by Alys Clare
‘I’ll go outside and tell the young women what you’ve said, my lady—’ Josse went over to the door of the abbess’s room – ‘and then I will proceed with my own mission here today.’
‘The dead men, yes.’ She came round from behind her table to join him. ‘I will summon our infirmarer, and we will take you to where they have been laid out.’
It amounted to something, Josse thought a little later as Abbess Caliste and Sister Liese led the way down to the rooms below the nuns’ dormitory, when a man actually looked forward to inspecting dead, putrid bodies. But such was his present mood that anything which took his mind off his own pressing sadness was welcome just then.
Sister Liese opened the door of a dark, windowless little room, pausing to light a lamp with the candle she held in her hand. Inside, she moved calmly around what lay on the trestle tables to light three further lamps. Then she turned to Josse and said, ‘Come and look, Sir Josse. We did brush off the earth that clung to them from their interment, but their clothing has not been disturbed by us, and so you see them much as they were when they were in the ground.’
Josse was grateful for the forethought of whoever had directed the recovery of the bodies. It was always useful if you could view your victims as their murderer left them. He was even more grateful to whoever had been burning incense; the smell from the bodies was still very much in evidence, but at least the incense masked it a little.
Then, putting all else aside, he stepped forward and began his inspection of the three dead men.
FOUR
They lay side by side on rough trestle tables, each body covered with a strip of worn, patched but clean linen. Sister Liese met Josse’s eyes and, at his quick nod, folded back the sheet covering the first body.
It was that of a man in early middle age. He had been small and wiry, narrow in the chest and shoulders; the sort of body a man developed when he had been hungry most of his life. He was dressed in a ragged tunic over a thin shirt; patched and darned hose; worn, down-at-heel boots that had not been cleaned for a very long time; a heavy, hooded cloak, very soiled. Standing out amid this dowdy collection, like a gaudy finch in a flock of sparrows, was a very fine belt made of soft, supple leather, rich dark-red in colour. It had a buckle that appeared, to Josse’s eyes, to be gold. He pointed to it, then looked at the abbess and the infirmarer.
‘Gold?’ whispered Sister Liese.
Abbess Caliste leaned closer, gently scraping the buckle with a fingernail. ‘Solid gold, I do believe.’ Straightening, she said, ‘I do not wish to make false accusations, especially when this poor man cannot defend himself, yet I do wonder how he came by such a treasure.’
Josse didn’t wonder; he was pretty sure he knew.
He looked at the face of the corpse. Narrow, eyes close together, the mouth open and what flesh there was on the scrawny cheeks already falling in, giving him a rat-like expression.
How had he died? As if Sister Liese read Josse’s thought, silently she indicated a darker patch on the man’s rusty brown tunic. Carefully loosening the strings that closed the garment and drawing the fabric aside, he saw a small patch of dried blood, right over the heart.
He studied the wound, gently pulling the flesh this way and that. ‘It’s a deep, straight cut, made with a slim blade,’ he said quietly. He pressed the chest on both sides of the wound, and a little clotted blood appeared. ‘He did not bleed much, to judge by the body and the clothes that he wore. I would say the stab went straight into the heart, killing him instantly.’
‘He would not have suffered, then,’ Sister Liese observed.
‘Very little,’ Josse agreed.
He moved to the next table. Sister Liese, having deftly covered the first man once more, now folded back the sheet that was spread over the second body.
This man was bigger, taller, broader and far more muscular than the first. He was clothed in similarly worn and dirty garments, and, in his case, the one outstanding item was a soft woollen muffler wound round his neck. It was, incongruously on such a masculine body, soft pink. In a well-used scabbard on his belt, he carried a sword. Josse drew it out and inspected the blade, which was stained with what looked like blood.
It was a fine weapon. He looked around for something with which to wipe it and the infirmarer, correctly guessing, reached inside her sleeve and handed him a square of linen. ‘There is water in the bucket by the door,’ she murmured.
