The False Virgin

by The Medieval Murderers

  It was obvious that the audience of monks were unwilling to accept the physician’s pronouncement.

  ‘It must have been the statue!’ cried Arnulf. ‘St Beornwyn was surely bringing down retribution upon John for his slanderous sacrilege against her.’

  There was a chorus of agreement from the circle of his colleagues standing around the corpse.

  ‘What clearer sign do we need?’ cried Jude. ‘There has been no earthquake, so why should our beloved Beornwyn’s image fall at the very moment that her denigrator was beneath it?’

  Louis, the physician, was unmoved by the arguments. ‘But did it fall? Or did someone help it on its way?’ he asked.

  ‘I respect your expert knowledge, Brother, but in my long experience, the most obvious explanation is usually the correct one, ‘said the prior, his placidity beginning to return in spite of the stressful circumstances. ‘Even if he did not drown – and I have to accept your opinion on that – the fall of such a heavy weight upon his head can surely be the only explanation for his grievous injury.’

  Louis, his face devoid of expression, shook his head. ‘Normally, I would submit to your wise opinion, Prior. But unless Beornwyn’s retribution was even more miraculous than it appears, that explanation cannot be accepted.’

  ‘On what grounds do you so stubbornly contradict our prior?’ snapped Matthew indignantly.

  ‘There are two reasons,’ replied the infirmarian evenly. ‘Firstly, the fractures are on each side of the head rather than on the top or back, which one would expect from a statue falling on him. But far more telling is the fact that there are two separate injuries, one on each side of the head. It is too much to accept that the statue had fallen twice!’

  There was a silence, then the circle of monks moved nearer so that the physician could point out the areas of blue-red discoloration above each ear.

  ‘He has suffered bruises, but the skin is not broken,’ explained Louis. ‘However, I can feel fractured bone beneath each injury. The poor man was twice struck violently with a blunt object and probably died rapidly.’

  During this altercation, the deceased monk lay in his sodden habit, staring up at the darkness of the roof high above. His pallid face was wet, his mouth partly open as if protesting against the discomfort that he was suffering.

  ‘What shall we do with him?’ asked the practical Mark. He had already plunged his arm into the basin to remove the wooden plug from a drain at the bottom, to stop the leakage over the cracked rim, which was threatening to turn the crossing of the nave into a duck pond.

  After some discussion, the prior, sub-prior and sacristan decided to place the body on a bier behind screens in a corner of the south transept, well away from the flooded floor – and from the curious gaze of the depleted number of visiting pilgrims. Two of the monks went for the bier, which was hanging on a bracket at the back of the church. It was a stout stretcher with handles each end and four sturdy legs, used to carry bodies and coffins at the infrequent funerals. John was reverently lifted onto it and his soaking habit removed, to be replaced by a shroud fetched from the vestry.

  ‘Matins shall be devoted to prayers for our departed brother,’ announced the prior. ‘Naturally we shall be holding a full Requiem Mass for him when the time comes.’

  As they filed into the quire stalls above the shattered function, Brother Matthew murmured into the prior’s ear. ‘We must discuss this in chapter as well as between we senior members. It may not be appropriate to offer the full rites of the Church to someone who may have been possessed by the Devil!’

  Next morning, before the chapter meeting, the prior, his secretary, the sub-prior, the sacristan and the infirmarian went back into the empty church to examine the damage to the shrine of St Beornwyn. A couple of burly lay brothers lifted the heavy statue from across the wide bowl and laid it on the flagstones. A stonemason from the village, who did any building work that was required in the priory, was called to examine it. He declared it undamaged apart from some chips from the base, which fitted into a socket on the back of the bowl.

  ‘Someone has jammed a crowbar or such-like under there and levered her off the supporting peg,’ he declared confidently, causing Louis to smile smugly at this confirmation of his theory. The mason promised to return with cement to set Beornwyn more firmly back on her pedestal and to repair the broken rim of the basin. When he had departed with the lay brothers, the senior monks were left alone to consider the situation.

