The Anchoress of Chesterfield

by Chris Nickson

  ‘Who died?’ John asked, but the guard just shook his head and gestured down the hill.

  ‘Go and see, Master.’

  The earth was dry, the dirt and pebbles shifted and vanished under his feet as John made his way from tree to tree, holding on to stop himself tumbling down to the bottom. It was steep, so easy to lose footing. Had that happened to the dead man, he wondered?

  ‘Carpenter.’ The coroner’s voice was grim. ‘Take a look at this.’

  He stood aside, the other men moving with him. John squatted and examined the body. The angle of the head gave the cause of death: his neck was broken. Only a single glance at the face; a young man who’d been fair-looking when he was alive. But this wasn’t anyone he knew. Good clothes, a dark green velvet tunic, fine woollen hose and boots of smooth, rich leather that reached to his ankles. A man of some wealth. But the tunic and the hose were ripped, the leather of the boots scuffed. He turned over the corpse’s hand. No real cuts, no recent dirt under the fingernails. The smooth skin of someone who’d never known manual labour.

  John stood again and looked back up towards the road. From here he could trace the man’s path, the scratches and gouges in the ground as he fell. Or perhaps he’d been pushed.

  But there was nothing to show why Strong needed him out here.

  ‘Do you know who it is?’ the coroner asked.

  ‘No, Master.’

  ‘His name’s Cuthbert Unthank.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  That wasn’t possible. Last night Jeffrey of Hardwick had been talking to the man. For a fleeting moment, John wondered if Jeffrey had killed him. No, he wasn’t the type, and he was too clever. If he’d been responsible for this, he’d never have mentioned talking to Unthank the night before.

  ‘A broken neck,’ John said. But that was obvious to everyone looking at the body.

  ‘Before he fell down here or as he tumbled?’ the coroner asked. ‘Maybe after he landed?’

  ‘Before he left the road.’ He showed Strong the hands. ‘If he’d still been alive, he’d have been grabbing for everything to stop himself. There would have been plenty of cuts. You see here? There’s no sign of that. Even if it had happened while he fell, there’d be something to see beforehand.’

  The coroner nodded. ‘Very observant, Carpenter. He’s been dead for several hours. What was he doing out here? The family’s Chesterfield home isn’t in this direction.’

  John didn’t reply. He had no answer, and the question wasn’t meant for him. And he had something else to think about: should he tell them about Jeffrey being with Unthank?

  He had no choice. One way or another, it would come out. If he didn’t say anything, who could tell what the reaction might be? Jeffrey was innocent, he was sure of that. If not, he was the best dissembler John had ever met.

  He drew the coroner aside, explaining what he knew. There were only two things: the fact that Jeffrey and Unthank had been drinking together, and what Cuthbert Unthank had said about Gertrude’s sister.

  Strong frowned as he listened, glancing back at the body by the stream as if it might have suddenly slithered away. He beckoned one of the guards and whispered in his ear, watching as the man scrambled awkwardly back up the hillside.

  ‘Strange how his name comes up and the next day he’s dead,’ the coroner said.

  ‘I’ve found that there’s no such thing as coincidence,’ John agreed. He studied the body more closely. This would be the only chance he’d have. Very soon the corpse would be gone.

  The man’s scrip was still there, attached to his belt; this hadn’t been a robbery. Inside, there were a few coins, a comb carved from bone, and a few scraps of paper. He patted at the man’s clothing. Nothing hidden away. His knife was still in its sheath. John took it out, testing the edge. Quite blunt. He held it up to the light. A few scraps of meat from where Unthank had cut his dinner. No blood, no sign it had been used in anger.

  He couldn’t tell how the man’s neck had been broken. But who could? He’d never heard of anyone with the skills to discern that. All the other injuries had come from the fall down the hillside.

  ‘Do you see anything else?’ Strong asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Could he have been drunk and fallen?’

  ‘It’s possible, but I don’t believe so.’ The road was wide enough. No reason for Unthank to be at the edge, even if he’d been drinking.

