The Alchemist of Netley Abbey: Eighth in the Hildegard of Meaux medieval mystery series

by Cassandra Clark

  Already the coroner was surrounded by several monks, the sub-prior among them, and it looked as if the news had spread to a chosen few. The sub-prior bustled over to them.

  ‘I trust you two brothers and our sister in God are willing to go back onto the St Marie with the coroner? Abbot Philip wishes it,’ he added as if they might refuse.

  The friar, presumably unaware of their instructions from Abbot Philip until that moment, looked irritated when Egbert stepped up and introduced themselves to the coroner and then suggested a drink before setting out for the ship. As a friar Hywel had no power in the monastery and, with a dark look at Egbert, he ceded his position. He stepped beside Hildegard and muttered, ‘Did you know about this?’

  The coroner drew their attention before she could think of an honest reply. He was saying, ‘The lord sheriff informed me there was an unexplained death and as I was already taking a look at a poor wretch struck by lightning on the other shore it offered me the opportunity of doing two jobs in one day. Where’s the body? Still on the ship, I’m told.’

  ‘Yes, you passed it when you crossed the Water,’ Gregory replied. ‘We left him as he was found, until you arrived. Blessings on you, my lord, for your celerity. The question of putrefaction will shortly become a problem in this heat.’

  ‘Let’s go at once,’ the coroner replied. ‘We’ll forgo that drink. I want to get back to the other side before dusk.’

  So saying the group turned back under the gatehouse. As they passed the porter’s lodge the man on duty called over to Egbert. ‘A word, brother?’

  Egbert went over. ‘What is it? The coroner’s a hurried man.’

  ‘You remember what you asked me yesterday?’ The porter gave a narrow glance after the group walking ahead and when Hildegard turned to look back he was whispering something to Egbert before going back inside the lodge.

  When Egbert caught up he gave Hildegard a secret glance and opened his palm to show her a key. ‘In case of need,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth. It was the lodge key. Swords, she supposed. Was the man expecting trouble?

  The boat had two rowing and was large enough to take everyone in comfort. The ship man was waiting on the deck of the St Marie to keep a look-out and watched them aboard.

  ‘Down here, my lord.’ He led the way to the hatch. ‘Not room for us all at once. Some cargo is still on board. I’ll be glad to get it off but they tell me we can’t move anything more until you’ve had a good look round.’

  When the coroner went below he had the friar at his heels. The rest followed and crowded inside as best they could.

  Hildegard hung back. She took the opportunity to question the ship man. ‘I understood Master John has taken some of his cargo into safe storage within the abbey precincts?’

  ‘He’s only taken off some valuables kept in there where I could keep an eye on them myself. Most of his imports are in the hold or on deck. He lost much of the latter. The rest might be salvaged. The big stuff,’ he explained. ‘His bales of precious silks. His velvets. His plate.’ After assessing her with a glance he lowered his voice, ‘You know this has put a curse on my ship, domina? I hope they understand that? She’ll need an exorcist before we can move her up river. I can’t risk moving her until she’s pure again.’ The lines between his brows deepened. ‘I can’t fathom out what killed him. No sign of blood. Who can have done it? Or what?’

  He gave her a long, frightened stare and lowered his voice. ‘Was it the devil? How would the devil get onto my St Marie? We’re a good ship. No worse than any other. Can you understand it?’

  ‘Not at present.’ She bit her lip. ‘In confidence, master, they believe it to be some kind of poison and in that case it would have to be administered by human hand.’

  ‘But how could that happen without the devil being involved? Who would think of giving poison to a monk? None of my lads were down there. They couldn’t have done it even if they’d been possessed enough to do something so evil. I’ve already told your brothers what they were up to. They never went down below, I can vouch for that. And he never even spoke to them when he came on board, that monk. He went straight below. And,’ he added meaningfully, ‘what was he doing with a woman like that?’ His lip curled. ‘That’s another question that needs answering, to my mind.’

  Hildegard nodded. ‘I quite agree with you, master. You’ve hit the nail on the head.’

  He gave her a complicit though subdued grimace and went to reassert his dominion over the land-lubbers making free on his ship.

