The False Virgin

Act Four

Herefordshire, August 1405

Prior Paul wore his usual benign smile, which was pasted on as he woke every morning in the affluent little priory of St Oswald and lasted until he went to bed. However, secretly he was very worried. A gnawing concern was eating away at his placid nature and every few minutes, he wandered restlessly over to one of the windows of his parlour in the prior’s house to stare across at the woods to the west. The morning was perfect, the warm sun dappling the bright green of summer and the swelling fruit in the orchards, but he was looking beyond these, fearfully seeking the approach of what might be their nemesis.

Soon he moved over to another window in his corner room, where he had relief from the westerly view, as he could look up at the blunt end of the Malvern Hills, where the earthworks of the so-called ‘British Camp’ crowned the Herefordshire Beacon. It was an ancient place, where some said the hero Caractacus had fought against the Roman invaders, but the prior pushed aside any thoughts of armies and battle, as they reminded him too clearly of his present concerns.

The door opened and a mellow voice caused him to turn from his sombre meditations. It was his secretary, Brother Mark – a good-looking and ambitious young man who quite openly admitted his intention of one day becoming an abbot in their Benedictine order. He came across with a couple of sheets of parchment, which he laid on the prior’s table.

‘Brother Patrice’s order of services for the coming week, Prior,’ he said. ‘And Brother Arnulf’s accounts for the visitors’ donations last month, as he described in chapter this morning.’

Paul laid a hand on the documents and thanked his secretary, but his mind was not on chanting or money, important though they were.

‘Is there any news from Wales?’ he asked, his smile still in place, but his tone anxious.

‘The porter was told by one of the carters who takes our wool that he saw thousands of men camped in the fields beyond Monmouth,’ replied Brother Mark. ‘But that is a good many miles away from here.’

The prior nodded and sank into the chair behind his table.

‘We can only pray to God that they will pass by this place,’ he said fervently. ‘Tell Brother Patrice that we will include extra prayers in every service until this danger is past.’

After discussing a few more routine matters, the younger monk left the prior to his worries and went down the stairs and out into the inner courtyard of the monastery. Although he had been there for almost a year, Mark was still beguiled by the attractive appearance of the place. Surrounded by a high wall of warm Cotswold stone, the priory was a stout oblong nestling under the shelter of the Malvern Hills, a high ridge that stretched northward for some twelve miles. It was virtually the boundary of Wales, and it was said that eastwards there were no other hills worthy of the name until one reached Muscovy.

At the end of the priory nearest the hill lay the church, a neat cruciform building with a squat tower surmounted by a pointed roof. The church was built almost against the wall, this situation being dictated by the spring that came up under the floor of the chancel, directly in front of the altar. Brother Mark knew that the priory had been founded here before Norman times because of this spring, which had a wide reputation for healing, especially of ailments of the skin.

When he looked away to the right, he saw that a score of yards in front of the main door of the church, a transverse wall ran across the oblong compound, cutting it in half. It was pierced by a central gate and beyond this, the more secular part of the establishment lay separated from the monastic area around the church. It contained the guest-house, kitchen, stables, laundry, brewhouse and accommodation for the lay brothers, who did all the manual work in the priory and in the fields outside.

As he stood on the steps of the prior’s house, built at the inner angle of the cross wall, Mark looked again at the creamy stone of the frater and dorter on his left, where the monks ate and slept. The dorter was connected to the south transept of the church by a passageway that led to the night stairs. This allowed the monks to enter the church for the nighttime services directly from their dormitory over the refectory, without being exposed to the elements. The young monk was well aware that the Benedictine Order was often accused of soft living, which had given rise to several splinter groups, who practised a more ascetic way of life.

His contemplation of the architecture complete, Mark crossed the inner courtyard to the opposite side of the church, where the chapter house and infirmary occupied that corner of the enclosure.

As he approached the infirmary, he saw the infirmarian coming towards him.

‘Have you much trade today, Brother?’ he asked Brother Louis in a mildly jocular way. The French infirmarian, who had studied medicine at the prestigious school of Montpellier, looked sternly at the younger man, critical of his light-hearted manner.

‘If you mean that we have a number of souls needing treatment for their ailments, then yes, trade is good,’ he said haughtily. In fact almost everything about Brother Louis was haughty. He was a thin, erect and stiff-necked man of about fifty, very conscious of his good education and medical skills.

Not at all chastened by this, Mark delivered a message from Brother Paul.

‘The prior wishes to know how Brother John is faring,’ he said. ‘We were all worried about him last evening when he had another of his seizures.’

The infirmarian shook his head, more in exasperation than concern.

‘Our Brother John is getting on in years. In fact, that is his main problem, as there is little physically wrong with him. He is frail and all we can do is humour him and keep him comfortable for the remaining years of his life, which I fear may not be all that many.’

Having put the younger man in his place, Louis stalked on towards the long building in the lower corner of the inner compound, opposite the prior’s house. This was the domain of Brother Jude, the cellarer, who was responsible for all the stores, including those that made life comfortable for the residents. A couple of lay brothers were unloading casks of wine from an ox-cart and carrying them through the large doors into the capacious storerooms, but the Frenchman entered through a smaller door into the cellarer’s office.

Brother Jude was a large, somewhat obese, monk with a full pink face and a red nose, which suggested that he was conscientious in sampling much of the liquor that entered his vaults. Indeed, the first thing he did was to offer the infirmarian a cup of best Burgundy wine and keep him company with a similar libation while they discussed the list of medical supplies that Louis had placed before him.

When this was done, Jude also enquired after the health of the older brother, John, who had collapsed on his way to matins the previous midnight, after having one of his shaking fits.

‘He has been getting worse for months,’ commented Jude as he finished the last of his wine. ‘I often see him from here, walking about the precinct talking to himself, staring up at the sky with his hands clasped as if he is speaking directly to God himself!’

Louis shrugged indifferently. ‘Perhaps he is, for all we know. There is little I can do about it, as he has no physical infirmity that I can treat. He has been having these fits these many years, but at least they are not getting worse.’

After a little more conversation about the state of the world, and especially the concerns about the political unrest in the country, the infirmarian walked in his stately fashion back to his hospital. Though its primary function was to treat the occupants of the priory, the small population of only eighteen brothers and a score of lay brothers provided relatively little work for the doctor. However, much of his labour went on the treatment of visitors, who came with a variety of ailments, seeking relief both from his medicines and through the miraculous water from St Beornwyn’s spring. Though some of these supplicants were common folk, the reputation of the priory for its medical care was such that a considerable income was obtained from rich merchants and manor-lords who came from all over the Midlands, the Marches and the West Country.

Once inside his infirmary, which was a long, low building, roofed in slate like the rest of the priory, Brother Louis went to the room at one end, which acted as his office and dispensary. A table and two chairs represented his consulting room, the rest of the chamber being given over to cabinets and shelves filled with various herbs and drugs, together with his paraphernalia for rolling pills and mixing tinctures. He poured a small quantity of a reddish liquid from a flask into a small earthenware cup and went into the main ward, which had half a dozen low beds, each consisting of a straw mattress resting on a low wooden plinth. Beyond was a short corridor leading to four cubicles, used either for patients wealthy enough to pay for a private room or those who were very sick. Only two were in use at the moment, one for a fat burgess from Hereford with a disfiguring skin disease of his neck, and the other for a wealthy fish merchant of Bristol suffering from weeping ulcers of his legs. The main ward contained only one patient and it was to that bed which Louis now went, holding up his cup of medicine as if it were a Communion chalice.

‘Drink this down, John,’ he commanded imperiously. ‘It will settle your mind after your disturbance of last night.’

‘It was no disturbance, Louis, it was a message from Heaven telling me to expect grave news!’ quavered the old man indignantly.

‘Just take this sedative, John, then get some sleep,’ urged the infirmarian impatiently. ‘You should be fit enough to attend compline later today.’

With this admonition, he walked away towards the private cubicles, where his bedside manner improved markedly as he enquired solicitously after the health of the two rich patients.

At St Oswald’s they subscribed to the tenets of the Benedictine Order, founded by the great man many centuries earlier, but they did not adhere as strictly to the rules as did the Cistercians or the Cluniacs, who had diverged from them because of their perception that the Benedictines had gone soft. Though, as in all monastic establishments, there were nine offices each day devoted to praising God, this small priory had compromised by joining several services together, so that they were actually only held on five occasions. That morning, terce, sext, nones and High Mass had been combined into a forty-minute observance that ended in plenty of time for midday dinner.

The black-robed monks trooped into their refectory and sat at the three oak tables set in a U-shape. At the centre of the top table sat Prior Paul, with his sub-prior, Matthew, on his right, and Pierre, the sacristan, on his left. The prior often ate alone in his house, but today he ate with his flock, anxious to hear if any of them had picked up any gossip from the lay brothers about the army that lay over the horizon.

‘The dray-man who brought that special ale up from Ross said he saw no signs at all on his journey,’ offered the cellarer, Jude, as one of the servants placed a trencher of roast pork with beans and cabbage on the table before him.

‘Yet there are reports of some peasants fleeing with their belongings on the road from the west towards Hereford,’ contributed Arnulf, the hospitaller, who tended to get most news of the outside world because of his dealings with the visitors who stayed in his guest-house.

The conversation lapsed as the serving men hurried in with more food, placing thick slabs of yesterday’s bread before each member, loaded with meat and vegetables. These trenchers used to be laid directly on the scrubbed boards of the tables, but recently the brothers had become sophisticated enough to lay them on pewter platters. Another servant came around with a jug of wine and yet another with a large pitcher of ale, and soon the community was tucking in to an abundance of food and drink, far removed from the Spartan origins of the monastic movement.

As Prior Paul slowly ate his meal, he looked around at his brethren and wondered what some of them were thinking. In spite of his bland, amiable appearance, he was an astute judge of men, as well as being an able administrator. He was well aware that his deputy, Brother Matthew, hungered after his own position as prior and was no doubt patiently – or perhaps, impatiently – waiting for his death or retirement to a hermitage. However, Paul was only sixty years of age and had no intention of handing over the reins for some time yet.

He looked across at the sub-prior now, studying his cadaveric face and his unbending and humourless manner. A large Roman nose with deep furrows on each side of his mouth suggested that life at St Oswald’s would not be so comfortable under his authoritarian direction.

On his other side, Brother Pierre, the sacristan, sat fastidiously picking at his food with his eating knife and delicately washing his fingers in a bowl of rosewater set before him. Dedicated to his task of administering all the physical aspects of the priory church, his nature was tarnished by his permanent disdain for all things English, his French origins oozing from every pore. He had come two years earlier from a large monastery on the Loire and made no secret of the fact that he hoped to be recalled there before his life amongst the barbarians became intolerable.

The other Frenchman, the infirmarian, Louis, sat at the top of one of the side tables. Thankfully, Paul knew that his Gallic tendencies were not as blatantly obvious as those of Pierre, but his rather aloof and sarcastic manner was born of his pride in his professional background, as he never let an opportunity pass to remind his fellows that he had trained at the most eminent centre of medical learning in Europe.

As the prior’s eye roved over the other monks, almost a score in number, he mused on the fact that he knew many of their secrets. At least two of them regularly visited women in the nearby village. and he suspected another of attending cockfights. Though the monks were supposed to be confined to the priory, many of them had reason to leave during the day, to supervise work in the fields or travel about the nearby countryside collecting alms from other villages. Twice a year a retinue of brothers carried the feretory around the district, the ornate reliquary that usually rested on the altar of the church. This heavy embellished and gilded box contained the skull-cap and some bones of the blessed St Beornwyn and was hawked around the hamlets and churches of the area to collect donations for the priory, accompanied by the monks chanting and ringing handbells.

In the relaxed atmosphere of St Oswald’s, there was no code of silence at meals, as was usually enforced by the Cistercians and other stricter orders. There was hardly noisy chatter, but certainly plenty of subdued conversation as the brothers worked their way through their ample meal. The main topic of conversation was the threat from the advancing army, now not many miles away, and this continuing anxiety led Prior Paul to ask Louis, Matthew, Jude and Pierre to come to his parlour after the meal.

An hour later, they sat on stools before his desk, the prior’s secretary standing discreetly in the background.

‘We need to decide what preparations we should make should this rebellion overtake us,’ began Paul. The seriousness of the situation had by now caused even his habitual smile to fade somewhat. ‘Though it seems that these brigands have halted their advance, we cannot expect it to be other than a temporary reprieve.’

The thin lips of the sub-prior pursed in disagreement. He never missed a chance to contradict his superior.

