Miss Weatherby was drawn magnetically over to the window of Margeaux’s study to ponder this new challenge.
“It sounds a bit more—well, you know—legal rather than historical.”
“The two fields are not mutually exclusive, Miss Weatherby,” Margeaux responded. “The postulate is that certain legal documents such as trusts and bequests from which wealth was conveyed are an accurate, and indeed even quantifiable, measure of ecclesiastical versus secular authority in the pre-Reformation period of the Church in England.”
Miss Weatherby looked as if she still had her doubts. Margeaux went on.
“This could be a whole new theoretical approach to assessing the timing and degree of power shifts underlying the division of the Church of England from the Church of Rome.”
“But I don’t have any background at all on trusts and bequests.”
The legal terms came out of Miss Weatherby’s mouth as if they had a bitter taste.
“Nor, I suspect, do you have any knowledge of how trusts and wills could be undone,” confirmed Margeaux. “That’s why I checked these books out of the law library for you.”
Margeaux picked up several large tomes from her desk and plunked them one at a time next to Miss Weatherby, who looked at the pile with trepidation.
“Did Gutenberg print those?” she asked.
“I have every confidence in your abilities, Miss Weatherby. Start by explaining for me how trusts and wills were written and how they worked. Then describe how they could be dissolved or nullified. Now I’m afraid I have to run.”
Margeaux started putting on her coat as Miss Weatherby lifted the heavy pile of books with a grunt.
“Any news from your brother?” Margeaux asked, watching her struggle to balance the stack of volumes.
“No,” she answered. “I’m getting quite concerned.”
“Don’t be,” Margeaux responded. “I’m sure he’s trying to get his life back together after prison. He’ll likely be in touch when he’s ready.
“Just pull the door closed behind you, won’t you,” Margeaux called over her shoulder as she hurried down the stairs.
Miss Weatherby lurched off balance to lean the books against the door jamb to keep them from falling from her grasp. As she struggled to close the door, the books began falling and hitting the floor with accelerating thumps.
“Careful with those,” Margeaux warned from the flight of stairs below. “They’re checked out in my name.”
Miss Weatherby looked down in frustration. The jumble of books hid her feet.
“If you want me to learn how trusts and bequests were done, why do you want me to figure out how they were undone?” she asked with no one around to hear or answer.
Margeaux drove to Atwelle in record time. By now she had driven the route to the village so many times that she knew precisely where road conditions or lurking police cars required vigilance, and where she could drive fast and with less caution. Her arrival outside St. Clement’s was punctuated by a short screech as her car skidded to a quick stop. Miss Daunting stood waiting for her at the church’s front door.
“My work on your project is going better than expected. No one knows a thing,” the older woman reported to Margeaux. “I’m actually enjoying it more than I expected.”
After their hasty huddle, they went inside. Don, standing some distance down the nave below the repositioned scaffolding on the left, noticed them and waved to Margeaux. The two women walked briskly down the main aisle to the front pew where they turned with military precision to join him.
“Any more news from the police?” asked Margeaux.
“None that I’ve heard,” Don answered. “I spoke briefly with Nigel. He stopped by before heading back home to his wife. He’s pretty distracted, poor man.”
Margeaux nodded and asked, “Have you been up there yet?”
“No. I waited for you,” he replied as he stepped back from the ladder to let her go first.
The metallic sounds of Margeaux’s steady steps were followed by the irregular syncopation of Don’s hesitant tread below. Don’s halting footfalls ceased as they both stepped over to the illuminated roof beam and clicked on their flashlights.
Their eyes studied momentarily the gargoyle before them once again. It had a grim appearance as the carved lips covered its crooked teeth without a grin. Still the sharp-looking fangs in the corners of its mouth threatened danger to what sat before it. Don and Margeaux shifted their flashlights quickly down to the second smaller carving.
“Chevalier?” Margeaux murmured her guess in French.
“Do you think so?” Don asked. “A knight?”
“Well, the prominent sword in front seems to suggest that.”
“Hmm,” mumbled Don in reply as he studied the male figure standing upright with his hands resting before his chest on the hilt of a tall sword whose blade extended down his body to where its point rested at his feet.
“But he doesn’t have any sort of armour or shield,” noted Don. “So I’m not sure he’s a knight in arms.”
They puzzled over the carvings a few minutes, unable to reach any definitive conclusions. Margeaux looked across the church at the opposite roof beam. Don turned and squinted in the same direction.
“Still too dark to see anything,” she observed. “When can they move the platform over there, do you think?”
“That’s odd,” Margeaux heard him comment. Turning to look at him, she saw his gaze had redirected to the corner at the end of the church next to the large stained glass window.
“What?” she asked, unable to see anything particularly surprising.
“There’s no gargoyle on the last roof beam in the corner. At least, there doesn’t appear to be one.”
Margeaux could see that the corner was enclosed by two dark wooden planks that formed a long rectangular box covering the base of the roof beam above the stonewall.
“What do you suppose that is, covering the bottom of the roof beam?” she asked.
“I’m not at all sure. It’s not structural, but there’s one in the other corner as well.”
