The Abbey Close

by Steven Veerapen

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A vegetable lamb, sir, o’ Tartary. Have you not heard tell o’ them from the sailors?’ His eyes lit up at Danforth’s hesitance. ‘They say that in the land of the Tartars there is a living creature that resembles a lamb, white and fleecy and all innocence. It grows from a seed, as a plant might, and is attached all its poor life to the ground from which it sprang by a strong root – like a mother’s birthing cord fixed to her bairn. Wolves come for the lamb, and he cannot run because o’ that root. But even if the wolves do not come, the pretty wee thing can go nowhere, and instead must consume all that is within his reach. When there is no more pasture left around him he starves, even without the wolves to trouble him.’

  ‘An extraordinary tale, Master Barber, though I think there is less meat to it than there is to this unnatural lamb itself. And people say the Abbey is such a creature, assailed by wolves and devouring the land around it until it withers?’

  ‘Oh,’ he shrugged. ‘Some men lean towards such fancies.’

  ‘I am glad, then, that you are not such a man.’

  Danforth nodded his thanks silently and then stepped back into the rain, turning up the wynd and back up the sloping High Street towards the Oakshawside. Music, laughter, and the image of Logan the gaoler harassing a dead girl chased him.

  10

  They awaited their appointment in Danforth’s room. Martin made free with the mattress, whilst Danforth sat at the desk, poring over the Cardinal’s letter. Between the neat lines of script he sensed anxiety. This was an unpopular war, and the Cardinal was blamed for encouraging it. If England should be victorious .... He turned his mind from the possibility. He had been a youth himself when King Henry had turned England on its head. Fleeing a land where no man trusted the next had been a relief. Now Scotland was his home. There would be nowhere else to run.

  ‘Your mattress is no more comfortable than mine.’ Martin’s voice drifted over, querulous.

  ‘I suppose not. It is little wonder our hostess cannot make a success of this place, offering such meagre hospitality. I wonder she makes her rents, in her husband’s name. It would be better for her if the old devil had died and let her succeed to it as a widow, an old relict.’

  ‘Perhaps. Do you think,’ he ventured, ‘that this missing monk, whom the Prior would make a ghost, that he might’ve been the one who took the virtue of the Brody girl and left her name mud?’

  ‘It is possible. I cannot say. At present, all is conjecture.’

  ‘And our friend the barber gave you nothing new?’

  ‘No.’ He had decided against telling Martin that the barber had insinuated that Logan had had some interest in the girl. He had started to dislike the boy’s fascination with the dead girl. In fact, he had begun to wonder about its nature. It had suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea if Martin had a young lady of his own in mind to marry. He had made it a point never to pry, even in his own mind, into the private lives of his colleagues. He would never have dreamed of doing so. Yet now he wondered if the boy had lost some sweetheart – if perhaps that might account for his interest in another dead young woman. ‘And I should thank you in the future not to speak so freely of me or our employment to strangers.’

  ‘What strangers? We’re guests here and seek friends. If people know who we are and grow accustomed to us, they’ll be more inclined to speak to us. You must learn the value of openness. People, Mr Danforth. You have to treat them like you’d like to be treated. Like friends.’

  Danforth made a little moue of distaste at the word. ‘Wise men trust no one with even the least information. Yes, even those who seem to be friends,’ he said, raising an objecting hand. ‘Only fools reveal their knowledge of any suspect matters to a smiling face. My lad, I would not trust you in this business had you not been stuck fast to me like a limpet since coming into the west. Ah, it is no matter. The barber said nothing. I am more wary of this spirit monk.’

  ‘But how can it be that a man can disappear, be written out of the history of the place?’

  ‘That is easier to answer. The Prior need not name him in the accounts, nor subscribe his name to the Tack. Burn all papers naming him. He might only be found out if someone speaks of him.’

  ‘Then we’re lucky that someone has.’

