by Non Bramley
I’d known this happen before. It was common for an accused to spin an even stranger tale right before their trial, and we knew Peter was good at telling plausible stories. But to blame it on the dead?
I gathered paper and ink from my room, telling Philip to dress and follow me. I wanted witnesses to this.
Peter was sitting with his hands in his hair when we unbolted the door and stepped in. He looked suspiciously at Philip.
‘Who’s he?’
‘No one for you to worry about. What’s this about a dead man killing?’
‘If I admit to … playing with the old granny’s corpse, what’s going to happen to me? Will I swing?’
‘It’s unlikely, but that’s not what you’re on trial for.’
‘You think that because the dead whore was played with too, I must have killed her right? And her little blonde friend.’
‘Magdela was defiled in the same way.’
He gestured to the paper in my lap. ‘I won’t say this again so write it down and I’ll sign it. I want to confess.’
His voice had changed. Gone was the high-pitched wheedling. In its place was his real voice, rough and direct.
Patricia was literate, so I handed her the sheaf of loose paper.
After a pause of interminable length, Peter Piss Pot told us the truth.
‘You’ve no idea what it’s like to be ugly, you and your golden friend over there. I didn’t ask for it – I was just born like everyone else but I’m stuck being someone nobody wants to fuck. When I have money I pay for it. There are plenty of whores in the summer. When I don’t have money, and when the whores have all gone away, I … play with the bodies in the mortuary. Been doing it for years. Doesn’t hurt anyone and I don’t see why I shouldn’t have my fun like everyone else. I’m the piss pot man so I can go everywhere. Nobody notices me. That milksop faggot who caught me should do the same. I see his eyes following you. He’d have to go second though. I get first ride.
‘It was back last summer. That Brother Simon – the pretty little pervert who used to work in the infirmary back then – caught me balls-deep. He understood, said he’d keep my secret. Said he liked his pleasures too. I didn’t think he would but he never told.
‘I’d had my eye on that juicy little whore Maggie for weeks. She wouldn’t take my money though. She’d been talking to pretty, pretty, Simon, and oh my, he was a beauty. Silly little tart fell in love with him. I watched ’em together, followed them. On Sundays, after Mass, they’d sneak out to that hole you found her in. First time I followed they rutted like animals. I lay on top of the door and watched ’em through a crack, watched her little crack being oiled.
‘After that he just prayed at her. Got her down on her knees, whispered at her. What a waste, eh? I still watched, thought he’d get down to business again, but he never did.
‘The last time it was different. He’d laid out this dress and women’s fripperies … flowers and things. Told her to put the frock on, said he would marry them, that he could as he was a priest too. Then they could lie together as man and wife, no sin. Said he’d take her away, back to his family, and that he loved her … all that shit. She went through with it, snivelling like a little girl. Then she lay down and opened her legs for him and he slit her throat, quick as you like. I nearly pissed myself and ran off. Came back the next day and there she was, so I went down and played with her too. Shame to waste that quim. I thought about telling on him but I was scared. Scared of him and scared of being found out.
‘The next girl he picked on was that Anne Mercer. People say she was a whore but I know my horseflesh and that one wasn’t. They used to talk and talk. I didn’t like that. Anne was kind to me. I warned her, told her he was a bad one for the women but it didn’t stop her talking. She never left with him though so I thought maybe he wasn’t after her like that. I watched him though, kept my eye on him. Thought maybe I’d kill him when the winter came. Easy enough it the dark days.
‘Last time I saw him it was a Sunday. Right on time, he went off through the west gate but I lost him in the streets. He didn’t go back to the same place. Couldn’t, could he? Not with the other in there. I looked for him for a while, came back and heard he had the red water, had gone home to die. Served him right.
‘Next day, morning, Will said Anne had gone, been taken and I went out to try and find her and saw Simon by the old market. Covered in blood he was. Staggering about, bloody all down his mouth. Must have shat his life out in the gutter somewhere. Hope she got away.
