Bright Belovèd

by Non Bramley

  When I climbed out from her grave and said to Will, ‘Your daughter had dark hair?’ a sigh went up from the little crowd.

  ‘It’s not Anne. It may be Rebecca Moorhead. We’re losing the light. We have to start the search again tomorrow.’

  ‘I shall run mad,’ Will said softly, and walked away from us, back to the southern gate.

  I saw a vision of the red and yellow thread entwined - but what of the blue and green?

  Lollis and I alone raised the bodies. We wrapped each corpse in the cloths they lay on, then rolled them on to plastic sheets. They weighed nothing. I carried the girls in my arms like children. They would both be laid in the abbey mortuary – a cellar with large barred windows under the infirmary.

  I spent a grisly half-hour watching Lollis examine the remnants of what had been living, thinking humans, bright with the beauty of life. There was little she could tell me. Nothing was certain but she believed that they had both been killed by a knife cut to the throat.

  ‘Deep enough to reach bone,’ she said. ‘And they were dressed in these smocks before it was done – there’s a spray of blood here. I can’t tell you if either girl’s been defiled. Magdela’s dissolving away in front of our eyes. Rebecca has no deep scratches on her anywhere I can see. There’s no broken bones either, no dents in the skull. One thing – it’s probably not important – but there’s something in Magdela’s hair, like soft beeswax.’

  ‘From a candle?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe. It feels a little oily. It could be something she used for beauty, to calm those riotous curls, poor lamb. I don’t want to tread on your territory Jude, and I’m not prone to fancies, but I keep getting a feeling … about whoever did this.’

  I’d experienced this phenomena myself when closely examining the mangled remains of the murdered. As you studied each ragged wound, each slash and stab your own body reacted to it in sympathy – you experienced a shadowy simulacrum of the attack, and some of the emotion of the inflictor of these horrors.

  Lollis smoothed the hair back from Magdela’s discoloured forehead. ‘These deaths appealed to a murderous aestheticism – the killer savoured their last breaths like a gift,’ she said and shuddered, shaking the feeling off and away.

  That night I sat with Will and Johanna in her little private study. Will was following me like a lost soul. I think he feared to be alone with his own thoughts or maybe being in the presence of someone who knew his shame was part of his penance. With God’s grace, Anne was alive and had no part in these grisly proceedings, but neither of us could be sure. Not now.

  This was Johanna’s winter study, a low-ceilinged cave of a place by the steps to Saint Credan’s Head Chapel that could be kept warm with a small fire. I noticed she was burning wood with traces of paint still clinging to it, probably scavenged during our hunt today.

  We drank watered ale, which I have never liked much. Will’s presence stilted the conversation at first. None wanted to torture him with speculation, and talking of more mundane matters seemed disrespectful to his fear, so we were mostly silent. In the end I told Will that we must speak of the deaths, and that if he couldn’t stand talk of it he should leave.

  ‘I can stand it,’ he muttered.

  ‘We know it’s the same man responsible,’ I said. ‘They were both killed in the same way. Whoever it is wanted them dressed to resemble a bride or a penitent. That suggests to me that we’re looking for someone with a religious madness on them. Rebecca may have been …’ – I shot a look at Will – ‘ravished, but Lollis can’t confirm or deny that. I’d say Magdela had lain with her killer, before or after death, and he left her uncovered for his own reasons. She’s too rotted to tell if it was forced on her. It’s possible the girls consented to the coupling. Their murderer could have been a lover, or a customer.’

  Will got up and left.

  ‘Did you have to, Jude?’ Johanna said.

  ‘I don’t know a kind way of talking about this.’

  ‘There isn’t one I suppose. Do you think we should follow him? He wouldn’t … harm himself, would he?’

  ‘Not now, no. If we find Anne tomorrow and I don’t seize the killer quickly, he might. It’s his hope keeping him sane now. After it’ll be his anger, but anger needs a target.’

