[William Falconer 06] - Falconer and the Ritual of Death

by Ian Morson

  ‘So people assumed he had fled with the coins, and not that he had been murdered.’

  ‘That is so.’

  Falconer ran his fingers through his thinning, grizzled hair.

  At least he now had some idea where to seek further. The dead man could be this Templar priest, though it was still possible that the man had fled with the money. On the other hand, the funds provided a motive for his murder. But he was still following the coldest of cold trails twenty years after the event. The murderer might even be dead by now. He began to wonder if Peter Bullock had not been fight all along. Why not let it rest? He was brought back to the present by the rabbi stamping his foot on the ground.

  ‘I have completely forgotten what I intended to tell you when you first arrived. Our reminiscences quite put it out of my mind. There is someone who wishes to see you, who has come all the way from Canterbury, indeed.’

  Falconer had indeed recently been in the city, in part to find a remedy for his headaches and memory lapses. But he could not guess who in Canterbury had got to know him well enough to travel so far just to see him.

  ‘Who is he, rabbi?’

  Jehozadok smiled.

  ‘Not he, but she, my friend. She goes by the name of Saphira Le Veske.’

  Before Falconer could react to this startling news, there was a commotion outside the door of Jehozadok’s little room.

  Hannah burst in, followed by a very tall, thin man who Falconer had not seen before. He was middle-aged, and sturdy despite his thin frame. His hair was long and black, and was complemented by a similarly long beard. His fierce brown eyes, set either side. of a sharp beak of a nose, scrutinized Falconer suspiciously.

  ‘Rabbi, who is this?’

  ‘Ahhh, Rabbi Jacob, this is a friend of ours, Master William Falconer. William, this is Rabbi Jacob, who arrived last week in order to assist me. Alas my decrepitude prevents me carrying out my religious duties properly. Now, what is all the fuss about that you have to interrupt us so roughly.’ Jehozadok’s measured tones slowed down the wild rabbi a little, and he respectfully bowed his head.

  ‘Forgive me, I was a little hasty. But I have bad news. Someone is spreading rumours about a murder. A child-murder.’ The old man groaned, placing his head in his hands.

  ‘Not again. Were we not only just talking about it, William?’ Jacob was puzzled.

  ‘You mean you already knew about it?’

  It was William who spoke next, alarmed that the events of the past were obtruding into the present in such an unpleasant way. Did it mean he had been wrong to exonerate the Jews then? He tried to put the thought out of his mind.

  ‘No. We were recalling an incident of twenty years ago. It seems no one has learned anything in the meantime.’ He stared hard at the new rabbi. ‘Have you alerted all your people?’ Jacob snorted.

  ‘Naturally. It was the first thing I did. They know to keep safely indoors until the -’ he dropped his gaze from Falconer - ‘the Christians are exhausted.’

  ‘You are right, rabbi. The mob will soon tire of beating their fists against stone walls and good oak doors. In the meantime, I will try and find out where the rumour has come from.’ Jehozadok reached out to grasp Falconer’s arm.

  ‘Saphira Le Veske!’

  ‘What of her?’

  ‘She is staying in the house of Abraham, son of Moses. But he is away on business, and Jacob did not know of her presence. No one will have told her to keep indoors. If she goes out for supplies, or in connection with her own affairs, she may be caught up in the rioting.’

  Jacob immediately moved towards the door, intimating he would find her. But Falconer stopped him.

  ‘No. You will yourself be in danger now. Stay here with Jehozadok and Hannah. I will find Saphira. Where is the house?’

  ‘It is the large house between Pennyfarthing Street and Kepeharm Lane. It has a flight of stone steps to one side.’ Falconer knew it well from the description. The house was on Fish Street only a few yards away from where he was now.

