The Abbey Close

by Steven Veerapen

  People were still milling about. Some were weeping, though most seemed unconcerned. They were safe from invasion. There were even some nervous giggles. ‘What,’ said Martin, shall we do now?’

  ‘I do not greatly care,’ said Danforth. There had come upon him the strange feeling that accompanies disasters – the desire not to think at all about it, but to talk endlessly about it.

  ‘Shall we see if the Prior knows more than those little rats?’

  Danforth turned and looked over the Bridge Port, his heart still racing. ‘You go to the Abbey, Mr Martin, and then meet me at the inn. Make purchase at their fine brew-house. Get cups. I would have a drink, Martin, if you would join me. I would have several drinks.’

  ‘Do you know what Eubulus said about strong drink, Mr Martin?’ Good alcohol always lent an impassioned intensity to his voice. He was in full flow.

  ‘I don’t. But then, I don’t know who You-bulla is? You-buss!’ Martin hunched over, laughing. ‘What a wee tit I am! Je suis un imbécile.’

  ‘Eubulus said, and I quote, the first three cups of wine are meet for the temperate: one to health; the second to love and pleasure; the third to sleep. After these, wise men go home. But we cannot go home, sir.’ They were each on their fifth cup.

  Martin had been to the Abbey brew-house. He had found Brother James there and purchased a jug of wine and two cups. James knew no more about the battle of Solway Moss than the baillies did, but he did know that no letter had come into the Abbey from the Cardinal. Thus, Martin had returned to the inn, ignoring the curious gaze of the distracted Mistress Caldwell, and brought the bounty up to Danforth’s room. Together they had discussed the imagined battle, the unfortunate necessity of remaining in town, and the Cardinal’s fortunes. Martin had even teased out Danforth’s opinion on the Cardinal’s other servants – ‘scoundrels!’, and his mistress – ‘shameless!’.

  ‘Here,’ said Martin, ‘what is the fourth and fifth cup?’

  ‘Fourth ... to violence.’

  ‘There’s been enough of that in this realm, enough in this burgh, even. The fifth?’

  ‘To uproar.’

  ‘God preserve us from that. And the next?’

  ‘To ...’ Danforth screwed up his face. ‘I ... I can’t recall. I know, but it won’t come. One cup goes to hurling furniture, though. This wine’s strong. Those monks know what they’re about.’ Martin barked laughter. ‘Peace, peace, you’ll disturb the hostess and the delicate host.’

  ‘I’m surprised,’ said Martin, ‘that the host hasn’t come up here to beg some from us. Looks fond of it.’

  ‘Aye, that’s true, right enough.’ A little silence fell as they drank. ‘I feel bad, Mr Martin.’

  ‘Arnaud, please. And little wonder, drinking like this. Don’t feel too steady myself, to be honest.’

  ‘No, it is ... it is a strange thing. I would not speak of it otherwise.’

  ‘If you weren’t enjoying the Abbey’s fruit, you mean. What’s on your mind, mon ami?’

  ‘I can’t escape this thought: that somehow this news, this great fright, the Cardinal’s woes ... that it’s my fault.’

  ‘That’s madness.’

  ‘Well, perhaps I don’t mean my fault. I ... but rather that I could have helped it to a better end.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You know, if I’d behaved in a different manner.’

  ‘Sir –’

  ‘Simon.’

  ‘You speak in riddles. You weren’t part of the battle. We’ve not seen his Grace in weeks.’

  ‘Aye, yet ... listen to this: I try to always count my beads before I sleep, to offer a fair number of prayers to the Virgin. Seven. Last night I neglected my duty, and so invited this ill fortune. Six, I got to. I hate six, unholy number. Tempting providence.’

  ‘Simon, last night the battle had been fought and lost already.’

  ‘Yet,’ Danforth persisted, ‘I didn’t do it, and today comes this news. I also haven’t yet made my pilgrimage to the Abbey church. And today comes this news. I haven’t found the murderer of this Brody lass, after the task has been given into my hands, and–‘

  ‘And today comes this news, aye, I see your theme.’ Martin shook his head in wonder. ‘How can it be that so sharp and rational a man can live by such superstition?’

  ‘If you think to mock me,’ said Danforth, swaying to his feet. ‘I shall leave, sir.’

