Murder at Meaux

by Cassandra Clark

  ‘As binding as any oath,’ Agnetha confirmed.

  ‘What are the words?’ asked Sister Ann.

  ‘“I take thee – whatever his name is – as my man, to have and to hold, for better, for worse, for fairer and grimmer for the duration of my life and to this I give thee my pledge.” And then he says the same.’

  ‘So it ended happily for her?’ Hildegard asked.

  ‘Not entirely. Her second man was as bad as she claimed and wouldn’t accept the courts ruling. He had her kidnapped outside York Minster during a religious procession, can you believe it? Of course he was done for abduction but after paying a small fine he beat her up so badly she almost died. I think after that she moved away.’

  ‘And kept her inheritance – and hopefully the young man to whom she’d made her vow?’

  ‘I pray so,’ Emma concluded.

  Sister Ann crossed herself.

  ‘Now Mark is trying the same ploy of a marriage oath to claim Eunice’s inheritance?’ Agnetha heaved a sigh and, as usual, added the final word on the matter. ‘Men!’

  All day the sound of the monks chanting in different parts of the abbey came to them across the canal. At one point Sir Bernard walked out with his wife on his arm and they stood looking thoughtfully into the water for a while.

  Shortly after they returned to the guest house, some of his servants came out on horses and headed in the direction of Beverley, talking among themselves, obviously having been allowed a day off.

  Lord Roger and Lady Melisen rode out too with hawks on their wrists, accompanied by their falconer and a couple of men.

  Friar John appeared at the gatehouse and stood for a few moments talking to the porters but was too far distant for it to be seen whether he was wearing a silver brooch or not. And eventually Pierrekyn crossed the bridge to give the nuns their daily singing lesson.

  ‘Everyone is forced into idleness,’ he told them. ‘The Sheriff and his bailiffs had their feet up half the morning but they too have now gone to Beverley. It’s a day of fasting so the conversi are in church and the guests are fending for themselves. Lady Avis has taken over the kitchens with her maid and the cook housekeeper while Sir Bernard wanders about bemoaning the fact that the monks’ chanting is driving him mad. He wishes they would sing something more cheerful.’ He laughed.

  ‘What about the abbot?’ asked Hildegard.

  ‘He’s in the thick of it. Praying and preaching, half way to heaven.’

  ‘And Ulf?’

  ‘Still in the infirmary with an army of brothers between him and the doors.’

  ‘Guarding him? Is anyone actually attending to his wounds?’

  ‘The Herberer, the Infirmarer and two trainees working in shifts so they can join in the saint’s day worship. He doesn’t want for attention.’

  ‘He must be badly wounded then?’

  ‘No-one will say.’

  ‘Because they daren’t?’

  ‘Not because they fear for his life, Hildegard. It’s more that they’ve been given orders not to speak to anybody while the judgement is pending.’

  She had to be content with that.

  No mention had been made of Osmund or Mark. It was difficult to imagine them spending time together in order to while away the hours.

  Then, later in the afternoon when everybody was beginning to wake up after their naps if they were guests, and about to start the Holy Office of Nones if they were monastics, a lad from the stables came shouting up to the gatehouse. He was making such a racket the nuns were drawn from their tasks to the windows again and were agog when they saw him gesticulating and shouting for help. A couple of porters stood up from their game of dice and hurried after him as he shouted something and ran back the way he had come.

  ‘Shall we go?’ Agnetha asked the silk spinners.

  Hildegard came out of her chamber. ‘Is there something wrong?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘We were wondering if we ought to go out and see what’s the matter,’ Emma said eagerly.

  ‘I don’t see why not. It sounds as if someone has been injured.’

  ‘I’ll bring my scrip and cures.’ Ann hurried back into her cell and emerged almost at once clutching a leather bag.

  The others were already letting themselves out through the gate so she hurried after them and soon all of them were running out over the bridge onto the foregate to follow at the heels of the porters who themselves were chasing after the boy.

