The Chapel of Bones

Chapter Five

Sara woke to a miserable morning, feeling as though the cold had penetrated her very marrow. She wriggled further under the scratchy fustian blankets. They smelled of the damp, of cats’ pee, but it was better than rising. Outside, the rain was sheeting down. There was a growing puddle by the door, spreading slowly across the floor and curving back towards the wall, and she watched it dully for a few minutes. The idea of going outside to fetch water and empty her bladder was unappealing.

A widow must shift for herself, though. She embraced her boys, pulling them to her. Eight-year-old Dan was reluctant, as though such behaviour was too immature for him now he was the master of the house, but three-year-old Elias was enthusiastic, as always, and his arms gave Sara a strange feeling of comfort; she had found herself desperate for the little boy’s hugs since Saul’s death. He wanted as much of her warmth as he could take, and he happily snuggled closer. Then, when Dan had already risen and was trying to strike a spark from his flint and dagger, Sara finally eased herself up and pulled her old cloak about her, tucking the bedclothes in around Elias. She kissed him, then went to the door and peered out.

Rain was falling like spears, pelting into the mud about the huts. All was so wet, it was like staring at the sea. She shivered and pulled her cloak tighter, and hurried outside. Behind her hut was a little lean-to shack with her wood neatly stored on either side. Here she squatted over the hole Saul had dug for them when he built this little home for his family, and cleaned herself as best she could with a damp rag. Grabbing a bucket, she ran out to the walls near the West Gate, filled it with water and carried it back home up the hill, careful not to slip on the wet cobbles. Manure lying on the streets could make walking hazardous in this weather.

She was soaked. Still, at least Dan had managed to light the fire. The room was already filled with smoke as the dry tinder caught and started to singe the bits and pieces of wood shaving he’d put over them. He was still crouched on all fours, arse in the air, head down, like a puppy begging to play, when she entered.

Tipping a little water into her ewer, she rinsed her face, then grabbed a reluctant Elias and washed his face too. Dan would do his own later. Her children were always hungry. It was not something that would improve, she knew. So many children died too young to have ever known a full belly. Of all her friends about this city, not one hadn’t lost a child. All knew the pain of loss, just as she did herself. Her only daughter, little Claricia, had died just before her second birthday. It had been a close thing for Elias, too.

‘Oh God, let us find some food today!’ she murmured under her breath.

It was two weeks since Saul’s death, and still she found herself willing him back, as though he had gone travelling and must soon return. Somehow, she couldn’t quite believe that she’d never see him again.

Dan was coping with the loss. He was a little rock, he was. Strong, he had nodded when he was told, and then sniffed a little, before declaring that he would have to start breaking up the firewood as his father always had before. He felt the responsibility of being master of the family very strongly. Bless him, he’d even borrowed old Jen’s hatchet, since he couldn’t lift Saul’s axe.

Elias was too small to understand. He had seen dead men before, of course, but he somehow thought of them as something else. His own father couldn’t have gone. Sara had seen the disbelief in his eyes as she told him. He’d listened as she explained he was dead and couldn’t come home again, and then he’d asked for some food, and while he chewed his bread, he said, ‘It’s all right, he’s bound to come back soon.’

The funeral was a blur. She’d seen little, her eyes were so fogged with tears, and when they carried her husband’s pathetic half-body outside, the heavens had opened again. There were inches of water in the grave, and a man nearly fell in as they were settling his body in his hole. Sara had stood there staring down at him, trying to remember his smile, his kind brown eyes, his mouth fixed in that half-smile he always wore. She tried to remember his hands about her waist, on her breasts, how his arms felt as they pulled her towards him in one of his great hugs — and found that all these memories and more were already fading. He was gone: the staunch defender of her and their children was dead, and there was nothing she could do to change the fact.

Elias looked terrible today. The rain was abating somewhat, and in the feeble light, she could see that his face had a sickly tinge to it, and she sighed as she mixed the greens into her bowl for pottage. He needed more sustenance — meat and eggs, not a weak broth of Good King Henry, Alexanders, some peas and a handful of beans. It wasn’t enough to keep a lad together.

