The Tainted Relic

ACT TWO

Oxford, 1269

When the fat boy was found huddled inside the sanctuary of St Frideswide in Oxford, there was a furore. Discovered by Brother Richard Yaxley, the feretarius or guardian of the shrine, in the early hours of Sunday, it was at first thought he was dead. Brother Richard’s immediate concern was that there would be disastrous consequences for the earning potential of the priory. And right at the start of St Frideswide’s Festival as well. He concluded that rival establishments in the competition for the attention of the pilgrims had somehow contrived to sully the sacred location. Outraged, he hurried out to raise the alarm. Soon the stone shrine was surrounded by worried monks, who peered in disbelief through each of its six narrow apertures, three set evenly in each side. The prior, Thomas Brassyngton, looked in through one of the apertures, which was in the shape of an ornate cross carved within a circle. He expressed the thought on everyone’s mind.

‘How on earth did he get in there?’

There was a buzz of conversation as the brothers mulled over the puzzle. The apertures were very small, and the body inside the shrine was very large. Brother Richard was by now beginning to look embarrassed. As feretarius, it was his responsibility to keep watch over the shrine during the feast period, when the public were to be granted access. The shrine was located in the feretory-the area behind the high altar-on a raised stone platform. The previous night Brother Richard had been elsewhere, and did not wish his prior to know where. Staring at the huddled form draped across the gilded coffin housing the bones of the saint, he gave voice to the next obvious thought.

‘And how are we going to get him out?’

At that moment, a voice piped up from within the sacred spot.

‘Hello, Brother Richard. What am I doing in here?’

A puffy, round face emerged from the bundle of rags that formed the impediment to the monks allowing pilgrims into the shrine that morning. There was a look that was a mixture of puzzlement and simple joy on the unlined features. Richard Yaxley gasped, recognizing the miscreant for the first time.

‘Will Plome! What are you doing in there?’

The fat boy giggled.

‘I said it first. You tell me.’

‘Will!’

Plome may have been a simpleton, but he recognized when someone meant business. He had once been part of a troupe of jongleurs and players, and had learned to distinguish the different tones of voice which actors such as John Peper and Simon Godrich used. The feretarius’s voice was now very like the one Simon used for God. Or sometimes the Devil. He screwed his face up in a way he hoped would convey contrition.

‘I’m sorry, Brother Richard. I just wanted to get close to her blessed presence. I came late last night, and as you weren’t here…’

Will missed the piercing look of disapproval that the prior gave Brother Richard at this revelation. And Richard’s downcast glance. He was too simple to know he had got the feretarius into trouble. He went on with his story.

‘I knelt before the shrine, and prayed. I prayed for good weather for the sheep, because they have to be out in the fields. And I prayed for the fish because they have to be in the ponds where it’s wet all the time. And I prayed…’

‘Let’s not go through all the beasts you prayed for, Will Plome.’ Brother Richard’s words were sharply rebuking. A reflection of the difficulty in which he found himself.

‘Oh, and I prayed for you too, Brother Richard.’

The assembled group of brothers sniggered at the simpleton’s unintentional association of the feretarius with the beasts of the field. Brother Richard’s face reddened. The prior took over the gentle encouragement of the progress of the fat boy’s story.

‘And did you pray for the saint to make you thin, Will? So that you could climb inside her shrine?’

Will Plome giggled.

‘No, Father Prior. That would be silly.’

It was Thomas Brassyngton’s turn to blush.

‘Then how did you get in there?’

‘That’s what Brother Richard just asked me.’

The prior saw this was going to require patience, a commodity he had little of at present. The day was progressing, and the pilgrims outside the church would soon be clamouring for access. Not only had he the saint’s bones to display, but more recently he had acquired a phial of St Thomas Becket’s blood. That would be an added attraction. After all, he could not rely on old saints ad infinitum. Their attraction and efficacy would inevitably wane, and he needed to add new vigour occasionally. New blood-literally so in this case. He noted with approval that Brother Richard had at least remembered to put out the large oak collecting boxes at the entrance to the shrine. The church was in need of improvement and repair, and the pilgrims’ contributions were a valuable source of revenue. But the fat boy was stopping it all from flowing. The prior put on his severest voice.

‘Will Plome. Unless you come out of there immediately, I shall bar you from all the sacraments of the church.’

‘Oh, all right, Father. You only had to ask,’ grumbled the simpleton. He slid round behind the saint’s coffin and disappeared from view. A miracle in its own right for one so large. The prior stared in astonishment at the trick. Then he felt the stone slab under his feet start to move. He stepped back sharply in alarm, thinking the very foundations of the church were crumbling. Then he watched in trepidation as the grey slab rose an inch or two, and slid sideways. From the mouth of the dark space below the slab emerged the round and hairless head of Will Plome. The prior laughed at his own gullibility.

‘Of course, I had forgotten about the Holy Hole.’

In years gone by, pilgrims had been allowed closer proximity to the saint by crawling from the retro-choir under the reliquary and into the shrine itself through a so-called Holy Hole in the shrine’s floor. It had been eighty years since its usage had been stopped owing to the damage caused to the saint’s coffin. Too many hands rubbing away the gilded ornamentation. The closest veneration available now was by putting a hand through the pierced apertures in the sides of the shrine. The apertures through which everyone had thought Will Plome had inserted his obese body. Whereas the simpleton had merely found the old access, and used it. Perhaps the saint had spoken to him after all. Thomas could not be sure. So it was with a little more respect that the prior took Will Plome’s arm, and helped him out of the gloomy pit.

The rest of the day passed well enough for the feretarius and the prior. Freed of its encumbrance, the shrine welcomed its numerous visitors, and the coffers started to fill. Beyond the press of the entertainers, pardoners and memento sellers who milled around the close in front of St Frideswide’s Priory, the town too benefited from the swell of pilgrims. Running north-south through Oxford, Fish Street was far busier than normal. The towers of St Michael’s at Southgate, and St Martin’s overlooking Carfax, marked the two ends of the busy street. In all, they were but two of some thirteen parish churches within the walls of bustling Oxford town. At the bottom end of the street, around South Gate, the firewood sellers were soon replenishing their wares. Farther along, the fishmongers rolled out more stout, stinking barrels of salted fish. Then, closer still to Carfax-the central crossroads-the stalls of the tanners and glove-makers, their narrow shop frontages hiding the tradesmen’s workshops behind, drew crowds like flies on meat.

By the early evening, the bustle at the heart of Oxford had died down somewhat. And as darkness fell, the tradesmen were deserting the streets, and securing their narrow shop frontages with shutters and bars. Honest English citizens retired behind their stout oaken doors. As did the equally honest members of the considerable Jewish community living on the eastern side of Fish Street, whose good sense told them to avoid confrontation by staying off the streets at night. For as night descended, another population stirred. The first to invade the streets was the army of rats and mice that fed off the leavings of the humans. But these scurrying denizens of darkness were comparatively harmless. Unfortunately, they did not have the night to themselves. The long winter evenings dragged on interminably for the young men studying at the university that formed the heart of the town. Boredom and the easy availability of drink provided a heady combination for those seeking to keep warm on a cold night before the curfew bell rang. Half the householders of Oxford brewed and sold beer, and drinking appeared to be an inevitable accompaniment to each step in a university man’s career.

That night, the watch, led by the town constable, Peter Bullock, plodded wearily along the broad aspect of the High Street. As they passed St Mary’s Church, Bullock saw a man he recognized as the feretarius of St Frideswide’s in earnest conversation with an Augustinian canon. In fact, it looked as though the conversation was getting a little heated, as Yaxley began waving his fist at the canon. The latter was a short, fat man with a lined face and little hair, and was unfamiliar to the constable. The monks of Oseney Abbey were not frequent visitors to the town. Bullock tensed, expecting to have to prevent an altercation. Then he was distracted by a group of raucous students in fine, but somewhat dishevelled, attire who burst from the church doors. Bullock shook his head in disdain as the youths staggered across the path of the watch, obscuring his view of the altercation, and down Grope Lane opposite. Guen’s bawdy-house was obviously in for some drunken customers, he opined. Straight from the sacred to the profane. The refrain of a familiar, taunting song drifted back up from the narrow alley.

Juvenes sunt lepidi,

Senes sunt decrepiti.

Bullock could not help but grin, taking in the wrinkled faces of his fellows. He himself was a squat man, with a bent back and a permanent scowl for a face. He was also well advanced in years-as were his colleagues of the watch. The students’ ribald song was appropriate. Youth is all charm, old age decrepitude. If his time as a foot-soldier had taught him one thing, it was the eternal truth that life was brief, youth exhilarating, old age a burden, and death a certainty.

‘Enjoy it while you can, boys,’ was his muttered benediction. When he looked back at the steps where the two monks had stood, they were gone. So he put the incident out of his mind. The watch proceeded towards East Gate, the last gate it had to secure to make the town safe for the night.

Just as they were swinging the gate closed, a figure on horseback slipped through the narrowing gap. The man, sitting astride a jaded palfrey, was tall and well built. He rode straight backed despite the signs of a long journey shown by the lather on the horse’s flank, and the splashes of mud on the man’s cloak. Bullock reckoned him to be a soldier of some sort from his bearing. But he could not see his face because of the hood that was pulled well forward to protect the traveller from the cold of the winter’s evening.

‘You are just in time, my friend,’ called the curious Bullock.

As he passed, the man eased round in his saddle, placing a gloved hand on the well-worn bags that hung across his thighs.

‘I hope so,’ was his enigmatic reply.

Bullock saw a flash of sharp, steadfast eyes set in a bronzed face that suggested the man had recently lived under hotter skies than the soft, misty climate of southern England. He had a feeling he knew the man, but could not place him. Then the rider was spurring the tired horse on. Bullock was left with the sight of a broad back, the clatter of hoofs on the stones of the street, and a sense of impending danger.

The second day of the festival was, if anything, even busier than the first. But all this activity created an unpleasant taste in the mouth of Brother Robert Anselm of Oseney Abbey. The tall, rangy monk with his gaunt face was every inch an ascetic. His dark, worn robes hung badly on his spare frame, as though he had lost a lot of weight lately. Which in fact he had, as he worried incessantly about the worm he saw boring into the soul of the abbey that had been his home for more than thirty years. This was the year of Our Lord 1269, the fifty-third of the reign of King Henry III. And despite the King’s virtuous translation of the body of St Edward the Confessor into a golden shrine for the greater glory of God, evil was rampant in England.

By the afternoon, the mayhem in the grounds of St Frideswide’s had got too much for him. It was not that the rival establishment to the abbey was drawing greater crowds, and therefore more income than his own Augustinian foundation. That mattered little to him. In fact he was glad that the current Abbot of Oseney, Ralph Harbottle, was elderly and reluctant to indulge in the unseemly battle for vulgar approval of the mob-the plebis frequentatio. No, what truly appalled him was the unholy marketplace full of sellers of wax effigies-used as offerings-purveyors of souvenirs, pilgrim badges and foodstuffs operating right at the doors of the church. Had not the Lord Himself driven the money-changers from the Temple? What was happening in the grounds of St Frideswide’s was a mockery of His actions. St Augustine’s own words came to his lips. ‘Business is in itself an evil, for it turns men from seeking true rest, which is God.’

Muttering, he turned up Northgate Street, past the weavers and corn merchants, and out through the gate where the Bocardo prison was incorporated into the walls of the town. Some unfortunate wretch hung his arm out of the narrow slit of a window in the prison, begging for food. Anselm ignored him. Outside the walls, the taint of sin was even worse than around St Frideswide’s. The ramshackle buildings there housed the sordidissimi vici-the stews of loose women, and the thieves’ kitchens of Broken Hays. Robert Anselm was glad finally to be free of it all, and hurried over the two bridges that crossed the fast-running streams that fed the Thames to the west of the town. The second bridge was rickety, without a handrail, and he walked over with caution. Once over, however, he strode out more certainly along the westerly causeway towards the abbey.

Oseney Abbey was one of the glories of Oxford, perhaps of all England. Even from the outskirts of the town, the pinnacled buttresses and stately towers of its new church dominated the water meadows above which the abbey stood. On cold, damp days such as this October one, its yellow stone fabric rose out of the bone-chilling mists that hung low over the marshy ground, criss-crossed with the narrow channels of water that ran into the Thames. Behind its imposing gateway lay the world of court and cloister, infirmary and dormitory. The fine lodgings of the abbot and the canons could not be bettered anywhere in the region. And in the abbey grounds stood mill and tannery, orchards, arbours, dove-houses and fish-ponds.

But it was the church which was its centrepiece. An earlier abbot had begun rebuilding it and the monastic buildings some twenty years previously. The church was nearing completion, but elsewhere building work continued. Brother Robert Anselm had to skirt around the master mason’s crude lodge in the centre of the unfinished cloister court, trampling over the residues of stone-cutting. He ignored the lime mortar dust that clung to the folds of his robe. A building site was a noisy place, and he was eager to seek the quiet sanctuary of the church.

At three hundred and thirty feet long, it was one of the largest churches in England, with a central and western tower and twenty-four altars. But it was more particularly the carefully wrought pattern on the tiles that decorated the floor at the core of the church which attracted him. A series of twelve apparently concentric circles was divided into four quarters representing the four Gospels and the four stages of the mass. Closer examination revealed that the circles were actually a single serpentine pathway with seven abrupt turns in each quarter, leading to the central rose, which bore six bays or petals. Seven, if the very centre was included. This pattern mirrored the great rose window in the western wall of the abbey church, and was the same distance horizontally from the main entrance as the window was vertically above it. So, if the base of the wall had been a hinge, the bright and colourful window would have folded perfectly over its darker image on the floor. Numbers and symmetry mattered to Brother Robert in ways he could not fully explain. And the pattern on the floor tiles was his sanctuary and his contemplative conduit.

