Sacrilege

Chapter 10

Robin Bates and his companions were waiting outside the Three Tuns after supper as they had promised, playfully jostling one another or leaning against the hitching posts, spitting into the dirt. The boy named Peter, whose place I had taken at the card game the night before, picked up a stone and threw it at a scrawny cat, who yelped and scurried away, belly low to the ground. Bates nodded as I approached, and I noticed two of the others lean their heads together and whisper, eyes fixed on me, knowing smirks playing about their lips in a way that made me immediately wary.

“Have you brought a full purse, my Italian friend?” Bates said.

I smiled, patting the moneybag I carried at my belt. The thought had occurred that, once outside the city limits, these boys could simply take my coins by force and leave me in a ditch, though I brushed the idea aside; they might choose to fight me for sport, but their youthful aggression was straightforward, not calculating. I was clearly there to be the target of their jokes, but I did not think they would deny themselves an evening’s entertainment by robbing me before we reached the card table. Bates slapped me on the back approvingly. I smiled again and laid a hand over the purse at my belt, feeling the reassuring shape of the keys I had copied from Langworth’s. I was content to play the joker for these young fools if it gave me access to Edward Kingsley’s house. The old priory held some secrets, that much was certain; secrets important enough for Langworth to fear that Walsingham had sent me from London to uncover them.

We walked through the town, crossing the Buttermarket and heading along Sun Street in the direction of the North Gate. The boys talked and cursed loudly, keen to draw attention to themselves with their swaggering gait and playful fighting; I noticed all carried swords in elaborate scabbards swinging at their sides. I wondered how much skill they possessed in the use of them. My little dagger, hanging at my belt, looked inadequate by comparison, yet I suspected I was probably more efficient with it than these boys who carried their fine blades as ornaments of their wealth. People scowled and turned away from them; I kept my head down as best I could and hoped we might avoid any trouble inside the city walls. It would not help my reputation in the town to be seen in the company of notorious brawlers, as I guessed these young men were known to be.

To distract him from looking too provocatively at a group of men who stood by the gate of a tavern, eyeing the boys with dislike, I turned to Bates and nodded in the general direction we were walking.

“Are you sure your friend Nicholas will be happy to see us? I gathered last night he is still in mourning.”

Bates laughed.

“Mourning? Not he. Nick hated the old devil almost as much as he hated that whore he married. Though he’d have bedded her himself, given the chance. We all would.” He gave a lascivious grin and I flexed my hands quietly into fists at my side, as I smiled in complicity. “No—if Nick seemed unwilling, it is only because he is afraid he will jeopardise the legal process. His father’s property is not his in law yet.”

“Then whose? His widow’s?”

“Well, that is just the point.” He turned to me, his eyes gleaming with the excitement of a story. “Nick was cut out of his father’s will and everything left to the wife. But if it was she who killed Sir Edward, then naturally her rights are forfeit and all should return to Nick. The difficulty is that she cannot be tried because she has fled.”

“Is that not as good as a confession of her guilt?”

“Eventually, I suppose, if she does not return. But she cannot be tried in absentia. Meanwhile Nick has a house, lands, income, and a full cellar he has been instructed by his attorney not to touch, and we his friends grow very impatient with the business. We had thought his father’s death would make him a wealthy man. In fact, I believe we have you to thank for his agreement tonight—he did not want to lose face in front of a stranger.” He punctuated this sentence with a friendly punch to my upper arm, which I received with good humour, inwardly gritting my teeth.

“But you said if the wife killed Sir Edward. Is it not certain, then?” I prompted.

Bates darted a quick, lizard glance sideways at me.

“They found her gloves, all bloodied. The next day she was gone, with a purse of his money. Hard to see how it could be anyone else. Mind you,” he added, assuming a thoughtful expression, “if she had not as good as confessed by running, there are plenty who might have pointed the finger at Tom Garth—the big fellow who tried to make trouble at the Three Tuns last night.”

“I remember him,” I said. “You think he could have done it?”

“He had reason. I’m not saying he did it. But he wasn’t the only one glad to see Nick’s father go to his grave.”

“Including Nick himself?”

He turned slowly, with a knowing smile.

“He was glad all right. But Nick is all talk, he could never have done it. He’s a coward at heart.”

I almost pointed out that a coward may well attack a man from behind in the dark—Tom Garth had said as much—but decided it was not in my interest to keep pressing the possibility of Nicholas Kingsley’s guilt while I was a guest in his house.

We crossed under the North Gate, which was no more than a small chapel built across the road, supported by wooden pillars, with room for a carriage to pass beneath. Beyond it, the streets opened up into orchards and fields, baked yellow by the heat. A wide avenue followed the line of the city wall, edged with fine houses, taller and more generously spaced than those nearer the centre of the town. As we walked, my hair was lifted from my face by intermittent gusts of a hot breeze that whipped and eddied around us, churning the heavy air. Gulls circled, calling mournfully. I squinted upwards; the sun was a malevolent eye glaring through the cloud.

At the end of a row of houses, Bates indicated to the right and I turned to see a handsome manor house, built in the style of an earlier century and set back from the road behind a low wall in spacious grounds that had been left to run wild. It was only as we drew nearer that I realised what had looked like a large rambling garden was studded with crumbling stone crosses and other burial monuments, and I recalled Fitch’s story about his niece being afraid to approach the house because of the old priory cemetery. The grave mounds were all grassed over and many of the headstones worn almost smooth.

We passed through a small gate. The path to the front door of the manor ran along the edge of the graveyard.

“I’m not sure I would like to live out here, surrounded by the dead,” I remarked to Bates. He laughed.

“It’s the vengeance of the living you have to worry about here.” He gestured to the cemetery. “This belonged to the parish, after the priory was dissolved. But twenty years ago the lessee of the manor house had the burial ground enclosed as part of his private lands. When Nick’s father took the lease, the parishioners petitioned him to give the burial ground back to the town, but he refused, so they have to carry their dead farther out of town now, at more expense. Created a lot of resentment. Still, they’re always complaining about something, the poor,” he added airily, and any respect I might have felt for him as the best of the group instantly evaporated.

