01 - Murder in the Holy City

by Simon Beaufort

  Courrances materialised from behind a pillar and glided over to Geoffrey.

  “You do not really believe the Greeks are behind this, do you?” he asked.

  Geoffrey shook his head. “But I do not know who is.”

  Courrances put a limp hand on Geoffrey’s shoulder, and Geoffrey heard the clank of a weapon under the soldier-monk’s robe as he moved.

  “You are in a vulnerable position, my friend,” said Courrances, so softly that Geoffrey had to strain to hear. “It is difficult to serve two masters, and if you fail to uncover who is behind these deaths, the Advocate will believe you have betrayed him. Even if you do uncover a plot, who knows whether he will believe your findings or not? It depends at whom you will point your finger.”

  And you were the one who put me in this position, thought Geoffrey. He was suddenly angry with himself. He had allowed himself to be fooled by Courrances, who probably guessed there was something more sinister afoot than a Saracen plot as he had claimed. Courrances was right: who knew where Geoffrey’s investigations might lead him, and, even if he did uncover the identity of the killer, who was to say the Advocate would believe him? What if it were Warner? The Advocate had already told Geoffrey that his cousin was invaluable to him: there was simply no way the Advocate would accept Warner’s guilt.

  Courrances removed his hand, but Geoffrey imagined he still could feel the man’s corruption oozing through his armour. The warrior-monk gave Geoffrey a smile that reminded him of the wolves that slunk around soldiers’ campfires in the desert, and slid noiselessly out of the chapel. Geoffrey waited a moment before following, his mind teeming with questions and worries.

  After a breakfast of flat, dry bread and pickled olives, the most immediate task was to visit the scriptorium, to ask questions about Dunstan and Marius. Roger and Hugh were already practising their swordplay in the bailey, observed by a crowd of soldiers who formed a circle around them. Geoffrey watched them for a moment, admiring Roger’s decisive movements and massive strength pitted against Hugh’s resourcefulness and speed. Then he went to don his own armour, and set off through the streets to the scriptorium, with Helbye and Fletcher at his heels and the dog slinking behind them.

  He was admitted to the Patriarch’s Palace by the captain he had met the night before. The captain had apparently been warned Geoffrey might come, for he led him to the scriptorium without asking him the purpose of his visit.

  The scriptorium was not yet light enough for the monks to write, but they were already busy, mixing inks, sharpening pens, and scraping vellum. The large room was full of their chatter, mostly about the death of Dunstan the night before. Talking to a Benedictine at the far end of the room was the Patriarch, who spotted Geoffrey and strode to greet him.

  “Marius was murdered last night too,” said Geoffrey without preamble, watching the reactions of the Patriarch carefully. “He was stabbed in my chamber at the citadel while I was here.”

  The Patriarch dug strong, slender fingers into Geoffrey’s arm and led him out of the scribes’ hearing. “In the citadel?” he echoed. “Marius was murdered in the citadel?”

  Geoffrey nodded. “Which points to the likelihood that the murderer is a knight, for it is not easy to gain access to the citadel at any time, but it is especially difficult after dusk.”

  “My God!” breathed the Patriarch. “This is becoming more sinister by the minute. So now I have no one investigating this business but you. You had better take care!”

  Geoffrey did not need to be told.

  “Do you have any idea who might be responsible?” the Patriarch asked, after a pause.

  Geoffrey shook his head, unwilling to give voice to his suspicions about Courrances, Warner, and d’Aumale without adequate proof. “But I need to question your scribes. I want to know more about Dunstan and Marius. Did they have any particular enemies? Or friends?”

  The Patriarch steepled his fingers and looked across the scriptorium at the gossiping monks. “Marius was very popular; Dunstan was not. Brother Alain is the best person for you to talk to. He is the scriptorium’s biggest gossip, and he was great friends with Marius.”

  He clicked his fingers imperiously and pointed at a large, balding man who sat apart from the others, biting his nails. The man swallowed hard and, looking like a lamb to slaughter, came toward Geoffrey and the Patriarch.

