The Holywell Dead

by Chris Nickson

  ‘He sounds like a man with a great deal to fear,’ Robert answered. ‘He killed a powerful man?’ The monk thought about that for a long time. ‘It would be a good reason to vanish, if the family wanted revenge.’

  ‘It seems that he couldn’t hide well enough.’

  ‘Or perhaps it was chance. Someone passing recognised him and sent word.’

  That was possible. If Crispin had done his killing on the king’s orders, though, surely the Crown would want this death investigated fully; they’d want to discover the murderers and make them pay with their lives. But if things had been personal, the protection wouldn’t extend that far. He needed to think about it and also puzzle out the meaning of the mounted men who’d visited the priest the month before.

  ‘Will you tell the coroner when he returns?’

  ‘I will, John,’ the brother promised. ‘Now go and see Katherine and Juliana.’ His face brightened. ‘No new cases while you were away, God be thanked. And no more dead.’

  That was a blessing he thought as he trudged the last few yards to his door. Inside, Katherine and the others were gathered around the table for supper. She had Juliana on her lap, feeding her with the small wooden spoon he’d carved.

  Home. And he was content. The place overwhelmed him.

  John had to tell his story twice; there were too many questions the first time.

  ‘What’s Castleton like?’ Eleanor asked when he’d finished. He smiled as he described it and tried to put all the wild country into words.

  ‘Do monsters and dragons live in the hills?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘No.’ He laughed. ‘They don’t exist, not any more. Only in stories. They were all killed long ago.’

  With a serious look the girl nodded, satisfied.

  He held Juliana until she drifted into sleep, and watched as Katherine changed the clout around the child. Another piece of cloth to wash in the morning.

  • • •

  John remembered Katherine’s arms around him. The next thing he knew he was waking with light showing through cracks in the shutters. Down in the hall the house sounded alive, voices and laughter, then the cry of an infant.

  He rubbed his teeth with a willow twig and washed himself. Poor Alan would wonder what had happened to him.

  The boy came dashing out at his knock, fingers moving in eager questions as they walked to Brampton. John answered the best he could, ready to be working with his hands again, to feel the wood talking to him, for life to be as it should.

  After this job was complete, they’d begin work on a new door for a house on Saltergate, only five houses from his own home. Simple enough, but it needed to be exact to fit well and keep out the weather. Already he was thinking ahead, letting his mind drift.

  Solid labour and honest sweat. It made him happy and put pennies in his purse. John sat on his haunches and watched Alan measure a length of wood then mark it, turning for approval before taking out the saw and cutting.

  The boy definitely had the feel. It was such a rare thing, a gift. Some masons possessed it with stone. He’d seen that in York as they wielded their hammers and chisels to create the delicate, powerful tracery which adorned the churches.

  By the end of the day things were almost complete. Another hour or two in the morning and everything would be finished. None of this stretched his skills, but it was still satisfying. And to be able to pass on what he knew brought true joy.

  He’d escorted Alan to his house and was walking home when he heard hooves, and the coroner barking out his name. John shifted his satchel on his shoulder and turned, shielding his eyes against the late sun.

  ‘You’ve had time to think about Crispin, Carpenter?’

  The man sat well on his horse, back straight, at ease above the ordinary people.

  ‘Yes, Master.’ He’d had the time, true enough, but the dead priest hadn’t entered his mind.

  ‘What do you make of him now?’

  ‘I think we might never know the truth.’

  De Harville shook his head. ‘He was killed here. The King appointed me to investigate deaths. I want to know who did it.’

  ‘You’re the King’s man. Crispin was the King’s man once. Wouldn’t the King’s household tell you about him?’

  ‘I’ve written to them.’

  Who knew how many weeks before an answer came, if at all? They might all be dead of plague by then.

  ‘The little we’ve learned so far doesn’t help us much,’ John said. ‘We’ve no idea who he’s supposed to have killed, or who they served. We know two men were here on good horses, with weapons. But that’s all we know about them. And there’s one other thing.’

  ‘What?’ The coroner listened intently.

  ‘The people behind this are very likely powerful men. They won’t take kindly to questions.’

  Start poking in places like that and he might be disturbing a wasps’ nest. If the men who’d given the orders were lords or barons or earls, no mere coroner would have the rank to protect him.

  ‘Justice, Carpenter,’ de Harville said firmly. ‘The law demands justice.’

  ‘And how many are above the law, Master?’

  It was a question without an answer. Rank, money, influence, so many things put a man out of reach of the courts.

  ‘You find him and I’ll take care of that.’ He pulled on the reins and turned away.

  Find him? How?

  • • •

  At home he let it all go. He was surrounded by people he loved and they were all well. John played with Juliana, games of this and that. During the long nights of winter he’d carved pieces of wood into blocks she could stack like stones, another into the shape of a horse, but with wheels that she could pull along with a piece of twine. Nothing special, but he delighted in sitting on the floor and spending time with her as she concentrated, placing one piece of wood on another, higher and higher, until it toppled to the ground.

