Sacrilege: A Novel

by S. J. Parris

  “Dear God—damned creature nearly gave me a seizure,” I whispered, and heard my voice shaking. She nodded, but the laughter had died on her lips as her gaze travelled over the old tombs that lined the walls. I was still holding the soiled sack; it was crusted stiff with some foul substance. With great reluctance I brought it closer to my face to sniff it and dropped it almost instantly as I caught the faint iron tang of dried blood. Meg coughed violently behind me and gagged as she did so.

  That unbelievable smell: as I stood up it caught again in my throat and I had to press a hand over my mouth, swallowing hard to stop my gorge rising. I sniffed the air, trying to trace the worst of it to its source, which seemed to be one tomb set into the wall beside the bricked-in staircase. I knelt and read the inscription: “Hugh de Wenchepe, Prior, 1263–1278.” I glanced up at Meg, who had come to stand at my shoulder; her face seemed even whiter in the shadows, her eyes fixed on the tomb of the long-dead prior with an expression of dread. I guessed that the old housekeeper thought she knew what had been hidden here, and I was gripped by the same awful sense of anticipation. I should have realised it the moment I opened the door. I had been in old tombs and burial vaults before; the ancient dead smelled of dust and mould. Yet Prior Hugh’s coffin gave off a ripe stink like an abattoir, as if he had been rotting there for only a few months. A chill ran through me and as I held the lantern over his blank-eyed marble face I noticed the marks: the tracks of human fingers in the dust at the edges of the tomb’s lid, where it had been recently opened.

  “Meg—hold this for me, will you?”

  I handed her my lantern; though I sensed her reluctance, she took it and held it above the bier as I leaned in with both hands to try and move the stone cover. This was no easy task; Prior Hugh’s tomb was neatly carved to fit its alcove in the wall and the only way to open it was to slide the heavy stone towards me, with the fear that, even supposing I managed to budge it alone, it might at any moment topple forwards, crushing my leg or, at the very least, shattering so that it could not be replaced. In vain I struggled, straining with all the strength I possessed, only to see the slab shift no more than a couple of inches. Whoever had moved it before must have had help; two men might lift it between them, but I was not willing to admit defeat, having come so far. I muttered a prayer in Italian as I grabbed the left elbow of the effigy where the prior’s hands were bent in prayer, to give myself better purchase. Bracing one foot against the wall of the tomb, I pulled on the statue’s arm; with a great grinding of stone, I felt the slab lurch forward a couple of feet as the smell of putrefaction gusted upwards from the gaping blackness beneath. “Santa Maria!” I cried, spinning away from the tomb into a corner where, leaning with one arm against the wall, I vomited up my supper and a quantity of sweet red wine.

  Meg waited patiently by the tomb, still holding the light, snatching breaths through the fabric of her sleeve. When I had wiped my mouth I turned back. Her face was unbearably bleak.

  “We should leave, sir,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “Leave the dead to their rest. Else we shall both take ill of the contagion.”

  “Not now,” I said, recovering myself a little, though my voice was barely a croak. “Whatever is in here holds the answer, I am sure of it. I need you to take the light again, Meg, if you can bear it for a while longer.” She hung back, understandably, though she did not take her eyes from the lid of the tomb and the hole under it.

  Expelling the drink from my body seemed to have done me good; my head felt clearer as I rolled up my shirtsleeves higher and asked Meg to hold the lantern directly over the opening beneath the stone slab, which was about two feet at its widest end. I took a deep breath and leaned in, as the candle flame threw my own shadow like a giant on the wall behind me.

  I made out the shape of a corpse wrapped in a thin linen shroud that appeared grey and horribly stained. I directed Meg to bend closer with the light and lifted one corner of the cloth, then jumped back as a hand fell from the wrappings onto the body’s chest. The flesh was blotched and partly blackened, but still intact, the fingernails long and curled over like claws. It was quite clear that this body did not belong to a prior dead for three centuries but had been put in Prior Hugh’s tomb recently. But how recently? Despite the smell, the body did not seem to be in an advanced state of decay, almost as if it had been artificially preserved. Besides, the hand was too small to be a man’s.

