by Paul Doherty
Kathryn rose to her feet and stared back at the corpse.
‘The cut is clean,’ she half-whispered. ‘The head was sheared off like an ear of corn. Sir Walter reached the cross.’ She continued speaking her thoughts aloud. ‘He knelt down just before the bottom step. He may have turned but the assassin took his head as easily as plucking an apple off a tree. . . .’
Chapter 2
‘Mordre wol out, that se we day by day. . . .’
—Chaucer, ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,’
The Canterbury Tales, 1387
Kathryn Swinbrooke took a deep breath and stared at the huge mantelpiece built against the far wall. On the shelf above stood beautiful marble figurines. After some confusion Kathryn realised these were chess pieces; she recognised the knight, the bishop, the queen and the king. She was particularly fascinated by the griffins carved on either side of the fireplace, painted in red, their eyes picked out in blue. Their snarling jaws revealed sharp, white teeth whilst wicked-looking claws pawed the air. The sculptor had made it seem as if they were ready for attack. The open hearth was empty, covered by a decorated screen. Kathryn marvelled at the beauty of this room. The floor was tiled in a black and white lozenge mosaic, its walls half-covered with linen wooden panelling carved in the new style. Above this hung paintings in gilt frames; most of them were devotional: the birth of Christ, the Annunciation, Satan tempting Jesus in the desert. Huge candle wheels hung on shiny black chains from the rafters. Through the large bay window, with its leaden mullioned glass, Kathryn glimpsed that dreaded maze. This solar was a far cry from the horrors of that twisting place, polished chairs and stools with quilted backs and seats, oaken tables, settles, shelves and cupboards displaying pewter and silver ware.
Kathryn was pleased she had something to stare at because she was making little sense of the mystery which confronted her. Colum lounged on a chair beside her. She felt a stab of envy, for his gaze kept going back to Lady Elizabeth Maltravers who sat opposite them in a gilt-edged, thronelike chair. Lady Elizabeth was truly beautiful. She was dressed in widow’s weeds, a luxurious black gown which fell down to just above her ankles, her little feet sheathed in ornate purple slippers with silver buckles. She wore a black veil which emphasised the pallid beauty of her oval-shaped face, and her eyebrows were plucked, though it was the eyes which fascinated Kathryn, so blue, innocent, almost childlike. Lady Elizabeth had been crying but had now composed herself. She sat opposite, rosary beads wrapped round one hand, the other holding a Book of Hours in a purple, jewelled cover.
Kathryn could only guess at Lady Elizabeth’s age. Certainly she was younger than Kathryn, no more than twenty-two summers: her marriage to Sir Walter must have been a May-December wedding. Kathryn quietly pinched herself at the envy which had prompted such a thought. The woman sitting on a footstool at Lady Elizabeth’s feet was also fascinating. She, too, was dressed in black except for the white veil covering her hair. She was olive-skinned with large dark eyes and a full red mouth; her hair raven black. Was she English, Kathryn thought? Or of French or Italian extraction? She had the look of the daughter of the Moon people, those travellers who wandered the roads in their gaily coloured carts. She had been introduced as Lady Elizabeth’s principal maid Eleanora; now she leaned protectively against her mistress’s chair, one hand on the arm as if she was ever ready to clutch Lady Elizabeth’s wrist. Kathryn had met the rest: Father John the chaplain, Thurston the Manciple, and Gurnell the master-at-arms, who sat flanking Lady Elizabeth. The only person who intrigued the physician was the white-faced, red-haired man who sat just behind the lady of the house: he had been introduced as Edward Mawsby, a distant kinsman of Maltravers who had acted as the dead lord’s secretarius. Mawsby was definitely nervous: his long, white face, bloodless lips and watery green eyes betrayed his agitation. He sat, head bowed, plucking at a loose thread in his costly jerkin. Luberon, sitting on the far side of Colum, leaned over and picked up his goblet and slurped from it noisily, then returned the cup with such force that the wine slopped out. A faint smile crossed Lady Elizabeth’s face. Mawsby’s head went down. Colum breathed out loudly, the usual sign that the silence was becoming oppressive. Kathryn wanted that. Beyond those windows, across the fresh green meadow in the shadow of that sinister maze, Lord Maltravers had been killed, his head cut off like that of a common criminal. Someone in this room, intimately connected to Maltravers, must know more than they’d conceded: and she needed time to think, to reflect!
