The False Virgin

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘Can you not give them a stern warning at chapter about the peril to their souls and the prospect of hellfire if they do not confess – or even fail to offer you any information they have about this evil tragedy?’

  Prior Paul sighed as he rejected this suggestion. ‘I can do it, certainly, but I know it will be useless, unless we have a potential martyr amongst us, who is willing to sacrifice himself for having saved the reputation of our saintly Beornwyn.’

  ‘What would happen to a brother who was found to be a murderer?’ asked the secretary.

  ‘I have never heard of such case, thank God,’ Paul replied, crossing himself. ‘As you well know, thanks to St Thomas the Martyr, who refused to submit the Church to the will of the second King Henry, we still have “benefit of clergy”, so that we can avoid the lethal punishments of the secular law. But no doubt some very severe penance would be levied by archbishops or even the Pope, such as banishment for life to some remote cell.’

  Mark was still not satisfied that the miscreant could not be persuaded to admit his crime.

  ‘I find it hard to believe that a man devoted to God, as we all are here, could live with himself knowing that he had taken the life of another. Surely he would be bound to unburden himself to his confessor? Each one of us, even you, has one of the priests amongst us as his confessor.’

  As was usual in any abbey or priory, most monks were not priests, but St Oswald’s had four brothers who had been ordained, so could administer the sacraments and take confessions.

  Paul’s smile returned briefly at his secretary’s youthful naïvety and unworldliness. ‘Mark, you will learn that monks, like any other mortal men, will not tell their confessor everything. In fact they are more likely to keep major sins to themselves and be content to offer the smaller ones. In any event, you know as well as I do that all confessions are inviolate and even an admission of murder could not be divulged.’

  He stood up to indicate that their discussion was over.

  ‘I did not hope that we could solve the mystery today, but wanted to clear our minds about what we know and do not know. Let us both sleep on it and especially pray for guidance, then speak of it again after chapter tomorrow. Meanwhile, we have to see John laid reverently in the ground, in spite of Brother Matthew’s doubts about his being possessed by the devil! And the other urgent matter is preparing this house against the advance of Glendower’s horde.’

  Next day, the monks assembled in their places in the quire for the solemn Requiem Mass that prepared Brother John’s body for eternal rest in the small cemetery outside the church. The nave held all the lay brothers and many of the villagers who depended on the priory for their livelihood. For all his eccentricity, old John had been popular with the rest of the community until his fits became worse and his mind began to fail. The plain wooden coffin stood before the altar as Prior Paul officiated, ignoring the disapproving scowls of Brother Matthew, who still muttered that perhaps the devil had entered his soul. As the litany and chanting saw the old monk off to Heaven, some of the brethren suspected that when he arrived there, John would seek out St Oswald and berate him for cutting short his life.

  The coffin was buried with all due reverence in the red Herefordshire soil and a simple wooden cross planted at the end of the grave. A final dirge was sung around it before the monks and lay brothers filed away to their normal duties.

  The formalities were over, but an hour later a message from a shepherd tending priory flocks at the furthest limit of their land sent the prior into a flurry of agitation. The man had spoken to a party of refugees coming up from the west, who reported that Glendower’s host, now strengthened by hundreds more French knights and foot soldiers, appeared to be making ready to move out of their camp near Monmouth.

  Paul gathered the monks together in the warming room and urgently gave them instructions to hide the priory’s valuables.

  ‘The treasure chest in my parlour, the sacramental cups and plates from the aumbry in the chancel and, of course, the relic of Beornwyn, must be hidden securely. We cannot tell how long it will be before this ravaging host arrives from the edge of Wales, but we must be ready for them.’

  As always, the sub-prior raised an objection.

  ‘All that will not fit into a stone coffin in the crypt. The treasure chest alone would be too large.’

  This provoked an immediate discussion, but it was a suggestion from the ever-practical cellarer that was soon accepted.