To hide my irritation, I turned to look back at the graveyard. The end farthest from us, bordered by the ivy-shrouded masonry of the original boundary wall, remained steeped in shadow, but as I shaded my eyes, I noticed a low stone mausoleum with a façade of white columns, cracked and patched with moss, and the carved figure of an angel standing on the portico, wings outstretched as if it were about to step off the roof into the air. I stopped and looked around, straining for any unusual sound. It was here that the girl Rebecca imagined she had heard someone screaming, as if the sound came from beneath her feet. From the very graves themselves, Fitch had said with that wink of his, little knowing how soon he would lie in his own. I shivered, despite the warmth of the evening, and overhead a seagull uttered a sharp lament.

“Are you joining us, Filippo?” Bates said from the threshold. He had the bell rope in his hand and behind the studded oak door its clamour echoed back through the house.

I tore my attention away and smiled enthusiastically, but my curiosity was sharpened even further.

“COME IN, THEN.”

Nicholas Kingsley did not have the air of a gracious host; he seemed stiff and ill at ease, glancing furtively about him as if at any moment he expected to see his father appear in a rage. He ushered us into a well-appointed dining room, with a large oak table in the centre and a polished wooden buffet standing against the back wall, where pitchers and drinking vessels had been lined up. In one corner of this room stood an elderly woman dressed in a plain brown smock of rough cloth covered by a white apron, her grey hair bound up in a coif and her hands folded meekly in front of her. She raised her eyes briefly as we trooped in—seven young men in number, including me—and I caught her glance for a moment. She flinched and looked quickly away and I saw that she was afraid. I was gripped by an urge to reassure her; this good old woman who had helped Sophia and been the only one to show her kindness during those terrible six months of her marriage.

I craned my neck to take in the elaborately carved wooded bosses of the ceiling as the others took their places, thinking how strange it was to be seated here at this table where Sophia must have endured so many meals, forcing herself to eat and make polite conversation with her husband’s dinner guests, aware of the greedy eyes of her stepson on her. Without meaning to, I found myself glaring at Nick down the length of the table; he chanced to glance up at that moment and the look he sent me in return was no less hostile. I tried quickly to rearrange my expression; I was so close, I thought, to the mystery of this house, and I must continue to play my part for this evening. To make them suspicious now risked ruining everything.

WE GATHERED AROUND the table, the boys’ spirits running high, pitchers of wine passing back and forth and spilling from pewter tankards as cards were thrown down amid shouts and curses, coins rattled into a heap to be scraped up by whomever luck had favoured at the end of each hand (for I had no illusion that any of them succeeded by skill, so raucous and impulsive their gaming seemed). Bates, who appeared by general consent to have appointed himself the dealer, called for hands of bone-ace, one-and-thirty, or maw, and the others reached for their purses as the pot was emptied. I lost graciously at the first three games and on the fourth, though not by any considered effort on my part, I found myself the winner of a hand and was able to return some coins to my depleted store. By this time it seemed I had earned enough of a place in the group for this small flash of good fortune not to turn them against me; in fact my companions cheered on my behalf and those nearest clapped me on the back—all except Nick Kingsley, who continued to glower from his end of the table.

If I disliked the boy before, my contempt for him was doubled by the way he spoke to the old housekeeper, Meg, as if she were a dog, demanding she fetch more wine even while she was busy bringing dishes of food from the kitchen, which the boys all set to with their fingers. The second time he barked orders at her to bring up more bottles, I gently offered to help.

“If you just point me towards the wine cellar, I could save her the trouble—”

“For Christ’s sake, man”—Nick spat half-chewed chicken across the table—“she’s a servant. Let her do her job. Or don’t you have servants where you’re from?”

“I thought she might be tired,” I said, glancing at Meg, who raised her eyes briefly and gave me a faltering smile.

“Well, if she’s too tired, I can always get another servant who can manage the work,” Nick said, with a malicious look at the housekeeper. She turned pale and shook her head vehemently.

“No, Master Nicholas, I have not complained. I’m going right away.” She backed out of the room and I saw the fear in her eyes; she would probably not find another position at her age, and was stuck here at the mercy of this young brute.

“Got to remind them who’s in charge,” Nick said, to no one in particular, while Meg was still within earshot. His friends murmured assent, examining their new cards and wiping greasy fingers on their breeches. I felt revolted by the lot of them, and silently hoped they would drink themselves into a stupor as soon as possible, leaving me free to explore the house.

I drank slowly; at first, from time to time one of them would remark on it, calling on me to drink up, while the others cheered for my cup to be refilled, but as the evening wore on and their drunkenness increased, my behaviour attracted less interest. They lit clay pipes of pungent tobacco, filling the room with clouds of woody smoke that ascended to hover like a blue veil above our heads; beneath the table they passed around a piss pot and soon the sharp smell of urine mingled with the pipe smoke and roast meat in the close air. I breathed through my mouth, fighting the urge to run outside into the night.

When dusk fell, Nick bellowed for candles to be brought, and the faces of the players were lit by that strange, wavering orange glow, creating shadows in the hollows of their eyes and cheeks as they leant forward over the table. By midnight, three of them had fallen asleep where they sat, heads resting on their arms on the tabletop, snoring with their mouths hanging wetly open, and the others continued their game half-heartedly, until Nick pushed his chair back abruptly, knocking over his tankard as he did so, and mumbled that he was for bed.

“Find a bed where you will,” he slurred, pointing vaguely at the rest of us, then crashed into a chair and lurched towards the door, unlacing his breeches as he went. Two of the others heaved themselves unsteadily to their feet and stumbled after him. A crashing sound came from the corridor, as of someone falling into furniture. Only Bates was left, shuffling the cards and looking around the table at his fallen companions with disdain. He seemed worryingly alert. As his eyes came to rest on me, I quickly affected a cloudy gaze and swayed a little in my chair.

