The Holywell Dead

by Chris Nickson

  The house sat a few yards back from the road. Until February old man Peter had lived there. But he’d died and the place had been empty ever since. Shutters closed, door locked. John noticed the place each time they passed, curious to what it might be like inside.

  This morning, though, was different. The door hung wide, open to the sun and shadows. But there was no sign of life about the place, no sense of anyone busy within. Wait here, he told Alan, and handed the boy his bag of tools. Cautiously he approached the house. His hand gripped the hilt of his dagger, ready, just in case.

  ‘God’s peace be with you,’ he called out, but there was no answer. Just the birds singing in the branches. Inside, it took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the gloom, blinking until he could make out something in the corner. He moved closer, his knife out and ready. His palms were damp with sweat.

  Then he realised what he was seeing and crossed himself. God save them all.

  • • •

  ‘We’re searching for the priest and you find this,’ De Harville complained. Caught in its winding sheet, it had to be the body of a man. Big enough, broad enough.

  ‘I didn’t choose it, Master,’ John replied.

  The shutters were pulled back and daylight flooded into the room. The bailiffs tried to keep their distance from the corpse, scared it could be another plague victim. Finally, tired of waiting, John stepped forward. If the man had died of pestilence, no one would have covered him so thoroughly. They’d have stayed far away.

  Pray God he was right.

  John knelt. The knife blade slid through the heavy cloth and he tore it further, ripping and shredding the fabric. For a moment he felt he couldn’t breathe. Then he stood and turned to de Harville.

  ‘Now we know what happened to Father Crispin.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  De Harville stared, saying nothing for a long time.

  ‘Slit it all the way open, Carpenter,’ he ordered finally. John sliced the heavy sheet until the body was exposed. Crispin was dressed, arms crossed over his breast. For all the world he looked like a man at peace, quiet and content in his death.

  No wound that he could see, no strange smell of poison as he lowered his face towards the man’s mouth.

  ‘Well?’ the coroner asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He rolled the corpse on to its side. There it was, the small dark patch of blood on the back of his cassock, the tiny stain on the sheet beneath. ‘This is it.’

  Whatever had made the wound was thin. Not a knife. Smaller, more like one of the needles the goodwives used. Yet bigger than that, longer, and very sharp, he thought, to pierce clothes and skin and to kill.

  De Harville squatted, moving around to view the body from different angles, tongue between his lips.

  ‘Examine him properly, Carpenter. See what the body can tell you, then have the bailiffs take him to be buried.’

  ‘I have work to do—’

  ‘You have work to do for me.’ The man’s eyes flashed. ‘You were the first finder. That means a fine, returned when the murderer is found. A shilling.’

  ‘I have money at home.’

  ‘You’ve found killers for me before, Carpenter. You can do it again. Four pence a day.’

  ‘I usually make five. And my ale.’

  ‘Four’s my offer.’ His mouth curled into a smile. ‘Don’t try my patience. Or I could put you in jail until we find the killer.’

  John stared at him. ‘That’s not the law.’

  ‘Carpenter,’ de Harville reminded him slowly, ‘I am the law.’

  Beaten without even a battle. He knew it. A carpenter was nobody in this world, not when a man with rank and several manors to his name desired something. John had no power; he never would. He nodded his agreement.

  ‘Come to my house when you’ve finished.’ The coroner looked around. ‘Why does Robert have to grow so old? I need my clerk with me.’

  ‘You should get someone younger. Let the brother go back to the monastery.’

  ‘Not with plague all over the land. It’s safer for him to stay with me until it’s passed.’ He glared.

  John waited until he was alone in the house before cutting through the priest’s clothes to expose his skin. Stabbed in the back, but it didn’t go all the way through; his chest was unblemished. Whoever did it must have pierced his heart. There was no sign of any other injury. The killer had even taken the time to close Crispin’s eyes as he wrapped him in the shroud. Someone who knew what he was doing, someone deadly and calm who felt no hurry or panic.

