by Ian Morson
The monk slowly closed the book in front of him and stepped down from his dais. He walked the length of the Scriptorium between the desks of the other scribes. Every one had been trained painstakingly by him, and he was proud of their work. His work and God's work. The tall and weakened figure of the Regent Master awaited him in the doorway. He could detect a stirring of curiosity in the others in the room. They knew something unusual was afoot, but their discipline, instilled by him, kept their heads lowered over the texts they copied. As he reached the doorway, Falconer stepped back and he walked through, gently closing the two halves of the oaken door on his domain. Behind it he could hear a rising tide of whispers.
Brother John leaned back against the heavy doors and sighed.
‘How did you know it was me?’
Falconer smiled, his pallid face lighting up with pleasure.
‘I didn't until the very last. Or at least I couldn't be sure. Segrim has not the force of will to commit cold-blooded murder, and anyway he was in the presence of the Bishop when Sinibaldo was killed. I checked that with the Bishop himself. The two servants who were in the kitchen at his death were not capable of such a deed. That left me with a puzzle, until I realized who I was forgetting. The very persons you never take note of in a monastery.’
‘The monks.’
‘Exactly. You actually ran into me, fleeing the crime, and still had the wit to invent a satisfactory story. I simply accepted your presence, and that of Brother Peter, the bursar, when he appeared soon after.’
‘But why didn't you just accept that the clerk, Gryffin, had shot him accidentally with his bow?’
Falconer leaned against the balustrade of the stairwell to ease his tired legs.
‘The angle of the arrow, and the position of the body. The arrow had pierced Sinibaldo in an upwards direction. Fired from outside in the courtyard, it would have been dipping. Then I saw a new gouge in the wood of a post in the kitchen. It was obviously where the arrow had struck. I couldn't make sense of this at first and pursued all sorts of silly ideas, thinking that the Bishop had been the intended victim. If only I had applied simple Aristotelean logic there and then, I would not have wasted so much time.’
Falconer shook his head at his own foolishness.
‘Once I had eliminated all other possibilities, I found myself returning to the obvious, and the arrow. A hit on Sinibaldo from that distance, through an opened door and into a darkened room, would have been a truly miraculous shot. No, I realized the killer had taken advantage of this heaven-sent instrument of death to carry out his intended deed and cover his tracks. He had probably decided on murder anyway - the overturned pots suggested a struggle was already taking place. Then the arrow came through the doorway and struck the timbers in the room. Our killer simply pulled it free and thrust it upwards into Sinibaldo's heart. Of course, if the killer was acting at close quarters, then the intended victim must have been Sinibaldo all along. It could not have been a case of mistaken identity.
‘And that meant the killer had to be you or Brother Peter. No one else was in the vicinity to seize the chance. I have to confess, I tended towards Brother Peter at first. I mean, he is so severe and you are so, well, jolly.’
A sad smile crossed Darby's strained features, but Falconer continued his exposition.
‘I had seen him myself going to see Humphrey Segrim. So that suggested him as one of the conspirators. But then I learned from Mistress Segrim that he had simply gone to lend her husband money to sustain his farm. She also told me about your informing the Abbot of Brother Peter's trip to Wallingford on the day of John Gryffin's murder.’
The monk was puzzled.
‘Why would that have made you suspicious of me? Surely it would have pushed you in the opposite direction.’
‘It would have done, except I already knew where Brother Peter was on that day, all day, which meant he could not have been at Wallingford. So I had to ask myself why you were telling lies about him. And then today, I had all my suspicions confirmed.’
Falconer stepped over to the monk, took his hands, and raised them up to his face.
‘I saw the hands of the person who strangled Segrim. They were covered in ink.’
John Darby's fingers were indeed stained with faint echoes of the reds, yellows and blues of the inks he so lovingly applied to his manuscripts. The monk's cherubic face contorted in a snarl.
‘Sinibaldo truly had the mark of Cain upon him. He planned to kill his own brother, the Pope's appointed legate to England. It was an easy decision to assist in his death.’
Angrily, he shook Falconer's hands free of his.
Startled at this move, Falconer stepped back and almost sealed his fate. He realized he was at the head of the creaky staircase, and about to fall. Clutching at the newel post to recover his balance, he was in no position to defend himself from Darby's onslaught. Those fingers that worked so delicately on beautiful lettering hooked themselves round Falconer's throat, and forced him back over the stairwell. Darby intended either to strangle him or to cast him down the steep steps. Falconer's arm muscles crackled as he fought to hang on to the post. He could feel the line of the top step gouging into his back, the smooth cloth of his robe helping his opponent to slide him further towards the drop. For the second time that day, Falconer appeared to be staring at death, but this time it was his own.
Suddenly there was an inhuman crack and the monk's grip on Falconer's throat relaxed. He looked up to see Darby's dead eyes in the middle of his reddened face. The whole head lolled at an unusual angle. Over his shoulder loomed the serious visage of Guillaume de Beaujeu, his arm crooked around the monk's neck. He had snapped it as coldly and simply as if it were that of a chicken due for the pot.