  They ran some way along the tow path until well outside the abbey’s perimeter wall and were eventually stopped only when the boy started to scramble down the steep canal bank. He was pointing and gesticulating at something in the water.

  They were a good way along the path near the quay where, if no barges were moored, the lay-brothers would sometimes put a line in the water, more for sport than need as the abbey ponds supplied all their fish.

  One empty barge was moored there now waiting to be loaded up before being taken down the canal to the river. The shrill shouts of the boy were difficult to make out but one of the porters was already slithering in an ungainly manner after him. Both were staring at something in the water among the reeds growing near the bank and the boy stopped his shouting and stood with his mouth open.

  Hereabouts the water flowed at its fastest and it must have been chance that whatever was down there had snagged on the reeds. Ripples from the obstruction lapped against the bank and pooled at their feet.

  Calling up to his companion the porter held out a hand to be helped back up the bank. ‘We’ll need a boat-hook or summit like that,’ he said when he was at the top.

  ‘I’ll get one,’ shouted the boy and scrambled back to run off towards the barge.

  The nuns were near enough to hear what the porters were saying. They looked worried.

  ‘Can’t make it out, can you?’ said one.

  ‘It’s probably nothing, some old rubbish the miller tipped in further up.’

  Hildegard went up to them. ‘We heard the boy shouting. Will you mind if I go down to have a look? I fear it’s more than rubbish.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to risk it, domina?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Then let me give you a hand.’

  ‘I think I can manage, thank you.’

  Kilting the skirts of her habit she slid down the bank to the water’s edge. It was as she had somehow guessed.

  A body, dragged below the surface by the heaviness of the garments he or she wore, was caught in the reeds and strained against the current for release. If it wasn’t brought out soon it would be carried swiftly down the canal to the River Hull and once it reached the Humber it would be gone forever.

  The boy re-appeared and pushed a boathook into her hand. ‘Can you reach, domina?’

  ‘We’ll need the men to lift him out when we get him close to the bank. He’ll be too much for us. His clothes are quite water-logged.’

  ‘Black velvet!’ exclaimed the boy as Hildegard’s boat-hook managed to pull the body close enough to reach down by hand and draw it to the shore. ‘Might it be one of the abbot’s guests?’ he asked in awe.

  ‘It might, indeed.’

  25

  ‘It’s my view he drowned himself for love.’ Lady Avis’s maid, as sure of her opinions as her mistress, was surrounded by a little group of servants.

  The lay-brothers paused in their labours after bringing in stoups of ale and several jugs of wine to restore everyone after their ordeal of seeing the apprentice, a young man in the first flush of youth, carried in by two porters bearing a make-shift stretcher.

  The body – there was no hope that he was still alive – was laid on a trestle quickly dragged forth and erected by the kitcheners at one end of the guest refectory.

  So far news of the drowning had not been imparted to the monks who were still at prayer in the abbey church.

  ‘Someone should send for the Prior,’ Hildegard suggested. She could not break the sanctity of the saint’s day, sh
e, a mere woman, even though it was the female Saint Hereswitha the monks were lauding. She glanced round. Finally one of the porters stepped forward. ‘I’ll go, domina.’

  One by one the guests appeared. Sir Bernard, an arm round his stoical wife, Osmund, looking pale, Friar John, brooch restored, his hands clasped in prayer as he gazed down at the bleached visage, hair fanning out quite like a halo, and the soaking wet, now bedraggled but once smart black velvet garments.

  ‘How, how could it happen?’ someone whispered.

  Friar John rose to the occasion and began a long prayer in Latin.

  Not much later the Prior entered. He stood for a time gazing down at the body. Eventually he said, ‘He is identified as Mark of Huby?’

  ‘He is,’ the porter agreed.

  ‘And has the Sheriff been informed?’

  ‘He’s gone in to Beverley, I believe.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘Before Vespers.’

