‘The head of Brân the Blessed is said to be buried on Tower Hill in London, where it defends these islands against invaders,’ added Rufus.
‘Didn’t do much of a job, then,’ muttered Henry, thinking of the Romans, the Saxons and his own Normans.
Rufus appeared to have exhausted his knowledge of the mysterious Irish book and further questions could draw forth no more information from him. Jordan le Brent looked disturbed and took the book back from Rufus with reluctant hands.
‘It sounds as if this may be a dangerous relic,’ he said sombrely. ‘I doubt if it should remain in our cathedral if it has this bad reputation from our Irish brothers-in-God.’
Thomas looked concerned, as he did not want to lose such an intriguing item before he had a chance to study it in depth.
‘What should be done with it, then, canon?’ he asked. ‘Surely it has too great a historical value to be destroyed! It may be part of the heritage of our early Christian Church.’
The archivist shook his head. ‘No, that might be sacrilege, but it is not for us to decide. I will suggest to the bishop that it be sent to Canterbury – let them ponder it and possibly send it on to Rome. The Holy Father has a secure vault in the basements of the Vatican where suspect volumes may be carefully hidden from the sight of man.’
Young Thomas had his own ideas about that, but at this moment he wisely kept them to himself.
In the Bush that evening, John de Wolfe sat at his usual table by the firepit, which on such a bleak night was full of glowing logs. He had his arm around his auburn-haired mistress, and on the other side of the table Gwyn sat huddled in his frayed leather jerkin, with a quart of ale and a large meat pie.
‘So what help did we get today from that coven of priests, Crowner?’ grumbled the big Cornishman. ‘Didn’t get us any nearer discovering who belted that proctor over the head.’
John had already told Nesta the story of the Black Book of Brân and as a strongly religious Celt herself, with a reputation for being somewhat fey in matters of magic, she was intensely interested.
‘Whether or not it helped you, it is a miraculous find,’ she said. ‘I only wish that I could read, for there must be things of great importance written there.’
‘It may be the work of the devil, not the angels!’ grunted Gwyn, himself a superstitious Celt. ‘But what use is it to us in finding a killer?’
Nesta contributed some of her usual common sense. ‘Stealing such a book means that it was a person who could read Latin. Otherwise, the thief could not even see that treasure was mentioned in one of these strange verses.’
John squeezed her closer, proud that his mistress had such a sharp mind. ‘It also means that it could not have been some rough villain sent by a more learned rascal, for as you say he would not be able to find useful documents unless he could decipher them.’
‘So are we looking for some priest?’ asked Gwyn before swilling down the rest of his ale.
‘A clerk, certainly, but not necessarily a priest. Almost no one, except a few rich barons and knights who have been to a school, have the gift of reading and writing, apart from those in holy orders.’
Ordained priests and deacons were far outnumbered by a whole range of lesser clerics, ranging from sub-deacons and lectors down to mere doorkeepers. Many clerks worked not in the Church but in the courts and commerce, as they formed the elite five per cent of the population who were literate.
‘I suppose it narrows it down,’ grumbled Gwyn. ‘But that leaves us with a few hundred clerks in the city alone – and God knows how many elsewhere in Devon!’
Nesta looked up at her lover’s stern face, the jaws darkened by black stubble, as it was some days since his last weekly shave.
‘John, how are you going to pursue this killer?’ she asked, her big hazel eyes full of concern. ‘As Gwyn says, you have so many possible culprits, but no clue as to where to start.’
De Wolfe tapped the fingers of his free hand on the edge of the rough boards of the table, his frown indicating deep thought. ‘Something the sheriff said today gives me an idea,’ he said at last. ‘If you can’t catch a rabbit by running after it, you must set a trap!’
It might be an exaggeration to say that Thomas de Peyne was ecstatic, but he was certainly blissfully content at being both back in the bosom of his beloved Church after his time in the wilderness – and with a literary problem before him. He was crouched over his desk in the cathedral library, reading by the light of a solitary candle, oblivious for once of the biting cold.
