by Paul Doherty
‘Nothing,’ Hugh replied. ‘Isidore came to visit Roger and found the door locked and bolted. He returned and, after receiving no answer, alerted Father Prior, who realised that Roger had also not attended Divine Office or this morning’s requiem mass. Prior Anselm summoned me and the others. Lay brothers broke down the door and we saw what you now see, only a short while ago. No one has left or entered this chamber except you. And,’ he indicated with his head, ‘the redoubtable Sir John.’
Athelstan gazed over his shoulder. Cranston framed the broken doorway. Benedicta had not followed them – being a woman, she would not be allowed into the friary enclosure. Athelstan moved to kneel more comfortably.
‘I will administer the last rites,’ he murmured. He opened his chancery satchel and took out a small leather case containing the phials of sacred oil. He turned the corpse over on its back, trying not to be distracted by the agonised rictus on Roger’s dead face. The chronicler had definitely been poisoned: the protuberant eyes, the livid skin, discoloured lips and thickened tongue, as well as the creamy, dirty froth staining the corners of the dead man’s mouth, were proof enough. Athelstan anointed the corpse – brow, eyes, mouth, chest and feet – before delivering absolution. The cadaver’s skin was cold, the muscles rigid. Friar Roger had been dead for some hours. Athelstan forced open the corpse’s mouth but the swollen tongue blocked any real investigation. He pulled back the upper and lower lips and stared pitifully at the yellowing stumps of teeth. He sketched a blessing above the corpse, crossed himself and rose. Prior Anselm had now composed himself.
‘Brother Athelstan,’ he said dully, ‘I want you to investigate all this. Do what you have to.’ He joined his hands and raised his eyes, lips murmuring in silent prayer. Once finished, he glanced swiftly at Athelstan. ‘Many years ago,’ he said, ‘we had a novice here, a young man of good family with brothers and sisters, a lovely father and mother. He was one of Brother Roger’s scholars, trained to study the past. He decided to write a history of his own father, a man he admired as much as he loved.’ The prior narrowed his eyes. ‘Now the boy’s father had served in the King’s array in France. Our young scholar started making enquiries and discovered that his father had been a professional mercenary who had served with the Falcons—’
‘I have heard of them,’ Cranston intervened, ‘Lord have mercy on us.’
‘I am sure you have, Sir John.’ Anselm smiled thinly. ‘They were a free company, notorious for the ruthless savagery they showed the enemy, be it man, woman or child. They burnt and murdered their way across northern France, so vile the Papal Legate excommunicated them. The boy’s father not only served with this company but was one of their captains. He amassed a fortune, returned to England and apparently made his peace with God and man: he became a wealthy city merchant with a reputation for helping the poor. Of course, there were many in France who could have told another tale. You see my point, Athelstan?’
The friar nodded. ‘Father Prior, I agree, and I have reached the same conclusion myself.’
‘The past can be very dangerous. You go back there …’ The prior blinked and stared down at Brother Roger’s corpse. ‘You go back there,’ he whispered, ‘you unlock doors. You open windows. You think what lies within is long dead and forgotten. Wrong! The past is a living thing, full of sweet memories but also monsters. This is what has happened here.’ He put his hand on the friar and drew him closer. ‘Athelstan, you must go back into the past, find these monsters. Either kill them or put them back in their pits to be sealed forever.’
Athelstan nodded his agreement. He was conscious of other friars gathered near the door, watching him curiously. ‘Father Prior,’ he replied, ‘once we leave here, this chamber must be sealed. Nothing is to be taken from it without my permission. So, what do we have here?’ He walked across to the chancery table: its chair had been pulled back, the table top was strewn with manuscripts, some fresh, others yellowing with age. Athelstan glimpsed a goblet of wine and a wooden mazer half full of dried nuts and raisins.
‘Roger loved these.’ Hugh had followed him across. The infirmarian picked up the goblet, swirled the dregs of white wine, sniffed and, before Athelstan could stop him, drained the cup. He then winked at Athelstan and handed the goblet to him. ‘Nothing but the finest wine from the Rhineland, and these,’ he picked up the bowl of nuts and raisins, poking them about with his bony fingers, sniffing them carefully, running a few of them across his hand before popping them into his mouth.
‘Hugh!’ Athelstan gasped.