  He prayed that Saphira was indoors, and not where the mob could reach her. He hurried from the room leaving an atmosphere both tense and fearful. Once on the street, he could hear the cries of angry people in the distance. The mob was probably assembling at Carfax just at the top of Fish Street, and would soon be sweeping down towards Jewry. Even as he crossed the street, he saw figures waving sticks coming towards him. The cries grew louder, and the actions of those at the front of the crowd were more agitated as it flowed towards him. He could not see clearly without putting on his eye-lenses, but he could tell well enough that even his own safety was in doubt. The mob was in no mood to worry about whether someone on the street in Jewry was a Christian or a Jew. Their head would be broken and questions asked later.

  He knocked urgently on the door of the house with stone steps. But there was no reply, save the hollow echo of his knock from behind the large oak door. He knocked again, more urgently as he watched the mob bear down, led by a large, ragged individual with a wild mane of hair. He was carrying a very large axe in his hand.

  ‘There’s one. Let’s show him what we think of the bastards.’ The man’s voice was as large as his frame, and he started to run towards Falconer, his axe high in the air. Falconer realized his black robe might make them think he was a Jew, and knocked repeatedly on the door. Others took up the wild man’s cry, following hard on his heels. It was too late for Falconer to flee, and he put his back firmly against the door, ready for the inevitable clash. Suddenly the door gave way behind him, and he fell backwards. For a moment he could see nothing but the wild man and his axe framed in the doorway. Then the door slammed shut, and he was in darkness, the only sound an axe burying itself in good English oak. He sat up, and stared into the hazel eyes of the woman he had last seen riding off to return to her home in France. She smiled and held out her hand, offering to help him to his feet. He grinned self-consciously at this apparition.

  ‘I am not so old that I cannot pick myself up off the floor, Saphira Le Veske.’

  ‘Then do so, William Falconer, and you can shake my hand afterwards without risking your male pride.’

  Falconer bent his legs, and then tried a fake groan.

  ‘Perhaps I need that hand, after all.’

  She offered it again, and this time he took it. Though she noticed he seemed to rise easily enough without her assistance. Staves thundered on the door, but they both knew it would hold well enough. Soon the tide of righteous anger would sweep past and down the street to break on other houses.

  Both breathed a sigh of relief over the close call. Then Saphira took Falconer’s arm, and led him to the rear of the house, where it was quieter.

  They sat either side of a large chimney breast set up with a roasting spit. For a long moment they stared at the packed earth of the floor, then both started to speak at the same time.

  Their laughs intermingled, and it was Saphira who first urged William to go ahead. He marshalled his thoughts.

  ‘I had thought you were returned to La Rrole in Bordeaux after Canterbury. Your son was to be introduced to the finer points of your business. How is Menahem, by the way?’ Falconer had rescued the boy from Bermondsey Priory, where he had been placed after a foolish move to convert from the Jewish faith. An act caused by the impetuousness of youth and the sudden, unexpected death of his father. It had taken being accused of a murder to bring him to his senses. But the Le Veske business had been in France, and Falconer had never expected to see either the boy or his mother again. Now she sat before him, modestly attired in a simple green robe belted tightly at her trim waist, over which she wore a black mantle edged in coney. When he dared to look again at her face, he realized her hair, which he recalled as luxuriant and flamered, was held in check with a very proper net snood. She could tell what he was staring at, and chuckled.

  ‘I think when you first saw me, I was not so properly attired as now.’

  ‘Indeed you weren’t. And you were halfway down a drainpip
e. The effect was ... startling.’

  Saphira involuntarily touched the snood that hid her crowning glory.

  ‘I was trying to escape from my locked room, as you well know. You now see me as I should be. A proper Jewish matron whose hair is hidden from the common gaze.’ Falconer bowed his head mockingly.

  ‘I accept your description of me as a common man. But I confess to an uncommon thirst at this moment. I believe it is due to witnessing my imminent demise at the hands of a madman with an axe.’

