Falconer's Crusade

by Ian Morson

  He threw the bones down on the table with such force that the cord snapped and the skeleton fell in pieces on to the floor with a clatter. The owl’s eyes snapped open and its head swivelled to take in the disturbance. Seeing nothing to further interrupt its sleep, it settled down with a flick of its wing feathers. Falconer ignored the mess he had created and left the room. He had to see the body.

  Master John Fyssh had seen the body and wished he had not. He had awoken to the sound of insistent hammering at the door leading into the lane. He was unable to ignore it and had reluctantly prised his bulk off the bed and gone down the steep wooden steps, calling peevishly in his highpitched voice as he went.

  ‘Very well. I am coming,’ he piped, pulling his fur robe tighter round his ample stomach.

  He stumbled in the darkness of the passage; it could not even be dawn yet. Grumbling, he incautiously opened the door before thinking that at this hour it could be a nightwalker. He was relieved to see it was one of the town constables, then angry that such a man should disturb the righteous sleep of a regent master.

  ‘There had better be a good reason for this disturbance, Constable.’

  ‘Have you not heard the hue and cry? There has been a murder.’

  ‘What business is that of mine?’ Fyssh seemed unconcerned at Bullock’s reason for awaking him before his normal hour.

  ‘It is your servant who has been killed.’

  Bullock was deliberately blunt, examining the fat man’s face for signs of foreknowledge. Was the spasm that momentarily creased his corpulent features fear of discovery? Bullock could not be sure before Fyssh gave an angry cry, ‘That bitch. She never was of use.’

  He had continued cursing his ill luck, only to realize the constable was still standing in his doorway, quietly insisting that he see the corpse. It was of some surprise that he had been persuaded to do so – he was not usually so intimidated by such a common person from the town, someone with no actual jurisdiction over him. Yet this ill-shapen man had somehow survived his tantrum and patiently waited while he slowly dressed in his warmest clothes. In the end Fyssh convinced himself he acquiesced merely to get rid of a person who more resembled a toad than a human being. He much preferred the company of well-formed young men with minds to shape.

  He had hastily affirmed that the corpse was indeed that of Margaret Gebetz and had abruptly turned to leave the side chapel in which she lay, half expecting the constable to continue to badger him with questions. Surprisingly, nothing was said and Fyssh breathed a sigh of relief at what he saw as his release. He left the constable washing his hands in the sacramental basin.

  Coming out of the church, he had seen the bulky shape of that interfering man Falconer hurrying towards him. He was about to grudgingly give him a good-day, when Falconer swept past him without a word, his eyes seemingly fixed on some distant target. Cursing the man’s incivility, Fyssh returned to Beke’s Inn to face the horror of a morning without a servant to prepare his food. He also tried to reconstruct what he had done the night before. Most of it had disappeared into a drunken haze after a certain point. The Lady Chapel in St Frideswide’s was icy cold. Perhaps just as well, as it housed the mortal remains of the murdered girl. The archway from the north transept framed what seemed a reverential scene, with the figure of a man bent over the recessed basin at the east end of the chapel. To one side stood a stone cross older than the chapel itself with, on its base, carved shapes that were rounded with age. It had no doubt been moved from another, older part of the church. The figure turned and Falconer saw it was Peter Bullock and he had been washing his hands in the basin put there for the purpose of cleaning sacred vessels.

  Bullock was one of the two town constables, paid by the merchant guilds to maintain a semblance of law. He acted as proxy for rich traders too busy to shoulder their own responsibilities. He was a squat man with a bent back and a permanent scowl for a face. Still, he bore his infirmity well and his patience in his dealings with the more powerful proctors of the university had appealed to Falconer when he first met him: an occasion when one of his students had unwisely assumed he could get away with cheating a baker of the few coins required to purchase some bread. The student had been drunk, the baker unwilling to let the matter drop even after Falconer had paid him what was owed. A constable had been called and Bullock had taken the baker aside and turned his anger into a grudging acceptance of the coins and a few pence more in compensation. Afterwards Falconer had asked the constable what had changed the baker’s mind. He had laughed and said he had merely reminded the baker that he might no longer be able to turn a blind eye to the certain overcharging of some customers. Falconer’s academic mind had been pleased by this practical application of logic, and a relationship had developed between two men of quite different stations in life.