The whole Chapter House was deserted at this eighth hour of the evening, and normally the timid little clerk would have been nervous at being alone in a cavernous chamber where a man had been done to death not many hours before. But his absorption in the pages of the Black Book left no room for fear, as he avidly read through the pages of vellum which bore the strange verses.
Further discussion with Brother Rufus and Canon Jordan earlier that day had brought them to the conclusion that the book had probably been brought to Exeter in the early years following the Norman invasion of Ireland, which began in 1170.
‘We were not all honourable men in that campaign,’ the chaplain of Rougemont had boomed. ‘There was a great deal of looting by foot soldiers, mercenaries and indeed the nobles themselves. The churches, abbeys and priories were not always immune, I fear. This book may have been gathered up during the pillaging of some religious house.’
The old archivist had agreed and said that he recalled that several local knights who had returned from that campaign had donated various gifts to the cathedral, probably spurred by a guilty conscience. ‘Anything vaguely literary may well have been dumped up in the library and forgotten,’ he said ruefully.
Now Thomas was going through the mysterious book, carefully digesting each obscure quatrain and trying to make sense of the messages they must contain. There were two verses on each sheet of parchment, neatly centred on the pages. The jet-black ink looked fresh, though the brittleness of the leaves and the patina on the leather casing of the wooden covers betrayed its age.
For several hours the little priest pored over the verses, and all he managed were questions rather than answers. Who was this Brân who had written the quatrains? Where and when had he done it? And, most important, why had he felt impelled to write them?
Thomas puzzled over the references to plague and Tartarus’ hordes and catamite kings – all of which meant nothing to him.
Other questions slid unbidden into his mind. Were these actual prophecies and, if so, were they in chronological order? And what time span did they cover – a hundred years or a millennium or eternity itself? And how could any reader identify whether a disaster – for that was what they seemed to foretell – would occur in his lifetime, as opposed to in the past or future?
When he had finished reading the twenty-four quatrains through for the third time, Thomas closed the book and sat back, his eyes closed as he tried to assemble his thoughts. One thing was clear to him, even though he felt guilty about his possible duplicity.
Canon Jordan seemed adamant that this book might be an evil influence and so should be surrendered to higher episcopal or even papal authority. If that were done, the Exeter archives would lose something of possibly great religious and academic value. There and then, Thomas decided that he would make a fair copy himself, so that even if Brân’s original was taken from them, the library would at least have a record of the quatrains for further study. Surely, he told himself, even if there were some demoniac properties in the Black Book, they could not be transferred over to a mere transcript on virgin parchment. Spurred by the thought that the archivist and the bishop might act quickly and dispatch the book to Canterbury before he had time to study every verse, Thomas set to that very minute in making a copy. There was ample parchment lying around the library, as the treasury clerks and those who had to write the timetables and orders of service for the precentor kept a store in their desks. Thomas went around the room and t
ook a couple of sheets from each place, then settled down with a fresh candle to begin his copying. He reckoned it would take him until tomorrow evening to finish the verses, given his other duties next day, then he could bind them himself. The simple materials of wood, leather and cord were kept in the library for this purpose, and Thomas was quite capable of threading a dozen pages between two thin sheets of wood and gluing leather across them. Once he had a copy, then he could concentrate on trying to decipher their meaning at his leisure, for this presented a challenge that his nimble mind relished.
Late into the night, he remained hunched over his desk, the only sounds being the scratch of a goose quill and the occasional sniff as his sharp nose became even redder in the freezing air.
It was almost midnight when he gave up, to go across to the cathedral for Matins and then back to his lodgings before the next service at dawn.
