by Paul Doherty
‘No, no, I want to know this place.’
‘You could be in danger.’
‘The same is true of any alleyways in Canterbury. Any news of Monksbane?’
Colum shook his head. ‘Too soon. Too soon.’
Kathryn went over and kissed Colum on the brow, patting him on the shoulder.
‘Very well. Listen to what I have to say. Oh, by the way, why are you late?’
‘Trouble at Kingsmead – the Court wants more horses – but go on!’
‘When my father was confronted by a patient with mysterious ailments,’ she began, ‘he created a hypothesis, a theory, then looked for evidence; that’s what I’m doing now, Colum. We all know about Atworth, a former soldier, a cruel Ecorcheur who repented and became a friar. For some unknown reason Duchess Cecily of York chose him as her confessor. They communicated, and she often visited him. Now there’s no doubt Duchess Cecily has her secrets, but does that have anything to do with Atworth’s death?’
‘Could he have been murdered,’ Colum asked, ‘to silence him?’
‘In which case Duchess Cecily is the murderess or someone she, or Atworth, communicated the secrets to, someone who would be equally damaged by public revelations.’
Kathryn sat down on the chair and went on. ‘But that’s ridiculous. Atworth, in his later years, was a saint; he tried to be a good man, a holy priest. He would never dream of revealing anyone’s confession, let alone someone like Duchess Cecily’s.’
‘But the arsenic?’
‘An accident, Colum. I treat many patients in Canterbury. A great deal of ill health, even death, is caused by people treating themselves or buying a cure from some cunning man. Do you remember that poor carpenter poisoned by his wife? Forced to drink Holy Water which was as putrid as that from any horse trough?’ Kathryn sighed. ‘I also believe God manifests himself, but apparitions, fragrant perfumes?’
‘You talk about a hypothesis?’ Colum teased.
‘I don’t know whether I am looking at the right symptoms. Something very strange happened to Atworth. Then we have the other business, the traitor close to the English Court, Padraig Mafiach’s murder.’
‘Could there be a connection?’
‘To all appearances’ – Kathryn shook her head – ‘no.’ She patted her stomach. ‘But as one of my old patients, a Yorkshireman, would say: “In my water I feel there is.”’
‘And so we come to Gervase’s death.’
‘Yes, my wild-haired Irishman; I think that is the clasp. Someone doesn’t want Atworth’s death fully investigated. Gervase may have known something.’
Kathryn paused at a knock on the door.
‘Come in!’
Eadwig shuffled anxiously into the chamber. ‘Mistress Swinbrooke, I am sorry, but the guest master . . .’
Colum, looking as fierce as possible, got to his feet, hand falling to his war-belt, but the lay brother stood his ground.
‘Don’t you bully me, Colum Murtagh. I know you. I served as an archer in the Duke of York’s retinue. I was then known as Edmund Appletree.’
‘So you were.’ Colum’s face broke into a smile. He stretched out his hand. ‘Nimble as a cricket you were. What are you doing hiding here?’
‘After St. Albans – Do you remember, you were only a stripling?’ Eadwig said – ‘a group of Lancastrians caught me. They had one end of a rope round my neck, the other over the branch of a tree. I took a great oath to my patron saint, Anthony of Padua, that if I was spared, I would dedicate myself to God.’
‘And they let you go?’
‘Oh no,’ Eadwig chortled. ‘They hanged me!’
Colum looked at the lay brother from head to toe.
‘You’re a sprightly enough ghost!’
‘The branch snapped.’ Eadwig beamed at Kathryn. ‘The Lancastrians thought it was a sign from God. They gave me my war-belt and a penny and told me to go and fulfil my vow.’ He tapped his foot on the floor. ‘Old Colum Murtagh trying to look fierce! You were nearly hanged once, weren’t you?’
‘As a boy, in my wild days.’
‘Tell me’ – Kathryn was bemused by this chattering lay brother – ‘you fought with the Duke of York, Eadwig?’
‘He was a grand man, Mistress. Colum will tell you: arrogant, vain as a peacock, but a good fighter. He was always kind to “the Earthworms,” as he called us.’
‘So you must have known Atworth?’
‘Oh yes, but I never told him.’
Kathryn got up and closed the door.
