‘Why should she be unwilling to?’ the knight asked.
And I believe that he truly did not know the answer.
‘There are many women, or so I am led to believe by my more worldly brothers, who would be ashamed to admit that they needed the spiritual guidance of a holy friar for the whole of the night,’ the friar said with a guile which would have put the nuns’ priest’s fox to shame.
‘We must have her name,’ the franklin said firmly.
‘Red-hot pliers would not drag that innocent name from my mouth,’ the friar told him.
‘In that case, I must contact one of your superiors, and ask him to use his spiritual authority to compel you to co-operate,’ the franklin said.
It was a pity, I thought, that the franklin did not work for the crown. For if he could use such language as that – while making it sound so natural to his tongue - he could have become a fine civil servant.
The effect of the franklin’s words on the friar had been to make him visibly pale.
‘My superiors are all busy men,’ he protested weakly.
‘But not too busy to be concerned about the reputation of their order, I would imagine,’ the franklin pointed out.
He spread his hand out wide in front of him, in what could have seen - by those in need of one - as a gesture of friendship. Oh, he would have been a master of court intrigue, this man!
‘Please…’ the friar said, licking his fat lips.
‘I can well understand that you might be concerned that your holy work could be misinterpreted,’ the franklin continued, his voice softening to match his gesture, ‘but the truth will out, whether we wish it or no.’
‘If you would only take my word…’ the friar said - proving, once again, that he was a more ardent beggar on his own behalf than he had ever been in the service of Sweet Jesu.
‘Alas, much as I might wish to take your word, I cannot,’ the franklin said. ‘But perhaps a compromise can be reached.’
‘A compromise?’ the friar repeated, hopefully.
‘Someone must be told this lady’s name. That is beyond question. But there is no reason it should become general knowledge.’ The franklin gave me a quick, assessing glance, then hastily continued, ‘I am sure that my two distinguished friends here would have no objection to your giving the name of the lady to me alone, so that I may go and talk to her while they continue their questioning of the other pilgrims.’
I could have challenged him at the moment, but I chose to rise above the temptation, since my interest was in seeing even-handed justice served, rather than in winning a foolish competition with the franklin.
Besides, whilst he seemed sure that by following the trail of the friar he was most likely to find the killer, I was not - for the friar struck me as a man who had too great a love of the rich things of life he had already obtained to ever risk losing them by committing a murder.
So let the franklin follow a false trail if that was what he wished, I decided. And if, as he was on that trail, I solved the murder, I would not lord my superior intelligence over him – at least, not more than a little.
‘Is it acceptable to you that the friar should reveal the name of the lady to me alone?’ the franklin asked.
‘It is acceptable,’ replied the knight, who would never have allowed a troop of foreign soldiers to outflank him in the physical world, yet had no idea at all that the franklin had just outflanked him in the mental one.
‘And you, Master Thatcher?’ the franklin asked.
‘If the friar is to confide in only one person, then I feel that I should be the man,’ I replied, for no other reason than pure devilment.
‘Why should it be you? It was my idea,’ said the franklin, sounding exactly like a child who sees the danger of others rolling his hoop while he is forced to stand and watch.
‘You are right,’ I agreed. ‘You should talk to the lady.’
The franklin nodded. Then, perhaps afraid that I would change my mind again, he stood up, threw his arm over the friar’s shoulder, and led the other man quickly to the door.
‘Do you have any strong opinion as to the particular order in which we should see the rest of the pilgrims?’ I asked the knight, once the franklin had firmly slammed the door behind him.
The knight did not. I would have been truly amazed if he had.
*
The knight and I saw the five guildsmen as a group. They insisted on it, and since I was not convinced that any one of them truly existed without the presence of the others, I readily agreed.
They had all shared the largest bedchamber in the inn, the guildsmen told us. They had all fallen asleep at the same time…
At exactly the same time? I interrupted.
At exactly the same time, their spokesman agreed.
They had all slept well, none of them stirring in the night, and had woken again within seconds of each other. They had never been apart. Unless we thought that all five of them committed the murders – which was, of course, a ludicrous notion, given that they were guildsmen – then we would have to accept that none of them had committed it.
And had their cook slept with them? I asked.
Certainly not! they had replied, scandalised. They had hired a separate room for him.
And so they had, the cook confirmed - the smallest and meanest room in the whole inn.
Not that he was complaining, I must understand - for why would he need anything else, only going to the place when he was dead drunk and immediately falling into a deep sleep.
I believed him when he said he had been drunk – believed, indeed, that that was probably the state in which he climbed into his bed every night of his life.
The manciple said he had slept soundly.
The reeve confessed to having risen in the early hours to take a piss – but I did not pounce on this confession since, while I could well believe he had killed the miller, I saw no reason he should have cut the prioress’s throat.
*
Despite what I promised earlier concerning my descriptions of the interrogations, you may by now be starting to think, dear reader, that I have presented you with far too much straw and far too few worms. If this indeed be the case, then I pray your indulgence not a moment longer, for the reeve was followed by the widow of Bath – as juicy a worm as ever wriggled her way around a man’s questions.