Josse nodded his thanks, then dipped the cloth in the water, saturating it, and proceeded to clean the sword. As the layers of dried mud, blood and general dirt slowly came away – this was no way to treat such a blade, he thought as he worked – he could make out a compelling design of intertwined curves and circles etched into the bright metal. He held the sword up for the two nuns’ inspection. They looked at it, then back at him, their expressions enquiring.
Josse smiled to himself; it had been foolish to expect nuns to know about swords. ‘This is a fine weapon,’ he said. ‘It is, if I’m not mistaken, Toledo steel, and it was made by a man who excelled at his craft.’
‘Indeed?’ said Abbess Caliste politely. Her glance then slid away to the dead man, and Josse took the hint. He returned the sword to its scabbard and resumed his inspection.
The man’s face was brutal, even given the unflattering effects of violent death. The lips were coarse, and barely covered the misshapen, discoloured teeth. The nose was broad and fleshy, and the eyes gave an impression of having secrets to keep, set deep as they were beneath heavy brows.
Abbess Caliste, sensing Josse’s first careful study was complete, said, ‘This is the man whom we believed was tortured. Shall I bare his chest to show you, Sir Josse?’
Josse drew a steadying breath. If the two nuns were prepared to look on whatever terrible wounds had been inflicted on the man, then he must not flinch. ‘Aye.’
The abbess leaned over the corpse and unfastened the tunic and the chemise, from the neck to the navel, folding them back on themselves and leaving the throat, chest and abdomen bare. Sister Liese and Josse both leaned forward together, bumping heads.
‘I am sorry, Sir Josse.’ Sister Liese instantly stepped back. ‘It is the first time I have seen the wounds.’
Professional curiosity, Josse assumed. ‘Let us look together, Sister,’ he said.
As well as the same small mark right over the heart, the chest had been carved with what looked like a big letter H. Josse was not very familiar with letters, but it seemed, even to him, that this one had rather too many extra lines, as if someone had been doodling and adding embellishments; vaguely, he pictured an illuminated initial letter in a big Bible. He might not have been much good with letters but he was, however, very used to wounds; he looked up, met Sister Liese’s blue-green eyes and raised his brows in query. She gave a quick nod.
Turning to the abbess, Josse said, ‘My lady, you may set your mind at rest regarding this man’s suffering. His death would have been as swift as that of the first man, caused by one deft stab into the heart. The cuts to the chest were done after death.’
‘After—’ Abbess Caliste put a hand to her mouth. ‘How can you be so sure, Sir Josse?’
‘Sister Liese, I believe, agrees,’ he said. The infirmarer muttered her affirmation. ‘Had the cuts been made into living flesh, there would have been massive loss of blood. The heart had ceased to beat before the damage was done.’
‘I see,’ said the abbess. Leaning close to Josse the better to see, she shook her head in puzzlement. ‘I feel I ought to know what those marks are, for in some way they seem familiar to me . . .’
It was easy to forget, Josse reflected, that Abbess Caliste had quite an unusual past: left, as a child, on the doorstep of poor but kind and decent people, she had entered Hawkenlye as a girl and become one of its youngest ever fully professed nuns. Her origins, it had gradually emerged, were with the strange, mysterious folk who from time to time spent a few weeks or months in the Hawkenlye forest. Was it possible, Josse now won
dered, that she was remembering some arcane symbol that she had once known in another life?
‘Perhaps we should show the marks to others who might recognize them?’ Sister Liese suggested. ‘My lady, should I fetch parchment and writing materials, so that we might copy them?’
‘Yes, please do that,’ the abbess said. ‘You will find pieces of scrap vellum on my table, Sister, and also a quill; and my ink horn.’
Sister Liese hurried away, leaving Josse to uncover the third corpse. Apart from the fact that this man had been considerably younger than his two companions in death, other elements of his clothing and appearance were similar. All three looked as if they hadn’t eaten a decent meal in weeks.
This man, too, had died from a single stab through the heart.
Whoever killed them, Josse thought, assuming they had died by the same hand, had known exactly what he was doing. To kill one man thus could have been a lucky thrust that just happened to reach into the body and stop the heart; to dispatch three in the same way suggested a killer with a rare skill.