  Bullock’s heavy figure seemed carved out of stone – as though he were part of the cross beside which he now stood. He looked to Falconer like a sad God musing at the figures of Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge, his breath visible in cold blasts that chilled humanity. Falconer turned to the form on the heavy oak table in the middle of the chapel. The girl had clearly been quite attractive in life, and some effort had been made to remove the obvious signs of the attack. Someone had cleaned the blood from her face, and it was now framed by a fringe of wet hair that clung to her cheeks, no longer housing the bloom of youth as they must have done only hours before. However, lurid splashes of dark red stained the front of her plain grey shift and the slash across her throat still gaped like an awful second mouth.

  ‘Who is … was she?’ asked Falconer as he crossed to the table to examine the body more closely.

  ‘Only a servant.’

  Bullock’s voice seemed strained and harsh, carrying an ironic note that Falconer had not noticed before. He looked up and Bullock sighed.

  ‘Margaret Gebetz, a French girl employed by Master Fyssh.’

  ‘Fyssh? Of Beke’s Inn? Was that him I passed in the lane?’

  ‘The same. He has already been here to identify her. You would know better than I, but no doubt he brought her back from his time in Paris.’

  ‘Do you suspect him of the killing?’

  Bullock hesitated, knowing Falconer’s own interest in suspicious deaths.

  ‘Maybe. Which puts it out of my hands.’

  Falconer ignored the reference to the university’s jealously guarded right to deal with its own and peered closely at the wound, then lifted both arms and looked at them. The girl’s hands were cold to his touch and though their owner could no longer feel anything, he was moved enough to gently lay them back, linked across the body.

  ‘You’ve cleaned the hands, too,’ he said, straightening the wet hair around her face.

  ‘No. I only wiped the face.’

  Falconer paused, then nodded.

  ‘Of course. I’ve seen all I want to see,’ he said and made to go through the arch past Bullock.

  The constable grasped his arm with a firm hand and spoke quietly into his ear.

  ‘I cannot be responsible for what may happen today. Certain people in the town need only the slightest excuse to show the university what they think of it.’

  He waved at the still form on the table, which in the gathering gloom of the storm-filled sky took on the appearance of a carved effigy on a tomb, stiff and lifeless.

  ‘This is more than they need.’

  Chapter Three

  The streets of Oxford at this hour would normally be waking to the noise of students, refreshed by a simple draught of ale and a stale crust from the day before. Like streamlets pouring into one great confluence, bodies garbed in a rich variety of styles and colours would rouse any late risers with their robust chatter as they filled every narrow lane leading to the High Street. Richer clerks, destined for high office of State, favoured brighter colours – scarlet and blue – whereas the tunics of poorer ones were confined to rustic browns. Scattered in the crowd would b
e the more sober attire of the Masters, crowned with fur-lined hoods. All would be making their way to Schools Street, that narrow lane of rooms hired by the Masters to teach in their different faculties.

  Also at this time the traders of the town would be lowering their wooden shutters to form counters to display their wares. The smell of bakers at their work would cause many a hungry student to yearn for his dinner, four hours away between terce and sext. The sight of sides of meat at the butcher’s would cause the student entrusted with the purchase of food for his hall to think what his farthing might fetch him. The smell of ale and wine mingled with that of leather in the bootmaker’s. Outnumbering the students as they did, the ordinary people of the town lived in an uneasy truce with the university. Successive royal charters had asserted the power of the chancellor over the town. Still, there was a living to be made out of so many hungry mouths, even if the chancellor regulated the traders’ profits. What did they care if St Augustine had proclaimed business an evil that turned men from true rest in God? Didn’t a man have to live and feed his family?

