by Ian Morson
‘It is true. Master of Cooks Sinibaldo was my contact in the Bishop's household. Shame that he was killed before I could speak to him. But at least you cannot accuse me of being his killer.’
Falconer nodded agreement.
‘Let me start from the beginning.’
De Beaujeu explained that his order, the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon as Falconer had surmised, had agreed to carry out a favour for ‘certain factions’ in Rome representing the Orsini family interests. Bishop Otho was a candidate for the Papacy, but supported by the Orsinis’ deadly enemies, the Colonna family. And potentially the English King, of course. The Grand Master of the order learned from his spies that Sinibaldo was jealous of his brother's power and influence, a situation that had been made worse by Otho appointing him Master of Cooks. Sinibaldo had felt mortally offended, but had accepted as it left him in a position to work out his revenge.
‘Cain and Abel,’ muttered Falconer, remembering his conversation with the Bishop, and thinking that Otho should have listened to his advisers after all. De Beaujeu looked curious at the Master's aside, but continued.
‘I was sent by the Grand Master to seek to use Sinibaldo to . shall we say, discredit the Bishop. His envy would have been a powerful weapon.’
‘And would not have dragged the Orsinis or the Templars directly into the matter,‘ added Falconer. ‘What if that had failed? Would you have killed the Bishop yourself?’
De Beaujeu did not reply, but the answer was in his steady gaze.
‘Mine, I think?’
The Templar's right hand reached out and drew the deciphered document towards him, folding it closed. Falconer did not intervene.
‘And your transcription of the hidden message?’
Falconer's hand dropped like a dead weight on the incriminating text.
‘I think I will keep that for a while. For safety.’
Falconer did not make it clear whose safety he was considering, but de Beaujeu knew that while the secret message was held by Falconer, his own hand was stayed. He got up from the bench with the same lithe power that had gained him access to Aristotle's Hall and was gone. A great sigh of relief burst out of Bullock, as though he had been holding his breath throughout the encounter.
The Regent Master picked up the paper with the Grand Master's message on it and flicked it into the fire. After a moment, the embers blackened the surface, obscuring the letters, then the paper flared up in a yellow flame that lit up the astonished face of Peter Bullock.
‘Why did you do that? That paper gave us a hold over him.’
‘He needs only to think we have it. Besides, a secret is best kept as a secret.’
Falconer slumped back against the table edge. He felt dizzy, but whether from the fever or the sudden dawning of the truth was difficult to tell.
Chapter Thirteen
Ann Segrim could find no comfort in her herb garden. An entire day had passed since she had left the message with Peter Bullock. Surely Master Falconer had returned to his lodgings by now and received it? Or had the ugly man simply forgotten to pass the message on, assuming that the wishes of a mere woman were unimportant, or concerned with some impropriety? She wished she had reason to travel to Oxford again, but even if she had a good excuse she had barely seen Humphrey to request permission. It galled her that she was a prisoner in her own home, her life ruled by the whim of her husband - especially when he was hardly there himself. Recently he seemed to be either holed up with visitors engaged in conspiratorial conversations, or riding off to God knows where. She crossed herself at the blasphemous use of the Lord's name, even in her thoughts. She must be patient - it had always served her before.
The morning was cool but clear, and the dew tumbled off the fat leaves of the comfrey as she brushed past it. Little beads of water sparkled on the skirt of her plain dress, as though seeding it with pearls. She often found solace in the herb garden, alone and free from the oppressive presence of her husband. She tended the plants lovingly, and took a small delight in dirtying her hands. Indoors she felt like a doll. Careless of the damp and clinging earth, she knelt and began to pick some rue.
‘I understand the lady of the manor wishes to speak with me. Perhaps as her servant you could take a message.’
Startled by the sudden appearance of a stranger in her private domain, Ann looked up to correct the man's misunderstanding. It was William Falconer with a broad grin on his face. She rose to her feet, uncaring of the earth that clung to her skirt. Continuing the flirtatious deceit, she dropped a crude curtsey and spoke in the broad accent of her kitchen maid.