  ‘Much as it pains me to accept it,’ began the prior, ‘it seems that you were right about this being a deliberate act, Louis. But I feel it flies in the face of reason to believe that anyone would so cruelly murder this poor old man. What earthly motive could anyone have?’

  The sub-prior was ready with an answer. ‘None of us was happy about Brother John’s lewd fantasies, especially as they were likely to drastically reduce our income from pilgrims, which finances the comfortable way of life enjoyed by this house!’

  Brother Paul sighed. Matthew never missed a chance to snipe at what he considered a lack of asceticism at Broomhill.

  ‘That could never be a motive for murder, especially in an institution devoted to God and good works,’ he protested.

  ‘You are too unworldly to be fully aware of the working of men’s minds, Prior,’ retorted Matthew cynically. ‘Men will kill for a couple of pennies, let alone the many pounds that pilgrims and supplicants bring in to St Oswald’s.’

  ‘But we’re not just men here, we are a special breed who have given our lives to the Almighty,’ said Mark, vehemently.

  Again the sub-prior gave one of his supercilious smiles. ‘You are young and innocent, Mark. When you have lived in the world for another twenty years, as I have, you will know that there are good monks and bad monks, just as in any other walk of life.’

  The physician Louis decided to put an end to this pointless argument. ‘The fact remains that our Brother John was foully murdered. There is no avoiding that conclusion, so whatever the motive, there is a killer amongst us.’

  Prior Paul became agitated, his hands fluttering in front of his ample stomach. ‘Amongst us? Surely we must look for some evidence that an outsider committed this foul crime?’

  The infirmarian shrugged. ‘I am merely a physician, who can tell you that John was deliberately slain. I cannot venture any opinion as to why or by whom.’

  ‘What about when?’ asked the prior’s secretary.

  Louis nodded sagely. ‘I wondered when someone was going to ask me that. We found the body shortly before matins, at around midnight. He was still warm and his limbs were still pliable. I last saw John in his room when I gave him a sleeping draught earlier that evening.’

  ‘At what time would that be?’ asked the prior.

  ‘I took myself to my bed in the dorter at about the seventh hour, though it is difficult to be precise.’

  Though some large abbeys and cathedrals had installed large clocks many years previously, they were still not common. At St Oswald’s, the bellringer who alerted everyone to the times of all holy offices, used a large graduated candle to inform him of the time.

  ‘So the despicable deed must have been perpetrated during the five hours between those times?’ persisted Mark.

  ‘It would appear so,’ agreed Louis. ‘But no one has asked me where it was committed. That is just as well, as I have no answer. Poor John could have been struck on the head in his room in the infirmarium – or in the church, or anywhere between. There is no way of telling.’

  After this there was a strained silence as no one could think of any further questions – or, indeed, answers.

  ‘We must leave this now,’ ordered the prior. ‘When we all meet in the chapter house, I will solemnly enjoin every member to examine his conscience and to confess any sins that may have a bearing upon the tragedy.’

  ‘Not only any sins, but any information that might be useful,’ added the sub-prior, determined to get in the last word.

  Twenty m
iles away, in a barn set on a piece of common land outside a village in the land of Gwent, another conference of a very different sort was in progress. Around a rough table taken from the reeve’s house, half a dozen men sat on a couple of benches looted from the same place. From a chair at the head of the table, Owain Glyndwr was listening to reports from his lieutenants and making plans for the morrow.

  ‘The further we go into England, the more difficult it will be to feed them and our horses,’ growled Evan ap Collwyn, one of the prince’s quartermasters.

  ‘Soldiers will always find a way of getting food from somewhere,’ retorted another giant of a man, Iestyn Goch.

  ‘Six thousand mouths need a lot of victuals,’ retorted Evan. ‘They have been on a very short commons since Brecon, and the way ahead looks unpromising.’