Which was, he acknowledged, a frightening thought.
He drew up the covering sheet, and he and Abbess Caliste stood either side of the third body. Neither spoke. He thought she was probably praying. After a short time, Sister Liese reappeared, carrying a small, rough-edged piece of parchment, a long, graceful quill, carefully sharpened, and a horn of ink.
‘Shall I copy the marks?’ the abbess asked Josse, taking the quill in her hand and dipping the tip into the ink.
‘Aye, my lady, if you will,’ Josse replied.
Sister Liese turned and bent over slightly, offering her back as a writing slope, and the abbess spread out the parchment. She leaned over the body on the central table, studying the symbols, and then, very carefully, she reproduced them. ‘Thank you, Sister,’ she murmured when she had finished, and the infirmarer straightened up. The abbess waved the parchment around to dry the ink, then handed it to Josse. ‘What do you think, Sir Josse? Have I made an accurate enough copy?’
He studied her work, looking repeatedly from it to the wounds on the chest and back again. As far as he could see, her reproduction was perfect. ‘A fine job, my lady,’ he said with a smile. He rolled up the parchment and tucked it away.
She nodded. ‘Have you any further need of the bodies?’ she asked. ‘Only, they had been properly buried and now have been exhumed; I think we should rebury them as soon as we can.’
‘I agree, my lady. I would ask only that we wait until Sir Gervase de Gifford has had a chance to view the dead men, but, since he said he would try to meet me here this morning, that should not mean too much delay.’
The abbess nodded again. ‘Very well. I will send word to Father Sebastian and ask if the burial may be performed as soon as he can spare the time.’
Josse was impatient to leave, for he had already decided to whom he would show the strange symbols. He touched a hand to the breast of his tunic, where the rolled-up piece of parchment crackled softly. But Abbess Caliste had offered to send for refreshments for him and, since he had undertaken to see Gervase this morning, there was little option but to accept.
They sat together in the abbess’s little room where, presently, Gervase joined them. Josse took him down to the room in the undercroft, where he viewed each body in turn, listening without response, other than the occasional nod, while Josse related his findings and conclusions. Back up in the abbess’s room, he and Josse downed mugs of spiced wine – very thin, quite acid wine, light on the honey and the spices, but then times were hard – and Gervase then turned to Josse.
‘Were the men buried immediately after they were killed?’ he demanded.
‘Aye, I’d say so, although it’s more difficult to be certain in winter, when there are no egg-laying insects around. But there was no sign of animal predation.’
Gervase gave a wry smile. ‘You mean, they’d probably been put in the ground before any hungry badger, fox or wolf had a chance to gnaw at them?’ As if belatedly remembering the abbess’s presence, he turned to her with a courteous bow and said, ‘I am sorry, my lady. I did not mean to be flippant.’
‘I know, Sir Gervase,’ she replied calmly.
He bowed again, then turned back to Josse. ‘And can you say how long they’d been in the ground?’
Josse knotted his brows in an intense frown. ‘There was some putrefaction, but not as much as I had expected. It’s been cold, of course, and that appears to slow the process down.’ He came to a decision. ‘The really harsh weather began after Christmas, and, had the men been killed and buried before that, the decomposition would be further advanced. I cannot be sure, Gervase, but my guess is that they were murdered and buried no more than a month or six weeks ago.’
‘We are now in mid-February,’ Gervase muttered, ‘so six weeks takes us back to the start of January.’ He was silent for a moment, clearly thinking.
‘Has that date some meaning for you, Sir Gervase?’ asked the abbess as the silence continued.
He looked at her. ‘Perhaps, my lady.’ He hesitated, then went on: ‘For some weeks in the final quarter of last year, there had been reports of a series of robberies and assaults on isolated houses. It seemed that whoever was perpetrating the crimes had been steadily moving southwards, reaching the area around Tonbridge – my jurisdiction – some time in December.’ He paused, frowning. ‘The assaults were all too often brutal, I am afraid to say. Old people attacked, battered and beaten, to persuade them to reveal where they had hidden their money and their valuables. One elderly widow, living alone, was forced to see her guard dog killed before her eyes, and then she was hit over the head repeatedly, until she was blinded in one eye. And all she had hidden away was half a mouldy cheese and a clipped penny.’
