The Falconer's Knot: A Story of Friars, Flirtation and Foul Play

by Mary Hoffman

  The Abbot signalled for him to stand aside and, as he did, another friar came along the corridor.

  ‘Welcome, Sisters,’ he said. ‘I shall accompany you.’

  ‘Brother Rufino,’ acknowledged Eufemia. ‘These are my novices, Paola and Orsola. Brother Rufino is the Infirmarian.’

  ‘And the person who found the body,’ added Bonsignore, ‘which has not been moved since. Though, of course, we have sent to his wife in Gubbio. We assume she will want the body transported there for burial.’

  His wife, thought Chiara. Of course. He was a rich man and even a poor one may have a family. It made the thought of what they were about to do much worse.

  ‘And please come to my cell when your work is done,’ said the Abbot. ‘I shall be pleased to offer you a glass of wine.’

  The door of the cell was pushed inward and Chiara strained her eyes in the gloom to see the figure on the bed. The cell had no window.

  ‘Please leave the door open,’ said Sister Eufemia, taking charge. ‘So that we may have enough light.’

  ‘I shall have water and cloths brought to you, Sisters,’ said the Infirmarian. ‘But first . . .’

  Brother Rufino stepped in and moved towards the thing on the bed. He had a cloth in his hand. Chiara saw the flash of the dagger as he drew it from the body and it made a sound like her brother carving meat at table. Before she realised what was happening, the cold stone of the cell floor was rushing up to meet her.

  When she opened her eyes, she was in the corridor again, with the not very reassuring sight of the Infirmarian standing over her with the dagger wrapped in a white cloth, which was slowly turning red.

  Sister Eufemia fussed round her but Chiara struggled to her feet, mortified. Sister Paola hadn’t fainted.

  ‘I am perfectly all right,’ she said. ‘Do not let me hinder you.’

  ‘If you are quite sure,’ said Brother Rufino anxiously. Sister Eufemia nodded to him and he left, taking the dagger with him.

  The corpse was much less frightening without it. The merchant was just a man after all and a dead man can’t do any harm. At least, that was what Chiara told herself. Then she saw with a shock that this corpse was the drunken man who had laughed at her and Sister Veronica on the road the day before. Chiara felt again how fragile life was, how a vigorous man could be snuffed out in an instant. The thought made her shudder.

  Under Sister Eufemia’s instruction, she helped wash the body, even round the wound, without feeling sick or faint again. They removed his clothes down to his undershirt and then Sister Eufemia pulled a long white shift, brought by a friar from the infirmary, over the dead man’s head. Then they washed and combed his hair and beard, which was not too bad because Sister Eufemia had closed his eyes first. There were bad smells though: stale wine and sweat and something metallic that must have been the blood.

  Sister Eufemia had saved one bowl of water to wash their hands in when the task was finished and she let the novices go first.

  ‘Time to visit the Abbot, my dears,’ she said, quite kindly.

  Chiara was glad to get out of the cell into the comparatively fresh air of the corridor. The sisters walked to the far end, where Sister Eufemia knocked on a large wooden door. When they entered the room, she saw that the Abbot had another friar with him, the kind Brother Anselmo that she had met in Assisi. She felt very pleased to see him, though he was looking just as grave and strained as Father Bonsignore.

  ‘It is done,’ said Sister Eufemia simply. But Chiara saw that the hand with which she accepted her cup of wine was not altogether steady.

  Brother Fazio, the Illuminator, was explaining to anyone who would listen to him, that the merchant Ubaldo had been perfectly well and in good humour when he had parted with him at the door of his cell.

  ‘But that is irrelevant, surely?’ said Brother Taddeo. ‘A man may be as well or sick as he likes before he is stabbed to death. He will be just as unwell afterwards.’

  Brother Fazio glared at him but conceded that he had a point. The friars were all gathered in the refectory, where the Abbot had asked them to wait. From time to time, Bertuccio brought them something to eat or drink. The daily timetable was ignored and they didn’t know if they had eaten their midday meal or not. In spite of advice to pray and meditate, there was an air almost of holiday.

