A Psalm for Falconer

by Ian Morson

  ‘I got your message.’ It seemed a foolish thing to say, for here he was on Port Meadow. But he was unsure how to coax Ann into talking about what it was that perturbed her. ‘The gatekeeper's son brought it – I wonder how many secret liaisons he has been instrumental in arranging. No doubt a lucrative little sideline for him.’

  Ann snorted. ‘No longer. The abbess has the nunnery guarded and sealed as tightly as the convocation that elects the Pope.’

  She cast a worried glance at Bullock, still not sure of her course. But the honest, open face she saw convinced her that the constable would be able to separate gossip and truth.

  ‘There is a rumour that the abbess was … too severe with Sister Eleanor. That she was punishing her for her errant ways, and went too far.’

  Bullock frowned, and looked unconvinced. Ann almost regretted speaking out.

  ‘You think I'm foolish to believe it,’ she said flatly.

  ‘What I think is that it is possible. But if I learned anything at all in the interrogations I was allowed to carry out, it was that there was resentment of the abbess's strictness on the part of some of the nuns. Some had enjoyed a comfortable life before she arrived, entertaining their families … and men who claimed to be their cousins, but bore no family resemblance. If you know what I mean.’

  He stared hard at Ann to emphasize his point. With unwanted daughters sent to a nunnery often against their will, a genuine vocation to serve God was not always present. So a lack of desire to observe the rules, especially celibacy, was not uncommon. Ann knew what the constable meant.

  They stopped at a bend in the river, now that the nunnery on the opposite bank was hidden behind a belt of trees. Momentarily free of the stifling atmosphere of the place, Ann wanted just to give it all up, and return to her home. With her husband Humphrey somewhere in the north about his own business, it was even more appealing than usual. His appetite for becoming involved in conspiracies had grown again, despite almost costing him his life the last time. But if it kept him out of her hair, she cared but little.

  She watched as a youth poled a flat-bottomed barge up the shallow reach of the river. The water plopped monotonously against the barge's flat prow as it was forced upstream. Each time the youth slipped the pole into the water, it grounded with a crunch on the gravel bed of the river. Then he had to strain every sinew to push against the pole, moving the barge a little further upstream each time. Watching its progress, she understood that her search for the truth was a little like pushing against the river's flow. If this youth could stick at his task, and deliver whatever he had loaded in the barge, so could she. And she had promised to help Bullock. Anyway, she could not bear the thought of Falconer returning to be told she had failed to solve a simple murder in an enclosed nunnery.

  Bullock almost read her mind. ‘Think how Falconer would approach it. Collect all the truths you can, and compare them to uncover the greater truth. Don't turn a deaf ear to anything.’ Ann thought of Falconer safely ensconced in his remote priory at the edge of the world, and had a sudden inspiration. She kissed the startled Bullock on his leathery cheek. ‘Peter, you're a genius.’

  The world spun him round in circles, and he could not tell which way was up. The greyness of the water mingled indistinguishably with the greyness of the mist as he tumbled along. He was too weak to regain his feet, and didn't even know if there was solid ground on which to put them. Through the mist he thought he heard the sound of a slowly tolling bell. Was there truly a cloudship somewhere, and was he bobbing in the sky-waters of Thady Lamport's Magonia? He was struck in the middle of the back by something hard and sharp. It almost knocked the breath out of him, and he cried out. But he was so numbed with cold that he hardly felt any pain. He cried out again, not really believing that anyone could hear him in this unreal land. The bell stopped, or had he just imagined the ringing in the first place? The cold of both water and air sucked the life out of him, and his mind was drifting into oblivion when suddenly something grabbed hold of him. His relentless tumbling was arrested, and he was being lifted upwards effortlessly, as though he was no weight at all. Were the cloud-sailors hauling him into their ship, or was his dying mind playing tricks on him? He blacked out again.