‘Be at peace, Brother,’ the infirmarian replied. ‘Taste them yourself.’ He placed the mazer back on the table. ‘I can detect nothing amiss. Examine them yourself. Indeed, if you wish, I can arrange for rats to be caught, caged and fed anything found in this chamber. I assure you, they will only be the better for it.’
Athelstan shook his head and walked around the chamber; there was no more food and drink. In his mind he listed the items Brother Roger might have put to his mouth. He carefully examined the feather-tipped quill pens but could detect nothing amiss. He then studied the room, a large friary cell served by a long lancet window and sealed by a heavy, iron-studded door. Athelstan could tell from the buckled lock, cracked bolts and ripped hinges that the door had been roughly forced. He knelt and scrutinised the dead friar’s fingers, bending close to sniff the cold, cracked flesh: yet all he could detect was the faint smell of ink, parchment and sealing wax. Once again, he stared down at the contorted face. He was sure that when the corpse was stripped, tell-tale rashes would be found indicating some powerful poison, probably the garden sort. He glanced up.
‘Prior Anselm? Brother Roger has been dead for some hours, probably since late yesterday evening. What happened last night? Where was Brother Roger, what was he doing?’
‘Apparently he left our meeting and collected that goblet of wine and mazer from Brother Paschal, our buttery clerk. Roger told Paschal he wanted to study until Matins. The buttery clerk offered to help Roger as our chronicler was never the steadiest on his feet. Roger thanked him and left for his chamber, Brother Paschal following close behind. Apparently,’ the prior continued, ‘Roger’s hands were full of manuscripts, and it was some time before they managed to open the door. Paschal waited until this was done, then took in the wine and mazer. Roger thanked him. Paschal left, and he distinctly remembers Roger locking and bolting the door.’
‘And no one else approached this chamber last night?’
‘Not that I know of,’ Anselm replied. ‘Brother John was busy locking coffers and chests in the cloisters, the usual routine when night falls. You know it well, Athelstan. The Magnum Silentium descends. All the brothers are to withdraw to their cells, remain alone, study, sleep, pray and make themselves ready for Matins, the beginning of Divine Office and the Jesus Mass. Brother John has reported nothing untoward, no visitors.’
‘In which case,’ Athelstan said, ‘I have no more questions for the moment. Brother Hugh, would you please take Roger’s corpse to the death house. Use the door to this chamber to block the entrance to it. No one is to be allowed in without my permission. I would like this chamber to be guarded by …’
‘Brother Athelstan!’ Cranston had withdrawn for a short while, but now he was bustling back into the chamber. ‘Prior Anselm,’ he exclaimed. ‘I have excellent news. Flaxwith, my chief bailiff, and Samson, the ugliest mastiff in the kingdom, and a comitatus of my bailiffs have just been allowed through the watergate. They’ve been hiding along the mudflats near Westminster. They seized a barge and came here looking for you, Brother, and rejoiced when they also found me. They are all armed and buckled for war.’
‘Good,’ Athelstan replied. ‘And their first task will be to guard this room.’ He turned back to the prior. ‘They can shelter here? We need every fighting man we can. God knows what the Earthworms are plotting against Blackfriars.’
Anselm agreed to this addition to what he called his ‘burgeoning community’. Athelstan and Cranston wait
ed as Roger’s corpse was removed. The chamber and enclave beyond gradually emptied as the prior instructed his brethren to return to their duties. Flaxwith and his posse of bailiffs arrived. Greetings and pleasantries were exchanged. Samson, ‘God’s ugliest creature’ as Athelstan called the mastiff, seemed ecstatic at seeing Sir John and greeted him with what was judged to be a howl of pure pleasure. Cranston, who couldn’t abide the mastiff, gently tapped it away with the toe of his boot as he fumbled for his miraculous wineskin. At last order was restored. Athelstan carefully checked the chamber. He supervised the repositioning of the door and impressed upon Flaxwith that the room was to be guarded day and night; no one was to be admitted except himself.
‘Why, Brother?’ Cranston asked. ‘Why are you so strict on preserving Roger’s chamber?’ They had now left and were sitting on a bench in the sun-washed cloisters, watching the scribes retake their seats before their sloping desks to continue their copying and illuminating using an array of brilliantly coloured paints: vermillion, red, blue and gold.