  ‘Quite.’ Danforth sighed. Disappointment seemed to build upon disappointment. If the Prior had been corrupted, the corruption of his order would follow. ‘A silent order that has such monks in it. What a world.’

  ‘What troubles you, mon ami?’

  ‘By my truth, I do not like the suspicions that breed in my mind, Martin. I would this matter was resolved, and not to the detriment of that holy place. Yet I cannot now think it otherwise.’

  ‘The truth, as ugly as it might be, must be got at,’ said Martin. ‘Would you have the girl’s father hanged and the matter closed, as the Prior hopes, when you entertain doubts of his guilt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then we must meet this fellow and hear what news he has.’

  ‘That I know. Come, I can find no comfort in sitting here. Let us stretch our legs a little. The hour draws near.’

  ‘Ah, you can’t stand too much of my company yet?’ Martin smiled, and Danforth rolled his eyes, standing up from the desk and stretching.

  Downstairs they found Mistress Caldwell, making a desultory effort to tidy the inn. She rounded on them immediately. ‘It’s late, sirs; are you leavin’?’

  ‘Only to take the air, mistress.’

  ‘You’ll find a lot of water in it.’

  ‘I find it refreshing,’ said Martin. ‘I like my air with water and food, not dust and hunger.’

  ‘It’s late for business,’ she persisted, her eyes eager for gossip. ‘Is there somethin’ in the wind of the army, or of those matters touchin’ the Cardinal’s honour? Is it true right enough that you’re engaged in this business of Brody? You think the man innocent, perhaps? The talk of the burgh is that he claims innocence, though we each know of his treatment of the wean. He did it, you mark me.’

  ‘Mistress, you might tend to your own affairs,’ snapped Danforth. His left eyelid was twitching insistently. Too many people had irritated him today. ‘And leave off that of others. Your husband may be absent, but that does not give you license to cluck your tongue, nor to turn it to the questioning of men. Cease your prattling, or else we might report it to the Town Council.’

  Mistress Caldwell bowed her head and then turned on her heel, stomping back into her private quarters. ‘That was hard,’ said Martin. ‘She’s already a sour, melancholic creature.’

  ‘And was she not deserving of it? She is little better than the Clacher crone.’ But Danforth already felt guilty. He was growing irascible, he knew. He tried never to speak roughly to women, even when he felt they warranted it. But to abuse a sad creature like Mistress Caldwell was the tactic of a bully, and he did not like it.

  ‘You know what the Cardinal says?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Women are either all sugar or all shite. I’ll give you three guesses which she is.’

  ‘You should know better than to listen to his Grace when he is in a jesting mood,’ said Danforth, biting his tongue.

  They left the inn and took the High Street towards the market cross. The rain had ceased. The darkness of the night encroached upon the few lights that peeped out from windows and shutters like solitary beacons warning of a hopeless battle. For the first time Danforth understood the notion of darkness falling: it seemed it was pressing down on the earth, and carried in it a glittering, crystalline frost. Still there persisted the roar of the swollen gutters and the river itself, risen high on its banks. Brother James was waiting for them, staring out over the bridge at the Cart, a black figure against the black of the night. The lanterns that stood covered on either side of the Bridge Port cast a slight glow upon him. His youthful face wore a pensive, pinched look. When he saw them coming he stepped back, and drew them with a gesture into the deepe
r darkness on the inside of the Bridge Port, where its rough, undressed columns blocked the lanterns.

  ‘The river is high,’ said James. ‘The rocks lethal. It is quite frightening to look over. A fall would be death.’

  ‘I do not doubt it.’

  ‘Well, Brother, what news draws us here?’ said Martin. ‘What of this missing monk?’

  ‘First, bless you, bless you for coming, sirs. I feel I might trust you. You have honest faces, Godly faces.’

  ‘Thank you, Brother. But this monk?’ prodded Danforth.

  ‘He was a friend of mine, sirs.’ James kept his voice just loud enough to be heard over the crashing of the water against the bridge supports. ‘He was not much younger than I, though only recently out of the novitiate. Brother Hector was his name, and before that Hector Watson, an orphan of lesser burgesses. He attended the school. An orphan, like me...’

