by Paul Doherty
‘Who was this student, your drinking partner?’ the exorcist gently asked.
Lascalle stared at her. If that hawk-faced knight frightened him, this woman with her bound eyes, quiet face and snow-white hair terrified him out of his wits.
‘What is all this?’ he wailed. He stared beseechingly at the proctor. ‘Who are these people? Why should I be questioned by the king’s commissioners?’
Sir Godfrey tapped him gently on the cheek.
‘Just answer the questions,’ he persisted.
‘I don’t know the student. He was short, russet-haired, clean-shaven.’
‘Which could be said of a thousand other students,’ Alexander remarked dryly.
‘Well,’ Sir Oswald barked, ‘shall we hang him?’
‘Wait!’ Dame Edith got up and, without any help, went and stood in front of the prisoner and touched his face. ‘Sir Oswald,’ she said, ‘you have a chapel here?’
‘Of course!’
‘And the blessed sacrament is kept there?’
‘Of course!’
‘Tell your chaplain to bring a host.’
Sir Oswald was about to protest, but Sir Godfrey nodded, so he hurried off.
The group in the solar remained silent. Lascalle, moving now and again, looked everywhere except at this strange, blindfolded woman. She stood like a statue, not even flinching as Lascalle moved his arms and legs in gusts of stale sweat. At last Sir Oswald returned, followed by a priest, a cope across his shoulders, in his hands a small pyx.
‘Now, Lascalle,’ Dame Edith said, ‘are you prepared to take the sacrament and swear on it that you are innocent?’
The young clerk nodded. The priest approached, opened the pyx and held up the small, white wafer.
‘Ecce Corpus Christi,’ he intoned. ‘Behold the body of Christ.’
Lascalle closed his eyes, head back, and opened his mouth. The priest had almost laid the wafer on his tongue.
‘Stop!’ Dame Edith seized the priest’s wrist. ‘I am sorry, Father, I meant no blasphemy. But Lascalle here is not perhaps in a proper state to receive the sacrament.’
The priest put the host back in the pyx, covered it with the end of his cope and stood back. Sir Oswald whispered that he could go.
‘Why did you do all that?’ Sir Godfrey asked.
Dame Edith tapped the manacles around Lascalle’s wrists.
‘He’s no Strigoi,’ she murmured, ‘nor a murderer. Sir Oswald, let him bathe and change, give him a hot meal for charity’s sake and let him go.’
Sir Godfrey concurred with this and Lascalle, gabbling his thanks and vowing he would light a thousand candles for Dame Edith, was hustled out of the chamber.
‘If he was one of those we are hunting,’ Dame Edith explained before anyone could question her further, ‘he could not have taken that sacrament. Believe me, sirs, you would have seen a man in a frenzy such as you’ve never witnessed before. Anything holy, really powerful, weakens their strength.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Ormiston murmured.
Dame Edith laughed. ‘Don’t you? Tell me, if you had committed some terrible crime could you take the oath and the sacrament and still say you were innocent?’ She shook her head and walked back to the chair. ‘Or have you seen Christians bait Jews with a piece of pork? Or Christians being forced to renounce the cross of Christ? No, no,’ she whispered, tapping the side of her head, ‘in here, according to your state, angels or demons work.’
‘What are we to do?’ the sheriff snapped. ‘Order everyone in Oxford to take the sacrament publicly?’
The exorcist gazed in his direction. ‘It may well come to that, Sir Oswald. Believe me, when you consider what we face, it may well come to that.’
A short while later Sir Godfrey and Alexander, with Dame Edith comfortably ensconced in the saddle of her palfrey, left Oxford castle. They went through the Great Bailey and then into Newington Hall Street. Outside Trillok’s inn, where the street widened, Sir Godfrey stopped.
‘We could talk about what we’ve just seen,’ he murmured. He waved a hand at the students, scholars and tradespeople pushing by him. ‘But God knows who could be listening. So where to now, eh?’
Alexander felt tired and rubbed the side of his face. He would like to go back to the convent of St Anne’s, not just for some food, refreshment and rest, but to see the lady Emily. As Sir Godfrey solicitously asked the exorcist if there was anything she needed, Alexander stared at the half-timbered walls of St Mary’s College farther down the street. The building brought back memories of his own hall at Cambridge and his exuberant, happy days there.