She would go to the Priory again and see if she could beg some food. A rich fishmonger had died, so she had heard, and part of his bequest was a great donation of food from the gate of the Priory of St Nicholas, bread and fish from the Almoner. If she could get a little fish and bread, it would make all the difference to her boys. They needed their food so desperately. She would go and plead with the Almoner.

Nicholas was already out. He had visited a church to preach, but the priest had refused him entry, and Nicholas was left to kick his heels outside. Rather than do that, he decided to go and have another look at the Cathedral. A keen urge prompted him to take a look at the Charnel Chapel, even though the rain was still falling steadily. It didn’t bother Nicholas much. He was used to all weathers.

It was a strange little building. Dedicated to St Edward the Confessor, because it was built in honour of King Edward I who had come to hear the trials after the murder, Nicholas thought it a peculiar place. Of course, all cemeteries had the same problem: if the religious establishment had been there for a while, when new bodies were ready to be interred, the pit-digger would keep coming up with old bones, and where should one store them? Bones took so long to rot down compared with flesh and blood. The favoured route was to put up a little chapel like this with a large storeroom beneath in which the bones could be installed, while above prayers were said for all the poor dead.

This was an innovation since Nicholas’s departure. When he had lived in the Cathedral’s grounds, he had truly lived here, on the spot where the chapel now stood, when this place had been the home of Walter de Lecchelade, the Chaunter.

No one had said what had happened to the old house. Presumably it was an accident: a fire had razed it to the ground, or a supporting beam had collapsed. It was of no importance. The place was only a building, when all was said and done, whereas this little chapel was significant. It protected people, giving a shelter to their remains while annuellars prayed for their souls.

It was as likely that after Walter’s murder the Chapter decided to remove the memory by eradicating his house. And they honoured the King while so doing.

Naming it after King Edward was fair, Nicholas considered. After all, if it weren’t for him, the guilty might never have been punished.

This was the first chance he’d had to take stock of the Cathedral since he had arrived, and now he studied the place with interest.

When he was living with the Chaunter, he had been prone to walking about the works, and he had been fascinated by the way that the workmen had gone about their tasks. Of course in those days they were working on the eastern range of the Cathedral, whereas now that end was completed and the men were attacking the nave and western front, bringing it up to the same height as the rest. It meant that scaffolding and equipment were standing apparently all higgledy-piggledy about the main entranceway. Also, the masons, smiths and carpenters had brought all their tools so as to have them closer to where the work was being conducted.

While he wandered about the Close, the rain stopped at last, and now there was a bright sun peeping between the rents of tattered clouds. Warmth began to return to him as his garments soaked up the heat, and he could smell the wet-dog odour as his woollen clothing steamed gently. It was a smell that spoke of comfort to come when he was dry, and he relished it.

There were so many men here, scurrying about like ants in the presence of this massive building. All no doubt knew what they were doing, but to Nicholas it looked as though they were all witless. There seemed to be no logic he could discern.

Walking closer, he saw men hauling on ropes, and he stopped to watch them. With his head and back so bent, it was hard to turn his head to gaze upwards, so he simply assumed that they were lifting something up to the wall and continued on his way.

‘Friar! Friar! Stop!’

Nicholas paused in the mud and moved his head this way and that, but couldn’t see the man who had called.

‘Please, stop there. A little while ago a man was squashed to death right there! Wait!’

‘If people want to talk, why do they conceal themselves?’ Nicholas muttered to himself as he waited. Soon a pair of legs appeared encased in the black of a clerk’s tunic, and Nicholas let his eyes ride slowly upwards. ‘Well?’

‘I … my God!’