  This morning that truce seemed to be on the verge of being broken, and the streets of Oxford were unusually quiet. A few foolhardy students, calling loudly to each other with nervous bravado, passed the window arch of the main room in Aristotle’s hall. The chill wind carried their voices in to Thomas, who shuddered and turned back to Hugh Pett. He had missed what Hugh was telling him in his desire to get out and explore Oxford.

  ‘Sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘I was saying as you’ve already mastered grammar, Master Falconer may progress you straight to the rest of the trivium.’ His pale face was turned solemnly at the younger boy. ‘Inter artes quae dicuntur trivium, fundatrix Grammatica vendicat principium.’

  Thomas looked glumly at his feet and scuffed the bare clay ground of the hall. He felt Hugh’s arm around his, then a playful punch to his side. The other boy was grinning.

  ‘Don’t worry. There are plenty of boys whose Latin is terrible. In the early days all you are required to do is sit and listen, then follow the repetitions.’

  Hugh passed him a book that he had been holding in his hand since showing Thomas where he was to sleep – a room shared with two other clerks. The room was dark, even well into the morning, its one unglazed window looked out on the wall of the building across the narrow lane. It was impossible to tell much about the room aside from the fact that it housed three stark wooden beds and a single chair. Living in the country as he had, Thomas was unused to the constrictions of the cheek-by-jowl houses in Oxford.

  In contrast to his room, Hugh’s was neat and boasted a view which revealed the walls of the city looming over the rooftops opposite. Hugh had taken the book he was now giving Thomas from a small collection on a shelf above his bed, itself covered by a patterned quilt. At the foot of the bed stood a carved chest, suggesting that Hugh Pett had even more rich clothes.

  ‘Take this, and study it. I must go and prepare for my Responsions. Remember what the Master said about not leaving the hall.’

  Thomas sighed and turned his attention to the battered text in his hands.

  Master Fyssh had bullied one of his students in Beke’s Inn into providing a crust of bread and some cheese, and another had some ale left over from the previous night’s drinking. No one, least of all Fyssh, relished the thought of being abroad in Oxford when the town was looking for a murderer. Especially if he himself were suspected. He had to make do with these leftovers until tempers quietened down. Now he sat at the table in the common hall picking the crumbs of bread from his sizeable stomach, cursing the girl as though she had deliberately died to ruin his digestion. The tankard at his elbow was empty and his students kept to their rooms in fear of Fyssh’s ill mood.

  He knew he should be lecturing, but who but the most foolish student would expect him? He cupped his many chins in his hands and stared disconsolately into the empty mug. A hard hand descending on to his shoulder caused him to shriek and knock the mug flying. The last dregs of ale stained his lavish gown, and he turned to be confronted by an ugly pockmarked face well known to him.

  ‘Moulcom!’

  Jack Moulcom’s pitted face split in a grimace hardly recognizable as a smile. His black hair was plastered greasily across his forehead and his eyes were like small pieces of coal set in a sea of pockmarks. His surcoat belied the coarseness of that face; it was red and of a rich material, yet somehow graceless on the clerk’s frame. For he was only a clerk, yet still Fyssh feared him. He sat on the bench staring up with his jaw hanging open and his chins wobbling. Moulcom set a hard hand on each of Fyssh’s shoulders and stared into his eyes.

  ‘The girl’s room.’ His accent was harsh and of the North.

  ‘Wh-what?’

  ‘The girl’s room. Where is it?’ The hands clenched harder on Fyssh’s shoulders, squeezing the statement from him.

  ‘Through there.’ He turned his terrified look to the end door of the hall where Margaret Gebetz had had her quarters. Moulcom gave one final squeeze, strode to the door and flung it open. After he had disappeared Fyssh called out in his piping voice.

  ‘Damn you, you can’t treat a regent master in this way. The Northern Proctor shall hear of it.’

  His voice tailed off along with his short-lived bravado as the oddly dressed student returned to the hall.

  ‘I think not. Not if you don’t want them to be told what I know of you and your little habits.’