  ‘Send someone to fetch him.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Who found this poor soul?’

  ‘I did,’ piped the lad who had led them along the canal path.

  ‘Take some sustenance and be prepared to answer a few questions as soon as the Sheriff appears.’ He turned to the porter. ‘Clear a suitable corner where he might interview everyone in relative privacy, will you?’

  ‘I will, brother.’ The porter left with his colleague.

  Subdued, with the friar’s Latin bringing even greater solemnity to the situation, the group remained as the Prior took Hildegard to one side. ‘Will you and your sisters stay with the body until we decide what to do next?’

  ‘We will.’

  26

  Osmund came to stand beside Hildegard and spoke in a lowered voice. ’Poor devil. I feel guilty for all my hard thoughts about him now.’

  She didn’t look at him. ’We are human with all the failings of humanity.’

  Osmund did not seem comforted.

  Now was not the time to ask him how he had managed to return the Friar’s brooch. The journeyman clearly possessed more guile than his manner would suggest.

  The Sheriff arrived in double-quick time. He was accompanied by a stranger and the mystery of the abbot’s private visitor in the blue cloak a few days earlier was solved. He turned out to be the Beverley Coroner. Tall, dark, spare and sardonic in manner, he cast a swift glance round cloister garth as he followed the Sheriff in to see Hubert. A little later, looking enigmatic, both men reappeared and made their way over to the guest house.

  Presumably the Beverley man did not intend to put Sir Bernard’s nose out of joint but that was the way Sir Bernard took it. The rival Coroner was quick to point out that he could not both question and consult Sir Bernard on the same matter, as he would surely understand.

  Striding over to where the body lay he gave it a thoughtful inspection and tactfully confirmed Sir Bernard’s much vaunted opinion that the body had been in the water for a very short time. However, his glance alighted on lacerations over the knuckles of both hands and he frowned. They saw him open out the palms of the hands, turn them over, replace them. ‘Has this boy been in a fight?’

  The head kitchener stepped forward. ‘He has. And I’m a witness.’ He indicated a couple of his fellows. ‘They can bear out what I tell you.’

  ‘Who was his assailant?’

  There was a shuffle of movement and Lord Roger, looking fierce, pushed Donal forward. ‘Here he is.’

  The Sheriff, having been already informed of the attack on Ulf, quickly established the course of events afterwards when Donal had come into the kitchens carrying Mark’s knife while the kitcheners were applying cold water, as instructed, to Marks bleeding nose. It turned out that it was not broken as feared but merely bruised.

  ‘This lad,’ the Head Kitchener slapped Donal on the shoulder, ‘made some untoward remark about lily-saps attacking unarmed men with their fancy knives to which the dead youth took exception. Donal, here, added fuel to the flames by calling the knife a toy fit only for a sot-wit child. And then a scuffle broke out...as was to be expected,’ he added.

  The Sheriff gave a large sigh and the words ‘boys will be boys’ were writ large in the air. ‘And is that it?’

  ‘We pulled them apart, my men and me, and gave them a good telling off.’

  ‘What happened to the knife?’

  ‘It’s here,’ growled Roger, stepping forward and slapping Mark’s jewelled knife onto the trestle.

  ‘We handed it to Lord Roger for safe-keeping,’ the Kitchener explained.

  ‘Is everybody in agreement that this is what happened?’ asked the Sheriff wearily. His manner showed that he regretted being called back from Beverley for no more than a scrap between two boys old enough to know better while the Coroner was the one to take charge of a body.

  Everybody glanced at everybody else and the kitcheners murmured their agreement that this was what had happened.

  The Beverley Coroner reached out a long arm and grasped Donal by the shoulder. ‘Let’s have a look at them.’ He turned Donal’s hands over, front and back, then grinned. ‘You pulled your punches.’

  Donal stared at the floor until Roger, overhearing, punched him in the back and whispered something which brought a tentative smile to Donal’s features.