  Not since he arrived in Giardinetto had Silvano seen all the brothers gathered together for so long with no task to do. There were several of them that he still didn’t know by name and he wasn’t at all sure what they all did. Since he spent all his waking hours when he was not praying or eating or sleeping, working in the colour room, he had made little contact with Fazio the Illuminator or Monaldo the Librarian or Valentino the Herbalist.

  But they were all there now. And there was only one possible subject of conversation.

  ‘Why is Brother Anselmo so long with the Abbot?’ whispered Matteo, one of the other novices who worked with the Colour Master.

  ‘Perhaps he is helping him to solve the mystery,’ suggested Silvano, also in a whisper. And such was the veneration Brother Anselmo was held in by all who worked alongside him, that it seemed only natural to them that he would be using his great intellect to discover the murderer of the merchant.

  Silvano had not seen the body; no one in the friary had but Brother Rufino and the Abbot – and the killer, of course. But Silvano did not need to see it. He knew exactly what a man looked like when his life had bled out through his ribs. This new death, so far from Perugia, haunted and unsettled him. But whoever had killed Tommaso had surely not followed Ubaldo to Giardinetto from Assisi?

  Yet perhaps the merchant had some business connection with the larger city? Try as he might, Silvano could see no link between the two killings except himself. He thanked the Lord that it wasn’t he who had discovered this latest body, but he wondered how long it would be before others made the connection. He wasn’t even sure that the Abbot believed in his innocence any more.

  ‘Whose dagger was it?’ Brother Valentino asked of no one in particular.

  ‘His own, I think,’ said Rufino, who had just entered the room, holding the weapon before him. It was cleaned of all bloodstains but still held a horrid fascination for every man in the refectory. ‘See, there is the letter “U” engraved on the hilt and Father Bonsignore thinks he saw such a dagger at his belt when he arrived.’

  ‘To kill a man with his own dagger!’ said Brother Taddeo.

  ‘The Abbot says you may disperse to your own occupations,’ said Brother Rufino. ‘We shall assemble in the chapel for Sext at noon and then come back here to eat. The bell will summon you in about an hour.’

  Silvano was one of the first to leave and the first thing he saw was Father Bonsignore and Brother Anselmo escorting three grey sisters across the courtyard. He recognised pretty Sister Orsola straightaway. What on earth was she doing in the friary? The other two were unknown to him. She turned at the gate and looked at him, as if aware that he was there. And into that look she put such compassion and understanding that his heart began to race.

  It was Brother Landolfo, the Guest Master himself, who had insisted on riding to Gubbio to break the news to the merchant’s wife. Although he was no longer young and certainly no longer slim, he had been a great horseman before he felt called to the way of Saint Francis. And he felt such guilt that a guest had died under his protection that only a fast ride on one of the friary’s surprised horses could relieve his feelings.

  When Isabella had seen him in her home pacing the carpet, she knew that the news was bad but she prayed that it would be bad enough. A husband wounded, mutilated, incapacitated, she could have borne if she had loved him but not Ubaldo. He was hard enough to endure in his health; in sickness he would be insupportable.

  But she need not have worried. Her husband was dead.

  She drank d
eep of the wine she had ordered for the friar and he looked at her sympathetically. Shock. It did strange things to people. He might have expected this gracious and beautiful lady to weep and she did not do that. But turning pale and gulping wine and pressing her hand to her exquisite forehead were all good enough signs of grief.

  ‘Stabbed, you say?’ she said at last. ‘Who did it?’

  ‘Alas, Madama, we do not know. The Abbot has undertaken to investigate but I left before he reached any conclusion.’

  ‘I must come to him,’ said Isabella, more calmly than she felt. ‘I must bring his body home. But I have things to arrange here first. I suppose I must see a priest, arrange the funeral. And I must tell the children.’ Her voice cracked.

  ‘There is no need for you to travel, Madama,’ said Brother Landolfo. ‘We can arrange to have him brought home if that would help. I believe the sisters from our neighbour convent have prepared the body.’

