Sword of Shame

by The Medieval Murderers

‘But you are tired, uncle.’

  ‘Now,’ he repeated. His voice was unexpectedly firm.

  As she turned away with a hurt expression, Elias took her wrist. I was surprised at the speed of the gesture. Also, I could see he was grasping her hard. But his tone was gentle.

  ‘Dear girl,’ he said. ‘You are always concerned for my welfare…unlike those carrion.’

  She bent forward and kissed him on the brow. Then she straightened up and, with a nod, indicated that it was time to leave Elias. He told me to replace the sword on the brackets above the chimney-piece. I did so and then returned to the dining hall with Martha. In my brief absence, the diners had drunk deeper. Now it was cousin Elizabeth’s turn to be informed that she was required and she bustled her way to Elias’s room.

  Cousin Cuthbert rounded on me. ‘Well, Master Revill, what success did you have with the old man?’

  ‘Did you squeeze anything out of him?’ said Rowland.

  ‘Did you creep into his confidence?’ said Valentine.

  These were such objectionable questions that I didn’t dignify them with an answer. From the words being bandied round the table I gathered that they each of them planned to visit Elias once more before turning in for the night, no doubt to try and impress on him their love and devotion to his welfare.

  For myself, I was too tired to stay up any longer after the day spent riding from Cambridge and the dispiriting sense that the journey had been futile anyway since I’d come to the wrong house. To be frank, the company at table was not altogether to my taste either. Martha, once again bearing a taper, escorted me to the foot of the narrow stairs that led to the next floor. She seemed more attentive to me than she was to her cousins.

  ‘Goodnight, Nicholas. I hope you sleep well.’

  ‘Perhaps I should have swallowed some of your concoction. Your uncle’s, that is. The soporific.’

  ‘Mine?’ She looked confused. ‘No, Abigail makes them to his specifications.’

  The point hardly seemed to matter and, taking the offered taper, I climbed the stairs to my little room. It was only when I was inside that it occurred to me I should have thanked her again for the night’s hospitality. I would never have made it back to Cambridge. There was no denying that this was a strange household, though. The little casement window was fogged up but I wiped at it with my sleeve and gazed out. The snow had stopped sometime while we were at supper and it lay, smooth and unmarked, across the courtyard. There was no light from the gatehouse and a dead, blank silence reigned over all.

  A night-gown had been thrown across the bed. I suppose I had Abigail to thank for that. It smelled musty. Apart from removing my shoes, I didn’t undress or change. It was too cold. I should have insisted on more blankets after all. I lay down on the narrow bed but without snuffing the taper. Having felt sleepy downstairs, I now discovered that, within reach of a bed and without anything else to distract me, my tiredness had departed. Failing a soporific, perhaps I should have drunk more at supper like the other guests. I wondered again exactly what pleasure or satisfaction Elias Haskell could hope to gain from the presence in Valence House of his would-be heirs, when he so despised them. Surely there must be limits to his fondness for mischief. He was a sick man, even if not in quite such a bad state as he pretended to be for the others. What did he expect to gain? A few trinkets, goblets and mirrors and suchlike? Even if, as Martha had claimed, some of those round the table had altered their wills in his favour–as a hypocritical sign of good faith, presumably–what use would that be to a man on the edge of his grave?

  Yet, looking at things from the other side, what fortune could any or all of the Haskell cousins hope to come by in this place? Even to my unpractised eye, the house and its outbuildings were in a state of disrepair. Wasn’t that evidence of a lack of fortune? Not necessarily of course. Some would say that the less there was on display the more must be hidden away. ‘All rumours,’ Elias had said, but he hadn’t denied them. And he’d also claimed that it was a general belief that old families must be rich, especially when they’d been reduced to the nub. Neverthless, I didn’t quite see it. The cousins were prosperous, even if they weren’t wealthy. It must be as the old man had said, that some people were never satisfied, always wishing to pile their plates higher.