  “This is Sir Geoffrey Mappestone,” said the Patriarch to the nervous monk. “He has questions that you will answer fully and honestly.”

  The monk nodded miserably, and the Patriarch strode away, calling out orders to his clerks. Geoffrey took Brother Alain’s arm and led him to a window seat near Dunstan’s desk. He could feel the man trembling, and noted that there were fine beads of sweat all across his glistening pate.

  “Now,” said Geoffrey when they were seated. “Why did you help Marius make Dunstan’s death appear like murder?”

  The man gazed at him aghast, and Geoffrey knew his intuitive guess had been correct. He had based his assumption on the fact that if the man was as great a gossip as the Patriarch had inferred, then very little would have kept him from the hubbub of excitement that Geoffrey had detected as he entered the scriptorium. But Alain had been sitting apart, eyeing Geoffrey and the Patriarch with much the same expression as a mouse sighting a swooping owl.

  “I do not know what you mean. I …”

  “Brother Marius was murdered last night,” Geoffrey said brutally. “At the citadel. For your own safety, I recommend that you tell me the truth.”

  All colour fled from the monk’s face, so that, with his bald head and bloated features, he reminded Geoffrey of a drowned corpse.

  “Marius dead?” Alain gave a great sigh and turned to gaze out the window at the fountains in the courtyard. “I would say Dunstan killed him, but Dunstan was dead already, killed by his own hand.”

  “Why would you think Dunstan was responsible?”

  “Dunstan was a vile creature, greedy in all things. Everything he did bespoke avarice. He always took more food than everyone else, even at times when there was barely enough to go round, and he was always out at the Greek market buying extra. He stole, too. Several of the brothers found things missing—inks, gold leaf, bits of jewellery—small things of no consequence, but we all knew it was him. We think he sold them at the market, because under his bed, he has a great chest of coins.”

  “A fine medley of traits for a monk.”

  Alain looked at him sharply, uncertain how the knight’s comment was intended to be taken. Geoffrey met his gaze and smiled encouragingly.

  “Over the last three or four days, Dunstan became much worse, and he became irritable too. He was constantly devouring those Greek cakes. We all wondered if it were overindulgence that was making him so irascible—all that sweetness disturbing the balance of his humours. He and Marius had arguments. At first, they were nothing much, just the usual disputes between colleagues working closely together. Then the fights began to be serious. Yesterday afternoon, they had a blazing row that could be heard all over the palace. Then Dunstan became maudlin, and he began to say he would take his life if Marius did not recant some of the things he had said. Marius refused. Dunstan sat here and moped for the rest of the day. When he did not appear for dinner, I knew there was something wrong. I found him hanging on that door. He had taken his life as he had threatened. Marius is … Marius …”

  “You must tell me the truth,” said Geoffrey as the scribe’s voice trailed off miserably.

  Alain took a deep breath. “Marius is important to all of us here,” he said, gesturing round at the other scribes, who were watching them intently. “He has to be told!” he yelled suddenly. Several monks shook their heads, and others appeared anxious, while some would not look at Alain and Geoffrey at all.

  “Told what?” asked Geoffrey, mystified.

  “Marius is important to us because he provides things … ladies …”

  “Marius arranges for women to visit the scriptorium?” asked
Geoffrey, hiding a smile. “Do not look so morose, Brother. I will not tell the Patriarch.”

  Alain’s relief was tangible. “Every Thursday night,” he said. “He arranges for some ladies to come to us. They have been coming for months now, and we have all … grown fond of them. I knew that if Dunstan was found to have committed suicide after proclaiming so loudly that Marius would drive him to it, then Marius would be sent away. And I would never see Mary again!”

  “Mary is one of these women?” asked Geoffrey.

  Alain nodded. “I cut Dunstan down and put him over his desk. I thought to make it look as though he had been murdered, and had not taken his own life. I thought the Patriarch would assume he had been killed because he was investigating these strange deaths. Marius was with others all day at the library, and so had a firm alibi and would not be blamed for any murder.”