  I told her of Anne’s dreadful bargain with her father.

  ‘Mother of God,’ she said. ‘Poor man. That’s three missing young women, and two we know were selling themselves. That looks bad. Oh God, you don’t think that Artie—’

  ‘No,’ I said quickly, shaking my head.

  We sat quietly for a while, and then she said, ‘Do you think that’s where Magdela and Rebecca have been all this time? Did they walk out the gates and straight into their killer?’

  ‘It’s likely. What’s puzzling me is there are no signs of struggle. There are no bruises I can see, no rope burns. When someone’s fighting for their life it leaves marks. Even the weak can put up a fight when they see a knife. We found both of them close to the south gate. If they were grabbed, wouldn’t someone have heard them scream? Did they know their killer and saw no threat in going with them? They may have gone down into their tombs and lain down willingly enough. Was this a sex game? Was it a kind of mock marriage? Why did they go down into the dark?’

  ‘Maybe they were killed somewhere else far away and carried here? They could have been dressed up after they were dead,’ Johanna said.

  I raised my cup to her. ‘You’re in the wrong job. You could have been a Reeve. There’s a lot of dried blood in Rebecca’s tomb. She was killed where we found her. If Rebecca was, Magdela probably was too. But why did he leave one half-naked and not the other? He wasn’t disturbed with Rebecca; everything was placed just so. Was it what they were that made the difference - Magdela a whore and Rebecca perhaps a virgin?’

  It didn’t fit. If I found Anne and Artie dead tomorrow by the same hand I was facing a mind I had never encountered before. A charming, indiscriminate but methodical killer with a need for ritual and a motive that changed from victim to victim.

  ‘I don’t know what he wants.’

  ‘It was one of us, wasn’t it?’ Johanna said. ‘Everyone who was living then is here now.’

  As I was leaving I remembered the petals I had found scattered around the pitiful remains. ‘Do you recognise these?’ I said to Johanna, opening the cloth and blowing on the papery flower-heads to separate them.

  ‘They’re Michaelmas daisies,’ she said. ‘They symbolise purity, innocence. Haven’t seen any for years.’

  —Sex and death. The two are inextricably linked in human minds but it’s a fallacy that at times of great trauma those experiencing it are compelled to fuck each other. Still, sex is the human antidote to death. Young women are our most valuable commodity, that’s if you’re minded to believe that the human race must never be allowed to stutter to its natural conclusion.

  I’ve noticed over the years that men burn out quickly and it’s the women who endure. At the end of days it won’t be heroic, muscular men who stand on the last high peak as fire rains down - it will be one toothless crone and a tiny babe. She’ll raise that child to the tormented skies and maybe God will relent. On more time.

  Men who like to fuck what they kill or kill what they fuck are motivated by the tiniest inkling of this power. Each woman is an apple blossom. Kill her and you kill whole orchards. The shock of it reverberates down the ages. Kill a woman and you are the greatest fiend of all and what murdering egotist could resist that accolade?

  Chapter Nine

  The following morning myself, Lollis, Peter Piss Pot and Will met at the gates. Whatever we did next had to be done with precision. I couldn’t have twenty unsupervised sets of boots trampling over what little evidence there might be, so I kept the group of searchers small. I spent some time scouring the two grave sites for anything I had missed yesterday. It added nothing to my knowledge.

  Building after building was searched till we were straying perilously close
to the old heart of the city. We scoured rooms with no walls and stamped a strange dance wherever we went, looking for the hollow sound of a hidden space. We found more underground chambers but all were just sad, dank places with nothing more to concern us than spiders, rot and the occasional sluggish dammer. One did contain three bottles of spirits that Lollis packed away, darting a guilty look at Will.

  I had started the day with a sick apprehension of more horror to come, but as the search progressed and we found no trace of Anne or Artie I began to feel rage tighten my throat and eat away at my concentration. I needed to pray, away from prying eyes and not in the abbey church that was still filthy with the mud and piss provided in such abundance by the pilgrims.