‘One can hardly call their leader a “brigand”,’ he complained. ‘This Glendower is a landed gentleman of mature years, a qualified lawyer and one who, in the past, has given loyal service to King Henry.’

The physician, Louis, nodded his agreement. ‘I have heard from France that he is well looked upon there – and that he has been offered military assistance by the royal court in Paris.’

Pierre snorted in disgust. ‘Some gentleman! He has rebelled against his king and for five years he has rampaged throughout Wales, sacking and burning towns. He has killed thousands and God alone knows what damage he has done to religious houses!’

The prior held up a placating hand. ‘The politics of the matter are none of our concern, but our survival and the protection of our community and property most certainly are. We need to plan how we might best limit the damage should Glendower’s army overrun us.’

‘Damage has already been done, just because of the threat of this rebellion to the countryside,’ snapped the sub-prior. ‘We heard from Brother Arnulf at the chapter meeting this morning that the value of donations from pilgrims and supplicants has decreased appreciably in the past few weeks. People are becoming afraid to travel here, as we are in the path of this Welsh army advancing into England itself.’

The infirmarian nodded his agreement. ‘Several of our wealthy patrons who were due to come for my treatment have sent messages to say that they are remaining at home until all trouble has passed.’

The prior shrugged. ‘There is little we can do about an advancing army, save pray earnestly to God in the hope that He will divert it. However, we have treasure and valuables here which would be the first target of a despoiling horde.’

Brother Jude, whose mind worked more slowly than the sharper Frenchmen, frowned as he mulled over his superior’s comment. ‘You mean we should bury our money and hide our silver chalices and patens?’

Prior Paul nodded. ‘Perhaps not actually in a hole in the earth, but certainly in a good hiding place. We must think about this now, so that if Glendower’s rabble come close, we can rapidly hide our treasure away somewhere.’

They discussed this for several minutes and eventually came up with a provisional plan to use an old stone coffin in the crypt beneath the chancel. This crypt had not been used for a century, as the infrequent burials of deceased monks were now made in a plot alongside the church, near the chapter house.

‘We will keep this to ourselves for the time being,’ ordered Paul. ‘The lay brothers need not be made aware of it, as they might be forced by these rebels to disclose the hiding place.’

‘May God give me strength to keep this secret myself, if I am subjected to violence and torture!’ said Pierre fervently.

‘What about our saint’s reliquary?’ asked the cellarer. ‘The outside is finely chased with gold and silver, and there’s a heavy gold band around the relic itself.’

The prior nodded again as he agreed with Jude. ‘The reliquary is too large to conceal, but we must preserve the skull-cap. Indeed, that is our most prized possession and must be kept safe at all costs.’

The object in question was kept on the high altar, but an hour after the prior’s meeting it was being used in the chancel of the church. A dozen pilgrims and supplicants were gathered in the empty nave, having come to the priory either indifferent to, or ignorant of, the presence of a hostile army just over the horizon. Most of them had some ailment, ranging from weeping skin ulcers to severe arthritis, but a few were ordinary pilgrims, curious about the well-known cult of St Beornwyn.

Today it was the turn of Brother Louis, the infirmarian, to administer the cures. Half a dozen of the monks occupied the quire stalls on each side of the chancel, providing harmonious chanting while Louis went to the altar. With repeated genuflection, he opened the gilded doors of the reliquary and removed the most precious fragment of their beloved Beornwyn, which lay amongst other parts of her skeleton.

It was a bowl-shaped calvarium, the top of the skull of the beautiful saint, which had been embellished with a wide band of heavy gold around the circumference, into which a repetitive motif of butterflies had been engraved.

Turning, Brother Louis held the relic high above his head and, as the chanting changed, began intoning a litany of Latin prayers. The small congregation in the nave dropped to their knees on the cold flagstones and crossed themselves, murmuring their own prayers as the infirmarian advanced towards the holy well, placed beneath the chancel arch, at the foot of the steps leading up to the presbytery.

It was an ornate structure of pink marble standing head high, the base carved with cherubim and seraphim. The upper part was a large alabaster statue of St Beornwyn herself, gazing down benignly into a large marble bowl shaped like a seashell, lying at the foot of the edifice. Just above the bowl, a kneeling angel held a pitcher under his arm, from which a small cascade of water fell into the bowl, almost filling it until the excess ran off through an overflow. The water passed into a conduit under the church and reappeared at a much more mundane spring in the outer courtyard, where it was used for everyday purposes in the priory and also for bathing the feet or other afflicted parts of supplicants who desired external treatment of their diseases.

Louis stood before the fountain and, with a stately bow, bent and held the ornate skull under the jet of water until it was half full.

The first supplicant who had come for a cure moved forward and kneeled before the priest, who with a sonorous stream of Latin, blessed the limpid fluid in the skull. Then bending, Brother Louis held it to the lips of the pilgrim who took a sip, or rather a gulp, as he was determined to get his money’s worth. This was repeated for each of the supplicants who were waiting patiently in the nave, and after much genuflection and mumbling of prayers, they lined up again before the infirmarian, who gave them a general blessing and then directed them to seek further diagnosis and treatment at the infirmary, if they so wished. Though he did not say it directly, there was a tacit understanding that such additional medical care would come at a price, though, to be fair, this was graded according to their apparent means and for those who were sick but obviously near-destitute, the treatment was free.

Later, one of the supplicants took advantage of this invitation and sought out Louis in his consulting room. A rotund cloth merchant from Evesham, he was suffering from severe flatulence and pains in his belly after eating. After examining him, which included prodding his corpulent belly, Louis suspected that much of his problem was due to overweight, but produced an earthenware pot, sealed with a wooden stopper.

‘At the end of each meal, swallow as much of this as would fill half an eggshell,’ he commanded. ‘And cut down drastically on your victuals, especially fatty pork and other greasy food.’

Handing the jar to the merchant, he told him to return when it was all used, or go to an apothecary in Evesham and buy more. He handed the man a slip of parchment on which were written some cabalistic marks, as a prescription for the apothecary.

Gratefully, the clothier departed, placing a liberal pile of silver pennies on Louis’s table. Before he left, he enquired about the saint who, he hoped, would work miracles upon his belly, aided by the infirmarian’s mixture of chalk, valerian and peppermint.

‘How did this priory come to be established in such a lonely place?’ he asked.

The infirmarian was quite willing to engage in conversation with this intelligent and liberal fellow.

‘It is said that a healing well has been here since time immemorial,’ he said, sitting back in his chair. ‘Even in the time of those Ancient Britons that we read about in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s famous book, people came from far and wide to drink and wash in its waters. There are several such wells along the Malvern hills, but this one has the best reputation.’

‘But why did this one have a Benedictine house placed over it?’ persisted the inquisitive merchant.

‘Before the Normans came, a daughter of the Earl of Hereford suffered from the falling sickness, which was cured by the waters of this spring,’ replied Louis. ‘The Earl was so impressed that he granted not only twenty hides of land here, but also gave a generous endowment for the priory.’

‘But why dedicated to St Oswald and St Beornwyn?’ asked the merchant.

‘The earl was influenced by his confessor, a Benedictine monk, who came from the Shire of York and was devoted to the memory of St Oswald, so the priory is named after him. Oswald was King of Northumbria in ancient times and, although a ferocious soldier, became a saint after his death in battle at Oswestry, because he had converted the pagan Northumbrians to the way of Christ.’

The clothier’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. ‘So why is the church dedicated to this St Beornwyn? Who was she?’

Brother Louis, ever an impatient man, was beginning to get a irritated by the merchant’s persistence, thinking that he was demanding a lot for his silver pennies. However, he decided to humour him one last time.

‘Several hundred years after Oswald’s death, which was a violent dismemberment, the same thing happened to a devout virgin in a church dedicated to St Oswald near Whitby. She was horribly mutilated by Viking berserkers on one of their raids upon the Northumbrian coast, and for her virtue and martyrdom she was herself elevated to sainthood. Some two hundred years ago, some of her bones were given to this church as holy relics.’

Satisfied at last, the clothier ambled away clutching his pot of stomach medicine and with a sigh of relief, the infirmarian rose and went into the ward where Brother John was sitting up on his pallet. After a perfunctory examination, Louis stood back and told the old monk that there was no reason why he should not rejoin his fellow monks.

‘You can eat in the frater and sleep in the dorter as usual,’ he declared. ‘Tomorrow you can go back to your duties in the scriptorium. Doing your usual tasks will keep your mind off your strange delusions.’

Brother John had become too feeble and unreliable to continue his old duties about the farm or dealing with the pilgrims, so the prior had relegated him to the scriptorium, a small chamber above the chapter house. This housed the priory’s small library and was where any work on manuscripts was carried out, directed by the sacristan. John had been given the task of making copies of psalms and chants for the choir and any other calligraphic work that was needed.

After supper, in the mild light of the summer evening, most of the monks congregated for a social hour in the ‘warming room’ situated at the end of the refectory. The fireplace was now empty, but in the cold weather it contained the only fire in the monks’ accommodation, apart from that in the prior’s parlour.

They sat around the stone benches built into the walls to discuss their activities and any local news and gossip. Of course, the rumours about the advancing Welsh army were a major topic.

‘I am told on good authority that Glendower has a sizeable contingent of French troops with him now,’ declared Jude, the cellarer, without disclosing who his good authority might be.

‘I still fail to understand how this Welsh barbarian is able to command the support of the French,’ grumbled Brother Pierre. ‘Nor why he is able to defeat a much mightier nation like England.’

‘In the hills and valleys of his rugged country of Wales, he is able to run rings around the English forces,’ replied Mark. ‘In a pitched battle on the open field, the King’s troops would defeat him, but as they have done since Roman times, the Welsh wage a guerrilla war, darting down from their rocks and crags upon tired soldiers, wet and dispirited after their long march from the Midlands into the forbidding mountains.’

Louis, ever contentious, pointed out that the Welsh leader had virtually annihilated a much stronger English army at the battle of Brynglas.

‘Their archers are the most skilful in Europe, which is why they are hired as mercenaries by many countries, even including England itself!’

The conversation and argument about warfare and tactics went on for some time, a somewhat incongruous subject for a group of monks, but eventually one of them changed the subject to Brother John, who like some of the other monks, had taken himself to his bed, to get as much sleep as possible before they were awakened at midnight for matins.

‘Old John is becoming a serious liability to the welfare of this priory,’ grumbled the cellarer. ‘I sometimes see him stumbling about the courtyard, mumbling to the sky and waving his arms about. It is an embarrassment to the supplicants who come here. They must wonder what sort of place this is to have a madman wandering about.’

Brother Arnulf, the hospitaller, agreed with him.

‘Several of the guests who stayed with me have been concerned about him and it cannot do the reputation of this place any good. The prior should think about settling him in one of our sister abbeys, which have places for such aged brothers in their declining years.’

The younger secretary, Mark, was not so ready to condemn the old man.

‘He seems quite harmless, surely little damage can be done by him. His fantasies can be quite interesting, for only a few days ago he told me that he had spoken with an angel during the previous night, who informed him that we need have no fear of the advancing army for at least another two weeks.’

Some of the monks chuckled, others clucked their tongues at this further evidence of Brother John’s dementia.

‘Perhaps our Lord God has set one of his Angels with the keenest eyesight on top of the Malverns, to spy out the movement of Glendower’s troops for us!’ suggested Pierre sarcastically.

For the next two days, little was seen of Brother John, as he spent most of his time in the quiet of the scriptorium, seated at his high desk with a quill and ink. He was copying out a dozen duplicates of a new chant, which Patrice, the precentor, intended to add to the choir’s repertoire. In spite of his age and other problems, John still had a sharp eye and produced excellent black-letter copies on sheets of parchment. He attended the frater at mealtimes and his appetite seemed undiminished. He was very quiet, but otherwise did nothing to give the other monks any cause for concern or irritation.

However, on the third morning all this changed.

At dawn, the brothers went down the night stairs into the church for prime, the first service of the day. The fact that Brother John was not amongst them failed to register, due to their sleepiness, until the office was over, when they trooped out into the early morning light of the inner courtyard. Here they found the old monk pacing up and down, shaking his fists at the heavens and muttering angrily at some unseen person apparently hovering above him.

‘This is becoming insufferable!’ snapped Matthew, the sub-prior. ‘Someone call Brother Paul. He must do something about this man.’

As Arnulf hurried across the precinct to the prior’s house, Mark went to the old man and gently placed a hand on his shoulder.

