Saintly Murders

by Paul Doherty

  Duchess Cecily’s mouth was now a tight, bloodless line.

  ‘Meanwhile,’ Kathryn paused, ‘your son Edward the King becomes aware that Clarence, in return for the French support, is selling secrets to Louis.’

  ‘He does not know it’s Clarence?’

  ‘No, but he suspects, so Edward contacts his own agent in Paris, Padraig Mafiach, also known as Robin Goodfellow. Mafiach is very good. He learns the names of both the English spy in the Royal Council and that spy’s accomplice. Mafiach takes a verse from the Bible, Zephaniah 1:16, both the Latin text and its English translation. He writes on the bottom “Recto et Reverso,” backwards and forwards, with that enigmatic phrase, “Veritas continet Veritatem; the Truth contains the truth.” Now, Your Grace.’ Kathryn rose, unlocked a coffer, and took out a scroll of parchment. ‘“Recto et Verso.” You can see how in both the Latin and the English text Venables’s name can be detected.’

  ‘And the phrase: “The truth contains the truth”?’

  ‘The same can be said about George of Clarence; the translation spells out his full name. Clarence is the one who contained or held Venables, just as the English text contains the meaning of the Latin verse.’

  ‘He was always a spoilt brat!’ Duchess Cecily looked out at the darkness beyond the small window. ‘Beautiful as an angel with a heart as black as sin! He told Venables when Mafiach would arrive at the Falstaff, yes?’

  Kathryn agreed.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me all this last night, Mistress? You told me about the friary and hinted at other things.’

  ‘Your Grace,’ Kathryn replied sweetly, ‘I was as honest with you as you were with me.’

  The Duchess gave a lopsided smile.

  ‘And now what?’

  ‘Oh, I am sure your son the King will frighten Clarence, who will, perhaps, forget this matter for a while. The Vicomte de Sanglier will regret coming to England. He will certainly regret being so bold and confident at not only contacting these traitors but openly baiting you on the matter of Mafiach’s death. He will go hunting different quarry.’

  ‘And you, Mistress Swinbrooke?’

  Duchess Cecily pulled back her cloak and opened a small jewelled purse on the gold cord round her waist. She took out a petite, silver glass case.

  ‘This is a relic, Kathryn.’

  The physician laughed. Duchess Cecily glanced at her sharply.

  ‘You find such things amusing?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Kathryn gazed up at the ceiling. ‘Will the Blessed Roger be canonised? Will his shrine be set up in the Friary of the Sack?’

  Duchess Cecily smiled thinly. ‘Perhaps, perhaps not. I truly believe Roger is with God, whatever sins he may have committed. However, these rumours, which Clarence would love to publish, have cooled my support for the canonisation.’

  ‘Of course,’ Kathryn agreed. ‘That explains de Sanglier’s spiteful remark. The French would love to spread such scandal and claim its source was no less a person than your own confessor, a saint of the Universal Church, a man whose cause you so vigorously promoted!’

  ‘I understand the Pope in Rome is busy.’ Cecily looked at the reliquary case and shook her head. ‘I just can’t believe a son of mine would dare to rake up such filth!’

  Kathryn was tempted to ask her if there was any truth in the rumours but bit her tongue.

  ‘Madam’ – she picked up the English translation – ‘read for yourself.’ She handed the piece of parchment across. ‘See, I have scored the letters.’

  The day of the Lord,

  The King of Kings most righteous, is at hand:

  A day of wrath and vengeance, of darkness and cloud:

  A day of wondrous mighty thunderings,

  A day of trouble also, of grief and sadness,

  In which shall cease the love and desire of women

  And the strife of men and the lust of this world.

  Dame Cecily did so, tears in her eyes, her finger spelling out the letters. She handed the piece of parchment back and thrust the reliquary at Kathryn.

  ‘Swear, Kathryn, on this piece of the True Cross, that what you have told me, and what you have learnt, will be shared with no one else this side of Heaven.’

  Kathryn brushed the reliquary with her fingers.

  ‘I swear,’ she murmured. ‘Your Grace has nothing to fear from me.’

  The Duchess got to her feet and stared down at her.

  ‘But I have got a great deal to fear from you, Mistress Swinbrooke! Leave George of Clarence to me! As for the rest, ask whatever you want!’