  ‘Well, my lords,’ she heard him say as he poked his head down inside the hatch. ‘Have you now confirmed that he’s a dead man?’

  The coroner was the first to climb out into the fresh air with an answer. ‘We have indeed, master.’

  ‘And your verdict as to the cause of his sad demise?’

  ‘Poison. No doubt of that. Tell me, my good fellow, do you carry anything on board of such a pernicious nature? Herbs from foreign lands, spices whose qualities are in doubt?’

  ‘Only the usual, my lord.’

  The coroner stroked his beard while he considered all possibilities. ‘These fiendish poisons from Venice are the work of the devil. Do you know...’ he glanced round to astonish them, ‘they’ve concocted a poison that they can put on the saddle of a man’s horse that’ll kill him instantly? Or at least, that’s what they say. Never come across it myself but there’s always a first time.’ He became brisk again. ‘I’ve decided to leave the matter in abbey hands.’

  Gregory was just emerging from below and caught these words. ‘The abbot will welcome your decision, my lord, and he’ll want to have Brother Martin taken to the mortuary as soon as possible, given this heat, so may we now move him?’

  ‘You may. I shall inform the Sheriff that although the law clerks are still in discussion I have authorized the matter to be placed in your capable hands. I will inform your Abbot before I take my leave.’

  Hildegard thought there was something odd about Gregory’s expression even though all he did was address the ship man. ‘How soon can you have him taken ashore, master?’

  ‘Leave it with me.’ He went for’ard where his two crew men were sitting and he could be heard telling them to put the body into the ship’s boat and row it over. When he came back he asked, ‘Will the lay-brothers fetch him from the beach? My fellas are not keen to set foot on land.’

  ‘We’ll stay with him until a messenger can be sent to have him taken to the mortuary.’ Egbert glanced at Gregory who nodded.

  ‘We must talk to Delith and find out how she came to be in a boat sculled by a monk. Knowing what some of them think about women anyway, it seems extraordinary that he should have agreed to go with her unaccompanied. They left before the lightning struck so it was not a question of Brother Martin trying to save lives and Delith begging a lift to do likewise.’

  Hildegard paced about on the shingle foreshore after the coroner had been conducted up to Abbot Philip’s lodgings by the friar. Only Gregory and Egbert remained.

  ‘I can’t imagine where she went earlier,’ said Gregory. ‘She must have changed her mind about going into pray. She wasn’t in the church when I went looking. Nobody was.’

  The death boat, as Egbert referred to the ship’s small lighter with the body aboard, had already set off from the St Marie and they were watching for it to reach the shore.Friar Hywel, still visible through the trees, was accompanying the coroner as far as the gate-house from where he would be able to send for some conversi to carry the body back for laying-out in the mortuary.

  ‘As soon as we can I’ll go and find her,’ Gregory continued, ‘but surely she can’t have anything to do with a poison as rare as the one the coroner was hinting at?’

  ‘Henbane would be about the level of her knowledge of poisons, I would expect,’ Hildegard agreed, ‘the unhappy and unscrupulous wife’s stand-by. But that’s out unless somebody persuaded the monk to take a good long drink of it as soon as he arrived.’

 
; ‘I often wonder about these unexpected deaths and what appear to be false tears afterwards,’ Egbert admitted with a grimace.‘There are too many malign plants growing around our woods and commons. They should be dug up wherever they’re found. They put temptation in people’s way.’

  ‘That may be their purpose. If they didn’t fulfil the role of temptation, it’d be something else,’ Hildegard asserted.

  Their solemnity deepened as the boat scraped onto the shingle. The two crewmen sprang out at once as if they couldn’t bear to be in the same vessel as a corpse while a contingent of purposeful lay-brothers were already hurrying down the bank towards them.

  ‘I’ll go and find her,’ Gregory muttered tersely. ‘Everything all right with you two?”

  They nodded.

  ‘Then I’ll see you later with the answer to the next piece of the puzzle.’ He strode off.