  And this made me think of my own situation. Nicholas Revill of the King’s Men, the finest and grandest company of players in London. But Revill’s circumstances were neither fine nor grand. I was still a lodger in other men’s houses and without any place to call my own. With hands not full but more or less empty. I retrieved out of my doublet pocket the buckle from my shoe, the one in the shape of a love-knot. I looked at its copper burnish in the taper’s feeble light. Somehow all this confirmed me in my impression of myself as a poor player. Perhaps there’s something about lying on a bed in a strange house during a silent and snow-filled night which encourages introspection and self-pity. I blew out the taper and settled down to a wakeful few hours.

  But I must have slept because I woke with a start. At least I think that I woke, since everything which followed seemed to take place in a kind of dream–or nightmare. There was a noise from outside, a panting sound. As I’ve said, there was a little window in my room overlooking the courtyard which lay between the main building and the gatehouse. To peer outside, I had only to swing my legs to the floor and crane forward. The panes in the window were rimed over. I rubbed at one of them and the cold burned my fingertips. I put my eye to the little circle I’d created.

  Outside all seemed as before. There was no moon but the stars overhead were blazing fiercely and the snow cast a chill glow of its own in response. The outline of the gatehouse, wearing a new thatch of snow, stood in front of me. Beyond it the skeletal shapes of trees were just visible. Almost immediately my breath fogged up the window again. I wiped at it once more. What was I looking for? I didn’t know. Then I heard that strange panting sound again. It came from below. I peered down. The angle was awkward and it was difficult to see clearly because the porch blocked the view. But there was definitely someone down there, a person standing a few paces in front of the main entrance to the house. I could just glimpse the top of a head. I had the impression of height, unusual height. More than that, the figure seemed to cast a kind of elongated shadow on the snow. Then the pane of glass filmed over once more. Shivering, I wiped at it a third time. When I tried to peer down again, the figure had vanished.

  It was cold up here, as I crouched at the narrow window, attempting to keep clear a little circle of glass that gave a glimpse of the night. I told myself that whatever was happening outside was no concern of mine. I was only in this house because of an absurd error, though admittedly one of my own devising. I lay back on the bed. No more sounds came up from outdoors but I heard a subdued shrieking from somewhere within the house which caused my hair to prickle. And then I remembered Grant the monkey and breathed deep and promised myself that I would quit this place on the next morning.

  I fell into a shallow sleep and dreamed I was escaping somewhere on a horse which was floundering in the snow. A monkey was clinging round my neck. I didn’t know what–or who–I was trying to escape. Perhaps it was the monkey. Eventually the horse stumbled and I was pitched headlong into a bank of snow. The monkey released its grip and ran off. I thought I might hide from whatever was pursuing me under the snow-blanket but another voice told me I would be suffocated there.

  I woke up aching and unrested. The little chamber was bathed in a lurid light. The memory of suffocating in the snow was still in my head and the room felt airless. This time I opened the casement window. It creaked on unwilling hinges and let in a draught of cold morning air. After the stuffy fears of the night, this was refreshing. The sun was just rising, a tight red ball, beyond the fringe of trees that fenced the house. The arrow-shaped spire of the church was dyed red. The sun’s rays struck the upper storey of the house. My first thought was that, provided there was no more snow, the road from Ickleton back to Camb
ridge might be passable. With luck I could get away from this strange spot. If I set off straightaway, with the minimum of farewells and assuming Rounce was fit to ride…

  Without thinking, I gazed down into the snow-filled courtyard. It was still in shadow at ground level and my eyes were full of red dazzle from squinting at the sun. Even so I could make out a darker shadow lying at full length in the snow and almost jumped back from the casement in shock. A second glance confirmed what instinct had already told me. There was a body down there. Whose I did not know.

  Pausing only to put on my shoes, I was out of the room and down the narrow back stairs almost before I knew what I was doing. Past the kitchen from which clattering sounds and cooking smells were emanating. I should have stopped there and then to summon help. Got the housekeeper Abigail or the other servant to accompany me. I wish I had now. It would have saved me a deal of trouble later on. Instead, like the fool I was, I half ran down the passage which led to the dining hall. The large chamber was empty. Evidently no one in Valence believed in early rising. The remains of last night’s fire smouldered in the great chimney.

