The Chapel of Bones

Chapter Eight

Stephen the Treasurer strode along the cloister with a face as black as his gown, and it was some while before Matthew could make his presence known.

‘The fabric rolls, Stephen. You have to check them.’

‘I can’t, not now. You’ll have to do them yourself. There’s too much going on just now, what with this murder.’

Matthew reluctantly took back the proffered rolls. His canon had never before shown such distress and inability to concentrate. Certainly it was shocking to find a body in the chapel, but murder wasn’t so rare, as he himself knew. That the Treasurer should be so alarmed was strange. He threw a look over his shoulder towards the Charnel Chapel. ‘No one can think straight today.’

‘No. It is appalling to think that the man was lured here to his death.’

‘Lured?’

‘Why else should he have been here in the Close? Someone must have tricked him to come here,’ Stephen said.

‘He could have been here because of some business with other people, or maybe he was taking a short cut, or wanted simply to see the rebuilding works,’ Mathew replied reasonably.

Stephen stopped and looked at him with keen eyes. ‘See the rebuilding? Everybody of any age in this city has seen the rebuilding works all their lives. We of the Chapter are the only people who truly care about the works, Matthew. And as for a short cut — he lived out on Smythen Street, I’m told. This wouldn’t have been a short cut in any direction.’

‘Then he was here for business,’ Matthew said. ‘After all, who could have wanted to lure him here, as you suggest? You are not suggesting that a member of the Chapter was so angry with a faulty saddle that he killed him, are you?’

‘No,’ Stephen said, ‘but why should he have been killed here if it was nothing to do with the Chapter?’

Matthew shrugged and was about to turn away when the Treasurer clutched his arm. ‘I have just had an awful thought! He was found at the Charnel Chapel, the very place where John Pycot’s men killed Lecchelade …’

‘I know,’ Matt said unemotionally.

‘My apologies — I forgot you were hurt in that attack too.’

‘It is nothing. I recovered well enough. Now, what of this saddler?’

Stephen’s face was paler than usual. A man who adored his ledgers and accounts, he was already pale, but now as he glanced at Matthew, he seemed almost translucent. He shook his head emphatically, a hand going momentarily to his brow. ‘Nothing, nothing. It’s my shock at this killing. Nothing more. No.’

Baldwin went up to his solar as soon as the messenger had set off again, and stood at his chest for a long time before he could work up the enthusiasm to open it.

He had wanted only to return here, but his infidelity had made his homecoming a hollow reward after his travels. All the time in Galicia and Portugal he had looked forward to once more being able to hold his wife in his arms, but then he had almost died, and his arms had embraced another. It shouldn’t have affected him, but it had. He felt as though his marriage had been shredded by that one act.

His sword was on top of the chest, and he pulled the blade out partway to peer at the cross carved into the peacock-blue steel. The smith had used a burin to etch the shape, and then hammered gold wire into it. It formed a Templar cross, to remind himself always of where he had come from, and the men with whom he had lived.

Baldwin had been a Poor Fellow Soldier of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, a Knight Templar, almost from the moment of leaving Acre when it fell in 1291, until 1307 when the knights were all arrested on the orders of the French King. It was the injustice of the capture, torture and murder of his companions which had led to his returning to England afterwards, determined to seek a quieter life in the Devon countryside and avoiding contact with any men in positions of power. He detested politicians after the French King’s betrayal of the Templars purely for his own benefit, and he couldn’t trust even the Church, for the Pope himself had left the Templars to rot in gaols, then aided the King in stealing all their possessions.

That was, perhaps, the guiding treachery which lighted his path thereafter. The Pope had been the ultimate leader of the Templars. They owned fealty to no man, no man on God’s earth, other than His vicar, the Pope. No baron, earl or King could command a Templar knight; only the Pope himself. Yet he had deserted them to their fate. The accusations levelled against the Order were so vast and all-encompassing that few of the men could present a case for their defence, yet they were not permitted the advice of even one lawyer. Their destruction was assured.

So Baldwin returned to learn that his older brother was dead, and he was the owner of the small manor of Furnshill near Cadbury in Devonshire. Except he was not to be allowed to wallow in his feelings of hurt and misery. Soon after his arrival, he met Simon Puttock, and shortly thereafter he was given the post of Keeper of the King’s Peace as a result of Simon’s lobbying.

He had been content here in Furnshill, he had been happy as a Keeper; yet there was something that now, when he looked back over his life, seemed to be gnawing at him. Partly, he supposed, it might be due to his marriage.