  Ralph Westerdale wished now that he had not provided the Oxford master with such an unreliable guide as Ellen Shokburn. He knew she frequently crossed the Leven Sands to carry out her tasks at the priory. But could a woman truly be relied on? The secrets of crossing Lancaster Bay were passed on to the Shokburn men in each generation, excluding the women. Perhaps she had led Falconer into some gully even on the less dangerous Leven Sands. He certainly was not in his room in the guest house, and it was now night.

  All the other monks had retired to their dormitory, but Ralph was still awake. He sat in his office, checking the catalogue to keep his mind off the missing master. He turned the pages of the loan records, the thick parchment crackling in his fingers. He came again to the missing page, and drew his finger down the sharp edge of what remained. What had there been of significance on that page? The entries went back a number of years – back to Brother Thady's time, if the records either side were to be believed. Maybe something else had been written there? He racked his brain to try to recall anything unusual in the records he had taken over from his predecessor. There was nothing that he could remember.

  It was the sound of sandals slapping on stone that woke him up, and made him realize he had once again dozed off over his precious catalogue. He crossed the room and poked his head out of the door, expecting to see his brother monks processing to the church for matins. But it was still dark, and there was no sound. Not morning, then – he could not have been asleep for very long. He tiptoed into the cloisters to see who was the owner of the footsteps that had woken him. Who, besides himself, had not retired for the night. There was no one. He was about to turn back to his office, assuring himself that he had imagined the noise, when he heard a creak. That sound was familiar to him – it was the door of the west book press. He had asked Brother Paul several times to deal with the faulty hinge, but it had never been done. Now someone was opening the press in the middle of the night. Which was impossible, as Ralph had the only key.

  Then suddenly he saw the flicker of a candle in the opposite corner of the cloister from where he stood. Someone was indeed near the presses. Casting caution to the wind, he scuttled round the cloister only to see that his noisy arrival had disturbed the mystery man. The candle lay snuffed out at his feet, and the door to the west press was ajar. He peered cautiously round the jamb, but there was no one inside. The books were stacked on their shelves as they should be, and there was nowhere to hide within the little room. A sound off to his right caused him to spin round, and he thought he saw a shape disappearing under the dormitory arch. He hitched his robes up, called out and ran as fast as his short legs could carry him. But when he got to the arch, it was the same as when he had chased the elusive Brother Thady. There was no one in sight, and whoever had fled could have gone a number of different ways.

  Disconsolate, he trudged back to the open door of the west book press, and looked inside. In the gloom he could make out little – the stacks of books seemed to be as tidy as he had left them. Perhaps he had disturbed the thief before he could take anything. But to be certain he would have to check all the records tomorrow, comparing the numbered books with the catalogue, and the list of those works that were loaned to the brothers. It would be a massive task, but one he was resigned to. Knowing that certain books were already missing, he must be sure if anything else had gone. The presence of the Oxford master made his task all the more pressing. If he knew what was lost, he could at least fake some loan records for the relevant books, and hope Falconer did not pursue the matter. He shuddered at the thought of lying to the man, but that was infinitely less worrisome than the thought that the book thief had to be one of his fellow brothers.

  He closed the heavy door to the book press, and locked it – though that seemed a po
intless gesture now. If someone else held a key, he no longer had control over the very valuable books that lay within. The only recourse was to pretend that this lock was broken, and ask the prior if the ironworks could supply a new one. As he began to retrace his steps, something crunched under his sandal. Bending down, he rubbed his hand over the normally smooth surface of the cloister flagstones. He felt something coarse under his palm, and on closer inspection realized that it was grains of sand. Whoever his thief was had been down to the shore recently.