  At the main door, I halted for an instant. Even now I might have called out for help. There were at least a couple of able-bodied individuals in the house who would respond. I ought to leave it to them. This was none of my business after all. Yet there is an urge in some of us to be first on the scene of a disaster, a foolish urge. I unbolted the main door and tugged it open. By now the sun had risen a fraction higher so that its first rays were slanting right into the courtyard, glaring off the snow. I shaded my eyes and, standing in the porch, gazed outside.

  There was a body perhaps a half dozen paces away and lying in a direct line from the front door. I could not identify him, but he was showing me a clean pair of slippered heels, half buried in the snow. The upper part of the body was pitched forward so that the head was face down and almost completely sunk in the snow. His arms were flung out. It was as if he had set out to leave Valence and stumbled in the snow and not troubled to raise himself again. I recalled my suffocating dream.

  But this was real and no dream. I made to step forward, away from the shelter of the house. Not that I could do anything to help the poor fellow–for it was certainly a man (and I had a fairly good idea which man it was by now)–since his whole posture showed that he was long past help. His posture, and the blood which spattered the snow in the area of his sunken head. Even at this point, I did not take fright for myself. After all, what had the goings-on in the Haskell household to do with Nicholas Revill? I was merely an accidental player who’d stumbled onto the wrong stage.

  I stepped through the snow, which rose above my ankles. I skirted the body until I came level with the man’s head. He wasn’t wearing a hat nor even a night-cap. Not the kind of weather to go out bare-headed. Not that he would ever care about such matters again, I thought. And felt an unexpected pang and wiped away some water from my eyes. It was Elias Haskell, the old man, the owner of Valence House. His hair, now revealed, was long and white and flecked with blood and snow. There was more blood spilled in the snow beside him although not in great quantity.

  My guts did a little turn as my eyes confirmed what instinct had already told me. Even then I didn’t have the wit to be properly alarmed. Instead I examined the scene as if it was going to tell me something or other of interest.

  I was facing the body. On my left hand was the little gatehouse. A curl of fresh smoke issued from the chimney, showing that the lodge-keeper or one of his brood was up and about. There was a single small window on this side of the gatehouse, looking into the yard, but evidently no one had yet observed Elias’s corpse. This was not surprising since the whole yard had been in shadow until moments before. As for the main house, most of the rooms lay in the rear area. In fact the only one, apart from the dining hall, that appeared to have a direct view of the courtyard was the chamber I’d been sleeping in. The outbuildings, their roofs newly covered with snow, looked more dilapidated by the bright light of the morning than they’d appeared in the gloom of the previous afternoon. There was no sound or sight of anyone else. Just the dead man and I.

  I wondered how long Elias had been lying out here. I was reluctant to touch the body, which would have long since turned cold anyhow. Presumably it had been he whom I’d heard–and glimpsed–last night, the panting sound some sort of death-rattle. What time had that been? For no good reason, it had seemed during the earlier rather than the later part of the night. Why had he been out here at all, the old man, when his proper place was tight asleep in his bed?

  And had he been alone, Elias Haskell?

  Why, yes, he must have been alone. Because there was only one set of footprints leading from the porch and they belonged to the slippers which protruded, heels uppermost, from the snow.

  Or rather there had been one set of footprints. Now they had been joined by another pair belonging to a witless player from London. And something else was nagging at the edge of my mind. Something which suggested that the dead man might not have been altogether alone when he met his end, footprints or no footprints. Something to do with an action I’d performed only moments earlier. What was it?

  Yet even then, looking at my own tracks and knowing that something was amiss, I did not grasp my danger.