‘Mistress Swinbrooke.’ Lady Elizabeth’s voice was soft and cultured. ‘You keep staring about. If you wish, I can show you the rest of the house.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Even the King, when he visited here last summer, was greatly enchanted. He called it a fairy castle.’
‘A beautiful place,’ Kathryn agreed. ‘But, my lady, one in which a hideous murder has taken place, though I cannot understand the how or why.’
Kathryn glanced sideways at Luberon, who had picked up his writing tray and was absentmindedly filling in one of the letters he had drawn.
‘Your husband, Sir Walter, rose this morning,’ Kathryn declared. ‘He broke his fast, tended to some business and then, as he did on any Friday, just before noon, entered that maze to carry out a penance. Is that how you described it, Father John?’
‘I have told you the truth,’ the chaplain replied. ‘And I find it difficult to repeat now my lord is dead. Sir Walter was born in Chepstow, he became a man-at-arms and fought in France, then, as mercenaries do, drifted across Europe. He fought with the Teutonic knights beyond the Rhine. He visited Cracow . . .’
‘And finally entered Constantinople two years before the Turks laid siege to it?’ Colum interrupted.
‘Sir Walter,’ Father John agreed, ‘was a master swordsman, a strategist. He joined the Emperor’s bodyguard, his personal retinue, and became an officer in the imperial household troops. You know the story? Constantinople was besieged and fell to the Turks. Sir Walter did his duty but was forced to escape; that is where I met him. The Byzantine Empire was finished. Constantinople was given over to pillage. Sir Walter and I seized certain treasures and fought our way out.’ He paused to sip at his wine cup. ‘Sir Walter journeyed to Italy. He campaigned with the Condottieri and made powerful friends in the banking houses of Milan and Padua.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Kathryn held up her hand. ‘He then returned to England and attached his fortunes to those of the House of York. He fought for the King in the recent civil war and played a part in the great Yorkshire victory at Towton. About three years ago he bought Ingoldby Hall, the same year he married Lady Elizabeth.’ Kathryn smiled. ‘He had no enemies?’
‘Rivals.’ Lady Elizabeth turned slightly in her chair. She pointed to a shield fixed high above the fireplace displaying the arms and heraldic devices of Maltravers. ‘Sir Walter was a powerful lord, he had rivals who were envious.’
‘But the Athanatoi were different!’ Kathryn gazed at Father John. ‘According to you these were former officers of the household troops of the Emperor of Constantinople who were captured, sold into slavery but later ransomed.’
‘That’s the accepted story,’ Father John replied, ‘what I heard some ten years ago. But Europe’s full of such fanciful tales.’
‘These fanciful tales?’ Kathryn insisted. ‘Tell me again.’
‘Since the fall of Constantinople,’ Father John tried to keep his voice steady, ‘the courts of Europe were rife with gossip about how the Emperor, who died on the walls of his city, was betrayed and abandoned. The survivors of his bodyguard allegedly took a sacred oath: they would keep their names and identities secret, but hunt down those they considered traitors.’
‘And Sir Walter was considered one of these?’ Colum asked.
‘So the gossips said.’
‘But they posed no threat to Sir Walter?’
‘I think it was just idle chatter.’ Father John shook his head. ‘Chaff in the wind. Many people could not accept that Constantinople had fallen and looked for
secret reasons. In truth, the city was weak, its power had shrunk whilst the might of the Turks could not be resisted. Sir Walter did his duty. He fought hard and bravely but he was only flesh and blood, not an angel from Heaven. Those treasures he brought from the ruined city he regarded as fair payment for his work.’
‘So, these tales about the Athanatoi, ‘the Immortals,’ ’ Kathryn gestured, ‘were just rumours, gossip?’
The chaplain agreed.
‘Until about a year ago,’ Kathryn continued, ‘when Sir Walter began to receive these threats?’
She picked up the strips of parchment from the table beside her. Each strip was made of two sections glued together and written in different hands. On the top one, an ominous salutation: ‘THE ATHANATOI SEND WARNING TO SIR WALTER MALTRAVERS, TRAITOR AND THIEF.’ The second part was a quotation from the scriptures:
‘THOU FOOL, THIS NIGHT THY SOUL SHALL BE REQUIRED OF THEE’. Kathryn tapped it with her finger.
‘This was the last one?’
