by Jason Vail
“Or what?”
“Easy, there, brother,” said the prior of Greater Wenlock, an elderly man whose back was stooped as if he was carrying an invisible weight, with only the cane clutched in his knobby hand preventing him from falling. He fumbled with a gold chain around his neck that supported a wooden cross. It had got tangled with a thong that held something out of sight beneath his robe. “There is no need to be so sharp. Sir Stephen has only come to us to do his duty, as our Prince has given it to him.”
“I am sorry,” Brother Adolphus said, although to whom he was sorry was not clear.
“Please pay no heed to Brother Adolphus,” the prior said. “He is upset over the disappearance of our precious relic of the saint. It has much disturbed him, as it has disturbed us all. I so dread returning to our brethren with word that what they entrusted to our care has been lost. They will not forgive us.”
“How was it lost?”
“My, you have a direct way, don’t you. We don’t know, actually.”
“How could you not know?”
The prior sighed. “Perhaps you should see for yourself while you hear our story. Please come this way, if you would. I am Brother Anthony, by the way.”
Most chapels were small and square. This one was large and round, due perhaps to some conceit of the Genevilles. Within the confines of acceptable taste, every magnate strived to be different in his display of wealth and power. There was an extension at the rear that reached as far as the eastern wall of the bailey. Stephen had never been inside it and had no idea what to expect, since it had been added after he had been here as a boy squire. Stephen thought the prior would lead the way, but the priest, Father Theophilus, headed the procession without being asked to do so, although Brother Anthony set the pace at a quick hobble.
Across the north side of the extension were a series of chambers, while the south was open and sunny. In ordinary times, it appeared to be a library, for there was a shelf of books and what could be rolls of accounts running the full length of the open chamber, and a scriptorium or clerk’s office. Two writing desks were now crammed in a corner and a good part of the room taken up by cots.
“Who sleeps here?” Stephen asked.
“We do,” Brother Adolphus said.
“You, the monks of Greater Wenlock?”
“Who else did you think I meant?”
Brother Adolphus was rapidly rising to the top of the list of people Stephen most wanted to strangle. People were not usually so openly rude, mainly because among his sort open rudeness provoked violence. Perhaps Adolphus thought Stephen would not dare to take open offense. Stephen was no more accustomed to suffering such insults than Walter Henle might be, but for the sake of his inquiry, he held back a sharp retort. It was too bad Gilbert wasn’t here so he could get credit for it.
“We keep, or I should say, kept, Saint Milburga’s bones in there,” Brother Anthony said, indicating the third chamber on the left with his cane.
Stephen lifted the latch and pushed the door open. “You did not lock it?”
“Of course, we locked it,” Adolphus said. “There’s no use locking the door now that it’s gone.”
Stephen went in. The chamber appeared to be a storeroom for vestments and other implements used in religious services: a staff, caps, platters for the bread, and vessels for communion wine. Under the window high above the reach of even the tallest person was a large old trunk. It did not seem out of place in here. Brother Anthony came round Stephen to stand by the trunk. He flipped up the latch and opened it. He removed a smaller box and set it on the closed lid of the trunk.
“We kept the relic in here,” Brother Anthony said.
Stephen knelt by the trunk. The small box was painted a cheerful red and the sides were reinforced with bronze that had been polished so diligently that it shined even in the dim light of the chamber. It lacked the glass top he had been told to expect. The box’s most significant feature, however, was the padlock and set of bronze hinges that secured the lid. The hinge had been pried loose from the box. The marks from the tool used to do so were plainly visible on the wood.
“Do you mind?” Stephen said, reluctant to open the box without permission.
“You have our permission,” Brother Anthony said.
Stephen lifted the lid. A bed of red velvet of a shade matching the paint on the exterior lay within the box. A depression in the middle indicated where the relic had lain. Even though the light was dim, he saw what appeared to be splinters of wood upon the velvet. He bent close to examine them. He picked one up, ignoring the sharp intakes of breath behind him. It was a sliver of bone. He laid the sliver upon the velvet. He was about to close the lid when a tiny object wedged between a fold of velvet and the wall of the box caught his eye. He dug down for it. It was small and round and had a hole in the middle. He had no idea what it might be. But one thing seemed clear: it was made of gold. He thought about returning the little round thing to the box where he had found it, but some instinct caused him to put it in his belt pouch. He closed the lid, and stood up.
“So, you kept the room locked? At all times?” Stephen asked.
“Yes,” Brother Anthony said.
“When was the last time anyone saw the relic?”
“Oh, it was three days ago. The day after we arrived.”
“Was it normal to keep the relic in its box and not to gaze upon it?”
“It is a powerful object, my boy. We do not lightly trifle with it. It is brought out only at special occasions, and those of need.”
Stephen looked up at the window. The shutters were closed, as anyone would expect. But the latch securing them was not fastened, if the unbroken line of sunlight at the boundary between the shutter panels was any indication.
“And the theft was discovered today, when the Prince came to see it?” Stephen asked.
“Yes,” Brother Anthony said. “I am afraid so.”