It was a holy labyrinth, and for the rest of the day, after his unpleasant experience in a festive Oxford, Anselm sought calm in its serpentine pathways.

‘So, you don’t know who the man is, but you think his arrival in Oxford bodes ill?’

William Falconer smiled wryly at his friend’s perplexing announcement. Bullock, for his part, pursed his lips and outstared the big, raw-boned man who stood before him. Falconer was a Regent Master at the university, teaching the seven liberal arts to a motley band of clerks who formed part of the student body. His only acknowledgement of his status was the threadbare black gown he wore. Eschewing any tonsure or master’s biretta, he went about bare headed, letting his thinning, grizzled hair grow naturally until it was time to hack the tangled length short again. His coarse, ruddy face and hands were those of a labourer, and misled an observer into thinking the man before him was uneducated. Until they saw the sharp, piercing intelligence behind Falconer’s pale blue eyes. It was a look that had scared many a recalcitrant student into submission.

The two men were standing in Falconer’s private solar in Aristotle’s Hall, the student lodgings that Falconer ran to supplement his meagre teaching income. It had been two days since Bullock’s disturbing sighting. He had spent the previous day trying to convince himself that he was being ridiculous. After all, the traveller had been just one more arrival among many in the town for the festival. And nothing untoward had occurred yesterday. But in the end he trusted his instincts, and on this third morning of the festival he had hurried over to Aristotle’s Hall to test his fears on his friend.

The two men stood because, though the room was of sufficient size to accommodate them, it also contained the books and experiments that occupied Falconer’s enquiring mind. They afforded little space for any of the comforts of living. To the left of the chimney breast was a toppling stack of his most cherished books and papers, including the prized works of al-Khowarizmi, the Arab mathematician. To the right of the fireplace were several jars of various sizes, containing potions and pastes exuding strange and exotic odours. Falconer no longer noticed the smells, and had in fact mostly forgotten the reason for some of the concoctions lurking in the pots. A truckle bed was hidden in one corner, for the bulk of the room was taken up by a massive oak table that was both eating surface and workbench. On it there were animal bones, human skulls, carved wooden figures, stones that glittered, and lumps of rock sheared off to reveal strange shapes in their depths. Peter Bullock was used to the chaos.

‘I tell you who he reminded me of. That Templar, Guillaume de Beaujeu.’

Falconer considered this for a moment, then shook his head.

‘No, that cannot be. The last I heard of him, he was in France, and well on the way to becoming the next Grand Master of the Order. His responsibilities would not allow him to travel incognito to Oxford just at the onset of winter. You must be mistaken, Peter.’

Peter’s grunt carried a clear indication of his lack of conviction as to Falconer’s estimate of the man. He hadn’t seen him, and the air of authority and calm that enveloped him more certainly than the warm cloak he had draped around him. True, it was over a year since either man had seen the Templar. And everyone had been preoccupied by the presence of the heathen Tartars in England at the time. He had then been a great help to Falconer in solving a murder. But Bullock wasn’t convinced that this meant they would always be on the same side. The Templars were a secretive bunch, who followed their own devious course through Christendom. On the surface, their duty was to escort pilgrims safely to the Holy Land. In the process they also acted as reliable bankers, ensuring money entrusted to them in the West could be drawn in the East. But everyone reckoned there were deeper currents beneath the surface. So, in Bullock’s mind, if your journey was along a similar route to the Templars, then you could profit from an alliance. But if your paths crossed, you needed to take care. Especially if there was something of value to the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple in the offing.

‘Well, you may think what you wish, William. But I am prepared to wager that something unpleasant is about to happen.’

As if in response to Bullock’s prophecy, the door of Falconer’s sanctuary was flung open to reveal the dishevelled figure of Miles Bikerdike, one of Falconer’s newest students. He had obviously run some distance, as he stood in the doorway gasping to catch his breath. His face shone with excitement.

‘Master…’

‘Take a deep breath, Miles Bikerdike, and tell me what’s afoot,’ rebuked Falconer. With each passing year, his students seemed to get younger, and more prone to childish behaviour. Falconer could not fathom why. Miles, with his round, fat face and wispy, blond hair, could be taken for a babe in arms. The babe managed at last to blurt out his message, however.

‘Master Falconer. There has been a murder. They say his head has been struck quite off his body.’

Brother Robert Anselm liked to walk the labyrinth. The symmetry pleased him, comforted him, when his mind was in turmoil. It was in turmoil now, and he shuffled round the serpentine route of the labyrinth, striving to concentrate his mind on the four elements of the mass as he moved from one quarter to another.

Entrance into Evangelium. Three turns and into Offertory. A turn back on himself and it was Evangelium again. Then three loops and back into Offertory. Two loops and he was walking Consecration. Like devotion, the route was never straightforward. Two more and he was in the final quarter-Communion. The dizzying, looping walk inward represented the first step of the threefold path.

Purgation.

It was not true to say that the monk’s head had been removed from his body. Rumour, after all, was always a precursor to exaggeration. When Peter Bullock and William Falconer saw the body, however, they realized that in this case the rumour had not much outstripped the reality. But first, they had had to be brought to where the body lay. Miles Bikerdike had taken them to John Hanny, another of Falconer’s students, who was sitting in the cold, cavernous hall on the ground floor of Aristotle’s. Hanny was pale faced and shivering. It was he who had found the body. Still more than a little scared, he agreed to lead the two men to where he had seen the supposedly decapitated corpse. They set off down the High Street, and at Carfax, Hanny was about to turn up to North Gate when Bullock stopped him.

‘Where did you say the body was, boy?’

‘Beyond Broken Hays stews in the lower water meadows.’

‘Then we shall go through the castle, and take the postern gate into the Hamel.’

Bullock was referring to the thoroughfare that the canons of Oseney Abbey used to get to the Chapel of St George inside the castle walls. It would be quicker that way than skirting round the town walls. He led the other two down Great Bailey and into the castle precinct, to which he held the keys. Once through the postern gate, they were out into the water meadows close by Oseney Abbey faster than by taking the normal route. Bullock questioned the boy as they walked over a bridge and along Oseney Lane.

‘And what were you doing here, when you should have been preparing for your lessons?’

The boy blushed, and began to bluster. Before he could say anything foolish though, Falconer stopped him with a raised palm. Bullock’s questioning was pertinent, because anyone in the vicinity of a murder could be a suspect. And at the very least should have started a hue and cry on discovering a body. If the boy was caught out lying, he would be in even deeper trouble. Falconer had an inkling what he had been about, and prompted Hanny to tell the truth.

‘I am sure Peter Bullock will forgive you a small sin, if you tell us the truth.’

Dumbly, the boy looked at his feet, bound warmly in a thick layer of sacking.

‘Master, I was up before dawn to fish for eels. I have been so hungry of late, and have no money for food.’

The eels were the property of the abbey, and to take them was tantamount to poaching. Falconer silently cursed his own oversight concerning the welfare of those in his charge. Why had he not seen that John Hanny was going hungry? Not all the students at the university were from rich families. Many were poor and allowed licences to beg in order to remain at the university. For such as they, an education was their only hope for a future, and a means of advancement. Hanny earned his keep by serving meals to the richer students, and feeding afterwards on the leftovers. Obviously not enough had been left for him. For the first time, Falconer also noted how patched the boy’s outer tabard was. He would not have missed such signs of distress a few years ago.

‘Go on,’ he said gruffly, to conceal his own sense of guilt.

‘I stayed outside the gates last night, and slept in an empty hut on the edge of Broken Hays. It was cold, but dry enough. I was intending to wake up in the night to fish, but I slept on.’ Suddenly his face lit up. ‘I suppose, then, I didn’t really break the law, did I? As I overslept.’

‘Your intention is crime enough for me, John Hanny. Continue.’

Hanny’s face fell again, as he saw the steeliness in Falconer’s eyes. He might have known the master would not allow him to escape so easily. It was going to be a case of memorizing vast swathes of Priscian’s Grammar for the foreseeable future. He sighed.

‘In the end, something woke me up. It was like the howl of a dog. At first, I thought it had been part of my dream. But then I heard it again. I thought maybe a fox had been caught in a snare, so I went out on the meadow to see.’ His voice began to tremble. ‘That’s when I saw him.’

Falconer put a large, firm hand on the boy’s shoulder, and squeezed hard.

‘Is it far from here?’

The boy shook his head, and pointed mutely across a small stream at a raised bank on the other side. At first, the scene looked peaceful enough. Cattle were grazing on the land below the bank, steam forming around their nostrils, as their hot breath plumed out into the cold air of the morning. On the edge of the bank lay a huddled shape resembling a pile of rags.

‘Stay here, John.’ Falconer reinforced his command by squeezing Hanny’s shoulder again. He beckoned Bullock to follow him. The two men continued on along the raised causeway that was the lane until they were close by the shape on the edge of the dyke. They had to scramble down from the lane into the field, where the cattle grazed on, unconcerned by the human activity. The ground was thankfully firm under foot. Falconer’s boots were old and cracked, and inclined to leak. Closer to, the bundle revealed itself as the body of an Augustinian monk. The robes were those of a canon, not a lay brother. He had to be from the nearby abbey. And he had to have been murdered. For the monk’s throat had been slit, and blood soaked the top half of his robe, and the ground around his shoulders. But what was truly strange was the attitude of the body.

‘What do you make of that, William?’

‘A pious murderer?’

The monk lay on his back, his legs stretched out, as though he had lain on the ground to sleep. His hands were arranged one over the other on his chest, and a rosary was linked round the fingers. He resembled a recumbent statue from the top of a tomb. Moving round the body, they could clearly see the man’s face. From his features, now soft and flaccid in death, they could still discern that the man was old. The face was lined, and his sparse, white hair was restricted to a tuft over each ear. His empty eyes were staring blankly up at the pale, blue winter sky.

From a pouch at his own waist, Falconer drew a V-shaped metal device. At the end of each arm was a circular ring in which was set a convex glass lens. He held the point of the ‘V’ to his forehead, and looked at the body through the two lenses. Falconer’s eyes were not as piercing as he liked his students to think, and the eye-lenses, especially crafted for him, allowed him to see more clearly close up. Particularly useful when clarity of vision was of the greatest importance.

It did not matter to the constable what his friend could see through his eye-lenses, though. Bullock had recognized the monk immediately. It was the man with whom Brother Richard Yaxley had been arguing the previous night. What was it Falconer had said in reply to his question just now? A pious murderer. Maybe he had been jesting, but Yaxley fitted the bill exactly.

‘Look here, Peter.’

‘What’s that?’

Falconer pointed at something under the monk’s clasped hands, half hidden in the folds of his robe. He delicately lifted one cuff.

‘It’s a blade. A curved blade.’

Falconer drew the implement from its hiding place. Immediately, he knew what it was. Weren’t they surrounded by the abbey fields where the lay brothers toiled to put provender on the canons’ table? It was the wrong time of year now for any reaping to be in progress. But the curved blade would have found a use some weeks earlier. It was a hand sickle. Now it had been used to reap the harvest of this unfortunate monk’s life.

His sun-burned face stood out like a sore thumb amidst the pale-faced tradesmen setting out their wares in the streets of Oxford. When the man chose to, however, he could blend with shadows, and disappear into the background. He had the uncanny ability to seemingly appear out of nowhere. A skill he had learned from his deadly enemies, the Hashishin, or hashish-eaters, of the East. The more popular term for them nowadays, under their current leader, the Old Man, was Assassins. But today there was no need for him to hide away, and sneak down alleys. Today he could be his more natural self, upright soldier and Poor Knight of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. As he entered the North Gate of the town, Matthew Syward, the watchman, having only just opened the gate, observed the tall man of military bearing with interest. Syward’s wife was a termagant, and he often dreamed of living the life of a soldier. He imagined that this one was probably returning from a night roistering in the stews of Broken Hays. He tipped a knowing wink at the soldier as he passed. But the man ignored him, and began to weave his way through the growing press of people. Oxford was always busy at the time of St Frideswide’s Festival, the normal bustle of the town being swollen by the presence of the blind, the lame and the scrofulous come for a cure. And by the unwelcome presence of beggars and pick-pockets. The watchman cursed the haughty soldier for his high-and-mighty attitude, hoping he would lose his money to a cutpurse. Matthew Syward didn’t like people who thought they were a cut above him, even if in truth they were. He would remember the man.

Unaware of the unfortunate impression he had created on the watchman at the gate, the Templar returned to the Golden Ball Inn, where he was staying. He had been lucky to find a room at such a busy time, but then good gold coins had helped. He suspected the sour-faced merchant who now sat in the corner of the inn, atop his bags, had been evicted from his room owing to the Templar’s own generous offering to the innkeeper. The sight gave him a twinge of guilt as he sat down to a breakfast of bread and ale. After all, his monastic vows had included that of poverty. But then again, he had experienced a tiring journey, and his quest was at the behest of the Grand Master, no less. That it contained a secret and personal element too he had divulged to no one. Yesterday had supplied a promising start to his search. And this morning might have seen its culmination. His early morning errand had been unsatisfactory, however. Nevertheless, he relished the taste of the freshly baked bread the serving-maid had provided. Later, his body and mind refreshed, he would continue his search. Absently, he rubbed at a fresh brown stain on his sleeve.

Falconer left the constable, Peter Bullock, brooding over the corpse, and after telling the pasty-faced John Hanny to return to Aristotle’s and eat something from the Master’s own supplies, he carried on towards Oseney Abbey. Bullock had been unusually excited since seeing the face of the dead monk, but would not tell his friend what bothered him. Falconer knew better than to press him on the matter. He would find out soon enough, no doubt. For now, he had to break the news to someone at the abbey that one of their canons had been murdered in quite unusual circumstances. After that, he would unburden himself of the affair. He did not relish getting embroiled in the jurisdictional arguments that would ensue over who should prosecute the case. The monk had probably been killed by someone from the town, and Bullock would expect to play his part. But the land on which he was killed belonged to the abbey. Moreover, the monk probably taught at one of the university schools, so the Chancellor would no doubt become involved too. Falconer would be well out of this nightmare.