The beams of their flashlights barely illuminated the opposite corner on the other side of the stained glass window.
“It doesn’t make sense—ten carved figures. There are always twelve,” insisted Don.
“Well, the number twelve comes from the number of Disciples, doesn’t it?” Margeaux replied. “And these carvings are definitely not Disciples.”
“But why have carvings on all the other roof beams but not the ones in the corner?” mused Don.
They puzzled in silence for a few minutes as their heads turned back and forth from the carving before them, to the invisible carving across the church, to the corner roof beams that had no carvings.
For a brief moment, some rare sunlight in the early winter gloom broke through the clouds and gloriously lit up the stained glass window. Then as quickly as the light came, it began to fade away. But from their vantage point on top of the scaffold, Don and Margeaux were able to make out some of the colored panes at the peak of the large window.
“I thought I saw a couple coats of arms,” said Margeaux. “Did you see them?”
“Yes. Some sort of heraldic figures, perhaps.”
“Well hopefully I’ll get a look at them someday—if that day will ever come,” Margeaux said with a note of frustration. “When will the scaffolding be moved across the way?” she inquired again.
“At least a couple days. Probably longer. I’ll talk to Nigel when I can. Our work here is the least of his concerns at the moment.”
NINETEEN
1532 Father Regis looked around the crowded marketplace for the sergeant. Seeing no sign of the large man’s red hair and moustache, Father Regis turned his attention to a cart of apples. The farmer selling the apples was busily rearranging them so the best were on top.
“Martin Dankwood, a good day to you.”
“A good day to you, Father Regis,” the farmer replied.
“Not well, Father. I fear it is near the end of his time.”
Father Regis placed his hand on the farmer’s shoulder. “The end of our time on this earth should be nothing to fear, my son. I will pray for him.”
“Thank you, Father,”
“I will take a couple extra apples today, Martin.”
“A good thing, Father,” said Martin Dankwood as he waved away the coins offered by Father Regis. “With All Hallows’ Eve upon us, winter is comin’ and the apples are soon gone.”
Father Regis nodded his thanks and looked for the sergeant once more without success before strolling on to the baker’s stall.
“Lizzie, you are looking well today. I will be needing my usual soul cakes for All Hallows.”
“Good day to you, Father. I have them, indeed,” the baker’s plump wife answered as she turned around and bent over to fetch a basket for his selection. “My husband has baked a good many with All Hallows on the morrow.”
Father Regis discreetly looked away from the large woman’s behind.
“Will you be havin’ many soulers stoppin’ by to earn some cakes by prayin’ for souls?” she asked as she lifted up a large basket full of the small round cakes. “After all,” she said as she turned back to show the cakes to Father Regis, “there’s enough souls newly dead in need of the prayin’.”
Lizzie’s smile disappeared and her face went white as she realized from the priest’s stern look that she had made her casual market chatter to the wrong person.
“I am sorry, Father. I did not mean to—.”
“No matter, Lizzie,” he said as he abruptly took some cakes and handed her a coin. Stepping away, Father Regis looked sadly at the cakes sitting in his basket, thinking of how he would have set some of them aside for Peter who gamely made his best effort every All Hallows’ Eve to fashion a prayer for the year’s departed souls of St. Clement. Peter, who had no family name, would remember each of theirs, Father Regis recalled while wiping away a small tear.
He continued wandering about the market, but the joy that he usually felt at being among the townspeople of Atwelle was gone. While the market buzzed with its typical activity, the priest’s thoughts ran to all the difficulties masked by the usual business of the day.
The work on the church was slowly grinding to a halt. Faced with the possibility of not being paid, more workmen were leaving every day, concerned about supporting their families through the winter. And those who remained and waited faithfully for All Hallows’ Day would find that Father Regis’s promise to pay them in full for their work on the church was not to be fulfilled. His mouth went dry as he imagined the men’s reaction.
Even worse, he saw no prospect of any funding that would cover the completion of the church’s construction. Reports of the heightened tension between the king and the pope were more frequent. The conflict of unspoken loyalties had a paralyzing effect on his attempts to raise funds. Father Regis knew the test would come soon from a king’s tax on the church and the clergy followed by a Peter’s pence that would represent a direct challenge between the authority of the king and the Church.
It would be the end of St. Clement’s. He pictured the walls of the church forever standing stillborn like ruins without a roof. He would have to answer to the Bishop of Norwich and face the black cowl of an unforgiving Father Cuthbert.
His heart grew even heavier as Father Regis thought about the murders and the missing baby. The threat of their mystery hung over the town like the low gray clouds coming in on All Hallows’ Eve. He had gone to the sergeant many times in the last week to check on the progress of the investigation, but had learned almost nothing. First of all, the sergeant always seemed to be sleeping during the day. And when he did speak with him, he could not get the large man to talk of anything but the murder of the prostitute. Was the sergeant doing nothing on Peter’s death and the disappearance of Bittergreen’s baby, Father Regis wondered.
“Father? Father Regis?”
The sound of his name brought him out of his thoughts. He realized he was staring absent-mindedly at some pheasants hanging from a wooden rack. A man in rough clothes who was known for poaching was looking at him uncomfortably.
