a withered hand. Then there was the strange episode when Chaucer had been shut up in the vault beneath the cellarer’s quarters. Someone had slammed the door and turned the key and run away. But why? To give him a fright? To keep him out of the way? Or even as a roundabout way of disposing of him?

Yet it was something else that tugged at Geoffrey’s thoughts as he wandered about the priory grounds. It was late afternoon. In the distance, to the south and beyond the flat river lands, the Surrey hills could be glimpsed through the haze. Chaucer struggled to pin down what was bothering him.

It was to do with the testament that had been written (or dictated?) by Brother James as he neared his death while his conscience was pricking him. The testament told the true story of the Bermondsey cross. A testament now destroyed by Brother Michael. No one would ever read it again. Perhaps Brother James had never intended it to be read in the first place. Merely writing it down would have been sufficient to clear his conscience. The document would have been penned in Latin, of course. Latin was the language of monks and priests and other learned persons. Geoffrey himself had translated work from Latin. That ancient language was the natural choice of educated people, especially two centuries ago. It could not be understood by the common folk, which was one reason for using it.

Yet the masons, Simon and John Morton, had somehow grasped the contents of James’s testament. How had they managed that? Only through one of the Bermondsey monks, surely. Yet none of the monks would have revealed the secrets of a dangerous document to a couple of artisans. Rather they would have gone to some lengths to keep it out of their hands, as was shown by Brother Michael’s willingness to pay the Mortons for the recovery of the testament.

So, if not one of the monks, who might have deciphered the Latin document – or at least made some rough sense out of it? And he suddenly recalled what he’d been told of Mistress Susanna Morton. That she gave herself airs, that she was a cut or two above the other womenfolk dwelling near the river. That she was reputedly the illegitimate daughter of a priest. Priests could read and write Latin. Was it possible that a priest who’d fathered a child might – out of guilt or a sense of responsibility or even out of affection – have tried to foster some learning in that child of his? Have tried to pass on the rudiments of another language, of Latin? Could it have been Mistress Morton who had unpicked the secret of the testament and told her husband or the brother-in-law, who had in turn taken their knowledge to Brother Michael in the hope of gaining by it?

Chaucer struggled to recall Mistress Morton’s words when he’d escorted Will home and given her the news of John’s death. She evidently regretted something. She’d said, ‘I wish I hadn’t picked out…’ before breaking off. He’d assumed she was referring to some object, perhaps the ring Will had presented to him. But supposing she’d meant to say ‘I wish I hadn’t picked out the words’? The words of Brother James’s testament, the words that revealed the truth of the miracle of the cross.

Had she passed the secret on, or fragments of it, to her husband and her supposed lover?

If so, they hadn’t gained much by it, as Michael had pointed out. They would shortly be buried in the graveyard. But Mistress Morton was still alive…

And at once Geoffrey Chaucer turned around and half-ran through the inner court and then the outer one. As he passed through the gateway, two thoughts flashed through his head: firstly, that he was not created for running and was already out of breath, and, secondly, that he must reach the Morton house before Mistress Morton, too, was murdered.

The man slipped along behind the raised path, which ran parallel to the workers’ dwellings. He was not completely concealed from anyone working on the garden patches, but fortunately no one was about at the tail end of the afternoon. This was the second time in a single day that he had made a foray outside the priory and to the same house. On the first occasion he had waited until the woman and the lad had left the place. They were going fishing, the boy carrying a net. That meant they would be gone for some time.

The man waited until they were no more than tiny figures on the foreshore before he crept through the back entrance to the house. Inside, the air was fusty and sickly. Simon Morton was lying on the bed, scarcely breathing, it seemed. For an instant the man debated leaving nature to take its course. But, no, that was too risky. Giving himself no time for further thought, he heaved the bolster from where it lay by the sick man’s side and pressed it down over Morton’s face. The body under the blanket twitched and there was a sound somewhere between a groan and a gurgle, and then nothing more. But the man kept his hands firmly in place until there could be no chance of Morton ever waking up again. Then he retreated by the route he had come, forgetting in his haste to remove the bolster from the dead man’s face. He strode back in the direction of the priory, heart beating hard and breath coming short, but curiously satisfied. Duty done, and for the second time.