‘Then they said you were coming, Reeve, and I got scared. People knew I’d wanted that Maggie and she’d turned her nose up. Didn’t want to get blamed, so I went back to where she was, covered the door up with mud, mixed a bit of sour milk in. In a few days it was green, like nothing was there. I don’t know nothing about the kid or the blonde piece, Rebecca, but I bet it was him.
‘So, that’s the truth Reeve. I’m as rotten a turd as you’ll ever come across but I killed no one. Now pass me those words and I’ll put my name on ’em.’
I took the papers from Patricia and read them through. I passed them to Peter and he signed them. That done, I leant across and slapped him with the back of my hand. The force of it knocked him sideways and the papers scattered across the bed. Peter struggled upright and held his hands up.
‘No need for that, Reeve. I’ve got no quarrel with—’
He stopped, staring at one of the fallen sheets. In my haste I’d gathered up the drawings I’d done in my illness, my little portraits of people I knew depicted as characters from the Canterbury Tales. Peter picked up Chaucer’s pardoner who I had given the elfin face of Thomas Tavener.
‘Why do you have a picture of Brother Simon the bastard?’
My God, my God, I am such a fool.
Chapter Thirteen
Thomas Tavener. Beautiful Thomas Tavener who had seemed to burn so bright with piety.
Patricia took the drawing. ‘That’s him, Simon. Lollis let him go home to die. He was gentle. Where did you get this?’
Was it possible? Could they be the same man? I imagined Thomas, down in the dark, whispering twisted penitence to a loving child, and knew.
I stood. The world span around me. My vision pulsing and darkening with my heart-beat. I tried to walk and my legs wouldn’t hold me. To be so weak, now!
Philip’s arm came around me. ‘Sit. You’re ill. I can help you.’
‘Get me to Johanna,’ I said.
He led me out, bolting the protesting Peter back inside his cell.
We all three descended the stairs, my feet stumbling and my legs like water. It wasn’t shock – I have heard far worse confessions. It was plain starvation.
I was close to fainting as we crossed the abbey Close and entered the dim church.
‘Stop,’ I said, and slithered to the floor.
Philip spoke urgently to Patricia, and she ran, God bless her. I knew what that must have cost. I gestured for Philip to pick me up and he dragged me up the spiral steps to the library, where Johanna sat, exactly as I’d seen her the first time we met.
She yelped in surprise and hurried over. ‘I know what this is. She needs to eat. Why drag her up here? I’ll go to the storeroom. There must be something.’
‘Just wait,’ Philip said, hauling me across the floor so that my back rested against his chest.
Patricia joined us, tugging at a heavy leather bag. How she’d got it up the stairs was a miracle. She was shaking, empty. Philip upended it and an old shirt unfurled itself and was followed by a cascade of food. Hard loaves and cheeses, jars of honey, wrinkled apples, smoked meats. It was his bag; I recognised it. He’d kept it in his own room, away from me. I had thought it a kind gesture, not to fill my space with his clutter. In reality he had simply hidden away enough to feed us all, eating secretly and keeping himself strong. I had wondered why he didn’t complain and suffer. Now I knew.
‘Help yourself,’ he said, opening a jar and scooping an oozing chunk of honeyc
omb out with his fingers, smearing it into my mouth. I had never tasted anything so good. It was so good I had tears in my eyes.
‘Don’t cry,’ Philip said, giving me more.
I wanted to kill him then.
After five minutes I was awake enough to speak.
‘You had this all along,’ I said, tearing my way through a loaf. ‘You watched me and everyone else starve. You kept it for yourself.’
Philip had the grace to look ashamed.
‘I don’t have time for you now,’ I said, getting up and handing Johanna my sketch of Thomas, now smeared with honey.
She took it and frowned. ‘That’s Brother Simon. He’s long dead. Where did you find this?’
‘I drew it from memory. I know this man as Thomas Tavener, the young noviciate who travelled with me from Banfield and who should be here, working in your lazar house. Did you not see him? Visit him?’
