When all was ready the service began. As this was Maynus’s church it was only fitting he should lead. Prayers for the dead were followed by a spoken mass at the climax of which the forearm of Saint Philip the Apostle was ceremoniously brought from its reliquary and shown to the people. The effect was profound. Many knelt, others crossed themselves while some wept tears of joy. All surged forward to be a little nearer the sacred relic and to breathe in the vapours of its power - it’s not often the town’s holy protector is so conspicuously exposed to public scrutiny.
Once the saint had been settled on the altar top Maynus sat down. Now Abbot Samson rose to address the assembly beginning with a blessing:
‘I offer my own prayers for the souls of these two departed people. May God bless them and cause his face to shine upon them.’
We all joined in with the Amen.
We waited to hear the great man speak, the air crackling with anticipation of what he might say. I was hoping I might at last hear what all this was about.
He surveyed the sea of faces before him, then began:
‘My children. You know why we are gathered here today. The tragic events of the past few days have filled me with heart-felt regret. I am conscious that they have come about since our arrival in Acre…’
Behind him came a gruff “hear hear” from Lady Isabel’s husband, Sir Gilbert de l’Aigle.
‘…which is why I intend to put matters right and relieve you of this troublesome burden.’
‘How?’ Another voice, this time from the back of the nave.
Samson acknowledged it. ‘I will tell you. As you can see the cause of your anguish has been recovered.’ He indicated Ralf’s remains. ‘The creature is now subdued and we intend to remove it entirely from your midst and ourselves along with it. After today you will have no more to fear from the Revenant and no further discomfort from us.’
‘How do we know the creature won’t return?’
Samson had clearly been anticipating this question: ‘I assure you, my friend, the creature’s powers have been neutralized and it is now harmless, by the grace of God and Saint Philip. But to be certain we will take other precautions. When we leave Acre we intend to do so by a circuitous route.’
This was news to me and caused a good deal of muttering among the assemblage.
‘What good will that do?’ came another voice. There were murmurings of agreement among the crowd.
‘It will confuse the creature so that even if it does recover its former strength it won’t know which way is the right way to return.’
‘So it may be let loose in the fields?’
‘I assure that will not happen,’ Samson insisted. ‘We go this very day, and in so doing we thank you for your forbearance and hope that when next we return it will be in happier times. I leave you with the blessings of Saint Philip and Saint Edmund both of whom I know will watch over you.’
That was it. He had finished. I must say I was disappointed but I could see why he would want to keep his address as short as possible. The questions coming from the people were rousing feelings which might spill over if he’d gone on any longer. As he sat back down I saw the perspiration on his forehead.
‘Precautions father?’ I whispered.
‘Have faith brother,’ he whispered back.
Now Lord William got to his feet and as he did so the congregation instantly hushed. Like Samson he swept his eye round the assembled ranks of townsfolk but I got the impression it was more of a warning glance than a conciliatory one:
‘I thank the lord abbot for his reassuring words,’ he began softly. ‘We can only hope that with his departure life will return to normal. But I cannot forget that a week ago we were a contented, happy town. Now women hide in doorways and children are afraid to play in the street. Meanwhile the crops wither in the fields and cows go un-milked in the pastures.’
It was all a great exaggeration, of course. Few children would be playing out in the kind of weather we’d been having lately, nor were there any crops in the fields at this time of the year to wither. But he had a point: normal life had been disrupted for which we were largely to blame.
He held up his hand for silence. ‘However, we cannot allow such matters to dominate our thoughts. There is another monster looming, one that will pose an even greater threat not just to us here in Acre but to the entire realm of England. I speak of course of that deceitful viper, King Philip of France!’
At the mention of Philip’s name there was some hissing and murmuring. One or two of the French monks began to look a little uncomfortable.
William now began to pace across the width of the aisle. ‘Even as I speak the tyrant’s forces are massing on our borders. But you need not tremble my friends for I bring you good tidings. Within a few days my brother knights here assembled and I are to depart for Normandy to join a great host summoned thence by our sovereign lord the king and together we will smash the enemy,’ which he demonstrated by smashing one fist into the other. ‘So let us leave behind our trivial concerns and make ready for the fight. In the name of the king!’ and he punched his fist into the air.
Now I could see why Lord William’s three brothers-in-law were here for while he was speaking they had risen to their feet and surrounded him in a show of military unity. The aging Gilbert de l’Aigle glowered around the congregation, took out his sword which he had concealed beneath his tunic and waved it aloft, to the consternation of Prior Maynus.
‘What do we say, lads? Hoorah for Lord William and down with King Pup!’
This got the expected response:
‘Hoorah for Lord William!’
‘To France!’
‘For King John!’
There followed a spontaneous outburst of applause.
I must admit Lord William’s words did lift the spirits. Even I was swept along and very nearly applauded too. After so many days of gloom and uncertainty it was good to have an enemy we could see at last. Ralf and the Revenant were all but forgotten. Many of the young men of the town wanted to volunteer on the spot. They crowded around the clerk who had miraculously appeared with a scroll and a quill to take names. Gilbert de l’Aigle beamed and strutted up and down the line thumping boys on the back as they made their mark:
‘That’s the spirit! Good man! Brave fellow! Well done!’
