Mathild 03 - The Darkening Glass

by Paul Doherty

  God forgive me, I forget that old woman’s name, yet I learnt so much from her about medicines from local plants and the various spells and incantations used in their application. At first I wondered if she was a witch. On one occasion her lined face creased into a smile, and she grasped my arm and leaned closer.

  ‘I watch your eyes, mistress, they are as clear as glass. You know, and I know, that no spell or incantation can cure anything. A prayer to the good Lord or His Blessed Mother is potent, but you see, mistress,’ she winked, ‘our patients don’t know that! They think spells work. Have you noticed, mistress, how, if the mood of your patients grows benevolent, they are more easily cured?’

  I certainly remember laughing at that. On another occasion she made a very strange remark, one that caught my attention. I had been full of questions; now she asked hers. One morning I went down for some dried moss mixed with curdled milk for a cut on my hand. I wanted it cleaned and kept free of pus; the old woman gladly obliged. We sat at the corner of the table, my sleeve pulled back. She carefully washed the wound and applied the mixture with the flat blade of a knife purified in the flame of a candle. I thanked her and offered to pay. She grasped my fingers and peered closely at me.

  ‘Mistress,’ she whispered, ‘physic has its own mysteries, but not as bewildering as the affairs of man. Why has his grace the king in all his wisdom sent Lord Gaveston to shelter here?’

  ‘This castle is fortified,’ I replied. ‘There’s the cove where ships may anchor. Lord Gaveston can withstand a siege. If he doesn’t, he can always take ship and flee abroad.’

  The old woman bowed her head, laughed softly to herself then glanced up.

  ‘But how did they know that?’

  ‘Mistress,’ I pleaded, ‘don’t play riddles with me. What are you saying?’

  ‘I have lived here for over seventy summers, and I can assure you, mistress, that never once has his grace the king ever visited here, and certainly not Lord Gaveston. So why should they come to a castle they’ve never visited? I go down to the town. Rumours mill as flies over a turd. The great earls are coming,’ she gestured with her hand towards the window, ‘and as for ships . . .’ She laughed. ‘Mistress, the cove down there is a haven for pirates, be they English or Fleming, from Hainault or France. Even if a ship came in, God knows whether it would be allowed to leave, and if it did, whether it would be safe.’

  The leech had placed her finger on a problem that gnawed at my own heart. Why here? Why the castle of Scarborough? Demontaigu, for all his years as a warrior, was mystified, as was Lord Henry Beaumont, who could, and often did, provide a litany of countless places where Gaveston would have been safer. The old woman tapped the side of her nose and winked.

  ‘Does his grace the king wish Lord Gaveston to be taken?’ She chewed the corner of her lip. ‘God knows, mistress, I have said enough. Now, as for this cut . . .’

  She wouldn’t be questioned further, though what she said reflected the gossip of the kitchen, buttery and refectory. Dunheved, that great collector of gossip, wandering the castle talking to this person or that, offered his own solution.

  ‘Perhaps it’s not the castle,’ he murmured, smiling. ‘Perhaps it’s the harbour. If Gaveston does flee to foreign parts, it will not be aboard a king’s ship but a pirate vessel, someone who could slip in and out and take him safely away without attracting the attention of other ships.’

  Yet in the end that was only one problem amongst many. For the rest, Gaveston insisted on holding his chamber councils, but these were mere chatter. We could only wait. The great earls threatened a siege, but Gaveston confidently informed us that his grace the king would raise levies and pin the enemy between his royal army and the castle walls. We had to be patient. Such was Gaveston’s hope. He was living in a fool’s world. No news came from either king or queen. To distract myself further, I worked in the castle’s kitchens: busy, noisy places with ham, sausage, rope and game birds hanging from the rafters to be smoked and dried. The spit boys invariably needed help to collect and dry the bavins or bundles of hazelwood rods for the long ovens in the castle bakery. I always rose early to help in such ordinary tasks. I loved the misty coolness, the promise of a full sun, the light blue sky. The smells from the kitchen were mouth-watering, as Gaveston still insisted on delicacies for his table. Bakeries have always delighted me. The fragrance of freshly baked bread provoked bittersweet memories of those happy, innocent days in Paris when I raced along the Rue des Cordeliers on tasks for my uncle whilst the oven boys prepared their first batches for the day.