  Hildegard went off with the cortege straightaway and left Egbert staring after them. They took the body along the shaded cool of the path through the woods and in through the gatehouse and then the full glare of the sun scorching down on Cloister Garth and turning it to a desert broke over their heads. She dragged out her straw hat which she had taken off while on the boat and crammed it back on her head.

  Idling guests looked up from the cloisters as they passed. No sign of Delith among them. She accompanied the cortege into the mortuary.

  As soon as they entered its cold musty atmosphere the chill of death seeped into her bones. No-one had said much about Brother Martin, what he was like, how they thought of him. With the poison still in his body his features were distorted horribly and there was no way of knowing whether he was young or old. The lay-sisters used to laying out bodies were already prepared.

  ‘You may stay if you wish, domina but this will not be pleasant.’

  ‘I feel I should know who he is,’ she replied to the sister who had greeted her. ‘Is there no-one to honour him from Chapter?’

  ‘At prayers again, domina, but one or two will be along straight afterwards I wouldn’t doubt.’

  ‘He must have been a familiar figure to you all?’ she suggested, helping to loosen the monk’s sandals and handing them to one of the helpers. She felt an overwhelming poignancy when she looked at his feet. There was something intimate in seeing the feet of a dead man more closely than perhaps anyone had ever done in real life. They were slim with long toes, carefully clipped nails, a little grimy from walking in the dusty garth and with roughened soles from going barefoot. It suddenly struck her that he was probably quite a young man.

  ‘How old would he have been?’ she asked the lay-sister pulling aside the white habit. Pale thighs no darker than his linen breeks were revealed.

  ‘Thirty or so I would guess. A bookish type. Never saw much of him. He tended to his own needs. He didn’t have much time for us.’ She pulled the habit over the corpse’s head to reveal a narrow chest, lightly covered in dark hair but the distortions caused by the poison had inflamed his neck and shoulders and it was this that made him look grotesque.

  His face was bloated as if pumped with air like the pigs’ bladders the boys used in their games making his eyes disappear into the folds of flesh.

  Hildegard bent her head at the sight of such disfigurement then straightened. ‘What else may I do to help?’

  ‘Come with me,’ said the lay-sister. Hildegard recognised her as the one who looked after the guests. When they were on one side she said, ‘For all his shyness he was a nice young fellow. Take no notice if anyone tells you otherwise. We must get to the bottom of this, domina. It’s only right.’

  ‘There’s no way he could have taken something deliberately? I know that’s a terrible thing to suggest – ’ she added hurriedly when she saw the look of horror on her face, ‘but sometimes we never know what straits people are undergoing until it’s too late.’

  ‘He would never go against the Church’s teachings,’ she replied. Her cold look made Hildegard apologise again for imputing sin to an apparently good man.

  ‘But do you have any idea why he went out to the St Marie? I understood the monks were instructed to pray for survivors in the church. Was he perhaps looking for something?’

  ‘All I know about him for sure, apart from his goodness and concern for others, was that Abbot Philip regarded him as likely for promotion in the abbey hierarchy. He thought most highly of him.’

  Wondering how the lay-sister knew such a thing she was wondering how to frame the question without offending her again when she supplied the answer herself. ‘He already entrusted him with the keys to the sacristy. The lord abbot would never do that lightly unless he was absolutely sure of him, would he?’

  With nothing much else in the way of practical help to offer, Hildegard went to the trestle on which the body was lying and offered up a prayer for his soul. Before she left a monk came in from the last Office to sit in vigil beside him.

  She stepped outside into a blaze of heat and light. It was only mid-day. She rubbed her eyes. It seemed an age since she’d given a thought to Hubert.

  ‘So now you’re brought up to date,’ she told him after she had refilled his flask with wine and listened to his complaints about being so useless. ‘We do need you, that’s true,’ she told him, ‘but we’ll try to solve the mystery of Martin’s death without you. At least, not without your untangling of whatever threads we can bring to you. The solution may lie with Delith, and Gregory is already questioning her. She should be able to throw some light on the mystery as she was there on board when he died.’

  ‘Gregory hadn’t spoken to her when he called in here a few minutes ago,’ Hubert told her.’