I, too, received an invitation but it was from the Lady Adela. She was holding something out to me: a purse of money.
‘It’s for you, brother. In compensation for your puppy.’
‘Thank you, my lady. But really there is no need.’
‘Then gift the money yourself in alms.’ She lowered her voice. ‘You haven’t forgotten your promise have you?’
Actually, with all that had gone on over the past two days, I had forgotten it.
‘I will do my best, my lady.’
She nodded. ‘And now I have another message for you - from my mother, the countess. She wishes to see you.’
I looked round to see where Samson was but he was locked in conversation with Lord William. He surely would not give me permission.
I turned back to Adela. ‘When?’
‘Now.’
To my disappointment there was no sign this time of Simone. Instead I was escorted by the same steward who had waited on the countess in the falconry - and not to the falconry this time but into the main edifice of the castle. No ceremony either, only the briefest of body-searches to make sure I wasn’t concealing a weapon and then up to the lobby on the first floor where the countess was waiting for me. She seemed nervous, not at all the self-assured matriarch I’d met on my first visit. My physician’s impulse was to ask what the problem was for there surely was one. I came to the conclusion that she simply had too much on her mind: her husband’s illness, the disquiet in the town, and of course her son’s impending departure to war in France, for despite the discord between her and Lord William no mother can relish the prospect of a son going into battle.
‘Thank you for coming, Brot
her Walter.’
I bowed. ‘Always a pleasure my lady.’
‘I doubt that. You don’t yet know why you’re here.’
She began pacing the floor. She was clearly in some considerable mental turmoil. After a moment she seemed to recover enough to continue:
‘Master Walter, I won’t mince my words. You suspect the abbot of misdeeds and me of colluding in them.’
I must admit her boldness shocked me. ‘My lady, I assure you -’ I began but she waved me silent:
‘None of your politing, this is not the time. I have brought you here to tell you you are to drop your suspicions and obey the abbot without argument.’
I bridled at that. For a week I had been biting my tongue and keeping my thoughts to myself but I could do so no longer. It poured out of me like bile from a sponge:
‘My lady, you wish me to speak plain. Very well, I will: I do indeed suspect the abbot of unspeakable crimes and you of some collaboration in them. I have tried not to believe it, to make excuses, to find alternative explanations. But as the days have progressed I have become more and more convinced that my suspicions are correct. Most recently they have been corroborated, partially at least, by others who will remain nameless but whose word I have no reason to disbelieve. These are matters for higher authorities than me. The only thing that has stopped me acting on them is my knowledge of the man. But that may change once we have returned to Suffolk.’
She listened to my bold little speech in silence. By the time I finished I was breathless. For a moment she said nothing but just looked at me blankly. I flatter myself that the great lady had never been spoken to in quite such bald terms before. Now I was about to find out if I would live to tell of it.
For a moment she said nothing as though devouring my words. When she did speak it was almost a whisper:
‘Now hear me, monk. Ever since you got here you have been asking questions, why you are here, why your learning has not been required. I can tell you now that the moment is fast approaching when your skills will indeed be put to the test. But the abbot fears that when that moment arrives your suspicions of him may cause you to hesitate which is why you must - damn!’
Fate sometimes takes a hand when we least expect it. All the while she was talking the countess had been pacing and nervously fidgeting with an object hanging from her belt. Now the thing had come unhooked and dropped to the floor with a resounding crack. As I stooped to pick it up it I saw that it was her personal seal. The figure it portrayed was of a much younger, slimmer Isabel with a falcon on her wrist and holding out her arms in a gesture of welcome. I realised that it was probably how she had looked forty years earlier when Samson was here last.
‘I’m afraid the bottom has broken off,’ I said handing it back, I noticed, with a trembling hand. ‘But I think it is still usable.’
She snatched the thing from me and signalled to the steward. ‘Bring him! Oh don’t worry,’ she said to me, ‘we are not going to the cellars - at least, not this time. I’m taking you to meet someone who I hope will dispel your doubts once and for all.’
The inside of the earl’s chamber was dark and hot with a blazing fire that provided the only source of both heat and light. Three ladies dressed in black with their faces veiled knelt around the earl’s bed mumbling prayers. Also in the room, almost unseen at the far end of the bed, was a little man dressed as a Franciscan friar.
‘This is Fra Ignazio,’ the countess introduced us curtly. ‘The earl’s physician.’
So, here was the reason I was never needed to examine the earl: an Italian doctor. Well, Siena was the world’s most renowned school of medicine and trumped even my own renowned school at Montpellier. The earl was certainly in good hands. Lady Isabel bent over the bed and mopped her husband’s brow with a damp cloth.
‘My lord, this is the monk I was telling you about.’