  ‘And what was the nature of this youth?’ asked Danforth.

  ‘He was a devout lad, sir, strong and athletic. He was, I think, not made for learning and the order, yet he had a sharp mind that shaped him for learning. Or so the Prior thought. He was ... not satisfied with the novitiate, required always to remain in the kitchens watching the food being prepared, then left alone in his private room to study. He was lost, sir. Myself, I accepted a new mother in the Church, a new father in the Abbey. He could not.’

  ‘Did he have converse with Kate Brody?’ said Martin, his eyes hungry. Brother James nodded his eyes downcast.

  ‘They fancied themselves to be in love, and wished to run away together. Until the girl’s body was found, I suspected that they had succeeded, and there an end to it: they escaped to begin some hard life afresh. I prayed for them, that they might be forgiven.’

  ‘They just walked out of the gates of the Abbey?’ asked Danforth.

  ‘No, sir. The girl returned home after her day’s labour. Brother Hector was in our company, his manner quiet ... in the morning he was gone. We rise early, sir, for matins. He was gone by then.’

  ‘Gone? But the gates are locked at night. The Prior said so.’

  ‘So they are. But he was gone all the same. He did not get out that way.’

  ‘And do you think,’ pressed Martin, ‘that the father, that Brody might have discovered them as they made their flight, and killed the girl?’

  ‘Brody?’ asked Brother James. ‘The man is a weakling, a nothing. He beat Mistress Brody mercilessly, until she could take no more. I think it would have been more likely that Brother Hector – that Hector – would have knocked him on the pate if he tried to stop their escape.’

  ‘Then, in your opinion, Brother,’ said Danforth, ‘what is the solution?’

  ‘I know not. I know only that if the girl is slain and her body spat up by the river, it is as like that Hector suffered the same fate, yet was less fortunate in having his body returned for proper Christian burial.’

  Danforth’s mind worked quickly. ‘What you suggest, Brother, is that someone did not want this amoral pair escaping, and perhaps bringing censure on the Abbey if their crime was uncovered. What you suggest is that someone of the order might have stopped the pair with violence.’ James only looked at them levelly. ‘I cannot credit this. No scandal could be so great that any man of the Church would bury it in blood.’

  ‘I cannot say, sir. I have heard nothing. Yet the Prior will not speak of Brother Hector, and conducts himself as though the lad never existed. We each live in fear of breathing his name. And since the discovery, there is greater terror amongst us that one of our own has some knowledge of the crime, and the Prior content to let a man hang who is too stupid, witless and poor to make any case for himself. You gentlemen, it is said, have some authority, yet not over our house. Still you might bring this matter to the Cardinal, to the king.’

  ‘Have you anything further that might aid us,’ asked Martin. ‘Anything, no matter how little you attach to it?’

  ‘I cannot think, sir. Only that there might yet be answers in the river, if the rains have not swollen it so that it has carried them beyond your discovery. I would have justice, sir, for my friend as well as for the girl. I would have the light of truth shone.’

  ‘As would we all, Brother,’ said Martin. ‘What happened, though, to your hand?’ The monk looked down in confusion.

  ‘I cut it.’

  ‘An unfortunate mishap.’

  ‘I am prone to them,’ he shrugged. ‘I cannot fight back. I must return to the monastery.’

  ‘Thank you for your help, Brother James.’

  ‘Peace be with you,’ said James, inclining his head. He took a few steps backwards before turning and heading back towards the Abbey’s gates.

  Danforth threw back his own head, inhaling the cold night air. At every turn things seemed to get further tangled, everyone holding their own secrets and protecting their own interests. What unity could there be in such a world? The unpleasant memory of London came to him, the fear and suspicion, the divisions and attacks, the abuses accused and the abuses carried out in the name of correcting them. Smoky streets, men whispering in alleys, midnight raids. The thought of his adoptive land following the same crooked path made him shiver.

  ‘There’s no question of our dredging the river,’ said Martin. The pensive look Brother James had worn had transferred to his face as he stared moodily over the Cart. Below, the water tumbled and frothed. Two swans, flashes of purer white against the white foam, stood out amongst the reeds, semi-distinct in the darkness. ‘And should we find a second body, it will be one more crime levelled against that miserable creature in the Tolbooth.’

  ‘And can we be sure of a second body, of the corpse of a fugitive monk slain alongside his quean?’ asked Danforth. Martin turned to him, full of curiosity. ‘I do not think we can. Did you hear that young Brother’s claim – this Hector was a strong and athletic youth, as like to knock a man’s pate as otherwise.’

  ‘I did. What does it signify to you?’ Martin’s gaze had turned sharp.

  ‘Only this: we have a murdered woman and a father likely incapable of the act, who in any case pleads innocence. We have also a strong youth, with the means and brawn to do the deed, who has himself vanished. It might be that this Hector was of a violent nature, and lured the girl to her death for his own pleasure, with no intention of marriage in some foreign clime. It may be that he regretted breaking his vow, or being shackled to the poor wench, or both, and slew her himself, running afterwards.’

  ‘There is that possibility,’ conceded Martin. ‘But somehow the tale becomes more tragic if the girl was killed by her lover, by the man she hoped would give her release from a hard life, you know? Yet it’s also possible that someone connected with the Abbey slew them both, as this young fellow suspects, so that their transgressions would be buried and their names erased with their lives.To be honest, I thought it strange that Brother James should speak against his Prior so.’

  ‘Did you, Mr Martin? Might not any man speak against his master?’

  ‘I’ve never heard you speak against the Cardinal. And you can’t say you’re pleased hearing him speak like that. Yet maybe our friend there had a liking for young Kate himself. A young man’s a young man, whether he puts on a black cowl or not.’

  ‘What a track your mind drives upon. He may be only a young man full of principles and worry. And by my truth I do not like either. Bringing the Abbey and its brothers into the matter adds complication, and none of it to the good of the Church. With Kate Brody dead, either we have a runaway monk with blood on his hands, or a dead monk and his killer connected with the Abbey. I see no good in either. We must be grateful to young Brother James, at least, for being a friend, for not sealing his lips to us as others do.’ He crossed his arms and again threw back his head. ‘It is as you said, sir. The truth must be got at, no matter how ugly.’

  Martin stared for a moment, and then smiled. ‘Let’s get at it then.’ Without another word, be inclined his head in the direction of the Abbey
, and then began sauntering towards it.

  ‘What are you doing? Martin, come back here!’ Martin did not break his stride. In frustration, Danforth balled his fists and pressed them against his neck. But he followed.

  The Abbey gates were still open, though James had disappeared. Martin strode through, as though he did not care whether he was seen. A short distance behind him, Danforth tried to blend into the dark, pressing himself against the open gate and sliding into the precinct. Martin, to his relief, avoided the open path and squelched across the grass towards the collection of buildings beyond the church. He paused, as though judging where to go, and then slipped between two of the smaller ones – the bake-house and a shorter, ancient stone pile with an old-fashioned oaken door. The rotten smell drifted from it.

  ‘What is this madness? You cannot think to spy on the monks?’ whispered Danforth.

  ‘You want to know if this Hector escaped the Abbey, don’t you?’ said Martin. ‘Or if he’s being sheltered here, or something. I had an idea about another route out.’

  ‘I ... I do not care. Come, let us get out of here before they lock us in for the night.’

  ‘What did that odd little monk say? “He did not get out that way.”’ Did his tone strike you as odd?’ Danforth thought back, cursing. Brother James had said that, but he had not taken note of his tone. Even when it was possible to remember what someone said, it was rarely easy to recall exactly how they had said it. Perhaps Martin had caught something he had missed.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So there’s another way in and out of this place, and I think I can guess what it is.’