Falconer's Judgement

by Ian Morson

  The King's voice was thin and reedy, but carried a note of confidence that suggested he was amongst people he trusted. No one here would question his authority, as de Montfort and some other barons were doing. No one here would question his surrounding himself with foreign advisers. Some present, no doubt, were Savoyard or Roman.

  ‘The money is now accruing from the abbeys and monasteries. I told you to have patience and all would fall into place.’

  The Bishop inclined his head, bowing to the King's better judgement.

  ‘Your subjects are most generous.’

  The other men in the group found this uproariously funny, but the King quietened their unruly behaviour with an upraised hand. Otho clearly did not understand what he had said to cause the laughter, and gazed at Henry with a puzzled look on his florid features. The King carried on as though nothing had happened.

  ‘We should soon have enough funds to enable our proper support of your candidacy to replace Pope Alexander. We can ensure that the church is illumined by your guidance, and a pious peace will prevail to our mutual advantage.’

  Falconer's racing brain could hardly take in the import of what was being said. But down below, the bulky frame of the Bishop seemed to puff up even more from the flattery of the English King. He flung himself from his chair and planted a kiss on each cheek of the startled monarch.

  ‘And in return I will reinstate your family's right to the throne of Sicily, and ...’

  The King hurriedly put a ringed finger to his lips and cut off the flow of promises from the Bishop. In response Otho gave a grotesquely knowing wink, but could not curtail his excitement. A voluble flow of words in his own tongue was cast in the direction of his secretary, the thin functionary who had preceded his entrance. Stepping from the shadows, the man paled at what was clearly a set of extravagant promises, but nodded to denote he had consigned them to his memory. The Bishop whispered eagerly into the ear of the King, no doubt translating his promises into the English tongue. But even this was eventually waved aside by Henry, and the Bishop bowed obsequiously. He then backed out of the hall, pausing only to throw several extravagant obeisances at the King, his robes twirling around his gesticulating hands.

  As the door closed behind him with a crash that echoed up the hall, Falconer felt Segrim's hand on his shoulder.

  ‘You've seen enough,’ he hissed.

  The Regent Master was reluctant to take his gaze off the scene below, but the conversation had now been lowered once again to conspiratorial tones. He had indeed seen and heard enough. There was obviously a compact between King Henry and the Bishop. In return for the King's moral and monetary support in his quest for the papal throne, the Bishop was to offer the titbit of an entire kingdom and more. There was clearly no reason why the King, or any of his supporters including Segrim, would be involved in plotting the Bishop's death. Falconer's edifice of truths was rapidly crumbling, and even though his thought processes were dulled by his chill, he knew he had been in error. The confident look on Segrim's face meant he knew Falconer had reached the right conclusion.

  Chapter Twelve

  The pale yellow dawn cast a feeble ray into the Regent Master's room, almost too weak to push away the gloom. The darkness of the chamber seemed to gain its strength from the figure hunched over the heavy oaken table. His muscular shoulders twitched involuntarily and a powerful sneeze stirred him to wakefulness. Bleary-eyed, he scanned the room vacantly, his head ringing with the aftershock of the sneeze. Bad enough that he could no longer see a way forward to discovering the true identity of Sinibaldo's murderer. Now he was being laid low with a fever. His head felt stuffed with old rags, and all his limbs ached unmercifully. He breathed in the chill air of the room, and his chest popped and rattled like some ill-fitted water-wheel.

  Trying to rise, he felt dizzy and slumped back on to the bench, resting his aching head on his folded arms. He tried to think clearly and sneezed again. It had all been so lucid at the start of the previous day. Segrim, or a monkish accomplice, had arranged for the Welshman to fire an arrow at the Bishop during a concocted riot. They had then sought out the unfortunate youth and ensured his silence by strangling him. It mattered not that John Gryffin had killed the wrong man. Indeed that had been all the more reason to punish his failure with death.