Stephen was about to say that he had seen enough when there was a commotion at the door. Two black-robed monks had someone by the arms. One of them said, “Brother Anthony! Look whom we found!”
“Why, Brother Gilbert,” said Brother Adolphus. “We wondered where you had got to. Tell, us, where is that Gospel you stole?”
Chapter 5
“I — I — I —” Gilbert stuttered. “I took nothing that belonged to the priory when I left. Except for myself. I am guilty of that.”
“We stopped caring about your disappearance years ago. But along with you, there was a manuscript missing,” Adolphus said. “A copy of the Gospels.”
“I don’t know about any such thing!”
“The coincidence is compelling.”
Stephen pretended to study the box that had held the relic, as if he had no interest in this conversation.
Anthony looked from Gilbert to Adolphus. “I must sit down. This is one too many shocks for my heart for a single day.” He hobbled toward the door.
Gilbert and the other brothers backed into the common room to allow him to pass. Anthony sat on one of the cots with a groan.
“I am sorry to see you in this state, brother,” Gilbert said.
“The penalty of living so long.” Anthony wagged a finger at Gilbert. “I may be infirm, but my mind is still clear as a bell. Now, tell us what you have been up to these many years.” His eyes wandered to Stephen, who had come out as well. “Is our business concluded, sir?”
“Not yet,” Stephen said.
“Ah, what more can we do?”
“This man works for me. Your business with him is with me as well.”
“For my part,” Anthony said, “I only want to rest and reminisce about old times, and to hear his news.”
“A charge has been laid,” Stephen said. “A charge of theft. It is a serious matter. Either Brother Adolphus must stand behind it and be prepared to offer proofs, or it must be withdrawn. What proofs do you have?”
Adolphus’ mouth was a thin line. “Just that shortly after Gilbert left us, that copy of the Gospels
was found to be missing.”
“Shortly after?”
“A day or two. Little more. Gone from its cupboard where it had been hidden.”
“A day or two? So anyone could have taken it, then? Rather like this relic.”
Adolphus’ mouth opened and closed.
“You will have to do better,” Stephen said. “Come along, Gilbert. If Brother Adolphus has nothing more to say, we are finished here.”
Stephen went out with Gilbert upon his heels.
“So Greater Wenlock was your priory,” Stephen said when they reached the relative safety of the bailey. “You never said.”
“There never seemed to be a reason to.” Gilbert rubbed his cheeks with the palms of his hands. “It was long ago. Another life, almost.”
Stephen walked around the chapel to the north wall of the extension. “I recall seeing a copy of the Gospels in your possession. You showed it to me once.”
Gilbert sighed. “I copied it myself, every letter. A little bit each day, mostly during the evening, when I was supposed to be sleeping.”
“Don’t monks belong to the priory? Everything you make belongs to the others. And you used the priory’s pen, ink, and parchment, I have no doubt.”
“I did.”
“Doesn’t that give Brother Adolphus grounds to think the book belongs to the priory?”
“It was my labor that made the book! I meant to pay it back. But I’ve been afraid to return. I am so ashamed. I was weak. I could not live up to my vows. I yielded to temptation. I could not bear to confess my failure.”
Stephen knew what that temptation had been: Gilbert had fallen in love with Edith, as plain-looking a woman as you could find anywhere, but beautiful to him. Stephen knew the power of such temptation. He had loved a woman once, a Jewish girl in Spain, with more intensity that he had ever thought possible. He had been happy for the only time in his life. Then illness had taken her away, leaving despair and sorrow that had not diminished despite the passage of a year.
“Anyway,” Gilbert said when his confession met with silence he took as disapproval, “if you must know, I took the book away to finish it. I could not leave the work undone.”
“You did, eh?” Stephen said, mouth moving and finger pointing as he counted the windows on the north side of the chapel annex so as to identify the one belonging to the room in which the relic had been stored. He stopped beneath the window that he thought should be the one, which was about halfway between the round chapel and the wall of the inner bailey, where wooden steps led up to the wall walk. Like all the other windows, it was twice a man’s height above the ground, tall and narrow, but wide enough for a man to fit through if he could climb high enough to reach it. “Here we are, I think. And did you?”
“Did I what?” Gilbert asked, distracted by the counting.
“Finish it.”
“I did,” Gilbert said with some pride.
“How did you manage such a feat? Do you have the Gospels memorized?”
“Some of them, but I copied the rest from the books at Saint Laurence’s church.”
“No one there thought your work odd? I mean, innkeepers copying the Gospels, that is strange enough to elicit some comment. Ordinary people never trouble themselves with such things.”
“No one asked questions about it.”
“I suppose it would be best if we do not discuss this matter any further.”
“Yes. I suppose not. You’ll leave it lie, then?”
Stephen did not answer that. He knelt beneath the window and examined the ground. Grass and weeds grew thickly against the walls and in the places where people and horses did not go, for no sheep were let loose here as they were in the outer bailey to keep the grass under control. He was not sure what he was looking for, since after two or three days it was unlikely he would find anything useful.
“Do you see anything?” Gilbert asked.