‘So peaceful, so beautiful,’ Athelstan murmured. ‘But to answer your question, Sir John, Prior Anselm and I have an agreement and I am sure you will concur. All these killings are linked to a royal mystery over fifty years old. At the moment I cannot trace any connection. All those involved in that mystery must be long dead. No trace exists of any of the participants surviving and, even if they did, what does it really matter now? And yet,’ he turned and looked seriously at the coroner, ‘apparently it matters very much. Indeed, a matter of life and death. I suspect Alberic found something and I think Brother Roger did the same. So it stands to reason that there could be something in that chamber which would throw great light on this mystery. No, don’t ask me. I cannot even guess, but I do not want the assassin returning to either take or destroy that evidence.’
Athelstan gazed across the cloisters, shielding his eyes against the sunlight. ‘This is a place of serenity, of calm, of hallowed prayer and service, or it certainly was until Satan set up festival here. He now presides at a great banquet of blood and this dulls my soul and darkens my spirit. Outside, killing begets killing. Sin prowls the street like a slavering beast to feast on rape, rapine and murder. We are assailed, Sir John, from both within and without, so much so that I am losing sight of who I truly am and what I do.’
‘Brother?’ Cranston peered at Athelstan; his good friend was almost in tears: his little ferret of a friar who was always so certain, so sure that he lived in the truth.
‘Sometimes I wonder, Sir John, I really do. If there is anything beyond the veil, perhaps the veil itself doesn’t exist. Perhaps only what we see, hear and feel is real. Nothing else. And yet this reality is not comforting. We are creatures of the dark, Sir John, blood stains both tooth and claw. We hunt and abuse each other. We kill each other in our minds, in our thoughts and, sometimes, if the opportunity presents itself, we actually carry it out.’
‘And what about God, Christ?’
‘Even if there is a God, even a God made man, let’s face it, Sir John, we killed him as well. Christ was murdered, the bloody, well-plotted killing of a totally innocent man.’ Athelstan glanced down at his feet. ‘This comes of dwelling too long in the halls of darkness. Oh, I think the darkness is real enough, but don’t become too alarmed, Sir John. Such miserable thoughts make me fall back on what I truly believe.’
‘Which is?’
‘Oh, the basic goodness of man and the saving power of Christ. I know in my heart of hearts that, in the end, good will triumph and the resurrection will occur. It’s just that sometimes I lose sight of that.’ He rose and clapped Cranston on the shoulder. ‘Enough sermonising, Sir John. Let’s return to the matter in hand. Do you have news from the city?’
‘Only what I learn by looking down from the walls of Blackfriars. Tiptoft is a veritable Hermes, a true messenger of God, the best scurrier in the city, but he still hasn’t broken through, which means that matters must be going from bad to worse. Thank God I sent the Lady Maude, the two Poppets and all my household into the countryside. Now I must do what I have decided.’ Cranston squeezed the friar’s arm. ‘I know you are busy here, Brother, but I must return to the Tower to rejoin the King and the others.’
‘Sir John,’ Athelstan murmured, ‘we will get you back, so let’s think how.’ He rose and walked back to the chronicler’s chamber. Flaxwith’s bailiff helped him move the door, then Athelstan once again entered that shadow-filled room and inspected it carefully. He had left certain items in a particular way and he was pleased to see that nothing had been disturbed. He left and hastened across to the death house. Matthias, Hugh and Brother John were grouped around Roger’s naked cadaver stretched out on one of the mortuary tables. The death house seemed more sombre, a truly ghostly place lit by fluttering lantern flame. Hugh was conducting a service for the dead, a purple and gold stole around his neck. He was blessing the corpse with a stoup of holy water, whilst Matthias incensed it with a smoking thurible which perfumed the air. All three Dominicans had pulled up their capuchons which almost hid their heads and faces as they intoned the ‘De Profundis’, whispering those sombre words: ‘If thou, oh Lord, should mark our iniquities, Lord, who would stand before you?’
Athelstan joined them at the table, participating in the responses even as he noticed the mulberry-coloured stains on the corpse’s belly and chest. From the little he knew, Athelstan recognised such blotches as clear evidence of a powerful poison. He tried to concentrate on the words of the psalm, closing his mind to the sombre mood of that corpse chamber. Nevertheless, he became distracted by a squeaking in the far corner. A rat had been trapped and its whimpering became more strident. Once the infirmarian had finished the psalm and bestowed the final blessing, Athelstan walked across to where the squealing was becoming more shrill. He stared down at the large, wire mesh cage and the sleek-headed, long-snouted rat, high on its legs, paws scrabbling, nose pushing at the wire, a large, plump rodent, long-tailed and vicious. Athelstan could almost feel its fury at being trapped.