“Looks like we are the last men standing, Filippo,” he said, a slight slur in his voice. “God, what I wouldn’t give for a woman now. If only Nick had dismissed that old crone and got himself a young housemaid, we might have had some sport with her, eh?”

By way of answer, I let out a convincing belch.

“There is a bawdy house outside the West Gate might still let us in at this hour,” he said, hopefully. “Shall we try it, you and I?”

I waved a hand imprecisely, shaking my head. “I would be no use to a woman in this state,” I said, slumping forward across the table. “But you go.”

Bates regarded me for a moment, then sighed.

“No. It can wait.” He clicked his tongue impatiently and stretched out in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. “God’s blood, I had just as well go drinking with my infant nieces for all the company these fellows have been tonight. We were supposed to keep on till dawn. You will take another cup, though, Filippo? Don’t leave me up drinking by myself here. I’ll wager you have some wild stories to tell from your travels.” He yawned and filled his tankard again and turned to me, the pitcher held out expectantly. The flush in his cheeks from the wine made him look even younger, and I saw that, for all his swagger, he was still just a boy, afraid of the silence, of being left alone. If I had not joined the Dominican order and given my twenties to philosophy and theology, might I have ended up in this kind of company? I was glad now that I never had the choice. Reluctantly I raised my cup for more.

Bates continued to drink steadily while I concealed my desperation for him to join the others in sleep, and instead recounted the tale of a young man in Naples who makes mischief by advising his lascivious elderly neighbour on the best way to seduce a beautiful courtesan, ensuring that the old man is caught out by his wife, while the young hero becomes the girl’s lover himself. Into the story I wove other characters: a miser, a conniving alchemist, and a pedantic schoolmaster, all bested by the wit of the young man, who I modestly implied was my younger self. Bates roared with laughter, poured himself more wine, and I watched in hope of seeing his eyelids droop as the story progressed. He had no idea, of course, that I was telling him the plot of The Candlemaker, a comedy I had written for the stage some years earlier; a ribald tale with a philosophical slant, filled with characters just like those I had observed when I first arrived in the glorious noisy, filthy, sexy chaos of the city of Naples as a youth. Bringing those streets to life made me feel how much I missed it.

It is rare that a storyteller feels delight at sending his audience to sleep, but I silently rejoiced when the wine and the late hour finally worked on Bates enough for him to stand up, sway a little on the spot, and then announce his intention of finding a place to bed down. I grunted, lay my head on my arms, and waited until the sound of his footsteps on the stairs and the boards overhead faded to silence.

My own head was more than a little fuzzy from the wine. I blinked hard to clear my vision, and when I was certain that no one was stirring, I took the two longest candles from the table and moved as noiselessly as I could towards the door, leaving my fellow gamblers snoring, spit falling in threads from their open mouths to pool on the boards beneath their sleeping heads.

I crossed the stone-flagged entrance hall and took the passageway past the stairs towards the back of the house, where I found a large, well-appointed kitchen, evidently cleaned and scrubbed scrupulously by the housekeeper before she retired for the night. I paused and looked around, the candles’ flames sending shadows skittering up the walls and across the black opaque panes of the casements. From somewhere in the distance came the drawn-out, wavering cry of an owl, a sound that never failed to make the hairs stand up on my neck, and I smiled in the dark thinking of the girl Rebecca and her belief that she had heard screaming coming from the burial ground. My fears that night were more prosaic; I did not want to be caught before I had a chance to uncover anything useful.

A cellar, I concluded, if it was used for storage, would most likely have some access from the kitchen. I moved carefully, anxious not to stumble into anything—pots, pans, brushes—that I might knock to the floor, announcing my presence. At the far side of the room, opposite the vast hearth with its rows of roasting spits, was a door set in a recess that appeared to open onto a rear courtyard. Beside it, an empty lantern hung on an iron hook, and with some relief I blew out one of my candles in case I had need later, and fitted the other carefully inside the glass, saving myself the trouble of shielding its flame with my hand. Immediately its light bloomed and seemed brighter, and I held it up as I tried the latch of the back door. This was firmly locked, but to the left was an archway that led through from the kitchen into a large pantry, its shelves stacked with jars and bottles, full sacks lying against the wall on the floor.

I lowered the lantern towards the floor and saw what I had hoped to find; a wooden hatch with an iron ring set into the flagstones. I set the lantern down on the floor and knelt beside it. Before I could reach out a hand to the ring, my breath was stopped in my throat by the sound of tapping from the room behind me. I swallowed silently, barely daring to turn, and it came again, sharp and insistent, a tap followed by a kind of scraping.

Slowly, I pulled my dagger from its sheath; keeping it low by my side but with my arm tensed and ready to spring, I rose and moved back into the kitchen, one step at a time, holding the lantern aloft. The room was empty. I waited, straining to listen, until eventually the tap came again, from outside the window: tap-tap, tap-tap, scrape. I felt my legs buckle with relief as I realised it was the branch of a tree, nudged by the wind; I laughed softly, and heard the trembling in my own laughter.

I worked quickly this time, determined not to be distracted again. To my surprise, the wooden hatch in the pantry opened smoothly, revealing a narrow flight of stone steps leading into a musty darkness below. Their treads were worn smooth with age and sagged in the middle from the passage of feet; I thought with pity of the elderly housekeeper being sent to fetch and carry up and down these precarious stairs. But perhaps she knew them so well by now she could find her way easily even in the dark. I was not so confident; keeping my feet within the yellow circle of the lantern’s glow, I descended carefully into a wide cellar, its ceiling supported in the centre by two thick stone pillars. Wooden barrels lined one wall, while another corner was filled with a jumble of what looked like broken furniture and a stack of crates, such as might be used to transport produce on a ship. I made a slow tour of the room with the light, examining objects, looking for traces of anything unusual on the floor or the walls, though already my heart was sinking with the weight of disappointment; I knew I was in the wrong place. The cellar had opened too easily to me; there was nothing hidden here but wine and refuse. The mysterious cellar Sophia had mentioned had to be elsewhere—yet where should I begin looking for it? It could not be more than a few hours until dawn, and I dare not be found wandering the house when the others awoke.