When he had joined the Knights Templar, he had taken the threefold vows. The Knights were warrior monks, and although they lived as men-at-arms, they also lived apart from the secular world. They had a Rule which had been written for them by Saint Bernard himself, and Baldwin had adhered to it. He had sworn before God, accepting his Order’s harsh demands of obedience, poverty — and chastity. When he had left the Order, that had been the most difficult to adhere to, but he had recognised his loneliness, and he felt that in the absence of a Grand Master to obey, his other vows might equally be considered redundant.

That was fine, but still he had qualms. And these had magnified a hundredfold since his adultery. It made him feel less a man, more a beast. If only he had resisted … but he had not. And now, perhaps, he should confront the whole sin.

His marriage, although built upon love and, until now, mutual trust and respect, was surely foul in the eyes of God? Other Templars had managed to escape the fires and find their ways to alternative Orders, some joining the Benedictines or Cistercians. Provided that they went to an Order whose Rule was more stringent than the Templars’ own, they were permitted, once the French King had raped their treasury and stolen all he could from their preceptories, to go into another House. Those who refused and lived were likely to be found begging on the streets of Paris.

He loved Jeanne, but how could she love him, if she were to discover that he had been so false to her?

Hearing a step behind him, he turned and saw his wife entering. ‘Jeanne.’

‘I wanted to know if I might help you to prepare for your journey.’

He saw, with a stab in his heart, that she had been crying. ‘My dearest, my Jeanne, I will not be gone for long,’ he said.

‘Of course not, Husband,’ she said. ‘I shall wait your return. And I shall always hold my love for you deep in my heart.’

He thrust the sword back into the scabbard and began to bind the belt about his waist. Unaccountably, her ignorance of his behaviour, and her sweet acceptance of his treatment of her made him feel a sudden anger, as though she was being unreasonable in the face of his own offence.

‘Sir, have I upset you?’

Her voice, so low, so level and yet so brittle, as though she was about to break down into tears of despair, made him glance at her again, and this time his anger was washed away by his guilt, but also his recollection of his love for her. ‘Oh Jeanne, Jeanne, come here!’

He put his arms about her and buried his face in her shoulder, eyes squeezed tight shut, and muttered, ‘Jeanne, don’t worry. There’s just something … I need to think about it, that’s all. I am not another Liddinstone, Jeanne.’

She stiffened to hear the name of her first husband, but then she seemed to melt into his embrace, and he felt her arms reciprocate his hug. ‘Come home soon, Husband. I will miss you.’

‘I know,’ he whispered, hardly trusting his voice.

‘I love you,’ she said quietly. ‘Don’t leave me.’

He felt his treachery like a blade in his throat.

‘What is it, Joel?’

He was still sitting in his great chair staring at the fire when his wife Maud entered, and he didn’t hear her at first.

‘Hmm?’ he grunted, then smiled. ‘Oh, it’s you. I was miles away.’

‘So I saw,’ she chuckled. She was a contented woman. Although their marriage had not been blessed with children, she and Joel had been together for almost six and thirty years now, and while she was feeling her age at all of four and fifty, and he no longer looked like the fresh-faced joiner she had married so many years ago, her affection for him had only deepened over the years. He saw to her needs, providing her with money and clothing, and in return she saw to it that his household was managed well and that his table was always overflowing with food.

‘Miles away? Leagues, more likely, Husband,’ she murmured. She was carrying a handful of scented herbs for their mattress, but catching sight of his expression again, she paused, then set them down on the table. ‘What is it?’

‘Henry. It’s such a shock.’

‘The market’s full of the news of it. He was found in St Edward’s Chapel, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes. Look, I didn’t tell you this, but Mabilla came here and accused me of killing him.’

‘What! That’s ridiculous!’

‘Of course,’ he said.

But there was something in his voice that made her look more closely at him. ‘You wouldn’t have hurt him, would you?’ she asked slowly.

‘My dear, of course not!’ he said more emphatically, and he smiled into her eyes, but when she returned his smile, she saw a blankness there, a space where once there would have been conviction, and she was suddenly aware of a sense of fear.

Thomas had taken Sara straight to her house, carrying her in his arms like a child. She weighed scarcely more than a girl. She clung to him while she sobbed, her face buried deep in his throat.

‘I don’t know what to do! I can’t continue like this!’

‘I’m so sorry about him …’

They had found Elias’s body very close to Sara. The child’s arm had been outstretched, as though in his final moment he was reaching out towards her. Thomas had tried to cover the little face, but he was too late and he heard her give a sudden intake of breath, then the low, animal moaning as she shook her head from side to side in frantic denial of this latest horror.

‘Sara, I’m so sorry,’ was all he had been able to say. The boy’s arm was snapped cleanly in two places, and the blood dripped like a viscous oil from the second gash above his elbow where the bones were thrust through the thin sheath of flesh. Yet there was no mark of suffocation about his face, and no sign of pain or anguish, just a terrible vacancy in his dead eyes.