  Saphira immediately rose, and left the room to carry out her duties as hostess. Falconer continued to wonder at her miraculous reappearance in his life. At a moment when he truly had felt he was on the verge of dying. She really was a guardian angel. When she came back in the room, she was bearing not one but two dark brown earthenware bottles, and two exquisitely carved crystal goblets.

  ‘I decided that your thirst will probably not be quenched with one alone. Besides, I had a fright too, and mean to follow your example.’

  He took the proffered goblet gingerly, afraid he might shatter the rock crystal merely by holding it. She poured a generous amount of dark red wine into the goblet, then charged her own with a similar amount, waiting until he had drunk before she did so. The atmosphere thus tempered with wine, and a rather good one from her home in Bordeaux, Falconer asked her how she knew to have her door barred. She shrugged.

  ‘We Jews learn to sense when the mob is out for blood, William. I didn’t know why, but I knew something was afoot.

  That is why I was a little slow answering your knock. It sounded like someone was after my blood. It was only when I risked a look through the spyhole set in the door that I saw your grizzled locks.’

  ‘Thank God you did, or I would have been cleft in two.’ He looked again at his miraculous saviour. There was a mischievous twinkle in her eyes that now seemed emerald rather than hazel.

  ‘Do you know you are going slightly bald at the back, by the way?’

  He blushed, and couldn’t stop his hand from involuntarily stroking the bare patch. He hid his face in the crystal goblet, draining the mine. She leaned forward to refill his glass, and he was not unaware of the swell of her breasts against the green material of her dress. He made himself look up.

  ‘Hmmm. This wine is very strong. Perhaps you have some food to prevent it going to my head?’

  She held his gaze.

  ‘I am afraid I did not have time to buy supplies, and having travelled alone, I have no servant to send out. As it will be some time yet, I imagine, before the mob gets tired of venting their anger on stones, and goes back to beating their servants and their wives, we will have to make do with what we have.’ Falconer settled back in the chair, and took another long draught of Bordeaux wine.

  Thirteen

  As the bells of the churches within the walls of Oxford clanged out their call to arms, and townspeople swarmed like ants around the warren of streets that made up Jewry, Richard Bonham decided it was fruitless to search for Falconer that night. Besides, his cold had worsened in the rain, and his muscles were beginning to ache. He had twice already been roughly bundled aside as men with staves and farm implements rampaged past, eager to see blood. Fortunately, his inoffensive demeanour had protected him from attack, and he had shrunk back into the shadow of a doorway each time, no more than a grey figure once the leaders of the riot had pushed him aside. Even so, his left foot had been trampled on, and he limped badly as he hurried homewards up St Edward’s Street towards the High Street.

  What had shocked him most was the sight of gaily dressed clerks in the midst of the mob. He had asked several of them if they had seen Master Falconer - that he had important news for him that could not be delayed - but the students had other matters on their minds.

  Students who should have known better had been caught up in the irrational frenzy that drove the persecution onwards. Despite his deeply held belief that the Jewish race was responsible for Christ’s crucifixion, Bonham bore no individual Jew any ill will. He prayed under his breath that no one would be harmed, for on such a night innocent parties could be murdered in the heat of the moment.

  So it was, on hearing rapid footsteps behind him in the darkness, he turned to face whoever approached. He had no wish to be beaten up as a Jew just as he thought he had escaped the mob. And he spoke up in order to identify his position.

  ‘A bad business this, my friend.’

  The man who stepped out of the gloom was unfamiliar to the observant Bonham, who fancied he knew most people who lived in the town. He was a large man with powerful arms sticking out from rolled-up sleeves. He wore the leather apron of a carpenter or perhaps a mason. Bonham noticed the stone dust sprinkled in his dark hair, and decided on the latter occupation. He should be an educated man, then, and Bonham hoped he would understand his reservations about the mob.

  ‘I am not saying the Jews deserve it, mind you. But then, did not one of their ilk called Copin once admit that they took a boy every year to crucify and use as an insult to the name of Jesus?’