I gave one last turn, willing myself to see anything I might have missed, straining so hard that it must have looked as if I was trying to see through the stone walls themselves. I stopped, struck by the thought. Perhaps that was it; this storage cellar was directly under the kitchen, but there could be more underground rooms beyond it, stretching out the length of the house. I shone the light again at the tangle of broken stools in the corner, splintered legs jutting into the air on top of an old wooden chest, casting spiky shadows on the ragged blocks of stone that shored up the wall of the cellar among the foundations of the old manor. Beside them, the stack of wooden crates, about the height of a man, very neatly placed. Too neatly, perhaps; I crossed the room, set the lantern on the floor, and tried to lever the boxes away from the wall. They were heavy, but I managed to shift them enough to feel into the gap behind, where my fingers brushed over wood, not stone.

Bracing myself, my palms growing slippery, I heaved the topmost of the wooden boxes from the pile and almost dropped it, staggering back under the weight so that my foot struck the lantern, which rocked for a few moments before mercifully deciding to stay upright. I steadied the box against my chest, the muscles in my arms standing out like cords as I set it on the floor with a heavy thud and paused to see if the sound had carried, sweat running down my collar at the exertion. What had Kingsley stored in these crates to make them so heavy? I lifted one edge of the wooden lid and found to my surprise that it had been left unfastened; inside was a pile of broken masonry. I lifted out a corner piece and realised letters were engraved on it, though faded almost smooth. This must be rubble cleared from the graveyard, the debris of old headstones. There could be no good reason for him to have squirreled it away in these crates, except as a useful deterrent against opening the door that clearly lay behind them.

One by one, breathing hard and pausing only to wipe the sweat from my eyes on the shoulder of my shirt, I moved the crates away until the low door stood clear. It was made of wood with iron studs, rising to a pointed arch in the old style and not even reaching to the top of my head. Naturally, it was locked. With shaking hands, I took out the keys I had copied from Langworth and tried each of them. The third fitted, with a little tweaking, and I closed my eyes with silent gratitude as I heard the bolt slide back. Just as I was about to push the door open, I caught the sound of a footfall on the stairs behind me and whipped around, my hand reaching to my side for the dagger.

If I had been a more superstitious man, I would have cried out at the sight, because the figure on the stairs seemed at first glance to have risen from one of the graves surrounding the house; dressed in a threadbare shift with a shawl around its shoulders, unbound tendrils of grey hair standing out from its head, the sunken features lit from beneath by the candle it carried in a terrible rictus. It took me a moment to compose myself, even though my rational mind realised it was only old Meg, the housekeeper, roused from sleep, and that her dreadful expression was merely a result of her own shock at finding me here. I ran a hand over my mouth, took a breath to steady myself, then pressed a finger to my lips with an imploring look.

She appeared to consider this request for a moment, then stepped closer.

“If it’s the wine you mean to steal,” she whispered, “you won’t find it in there. That door is locked, in any case.”

I shook my head urgently and beckoned her nearer.

“I am not here to steal anything. I am only looking for answers.”

I saw her face draw immediately tighter, as if she knew what I alluded to.

“Meg.” I bent my head and fixed her eyes with my own in the shifting light. “I am a friend of Soph—” I checked myself just in time. “Kate. Your mistress. I am here to help her. She always said you were kind to her.”

The old woman hesitated; her desire to believe me seemed to be battling with her natural wariness towards a stranger and a foreigner. After a moment, her face crumpled and her thin fingers clasped my wrist.

“She didn’t kill him,” she said, her voice barely escaping the dry lips.

“I know.” I pressed my own hand over hers for reassurance. “But to save her I must find out who did. Sir Edward had secrets …” I gestured with my head towards the room behind us. Fear darted across Meg’s eyes again.

“I have not been through that door, sir. Not once. Only he had the key and it has not been seen since he died.”

“Someone took it from his corpse while it was still warm. But I have a copy.” I pushed the door an inch farther to show her it had opened. She inhaled sharply. “Well, then,” I said. “Let us see what your master wanted to hide.”

Meg stepped back, shaking her head as if I had just suggested she walk through the gates of Hell itself. I turned, my hand on the latch.

“Do you know what he kept in here, Meg?”

She continued to shake her head as if her life depended on it, but the candle in her hand trembled and in its light I saw tears well up and spill over her lined cheeks. My heart swelled with pity and I squeezed her hand again. “It’s all right. You need not look.”

“I never saw anything, sir, I swear it on the holy martyr. But sometimes I heard it. Dreadful sounds. There was nothing I could do, though, you understand? Not a thing.”

“What did you hear?”

She only pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to stifle a little sob and shook her head again. My gut tightened with a horrible apprehension.

I pushed open the door and picked up my lantern, holding it up as I stepped forward into thick darkness.

Before me there stretched out a passageway, lined with damp stone, tall enough for a man to walk along, if he stooped. It smelled as if no clean air had circulated there in recent memory, and I took shallow breaths through my mouth to avoid the lingering odour of decay. It was hard to get my bearings underground, but I had the sense that the passage was leading me away from the house, under the cemetery itself, and though I consider myself above superstitions and folktales, nonetheless I had to suppress a shudder at the thought of all those corpses pressing down overhead and to each side—an impression made stronger by the unmistakable smell of dead things that seemed to grow denser with every step.

The floor beneath my feet was of compacted earth and I stepped forward carefully, keeping the lantern as steady as I could, to stop myself from stumbling, brushing thick cobwebs from my eyes and mouth with every step. After perhaps thirty yards, as I felt the faint stirrings of cold air as if from some vent nearby. I saw that three rough steps had been cut into the floor of the passage and that it ended abruptly in a wooden door. I pushed this gently with the flat of my hand and found that it opened a little way without too much difficulty; as I did so, something brushed swiftly past my foot in the dark and I leapt back, stifling a cry, heart pounding in my throat. Rats, no doubt; a faint scuffling came from whatever lay beyond that door.