In the end it took Thomas and two other men from the street to pull the young woman away from her trampled child, Thomas himself carrying Elias’s slack form off to the Cathedral.

They were most kind in there. Janekyn Beyvyn; the porter at the gate, directed them to a priestly-looking canon, and Thomas recognised the Almoner. This fellow took Sara to a house nearby, in which a midwife lived, and she drew Sara indoors immediately, to give her comfort and a soothing draught. That was last afternoon, and now Thomas was taking her home again after the funeral.

‘You have no family here?’

‘None,’ she whispered. Her voice was rough and raw from weeping, and Thomas found his own breast spasm as though he was about to weep at any moment. He felt appalling guilt that she should have been reduced to this.

When he first saw her, only a fortnight ago, she had been a beautiful young woman. And then came the miserable accident that took her man away from her, reducing her status to that of a widow, and depriving her two sons of a father. The fact that there was no money in Saul’s purse when he died meant she had to rely on the alms given by the Priory. Her son’s death was a direct consequence of Thomas’s negligence in killing her husband. This woman’s misery was entirely his responsibility.

They reached the house and he kicked the door wide. Sara moved hardly at all in his arms, and he set her down on a stool while he unrolled her palliasse and spread blankets over it to make her bed. Then he took her up and placed her gently upon it.

‘Where is my son?’ she asked pathetically. ‘Where is Dan?’

‘He’s down the way,’ Thomas said, putting his sore palms under his armpits. ‘I sent a man here last evening to find him and see to his safety. He should be all right. Now, I am going to leave you a while and find a little food for you. All you need do is wait here.’

She looked at him. Her eyes were red, her mouth a vivid gash, and her whole manner that of a woman who had lost everything. ‘Just send me my son … my only boy.’

Thomas nodded, then fled.

First he went to the woman’s hut where Dan had been installed. He saw that the boy was well and fed, then hurried to the market, buying pies and wine with the few pennies he possessed. When he arrived back, the same woman who had last thrown him from the place was there again, but this time she was less severe, telling him her name was Jen and even smiling once or twice.

‘Thank you for helping her,’ she said in a low tone when Sara seemed to have fallen asleep with the exhaustion of despair. ‘Sara will need all the help she can get after the last two weeks.’

‘I’ll do anything I can,’ Thomas said. ‘But … I don’t know what I can do to help. I can try to bring food and drink …’

‘That’ll do for a start.’

‘She told me she has no family here. I thought her accent was strange. Is there no one?’

‘No. You know what it’s like for these workers on great buildings. Saul was a good mason, and he followed his master from one church or cathedral to another. This was the latest of the great buildings he’d worked on. Their families are somewhere else. I don’t know where.’

‘So she has no one she can rely on?’

‘No one.’

Thomas nodded, staring at the woman on the bed for a long moment. He would do anything to bring the smile back to her face. That lovely, radiant smile: the one he had erased for ever, just as his rock had wiped away her husband’s face.

William stood in the entranceway of the tavern, leaning on his old staff.

The room reeked of sour ale and wine and shit from the privy too, the stench only partly tempered by the little fire in the hearth at the middle of the room. Its smoke removed the worst of the smell, but the acrid fumes attacked the nostrils and throat.

He checked the place. It seemed safe enough. He stepped down from the doorway onto the six-inch block of wood that served as a step, and then strolled over to a bench. A grizzled man, probably only in his thirties, although he looked more like fifty with his pallid complexion and bloodshot eyes, was sweeping up some rushes. The stained and filthy towel tied about his waist showed he was the master of the place, just as the sagging flesh of his face spoke of his fondness for the ales sold there.

‘Ale,’ William said.

The man turned and surveyed him, nodded, and ambled unhurriedly to the back of the room where a pair of barrels were racked against the wall. He drew off a large jugful and brought it to William, together with a green-painted drinking horn made of pottery.

William watched him as the innkeeper moved about the place. His slowness was a studied insult to a man like him who was used to the swift service of esquires and heralds in the King’s host.

It was a long time since he had been free of the trappings of the King’s service. Starting out from Exeter with King Edward I in 1285, he had thought that he might, if he was fortunate, manage to eke out some sort of existence within the royal household.

Of course, that was the present King Edward II’s father, Edward I, and life was different in those days. The old man was alarming back then — in his mid-forties, tall, imposing and severe; you were well-advised to keep to the right side of his temper. When the mood took him, he was a vicious bastard. He even ripped the hair out of his son’s head in handfuls, so it was said, when they had one of their rows — probably over that vacuous bolster-head Piers Gaveston. Most of their later quarrels were over him.

The old King was a real man. Strong, quick to take offence, slow to forgive or forget, and he could scare any of the barons in the land. He was utterly ruthless, and the devil with any man who stood in his way. Still, for William he had been a good master.