  It was soon established that Mark had last been seen shortly after mid-day. A porter vouchsafed that he had left the abbey precincts and walked out onto the fore gate as the mid-day Office was coming to an end.

  Then the Beverley man took the floor. ‘My thanks, friends. The lacerations on the knuckles of the dead man might bear out the claim that a bit of a scrap took place although I’m not entirely satisfied it ends here.’ He gave a sardonic smile that took in the whole group but lingered on Sir Bernard. ‘Who is the youth’s master?’

  ‘That’s what we’re here to ascertain,’ the Sheriff told him. ‘His master died a few months back and his daughter and her husband, the accused at present in the abbey prison, were claiming rights. As it stands the journeyman silversmith is the one in charge of the workshop.’

  ‘Is this fellow here? Can he stand forth?’

  Osmund, looking frightened, edged to the front. The Sheriff asked him a few questions about Mark and his apprenticeship then nodded and allowed him to step back with everybody else.

  He said, ‘The question of foul play cannot be discounted. I’m asking you all to stay here until we tell you to go.’

  ‘He was grief-stricken at the murder of his lady,’ Avis’s maid whispered, loud enough for the Sheriff to overhear. ‘It’s my belief he did it himself, out of melancholy.’

  The Beverley Coroner picked up on this. ‘Let’s keep an open mind about it.’ To the Sheriff he asked, ‘Is he known to have any other enemies apart from the lad Donal?’

  The Sheriff frowned, ‘Only the prisoner but he’s been under guard all along.’

  ‘And that’s the fellow the boy attacked first?’

  ‘It is.’

  A clerk was brought in to take statements from everyone By now, probably tired of asking the same question, the Sheriff handed over to his bailiffs to speed things up. Everybody was going round asking the same question of each other: where were you between Sext and Nones? and eyeing their fellow guests with suspicion, answering with care.

  There were plenty of mutual alibis, the servants because they tended to stick together in their time off,

  Sir Bernard and Lady Avis because they had been together the whole afternoon, walking in the abbey gardens, and later taking a short stroll to the bridge and back as Lady Avis was sure the nuns looking out of the window of their parlour could verify.

  Osmund had no-one to corroborate his assertion that he had been alone his chamber, trying out a few designs for future silver trinkets.

  ‘Can you bring forth any evidence that you were where you say you were?’ asked the bailiff questioning him.

  Osmund disappeared upstairs and came down a few momen
ts later with a piece of much-scraped vellum in his hand.

  He held it out.

  The bailiff gave it a glance then handed it to the Sheriff. He peered at it and asked, ‘But no-one actually saw you in your chamber?’

  Osmund stuck out his lip. ‘No-one saw me near the canal either.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ the Sheriff came back, quick as a flash.

  ‘They couldn’t have because I wasn’t there.’

  Pierrekyn had the soundest alibi, four nuns of mostly unimpeachable honesty to vouch for him, and was let go at once whereas the rest of the guests were again invited to remain in the refectory until both the Sheriff and the Beverley Coroner, accompanied by a bailiff, had walked the canal bank to find out where the apprentice had gone in.

  ‘If you have to leave on nature’s cause you will require permission and an escort,’ the Sheriff announced.

  The two bailiffs who were told to remain were derisive and sprawled in chairs usually reserved for special guests so that Sir Bernard and his wife had to make do with a bench. Avis fanned herself and looked faint. The bench creaked as she shifted about. Eventually she called for wine.

  Hildegard and her nuns had lighted candles and remained close to the body.

  Standing beside the trestle listening to Friar John’s endless Latin Hildegard had plenty of time to ponder the matter.

  The question was, assuming Mark’s death had been caused deliberately, who gained by it?

  In this case, Sir Bernard would gain if his eye was still on the elusive inheritance and he feared Mark’s claim of a prior nuptial agreement could be upheld.