  He had worried a little over the strange position of the body in the kitchen, and moreover there was the recent gouge in the wooden pillar. What had caused that, and was it important? He had wished he could speak to the servants who had been present to tidy up these loose ends in his imagined tapestry. He shook his befuddled brain. Yesterday he had cast aside these minor facts. After all, not everything could always be fitted into place. Now, it seemed nothing fitted. If Segrim had no reason to kill the Bishop, in fact had every reason to protect him, the truths he had collected did not match at all. As if reflecting the state of Falconer's thinking, the early morning sun was obscured by cloud, and a depressing greyness fell across the room.

  Guillaume de Beaujeu was angry. He had still not heard from that fat, murdering Archbishop about getting access to Otho. What's more, he had wasted a good night's sleep, keeping an eye on Aethelmar's co-conspirator. He had returned in the early hours of the morning to his room at the Golden Cross Inn after a chilly night observing the comings and goings at Oseney Abbey. The dank and penetrating vapours of the low-lying marshy land had bitten deep into his bones. He had even found himself wishing once more for the sharp but sere cold of the desert nights in the Holy Land. His vigil had been doubly uncomfortable because he could smell the aroma of the meal the monks had eaten earlier, and could sense the warmth spilling out into the night from the dorter wing where self-indulgent monks had candles burning yellowly long after the sun had set. The heat had not reached him, squeezed as he was behind the low scrub that lined a foetid drainage channel. In the end no one had ventured beyond the walls of the abbey. Or so he assumed - much to his mortification, he realized in the middle of the night that he had dozed off. Waking with a red moon hanging low in the sky, he did not know whether he had slept for a moment or a long time. He scanned the water-meadows for movement but there was none, and everything seemed as it had before his eyes had closed.

  Now he had returned to his room to find his saddle panniers disturbed. Whoever had examined them had taken care to replace them in the same position in an attempt to hide his actions. But de Beaujeu knew the knot on the cord that held the flap down was not his. He fingered it thoughtfully, then untied the unfamiliar knot and opened the bags. His few possessions were still inside, so the intruder had not been a common thief. His hand then went automatically to the secret compartment, sliding his fingers into the supple leather. With a start he realized the letter had gone.

  He let out a curse in his own tongue and called angrily for the landlord of the inn. The man was at his door in an instant, betraying the fact that he must have been hovering nearby, nervous of the Frenchman's return. He was doubly betrayed by the petrified look on his face that an obsequious smile failed to mask. De Beaujeu strode over and grasped a handful of the landlord's stained and coarse shirt. He twisted the cloth tight around the other's neck and slammed him against the inner wall of his room. The cheap daub cracked and a chunk fell loose at their feet.

  The red-faced landlord squawked and scrabbled with roughened fingers at the Frenchman's steely grip. De Beaujeu shot just one word at him.

  ‘Who?’

  Seeing a reluctance in the man's eyes to respond to his question, he grasped a knot of his greasy hair and cracked his head sharply against the crumbling wall. The landlord's eyes squeezed tight with pain, and the words poured out of his mouth.

  ‘It was Bullock, the constable. He made me do it.’

  De Beaujeu loosened his grip and strode out of the inn, leaving the landlord to slide down the broken wall into a quivering heap.

  ‘Thank God you are safe.’

  Peter Bullock stood in the doorway of William Falconer's room, a nervous Hugh Pet
t peering from behind his crooked shoulders.

  ‘Your young student let me in. I had been hammering at the hall door for an age. It was a good job he and the others were returning from their morning lectures. Why didn't you answer?’

  He paused in his volley of anxious questions and peered more closely at his friend. ‘You look awful.’

  Falconer groaned and whispered through a hoarse throat.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It's near to sext. The middle of the day and you haven't yet stirred. You must be ill.’

  Falconer rose groggily, wiped his dripping nose on the sleeve of his robe and closed the door in the startled face of young Pett. He turned to Bullock, who seemed to fill the room with his misshapen body.

  ‘I'm fine. A little cold is all. And a heavy dose of disappointment.’