  ‘This is your room, Simon. And I don’t mean to mock you, so calm it. But, if I might allow, this is borne of some desire to see a greater measure of ... like, well, of control, in greater things than anyone can control. You neglecting your rosary for one night no more caused bad news to come than ...’ His eloquence failed him. ‘Than anything else trifling. It’s a conceit to think it so, a strange fruit of the mind. Pray do me one thing, mon ami?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stop that kind of thinking.’ Danforth said nothing, but sipped moodily at his cup. ‘And as we bide in this damned burgh, we shall unmask the devil who walks amongst us. We need your mind clear, Simon, to find him. Not clouded by doubts.’

  ‘My mind’s always clear, clear as crystal. Here,’ he announced, abruptly shifting the subject. ‘Remind me some day to tell you about my little idea. On the ordering of the world.’

  ‘Only a little one?’

  ‘Little, aye, but on a great matter. The biggest.’

  ‘It’s not that thing about the world being a sick man, and God a physician, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said Danforth, jutting out his bottom lip. ‘Forget it. I’ll turn it into a little book one day, mark you. Layman’s book of course, mere scribbling. For the Cardinal alone to read, at his pleasure.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Martin pointed at the Book of Hours.

  ‘No. Don’t touch that.’

  ‘I’m nowhere near it, Jesus. What is it, a French book of filth?’

  ‘Don’t be a fool. It is nothing to do with you. My book is yet to be written. I’ll do it someday.’

  ‘do that, Simon,’ yawned Martin. ‘Great matters aren’t for me.’

  Though they did not throw furniture, their next cups saw Martin falling back into his own room, and Danforth sleeping folded on the floor of the garderobe, his arms around the vomit-flecked chamber pot.

  They did not speak the next morning, Danforth feeling too pale in the face to chance long discussion and debate, and worried still more about the state he had allowed himself to get into. He wrote, ‘DO NOT DRINK OF HARD WATER’ in his Book of Hours, and made ready to go to Mass. It was a Sunday, after all. Embarrassment flooded him. He had told Martin about his superstitious beliefs. He knew they were irrational, but he could not give them up. Even giving them up might invite misfortune. Fate would not take it well, having a thumb bitten at her.

  They met downstairs. To Danforth’s chagrin, Martin looked hale. Even in his youth, Danforth had never mastered the art of drinking late and appearing refreshed the next morning. Always his head swam and tilted. ‘Good morning, Simon.’ Martin’s voice was light and chirpy.

  ‘Morning. Mass?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Appearing from the private rooms, Mistress Caldwell gave them both an amused look. ‘You slept well, I trust, gentlemen?’

  ‘Passing well,’ said Martin. ‘How does your husband?’

  ‘No change.’

  ‘Then we’re sorry for it. Perhaps it will be that his condition improves. This realm and our people are due some fair fortune.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I pray it be so. Though it’s good news we’re not to be invaded, though all my buildin’ up the fence for nothin’.’

  ‘Better to be safe than sorry.’

  ‘Good day to you,’ said Danforth, tired of the conversation and already disgusted by the smell of the invalid. He stepped out into the morning light, and felt its shafts pierce. A sudden urge came upon him to walk down to the Cart and dive in, drinking deeply. Then the girl’s body came into his mind and his stomach twisted. Another pang
of pain shot through his head as he heard raised voices, not from the direction of the market cross, but the other end of the High Street, where it met the Well Meadow. He looked right, as the activity came into focus.

  The owners of the voices appeared. Baillie Semple was marching down the street like a Roman emperor, his protruding gut leading the way with pride. Beside him were chattering burgesses, undoubtedly men of the Town Council. Behind them were two servants carrying a makeshift litter, its lumpy content draped with a sodden blanket. Danforth’s mind returned immediately to that other sheet he had seen recently. His stomach lurched.

  At once the noxious smell from the inn caught him again, his throat constricting. A wave of nausea seemed to sweep over him, and the burgesses leading their gruesome train tilted. They resolved themselves for a second, and then tilted in the other direction. He took a step back towards the lintel, needing strength, needing solidity. As the world seemed to waver and fade in clarity and sense, he heard Martin’s voice calling, ‘Sir – Mr Danforth – Simon!’, but it seemed to be getting further away, whilst the ground, rain-splattered and muddy, grew closer and closer. He wondered briefly if he was dying and willed himself to reach for his medal of St Adelaide, but he was no longer in control of his limbs.