  His eyes pierced Fyssh who seemed to deflate and collapse back on to the bench, an empty bag. Turning back to the door, he flung a warning over his shoulder.

  ‘You wait there, and if any of your students come, get rid of them.’

  Fyssh sat still, his body shaking with terror. He nervously drew his fat forefinger through the puddle of ale on the table top and absently sucked it. A crash of furniture in the other room made him wince. It was followed by the sound of pots echoing as they bounced on the floor. Fyssh pressed his hands to his ears, trying to shut out the sound of Moulcom becoming more and more angry. If he couldn’t find what he wanted, what would he do to the regent master? And what could he possibly want from amongst the paltry possessions of a dead servant girl?

  Falconer stood at the entrance to St Frideswide’s deep in thought. Should he once again get involved in a mystery – for this was no straightforward killing, he was sure of that – or should he keep to the promise he made the chancellor after the Godstow affair? He sighed, why was he fooling himself that he had a choice? He could not relax until he had solved this particular problem. Especially as the townspeople seemed, according to Bullock, so incensed by the slaying. As he went to turn back to Aristotle’s hall, a voice called him from the opposite direction.

  ‘Falconer. I want to talk to you.’

  William sighed again – it was the voice of de Stepyng whose instruction in the law Schools seemed to him to be fastidious to the extent of dullness. He had obviously come from there for Falconer’s hazy vision could discern his shape coming out of the end of Vine Hall Lane. As he approached, Falconer’s judgement as to the ownership of the voice was confirmed. Robert de Stepyng was as fastidious in his appearance as his mind. His plain black gown with white trimmed hood was topped by a sallow face with a hawk-like nose. His close cropped hair emphasized the sharpness of his features, even his ears appeared pointed at the top.

  ‘I understand that someone has died.’

  ‘Murdered. That is so.’ Falconer thought how strange it was that everyone slipped into de Stepyng’s clipped speech in his presence.

  ‘That should still not prevent the students from attending their normal lectures at the set hour.’

  Falconer felt a gust of chill wind along the lane and looked up to the sky. It was clouding over and threatening to rain.

  ‘Bullock thinks the townsmen are ready to riot, so perhaps it is sensible of the students to stay indoors. I have told mine to do so.’

  ‘Bullock?’ D
e Stepyng’s question came of the impatience of someone who wished everything defined.

  ‘One of the town constables.’

  ‘Oh.’ He clearly thought that definition left the man in question not worthy of any further consideration. ‘A town girl killed by her own kind, no doubt. They would cut each other’s throats for a stale loaf. Not known to me and therefore no concern of mine. Or yours, Falconer.’

  De Stepyng too was clearly recalling William’s previous involvements. Falconer shuddered as another driving gust of wind blew and spots of rain began to fall. As he drew his gown around him, he noticed that the weather seemed not to affect the calm of the other man. It was as if even the wind was afraid to disturb his precision.

  De Stepyng turned and went towards St Aldate’s without another word, a dark figure disappearing into the gloom of gathering clouds, leaving Falconer with a niggling thought that he could not pin down.

  Thomas was tired of sitting in the cold hall at Aristotle’s. He had come to Oxford expecting something more than boredom, and the fright of the previous night had receded. Hugh and the other students were keeping to their rooms, and Thomas did not feel like disturbing the people he was to share with just yet. He looked idly through the window arch then leaned right out. The street was dead quiet both ways and Thomas could not see that it would be dangerous to be abroad. He would just explore the immediate area – Hugh had said the houses the other side of Shidyerd Street belonged to Jews. He had heard many tales about Jews but had never seen one. His father had once told him of a Jew called Samuel who lived in Bristol. He had enticed a boy called Adam into his house and crucified him with his wife’s connivance. His father had not spared any gory details and Thomas shuddered to recollect it. The story went on to tell how a voice from God had shamed the wife into confession. She had resolved to accept Christian baptism, but Samuel had killed her in anger. Thus his father warned him of the outcast Jews and their evilness, though he had not seen one himself.