The widow, as I may have mentioned before, cut a formidable figure. She had arms that might crush a man’s rib cage, and legs capable of squeezing the life out of his body further down. In my Tales I say that the kerchief she wore on her head weighed a good ten pounds, and lest you think I exaggerated, I will affirm it again. It weighed at least ten pounds! It would have bent the neck of many a sturdy man, yet the widow wore it as if it were no more than a butterfly which had landed on her.
I do not mean to paint a false picture of her. In truth, I would be failing in my duty as an artist were I portray her as some kind of grotesque. Because, for all her size, she was to be thought of, first and foremost, as a woman. And what a woman! Even though I am normally drawn to females of a more delicate kind, I could not fail to sense her strong attraction. Nor could I ignore her gap teeth, which announced her nature as much as does a wooden fish over a fishmonger’s shop or a brush over the door of an inn.
The widow sat down on the chair in front of us. There was a slit up the side of her gown, and as she crossed her legs, she revealed a goodly portion of her scarlet hose.
‘Well, this is certainly a pretty pickle that we find ourselves in and no mistake,’ she said, as if more amused than appalled. ‘I am no novice in the art of taking pilgrimages.’ She began to count them out on her fingers. ‘Let me see, there was Edward … I mean Rome. Santiago de Compostella - (Hal), Jerusalem – (Jack, Adam, Will and Richard). Cologne…’
‘We do not doubt that you are an expert on pilgrimages – along with other things – madam,’ the knight said harshly.
‘And never once, on any of those jolly jaunts, has t
here been a murder,’ the widow continued, as if she had either not heard him at all or else had not caught his tone. ‘Yet on this journey - which is so short in duration that it can scarcely be called a proper pilgrimage at all - we have already had two.’
‘And what can you tell us about those two murders, madam?’ the knight demanded, in a voice which would have made most infidels instantly recant their heresy.
‘Why, nothing,’ the widow replied.
‘Did you sleep alone last night?’ the knight asked.
The widow sighed. ‘To my great regret, I did,’ she said, ‘for though I have walked to the altar with five husbands, none has survived long in the state of holy matrimony.’
‘And why was that?’
‘Because they all died.’
‘Died? Or were murdered?’
The widow laughed, as she might have done if the knight had been trying to be humorous.
‘They were natural deaths,’ she assured him. ‘Although, in all fairness, I must confess that the spans of their lives might have been longer had they not married me.’
‘You make no sense, madam,’ the knight said. ‘Explain what you mean by that.’
‘Merely that, in each and every case, their great willingness to fulfil their matrimonial duties more often than was necessary proved to be a strain which their poor hearts could not take.’
It was becoming clear to me – which, since I was a poet and observer of men, it should have done - that the knight harboured no great affection for the widow, and that nothing would have pleased him more than to hear her confess to the murders of the miller and prioress. But I did not think such a confession would be forthcoming. For though she was quite powerful enough to have carried out the deeds, she seemed, like the friar, to be one who was more interested in enjoying her own pleasures than in denying others theirs.
‘I have no more questions which I wish to ask this woman,’ the knight said gruffly.
And neither, I must confess, had I.
*
The wife of Bath had left us, (though something of her powerful presence was still to be felt in the room), and the poor parson and his brother the ploughman had taken her place. They sat before us now, on low stools, their faces lifted upwards and filled with an innocence which shone as brightly as innocence must have from the faces of Adam and Eve before the Fall.
I leant forward, and asked them where they had…
I leant forward and questioned them about…
I…
I have a problem, one that I did not even anticipate when I began this narrative. It is a problem which stems from the rules which govern the writing of a who-hath-done-it. And not from the rules which already exist – for there are none – but from the rules that there will be – the rules by which you, my readers of the future, will judge this book.
Let me explain. The first few works in this new form will, I imagine, recount true incidents, as mine does. But this state of affairs cannot continue forever, for I doubt if there are more than a few dozen genuine stories on which future writers will be able to draw.
So what will happen when these stories have been exhausted?
Will the writers of who-hath-done-its abandon the form altogether?
I think not, for I have yet to meet the man who will cease to milk a cow until he is sure it has run completely dry. It is my guess then that, denied any other sources for his material, the writer will turn in on himself, and replace the true with the invented.
And thereby hangs a tale. Or perhaps it would be fairer to say, ‘From there, the tale will hang.’
For the writers of such stories will not have to work under the same restrictions as I must. I cannot choose who the murderer will be, for example, for in a true tale, he is who he is.
The creators of new stories, however, will have a choice. Thus, in their books, the meek widow who lives on the edge of the village may turn out to be none other than the mad axe man – the killer with the blood of a dozen poor souls on her hands. Thus, the village idiot could be revealed to be not an idiot at all, but a cold-blooded murderer.