As he crossed the raised causeway leading to the abbey, he startled some magpies in the field to his right. They rose in a clatter of wings, their tails held stiffly behind them. They reminded him of the story of the founder of the abbey, Robert d’Oyly, whose wife, Editha, had seen some magpies chattering in the selfsame fields. Only she had seen them as souls in purgatory crying out for prayers. Her vision had resulted in the founding of the abbey. He counted these magpies as they flew up. There were seven of them.

Entering the abbey through its main gate, Falconer hesitated, pondering who to talk to first. As it was well past dawn, the abbot would no longer be in the chapter house. And the service at prime was over. In years past, the monks would now have been occupied with manual labour. But times had changed for the abbot and his fellows. The lay brothers did that sort of work, while the canons devoted themselves to prayer and contemplation. The old aphorism that the world divided itself into three classes-those who fought, those who laboured and those who prayed-had a great deal of truth in it. Especially within the walls of an abbey.

As he made his way through the cloisters, he saw a familiar figure approaching him. Brother Peter Talam was the bursar of Oseney, occupying himself with all its external affairs, especially the rebuilding work that was still in progress twenty years after its initiation. He was a large man with a severe mien, and his steps were as short and as stiff as his manner. This always gave him the appearance of someone in a hurry. Indeed, he was so preoccupied that he almost ran into Falconer, rearing back like a charging horse only at the last minute.

‘Master Falconer. I did not see you. It has been a long while.’

Falconer recalled that when they had last spoken some years earlier, he had been investigating the strange affair of the death of the papal legate’s cook. That had been an unpleasant time for the abbot and the bursar. It appeared that now he was in danger of being embroiled in a similar business.

‘Brother Peter. I imagine you are busy.’

Talam’s life was one of bustle, so it was no surprise when he averred that he was indeed so.

‘Yes, I am. La Souch is not in evidence, and his men are just sitting around awaiting his instructions.’

Falconer wondered whether this missing La Souch was the monk he had found in the meadows. But then, why would Talam refer to ‘his men’?

‘La Souch?’

‘La Souch. Eudo La Souch. He is the master mason in charge of our building works. A surly fellow from the Low Countries who thinks he can come and go as he pleases.’

Falconer saw the glint of battle in Brother Peter’s eyes. He felt sorry for this Hollander, if he thought he could best Brother Peter. Many a wily tradesman from the town had tried, and lived to rue the day. Still, if he was a master mason, then he was a person of no small intelligence, who had progressed through a training no less arcane than that endured by any master of philosophy at the university. And he would possess secret knowledge of formulae as complex as those of any mathematical savant. If anyone could give Talam a run for his money, maybe it was Eudo La Souch.

By now, the bursar was dancing on his toes, unable to contain his staccato little trot any longer. He was bothered by more than the missing master mason apparently.

‘What is more, Brother John Barley did not appear for prime this morning. The abbot, being charitable, is fearful for his health, seeing that he and Brother John are of an age. So I must seek out an errant brother, as well as La Souch.’

The bursar sounded exasperated at being required to run around tracking down missing canons who should know better. But Falconer thought that perhaps Brother John Barley had a very good reason for his non-attendance. Before Talam could race off about his errands, he grabbed the monk’s arm. He knew the abbot was quite elderly. So the missing John Barley would be so too.

‘Tell me, Talam. Brother John-is he bald? With little tufts of white hair at his ears?’ Falconer demonstrated the tufts he had seen on the corpse by bunching up his own fingers at the sides of his temple, and jabbing them back and forth.

Talam’s lips formed into a downturned curve. If Falconer had not known him, he would have thought it was a grimace. In fact it was Talam’s severe version of a smile. It was the closest he came to showing amusement.

‘That is Brother John. Let’s just say he has no longer any need of the barber to maintain his tonsure.’

‘Then I think I have some bad news for you.’

Oseney Abbey was soon awash with rumour. Including a scandalous suggestion of self-harm. Though how Brother John could have cut his own throat then lain impassively with his hands crossed on his chest was not fully explained by the instigator of that rumour. It served only to make Brother Robert Anselm more agitated, and he resorted once more to the little pilgrimage of the labyrinth. A turn into Evangelium to begin. Three turns and into Offertory. A turn and back into Evangelium. Three turns and into Offertory again. Two turns and into Consecration. Two turns and into Communion. The holy path led hypnotically back and forth, calming his soul. Until Brother Robert reached the Holy Jerusalem in the centre of the labyrinth, there to enter the second step of the threefold path.

Illumination.

As Falconer approached the abbot’s offices, he heard raised voices. Or more exactly, one raised voice interspersed with the weary tones of Ralph Harbottle, the abbot.

‘You must find more money, or the supplies of stone will run out. Then the work for my men will dry up, and I will be forced to find them work elsewhere.’

The foreign tones were guttural and peremptory, the talk of building work. It had to be Eudo La Souch, the master mason. In reply, Harbottle’s voice betrayed a man run ragged, and weary of the distraction.

‘In truth, Master, you should speak to Brother Peter about this. He is the bursar.’

‘And he tells me he cannot conjure funds from the air. He says you need to attract more pilgrims. The priory in the town not only has its saint, now it has the blood of St Thomas the Martyr too.’ The Hollander paused, then continued in more wheedling tones. ‘I was told my predecessor knew something about a relic…’

‘No!’ Ralph Harbottle’s voice was suddenly firm and peremptory. ‘No, I forbid you to speak of the matter. If we have to delay the work begun by Abbot Leech, then so be it. The new buildings have been twenty years in the making already, another twenty will not matter greatly. You have only been in charge for two years. There is plenty of time ahead of you.’

‘Not if you cannot pay me.’

Falconer stepped back as a stocky, well-built man stormed out of the abbot’s office. His weather-beaten face betrayed his outdoor occupation, as did the knotty muscles of his arms protruding from the rolled-up sleeves of his dark blue tunic. He scowled at the Regent Master in his path, and Falconer stepped aside. The mason pushed past, and stomped off down the passageway. It seemed Eudo La Souch was not a man to be crossed when he was in a temper.

‘Ah, Master Falconer. Thank you for coming. A bad business this.’

Falconer turned to look at the tired abbot, Ralph Harbottle, standing in the doorway to his inner sanctum. The man seemed even older than when Falconer had seen him last. His skin was ashen, and parchment thin, his grey hair hung lankly on his forehead, and in thin wisps over his ears. Falconer imagined that if he hadn’t been holding on to the door frame, the abbot might have collapsed.

‘The murder, I mean.’

Falconer hadn’t imagined it had been anything else that Harbottle was ruing. But perhaps his mind had still been on the row with the master mason, and the shortage of funds. Falconer was also curious about the reference to a relic, but he put it out of his mind owing to the pressing matter of the murdered canon. At Talam’s insistence, he had reluctantly agreed to see the abbot. Though unwilling to get involved, he agreed he should at least tell Harbottle face to face what he had seen.

‘Indeed, Abbot.’

‘I have arranged for the body to be brought back here. Though I have no doubt that the constable will want to interfere, and ask questions of all the brothers. You know the sort of thing. “Where were you last night?” and “Did you murder Brother John?”’

Harbottle threw his hands up in a gesture of disgust at the idea. Prompted by such thoughts of Bullock blundering in, Falconer spoke without further consideration. At the same time cursing himself for breaking his own resolve not to become involved.

‘You cannot think of a reason why anyone at the abbey should have had cause to envy or dislike Brother John Barley, can you?’

Harbottle looked shocked.

‘I knew it! Master Falconer, this is a house of God, a place of prayer and contemplation. There is no room for envy or hatred, nor any of the vices that might occasion such intemperate feelings.’

Falconer refrained from reminding the abbot of the scandalous murder that had previously taken place at the abbey, and who the perpetrator had been. It looked as though it would not take much more to crush the poor man totally. He was clearly at the end of his tether over the changing fortunes of the abbey. But Harbottle was also a perceptive man. He would not have risen so high in his order if he had not been so. And he could see the clouded look in Falconer’s eyes. For a man of uncommon piety, he was also a realist. He sighed, and flopped down on to the hard, wooden seat behind him.

‘I am sorry, Falconer. I am beginning to fear that being in charge of the abbey is getting beyond me. During my novitiate I never dreamed of having to face such complicated…secular issues. As a novice, my day was filled with labour and the contemplation of God. Now all I am allowed to think about is the difficulty of getting supplies of stone. And the passing of fellow canons of my generation. There have been too many of them of late, I fear. First there was Brother Benedict, then the unfortunate accident suffered by Brother William…’

Falconer interrupted the abbot’s ramblings.

‘Brother John. Was he a contemporary of yours too?’

‘Yes, we entered the novitiate together. Virtually on the same day. And I can assure you no one even disliked him, much less hated him enough to…to try and hack his head off. He was inclined to pranks, but never malicious.’

The abbot shuddered, and bowed his head in prayer. After a few moments, Falconer slipped silently out of the room. There appeared to be nothing to be gained by questioning the abbot further. He would return to Oxford, and see what Peter had dug up.

The bustle of St Frideswide’s holy day market was at its height. The environs of the church thronged with sellers of candles and insignia, pilgrim badges and tempting victuals. Many of the faces in the crowd belonged to robust young men. They were peregrini, professional pilgrims who hired themselves out for pay. They performed pilgrimages and penances on behalf of those rich enough to want to avoid the discomfort of wandering from shrine to shrine in the inclement weather England threw at them. Peter Bullock elbowed his way through the throng, his ears impervious to the blandishments of the stall-holders. He wanted to speak to Brother Richard Yaxley about his altercation with the dead canon before the murder became too widely talked about. He didn’t want Yaxley to have any time to prepare a story.

Mounting the steps of the church, Bullock ignored the mumbled complaints of the line of pilgrims waiting their turn at St Frideswide’s shrine. They probably thought he was trying to push in ahead of them. But when they turned round and saw his stony face, all their cavilling ceased. Instead, the pilgrims looked furtively at their feet, at the intricately carved stonework, at their neighbours in the queue. Anywhere to avoid the constable’s implacable gaze. Inside, the church was a blaze of light. Extra candles and tapers lit the interior, especially the rear of the high altar where the shrine stood. The scene did not inspire Bullock. In fact, it was an irritant to him. He knew the two chaplains who scurried back and forth, and that many of the tapers were paid for out of a grant forced on the Sheriff of Oxford by King Henry after his spat with the barons five years earlier. The town had favoured the barons, and when the King had ultimately triumphed, the town had paid the price. To the tune of one hundred shillings annually. The tapers burned night and day for the soul of the King, in an attempt to neutralize the curse said to fall on any monarch entering the confines of the town.

Bullock spotted Yaxley standing at the side of one of the many large, iron-bound boxes strategically placed along the pilgrims’ route to the shrine. He was glowering at an elderly, lame man in rags who had had the temerity to pass without making an offering. Yaxley bent down, and whispered in the cripple’s ear. The man gulped, and extracted a small coin from his battered purse. It was probably all he had to buy a scrap of food later. No doubt Yaxley had advised him that miracles did not come cheap. And that hunger was temporary.

‘Brother Richard, might I have a word?’

Bullock was pleased that his unremarked approach surprised Yaxley. In fact, a guilty look flickered across the monk’s features before he could wipe it out with feigned anger.

‘I am doing God’s work, Constable. There is no time for idle chit-chat.’

Bullock snorted in contempt.

‘I am sure God will not begrudge a few pilgrims remission from their sins without charge.’

He grabbed Yaxley’s elbow firmly, and propelled him away from the cripple, who gratefully slid the coin back into his purse. He led Yaxley into a quieter side chapel away from the main hustle and bustle. The monk’s face was ashen, but still he preserved his façade of aggrieved innocence.

‘Really, you should speak with Prior Thomas first. I will not be bullied in this way. You have no jurisdiction over me.’

‘Shall I then get him to ask where you were last night? And the night when Will Plome found his way into the shrine?’

Yaxley began to shake, and his bluster disappeared.

‘How do you know about that?’ He and the prior thought they had kept the incident with Plome quiet. Bullock just smiled wolfishly, forcing Yaxley to speak first. ‘Look, what is all this about? I…fell asleep when I should have been alert. That is all.’

‘And last night?’

‘I was here all night. You don’t think I would be so foolish as to fall asleep again, do you?’

‘Presumably, there is no one who can verify that?’

‘Why should there be any need to be?’

Bullock could tell from years of experience that the monk was being evasive. He didn’t believe his excuse that he had fallen asleep the night that Will Plome had gained access to the shrine. Moving the slab at the entrance to the Holy Hole would have made a dreadful noise in the stillness of the church. Yaxley had definitely not been carrying out his duties as feretarius that night. The question was, where had he been? And had he been absent last night also, when Brother John Barley had been murdered? Bullock decided on an all-out attack to keep the man off balance.

‘Why? Because Brother John Barley was murdered either last night, or in the early hours of this morning.’

The feretarius looked horrified.

‘And you think I killed him? Why?’

‘Why? Because I saw you arguing with him two days ago. What was that all about?’

Yaxley went pale, then tried to cover his discomfort with a sneer. ‘Because I am certain it was he put Will Plome up to sneaking inside the saint’s shrine in order to discomfit the priory. The simpleton could never have found the old entrance without help, and Barley is of an age to recall stories of its use. The canons at Oseney are jealous of the shrine’s popularity, and would stop at nothing to spoil that.’

‘And why blame Brother John specifically?’

‘Because he…’ Yaxley paused, framing his words carefully. ‘Because I had heard tell that Barley was claiming he would soon do something to the great benefit of Oseney Abbey. That he had a rare gift to give. When I asked him about it that day, he laughed and just asked about Will Plome. I could see that was his “rare gift” to the priory-a cruel prank. If he had not been the instigator, how would he have known about the incident?’