‘It was posted on the door of Canterbury Cathedral.’ Gurnell spoke up. ‘One of the monks found it early in the morning; another was fastened to the market cross.’
‘Ah yes.’ Kathryn picked up a further sheet of parchment consisting of two pieces glued together. The salutation was the same but the quotation was different: ‘THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH.’ ‘And how many of these did Sir Walter receive?’
‘In the last year,’ Lady Elizabeth pushed away her footstool, ‘about eight or nine. Some he destroyed.’ She pointed at the parchment strips on the small wine table next to Kathryn. ‘Others were kept.’
Kathryn collected these. The greeting was always the same, ending with a strange crudely drawn ‘A’ which she recognised as the first letter of the Greek alphabet. They were written on the same type of parchment, the same ink, the same hand. The quotations were different; the parchment strip was more costly, the writing extremely neat like that of a professional scribe. She noticed how the quotation strips were the same length and breadth though they all carried different threats: ‘THE NIGHT COMETH, WHEN NO MAN CAN WORK.’ And ‘BE NOT DECEIVED: GOD IS NOT MOCKED. FOR WHAT A MAN SOWS HE ALSO SHALL REAP.’ ‘THE LOVE OF MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL.’ ‘BEHOLD I STAND AT THE DOOR AND KNOCK.’ And, finally, from the Book of Revelation; ‘I LOOKED AND SAW A PALE HORSE AND THE NAME OF HIM THAT SAT ON IT WAS DEATH.’
‘They all imply a threat,’ Kathryn remarked, ‘that vengeance was coming, that Sir Walter had good cause to be afraid. Were they ever sent to the house?’
‘Never!’ Thurston the Manciple spoke up.
Kathryn could see that he had been drinking heavily; his speech was slurred.
‘They appeared in different parts of the city.’
‘Of course.’ Kathryn intervened. ‘Where they would be first seen by some official monk or priest and, of course, Sir Walter was a powerful man so they would be sent here immediately. Was Sir Walter frightened?’
‘My husband feared nothing.’ Lady Elizabeth’s voice was clipped. ‘Except damnation.’
‘Was there any other threat?’ Colum demanded. ‘Any assault? Robbery?’
Silence greeted his words.
‘So, nothing at all,’ Kathryn concluded.
‘Nothing.’ Lady Elizabeth’s voice was hard.
Kathryn watched Eleanora. She had sat like a statue but now she noticed how the lady-in-waiting slightly tapped her mistress’s wrist as if to comfort and soothe her.
‘Did Sir Walter discuss these threats?’
Lady Elizabeth shook her head.
‘Yet he felt guilty?’ Kathryn was determined to elicit the truth. ‘He must have done, otherwise that penance every Friday?’
‘Mistress Swinbrooke.’ Father John joined his hands as if in prayer. ‘Mistress Swinbrooke, Sir Walter was a good soldier, a christian man. He gave generously to the poor. He adorned churches. He did feel guilty about what had happened some nineteen years ago as well as killings carried out at the battle of Towton. He sometimes wondered if he should have died beside his Emperor, if he could have prevented later bloodshed. I advised him to accept God’s will. The Friday penance was a way of Sir Walter purging his soul. Just before noon he would enter the maze. I would hear his confession and shrive him. I do not wish to break the seal of the sacrament. However, I assure you Sir Walter had nothing on his conscience except the events of one day which occurred nineteen years ago and the massacre of some mercenaries at Towton during the civil war. He carried out his penance in a hair shirt, a halter round his neck. He would walk on his knees through that maze and pray before the Weeping Cross. He would then come back the same way.’
‘But he only owned Ingoldby Hall for about three years?’ Kathryn asked.
‘True,’ Father John replied. ‘Before that Sir Walter performed his penance in a church or before a shrine; Our Lady’s at Walsingham or St. Cuthbert’s in Durham. During his military service, when possible, he would carry out his devotions in his tent or at whatever hostelry he was staying at, kneel before a crucifix and ask for God’s forgiveness.’
‘Do you think he bought Ingoldby Hall because of the maze?’
‘I know he did.’ Mawsby pulled his chair a little closer to Lady Elizabeth’s. ‘I took the indenture for its purchase and sent letters to Sir Walter’s goldsmiths in London. My kinsman was greatly smitten by Ingoldby. A worthy residence for Lady Elizabeth, but, yes, I believe the maze was the reason Sir Walter paid the high price without demur or question.’
