The Scandal of the Skulls

by Cassandra Clark

  Idonea came to the door looking flushed and with shining eyes. ‘Oh, it’s you, domina.’ Her face fell. ‘Have you come with news?’

  ‘I wondered if I might ask you a few questions that have been buzzing around in my head since we first spoke?’

  ‘I’ve nothing to say.’ She put a foot behind the door.

  ‘It won’t take more than a minute. I thought I might know something that might help. If you need any help, that is, in finding your brother.’

  ‘Why would I want to find him? He murdered my Robin.’

  ‘Or did he?’

  Idonea scowled. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I can’t stand on the doorstep and talk with the whole street listening.’

  With a show of resentment Idonea removed her foot from behind the door and opened it enough to allow Hildegard to squeeze inside.

  She led her into a small back room overlooking a yard. It had once been spick and span but now, despite its neatness, a patina of grime smeared everything. The hearth was full of ashes.

  Idonea gestured towards a wooden chair in the window. ‘Sit in his chair if you like. I’m sure he won’t mind.’

  ‘Where do you think he is?’ Hildegard sat down but made sure she could observe Idonea’s expression as she did so.

  ‘He’s dead as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘No such luck. He’ll be cosied up somewhere.’

  ‘Did he have a sweetheart?’

  ‘Him?’ she sneered. ‘No profit in that, is there? Not unless he meets an heiress of course.’

  ‘So you’re convinced he’s alive?’

  The girl put a hand to her mouth with an exaggerated gasp. ‘Have you come here to tell me somebody’s done him in?’ She paused and then gave a dramatic cry. ‘Praise the lord! There is justice after all!’ She pretended to recover and gave Hildegard a cutting glance. ‘Just as you folk constantly tell us - justice is for the meek.’

  She put her hands together as if praying and spoke with eyes raised piously to the ceiling. ‘Oh lord. Please forgive my dearest brother, Frank. First for the sin of killing my betrothed and then for killing his best friend. Forgive him, I beseech thee, oh lord. And receive my thanks for your divine mercy in taking him down to hell - where he belongs,’ she ended with a snarl.

  ‘It’s not proven that he killed either of them,’ Hildegard interrupted. ‘And why would he kill Jack?’

  ‘To shut him up.’

  ‘That’s what they’re saying in the streets but it could only be true if he was guilty of the first murder. Do you know he killed Robin?’

  ‘Know? How could I? I wasn’t there. Others know it though. Bother them with your questions.’

  ‘So it’s a belief and nothing more?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Idonea looked down at her hands.

  Hildegard said, ‘Frank could not have known that someone was going to set the windlass in motion. Not unless it was a pre-planned scheme.’

  Idonea still said nothing.

  ‘Do you sincerely believe he went on to murder his best friend, a guild brother, in cold blood?’

  ‘If it was his life against Jack’s it wouldn’t stop him. He was a cold bastard when he wanted to be.’

  ‘He seemed to be trying to do his best for you.’

  ‘For himself, more like! That scheme to marry me off to old Gervase was for him, not me. There are better fish to fry and I didn’t need my brother to poke his nose in!’ Idonea gazed fiercely into the ashes in the hearth. Then she swung round. ‘Why are you saying all this? What’s it got to do with you?’

  Hildegard sighed. ‘Forgive me. I can’t seem to help myself when I see a clear case of an innocent man going to the gallows.’

  ‘And you’re telling me you think Frank is innocent?’

  ‘Of killing Jack, yes.’

  ‘And Robin?’ She stared hard at Hildegard.

  ‘It has all the appearance of an accident that went wrong as Master Gervase says. An accident. Somebody deliberately interfered and it resulted in Robin’s death.’

  ‘That’s a lot different to what anybody from round here is saying. Who would interfere? It was Frank with an axe to grind from first to last. He planned it. And his guild are covering up for him. Outside the guild they’re saying he did it because of what happened before.’

  ‘When, four years ago?’

  ‘You’ve heard about that then? I bet you haven’t heard it all. One of those young lads who was hanged was Frank’s - ’ she broke off. ‘Never mind. It’s all past now. I hope he is dead. It’s what he deserves.’