  Falconer came to in a gloomy chamber lit by the fitful flickering of a single tallow lamp. He sat up, throwing aside the bearskin under which he lay, and, as he could feel no motion, assumed he was not on board a cloud-ship after all. The stone-flagged floor and solid walls confirmed that he was very much in the real world and on terra firma. What dragged him back into his previous nightmare, however, was the continued tolling of that bell. It came from somewhere above his head. He got to his feet, still groggy from the blow he had taken on the back of his skull. He felt it gingerly – there was an egg-sized lump there already. Looking down at himself he saw that he was dressed in an ornate robe with elaborate patterns picked out in golden thread, only slightly dulled with age. Definitely nothing from his own wardrobe. His feet were clad in the softest of leather slippers. Perhaps this was heaven and he was dead after all.

  He crossed to the narrow window arch opposite the bed were he had been lying. Looking out, he could detect the last roiling threads of mist drifting away from the smooth surface of the water that sparkled in the moonlight. He was in a tower, and the water surrounded it as far as he could tell. Then, drifting over the still surface of the water, he heard a thudding sound. Was it the steady beat of the trip-hammers up at the ironworks, or his own heart pounding? For a while it ebbed and flowed, and then was gone. He was not really sure if he had heard it at all. Looking round the room again, he saw through an arch the bottom steps of a staircase. He went over, and peered upwards. The stairs spiralled away above his head, and the sound of the bell was closer though a little muffled. He climbed the steps, feeling his way along the rough wall with his left hand.

  Higher up, a yellowish light spilled down the spiral, getting brighter as he proceeded. As his eyes came level with the top step, he was confronted with one of the strangest sights he had ever encountered. At first he thought he saw a legless, eyeless apparition with one long arm that pulled incessantly on a rope. Then he realized it was a man like himself, sitting cross-legged in Eastern fashion on the cold floor of the tiny room. He also had two arms – the one not pulling on the bell-rope was hidden underneath the longest beard Falconer had ever seen. It flowed from the apparition's bowed head, down over his chest, and into his lap. All Falconer could see was the top of his head, which was covered in a mass of white hair that blended in with the white of the splendid whiskers.

  The tolling stopped, and slowly the man raised his head. Buried deep in the thatch of hair was a pair of red, rheumy eyes that spoke of unspeakable horror endured. What was visible of the face was pale, the skin hanging in folds. The toothless mouth opened, and the words seemed to creak as they came out. It was as if the man was unused to employing the human attribute of speech.

  ‘You are well?’

  ‘Glad to be alive, and to be able to feel pain. I presume it is to you I owe my salvation.’

  ‘Your salvation is something I have not yet striven for. However, it was I who pulled you out of the Leven.’

  Despite his obvious years, the man rose effortlessly to his feet, uncurling his legs in one fluid motion. He was dressed in a coarse grey tunic, his legs bare and sinewy. Falconer wondered if the sumptuous robe he wore was the old man's only other item of clothing. He was tall, taller than Falconer even, and his presence filled the little bell-tower.

  ‘My name is Fridaye de Schipedham. Welcome to Harlesyde Island.’

  *

  As Falconer was stranded on the island until the tide retreated, he and de Schipedham sat together in the lowest chamber of the tower in front of a fire that Falconer suspected the hermit had laid especially for his visitor. He did not seem the sort of man who resorted to the self-indulgence of warmth and comfort, even on a winter's night. The glow of the flames temporarily gave a natural pinkness to de Schipedham's pallid face. He stared into the fire with dull eyes as he explained how he had heard Falconer's cries from the bell-tower. Temporarily abandoning his task of tolling the bell that warned it was unsafe to cross the sands, he had quartered the rocks below until he had come across Falconer, more dead than alive. He made little of the task of dragging Falconer up from the rocks to this tower, but the Oxford master knew it must have been no mean feat, especially for a man of advanced years. He described how he had stripped off Falconer's soaking black gown, and wrapped him in the only other warm robe available – his own – and buried him under the thick bearskin for warmth.

  ‘It was then up to you whether you lived or died,’ was the hermit's lugubrious prognosis. Fortunately for Falconer his constitution was strong, and although he still felt chilled to the bone he was sure he would recover from his immersion. Curious about de Schipedham, he asked where the robe that warmed his frame had come from. Fridaye focused those pain-filled eyes on Falconer.

  ‘From a Saracen.’

  ‘You killed him?’

  ‘No. Nasir-Daoud, Prince of Kerak, was my friend.’

  The strange statement hung in the air for what seemed an age, until de Schipedham exhaled a great breath, and continued. ‘In my youth I joyously went on Crusade under the banner of my Order, the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem.’

  A Hospitaller. And a Crusader.

  ‘It was the Sixth Crusade, and the Emperor Frederick and the Pope were squabbling between themselves. In Outremer, however, the Hospitallers still knew who their enemies were supposed to be, and I revelled in the killing. But then at a little skirmish at Napoulous, I was captured and held hostage. The problem was, no one came to ransom me. Of the twenty years I spent in the Holy Land, fifteen were in captivity.’

  Falconer marvelled as the old man told his story. The Sixth Crusade had been instigated forty years earlier, yet here was someone who spoke of it as if it were yesterday. He spoke of Pope Gregory and Emperor Frederick – the direst of enemies, yet on the same side – as if they lived. To Falconer they were only half-remembered shades.

  As dawn broke, and poked a fitful shaft of light into the chamber, de Schipedham spoke of his captivity. He talked of being seduced by the Saracen ways, and by one of their women in particular. He broke his vow of celibacy, and revelled in the pleasures of the flesh that he discovered. As the pool of light progressed across the floor towards them, the words tumbled out of de Schipedham's mouth. It was as if he was making up for years of isolation on this little hump of land, when he had had no chance to speak to anyone.

  ‘Then they came for me. The leader of the Hospitaller commanderie in Outremer appeared one day, negotiated my release, and took me home. Except it was no longer my home, and the other Hospitallers were not my comrades. Not the comrades I had left, anyway. They were all long dead, or returned to England. I had been forgotten about till this time. They soon realized I was an embarrassment. Perhaps because I was too understanding of the enemy, or because I reminded them of their own failing in not gaining my release sooner. You see, they only came to know of me by chance as they negotiated the release of the captive Hospitallers after the battle of Arsuf. A battle I only learned of later. Either way, the commander resolved to return me to England. Once there, I was shipped off to the remotest commanderie they could find, at Berdsey.’

  But not even that had been far enough for his Order. His strange moods and preoccupations had ensured his banishment to this solitary rock, where he was responsible for warning travellers of impending doom. He laughed hollowly. ‘Fitting that I should spend at least as long here in penance as I spent in Outremer itself.’

  Had he truly been squatting on this rock for twenty y
ears? Falconer wondered if he knew anything of the death of John de Langetoft, and the events that led up to it. He thought he would ask while the old man appeared eager to talk.

  ‘What do you know of your neighbours at Conishead Priory?’ ‘I know it was a leper hospital before it was a priory. But that is not the reason why it stinks. There is evil-doing in its walls, and too many secrets. Secrets pile up and rot, if they are not cleared out. And I can smell the rot from here.’

  Chapter Nine

  The tides had permitted Falconer to leave Harlesyde Island just as the prime bell was ringing over at Conishead. The white-bearded Hospitaller had taken him partway across the sands, then pointed out the way to Spina Alba, the crossing point on the western side of the bay. Falconer had thanked him for his assistance, and the information he had gleaned in the long hours before dawn. The old man gazed briefly at Falconer with his worldweary eyes, made the sign of the cross, and said he would pray for him. Then he turned and made his way back to his solitary existence. Falconer did not dare take his eyes off the point on the river bank he had been directed to, so only looked back after he had reached it. By then Fridaye de Schipedham was nothing more than a white wraith shimmering in the glare that rose from the slick surface of the bay. His form wavered like smoke in the wind, and disappeared amongst the trees that fringed the rocky shoreline. Like everything in this remote spot, the Hospitaller seemed insubstantial, and more than a little unreal.