‘Maybe he knew the same way I did. From Will Plome himself. Will has been telling everyone that the prior thought he had become miraculously thin in order to gain access through the viewing holes. He thought that very funny. As for the slab, anyone who treads on it can see it rocks. Will was probably just curious, and investigated what was underneath. If you had been there, you might have seen that.’

Yaxley ignored the implication that Bullock doubted his claim of being asleep at his post. He merely stuck to his story.

‘As for last night, I was here attending to my duties. Now you must forgive me, as I must attend to them now.’

Bullock knew that as yet he could do nothing to undermine Yaxley’s assertion. Though he did wonder whether John Barley had really had something to offer the feretarius. If so, what could it have been? Without any more information, however, he would have to let the feretarius go. For the time being.

Falconer had got no farther than the open yard of the cloister in Oseney Abbey. In its centre stood the timber-and-thatch affair that was the master mason’s lodge. More than just a shelter, underneath which the mason carved his stone, it stood as a symbol of the man’s arcane skill. Scattered on the table underneath the thatch were La Souch’s instruments. With a mason’s square, compass and straight edge, he mapped out the geometry that defined the symbolism of the church. The floor plan was based on three squares set in diamond formation, each overlapping the other. Three squares-Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Where the two outer squares overlapped, at the centre of the central square, was the most sacred place in the church. Ultimately, the whole building was a symbolic rendition of the Heavenly Jerusalem. But equally a master mason was a practical man, and used mathematics to calculate the strains and stresses of the construction. La Souch was architect, structural engineer, mystic and building contractor rolled into one.

At the moment, he was preoccupied with restoring the Oseney Ring of bells to the new west tower. He was scrambling like a monkey up the rickety framework of timber, rope and pegs that surrounded the tower, giving out orders as one of the bells began its precarious ascent on the end of a rope pulley. Falconer wondered which one it was. The bells were named Hauteclere, Douce, Clement, Austyn, Marie, Gabriel and John. There were seven in all. At one point the bell caught on a projecting timber, and La Souch swung out over the void, maybe forty feet in the air, to free it. Falconer held his breath. He himself was fearful of heights. But La Souch seemed oblivious to the danger. He freed the bell, and swung back nonchalantly on to the scaffolding. Falconer looked away as the man clambered ever higher.

That was when he saw the oddest sight. Inside the church, by the dappled light of a stained-glass window, a tall, skinny monk described a weaving path in the centre of the nave. His movements veered arbitrarily left and right, and sometimes the monk turned back on himself, appearing to retrace his path. Gradually, though, he moved from the periphery of the nave towards a central point. There was a look of fierce concentration on his face. At the centre of his ramblings he stopped, and turned slowly round in a complete circle. His face, coloured by the broken light from the window, now looked ecstatic, and was quite unheeding of Falconer observing him. The Regent Master began to feel a little embarrassed at spying on the monk’s devotions, but was drawn towards him. He wandered into the church, and stood in the shadow of a pillar. From there, he could see the pattern on the floor of the nave which the monk had been following. It looked like a maze. Or more strictly speaking a labyrinth. A maze had dead ends, whereas the labyrinth ran circuitously but inexorably in one direction.

‘It describes a contemplative journey. A pilgrimage.’

The gentle voice was that of the tall monk, addressing Falconer from the core of the labyrinth. His face was radiant in the coloured light, his smile one of peace.

‘You start at the western end. There.’

He pointed at the entrance to the labyrinth, clearly inviting Falconer to walk it. The Regent Master complied. He could do with a little contemplation on his existence. The twists and turns meant the journey could not be hurried, and Falconer slipped into a steady rhythm. His pacing brought him tantalizingly closer and closer to the centre, while still circling round it. Round and round the monk, who turned slowly to observe his new tyro. Finally, the two men stood in the centre, and the monk grasped both of Falconer’s shoulders in approval.

‘There. That part of the journey is a purging, a letting go. Do you feel it?’

Falconer was not sure what he felt. He was not a man accustomed to feeling the mystical. But somehow he did experience a relief from the pressures of his normal life. Students and their diet. The monk offered his name.

‘Robert Anselm.’

‘William Falconer.’

‘Ah, yes. I have heard of you.’

Falconer guessed the monk was thinking of the previous murder that had brought him to Oseney. Now a second one had occurred, and here he was again. Albeit reluctantly.

‘Here in the centre is an opportunity for insight, and illumination.’

Falconer reckoned he also needed that right now. Not least to sort out his doubts about his continuing vocation. Anselm went on to describe the symbolism of the six petals around the central core of the labyrinth. Mineral, plant, animal and so on-all the elements of the world were there represented.

‘And the very centre is the seventh symbol. In the person of the Trinity. Here, beneath this stone.’

He pointed a reverential finger at the carved stone in the centre. Falconer could not see it clearly without using his eye-lenses. Too embarrassed to take them out before a stranger, he bent down to examine the carving. It was of God as a master mason, or architect, wielding a giant set of compasses.

‘Does it provide you with any insight, Master Falconer?’

‘About what?’

‘The death of Brother John, of course. Do you see it?’

Falconer shook his head.

‘I am afraid I rely on facts, Brother Robert, and there are precious few of those at present.’

‘You will see it, if you only look. I am sure.’

Falconer was not as confident as Anselm seemed of his ability to see the killer. It was time for him to go, and to pay better attention to John Hanny’s needs. He thanked the monk, and left. Anselm winced as Falconer ignored the twisting outward labyrinth, and crossed the floor in a direct line to the doorway.

The Templar, once refreshed by the morning bread and ale, ventured out into the throng of pilgrims making their way to St Frideswide’s Church. The skinny, dark-haired maid who had served him his food both days was also the maid who had plumped up his straw mattress for him on arrival. When he left the Golden Ball Inn, she was hovering by the door, a sly look on her pinched face. He admired her persistence, which flew in the face of her lack of comely charms, but it was wasted on him. His order demanded chastity, as well as obedience and poverty. And he had never had any difficulty obeying the rule of chastity. Nor that of poverty-the order provided him with all he wanted. It was obedience which was most irksome to the Templar, and which provided him with the greatest struggle. If he had chosen to obey the Grand Master strictly, he would probably have given up his quest by now. But he hadn’t. He had not come this far to give up so easily. Last night’s little setback needed to be overcome, and he could not do that by scuttling back to Occitania. He would have to return to Oseney Abbey and the mason.

If he could find the man in charge of the building work there, he might succeed where he had failed with the monk. Not knowing the short cut that had taken Falconer, Bullock and the boy Hanny out on to the water meadows, the Templar exited the North Gate and followed the well-trodden northern track to the abbey. So it was that he missed Falconer, who was returning to Oxford by the postern gate in the castle wall.

On his way to the abbey, the Templar talked to the ragged peregrini, who were seeking to double their fortunes by adding the power of the relics at the abbey to that of St Frideswide. He asked casually whether anyone had heard of a portion of the True Cross in the vicinity. Suddenly he was surrounded by shining faces, eagerly demanding that, if he knew of such a relic, he tell them of its location. It was of inestimable importance to them. One man with a boil-ravaged face would not let go of his sleeve. He was convinced that the Templar knew more than he was admitting to, and begged to be let into the secret. He was desperate for a cure. The Templar broke free of his clutches only with some difficulty. Thereafter, he refrained from revealing his intentions to his fellow travellers.

At the abbey, the Templar cast around until he saw a man carving a diamond pattern on the surface of a cylindrical piece of stone. Each piece, piled on its companion, would make up one of the pillars to the entrance to the nearly completed church. The Templar stood and marvelled at the man’s skill as he worked on in silence. Every blow was precise and controlled, leading to a groove that spiralled up the pillar section. Could this be the mason he sought? He had supposed him to be older. He tested the ground with a question.

‘Did you know that a pillar, being the synthesis of a circle and a square, represents the marrying of the spiritual and the material worlds?’

The man smiled coolly, and chose his reply carefully.

‘Yes. And that the pillars named Jachin and Boaz stood either side of the entrance to Solomon’s Temple.’ La Souch stopped chipping at the stone, and squinted into the sun, studying the dark-skinned stranger.

‘You are a Templar?’

The man briefly inclined his head. It was barely an acknowledgement, but enough. The mason set his tools carefully on the floor of the lodge where he sat.

‘Some people say you lot have more secrets to hide than we poor masons. Have you been to the Holy Land? The darkness of your skin suggests you have, and recently.’

The Templar grimaced.

‘Alas, I got no farther than our fortress near Famagusta on the island of Cyprus. I leave the honour of having once freed Jerusalem from its yoke to one of my ancestors, Miles de Clermont. I have to be content with the Heavenly Jerusalem embodied in the structure of churches such as this one you have constructed.’

‘Me and my predecessor, God rest his soul. I have only been working here for two years, myself.’

That was not what the Templar wanted to hear. He had come all this way because of a story concerning the mason working on Oseney Abbey in England. Certain knowledge had been conveyed to the Templar Grand Master. Knowledge of a particular relic that the Order had been seeking for years. At one time they had traced it to Tewkesbury Abbey, but it was no longer there, and the trail had gone cold. Then a story about a mason working in Oxford had reached the Grand Master. It now appeared that story had been too long in surfacing. The old mason was dead. There perhaps remained a slight chance that the knowledge had been passed on, though.

‘But you work to plans laid down by the master mason who came before you?’

Eudo La Souch produced a snorting laugh that had his labourers working on the site looking in his direction. They were curious as to what had amused their normally sour taskmaster. But he waved his hand at them, and they hastily returned to what they were doing. La Souch examined the Templar, lounging in the shade of the lodge roof. Despite the man’s relaxed posture, he could see that his muscular legs held his body in perfect balance. His arms, crossed nonchalantly over his chest, were actually tensed and ready for an assault from any quarter. He wondered whether the man ever truly relaxed.

‘If you think there were any plans, then you do not understand how we work.’ By ‘we’, he meant the secretive guild of master masons. ‘We have no need for drawings. It’s all in here.’ He tapped his head. ‘The closest you would come to plans are those.’

He pointed at a large area of plaster on the ground in the centre of the cloister. It was criss-crossed with faint marks-lines scored in the surface of the plaster.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a pattern floor, where I can draw up full-size templates for the construction.’

‘Then you have no records of work carried out by your predecessor?’

La Souch shook his head. The Templar was dejected. His search for the relic had come to a dead end again.

‘And when you started you didn’t hear of any rumours of a relic that might have had a special place constructed for it?’

‘Relic? What sort of relic?’

‘A piece of the True Cross.’

La Souch tried to keep calm, and not to show this Templar he knew anything about such a relic. He was afraid to speak in case his voice quavered. He shook his head, and picked up his stoneworking tools again. He began chipping at the stone, though he knew he was ruining the block with shaking hands. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the Templar sigh, push himself away from the wooden post he had been leaning against, and walk away. La Souch made sure he was well out of sight before he downed his tools. He hurried over to the fabric rolls that held the accounts of the building work for the last twenty years. He would need to redouble the effort of his search now he knew for certain. Previously, the existence of the relic had only been a story hinted at by the workmen he had inherited from his predecessor. The Templar had now confirmed its reality.

‘Have you seen John Hanny? I told him to come back here, and wait for my return.’

The three students who sat companionably at the table in the communal hall of Aristotle’s shook their heads in unison. It was late afternoon, so they were about their supper, a pan of bean potage, which sat steaming in the centre of the plain trestle table. Edward Bygrave, a wealthy student dressed in fashionable parti-coloured tabard and scarlet hose, spoke up for them all.

‘Please, Master Falconer. He fetched the potage for us, and we invited him to eat also. But he said he could not. And truthfully, he did look ill. Sort of pale.’

Falconer didn’t like the boy’s truculent tones, nor the way Miles Bikerdike grinned at Bygrave’s report. He doubted they had so readily offered poor Hanny his share of the food. Despite the fact he had earned it by serving his wealthier fellows. Hanny would have fetched the potage from the bakery oven, where those who lacked the where-withal for cooking had hot meals prepared for them. It should have entitled him to his share. Even at the expense of his pride.

‘Very well. But no-one thought to ask him where he was going, I suppose?’

Again the little group shook their heads solemnly. Falconer sighed heavily, wondering whether he was still up to teaching his students. The Seven Liberal Arts were all very well. He could still pound those into their skulls. But it seemed that common decency was an increasingly difficult attribute to impart.

Though he wanted to talk to Bullock to see whether the man had any further news on the monk’s death, he knew he would have to ensure that John Hanny was found first. That would be his penance for ignoring the boy’s plight until now. In fact, some deep concern was beginning to gnaw at his stomach. He had unquestioningly accepted Hanny’s version of why he had been outside the walls that night. What if he had not been eeling, but was somehow embroiled in the death of the monk, after all? Falconer shuddered at the thought that he might have completely misread the boy. He turned back towards the front door of Aristotle’s and the darkening streets. The three students were already beginning to reach for the ale jug, and joking with each other. Hanny’s plight was already forgotten as far as they were concerned. Angry that they did not share his worries, Falconer decided to leave them with a severe command.

‘You are to speak Latin, and only Latin, to each other. These are the rules of the university, after all.’

Their groans cheered him up somewhat.

Outside, the narrow lanes were dark and silent. Almost everyone would be at supper, but still the quiet was unusual. Oppressive even. Suddenly he was on the alert, his senses sharpened as if on the eve of battle. He had been a soldier in his youth, and his awareness of danger had never left him. If something was afoot, then it was doubly important to find John Hanny, and keep him safe. He decided to avoid the open thoroughfare of the High Street, choosing instead to go down Kibald Street, and into Grope Lane. He didn’t think Hanny would be in one of the bawdy houses there. Though the girls cost only a few pennies, that was more than the boy possessed. But there were also some low taverns in the street, feeding Grope Lane’s customers’ other appetite. He poked his head in a few doors, but here too there were few people. And those there were had fallen into a drunken stupor. At the bottom of the lane, he turned into St John’s Street, then up Shidyerd Street into Little Jewry Lane. He was now approaching the back of Jewry, and could hear a dull rumbling sound. At first it puzzled him, as he could not make out what was causing such a noise. Then he distinguished the sound of splintering wood, followed by a surge in the noise. He could now hear individual voices calling out in triumph. It was the sound of a mob.