Stephen smoothed tufts of grass out of the way so he could look at the dirt. “What does that look like to you?”
There was a half-moon impression in the dirt by one of the tufts. A pit within the crescent showed where a small stone had been dislodged. A pebble lay a few inches away. Stephen picked up the stone and set in the pit. It fit perfectly.
“That could be a heel mark,” Gilbert said.
“I would say it is, more likely than not.” Stephen pointed to the window. “Whoever made it stood with his back to the wall, right here. Beneath that window.”
“An odd place to loiter.”
“That was my thought.” The sill was too high to reach even with a good jump. “That’s how the thief got in. The window isn’t latched. If it was, the thieves levered it up. They closed the window when they left, but couldn’t reset the latch.”
“Someone boosted up the man who went inside,” Gilbert said, following the train of Stephen’s thought.
“I’d say so, wouldn’t you?”
“That sounds plausible.”
“But plausibility proves nothing.”
“It’s a start.”
“Plausibility has got us in trouble before.”
“No, that was impulsiveness.” Still eyeing the window, Stephen said, “Let us prove its plausibility.”
“What do you mean?”
Stephen grasped Gilbert’s shoulders and maneuvered him against the wall. “You stand here. You shall be the man who left the footprint.”
“You’re not going to —” Gilbert sputtered.
“Make a step for me with your hands. Hurry up, now.”
Muttering protests, Gilbert entwined his fingers. Stephen stepped upon his hands, then climbed to Gilbert’s shoulders. From this vantage point he could just reach the sill. He chinned himself upon it to show that he could do so, then gasped at Gilbert, who had remained beneath him, “You may want to get out of the way!”
As Gilbert stumbled to the side, Stephen let go. The landing was hard on his bad foot and he collapsed.
When he sat up, he noticed that a woman drawing water at the well was looking at him as if he had lost his mind. A guard on the castle wall above the woman was laughing at Stephen. He said something to someone out of sight in a nearby tower, and a second guard came out to see what was so amusing.
“They had to have done so at night,” Stephen said, as Gilbert helped him to his feet.
“That is obvious, given the spectacle you have made of yourself.”
“Which means they are, or were, among those quartered within this very bailey.” The gate to the outer bailey was closed at sundown as the town’s curfew bells rang, and the two baileys were sealed off from each other. Only those of high estate were quartered in the towers of the inner bailey: earls and those closest to them.
“It cannot be possible. We cannot be the ones to make such an accusation. I like my head where it is.”
“Not yet, certainly. We’ll have to have good proofs. Better ones than Brother Adolphus has.”
“I thought we weren’t to talk about that.”
“You aren’t. I can say what I please.”
Gilbert sighed. “I suppose we shall have to question everyone.” By everyone, it was clear he meant the magnates, who would be insulted at the suggestion of complicity.
“I’ll not force that on you. We’ll start with the guard and then move on to the servants. Perhaps one of them saw something.”
“That doesn’t seem likely if no one saw or heard what happened to poor Ormyn.”
“Well, we must try something.”
Chapter 6
Interviewing the guards of the inner bailey and the Prince’s staff, the constable, and the earls lodged there took the remainder of the day. Stephen and Gilbert split up so that no one would go unquestioned, and they could get the business done as quickly as possible. It was grueling, asking the same questions over and over, and getting the same answers, and Stephen was exhausted by the time he and Gilbert met at the gate to the outer bailey.
“Nothing?” Stephen asked at Gilbert
’s resigned expression.
“Except for a messenger from Winchester arriving to much disturbance on Thursday night. People came out with torches when he arrived, apparently, but no one saw or heard anything untoward. And you?”
“The same.”
“I could use a pot of ale. Not to mention something to eat.”
“I like that idea.” They had missed dinner in their determination to interview everyone they could as quickly as possible. There was always a lot of coming and going in the Prince’s court and among the households of the earls, and they didn’t want anyone who might have seen something to get away.
Gilbert frowned. “If we go back home now, Edith is likely to find something for me to do.”
Gilbert was certainly right about that. There were still about two hours left in the day, and Edith abhorred wasting time when she had chores to be done, which was just about always.
“The Wobbly Kettle, then?” Stephen suggested. “That’s a good place to hide.”
“Hide? Who’s talking about hiding? We shall be consulting about our work.”
“That’s what I will say if she asks what kept us.”
“Good lad. You are learning. I shall have you perfectly trained up for a wife one day.”
Stephen did not answer that as they turned through the main gate and headed up High Street. In his current state, he wasn’t much of a prize. Women of his class selected husbands — or more accurately their parents selected on their behalf — for the groom’s position and property, and he had neither. He was a cripple without anything to his name but some armor, a couple of swords, and three horses. The prospect of marriage was unlikely.
Stephen had already shared with Gilbert most of what he had seen in the chapel storage room — except for a small thing that had slipped his mind. Only as they passed Leofwine Wattepas’ house at the corner of High and Mill Streets, with its fine view of both the castle and the church, did the thing come to mind. He stopped and dug around in his pouch. The little round thing was so small that he had to take everything out before he found it. He rested it in his palm and asked, “What do you make of this?”