  Kathryn and Colum were betrothed on the eve of Corpus Christi, at the door of St. Mildred’s Church, very close to the font where Kathryn had been baptised. The guests gathered round to witness this solemn exchange and the promises of both that they would be married before the summer ran its course. Kathryn felt sublimely happy. She was dressed in a beautiful gown of blue satin fringed with white, a jewelled crucifix Colum had given her around her neck, her black hair covered by a silver-white, gold-edged veil. She watched Father Cuthbert bless the ring and the candles to be used at the nuptial mass. Thomasina, Agnes, Wulf, Holbech, Mathilda Chandler, and all their friends from the parish clustered in the warm porchway of the church; they cheered as Colum took Kathryn by the hand and led her out to the top step, where they repeated their promises in public. Kathryn stared at the sea of faces smiling up at her. Here she had been baptised, come with her father for Sunday mass, and once, almost an eternity ago, believed she loved Alexander Wyville. As she stared down at the throng, a movement at the back caught her eye. Her heart skipped a beat. Was that Wyville’s face she’d glimpsed? She glanced away, dismissing what she had seen as simply a ghost from the past. Colum, the love of her life, was standing holding her hand, smiling lovingly down at her.

  Author’s Note

  This novel develops a number of very interesting themes. First, medieval medicine was perhaps more advanced than it is given credit for. Like today, quacks and charlatans flourished, but many physicians were keen observers and often diagnosed and, sometimes, even successfully made a prognosis of serious ailments. It is easy to assume that in the medieval ages the status of women was negligible and only succeeding centuries saw a gradual improvement in their general lot. This is certainly incorrect. One famous English historian has pointed out that women probably had more rights in 1300 than they had in 1900, whilst Chaucer’s description of the Wife of Bath shows a woman who could not only hold her own in a world of men but travelled all over Europe to the great shrines and was a shrewd businesswoman, ever ready to hold forth on the superiority of the gentler sex.

  In this novel fiction corresponds with fact, and the quotation facing the title page summarises quite succinctly how women played a vital role as doctors, healers, and apothecaries. Kathryn Swinbrooke may be fictional, but in 1322, the most famous doctor in London was Mathilda of Westminster; Cecily of Oxford was the royal physician to Edward III and his wife, Philippa of Hainault; and Gerard of Cremona’s work clearly describes women doctors during the medieval period. In England, particularly, where the medical faculties at the two universities, Oxford and Cambridge, were relatively weak, women did serve as doctors and apothecaries, professions only in later centuries denied to them.

  History does not move in a straight line but often in circles, and this certainly applies to medieval medicine. True, as today, there were charlatans ready to make a ‘quick shilling’ with so-called miraculous cures, but medieval doctors did possess considerable skill, particularly in their powers of observation and diagnosis. Some of their remedies, once dismissed as fanciful, are today in both Europe and American regarded quite rightly as alternative medicine.

  Medieval physicians recognised the dangers posed by rats and viewed them as the carriers of disease. Medieval municipal authorities also waged war on this versatile rodent, though with little success: The position of official rat-catcher was common in many towns and cities. Indeed, the most successful way of
eliminating the vermin was either by fire, as proved by the Great Fire of London in 1666, or the use of ferrets to wipe out both the vermin and their nests. The idea of someone bringing rats into a certain town is based on fact. Such ‘forced infestations’ were common, whilst Malachi Smallbones is based on that eternal confidence trickster, the person who secretly creates a problem and then publicly offers to resolve it!

  Medieval physicians knew a great deal about the properties of arsenic. They saw it as dangerous but believed that, in small quantities, it could be useful. Indeed, this practice continued well into nineteenth-century Europe. Arsenic does have certain unique properties. The slow corruption of a victim poisoned by arsenic, and the red dust often found in their coffins, sent a number of notable murderers to the scaffold.

  In the Middle Ages shrines and relics were big business, a veritable source of revenue for many churches. Naturally, there were many religious orders who prayed that one day their church would house the relic of a great saint. The cures at these shrines should not be summarily dismissed. True, some are laughable; others bear powerful witness to the power of mind over matter; whilst a few, like those of Lourdes, must be considered as genuine.

  The rumours about Duchess Cecily of York are not fiction. George, Duke of Clarence, was a treacherous prince, and, later in Edward’s reign, he was arrested for plotting against his brother and spreading such scandalous rumours about his mother and the conception of his kingly brother. In 1483, when Richard of Gloucester usurped the throne and imprisoned his nephew, Edward V, in the Tower, his henchmen allegedly resurrected this story. They pointed out that Edward IV may have been illegitimate, and therefore, his sons had no claim to the throne. Accordingly, the story may be salacious, but it did become a powerful political weapon in the turbulent politics of the House of York. In the end, those who spread such scandal received very little comfort. Clarence was murdered in the Tower, allegedly drowned in a vat of malmesey. Richard of Gloucester, later Richard III, was defeated and killed by Henry Tudor at the battle of Bosworth in 1485.