  Owain, the true Prince of Wales, listened carefully to all the opinions, absently pricking the reeve’s table with the point of a small dagger. He was a large man, though not on the scale of Iestyn Goch. Handsome at fifty, with light brown hair and beard to match, he had an avuncular calmness that belied his prowess as a fighter and a politician. This rebellion – better termed a war of independence – had been running for five years and until Usk a couple of weeks ago, had been increasingly successful with every passing month. However, that battle at Pwll Melyn had seen the death of his brother, who was his chief supporter, as well as Bishop Thomas, a fighting cleric who had won over the priesthood of Wales to his side. Equally tragic was the loss of Crach Ffinant, his bard, soothsayer and prophet. In addition, his son had been captured and dragged to the Tower of London. However, this severe setback had not weakened his determination to advance into England, threatening the very heartland of the unpopular tyrant King Henry I V. Thankfully the French had now kept their promise and landed almost two thousand men at Milford Haven, who were now joining his forces. However, as Evan had pointed out, an army marches on its stomach, and at the moment those particular organs were pretty empty.

  ‘Until now, we have been campaigning in Wales and have seized our sustenance wherever possible from towns, manors, castles and courts belonging to Englishmen or Welshmen who have sold out to them,’ observed Glyndwr. ‘As I have always insisted, we have never stolen from our own peasantry, the very people for whom we are fighting. However, now that we are on the very edge of England, we need not be so sensitive. We have suffered oppression and humiliation, with untold cruelty from them for over a century, since they murdered Prince Llewelyn at Cilmeri. So now we will take what we need, to show them that the tables have turned.’

  He transferred his gaze to another man, a sallow, black-browed fellow with a shock of dark hair and a turn in his eye.

  ‘Mostyn Gam, what have your scouts reported about our route towards Worcester? What prospects are there for feeding our men and beasts on the way?’

  Mostyn looked pessimistic. ‘Not very good ones, arglwydd. There are few great houses and estates, most of the farms are small and half of them only grow bloody apples!’

  ‘What castles will we have to contend with? They are usually well stocked with food and fodder.’

  Mostyn Gam pulled out a small roll of parchment from his pouch and flattened it on the table. Entering England was a new experience for the Welsh army and their knowledge of its geography was sparse. Though the coastline was well known, the inland areas were familiar only to those who lived there, as there were no reliable maps and only the main roads between towns were recorded, their distances often being speculative.

  ‘Our priest from Talgarth went disguised with one of the scouts. He drew this chart when he came back, marking the places where he felt meat, grain, hay and even money might be taken.’

  They pored over the crude map for a time, noting where castles, manors and villages were sited near the route they proposed for reaching Worcester.

  ‘What’s this one, marked with a cross near this line of hills?’ asked Evan ap Collwyn, jabbing a large finger onto the parchment.

  Mostyn squinted at it with his lazy eye. ‘He said it was a small priory, dedicated to some English saint or other. It’s isolated and, with a bit of persuasion, may well yield up something useful. They’re bound to have livestock for us to slaughter, as well as a mill stocked with flour and grain.’

  ‘And some gold and silver cups on their altar, as well as a fat money chest in their chancel,’ suggested another man, a cousin of Owain’s from Builth.

  The prince held up a cautionary hand. ‘We are fighting the King of England, remember, not the Holy Catholic Church! I respect those religious houses in Wales who support our cause and if English priests and monks do not oppose us as we pass by, then we have no call to harm them or their houses.’

  Evan ap Collwyn grinned. ‘Indeed, but no doubt some of these fat clerics can be persuaded to “voluntarily” offer us sustenance. Is it not their Christian duty to aid any travellers who knock on their doors to ask for food and lodging?’

  There was a guffaw from around the table and even Owain raised a smile as he replied. ‘I doubt if any man of God would relish six thousand travellers knocking on his door . . . so we will proceed with moderation.’

  The leader was in a subdued mood, keenly feeling not only the loss of his brother and son, but the absence of his strange astrologer and prophet, Crach Ffinant. A superstitious man, Glyndwr took predictions and prophesies very seriously and missed the advice of Crach, with his reading of the stars and the clouds, and the behaviour of the birds and natural elements.