Gathering my courage, I pushed the door farther and squeezed through the gap, repeating to myself that I had nothing to fear except dropping the lantern. So I thought, until the full force of the stench hit me and I had to clutch the wall, fighting for breath as my head swam and my stomach rose, so that I was afraid I would faint and retch at the same moment. It is almost impossible to convey the horror of that smell, even now; a brutal mixture of rotting flesh as from a charnel house, with undercurrents of every other filthy human effluent: piss, vomit, ordure, and a faint note of something unfamiliar, almost sweet, herbal. It was as if I had opened the mouth of Hell and all its foul vapours had rushed out to poison the earth.

Battling against the bile that threatened to choke me, I steadied myself and held up the lantern to examine this unspeakable place I had entered. I saw that I was inside an underground tomb, cut out of the earth and walled with stone, its floor covered with ancient flagstones carved with patterns I could not decipher in the candle’s thin light. On each of the four walls niches had been built with stone biers inset, two lengthways along the longer walls, the lower ones complete with reclining effigies, their features still remarkably sharp, protected down here from the ravages of wind and weather and by the cool air, which filtered in through unseen ventilation holes and raised gooseflesh on my skin. I looked up; above me, high enough to stand upright, was a vaulted ceiling, and opposite the passage where I had entered, a flight of stone steps led upwards, but the exit had been bricked up. I must be directly under the mausoleum I had seen in the churchyard earlier. I thought it curious that the tombs had not been desecrated when the priory was dissolved, as I knew many had been in other religious houses, but perhaps a few monks dead for three centuries were not enough to pique the interest of the commissioners who came to raze the buildings.

Apart from the effigies on their stone biers, the tomb was empty. I moved forward with cautious steps, shining the light into the corners, keeping my sleeve pressed over my mouth, but could see no obvious reason why this place should have been so significant that Langworth needed to steal the key from Sir Edward Kingsley’s corpse. If anything had once been hidden here, Langworth must have returned to clear it out before anyone could find it. I cursed and was on the point of turning back when something drew my eye: a flash from the floor close against one of the end walls. I crossed quickly and knelt to see what object had caught the light, and almost cut my knee on a shard of glass. There were several lying in the same place, and when I picked up one of the largest I saw that it was curved on one side. I gathered some of the other fragments and realised that I was holding the broken pieces of a small glass alembic. Bringing one piece nearer to the light, I saw that there was a residue staining the interior, of what looked like a dark-greenish hue, though it was hard to tell as the candle flame flattened all colours. I put my hand down to my side to lever myself up and felt something rough beneath my fingertips; lifting the light again I saw that it was a short length of rope, frayed at one end where it looked to have been cut with a knife. A couple of feet away, tucked into the shadows, was a pile of sacking. Gingerly, I lifted one corner, pinching as little of the material as possible between my thumb and forefinger. As I did so, something stirred within and a large brown rat shot out of the filthy nest past my feet. I swore aloud in Italian and from behind me I heard a muffled cry. I whipped around to see Meg standing in the half-open doorway still holding a candle in one hand, her shawl clutched across her mouth. We stared at each other for a moment, our ragged breathing amplified unnaturally in the vault, until I burst out laughing. I could hear the hysterical note in it as Meg joined in, prompted by relief.

“Dear God—damned creature nearly gave me a seizure,” I whispered, and heard my voice shaking. She nodded, but the laughter had died on her lips as her gaze travelled over the old tombs that lined the walls. I was still holding the soiled sack; it was crusted stiff with some foul substance. With great reluctance I brought it closer to my face to sniff it and dropped it almost instantly as I caught the faint iron tang of dried blood. Meg coughed violently behind me and gagged as she did so.

That unbelievable smell: as I stood up it caught again in my throat and I had to press a hand over my mouth, swallowing hard to stop my gorge rising. I sniffed the air, trying to trace the worst of it to its source, which seemed to be one tomb set into the wall beside the bricked-in staircase. I knelt and read the inscription: “Hugh de Wenchepe, Prior, 1263–1278.” I glanced up at Meg, who had come to stand at my shoulder; her face seemed even whiter in the shadows, her eyes fixed on the tomb of the long-dead prior with an expression of dread. I guessed that the old housekeeper thought she knew what had been hidden here, and I was gripped by the same awful sense of anticipation. I should have realised it the moment I opened the door. I had been in old tombs and burial vaults before; the ancient dead smelled of dust and mould. Yet Prior Hugh’s coffin gave off a ripe stink like an abattoir, as if he had been rotting there for only a few months. A chill ran through me and as I held the lantern over his blank-eyed marble face I noticed the marks: the tracks of human fingers in the dust at the edges of the tomb’s lid, where it had been recently opened.

“Meg—hold this for me, will you?”

I handed her my lantern; though I sensed her reluctance, she took it and held it above the bier as I leaned in with both hands to try and move the stone cover. This was no easy task; Prior Hugh’s tomb was neatly carved to fit its alcove in the wall and the only way to open it was to slide the heavy stone towards me, with the fear that, even supposing I managed to budge it alone, it might at any moment topple forwards, crushing my leg or, at the very least, shattering so that it could not be replaced. In vain I struggled, straining with all the strength I possessed, only to see the slab shift no more than a couple of inches. Whoever had moved it before must have had help; two men might lift it between them, but I was not willing to admit defeat, having come so far. I muttered a prayer in Italian as I grabbed the left elbow of the effigy where the prior’s hands were bent in prayer, to give myself better purchase. Bracing one foot against the wall of the tomb, I pulled on the statue’s arm; with a great grinding of stone, I felt the slab lurch forward a couple of feet as the smell of putrefaction gusted upwards from the gaping blackness beneath. “Santa Maria!” I cried, spinning away from the tomb into a corner where, leaning with one arm against the wall, I vomited up my supper and a quantity of sweet red wine.

Meg waited patiently by the tomb, still holding the light, snatching breaths through the fabric of her sleeve. When I had wiped my mouth I turned back. Her face was unbearably bleak.