  John paced around the room, examining the floor, pausing to feel the packed dirt with his fingertips. No trace of blood. The dirt was too hard and dry for footprints, but a path from the door could have been roughly swept, he decided, after the body had been dragged. Hard to be certain now, though; so many feet had walked over it.

  The priest still wore a wooden cross around his neck, and a leather scrip hung from his belt. There was little inside, just a few coins and an old comb made from bone with some of the teeth missing. Not a robbery. Murder, pure and simple.

  Why?

  What did he know about Father Crispin? The man had arrived the summer before, after the parish had spent a twelvemonth with no one at the church, just a curate who travelled from Clay Cross to give communion twice a month.

  Crispin was older, grey in his hair, so he must have spent time elsewhere. But he’d been a shy man, not given to small talk or idle chatter in the marketplace. No friends as far as John knew.

  ‘You can take him,’ he told the bailiffs as he left. They were waiting outside. Rough, hulking men, but good in a fight. ‘The church will look after him.’

  • • •

  De Harville had his feet up on the table, dictating to Robert who tried to keep up with his voice. They both stopped as the servant showed John into the room.

  ‘Well, Carpenter? What do you have to tell me?’

  ‘Very little, Master. It was carefully done and it didn’t happen where he was found. Nothing taken from him and that body was prepared. It was a very deliberate killing.’

  ‘Go on.’ The coroner stroked his chin.

  ‘I need to know more about the priest. Who he was, where he came from, what he’d done before.’ John shrugged. ‘It could be an old grudge.’

  ‘Brother?’ De Harville raised an eyebrow and looked at the monk. ‘How did he come to us?’

  ‘We wrote to the bishop to ask for a priest to replace the old one. After six months of begging he sent us Crispin.’

  ‘Did you know him at all?’

  Robert shook his head. ‘I tried to talk to him, but he smiled and passed me by. It always seemed to me as if he didn’t have too much time for anyone here, as if in his heart he wanted to be somewhere else. He performed his duties and retreated home again.’

  ‘I’d like to look in his house,’ John told de Harville. The man gave a short nod.

  ‘I’ll come with you. I was there yesterday when we started hunting for him.’

  It was a small stone building on the far side of the churchyard, with a door to the street and two expensive glazed windows, one for the hall downstairs and another for the solar above. The coroner chose a key from a heavy ring and turned it in the lock.

  The room smelt musty and unloved, as if the inhabitant had been here reluctantly. John moved around, trying to fill himself with the sense of the priest. All he could feel was a man who lived a small life. Someone who wanted to be unremarkable, unnoticed. Hidden.

  There was nothing of Crispin in the hall. Just the usual furnishings of any priest’s house – a table, a bench, a prie-dieu, candles in their holders, a Bible on the table. Above, in the solar, no more than a bed of old straw and a chest. Locked. He turned to de Harville. The coroner nodded.

  He forced the hasp with his knife, pushing back the lid. A thick winter cloak of good wool lay on top, carefully rolled and scented with herbs to keep off the moths. It looked well-worn and old, John decided as he lifted
it out, the nap of the cloth worn smooth. A pair of boots lay beneath, with heavy, solid soles, the uppers made from soft, expensive leather. He set them aside and returned to the chest.

  It didn’t seem possible. John glanced at de Harville.

  ‘You need to see this, Master.’

  A pair of knives, beautifully crafted, in heavily worked leather sheaths. A short sword in its scabbard. Not the tools of any holy man that he’d ever met.

  ‘What do you make of it, Carpenter?’

  John sat back on his heels, still staring at the weapons in the chest.

  ‘I don’t know.’ In York he’d once heard of a soldier who’d become a monk. But never one who’d taken a priest’s vows. He glanced up at the coroner. ‘It seems that Crispin has a past. But there’s nothing here to let us know who he really was.’

  De Harville drew out the sword, weighing it in his hand and making a few tentative cuts.

  ‘It’s a fine piece of work,’ he said admiringly. ‘Not cheap.’