Hugh came across and joined him. ‘I cleaned poor Roger’s teeth and gums. I put all the shards of food in that cage and Brother rat has suffered no ill effect. I will leave him there for a while.’ Athelstan walked back to the table, and the others crowded around him.
‘Roger was poisoned,’ Athelstan declared. ‘Can you say by what?’
The infirmarian pulled the canvas sheet over the corpse. ‘Something natural but noxious,’ he murmured, ‘a plant or herb which clutched his heart and closed his throat. I suspect death was very swift.’
‘And how?’
Athelstan looked despairingly at these three Dominicans, men who had been here long before him. Teachers and practitioners: Brother John had been an entertaining source of stories about everything under the sun. Hugh had instructed Athelstan on so many matters, but especially to observe most critically both cause and effect. Matthias, skilled as any royal chancery clerk, had taught him the secrets of ciphers and the elegant abbreviations so beloved of the professional scribe. And of course Brother Roger had regaled him with stories about London, Blackfriars and the scandals of the royal family. Athelstan smiled to himself, the dead chronicler and Sir John had a great deal in common.
‘How,’ he whispered, ‘did poor Roger die? Who is responsible?’ He gazed at his fellow Dominicans. ‘What do you think?’
‘Gaunt,’ Hugh replied. ‘John of Gaunt, our self-proclaimed regent. Athelstan, we have discussed this amongst ourselves. Gaunt will be implacably opposed to our young king having a saint included amongst his ancestors.’
‘But Gaunt is also a descendant of Edward II.’
‘The House of Lancaster was bitterly opposed to Edward II,’ Hugh said.
Athelstan stared at a shaft of fading light streaming through a narrow window.
‘What Brother Hugh has said is logical enough,’ Matthias declared. ‘Gaunt and others might fiercely resent the canonisation of Edward II, who proved to be a thorn dee
p in the side of the House of Lancaster. But what about the Italians, Fieschi and his companions? Are they truly committed to the cause, or do they too have serious reservations? Did they, all or one of them, want this process of beatification to collapse in a welter of confusion, as so many do? After all, the curial offices of the Papacy are crammed with stacks of petitions for the sanctification of this or that person.’
‘Brother?’ Hugh demanded. ‘What do you think?’
Athelstan just smiled at the three friars, sketched a blessing and returned to the chronicler’s chamber. He sat at the chancery desk sifting through the different manuscripts and scraps of vellum. Apparently Roger had collected and studied the different records sent to Blackfriars from the royal chancery and the record chambers of both the Tower and Westminster. According to the scrawled notes recorded on a sheet of parchment stretched out under metal weights, Roger had created an index. To a certain extent all the documents dealt with the same issue: warrants, proclamations and letters concerning the imprisoned Edward II. Most of the letters were directed to the Sheriff of Gloucester, copies being sent to Berkeley and Maltravers. They all carried the same message: conspiracies were being formed, and covens being organised deep in the Forest of Dean to free the imprisoned king. The justices of Oyer and Terminer were being despatched into the shire to hunt down, arrest and indict all such traitors and malefactors. The crown spies were also very busy, royal clerks sent in disguise into the towns and villages close to Berkeley to discover who was involved and where they could be found. Occasionally a memorandum would be published listing the names of these traitors. Each list was always headed by the Dunheved brothers, Thomas and Stephen.
Now and again Athelstan would come across scraps of parchment with the name ‘Eadred’ by itself, then with a list of titles all written in Brother Roger’s hand. Athelstan deduced that Eadred had been a Dominican priest at Blackfriars during the reign of Mortimer and Isabella. He had served as a prison chaplain in Newgate when the Dunheved brothers had been imprisoned and later died there. Eadred had organised the conveyance of their corpses back to Blackfriars for burial. After Mortimer fell from power, Eadred became Prior of the Dominican house at Oxford and Provincial of the entire order in England. Many other names appeared, and Athelstan realised that Roger had been developing a theory that in 1327 virtually the entire Dominican order in England supported the deposed Edward II.