“We should leave, sir,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “Leave the dead to their rest. Else we shall both take ill of the contagion.”

“Not now,” I said, recovering myself a little, though my voice was barely a croak. “Whatever is in here holds the answer, I am sure of it. I need you to take the light again, Meg, if you can bear it for a while longer.” She hung back, understandably, though she did not take her eyes from the lid of the tomb and the hole under it.

Expelling the drink from my body seemed to have done me good; my head felt clearer as I rolled up my shirtsleeves higher and asked Meg to hold the lantern directly over the opening beneath the stone slab, which was about two feet at its widest end. I took a deep breath and leaned in, as the candle flame threw my own shadow like a giant on the wall behind me.

I made out the shape of a corpse wrapped in a thin linen shroud that appeared grey and horribly stained. I directed Meg to bend closer with the light and lifted one corner of the cloth, then jumped back as a hand fell from the wrappings onto the body’s chest. The flesh was blotched and partly blackened, but still intact, the fingernails long and curled over like claws. It was quite clear that this body did not belong to a prior dead for three centuries but had been put in Prior Hugh’s tomb recently. But how recently? Despite the smell, the body did not seem to be in an advanced state of decay, almost as if it had been artificially preserved. Besides, the hand was too small to be a man’s.

A thought struck me then; I clenched my teeth tightly and peeled back the shroud over the face. I flinched as the linen came free, taking pieces of discoloured skin with it. Beside me, Meg turned away with a soft gasp. To gaze on the frailty of our human frame is always appalling and this face seemed more so than any corpse I had seen. Tufts of fair hair still stuck to the blackened scalp. Its features were frozen in a terrible grimace, the lips pulled back to expose the teeth, the eyes staring, the cheeks sunken in, and although the body had begun to putrefy it looked as if an effort had been made by whoever buried it to slow the effects of decay by some amateur process of embalming. It might have lain there a month or several. Worst of all, it was clear that the body was that of a boy, not yet full-grown. I turned to Meg and saw that her eyes were brimming with tears.

“Did you know?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“I swear, sir, no. But I had wondered … Is it the beggar child?”

“Beggar?”

“I saw him only once, sir. Last autumn, before the lady Kate came to us. It was supposed to be my day off, but I came in because the timber merchant had to change his delivery day, and there was Master in the kitchen feeding this lad bread and milk. Terrible skinny thing he was, half starved. He never came back and Master gave me to understand it was not to be mentioned again. But sometimes I noticed food was missing …” Her voice trailed off into silence.

“You think he kept the boy down here?” I glanced behind me to the frayed rope. “Sweet Jesus. Why? What did he do to him?”

Meg only closed her eyes very slowly, as if this might erase the horror before us. There was one obvious reason why a man might keep a young boy prisoner, but nothing I had heard about Sir Edward suggested this was his vice. Had he procured the boy for others, I wondered—his influential friends, perhaps? Poor, poor child, I thought, sickened to the guts by the thought of the boy tied up in this place of death, no doubt terrified out of his wits. I was seized by an urge to run, out of the putrid air, away from the horror of the place. I leaned over and took a last look at that dreadful face, and that was when I noticed a glint of metal in the depths of the tomb.

“Bring the light closer,” I whispered urgently, as I reached in, steeling myself against the touch of that flesh under my fingers.

The corpse wore a silver chain around its neck; shreds of skin caught in the links as I pulled it to the front. Hanging from the chain was a round medallion, engraved with an image that I could not make out. I took the light from Meg and brought it so close to the face that were it not for the lantern glass I would have singed the creature’s hair. The medallion showed the figure of a man carrying a bishop’s staff in one hand and his own severed head under the crook of the other arm. The head was smiling and wore a mitre. “Dio mio,” I whispered, handing the lantern back to Meg.

“What is it?”

I scrabbled to unclasp the chain, causing the corpse’s head to bob up and down in my haste.

“This is no beggar boy,” I said, as I finally pulled it loose and held the medallion up. “See this? It shows the figure of Saint Denis.” When she looked uncomprehending, I continued, “The patron saint of Paris. And the namesake of a young French boy who disappeared some six months ago.”

Her eyes widened and with her free hand she made the sign of the cross. “Then there was more than one.”

“There was a beggar child found though, wasn’t there? Dismembered, on a midden.” I glanced back at the corner where I had seen the blood-soaked sacks. They were large enough to carry a child’s severed corpse.

“They arrested a vagrant for that, though,” Meg said, her eyes still riveted to the tomb. “An old man, one of the former monks.” She shook her head. “May God have mercy on us all.” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. I closed the medallion in my fist and turned to face her.

“You guessed at this, didn’t you?”

“Not this”—she gestured towards the tomb—“I will swear it by everything I hold dear! If I had known …” She left the thought unfinished.

I recalled Langworth’s brisk words to Samuel concerning her.

“Meg—there are others, your master’s friends. They may believe you know more than you do. I fear you too may be in danger. Is there anywhere you can go, away from this place?”

“I have no one, sir. This has been my only home for twenty years. Where should I go?”

I could only look at her in helpless silence. What protection could I offer, alone as I was in this strange city with my money fast diminishing and no one I trusted without reservation?

She gave me a sad smile in return.

“I’ve seen four-and-seventy summers, sir. If this is my last, it’s more than many get.” She glanced behind her in the direction of the house. “It’s not much of a life there now, with Master gone.”

I frowned, surprised at her words.

“Was he kind to you? Sir Edward?”

“In his way. He kept me on, even when I grew too old to fetch and carry as I once did. I gave him loyal service and he trusted me.”

“You mean you kept his secrets.” I thought of Sophia and what she had suffered in that house, while the housekeeper, cowed by a mixture of twisted loyalty and fear, said nothing.

Meg caught the edge in my voice and met my eye with a frank expression that suggested I could not hope to understand.

“I had no choice, sir.”

“But he is dead now, and there are others who may not trust you so completely. They may want to make absolutely certain you don’t share those secrets. If they can do this—” I gestured towards the corpse. A phrase of Langworth’s drifted back to me. “Meg,” I said, stepping forward and clasping her bony wrist. “Promise me that you will take no medicine from Doctor Sykes.”

At this she laughed, with gentle condescension, as if I had tried to make a joke.

“You think I’ve lived here so long and not learned that for myself? Don’t you fret, I’ve seen what Sykes’s remedies can do—” She broke off and shot a quick look sideways at the tomb. I followed her gaze.

“Did Sykes kill the boys?”

She stepped back, alarmed by the urgency in my face.

“I told you, sir, I knew nothing of any boys. I only saw the little beggar child once. I was thinking of something else.” She lowered her voice and looked at the floor. “No matter. It was long ago.”

“Sarah Garth, you mean?”

“What do you know of that?” Her head jerked up.

“I know only that she fell sick and died here. Her family think she was murdered.”

Meg passed a hand across her forehead.

“Sarah took ill with the sickness that takes all foolish girls who are easily flattered by men.”

“She was with child?” My eyes widened. “By Sir Edward?”

“Maybe. They were both at her, you see.”

“Nicholas as well?”

“He was fourteen then, and his father encouraged him.” She shook her head again. “Sir Edward’s wife was not long dead, and that poor silly girl thought she’d make the next mistress of St. Gregory’s one way or another. She soon learned better when she got the child and found neither one of them meant to marry her. So she threatened to tell all of Canterbury their business.”

“And Sykes came out to tend her?”

“You know a lot for a stranger,” Meg said, with a shrewd glance. “Master called him in to look at her condition, yes.”

“Did Sykes try to rid her of the child?”

“That I don’t know. But one way or another, Master was rid of the problem after his visit.”

“God’s blood,” I whispered, almost to myself. So Tom Garth might be right—Edward Kingsley may well have had Sarah killed discreetly to save his family a public scandal or the expense of supporting a bastard. And who better than his friend the physician to administer a fatal remedy without suspicion? The dose makes the poison. But did any of this connect with the boys who died in this hellhole, or Fitch, or Sir Edward’s murder?

Meg clutched her shawl tighter around her shoulders, her eyes flitting again to the body in the coffin.

“I have seen enough here, sir.”

“And I.”

I set my shoulder against the stone lid of the tomb and with considerable effort managed to push it back into place, feeling a dreadful complicity as the ruined face of the boy disappeared into darkness and Prior Hugh reclined serenely again on his bier, his marble hands frozen piously in supplication. I had almost grown used to the smell; at least it was no longer making me retch. Meg took a last look around the mausoleum as if she still doubted the evidence of her own eyes.

“But your master already had one bastard, I thought?” I asked, as I followed Meg from the room. She stiffened, and turned to face me.

“No, sir, he did not. Where did you hear that?”

I bent to lock the door behind us, lowering my voice now that we were back in the passage.

“Nicholas complained that the Widow Gray was to receive a gift in his father’s will. She has a son, does she not?”

Meg sniffed.

“But her boy is near thirteen and she only came to Canterbury six years ago.”

“Six years?”

“Just after Canon Langworth arrived.” She fixed me with a meaningful look. I recalled what Harry had said about the rumours that followed Langworth.

“You mean he is Langworth’s son?”

“I only know what is whispered in the town. The canon visits her often, though perhaps that is just his Christian duty.”

I made to run a hand through my hair but as I brought it close to my face I realised how the smell of dead flesh clung to my fingers.

“But if the boy is Langworth’s, why was Sir Edward giving her money?” I could not fathom the tangled relationships in this town and my head was beginning to ache badly from wine and lack of sleep. Meg did not answer—I had the sense she felt she had said too much, forced into too great an intimacy with me by the shock of our monstrous discovery. I paused by the door that led from the secret passage back into the storage cellar and leaned against the wall, feeling suddenly faint.

“Mistress Kate,” Meg said, eventually. “She is well?”

“Who?” I was concentrating on fighting the rolling waves of light and dark behind my eyes; it took a moment before I realised she meant Sophia. “She will be better when she no longer fears for her life.”

“If the murderer can be found, she would inherit St. Gregory’s,” Meg said. I did not miss the wistful glance that accompanied this thought; perhaps she was thinking how much easier her own life would be with Sophia rather than Nicholas running the household. Perhaps I had one ally in Canterbury, at least.

I locked the low arched doorway behind us, glad to leave the underground passageway and its terrible secret buried again in silence, though I feared the foul stench of the tomb had followed us; I could almost believe that smell would accompany me for the rest of my life. Summoning the last of my strength, I piled the boxes of rubble in front of the door until it was covered and gave Meg my arm to help her up the steep steps back to the normality of the pantry.

“Will you report what you have seen tonight, sir?” she whispered, as I closed the hatch behind me.

“Not right away. There is more I wish to discover before I say anything.”

“Do not tell Mayor Fitzwalter,” she said. “You will get no justice from him. Better wait until the assize judge comes to town in a few days. But, sir”—she plucked at my sleeve, looking up with anxious eyes—“you will tell them I knew nothing?”

I was about to reply when a noise from the kitchen beyond made us both start. We froze; in the next room, someone stumbled into a bucket with a great clanging of metal, accompanied by some thick curses. Meg motioned to me to crouch behind a pile of flour sacks, while, pulling her shawl tighter, she stepped through the archway into the kitchen.

“Christ’s body, woman, you near scared the life out of me!” The voice was Nicholas Kingsley’s. “What are you doing creeping around in the dead of night?”

“I couldn’t sleep, Master Nicholas. I thought since I was awake I might as well make myself useful in here,” Meg replied.

“Huh. Well, you can make yourself useful by getting me something for my head. It feels as if it’s about to explode. I have a raging thirst too.”

He was slurring his words. I remained still behind the sacks, only now feeling the ache in my arms and shoulders from hefting the crates and the tomb’s lid.

“In my experience, Master Nicholas,” Meg said, trying to keep her voice light, “the best remedy for that kind of headache is bed rest and a quantity of fresh water.”