‘Let the guest master wait,’ she whispered, ‘or his feverish imagination run riot. Why didn’t you tell people you knew Atworth?’
‘Mistress, we take vows when we come here. We give up the world and therefore the past. It wasn’t my duty to come up to Brother Roger and say, “I knew you. Do you remember so and so?”’
‘And what was he like? Come on, tell me.’
‘A killer, born and bred, Mistress. Certainly in his soldiering days.’
‘Did he like killing?’
‘Not when he came back to England; he was beginning to change. He was a henchman; Master Murtagh knows what I mean. If the Duke said, “Do this,” Atworth would have done it. I only knew him for a short while; then we went our separate ways. I joined the monastery first. I nearly fell out of my stall when I saw him for the first time. He had changed. He was a great sinner trying to be a great saint: That’s why Duchess Cecily chose him as her confessor.’
‘What did he do?’ Kathryn asked.
‘Kept to himself. The Prior and Brother Simon looked after him, oh and that Jonquil.’
‘You don’t think much of him?’ Colum asked.
‘No, I don’t. Brother Atworth called him his Guardian Angel. I think he was put here.’
‘Put here?’ Kathryn grasped Eadwig’s hand. ‘You are a veritable source of stories, Brother Eadwig.’
Eadwig tapped the side of his nose. ‘I watch and listen.’ He squeezed Kathryn’s fingers. ‘To put it bluntly, Mistress, I would have told you this anyway. I don’t like Anselm, and I think Jonquil is a spy.’
‘For whom?’ Kathryn asked.
‘Why, Mistress, the Duchess.’
‘To spy on her own confessor?’
‘Well, to keep an eye on him, though for what reason, I don’t know.’
‘How long has he been here?’
‘Oh for some months. After the Yorkist ascendancy, he turned up at the friary gate with letters of accreditation from some merchant in London. At first I thought he was a pleasant lad, rather simple, until I noticed he used to leave the friary and slip back in the early hours.’
‘Is that common?’ Colum asked.
‘No, the brothers here are fairly faithful to their vows; their sins are gluttony and overtippling rather than the pleasures of the flesh. You see, Mistress, I like the Ancient One. Brother Timothy’s a great storyteller. He’s wonderful to listen to as long as you don’t believe half of what he tells you. I put the old one to sleep. I then hide in his room, well away from the others, who are constantly saying, “Eadwig, go and get this,” “Eadwig, go and get that.” It’s wonderful what you can see from his window.’
‘So Jonquil crosses Gethsemane?’
‘As fast as a squirrel to a tree into the bushes he goes. I wager he’s touched that wall so much the very stones would cry out and recognise him.’
‘And where do you think he goes?’
‘He doffs his robe. If he’s dressed in a jerkin, hose, and boots and keeps well away from certain places, he’s as free as a bird.’
‘So Jonquil is used for errands in the city?’
‘Of course, Mistress! I think to myself, why doesn’t Jonquil just leave? He hasn’t taken any vows yet. He acts like a fish out of water. He followed Brother Roger everywhere; the only reason that he is in the Friary of the Sack was Brother Roger. I wager a jug of wine to a jug of ale, Brother Jonquil is gone by Michaelmas.’
‘And you tell no one,’ Colum asked, ‘wha
t you see or suspect?’
‘I am not stupid, Irishman. I know my place in the scheme of things.’
‘Will you help me?’ Kathryn asked.
‘If I can, Mistress, but . . .’
‘Brother Eadwig!’ The voice boomed like a bell from outside.
‘Ah, my master has summoned me. Irishman, I think you should go.’ The lay brother opened the door. ‘I’ll wait for you outside. You’d best make it quick.’
As soon as he was gone, Kathryn and Colum embraced. He held her fiercely, kissing her on the cheeks and brow.
‘Be careful,’ Colum whispered. ‘I trust Eadwig. If anything happens, send him to me!’ He backed away. ‘How long will you stay?’
‘Until I have the measure of this place.’ Kathryn stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the chin. ‘Now you’d best go before being excommunicated by bell, book, and candle.’
