by Paul Doherty
‘Pax et pax et pax – peace and peace and peace – all shattered. Fly he did, like poor Brother Theobald.’
‘Theobald?’
‘Theobald was a novice here many, many years ago,’ Eusebius gossiped on. ‘He fell in love, he did, with a moon-maid who became his leman. When she left him, Theobald climbed to the top of the tower and tried to fly like an eagle. Before he fell, he carved some words in the belfry. You can see them there.’
‘You mean he committed suicide?’
‘Now, you hush!’ Eusebius raised one black-nailed finger to his lips. ‘You hush! Theobald’s ghost haunts this place, so be careful what you say.’
I thanked him and took heed of his warning about how the swinging bells could be dangerous. I climbed the ladder to the first floor. A grim, chilling experience, the cold air seeping through the arrow-slit windows. Eusebius, his voice like that of a ghost, echoed up, reminding me to be careful and telling me that he was now leaving for the buttery to break his fast. Each of the floors of the tower was the same: dirt-filled, cobwebbed, nothing but shards of rubbish and heaps of bird droppings. At last I reached the bell chamber. The ceiling rose to a cavernous vault above me. The heavy bells, and the wood and cordage to which they were attached, looked like some grim engine of war. There was hardly any room to move. The windows in each of the four walls now looked much bigger than the apertures glimpsed from the courtyard below; each was about two yards high, the same across, the brickwork on either side about two feet in thickness. The slate ledges, slightly sloping away to drain any rainwater, were broad enough to allow a man to stand on. The sills were at the same level as the two bells hanging side by side, so if these were swung, anyone standing between them and the ledges would be struck. Had this happened to Lanercost? I walked carefully around, examining the floor, studying the droppings and clumps of rotting feathers as well as spots of oil, paint and polish used to grease the bells and the apparatus that carried them. The bells themselves were massive, their yawning bronze mouths tinged a greyish-blue due to the elements. The sharp rims of both were decorated with the lettering of their names, carved by some ancient smith above the date on which they had been consecrated.
I can still recall that bell chamber. A lonely, sinister place made even more so by some bird, wings splayed, swooping in to dim the light, only to wheel away with raucous screeching. Was it also an abode of murder? Had someone been up here with Lanercost? What had truly happened here? Using my hand to rest against the wall, I edged carefully around to the window that Lanercost must have fallen from. I examined the slippery, sloping ledge but could detect nothing untoward. I leaned over to inspect the heart-stopping drop, first to the black-slated roof of the nave, then to the great courtyard below, where the occasional friar hurrying across looked so small. I eased myself back and stared at the rough, undressed walls of ashlar, those bells hanging so silently, the corners choked with the dust of centuries. I recalled Eusebius’ remark about Theobald. I found nothing until I returned to the window from which Lanercost must have fallen. High on the smooth lintel stone, I detected some letters carved so many years previously: ‘Theobald, who loved so much and lost so much’. My fingers traced the inscription. I wondered if Lanercost had known of such a story. Had he been so overcome with guilt at the death of his brother that he’d climbed up here and committed suicide? Yet Lanercost was a young warrior hardened in the service of Gaveston – so was it murder? Yet again, he was a man of war and would have defended himself vigorously, and if murder was the explanation, why had he scaled the ladder up into this narrow forbidden room in the first place? Surely he wouldn’t have come up here with an enemy. This was the root of the mystery.
I startled at a creak, steadied myself then gazed in horror – the bells were moving slightly, swinging backwards and forwards. I was still standing at the window where Lanercost must have fallen. The bells were slowly swaying as if in a dream, like monsters roused from their slumber. They swung, dipped and came out towards me; their sharp rims seemed more like teeth. I glimpsed the heavy metal clappers even as I realised that if I stayed there, as Lanercost might have done, the bells would tip me over the rim. Why were they moving? It was about Nones, yet no peals should mark such an hour. I edged around the wall even as the bells began to move faster, their heavy metal edges skimming the air like deadly sharpened blades. They did not move in accord but one in either direction. I was in no real danger as long as I did not panic or make a mistake. I reached the opening and clambered down the ladder to the floor below.
‘Brother Eusebius!’ I screamed.