He kept his arm around the monk and with the other gently assisted Falconer to his feet. As the Regent Master recovered his breath, de Beaujeu pressed his finger to his lips and slid the body down the stairs that were to have brought about Falconer's demise. They watched the body tumble to the bottom, then the Templar spoke.
‘No one need ever know it was anything more than an unfortunate accident,’ he explained, and led Falconer down the stairs before the scribes, responding to the strange noises, issued from the Scriptorium.
Chapter Sixteen
Falconer was happy to be back in the familiar surroundings of his own room at Aristotle's Hall. Some days had passed since the solemn burial of Brother John Darby in the peaceful cemetery at Oseney Abbey alongside the brethren who had passed to glory before him. There seemed no benefit from laying accusations of murder at the doors of the abbey, and his death was seen as a tragic accident. All the monks knew he would be sorely missed, and a new prior and master of copying would be difficult to find.
The Regent Master was celebrating the full recovery of his health, and had spent fourpence of his meagre income on a robust Gascon wine which he now opened in the company of Peter Bullock and the Templar Guillaume de Beaujeu. The latter was shortly to return to France, and Falconer was anxious to prise just a little more of the facts of the recent case from him.
After a while, they had all consumed sufficient of the wine to make the conversation free and ribald, even though the Frenchman had denigrated its simple qualities. He did not demur, however, when it came to refilling his tankard. Falconer had explained about the prediction of the eclipse in Friar Bacon's papers, and his idea to frighten Segrim into confession.
‘I should have known his accomplice in the murders would not be so easily taken in.’
Bullock snorted with laughter, his wine slopping on to the floor.
‘I don't know why he was not frightened. I knew what was afoot and Friar Fordam scared me to death.’
‘And so you should have been, we all know whither you are bound at the Last Judgement.’
The comment delighted both Bullock and his drinking partners, and they toasted the constable's despatch to the sulphurous pit. Falconer still forebore from telling the man he had seen him as the face of Go
d. That was something he could savour in private. Then Falconer turned to the Templar with a question.
‘I assume that the Bishop's denial of his brother's complicity in an attempt on his life was incorrect. And that the conspiracy involving Segrim and Darby sought to despatch Sinibaldo before he despatched the Bishop, on whom so much of the King's plans depended.’
‘Oh, indeed. Sinibaldo had tried several times to end his brother's life, the last in the King's own residence in London. Then it was by means of poison to be administered by a bogus doctor. Whether he did it out of pure jealousy or hope of advancement, who knows? I was instructed to enlist him, so that the Orsinis’, and your King's, candidate for Pope was eliminated. But Sinibaldo was killed before I arrived, leaving me with the need to find out who had done it.’
‘But why?’ asked the constable. ‘If your contact was dead, why did it matter who had carried out the deed?’
Falconer cut in before the Templar could reply for himself.
‘Because, if you had discovered the Bishop was involved in the demise of his own brother, you could have used it to the same end. Eliminating Otho from the candidacy for Pope. By blackmail, if not by murder.’
De Beaujeu acknowledged Falconer's perspicacity with a slight inclination of his head.
‘I must confess, though, I was not unhappy that he had been killed. I prefer to use an instrument that is a little more subtle than outright murder. Except where it is absolutely necessary. Then I use whatever means are at my disposal.’
‘Like your own hands?’
De Beaujeu merely smiled his cold smile, and offered his tankard for more wine. Falconer poured and continued.
‘Still, I should be grateful that you were at the abbey at the last. I had underestimated Darby, and the state of my recovery.’
He stopped pouring as a thought then occurred to him.
‘Why were you there?’
Falconer saw an embarrassed look on Bullock's face, which he tried to mask with a deep draught from his tankard. But Falconer was not so easily diverted.
‘You arranged for him to be there?’
‘I could not let you beard the murderer in his den alone in the state you were in. But I knew it was not worth arguing with you about going there on your own. I also knew I could not follow you without you seeing me. But I remembered our Templar friend's stalking skills, having witnessed them. So I requested him to pick up your tracks as you left the postern gate and follow you. And a good job I did too, or you might have been at the foot of those stairs with a broken neck, not Brother John.’
Falconer swept aside the constable's annoyance at being found out with profuse thanks, and agreed he had saved him from his own foolishness. But still Bullock had a grumble about Falconer saving the worthless life of Humphrey Segrim. The Regent Master passed it off as unimportant.
‘I doubt we shall hear of Segrim involving himself in affairs of state again. He is a humbled man. Mistress Ann told me yesterday he was paying more attention to his own affairs now. Apparently the manor needs some careful managing. He even asked her opinion on a money matter.’
‘He certainly won't be able to shout at anyone for a long time yet,’ chortled Bullock, putting his hands round his throat and making croaking noises by way of explanation. Having heard the story, de Beaujeu was curious about Falconer's revival of the apparently dead man.
‘I have seen the same done with a drowned man in the Holy Land. It was a Jew did it then.’
‘And it was from a Jew I learned the technique. It doesn't always work, however. This time I was lucky.’