  I would say my morning prayers in that delightful little garden and wait for the chaplain, a fussy grey-haired priest, to prepare the chapel for morning mass. Sometimes Dunheved and Demontaigu would join me, though usually the Dominican and my beloved Templar priest celebrated mass in their own chambers. On one occasion Dunheved remarked how little Gaveston fell to his prayers, and asked if it was true that his mother had been a witch. I simply smiled and said I did not know, voicing my own anxiety about Gaveston’s foolery and the king’s stupidity. Oh yes, I remember all those things: that homely chapel with its delicate paintings and its lovely garden; the morning tasks in the bakery and kitchen. I remember them because that was when and where the horrors began again.

  It must have been about six days after our arrival in the castle. I was in the buttery chamber when Dunheved came hastening in, his black and white gown flapping in the strong morning breeze.

  ‘Mistress Mathilde, I beg you, come to the chapel.’ He was breathless, one hand against the wall, half bowed as he tried to catch his breath. Demontaigu, who’d been breaking his fast nearby, joined us as we hurried out of the bailey and along the pebble-packed path to the chapel. Rosselin and the Beaumonts were already there, clustered before the door. A distraught chaplain was tugging at the great iron ring. Demontaigu forced his way through.

  ‘It shouldn’t be locked, but it is securely,’ the chaplain wailed. He crouched down and peered through the keyhole. ‘The key has been removed,’ he spluttered.

  ‘Did you lock it last night, Father?’ Dunheved asked.

  ‘No, I don’t lock it – why should I? This castle is fortified; the chapel holds little of value except the sacred pyx, and who would steal that, eh?’

  I walked around the side of the chapel overlooking the garden. The windows were really no more than arrow loops high in the wall, the horn that filled them long discoloured by the elements. I walked back.

  ‘I’m concerned,’ Rosselin declared. ‘I cannot find Middleton. He used to come here after dawn; he was worried, prayerful!’ I recalled the sacred medallions and badges Middleton had clasped on his jerkin.

  ‘He has been so distracted.’ Rosselin himself certainly appeared so, pacing backwards and forwards, now and again banging on the chapel door as if to rouse someone within.

  ‘You think he might be inside?’ Dunheved asked.

  Rosselin just shrugged. Dark-faced Ap Ythel, chewing a piece of bread, sauntered over with a number of his archers. I appealed to him for help, and six of his companions were dispatched to fetch a great log from the wood yard to use as a battering ram. The chapel door began to buckle. Ap Ythel’s archers shifted their aim from the lock on the left to the stout leather hinges on the right. The crashing brought others hurrying over to see what was happening. The archers continued their pounding. At last the leather hinges snapped and the door sprang loose, falling back so sharply that the lock tore away from its clasp. Inside was a ghastly scene. The beautiful chapel, with its exquisite silver pyx shimmering in the red glow of the sanctuary lamp, had been transformed into a place of hideous, brutal death. From a beam, twirling slightly at the end of a thick rough rope, hung the corpse of Nicholas Middleton. The medals and brooches pinned on his jerkin shimmered mockingly in the poor light. The makeshift scaffold, with the sanctuary ladder propped against the beam, was as brutal and stark as any crossroads gallows. A truly eerie sight. Middleton’s corpse was all askew, booted fee
t hung toes down, his legs in their green hose slightly apart, hands dangling, his head lolling oddly as if his neck had been twisted like that of a barn-yard fowl. One glance at that contorted bluish-red face, eyes half closed, swollen tongue pushed out, pronounced sentence of death.

  I asked for the corpse not to be touched, then stared around, listing in my mind what I saw. The ladder against the rafters. The key to the chapel lying on the ground. The sacristy door half open. The mercy chair had been slightly moved. I walked up through the sanctuary and into the sacristy; inside was nothing but a dusty silence. The door to the garden beyond was still firmly bolted and locked, both top and bottom all rusted, secure and fast. I walked back into the sanctuary and studied that grisly scene. Ap Ythel’s men now stood in the shattered doorway, driving back the curious. At my request the corpse was cut down and stretched out on the flagstones. Rosselin stood over it, pallid as a ghost. He was trembling, mouth opening and shutting, eyes blinking. I studied him carefully. Was he the killer? He knew Middleton came here, and yet sometimes you can look at a human being and sense his innermost soul. Rosselin was terrified, a broken man. A squire, used to the heat and hurl of battle, this ominous repetition of swift, mysterious death had broken his will.