‘I thought to go but what with everything here … The lepers live away from us. There was no need.’
‘Read this,’ I said, handing her Peter’s confession. ‘Piss Pot has just confessed that he saw this man kill Magdela. I think Thomas and Simon are one and the same man. I think he came back here, with me.’
‘But Simon’s dead,’ Johanna said, smiling nervously. ‘Peter’s spinning another story to take the blame away from himself.’
‘Did you see Simon’s corpse?’ I asked.
‘Well, no, but Lollis saw him. He was coughing up blood, lots of it. She knew that disease. He had hours left to live, asked to go home to die. Didn’t want any of us to go with him or tend him. It was a horrible way to die, he knew that. His mother didn’t live far from here, a couple of miles away along the old Stychford Road if memory serves.’
‘Where?’
‘A place called Wychnor.’
—What is the nature of evil, Levi? I’ve spent much of my life keeping company with it, tracking it, trying to take it in my hands. Years ago I came across a young man who had been lying in agony for days. He’d fallen asleep one night in an empty church and evil had slipped in to set him alight. He burned in his sleep and woke in a body he didn’t recognise. Evil didn’t even stay to see his suffering.
It’s possible I suppose that his attacker was mad or diseased, that some cancer switched off his capacity to control his own actions, but if I think this logic through to the end I can come to only one conclusion. Some of us are demons in human skin.
Demons look at the beauty of life and see it flayed and burning. One little tumour, a bad childhood or a moment of mental imbalance and the monster splits its skin. It was there all along.
There is such a thing as the Devil. I’ve shaken his hand. I’m a killer too and he whispers to me.
I keep my eyes on God and he hasn’t abandoned me yet. I feel his place in my soul, a warm light that has dimmed but never gone out. When I pray I ask to never be left lonely in my own head, with nothing but the gibbering of fiends.
—I pray for this too, Jude. Hell is the absence of God.
It was still daylight as I saddled Meg but flocks of starlings were swirling and pulsing over my head; dusk was not far away. I could have stayed, I know, waited till morning, but would you? Thomas could still be here, in the lazar house and I would be damned if I’d stay in this place impotently kicking my heels any longer. If a wolf took me then that was God’s will.
I gave Meg a handful of apples now ungrudgingly given by Philip. He was following me, repeating that he could explain if I’d just listen.
‘Tell me how you dodged the wolves, now,’ I said. ‘I’m going out there and I need to know. Do something useful for once in your life.’
Philip looked tortured. ‘This is the end isn’t it.’
‘Tell me how you got through or get out of my sight.’
His shoulders sagged. ‘I rode here. The wolves are sick, Jude, my love. They’ve got some disease. They’re attacking each other. I rode straight here. Haven’t you noticed there’s been none around the walls for weeks now?’
I hadn’t. I’d been otherwise engaged.
‘I still came all the way to see you,’ he said.
‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’
‘I wanted you to stay here. I wanted you to think I was a hero.’
‘You were watching us starve to death you sick bastard.’
‘I wouldn’t have let that happen, I promise. You were just so much kinder like this.’
I stopped and laid my forehead against Megs’ shoulder. I was just so much more docile, he meant.
‘Let me come with you.’
‘You will go and tell Johanna what you’ve just told me. You will share every morsel of your food and when I get back, if I get back, we’ll talk.’
I didn’t need to tell him how that conversation was likely to go.
Even Meg felt the menace of it as the west gate closed behind us. The world was silent but for the strange clicking shrieks of the starlings. A hard frost covered the world. I had not been outside or truly alone for months. It was a weird sensation, expanding out of yourself into all this space. I took my hammer from my belt and laid it across the saddle.
Meg’s hooves sounded hollow and loud as we crossed the bridge over the ditch. The water had frozen hard. It was only half a mile to the lazar house and we followed the dirt track over open ground. My lungs felt sore from the frozen air. I was breathing too hard.
There was no way to raise the residents of the lazar house quietly. I had to shout, any minute expecting to hear the bark of wolves.