  A thought struck me then; I clenched my teeth tightly and peeled back the shroud over the face. I flinched as the linen came free, taking pieces of discoloured skin with it. Beside me, Meg turned away with a soft gasp. To gaze on the frailty of our human frame is always appalling and this face seemed more so than any corpse I had seen. Tufts of fair hair still stuck to the blackened scalp. Its features were frozen in a terrible grimace, the lips pulled back to expose the teeth, the eyes staring, the cheeks sunken in, and although the body had begun to putrefy it looked as if an effort had been made by whoever buried it to slow the effects of decay by some amateur process of embalming. It might have lain there a month or several. Worst of all, it was clear that the body was that of a boy, not yet full-grown. I turned to Meg and saw that her eyes were brimming with tears.

  “Did you know?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I swear, sir, no. But I had wondered … Is it the beggar child?”

  “Beggar?”

  “I saw him only once, sir. Last autumn, before the lady Kate came to us. It was supposed to be my day off, but I came in because the timber merchant had to change his delivery day, and there was Master in the kitchen feeding this lad bread and milk. Terrible skinny thing he was, half starved. He never came back and Master gave me to understand it was not to be mentioned again. But sometimes I noticed food was missing …” Her voice trailed off into silence.

  “You think he kept the boy down here?” I glanced behind me to the frayed rope. “Sweet Jesus. Why? What did he do to him?”

  Meg only closed her eyes very slowly, as if this might erase the horror before us. There was one obvious reason why a man might keep a young boy prisoner, but nothing I had heard about Sir Edward suggested this was his vice. Had he procured the boy for others, I wondered—his influential friends, perhaps? Poor, poor child, I thought, sickened to the guts by the thought of the boy tied up in this place of death, no doubt terrified out of his wits. I was seized by an urge to run, out of the putrid air, away from the horror of the place. I leaned over and took a last look at that dreadful face, and that was when I noticed a glint of metal in the depths of the tomb.

  “Bring the light closer,” I whispered urgently, as I reached in, steeling myself against the touch of that flesh under my fingers.

  The corpse wore a silver chain around its neck; shreds of skin caught in the links as I pulled it to the front. Hanging from the chain was a round medallion, engraved with an image that I could not make out. I took the light from Meg and brought it so close to the face that were it not for the lantern glass I would have singed the creature’s hair. The medallion showed the figure of a man carrying a bishop’s staff in one hand and his own severed head under the crook of the other arm. The head was smiling and wore a mitre. “Dio mio,” I whispered, handing the lantern back to Meg.

  “What is it?”

  I scrabbled to unclasp the chain, causing the corpse’s head to bob up and down in my haste.

  “This is no beggar boy,” I said, as I finally pulled it loose and held the medallion up. “See this? It shows the figure of Saint Denis.” When she looked uncomprehending, I continued, “The patron saint of Paris. And the namesake of a young French boy who disappeared some six months ago.”

  Her eyes widened and with her free hand she made the sign of the cross. “Then there was more than one.”

  “There was a beggar child found though, wasn’t there? Dismembered, on a midden.” I glanced back at the corner where I had seen the blood-soaked sacks. They were large enough to carry a child’s severed corpse.

/>   “They arrested a vagrant for that, though,” Meg said, her eyes still riveted to the tomb. “An old man, one of the former monks.” She shook her head. “May God have mercy on us all.” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. I closed the medallion in my fist and turned to face her.

  “You guessed at this, didn’t you?”

  “Not this”—she gestured towards the tomb—“I will swear it by everything I hold dear! If I had known …” She left the thought unfinished.

  I recalled Langworth’s brisk words to Samuel concerning her.

  “Meg—there are others, your master’s friends. They may believe you know more than you do. I fear you too may be in danger. Is there anywhere you can go, away from this place?”