  A disturbance at the door made me turn. Gaveston, accompanied by the constable, swept into the chapel. He took one look at the corpse, groaned and, turning away, just stared at the ground. Eventually he straightened up, his face as pitiful as if he was looking upon his own death. I watched intently for any artifice or pretence. I had seen Gaveston in his glory days and the Gascon had certainly changed: the dark hair was silvery in places, the beautiful, smooth face furrowed, cheeks slightly hollow, eyes frenetic, as if his wits had begun to wander.

  ‘How?’ The question came as a croak. ‘How?’ he repeated.

  ‘Only God knows,’ Dunheved whispered.

  ‘You!’ Gaveston shouted, pointing a finger at me. ‘You were commissioned to discover the cause of all this.’ His eyes had that hunted look. I wondered if I should question him, but what was the use? He would lie. Gaveston was never one for revealing his innermost thoughts.

  ‘Well?’ he shouted.

  ‘My lord,’ I retorted, ‘how can I, when we flee up and down this kingdom like robbers put to the horn?’

  Gaveston raised a fist. Demontaigu’s hand fell to his dagger. Ap Ythel hurried across and whispered into the Gascon’s ear. Gaveston half listened before spinning on his heel and sweeping out of the church. I curbed my own anger, becoming busy with the corpse. Dunheved picked up the key and walked away, his sandalled feet tapping on the flagstones.

  ‘No secret entrance here,’ he called, ‘no passageway.’ He paused, shook his head and came back to ask Demontaigu to give the dead man the last rites. My beloved agreed, kneeling to one side of the corpse, myself on the other. The words of absolution were whispered whilst I scrutinised the corpse: his fingers, the palms of the hands and the head. I could not detect any contusion or bruise, nothing to suggest that Middleton, his sacred medals and badges still glistening in the light, had been murdered. I stared around. Dunheved was now at the porch door, pushing the key in and out of the broken lock.

  ‘It would seem,’ I whispered once Demontaigu had finished, ‘that Middleton came here, moved that ladder and dispatched himself. The rope?’ I called out to the chaplain.

  ‘Oh,’ the chaplain hurried over, ‘there’s rope kept in the chapel chest in the sacristy.’ He spread his hands. ‘Mistress, this is a castle; rope is easy to find . . .’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘So,’ I gestured, ‘Middleton came here early this morning.’ My raised voice stilled the clamour as the rest gathered around, including the Beaumonts, who acted like spectators at a mummery.

  ‘He brought in or collected some rope,’ I continued, ‘then locked the door, took the key out, moved that ladder, climbed up to secure the rope, fashioned a noose, tightened it around his neck and hanged himself.’ I paused. Demontaigu, ignoring Rosselin’s muttered objections, was now searching the dead man’s clothing. He removed his right boot and shook out a small roll of vellum. He undid this, read it and passed it to me. The large scrawled letters proclaimed the usual message: Aquilae Petri, fly not so bold, for Gaveston your master has been both bought and sold.

  I read the words aloud. Rosselin moaned quietly like a child.

  ‘Not suicide but murder,’ Demontaigu whispered.

  ‘So it is finished,’ Ap Ythel murmured in his sing-song voice. ‘Genethig – little one.’ He crouched down beside me. ‘Gaveston is both bought and sold. He is ruined.’

  ‘True, fy cyfaielin, my friend,’ I whispered back. ‘The only questions are when and how.’

  I asked the chaplain to take care of the corpse. Demontaigu and Dunheved escorted Rosselin out into the garden. I knelt and inspected the corpse once more, as well as the ladder and rope. One of Ap Ythel’s archers was sawing at the noose just above the knot. He cut this and handed it to me for scrutiny, then I examined the rest of the chapel. The horn-glazed windows were narrow and sound. The door from the sacristy to the garden was rusted fast, as if it hadn’t been opened for years. The chaplain confirmed that there was no crypt or hidden entrance. Finally I inspected the door. The key had been fitted back into the ruined lock. I studied this and the rent hinges, then I glanced back down the small nave: nothing, no mark or sign of how Middleton had been murdered. Or had he, I wondered, received that taunting message about the Aquilae and decided to commit suicide? But would a man brimming with religious scruples and anxieties commit Judas’ sin? On the other hand, if he, a young warrior, had been murdered, how?