  The day was just starting to dim a little. We had an hour, maybe two till dusk fell, and so I sent the others back. We would start the search again in the morning.

  Then I turned my steps towards the only building left standing on a pock-marked market square – an ancient guild church. Much of the roof had fallen in but the walls still stood. The door was off its hinges and the windows smashed, but inside the walls glowed with painted angels, demons and saints. I stood for some time admiring a depiction of Saint Christopher wading through the water with Christ on his shoulder. Some folk still believed that seeing the image of Saint Christopher once a day prevented sudden death. The old fear of dying unshriven was calmed that way.

  The floor was covered with fallen lath and plaster, leaves, and the usual rubbish but the altar reredos was still there, a glorious gilded carving of Christ in splendour. Our Lord was joined by the Madonna and another saint I didn’t recognise at first. Intrigued, I went closer, peering in the grey light. It was Saint Bertram, the patron saint of music. This place must have been dedicated to the saint who started his life as a pagan prince but became a Christian mystic after his wife and newborn son were eaten by wolves as they sheltered in a cave. The wolves who robbed him of his family were different to those we faced now, but I felt a kinship with this man who played and sang so beautifully.

  I looked for the gallery where musicians would have played to glorify God during the Mass and found it at the top of a dark flight of steps, the banister rails carved with instruments so ancient and strange I couldn’t identify them.

  In the gallery I sat with my back to the wall. No one could see me or hear me. I was alone and I prayed, mostly I prayed for wisdom and tried to hand my hate to God – not all of it, but some.

  The floor where I sat was the dark brown of old oak, so it was sheer luck that my eyes picked out a pool of some dried substance in the corner. It had been scratched at with a sharp implement, possibly a knife blade, and when I ran my nail through it, it flaked into a black powder. I added a little spit to the palm of my hand and the flakes gave off a dark-red tint and a coppery scent.

  It was dried blood.

  Mixed into it were a few brittle thyme leaves, and stuck to the wall was a single hair. I rubbed the powdery blood from it.

  It was as dark as midnight.

  A roll of thunder got me up off my knees where I cradled that hair like a penitent. The sky through the broken roof looked bruised. We were in for a storm.

  Placing the hair and a few thyme leaves in a square of cloth, I pocketed them and left.

  By God it had grown dark. The first fat drops of rain were falling, threatening a deluge. I ran through the square and up the street towards the south gate, feeling a flash of lightening lift the hair on my head even before it split the sky and turned the world white.

  The rain fell harder, and then it was as if a sea were falling from the clouds. Water poured and thunder deafened in harsh stuttering booms.

  I was near the gate, just a minute away at most when a wolf came out of the darkness and crouched in my path. Then it turned its head and looked at me.

  It was huge, its shoulders and hanging head slabbed with muscle. It raised its top lip, tasting my scent. Teeth, inches long, still had the bloody remnants of its last meal embedded between them.

  I had nowhere to run, no door to put between us so I slipped my hammer from my belt and backed up to put my shoulders against a wall, at least that way I would only have to fight what was before me. This was the biggest male I had ever seen. Other, smaller shapes moved behind it. It had brought its pack to hunt.

  I had no doubt then that I was about to die.

  The big male dropped down on to its knuckles and moved towards me, its head snaking from side to side. I raised my hammer but knew I could do little.

  When it was so close I could smell it and see the mottled brown spots on its skin, it stopped and sat. I had no idea what it was doing. I had never seen a wolf do anything but attack. This one looked like it was thinking.

  I had a bowel-loosening thought - maybe it was training young ones; wanted them to make the kill. It would be a long and bloody end for me if I was to be torn and eaten in increments, limping to my death while monsters gibbered and ripped the flesh from my bones. Please God, not that.

  But this wolf still sat. It watched me. I saw its orange eyes examine my clothes, my hammer, my face. Then it came so close I could have reached out and touched it.