“They were fairly caught,” the man said defensively. With a worried look at the priest who remained silent, he held out a bird whose head hung limply over the man’s fist. “Here, this one is for you, for free.”
Father Regis at first took the pheasant with a natural momentary happy thought of how much Peter would enjoy it for dinner. But then the reality of Peter’s brutal death returned to blacken his mood even more. With a distracted gesture, he handed the bird back to the man and moved on, his mind returning to the murders of Peter and the prostitute.
“Does the sergeant have the same suspicions I have?” he wondered. Peter had seen both Richard Lanham and Francis DuBois visit the prostitute, and they had seen Peter. Either man was capable of killing Peter to prevent damage to his reputation and the campaign to control the inland port and its revenue. Either man had a motive to kill the prostitute for the same reason.
A sudden sobering thought brought Father Regis to a stop. He remembered the sergeant’s demand to Peter that he stop hanging about the lane where the prostitute lived. Could the sergeant have killed Peter and the prostitute at the command of either Lanham or DuBois?
“Or on the command of both?” he asked out loud. Feeling the villagers’ curious looks from his question still hanging in the air, he moved on to the next market stall.
“But what of the missing baby?” he puzzled in his mind. “Why would they bother with a workman’s child?” There was no apparent connection. It must have been the act of another criminal, he concluded. “Is it one, or two, or three criminals?” Whatever the solution, it did not bode well for finishing the construction of the church, he concluded.
“Father Regis!”
The booming voice above him brought him up short. He realized the sergeant was surveying him from atop the man’s tall horse. There were dark circles under the sergeant’s fatigued eyes. The entire length of the sergeant’s sword passed through the priest’s vision as the large man dismounted from the horse and lowered himself to the ground.
“Let me walk you back to the church—or what there is of it,” he suggested in a grim voice.
They walked without talking until they left behind the commotion of the market. Just as Father Regis started to ask the sergeant about his investigation, the sergeant stopped and looked down over his moustache at the priest. Father Regis watched the horse shake its head and mane. He could not bring himself to look the sergeant in the eye.
“I know who is responsible for the murders of Molly and poor Peter,” the sergeant announced in a quiet but firm voice.
Father Regis looked anxiously at the sergeant.
“For a big man, I can move quickly and quietly, Father.” He wiped the length of his moustache with a gloved hand and gave a heavy sigh. “And I have followed unlikely people to unlikely places.”
“Who is it?” the priest immediately asked.
“I shall not say, Father, but you would not believe it.”
“Can you not tell me?” Father Regis urged.
“I must speak to DuBois and Lanham first. Then you will know.”
Father Regis felt his stomach sink. The sergeant remounted his horse.
“Justice will be done,” he assured the priest below him. “Whether it be the king’s—or my own,” he added, laying his hand on his sword.
Father Regis hurried in the direction of the church after watching the sergeant ride away. He felt as if he would be ill. A major patron of his church would be accused of a capital crime. With that loss and the controversy of the levy of Peter’s pence, there would be no hope for rebuilding the church.
Even worse, he realized he was about to meet again with Christopher Lanham and Margaret DuBois. In a few minutes, he would be trying to encourage them to ma
rry, while he knew one of their fathers would be arrested shortly for murder. He did not know how he could carry out such deception.
Father Regis soon met the two young people outside the walls of the unfinished church. Christopher and a family servant rode up on their horses as Margaret arrived in a driven carriage. He was pleased to see the two of them greet each other pleasantly before he welcomed them. The three of them, followed by Lanham’s servant, wandered along the church walls underneath the gray sky toward the shells of the families’ chapels. Christopher commented favorably on how much progress had been made despite the rumors of workmen deserting their labors.
“I assure you both, the workmen have not been a problem,” Father Regis responded.
Christopher gave him a skeptical look.
“But I have heard talk that the murders in the town and the disappearance of the carver’s infant son are thought by the workmen to be evil signs of a curse on the place?” he asked.
Father Regis tried to look as if the very idea was an affront. “This is consecrated ground, my son. There is no evil here.”
He was surprised when the two young people walked past the family chapels to the area of the chancel where the altar would stand next to the entrance to the crypt. There they turned and looked back down the length of the church under the open sky. Father Regis sensed a feeling of doubt about the place from them both.
“Besides,” he tried to assure them, “the sergeant has told me that he knows with certainty who has committed all the assaults upon the civil peace of our town and that he will make an arrest of the guilty in short order.”
Christopher looked at Father Regis with surprise.
“Well that is certainly good to know, Father. Do you feel better for having heard that news, Margaret?”
The young maiden nodded demurely and lifted her skirts to step around the entrance to the crypt as she walked back toward the DuBois family chapel.
2017 As Margeaux drove into Atwelle, it seemed as if the village was deserted. The recent funerals and the missing baby cast a lingering pall over the place like the gray clouds that seemed these days to be permanently painted on the sky above. When she eventually stepped into St. Clement’s, the church, like the town, was empty and silent.
The Atwelle Confession Page 18