I do not like this business, he thought to himself, God be my witness, I don’t! He wistfully recalled his days in the royal chancery, riding around London, meeting friends at a riverside tavern, being party to important decisions, enjoying the power of being so close to the high and mighty in the kingdom. He felt homesick for his tidy chambers above a shop near St Paul’s, his books, his manuscripts, the easy pace and routine of his life – mass in the morning, breakfast in one of the cookshops, a hard but rewarding day drafting letters or sealing documents. In the evening he would visit friends, perhaps take a barge down river to one of the palaces where they could use their status as clerks to dine and feast at their own leisure. Or, if the mood took him, join the choir at St Paul’s in their polished wooden stalls as they sang Salve Regina. A beggar whining for alms caught his attention. The man’s face was covered in rotting sores, he limped along the side of the houses, using a crude staff as an awkward replacement for his leg, which had been sheered off just under the knee. The beggar’s face was raw with pain, he whimpered for alms, one skeletal hand thrust forward. Alexander walked over and tossed a penny at the man.
‘Is that all?’ the beggar asked spitefully.
Alexander gave him another coin and the man hopped off without a thank-you or a backward glance.
It’s all dirt, Alexander thought, horrible murders, devil-worshippers, the world’s gone mad.
‘Alexander!’
The clerk started and gazed around. Sir Godfrey, holding the reins of their horses, was staring at him strangely.
‘Alexander, are you well?’
Don’t you care? Alexander thought, gazing at the knight’s handsome but hard face. Aren’t you frightened? Don’t you have a home, loved ones?
The knight stared grimly back. ‘Alexander McBain, have you lost your wits? We have to move on. Dame Edith says we should visit Stapleton Hall. The students who disappeared from there . . .’ The knight angrily waved Alexander over. ‘Come on!’ he rasped. ‘You are daydreaming like some milkmaid!’
The clerk bit back his angry reply. The exorcist leaned down from her palfrey and gently tousled his hair, a soft warm caress like a mother’s.
‘Don’t be angry, Alexander,’ Dame Edith murmured. ‘We are all tired. We are all frightened and the sooner this business is done the sooner we can go home!’
Alexander nodded and grasped the reins of her palfrey. With Sir Godfrey leading, they entered Cheyne Lane, turned left at Peter Hall and went down towards Stapleton. They entered the hall by a side entrance. A porter called grooms to stable their horses, then took them across the grassy quadrangle, round by the chapel and library, to the provost’s chambers in Palmer’s Tower. No one was there. A servant told them the provost was in the library, so they were taken farther up the narrow, wooden stairs. The day had become overcast, the clouds threatening rain, so the long library chamber had been lit by candles placed on the rim of a wheel and hoisted up by pulleys. A table, with benches on either side, ran down the centre of the chamber. The walls were lined with cupboards, their doors open to show books, bound in leather and dark-coloured vellum, securely held in place by stout chains. The servant left them there, closing the door behind them. Dame Edith sat on a stool, Sir Godfrey standing beside her, as Alexander walked down the dusty, eerie chamber.
‘You like our library?’
Alexander’s heart s
kipped a beat as a dark, hooded figure shuffled out from the shadows. A claw-like hand pulled back the hood, revealing iron-grey hair swept back from a high, domed forehead, the muddy skin of a face enlivened by green eyes and with a sharp, bird-like nose above thin, bloodless lips. The man stretched out his hand.
‘Thomas Wakeham,’ he announced, ‘provost and treasurer of Stapleton Hall.’
Alexander forced a smile and introduced himself and his companions. The provost stared curiously at Dame Edith. He dismissed Sir Godfrey with a flicker of contempt, as if any man who bore arms was beneath his notice, and turned his back on the knight, a sour smile on his face.
‘Master McBain, we expected you. Proctor Ormiston explained why you were coming. You,’ he flickered a glance over his shoulder, ‘and your companions.’
Sir Godfrey patted Dame Edith’s hand. ‘Stay quiet,’ he murmured.
‘I need no second bidding,’ she whispered back.
Sir Godfrey strode across the library floor and gently pushed Wakeham round.
‘Yes, you should have been expecting us. I bear the king’s commission.’