‘Milady is far too busy to see a common traveller unannounced. Tell me what you want her for.’
Falconer could not suppress a laugh, but it soon turned into a fit of coughing that he could not control. Ann saw for the first time that his face was flushed and sweat was dripping from his forehead. Even if he had walked from Oxford, the morning was still cool and unlikely to raise a sweat in a fit man. She knew he must be ill. Dropping her pretence, she motioned him to a bench by the wall and he gratefully flopped down. She sat hesitantly at the other end of the bench, for the moment retaining a decorous distance from him.
The coughing fit stopped and in response to the unspoken question in her eyes, he spoke.
‘It's nothing, just a slight chill. I should not go swimming in the dead of night.’
He clearly was not going to explain this cryptic remark further, and Ann suddenly found herself at a loss for words. She felt foolish, and was aware that his piercing blue eyes, hazed with a fever that she could see was more than a chill, bored into her. She dropped her eyes to her lap, where her hands nervously twisted the folds of her robe. He gently reminded her of her wish to speak to him. Peter Bullock had remembered after all to pass on her message.
Falconer had barely slept in the night - coughing fits and his growing perception of the truth about the murders had conspired to keep him awake. He was sure that Ann Segrim must have another truth to add to the increasing pile that would decipher the puzzle as surely as his knowing the Templar's code. Besides, he simply wanted to see her again. He had risen with the dawn and, despite the hotness coursing through his body, had hurried all the way to Botley, circumventing Oseney Abbey as he did so. There had been signs of activity in the abbey as the monks rose to their religious observances, but Falconer did not want to enter its gates again until he had spoken to Ann Segrim. And she to him.
Brother John Darby had once more excused himself from the boredom of the daily meeting in the chapter house, and was seated at his desk in the lofty Scriptorium. It was a bright, sunny morning and Brother John's mood suited it. The transcriptions for Master Falconer were nearly completed, and the newest recruit to the team of copyists had managed yesterday to copy a page of text without spilling any ink. Also yesterday he had had a long conversation with Abbot Ralph about the recent mysterious absences of Brother Peter Talam. He expressed his concern that the brother should be so long away when his presence was needed to ensure the regular income from rents for the abbey's properties. He regretted telling tales, but felt the Abbot should know that he had been told by another brother that Brother Peter had travelled as far afield as Wallingford. And hadn't there been trouble at the castle there? Then the night before last he had been abroad when all pious folk were in bed. Ralph had been uncertain what to do, but promised that he would look into the matter.
This very morning, with the early sun warming his heart, Brother John had bumped into the cause of his concern in the corridor connecting the chapel with the Abbot's quarters. The man looked careworn and could hardly muster an excuse as Darby collected the precious parchments that had been knocked out of his grasp on to the stone-flagged floor.
‘You could at least help me, Brother,’ complained Darby.
Dancing anxiously from one sandal-clad foot to the other, Talam scooped up one of the documents and thrust it abruptly at his colleague.
‘Forgive me, Broth
er, but I have an urgent matter at the hospital.’
With that he was gone, leaving Darby wondering what could be so urgent at St John's. Didn't everyone who got taken there die anyway?
Now he had the extra task of swabbing the dirt from the texts that had been catapulted out of his grasp. Sitting on his high stool he began his day by ensuring they were as pristine as before, then set them aside to carry out his main task. As his copyists silently slid into their allotted seats, he began shaping the large letters that would illuminate the next page of his chronicle. Gradually they spelt out the desired text.
‘THE SEVENTH SEAL.’
Falconer hurried back from Botley with the information that Ann Segrim had given him almost completing the assemblage of truths on the murders of both Sinibaldo and poor John Gryffin. The unfortunate student, because he had drawn a bow in Oseney Abbey, was an innocent bystander whose death simply served the ends of the real murderer. Falconer was now nearly sure he knew who that was, and why the murder had been committed. It remained only to trap the man somehow into revealing the truth himself. His head was spinning, but he had to speak to Ralph Harbottle at Oseney. What Ann had told him about Brother Peter Talam meant he must see the Abbot. With each step that he took his feet seemed heavier and heavier. He staggered along the narrow lane that led to the abbey, and a great black cloud of jackdaws and crows rose out of the field to his left. Now he could make out the archway of the abbey, but it seemed to be wobbling and about to collapse. The ground appeared to be shifting under his feet, and he could hardly stand. He couldn't believe there was an earthquake taking place. Not now. But suddenly he was pitched forward into a dark and bottomless pit.