  Sometimes it felt impossible to believe that she was part of him. Each day she seemed to grow a little bigger, with some new skill like a miracle. When she walked for the first time it had terrified him until he came to understand that from then she’d be growing away from them all, becoming someone who would live her own life.

  • • •

  The next day word spread: two more cases of plague in the Shambles, a mother and her son. The morning after, another three. The houses were squeezed so tight in there, the air so full of the stink of dead animals from the butchers’ shops, that everyone knew it would spread.

  The fear returned. The goodwives would no longer visit to shop for their meat. Just to set foot in the small streets of the area was courting death. Safer to go without than that. The pestilence was close, and it was growing stronger.

  How did you fight an enemy you couldn’t even see? And if all these deaths were God’s will, what did that mean for the world?

  • • •

  Faces grew even tighter. Tempers flared. People stayed behind their doors as much as possible. But he couldn’t do that if he was going to earn money.

  Alan’s mother was reluctant to let her son go with him. He understood. But the plague was already here. It would find them or it wouldn’t. Whatever they did would make little difference in the end. All the prayer in the world, all the belief, all the nostrums; none of them seemed to help.

  • • •

  John tested the smoothness of the wood with his palm then squinted down the line. Exactly right. He nodded and a broad smile creased Alan’s face. The boy was so gifted that he hardly needed to check his work.

  It was the last thing they’d do today. He told the lad to start cleaning the tools then stood and stretched his back. The boards were for the new door, so they needed to be even and soft as silk.

  He laid them with the others and covered them. It was tedious work, but necessary, and good practice for Alan. John turned as he heard the sound of feet on the dirt.

  One of the bailiffs, breathless and red-faced.
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br />   ‘The coroner says he wants you, Carpenter.’ The man bent over, hands on his knees.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He wants me to take you there.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ John told him.

  He gave his orders to Alan: finish cleaning the tools then take them home and keep them well until the morning. Pride blossomed across the boy’s face, trusted for a second time with the satchel.

  ‘Where are we going?’ John asked. He followed as the bailiff strode out briskly, a sword banging against his leg. What was the man’s name? Alfred, he thought, but he wasn’t certain.

  ‘The Tapton Road, Master. By the river there.’

  He’d walked by the spot several times but he didn’t remember it well. Better to follow quietly and see.

  They scrambled down the bank, clutching at tree roots and thick tufts of grass to stop themselves from falling. The coroner was waiting, trying to brush smears of dirt off his hose and his silk cote.

  A lip of ground ran above the water, just wide enough for a man to stand. Lying there, wrapped in a winding sheet, was a body. Exactly the same as Father Crispin. But out here, away from everything? This was an unlikely place.

  John glanced back up the hill. The corpse would be mostly hidden from the road by the bushes that covered the slope. Why here? Why not send the body out into the river and let the current take it? The flow was strong enough to carry it away.

  ‘Carpenter.’ De Harville jarred him out of his thoughts as he nodded at the body. John took his knife and worked it through the sheet, pulling it back until he could see the face. He looked up, confused. This wasn’t any man he recognised. He moved aside so the coroner and the others could view it.

  Nobody knew him. A stranger.

  ‘We can’t examine him down here,’ John said. ‘We need more room. A rope to drag him up to the road and back to town.’

  ‘Do what he says,’ the coroner instructed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The man wore good clothes. A shirt of fine linen under a houppelande, tailored hose that fitted closely and beautifully-worked leather boots. The limbs were stiff and unyielding, but John was able to examine the palms of the man’s hands. Some calluses and roughness, but this wasn’t anyone used to hard manual work. That confirmed the evidence of the clothes. Whoever the dead man was, he’d possessed money and liked to display it. Forty years old, perhaps, with greying hair and a neatly trimmed beard; close to Crispin’s age. In death, at least, he seemed peaceful.

  A knife hung in its sheath from his belt, and John could see, close to the left hip, where the leather was worn from a sword and scabbard. No scrip, though, just two leather thongs that had been cut. That was different from the priest.

  He looked at the coroner. De Harville’s eyes were absorbing every detail. He nodded and John turned the body. He knew what to look for and spotted it immediately, the tiny blossom of blood. Very carefully he sliced through the clothes. It was right there, a small, round hole that hadn’t gone all the way through the chest. Exactly the same as Father Crispin.

  John stood.

  ‘Well, Carpenter?’

  ‘Let me think.’ John began to walk away. The body wasn’t going to tell him anything more. De Harville kept pace.

  John looked up at the steeple in the distance. ‘We have an assassin in the town, Master. Both these deaths were skilfully done.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘He must have been there since last night. Why did it take so long to notice him?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ the coroner asked.

  ‘It all matters. You don’t know him?’

  ‘No.’ A curt, frustrated answer. ‘I’ve never seen him before.’

  Whoever the victim was, he’d been from de Harville’s class. A man like that would be quickly missed. Word would spread like a fire. But he wasn’t from this area or the coroner would recognise him.

  Then why had he been killed and his corpse left close to Chesterfield? What did it mean? Had something happened at one time that involved him as well as Crispin? But here?

  One man they couldn’t identify, another whose past was a silent mystery. And no one to suspect. Nothing at all.