‘What is troubling you, John?’ he asked. ‘Have you been hearing voices again?’

The aged Benedictine lowered his arms and turned an angry face towards the younger man. ‘A message directly from St Oswald, no less! We are undone, this house is a sham and must be abandoned!’

Some of the other monks had begun to drift towards the refectory for their breakfast, but the vehemence of John’s voice caused them to turn back and stare at him. The infirmarian, in his role as a doctor, joined Mark at the old man’s side in an attempt to pacify him, for he seemed to be in a towering rage.

‘John, John! Why are you so troubled?’ Louis asked soothingly.

John glared at him scathingly. ‘I tell you, all is lost with this place! We have been tricked for centuries.’

‘Have you had more strange dreams?’ asked Mark gently, but this seemed to annoy the elderly brother even more.

‘Dreams? Not dreams, boy!’ he ranted. ‘St Oswald came to me in the night – or rather, I went to him.’

Louis decided to humour him once more. ‘You went to him? Just where was this meeting – in the dormer?’

The elder monk’s lined face looked at him pityingly. He raised an arm and pointed a quivering forefinger at the hill visible above the priory wall.

‘Up there, at the British Camp.’

Brother Louis’s eyebrows rose. ‘On the top of the Herefordshire Beacon? Really, Brother, you test my patience. Those old legs of yours would hardly take you to the foot of that hill.’

John scowled at him. ‘I was taken up there by a pair of angels. They held my arms and we drifted up there as gently as a butterfly.’

‘And St Oswald was there waiting for you, I suppose?’ said Pierre sarcastically.

‘He was indeed, standing in the centre of that great earthen circle built by the ancients.’

By this time Arnulf had returned with the prior hurrying behind him. Paul went straight to John and held both his hands in his.

‘Brother, you must try to restrain yourself with these wild tales. They do no good for the reputation of our house.’

‘Our house no longer has a reputation!’ bellowed the old man defiantly. ‘We have been living a lie these past two centuries.’

The prior turned to the infirmarian. ‘Brother Louis, will you take our old friend to your sickroom and give him something to calm his spirits? Perhaps a good sleep will settle his mind.’

He laid a calming hand on the sleeve of John’s habit, but the old monk irritably shrugged it off.

‘I’ll not go to bed. It’s not long since I rose!’ he declared loudly. ‘I must proclaim this message of deceit to the world.’

He began shuffling towards the gate between the inner and outer precincts, repelling all attempts to restrain him. However, at a sign from the prior, his secretary ran forward and closed the large wooden gate that sealed the archway.

‘Brother, where do you think you are going?’ coaxed Paul. ‘Come back with me to my parlour and take a cup of wine to settle your spirit.’

Frustrated at having his exit cut off, John began mumbling again and waving his hands to heaven, but after few moments, he seemed to sag into submission, allowing Mark and the prior to lead him slowly back towards the house in the corner of the inner court. The dozen monks, who had congregated around them, watched as they reached the entrance porch.

‘The poor man has lost his mind altogether now,’ observed the sub-prior, not without a tinge of satisfaction unbecoming in a servant of God. ‘If I was the prior, I would get him to a place of refuge without delay. He does this house no good with his bizarre behaviour.’

Pierre, the sacristan, privately had his own ungodly thoughts, thanking Heaven that the austere Brother Matthew was not yet prior, but aloud he joined in the general agreement that something must be done about old John.

‘I wonder what our patron saint told him up there?’ mused Arnulf, the hospitaller, pointing up towards the Beacon, which hovered over the priory.

Jude grunted. ‘As always, no doubt our prior will listen politely to John’s ramblings. He has the patience of a saint himself.’

A few minutes later, the agitated old monk was seated on a stool before the prior’s table, behind which Paul was beaming at him with his inevitable fixed smile. Mark was hovering to one side, after providing the other two with cups of wine from the prior’s cupboard.

‘Now, Brother John, tell us why you were so set on leaving the priory just now,’ asked Paul gently, ‘and where did you think you were going?’

The seemingly innocent question set off the old man’s temper once again. His hand shook and some of the red wine spilled onto the polished floorboards.

‘Where? Anywhere, out of this accursed place!’ he quavered. ‘But I will soon direct my feet towards the bishop in Hereford or Worcester – and then to Canterbury, or even Rome, if needs be!’

Paul shot a look at his secretary, his eyebrows raised in surprise. Mark shrugged, then spoke to the aged brother.

‘John, that is an ambitious enterprise! I doubt you have been further than Worcester in your life?’

‘I will find a way. The Lord and St Oswald will guide my steps.’

Prior Paul felt it was time that they got down to essentials.

‘John, dear brother, what exactly is it that so disturbs your mind?’ he asked gently. ‘You speak of betrayal and shame, but what is in your turbulent mind that so distresses you, at a time of life when peace and tranquillity should be your lot?’

John’s lined face looked from one to the other of the men who were trying to soothe him, but the wildness did not leave his eyes.

‘St Oswald has chosen me as the channel to deliver the truth to the world!’ he declared. ‘I am in honour bound to carry out his sacred mission, no doubt ordered by the Almighty Himself!’ He rocked on his stool as he crossed himself at these words, spilling more wine in the process.

Mark rolled his eyes at his superior and Paul sighed; even his fixed smile was weakening a little at the old man’s intransigence, and he responded more firmly.

‘Brother John, you must tell me what exactly was this vital message that you feel so fervently bound to convey it to the highest levels of our Mother Church!’

A life-time of vows of obedience surfaced in the monk and he bowed his head in submission. The secretary retrieved the cup from his fingers before what was left of the wine was spilled, as John began to speak.

‘I have been troubled for some weeks by feelings of impending doom, Prior,’ he said in a low voice. ‘It was as if a malignant thunder-cloud was hovering over the Malverns and over our house. I knew something bad was going to happen and at first I thought it was the destruction that might be wrought by these advancing Welshmen.’

Paul nodded sagely. ‘A natural enough fear, Brother. I doubt there is one of us who has not been touched by such apprehension.’

John shook his head, still looking down at the floor. ‘No, it was not that, for the blessed Oswald assured me that we would suffer little harm from Glendower, who he said was a devout man and a protector of God’s houses in Wales.’

The prior privately thought that this might not apply to England, but he kept his doubts to himself. ‘So what was it?’ he persisted.

Brother John took a deep breath, then let it out in a long sigh as he committed himself to exposing his secret.

‘He told me that all those centuries ago, the woman Beornwyn, who has become our patron saint and whom we praise and revere every day, was a brazen hussy, a whore who even fornicated in God’s house, in the church of St Oswald himself! She was not killed by berserk Norsemen, but rightly executed for her profligate lewdness.’

The prior’s face paled and his famous smile dropped from it like breeches falling when a belt breaks.

‘That is a terrible thing to say, Brother!’ he gasped. ‘I am your confessor and I will have to give you a severe penance for such evil thoughts.’

‘His mind is deranged, Prior,’ murmured Mark. ‘He is not responsible for his fantasies.’

But aghast at this sudden blasphemy, Prior Paul’s habitually placid nature crumbled and he rose to point a shaking finger at the old monk.

‘I will listen to no more licentious slander against our beloved Beornwyn!’ he howled. ‘Go to your bed and stay there until I have decided what to do about you!’

As John stumbled to his feet, the furious prior turned to his secretary.

‘On second thoughts, escort him to the penitentiary cell and make sure that he stays there. Say nothing to the others. We cannot have the rest of our brotherhood tainted with his vile accusations!’

Mark took the culprit by the arm and gently led him away. John went unprotestingly, his eyes lowered to the floor as they left the prior to simmer down in his parlour.

As they walked across the inner courtyard, some of the other monks were still standing there, looking expectantly at the couple as they made their way to the chapter house, where a tiny cell was attached to the side of the building.

Brother Matthew, the sub-prior, came across to intercept them. ‘What has happened?’ he demanded imperiously. ‘Why are you shutting him away?’

Mark raised a hand warningly at Matthew. ‘Our brother here is unwell. The prior wishes him to be kept alone for a time.’

Matthew glowered at the young secretary. ‘I am the sub-prior. I demand to know what’s going on!’

Stubbornly, Mark shook his head. ‘You must speak to the prior yourself, Brother. Those are his orders.’

Matthew angrily marched off towards the prior’s house, leaving Mark to shepherd the old man into the small room that was kept for those who had offended in some way. It was rarely used, save for occasionally housing a brother who came home drunk from the village or was repeatedly late for holy offices.

Reluctantly, Mark ushered John to the hard chair, which, along with a lumpy mattress and blanket on the floor, was the only furniture, apart from an empty bucket and a large wooden cross on the wall.

‘Sit there and rest, Brother,’ he said compassionately. ‘Lie down, if you wish, though it’s early in the day for sleep.’ As he went to the door, he turned to look at the old monk sitting with downcast eyes. ‘I’ll get one of the kitchen boys to bring you some broth, bread and water.’

Getting no response, he went out and pulled the door shut behind him. There was a key on the outside, but the prior had not told him to lock the old man in, so he left it there and went back across the precinct. Inside, John stirred himself and went to the small window, an unglazed square with bars across it. The only view was of the bare stone of the outside wall of the church, but as he held on to the bars, a blue butterfly fluttered in and alighted on the back of his right hand. With a strangled cry, he jerked away and as the creature flew off, he collapsed onto the hard bed and cried piteously, his chest heaving with sobs.

At about the ninth hour, after the office of prime, the monks all trooped into the chapter house for their daily session, which was part service, part business. As the priory had no novitiates at the moment, all the brothers had taken their vows and could remain for the whole meeting. One began by reading a chapter from the Rule of St Benedict, then the date, calendar and phase of the moon was announced, together with the names of the saints that were commemorated on that day. Prayers were said for the King and for the dead, then the daily schedule of services and duties were read out.

At chapter, any brothers who had offended in any way were brought before their fellows and penances ordered where necessary by the prior or his sub-prior. Today, the usual dull routine had been broken by John’s weird behaviour, and the monks were eager to hear it discussed. From his chair facing the half-circle of benches where the brothers were sitting, Prior Paul began the proceedings, his face looking uncharacteristically drawn and sombre.

‘We need to consider what must be done about the affliction of our Brother John, who, I must remind you all, has been a faithful member of this community for more than thirty years. His mind is now obviously deranged, but the distasteful nature of his recent fantasies is such that we must seriously consider how we should deal with him.’

At this, Brother Luke, one of the older monks, stood up to ask a question.

‘Prior, we have only heard rumours of what John alleged this morning. Can you please tell us what he said?’

Paul looked very uncomfortable at this, but he had little option in the fraternal nature of their closed community. He cleared his throat.

‘It is a hideous blasphemy, which I am loath to repeat, but you will have to acknowledge that it comes from a diseased mind. Brother John, in his demented state, alleges that St Oswald of blessed memory had told him that our dear patron, Beornwyn, was not a pure virgin, but a fornicator who actually committed her sins in a house of God!’

There was a hiss of disbelief and a wave of muttering amongst the brothers, but it was cut short by the harsh voice of Matthew, sitting on a chair at Paul’s right hand.

‘Forgive me for interrupting, Prior,’ he snapped. ‘But I find to my horror that this is the most foul and terrible accusation that it has ever been my lot to hear! To malign and slander our beloved patron, who cannot answer for herself, is an injustice that has no equal in my memory.’

He was almost quivering with anger at this slur on his heavenly heroine, the virtues of whom he had always extolled to an extent that bordered upon an obsession. He was not finished yet and, red-faced with temper, addressed the prior directly.

‘I would advise that we should not proceed any further without John being brought before us to answer for his sin. It is always customary for brothers who have offended to be faced directly with their misdeeds before this chapter and I feel it even more necessary now!’

Everyone knew that the sub-prior was flexing the muscles of his ambition, laying further claim to succeeding Paul when the time came. He rarely lost a chance to qualify or even contradict the prior over any lapse of custom or procedure, to emphasise his dislike of the more lenient regime favoured by Paul.

This time, however, the prior dug his heels in.

‘All in good time, Brother! But first I wish to hear what others have to say about this unfortunate matter. We all have a right for our opinions to be heard.’

‘John claims that angels took him up to the Beacon where he met St Oswald?’ said Brother Arnulf, who was in charge of the guest-house.

‘I suppose that is not impossible, though it would indeed be a miracle! Are we to believe that part of his story, even if not the more scurrilous aspects?’