The first faint toll struck, then fell silent. I glanced at the ropes that fell through the gap to the floor below. Whoever was pulling them had now stopped. I reached the bottom breathless, the sweat on my coarse woollen kirtle cooling in the icy air of the tower. For a brief moment memories surged back of running down a ladder in my father’s farm while he urged me to be careful, shouting so loudly my mother came rushing out of the house, clothes flapping. I blinked. I felt feverish and agitated. I drew my dagger from its concealed sheath on the belt beneath my cloak. I turned to the left and right but no one was there. The ropes were still moving slightly. The door leading back into the church hung half open. I went through. The nave held so many gloomy corners a host of enemies could lurk there unseen. I opened the main door of the church and went out on to the porch. The Aquilae Petri stood at the bottom of the steps, staring up at me.
‘Have you been in the church?’ I accused. I gazed around. The great cobbled square was busy with the good brothers going about their usual duties. Barrows stood piled high with vegetables; a cart of manure from the stables trundled across. A lay brother, raucously singing a hymn, pushed bracken into the braziers. I could see no one hurrying away. I felt unsteady, as if I was in a dream. The horrors of that lonely belfry contrasted so sharply with the normal duties of a busy friary and those four young men staring up at me curiously.
‘Mistress what is wrong?’ Rosselin, blond-haired and ruddy-faced, his thickset body swathed in a cloak, stepped forward. The others had their cloaks thrown back. They were all harnessed and armed, wearing leather breastplates, war-belts strapped on as if ready for combat. ‘Mistress,’ Rosselin walked up the steps, spurs clinking, ‘we came to see where Lanercost died. What is the matter? We have not been in the church.’ He pointed back at Middleton, whose head was completely shaven. ‘Nicholas believed he heard the bell chime.’ I stared at Rosselin’s companion, the strangest of the Aquilae. Middleton’s jerkin was festooned with medals and amulets, a pair of Ave beads twined round his war-belt.
‘Nothing, nothing.’ I leaned against the stone pillar of the church door and glanced up at the babewyn glaring down at me; it had the face of a monkey, with pointed ears, protuberant eyes and popping tongue.
‘Come away,’ I murmured. I turned and walked back into the church. The Aquilae followed in a jingle of spurs, a creak of leather and a slither of steel as two of them unsheathed their swords and daggers. I sat at the foot of a squat, drum-like pillar. Further up the church I heard a door open and the patter of sandalled feet as the sacristan and his assistants pruned the candles in the sanctuary. I gestured at the squires to join me. Despite their wariness and war-like appearance, they squatted down. Gaveston must have told them about the king’s commission to me under the secret seal.
I made myself comfortable. It was so strange to discuss such matters like farmers gathering in the nave of a church to do business, but the order, harmony and etiquette of the English court had been violently shattered. The king and his favourite were like fugitives fleeing from one sanctuary to another. Fortune had turned her wheel yet again. The Aquilae also sensed such a change, a sense of loss that their days of power, of strutting around the throne, were over. They too were marked men, hotly pursued by the forces of the earls, and now one of their coven had been mysteriously killed. They were both curious and highly nervous.
‘How did Lanercost die?’ Rosselin voiced
their thoughts. He spoke louder than he intended, his words echoing through that cavernous place.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied wearily. ‘He may, God forbid, have taken his own life.’ My words were greeted with shakes of the head and loud objections.
‘Or he may have been murdered.’
They fell silent.
‘If so,’ I continued, ‘why, how and by whom? Did someone invite him into that belfry? If so, why did he go? Whom was he meeting? In addition, was it one attacker or more? Yet,’ I shrugged, ‘I have examined the belfry; it is narrow and close, a place where more than one assailant would find it difficult to hide. You see the problem, sirs: why, how, who?’ My voice trailed away. I was tired, and could make little sense of what I’d seen and heard.
‘He carried no arms,’ Kennington murmured. Small and wiry, Kennington reminded me of a fighting dog, with his pugnacious jaw and close-set eyes. His black hair was cropped short, and he had a scar on his right cheek. He was nervous and ill at ease, fingers never far from the hilt of his dagger.
‘And?’ I asked.