  “But you misjudged the situation,” said Geoffrey, feeling a certain pity for the plump monk. “Marius saw the body, immediately assumed, as indeed you had intended, that Dunstan had been murdered—by someone at the palace—and fled in terror to be murdered at the citadel.”

  Alain nodded and turned away to gaze out of the window. “I was foolish to have attempted such a rash plan. But when I saw Dunstan hanging there, all I could think about was that Marius would be blamed. And none of us here knows how to contact these ladies but Marius. He ran errands for the Patriarch, you see, and this enabled him to be out and about a lot. The rest of us live and work here, and we seldom leave the palace premises. Marius not only brought the ladies here, but he knew which of the guards could be trusted not to tell …”

  “This explains why Dunstan’s suicide was dressed up as murder, but not why he was driven to suicide in the first place,” interrupted Geoffrey, before the conversation swung too far away from the business at hand. “Have you any ideas?”

  Alain took a deep shuddering breath. “Perhaps his evil dealings became too much for him. He was always in the church confessing his sins, so they were obviously beginning to weigh heavily on him.”

  “What evil dealings?”

  “He could change the style of his writing, and he knew Greek. He did all sorts of scribing for various merchants who paid him far too well for his work to have been honest. Then there was something going on at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Marius and I usually attend mass there on Sundays, and we saw him at least twice. I saw him poking round the back of the altar in one of the chapels.”

  And Geoffrey knew exactly why. Dunstan had been searching for the blackmail money that he had instructed should be left there. So that cleared up another mystery—that Dunstan was definitely blackmailing someone.

  “Was there anyone who wished Dunstan harm? Someone who might have driven him to his death?”

  “Oh yes,” said Alain. “All of us, for a start. He made us pay him to keep the secret of the ladies from the Patriarch. Then there are all the merchants he cheated. And I was beginning to wonder whether the Patriarch knew about him, and decided it was time for … well, you know.”

  So Dunstan had been a thief, a cheat, and a blackmailer with scores of enemies. Any one of them could have left the poisoned cakes in his desk; from the sound of him, Dunstan was sufficiently greedy to have eaten them without questioning where they had come from. Dunstan had been a doomed man long before he saved others the bother of killing him.

  “Are you aware that he was blackmailing anyone other than all the monks in the scriptorium?”

  Alain frowned. “We wondered about that,” he said, gesturing again to his colleagues. “Our suspicion is that he tried to blackmail someone, but the someone was too powerful for him. We think Dunstan’s intended victim turned against him, which explains why, for the last three or four days, his behavior was so odd. He never left the palace, and he was moody.”

  “Do you have any idea who might harm Marius?”

  Alain shook his head, and Geoffrey was horrified to see the sparkle of tears in his eyes. “None at all. And now I will never see Mary again,” he said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Geoffrey returned to the citadel, gave Hugh and Roger a brief description of his findings, and prepared to leave again for the Greek market. Hugh looked well-rested and healthy, but claimed a headache. Geoffrey suspected it had more to do with the fact that it was his turn to supervise the repairs on the city walls, than with the blow on the head the previous night, for it had not affected his sword practice with Roger. The knights loathed “wall duty,” which involved overseeing large work parties of soldiers and local labourers to repair the damage caused when the Crusaders took Jerusalem. The soldiers and locals were apt to quarrel at the slightest provocation, and both slacked at the heavy labour as soon as the knights’ attention was elsewhere. Wall duty was hot, dirty, and unrewarding, and the knights thoroughly resented its necessity.

  Geoffrey, Roger, Helbye, Wolfram, a trio of soldiers from Bristol, and Geoffrey’s dog set off toward the market in the Greek Quarter. The business day in Jerusalem was already well under way. Carts clattered along the packed-earth streets, and the gutters ran wet with night waste. Blankets were draped out of windows to air, and shutters were thrown open to allow the clean morning breeze to circulate. A few flies buzzed around their heads, but not in the swarms that massed in the heat of the day. The cold unease that had lain leaden in the pit of Geoffrey’s stomach since his conversation with Courrances began to recede, and his natural optimism began to shine through in the freshness of the new day.