The sub-prior again jumped in to reply before Paul could answer. ‘Being taken up a mountain is not uncommon in religious history,’ he grated. ‘Was not the Muslim prophet Mohammed taken on his night journey by angels from Araby to the Mount of Jerusalem? And did not our own Lord Jesus Christ Himself go up to a mountain with Peter, James and John to meet Moses and Elijah?’

The prior’s smile came back fleetingly as he responded. ‘Indeed, Brother Matthew. And did not your namesake also record in his gospel that after forty days in the wilderness, Christ Jesus was taken to a mountain to be tempted and that angels then came to minister to him?’

The sub-prior nodded his agreement, but used the opening to come back at his superior.

‘As always, you are right, Prior. But on that occasion it was Satan who transported him to that high place! Can we be sure that the same has not happened to Brother John and that this was not possession by the Devil?’

There was a fresh bout of murmuring amongst the assembled monks, which the prior brought to end by raising his hand.

‘Then we will question our sick brother as he stands before us, as Matthew has suggested.’

He directed his secretary to fetch John from the penitent’s cell and there was an uneasy silence in the chapter house as the younger man went on his mission. The monks shuffled their feet and looked uncomfortable, sensing the antagonism between their prior and Brother Matthew, as well as their concern over John, who until the last few days, they had looked on as a harmless, if eccentric, old colleague.

Then the door jerked open and the prior’s secretary stood there, looking flustered. ‘‘He’s gone! The cell is empty!’

Paul jumped to his feet. ‘Gone? Where can he have gone? He must be somewhere in the priory!’

The irate Matthew strode towards the secretary and pushed him aside at the door. ‘Why was he not locked in?’ he snapped. ‘Do I have to check everything myself?’

He marched out, followed by Mark, then the prior himself at the head of a ragged procession of brothers.

‘When was he last seen, Mark?’ demanded the prior. ‘He can’t have gone far on those old legs of his.’

His secretary, feeling guilty for not turning the key, said that the last person to have seen him must have been the lay brother who took him some food, now several hours ago. The sub-prior was barking out orders, and within minutes all the monks and a number of lay brothers and servants were combing the various buildings in the inner and outer courtyards. It was only when a door-ward, disturbed by the commotion, stumbled out of a privy near the outer gate, that a sighting of the old monk was obtained.

‘He passed out onto the lane to the village about an hour ago,’ the porter announced in an aggrieved voice. ‘I didn’t know anyone was looking for him.’

The prior sighed. ‘John would try the patience of Job,’ he complained. ‘Mark, send a couple of servants after him – and go with them yourself, as you seem most able to calm his madness.’

Two of the ostlers quickly saddled up a trio of ponies and minutes later, they were jogging briskly along the track that joined St Oswald’s priory to the outer world. It passed through the handful of cottages that made up the village of Broomhill, almost all of whose inhabitants were dependent on the priory for their livelihood. As they passed, one of the ostlers called out to a woman who was tying her goat to the stakes of her garden fence.

‘Good-wife, have you seen an old monk passing this way?’

She waved a hand onwards. ‘Brother John went by less than an hour ago. Never so much as returned my greeting, neither. He’ll surely be past the crossroads by now.’

They kicked their ponies into a trot and soon reached the junction of the track with the wider road that came up from the Forest of Dean and led towards Worcester.

‘Which way now, Brother?’ demanded one of the servants.

Mark rapidly considered this and felt that, given John’s threat to report his fantasies to a bishop, it was more likely that he was aiming for Worcester. They turned left and within half a mile, they saw the old man limping ahead of them. When they caught up with him, Mark saw that John was exhausted, only his fanatical willpower keeping him on his feet.

‘John, John, what are we going to do with you?’ sighed the younger monk, as he gently helped to lift John on to his own pony.

‘I’ll be locked up this time, boy,’ croaked the old monk. ‘But St Oswald will find a way to get my news proclaimed abroad.’

Mark led the pony towards home, sending one of the grooms ahead to tell the prior that the fugitive had been found unharmed. When they reached the priory, they were met by a silent group in the inner courtyard, a grim-faced sub-prior pointing at the infirmary building.

‘In there with you, John,’ he ordered in a voice of stone. ‘You are not to leave, on pain of excommunication.’

As Mark and Brother Louis led him to the sick ward, the infirmarian decided that they would use one of the single rooms to hold John.

‘They are unlikely to become full after the rumours that must already be spreading, thanks to the carters,’ said Louis, somewhat bitterly. ‘This will badly affect both our reputation and our treasure chest. We have had several more messages from patrons to say that they have called off their visits.’

‘Maybe the threat of the Welsh advance is the reason for that,’ countered Mark.

They settled John in one of the small chambers at the end of the main ward, the old man being silent now, but Mark noticed a sly glint in his eye as he watched them leave.

‘Behave yourself now, Brother,’ admonished the secretary, but John made no response. Outside the room, Mark was concerned that there was no lock on this door, but Louis seemed unconcerned.

‘I spend much of my time in here and will keep an eye on him. Anyway, the prior has set a permanent guard on the gate between the courtyards. There is no other way out, except over the wall, and I doubt that even our intrepid old escaper will attempt that, especially as I will give him a good dose of laudanum to dull his warped senses.’

As the small community tried to get back to its normal routine, a quite different concern gripped them later that day, making them all but forget the peculiar behaviour of their oldest brother.

Lay-brothers and villagers who were working in the more distant fields and pastures began to notice an increase in the number of travellers using the lanes and tracks coming from the west. All were moving in the same direction, away from the Welsh border, and instead of the usual traffic of pedlars, carters and merchants, whole families seemed to be on the move, some with wagons or handcarts piled with possessions. The village reeve of Broomhill went to question some of the refugees and felt obliged to come up to the priory to report what he had heard.

‘It seems this Glendower’s army is on the move,’ he told Arnulf, who was the most approachable of the monks, as he spent much of his time in the outer courtyard attending to the guests and visitors. ‘The Welsh and these new Frenchies have been camped up for a couple of weeks, licking their wounds after being badly beaten near Usk. But it seems the English forces have pulled away and these barbarians are starting to advance again into the Marches.’

The hospitaller hurried with the news to his friend Jude, the cellarer, and in turn they went to the prior’s house to give him even more to worry about. They found him in the parlour with the sub-prior.

‘We had better set about hiding our treasures, as I suggested earlier,’ was Paul’s immediate response. ‘Brother Matthew, will you ensure that the old crypt is cleared out? It may be that we will need to wall up the entrance to conceal its existence.’

As usual, the sub-prior was reluctant to hasten to carry out Paul’s suggestions.

‘I doubt there is much need for urgency, Prior. Monmouth is a long way off for a rabble travelling on foot – and no doubt stopping every few yards to loot and ravish.’

‘Nevertheless, see that it is done,’ retorted Paul irritably. ‘We had better make sure that Beornwyn’s skull is safest of all – apart from our devotion to it, it has an appreciable amount of gold around it.’

After vespers later that day, the usual relaxation and gossip hour in the warming room was dominated by talk of the approaching invaders. More reports had come in as the priory workers returned from the fields where early harvesting was in progress.

‘It is said that the Welshmen are destroying every castle and manor house,’ said Brother Jude, with an almost salacious delight.

‘But they are respecting churches and holy houses,’ countered Louis. ‘No doubt the influence of their French allies is moderating their behaviour.’

Mark, always mild and conciliatory in his speech, reminded the French monk of his previous opinion. ‘I recall you saying that the Welsh leader was an educated and cultured man – is that really true?’

The infirmarian nodded gravely, pleased to be a Frenchman who could teach an Englishman some British history.

‘This Glendower is a relatively wealthy man with several estates of his own. As well as being a soldier, he studied at the Inns of Court in London to be a lawyer. Not only that, but he married the daughter of one of the King’s judges. He is descended from the princes of North and South Wales, but has been in the service of several prominent English nobles, fighting for them, and indeed, for King Henry himself.’

The prior’s secretary admired Louis’s erudition. ‘You seem unusually well informed about these matters, Brother.’

The infirmarian smiled smugly. ‘I like to keep abreast of what is happening in this country. One never knows when it might come in useful.’

Big, amiable Brother Luke joined in the discussion. He was a large, slow-moving man, content to supervise some of the lay brothers in the fields – and often chose to labour alongside them.

‘If this Glendower served the English aristocracy and even the Crown so well, why is he now campaigning against them?’

‘I can answer that, as I came here from the priory of Bangor in North Wales,’ volunteered David, one of the younger monks. ‘He has become disaffected since the death of one of his major patrons and then being overlooked for advancement by other nobles. Also he had a serious dispute over land with a powerful English neighbour in Ruthin, which triggered the present conflict.’

Louis nodded his agreement. ‘That dispute has escalated into a nationalist rebellion and flocks of Welshmen – even students from Oxford – have been streaming back to join his army.’

‘What about the involvement of the French?’ asked Mark, always keen for enlightenment.

The sacristan, Pierre, answered this one. ‘Paris has no love for the English king,’ he said cynically. ‘This was a chance to foment rebellion against the unpopular Henry by joining with the Welsh and several powerful lords in the North of England.’

‘I heard tell of something called the “Tripartite Indenture”,’ observed Mark.

Louis nodded again. ‘You are well informed yourself, Brother. Yes, recently Glendower agreed with those northern lords that, with the help of the French, they would defeat the King and divide up England and Wales into three separate provinces, each under their own control.’

Jude, the cellarer, sneered at the notion. ‘That’s a fantasy worthy of Brother John!’ he scoffed. ‘Our King, God bless him, will never let his kingdom be stolen from him like that! He will fight like a lion – and no doubt the French will then see reason and run home as usual!’

This started a squabble between the French and English factions amongst the brothers, which the sub-prior had to suppress with threats of penances for this unchristian behaviour. By the time they had settled down, the hour was late enough for them to seek their beds until the call for matins at midnight.

For the rest of the evening, the priory slumbered peacefully under the silvery light of the full moon. High above, the Herefordshire Beacon was silhouetted against the sky and, beyond it, the rest of the Malverns marched away to the north. The guard posted on the gate of the inner courtyard snored his way through the hours, but had the foresight to tie a cord from the latch to his wrist as he lay slumped against the gatepost.

Just before midnight, the night-porter in the dormitory began ringing the bell for matins and almost a score of sleepy monks clambered from their palliasses. After a perfunctory wash in the basins at the end of the dorter, they donned their habits as the prior arrived from his quarters, then began filing through the door at the opposite end. This led them down the night stairs into the south transept of the church on the way to their places in the quire.

They all carried lighted candles, which were to be placed in sockets in the choir stalls, and this dim illumination was sufficient to cause the leading monk to stop dead as he reached the crossing of the nave.

It was Brother Pierre, the sacristan, and he let loose a sound partway between a scream and a sob. Close behind, still only half awake, Brother Luke bumped into him with a muttered expletive, which was rapidly converted into a gasp of surprise.

‘Holy Mother of God, what’s happened? Who’s that?’

Within seconds, the rest of the monks had formed a half-circle around the spring of St Beornwyn. Her alabaster statue had fallen forward from its pedestal and lay face down in the wide basin below, but even more alarmingly, it was obscuring the upper half of a body, also face down in the healing pool. Water had splashed out and lay on the slabs below the steps leading up into the quire and presbytery.

The sub-prior pushed forward and was first to reach the inert figure lying bizarrely in the sacred spring. Both Mark and the sacristan were close behind him and all three crouched alongside the victim of what appeared to be an extraordinary accident. By now, Prior Paul, who brought up the rear of the procession, had hastened to the fore and taken charge.

‘Get that statue off the poor fellow!’ he shouted, for once uncaring about the sanctity of the surroundings. He grabbed one shoulder of the stone saint and with Matthew and Mark grasping the head and opposite shoulder, levered up the full-size effigy and swung it sideways to rest across the top of the basin. It was extremely heavy and there was an ominous ‘crack’ as part of the retaining edge of the pool broke away, allowing more water to stream across the floor.

‘Lift him out, for Christ’s sake!’ howled the prior, but it was an unnecessary command, as Matthew and Mark were already pulling the victim up from the basin. Then with Brother David and the precentor carrying the legs, they staggered across the flooded floor to a dry patch of flagstones and gently turned the figure face up as they laid him down.

‘It’s old John!’ said Pierre flatly, though this surprised no one, as he was the only one missing.

‘And he’s dead!’ added the infirmarian, after bending for a few seconds over the inert figure. There was a murmur of concern and a flurry of making the sign of the cross.

‘I have heard of some supposedly drowned men who recovered after having the water squeezed from their chests,’ suggested the prior tremulously, thinking that this looked like being the worst week of his life.