  I raised my hammer to put all of my strength into a blow that might at least slow it down, but again it stopped.

  Then it spoke.

  ‘Where?’

  The noise more like a bark than a word.

  I gazed at it with my mouth hanging open - trying to blink water from my eyes.

  It repeated. ‘Where?’

  To my knowledge no wolf has ever tried to start a conversation with its food. I felt like I was still in a fever dream.

  ‘Where what?’ I asked it, trying to resist the ludicrous laughter that threatened to bubble up and still brandishing my pointless hammer.

  The wolf looked away and its claws convulsed. I realised it was fighting every instinct to rip open my belly.

  ‘Red,’ it said.

  I didn’t understand but reasoned that saying so would negate any reason it had not to rip me open. So I lowered my hammer, dropped it, and pointed - I don’t even know where.

  The big male shifted and shat. Then it turned and walked on all fours in the direction of my wavering finger. In a minute the pack had gone.

  The rain stopped.

  I went home.

  Chapter Ten

  The rain came again and again in the days that followed, darkening the sky. It poured through holes in the abbey church roof and the lay brothers used it to sweep out the noisome filth left by the pilgrims. The abbey had closed its gates now. Wolves were here, although no one believed my tale of a speaking wolf. The beasts had arrived early, by at least a month. This winter would be a long one.

  Their arrival had caught us unprepared so on the last bright day we would see for months Lollis took one last cart of provisions to the lazar house. Brother Michael, who ran this little hospital for those poor souls who the world treated even worse than dammers, would usually have made the journey himself, but Lollis had a hatred of confinement and, I think, took the opportunity to be outside the walls one last time.

  I could have gone with her but I had no wish to see Thomas. If he was unhappy in his new post there was little I could do about it. I asked Lollis to give him my greetings if she came across him.

  She had been thinking about my odd encounter and sought me out on that bright morning. ‘Wolves can make very odd sounds,’ she said, ‘and terror heightens the senses. I’m not saying it didn’t speak, just that I’ve never heard of it before. Who knows? They may be more like us than we know.’

  ‘It spoke, but it made no sense.’

  ‘I’ve got a theory,’ she said, as we walked towards the gate. ‘If the first wolves were dammers who were better at the hunt, does that mean they were the kind of people once who were, well, predators. Are we being preyed on by the worst of the bastards who murdered and raped and stole when they were human?’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be poetic justice? That God made t
hem into the monsters they were all along.’

  She shrugged. ‘None of us gets what we really deserve, good or bad. Take the poor buggers in the lazar house, for example. It’s not leprosy with most of them; it’s syphilis. Just as nasty though. I tell them to eat mouldy bread - to press it to their sores, but I’m sure Michael thinks I’m a witch. He tells me I should prescribe prayers.’

  Of all of the souls at the abbey it was Lollis I warmed to most. She was compassionate when she had no need to be. I asked her if she wanted me to come along but she shook her head.

  ‘No offence, Jude, but this will be my last opportunity to spend a rare few minutes on my own.’

  I wished her well and watched her leave through the west gate that was barred behind her.

  I had made the decision to not tell Will about the blood and single hair I’d found on what turned out to be the last day of our search. It seemed too cruel. I had no body, no way of knowing if this was the blood of his daughter. We had a long, sealed in winter ahead of us and I could at least spare him months of impotent anguish.

  With the arrival of the wolves our little community took it in turns to walk the walls all day and all night. We had a few arrows and a lot of stones. I became good with a slingshot and spent long cold nights watching black shadows cluster around our gates, and listening to the strange guttural snorts and shrieks that were a wolf’s true language.

  As the days went on and the sun disappeared we were never left unattended. Every crack in the wall was tested. Often I heard human screams and wails and the bark of wolves. I had no idea if they came from close to us or miles away. Sound travels far in winter’s silence.

  I can’t avoid it any longer. There’s something I need tell you. I find it hard to talk about.