Nicholas always felt a slightly perverse satisfaction when people first took in his appearance. The scar inflicted on him that night had ravaged what had before been rather good looks. His assailant had used a long-bladed weapon, perhaps a sword, or a very long knife; whichever it may have been, it had torn into his flesh at the temple, pierced his eye and ruined it, and then continued downwards, ripping away the flesh from cheek and jaw, opening the whole side of his mouth. He was told that when they found him that morning, the two annuellars on their way to prepare for the first of the day’s masses in honour of patrons and dead canons, the Bratton’s Mass, had come across the bodies and thought all must be dead. Nicholas himself had most of his head simply a mass of blood, and with all the exposed bone, they had thought he couldn’t survive, until one noticed that there was a bloody froth coming from around the wound. He was breathing.

‘My visage shocks you?’ Nicholas asked nastily.

‘Is it really you, Nicholas?’ the man gasped, and Nicholas peered up more closely.

‘Matthew?’

Henry heard the banging on his door soon after he had gone through to his counting room, and groaned inwardly. ‘Another damned fool asking for a saddle he can’t afford,’ he grunted as he listened for his bottler’s steps. Soon he heard the steps return, and he sat up a little more smartly in his chair. For all his cynicism, a man couldn’t afford to shun any client, especially when he was in the process of waiting to hear from a dissatisfied customer who might well sue him and ruin him utterly.

‘Master, it’s …’

The bottler was shoved from the doorway, and William entered, his face wreathed in smiles. ‘Master saddler, it’s good to be here again. Bottler, bring me a jug of wine, and one for your master,’ he added, prodding the man with his staff. He hopped over to a stool and sat, rubbing at his calf. ‘Fucking wound. You’d have thought fifteen years would see it off, but the bleeding thing comes back each winter. Hurts like a sodding burn under the skin. All because of a poleaxe some arse shoved at me when I was fighting a man on the stairs above me. I killed him slowly when I caught him, I can tell you! Ha! He squealed for a good three hours before I got bored!’

Henry surveyed him despairingly. ‘What do you want here, William? I’m very busy.’

‘Ach, God’s Balls, man, you’re always busy. I thought the idea of being a rich man in this city was, you could take more time off to enjoy yourself, eh? Well, this is your opportunity. I fancy getting lashed today. You can come and help me.’

‘I can’t just drop everything to go and drink with you!’ Henry protested. ‘I’ve got a business to run here.’

‘What’s the point of a fucking business if you can’t tell them all to poke themselves and have some fun?’ William asked reasonably. ‘Anyway, the market’s open and the bulls will be baited soon. We could go and have a drink at the alehouse on the corner, then on to the baiting pens for a wager or two, and back to …’

‘I cannot possibly. That is ridiculous.’

‘Why? You too grand to enjoy a drink with me any more?’ William asked, his grin broadening. ‘Time was, you were happy for a few cups of ale with me.’

‘I don’t have time for this,’ Henry muttered.

‘What’s the matter? Have you forgotten all the fun we used to have? Eh? Come on, grab a cotte and a hat and let’s go.’

The bottler returned with the wine and William slurped a half-cup in one gulp.

‘I can’t. I have work to do,’ Henry said, looking away.

‘There something wrong? Something wrong with me?’

Henry looked back quickly. He recognised that tone. It was the voice of the other William, the man who would draw steel and stab a man for an imagined insult. ‘No, old friend.’

‘Then what is it? You ashamed to be seen with me?’

Henry felt his shoulders sag. ‘Will, I am worried. A customer has threatened to sue me.’

‘Tell me who it is, and I’ll see he doesn’t,’ William said reasonably.

‘You can’t fix everything with cold steel!’ Henry blurted.

‘I don’t know anything you can’t,’ William smiled.

‘I’m still suffering from the night we killed the Chaunter. I feel such guilt … it is heavy on my soul.’

‘Him? Christ Jesus, that was such a long time ago,’ William exclaimed in genuine astonishment. ‘I haven’t counted the men I’ve killed since then. Why on earth does his death worry you?’

‘Because it was murder, Will: murder! We set upon him, we bribed others to help us, and we murdered him,’ Henry said wearily. ‘It was a foul deed.’