As if on cue, a bell began to toll wildly. It was the unmistakable note of St Martin’s Church. The bell that called the town to arms. Falconer had heard it tolling before, often to be matched by the resonant sound of St Mary’s. That was the warning bell for the university. He wondered whether something-the death of the monk perhaps-had sparked off a riot between town and gown. But the bell of St Mary’s Church remained silent, and the sound of the mob appeared to be restricted to Fish Street, along which were ranged the homes of the Jews of Oxford. Falconer hoped that his old friend, Jehozadok, was safely indoors. The old rabbi was too frail to stand up to the mob, and he knew it. But some of the younger Jewish men would probably not be so circumspect.

Only the other day, Falconer had seen one youth who he knew as Deudone accosting the pilgrims making for St Frideswide’s. He was pretending to limp, then uttering an oath and suddenly walking freely. Then he had thrust out his hand, saying the pilgrims should give him alms as his miracles were just as genuine as the saint’s. Fortunately the pilgrims had turned away in disgust. On another day, his contemptuous behaviour could have got him into trouble. A riot such as was boiling up now would be an admirable opportunity for Deudone to think of showing his mettle. The boy was an ardent suitor of Hannah, daughter to the apothecary Samson. Her raven-haired beauty had turned his head, and he would do anything to earn her admiration. It was too much to hope that he would hide away from the mob. Moreover, he was the ringleader of a larger group of hotheads.

All thoughts of John Hanny temporarily shelved, Falconer hurried down Jewry Lane, hoping to reach the home of Deudone’s mother, Belaset, before the mob did. Belaset was a widow who had taken over her late husband’s business very successfully. Her financial acumen was the equal of, if not greater than, her husband’s. Sadly, the skill seemed not to have passed on to the son. Deudone was impetuous, with little aptitude for hard work. If Falconer knew Hannah’s mind as he thought he did, she would not be impressed by any of the boy’s wild behaviour. But he still needed to be prevented from confronting a mob of angry people intent on causing mischief.

As he emerged from the end of Jewry Lane on to Fish Street, Falconer could see that the mob was busy at the top end of the street, where it joined La Boucherie. The houses of some of the more prominent members of Jewry were located there. But then they could withstand the efforts of the mob. They were built of stone, and had sturdy oak front doors. With one eye on the milling crowd, lit by flaming torches and resembling a scene from Hell, Falconer eased along the shop frontages at the lower end of Fish Street. Jehozadok, Hannah and Samson lived in neighbouring houses close by. And Belaset lived below them next to the cloisters of St Frideswide’s Church, just beyond the synagogue. Sometimes the songs of the Talmudic scholars would mingle strangely with the sounds of a religious procession on its way to the shrine of the saint. Tonight, the only sound was the unpleasant and dissonant roar of angry people intent on causing damage. And the racket was getting nearer.

He knocked quietly on Belaset’s door, hoping the woman would realize it was not the mob outside yet. A panel slid back, and Falconer could see a pair of brown eyes behind the grille set in the opening.

‘Belaset. It’s me, William Falconer. You need not let me in. I only wish to know that everyone is safe. Have you seen Jehozadok?’

The woman’s deep, dark eyes stared out through the grille calmly.

‘You need have no fear for him, Master Falconer. He is here with me. And so is my son. I have told Deudone that he is to stay inside and protect us.’

Falconer saw the flash of amusement in her eyes. They both knew it was she protecting her son, not the other way round. He saw the outer edges of her eyes crease up, and imagined the smile on her lips.

‘It helps that Samson and Hannah brought the rabbi here, and have stayed with us too. Thank you for your concern, but you should look after yourself now.’

‘Have you any idea why these people are on the rampage?’

Falconer could hear the heavy sigh despite the thickness of the door.

‘Do they need a reason, when the greatest in the country treat us so badly? But Hannah said she did hear from the cutler who rents his shop from them that there was some talk of a ritual murder near Broken Hays. Whoever found the body has accused us, of course.’

‘A ritual murder…?’ Falconer was appalled. Since the ridiculous story of a child murder in Lincoln some fifteen years previously, horrific tales of Jewish rituals abounded. It needed only some incautious remark to set off a vicious attack on local Jews. Could it have been John Hanny who had unleashed this current riot? And had he done it unwittingly, or with malice in his heart? Either way, the boy needed to be found.

In the dying light of the candles in the nave, Robert Anselm stood at the centre of the labyrinth, far from the turmoil of Jewry. Around him on the floor of the nave were ranged six hemispheres. They resembled rose petals, with the end of the labyrinth walk as the stem of the flower. Each hemisphere was a symbolic representation of the attributes of the world. He turned round slowly on the spot, meditating on each portal individually. The first was Mineral, the next Plant. Then came Animal followed by Human. The last two were Angelic and the Unnameable. The seventh point was the central slab at his feet. Here was Illumination.

He recalled a time more than thirty years earlier, when he had desperately needed illumination, to resolve the great tribulation that had confronted him with the arrival of the relic. The relic was supposed to have been the answer to Oseney Abbey’s prayers-its saviour. The rumours of its arrival had begun three days before, and had caused a great stir among the brethren. Even the young Anselm had welcomed the news at first. The abbey took a great deal of money to maintain, and resources had dwindled of late. A new focus for pilgrimage could make all the difference. Robert Anselm could see that.

Brothers Petroc and Peter had been overcome by the majesty of the relic. They had twittered on after nones, finishing each other’s sentences as they had a habit of doing.

‘Is it not a wonder to behold, young Robert. A piece…’

‘…of the True Cross, here in…’

‘Oxford. At our abbey.’

It was not long, however, before the abbot was cautioning everyone to remain silent on the matter. And Robert Anselm no longer felt elated. No, he had felt only oppressed. By then he had learned a deadly secret, so that, rising from his knees after prayers one evening, he had had to fight for breath. Petroc and Peter had helped him out of the chapel into the fresh air, where he took in great lungfuls of the sweet-scented air. It nevertheless tasted bitter on his tongue. He had retched. He had then hidden his true emotions, by dipping his head between his legs, and moaning. A non-committal sound that the two brothers took as disappointment that the relic was not to be. They had left him to regain his composure. The following morning, though, Anselm had numbly risen from his cot before the third hour of the morning. No great task, because he had not slept all night, and his duties called him to the kitchens. But it had been with a heavy heart that he had begun his daily tasks.

Daily tasks that had absorbed him ever since. This night, thirty years on, he began to tread the route towards the exit of the labyrinth. This journey out represented Union, and action in the world.

Falconer crossed Fish Street, and stood in the doorway of St Aldate’s Church opposite Belaset’s house. The mob was rampaging down the street, led by some massive brute of a man with a thick ginger beard. His face was red, though whether this was due to exertion, drink or the light of the flaming brand in his fist was difficult to tell. One eye was clouded dead white, which gave him the look of one half dead. But his actions were lively enough. He charged up to the door of the Jewish synagogue, and thumped on it with the butt of his firebrand. Sparks flew into the air.

‘Kill the Jews. Kill the child-killers. Kill the monk-killers.’

His cries were echoed like a litany by the jostling crowd of angry people behind him. They were largely men of the town, though there were a few women on the fringes, who by their ragged looks were perhaps there for any pickings from the riot rather than out of conviction. Falconer also spotted the gaudy robes of a few clerks in the midst of the more sober dress of the townspeople. He screwed up his eyes to try to commit their faces to memory, cursing his poor vision. The lenses he had were only of use at close quarters. So the faces of those farthest away were no more than a blur. But then he did see someone he recognized skulking on the edge of the mob. It was unmistakably John Hanny, and he looked distinctly uneasy.

Falconer eased from under the shadow of the church porch, and skirted round the crowd, closer to where Hanny stood. Ginger-beard was having no success with his assault on the synagogue door, and those at the back of the mob were beginning to drift off down Pennyfarthing Street, and Jewry Lane. All but the most hotheaded would soon begin to realize that their shouts, and the noise of their attack on the Jews’ houses, would bring the constable and his crew to the scene. And Falconer knew he should get John Hanny away before that happened. Peter Bullock was no respecter of university privileges. In fact they irked him, despite his friendship with Regent Master Falconer. He would cheerfully incarcerate an errant clerk in the Bocardo, if he could catch him at wrongdoing.

As the pent-up emotions of the individuals in the mob began to leach away, and they began to disperse, Falconer reached his guilty student clerk. He grabbed his arm tightly.

‘John Hanny, you will come with me. Now.’

The boy’s face, as it turned to Falconer, was a picture of shock, and shame. He stammered a sort of lame excuse, but his teacher was not in a mood to listen. He strode off down Little Jewry Lane, dragging the youth stumbling and groaning behind him. Turning swiftly left and then right, he hurried down the unsavoury alley accurately named Schitebarne Lane, and back towards Aristotle’s Hall.

In the quiet and safe atmosphere of the communal hall, he sat Hanny down beside the embers of the fire. The other students had retired to their shared dormitory rooms, carelessly leaving a cold mess of potage on the hearth. Falconer, towering over Hanny, demanded to know what the boy was doing starting a riot. Hanny’s face was as white as a sheet, and his words came in little gasps.

‘I swear I did not actually say it was the Jews. That was the fault of that wall-eyed giant. He said it must have been the Jews, as they were always killing Christians for their rituals.’

Falconer snorted in disgust. He would let Bullock know about the wall-eyed man, assuming that the constable hadn’t manage to grab him off the street anyway. The boy had been foolish, and incautious like any young man with a story to tell. But what was it he had said that had excited the crowd so? There was nothing in the details Hanny had given him and Peter Bullock which could have done that. Had he held something back?

‘I think you had better tell me everything, John.’

John looked glumly at the ground, where a careless spillage of bean potage had left a dark brown stain. He pushed at the mark with his foot, spreading it in the straw.

‘You will not believe me, if I told you.’

Falconer smiled gently. Young men like this student often imagined that they had seen wonders. When their vision was clouded with drink, and all they had been witness to was something unusual, that nevertheless had a perfectly rational explanation. The Regent Master’s guiding star was Aristotelean logic, which demanded scientific observation and comparison of facts. Occasionally in the past, he had been incautious enough to express opinions openly about others’ beliefs. And that had put him at odds with the Church and the university establishment. More than one chancellor had hinted at heresy, and threatened him with an appearance before the Black Congregation. It had not helped his position in the university, and his reputation was tarnished as a consequence. Lately, he had grown more circumspect, more compliant, which did not entirely please him. But he was weary of conflict and controversy, and not for the first time questioned whether he should even be teaching at all. But, at his lowest ebb, he would encounter such a lost youth as John Hanny, and his commitment was renewed.

‘I might just surprise you, John Hanny. I am old enough to have seen many things, and few, if any, have given me cause to marvel. Except for the gullibility of student clerks.’

John blushed, and began a stumbling revelation.

‘I did go eeling that night. That was the truth. And I did fall asleep in the hut, and was awakened by a noise. But I saw more than I told you or the constable.’

The boy paused, a fearful look in his eyes.

‘Go on. You must tell me everything now.’

‘When I crawled out of the hut to see what had made the noise, I saw him.’

‘The dead monk?’

‘No. Him. The murderer. He was bending over the body with something in his hand. A curved blade. It looked like a sickle. I watched as he turned the body over and straightened the legs. He did something else that looked like a sort of magical pass with his hands over the body. Then he laid the sickle under the monk’s hands, folding them across the body. What could he be doing else, but conducting some Jewish ritual over the man he had killed?’

Falconer wondered too, but was not inclined to think Hanny had seen a ritual of any sort. It was more likely the killer had been searching for something the monk had in his possession. But who had the boy seen who had him so scared he dare not at first reveal this knowledge?

‘Tell me who you saw.’

The boy screwed up his face in fear.

‘I thought it was the very Devil, sir. Or if not him, some Jew. He was big and dressed all in black, and I saw his face when he turned away from the body. It was dark-complected, and the eyes burned like coals. I swear that is the truth. He actually reminded me of that youth Deudone, who is always mocking Christians, and bragging about how much richer he is than us.’

‘You didn’t mention him by name to the mob?’

‘No, master!’

Falconer held in his anger at the boy’s unthinking demonization of the Jews. But it was doubly worrying, if Hanny imagined he had seen Belaset’s son at the scene of the murder. Most people would not want any further proof of the guilt of a Jew.

‘I want you to think most carefully, use your brains to think about what you really saw. Perhaps you will make more sense in the morning. We will tell the constable then.’

Hanny subsided on to his stool, and looked incredulously at his master.

‘Master. Don’t you believe in the Devil?’

Falconer grunted. How could he explain it to this callow youth in a way that did not sound like heresy?

‘The Devil? Put it this way, John. I do believe in the ability of man to create infinite evil.’

Peter Bullock yawned, and kneaded the small of his back. He had had a frustrating night with nothing to show for his discomfort but cold feet, and a nagging ache at the bottom of his spine. After being hauled from his bed to a disturbance in the Jewish quarter that had turned out to be something and nothing, he had decided to make use of the disruption to his sleep. He had sneaked into the precincts of St Frideswide’s Church, and found himself a hiding place behind one of the empty vending stalls there. He could see the tapers still burning inside the church, and the shadow of someone moving about. It had to be Brother Richard Yaxley, carrying out his duties as feretarius. During the festival, the monk remained in the church at night to guard the shrine. Or rather, he should do so. Bullock was sure he had deserted his post the time Will Plome inserted his fat frame into the shrine. And he suspected Yaxley was also absent when he murdered Oseney Abbey’s Brother John Barley. But suspicion was not enough. Bullock needed proof. Last night he had been determined to gather the evidence by spying on the man.

He found that by perching on a wall he could observe Yaxley moving around inside the church, going from offertory box to offertory box. He was collecting the coins in a bag, which was soon heavy with the bounty. He then moved towards the high altar. For a while he disappeared from Bullock’s limited view. In fact, he was out of sight for so long that the constable was on the verge of entering the church, thinking Yaxley had given him the slip. Then he reappeared, unencumbered by the bag of coins. Bullock watched as Yaxley climbed to his watching loft at the level of the triforium windows. There, he settled down on a straw-filled mattress, and lay back. Disappointed, Bullock observed in envy as the monk spent a comfortable night resting in the warmth of his station above the shrine.

It was a grey dawn that saw Bullock easing his aching bones, and slipping away for a cold breakfast of bread and ale. Frustrated at being none the wiser about Yaxley’s earlier activities, he almost didn’t hear his old friend, Falconer, calling from behind him.

‘Peter. Peter. You’re abroad very early.’

Bullock slowed his pace to allow Falconer to catch up with him, and they walked together towards the castle.

‘I might say the same for you, William. But I have been on business. What’s your excuse?’

Despite his determined tread, Bullock was finding himself hurrying to keep up with the taller man’s loping stride. Fortunately for him, Falconer stopped abruptly in response to his question, and stood at the corner of Fish Street and Pennyfarthing Lane. He watched distractedly as the early-rising tradesmen opened the shutters of their shops and began setting up their stalls. They had to profit when they could. And it would be another lucrative day meeting the needs of the pilgrims who thronged into Oxford for the Feast of St Frideswide. The lanky Regent Master turned his gaze on his stockier companion.

‘Business? What business? The riot that took place across the street from here yesterday? I was coming to tell you about that. It was a wall-eyed man with ginger hair who was the ringleader…’

Bullock smiled grimly.

‘Ah. William Lawney. That makes sense. He owes a lot of money to the Jews. Money he borrowed for a business venture that failed. Thank you for that. I was on the scene too late to do anything about the commotion. All the excitement had evaporated by the time I arrived, and everyone seemed to just disappear down convenient alleys before I could employ my sword to good effect.’

The constable was renowned for his huge but rusty sword which hung at his hip most of the time he patrolled the streets of Oxford. He no longer bothered about the sharpness of its edge, because, if he ever drew it, it was to employ the flat of the blade. That was far more effective a deterrent, when laid across a clerk’s buttocks, than a cutting edge. And more forgiving. Last night, the crowd had dispersed without even the need for that.

‘I will deal with Master Lawney. But no, that was not the business I was thinking of.’

‘The murder, then.’

‘Yes. I have been observing my suspect.’

Falconer frowned, and looked at the salted fish seller rolling his barrels of produce out on to the street. It reminded him again of the starving John Hanny, and what the boy had seen that night.

‘You have a suspect? Who is that?’

Bullock bubbled with the satisfaction of putting one over on his erudite friend. It was not often that he got to the truth before the Regent Master.

‘Why, Brother Richard Yaxley, of course. I saw him arguing with the dead man the night before he was killed. He claims over some trifling incident concerning young Will Plome, but that is a red herring.’

Falconer knew Plome, who had come to Oxford with a troupe of travelling players. There had been a murder that had almost been laid at the door of the fat youth. Until the Regent Master had solved the puzzle. The jongleurs had moved on, but Will had stayed behind. He now made a living running errands for kindly people who pitied his simplicity.

‘What did Will have to do with it?’

Bullock waved a beefy hand dismissively in the air.

‘Oh, nothing really. It was a trifle. But I do think he was put up to embarrassing the feretarius by Brother John Barley. You know how some of the monks at Oseney envy the popularity of the saint’s shrine. Especially at this time of year.’ The constable rubbed his finger and thumb together to signify the lucrative nature of the shrine. ‘And haven’t you always told me that money is an excellent motive for murder? Yaxley also said that the monk had something of great value to offer, but had then played that trick on him instead.’

Bullock was prepared for his old friend to pour scorn on his conclusion. And was surprised when Falconer merely responded with a tilt of the head, and a little grunt. If he hadn’t known him better, Bullock would have thought the Regent Master had actually agreed with his analysis. Without demur. But in reality, Falconer just seemed distracted, and not at all full of the usual enthusiasm he exhibited over a murder. He appeared to be more interested in the mundane activities of the fish seller, Luke Bosden, setting up his stall across the street. Bullock narrowed his eyes, and peered at Luke as he rolled out another barrel of salted fish. If his actions were so interesting to Falconer, then maybe there was some deep riddle to be solved by observing them.

In fact, Falconer was not really looking at the fish seller. He was merely worried about the state of John Hanny’s mind. And his belly. The description of what he had seen the night Brother John Barley was murdered had left Falconer half inclined to admit to the very real existence of the Devil. And to consider taking holy orders to seek expiation of all the heretical scientific ideas he had held heretofore. Anything rather than think Deudone was involved in the death.

Yet Falconer had always relied on observation to guide his thinking. And it was a very real world which bustled around him now. The mundane life of real toil that a man like the fishmonger Bosden pursued in his effort to feed himself and his family. If there was anything spiritual in this world, it was the relentless optimism that sustained such men as Bosden. By comparison, Falconer, who did nothing more than cram a few notions into the heads of boys more often than not reluctant to give them room, felt himself worthless. He took a deep breath, and tried to concentrate on what Bullock had been saying. There was a connection. Suddenly it came to him. The conversation he had overheard between Harbottle and the master mason.

‘What was that you said about something of value? Could it have been a relic?’

Bullock sighed, realizing that Falconer had not been listening to a word. A relic? There had been nothing of the kind, only a trick played on Yaxley that had badly misfired. But at least this was more like his old friend. Off on a sidetrack, when the obvious was staring him in the face. He went over his conversation with Yaxley again, asserting that no mention had been made specifically of a relic. This obviously did not put Falconer off, for now he had a request for Bullock.

‘It could be that you are right, Peter. But we need to go and talk to the abbot. Will you send one of your men to Oseney to ask the abbot if he will see us? There is something I must do first. Oh, and will you ask him to arrange for us to talk to the master mason, La Souch, also?’

Bullock nodded in agreement, though he didn’t know why they needed to talk to a mason. Nor was Falconer forthcoming about the urgent errand he had to attend to first. Such mysterious behaviour was typical of his friend, and he had long given up trying to fathom him out. He turned to go down Pennyfarthing Street towards St Ebbe’s Church, and the castle postern gate, while Falconer turned the other way. His resolve momentarily reinvigorated, Falconer could not help having a final dig at his old friend.

‘You have discounted our mysterious Templar, then?’

Bullock grunted in a non-committal fashion. In fact, he had forgotten all about him.

If Peter Bullock had known that the Templar was already abroad, and had exited the town while Master Falconer was brooding over the fate of fishmongers, he might yet have included him in his reckoning. For the Templar was returning to Oseney Abbey, convinced it was the goal of his mission. When he had last spoken to the master mason, he had been sure that Eudo La Souch knew more than he was telling. He had mentioned the possible existence of a piece of the True Cross somewhere in the abbey, and the mason had all but screamed out he too knew of it. His face had paled, and sweat had broken out on his temple. La Souch had tried to mask his reaction by picking up his tools, and chipping away at the section of stone pillar he had been working on. But the new chiselling had been a mess compared to the work he had carried out before. His hands had trembled, and he couldn’t wait to be rid of his inquisitor. The Templar was sure he knew something. But did he know the actual location of the relic? Or, like himself, was he still searching?

He had decided there and then not to press the man to reveal what he knew. With his skill at persuasion, learned from his old adversaries, the Assassins, he could easily have extracted what information the mason had. But then he might have found himself in another dead end like the one he had encountered with the monk, John Barley. Far better to let the man pursue his own searches, and uncover the truth. Then the Templar could intervene, saving himself a lot of work. Today, he was planning to find out how far the mason had got. The Templar strode cheerfully along the roadway towards Oseney Abbey, crossing the two streams that marked the edge of the water meadows. In passing it, he hardly gave the place of Brother John Barley’s murder a second glance.

When William Falconer and Peter Bullock met up at Northgate, the Regent Master looked pleased, but was no more forthcoming about his errand. Instead, the two men walked in companionable silence towards Oseney. A trickle of pilgrims preceded them through the entrance to the cloisters of Oseney Abbey. Normally, no-one but the canons and lay brothers would be allowed access to this part of the abbey. But today the church entrance was blocked by a mesh of scaffolding that hung on the western façade. Eudo La Souch’s work was progressing despite the financial straits of the abbey. And because of that, the cloister was open to give access to the church for pilgrims. Bullock looked up and marvelled at the size of the new church. Over their heads rose flying buttresses topped with pinnacles, and the two magnificent towers, the western one of which housed the Oseney Ring of bells. He tipped his head back, and admired the soaring bulk of the tower. It was impressive, even clad as it was in wooden scaffolding, and it stood square and solid against the scudding clouds and pale blue of the morning sky. He thought he saw a bird swooping round the topmost pinnacle, and screwed up his eyes to identify it. It was large, and on reflection appeared to be diving hawk-like towards the earth rather than spiralling round the tower. Its wings were thin and flailed at the air, though, unlike those of any hawk that might stoop for its prey in this fashion. In fact, it was far too large for any bird. Bullock cried out and clutched at Falconer’s sleeve. The Regent Master turned his gaze up to what Bullock saw just as the figure resolved itself into the shape of a man.

‘God in Heaven!’ cried Bullock, just before the flying man crashed through the thatch of the master mason’s lodge, and thumped into the earth below.

Falconer and the constable raced across the cloister, and through the scatter of pilgrims fleeing in the opposite direction. Inside the devastated lodge, lying flat out on the plaster pattern floor, lay the broken body of the master mason, Eudo La Souch. A thin trail of dark red blood leaked from the back of his head following the tracks of the templates scored in the floor. It slowly described the outline of a curved section of a clerestory window.

The cloister suddenly seemed to fill with people. Those pilgrims who had fled the plummeting body were now drawn back inexorably. The gruesome sight of the broken mason was a sharp reminder of the frailty of the human body. And would no doubt act as an additional spur for the pilgrims seeking remission of their sins before the master mason’s fate became their own. Bunched together in the crowd was the gang of workmen and apprentices who until that moment had been employed by Eudo La Souch. Their faces were strained and pale. Unless another master mason was found, and quick, they were out of work. One older man among them, dressed in an apron and blue shirt flecked with spatters of lime mortar, stepped forward from the crowd to get a closer look at his erstwhile employer. He pulled a tattered brown hat off his head, crushing it in his calloused hands. After convincing himself that the body was indeed that of La Souch, and that he was without doubt dead, he turned to the tall, black-clad figure of William Falconer. As far as he could tell, this was a man of authority, who needed putting straight.

‘Impossible,’ he grunted, in an accent as thick as that of his dead master.

‘What’s impossible?’ Peter Bullock cut in quickly, asserting his own control of the situation. The man merely looked up at the tower, and down at the body. Then snorted, shaking his head in disbelief. It was Falconer who answered Bullock’s question, however.

‘I think our friend here is suggesting that it is impossible that the master mason could have fallen accidentally. And I would tend to agree. I saw La Souch shinning up the scaffolding when the bells were being replaced, and he was as nimble and sure footed as a squirrel.’

Satisfied that his opinion had been heard, the builder nodded, stuffed his battered hat back on his head, and went back to his comrades to confer. Falconer saw Robert Anselm pushing through the crowd of pilgrims, some of whom were now on their knees praying. Whether for the soul of the dead man, or their own salvation, Falconer could not quite determine. For a brief moment he also thought he saw a familiar, sharp-featured dark face at the back of the crowd. Then Anselm stood in his way, and the face was gone. The monk gasped when he saw the state of the body, broken by the fall from one of the highest towers in the country. He crossed himself.

‘May God receive his soul. Poor man. There have been accidents before, of course. But nothing as…’ He waved his hand at the horrific sight, apparently unable to find words to describe it adequately. ‘…as this.’

Falconer took the shocked monk’s arm, leading him away from the unpleasant sight.

‘I’m afraid, Brother Robert, that this was probably no accident. La Souch was a master mason, as at home at height as on the ground.’

Anselm frowned, tapping at the earth nervously with his sandalled foot.

‘But wouldn’t that perhaps make him careless? If he truly regarded working at the top of the tower as safe as working below, could he not have tragically misjudged his footing?’

‘It’s possible, I suppose, Brother Robert.’

Falconer was reluctant to concede as much to the monk. But his mind was brooding on the thought that, just when he wanted to see the mason about a mysterious relic, Eudo La Souch had unfortunately plunged to his death.

‘And you think this relic is the key to what is happening here?’

Falconer nodded in response to Peter Bullock’s question. The two men were sitting in the scriptorium of Oseney Abbey, currently devoid of the monks who would normally be taking advantage of the morning light to copy texts for the abbey library. The two rows of high stools stood unoccupied, though the burnished wooden desks were still scattered with papers, and the horn boxes filled with quills. The distant sound of plainsong was all that betrayed where the scribes had gone. A song for the soul of Eudo La Souch. Light streamed in from the scriptorium’s high windows, and across the floor to the men’s feet.

‘It has to be. Firstly, Brother John Barley is murdered after offering what we think may have been a relic to the feretarius of St Frideswide’s Priory, then…’

Bullock interrupted.

‘Though that may have been a cruel jest on Barley’s part. We don’t know that for sure.’

‘If it was a prank, then it went horribly wrong. From Brother John’s point of view. No, I am inclined to think it was genuine. What else was the murderer doing, when John Hanny saw him, as he put it, “making passes” over the monk’s body? What else but searching for something.’