I dare go further even than this in my speculation. I am willing to wager that these writers will always choose one of the seemingly innocent as the killer – for where lies the glory in revealing that the obvious candidate was the guilty party from the beginning? And the readers will join this conspiracy with the writer, searching out the one character who could not possibly have killed, and marking him down, for that very reason, as the one who did.
And this, my dear reader, is where I encounter my problem, for I will have written only one who-hath-done-it, while you will have read dozens. Thus, when you see the words, ‘The parson and the ploughman sat before us now, their faces filled with an innocence which shone as brightly as innocence must have on the faces of Adam and Eve before the Fall,’ you will be certain that you have found the killers.
But you will be wrong! For this is not one of the sophisticated mysteries you will have been used to reading. It is a first attempt – a mud hut which needs to be constructed now, so that many years hence another writer may be able to build a palace. Thus, my story does not have the cunning which later examples will display, and if I mislead you it will not be because I intended to do so, but because of what you have come to expect.
Do you understand now why I have had difficulty in describing what passed between the knight and myself on the one hand, and the parson and his brother on the other? I am afraid that your subtle mind will misinterpret the words – afraid that because the two seemed so innocent, you might take them to be guilty as sin.
And they were not! I swear it! The parson and the ploughman were just what they seemed. They had played no part in the murder of the prioress and the miller, nor, I would imagine, in any other unnatural death to which they were close either before the pilgrimage started, or after it had finished.
Is that clearly understood, then? The parson and the ploughman were innocent!
Good! Then let us forget them altogether and move on to other pilgrims who might perhaps have a little more to offer us in the way of culpability.
*
‘I did not kill the miller and I did not kill the prioress,’ the monk said, giving his shiny weather beaten head a vigorous rubbing with his broad hand. ‘Since I was alone at the times they met their deaths, I cannot prove I was not involved, but then neither can I prove to you that God exists. You will just have to take my word on both those matters.’
He was nervous I thought – though I would have said that his nerves came more from impatience than from distress.
‘Who do you think killed them?’ I asked.
‘I have not the slightest idea,’ the monk replied, off-handedly.
‘And not the slightest interest?’ I countered.
‘Nor that either,’ he agreed. ‘Men and woman have died ever since the day that the angel drove Adam and Eve from paradise. There is nothing I could do about it, even if I wished to.’ He glanced out of the window, to see how high the sun had risen in the sky. ‘I must go now,’ he said anxiously, ‘I must go before I lose the falcon.’
‘The falcon?’ I repeated. ‘Which falcon?’
‘Did you not see him riding the air, as we came into town yesterday?’ the monk asked.
‘I saw falcons being trained,’ I admitted. ‘I can’t say I noticed any particular bird.’
‘But he stood head and shoulders above the rest,’ said the monk, amazed - as obsessed men often are - to learn that there are others who, for some inexplicable reason, do not share their enthusiasm. ‘I knew the moment I saw him that I must have him,’ he continued, ‘for he is a truly magnificent bird - a god among hawks. A man might sell his soul to possess such a creature.’
Or at the very least he might be willing to do whatever black deed was necessary in order to get the money to buy it, I thought.
*
Only a day earlier, the nuns’ priest had seemed no more than a shadowy figure who made
up part of the prioress’s retinue. Then he had told his tale, and in the telling of it had emerged as a brilliantly coloured butterfly does from a dull chrysalis. Now there had been yet another change. As he crossed the common room he moved slowly and awkwardly, like a man forced to carry an anvil of guilt on each shoulder.
‘I can tell you nothing except that I have failed,’ he said. ‘Failed my God and failed the nuns He charged me to protect.’
‘You should not blame yourself,’ I told him.
‘Then who else should I blame?’ he asked. ‘If I had fulfilled the task I had been given, the prioress would still be alive.’
‘You had the room next to hers, did you not?’ I asked.
The nuns’ priest nodded. ‘And the other nuns were on the other side.’
‘Why did they take two rooms instead of just the one,’ I wondered aloud.
‘The prioress was a lady of gentle birth,’ the priest said. ‘It was not meet that she should share a room with her lesser sisters.’
‘Yet she did share a room with her nuns in Southwark,’ I pointed out. ‘Was that only through necessity? Was it only because there were no other rooms available?’
‘I know nothing of such matters,’ the nuns’ priest said. ‘Harry Bailey can better advise you on that than I.’
‘Did you hear any strange noises in the night?’ I asked.
‘I heard the sisters scream,’ the nuns’ priest said evasively.
‘And before that?’
‘Someone tried to open my door in the middle of the night.’
‘But it was bolted?’
‘Yes.’
So the nuns’ priest, a vigorous, powerful man, had bolted his door, while the frail prioress had not bolted hers.
‘Do you have any idea who it was who tried to get into your chamber?’ I asked.
‘What is your next question?’ the nuns’ priest replied, stonily.
‘The wall between the chambers is quite thin. Did you hear any noise from the prioress’s room?’
‘No,’ the nuns’ priest said - a little too quickly.
‘Are you telling the truth?’ I demanded.
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