The Seventh Seal
When the Lamb broke the seventh seal, upon the earth was thunder and lightning, and a great earthquake ...
Falconer's head was splitting with pain and a cacophony of brassy sound was echoing through the vault of his skull, bouncing off the chamber. He squeezed his eyes open, only to see the broken clods of earth into which his face was thrust. He realized he was lying face down on damp and friable soil. Hadn't he collapsed in front of Oseney Abbey on dry and stony ground? And what was causing that horrendous sound? He shakily raised his head from the earth, shifting his hands to his ears to shut out the noise. It was so loud, his teeth seemed to rattle in their sockets. The earth trembled and suddenly pebbles beat upon his back and exposed head. He curled himself into a ball, wrapping his arms over his grizzled locks. Squinting between his elbows at the ground in front of him, he realized the pebbles were hailstones, some the size of his fist, that were crashing to earth into pools of red blood, where they hissed and melted away, turning the glutinous blood into pink rivers that ran between his arms.
Puzzled and a little afraid, he dared to raise his gaze even further, and gasped at the sight of seven monstrous forms that towered almost beyond his vision into the clouds above. It was as though they had been inhumanly stretched on a rack, their feet still stuck to the ground and their heads now in the sky - a sky that roiled with colours and cloud shapes, sometimes resembling fire-breathing dragons, sometimes gentle flocks of sheep. One of the towering forms, white and rippling, like a column supporting the heavens themselves, raised a gilded trumpet to its lips. Again the piercing blast split through Falconer's brain, and for a moment it seemed as though he was curled up inside his own skull peering out of the sightless sockets. The ever- changing hues of the sky were darkened by a massive shape that whistled and roared as it approached. A fiery mountain ripped from its earthly chains descended on him erupting gouts of molten rock. In a few moments it obscured the whole sky, and he screamed as the edifice of his skull was shattered by the unimaginable weight of earth pressing on it from above.
There was nothing to hear but the echo of the last blast on the heavenly trumpet dinning in his ears. His eyes blinked open as he felt the soothing to-and-fro motion of a boat beneath his feet. He gasped as he realized he was not dead after all. But he could not understand how he came to be aboard ship. It must be ten years since he was last on a boat, travelling back through the Mediterranean from Cyprus - unless the last ten years had been some strange dream, and had not really occurred at all. He urgently needed to make sense of what had happened to him. If it was all a dream, the final act had been terrifying. He sat up in the bunk in which he had been lying and called out. No one answered. Instead there came a thundering sound, and the boards of the boat beneath his feet began to shudder and vibrate. It was as though some underwater monster was bearing down upon the boat, intent on swallowing it up. He staggered out on to the deck to witness a great white column burst from the sea amidst a fountain of spray. Around its base the water boiled and seethed, and great waves were thrown back from it. Falconer grasped the side of the boat as the mighty torrent struck, tossing the tiny vessel high into the air and dropping it with spine-jolting suddenness back into the fretful sea.
The column formed into another angel, for that was what those monster shapes surely were, and a living trumpet sprouted from its lips blaring out its apocalyptic message. Suddenly, Falconer was aware of other vessels in the sea around him, some already shattered by the pounding waves. Sailors clung to spars and broken timbers, bobbing like discarded rubbish on the surface of the choppy sea. A cacophony of screams ripped at the tatters of his brain, and the blinding light of a shooting star flew across the firmament straight towards the unfortunate seafarers. Its passage over his head was accompanied by a thunderous roar that seemed to split the sky, and it splashed down into the sea amidst a plume of steam. As the boiling waters settled, the sea around where the star had sunk was stained an evil and slimy green. The miasma spread across the surface of the sea in a shimmering slick, and the men who had been pitched from their boats were sucked into it and swallowed without trace, their screams cut off as they disappeared below its turbid surface.
