The Abbot's Gibbet

19

The Abbot had a sense of unreality as he stood in the alley staring down at the slumped figure clothed in the black habit of his Order. People clustered at the entrance to the alley, craning over the crossed polearms of two watchmen to peer at the body. Beyond, men and women strolled past, uninterested, as they made their way up to the fair or returned from it to their lodgings for a meal.

Champeaux had seen many dead bodies in his life – monks who had expired from fevers, old age, or occasionally famine, but there was something unutterably sad about this death. Peter was so young. He should have had many years to live, for he was healthy enough, and he might have become a good monk if he had resolved his problem with the girl. All men who entered the cloister were forced to come to terms with their vow of chastity, and Champeaux was convinced that the youth would have been able to as well. It was one thing to be tempted, but if one had to be, it was better that it should happen before taking the vows so that the problem could be confronted and the firm decision taken beforehand.

He was only glad that Baldwin and Simon were on hand. The knight was already crouched by the figure, staring at it with a strangely sympathetic expression.

“How did he die, Sir Baldwin?”

Baldwin hardly looked up. “His wrists are cut.”

The bailiff watched as Baldwin gently rolled the body over, examining Peter’s back and maintaining a commentary on what he saw.

“He’s not been dead long: his body is still warm and the blood hardly clotted. There is no sign of a wound in his back or anything to suggest that he was murdered. Only the cuts on his wrists. It is…”

“I know, Sir Baldwin,” said the Abbot quietly. “It looks like suicide.”

The knight said nothing, rolling the body over onto its back once more and holding an arm up to study the scored flesh.

Simon said, “His hands are clenched as if he was preparing to fight.”

“All of us are bled for our health,” said the Abbot slowly. “He would know that clenching the fist makes the blood flow faster.”

The knight nodded. “It was merciful and swift. The boy would have lost consciousness speedily with both wrists opened.” He looked up at the grieving face of the Abbot, adding softly, “He would not have suffered, my lord.”

“Thank you for that, Sir Baldwin. I would not wish to think be had been in pain for long, the poor fellow. It is bad enough that he should have contemplated such an evil act, such a sin against his God, without having to suffer for it.”

That, they all knew, was the nub of the issue. Suicide was a crime against God: an act of violence condemned by all. It meant a suicide could not be buried in a church or churchyard.

“Why should he have done this?” Simon wondered.

The Abbot was silent a moment. He could not discuss the novice’s confession of lusting after the girl. “He was not in the Abbey last night,” he admitted at last. “I think his mind was disturbed.”

“What will you do with him?” asked one of the watchmen standing nearby. “Leave him out at the crossroads?”

There was a greedy delight to his voice that made the Abbot snap his head round sharply. The watchman was smiling, pleased to see that even a monk could fall to utter disgrace, and for once Abbot Robert permitted himself a burst of anger.

“You think that because he has suffered the torments of evil, a slow and dreadful torture you cannot imagine, that he should be deserted like a felon? You think his soul should be cast aside because of the pain he has been forced to endure? You yourself, aye and your family, your children, your parents, all of you, are protected by the monks of this Abbey giving themselves up to God, and you dare to crow when one of us finds the agony too great! This man was taken by God. He committed suicide after days of struggling with the devil within him, while his mind was unbalanced, and that was an act of God. God chose to take him to Himself. How dare you suggest he should be treated like an unshriven felon! Peter will be buried with honor in the monks’ graveyard, the same as if he had died in any other way, and you can tell your friends that!”

Simon was stunned to see the Abbot’s sudden emotion, and the watchman was equally shocked. He withdrew, muttering apologies, and the Abbot gave a great sigh, as if he had exhausted his final energy with his explosion. Champeaux glanced down at the body once more. “Oh, Peter, Peter. Why should you have come to this?”

The bailiff wanted to lead the Abbot away. The death of the monk had shaken the older man to the core of his soul, and his sadness was unbearable. Simon was about to propose that they quit this miserable place when he caught sight of the stick.

It was a plain oaken cudgel, with a large ball for a head, which rested at the foot of one of the walls only a few feet from the alley’s entrance. Someone could have tossed it in, he thought, a passer-by with no further use for a heavy piece of wood like this. Yet Simon knew that no one would discard such a useful weapon. A good defensive tool like this would be kept and cherished until it became old or rotten.

He held it to the light and studied it. There was no sign of cracking, no dents – it was in fine condition. The ground here was a matter of a yard or so from the corpse, and Simon gave it a measuring look. The cudgel could have been brought here by the monk, dropped while he prepared to destroy himself, and lain here forgotten while the lad watched his life-blood trickle and gush from his wounds. Simon had never seen the monk carry a cudgel, but many men would, and he had no doubt that a monk could get hold of one as easily as a serf. His gaze sharpened. If Peter had taken this with him, could it be possible that he was the monk responsible for the reported thefts? Might Peter have been the one who struck Will Ruby down? There had been other men too who had been attacked – could Peter have been the robber?

The watchmen converged on Jordan Lybbe’s stall and shoved past the boy at the front. Long Jack grabbed his arm and hauled him after them: Hankin had no time to call out, let alone scream. He wanted his master, but Lybbe wasn’t there, and Hankin knew he had no protector without him.

Other stallholders, who had all paid their protection money, had been expecting this. It was well-known that the watchmen had been trounced by Lybbe, so it was inevitable that while the merchant was away from his stall, it would be visited again. Those nearest turned their faces away and concentrated on their business. There was no point in being beaten to protect another’s goods – especially when the owner was an accused felon and outlaw. News travelled fast among the community of traders.

“All this is your master’s, isn’t it, boy?” Long Jack said, waving an arm round the goods on display. “It all belongs to Jordan Lybbe, this. Well, no longer. Now it’s ours, and we’re taking it.”

Hankin stared up at him, a young boy gripped by a man representing authority – a watchman. His master, the man he looked on as a father, had disappeared, and these men were going to steal all his goods. Hankin was scared, but Lybbe had saved him, had rescued him from starvation when his parents had died. The boy had no family, only Lybbe. He had no loyalty except to Lybbe. And these men intended robbing his master of everything he owned.

His right arm was gripped by Long Jack, but he could still reach his small sheath-knife with his left: he snatched it from its scabbard and jabbed it into Long Jack’s arm. The watchman shrieked, let go of the boy, and stared uncomprehendingly at the gash as his blood dripped. “You little bastard!”

Hankin scrambled back into the recesses of the hanging materials. He still feared the grim men, but thrusting his knife into Long Jack’s arm had given him a sense of satisfaction that even a thorough beating couldn’t erase. He could defend himself. Deep among the bolts of cloth, he crouched, his knife poised, waiting.

Will Ruby was furious when his apprentice broke the little knife. The thin-bladed tool was one of his favorites, and he always used it when he had any fiddly jobs to do, such as cutting up young coneys or hares. The fool should never have tried to use it to pry apart the bones of a goose’s neck. It was no surprise that the blade had snapped in half – it was far too weak for a job like that.

There was a cutler in the fair, and Will decided to go and see what the man had on offer. If there was anything like his old knife, he would buy it. He’d made enough already to be able to afford it, and he felt he deserved a present after the two consecutive shocks of finding the headless body, and then being attacked. He gingerly touched the lump on his head. It was still sore, but at least no harm seemed to have been done. No harm other than losing his favorite knife because of letting the apprentice look after things while he went to rest his headache, anyway.

The route to the cutler took him past the cloth-sellers, and he nodded and smiled at the people he met, most of whom he knew from his shop. It was always best to appear to be cheerful and friendly; customers preferred to deal with happy men rather than morose ones.

A small crowd was gathered at one point, blocking his passage. Everyone was staring at one particular stall. Ruby followed their gaze and stopped dead.

The watchmen huddled round the merchant’s awning, Long Jack with a tourniquet bound above his elbow. At his nod, the men cautiously entered. Ruby frowned when he heard a high scream, then curses, and a boy was dragged out between two men, Long Jack following with a knife in his hand.

“What’s all this about?” Ruby asked his neighbor.

“It’s the man’s stall, the one who’s been arrested. I reckon those swine are going to make sure they get as much money as possible now the owner’s gone.”

“What about the boy?”

“He wanted to protect his master’s stuff, daft little sod.”

Two members of the watch had the boy gripped hard between them, stretching him over a barrel. Another stood with his club in his hands, watching the crowd with a sneer, while Long Jack untied his heavy leather belt. He raised it and brought it down on Hankin’s back.

Ruby could see the agony in the lad’s strained muscles as the leather cracked on his frail body. But no one stirred in the crowd as Long Jack raised his arm again, preparing to strike. There was merely a hushed expectancy, and then a kind of mass sigh as the belt came down on the child’s thin form.

Ruby knew the watchmen. They had extorted money from him for the past three years at fair-time. All the traders knew how they made money for themselves, but there was no one to complain to. The Abbot must know how they abused their position, but he took no action, and there was hardly any point in a portman trying to stop them if the Abbot would not support him.

The strap rose again, and Ruby saw the sweat break out on the boy’s face. He looked as if he was pleading with the crowd, begging one of them, any of them, to help him, but all those he stared at glanced away, with a kind of shame. Ruby felt his headache renewing its force, the pain increasing with each lash of Long Jack’s belt.

Then he could bear it no longer. The pain in his head, the agony on the boy’s face, the sense that the port was being overrun with injustice in the form of watchmen who used violence for no reason, that the town was degenerating into a cesspit of murder and felony… made his blood suddenly boil.

He growled – he actually growled! The sound made him feel a sudden animal delight in battle, and he leapt over the trestle. Grasping the belt from the watchman, he kicked the man’s legs away, and he fell. Ruby was already on the others. For a moment, they stared as he screamed abuse, as dumbfounded as a farmer who sees his mildest pig become a mad boar, but when he laid about him with the belt, they moved. The guard with the club caught the full weight of the buckle over his forehead, and collapsed like a pole-axed steer, but by then the other two were already out of range. They let the lad fall, weeping, and withdrew to a safe distance, one laying his hand on his knife.

Ruby dropped the belt and knelt by Hankin, murmuring to him softly, and the two men glanced at each other. They were about to rush at the butcher when a voice made them stop.

“Bugger this! Let’s get the bastards!”

The watchman drew his knife. “Who dares attack us? You?” he asked, pointing with his dagger at a grim-faced cobbler.

“Yes, me.” And before the other could respond, the cobbler had thrown himself forward. The watchman stepped back, but his sneer of contempt changed to a look of concern as he realized that the cobbler was not alone. The crowd, which had averted its eyes as the boy was thrashed, had seen the hated watchmen forced to retreat by the brave actions of one man. Now, even as the cobbler jumped into the fray, his neighbors followed, and instead of one headstrong opponent, the watchman found himself faced with thirty moving forward inexorably. He waved his dagger uncertainly to hold them at bay while he fell back, his friend at his side.

But before they could move far, the cobbler had gripped the man’s arm, immobilizing his knife-hand, and the mob moved in, grabbing both men and dragging them to the awning poles. The two were lashed to it, and Long Jack and the guard were hauled and bound to another. Then, while all four howled with impotent fury, they were thrashed with belts, and when the traders got tired of that, they fetched rotten fruit and pelted the bullies with it.

Ruby was oblivious to all this. Cradling Hankin’s frail body, he carried him past the screaming watchmen and was about to return to his own stall when he was stayed by a hand on his arm.

“Is the child all right?”

“Yes, brother.” Ruby had not spoken to Hugo before, but recognized the friar. “Beaten, but not too badly.”

“Why did they do it?” Hugo asked, shaking his head.

“They knew his master was locked up.”

“Who? The man who owns this stall?”

“Yes, friar. Hadn’t you heard? It was Jordan Lybbe, the outlaw. He’s been arrested – everyone thinks he must have murdered poor Torre.”

“Jordan Lybbe an outlaw?” Hugo repeated with horror. “But he can’t be!”

Simon studied the club speculatively. A man dressed as a monk had robbed men in the town and attacked Ruby. It was possible that Peter had been the thief. If so, maybe it was for the best that he had taken this way out of a disgraced life.

Catching sight of the Abbot’s face, Simon was sure that he had already reached a similar conclusion without seeing the club. His face was pained, but set into a firm blankness, and the bailiff wondered what he had heard in confession when Peter had demanded his talk the previous evening. Baldwin had been interested in the lad even then, Simon knew, and the bailiff wondered at the acute suspicion his friend had shown.

Simon didn’t want to add to the Abbot’s sorrow, but he was the warden’s own bailiff. He could not allow this evidence to be hidden. “Sir?”

Abbot Champeaux turned to him enquiringly, and when he saw the club his eyes widened, and he cast an involuntary glance at the body which told Simon he had guessed the same.

“What is it?” Baldwin asked, grunting as he got to his feet. “Ah – a cudgel, and a solid one at that. Where was it?”

As Simon explained, the knight listened carefully. “It was there?”

The bailiff nodded. “He must have been sickened by what he had done, and tossed it away from him. Or maybe he dropped it there as he came into this alley, filled with his determination to end himself.”

“Perhaps,” Baldwin said, but without conviction. “Why here?” he wondered, squatting by the wall. “Let’s suppose it was his.” He walked to the entrance to the alley, swinging the club, and let it fall. It struck the damp soil of the alley and fell over. “It couldn’t have fallen from his hand, then.”

Simon saw what he meant. The cudgel had lain at the wall opposite the body, and the boy would hardly have let it fall there and then crossed the alley to kill himself. Yet it could not have bounced there as he slumped down.

The knight walked to the body and tossed the stick toward where it had been found. “He could have thrown it away.”

“Perhaps he was revolted by what his club had done and hurled it from him?” the Abbot supposed.

“It’s possible, but if that were so, wouldn’t he have thrown it harder and further? And why come here to die? Suicides hang themselves or cut their wrists at home. What could bring him here?”

“He had the mind of a monk,” said the Abbot. “He didn’t want to pollute the Abbey precinct with his blood.”

“If he had such a mind, why kill himself and endanger his soul by such an affront to God?” Baldwin asked curtly.

He squatted, staring at the wall and the fallen cudgel, then down at the body, before giving a short exclamation. Slowly, reverently, he uncurled the fingers of Peter’s hand. He studied the hand with intense concentration, and as the Abbot made to leave, he looked up. “Abbot, could you come here, please?”

“What is it, Sir Baldwin?” the older man said, his voice betraying a degree of asperity.

“This,” Baldwin said quietly.

Simon saw a series of deep slashes that cut the palm and fingers. He winced at the sight: he could imagine the pain of the blade cutting so deep into the flesh.

“Well, Sir Knight? Am I supposed to be interested in the last madness of the boy? He is dead, and these marks and mutilations are of no concern to me now,” the Abbot said brusquely.

“They should be. I have only ever seen this kind of mark on men who had tried to defend themselves against an attacker. Why should a suicide slash at his hands? But a man who is set upon by another with a knife will often grab at it to keep the blade away, and as the attacker pulls the knife back…”

“He was attacked?”

“Yes, Abbot. This lad is no suicide. These marks show he tried to protect himself against his killer. My lord Abbot, Peter was murdered!”

“Who could do such a thing?” Abbot Robert whispered, horrified.

Baldwin shrugged. “That I don’t know. Perhaps the man who has been robbing, and perhaps it was the same man who killed Torre. That could explain why the cudgel is here: because Peter saw the thief in the alley, and maybe the robber dropped the club to hide his guilt, and then couldn’t find it again, or ran away as soon as he had killed the boy. Perhaps he wanted to implicate the boy in his own crimes. It is no matter – what does matter is that Peter was murdered, and didn’t commit suicide.”

“Sir Baldwin, you give me a crumb of hope in the midst of all my despair.”

“We still have to seek his murderer.”

“Who could it be? Who would dare such a crime?”

“We have arrested the man who had the knife from the sheath on Torre’s body. It is possible that he could have killed Peter, but…”

“What, Sir Baldwin?”

“He was with Jeanne and Margaret for some time before I had him arrested,” Baldwin said slowly. “I would be surprised if the novice could have been here for long without being discovered: this alley is well used. Yet our man has been in prison for over an hour already. We must go and see whether he can shed some light on this. There is another thing: this monk was keen on a girl.”

“I know it,” the Abbot admitted. “I tried to persuade him out of his infatuation, but it was no good.”

“Last night I saw him north of the fair. This lad was scorned by her, and it looked as though his heart was broken. I think we must see the girl and ask her what was said and why she chose to refuse him so forcefully – perhaps she can give us a clue.”

“What possible clue could she give you?” the Abbot asked.

“She was scathing toward him. Perhaps this was not the act of a mad felon but there is a more prosaic reason for the boy’s death. What if he had a rival? Might not that rival have decided to dispose of her other suitor?”

“If Peter’s rival knew she had spurned him, there would hardly be a reason to kill Peter,” the Abbot said reasonably.

“True, but she was so disdainful of him, I have to wonder what she knows of this. Something surely made her react in that way to him. He seemed so sure of her feelings, and must have been utterly devastated when she rejected him so cruelly. We need to question her.”

“Go and speak to her with my blessing. I can tell you where she lives – Peter told me who she was last night.” The Abbot’s voice hardened. “But first interrogate the man in the jail and find out what he has to say for himself.”