She shrugged. ‘Fever. He has had it ever since he was down underground.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Geoffrey, not sure what the woman was talking about. ‘I haven’t come to check on your husband. Anyone can see he is too ill to work. Can we speak somewhere private?’
Even as he said the words he realized that it was a foolish question. This was as private as they were going to get. Already the presence of an unfamiliar figure had caused the occupants of other dwellings to poke their heads out, perhaps alerted by the playing children. Geoffrey moved into the shadow of the Mortons’ doorway.
‘It is the wife of John Morton I wish to speak to.’
‘John’s wife? He has a wife over Chatham way. But they had a falling-out and so John has been living here with us for as long as there is work at the priory. He is brother to my Simon.’
She nodded towards the man in the bed. Then, realizing the drift of Chaucer’s words and picking up on his half-whispered tones, she said: ‘Something has happened, hasn’t it? Something’s happened to our John?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
Swiftly Geoffrey explained the circumstances of her brother-in-law’s death. He thought it best to give her an unvarnished account. A fight of some kind in the inner court of the priory – and even as he said this, he realized he didn’t know whether there had been a fight or a simple, unprovoked attack by the claw-handed Adam – which had resulted in a shocking death. In truth, there wasn’t very much more to say. Mistress Morton dropped the leather bucket, and dirty water splashed over their feet and leggings. She stood wringing her hands. She swayed against the doorpost. Will looked up at his mother from the corner where he was still crouched.
‘I knew it,’ she said.
‘Knew what?’
‘Ever since they were working down in that cursed place, in that cellar, and brought back—’
The woman stopped herself and put a hand to her mouth. Chaucer noticed that she was gap-toothed.
‘I don’t understand, Mistress Morton. What cursed place? Brought back what?’
‘They were down in the cellar last week. It is ghost-ridden. There are bones down there. Bad fortune comes to all those who go there. I wish I hadn’t picked out—’
Again the woman paused as if on the verge of saying the wrong thing. Then she went on: ‘My husband Simon has been afflicted with a fever and now you say that John is dead and, look, I scalded my arm only the other day.’ She rolled up the sleeve of her smock and displayed a stretch of raw, puckered skin. ‘The boiling water leaped out and took hold of my arm,’ she continued. ‘It has never done that before. And John is dead, too, God rest his soul.’
Geoffrey thought that, in her grief, the woman must be confused between an ordinary household accident and a violent death. By this stage some of the other women from the row had come bustling out, together with their children. There was a mixture of curiosity and pity on the faces of the adults, more curiosity than pity perhaps. All the same Mistress Morton stepped out from the shadow of the doorway and as if by instinct went towards her neighbours, who immediately surrounded her. There was a moment’s silence, which was broken by a babble of questions and exclamations.
Geoffrey was relieved. He reckoned he could leave it to the neighbours to comfort Mistress Morton, if comfort was what she required on hearing of her brother-in-law’s death. Nor was it his responsibility to stay and tell John’s brother, Simon. The sick man was surely incapable of understanding or, at the least, it would make the blow even worse to inflict the news on him in his current state. Simon Morton was well out of things.
Geoffrey began to walk back in the direction of the priory. He hadn’t gone far when he sensed someone behind him and felt a tug on his sleeve. It was Will, the dead man’s nephew. Looking at the smile on his freckle-filled face, Geoffrey grasped that the boy really was a little light in the head. He was all cheerfulness. It was as if he’d forgotten about the fatal violence he’d witnessed in the courtyard. Probably he had. He held out his clenched hands, the backs uppermost. He nodded at Chaucer, as if to say ‘you know what to do next’.
So Geoffrey tapped the boy’s right hand. Delighted, Will flipped it over to reveal a palm which contained nothing but grime. The boy put his hands behind him and, after a bit of fumbling, brought them round to his front once more. Wondering how much longer he’d have to humour the lad but unwilling to turn his back on him, Geoffrey tapped the clenched left hand, which the boy promptly opened. Chaucer had been half-expecting the left hand to be empty, either because Will had switched whatever he was holding to the other one or even because he wasn’t holding anything in the first place. So it was with a small thrill that he saw that Will had indeed been concealing an object.