Louis shrugged, but, to appease Paul, bent again and pressed hard on John’s chest a few times with both hands. There were wheezing sounds from the dead man’s mouth, but no water emerged and the infirmarian stood up again.

‘I doubt that he drowned, as there’s no froth at his lips or nostrils,’ he pronounced grimly. ‘I was once physician to an abbey in the marshes of the Carmargue, where I saw many drowned people, so I am familiar with the signs.’

The prior stared at him. ‘But nothing else could have killed him? His face was under the water!’

Brother Matthew jumped to contradict Paul. ‘At his age, surely many things could have caused him to collapse. An apoplexy or a stroke? After all his strange behaviour lately, it should be no surprise that his brain has become severely disordered.’

Louis had been crouching to examine the corpse more closely during this exchange, running his hands over the soaking white hair and feeling the scalp. He now stood up and looked gravely around the ring of anxious faces in the flickering candlelight.

‘Our brother’s brain has certainly become severely disordered – but not by an apoplexy. His skull has been fractured!’

Again a ripple of consternation passed around the onlookers.

‘Hardly surprising, after that statue fell upon him,’ observed Matthew caustically. ‘It must weigh several hundredweight.’

‘It was not the statue,’ declared the infirmarian. ‘Old John has been deliberately struck upon the head!’

‘It must have been the statue!’ wailed the prior. ‘It is unthinkable that anyone would have offered that poor man violence.’

Louis shook his head vehemently. ‘There can be no doubt – he was struck upon the head. He must have been dead before his face went under the water.’

It was obvious that the audience of monks were unwilling to accept the physician’s pronouncement.

‘It must have been the statue!’ cried Arnulf. ‘St Beornwyn was surely bringing down retribution upon John for his slanderous sacrilege against her.’

There was a chorus of agreement from the circle of his colleagues standing around the corpse.

‘What clearer sign do we need?’ cried Jude. ‘There has been no earthquake, so why should our beloved Beornwyn’s image fall at the very moment that her denigrator was beneath it?’

Louis, the physician, was unmoved by the arguments. ‘But did it fall? Or did someone help it on its way?’ he asked.

‘I respect your expert knowledge, Brother, but in my long experience, the most obvious explanation is usually the correct one, ‘said the prior, his placidity beginning to return in spite of the stressful circumstances. ‘Even if he did not drown – and I have to accept your opinion on that – the fall of such a heavy weight upon his head can surely be the only explanation for his grievous injury.’

Louis, his face devoid of expression, shook his head. ‘Normally, I would submit to your wise opinion, Prior. But unless Beornwyn’s retribution was even more miraculous than it appears, that explanation cannot be accepted.’

‘On what grounds do you so stubbornly contradict our prior?’ snapped Matthew indignantly.

‘There are two reasons,’ replied the infirmarian evenly. ‘Firstly, the fractures are on each side of the head rather than on the top or back, which one would expect from a statue falling on him. But far more telling is the fact that there are two separate injuries, one on each side of the head. It is too much to accept that the statue had fallen twice!’

There was a silence, then the circle of monks moved nearer so that the physician could point out the areas of blue-red discoloration above each ear.

‘He has suffered bruises, but the skin is not broken,’ explained Louis. ‘However, I can feel fractured bone beneath each injury. The poor man was twice struck violently with a blunt object and probably died rapidly.’

During this altercation, the deceased monk lay in his sodden habit, staring up at the darkness of the roof high above. His pallid face was wet, his mouth partly open as if protesting against the discomfort that he was suffering.

‘What shall we do with him?’ asked the practical Mark. He had already plunged his arm into the basin to remove the wooden plug from a drain at the bottom, to stop the leakage over the cracked rim, which was threatening to turn the crossing of the nave into a duck pond.

After some discussion, the prior, sub-prior and sacristan decided to place the body on a bier behind screens in a corner of the south transept, well away from the flooded floor – and from the curious gaze of the depleted number of visiting pilgrims. Two of the monks went for the bier, which was hanging on a bracket at the back of the church. It was a stout stretcher with handles each end and four sturdy legs, used to carry bodies and coffins at the infrequent funerals. John was reverently lifted onto it and his soaking habit removed, to be replaced by a shroud fetched from the vestry.

‘Matins shall be devoted to prayers for our departed brother,’ announced the prior. ‘Naturally we shall be holding a full Requiem Mass for him when the time comes.’

As they filed into the quire stalls above the shattered function, Brother Matthew murmured into the prior’s ear. ‘We must discuss this in chapter as well as between we senior members. It may not be appropriate to offer the full rites of the Church to someone who may have been possessed by the Devil!’

Next morning, before the chapter meeting, the prior, his secretary, the sub-prior, the sacristan and the infirmarian went back into the empty church to examine the damage to the shrine of St Beornwyn. A couple of burly lay brothers lifted the heavy statue from across the wide bowl and laid it on the flagstones. A stonemason from the village, who did any building work that was required in the priory, was called to examine it. He declared it undamaged apart from some chips from the base, which fitted into a socket on the back of the bowl.

‘Someone has jammed a crowbar or such-like under there and levered her off the supporting peg,’ he declared confidently, causing Louis to smile smugly at this confirmation of his theory. The mason promised to return with cement to set Beornwyn more firmly back on her pedestal and to repair the broken rim of the basin. When he had departed with the lay brothers, the senior monks were left alone to consider the situation.

‘Much as it pains me to accept it,’ began the prior, ‘it seems that you were right about this being a deliberate act, Louis. But I feel it flies in the face of reason to believe that anyone would so cruelly murder this poor old man. What earthly motive could anyone have?’

The sub-prior was ready with an answer. ‘None of us was happy about Brother John’s lewd fantasies, especially as they were likely to drastically reduce our income from pilgrims, which finances the comfortable way of life enjoyed by this house!’

Brother Paul sighed. Matthew never missed a chance to snipe at what he considered a lack of asceticism at Broomhill.

‘That could never be a motive for murder, especially in an institution devoted to God and good works,’ he protested.

‘You are too unworldly to be fully aware of the working of men’s minds, Prior,’ retorted Matthew cynically. ‘Men will kill for a couple of pennies, let alone the many pounds that pilgrims and supplicants bring in to St Oswald’s.’

‘But we’re not just men here, we are a special breed who have given our lives to the Almighty,’ said Mark, vehemently.

Again the sub-prior gave one of his supercilious smiles. ‘You are young and innocent, Mark. When you have lived in the world for another twenty years, as I have, you will know that there are good monks and bad monks, just as in any other walk of life.’

The physician Louis decided to put an end to this pointless argument. ‘The fact remains that our Brother John was foully murdered. There is no avoiding that conclusion, so whatever the motive, there is a killer amongst us.’

Prior Paul became agitated, his hands fluttering in front of his ample stomach. ‘Amongst us? Surely we must look for some evidence that an outsider committed this foul crime?’

The infirmarian shrugged. ‘I am merely a physician, who can tell you that John was deliberately slain. I cannot venture any opinion as to why or by whom.’

‘What about when?’ asked the prior’s secretary.

Louis nodded sagely. ‘I wondered when someone was going to ask me that. We found the body shortly before matins, at around midnight. He was still warm and his limbs were still pliable. I last saw John in his room when I gave him a sleeping draught earlier that evening.’

‘At what time would that be?’ asked the prior.

‘I took myself to my bed in the dorter at about the seventh hour, though it is difficult to be precise.’

Though some large abbeys and cathedrals had installed large clocks many years previously, they were still not common. At St Oswald’s, the bellringer who alerted everyone to the times of all holy offices, used a large graduated candle to inform him of the time.

‘So the despicable deed must have been perpetrated during the five hours between those times?’ persisted Mark.

‘It would appear so,’ agreed Louis. ‘But no one has asked me where it was committed. That is just as well, as I have no answer. Poor John could have been struck on the head in his room in the infirmarium – or in the church, or anywhere between. There is no way of telling.’

After this there was a strained silence as no one could think of any further questions – or, indeed, answers.

‘We must leave this now,’ ordered the prior. ‘When we all meet in the chapter house, I will solemnly enjoin every member to examine his conscience and to confess any sins that may have a bearing upon the tragedy.’

‘Not only any sins, but any information that might be useful,’ added the sub-prior, determined to get in the last word.

Twenty miles away, in a barn set on a piece of common land outside a village in the land of Gwent, another conference of a very different sort was in progress. Around a rough table taken from the reeve’s house, half a dozen men sat on a couple of benches looted from the same place. From a chair at the head of the table, Owain Glyndwr was listening to reports from his lieutenants and making plans for the morrow.

‘The further we go into England, the more difficult it will be to feed them and our horses,’ growled Evan ap Collwyn, one of the prince’s quartermasters.

‘Soldiers will always find a way of getting food from somewhere,’ retorted another giant of a man, Iestyn Goch.

‘Six thousand mouths need a lot of victuals,’ retorted Evan. ‘They have been on a very short commons since Brecon, and the way ahead looks unpromising.’

Owain, the true Prince of Wales, listened carefully to all the opinions, absently pricking the reeve’s table with the point of a small dagger. He was a large man, though not on the scale of Iestyn Goch. Handsome at fifty, with light brown hair and beard to match, he had an avuncular calmness that belied his prowess as a fighter and a politician. This rebellion – better termed a war of independence – had been running for five years and until Usk a couple of weeks ago, had been increasingly successful with every passing month. However, that battle at Pwll Melyn had seen the death of his brother, who was his chief supporter, as well as Bishop Thomas, a fighting cleric who had won over the priesthood of Wales to his side. Equally tragic was the loss of Crach Ffinant, his bard, soothsayer and prophet. In addition, his son had been captured and dragged to the Tower of London. However, this severe setback had not weakened his determination to advance into England, threatening the very heartland of the unpopular tyrant King Henry I V. Thankfully the French had now kept their promise and landed almost two thousand men at Milford Haven, who were now joining his forces. However, as Evan had pointed out, an army marches on its stomach, and at the moment those particular organs were pretty empty.

‘Until now, we have been campaigning in Wales and have seized our sustenance wherever possible from towns, manors, castles and courts belonging to Englishmen or Welshmen who have sold out to them,’ observed Glyndwr. ‘As I have always insisted, we have never stolen from our own peasantry, the very people for whom we are fighting. However, now that we are on the very edge of England, we need not be so sensitive. We have suffered oppression and humiliation, with untold cruelty from them for over a century, since they murdered Prince Llewelyn at Cilmeri. So now we will take what we need, to show them that the tables have turned.’

He transferred his gaze to another man, a sallow, black-browed fellow with a shock of dark hair and a turn in his eye.

‘Mostyn Gam, what have your scouts reported about our route towards Worcester? What prospects are there for feeding our men and beasts on the way?’

Mostyn looked pessimistic. ‘Not very good ones, arglwydd. There are few great houses and estates, most of the farms are small and half of them only grow bloody apples!’

‘What castles will we have to contend with? They are usually well stocked with food and fodder.’

Mostyn Gam pulled out a small roll of parchment from his pouch and flattened it on the table. Entering England was a new experience for the Welsh army and their knowledge of its geography was sparse. Though the coastline was well known, the inland areas were familiar only to those who lived there, as there were no reliable maps and only the main roads between towns were recorded, their distances often being speculative.

‘Our priest from Talgarth went disguised with one of the scouts. He drew this chart when he came back, marking the places where he felt meat, grain, hay and even money might be taken.’

They pored over the crude map for a time, noting where castles, manors and villages were sited near the route they proposed for reaching Worcester.

‘What’s this one, marked with a cross near this line of hills?’ asked Evan ap Collwyn, jabbing a large finger onto the parchment.

Mostyn squinted at it with his lazy eye. ‘He said it was a small priory, dedicated to some English saint or other. It’s isolated and, with a bit of persuasion, may well yield up something useful. They’re bound to have livestock for us to slaughter, as well as a mill stocked with flour and grain.’

‘And some gold and silver cups on their altar, as well as a fat money chest in their chancel,’ suggested another man, a cousin of Owain’s from Builth.

The prince held up a cautionary hand. ‘We are fighting the King of England, remember, not the Holy Catholic Church! I respect those religious houses in Wales who support our cause and if English priests and monks do not oppose us as we pass by, then we have no call to harm them or their houses.’

Evan ap Collwyn grinned. ‘Indeed, but no doubt some of these fat clerics can be persuaded to “voluntarily” offer us sustenance. Is it not their Christian duty to aid any travellers who knock on their doors to ask for food and lodging?’