  ‘What was he doing here?’

  ‘Looking for her. Nobody seems to know where she is.’

  ‘I noticed her little maid when I left the mortuary,’ she told him.

  ‘With her mistress?’

  ‘Actually no, she wasn’t now I come to think of it.’

  ‘Go and ask her where she is, Hildegard. She’s bound to know. It’ll save Gregory getting into a fret.’

  Chapter Five

  Hat tilted over her eyes she went outside again. Lucie’s halo of bright hair was clearly visible. She was sitting by herself in the cloisters with the blackbird in her lap. When Hildegard went up she had the wariness of a maid who expected to be beaten. ‘If you’re going to ask me the same question that funny Brother Gregory did, I can’t tell you,’ she began.

  Hildegard laughed. ‘Can’t or won’t?’

  The girl’s face broke into a shy smile. ‘You’re just like Jankin. He always picks through words. Can’t. I would if I could. I haven’t seen her since she got up from over there...’ she indicated the pilgrims’ corner, ‘and went into the church.’

  ‘May I sit down?’

  ‘Here, share my cushion.’ She girl moved over a bit.

  ‘Does she often go off like this?’ Hildegard sat down and tucked up her legs.

  ‘She doesn’t go anywhere without telling me where she’s going and who with, for safety.’

  ‘Safety?’

  The girl blushed. ‘You know...’

  ‘I don’t suppose she saw that as a consideration, here in the abbey. She surely wasn’t thinking of...I mean, the men here have a holy purpose, by and large.’

  ‘That wouldn’t stop her if she had her eye on someone.’

  ‘I meant the monks, I suppose...’ she glanced across the garth towards the three mercenaries fooling around near the fountain, adding. ‘Even those lads in their mail shirts will surely respect the place they’re in whatever their true purpose in being here...’

  ‘They’re only waiting for the cargo to be unloaded so they can drive it back under guard to their lord Arundel,’ Lucie said. ‘They don’t care that it’s an abbey. It’s free food and ale as far as they’re concerned.’

  Interesting, Hildegard thought, storing away the information about Arundel with an unspoken question about a cargo that needed three armed guards.
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br />   ‘I’m sure you needn’t worry about your mistress’s safety,’ she reassured the girl. ‘This is one of the safest places on earth.’ She stopped. The St Marie hadn‘t proved safe. On the other hand it was not exactly within the holy abbey precincts if you wanted to run a fine tooth-comb through the argument. She bit her lip. It was foolish, even so, to talk about safety, even though Delith presumably knew what she was doing.

  ‘I wonder if your mistress mentioned anything about going out to the St Marie last night just before the storm broke?’ she asked.

  The girl looked down, somewhat shamed. ‘I suppose everybody knows she went out there by now and what for,’ she mumbled. ‘Jankin guessed at once and that monk you’re friendly with knew for sure.’ She lifted her pert and pretty face. ‘Because I’m her maid it doesn’t mean I think what she does is right. I would never do a thing like that...’ A tear began to slide down her cheek. ‘I’ll never get away and I don’t know what to do. She feeds me. She gives me clothes and shoes to wear. I was like Jankin when my mother died. I used to run errands for the merchants. Then she found me... She’s...’

  ‘She’s...?’

  ‘She’s not kind to me – but at least I don’t have to sleep on the streets anymore and she makes sure her...her customers,’ she mumbled, ‘she keeps her customers away from me.’

  Or you from them, thought Hildegard, assessing with compassion the youthful, innocent and pretty face. Delith would never again have what Lucie had and some men would pay a higher price for innocence than for all the tricks of the trade. She took her by the hand. ‘Are you worried about what’s going to happen to you if she’s abandoned you?’

  ‘I suppose I am.’ She blushed again, to a shade like the pink of a freshly opened anemone, and it made Hildegard want to put a cloak of protection over her and tell her that all would be well but instead she said, ‘We’ll no doubt find her sitting in the cool shade somewhere happily playing with her pet blackbird. And even,’ she laughed as at something unthinkable, ‘even if she actually abandoned you I can guarantee you’d always find someone here to look after you. I promise you that.’