Colum winked, caressed her face with his hand, and slipped through the door. Kathryn felt sad listening to Colum’s laugh as he went down the stairs with Eadwig, his profuse apologies to the guest master, the retreating footsteps, the door being opened and closed. Kathryn shivered and looked down at her feet. She was tempted to follow him, collect her possessions, and leave this place. She walked to the window. Lights glowed here and there, but the friary lay silent. Kathryn felt uneasy and went back to the door, pushed the bolts across, and turned the key in the lock. For a while she lay on her bed but was restless. She got up and lit more candles and placed them on the writing-desk. Her mind teemed with the events of the day: Malachi sitting insolently in her kitchen; the whispered confessions of Mathilda Chandler; the wax-like corpse of Brother Atworth; those hideous, smouldering remains.
‘I’ll make sense of it yet,’ Kathryn murmured.
She took a piece of parchment. ‘Quid novi?’ She scribbled the Latin tag: ‘What is new?’ She wrote down the title. ‘On the matter of rats.’ Kathryn dipped her quill into the small jar of black ink. Father had taught her how to write, not in a cipher but with abbreviations as a clerk would do. She marshalled her thoughts. The infestation was sudden, obvious in some parts of the city but not others. Here in the friary, the corpses of two rats had been described as singed. ‘Had there been a fire here?’ she continued writing, ‘or in another part of the city?’ Kathryn couldn’t recall any conflagration being reported. Why had the rats disappeared from here? Who’d mentioned stoats? Ah yes, Mathilda Chandler! Kathryn recalled Bourchier’s and Luberon’s insistence that she liaise with Malachi Smallbones, but what could she advise?
‘Poison,’ she wrote. ‘But what potion? How is it to be administered safely?’ Kathryn sighed and drew a line. She started her second column: ‘On the death of Padraig Mafiach.’ Kathryn breathed in deeply. Colum hid it well, but he was worried. He had been appointed to meet Mafiach, but the agent had been murdered. How? Kathryn paused, quill poised. What could she write about that grisly killing? How could a man like Mafiach be slain and his assassin so easily escape? She wrote down the question: ‘What does the cipher mean?’ And there was something else. What had she seen or heard in that chamber? Was it something the taverner had said? Kathryn threw the quill down in exasperation. She went and knelt on the prie-dieu.
‘Oh, Lord,’ she whispered, ‘what a tangled mess!’
And that was before she ever came to Brother Roger! Kathryn was convinced that Atworth’s death was due to self-poisoning, but the other phenomena? And Gervase? Why had he been murdered in such a barbarous fashion? And what was Jonquil doing here spying on Atworth? Was it for the Duchess? Or someone else?
Kathryn rose. She walked up and down the chamber. Only then did she notice the piece of parchment stuck under the door; it was jagged and rather dirty. Her heart skipped a beat. She went across and picked the paper up. The message was scrawled in an untidy hand. ‘Meet me now at the Blessed Roger’s grave.’
Kathryn noticed how both the words ‘meet’ and ‘blessed’ had been mis-spelt; written as ‘mete’ and ‘blesed’; the scrawl could have been in anyone’s hand. Underneath was a further message, a quotation from the Book of the Dead: ‘And the grave will give up its secrets.’ Kathryn hurriedly put on her boots and grabbed her cloak. She was about to draw back the bolts when she saw that the ring handle of the door had been moved. It had been swung to one side. Kathryn drew back the first bolt and bent down to draw the bottom one when she heard a faint shuffling. She stood back in a spasm of cold fear.
‘Stupid hussy!’ she whispered.
She looked at the message. Whoever had put that under her door was just beyond it. Kathryn recalled the shadowy stairwell outside. The guest-house was fairly deserted. Anyone could have written that message or had it written for them.
Kathryn went across to her panniers; fingers trembling, she undid the buckles. She was aware of a cold sweat on the nape of her neck. She drew the dagger out, casting away its velvet sheath – a present from Colum – and stood staring at the door. She went quickly to the window. The small, latticed door was clasped securely. She pulled across the shutter, lowered the bar, turned, and stared at the door.