  ‘Sometimes an outsider can see more of the picture than somebody who lives close up. Sometimes that can be a help. They need all the facts though.’

  Idonea began to pace about the small chamber. A cat came in but she ignored it. It went to settle on Hildegard’s lap. Idonea noticed and curled her lip.

  She stopped her pacing and glowered down at Hildegard. ‘So you think you can see more than us, do you? Let me tell you, I don’t take kindly to having my doings picked over by strangers, domina. And,’ she stabbed a finger, ‘I don’t believe you when you say Frank’s dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I’m offending you by taking an interest. And nor did I say Frank was dead. What if I know for a fact that he’s still alive?’

  Idonea looked startled. ‘How can you know?’

  ‘I said, if.’

  ‘Is he or isn’t he?’

  ‘How well do you know de Lincoln?’

  ‘Who?’

  She knows very well who, thought Hildegard. She decided to make the most of her advantage. ‘He drinks in the Cat. I believe you go there yourself sometimes.’

  ‘With my mates, yes. What if I do?’

  ‘Nothing. You can go where you like. But you met de Lincoln there. Or don’t you know his name? A tall, handsome fellow from out of town. I’m told he took a fancy to you.’

  Idonea blushed scarlet then turned away with an angry sweep of her hair. ‘You been spying on me? I don’t see how you could know - you must be a bloody witch. A lot of men talk to me! Why not? What can I do about it if they find me worth talking to?’

  ‘I only asked how well you knew him.’

  ‘Yes, but you mean something by it.’ She swung round to give Hildegard another glare. ‘Are you trying to tell me something about Joh - about de Lincoln? Is that it? Are you warning me off? Is he married? Well, so what? We have a drink together. Nothing wrong with that except to those with nasty minds.’

  She was enraged, unaccountably so. Hildegard asked, ‘Have you known him long?’

  Idonea shook her head then, confused, said, ‘it seems long - he knew Robin.’

  ‘I expect he was sorry to hear that someone he was drinking with came to such a horrible end.’

  ‘Why should he care? Robin was just - ’ she broke off and picked up the fire tongs and made some useless play with them before replacing them. They fell over with a clatter and she picked them up and balanced them with great care against the fender.

  Hildegard knew that now was not the time to betray Frank’s whereabouts. Not if de Lincoln was involved.

  They crowded into the cramped little drying room, the two Sisters, Brother Gregory and Hildegard, not forgetting Frank who, awake now, was sitting up sipping at a steaming, sickly-smelling potion Sister Ann was urging him to drink. A nasty scratch down his cheek was beginning to heal.

  ‘Well you certainly can’t walk anywhere yet,’ Sister Elwis had been saying in an admonishing tone when the Cistercians arrived. ‘You’ll undo all the good work of the sister here.’

  Frank looked chastened. Brother Gregory went to crouch beside him, man to man, to explain who he was and why he was here. Then he said, ‘Sister Elwis says you’re able to talk to us now, Frank, so why don’t you begin at the beginning and tell us what happened?’

  With an appealing glance at the silent nuns Frank visibly submitted. His voice was hoarse at firs
t. ‘It was when I heard they’d roused the hue and cry on the evidence of my gouge being close by where Jack was found, and me being appealed of his murder. I was already in trouble over Robin. I thought I wouldn’t stand a chance if I was thrown into the town jail, so I scarpered.’

  ‘Where did you go?’ asked Gregory when Frank seemed to lose interest in saying any more.

  With an effort he said, ‘I hid out by the river for a while, keeping ahead of them, shutting myself into a yard after they’d searched it, that sort of thing. Lucky I know this town like the back of my hand.’

  ‘Very lucky. So you eluded them. Tell us, how did you fall down the shaft?’

  ‘During vespers the search eased off a bit so I thought I’d try and get over the wall and into Clarendon Forest and hide out there for a while. I didn’t have any real plan. I just wanted to stay alive.’