  ‘Thank you; you are kind. But I must go and bring him myself in his own carriage.’ Isabella looked down at her green dress with the yellow silk bodice. ‘And I must change into more suitable clothes.’ She rose. ‘Please stay as long as you wish. Ring if there is anything you need. Let my servants bring you food. But you must excuse me. There is so much to do.’

  And as she climbed the stairs to her children Monna Isabella felt bowed down by the weight of all her responsibilities. She did not wish Ubaldo back; she had often dreamed of this moment, not daring to hope it would come when she was still young enough to benefit from it. But now that it had, she felt no pleasure. Only apprehension and a terrible searing loneliness.

  .

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Illumination

  Silvano sensed the change as soon as he joined the brothers in the chapel next morning. There was nothing specific: a few friars perhaps looked at him more closely than usual. But there was something in the air – a feeling that he was the subject of speculation. It wasn’t until breaking their fast after Prime that anyone said anything direct.

  His fellow-novice Brother Matteo whispered to him, ‘Is it true? You are not really a novice?’

  ‘Silence in the refectory!’ called the Novice Master, saving Silvano from the need to answer.

  But he caught up with Matteo on their way to the colour room.

  ‘Who says that I am not a novice?’ he demanded.

  ‘Everyone,’ said Matteo, not unkindly. ‘We had all wondered, what with you being allowed to go hawking and keeping your horse. But now everyone is saying that you came here because of a murder.’ He hesitated. ‘A knifing in Perugia – like the one here.’

  Silvano sighed. First his interrogation by the Abbot and now the common knowledge of his secret. It had been good not being under suspicion these last weeks, but it had obviously come to an end.

  ‘I am guilty of neither crime,’ he said and saw Matteo’s worried expression clear. ‘The man in Perugia I found dying and it looked bad against me because he was killed with my dagger. And,’ he swallowed, ‘I had been paying attention to his wife. But I did not kill him. And this man Ubaldo was completely unknown to me. I did not exchange a word with him. Why would I want to kill him?’

  ‘Brothers,’ said the Colour Master, appearing out of nowhere behind them, ‘do not dawdle. We have much time to make up in the colour room if we are to keep Ser Simone supplied.’

  It was a relief to return to work. Most of the friars had spent the day before in idleness and it did not suit them, as well as being against the rule of their founder. The lack of activity had bred speculation and gossip, which was no doubt how the word about Silvano had spread. He was aware of the glances of the other friars in the room and had to try hard to concentrate on the pigment he was making.

  ‘We need large quantities of terra verde – green earth,’ said Brother Anselmo, just as if no one had been horribly murdered in the friary the day before. ‘Ser Simone uses it for under-painting the flesh tones of all the figures in his frescoes. It is the simplest colour to make. We have here a load of celadon rock from Verona,’ indicating some sacks in the corner. ‘Now, it is not exciting. It cannot be used for finished greens in wall paintings, like malachite or verdigris, because it won’t last. But it is an essential part of the painter’s art and we shall spend today grinding it for the glory of Saint Francis, in whose Basilica it will be used.’

  It was a long speech for Brother Anselmo, and Silvano sensed that he was trying to bring the brothers back to earth – literally – by giving them this dull clay-like stuff to work with. And there seemed to be a message about how much unexciting work was needed before a surface could be richly adorned. It was clear that he had no intention of discussing the murder and the friars worked diligently at their porphyry slabs till Sext at noon.

  But there was no rule of silence in the colour room and, as long as the work was done, Brother Anselmo did not mind if there was a low level of conversation. The trouble was, from Silvano’s point of view, that the main topic seemed to be him. Many of the brothers glanced towards him and held whispered conversations. He was gratified to see Brother Matteo talking animatedly under his breath to some of them and he hoped that his denial of the murders was being passed on. But no one spoke to him all morning and he felt very alone.

  A visit from Brother Fazio was a welcome interruption. The Illuminator worked separately from Brother Anselmo and had his own novices to assist him. But he came into the colour room for supplies of dragonsblood, arzica, sandarach or saffron. Before Anselmo’s arrival, he had got his colours from Sister Veronica at the convent. There was only one colour that he made himself and that was the lead-white used for the surfaces of his parchment.