I am safe, she reflected, as long as I don’t open that door and step out into the darkness. She wanted to scream. On the one hand she was frightened of what was waiting for her, but on the other, she realised a piece of wood might separate her from the solution to some of the mysteries which cloaked this place. Who could it be? Jonquil? A hired assassin? Kathryn breathed in deeply. The dagger felt slippery in her sweaty hand. She moved across to the door and pressed her ear against the wood. She stood holding her breath, ears strained for any sound, trying to curb both her panic and her imagination. She heard it again, a slight movement, a creak which, at any other time, she would neither have heard nor bothered about. Kathryn stepped back. This cat-and-mouse game could go on for hours unless one of the brothers came to see that all was well. Even then, whom could she trust? Kathryn remained rooted to the spot, staring at the door, and jumped at the loud knock.
‘Who is it?’ she called out.
No answer.
‘Who is it?’ she repeated.
‘Mistress, open the door, please! I bear messages!’
The voice was disguised. The thickness of the door, that hollow stairwell; the voice had a twang to it. If only . . .? Kathryn gripped the dagger and cursed her own impetuosity. She could have asked for Colum to stay in a separate chamber, demanded some sort of protection. She was here alone. Many friars would never dream of entering a guest-house in which a woman was present or come knocking at her door in the late hours. Again came the knock, the whispered voice. Kathryn found it hard to control her panic.
‘I will not open!’ she shouted. ‘Identify yourself! What do you want?’
Who else was in the guest-house, she wondered? Some visiting merchant? Kathryn heard the door creak. She glanced at the leather hinges. Was her would-be assassin trying to force the door a little further in? Would he fix on its weakest point, the stiff leather hinges? Kathryn’s mouth went dry. The window was too small to climb through, yet it was her only security. She raced across, pulled back the shutters, and pushed open the latticed door. The ground below was shrouded in darkness. Kathryn looked around. What could she use? Her eye caught the pieces of parchment on the table. She took one up and held it above the candle flame, watching the fire turn it black as the flame began to lick. Grasping it, Kathryn hurried to the window and shouted for help, waving the parchment for as long as she could. The flame grew stronger, fanned by the breeze, and the heat scorched her fingers, so she had to let it go. She was now shouting at the top of her voice. She grabbed another piece of parchment and lit this, all the time aware of the crashing against the door. Kathryn’s throat hurt from shouting so loudly. She heard a cry from below, and then there was silence on the stairwell outside. She stood fighting for breath and grasped the dagger where she had dropped it on the floor. She heard footsteps, a loud knocking.
‘Mistress, Mistress Swinbrooke!’
She r
ecognised Eadwig’s voice.
‘Identify yourself!’
‘Mistress, you know me.’
‘What are you doing?’ Kathryn demanded. ‘Why were you near the guest-house so late at night?’
‘Mistress, Master Murtagh asked me to come.’
Kathryn pushed at the door, wiping the sweat from her brow on her gown. She was so tense that what she had eaten earlier felt like a ball of lead in her stomach. She stood by the door.
‘Eadwig’ – she fought to keep her voice level – ‘is that you?’
‘Mistress, I saw the parchment, the fire.’
‘The guest-house,’ Kathryn asked, ‘is it deserted?’
‘Yes, Mistress, the merchant left two hours ago. I found the entrance door slightly off the latch.’
‘Is there anyone else there?’ Kathryn insisted as other footsteps echoed on the stairs. She heard Prior Anselm’s high-pitched voice and the infirmarian demanding what Eadwig was doing there. Kathryn sighed with relief, pulled back the bolts, and turned the key. Eadwig almost fell into the room, followed by the Prior and Brother Simon. Kathryn went and sat on the edge of the bed, her legs still trembling.
‘In God’s name,’ Simon came and crouched beside her, ‘Mistress, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost!’ He prised her fingers gently from her face.
‘Someone was out there.’
‘Mistress, there was no one.’
‘Then what’s that?’ Kathryn demanded, pointing to the piece of parchment on the floor.
The friar picked it up. ‘This could have been written by anyone.’
‘No, Father Prior, it was not written by just anyone,’ Kathryn retorted. ‘It was put under my door not so long ago. And, like a fool, I nearly drew the bolts, unlocked the door, and went out. No one was waiting for me at Roger Atworth’s grave; there was only a killer wanting to put me in mine, sword, dagger, axe, or garrotte string!’ Kathryn felt the anger welling within her.
The Prior and the infirmarian didn’t look so comforting now but more like very worried men.
‘Mistress, this is a friary.’