‘Pah! It was nothing.’

‘I am going to be dead soon, and before I die, I want to confess my crimes.’

William shrugged. Then he leaned forward, and the other grin was on his face again, the cold, dead grin of the murderer. ‘That’s fine; you do that. But don’t recall any other names, will you, Master Saddler? Because if I heard you were trying to fix me at the same time, I’d see if I could keep you screaming even longer than my record. Eh? You understand me? For you, a confession will hurt a bit, but for me, it could mean me being thrown out of the Priory. I don’t want to lose my corrody, Saddler. So keep my name out of anything like that. You understand me?’

John Coppe watched his friend the porter. They were at the gate again, and Janekyn was busying himself about the place, watching all those who were passing through, ever alert to the sight of known cutpurses or men or women of ill-fame who might enter either to rob or solicit for business.

Janekyn was a remarkably calm man. Sparing of words, he was nonetheless kindly, and to men like Coppe who had suffered in battles, he was generosity itself, always sharing his meagre supplies of food. Yet there was something about the friar which had unbalanced him. At the time Coppe had seen this, and decided that he wouldn’t probe and upset his friend, but that was some days ago now. Jan had had enough time to get over whatever it was that the fellow had said. Even so, Coppe was reluctant to broach the subject … but his fascination was being fed by the air of mystery.

‘You remember that friar? I saw him again earlier.’

‘Ah?’

‘Yes. Down there near the Charnel Chapel. He met up with one of the Treasurer’s clerks — the one in charge of the works.’ There was no response. ‘Come on, Jan, what’s the problem? He said something about there being a murder, and then you and him went all quiet. He asked whether you were a local man, said that was that then, and buggered off.’

Janekyn shrugged slightly, his eyes still on the passing folk, and then he pursed his lips, shot a glance at Coppe, and jerked his head to beckon his assistant. When the lad was standing in his place with a heavy ash staff in his hands, Janekyn went inside and came out with a couple of thick fustian blankets and a jug that steamed in the cool air. ‘Who needs cups when the weather’s like this?’ he grunted rhetorically, and took a swig before passing it to Coppe. It was heavily spiced and sweetened wine, and Coppe could feel the warmth soaking down from his belly to his toes — even to the toes of the leg that had gone so many years ago.

‘There was a murder, right enough. It was November, a week and two days after All Souls’ Day.’

Coppe nodded. That would be the ninth, then.

‘The trouble had been brewing for ages. I was only a lad, but I can remember it still. It cut up the city. The Bishop was a foreigner, a man called Quivil, who was arrogant. Wanted everything done his own way. Under him the Archbishop put in a Dean who was a local man, John Pycot — everyone called him John of Exeter. The Archbishop was determined to see Pycot grow in importance and fame. There were rumours spread about him — that he was greedy, took benefices wherever he could, and never did a stroke of work apart from what would benefit him — but they came from the Bishop. That was the sort of man Quivil was. Always putting down those he couldn’t get on with. All the city respected the Dean. We liked John Pycot. The Bishop refused to accept him, and never even acknowledged his position, but couldn’t get rid of him. So he put one of his own men in as Chaunter, to sort of keep Dean John at bay the whole time. The Dean was cross, and it led to a fight. The Chaunter got killed. And that’s about it.’

‘Why the coldness towards the friar, then?’

‘He was there; he helped protect that damned Chaunter against the good Dean’s men. That friar saw what the Bishop wanted him to. Useless. No, any man who knows this city would agree that the Dean was the better man.’

‘Is he dead now?’

‘Don’t know. He was gaoled for a long while in the Bishop’s cells, then forced to take up the vows and go into exile in some monastery or other. No one will hear from him again.’

‘Don’t you think that the friar has paid for his actions?’ Coppe said, thinking of the dreadful wound on his face that all but matched his own.