There was silence in the room. Then Josse said, ‘The assaults have now stopped?’
Gervase sighed. ‘No reports have reached me of anything since January. Either the perpetrators have moved on, or else—’
‘Or else they now lie dead in our undercroft,’ the abbess finished for him. Abruptly, she stood up, and Josse, noticing how the power in the room shifted as she did so from the sheriff to her, thought anew what a quietly strong and authoritative woman she had become . . .
But she was speaking, and he made himself listen.
‘. . . any real likelihood we shall discover the identities of the three men, Sir Gervase?’ she was asking.
‘Very little, my lady, if they are indeed who we believe them to be, for they are not local,’ he said. ‘You wish, of course, to have them taken away for burial, I know, and—’
‘They can be buried in the Hawkenlye graveyard,’ she interrupted. ‘Sir Gervase,’ she went on, her tone softening, ‘in the absence of certainty in this matter, we should leave judgement to a higher authority. I will ensure that such details of the men that we have are recorded, in case anyone should ever come looking for them. Then our priest will bury them, and we shall all pray that the Lord has mercy on them.’
‘It is highly likely that they are all three guilty of grave crimes, my lady abbess,’ Gervase said, his face stiff.
‘If so, then they have already paid by their deaths,’ she replied implacably. ‘If they are innocent, then they deserve our compassion and our prayers.’
She appeared, Josse reflected, to have covered either possibility more than adequately. Amused, despite himself, at Gervase’s obvious discomfiture, he suppressed a smile.
The sheriff was bowing again to the abbess, taking his leave. ‘If there is anything further I can do for you in this matter, my lady, or, indeed, in any other, you have only to summon me,’ he said.
She bowed in return. ‘Thank you, Sir Gervase.’
He nodded briefly to Josse, muttered his thanks, and then swept out of the room. Josse could hear his footsteps pacing quickly away.
‘Have I offended him, Sir Josse?’ the abbess asked softly. ‘Would he have had me judge and condemn those three men, refusing them Christian bu
rial and the hope of resurrection, even though we cannot be certain they are guilty of the crimes Sir Gervase described?’
‘If he is offended, then the fault is his and not yours,’ Josse replied. He went over to her and took her cold hands in his; he had known Caliste a long time, and he hoped she would not mind the small intimacy. ‘You are quite right, my lady—’ he let go of her hands – ‘and it is not for us to judge.’
She nodded, her expression relieved. ‘Thank you,’ she said simply. ‘What a friend you are.’ Then she stood on tiptoe and placed a soft kiss on his cheek.
Riding back up to St Edmund’s Chapel on its rise above the abbey, Josse could still feel the imprint of that kiss. Reflecting how nice – how unusual – it was to have a woman be tender to him, resolutely he put Abbess Caliste out of his mind and turned his attention to what lay ahead.
He tethered Alfred to a tree and strode over to the little cell. The low door had been propped open and a thorough wash-down of the ceiling, walls and floor had obviously been carried out. Now, Gus was busy erecting three simple, narrow cots against the far wall of the cell, while Helewise, her granddaughter and Meggie, sleeves rolled up and their gowns covered by voluminous white aprons, busied themselves organizing the stores they had brought on to the set of shelves inside the door. Three neat piles of bedding sat on a mat on the grass, waiting until Gus had finished.
All four greeted Josse with happy faces. He noticed that Little Helewise already had more colour in her cheeks and, for the first time since she had arrived at the House in the Woods, she was smiling.
He decided it was time to swallow his hurt and resentment, and wish them well. ‘The weather looks set to improve,’ he said, standing back to observe their handiwork, ‘which must surely indicate that your endeavours are blessed.’
Meggie came up to him and linked her arm through his. ‘We’ll set the hearth stones back in place as soon as the floor’s dry,’ she said, ‘and I’ve already collected kindling and firewood enough for today. We’ll be snug as fleas in a blanket by nightfall!’