  ‘Where the spring comes out of the earth beneath the chancel, there is a small chamber where the top end of the conduit that feeds Beornwyn’s fountain is placed,’ Brother Jude said. ‘One of the stone slabs in the chancel floor is removable and there is sufficient space beneath to hide all we wish.’

  The precentor, Brother Patrice, had a different question. ‘With our relic hidden away, we will be unable to administer any sacred water to pilgrims,’ he pointed out.

  Arnulf, the hospitaller, answered this scornfully. ‘There’ll be no pilgrims for as long as the Welsh are advancing on us. I have had no lodgers in the guest-house since yesterday.’

  Soon the inner ward was bustling with activity. All the lay brothers were kept out and the centre gate firmly closed, with one brother set to guard it against intrusion. Although all the rest of the community knew what was going on, the prior wanted to keep the actual hiding place of the valuables as secret as possible.

  Although it was unmarked, Jude, who seemed to be best informed about such matters, identified the slab in front of the altar that covered the spring – virtually where old John’s coffin had rested shortly before. With no strong labourers to help them, the brothers had to struggle with the heavy stone themselves, but when it was prised out and slid aside, they saw that the cellarer was right about the masonry-lined cavity beneath. It surrounded the small pool from which clear water bubbled out and then vanished down a conduit to the basin of St Beornwyn. There was sufficient room around the margins of the pool for the wooden chest that contained the mass of silver coins collected from pilgrims, as well as for the calvarium of their beloved saint. The silver chalices, patens and other precious items used in their religious observances, were fetched from the aumbry, a locked cupboard built into the wall of the chancel. All these were carefully wrapped in blankets and laid on the raised stones around the spring.

  When the slab was replaced, dirt was rubbed into the cracks, then dust carefully brushed over all the slabs before the altar, to obliterate any signs of disturbance. When it was finished, Prior Paul stood in front of his brothers to contemplate the result.

  ‘That is all we can do now,’ he said sombrely, his famous smile having almost vanished in the turmoil of recent days. ‘We can only commend the safety of our holy objects to God.’

  As he led prayers on the spot, his secretary could not help wondering how that chestful of silver pennies could be considered as ‘holy objects’.

  Later that day, a lay brother and a pair of men from the village were sent out westwards to give early warning of the approach of the advancing army. As disciples of the priory, they would get lodging with any cottager or forest-dweller who had not yet run away. When either the Welsh host or their scouts were spotted, they would ride back to Broomhill with the news. The prior, who had thought up this plan, was not really sure it achieved anything, but he felt that any warning was better than none.

  In the meanwhile, Paul kept up the pressure on his brethren to reveal the killer of Brother John. At every chapter meeting and at prayers before each dinner and supper, he exhorted them to study their consciences and to safeguard their immortal souls. His normally mild manner had hardened in past days, and even Matthew could not carp about his laxity of discipline.

  ‘For how long can you live a lie like this!’ barked the prior at chapter one day. ‘One of you has the mark of Cain upon himself, invisible though it be to all except the culprit.’

  His voice gathered strength as he looked over the bowed heads of the abashed community
. ‘I will never understand why you, whoever you are, could not recognise that John had a disordered mind and that he could never be able to carry out his threat of informing the world of his morbid fantasy! You may have done this wicked deed in the honest, but mistaken belief that you were safeguarding the reputation of this house. That could be taken into consideration when you face the consequences of your action,’ he cried, swinging a pointed finger around the assembled brothers. ‘God and the bishops he has appointed as his agents on earth, are full of mercy and compassion. The secular law has no control over your punishment and anything that the Church can mete out to you is as nothing compared to the abyss you face without confession, contrition and absolution!’

  He worked himself up to the finale. ‘Repent and confess, or you will burn in hell and your miserable soul will suffer torments until the end of time! Confess to me and lift what must be an intolerable burden lying across your shoulders every minute of the day and night. Repent and confess!’

  Paul continued in this vein for the next week, without any visible effect upon his reluctant listeners. He even began to wonder if his infirmarian’s diagnosis of murder could have been wrong, though the facts seemed to speak for themselves.