The flimsy boat that was all that stood between Falconer and certain death in the poisoned sea began to rock violently in the choppy waves. Each surge threatened to toss him over the side. Then he heard the sound of shingle under the keel of his little craft, and almost fell over the side of the boat in his haste to regain firm ground. His feet hit pebbles and he stumbled badly, rolling on his back and cracking his head. He let the rounded stones press into his hips and the back of his skull, unmindful of the pain, glad only to be alive. He kept his eyes tight shut as he heard the fourth trumpet sound, opening them when he felt a frightening coldness rolling over his feet and legs. He looked down into nothingness.
In panic he looked up at the sky, momentarily imagining he could see a face that somehow resembled the craggy features of Peter Bullock. He thought wryly that if God had a human face, there was every reason that it should be Peter Bullock's. But then part of the face became obscured, and he couldn't discern it at all. Part of the sky - sun, moon and stars in the one firmament - was black. No, not black, it simply wasn't there. Almost against his will, his eyes were drawn down to his legs, which now felt icy cold. They had disappeared too. He could not find the words to describe what he saw. Over his lower limbs lay a darkness that seemed to swallow the light, and it crept ever higher up his legs as he lay there watching the horror. Realizing the danger, he squealed in terror and dragged himself away from the encroaching dark. With relief he saw that his legs and feet were still there, though they felt numb and cold.
Awkwardly he staggered to his feet, and stumbled over the shifting surface of the shingle. He moved inland to get away from the shipwrecked mariners and enveloping darkness. He crested the shingle dunes and gazed over barren desert dotted with grey boulders. Before his unbelieving eyes, a massive crack opened up, zigzagging across the parched and brittle earth, and sulphurous fumes assailed his nostrils. Coughing and choking, Falconer dropped to his knees, holding on to the shifting earth beneath his feet as it ground and shattered. Every moment was a struggle for survival, and every moment brought a new horror. He heard a buzzing noise like the sound of a huge swarm of b
ees. As he raised his eyes to the heavens, the rasping grew in intensity, setting his teeth on edge, and he grimaced with pain. Out of the cavernous wound in the desert's surface rose a myriad tiny winged shapes. In their buzzing they spoke the name of their master - Abbadon the Destroyer. They rose and rose like smoke from a fiery furnace, eventually blotting out most of the mottled sky with their presence. Falconer was trapped between the encroaching nothingness and a plague of locusts.
Looking around him he realized that the rounded shapes he had thought were boulders were in fact people burrowing in terror into the unrelenting soil. They wailed in fear as, like Falconer, they cast their gaze up to the living clouds of insects now descending on them. In an instant Falconer and the other wretches were smothered in the creatures. He frantically began to brush them from his arms and head. It was then he knew they were no ordinary locusts. On top of each chitinous green body was a tiny human head with long flowing locks. As the creatures grinned at his pain and fear, between their lips he could see jagged, pointed teeth running with blood. He felt sharp, painful pricks all over his body and, picking one of the locusts from his arm, he could see it was armed with a scorpion's tail that plunged time and time again into his frail flesh. He redoubled his furious efforts to sweep the horrific creatures from his body and stamp on them. He could hear the crunching as they died but as soon as he had brushed one arm free and begun on the other, even more locusts replaced those he had crushed. He was drowning in insects as surely as those seafarers had in water. The exquisite pain of thousands of tiny stings was too much to bear, and he blacked out.
When he came to, he appeared to be lying on a soft bed looking up into a cavernous room. His eyes still swam, and vague shapes hovered over him, dissolving and reforming like scudding clouds. The face of a mighty angel, its features distorted but discernibly those of Ann Segrim, descended from the heavens and spoke in a tongue he could not understand. The words echoed around his skull like distant thunder. He strove to rise but his limbs were dead, refusing to obey him. He could see a scroll in the hands of the mighty angel, who bestrode his bed with feet of fire. Further away a voice from the heavens told him what to do. It said:
