Tyrant of the Mind

Chapter Twenty

The body of the murdered man lay covered on a trestle bench in the sanctuary of the castle chapel. Thomas looked around on the vague hope that someone would appear to order him off or perhaps bring him the comfort of companionship. He was, however, quite alone.

He stood quietly beside the corpse for a moment, then pulled back the cover to reveal the butchered body of a man who was once a son, a brother, and perchance even some woman’s lover.

Although the chapel was bitterly cold, the smell of decay was unmistakable. The sickening sweet odor of overripe flesh from the corpse’s pale skin drifted into his nostrils. Thomas coughed. He wanted to vomit but would not allow himself such a weakness.

“Courage, man!” he muttered to himself. “You may have taken monastic vows, but you are no less a man than you were before them.” He shrugged. “And the man you were probably wouldn’t like this any more than the man you are.” Thomas smiled at his weak attempt to draw bravery into his heart.

The corpse lay on its back. Thomas held his breath and bent to examine the body. There were marks on the face. Scratches perhaps. Thomas could count three, perhaps four, jagged lines along the left cheek. There was also a deeper cut on the left side of the face. That wound had bled freely but would not have been fatal unless it had festered. It looked cleanly done. A sharp knife perhaps?

Gingerly, he turned the body over on one side. “Here the killer plunged the knife into Henry’s left side just under his arm,” he noted aloud, the sound of his own voice echoing back at him from the crudely rounded roof over the sanctuary. “A short slice on the face from ear to jaw. Then a blow to the left side? Might there have been two men who attacked him? One behind him who held a knife under his chin, thus cutting him in the struggle, and one who delivered the blow from the front and under his arm?”

Thomas frowned in thought. If Henry had been surprised by the attack from behind, the assailant could have slit his throat easily. There would have been no need for the second wound. Had Henry become aware of the threat in time to struggle free after a slight wound to his face, he would have called out. From the rooms along that corridor, the baron, the priest and Thomas could have rushed to his aid and frightened the assailants off before a fatal wound was struck against a man who was fighting back. Neither sequence of events matched the wounds. Why?

The wound in the side was a strange one as well. If he had been facing his murderer, surely he would have been stabbed in the heart. Had he twisted somehow? Thomas turned this way, then that. No motion quite fit the blow.

Finally, there were the scratches on his face. What were they from?

Thomas flipped the body all the way over. In the back of the corpse was yet another very deep wound. “If he had been killed with the blow under the arm, why stab him again in the back?” he wondered aloud. He bent down and looked more closely at the wound. He made a fist as if holding a dagger and pretended to strike at the corpse. This wound seemed to have been made by a blow from above; the cut was higher on the right and slanted down to the left. Why would someone have faced Henry only to reach around him and stab him in the back?

He looked again at the side wound and compared the size of that entry wound under the arm with the one in the back. The one in the back was large enough to suggest that a blade had been plunged all the way into the body. The smaller wound in the side indicated one of two things: a very small blade had been used or only part of the knife had entered Henry’s side. More likely the latter, Thomas thought. “The knife may have entered Henry’s lung at the side wound, but it would not be deep enough to reach his heart. It surely would have been fatal eventually,” he whispered, “but the one in the back would have killed him at once.”

Thomas spent another few minutes looking over the body but saw nothing else of interest. Then he stood back to get a cleaner breath of air before he turned the corpse over on its back, an act he did with as much gentleness as if Henry had still been alive. He carefully pulled the cover up to hide the man’s body from curious eyes and fell into silent thought.

As with any man, Henry would have had his faults and perhaps even deserved punishment for them. But this? Thomas looked at the outline of the corpse under the sheet. No man or men had the right to murder him. Indeed, what right had any imperfect mortal to steal another’s life?

His own time in prison might have made him more hesitant than others to conclude that any man had the right to decree how another should die. That Thomas freely admitted. If he were yet more honest with himself, he would acknowledge that he secretly thought that only God, not men, should decide fit punishment for crimes that now required the burning, hanging or quartering of a fellow man. Since one mortal’s idea of fair punishment was another’s definition of excess, or laxity, could either be right?

Last summer, he had seen human judgments rendered. One he had even abetted. Now, looking at Henry’s mutilated body, he wondered if he had been right to do so. Might not severe penance have been the better choice until a natural death took the person to face God’s justice? He hesitated. And should the sinner himself have a choice?

“If the sinner understood the depth of his sin, might he not have the right to seek God’s eternal judgment quickly?” Thomas immediately dismissed the idea in fear. “May God forgive me for such a thought! That path suggests that self-murder would not be sin if it would allow a man to face God sooner, a most heretical idea indeed!”

He turned away from the body. He should not be thinking on any of this. Such questions were better left to philosophers and saints. In too short a time, he had been faced with much violent death, and he had been graced with neither the calm faith of a monk called to the vocation nor the temperament of a soldier hardened to such things.

Thomas walked away from the body on the trestle, then stopped. Surely, he had seen something move. Just in front of him toward the door.

There it was again. He was sure of it. Something had moved in the shadows. Then he heard a light scuffling sound.

Taking care not to let whoever was watching him know that he was privy to their presence, he crossed himself as if he had been in prayer, then bowed his head and walked on, slowly, meditatively, toward the chapel door.

As he reached the place where he had noted the movement, he bent down to examine his shoe, meanwhile shifting his eyes to peer carefully into the darkness. A darker shadow moved once again. Thomas stood up and turned toward the shifting gloom.

“What are you doing here, Richard?” he asked.