He had already overseen the death of Adam, the man with the crooked hand whom he had hired to dispose of John Morton. He had met Adam in the monks’ graveyard. It had been comparatively simple to catch Adam off guard, to slip the girdle over his head and pull it tight and tighter yet. An unholy glee filled him during the act. His legs were shaking as Adam’s slack body fell to the ground. Then he had hurriedly set the scene to make it appear as though Adam had killed himself.

The man would not have believed that he could have found the strength to kill another human being and then arrange his body just so. Yet in an hour of crisis strength comes from somewhere. Had the prior not said that men in despair can accomplish great and terrible things? It was a gift from above…or the other place. The man dismissed the thought. He had done his duty, that was all. When this was finished he would get absolution, he would cleanse himself.

With the deaths of John Morton, then Adam and now Simon, all those who knew the story of the cross were dead. All, that is, apart from the very few Cluniac brothers who were privy to the secret. And they would not talk.

When the man had heard the story, the supposed true story, of the origins of the cross, he had been outraged. It was as if a segment of the sky had fallen to earth. At all costs, the cross must be defended and the story of its origins suppressed. Those who had uncovered the secret must be silenced. The priory was in mortal danger and all measures were justified. Even God himself would wink at the act. Unwilling at first to do the necessary work himself, the man had approached Adam, recognizing his desperate and bitter character. He had envisaged a silent act, a killing conducted with decorum. But Adam had disposed of John Morton in the crudest and most public manner. Therefore it was necessary to deal with Adam. Once the man had surprised himself by finding the deed easy enough, the killing of Simon Morton followed naturally.

And with that the man thought it might be over. Absolution alone remained. Cleansing.

But then he turned to puzzling over how it was that two simple masons had understood the words of a Latin document uncovered in a vault. Too late, he recalled the gossip, familiar enough in the priory, that Mistress Morton was the bastard child of a priest. Too late, he considered that having such a man for a father – a wicked man who had defaulted on his duty – might mean that it was the woman who was at the root of all this trouble. Women were at the root of the world’s ills, beginning with Eve. And now there was this one, the offspring of a priest. Susanna Morton, well named after the woman in the Book of Daniel whose beauty had tempted the elders into gazing on her naked, bathing body. Susanna might have unpicked the secrets of Brother James’s testament. No sooner had the thought occurred to the man than it hardened into a certainty. It was Mistress Morton who was responsible. She had read what she shouldn’t have read. She, too, would have to be dealt with. Even as he strode along, the man fingered his girdle, which he would use around the woman’s white throat. Something in him relished the close quarters he would have to engage in to dispose of Susanna.

So now the man crossed over the path at the point behind the Morton house. It was fortunate, he told himself again, that the place was set a little apart from the other dwellings. But what was this? Far from the quiet of the afternoon, there was a throng of people around the Morton hut. Neighbours and even a couple of monks. Her foolish son was there too. Too late, the man recalled that Mistress Morton would have returned to find her husband dead. He almost giggled to think how fast he had forgotten that earlier murder. These people had come to condole with her. He could do nothing to her at present. He’d have to wait for a later opportunity.

He made to turn round and came face to face with Geoffrey Chaucer.

‘Brother Ralph,’ said Geoffrey.

Chaucer just about managed to pant the words out. He was red-faced and running with sweat.

The young man paused indecisively. Guilt and rage were written across his usually placid face like the mark of Cain.

‘What are you doing?’ said Geoffrey.

The monk seemed to consider the question before saying: ‘I am doing my duty. What are you doing?’

‘You were in on the secret, weren’t you?’ said Geoffrey after a time. ‘The true secret of the Bermondsey cross.’

‘I heard about it from Brother Peter. He was deeply troubled.’

‘But not as deeply as you,’ said Geoffrey, reflecting on how he’d recently thought of himself as a good judge of men. But there really was no way to winkle out a man’s inner self from his appearance. Here was Brother Ralph, innocent and bland-seeming but with the fire and fury of a fanatic. He already knew the answer, but for form’s sake he said: ‘Why did you carry out the killings?’