He remembered how he had thought fleetingly of leaving Segrim dead. The vision of a widowed Ann Segrim had floated before his eyes, and the idea had been tempting. But only briefly. Anyway, he could never marry and retain his teaching benefice, and a wealthy widow would swiftly have attracted another husband. Better that Ann stayed married to a cowed Humphrey Segrim, who would have no more power to supervise his wife's every move. Falconer drove from his mind the possibilities that such a situation might present, and returned to wrapping up the loose ends of his tapestry of truths.
With an innocent look on his face, he leaned across the table towards de Beaujeu.
‘What did you find out from John Gryffin when he was in Wallingford Castle's dungeon?’
De Beaujeu was too canny a person to be so easily caught out, and laughed at Falconer's attempted trap.
‘You do not know whether I spoke to John Gryffin, or to anyone in Wallingford Castle. Yet you dare ask that? Well, as it no longer matters I will answer you. Yes, I did go to Wallingford.’
Bullock crashed his tankard down on the battered surface of the table, and snorted in satisfaction that his memory had not played him wrong. The Templar continued his story unperturbed.
‘I had the good fortune to encounter a sleeping warden and relieved him easily of his keys. The boy was in a cell on his own, and so terrified of what was to happen to him, he would have done or said anything to escape. The poor lad thought incarceration was the worst thing that could occur. He didn't envisage death as his fate, and so soon at that. Anyway, he told me enough to convince me he had acted entirely on his own, and had not been involved in any plot.’
A wry smile crossed de Beaujeu's lips.
‘He also said he just reacted out of anger and was amazed that his arrow had found its mark, as all his comrades derided his poor aim when it came to killing game. He said he had never hit anything in his life before, and couldn't see clearly from one side of his cell to the other. To hit a man at such a distance, he classed as a miracle.’
Falconer heard in poor Gryffin's words an echo of the words he had used with his killer only a few days before. The three men paused and pondered on the untimely and unfortunate death of a young man whose only crime had been accidentally to present a calculating murderer with his weapon of destruction. Bullock broke the silence with a question for his old friend.
‘What I can't understand is why you were so worried about the potion Brother Talam was giving you, when I came in that day. To me it looked as though you thought he was poisoning you. Yet you say you never suspected him of being the murderer.’
Falconer chortled.
‘True. By then I knew his innocence - and Darby's guilt, incidentally. You see, Ann Segrim came to me with some information she thought would be of great use. And it was, but not in the way she imagined. She overheard Darby telling Ralph Harbottle that Brother Talam had been to Wallingford on the fateful day. But I knew he couldn't have been, because I had already learned by chance that Talam was providing potions for Friar de Sotell's weak heart, and had ministered to him all that day after a particularly bad attack. He had provided him with a draught of foxglove extract, and sat with him. He didn't want anyone to know because there is no love lost between the Abbot and the Friar or, more precisely, their respective orders. I only found this out because I myself enquired after de Sotell's health.’
He waved his finger at the constable.
‘Which only goes to show that all the facts are needed, no matter how insignificant or apparently unrelated, in order to find the truth about a murder.’
Bullock was not about to be diverted by the lecture, however.
‘You still haven't told me why you feared Talam's potion.’
Falconer grinned sheepishly.
‘I hate taking medicine, don't you?’
Epilogue
The events surrounding the death of the master of cooks of the Papal Legate are well recorded in history, as are the political consequences. For a time the gates of Oxford were closely watched and lectures suspended. Both excommunication and interdict were proclaimed on the University and town. However, several English bishops bluntly told the Papal Legate that his servants’ attitude was much to blame. And after the offenders, less the unfortunate Gryffin, had taken part in a penitential procession through the streets of London, and paid for the repose of Sinibaldo's soul, a pardon was issued. Nowhere is it rec
orded who actually committed the murder, or why.
At this time Henry was forced by the barons of England to rid himself of most of his foreign advisers. But even this did not prevent matters simmering on until the barons’ rebellion three years later. Bishop Otho left for Rome shortly after these events, which were described in several monastic chronicles, but failed in his bid to become Pope. James of Troyes, Patriarch of Jerusalem, was elected Pope on 29 August and took the name of Urban IV. In his turn, he died in 1265.
Guillaume de Beaujeu served the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple well, and his path crossed that of William Falconer on other occasions. He eventually became its Grand Master in 1274.
Little is known of the rest of Humphrey Segrim's life, for while he was briefly associated in the chronicles with great names such as Aethelmar of Lusignan, there is no mention of him after the events of 1261. Similarly his wife is lost in safe and happy obscurity.
Chronica Oseneiensis was kind to Ralph Harbottle and his pious and generous life is recorded in great detail, including the enhancement of the buildings at St John's Hospital. The bursar Peter Talam has a passing and grudgingly favourable mention also, though little is now known of their chronicler John Darby. The Dominicans too have little to say about Friar Robert Fordam, whose meteoric rise to celebrity with his prediction of the end of the world in 1261 or thereabouts was followed by a similarly swift descent into obscurity when the world carried on in its course. He is thought to have retired to a solitary cell in Northumbria, where he had no one to hypnotize but the gulls.