There was a guffaw from around the table and even Owain raised a smile as he replied. ‘I doubt if any man of God would relish six thousand travellers knocking on his door… so we will proceed with moderation.’

The leader was in a subdued mood, keenly feeling not only the loss of his brother and son, but the absence of his strange astrologer and prophet, Crach Ffinant. A superstitious man, Glyndwr took predictions and prophesies very seriously and missed the advice of Crach, with his reading of the stars and the clouds, and the behaviour of the birds and natural elements.

With a deep sigh, he sat wishing for some sign from heaven that he was doing the right thing by marching deeper into the heart of England than anyone else since the Norman Conquest.

After vespers, the last service of the day, Prior Paul called his secretary into his parlour, bidding him to close the door firmly.

‘Mark, you are my confidant and my friend. We must talk seriously about the tragedy that has befallen this house. Between us, we must try to come to some conclusion.’

It was true that the prior was extremely fond of the younger monk and an almost father-son relationship had grown between them. Mark was a nephew of the Bishop of Lichfield, who had been ordained from the same seminary as Paul, a fact that was likely to advance the younger man’s career prospects, starting with this secretarial post in St Oswald’s.

Mark sat on the stool opposite the table and looked expectantly at his mentor.

‘How do we begin, Prior?’ he asked.

‘By posing a series of questions, I think. The first is whether we have to accept that it must be a member of our brotherhood that is the culprit.’

The secretary pondered this before he answered.

‘I suppose we have to accept that John’s death was murder, not some bizarre accident. Our infirmarian was adamant about that and I cannot see any hope of denying it.’

Paul nodded, his famous smile having deserted him. ‘A lack of drowning and two blows to the head would seem to make his conclusion incontrovertible. Now what about anyone other than a brother being the perpetrator?’

Mark shook his head sadly. ‘Little chance of that, I’m afraid. The death occurred within the inner precinct and there was a guard on the only gate all that night. I cannot see anyone from outside scaling a ten-foot wall, especially when a stranger would surely have no motive to silence poor John’s fantasies.’

Paul looked at his assistant. ‘You feel sure that that must have been the motive?’

‘I see no alternative. Why else would anyone wish to dispose of an obscure old monk who, apart from this recent aberration, never uttered a controversial word in his life?’

The prior rose from his seat and went to a window to stare out, though for once he was not searching the horizon for the approaching Welsh horde. He turned back to face Mark. ‘So we are left with seventeen brothers as the only suspects?’

Mark turned up his palms in an almost French gesture, perhaps learned from Pierre or Louis.

‘There was one lay brother in the precinct, of course: the night porter, Alfred, who rings the service bell. But he is almost as old and feeble as John, and has spent almost all his life here. Surely we can discard him as a suspect?’

The prior nodded his agreement. ‘And there are two others we can discard as well.’ The secretary raised his eyebrows in query as Paul continued, ‘Ourselves, I trust! I certainly know that I am innocent and I am sure that you feel the same.’

Mark flushed a little at the implied compliment. ‘Thank you for your confidence in me, Prior. But, of course, an episcopal or even papal enquiry, to say nothing of the secular authorities, could not eliminate us from suspicion any more than the rest of our brothers.’

Paul shook his head. ‘There will be no enquiry outside the ecclesiastical fraternity. In these fraught times, with an enemy advancing on Hereford and Worcester, no coroner or sheriff will concern himself with an internal matter in a religious house. I doubt any bishop will be interested, either, for like us they will be too concerned with defending their brethren and their treasures.’

He sat down again and rested his chin on his clasped hands. ‘So we now have fifteen suspects to consider.’

‘I think we have one more to eliminate,’ Mark said, ‘and that is our brother Louis. He was the one who detected the murderous nature of the death and rejected any notion of an accidental – or miraculous – collapse of Beorwyn’s statue upon old John.’

The prior saw the logic of this at once. ‘Ah, you mean that if he was the killer, he would have gone along with the obvious conclusion that John had drowned under the statue? He certainly would not have demonstrated the two blows to the skull to us.’

There was a silence as each man digested this.

‘That still leaves us with a considerable number of names to consider,’ said Paul ruminatively. ‘And no clear idea of how to proceed. I can hardly take each brother aside and demand to know if he killed old John!’

Mark pulled the top of his black robe away from his neck, as it was very hot in the chamber, even with the two glazed casements open.

‘Can you not give them a stern warning at chapter about the peril to their souls and the prospect of hellfire if they do not confess – or even fail to offer you any information they have about this evil tragedy?’

Prior Paul sighed as he rejected this suggestion. ‘I can do it, certainly, but I know it will be useless, unless we have a potential martyr amongst us, who is willing to sacrifice himself for having saved the reputation of our saintly Beornwyn.’

‘What would happen to a brother who was found to be a murderer?’ asked the secretary.

‘I have never heard of such case, thank God,’ Paul replied, crossing himself. ‘As you well know, thanks to St Thomas the Martyr, who refused to submit the Church to the will of the second King Henry, we still have “benefit of clergy”, so that we can avoid the lethal punishments of the secular law. But no doubt some very severe penance would be levied by archbishops or even the Pope, such as banishment for life to some remote cell.’

Mark was still not satisfied that the miscreant could not be persuaded to admit his crime.

‘I find it hard to believe that a man devoted to God, as we all are here, could live with himself knowing that he had taken the life of another. Surely he would be bound to unburden himself to his confessor? Each one of us, even you, has one of the priests amongst us as his confessor.’

As was usual in any abbey or priory, most monks were not priests, but St Oswald’s had four brothers who had been ordained, so could administer the sacraments and take confessions.

Paul’s smile returned briefly at his secretary’s youthful naïvety and unworldliness. ‘Mark, you will learn that monks, like any other mortal men, will not tell their confessor everything. In fact they are more likely to keep major sins to themselves and be content to offer the smaller ones. In any event, you know as well as I do that all confessions are inviolate and even an admission of murder could not be divulged.’

He stood up to indicate that their discussion was over.

‘I did not hope that we could solve the mystery today, but wanted to clear our minds about what we know and do not know. Let us both sleep on it and especially pray for guidance, then speak of it again after chapter tomorrow. Meanwhile, we have to see John laid reverently in the ground, in spite of Brother Matthew’s doubts about his being possessed by the devil! And the other urgent matter is preparing this house against the advance of Glendower’s horde.’

Next day, the monks assembled in their places in the quire for the solemn Requiem Mass that prepared Brother John’s body for eternal rest in the small cemetery outside the church. The nave held all the lay brothers and many of the villagers who depended on the priory for their livelihood. For all his eccentricity, old John had been popular with the rest of the community until his fits became worse and his mind began to fail. The plain wooden coffin stood before the altar as Prior Paul officiated, ignoring the disapproving scowls of Brother Matthew, who still muttered that perhaps the devil had entered his soul. As the litany and chanting saw the old monk off to Heaven, some of the brethren suspected that when he arrived there, John would seek out St Oswald and berate him for cutting short his life.

The coffin was buried with all due reverence in the red Herefordshire soil and a simple wooden cross planted at the end of the grave. A final dirge was sung around it before the monks and lay brothers filed away to their normal duties.

The formalities were over, but an hour later a message from a shepherd tending priory flocks at the furthest limit of their land sent the prior into a flurry of agitation. The man had spoken to a party of refugees coming up from the west, who reported that Glendower’s host, now strengthened by hundreds more French knights and foot soldiers, appeared to be making ready to move out of their camp near Monmouth.

Paul gathered the monks together in the warming room and urgently gave them instructions to hide the priory’s valuables.

‘The treasure chest in my parlour, the sacramental cups and plates from the aumbry in the chancel and, of course, the relic of Beornwyn, must be hidden securely. We cannot tell how long it will be before this ravaging host arrives from the edge of Wales, but we must be ready for them.’

As always, the sub-prior raised an objection.

‘All that will not fit into a stone coffin in the crypt. The treasure chest alone would be too large.’

This provoked an immediate discussion, but it was a suggestion from the ever-practical cellarer that was soon accepted.

‘Where the spring comes out of the earth beneath the chancel, there is a small chamber where the top end of the conduit that feeds Beornwyn’s fountain is placed,’ Brother Jude said. ‘One of the stone slabs in the chancel floor is removable and there is sufficient space beneath to hide all we wish.’

The precentor, Brother Patrice, had a different question. ‘With our relic hidden away, we will be unable to administer any sacred water to pilgrims,’ he pointed out.

Arnulf, the hospitaller, answered this scornfully. ‘There’ll be no pilgrims for as long as the Welsh are advancing on us. I have had no lodgers in the guest-house since yesterday.’

Soon the inner ward was bustling with activity. All the lay brothers were kept out and the centre gate firmly closed, with one brother set to guard it against intrusion. Although all the rest of the community knew what was going on, the prior wanted to keep the actual hiding place of the valuables as secret as possible.

Although it was unmarked, Jude, who seemed to be best informed about such matters, identified the slab in front of the altar that covered the spring – virtually where old John’s coffin had rested shortly before. With no strong labourers to help them, the brothers had to struggle with the heavy stone themselves, but when it was prised out and slid aside, they saw that the cellarer was right about the masonry-lined cavity beneath. It surrounded the small pool from which clear water bubbled out and then vanished down a conduit to the basin of St Beornwyn. There was sufficient room around the margins of the pool for the wooden chest that contained the mass of silver coins collected from pilgrims, as well as for the calvarium of their beloved saint. The silver chalices, patens and other precious items used in their religious observances, were fetched from the aumbry, a locked cupboard built into the wall of the chancel. All these were carefully wrapped in blankets and laid on the raised stones around the spring.

When the slab was replaced, dirt was rubbed into the cracks, then dust carefully brushed over all the slabs before the altar, to obliterate any signs of disturbance. When it was finished, Prior Paul stood in front of his brothers to contemplate the result.

‘That is all we can do now,’ he said sombrely, his famous smile having almost vanished in the turmoil of recent days. ‘We can only commend the safety of our holy objects to God.’

As he led prayers on the spot, his secretary could not help wondering how that chestful of silver pennies could be considered as ‘holy objects’.

Later that day, a lay brother and a pair of men from the village were sent out westwards to give early warning of the approach of the advancing army. As disciples of the priory, they would get lodging with any cottager or forest-dweller who had not yet run away. When either the Welsh host or their scouts were spotted, they would ride back to Broomhill with the news. The prior, who had thought up this plan, was not really sure it achieved anything, but he felt that any warning was better than none.

In the meanwhile, Paul kept up the pressure on his brethren to reveal the killer of Brother John. At every chapter meeting and at prayers before each dinner and supper, he exhorted them to study their consciences and to safeguard their immortal souls. His normally mild manner had hardened in past days, and even Matthew could not carp about his laxity of discipline.

‘For how long can you live a lie like this!’ barked the prior at chapter one day. ‘One of you has the mark of Cain upon himself, invisible though it be to all except the culprit.’

His voice gathered strength as he looked over the bowed heads of the abashed community. ‘I will never understand why you, whoever you are, could not recognise that John had a disordered mind and that he could never be able to carry out his threat of informing the world of his morbid fantasy! You may have done this wicked deed in the honest, but mistaken belief that you were safeguarding the reputation of this house. That could be taken into consideration when you face the consequences of your action,’ he cried, swinging a pointed finger around the assembled brothers. ‘God and the bishops he has appointed as his agents on earth, are full of mercy and compassion. The secular law has no control over your punishment and anything that the Church can mete out to you is as nothing compared to the abyss you face without confession, contrition and absolution!’

He worked himself up to the finale. ‘Repent and confess, or you will burn in hell and your miserable soul will suffer torments until the end of time! Confess to me and lift what must be an intolerable burden lying across your shoulders every minute of the day and night. Repent and confess!’

Paul continued in this vein for the next week, without any visible effect upon his reluctant listeners. He even began to wonder if his infirmarian’s diagnosis of murder could have been wrong, though the facts seemed to speak for themselves.

The scouts he had sent out to spy on the Welsh had not returned, but on the fourth day, they sent a message with a shepherd to say that so far, there were no signs of even the advance guard of the Welsh.

‘No doubt they are taking their time in destroying and plundering everything in their path,’ muttered Arnulf glumly, as he sat sharing a cup of wine in the cellarer’s room.

Brother Jude shrugged. ‘Certainly this Glendower has wrecked almost every castle in Wales and the Marches. I have not heard that he has been slaughtering or pillaging religious houses, thank God.’

‘We shall soon find out, Brother!’ grunted Arnulf, gloomily.