Chaucer made no attempt to take it but bent forward to examine a ring, an old and dulled golden ring. It looked valuable.
‘Very good, Will. You had me fooled for a bit,’ he said. ‘You should take that back to wherever you got it from. Run along now.’
In the back of his mind was the thought that if the boy was caught with the ring he might be accused of stealing it. But Will seemed to have no intention of running along. His cheerful expression was replaced by a look of disappointment. He thrust the palm holding the ring towards Chaucer.
‘No, I do not want it. It’s not mine. It’s probably not yours to give away either, Will. Put it back where you got it, I say again.’
But Will would not budge. He stood opposite Geoffrey, insistently proffering the ring. Over the boy’s shoulder, Geoffrey could see the gaggle of neighbours still clustered about Will’s mother. He wondered whether the ring had come from the Morton house. It didn’t look like the kind of thing a mason’s family would have. He remembered that the sick man’s wife had said something about an item brought back to the house from…from where? The cellar she’d also referred to?
As if in confirmation, Will said: ‘Down among the bones.’
Once again he shoved his hand forward so that the ring was almost under Chaucer’s nose and repeated ‘down among the bones’ in a strange singsong, as if the phrase was part of a children’s rhyme. The simpler course would be to take the ring, Geoffrey decided. The odds were that it did not belong to the boy or to his mother or father. He could make enquiries inside the priory, without revealing how he’d come by the thing. He could pretend that he’d found it by chance (which was correct, in a way). He didn’t want to get Will or his family into trouble. Unless one of them really was a thief, of course.
Chaucer plucked the ring from the boy’s open hand, and the grin that split the other’s face told him he’d made the right move in the game they were playing. He slipped the ring into a pocket. Will moved a pace or two back, then turned and ran off in the direction of home.
Baffled, Geoffrey resumed his walk to the priory. Passing the lay cemetery, he reflected that his hopes for peace and quiet in this place had been destroyed and then rebuked himself: a man had just died, after all. His own hopes didn’t count for much against that. Passing through the outer gate he was unsurprised to see no sign of the hulking gatekeeper. With a murderer on the loose, the man had obviously decided to make himself scarce. The inner courtyard where the killing had occurred was empty too. There was still blood on the ground, already dried and fading in the sun. Chaucer noticed that his quill pen was where he’d left it on the block of stone. He didn’t imagine he’d be resuming a quiet morning of writing. He thought for a moment of his house in Aldgate and wondered what his family was doing.
He walked on past the cloister. Everywhere was deserted. It was eerily silent. His thoughts turning to the claw-handed man on the loose, he was startled to see a figure rounding the corner of the monks’ sleeping quarters.
But it was only Andrew coming towards him, the other mason. There was dried blood on his shirt from the cut he’d received as the killer escaped. Presumably he’d had the wound attended to in the infirmary.
‘Have they caught him yet?’ Chaucer asked.
‘I do not think so,’ said Andrew.
‘I have taken the boy home,’ said Geoffrey. ‘His mother knows now. Perhaps you can tell her more.’
‘Don’t know much more than you, Master Chaucer.’
‘What was the cause of the fight?’
‘It was no honest fight but a coward’s attack. Like I said, Adam was new to us. A surly bad-tempered fellow, out for trouble from the moment he started. Possibly he was bitter on account of his withered hand. He made fun of simple Will and then, when his uncle defended the lad, Adam turned on him. But if you ask me…’ Andrew’s voice tailed away.
‘Yes?’
‘…I can’t explain it, but it was as though Adam was looking for an excuse to go for John Morton. There’d been strong words before you stuck your head out of the window, Master Chaucer, and afterwards there was quiet for a bit while we got on with our work. Then Adam suddenly leaped on old John and did for him with a blow to the neck. With the chisel. I tell you one thing, though. No true mason would use his tools in that fashion. We masons are a peaceable bunch. He was no proper member of our guild.’