  ‘A commendable motive. No-one would criticise that.’ Gregory’s voice was very soft.

  Encouraged, Frank said, ‘It was when I was coming up from the river bank I decided I’d cut across the Close. I could hear the singing and knew I had a short while to cross before everybody came pouring out. I was on the scrub land when somebody came up behind me and threw a cloak over me. From behind,’ he added in case his listeners were in doubt.

  ‘So you couldn’t see who it was?’ Gregory asked.

  ‘How could I?’

  ‘Was there one or more?’

  ‘One. A tough fellow. Big. He roughed me up. Gave me a hell of a scratch with a knife or something.’ He touched his cheek. ‘I didn’t know which way he was pushing me. I thought it was one of the hue and cry and he was trying to push me towards the rest of them. I fought back but then he gave me a great heave and I slipped. I guess I must have been on the brink of the shaft because suddenly there was nothing under me. I was falling.’ He closed his eyes as if reliving it.

  When he opened them he said, ‘Something stopped my fall. It held me there, suspended in nothing and I thought I was safe but then it gave way and I fell again. And after that I don’t remember anything until I woke up in agony. My legs,’ he explained, glancing down at them. ‘It was pitch black. I thought I was in hell and it wasn’t flames after all but just emptiness. I didn’t care. I might have lost consciousness again because when I came to I felt sharper. I guessed I must be down the old surveyor’s shaft from the old times.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I panicked. I don’t mind admitting it. I thought, who the hell’s going to find me down here? I’m as good as dead. I shouted my head off and when I was exhausted I listened to see if the hue and cry were near. I didn’t care by then if they took me in. But there was nothing, just the echoing of my voice going on and on, I thought it would never end and when it eventually faded, I heard a trickling of loose stones then nothing and - I thought I was as good as dead and no priest and - ’ he broke off and his eyes sheened over.

  Eventually Hildegard said, ‘Tell us a little more, Frank. Was it daylight by then?’

  ‘I could see a faint glimmer up above. It seemed miles away. Not day but night. A star or two. Very far and bright. I tried standing but my legs wouldn’t take me. Even if I could have stood and reached up I would never have been able to get a handhold on anything. There was nothing to hold onto. It was just hard, compacted gravel.’

  ‘So down the shaft you were, no hope of rescue. You must have wondered why?’ Gregory spoke in a persuasively soft voice.

  ‘I knew it was for my sins, brother. I prayed. I asked forgiveness. Then I prepared to die unshriven.’

  ‘Are these sins ones you have ever offered to a priest?’

  ‘Yes, many times. The most difficult to let go is the sin of hating my friends for living when - ’ he cleared his throat, ‘when others are dead through no wickedness of their own. It seemed to me that God has no forgiveness in him, no sense of justice, that he punishes us whatever good we do. Then I knew I was guilty even thinking such thoughts and it made me feel that life was a hopeless, pointless, empty thing and I felt relief that I was going to shed my mortal coil at last and be done with it and that it was a sin even to think like this as well so I was damned whichever way I turned. I thought, I might as well give up. But then, that’s a sin also.’

  ‘Hm,’ murmured Gregory, ‘Many of us are guilty of being daunted by a feeling of hopelessness. You are not alone.’ He paused, then, softly, asked, ‘And what about Robin?’

  Again Hildegard saw Frank weeping. This time it was a slow seeping of moisture from between his eye lashes. His way of disguising it was to tighten his lips and turn his face to a semblance of stone.

  ‘I swear I had nothing to do with what happened after we trussed him up. It was a warning to him, like. We didn’t mean no harm. We were going to come back after a while and make him beg us to set him free.’

  But somebody got there first.

  Sister Ann leaned over. ‘I think that’s enough now. This young man needs sleep.’

  ‘We shall keep him here privily until we find out what the serjeants intend,’ rejoined Sister Elwis. ‘He’s safer here than in the jail and the serjeants can be assured that he will not abscond.’

  The nuns and Hildegard trooped out. When she glanced back Brother Gregory had hold of one of Frank’s hands and was murmuring something to him that brought a bitter smile to Frank’s face.