  John stood, his eyes roving around the solar. It was the same as the hall, nothing else of Crispin’s around, nothing that marked his presence here. What tiny life he had was all in that chest, and it didn’t speak of a peaceful man.

  He tossed the straw of the bed, in case the priest had hidden anything. Then a closer search in the hall. Nothing. Maybe he simply had nothing to hide, no other possessions.

  Outside, people moved around and the world seemed normal. The May sun shone and he felt the warmth on his face. The priest’s house had seemed chilly, as if spring had never quite reached the place.

  A goodwife passed, clutching her basket, giving him a curious stare for a moment before turning away and forgetting him in an instant. John turned his head and looked back. A carrion crow perched on the roof of the house, its beak bobbing and pulling at something. Was that an omen?

  ‘What now, Carpenter?’

  ‘I don’t know. How can we find out who killed him if we don’t know who he’d been when he was alive?’

  The coroner gave a tight nod. ‘I’ll write to the bishop. Meanwhile,’ he ordered, ‘I want you to start asking questions in town.’

  • • •

  Juliana pushed herself to her feet as he entered. She began to smile and tottered towards him. John scooped her into his arms, ducking to kiss Jeanette and Eleanor on the tops of their heads as they sat and span wool.

  Dame Martha was working with Katherine in the buttery, brewing a fresh batch of ale. She assessed him with old, wise eyes.

  ‘Coroner’s work again, John? It’s all over town.’

  He nodded, seeing his wife frown.

  ‘There’s not much to find so far.’ He reached out and squeezed Katherine’s hand lightly, an apology. But she knew he had no choice. If de Harville ordered, he had to obey. It was the way of the world. ‘What did you know about Father Crispin?’ he asked Martha.

  ‘Very little, I suppose,’ she answered after a moment as John tickled Juliana under the chin until she giggled; death and joy side by side. ‘He said the mass well enough but I don’t remember ever speaking to him.’

  ‘Could you ask the other goodwives? They might know something.’

  ‘I will.’ She gave him a pointed look. John let his daughter slide down his body. Martha took her by the hand and led her back into the hall.

  ‘I don’t want to do it,’ he told Katherine.

  ‘I know.’ There was a bitter undertone to her voice.

  ‘I found the body.’

  ‘And now you have to neglect your own work to do the coroner’s job?’

  It was the same argument they’d had before. But they both felt the same, and the words were no more than her resentment at the way the coroner used his position. Finally he stroked her face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘But I don’t think there’ll be much I can do. I don’t think the answers to this are in Chesterfield.’

  ‘There was another case of pestilence today,’ she told him, and suddenly he felt guilty. The priest’s body had driven everything else from his head.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Elizabeth, the drover’s wife.’

  The woman’s face sprang straight into his mind, round and red and cheery. They had five children, the oldest twelve, the youngest two, and she herded the little ones in front of her like a flock of sheep. Two of them worked but the youngsters kept close to her skirts. With her husband gone most of the time, taking his horse and cart between Sheffield, Derby and Nottingham, what would happen to them all?

  The family lived close to the bottom of Soutergate, no more than a dozen yards from the bridge across the river. Praise God the plague hadn’t begun to climb the hill yet, he thought, then crossed himself.

  ‘Go,’ Katherine told him. ‘It’ll be dinner soon.’

  • • •

  He spent the afternoon asking questions around Chesterfield. But people had other things on their mind than Father Crispin. The new plague case brought more worry and fear. They drew into themselves and pulled their families close. They were wary of any stranger, and John had only been here for three years. He’d need more time to be trusted.

  Still, no one had anything bad to say about the priest. He’d done his job well enough, yet none seemed to know him. Crispin had been remote, he’d made no attempt to be a part of the town.

  Maybe it was simply the man’s nature, John thought later. He was sitting in the garden, holding a mug of ale, taking occasional sips. The priest had been a fighting man at one time. A successful one, to judge by the quality of his weapons. Perhaps it was that part of his history which made him wary of people.

  ‘John?’