  What I did grasp instead was an object lying in the snow at some distance from Elias’s outflung left arm. I hadn’t seen it at first because it was half buried in the snow and because the sight of the dead man was more pressing. There were no tracks or other marks around the sword, indicating that it had been thrown there rather than dropped on the spot. I bent down and once again gripped the sword which I had originally lifted from the wall-brackets in Elias Haskell’s bedchamber. The sword which was hundreds of years old and had been discovered up the chimney. The sword which seemed to possess–how had Elias put it?–a mind to think with or wings to fly with. And now, in an easy action considering its weight, the sword seemed to rise free of the snow in which it was embedded. The hilt and pommel were cold to the touch. When I’d handled the thing before it had been by firelight and candlelight. But even in the dazzling sun, the blade was dull as if tainted with those bluish patches and other stains which I didn’t care to examine too closely. I noticed what I hadn’t noticed in the chamber, that an inscription ran the length of the blade down the centre. Two inscriptions, for there was another on the reverse. They were in Latin. I made out the words as best as I could but they did not seem to be much help or use in this present situation. How had the sword come to be out here? Had someone taken it from Elias’s room while the old man slept? Was the blood in the snow the result of wounds caused by the sword?

  Well, there was a mystery here but it was nothing to do with me.

  I was wrong, of course. It was everything to do with me.

  Something else about the sword drew my attention but before I could do anything further a movement in the corner of my eye made me look up. There was a cluster of people standing in the entrance to the house. With that clarity which sometimes comes with great danger, I saw myself as they must be seeing me. Here is an old man lying dead and bloodied in the snow. Has he been unlawfully killed? It seems so. Two sets of footprints, and two only, are linked with the body. One of them belongs to the corpse. The other belongs to an interfering player, who has most definitely stumbled onto the wrong stage. To make matters worse, the player is brandishing a sword which, to all appearances, could be the murder weapon. That he now lets fall the weapon, so that it drops with a dull thud into the packed snow, makes no difference. In fact the panicky gesture only makes him look the more guilty.

  I was sitting on the chest in the bedchamber, the third time I’d attended on Elias Haskell in less than twenty-four hours. As before the old man was lying on his great bed with its bulbous foot-posts. The only difference now was that he was dead. When I first saw him, his long face illuminated by the candles which glimmered in the recesses of the head-board, I’d been reminded of a s
hrine or tomb. Now it was that, almost literally.

  But, otherwise, being in Elias’s chamber was like being in a cell. I was a prisoner or near enough, confined and unable to make my escape without violence. The heavy curtains remained drawn as a mark of respect but a gap between them admitted a shaft of winter sun which provided enough light. By now it was mid-morning. Lounging near the door–and preventing my exit should I have attempted to make one–was the young, hulking fellow from the stables, the one called Andrew. He smelled of horses. Sometimes I caught his eye, the one that wasn’t covered by his forelock of straw-coloured hair. When I did catch his eye he grinned, vacuously. He obviously did not share in the general mourning for Elias Haskell. Whenever I got up from the chest to stretch my legs he stiffened by the door as though as I was going to attack him. He hadn’t said a word in the couple of hours or so we’d been penned up together in the dead man’s chamber. If I hadn’t heard him wooing Meg the previous afternoon–‘I’d rather take care of you’ he’d said–I might have wondered whether he could actually speak at all. It hardly mattered anyway, since I didn’t feel much like talking.

  The members of the household, clustered in the doorway, had witnessed me standing over the corpse of Elias Haskell, sword in hand. They’d observed my footprints in the snow alongside those of the dead man. They had come to the obvious conclusion, which was the very one I would have arrived at, had I been in their shoes. I had killed the old man outside in the snow in the morning just as the sun was rising. I had killed him for reasons best known to myself. And I’d been caught red-handed.

  Scarcely had I let fall the sword to the snow-covered ground than the individuals in the doorway began advancing on me in a timorous fashion as if they were approaching a dangerous dog. There was the furious-looking Abigail, the tottering Valentine, the shocked-seeming Martha, the dapper Rowland, the imperious Elizabeth, the lawyerly Cuthbert. The bad-tempered gatekeeper came from the other side while the hulking lad with the forelock of hair emerged from the stable-block.