  Friar Jonathan was declaiming his message at the market cross when they passed after leaving Frank in the care of the nuns. The friar broke off long enough to say he might see them later. They told him they were going to eat at the George.

  ‘So what do you make of Frank?’ Hildegard asked as soon as she and Gregory were seated at a table a few minutes later

  ‘In some ways it takes us no further. And yet in another way it provides a glimmer of light.’ Gregory considered his finger nails. ‘What you told me earlier about events after the Salisbury parliament suggests a motive for what was done to Robin. It accords with general opinion. Frank and some mates, urged on by drink, taking revenge on someone they no longer trusted.’

  ‘But he denies taking revenge to the bitter end. He seems credible.’

  ‘Of course he will deny it.’

  ‘Especially if it isn’t true.’ She frowned.

  ‘Would anyone else have as solid a motive?’

  She lowered her voice. ‘Tell me truly, Gregory, apart from whatever Frank’s feelings were for one of the lads who were hanged and his subsequent grief, do you suspect Robin of a worse kind of betrayal? Say, a more recent one?’

  ‘What makes you ask that?’

  ‘It seems that revenge, though said to be best served cold, cannot be served four years later without something to prompt it.’

  ‘Is there a reprise of an earlier betrayal, is that what you mean?’

  ‘Well, look at it. Four years ago Robin’s accomplices are hanged. He escapes punishment. Maybe it’s not just his age that gets him off. Youths his age were hanged in great numbers after the Rising. Maybe he does some sort of deal, an arrangement with the Justices? Who was the justice, by the way?’

  ‘One of Arundel’s men no doubt.’ Gregory frowned. ‘The earl would be sure to have him in his pocket, whoever he was.’

  ‘Is it possible that Robin bartered his freedom by becoming an informer?’ She mentioned Idonea and what she had hinted.

  Gregory smiled thinly. ‘That would put him on a course opposed to the rest of the guild. They’re as discrete about their support for the king as they are about everything but we know from your list that Master Gervase himself is willing to offer gold to save Sir Simon Burley’s life. He can have no love for informers.’

  She went cold. ‘Is it possible that Robin got wind of the plan to free Sir Simon and tipped de Lincoln off? And they found out – and decided to silence him for good? Arundel’s castle is not far away. He’s the big power round here.’ She paused, ‘It brings us back to de Lincoln.’

  ‘From all I’ve heard about Robin he was a tave
rn-loving fellow - but maybe he was one of those who are often less inebriated than they appear, the sort who listens and remembers. That young lad in the grove with the fiery old knight, for instance, I can see somebody like him and a lot of loose talk if he was drunk and angry enough.’

  ‘Is this why de Lincoln was sent here? To buy information?’

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  ‘And,’ she repeated, ‘someone found out about Robin’s secret dealing and had him silenced?’

  ‘Back to Frank?’ He paused. ‘As the king said,’ and quoting he added, ‘“Will no-one rid me of this troublesome knight?”’

  ‘And who is the king in this case?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘He is certainly a power inside the town walls.’

  The name of Master Gervase hovered unspoken between them.

  After a pause Hildegard said, ‘Gregory, after we came across those three in the grove on the way to Clarendon, you told me that your conclusions, though logical, might be based on false premises.’

  ‘You feel we’re in danger of making the same mistake now?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Let’s change the subject,’ he suggested. ‘Here comes our hawk.’

  TWENTY EIGHT

  The young friar’s eyes lit up when they fell on Gregory again. ‘So, brother, you’re back from exile in the Forest? The domina told me you were visiting kin.’ Warmly acknowledging Hildegard he sat down on an adjacent bench.

  ‘Hildegard tells you truth,’ Gregory replied. ‘I met my cousins whom I haven’t seen for over seven years. So how are things with you?’

  ‘Hildegard has probably also told you that Frank has put a noose round his neck by absconding?’

  ‘She mentioned something of the sort.’

  ‘What a fool he is!’ Jonathan shook his head.

  ‘I thought you were pleased he’d made good his escape?’ Hildegard interjected.