by Mike Ashley
“In disgrace,” the prince said.
I nodded. “I knew Luis from when he came and introduced himself as being the second son of a noble family from the neighbourhood of Caminha . . .”
“Which is a town on our border with Spain, now on this side, now on that through the centuries. But now on ours.”
I opened my mouth. “If you know . . .” I said.
“I do not know exactly,” he said, his voice gone even softer and acquiring the distant tones of a storyteller. “Luis Vilalonga always seemed different to me. He spoke with too careful a diction for a youth from that area. You, yourself, being from Porto, carry the accent of the region, but not all your words are precisely as I would expect them to be. Your mother is Castillian, is she not, Tiago?”
“My loyalties are all on your highness’ side,” I began, defending myself. “I am all Portuguese. My grandfather arranged my father’s marriage through his contacts as a cattle merchant. It does not mean . . .”
“I told you to cease, Tiago. I do not suspect you. And I know your father very well. One of my most ardent backers.” He smiled, a controlled smile. “I only mention it because your mother is Castillian and gave your name after an answered prayer to the Saint in Compostela. I don’t suspect you of feeling any loyalty to Castille as such, but would you, perhaps, have felt some loyalty to a young man of the same background? Was that what your note was about? Seeking to warn him that he might go without punishment?”
“Luis did not have my background,” I said, my voice rising, injured. “He was all Castillian. Probably noble. Certainly educated. He sometimes slipped and mentioned names of villages and people, names I’ve heard my mother mention, but which wouldn’t come naturally to a Portuguese nobleman.”
The prince nodded. “I’d noticed so too. I pay more attention to those young men than you think, Tiago. After that incident with the Gran Canary that both Portugal and Spain claimed, a case which is still before the Holy Father’s tribunal, I could do no less. It is quite possible the Spaniards are seeking to hinder us and I know they would like to beat us at our game. Find lands to enlarge their already large country. We must not allow that, else they’ll swallow Portugal. But what did you discover that solidified your suspicions?”
I shrugged. “My father went to Caminha. On business. I told him of Luis, and asked him to find out about his family. My father wrote me a letter back. There are Vilalongas on the outskirts of Caminha but no one such as Luis is known thereabouts. So I knew he had to be a spy. I could allow him to be arrested, and maybe ransomed for surely he was of noble family . . . Or I could warn him.”
“Granted that you were probably right, still I’d like to know what about Luis so interested you that you went through the trouble of even asking your father. And why you’d warn him.”
I took a deep breath. Here was frailty in a form my celibate master would never understand. “There was a girl,” I said.
“There usually is.”
I felt colour rise to my cheeks and started. “She’s not . . . She’s not . . .”
“Anyone your parents would allow you to marry?” He shook his head. “They usually aren’t.”
“Your Highness, I want you to understand –”
“Tiago. I am human and have lived in the world. I will grant you my own interests, my passion for the sea and for the lands beyond to which I hope we can take the light of our Lord have allowed me little time for lusts of another order. Still I know the power of all-consuming lust and youthful love.” He waved my objections away before I could voice them. “Though no one dare mention it now, I think you’re as aware as I am that my father was a bastard and not the only bastard son of his father.” He frowned at me. “So, who is this girl and in what way was she involved with Luis?”
She was younger than I. Probably all of seventeen. Blonde, as some women are, without resort to artifice. Exotic, particularly in these southern lands where all the beauties were dark haired and dark skinned.
Mid-afternoon, outside, she looked even better than she did by torchlight while helping serve at tables in her father’s tavern. Her hair was somewhere between a walnut shell and clear starlight. But her eyes were dark and hard. “He was just a boy,” she told the prince, and wagged her hips a little, as if she had hopes of seducing Prince Henry, too. “Well dressed and probably wealthy, but just a boy.”
The prince removed the tarnished silver locket from his pocket, opened it. Confronted her with her own lock of hair.
She smiled, pleased, like a cat with cream. “Well,” she said. “What does that mean?” and laughed. “It was just a little bit of hair. It did not hurt me. And he set such a stock by it.”
“You were not his then?” I asked. The words were out of my lips before I thought. The prince shot me a withering look, but she – Leanor-a-bela, Leanor the beautiful, as we called her, looked at me and shaped her lips to a very little smile.
“I am no one’s,” she said and tossed her curtain of fair hair.
But she wasn’t offended and had made no protest of her maidenhood. That meant . . . I felt suddenly nauseous.
Luis had bragged that he’d done it all with her, and I’d still wanted her. I knew how life could be for the poor. Doubtless, being the mistress of a rich man was better than being a poor man’s wife. I understood. It was all I, myself, could offer her. But her brazen acceptance of it, with no hint of regret for a more honourable condition, shocked me. “Luis said,” I said. “Luis said –” I could go no further.
But the prince understood. “Would your father have killed Luis to avenge your honour?”
Leanor’s eyes grew very large, startled. Then she threw her head back and laughed, the unbridled laughter of a mad woman. “My father doesn’t give this,” she showed a small, clenched fist, “for my honour. As long as he can sell me to a wealthy man, and as he’s well on his way to managing that, what Luis might brag of did not bother him.”