  There was an awkward moment’s silence that scared Bonham. But when the man finally spoke, he seemed a little breathless. Bonham guessed he too had been running to avoid the mob.

  ‘Each man must make his own decisions on the truth of that, master. It’s sixteen years since that nonsense of Little Sir Hugh, and we are not allowed to forget it.’

  The man was obviously not as educated as Bonham had thought. His reference to the celebrated case in Lincoln of ritual child-murder vexed the master. Did the man not believe the truth of it? Little Sir Hugh was a Christian martyr, and Bonham took pains to correct him.

  ‘We are taught never to forget our Lord’s sacrifice, and we should not forget that of other martyrs, especially those victims of ritual slaughter.’

  The mason clenched his fists, and they looked like massive stone blocks to the slight Bonham.

  ‘It may be so, master. But I would not grace it with the name of ritual, which is a greater and a solemn thing to those who seek the truth. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to my lodgings.’

  So saying, he pushed past Bonham, and turned at the end of the street towards North Gate. Bonham shrugged his shoulders, wrapped his cloak tighter round his shivering frame, and went the same way across the High. He was suddenly feeling much worse, the band of a severe headache tightening around his temples. Uneasy about what ailed him, he knew he needed to consult his medical references.

  31 August, 1271

  It was the rain that quenched the passions of the rampaging townsfolk. The skies opened once again as darkness fell, and torrential rain swept through the lanes of Oxford, causing the sewage drains to overflow. Outside the walls to the south of the town, the flat meadows leading down to the Thames became a soggy morass, threatening the Dominican Friary that had been built on the land only some ten years earlier. Rioters ran for cover, and left the Jews to their own devices. As the noise of their rampage gave way to the hiss of the rain, Falconer was roused from his slumber beside the kitchen fire. Saphira was already moving around.

  ‘Did I fall asleep? You should have woken me.’ Saphira smiled gently down at him, her emerald eyes now honeyed by the glow of the guttering flames.

  ‘You looked so peaceful, I was reluctant to rouse you.’ She was wrapped once more in the coney-trimmed black mantle, but Falconer could tell that under it she was still naked.

  The eventful moment last night had come almost unexpectedly to Falconer. Once they had settled down to drink, Saphira had noticed that his dingy black robe was wet. She had suggested that he might like to remove it in order to dry it, rather than sit in misery and discomfort. The proposition had startled him.

  ‘But, madam, we are alone, and...’

  ‘Please, William, I am a widow and familiar with a man’s anatomy. Besides, you no doubt have a shift and breeches on under the robe.’

  Falconer did not doubt she knew much about a man’s anatomy, but held back from suggesting
that didn’t include his specifically. To urge him on, she removed her black mantle and held it out to him.

  ‘Here, if you are feeling modest, I shall leave the room and you can put this on instead.’

  He took the heavy fur-trimmed mantle in his hand, and smiled.

  ‘No need to leave the room. Just turn your back.’

  ‘Turn my... ?’

  ‘Back. And look away.’

  She did so, and Falconer pulled his damp and clinging robe over his head, tossing it close to the kitchen fire to dry out.

  He could not help but admire the shape of her buttocks, as he pulled on her mantle. He laughed, and she turned round to see what had amused him.

  ‘The gown barely covers my... modesty, Saphira.’ It was true. A mantle that had enveloped Saphira’s still slim waist did not go far around Falconer’s not so trim haunches.

  Saphira snorted, and then laughed out loud. It was a raucous, unladylike roar, and Falconer liked her all the more for it. She sat back in her chair.

  ‘And seeing that you are so casually attired, my lord...’ She drew the snood from her head, and let the thick mane of red hair tumble free. Both of them reached for their goblets, and drank deeply. There was something about closely escaping death at the hands of the mob that released the mind from constraints. Saphira shook her head to loosen her locks, and then stared hard at William with her emerald eyes.

  ‘Damn it all. Let’s not pussyfoot around here, William. Who knows what tomorrow may bring?’