  17

  All was blissful blackness and peace. But sometimes the deep bells of the Abbey and the shriller chiming of the Tolbooth echoed. Then he saw Prior Walker standing in his office, pushing a young monk into the great fire and laughing. The flames danced higher in excitement. But suddenly they turned black, flared and went out. Danforth instead found himself staring into Tolbooth gaol cell, and there seemed nothing odd in the transition. The young monk had changed too – he had become Brody, shrivelled and curled up on cold coals. Danforth reached out to him, but he melted away, taking the cell with him. Nothing. Blackness, for an unaccountable time. Then shapes resolved themselves, and there was Alice, lying on a table, dead. ‘Alice Spivey, I am your husband. You have told me before you are not dead – rise up, prove it!’ he cried. On her wooden slab, her neck swivelled, and she turned a battered face to him.

  He jolted awake, and was conscious of being on a lumpy mattress, and that wasn’t fair. He had been in touching distance of his lost wife only seconds before and wished to be again. Arnaud Martin – damned fool – would press food and water on him, and the stuff would go halting down his throat, burning its way and hurting his stomach. If he was to die, then he wished that it would happen quickly, not leave him hanging on to the threads of life. Then he would sleep again.

  When he awoke properly he had no conception of the time or day – his room hung in a twilit netherworld. Then a thousand memories came flooding back, and with them a thousand more questions. The battle had been fought and lost. Had the Cardinal written him with a summons? Had the king made peace with his Cardinal? Had any more defamatory verses sprung up? Whose body lay covered on that litter?

  He sat up and let his eyes grow accustomed to the dim light. He felt well enough, if still exhausted. He sat there awhile, content to think, to ensure that no great matter had escaped him during whatever ailment had overcome him. He let his mind make a list, and when he could see it, he began to read through it, checking off the items that troubled him. He was interrupted by the door sliding open.

  ‘You’re awake, sir,’ said Mistress Caldwell. She stood in the doorway, her stout body a great grey wall against the dankness of the passage beyond. With her came the smell of medicine and sickness. ‘Thank God; I had thought perhaps some illness of my husband’s had infected you. Thank God it’s no’ so.’

  ‘Your husband, mistress – how does he?’ His voice was hoarse. She frowned, casting her eyes down.

  ‘There is no change. Still he doesn’t speak, and still he can’t tell me where he’s been. Rather he’s grown worse. He’s seldom awake. I fear he has no’ long left in this world.’

  ‘Then I am sorry for it.’

  She was carrying a bowl of broth – the first food he could recall ever having been offered by her. She brought it to him and he took the wooden spoon. He dipped it into the grey liquid and touched it to his lips. It was tasteless, like overboiled gruel. ‘This is good,’ he said. ‘Thank you for your kindness.’ She brightened.

  ‘Have you any news? What time is it?’

  ‘Near noon, sir. It’s Wednesday. The rain has ceased. You slept and were abed all Sunday, and Monday and Tuesday. We feared for your life.’

  ‘Wednesday! How can this be? What happened to me?’

  ‘I cannot say, sir. You fell by the doorway on Sunday morning. Mr Martin and I carried you up here. A fine young man, he is, and so fair.’ She blushed. ‘I entreated him to fetch that apothecary, but he’d have none of it. I think he dislikes the man, for all he eased Kennedy’s sufferin’. All day yesterday he tended to you. He put food in your mouth and attended to your toilet,’ she said without embarrassment. ‘It’s exhausted him.’ Danforth settled back on the mattress, ignoring the rest of the broth. So he had passed out and lain for days, being attended like a child by his younger colleague. He closed his eyes, shamefaced, whilst she prattled on. ‘I think Mr Martin is a good friend to you. Few people have such friends. I know I have none.’

  ‘What news is there, mistress?’

  ‘We’ve heard nothin’ new. The common bruit holds that the king’s retired to somewhere in the east. Possibly to see the queen. No one knows anythin’ of her Grace and her comin’ wean, although that itself is good news of a sort, isn’t it? But England and its forces, they’ve gone south, takin’ ... I don’t know, sir, some great lords and barons as prisoners. Some are sayin’ it’s the end of the world, or at least the end of Scotland, but nothin’ has changed round here.’