Kathryn smoothed out a crease in the folds of her gown. Luberon’s pen was squeaking: he was making notes, not so much for her but the letter he would send to the Archbishop who, of course, would pass it on to the King. Once again she studied the people in the room. She had established a number of facts: first, Sir Walter was a very wealthy man but one riven with guilt. Second, he was a lonely man, although surrounded by his riches and married to a beautiful woman less than half his age. Third, he lived in the past. Perhaps the only person who really knew him was his chaplain. Fourth . . . Kathryn chewed the corner of her lip. She had attended many deaths, and found that sometimes the grief of relatives was unbearable. But there was a coldness here, a detachment, even from the chaplain, Father John. Lady Elizabeth was in mourning but not grief-stricken. Was this shock? Had they accepted Sir Walter’s death and the horror which surrounded it? Or did they see it as something distant, separate? The result of Sir Walter’s private demons?
‘My husband was a lonely man.’ Lady Elizabeth gazed beseechingly at Kathryn. ‘I speak for all my household: Sir Walter was kind and generous but was often like a man lost in a dream.’
A murmur of agreement greeted her words.
‘He was secretive,’ she continued. ‘One never knew what he was thinking. Sometimes, and I have spoken about this to Father John,’ she blinked, ‘I wonder if he wanted to die? As if he had supped deep of the cup of life and found it wanting?’
‘Is that true, Father John?’
‘Yes, yes.’ The priest measured his words carefully. ‘When I listened to his confession, I believed Sir Walter would have preferred to die in battle. During the King’s recent campaigns—’
‘I know what you are going to say,’ Colum interrupted sharply. ‘Sir Walter was always in the thick of the fighting.’
‘Yet he did not wish to be murdered.’ Kathryn made her voice decidedly harsh. ‘Whether a man wishes to live or die is one truth, his murder is another. Sir Walter was barbarously murdered at the centre of that maze.’
Her words did not please Lady Elizabeth or her entourage. Father John made to protest but Lady Elizabeth made a cutting movement with her hand.
‘And you think his assassin is in this house?’
‘That could be another truth,’ Kathryn replied. ‘So, I must ask a very difficult question but one which the Archbishop or the King’s Justices might ask. Who would profit from Sir Walter’s death?’
Lady Elizabeth’s head went down, and when she glanced up, red spo
ts of fury showed on her cheeks. She gestured towards an elmwood chest.
‘A copy of Sir Walter’s will, although it has yet to be approved by Chancery, can be studied. I am his heir, Mistress Swinbrooke. Yet, I remind you that I am of the Redvers family, merchant princes of London and elsewhere. The dowry I brought to our marriage was considered to be a fortune. I did not need Sir Walter’s wealth.’
‘My lady, do not take offence, I did not say that. I asked a question: who profits?’
‘The will,’ Lady Elizabeth continued, fighting hard to control her temper, ‘makes generous bequests to everyone in this room. But, there again, Mistress Swinbrooke, no one in this room had to wait for Sir Walter’s death. You had only to ask; my husband’s response was always generous.’
‘I can vouch for that.’ Mawsby spoke up. ‘I fought for the House of Lancaster and had to flee abroad to Antwerp. Sir Walter arranged for a pardon to be issued and offered me employment.’
Colum abruptly sat up in his chair as if to study Mawsby more closely. Kathryn wondered if the red-haired, pale-faced man had been trying to hide, but from what?
‘Very well.’ Kathryn composed herself, knowing that the next questions would provoke even more hostility. ‘Sir Walter entered the maze. He was shriven by Father John and made his lonely pilgrimage. Was he the only one who knew how to thread that maze?’
‘The only one,’ Father John confirmed. ‘It was a mystery to us.’
‘Fine,’ Kathryn interposed. ‘Sir Walter enters the maze. He should have returned, what, an hour later? But he did not. How was the alarm raised?’
‘Sir Walter was a soldier,’ Father John replied. ‘When he finished his devotions before the Weeping Cross he always sounded the horn he kept there.’
‘But no horn was found?’ Colum asked.
‘It has gone,’ the chaplain replied.
‘So, an hour or so after Sir Walter entered the maze . . .?’
‘I became concerned.’ Gurnell spoke up. ‘I heard no horn. I carry one as well. If something important happened I would sound the horn to alert Sir Walter.’