‘So, if he met someone, it must have been someone he trusted. I mean, to take off his war-belt . . .’
‘And whom would he trust?’ I asked. ‘Whom do you trust?’
Kennington didn’t answer.
‘Lord Gaveston?’ I offered. ‘His grace the king?’ I paused. ‘And, of course, you, his brothers in arms?’
Again silence. I stared beyond the Aquilae at a faded wall panel ridiculing the idiocy of life. From the neck of a white lily sprouted the head of a crane with a fish between its teeth; from its feathers protruded a monkey’s face sporting horns and spitting fire. Murder, I suppose, is life’s supreme idiocy, especially murder of a friend by a soul turned Judas.
‘Well?’ I asked.
‘We know nothing!’ Philip Leygrave, his girlish pink face framed by wispy blond hair, grasped his war-belt and clambered to his feet. ‘Remember, mistress, we were in the rose garden when you brought news of poor John Lanercost’s death. After that . . .’ He shrugged and buckled on his war-belt, making a sign for his companions to do likewise.
‘After that what?’ I snapped.
‘Geoffrey withdrew from our company, mouthing threats against Alexander of Lisbon. He kept to himself. He came here to pray. Well,’ he pulled a face, ‘what does it matter?’
The rest also rose, those who’d taken off their sword belts strapping them on.
‘Do you fear an attack?’ I asked. ‘Here in this friary that has become the king’s own chamber? What do you really fear, masters?’
‘Nothing,’ Leygrave replied over his shoulder.
‘I am trying to help,’ I pleaded. ‘Sirs, I am not your enemy!’
‘You’re a woman.’ Kennington’s foppish remark provoked a few sniggers.
I recalled the gossip that the Aquilae Petri were homosexuals, imitating David in scripture, whose love for Jonathan ‘surpassed that of any love for a woman’.
‘A woman?’ I conceded. ‘Like your mothers, your sisters, her grace the queen? What does that matter? My heart is good and my will is sound. Woman or not, I offer you this advice. If Lanercost was murdered, could not one of you be next? Is that why you are all harnessed for war like bully-boys in Cheapside?’
Rosselin swaggered across and stood over me. The others called him back. I shaded my eyes against the light pouring in through the coloured pane window on the opposite wall. I was determined to show no fear. I expected Rosselin to be aggressive but his face was full of fear. The others kept calling him away. He took a small scroll from his wallet and handed it to me. I unrolled it.
‘Aquilae Petri,’ I mouthed the words, ‘fly not so bold, for Gaveston your master has been both bought and sold.’
The letters were perfectly formed. I did not recognise the script, nor, when I asked, did Rosselin or the others.
‘When was this delivered?’
‘We share chambers in the friary guest house.’ Rosselin crouched down. ‘Lanercost, as was his custom, rose early and left long before dawn. We were still in bed when the Jesus mass bell sounded.’ He glanced away, embarrassed. ‘We are more concerned, mistress, about our bodies than our souls. Anyway,’ he gestured at the parchment, ‘that was pinned to our chamber door. God knows who sent it. Ah well, you may keep it.’ He rose, bowed and sauntered out with the rest.
I stayed to collect myself. The morning was drawing on. Eventually I felt calmer, more resilient. I left the church and crossed the yard to the buttery to collect some milk and bread. Brother Eusebius was there, face almost hidden in a huge bowl of oatmeal. He quickly finished, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, assured me that the church and bell tower were deserted when he left, then volunteered to show me to the corpse house, where Lanercost’s body had been taken. I forgot the food and gladly accepted. Eusebius chattered all the way as he led me along grey flagstoned passageways, around the great cloisters and the small, through the apple yards and baking yards, past the scriptorium and library, the prior’s chancery and the almoner’s chambers, then through a small orchard ripe with sweet-smelling white blossom to the corpse house, a one-storey, red-tiled, barn-like building with a rough-hewn crucifix nailed to its door. Inside, the whitewashed walls were decorated with herbal sprays pushed into crevices. The beaten-earth floor was clean and sprinkled with flower petals. In the centre stood a huge table, with smaller ones around the walls. On some of these lay corpses under their shrouds, from which feet and arms dangled. Eusebius handed me over to the corpse dresser, Brother Malachi, a burly Franciscan, head bald as an egg, his face almost hidden by a thick white moustache and beard. A jovial soul, Malachi, with a wave of his hand, proudly introduced me to his ‘visitors’, as he called them. At my request he took me over to the centre table and removed the shroud to reveal Lanercost’s naked body beneath. Brother Malachi had done his best to clean and anoint the corpse, but a mass of ugly wounds and bruises marked both the head and body, eloquent witness to Lanercost’s horrific fall.