  The scouts he had sent out to spy on the Welsh had not returned, but on the fourth day, they sent a message with a shepherd to say that so far, there were no signs of even the advance guard of the Welsh.

  ‘No doubt they are taking their time in destroying and plundering everything in their path,’ muttered Arnulf glumly, as he sat sharing a cup of wine in the cellarer’s room.

  Brother Jude shrugged. ‘Certainly this Glendower has wrecked almost every castle in Wales and the Marches. I have not heard that he has been slaughtering or pillaging religious houses, thank God.’

  ‘We shall soon find out, Brother!’ grunted Arnulf, gloomily.

  But it was almost a week before the scouts returned, trotting up to the main gate of St Oswald’s and breathlessly delivering their news to Prior Paul, who came to the steps of his house to meet them.

  ‘They are but five miles away by now,’ reported the lay brother, who normally was one of the millers. ‘They delayed for several days to sack Ledbury, but the day before yesterday, moved on to Eastnor where they camped again.’

  Ledbury was a small market town and Eastnor was a village with nothing between it and the priory, other than woods and open country. Pale with anxiety, Paul ordered his monks to call in the villagers from outside the walls and within the hour, about fifty men, women and children were camping in the outer courtyard.

  ‘The women and children can stay in the guest-house,’ ordered Brother Matthew, now striding around officiously, organising the influx. ‘The men can remain out here, until we see what the situation is by nightfall.’

  Several of the younger men had volunteered to stay outside to drive some of their best cattle, hogs and sheep up into the dense woods on the hills behind, hoping to keep them out of the clutches of the invaders.

  ‘The rest of them, and all the fowls, will have to stay where they are,’ said Jude sorrowfully. ‘I doubt we’ll see any of them again after this horde has passed.’

  ‘If they do pass!’ added Arnulf, looking askance at the ragged children running in and out of his tidy guest-house. ‘This place will never be the same again.’

  There followed an uneasy couple of hours when the priory seemed to be holding its breath. The birds still sang and the remaining sheep still bleated outside the walls, but there was still no sign of the dreaded Welsh.

  ‘They move very slowly,’ said the lay brother who had gone scouting. ‘There are a few hundred mounted men in the lead, mostly French knights, but the main host is on foot, many of the men without shoes. And the slowest of all are the stolen carts, laden with food and weapons. Their oxen can only keep up half a man’s walking pace.’

  But eventually, they came.

  The two porters were keeping a lookout from the top of the arch over the main gates, which were firmly closed and barred. The first signs they saw were a couple of men armed with spears, appearing on ponies on the track out of the woods. Alongside them walked a pair of archers, each with the famous Gwent longbows slung across their back, the bowstrings coiled inside their leather hats to keep them dry.

  The lookouts cried a warning down to the crowd assembled anxiously in the courtyards below, then watched until they saw the advance guard reach the cottages a few hundred paces away. The men began searching them and brought out a few objects from the humble shacks, then turned their attention to the mill placed over the small river, which meandered across the pastures until it vanished into the woods beyond. There had been no time to bring the mill’s stock of grain and flour into the priory, but Jude had been storing as much as he could in his cellarium over the past week.

  When the soldiers emerged, they moved over to a point opposite the priory gates and began eating whatever food they had found in the cottages, sitting relaxed on the grass, obviously under orders not to approach the priory until the army arrived.

  ‘Our hopes for the horde to pass us by seem dashed already,’ said Brother Mark, who had been looking out through a small spy-hole in the main gate. ‘These scouts are waiting for their leaders to catch them up.’

  He made way for the prior to peer through the flap. After a moment, Paul turned away and spoke gravely to his brothers.

  ‘I must go out and confront this Glendower when he comes, to plead with him that he leaves this religious house in peace, for I have heard that he is a devout man.’

  An hour later, the prior had his chance of confrontation. The porters above the gate gave a cry of warning, as they saw the vanguard of the Welsh host appearing through the trees, half a mile away.