He had noticed William when the latter had explained about the South Gate to the city and how it had been left open. That was during the trial of the Chaunter’s murderers, and the implication was obvious to the meanest intelligence: the city was complicit in the assassination. Only with the connivance of the city’s oligarchs could the killers have had the gate opened in order to guarantee their escape after curfew.

Standing up like that in his own city to denounce his neighbours, that had taken courage, and the King had seen it. He admired it, too. A man who’d stand against all his past friends to help the King, that was a man of loyalty … or greed. Either way, it was enough to make him useful to the King.

Soon after the ending of the trial, when the King left Exeter, he took Will with him. He joined the King’s host, and climbed the ladder of opportunity whenever he could. Under King Edward I he became an infantry constable, a post with which he was well-satisfied, and when King Edward II took the throne in 1307, within two years Will found himself a Royal Yeoman. He never was too sure what had led to that, because he hadn’t got on very well with the new monarch, but he supposed it was something to do with Edward’s needing allies. Everyone seemed to dislike him. He had begun his reign in a promising way, taking over the realm to general acclaim and delight, because he was a tall handsome lad, and people were sick of the austerity of his father’s rule. All military clothes and no style — if it wasn’t practical, Edward I wasn’t interested. The young Edward, however, wanted fun!

Actors, jugglers, singers, troubadours … all came to see and entertain him, and when he was particularly enamoured, he’d join in and perform with them. At first, this pleased some of his subjects but then a sourness started to settle. His frivolity angered the churchmen, who muttered about his excesses, and his barons looked on him disrespectfully, comparing him unfavourably with his father.

Then came the ignominious disaster of the invasion of Scotland, and Robert Bruce’s repulsion of the English at Bannockburn.

Ach, William could remember that well enough. He’d been one of the hungry foot-soldiers there, standing with his pikemen at his sides, waiting, and seeing the knights all go down in the pock-marked swamp. They did not stand a chance. The Scots bastards stood back and fired at them with their bows, then formed into groups of pikemen, the points outthrust like a hedgehog’s back, and none of the knights could penetrate their defence. Not that many of them got that far: most fell in the mud and drowned or were slaughtered where they lay, incapable of rising in their armour, their mounts thrashing at their sides with their legs broken in the pits dug by the Scots. It wasn’t a good battle. Will and his men had been lucky to escape without a serious mauling.

After that, his star waxed full marvellously. King Edward had granted him the custody of Odiham Castle with the men-at-arms who resided there, twenty-one squires and their pages, even though William wasn’t of knightly rank. And there he’d remained, occasionally answering the King’s calls to go to war, once falling out with the King when he tested his skills by using a writ of the Privy Seal to thieve a manor from the widow of a knight. He’d won, though, in the end. The King had need of trained fighters, especially men who could be trusted with a company behind them.

War had been good to Will. He’d made his fortune several times, and if he lost it afterwards, well, that was what money was for. He wasn’t going to complain.

Still, when he realised that his sore joints and scars were making him unfit to fight, the idea of coming back here to his old home was attractive. Even if there might be one or two who still bore him a grudge because of the way he had fingered Alured de Porta, the city’s Mayor, and the Southern Gatekeeper, pointing out that only their incompetence or their active support could have led to the gate being left wide open for the killers to escape. So Alured was taken out and hanged on the feast of Saint Stephen, the day after Christmas. A shame — he was a pleasant enough fellow. But when the murderers had all escaped, apart from the vicars and novices in the Cathedral of course, the King had to pick someone who could be punished symbolically on behalf of the whole city. The Mayor was the best and most fitting victim. Nothing personal.

Will filled and drained his horn three times while he waited, considering again his long life and the many battles in which he had participated, the men he had killed. Some had died in the angry heat of warfare, while others had expired more quietly in little green lanes when they had least expected it — and when their deaths could benefit him most directly. All those bodies were in his memory, available instantly to be called to his mind, and he smiled as he recalled some of them: the weaker ones who pleaded with him; those who tried to flee; those who brazened it out, lying to him in order to secure their freedom. Some of those were the most memorable. All had helped him. While he removed their lives, he also took their purses.

Only when the third horn was empty did he hear the door open and, glancing up, see the figure he expected. ‘At last.’

‘I can’t drink that stuff. I need some wine.’

‘You look as though you need more than wine,’ he said fondly.

Mabilla stared at him, and her expression froze his blood. It was a look of pure, intense hatred.

‘Why do you look at me that way?’ he almost stuttered. ‘It’s me, your William …’

‘How did you think I should look?’ she hissed malevolently. ‘I’m a widow now, because of you! It was you, wasn’t it? You murdered my Henry!’