  What about the way it had been done? There was coldness and calculation in that. Even wrapping the bodies in shrouds, as if they were simply awaiting burial. The murderer had planned everything.

  ‘What do you think about the way they were killed, Carpenter?’

  ‘A long, sharp needle,’ John answered. It had to be that, he was certain. ‘A thick one. He knew what he was doing. It was precise, all the way to the heart but no further.’

  ‘How do we find him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said with a long sigh. ‘I really don’t.’

  • • •

  The church bell began to toll as he approached the town. More plague dead going into the ground. The curate from Clay Cross would say the service next time he was here. The important thing was to bury the corpses as soon as possible.

  A questioning glance at Katherine as he entered the house on Saltergate. She shook her head: no new victims that day. His family was safe. Perhaps it wasn’t much, but he asked nothing more than that.

  Treasure what he had, because it could all vanish in a moment. He’d learnt that when he was young. Parents and children died together, and for a year or more those who remained alive survived in a wasteland, abandoned by God. A return to those times could happen so easily.

  He picked up Juliana, tickling her until she screamed with laughter. The sound rolled over him, filling him with joy until he was laughing too.

  • • •

  Later, with Juliana and the girls asleep in the solar, they sat around the table with a rushlight burning as John told them about the new body.

  ‘What I don’t understand is the weapon he used,’ he said. ‘It seems like a needle. Like the ones for darning, but thicker and longer. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  Katherine and Walter listened closely. Dame Martha seemed to stare at nothing for a long time, staying so quiet that he wondered if she was having another spell.

  ‘Nalbinding,’ she said finally.

  The word meant nothing to him. Martha rose, leaning on the stick he’d cut for her, and hobbled off into her room. John looked at his wife. She shook her head and went after the older woman.

  ‘What does she mean, John?’ Walter asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Fully five minutes passed before the women emerged. Martha was clutching something in her crooked hand, and dropped it on to the table where it glistened in the light.

  ‘For nalbinding,’ she told them. It was a needle, a handspan long, pointed at one end then growing to the thickness of a small finger, with a hole at the other end to thread yarn. ‘My mother taught me how to do it when I was a girl,’ Martha explained. ‘I’ve forgotten now, but you can make things with it. Clothes.’ She sat back with a satisfied smile.

  John picked it up and rolled it in his hands. She was right, a needle like this might have been the weapon. It would only take a little work to sharpen the tip until it could pierce flesh. It was small and thin, but still long enough to reach the heart. Easy to conceal up a sleeve and deadly in the right hands.

  ‘May I borrow this?’

  ‘Of course,’ she told him with a smile. ‘That’s why I brought it out.’

  • • •

  ‘Dame Martha thought of that?’ De Harville asked in surprise. In the corner, Brother Robert lowered his head to hide a smile.

  ‘She did,’ John said. ‘She’s right; something like this would be a perfect weapon for a trained assassin. It would leave very little blood, and anyone could carry it without suspicion.’

  ‘Nalbinding?’ The coroner ran the unfamiliar word slowly over his tongue. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ That had probably been lost over the years. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose it does.’ He held the needle and mimicked a stabbing mo
tion. ‘Yes, I suppose this could work. Now we can guess how it was done, but it doesn’t help us find the murderer. We can’t search every man in town to see if he’s carrying a needle like this. The killer would just hide it somewhere. How do we find him?’

  ‘Perhaps we need to look for strangers,’ John suggested.

  ‘Not too many of those in times like these, Carpenter,’ de Harville said. ‘You ought to know that.’

  ‘Perhaps we should look for those who came after Father Crispin arrived, God rest him,’ the monk said.

  ‘That’s possible,’ the coroner allowed. ‘Think of some names.’

  Who? It wasn’t too long since he’d been new here himself, watched constantly and suspected. No faces sprang into his mind but surely there had to be a few.

  ‘I can ask Walter. He should be able to tell me.’ Going back and forth delivering his messages, he saw everyone in Chesterfield. With his memory he would be able to pick people out.

  ‘Your wife’s brother?’ the coroner asked. ‘As good as anyone. Find some people and look at them.’

  ‘Yes, Master.’

  • • •

  With nothing more to do until Walter came home that evening, he collected Alan. Better to earn a half-day’s pay with some honest work. The boy stumped along with the satchel on his shoulder, proud to carry it. It dragged him down, but he wasn’t about to stop.

  Was that how he’d been, John asked himself? Eight years old, his tools the only thing in the world that he owned. He’d kept moving, from village to town, one small job on to the next, learning with every single one. These days the tools seemed light as he carried them. Back then they felt like the weight of the past and the future on his shoulder.

  ‘We should be able to get the shape of this today. I’ll work with you.’

  Alan’s hands moved furiously. No, he wanted to do the job himself, to prove that he could. John could watch, help if he needed it, advise and instruct. But the boy wanted to do the work on his own.

  ‘If that’s what you want, then I’ll let you,’ John told him.

  Alan sensed how it should all be. He could look and see the picture in his mind. He could feel the wood and understand immediately how it needed to be worked. Why one piece might be fine and another that looked the same completely wrong. Exactly as John could.