But it was almost a week before the scouts returned, trotting up to the main gate of St Oswald’s and breathlessly delivering their news to Prior Paul, who came to the steps of his house to meet them.

‘They are but five miles away by now,’ reported the lay brother, who normally was one of the millers. ‘They delayed for several days to sack Ledbury, but the day before yesterday, moved on to Eastnor where they camped again.’

Ledbury was a small market town and Eastnor was a village with nothing between it and the priory, other than woods and open country. Pale with anxiety, Paul ordered his monks to call in the villagers from outside the walls and within the hour, about fifty men, women and children were camping in the outer courtyard.

‘The women and children can stay in the guest-house,’ ordered Brother Matthew, now striding around officiously, organising the influx. ‘The men can remain out here, until we see what the situation is by nightfall.’

Several of the younger men had volunteered to stay outside to drive some of their best cattle, hogs and sheep up into the dense woods on the hills behind, hoping to keep them out of the clutches of the invaders.

‘The rest of them, and all the fowls, will have to stay where they are,’ said Jude sorrowfully. ‘I doubt we’ll see any of them again after this horde has passed.’

‘If they do pass!’ added Arnulf, looking askance at the ragged children running in and out of his tidy guest-house. ‘This place will never be the same again.’

There followed an uneasy couple of hours when the priory seemed to be holding its breath. The birds still sang and the remaining sheep still bleated outside the walls, but there was still no sign of the dreaded Welsh.

‘They move very slowly,’ said the lay brother who had gone scouting. ‘There are a few hundred mounted men in the lead, mostly French knights, but the main host is on foot, many of the men without shoes. And the slowest of all are the stolen carts, laden with food and weapons. Their oxen can only keep up half a man’s walking pace.’

But eventually, they came.

The two porters were keeping a lookout from the top of the arch over the main gates, which were firmly closed and barred. The first signs they saw were a couple of men armed with spears, appearing on ponies on the track out of the woods. Alongside them walked a pair of archers, each with the famous Gwent longbows slung across their back, the bowstrings coiled inside their leather hats to keep them dry.

The lookouts cried a warning down to the crowd assembled anxiously in the courtyards below, then watched until they saw the advance guard reach the cottages a few hundred paces away. The men began searching them and brought out a few objects from the humble shacks, then turned their attention to the mill placed over the small river, which meandered across the pastures until it vanished into the woods beyond. There had been no time to bring the mill’s stock of grain and flour into the priory, but Jude had been storing as much as he could in his cellarium over the past week.

When the soldiers emerged, they moved over to a point opposite the priory gates and began eating whatever food they had found in the cottages, sitting relaxed on the grass, obviously under orders not to approach the priory until the army arrived.

‘Our hopes for the horde to pass us by seem dashed already,’ said Brother Mark, who had been looking out through a small spy-hole in the main gate. ‘These scouts are waiting for their leaders to catch them up.’

He made way for the prior to peer through the flap. After a moment, Paul turned away and spoke gravely to his brothers.

‘I must go out and confront this Glendower when he comes, to plead with him that he leaves this religious house in peace, for I have heard that he is a devout man.’

An hour later, the prior had his chance of confrontation. The porters above the gate gave a cry of warning, as they saw the vanguard of the Welsh host appearing through the trees, half a mile away.

The first to break out on the narrow forest track were horsemen, a score of whom rode in pairs. There was little by way of extravagant heraldry, as this was a fighting force wary of opposition, but the leading pair held pennants aloft, attached to spears. One displayed a gold French fleur-de-lis, the other the red dragon of Cadwalader. As they advanced at walking pace, the next sight the anxious watchers had was of a dozen men on larger steeds, some wearing armoured breastplates. As they came nearer, it was obvious which was the leader, as a very erect man on a horse with more elaborate harness pulled slightly ahead of the others as they emerged from the narrow track on to the more spacious fields. Behind them came a stream of mounted knights, many in the more colourful uniforms of the French, then a long cavalcade of foot soldiers with a motley mixture of clothing and weapons. Some carried swords or maces, others had spears or pikes, but many were archers. The stream of men seemed endless and they were still emerging from the trees when the leaders had reached the cottages in front of the priory.

‘There’s thousands of them, Prior!’ shouted down one of the porters. ‘Looks as if they are going make camp in the fields outside.’

With the monks crowding around him, Brother Paul peered through the squint in the main gate and saw that the leading men had dismounted and were conferring amongst themselves.

‘I must go out and speak with their leader, this Glendower,’ he said stoically. ‘Throw ourselves on his mercy, if needs be.’

There was a babble of concern from his brothers.

‘It is too dangerous, Prior!’’ said his secretary, urgently. ‘Let me go in your place to see if they are amenable to reason.’

‘It will be equally dangerous for you, Mark,’ said Paul gently. ‘But you will come with me – and you both, Louis and Pierre, for you might be able to charm your fellow Frenchmen!’

Amidst a chorus of concern from the other monks, the bar was raised from the gates and the four men stepped out on to the track leading from the priory to the village. As they walked slowly towards the leaders of the army, more men were pouring across the fields, now followed by ponderous supply carts, pulled by both oxen and draught-horses.

When the quartet of monks got within fifty paces of Owain Glyndwr and his lieutenants, the front row of half a dozen riders dismounted, men running from behind them to hold the horses. In the warm summer weather, with their scouts reporting no immediate threat of opposition, most of the knights had discarded their armour, though some still wore a breastplate or a hood of chain mail which covered their necks and shoulders. Owain himself was bare-headed and wore a jupon, a short quilted jacket of green silk. His breeches were thrust into spurred riding boots and a heavy sword hung from a low-slung belt.

As he walked to meet the Benedictines, two of his companions coming close behind for protection, the prior saw a powerful man with abundant grey-brown hair and a forked beard and moustache of the same colour.

They stopped a few paces apart and regarded each other.

‘I am Paul, the prior of St Oswald’s,’ began the monk hesitantly. ‘Do you speak English, sir?’

The impassive face of the Prince of Wales suddenly cracked into a smile. ‘I do indeed – and French, Latin and Welsh! Take your pick, Father.’

Paul felt a sudden wave of relief. Uncertain whether this war-like host had intended to slay him on the spot, he now felt that whatever pillaging of their goods might happen, this civilised man would not unleash an orgy of rapine and murder upon them.

‘What are your intentions here, Sir Owen? We are a small house, with few people and no great riches.’

‘How often have I had that said to me, Prior? But I have no quarrel with the Church – several of my most ardent supporters are of your cloth.’

He swept a hand behind him, where Paul noticed that several of the mounted men wore crosses around their neck

‘What then do you want of us?’ asked Paul.

Glyndwr regarded him coolly. ‘We must be given – or we’ll take – whatever sustenance we can gain here. Your grain, fodder and meat. And a place to rest up for a day, as I have many tired and hungry men here.’

One of the men in French uniform spoke up from behind the leader. His English was heavily accented. ‘Are there no estates or great houses nearby? They are the places where we are more likely to find worthwhile stores to plunder.’

Before Paul could reply, Louis spoke up in his native language, addressing the speaker. ‘None before Malvern or Upton. You need to move on a few more miles.’

Not to be outdone before a fellow-countryman, Pierre also made his nationality known, by using the same tongue. ‘It is a pleasure to hear God’s own language spoken in this outlandish country, Monsieur.’

Glyndwr’s bushy eyebrows rose a little as he turned his head to speak to his Gallic comrade.

‘We seem to have come across a nest of Frenchmen, Comte de Salers!’ He swung back to Pierre and Louis. ‘And what are you doing here, sitting on the Welsh border?’

‘I am the sacristan, recently from the abbey of Fontrevault – and anxious to return there! This is Brother Louis, our infirmarian.’

‘A Doctor of Physic from Montpellier.’ Even in such a fraught situation, Louis could not resist flaunting his badge of fame, and the Welsh leader seemed interested.

‘One reason for our need to halt here for a day or so is that we have sick and wounded men. Will you look at them or have you scruples about helping the enemy?’

This was a challenge to Louis’s Hippocratic oath.

‘They are not my enemies,’ he snapped. ‘All men in distress deserve Christian aid. You seem to have many of my countrymen in your retinue, so I will ask them how we might best aid the sufferers.’

Owain called the Comte de Salers forward and the two French monks went to confer with him, leaving the prior and his secretary facing the prince.

‘If you have many sick men, perhaps they would be better housed in our infirmary and in the guest-house, rather than lie in carts or on the cold grass out there,’ he suggested, pointing to the mass of men who were now covering the field, many sitting or lying down.

Already some were forming into groups and lighting fires with sticks picked up on their journey through the woods.

‘Where are your own villagers now?’ demanded Glyndwr.

‘Inside our walls. The women and children are in the guest-house, but we can move them to the lay brothers’ dormitory if you wish to shelter your sick and wounded.’

Glyndwr regarded the plump prior critically. ‘You are a compassionate man, unlike some clerics we confront! They often abuse us, resist and even try to offer us violence.’

Mark thought it was time he said something to support his prior. ‘We are a house of healing, sir. The priory was founded centuries ago because of the miracle of the spring, above which the church was built. Much of our work is treating the sick, either by the magic of Beornwyn’s fountain or by the expertise of physicians like Brother Louis.’

Glyndwr seized upon the idea of a magical spring. His fascination with divination and mystic signs made anything occult a welcome diversion from the years of warfare to which he had committed himself.

‘We have a strong tradition of healing wells in Wales. Tell me of this spring you have here.’

Between them, Mark and the prior outlined the history of Beornwyn and St Oswald.

‘Some two hundred years ago, we were given some of the bodily relics of that saintly virgin to keep in the church,’ added Paul. ‘Since then, the power of healing has increased, as has the reputation of the priory to attract pilgrims.’

The Welsh prince was no fool and knew that this meant that donations must have filled the coffers many times over since the spring and the relics attracted a stream of supplicants. But he was interested in the more mystical aspects of the story.

‘I must see this famous fountain for myself – and touch your virgin’s relics,’ he announced. ‘They may confer good fortune upon our crusade!’

Paul realised that the gold-banded skull was now hidden away, and they had carefully avoided mentioning it in treating the sick. Thankfully, he thought, they still had several other mouldering bones in the reliquary, which could be shown to Glyndwr to satisfy his curiosity. The more affable they could make their relationship, the better chance the priory had of getting away with a minimum of looting.

‘Come in now, and bring your senior officers with you,’ he invited. He led them back to the priory gates and called to the porters to throw them wide. ‘And leave them open, there will be sick and wounded coming in shortly,’ he commanded.

His two French brothers had gone off with some of Owain’s captains into the now dense crowd of soldiers, to find men in most need of medical care, but Mark kept close to the prior as they led Glyndwr into the outer courtyard. Many of the villagers and lay brothers shrank back as the armed men strode through, but Paul called to the rest of his monks to follow them to the church.

He led the invaders up the steps and across the empty nave until they reached the marble fountain and the effigy of St Beornwyn. As Paul genuflected in deference to the high altar, he was surprised to see that Owain Glyndwr dropped to both knees on the flagstones, crossed himself and held his hands before his bowed head, as he murmured some prayers. Then he climbed to his feet and looked with interest at the unusual fountain that sat before the chancel arch.

‘This is where your pilgrims come for a taste of your miraculous water, Prior?’ he asked.

Paul nodded. ‘They are also shown part of our blessed patron’s relics kept in that reliquary up at the altar,’ he said, trusting that God would forgive his economy with the truth – though he assuaged his conscience with the fact that the other bones they possessed in the casket were relics and that omitting to mention the skull-cap was not an outright lie. ‘And, of course, our infirmarian, a skilled physician, offers them medical treatment where necessary,’ he added, to cover up any hint of evasion in his voice.

‘I wish to avail myself of this same benediction from your saint,’ said Owain, bluntly. ‘She is an English saint, but no matter. Many of our Welsh saints were Breton or Irish – and the apostles were Palestinian Jews. The Kingdom of God knows no nationality.’

Paul was pleasantly surprised to find the Welsh prince such a devout man. It might be a good sign for hoping that the priory might come off relatively lightly from the attentions of the horde of invaders outside.

He beckoned to his sub-prior and the precentor and whispered in their ears, sending Matthew up to the altar to open the reliquary and reverently bring down a leg bone of Beornwyn, resting on a linen cloth. Patrice was dispatched to the aumbry in the chancel wall, from where he retrieved a communion chalice made of pewter, chased with silver ornamentation. As they had hidden their valuable vessels under the floor, this goblet was one used to take around the villages with Beornwyn’s relics, when holding Mass during pilgrimages to raise funds for the priory. Paul hoped that it would look good enough for Glyndwr not to wonder if they had more valuable ones hidden away somewhere.