  ‘My men are searching for Jeffrey. I told them to have him at my house in an hour. I’d like you there, Carpenter.’

  It was neatly phrased. A request, although there was no possibility of refusal.

  ‘Yes, Master.’

  ‘I’ll want your evidence as to what he told you.’ He stared at the dead face. ‘But I don’t see how this relates to the death of Gertrude.’

  ‘Nor do I, Master,’ John agreed. ‘But I’m certain it does.’

  • • •

  Jeffrey of Hardwick stood calmly and completely at ease in the hall of the coroner’s house. He wasn’t tied, he’d been treated with deference. A guard lingered by the door, but he didn’t seem alert or aware of any danger.

  Sir Mark Strong sat at the table, his clerk close by, writing out the questions and answers. John stood in the corner, out of the way. He’d speak if the coroner spoke to him, otherwise he’d stay silent, listening.

  Jeffrey didn’t need any help. He replied readily, pleasantly, recounting the time he’d spent with Unthank, recalling their conversation.

  ‘Where did you leave him?’

  ‘Outside the alehouse on Low Pavement. We’d both been drinking, but neither of us were drunk.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘Not late,’ Jeffrey answered. ‘My landlady was still up when I returned to my lodgings and she likes an early bed.’

  That brought smiles.

  ‘How did Unthank seem?’

  ‘The way he usually was. He’d always been a morose man, a little bitter and given to gossip.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry to see him dead, Master, but I had nothing to do with it and I don’t know who might have killed him.’

  The coroner glanced at John and raised an eyebrow. A quick nod in return.

  ‘When you parted, did he say where he was going?’

  Jeffrey turned his head sharply, smiling as he saw the carpenter.

  ‘No. I thought he’d be going home.’

  ‘Did he talk to anyone else? Any friends who came over and said hello?’

  ‘He flirted and chattered, but no real conversation with anyone else when I was with him. It was just the two of us.’

  The coroner had no other questions to ask. Jeffrey was telling the truth, he was certain of that.

  ‘Master, if there’s anything I can do to help find the person who did it—’

  ‘Talk to the carpenter,’ Strong said. ‘That’s all. You’re free to go.’

  ‘Well?’ Sir Mark asked when they were alone. He poured himself a mazer of wine and began to drink.

  ‘We’re no further on. Jeffrey is innocent.’

  Strong nodded. ‘Use his help.’

  ‘I have. I like him. And now he has even more reason to be involved. He’ll want to clear his name.’

  ‘I saw my lord before anyone reported Cuthbert Unthank’s death. He wants to know what progress you’ve made.’

  John drew in a breath. ‘What did you tell him, Master?’

  ‘That you were learning more, but you didn’t seem to know yet who was behind his daughter’s killing.’ A pause. ‘He reminded me that the fair opens in a few days.’

  He knew. He couldn’t forget the fact. Every minute it was drawing closer and he was still flailing.

  ‘Thank you, Master.’

  • • •

  It was late morning already, time for dinner. The hours had slipped by. Outside the coroner’s house, John looked around. Jeffrey of Hardwick was sitting on a wall, smiling like a man without a care in the world.

  ‘Come home and eat with us.’ They
didn’t have much, but they could tease out another portion of pottage. Katherine and the children liked Jeffrey; he’d be a welcome guest.

  ‘I can’t, but I thank you. My father wants to see me at the warehouse so we can check some of the invoices.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘He wants me to take more responsibility, but whenever I do, he tries to stop me every step of the way.’

  ‘Being questioned didn’t worry you?’

  ‘Why? I didn’t kill Cuthbert. I don’t know who did. If I’d suspected anyone, I’d have said.’ He sighed. ‘I can’t believe we were talking just before he was killed. He was a good man, John. You might have liked him.’

  He’d never have had the chance to find out if that was true. The Unthanks were a different class. Cuthbert Unthank wouldn’t have mixed with a carpenter. John smiled.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss. May God keep him.’