‘Then, do you think he found what he was looking for? If so, why did La Souch die? Unless…’ Bullock’s face suddenly lit up, as a thought struck him. ‘Unless La Souch killed Barley for the relic, took it, and was himself killed in his turn!’

Falconer pulled a face, dousing Bullock’s enthusiasm with cold scorn.

‘Hmmm. I don’t think so, unless we have a string of relic thieves, all queuing up, and prepared to murder in turn for its possession.’

Bullock was disgruntled by Falconer’s careless dismissal, and eager to defend his proposition.

‘Is that so far fetched? A holy relic is a worthy prize indeed, and many would give a fortune for possession of one.’

Falconer suddenly bent forward at this point, tapping Bullock on the knee with a bony finger.

‘And that is what is worrying me about this whole affair.’

Bullock reared back, brushing the offending digit away with the back of his hand.

‘What?’

‘If the holy relic-whatever it is-is so great a prize, then why do we not know of it? Why does the abbey not display it with joy and attract a multitude of pilgrims? And why did John Barley wish to offload it on to the feretarius of St Frideswide’s? With whom he did not have an exactly fraternal relationship.’

‘That is a very good question, Regent Master Falconer.’

Another voice cut into the men’s conversation. Falconer looked over Bullock’s shoulder to see Peter Talam, the bursar of the abbey, entering under the soaring archway that led into the scriptorium. His bustling walk raised dust motes that sparkled in the shafts of light crossing the room.

‘I heard a whisper of just such a relic a number of years ago. Apparently the translation from Tewkesbury to the abbey was effected over thirty years ago. Well before my time, I might say.’

Falconer invited Talam to sit on the stool next to himself and Bullock. But the restless bursar paced backwards and forwards, continuing to raise dust around his heels.

‘Being responsible for the funds of the abbey, I was of course intrigued by the story of a relic in our possession. Especially as it was said to be a piece of the True Cross with Christ’s blood on it. I even asked the abbot about it. This was more than ten years since. But he would say nothing. Neither confirming nor denying the story. And I could tell by his look that I was expected never to raise the question again. So I didn’t.’

Falconer could well believe in Talam’s discretion. He was stiff, but a dedicated servant to the abbey.

‘But someone else did, and recently.’

Falconer recalled the brief snatch of conversation between Abbot Harbottle and the master mason that he had overheard. La Souch had clearly heard the story about the relic himself. He had also got the same short shrift from Harbottle that Talam had received ten years earlier, when he had asked about it. But the effect on the abbot had been devastating, as Falconer himself had witnessed. He realized that Bullock was looking at him with curiosity etched on his face. It was Talam who spoke, however.

‘Eudo La Souch asked the abbot about the relic?’

Falconer nodded.

‘So the mason did know about the relic, but did not possess it.’ Bullock was chagrined he hadn’t seen it. ‘Could he have known its location?’

‘I think not. Or he would not have still been here. He would have…what is the expression?…’ Falconer smiled contemptuously. ‘Translated it.’

Talam pursed his lips in disapproval. The translation of a saint’s remains or any other such relic was in some people’s eyes a euphemism for theft. But those holy people who effected the removal of such relics, sometimes without the owner’s approval, were seen to be merely responding to the demands of the saint to be relocated. To be carrying out a furta sacra-a holy theft, or translation. But he had to admit there was truth in the man’s deduction. If Eudo La Souch had somehow located the relic’s hiding place during the rebuilding work, he would have disappeared as soon as he had been able to remove it. It did still leave the question as to why such a valuable relic had been hidden in the first place, though. The same difficulty had occurred to the constable too.

‘But why hide such a venerable object?’

Talam sighed, and for a moment ceased his endless pacing.

‘Only the abbot knows that. And he’s not telling. If only we knew who the monks were who trans…’ He looked Falconer squarely in the eye, and chose his next word carefully. ‘…brought the relic here. Unfortunately, Brother John Barley was the last of that generation. Apart from the abbot himself.’

Falconer suddenly recalled the abbot lamenting the deaths of several of his colleagues. Now it had a meaning. Sitting as they were in the vast room where texts were copied, and records of the abbey’s life were written, Falconer had an idea.

‘Tell me, Brother Peter, did all those of John Barley’s age die a natural death? I mean, due to advanced years?’

Talam looked puzzled.

‘I don’t know what you mean, Master Falconer. Over the years, many canons have passed over to the Heavenly Jerusalem after a full life of prayer.’

‘But, in recent years, have there been deaths among the older canons not due to the natural process of time? Apparent accidents, perhaps?’

‘There have been some, of course. Just before I came here, I believe there was a brother who ate a poisonous plant accidentally. As for others, I cannot say. Brother Thomas was killed by robbers on the road returning from Glastonbury seven years ago. But these are perfectly normal occurrences in the dangerous and lawless world in which we live.’

‘Perhaps, Brother Peter. Perhaps. But if John Barley was killed for the relic, perhaps others have died because of it. Would you be so kind as to show me the abbey chronicles anyway?’

‘Going back how long?’

‘Let’s say twenty years. To start with.’

Falconer was soon settled down with the records that Talam provided. But, though he seemed content to plough through them, Bullock could not face the thought of sitting with dusty tomes for hours on end. Reading old documents concerning past history was not his idea of pursuing a murder case. Future success required vigorous and decisive action. Besides, he still had his suspicions about Yaxley, the feretarius. He decide to return to Oxford, and winkle the truth out of the man.

And if that didn’t work, there was always the Templar.

It was taking Falconer a long time, but a pattern was beginning to emerge. Starting with a monk twelve years earlier who had died as a result of falling masonry occurring during the building of a section of the great abbey church. The appropriately, if unfortunately, named Brother Benedict Mason had died instantly. One year later it was the turn of the monk Talam had recalled, who had died shortly after eating his dinner. Brother Ralph Durward had been found stone cold, and blue lipped, when he had failed to answer the call of the first bell of the day. The cook had been mortified when it had become apparent that an excess of digitalis had found its way into the monk’s food. He could offer no explanation for the error. And just as Talam had said, Brother Thomas Dyss had been killed on the road just west of Oxford, barely three miles from the sanctuary of his abbey. He had made the long journey to Glastonbury and back without mishap, only to be stabbed to death almost on his doorstep. Robbers on Standlake Common had been blamed. Between these three incidents six other canons had died, though most of old age or disease. The only other death that attracted Falconer’s curiosity was that of Brother William Hasilbech. He had been found on the road north of Oxford with the marks of horses’ shoes imprinted in the bruising on his body. His head was crushed, as if by the flying hoof of a horse. But this was during the lawless times, when the barons had fought the King. There had been much traffic of armies hurrying thither and yon. It could even have been the King himself, or his son Edward, who had carelessly ridden down the monk one dark evening. Both had been in the vicinity of Oxford at the same time. Falconer recorded it as a possibility in his search for a pattern of deaths.

It was another hour, and by candlelight as night closed in, before he found the final suspicious incident. Brother John Paston had gone into the church during a violent thunderstorm one night a year earlier, and had been discovered only the following morning, with a chewed-up scroll blocking his mouth. He had choked. It had been supposed that Paston, a deeply devout if rather difficult individual, had been emulating the command of the mighty angel in Revelation, who, to the accompaniment of seven thunders, adjured John in the following way. ‘Take the scroll, and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, though in your mouth it tastes as sweet as honey.’

Falconer doubted that the soggy paper wedge had tasted so to Paston in his last moments. By the guttering flame of the candle stub, he scratched down the names on a scrap of parchment, left by the monk whose desk he sat at.

Mason-brained by a stone

Durward-poisoned by a plant

Hasilbech-trampled by a horse

Dyss-stabbed by a robber

Paston-suffocated on a scroll

Barley-throat cut by a sickle

Six monks, all dying in suspicious circumstances, when viewed from this new perspective. But didn’t these things always come in sevens?

‘Don’t forget La Souch, flying from the tower, and dying like Hiram Abiff.’

Falconer stiffened as the disembodied voice whispered an answer from the darkness. He hadn’t known he had uttered his final thought out loud. Maybe he hadn’t. He sat perfectly still, listening and trying to work out from where the voice had come. Whoever it was, was referring to the ancient mason of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. Hiram Abiff had been killed by three apprentices, and tossed down from the Temple rather than betray the masonic secrets he was entrusted with. Could the person in the darkness be a Jew? Deudone, perhaps? Not to be outdone in esoteric knowledge, Falconer offered another similarity to test the hidden man.

‘Just as James, brother of Jesus, was struck on the head and cast down from the Temple rather than reveal the secret that the two pillars Jachin and Boaz were the gates of salvation.’

The lurker in the darkness gave a little grunt of satisfaction.

‘I knew you would understand. So, now you have possession of a secret of your own. What do you think should be done about it?’

The voice was cold, and dispassionate, and it sent a shiver down Falconer’s spine.

Bullock was in some difficulty. He had searched high and low but he could not find Richard Yaxley. The feretarius had seen to his duties as normal up until the closing of the church to pilgrims. After that, no-one was quite sure whether they had seen him. The chaplain servicing the tapers was certain Yaxley had gone to take the pilgrims’ offerings to the priory chest. But only because that was what he did at this time every day. The bursar thought he had seen him, but then couldn’t be certain, as he may have been thinking of yesterday. Or the day before. The upshot was that Yaxley had disappeared, and the night was drawing in. Deeply concerned that a potential murderer might be on the loose, Peter Bullock hurried towards his lodgings in the castle. He had the curfew, and the locking of the town gates, to see to. But at the same time, he would use the crew of the night watch to scour the streets for the missing monk. They were a bunch of old men, but Yaxley was hardly a desperate criminal who would seek to fight his way out of a corner, if found. He was more a lurker in the dark, and a back-stabber.

Crossing Carfax, he was hailed by Matthew Syward, who kept watch at the North Gate for him. In truth, the man was lazy and unreliable, more inclined to ogle the women who frequented the stews of Broken Hays than attend to his task. But the job was poorly paid, and required attendance when others would prefer to be at home, or in the tavern with comrades. It was well nigh impossible to get someone who could be relied on. Syward was the best Bullock could hope for. So, when the gatekeeper tried to tell him of the swarthy man with the soldierly mien who had once again sneaked out through the North Gate just before curfew, Bullock didn’t pay much attention to him. Syward was always taking against someone he thought had slighted him, and making up stories. It was Yaxley Bullock needed to find, before another murder was committed.

The figure glided silently out of the darkness, and rested his hands on Falconer’s tense shoulders. He looked down at the list scratched on the parchment before the Regent Master.

‘Hmmm. They are all dead, then.’

‘De Beaujeu-it is you. I could not be sure. In fact, when the constable reckoned he had seen you, I did not believe him. After all, nothing could be so important as to bring a future Grand Master of the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple all the way to Oxford. But when I went back to John Hanny’s description of the…apparition he had seen hovering over the body of John Barley, it did set me to thinking. Before I came here today, I spoke to Hanny once more.’ He didn’t admit that the real reason he had returned to Aristotle’s Hall was to ensure Hanny’s welfare. That he was getting his fair share of food. His conscience had pricked him hard. ‘This time, his story did make me wonder if the dark-skinned man could yet have been young Deudone the Jew. But he said the lurker in the shadows was cool and calm. Such self-assurance shown by taking the time to search the body eliminated the hotheaded youth. He is boastful and would have panicked, whereas you, a Templar…’ Falconer let the idea hang in the chill air for a moment, remembering too the fleeting glimpse of a familiar face he had seen in the crowd around the dead mason’s body. ‘If it was you, this relic must be something very special.’

He could still feel the steely grip of Guillaume de Beaujeu on his shoulders. Close to his neck. So close that he was unsure of the man he had once thought of as his friend. He recalled Bullock saying that you couldn’t trust the Templars, if your motives did not coincide with theirs. Maybe the constable had been right. One way or the other, he had to know the truth.

‘Was it you my young student saw standing over the body of John Barley?’

De Beaujeu’s fingers dug into Falconer’s flesh. Then relaxed.

‘Surely, William, you cannot think I killed him? I thought you knew me better than that.’

‘Truthfully, I think I hardly know you at all. You are a very…inscrutable sort of man.’

‘While you wear your heart on your sleeve for all to see. Talking of hearts, how is the beautiful Anne, by the way?’

Falconer did not respond to the Templar’s enquiry about Mistress Anne Segrim. She was and always had been another man’s wife. That was the end of the matter.

‘I see.’ De Beaujeu took his hands from Falconer’s shoulders, and slid down on to the stool next to him. ‘Well, you were right about the apparition this boy saw searching the body. It was me, and I was looking for the relic. I was also aware the boy had seen me. That’s why I left before I could be dragged into the whole sorry mess. I was following a rumour about this particular relic when I heard of the monk John Barley offering just such a one in the town, and arranged for him to bring it to me. But I was too late. The murderer got to him first, and there was no sign of the relic on the body. All I could do for poor Barley was to arrange his body more sympathetically than the killer had left it.’

Falconer recalled remarking to Bullock, when they had found the body, about the piety of the arrangement of its limbs. That had been De Beaujeu, then, and not the murderer. He believed the Templar when he averred he was not the killer. For if he had been, then Hanny would have been dead too by now. The Templar would not have left a witness alive.

‘This relic must mean a lot to you.’

The Templar lowered his gaze, and his voice became slightly muffled and tremulous.

‘You are right. I came here to find the relic on behalf of the Order. But I have a personal reason for tracking it down also. Let me explain.’

In the gathering darkness, De Beaujeu related to Falconer a story of death and despair appropriate to the gloomy surroundings in which they sat. He told a tale of a fragment of the True Cross, stained with Christ’s blood, which had passed from hand to hand for one hundred and fifty years, leaving mayhem in its wake. He told of the curse that tainted the relic, causing the death of anyone who touched it. How the Muslim guardian of the relic had laid the curse before being slain by a Crusader simply for being an Arab in Jerusalem.