  With a deep sigh, he sat wishing for some sign from heaven that he was doing the right thing by marching deeper into the heart of England than anyone else since the Norman Conquest.

  After vespers, the last service of the day, Prior Paul called his secretary into his parlour, bidding him to close the door firmly.

  ‘Mark, you are my confidant and my friend. We must talk seriously about the tragedy that has befallen this house. Between us, we must try to come to some conclusion.’

  It was true that the prior was extremely fond of the younger monk and an almost father-son relationship had grown between them. Mark was a nephew of the Bishop of Lichfield, who had been ordained from the same seminary as Paul, a fact that was likely to advance the younger man’s career prospects, starting with this secretarial post in St Oswald’s.

  Mark sat on the stool opposite the table and looked expectantly at his mentor.

  ‘How do we begin, Prior?’ he asked.

  ‘By posing a series of questions, I think. The first is whether we have to accept that it must be a member of our brotherhood that is the culprit.’

  The secretary pondered this before he answered.

  ‘I suppose we have to accept that John’s death was murder, not some bizarre accident. Our infirmarian was adamant about that and I cannot see any hope of denying it.’

  Paul nodded, his famous smile having deserted him. ‘A lack of drowning and two blows to the head would seem to make his conclusion incontrovertible. Now what about anyone other than a brother being the perpetrator?’

  Mark shook his head sadly. ‘Little chance of that, I’m afraid. The death occurred within the inner precinct and there was a guard on the only gate all that night. I cannot see anyone from outside scaling a ten-foot wall, especially when a stranger would surely have no motive to silence poor John’s fantasies.’

  Paul looked at his assistant. ‘You feel sure that that must have been the motive?’

  ‘I see no alternative. Why else would anyone wish to dispose of an obscure old monk who, apart from this recent aberration, never uttered a controversial word in his life?’

  The prior rose from his seat and went to a window to stare out, though for once he was not searching the horizon for the approaching Welsh horde. He turned back to face Mark. ‘So we are left with seventeen brothers as the only suspects?’

  Mark turned up his palms in an almost French gesture, perhaps learned from Pierre or Louis.

  ‘There was one lay brother in
the precinct, of course: the night porter, Alfred, who rings the service bell. But he is almost as old and feeble as John, and has spent almost all his life here. Surely we can discard him as a suspect?’

  The prior nodded his agreement. ‘And there are two others we can discard as well.’ The secretary raised his eyebrows in query as Paul continued, ‘Ourselves, I trust! I certainly know that I am innocent and I am sure that you feel the same.’

  Mark flushed a little at the implied compliment. ‘Thank you for your confidence in me, Prior. But, of course, an episcopal or even papal enquiry, to say nothing of the secular authorities, could not eliminate us from suspicion any more than the rest of our brothers.’

  Paul shook his head. ‘There will be no enquiry outside the ecclesiastical fraternity. In these fraught times, with an enemy advancing on Hereford and Worcester, no coroner or sheriff will concern himself with an internal matter in a religious house. I doubt any bishop will be interested, either, for like us they will be too concerned with defending their brethren and their treasures.’

  He sat down again and rested his chin on his clasped hands. ‘So we now have fifteen suspects to consider.’

  ‘I think we have one more to eliminate,’ Mark said, ‘and that is our brother Louis. He was the one who detected the murderous nature of the death and rejected any notion of an accidental – or miraculous – collapse of Beorwyn’s statue upon old John.’

  The prior saw the logic of this at once. ‘Ah, you mean that if he was the killer, he would have gone along with the obvious conclusion that John had drowned under the statue? He certainly would not have demonstrated the two blows to the skull to us.’

  There was a silence as each man digested this.

  ‘That still leaves us with a considerable number of names to consider,’ said Paul ruminatively. ‘And no clear idea of how to proceed. I can hardly take each brother aside and demand to know if he killed old John!’

  Mark pulled the top of his black robe away from his neck, as it was very hot in the chamber, even with the two glazed casements open.