‘I have already told you. Duty. To defend the cross and the priory.’

‘They do not need defence of the kind you have given.’

‘I should have left you shut up in that vault. The chances were that you wouldn’t have been found for several days. Nobody goes down there. It is a cursed place.’

‘Why did you let me out?’

‘Not you, Master Chaucer. It was Magnus the cat. I knew I must have left him shut inside. He should not be shut in to starve.’

Geoffrey did not know whether to laugh or weep in the face of this murderous man who had already done two others to death and was undoubtedly on his way to kill a woman but who could still care about the life of a cat. He was about to call out to the cluster of individuals around Mistress Morton’s hut for assistance in apprehending Brother Ralph. But the monk anticipated him and took to his heels, running not in the direction of the low houses nor back towards the priory but eastwards towards the river. As he went he shouted out something about ‘cleansing waters’.

Chaucer set off in pursuit, but Ralph was younger, fitter and faster. He reached the edge of the shore. The mud was thick here, and he waded across it with difficulty, sploshing through the incoming tide. Geoffrey stumbled and fell on his face. Above him he heard the beating of wings and a shadow passed across. He glanced up but the bird, which he couldn’t identify, was already flying higher. He watched as Brother Ralph reached the end of his glutinous passage across the mud and stones and then, deliberately, waded into the fast-flowing water. His black garb billowed out, then only his head and a single arm were visible. The man’s white hand was the last of him that Geoffrey saw, a white and delicate hand.

Returning at the end of this long and murderous day to his lodgings in the gatehouse, and after supper in the refectory, Geoffrey noticed that the quill pen remained where he’d placed it at the start of the morning on a block of stone. He wondered who’d complete the work on the wall cavity now. He had said nothing about the details of the death of Brother Ralph, though it transpired in conversation with Prior Dunton that the young monk had the reputation of being ‘odd’.

‘His mind must have been turned by all the deaths we have witnessed here today,’ said Dunton. ‘In a frenzy he threw himself into the waters of the river. Pray heaven that Ralph’s death will be the last.’

‘I think it will be,’ said Geoffrey.

‘We will say a Mass for his soul,’ said the prior, ‘and for those others who have died in Bermondsey today, of course.’

Nor did Chaucer mention the great bird that had passed overhead as Brother Ralph reached the waterline. A gull, probably. What else could it have been on the Thames foreshore? In fact, he mentioned nothing at all at supper in the refectory (there are advantages sometimes to eating in silence). Instead he slipped inside the great church after supper and before the hour of compline. Once again the church was almost empty, the summer evening fading in bright colours beyond the great west window. He went to gaze on the cross behind its grille. The cross was small, barely significant. As Brother Michael had said, its value lay not in itself but in the tale of its discovery.

Geoffrey Chaucer reflected on the two stories, the legend of the miraculous bird which had dropped the object from its beak and the more prosaic account of a band of monks who’d wanted to bring some fame and credit to the priory. Did it matter which was true? Not to him perhaps, but it was important enough to have caused a string of deaths. And now he alone was in possession of the secret. That Brother Ralph had hired Adam to dispose of John Morton, then himself killed the claw-handed man before going on to stifle Simon Morton. And no doubt Ralph would have done the same for Susanna Morton if he hadn’t been intercepted by Geoffrey. He remembered Ralph’s parting words about ‘cleansing waters’. God knows, if you cannot read a man’s face, how can you interpret what goes on in his head? Well, the fast-flowing Thames received everything and everybody cast into it, the pure and the impure, the innocent and the sinful, without distinction.

Geoffrey wondered whether the widow Morton would be without a mate for long. He didn’t think so. She had too many attractions. But he did not intend to stay in Bermondsey Priory to find out. He’d had enough. He’d make his excuses to the prior and leave Bermondsey tomorrow morning and get back to the domestic bustle of the Aldgate gatehouse. Get home for a bit of peace and quiet. Why, he might even be able to do a bit of writing without the distractions of murder.

And as he was retrieving his pen, Geoffrey Chaucer remembered that early that morning before the murders started he’d had an idea for a poem. The subject had slipped his mind now. What was it he intended to write?