Wakeham stepped back, some of the arrogance draining from his face.
‘And our questions are simple,’ Sir Godfrey continued. ‘A number of scholars who have lived and studied at this hall have disappeared without explanation or trace. Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ Wakeham replied petulantly. ‘We have conducted our own searches. We sought the advice of both the sheriff and the proctor.’ He wriggled his bony shoulders. ‘They have gone.’
Sir Godfrey was sure the man was about to turn his back on him again.
‘Master Wakeham!’ he exclaimed, ‘I appreciate you are busy, but so am I. We take our authority from the king, so you will stand and answer our questions!’
Wakeham looked slyly at Alexander, licked his lips and decided discretion was the better part of valour. He pushed his bottom up against a table and folded his arms.
‘Yes, sir, scholars from this hall have disappeared. We have found no trace of them but there was a connection between them. They belonged to a secret society who called themselves the Luminosi – the Enlightened Ones,’ he translated patronizingly. He waved bony fingers at Alexander. ‘As Master McBain knows, Oxford and Cambridge are riddled with such societies. Young men in pursuit of secret knowledge: the philosopher’s stone, the mysterious alchemy, the cabbalistic writings of men like Roger Bacon. I could name at least thirty such societies in both universities at the present time.’ He pushed his bottom farther on the table. ‘I am correct am I not, Master McBain?’
‘Aye, you are,’ Alexander grinned. ‘When I was at Cambridge I belonged to a group called the Scelerati, or the Sinners. We were in pursuit of a different type of knowledge.’
‘Surely,’ Sir Godfrey persisted, ‘members of this group, friends of the missing students, still study here.’
‘I wish you were correct,’ Wakeham replied. ‘But, no, they were a small, self-contained group, quite isolated. They attended lectures in the schools, disputations here in the hall. They did not roister or get drunk, so they were left alone.’
‘And their belongings?’ Alexander asked.
‘Nothing much,’ Wakeham replied, ‘quills, the occasional book, clothing, rosary beads. And all these have now been sent back to their families.’
‘Did you find anything remarkable?’
‘Yes, I did. Each had letters, small strips of vellum issued by the sheriff and by Proctor Ormiston. The one from the sheriff allowed them passes out of the city gates after curfew.’
‘And the one from Proctor Ormiston?’
‘Licence to study at the university library in the church of St Mary.’
Sir Godfrey glanced at Alexander.
‘Strange.’ Dame Edith spoke up abruptly. ‘Neither the sheriff nor the proctor told us this.’
‘Well,’ Wakeham clutched the voluminous sleeves of his gown. ‘I can tell you no more, sirs.’ He stood, lips pursed.
Sir Godfrey and Alexander thanked him as courteously as they could, helped Dame Edith to her feet, walked out of the library and across the wet grass towards the main gate. The sky had grown darker, the day was drawing on. A cold biting wind stung their faces and chilled their fingers as they stamped their feet, waiting for the porter to bring out their horses.
‘Are all scholars so welcoming?’ Sir Godfrey grumbled. ‘By the rood, Alexander, you’d think we were the Inquisition!’
‘To men like Wakeham you are,’ Dame Edith replied tartly. ‘This is Oxford, sir knight, where they do not take kindly to outside interference.’
Grooms brought their horses and they went out through the gateway into the street. They were about to move off when the tousle-haired porter who had taken them to Palmer’s Tower suddenly slipped through the gate and caught the hem of Alexander’s coat.
‘Please!’ he hissed, his red-rimmed eyes large and tearful. ‘Those scholars who disappeared. I was their servant. I know nothing except this . . .’
‘Except what?’ Alexander asked, stepping closer.
‘Go to the Mitre tavern. Ask for a servant girl there, Laetitia. She knew the Brabanter. She may know more.’
And, before Alexander could question him further, the man turned and fled back into the hall.
‘Strange upon strange,’ Sir Godfrey commented, leading them off down the darkened Turl. ‘The Mitre is in Carfax, isn’t it?’ He looked over his shoulder at Alexander.
The clerk nodded.
‘Well, we’ll go there. And let’s hope it doesn’t rain.’