Eventually an elderly brother opened the gates, his features pinched with the cold.
‘How did you get out there?’ he said, and beckoned me in.
I searched the place, opening doors and frightening the poor diseased souls who called this place home. I came to a corridor of cells, home of the worst cases. The last door opened on to a woman who turned her face to me. She had sores that had obliterated every feature except the black slit of her mouth and one eye. Her flesh had broken out into red petals, weeping yellow.
Brother Michael, head of the house found me, as I knew he would if I made enough noise.
‘What do you want here? Who are you? We’ve got nothing to steal.’
Thomas had gone, he told me. Disappeared in October, the day after Lollis made the last delivery of supplies from the abbey. Brother Michael had been distraught to lose him. His kindness and strength had made him popular with all.
‘The beautiful are so rarely kind,’ he said. ‘And he was so content here. Never wanting to leave the walls. Never wanting to gossip with visitors. I think he found peace. Find him, Reeve. If you can.’
‘I will,’ I said.
The sky was still light, so I turned Meg towards the city. We would cross it and follow the old Stychford Road east, to Wychnor. Every few minutes I stopped and listened, ears straining in the silence. I turned in the saddle, searching for the black shapes of hungry beasts. We were still on our own.
I wanted to believe Philip, that the wolves were sick and gone. It was like trying to believe in the power of witchcraft to change the world – you might want it to be true but reality said otherwise.
The light was strange. Reflections shone like gold and the air shimmered.
I rode down the street of the murdered women, ignoring calls from the abbey walls to come back, to not be a fool.
Nothing stirring but the remnants of dammers in the gutter, sometimes just sinews left twitching and curling. You learnt to ignore them, but my sight had grown accustomed to enclosing walls and they dragged at me.
It was still light, would be for two hours or so. If I found Wychnor and Thomas wasn’t there I’d stay the night if I could. If I found nothing, I’d turn Meg and head back before nightfall.
We walked on, slowly, further into the city than I’d ever been, past the wrecks of buildings and the faded primary colours of old signs. There were piles of wolf shit everywhere, some of it in sticky pools and an odd colour. Meg pick
ed her way through it and tossed her head at the stink – the rank of the lion. My God, there had been hundreds here. Where were they?
I saw the wolf. It was squatting, barring the way. There was no sign of its pack. Red sores puckered the corners of its mouth, the wounds raw and fibrous. Its mouth hung open and its eyes had a curious sheen, like oil on water. It made no move towards us, so I turned Meg and we retraced our steps.
As I looked back it was following us, but slowly, as if it didn’t remember what it was supposed to do. I kept a grip on my hammer.
The only way through now was to work our way across the city by narrow, winding alleys that I had hoped to avoid. It put the fear of God in me. No one ever came this way; the ground was weed-choked, litter-strewn. We may have been the first to attempt it since the fall.
The panting of the sick wolf was louder here. I quickened the pace.
Wychnor. There was nothing there according to Johanna but an old church and one solitary farm, the family home of Brother Simon the bastard, or Thomas if I was right and they were the same man.
If I kept on this road I would reach it. Thomas wouldn’t be there, but maybe his family were living. We went on, faster now but still too slow. Meg was underfed, her ribs showing and I didn’t want to kill her. I even let her stop and crop the yellow grass, but not for long. Her stomach would be nothing but a ball of acid and could easily twist and rupture.
The wolf fell behind but kept coming, a black spider on the horizon.
We left the city and there was still deep snow here, carved into fantastic shapes by the wind, which was bitter. The land stretched out, covered in barbed winter brambles. The air was as cold as the sound of silver bells.
We went on and I realised we’d lost the road. Everything was white. I was lost and a night in the open would kill us. I turned in the saddle and thought the wolf had stopped its pursuit, but it had just dropped out of sight for a few moments. It saw me, and barked. It was a clever beast. Eventually we’d get tired and sluggish with cold. It could wait. The sun was a pale gold coin.