The wide-ranging duties of a coroner included many events apart from investigating sudden and violent deaths. As well as having to hold inquests on finds of treasure, any catches of ‘royal fish’ – the whale and the sturgeon – came within his jurisdiction, as they belonged to the king. But on the day following Thomas’s nocturnal labours in the library, John de Wolfe was called to yet another category of his responsibilities. Not fire or rape this time, but a serious assault. These could often prove fatal, given the lack of effective medical treatment, and sometimes coroners would commit the care of the injured victim to the assailant, the reasoning being that the latter had a powerful motive for keeping the man alive, as if he died within a year and a day the perpetrator would be hanged for murder!
However, this time the victim was badly bruised and shaken but not in any serious danger of dying. De Wolfe, with Gwyn and Thomas at his side, rode out a few miles east of Exeter to the village of Clyst St Mary in answer to a plea from the manor reeve, the man responsible for organizing the labour force of the hamlet. He had ridden to Rougemont that morning to report that the bailiff had been assaulted by three men the previous evening. The bailiff was the representative of the manor lord, in this case the Bishop of Coutances, who was far away in Normandy.
‘The lad who herds the pigs raised the alarm,’ said the reeve as he rode alongside the coroner for the last half-mile into the village. ‘Simple in his wits, but he knew when something was wrong.’
‘You say this was in a field where there was a mound?’ demanded John.
‘Well, not a field as such, but in the wasteland between the pasture and the edge of the forest. There’s a grassy heap the height of a man – the old wives say it has been there since the days of Adam and Eve, though how they could know that beats me!’
‘How could your pig-boy see what happened if it was dark?’ objected Gwyn.
‘He saw the flickering lights of a lantern and crept up to have a look. The moon was more than half-full last night, so he could see a fair bit. There were three men, digging into the side of the mound, so he ran back to the bailiff’s dwelling to tell him.’
‘What happened then?’ asked de Wolfe.
‘Walter Tremble, our bailiff, called me out of my cottage and we went up there to see what was amiss. Sure enough, there were three fellows there, two of them with a pick and a shovel, digging like rabbits. Walter has a short temper and he ran ahead of me, shouting fit to burst.’
As they came within sight of Clyst St Mary, the long-winded reeve came to the climax of his story.
‘The one with the lantern straightway turned and ran, but the diggers stood their ground, and when Walter reached them they set about him with their tools. He’s a big man, the bailiff, but he had no chance against a pick and shovel wielded by two desperate men.’
‘Why didn’t you go to his aid?’ growled Gwyn.
‘I did, but I’ve got a stiff leg and was way behind Walter,’ he whined by way of excuse. ‘My breathing’s not so good either. I’m not much use in a fight. Anyway, these men after beating the bailiff to the ground ran off into the darkness after the first man. I was more concerned about getting aid for Walter than chasing them,’ he added virtuously.
‘Could you see anything of them?’ asked the coroner. ‘Were they local men, d’you think?’
‘Too dark to see, sir, even with a bit of a moon. But I got the impression that the first one, the one with the lantern, had a long habit on, down to his ankles. I thought he might have been a priest.’
‘We’ll have to ask the bailiff. He obviously got a lot nearer than you, reeve!’ growled de Wolfe sarcastically.
They had the opportunity a few minutes later as they were led to the only stone house in the village, next to the church. The parish priest had to put up with a meaner one of timber, but the absent bishop had installed his bailiff in a more substantial dwelling. In a small room off the main chamber, they found Walter Tremble groaning on a feather-filled pallet on the floor, his stout wife hovering anxiously with a hot poultice for the bruising on his chest. He looked a sorry sight, with livid purple bruising down one side of his face, puffy lids closing his right eye and numerous scratches on both arms.
However, his injuries did not prevent him from lacing his story with numerous oaths and blasphemies as he told the coroner what had happened.
‘They set upon me the moment I approached the bastards!’ he mumbled through swollen lips. ‘Struck me with a shovel and the handle of a pick before running away into the darkness, the cowardly swine!’
He could add little to what the reeve had already said, apart from claiming that the two diggers were large men, dressed in dark clothing, one with a sack around his shoulders.