  ‘Give me an hour. I’ll be able to satisfy my father by then. I suppose I have a good reason to find whoever killed him.’

  ‘You do,’ John agreed. ‘We can meet in the church porch.’

  • • •

  He was early, talking to the men working on the church. Masons and tilers, men whose trades took them from place to place, wherever there was work. He’d once been that way himself, but he didn’t miss it. He no longer envied them their freedom. Instead, he felt complete here, settled, with a family.

  Yet there was still pleasure in hearing them talk about the problems with the job, the things that still needed to be done to the building. They talked easily, full of humour and the kind of camaraderie that only came from a group of men working and staying together.

  By the time Jeffrey arrived, looking haggard and careworn, the men were drifting back to their work and clambering up the scaffolding to the roof.

  ‘That would terrify me,’ Jeffrey said as he watched them.

  ‘A few times and you don’t even think about it. It’s wonderful to look out and see so far.’

  ‘You’ve been up there?’

  ‘I worked on the tower. The master carpenter was murdered and people suspected me because I’d just arrived.’

  ‘I didn’t know… I’m sorry.’

  ‘No need. It was ten years ago now, and it changed my life for the better. You don’t look too happy.’

  ‘Someone told my father I was with Cuthbert before he was killed. He thinks I’ve brought the family into disrepute since I’m involved in it all.’

  John clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Then we’d better discover who’s responsible. We both have an interest.’

  The young man pursed his lips. ‘Are you sure it’s connected to Gertrude’s death?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said after a small moment. He couldn’t see how, but he knew it inside. It felt right, it had to be that way. ‘I want to take another look at where it happened. Maybe you’ll see something I didn’t spot.’

  But there was nothing left. The coroner and his men had been all over the road above the stream. They’d obliterated any marks or signs that might have been left. Searching farther didn’t help.

  ‘We don’t know how many were with him,’ Jeffrey said as he shook his head in frustration.

  ‘Unthank looked quite big.’

  ‘He was. But he was slow and awkward. He was never a fighter, although his father once wanted to make one of him. He never had the skills or the desire for it. He’d have been happiest raising sheep, I think. He liked the countryside.’

  But he’d never have the chance now. His poor corpse was probably being lowered into the ground as they searched out here.

  Finally, though, there was something. Jeffrey was halfway down the slope, tracing the path Unthank’s body had taken as it fell. He looked in the bushes in the vain hope that something might have fallen, something to point them in a direction.

  ‘Here,’ he called out, and held up a scrap of vellum.

  John was down in the riverbed, checking that nothing had been tossed away from the corpse as it landed. He scrambled up the hillside, feet slipping, reaching out for saplings and tree trunks to give him purchase.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I can’t tell how many times it’s been written on and scraped down,’ Jeffrey said. The scrap was the size of his thumb. It had caught on a mayflower tree, snagged on one of the thorns. Something had been scratched on it, two words written in ink from the oak gall.

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Cui bono. It’s Latin. It means who benefits from something. A Roman consul called Lucius Cassius first said it.’ He beamed, happy to remember something his tutor had probably beaten into him.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Who profits from something. Who gains? It’s one of the basic questions of law.’

  Now it made sense. A few tiny scratches on a piece of sheepskin that said so much. Who profited from Cuthbert Unthank’s death? Who gained by killing Gertrude? He tried to think. He knew nothing about Unthank. But Gertrude was an anchoress, a nun. She possessed nothing; poverty was her choice. What could she have to leave anyone? No one could benefit from that.

  ‘Cui bono.’ His mouth hesitated over the words, drawing them out and examining them. A foreign tongue, the language of the Church and the courts, of the educated and the wealthy. He’d never heard the words before. But the question was good. He should have asked it from the beginning.

  Now he had to find an answer.

  ‘Who profits from Cuthbert Unthank being dead?’ John asked as they walked back to Chesterfield. Their tunics and hose were smeared with dirt from climbing up and down the hillside, but they’d found something.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Jeffrey stared at the tiny piece of parchment once again. ‘His branch of the family isn’t wealthy. They have enough money for themselves, but that’s all. And I don’t think they’ve ever done anything wrong.’