Janekyn gave him a steady look. ‘Sorry, John, I know you feel sympathy for a man like that, but I can’t. He fought on the side of the man who helped create a rift in the Chapter. For that I hope the Chaunter rots, and I don’t care to drink with those who tried to save him, neither.’

After William’s departure, Mabilla entered the counting room. ‘I saw him leaving,’ she said quietly, nervously fingering a thread on a tapestry.

‘He told me I mustn’t confess,’ Henry said heavily. His wife, he could see, was very scared. She seemed unable to meet his eyes, as though she feared his emotions might force her to break down in sympathy.

Sympathy was a commodity he could not summon up for others. He sat drained, his face twisted and his eyes moist; he could have wept. Both forearms lay on the table before him, and Mabilla felt that William had sucked the energy from him. Even the will to live was gone.

‘Oh, my love,’ she said. She went to his side and took his hand in her own, kneeling and gazing up at him. ‘My love, don’t look so upset. The man was only demanding that you protect him.’

‘He said he’d kill me. I think he threatened not just me, my darling, but you and Julia too. I need some wine!’

‘My love, no! Keep your head clear just for a little longer. Don’t think of me or of Julia. We are strong enough. Think of yourself. If you allow him to threaten you, it’s your soul he’ll harm. Don’t let him do that. We can always seek protection. There are men you can hire.’

‘Darling, he threatened …’

‘All he can do is perhaps try to hurt you, but we can stop that. We’ll get men to guard you, if you want. But his threats are nothing compared to the risk to your immortal soul, Henry. Think of that: your soul! If you feel you must confess your sin, then do so.’

Henry turned his head and looked at her. ‘I wish I knew what to do for the best.’

‘Look into your heart, my love.’

‘It’s not just my heart, darling. Peter, the acting Prior at St Nicholas’s said I should confess, too.’

‘Then you must do it, my love. It’s your eternal soul. Don’t let him risk that.’

‘But if I speak to any of the canons or vicars, they’ll be bound to tell someone else. The Cathedral is no repository for secrets. They gabble away all the time like old women. If only I …’

A face returned to him. A face he had seen in the streets, the ravaged features of the man he had last seen sprawled in the mud at the side of his master. Friars could hear confessions, he reminded himself.

‘Perhaps there is one man I could speak to,’ he said.

Sara was early at the gate to St Nicholas’s. She and Elias were waiting for the bread to be distributed, and she lifted and pushed her little son before her, trying to maintain their place among the people who crowded the narrow street.

It was a blessing that the good monks at St Nicholas’s Priory issued their alms. Without their generosity many of the poor of the city would die, Sara among them.

No! The boys were reason enough to continue the battle. She might have lost her man, but she wouldn’t lose her boys too. And if that meant queuing at the gate to St Nicholas’s, she’d be here all night if necessary.

Just then, the bell tolled out, and now she could hear the chain and latch being pulled. That meant the Almoner had brought food for the poor. She’d be able to get something into her belly, with luck. But there were so many people about, she realised, glancing from side to side. What if there wasn’t enough food for her, for Dan and Elias?

As she looked and felt the others pushing her forwards from behind, she noticed that the ring of people before the gate was contracting: men and women were forcing their way towards the gate from either side. The crush on all sides was so tight that it was impossible to move her arms, and then her breasts were bruised as she was shoved painfully into the backs of those in front. They retaliated with elbows and backward kicks, and her shins were barked by the boot-heels of the man in front of her as he shouted for people to stop their ‘infernal fucking shoving!’

It was alarming, most of all because she knew that Elias was at her side. He had her hand in his, and he was wailing already. She couldn’t pick him up, though. He was terrified, and so was she as the mass of people pulled her inexorably on. And then the fellow in front wasn’t there. He simply disappeared from sight, and as her mind tried to absorb this, her feet were trapped. She couldn’t lift or press them onwards, and the weight of hundreds was at her back. With a scream of dread, she felt herself topple; her son’s hand was ripped from her grasp, and she tumbled down with her ears seared by the sound of his screams.