She beckoned me forward. I could see immediately that the earl must have had a massive trauma which had left him speechless and almost totally paralysed down the right side. I’d seen such cases before. Occasionally, depending on the severity of the cataclysm, some mobility or function of speech may return but I feared in the earl’s case the damage was too severe. Frankly I was surprised he was still alive and the fact that he was owed much to the dedication of his carers - and perhaps to his own determination.
As I came within range he grabbed my hand with his good left one and the grip was surprisingly strong. It was clear he wanted to tell me something and the effort took all his remaining strength. He could not speak so there was only one way he had to communicate: through the eyes. The earl’s eyes were intense and confirmed that the mind behind them was alert and active even if his body was not. What I read in them was plain enough. It was that he trusted his wife and desired me to do the same. Whatever had passed or had not passed between Isabel and Samson all those decades ago did not matter now. I was to do whatever they wanted. That was the message I took from Earl Hamelin’s eyes.
Part Three
The Return
Chapter 24
THE JOURNEY BACK
‘I wanna pooh!’
‘Get away from me you disgusting old man! Gilbert! Gilbert! Gilbert! There you are Gilbert. Why do you not answer when I call?’
‘Because I am not Gilbert. I keep trying to tell you master, I am Gerard. Gilbert died six months ago at -’
‘Yes yes I know, at Eye. Eye Priory. The priory of Eye. Eye-eye-eye. For the love of decency get Humphrey off me, will you? I’m at a critical stage in my work and I don’t want him dribbling over it.’
‘Brother Humphrey is constipated, master.’
‘Then for heaven’s sake give him something to relieve it. I recommend buckthorn. Or slippery elm. Dandelion boiled in vinegar if nothing else is available, but you need a lot of it. Best of all is senna. It’s an old Arab concoction - my brother Joseph used to swear by it. Loosen the stubbornist of bowels. It’s all in the pods, you see? Highly effective - but explosive, oh yes. You want to stand well clear. I have some drying in my laboratorium if you’re interested.’
‘I favour the more direct approach, master.’
‘Do you, indeed? Well I hope you remember to cut your nails first. Nothing worse than a sharp digit up your fundament.’
‘Humphrey doesn’t mind. He has a child’s memory and soon forgets. Your laboratorium, by the way, closed soon after you moved into the infirmary. It’s now a wood store.’
‘What’s that you say? Close my lab? You can’t do that! How am I to perform my duties? How am I to tend my patients? And what about my notes?’
‘You don’t have patients anymore, master. Brother Egelwin is abbey physician now. As for your notes - they were burned. Mould. Now, would you like some warm cinnamon milk with a piece of bread to dip in it?’
Burn my notes? How dare they! Years of work gone up in smoke. Well, if they are happy to burn my medical notes what might they do to this, my testimony?
I don’t trust that Gerard. There’s something not quite right about him. It’s the eyes. The mouth says one thing but the eyes another. My old tutor at Montpellier used to say something similar. Walter, he’d say to me, listen to what the patient says but always watch the eyes. He may be complaining about the belly-ache but really he suspects his wife is playing around with the butcher’s boy and that flaxen-haired cherub in the cradle is not his. Most of my colleagues wouldn’t agree, of course. Brother Egelwin for one. He belongs to the school that thinks it perfectly acceptable to make a diagnosis without ever seeing the patient, without being in the same room. Ridiculous! How is a man to get paid if he isn’t there in person to collect his fee?
Yes, the eyes can tell more than a thousand words. That was certainly true of earl Hamelin. The effort to communicate had exhausted him and I was quickly ushered away so that he could be ministered to by the countess and that Italian doctor. I should have liked to stay and help. I should also have liked to ask more of the countess, most especially concerning those d
ays so long ago when Samson was incarcerated at the priory. Something passed between the abbot and the countess in between time, I was sure of it. An alliance had been formed between them that endured over four decades. As to the true nature of that alliance, I was never able to establish for certain. Those who could shed light on that time fell away in quick succession soon after. The old earl died within a couple of months of my meeting with him and the countess not long after. Prior Maynus survived one more winter before he too was cold in his grave. It was as though a curse had descended upon the chief players in the drama to ensure their silence. Only Samson remained and he never mentioned it again.
Whatever the solution I did not have long to ponder it for hardly had I closed my eyes that night than they were abruptly opened again by the sounds of loud voices below my window. It was still dark outside but many torches lit up the yard. I opened the shutters to see it filled with monks and servants. A cart was being hauled up to the entrance and Clytemnestra was in the process of being harnessed to it.
‘You there!’ I called to the nearest man. ‘Is this the abbot’s transport?’
He shrugged and nodded towards the porch below me. Out of the shadows a shadowy figure emerged:
‘Brother Lambert. I should have guessed.’
He smiled his feline smile. ‘Good morning, brother. Yes, this is the wagon you and the abbot are to take.’
‘And are our guests aboard?’
‘Indeed. Do you wish to see?’
If he was offering, there was clearly nothing worth seeing. I declined his invitation - but on second thoughts:
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