  ‘That leaves us with nothing. How can we be sure that even came from him?’

  ‘He could read and write and he spoke a little Latin. How many around here could say the same?’

  Precious few; it was a convincing argument. But all it meant was that the words were teasing them. How could anyone profit from the death of a young man or an anchoress nun? Anyone religious had renounced the world.

  That was the idea, at least. Yet he’d seen bishops weighed down under their jewels and rich clothes in York. They had their houses filled with servants and their coffers stuffed with coins. But most in holy orders were good people.

  All he knew about Unthank were the few things Jeffrey had told him. It was a shaded picture, he realised that. But unless he had a fortune or was heir to one, there was little to make anyone kill him.

  An argument that turned violent? That was possible. Jealousy over a girl? It could have been. But Jeffrey shook his head at both ideas.

  ‘Cuthbert wasn’t going to inherit, and he was never especially interested in a girl in all the years I knew him. He flirted, but it was all in fun. Nothing more. He didn’t go wenching, never made remarks the way men usually do. No, I don’t believe it’s that. And why would he be out on the Tapton road after dark? His home is in the opposite direction, and he wasn’t drunk enough to wander that far away.’

  ‘Maybe he went to another alehouse after he left you.’

  Jeffrey shook his head. ‘He had precious little money left.’

  That made sense; there had only been a couple of small coins in the man’s scrip when John searched it.

  ‘What, then? How could anyone gain by his death?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jeffrey answered in a voice filled with sorrow. ‘I truly don’t.’

  They talked for an hour, pushing ideas back and forth as they leaned on the wall around the churchyard. Men shouted and sang as they worked on the building. The weekday market was over, traders packing up what was left and leaving. People passed. He knew many of them, giving brief bows and smiles. He was part of this place. Most of the people accepted him.

  Any murder tore at the fabri
c of a community. The killing of Gertrude had ripped it open. And now there were the deaths of two other innocents, Cuthbert and the forager. Add to that the bodies of the squires. Too many, far too many. The bill was too high.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Jeffrey asked.

  ‘I’m trying to find something that connects all the people who’ve died. Did Cuthbert ever have anything to do with Gertrude?’

  ‘No, she was his cousin. As I said, he had no particular interest in women at all.’

  The other deaths all appeared to be linked, a chain went from one to another. But this stood apart, with no obvious reason or rhyme behind it. Perhaps it had nothing to do with the rest. More likely they simply hadn’t discovered what connected it yet.

  ‘Do you know any friends of his?’

  ‘One or two. They’ll be in town for the fair.’

  ‘Talk to them. Ask some questions and see what they have to say about him.’

  ‘So soon after his death?’

  ‘Yes, he’ll be in their minds. Leave it and their thoughts will fade.’

  With a nod, Jeffrey stood. ‘What about you?’

  John shook his head. ‘Master, I wish I knew. I really do.’

  • • •

  Who might have answers? He wracked his brain to come up with a name but there was no one. Dame Gertrude, the squires, Unthank, they all came from a different class. The solution to all this lay with them, he was sure of that. But men like him were barred entry.

  Standing at l’Honfleur’s door, he wasn’t certain why he’d come. There was little to tell. Maybe the man would have something to spark an idea.

  But he wasn’t at home. He’d gone hunting, and would spend the night at his manor near Hathersage.

  He scuffled his way back to Knifesmithgate, kicking at pebbles and trying to think. He’d almost reached his door when the sound of running feet made him turn. The head of the coroner’s guard coming, waving at him.

  ‘What is it?’ John asked.

  ‘He wants you.’

  He felt the dread rising through his body. ‘Is someone else dead?’

  ‘Not this time, thanks be to God.’

  They hurried through the streets, walking quickly, not speaking, out past West Bar to the coroner’s house. They entered, passed the screens, and he saw Sir Mark Strong pacing over the rushes. He held a mug of ale, his mouth set and firm, his face dark as thunder.