‘That Crusader was Miles de Clermont. And he was my ancestor.’

Falconer could hear in de Beaujeu’s tone of voice the burden this placed on the Templar. His Order wished to hide the tainted relic from the world. But it seemed de Beaujeu felt personally responsible, not only for the action of his ancestor, but for every death caused by the tainted relic ever since. Falconer, however, still refused to accept the sorcery.

‘I don’t believe in such nonsense as curses. Why, if I did, I would be shrivelled to nothing by now from all the curses laid upon me by my students down the years. They have cursed me a-plenty for the work I have set them.’

De Beaujeu shook his head sadly.

‘This is too deadly to be taken so lightly, William. If you could only hear the tales that down the years have accompanied this relic…’

Falconer abruptly interrupted.

‘Exactly. That is what they are. Just tales, recited to please a gawking audience of fools.’

‘And the deaths of these six monks?’ De Beaujeu tapped the scrap of parchment with the six names on it. ‘Did they not appropriate the relic, and in so doing tarnish their souls, so that their deaths were inevitable? Is it not the way they died which has led you to assuming these six names are those of the monks who have touched the relic?’

Falconer was trapped by his own logic. That indeed had been his thinking, he had to admit to the Templar.

‘But they were killed by a human agency, not by the relic in some mystical way.’

‘Does it matter how they died? The fact is they touched the relic, and now they are dead. As is the mason, La Souch.’ De Beaujeu paused. ‘And with them dies the only hope I had of tracing the relic’s location.’

Falconer couldn’t help but smile. Something else had just fallen into place for him.

‘Not exactly. Unless La Souch was felled by avenging angels, or the ghost of this murdered Arab…’ He held his hand up to ward off De Beaujeu’s incipient protest at his flippant remark. ‘Unless some supernatural power is at work here, La Souch was killed by someone other than the six errant monks, who by then were all dead themselves. So someone else knows about the tainted relic, and thought that the master mason had uncovered its whereabouts. That was a secret this person thought worth keeping. And I have an idea how to find out who it is.’

Bullock hurried through the night, hoping he might be in time. His failure to find Yaxley had driven him to seeking out Will Plome. It had occurred to him that the simpleton may have been aware of the feretarius’s absence when he made his late night visit to the shrine. Even Will could have assumed that Brother Richard would stop him climbing down the Holy Hole to gain such close proximity to the saint. The boy had lodgings in Sleying Lane outside the town walls, charitably provided by no less a person than the Jewess Belaset. It was no more than a simple room, but Belaset charged nothing for it. Getting Will’s eager, if unreliable, services in return. Businesslike she might be, and better at it than her husband or son, but she was also a mother. And she could not bear to see somebody’s son reduced to begging in the street. Few were aware of her kindness to the simpleton, as she cared for none to know. But Peter Bullock knew, and though it was late, he called on Belaset. He wanted her help when he confronted Will.

Belaset agreed to accompany him, though she was herself worried about her absent son, Deudone. He had gone off into the night about some mission of his own. Belaset was afraid he would get himself into trouble, and hoped he had merely gone to press his suit with Hannah. But in the meantime, she couldn’t refuse to help the constable coax the truth out of Will. So, having roused the sleeping guardian of South Gate, and berated him for his laxity, Bullock, along with Belaset, slipped quietly through the wicket gate set within the massive town gates proper.

It did not take long to rouse the bewildered Will Plome, and soon he was lighting a cheap tallow lamp to illuminate his quarters. The yellow glow revealed a little room that was surprisingly neat, though spartan. The furniture amounted to no more than a low bed, a stool and a table. On the table lay some gaming boards, one a circular tablet with holes bored in it in a sort of pattern. Most of the holes were filled with pegs. Bullock recognized it as a board to play the Solitary Game on. The other board he couldn’t figure out. It looked like two chessboards linked together, and on it were arrayed gaming pieces, some of which were circular, some triangular and some square. Bullock took it for a child’s toy, to pleasure Will’s simple mind. The boy saw him looking, and explained.

‘It is a game I was taught by Master Falconer. He calls it the Philosopher’s Game. He gets angry when I beat him at it.’

Bullock smiled, imagining his friend allowing the simpleton to win, and feigning annoyance as part of the game. But Belaset put him right.

‘Will is very good at the game. And I suppose William Falconer is annoyed at Will’s skill because it requires a high understanding of mathematics, such as the Regent Master fancies is only reserved for himself. Will has the beating of me at it too.’

Bullock coughed in embarrassment, not understanding how a simpleton could have a greater mind than both this clever Jewess and his best friend. It didn’t make sense, unless the woman was having fun at his expense. He would have to ask Falconer later. But first he needed to know all about Yaxley, and his nocturnal activities.

‘Will Plome, you must tell all you know about what Brother Richard at St Frideswide’s has been doing these last few nights. You do know something, don’t you?’

Will looked anxiously at his friend, Belaset. ‘Brother Richard committed a mortal sin…’ He faltered. The olive-skinned woman looked deeply into the boy’s soul with her big brown eyes.

‘Tell him the truth now, Will.’

The truth, when it came out, did not surprise the constable one morsel.

Falconer stood at the edge, contemplating the pilgrimage before him. He knew he would find enlightenment in the labyrinth. The path was tortuous, twisting back on itself, taking him through the four stages of the mass. He stepped forward and entered into Evangelium. Three turns and he was in the segment representing Offertory. A turn back on himself and it was Evangelium again. Then three loops and back into Offertory. Two loops and he was walking Consecration. Like any pilgrimage, any seeking for purgation, the route was never straightforward. Two more turns and he was in the final segment. Communion. He stood right in the centre of the labyrinth, surveying the six petals at its core. And the seventh point under his feet at the centre of the labyrinth. He knew that here lay Illumination. Under a slab with a carving of God represented as a master mason. The perfect hiding place for a cursed relic. The slab under him rocked slightly.

‘Has it been vouchsafed to you yet?’

The voice was quiet, and deliberately held low. But Falconer could detect the tremulous undercurrent in it.

‘Illumination? Yes, it has.’

He looked across the void that was the labyrinth to where the figure stood, tall and angular, between the pillars at the back of the nave. The rose window hung over his hooded head, lit only by the cold rays of the full moon. The colours were dulled and leaden.

‘We all touched it, you know. The relic. And so our fates were sealed on that day so long ago.’

‘There was nothing inevitable about the deaths of your fellow monks, Brother Robert.’ Falconer was still clinging to the idea of his rational world. ‘That was in your hands, not fate.’

‘In one sense you are right, Regent Master. But there was some inevitability about how they died, don’t you think?’

‘No, Brother Robert. You arranged that yourself to fit into your little world of the labyrinth.’ Falconer slowly circled the central core of the maze, listing each of the contemplative elements around its edge. ‘Mineral-Brother Benedict Mason killed by masonry. Plant-Brother Ralph Durward poisoned by a herb. Animal-Brother William Hasilbech trampled by a horse. Human-Brother Thomas Dyss killed, apparently by a robber, though that was you too, wasn’t it?’ Falconer stared through the gloom at the hooded figure. Robert Anselm did not move a muscle, so Falconer continued his litany. ‘Angelic-Brother John Paston suffocated by a scroll as in Revelation. And finally, the Unnameable-Brother John Barley reaped by a sickle, just like the actions of our Lord in Revelation.’

Anselm nodded with apparent satisfaction at the symmetry of the deaths. But Falconer had not yet finished. He began to wind his way out of the labyrinth, walking first directly towards the monk, but then turning left into Communion. A complete about-turn then brought him back on his outward track, only for him to turn left again around the rim of the labyrinth. He talked as he circumnavigated the course to Union. Action in the world.

‘What I don’t understand is how you fitted into this group. They were all old men, and had brought the relic here a very long time ago. You could only have been a boy at the time.’

‘I was seven. I worked in the kitchens here, and the canons were so used to seeing me around that they didn’t see me any more. If you know what I mean. When the six canons-Mason, Durward, Hasilbech, Dyss, Paston and Barley-came back with a piece of the True Cross, I overheard their conversation. I crept into the chapter house where Hasilbech was showing Abbot Leech their furta sacra. It seemed nothing at first sight. Just a small wooden box. Then Brother Thomas Dyss opened it up, and removed something. It seemed to shine of its own accord, though no doubt it was just a reflection of the light shining on it through the windows. It was a glass bottle. For some reason Brother Thomas opened it, and slid the contents out on to his palm. The canons passed it around. Only the abbot refrained from touching it. It was only later I knew how lucky he had been. He was reading a small strip of parchment that had lain at the bottom of the box. When he finished reading, his face drained of blood, and he urged Ralph Durward, who was holding the contents of the bottle in his hand to return it to the vial immediately. Then he commanded the canon to put the bottle back in the box, which lay on the seat of his chair. Finally, in the face of all the protests from his six canons, he ushered them from the chapter house. It was only when they had gone that I realized they had left the box behind. I could not resist it.

‘Risking being caught in the act, I sneaked over, and opened the box. Inside lay an old glass vial with a gilded stopper. It was difficult to see what was inside because the glass was clouded. So, like Brother Thomas, I picked the vial up, and unstoppered it. As I tipped the vial, a greyish piece of wood slid out on to my palm. On its surface was a dark brown stain. Somehow, I knew immediately what it was, and I was awestruck. I cannot describe the feeling to you, even now.’

As the monk spoke, Falconer’s progress out through the maze was leading him inexorably to Anselm. He could see how the monk’s eyes glittered in the darkness at the recollection of holding the True Cross stained with Christ’s blood in his hand.

‘Of course, then I did not know of the curse on those who touched the relic. That only emerged in rumours at the abbey the following day, when the relic, so newly acquired, disappeared, never to be seen again. Abbot Leech had read the warning enclosed in the box, and enjoined the community not to mention its existence. He hid it away himself, then later had it immolated by the mason rebuilding the abbey. No-one knew that the kitchen boy had touched it also. The dire consequences of the curse filled me with horror. I was only a boy, yet my careless curiosity had apparently doomed me. In the same way it had doomed the six canons.’

Falconer now faced Anselm at the very exit to the labyrinth.

‘But you later also learned that those who touch the relic only die when they relinquish it from their possession, didn’t you?’

Anselm’s hooded head dipped in acknowledgement.

‘Yes. And that is why it must remain in the abbey. The others couldn’t see that. But they were very old, and had no reason to fear death. John Barley would have given it to Yaxley merely to be rid of it, if I had not stopped him. He felt he could sacrifice what was left of his life to rid the abbey of the cursed thing. But I still wanted to live.’

‘And Eudo La Souch?’

‘The mason had discovered where his predecessor had finally hidden it at Abbot Leech’s behest. The other day, I came upon him rocking back and forth on the slab. He pretended to be just checking on the security of the tiles, but I knew what he was doing. So when he next ascended the tower to check the bells, I pushed him off. You see, the relic cannot leave the abbey, or I will die.’

‘That’s nonsense. You of all people must see that. It was you who killed your six fellow canons, not the relic. Or its curse.’

The hooded figure shook its head, and lifted a trembling hand up.

‘Then by what agency am I afflicted with what plagues me?’ He swept the hood away from his head, and Falconer gasped at seeing how gaunt and grey Anselm’s features had become. The man was wasting away before his eyes.

‘It is as if a rat gnaws at my vitals, giving surcease neither night nor day. I don’t think I will stand it much longer.’

Indeed he looked like a living skeleton already, consumed from the inside out. But he was a spectre with a purpose. He pulled a knife from under his robe and, summoning all his failing energies, sprang at Falconer. But he was too weak already. He almost fell into de Beaujeu’s arms as the Templar stepped out of the shadows, where he had been hiding. Despite his failure to achieve his aim, the monk’s face still bore a beatific smile.

‘I have lost, then. But if I were to have the chance once again to hold the True Cross in my hand-to touch Christ’s blood-I would take it willingly.’

Abbot Ralph Harbottle lifted the small wooden box out of the exposed hole in the floor at the centre of the labyrinth. Seeing for the first time what the abbot before him had taken such care to hide away. It was made of rosewood, carved and gilded, though the gilding was largely worn away. Cautiously, he lifted the hinged lid to reveal the contents to the three men standing with him. William Falconer and Peter Bullock peered into the box, where lay a small glass vial atop two battered strips of parchment. It seemed far too insignificant to be such a powerful and revered relic, with such a weighty and gloom-ridden history. Bullock was disappointed. As disappointed as he had been to discover from Will Plome that Brother Richard Yaxley’s only crime was to have become enamoured of Matthew Syward’s wife. On learning the truth, the constable had rushed from Will’s hovel to catch the two adulterers in the act. In the end, his only satisfaction had been to see the pompous feretarius turned into a grovelling penitent. Belaset had returned home to find Deudone moping over his rejection by Hannah. It had still been Falconer who had uncovered the real murderer.

Harbottle touched the two pieces of parchment. One averred the authenticity of the relic. The other, slightly less ancient document warned of the curse. It was the latter Abbot Leech had read on the fateful day the box had been brought to Oseney. Harbottle closed the lid of the rosewood box, and passed it to the third man. The Templar, Guillaume de Beaujeu, hesitated only a moment before taking it from the abbot. Possession of the box represented the culmination of a long and tortuous pilgrimage for him.

‘I promise to keep it safe, and henceforth prevent it harming anyone else. What my ancestor, Miles de Clermont, brought about, I will bring to an end. No more deaths will be occasioned by this relic.’ But then he realized the implications of his actions. He looked up to meet Harbottle’s lugubrious stare. ‘What of Brother Anselm?’

The abbot shook his head. Anselm was not yet dead, but it was inevitable anyway, whether the relic was removed from the abbey or not. His end was not far away, and his dying would be a painful journey. There were many deaths besmirching his immortal soul. De Beaujeu took a deep breath.

‘Then let him be the last that dies because of this curse.’