Geoffrey nodded. Andrew was right. You rarely saw a quarrel among the masons. Their work demanded skill and concentration and a kind of rhythm, a combination of head and hand. Perhaps the physical labour left them too tired for scraps and fights; perhaps the fact that they were frequently employed in building churches and other holy places sobered them. While Andrew was talking, a question had been running through Chaucer’s head. He decided to trust the other man and ask it.
‘Have you been working on a cellar recently?’
At once Andrew turned wary. ‘A cellar, sir?’
‘Mistress Morton told me that was where her husband caught his fever. She said it was a cursed spot.’ Chaucer said nothing about the ring in his pocket which might have been retrieved from the cellar.
‘Oh, that place,’ said Andrew. He seemed to debate with himself whether to elaborate, then said: ‘Yes, Master Chaucer, there are all sorts of tales told of it. I don’t believe the prior himself would venture down there after dark – though it’s always dark down there, of course. Yes, it’s true. John and Simon were sent down to do some repairs by the cellarer, Brother Michael.’
‘But not you or Will?’
‘Will is a delicate creature. In truth, he is not fitted for much. Me and the boy were seeing to another job – a boundary wall. I prefer to work outside.’
‘Not Adam either, the one-handed man? He wasn’t working down in this cellar?’
‘I tell you, Master Chaucer, Adam had been with us only a couple of days since Simon fell sick. I didn’t know him from, well, didn’t know him from Adam.’
Geoffrey sensed the mason’s unease – or perhaps it was simple impatience with his string of questions. And, indeed, he could not have said exactly why he was asking them.
‘Where is this, ah, cursed spot?’
‘It lies under the cellarer’s chamber on the other side of the cloister.’
Since the cellarer was the person in overall charge of provisioning, naturally there would be storage areas under his part of the priory. Geoffrey might have gone on to enquire exactly what ‘tales’ were told about the cellar, but at that moment there was a strange flurry of sound and Prior Dunton burst into view, accompanied by Brother Peter the librarian with other monks trailing behind. They were walking fast but turning to look behind them. At first Chaucer thought they were being pursued but, seeing him and Andrew, Richard Dunton changed direction.
‘You’ve caught him? Or he’s escaped, the murderer?’ said Chaucer. He could think of no other reason for the strained expression on the prior’s face.
‘Oh, he has been caught – or escaped if you like,’ said Richard Dunton. ‘He’s over there. In our cemetery. He’s dead, too, now. Come and see.’
At this point, or shortly afterwards, Richard Dunton became concerned at the two deaths at Bermondsey Priory, not so much because of the events themselves but because of their effect on the priory’s standing and reputation. Two violent deaths, with the second coming hard on the heels of the first. At least the claw-handed Adam had had the foresight to die in a cemetery. Or rather he had been struck down there. Or had struck himself down. He’d climbed a tree in the graveyard, wrapped one end of a rope about his neck and the other around a branch. Then he’d toppled off the branch and hung there, slowly throttling.
Dunton and Chaucer had stood looking up at the body suspended from the branch of an oak. The face was livid, and the man’s tongue poked like a stick out of his almost toothless mouth. His torso shivered and his feet swayed in the breeze. A few paces behind them stood Brother Peter, the librarian and sacrist. Chaucer had been surprised to learn that, in addition to his other duties, Brother Peter had charge of the burial ground. He was muttering and crossing himself at the sacrilege of a man committing suicide in the bounds of the cemetery. Keeping him company was the moon-faced monk who had the post of revestiarius.
‘Well, he has met a quick retribution,’ said Geoffrey.
‘It had been better to have him arrested and brought to trial,’ said the prior.
Geoffrey didn’t remark that the result would have been the same: a noose tightening about Adam’s neck until he expired. Nevertheless, Dunton was right. It would have been much better if the murderer of John Morton had been apprehended in the proper fashion. Now it rather looked as though the murderer had taken the law into his own hands. Geoffrey reached up and touched the trailing end of the black girdle wound about the dead man’s neck. It was similar to the girdles that the monks used to secure their dark garments.