‘What about the one with the lantern?’ asked Gwyn.
‘That sod was much smaller, but he ran off before I got to the mound,’ replied the bailiff. ‘He was dressed in black, a long tunic like the one your clerk is wearing.’ He nodded painfully at Thomas, whose rather threadbare cassock was slit up the sides for riding a horse.
There was no more to be learned from Walter, and with some muttered platitudes about trusting that he would soon be recovered de Wolfe took his leave, asking the reeve to show them where the assault had taken place. On the other side of the village, past the strip-fields that ran at right angles to the track, was an area of meadow, the grass now short and stiff with frost. Beyond that was the wasteland, a large area where trees had been felled to increase the arable area but which still had trunks and roots sticking up as far as the edge of the dark forest. At the top of this slope was a grassy mound, disfigured on one side by fresh red earth thrown out of an excavation a couple of feet deep.
‘They didn’t get very far down, as we disturbed them,’ said the reeve. ‘Anyway, they were wasting their time, as my father told me that his father and some other men had dug right through it fifty years ago and found nothing but some old pots and bones.’
On the way back to Exeter, John de Wolfe mused on what little they had learned in Clyst St Mary. ‘The bailiff will survive, but what happened is part of this mania that is sweeping the district. They’ll be digging into molehills next in the hope of finding gold!’
Thomas had a question, as usual. ‘Are these the same men who attacked the proctor, I wonder?’
‘No reason to think so,’ grunted Gwyn. ‘Every jackass in the county is wielding a spade these days.’
‘But they were very violent and both the reeve and the bailiff had the notion that one of them was a cleric,’ objected Thomas.
‘You may be right, young man,’ agreed de Wolfe. ‘I think it’s time we set that trap I mentioned, but it must be done carefully to catch the right vermin.’
That night the coroner’s clerk finished his copy of the Black Book and spent until the midnight hour stitching the few pages into the covers. Having spent much of his life with books and documents, he was quite adept at simple assembling and binding. Encasing Brân’s book with leather would have to wait until another day, as he needed to get some more oxhide glue from a tannery on Exe Island.
After morning serv
ices had finished in the cathedral, Thomas could not resist studying the quatrains yet again and gave up his dinner to go back to the library and pore over the obscure verses. He was particularly anxious to see if he could recognize any that might have relevance to the present time, but another two hours’ study left him as baffled as ever. Some of the other clerks were very curious as to what he was doing, and as they all knew of the circumstances of the ransacking of the library and the killing of the proctor Thomas had no option but to tell them of the Black Book and to show it to them, as clerics were more nosy and gossipy than most goodwives in the marketplace.
Later that day he returned with the glue to sheath the boards in thin black leather, trying to make the copy as similar as he could to the original ancient tome. With the book in a screw-press in the corner of the upper room, to allow the glue to set, he decided to take the original back to his lodgings in Priest Street1, so that he could spend more hours on it that evening. With a couple of candle ends salvaged from a side altar, he once again sat to rack his brains over the strange verses. He shared the small room with a vicar-choral, for, as the name suggested, many of the houses in Priest Street were rented out as tenements to junior clerics. Tonight, his roommate had gone to visit his sick sister in the city, and Thomas was glad of the solitude to puzzle over Brân’s prophecies.
Once again he carefully read through the two dozen quatrains, searching for anything that might suggest a contemporary meaning. Eventually, he settled on one that with a stretch of imagination might relate to the present time. It was the fifth in the series, and his lips again whispered the words as he read them through once more:
‘When three golden beasts did reign by bishop’s rule,
A bearded champion fought oppression’s realm,
His secret horde defied the edicts cruel,
But all was lost beneath the budding elm.’
Thomas huddled deeper into his thin cloak, as the only fire in the house was in a communal room at the back and the cold seemed to be addling his mind.
The Lost Prophecies Page 5