They forced their way up the street, unaware of the cowled figure staring down at them from the top casement of one of the overhanging houses. The man pushed open the rickety, wooden window, covered with thin greased parchment. He strained his neck to glimpse the two men, Dame Edith riding behind them, making their way through the evening crowd towards the High Street. The man’s eyes, dark as bat’s wings, were cold and hard. He watched, as a hunting snake would eye its quarry, his lips pressed close together, humming the tune of a jig he had heard in one of the taverns.
‘They are moving on,’ he murmured to a second cowled figure seated on a stool in the far corner of the empty, musty room. ‘They have talked to Wakeham, but he’s so ignorant and arrogant he’ll have told them nothing. But the servant, he may have been useful. Shall we kill him?’
‘No,’ the other replied gently. ‘Why pursue minnows when we have such fat pike in the pond?’
‘Are they dangerous?’ the figure at the window asked.
‘Yes, they are. The knight is a killer, one of the king’s best swordsmen. He is ruthless, with a sense of duty found in few others.’
‘And McBain?’
‘A court fop, a dandy. Or so he pretends. But his brain is razor-sharp. He’s like the knight but, perhaps, lacks his courage.’
The man closed the window and stared across at his black-masked master. ‘It’s the woman, isn’t it?’
The seated man nodded.
‘A canting, dangerous bitch!’ he spat out. ‘Sooner or later, and it will be sooner rather than later, she’ll smell something wrong – the relic, the soldier’s death. She’ll marry them together.’
‘What shall we do?’
The master sucked in his breath through the slits of his mask.
‘Our leader will soon join us. So, for a while, let’s avoid them. If they keep coming on, we’ll kill them all!’
Chapter 6
The taproom of the Mitre was thronged with students and tradesmen. The rushes underfoot had turned to a muddy mess as sweating scullions and serving girls brought platters of red meat from the kitchens and hot pies from a nearby cookshop. Potboys rushed around serving jugs, blackjacks and flagons of frothing ale or deep-bowled cups of wine. In one corner five scholars practised a carol. Alexander smiled when he listened to the words for, though the song was in Latin, the scholars were really singing a salacious ditty about the mayor of Oxford’s daug
hter with wide generalizations about the morals of Oxford women. Thankfully, the traders seated around didn’t realize the insults the grinning scholars were bellowing out; they were intent on filling their bellies and discussing the day’s trade. Beggars hopped around – Alexander glimpsed the one he had seen earlier in the day. Two tired-looking whores touted for business, but their faces were so raddled with paint and their fixed grins showed such blackened teeth that they would find little custom that night. Alexander smiled at them and tossed each a coin. They grasped the coins without a word of thanks and fought their way to the great tuns of beer where the landlord stood taking orders for the strips of beef roasting behind him in the kitchen. Jostled on every side, Dame Edith between them, Alexander could see Sir Godfrey was fast losing his temper – his hand was already on his sword. The clerk grabbed one of the serving wenches.
‘Laetitia?’ he bawled in her face.
The girl shook her head.
‘Not here yet!’ she yelled back. ‘Not till the bell sounds for vespers. She has other things to do.’
‘Oh, for the love of God!’ Godfrey shouted at Alexander above the hubbub. ‘Hire a chamber.’
Alexander did and the sweaty, greasy-aproned landlord led them up some rather shaky wooden stairs to a small, white-washed chamber above the taproom. It was a bare, gaunt room, and none too clean, but at least they were quiet and the raucous noise of the taproom merely a constant hum. They ordered ale, bread and some dried, cooked meat with a dish of onions. Dame Edith picked at her food, but Sir Godfrey and Alexander ate with gusto.
‘There’s nothing like tramping the streets of Oxford,’ Sir Godfrey said sourly, ‘to give a man an appetite.’
‘But was it worth it?’ Alexander asked. ‘Dame Edith, are you tired?’
‘Confused,’ she smiled, ‘very confused. So, let’s see, master clerk, what we do know. First, there are legends that hundreds of years ago a Strigoi leader built a keep and terrorized the countryside. He and his coven were destroyed by Sir Hugo Mortimer, an ancestor of our good sheriff Sir Oswald Beauchamp. Moreover, if we believe what we heard this morning, Proctor Ormiston has some Mortimer blood in him as well. Secondly, the Strigoi leader seems to have reappeared, formed a coven and perpetrated terrible murders here in the city. What else?’