  “I have no one, sir. This has been my only home for twenty years. Where should I go?”

  I could only look at her in helpless silence. What protection could I offer, alone as I was in this strange city with my money fast diminishing and no one I trusted without reservation?

  She gave me a sad smile in return.

  “I’ve seen four-and-seventy summers, sir. If this is my last, it’s more than many get.” She glanced behind her in the direction of the house. “It’s not much of a life there now, with Master gone.”

  I frowned, surprised at her words.

  “Was he kind to you? Sir Edward?”

  “In his way. He kept me on, even when I grew too old to fetch and carry as I once did. I gave him loyal service and he trusted me.”

  “You mean you kept his secrets.” I thought of Sophia and what she had suffered in that house, while the housekeeper, cowed by a mixture of twisted loyalty and fear, said nothing.

  Meg caught the edge in my voice and met my eye with a frank expression that suggested I could not hope to understand.

  “I had no choice, sir.”

  “But he is dead now, and there are others who may not trust you so completely. They may want to make absolutely certain you don’t share those secrets. If they can do this—” I gestured towards the corpse. A phrase of Langworth’s drifted back to me. “Meg,” I said, stepping forward and clasping her bony wrist. “Promise me that you will take no medicine from Doctor Sykes.”

  At this she laughed, with gentle condescension, as if I had tried to make a joke.

  “You think I’ve lived here so long and not learned that for myself? Don’t you fret, I’ve seen what Sykes’s remedies can do—” She broke off and shot a quick look sideways at the tomb. I followed her gaze.

  “Did Sykes kill the boys?”

  She stepped back, alarmed by the urgency in my face.

  “I told you, sir, I knew nothing of any boys. I only saw the little beggar child once. I was thinking of something else.” She lowered her voice and looked at the floor. “No matter. It was long ago.”

  “Sarah Garth, you mean?”

  “What do you know of that?” Her head jerked up.

  “I know only that she fell sick and died here. Her family think she was murdered.”

  Meg passed a hand across her forehead.

  “Sarah took ill with the sickness that takes all foolish girls who are easily flattered by men.”

  “She was with child?” My eyes widened. “By Sir Edward?”

  “Maybe. They were both at her, you see.”

  “Nicholas as well?”

  “He was fourteen then, and his father encouraged him.” She shook her head again. “Sir Edward’s wife was not long dead, and that poor silly girl thought she’d make the next mistress of St. Gregory’s one way or another. She soon learned better when she got the child and found neither one of them meant to marry her. So she threatened to tell all of Canterbury their business.”

  “And Sykes came out to tend her?”

  “You know a lot for a stranger,” Meg said, with a shrewd glance. “Master called him in to look at her condition, yes.”

  “Did Sykes try to rid her of the child?”

  “That I don’t know. But one way or another, Master was rid of the problem after his visit.”

  “God’s blood,” I whispered, almost to myself. So Tom Garth might be right—Edward Kingsley may well have had Sarah killed discreetly to save his family a public scandal or the expense of supporting a bastard. And who better than his friend the physician to administer a fatal remedy without suspicion? The dose makes the poison. But did any of this connect with the boys who died in this hellhole, or Fitch, or Sir Edward’s murder?

  Meg clutched her shawl tighter around her shoulders, her eyes flitting again to the body in the coffin.

  “I have seen enough here, sir.”

  “And I.”

  I set my shoulder against the stone lid of the tomb and with considerable effort managed to push it back into place, feeling a dreadful complicity as the ruined face of the boy disappeared into darkness and Prior Hugh reclined serenely again on his bier, his marble hands frozen piously in supplication. I had almost grown used to the smell; at least it was no longer making me retch. Meg took a last look around the mausoleum as if she still doubted the evidence of her own eyes.

  “But your master already had one bastard, I thought?” I asked, as I followed Meg from the room. She stiffened, and turned to face me.

  “No, sir, he did not. Where did you hear that?”

  I bent to lock the door behind us, lowering my voice now that we were back in the passage.