“I don’t know whether to condemn her or pity her,” the prince said.
We were walking back to his house under the blazing midday sun when the whole village was quiet and everyone asleep inside, escaping the heat.
He shook his head. “Am I to understand you talked to Luis about her, in church? And about what you’d found out about him? And you thought he’d left? As you wanted him to leave?”
“I wanted him to leave because I was afraid if he were arrested his family would ransom him. I thought his family . . . I thought he might then have taken Leanor with him to Spain and I’d never see her again.” I hesitated here, feeling foolish. “I did not talk to him in the church. I only wanted to tell him where to meet me later. The church was not a place to discuss something that . . . People might think what I was doing . . .”
“Was treason?” the prince supplied, but his voice was amused.
I sighed. “They might think it more serious than it was. I didn’t think Luis had learned anything that justified arresting him. Not yet.”
I saw the prince raise his hand.
“He’d been too busy with Leanor to do much spying,” I said in a rush. “So I told him I knew something about him and asked him to rent a boat from a fisherman and come and meet me in the cave of the magi, which is offshore and well known to all. People go there to pray or think, or for less licit purposes with local girls. I wanted to go there late at night, when it would be empty. It’s a good place because the splashing sounds of any other boat coming into it alert you to someone else’s presence. I wanted to convince Luis to leave or I would denounce him. I thought if he left, Leanor might consider me.” I felt myself blush at these words. “But Luis never came. I thought he’d just run.”
The prince nodded. “And now we’re to assume he was waylaid on his way to meet you. Perhaps by one of the many suitors of your fair lady. Don’t you know the name of at least one of them?”
“Pedro Aguila. The one who found the body. Leanor has been very close to him since Luis left.”
“It is pro
bably for naught,” the prince said. “But we’ll see Pedro.”
We found Pedro outside, tuning his lute under an olive tree. He looked up as we approached. “I thought you’d come to see me,” he said, as his fingers played with the chords, seemingly of their own accord. “I know you’ve talked to Leanor.”
“You’re close to her, then,” the prince said. “And she warned you we found out about your murdering Luis?”
Pedro looked surprised, then frowned and shook his head. “I didn’t murder Luis. I wouldn’t murder for Leanor, anyway. One like her in every village. Only the foolish and the innocent fall for her.” He gave me a malicious look. “Besides, she says her father is setting her up to be the mistress of an older man. He already has the gentleman bespoken and Luis told me it had all been decided a while ago. She’s a fine instrument, but I knew I’d not get to play her.”
“You talked to Luis. When?”
“The night he disappeared,” Pedro said. “We drank and sang in the tavern. I walked him to the boats. He said he was renting one, and going out on a fishing expedition. Don’t know what he meant, but I guess he died of it.” He looked at us, his face serene and self-satisfied. “Perhaps it was another woman.”
“Somehow I don’t think so,” the prince said. We were back on the road and walking towards the house of the fisherman who rented his two rowboats privately – to students who wanted to talk, or think – or seduce a wench – away from the boiling anthill that was the village. “Pedro walked him to the boats. So Luis intended to meet you. Something must have happened on the boat.”
The fisherman’s home was little more than a hut, set on the beach proper. The brightly painted boats sat beside it, where their owner had pulled them out of the reach of high tide.
The owner heard us approach and scrambled from inside the home. Somewhat overwhelmed by the prince’s presence, he gladly allowed us to look at the boats. And he gladly confirmed they’d both been rented a week ago. “First one to this gentleman,” he said, gesturing towards me. “Second to a taller, darker one. The other one must have returned it during the night but this gentleman only brought his in after matins had rung. I was awake then.”
The prince examined the two long, narrow vessels – one called My Loves and the other Good Hope. I’d rented My Loves, but they were identical. Both had enough space for two rowers to sit, facing each other, and then a good space between them.
Under each of the benches was a roomy storage space, filled with nets and dark blankets.
The prince tugged at blankets and nets with impatient hands. On the bottom of the Good Hope, he stooped to look at a stain, then called me over. The stain was dark and glossy and a bit of it was smeared up the side of the boat and over the edge to the outside. Blood. Dried blood.
The prince dug under a bench and came out with the nets. The nets had circular weights made of some heavy metal. Just large enough to fit a man’s hand, just large enough to take a man’s life. One of the weights had the same stain as the boat.
“Someone hid in that boat, that night, under one of the rowing benches,” the prince told me. “Someone who knew Luis was going to rent it. And, in the dark of night, a person, pressed under there, would look like no more than a bunched sail, a net, a bit of cloth. Who could have heard you talk to Luis, at the church?”
“No one,” I said. “We were alone. Just the two of us, in the silent church and a breeze whistling in, blowing the altar cloth.”
“Were you quiet?”
“I was quiet,” I said. “Luis was not quiet for long. He shouted and tried to tell me I had nothing on him and he had no reason to go to some blessed cave. But in the end he agreed to meet me.”
“Someone must have heard you. Let’s see if we can find anything in the church.”
The church was cool and silent. Luis’ plain pine coffin, mercifully closed, stood before the altar. The altar cloth was still.
Just then the outer door of the sacristy opened. The sacristy was part of the church and yet set apart by a strong iron gate. And it had its own entrance from the outside, which permitted the priest to come in without walking amid the assembled congregation. Both the outer door and the gate were kept locked to prevent the theft of communion plate.
The altar cloth fluttered briefly. Then the door was shut gently and the fluttering stopped.
The priest appeared behind the gate, unlocking it with the key from the ring at his waist.
He bowed perfunctorily to the prince. “The burial mass will be this evening, Your Highness,” he said, assuming we’d come to enquire about Luis. “Frankly, the sooner he’s buried the better. I’m still not sure why you think he didn’t kill himself. He was such a low boy, always boasting of seducing women.” He spoke with withering disdain but his mouth closed hard, in anger, and his eyes flashed with aggrieved ire.
The prince took a deep breath. “Which is why you killed him,” he said, firmly.
The priest opened his mouth, but said nothing.
“You killed him because he seduced the tavern keeper’s daughter, after whom you’d lusted for a while. You meant to make her your mistress, but you were not willing to share her.” The prince lifted his hand, silencing the priest before he could speak again. “You were in the sacristy, just closing the back door or just opening it, I don’t know, and you overheard Tiago and Luis talking. You hid and stayed quiet. Only the fluttering altar cloth betrayed that the door was open. That night you followed Tiago and, after he took one boat out, you hid in the remaining boat. With your dark habit, in the night, you’d look like an old blanket, like the fishermen keep under there. When the boy was far enough from shore, you hit him hard, with the weight from a net. And then you dropped him overboard, but not so fast that the bottom of the boat escaped being covered in blood. You were not smart enough to put weights on the corpse. You never thought anyone would think of anything but suicide.”
The priest took a deep breath, like a drowning man. He went so pale his lips looked grey. “Sorcery,” he said at last. “Only sorcery could have revealed all that to you. You’ve consorted with infidels too much. I did only what was good and holy. I could not let him go around bragging of what he did to her. She was too good for him. Too innocent. Too gullible. She was –”
Only then did he realize he’d given himself away. He made an attempt at running. But the prince was faster and stronger.
“You see,” Prince Henry said, sitting behind his desk, while I perched on the three-legged stool in his paper-choked scriptorium, “I realized that the church has only one narrow front door and no windows that open. The windows are solid panels of glass and none of the squares are broken. The only way the cloth could have fluttered was if the sacristy door had opened. And only the priest had the key.”
“But –” I opened my mouth in shock, took a moment to find the words. “The priest!”
“Priests are human too,” Prince Henry said. “And many of them do not choose the church of their own free will but are sent into the church by parents who do not wish to divide their land or their small fortune. And that young lady was clearly available for . . . other than marriage. The young man, Luis, was bragging of what he’d done with her. It was too much for Father Alexandre’s mind. He might never have done anything, but he heard you plan your rendezvous and he knew he could take his enemy alone, in the dark of night. I doubt his mind had much time to weigh on it. It was a crime of passion.”
The prince glanced over his shoulder at the narrow, high slit of a window beside him, and through it at the distant glimmer of the sea. “Ah, Tiago, one day we’ll navigate all the corners of the ocean and bring the light of reason to them all. In our maps, there will no longer be a space marked ‘Sea Of Darkness’. But I’m afraid that in the heart of man, the darkness shall always remain.”
The Stone-Worker’s Tale
Margaret Frazer
The following is the latest story to feature Dame Frevisse of St Frideswide’s Priory in fifteenth-century Oxfor
dshire. The character was originally created by the writing duo Mary Monica Pulver and Gail Frazer with The Novice’s Tale (1992), but the series has been continued by Gail alone since The Prioress’s Tale (1997). The series has now reached thirteen books. Gail has written other non-series stories of which “Neither Pity, Love nor Fear” from Royal Whodunnits won her the Herodotus Award in 2000.
When Dame Frevisse had last been in St Mary’s church at Ewelme, it had been a quiet place, its brief nave divided from its side aisles by graceful stone pillars, the chancel and high altar remote beyond a richly painted wooden screen topped by a gilded crucifix and saintly statues. Now, its quiet, ordered peace was gone. Near the high altar the south aisle was given over to scaffolding, stone dust, and workmen. The summer morning’s heavy sunlight poured through the hole in the wall that would someday be a stone-mullioned window of richly stained glass. The crane, with its ropes and pulleys, still straddled Lady Alice’s stone tomb from yesterday, when it lowered into place the tomb’s slab top, complete with a full-length carving of Lady Alice lying in prayerful repose, gazing serenely up to heaven.
Presently, though, Lady Alice was anything but reposed, serene, or prayerful. She was angry and not bothering to hide it as she demanded at her master mason, “He’s gone? Simon Maye is gone? Just gone? He was here yesterday and now, like that, he’s gone?”
Master Wyndford, in open distress, holding one arthritic-twisted hand against his chest, rubbing at the back of it with the fingertips of his other hand in an agitated, uneven way, not seeming to know he was doing it, betraying how over-set he was by her anger, said, “Yes, my lady. In the night sometime it must have been.”