  He beckoned Bullock to sit down and slumped on the bench beside him. An account of the events of the previous day followed, culminating with the revelation that he was entirely lost concerning the murders. Bullock, whose eyes had widened at the mention of King Henry, now leaned forward with a story of his own to tell. He told Falconer of his sightings of the mysterious man, how he followed him to the Golden Cross Inn and got the landlord to let him into the man's room. Falconer was mildly interested, but his sore eyes kept drooping and each wheezing breath was an effort. He just wished the constable would get his story over with and leave him to suffer in peace.

  ‘And then I found this letter.’

  Falconer looked up and saw that Bullock was triumphantly brandishing a folded piece of parchment, with a broken red wax seal on its outer surface.

  ‘Who's it from?’

  ‘You haven't been listening to a word, have you.’

  Bullock's craggy features were crestfallen and Falconer regretted his inattention. The constable obviously thought he had something important, and the least he could do was appear interested - for the sake of their long friendship, if nothing else.

  Yes, I have. The mystery man is a warrior, you say. And what does the letter from his luggage prove?’

  Once again a frown creased the already lined face of Peter Bullock.

  ‘I was hoping you'd tell me. It's in a foreign language.’

  He passed the folded letter to Falconer, and the two halves of the broken seal were united before the Regent Master's eyes. Suddenly, his curiosity was aroused, and he thought for the first time that Bullock might indeed have something interesting. He brought the red wax close to his face and followed the lines of the impressed shape with his fingers.

  ‘What is it?’ came the anxious voice of Peter Bullock.

  ‘This is the crest of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. Templars, to you and me.’

  Bullock beamed with pleasure that he had found something to attract Falconer's attention after all.

  ‘What does the letter say?’

  Falconer opened the stiffened sheet and scanned the letter quickly.

  ‘It's in the French tongue. But I can read it.’

  He read in silence, and Bullock shuffled uneasily on the bench, staring intently at his friend as though he could decipher the contents from Falconer's face.

  ‘It's about a shipment of pottery from Northern France with a lot of details about the price of transportation, the route and the contents of the crates.’

  Bullock was struck dumb. It was not at all what he expected - such a disappointment after waiting since yesterday, thinking this letter would solve all the mysteries of the master cook's death. Strangely, Falconer did not seem at all disappointed. With a quiet smile on his face, he swung round to face the table and spat on the dried remains of yesterday's ink. Mixing it together with a little water from the bottom of the jug that had been delivered for his ablutions, Falconer lifted up a quill and checked the quality of the point. Satisfied, he looked at the disconsolate Bullock.

  ‘Don't you think it odd, my friend, that your warrior should be carrying a business document? And in a secret compartment too?’

  ‘Well, perhaps, but . ’

  Falconer did not let him finish, and Bullock could tell that, despite his fever, his friend was in a familiar mood. He always became impish when he saw the solution to a puzzle no one else had spotted. The constable knew he would have to be patient and allow Falconer to tell it in his own way.

  ‘You see, the Templars have fingers in many pies. Financial and political. In areas where information is very sensitive, and needs to be kept secret.’

  Bullock nodded but could not see where this was leading, and why Falconer needed quill and ink. The Master continued.

  ‘They often send messages within messages, and this letter is too innocuous on the surface to warrant being hidden. Therefore, there must be a hidden message in it.’

  Bullock's disappointment was beginning to dissipate. A hidden message meant something important.

  ‘But that gets us nowhere. How can we decipher it?’

  ‘I happen to know some of their codes. Don't ask me why for it's a long story. But the commonest code is to scatter the true message using the second letter of the third word in each sentence. See how short these sentences are, and how long the text? Not normal for a simple business letter. It suggests to me there is a message hidden using that code. Whoever did it was very lazy to use such a common one, but that is our luck and the Templar's misfortune.’

  He passed the letter to Bullock.

  ‘You call out the letters and I'll write them down.’