  The first to break out on the narrow forest track were horsemen, a score of whom rode in pairs. There was little by way of extravagant heraldry, as this was a fighting force wary of opposition, but the leading pair held pennants aloft, attached to spears. One displayed a gold French fleur-de-lis, the other the red dragon of Cadwalader. As they advanced at walking pace, the next sight the anxious watchers had was of a dozen men on larger steeds, some wearing armoured breastplates. As they came nearer, it was obvious which was the leader, as a very erect man on a horse with more elaborate harness pulled slightly ahead of the others as they emerged from the narrow track on to the more spacious fields. Behind them came a stream of mounted knights, many in the more colourful uniforms of the French, then a long cavalcade of foot soldiers with a motley mixture of clothing and weapons. Some carried swords or maces, others had spears or pikes, but many were archers. The stream of men seemed endless and they were still emerging from the trees when the leaders had reached the cottages in front of the priory.

  ‘There’s thousands of them, Prior!’ shouted down one of the porters. ‘Looks as if they are going make camp in the fields outside.’

  With the monks crowding around him, Brother Paul peered through the squint in the main gate and saw that the leading men had dismounted and were conferring amongst themselves.

  ‘I must go out and speak with their leader, this Glendower,’ he said stoically. ‘Throw ourselves on his mercy, if needs be.’

  There was a babble of concern from his brothers.

  ‘It is too dangerous, Prior!’’ said his secretary, urgently. ‘Let me go in your place to see if they are amenable to reason.’

  ‘It will be equally dangerous for you, Mark,’ said Paul gently. ‘But you will come with me – and you both, Louis and Pierre, for you might be able to charm your fellow Frenchmen!’

  Amidst a chorus of concern from the other monks, the bar was raised from the gates and the four men stepped out on to the track leading from the priory to the village. As they walked slowly towards the leaders of the army, more men were pouring across the fields, now followed by ponderous supply carts, pulled by both oxen and draught-horses.

  When the quartet of monks got within fifty paces of Owain Glyndwr and his lie
utenants, the front row of half a dozen riders dismounted, men running from behind them to hold the horses. In the warm summer weather, with their scouts reporting no immediate threat of opposition, most of the knights had discarded their armour, though some still wore a breastplate or a hood of chain mail which covered their necks and shoulders. Owain himself was bare-headed and wore a jupon, a short quilted jacket of green silk. His breeches were thrust into spurred riding boots and a heavy sword hung from a low-slung belt.

  As he walked to meet the Benedictines, two of his companions coming close behind for protection, the prior saw a powerful man with abundant grey-brown hair and a forked beard and moustache of the same colour.

  They stopped a few paces apart and regarded each other.

  ‘I am Paul, the prior of St Oswald’s,’ began the monk hesitantly. ‘Do you speak English, sir?’

  The impassive face of the Prince of Wales suddenly cracked into a smile. ‘I do indeed – and French, Latin and Welsh! Take your pick, Father.’

  Paul felt a sudden wave of relief. Uncertain whether this war-like host had intended to slay him on the spot, he now felt that whatever pillaging of their goods might happen, this civilised man would not unleash an orgy of rapine and murder upon them.

  ‘What are your intentions here, Sir Owen? We are a small house, with few people and no great riches.’

  ‘How often have I had that said to me, Prior? But I have no quarrel with the Church – several of my most ardent supporters are of your cloth.’

  He swept a hand behind him, where Paul noticed that several of the mounted men wore crosses around their neck

  ‘What then do you want of us?’ asked Paul.

  Glyndwr regarded him coolly. ‘We must be given – or we’ll take – whatever sustenance we can gain here. Your grain, fodder and meat. And a place to rest up for a day, as I have many tired and hungry men here.’

  One of the men in French uniform spoke up from behind the leader. His English was heavily accented. ‘Are there no estates or great houses nearby? They are the places where we are more likely to find worthwhile stores to plunder.’