  The Greek market was seething with activity. Brightly coloured canopies were rigged outside every house, while owners laid out their wares on the street in the shade, so that there was barely enough room to walk between them. Everywhere, voices were raised, advertising goods and arguing about prices, and gangs of children, idle while their parents haggled, whooped and shrieked and weaved in and out of the stalls. The first street contained the spice-sellers, with huge mounds of brightly coloured powders and seeds laid in neat piles across blankets spread on the ground. The sweet smell of dried peppers mixed with the pungent aroma of garlic and coriander. The dog wandered over to a lurid heap of turmeric intent on mischief, but beat a retreat when a preliminary sniff made it sneeze.

  The next street was where the cobblers plied their trade, and their stalls had great piles of shoes and boots ready to be stitched to individual requirements. The smell of leather was not quite strong enough to dispel the powerful wafts emanating from the nearby butchers’ shops. Beyond were the candlemakers and beyond them, the bakers, with the rich scents of cakes and bread.

  Geoffrey left Helbye and the others at the corner, while he and Roger went to investigate alone—he did not want to frighten anyone who might provide him with information by a show of excess force. Slowly, and with Roger offering to sample the wares from each stall, Geoffrey walked along the street, searching for the sweet cakes with the distinctive pattern. Although the street was full of people, they maintained a wary distance from the knights, whose reputation in the city was, not without cause, that of undisciplined violent louts who sought fights with little provocation. Roger stopped to purchase cakes from a baker who seemed to specialise in goods twice the size of those of his colleagues, and Geoffrey strolled on alone.

  As he neared the end of the street, he thought he was going to be unsuccessful and that he would need to begin buying cakes so he could identify the style of wrapping paper. Then he saw them on the very last stall in the row. He paused at the corner and looked up and down the alley that ran to the left and right. It was dingier than the bakers’ street, and there were one or two stalls selling what looked to be broken pots and pans. The alleyway disappeared into shadows in either direction, and Geoffrey felt uncomfortable not knowing where they led. His military training told him he ought to explore them before speaking to the baker—for it was a foolish warrior who did not know his escape routes—but, he decided reluctantly, this might merely serve to arouse suspicion.

  The stall owner had her
back to him, busily wrapping bread for an elderly man who was complaining about his sore gums in a high-pitched, tremulous voice. When she turned, Geoffrey was startled to recognise Melisende Mikelos. She recognised him at the same moment, and her reaction was far from flattering.

  “You! Not again! Will you pester me forever?”

  Geoffrey hoped not, but the way she was appearing in the most unexpected of places suggested otherwise. He felt a sudden surge of disappointment that, after all they had been through, she was guilty after all. He had come to accept her innocence after Loukas had been killed while she was in custody, but her clear link with the poisoned cakes gave him cause for serious doubts. Even if she had not committed the murders herself, she must surely be involved. She met his gaze with her clear gold-brown eyes, and Geoffrey’s disappointment intensified. She was an attractive woman—if her personality was not taken into account—and it seemed a shame that she had embroiled herself in the unpleasant business of murder.

  He smiled politely. “I have come for some cakes.”

  She shot him a disbelieving look. “For your elderly mother?” she jibed.

  “For my dog,” he retorted, and regretted it instantly. He was not going to gain information from Melisende Mikelos by being offensive. The dog, meanwhile, had recognised the scent of the cakes that had caused him so much discomfort the night before; it paused only to nip Geoffrey hard on the ankle to repay him for the force-fed milk, before sloping away up the street with its tail between its legs. Melisende watched it go, while Geoffrey surreptitiously rubbed his ankle.

  “Your dog has no more sense than you do,” she said. “What do you really want?”

  “Do you know a scribe named Dunstan?” Geoffrey asked, deciding a direct approach might work better than subterfuge with this outspoken woman.