  Very soon a string of letters was scratched on a scrap of paper by Falconer's elderly quill.

  A-U-N-O-M-D.

  Bullock peered at the sequence and tried to mouth a word. He was disappointed.

  ‘It's meaningless.’

  ‘Have patience,’ urged Falconer, and raised his quill to continue the task. Bullock counted and called out another sequence.

  U-G-R-A-N-D-M.

  Falconer felt a shiver up his spine, and was sure it was not the fever that caused it. The following letters confirmed his suspicion.

  A-I-T-R-E.

  He quickly scored lines after the second, fifth, seventh and twelfth letters on the paper.

  ‘“Au nom du Grand Maître”. It's a letter from the Grand Master of the order himself, written in French. Carry on.’ The owner of the letter was frustrated in his search for the town constable. He was quite prepared to confront the man over his theft, and claim his letter back. It was, after all, an important business document. He was confident that Bullock would not be able to decipher the message containing the secret authorization of the Grand Master, and therefore he would be seen as an innocent wronged.

  He knew from his earlier surveillance that the man lived below the Great Keep. But when he entered the gloomy courtyard he could see the door to the constable's quarters was firmly shut. There was no response to the insistent sound of his fist on the studded door. He quartered the city, expecting to run across Bullock patrolling the narrow lanes, again without success. The streets were full of rowdy students baiting each other, threatening to make the dusty alleys a battleground between those from the northern nation and those from the south. But of the constable there was no sign. His last resort was the home of the nosy Regent Master, William Falconer. He and Bullock were a strange pair, but obviously close friends. Loosening his sword in its scabbard, he retraced his steps towards East Gate and the narrow lane that led to Aristotle's Hall.

  Gradually the letters hidden within the innocuous-seeming business document spelled out an authorization for the bearer from the Grand Master of the Templars. It was addressed to the supporter of the Orsini faction in the household of Bishop Otho. Tantalizingly, the name of this person was not mentioned in the body of the text they had deciphered so far. However, the last paragraph of the business letter began to reveal the instructions the bearer of the document had been commanded to follow. They were to do with the elimination of the Papal Legate, and demanded the cooperation of the Orsini agent. Bullock still d
id not understand what the import of the hidden message was.

  ‘What's this Orsini?’ he asked, pronouncing the middle syllable as ‘sin’. Falconer corrected him, putting a long ‘i’ in the middle.

  ‘The Orsini are a who, not a what. A very influential family indeed - cardinals, or wealthy supporters of cardinals.’

  Falconer could already begin to see what was afoot.

  This is all about the politics of power in Rome itself. And the election of the next Pope. Let's finish the deciphering. There has to be a name somewhere for this agent.’

  Eventually they found it. Bullock called out the letters and Falconer was ahead of him.

  S-I-N-I-B-

  ‘Sinibaldo!’

  ‘I see I have underestimated you.’

  The quiet voice from the doorway startled both Falconer and his friend. Neither had heard anyone approaching, and whoever it was had mounted the rickety stairs without creaking a timber. Falconer squinted at the shadowy figure standing in the darkening passage and smiled.

  ‘Come in, poor knight.’

  As de Beaujeu stepped forward, Bullock gasped and dropped his hand to the rusty sword that always swung at his waist, more as a threat than an actual weapon. He was afraid that now he needed to use it, and it or he would prove inadequate. The Templar was probably more than a match for himself and the feverish Falconer. He began to draw the ancient weapon from its sheath. Falconer swiftly but gently stayed his hand, clasping his fingers over Bullock's grasp.

  ‘I think the Templar has come to talk, not fight, Peter.’

  He motioned for the man to sit opposite them at the table, and noted the natural grace of his movement. This man was indeed a warrior - a secret warrior trained in the ways of the East. Once a Crusader then. When he spoke, his voice also trod carefully, gently but with a backbone of steel.

  ‘I see you already know of my mission.’

  He gestured towards the stolen letter lying on the table between them. Bullock had the good grace to look embarrassed.