The monks filed into their places in the quire and began their familiar routine of chants as the prior extemporised on the ritual for administering the ‘cure’.

Accompanied by prayers in Latin, he filled the chalice from under the angel’s jet of clear water and set it on the rim of the large basin below. Then Matthew solemnly offered him the cloth carrying the ancient bone, which with more ceremony was presented to Glyndwr, who had again kneeled before him. Several of the other lieutenants, including a couple of the French officers, kneeled beside him and Paul gravely bent to present the crumbling thigh-bone to each man, who all touched it somewhat tentatively before making the sign of the cross.

Then he went along the row of kneeling warriors and offered each a sip of blessed water from the cup. After more prayers, and amid the soporific chanting from the quire-stalls, Matthew and Patrice returned the relics and the goblet to their resting places. The ceremony over, the soldiers rose to their feet and the prior rejoined them below the chancel steps.

‘I see that your beautiful basin has recently suffered some damage,’ said the observant Owain, pointing at the rim of the bowl. ‘Is that not fresh cement in that repair?’

Hoping perhaps to increase the prince’s sympathy for their house and further strengthen the good relations that seemed to be building between them, Paul began to recount the events of the past week.

‘We have recently had a tragic episode, sir. One of our oldest brothers, weak in the mind from age and illness, caused us much anguish by his strange behaviour – and was murdered for his demented fantasy!’

His secretary, Mark, seeking to consolidate the prior’s tactics, began to give Owain the details of Brother John’s weird claims that he had been transported up to the ancient site on the hill above, to meet St Oswald and be told the shocking news of their patron’s infidelity. Before he could continue with the description of John’s violent death, the Welsh leader interrupted him, seemingly in a state of excited interest.

‘What? And you all ridiculed the man? It may well have been true! Such visitations have occurred throughout history.’ He glared around at the circle of monks, who began to look sheepish, then apprehensive as the Welsh leader’s anger became obvious.

‘We had no reason to believe the old man’s claims,’ said Paul, falteringly. ‘He had been having fits for years and recently had been acting strangely.’

‘That may be a manifestation of his contact with forces beyond our comprehension,’ snapped Glyndwr. ‘Many visionaries in the past have suffered from such seizures as they were used as a channel by mystical powers. You should have listened more diligently to what he had to say through your patron saint!’

The prior rallied his defence against these accusations.

‘His claims that our beloved Beornwyn, revered for many hundreds of years, was a libidinous fornicator who desecrated a house of God, were repugnant to us,’ he cried. ‘It also damaged our reputation and threatened to ruin our healing of the sick!’

‘And, no doubt reduced the contributions to your treasure chest,’ observed Owain, scathingly. ‘So who killed this poor man?’

‘We do not know, sir,’ said Mark, seeing that the prior had become too emotional to speak wisely. ‘All we know is that to our great regret and anguish, it must have been one of us, as the circumstances permit of no other explanation.’

‘And you have not exposed this villain?’ roared Glyndwr. ‘Is he one of these?’ He flung a brawny arm around to indicate the group of monks now cowering on the steps.

Prior Paul stepped forward again, red-faced with a mixture of anger and apprehension.

‘This is our business, Prince! It is not a secular matter, but one to be settled by the Church – even by the Pope, if need be!’

‘Pope! Which one, eh? The true father in Avignon or the imposter in Rome?’

He had recently transferred the allegiance of his new parliament and Church in Wales to the pontiff in the south of France.

‘We have done all we can to make the culprit confess,’ cut in Mark, hoping to calm the developing dispute. ‘But all the prior’s efforts have been in vain.’

Glyndwr glared around at them all, his forked beard jutting forward aggressively. ‘I’ll soon alter that, priest! No one slays a man of vision chosen by God and gets away with it in my presence!’

He swung around and barked orders at Rhys Gethin, one of his principal compatriots, to call in a score of soldiers from outside.

‘I want these monks hanged, for one of them is a murderer!’

‘How do we know which one?’ queried Rhys.

The reply he received was the one that the papal legate Arnaud Amalric had uttered during the Cathar heresy several hundred years earlier, when he ordered the killing of twenty thousand people in Beziers. ‘Kill them all, for God will know which are the innocent!’

There was instant confusion, with the prior making vociferous protests, some of the brothers falling to their knees, hands clasped in supplication and others try to escape back into the chancel. But well-disciplined men-at-arms surrounded the monks, though the two French brothers who had gone to see the sick troops had been forgotten. The monks were dragged into a line before Glyndwr, though he spared the loudly protesting prior the indignity of being a suspect.

‘This is your last chance to save yourselves!’ he said in an ominously level voice, full of menace. ‘Don’t think I will spare you, for King Henry’s armies have slain scores of monks in Wales, burned their abbeys and massacred men, women and children by the hundred.’

He glared along the line as the ashen faces and trembling knees. ‘Whichever amongst you is guilty, step forward!’ he roared. ‘This is your last chance to join the martyrs! Otherwise the weight of your consciences in letting your innocent fellows join you in death will load you down as you all take the last few steps to the hanging trees outside!’

His own followers had increased in numbers as curious soldiers had pushed into the nave to see what was going on. Their leader turned to them and waved an imperious hand towards the group of terrified monks.

‘Help Rhys Gethin to take these murderous men to the nearest wood and hang them!’ he commanded.

There was a sudden commotion as one of the brothers abruptly dropped to his knees in front of Owain Glyndwr and grasped his ankles in desperate supplication.

‘Sire, have mercy! If I confess, I can tell you where the treasures of this house are hidden. But spare my life, I beseech you!’

The Welsh leader kicked him aside contemptuously, so that the monk fell onto his side on the cold stones.

‘Don’t try to bargain with me, you dog!’ he bellowed. ‘If you wish to confess, it can only mean that you are the guilty one. You should be hanged twice over for betraying your brothers, you treacherous coward!’

Arnulf, for it was the hospitaller who had caused this dramatic turn of events, clasped his hands before his face, tears running from his eyes, as he looked up at the grim figure of Glyndwr.

‘It was not me who delivered the blows,’ he gabbled desperately. ‘Jude was the killer. I was drawn into helping him against my will!’

At this the cellarer, Jude, lunged from amongst the crowd of quaking brothers and tried to leap on his fellow monk, who was cowering on the floor. He was grabbed by a couple of soldiers, but still managed to screech denials of his guilt.

Arnulf continued to blabber his confession. ‘Jude killed the old man after we agreed to get rid of him, as he was responsible for maliciously ruining the reputation of this house.’

‘You liar, may you rot in hell!’ yelled Jude, struggling in the grip of the two brawny soldiers. ‘It was you that was afraid that your fleecing of visitors to the guesthouse would be damaged if their numbers were reduced!’

From his position on the flagstones, where he was now being held down by the riding boot of one of the French officers, Arnulf screamed his counterclaims.

‘Be damned yourself, Jude! You feared that old John’s slander would reduce the profits you make from selling priory stores to outsiders!’

At this, Prior Paul became so incensed that he even forgot the presence of the invading troops around him.

‘You evil, foul men! How dare you shelter in this house of God merely to embezzle our substance! I have long had my suspicions about you, but had no means of proving it.’

At a sign from Glyndwr, the men holding Jude threw him to the ground to join his partner in crime.

‘You miserable wretches, how dare you masquerade as holy men while all the time you were lining your own purses? I suppose when you had stolen enough ill-gotten gains, you would vanish to spend your loot in comfort.’

He turned to the prior, who was so devastated that his familiar smile had vanished, probably for ever.

‘At least our invasion has solved your crime, Prior! I think, in return for our help, we deserve to see this treasure of yours.’

He aimed a kick at the prostrate form of Arnulf, still lying on the floor. ‘Show us where it’s hidden, swine! Though it won’t save your neck from being stretched.’

Looking as if he had aged ten years during the past few minutes, the prior intervened, shaking his head in resignation.

‘Let him be, Prince. I will show you where our hard-earned savings and our treasured relics are hidden.’

Wearily, he led a strange procession of armed men and monks towards the altar and indicated the slab beneath which the spring was concealed. It took hardly a moment for soldiers to use their pikes to lever up the loosened flagstone, revealing the wrappings that held the priory’s wealth.

Glyndwr looked with great interest at the contents of the woollen blankets. The weight of the treasure chest brought a smile to his face, but his fascination was with the skull of Beornwyn, of now-dubious fame, as the prior’s secretary explained how the calvarium was used in their healing ritual.

Owain held it up reverently and examined the wide gold band with its butterfly decoration. Then he kneeled on the edge of the well and reached down to fill the skull-cap with the clear water that was bubbling from the earth. He stood up again and offered it to Paul, who was by now totally bemused by the actions of this superstitious Welsh leader.

‘Prior, though you gave me water in a goblet just now, I wish to take it again in its proper holy vessel. It may have a greater power in blessing my campaign with success.’

He handed the skull to Paul and, with his lieutenants grouped around him, Glyndwr kneeled again before the prior. Gathering his wits together with an effort, the monk held the libation aloft and murmured a stream of Latin as a form of blessing. This time, there was no background chanting from the monks, who were saving their prayers for their own souls in imminent anticipation of being hanged. Then, with more muttered incantations, Paul held Beornwyn’s relic to Owain’s lips and waited until he had taken a mouthful.

Then the prince rose to his feet. ‘I think that we can now leave you in peace, Prior. I will spare the innocent brothers – though you will need to recruit two new ones after we have gone!’

This threat revived Paul’s agitation and he thrust the relic at Owain, the remaining holy water slopping onto the floor.

‘I beseech you, do not vent your anger upon these two men! Evil though they be, this is a matter for the Church’s retribution, not for earthly princes.’

He attempted to push the calvarium into the Welsh leader’s hands. ‘Take this relic of our beloved patron. It may bring you good fortune, and there is much valuable gold around its rim.’

Glyndwr refused to accept the offering and gently pushed it back towards the prior.

‘I will not take your treasured relic, priest. Keep it and continue to do good in the name of that woman, whether she was virgin or whore. The gold is tempting, as I am sorely in need of the wherewithal to feed my troops, but I will not desecrate something that has been in God’s service for centuries. Neither will I risk my immortal soul by committing the sacrilege of taking your communion vessels.’ He gave a rare smile as he qualified this. ‘However, I have no religious qualms about taking your treasure chest.’

Giving a sign to one of his captains, two soldiers lifted the heavy chest and made off with it towards the church door.

‘We shall starve this coming winter without our money!’ wailed Prior Paul, but the Welsh leader was unmoved.

‘I doubt that, monk!’ he growled. ‘I’ll wager you have cattle hidden in the forest and grain and silver stored elsewhere. If you insist on saving the necks of these two treacherous villains, then I will leave them with you and be damned to them! I will take your treasure chest instead, which seems a fair exchange.’ With that he swung on his heel and marched to the main door of St Oswald’s church, his retinue and soldiers following behind.

As he walked across the inner precinct, the blue butterfly that had been sunning its wings on the cross of old John’s grave took to flight and fluttered twice around the head of the Welsh prince. Then it rose above him and flew off as straight as an arrow, up towards the peak of the Herefordshire Beacon, far above.

Historical note

The year of this story, 1405, was the zenith of Glyndwr’s twelve-year campaign for Welsh freedom sparked by more than a century of indignity and cruelty heaped on the population since the crushing of independence by Edward I. Within five years he had regained most of the country, was recognised as Prince of Wales by King Henry I V, established a parliament at Machynlleth, had plans for an independent Welsh Church and two universities, and had formed alliances with the Scots and the French, the latter sending a large force to assist him. He invaded England itself, the first such foray since the Norman Conquest, and penetrated almost to Worcester, but his lines of supply were now too fragile and, faced by a large English army, there was a standoff, then both forces retreated, His wife and two of his daughters were captured and died in the Tower of London and by 1412 he was reduced to fighting a guerrilla war. He soon vanished and there was never any record of his death or burial place, though it is possible that he took refuge with another daughter, Alys, who had married Sir John Scudamore, the Sheriff of Herefordshire and sheltered him in their home in Kentchurch in that county – where the Scudamores still reside. As with King Arthur, a legend arose that he was not dead, but would appear again when Wales was in peril.

Shakespeare makes a number of allusions to Glyndwr’s mystical nature in his play Henry the Fourth, Part I and it is known that he relied considerably on portents and prophesies delivered by his soothsayer, Crach Ffinant.