  I joined the rest in the chapel garden. We sat on a turf seat near a trellis covered by climbing roses. The morning was proving clear and crisp, the flower fragrances most pleasing and soothing. It was a place unsuited to the macabre death and secret malevolence we’d just witnessed. Rosselin was still stricken by what had happened. I questioned him closely; he could tell me little. Middleton had been frightened, determined like Rosselin to stay from any high place. He’d turned even more to religion, praying before a triptych of Christ’s Passion in his chamber, worrying at any shadow. Rosselin sat, face cupped in his hands. He confessed how Middleton had discussed deserting Gaveston, but where could they go? Every man’s hand now was turned against them. Rosselin was a squire, a soldier, but this silent, ominous war against him and the others had broken his will and sapped his courage. He talked hauntingly of murder tripping behind him like a bailiff waiting to pounce. About a host of shadows lurking at the top of darkened stairs or gathered in a coven, peering at him from some high place. I asked him what he meant. He retorted how he and Middleton felt they’d been pursued by the furies, by the ghosts of their dead comrades, by wraiths swirling in a black cloud around them. I could not decide if he was being honest or just babbling in fear. He talked of a scraping against his door in the dead of night. How he’d gone out into the stairwell and heard a whispering, as if a pack of hunting demons were plotting in the darkness below. I shivered as I listened. The dead do walk amongst us. Demons lurk in corners watching the affairs of men. Nothing draws them so fast as the feast of murder, a banquet of hot blood spilt in anger. I believe the preacher who said that Satan studies us most intently, lips curling with pleasure as he glimpses another son or daughter of Cain, the father of murder.

  ‘Do you wish to confess?’ Demontaigu asked. ‘To be shriven?’

  Rosselin gazed at him bleakly. ‘Too late, too late,’ he murmured, then he added those sombre words: ‘With hell we have made a compact, with death an agreement.’

  ‘And your master Gaveston?’ Dunheved asked. ‘Can he not help?’

  Rosselin wasn’t really listening.

  ‘We flew so high,’ he muttered, ‘basking under his sun. Now we’re blackened and shrivelled, falling like stones.’

  ‘Please,’ I begged, ‘your four comrades are murdered. Can you not help us avenge them? Secure justice against their as
sassin?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he whispered. ‘Yes, your sins do catch you out.’ He straightened up. ‘Who killed them?’ He shook his head. ‘How, why?’ He shrugged. ‘Punishment.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I choose,’ he lifted a hand, ‘you choose. Mathilde of Westminster,’ he said my name slowly, ‘watch your mistress! Subtle as a serpent she is.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I retorted. ‘Are you saying her grace had a hand in these deaths?’

  ‘Subtle as a serpent!’ Rosselin abruptly paused, as if realising for the first time who he was talking to. Then he rose quickly to his feet, mumbling about having to wait on Lord Gaveston, and strode hurriedly away. We watched him go.

  ‘A man under sentence of death,’ Demontaigu observed. ‘I wonder if he will stay or flee.’

  ‘Where?’ Dunheved got to his feet. ‘Where can any of them flee?’

  ‘Perhaps at least we can find out what was in Middleton’s mind.’ Demontaigu opened his wallet and took out a small, thick key. ‘I found this on Middleton’s corpse; it must the key to his chamber.’

  Chapter 8

  The siege had begun, help from the King frustrated, the Castle was without food.

  The dead man’s lodgings were on the second storey of the soaring keep, immediately beneath Rosselin’s. The key fitted. We walked into that chamber, a chilling experience: everything had been left neat and tidy, as if Middleton was about to return. The bedclothes had been pulled up. Garments hung from wall pegs. A pair of boots and soft slippers lay pushed beneath a writing table holding a jug and pewter cups. Against the far wall the squire’s chest and coffer were closed and clasped. Only the lighted candles flickering under their metal caps betrayed Middleton’s agitation. The tapers had been placed on the table around a triptych of Christ’s Passion, as well as on the floor beneath the rough yew crucifix on the wall, around which Middleton had woven his Ave beads. On the writing table, precisely arranged in the form of a cross, were a number of pewter badges venerating St Christopher, the patron saint of those who feared sudden, violent death. The small psalter lying beside these was well thumbed, especially the page with the litany to St Christopher. On the blank pages at the back Middleton had scrawled his own thoughts.