  ‘And there have been no more foul papers cast abroad in the streets? No words of infamy touching the Cardinal’s honour?’

  ‘None, sir.’

  ‘That is good. So, three nights I have lain insensible, and in the brain of your fine lodging rather than within the belly of a whale. Mistress Caldwell, what has become of that body? I saw Baillie Semple leading it from the Well Meadow. Did it belong to a monk?’ She wrinkled her face, confusion and interest wrestling for control of her brow. She must, thought Danforth, think him mad.

  ‘A monk, sir? Why a monk? No monks are said to be missin’. A scandal of that complexion would have quite flown through the burgh. The only mention of monks in these dark days has been that Brody accused them of takin’ his daughter in sin.’

  ‘Forgive me, I must still be soft in my mind, and thinking of nothing but Church matters. Who was found?’

  ‘That vile old wretch Brody.’ She looked almost happy, a wicked grin splitting her face.

  ‘How – slain?’

  ‘No, sir. Your mind does run crooked today. The drunken sot tried to escape the burgh after the Tolbooth, but found the river no’ so obligin’ as Mr Logan. He must have slipped and fallen, and was washed up by Snawdon, no’ far from the Nether Common where he threw his daughter. They brought him back through Under the Wood and down the High Street.’

  Danforth bit his lip, thinking. There might indeed lie an end to the unpleasant business. Certainly it would please the Prior, the baillies and the Town Council, who could now draw a line under the affair. A girl had been murdered, her father accused, escaped – proof enough of his guilt – and then drowned himself in the attempt. Such things happened. If Brody was innocent; if Brody had suspicions about the monastery and its brothers ... well, dead men could not tell tales. A minor embarrassment for the burgh officials might be swept away by greater news. A scandal touching the Abbey would not be so yielding.

  ‘And there is an end to that,’ said Mistress Caldwell. ‘Yet I think the scandal of it might keep the people of the burgh exercised for some time. Do you not, sir?’

  ‘I do, knowing this burgh and its people.’

  ‘I have a question, Mr Danforth,’ she said, looking at him intently. ‘Though I know I’ve no business,
you bein’ so kind in fetchin’ that apothecary and all. If it’s a trouble, please say, and I’ll leave you to your broth.’

  ‘No, mistress, it is no trouble,’ he said, his eyes sliding down to the offensive bowl. ‘What have you to say?’

  ‘It’s in regard to my husband.’

  ‘Mr Kennedy.’

  ‘Tam, sir. I know he’ll soon be dead. No, pray don’t look sad on my account. He was a rotten husband and a weak, intemperate man, though a fair gallant when I wed him. Too gallant. I’ve been more the man of this house than he, these past years. Yet I confess it’s a comfort to me that he’s returned to die under his own roof and no’ ... no’ abroad I don’t know where.’ A surprising sparkle of youth crossed her hard face. ‘I told a lie, may God forgive me, when I said that he was abroad on business. He fled the burgh near two years since, when he knew he would get no sons by me, takin’ every penny pertainin’ to this house and more besides. Wi’ a widow of the burgh,’ she spat, ‘who must have brought him to his present condition. In his absence I’ve lived as worse than a widow. My husband has remained my master, yet he has no’ discharged his duties. I have been under his coverture and he no’ here to see that this inn flourishes. Those who owe us money laugh at me, deignin’ only to deal wi’ my husband, and knowin’ that he’s no’ here.’

  ‘Is this so, mistress? I did not know.’ She drew back, eyebrows raised in disbelief. ‘I am sorry to hear of your troubles, but what would you have me do?’

  ‘I’ve written a will, sir. And I have put the pen in Kennedy’s hand, and his hand to it.’

  ‘That is wicked, mistress. It is no better than forgery.’ She looked downcast. ‘You say you have no children. This will, it bestows upon you the rightful half of your husband’s estate owed to a childless widow?’

  ‘It does, sir. No more than my due. I’ve kept up his estate as best I could whilst he, I can only think, made his own life elsewhere. I don’t know what he might have earned in the last two years, nor where it might be, for he will no’ speak. I had thought if we could regain his speech, I might discover it. But if that is no’ to be, then I would have only what the law says I might have.’