“Get me some then.”

“But …” Meg faltered. “I have not been to draw any from the well yet, Master Nicholas. It is the middle of the night, and—”

“Well, you can draw some now.” His tone was growing more irritable.

“It is only that—it is very dark out there. I could get you some small beer for now, and bring water when—”

“I said draw some water, woman! Am I not the master of this house? My father might have kept you on out of pity, you crone, but I want a servant who will do my bidding without answering back.”

I could not stand to listen to any more of this. I brushed the flour from my breeches and stood in the archway that separated the pantry from the kitchen.

“You can’t send her out in the middle of the night. If you need water, I will go.”

Nick looked at first shocked, then outraged to see me.

“You! What in the Devil’s name are you doing here?”

“Same as you—looking for something to drink.”

“In there?” His face hardened and he took a step towards me as I watched an idea struggling to take shape in his fuddled mind. “Have you been stealing my father’s wine?”

I held up my hands to placate him.

“I have touched nothing. I only wanted water.”

“You lie.” He pointed at me as he took an unsteady step closer. “Do you think me a fool? Your hair is covered all over in cobwebs—you’ve been in that cellar! Devil take you—I told Bates I wanted no thieving foreigners in my house, but he would have you along for the sport.”

“You are drunk,” I said, turning away from him in disgust. He lunged at me, aiming a punch at my jaw, but his judgement was muddied by drink; from the corner of my eye I saw his fist swing and put up my left arm to block it, then landed a blow to his stomach with my right. He staggered back, winded, against the large table in the centre of the kitchen, cursing and spluttering, but I sprang forward on the balls of my feet, fists clenched, challenging him to try again. His head was clear enough to see that he would not come out of a fight well; instead he clutched at his gut and glared at me, his thick features twisted with hatred.

“Get out of my house,” he hissed. “And when my friends are up we shall make you pay for your thieving, you filthy cur.”

I should have taken my leave then, but I hesitated, looking at his blunt insolent face, thinking of how he had treated Sophia, how he had spoken to old Meg, and it was as if all the pent-up anger of that night rose in me and exploded. I half turned towards the door, then, almost with an impetus of its own, my fist drew back again and before I was even conscious of having decided on the action, it flew forward and connected squarely with his face. He was caught so much off guard by the blow that he lost his footing, slipped, and fell backwards, his head glancing off the corner of the heavy oak table. He hit the floor and lay there, quite still, blood trickling from his nose.

“Oh, Jesu! What have you done?” Meg cried, hastening to kneel by the motionless figure.

“I—I didn’t mean—” I stepped back, rubbing my bruised knuckles, aware only now that I was shaking violently. “Is he breathing?”

The old woman bent her head over Nick’s face. My heart seemed to slow to a standstill in the silence that lasted an eternity while I waited for her answer.

“Just—thanks be to God. Help me to sit him up, or the blood in his nose will choke him.”

Together we pulled him upright against the leg of the table, where he slouched sideways, head lolling, his mouth hanging open as blood dripped down his chin and onto his chest. Meg held the corner of her shawl to his nose.

“Looks worse than it is, I hope,” she whispered, in a tone of reproach. “Dear God, you could have killed him. Why did you not stay hidden?”

“The way he spoke to you—” I stared at the youth’s battered nose and the stream that bubbled over his swollen lip. For one moment of fury I might have been facing my own trial for murder.

She looked up with a rueful smile.

“You mean well, sir, I see that. The Lord knows I have no affection for this boy, but no one will be helped by breaking his skull.” Her face grew serious. “You should go. If he recalls what happened when he wakes, the lot of them will turn on you. They are foolish youths, but they swagger about with swords for all that.”

“He may think you were helping me to steal.”

“Leave me to worry about him. I’ve known him since he was an infant. You get yourself back to the city before first light. There have been enough horrors this night.”

I hesitated, but saw that she was right. On an impulse, I leaned forward and planted a kiss on the top of her head. Her white wisps of hair felt discomfitingly like cobwebs.

“Keep yourself safe, Meg,” I whispered. “When your mistress is free to return here, she will take care of you, I have no doubt.”

The old woman laid a bony hand over mine for a moment, and I saw the sheen of tears in her eyes before she blinked them away.

“Get you gone,” she said. “And remember what I told you, sir—I knew nothing of this dreadful business. God knows I speak the truth.” She glanced in the direction of the cellar.

I nodded, squeezing her hand a last time, hoping she had wit enough to avoid the belligerent anger of Nick Kingsley and the infinitely more dangerous calculations of Langworth and Sykes.

The sky was already edged with pink light in the east as I retraced my steps through the priory burial ground towards the gate, casting a last glance back at the ominous shape of the dirty white mausoleum with its stone angel about to take flight. Red streaks showed between dark banks of clouds at the horizon and a welcome breeze lifted my hair and dispelled a little the foul vapours that I imagined still clung to me from the night’s encounter. I passed unremarked under the North Gate and in the yard of the Cheker, as I walked by the water pump, on impulse I stripped to the waist and stuck my head and shoulders under the flow, letting the cold water wash the cobwebs and filth from my hair and face, until I could almost believe I was clean again. When I was done, I held my bruised fist in the water to bring down the swelling, bitterly regretting that I had not shown a greater degree of self-control with Nick Kingsley. Now I had two enemies in Canterbury and it would be all but impossible to make any further investigations at St. Gregory’s, with Nick and his friends looking for the chance to give me a bloody nose or worse in return.

Shivering as I dried myself with my shirt, I realised the inn was still locked up for the night, and I would have to wait until the servants rose for their early chores—unless I wanted to get Marina out of bed, a prospect I did not greatly relish. Instead I crossed to the stables and found my horse dozing quietly in his stall. I squeezed in beside him, murmuring gentle nonsense, and lay down on a bale of hay. As I drifted towards an uneasy sleep, my fingers closed around the silver medallion of St. Denis in my purse and the decaying face of the Huguenot boy rose, livid, behind my eyelids, seeming to ask what in God’s name I meant to do next.