  “Nicholas complained that the Widow Gray was to receive a gift in his father’s will. She has a son, does she not?”

  Meg sniffed.

  “But her boy is near thirteen and she only came to Canterbury six years ago.”

  “Six years?”

  “Just after Canon Langworth arrived.” She fixed me with a meaningful look. I recalled what Harry had said about the rumours that followed Langworth.

  “You mean he is Langworth’s son?”

  “I only know what is whispered in the town. The canon visits her often, though perhaps that is just his Christian duty.”

  I made to run a hand through my hair but as I brought it close to my face I realised how the smell of dead flesh clung to my fingers.

  “But if the boy is Langworth’s, why was Sir Edward giving her money?” I could not fathom the tangled relationships in this town and my head was beginning to ache badly from wine and lack of sleep. Meg did not answer—I had the sense she felt she had said too much, forced into too great an intimacy with me by the shock of our monstrous discovery. I paused by the door that led from the secret passage back into the storage cellar and leaned against the wall, feeling suddenly faint.

  “Mistress Kate,” Meg said, eventually. “She is well?”

  “Who?” I was concentrating on fighting the rolling waves of light and dark behind my eyes; it took a moment before I realised she meant Sophia. “She will be better when she no longer fears for her life.”

  “If the murderer can be found, she would inherit St. Gregory’s,” Meg said. I did not miss the wistful glance that accompanied this thought; perhaps she was thinking how much easier her own life would be with Sophia rather than Nicholas running the household. Perhaps I had one ally in Canterbury, at least.

  I locked the low arched doorway behind us, glad to leave the underground passageway and its terrible secret buried again in silence, though I feared the foul stench of the tomb had followed us; I could almost believe that smell would accompany me for the rest of my life. Summoning the last of my strength, I piled the boxes of rubble in front of the door until it was covered and gave Meg my arm to help her up the steep steps back to the normality of the pantry.

  “Will you report what you have seen tonight, sir?” she whispered, as I closed the hatch behind me.

  “Not right away. There is more I wish to discover before I say anything.”

  “Do not tell Mayor Fitzwalter,” she said. “You will get no justice from him. Better wait until the assize judge comes to town in a few days. But, sir”—she plucked at my sleeve, looking up with anxious eyes—“you will tell t
hem I knew nothing?”

  I was about to reply when a noise from the kitchen beyond made us both start. We froze; in the next room, someone stumbled into a bucket with a great clanging of metal, accompanied by some thick curses. Meg motioned to me to crouch behind a pile of flour sacks, while, pulling her shawl tighter, she stepped through the archway into the kitchen.

  “Christ’s body, woman, you near scared the life out of me!” The voice was Nicholas Kingsley’s. “What are you doing creeping around in the dead of night?”

  “I couldn’t sleep, Master Nicholas. I thought since I was awake I might as well make myself useful in here,” Meg replied.

  “Huh. Well, you can make yourself useful by getting me something for my head. It feels as if it’s about to explode. I have a raging thirst too.”

  He was slurring his words. I remained still behind the sacks, only now feeling the ache in my arms and shoulders from hefting the crates and the tomb’s lid.

  “In my experience, Master Nicholas,” Meg said, trying to keep her voice light, “the best remedy for that kind of headache is bed rest and a quantity of fresh water.”

  “Get me some then.”

  “But …” Meg faltered. “I have not been to draw any from the well yet, Master Nicholas. It is the middle of the night, and—”

  “Well, you can draw some now.” His tone was growing more irritable.

  “It is only that—it is very dark out there. I could get you some small beer for now, and bring water when—”

  “I said draw some water, woman! Am I not the master of this house? My father might have kept you on out of pity, you crone, but I want a servant who will do my bidding without answering back.”

  I could not stand to listen to any more of this. I brushed the flour from my breeches and stood in the archway that separated the pantry from the kitchen.

  “You can’t send her out in the middle of the night. If you need water, I will go.”