I inspected the cadaver most closely. I noticed how the back and sides of the head were staved in. I heard a sound and turned. Demontaigu stood in the doorway. I lifted a hand and beckoned him over. He walked across, stared at the corpse, crossed himself and said he would wait for me outside. I inspected the corpse once more, whispered the requiem, thanked Brother Malachi and joined Demontaigu. He simply shook his head at my questions about where he had been and, clutching my wrist, led me across the friary grounds to his cell in the Sienna gallery, which lay near the refectory. The cell was a small whitewashed chamber with a bed and a few sticks of furniture, its only luxury being a painted wall cloth displaying a golden cross against a red background. Demontaigu had emptied the contents of his saddle bag on to the bed. He now sat down and sifted amongst these. I watched him curiously as he listed them, mementos of his previous life. A small relic; a psalter embossed with the five wounds of Christ displayed in silver; little leather pouches containing a medal his mother had given him, a lock of her hair and that of his long-dead sister. Next to these a flute, a childhood toy, as well as badges and amulets from the various shrines and Templar houses Demontaigu had visited.
‘My heirlooms,’ he declared without glancing up. ‘I heard about Lanercost’s death but I had to face more pressing matters. Ausel and the rest have gone to Scotland. They’ve accepted the Bruce’s writ and his claim to the Throne of Scone. The Noctales have severed any loyalty and fealty my brethren had for the English crown. They’ve taken everything with them, including all my possessions except these.’ He scooped them up and placed them in a pannier. ‘Memories,’ he murmured, ‘of a former life, as a boy in a farm near Lilleshall, as a novice at the New Temple, of service in Outremer.’ He rose to his feet and grasped my hands. ‘Now you have my full obeisance.’
I smiled at his chivalrous play-acting. Demontaigu, however, gazed sadly back.
‘I’m not leaving, Mathilde, but the world has changed. My life as a Templar is no
longer a secret. People may have suspected before, but now they know the truth. I enjoy the queen’s protection. Lisbon might wish me harm, but whilst I am here, I am safe. Moreover, his massacre out on the moors is now well known. In his heart, his grace cannot be pleased at such an abuse of his authority. In the old king’s days, Lisbon would have been hanged out of hand.’
‘There again,’ I added bitterly, ‘in the old king’s days, Lisbon would never have been allowed into the realm.’
‘True.’ Demontaigu heaved a sigh. ‘He is certainly not welcome at court.’
‘Where is he now?’ I asked.
‘Before he left, Ausel discovered that the devil and his minions shelter at Tynemouth Priory, further up the coast.’ Demontaigu paused. ‘I’ve just come from the city. Rumour runs like flame through stubble. The earls are advancing fast. God knows what will happen next. Now, as regards to Lanercost, my brethren have asked me . . .’
I told him succinctly what had happened, voicing my suspicion that somehow Lanercost had been inveigled up into that tower and murdered. I did not add what had happened to me. I wanted to remain cold and alert as deep suspicions gnawed my heart. Lanercost had been murdered soon after we informed him about his brother’s death. We had raised the suspicion that Geoffrey had, unwittingly perhaps, passed information he’d learnt from his brother John to someone else, who’d informed Lisbon and so provoked that bloody massacre. Did a mysterious unknown party blame Lanercost and decide to carry out vengeance? Was it the Templars? Had they sent an assassin into the friary to exact summary justice? I stared into Demontaigu’s face; those lovely eyes gazed shrewdly back. God forgive me, for a while I wondered about the Templars, until a second Aquilae fell to his death.
Chapter 3
Finally the kingdom of Scotland was freely offered to Robert de Bruce.