Richard Dunton was no fool. He nodded and said: ‘I can see where your thoughts are directed, Geoffrey. But it would not be so difficult to come by one of those cords. It is obvious what has happened here.’
‘It is?’
‘This man Adam, overcome by remorse, flees to the cemetery, where he plans to die. He is already equipped with the cord that will snuff out his wretched life. While we are searching the place for him, he is quietly preparing himself for death. Remember Judas the Apostate, who hanged himself from a tree after betraying our Saviour. Remorse can call on the most unlikely men, and call quickly and unexpectedly too.’
‘Judas had the use of his two hands, I believe,’ said Geoffrey, indicating the withered hand of the man swaying from the oak.
‘Men in despair can accomplish great and terrible things,’ said the prior.
Yes, thought Chaucer, but not impossible things like clambering up an oak, crawling along a branch, fastening one end of a cord about his neck and the other around the branch, all the time employing only one hand. However, he could not have said for certain whether the dead man did not have some limited use of his left hand, and the prior was surely correct when he claimed that men in desperation can do things they’d be incapable of in normal circumstances.
‘If only he had chosen some other place,’ said Brother Peter, speaking aloud for the first time. ‘Why did he have to choose this sanctified ground?’
‘Hush now, Brother Peter. The circle is closed,’ said Dunton. ‘This man killed another man and now he has done away with himself, God rest both their souls. We must cut him down.’
He beckoned to a gaggle of lay workers who’d been standing at a distance, out of respect for the prior or the dead man or both.
‘But why did he kill John the mason?’ said Chaucer as they left the cemetery while the murderer’s body was being cut down.
‘I do not know. You were there. A quarrel, wasn’t it?’ The prior suddenly broke off and said in a more anxious tone: ‘You intend to report on this back at court, Geoffrey?’
And Chaucer, who’d been thinking of no such thing, said: ‘You cannot keep it a secret.’
The reality was that, at court, no one would be remotely interested in a spat between a couple of artisans which had resulted in a murder and an apparent suicide. But it seemed to Geoffrey that Dunton had been t
oo quick to declare the matter closed. If the prior hadn’t been worried for the reputation of his house, he began to show some concern now.
‘Very well, Master Chaucer, if you consider that there is anything…untoward…about this sad affair, then you are welcome to pry into it and ask questions. I know how much influence you have at court. Go where you like. Talk to whomever you wish. I shall even give the brothers dispensation if you need to speak to any of them. Ask away to your heart’s content and satisfy yourself that this case is exactly what it seems, a vicious man who hanged himself after being overcome by remorse. Meanwhile, the life of this place must continue as though nothing has happened.’
Chaucer noticed the coolness and relative formality in Richard Dunton’s tone. He thought that the prior was overestimating his influence at court but, of course, he didn’t say so. It was a touchy subject. Any influence was largely because of the connections between his wife Philippa, her widowed sister Katherine Swyneford and John of Gaunt himself. Officially Katherine was resident in the Savoy Palace as magistra to Gaunt’s children by his first wife, and unofficially she was there as Gaunt’s mistress. The magistra pretence was necessary for Katherine because Gaunt’s second wife – the noble Constanza, from the kingdom of Castile – lived under the same ample roof. It was because of her sister Katherine’s status that Philippa Chaucer and her family had been given choice lodgings on the south side of the palace overlooking the river, even though they’d recently moved back to Aldgate.
Chaucer wondered how far knowledge of the affair between John and Katherine had spread. Certainly it was whispered about at court. Had the rumours reached as far as Bermondsey Priory? Did people believe that Chaucer, because he was brother-in-law to the woman who was Gaunt’s lover, had to be humoured? Or was Richard Dunton’s belief in his ‘influence’ connected only to his reputation as a court poet? Whichever version was right, it was sufficient to open a few doors.
And opening doors was what Geoffrey Chaucer was about to do now. He slipped inside the entrance and peered at the precipitous flight of steps running down into darkness. This must be the place: the storage space under the cellarer’s area of the priory, the place where John and Simon Morton had been sent to carry out some repairs before one fell sick and the other died prematurely.
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