  When he had gathered up what he needed, Brother Anselmo said something quietly to Fazio and he beckoned Silvano to help carry his packages. Silvano was glad to leave the poisoned atmosphere of the colour room behind.

  Brother Fazio led the way to his cell, the only double one in the friary. Silvano assumed that the inner room was where the Illuminator slept and prayed. The large outer room was a public one, full of activity. Two novices worked on scraping the animal skins that would become the parchment. In the middle of the room was a high wooden desk with a seat and on the surface was spread the page that Brother Fazio was working on.

  ‘It is a New Testament,’ Fazio explained, when Silvano had handed his parcels of pigments over to one of the novices. ‘Here I am illuminating the words of Saint John the Evangelist.’

  Silvano looked at the elaborate letter at the beginning of the chapter. Brother Fazio was an artist as skilled in his way as Simone Martini. There was a complete scene coiled within the shining golden letter: reds and greens and blues showed a grapevine laden with fruit; there was even a little man tending the vine and cutting off a dead branch with his billhook. It was so lifelike that Silvano could imagine the taste of the grapes in his mouth. Brother Fazio, holding a parcel of pigments in his right hand, picked up a pen in his left and added a tiny fleck of white to the wing of a miniature bird pecking at a grape. It seemed he was equally dextrous with either hand.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Silvano.

  Fazio looked pleased. ‘It is for the glory of God,’ he said modestly. ‘Would you like to see how we prepare the parchment and pigments?’

  The novices were willing to show Silvano their work. He wondered if they had heard the rumours about him. Brother Fazio chattered on about the techniques of illumination. He was rather a fussy little man but friendly enough and clearly proud of his work. ‘And we mix the colours with white of egg,’ he finished. ‘Yes, it is thanks to me that you have such bright yellow frittatas from Bertuccio’s kitchen. All those leftover yolks.’

  Silvano had been interested, in spite of his troubles. It was fascinating to see how a real artist like Brother Fazio could create beauty from such humble ingredients as part of an egg and
the bits of rock that people like himself ground to powder in the colour room.

  ‘Come and see where I make my white,’ said Fazio suddenly. He took Silvano to an outbuilding at the far edge of the friary’s grounds. The smell hit Silvano when they were still several yards away but it didn’t seem to bother Brother Fazio. The Illuminator opened the door and the smell got much worse. Silvano held his sleeve over his nose.

  ‘I am grateful to you, Brother Silvano,’ said Fazio, ‘for bringing another horse to the friary.

  Silvano wondered if Brother Fazio was out of his wits.

  ‘My horse?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, the white that I need is made from coils of lead in these special pots,’ said Fazio. He pulled back some stinking straw and Silvano saw rows of clay pots stacked in tiers. ‘Each one has a compartment in the base, which I fill with a solution of vinegar,’ continued Fazio apparently unaware of the impression his handiwork was making on the novice’s nose. ‘I then pack the pots in straw and horse manure,’ he finished triumphantly, ‘and that is where your handsome steed comes in handy.’

  ‘But how does that produce the white pigment you need, Brother?’ asked Silvano, desperate to get out of the shed. Much to his relief, Fazio packed the straw back round the pots, like a mother swaddling a child, and led the way back into the fresh air.

  ‘After a few months,’ he said, ‘white flakes appear on the lead spirals. I scrape it off then it is washed and dried. Then my novices grind it with linseed oil, under my supervision. It is not so different from what you do in the colour room. But lead-white – bianco di piombo – is not suitable for fresco painting. Your Simone won’t use it.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Silvano.

  ‘Because on a wall, it will turn black over time,’ said Fazio. ‘It is already happening in the Upper Church in Assisi. You have to use lime-white – we call it bianco di Sangiovanni, Saint John’s white, but I don’t use it for his Gospel, oh no.’ The Illuminator laughed at his own joke. ‘Saint John’s white is for walls only.’