  He hadn’t heard Walter approach. But Katherine’s brother was light on his feet. He was taller than John now, fifteen years old and still growing like a weed. He earned a living by delivering messages and packages all over Chesterfield, reliable, swift, honest.

  Some thought he was simple. When he was younger, someone had hit him hard on the head. Since then he’d spoken slowly, and sometimes he stumbled over words. But there was nothing wrong with his reasoning. Or his courage. John had learned that all too well.

  ‘Any more word on the victims?’ John asked.

  The lad shook his head, the thick mop of hair dancing from side to side. The dust of the day still clung to his hose and tunic. ‘Do you need help looking into Father Crispin’s death?’ Walter had worked with him before. Saved his life, too, and put himself into danger. But the lad relished it. He liked the adventure and the excitement. His eyes glittered hopefully. He was young, he was immortal.

  ‘Not yet.’ He saw Walter’s face fall and told him what little he knew. ‘I don’t even have any idea why anyone would want to kill him.’ John eyed the young man. Walter was observant, so much a part of Chesterfield that people rarely noticed him. ‘What about you? Is there anything you can tell me about him?’

  ‘I-I-I saw two men at his door last month,’ he answered after a long pause.

  ‘Who were they?’ He could feel his heart start beating faster with the sense that this was something.

  ‘I don’t know, John,’ Walter answered. ‘I couldn’t see their faces.’ He hesitated, drawing the picture into his mind. ‘I think they were big men.’ He smiled quickly. ‘They had mud spattered on their legs and on their boots, as if they’d ridden.’

  John was always astonished by the lad’s memory. He could conjure up images, still see things that had happened long before and pick out the tiniest details. That men had visited Crispin was interesting. If they’d ridden to town, then they would have stabled their horses somewhere. In the morning he’d discover more.

  John chuckled. ‘You’ve helped me already.’

  Walter frowned. ‘But I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘You have. You’ve done more than you know.’

  • • •

  In the darkness he sensed Katherine was still awake. Her small shifts in the bed, the uneven breathing even as she tried to
be quiet.

  ‘Tell me it will be all right,’ she said softly.

  Very gently, he squeezed her shoulder and pulled her closer. But he said nothing; he couldn’t lie to her.

  • • •

  ‘Last month?’ The man stroked his chin. His clothes were filthy and stained. The whole stable reeked of manure. A boy moved a pile of it around with a besom, pushing it against a wall where it quickly gathered flies. ‘Aye, I remember now.’ He smiled, showing a mouth almost empty of teeth. ‘Didn’t stay half a day but they still expected the horses properly groomed and fed. Haggled over the price, too.’ He spat with disgust. ‘And then they didn’t want to pay.’

  ‘Where did they come from? Did they say?’

  He shook his head. ‘Said no more than they had to. I’ll tell you something, though: they had money. Both of them on good beasts and better clothes than you’ll see round here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Strangers with money and good clothes? It seemed surprising that more people hadn’t noticed them. Men like that stood out and gossip was like gold.

  ‘Fine beaver hats and jackets with stitching on them.’

  ‘Stitching?’ John could feel his hopes rising. ‘A coat of arms?’

  ‘No.’ The man shook his head. ‘Not that. What do you call it... patterns.’

  Embroidery, he thought. So much for that thought. Still, dressed like that they weren’t scraping for pennies. Men with some status.

  ‘No badges? No marks?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  Impossible to tell whose men they were. ‘How were they armed?’

  The stableman grinned widely again. ‘I noticed that, right enough. A sword each and they both carried daggers. Hilts bound in leather and silver on the pommels.’

  ‘Silver?’ John asked sharply.

  ‘Sure as I’m standing here,’ the man said with a nod. ‘On the bridles, too. Like I said, fine animals and well-tended.’

  ‘What did they look like?’

  ‘They were big. Broad,’ he replied after a moment. ‘Hard eyes. They looked cruel. Arrogant, that’s it. One of them had a scar on his face. I’ll tell you this, Master, I’d not be wanting to go up against them.’