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The Tainted Relic

Page 13

by The Medieval Murderers


  That was when he saw the oddest sight. Inside the church, by the dappled light of a stained-glass window, a tall, skinny monk described a weaving path in the centre of the nave. His movements veered arbitrarily left and right, and sometimes the monk turned back on himself, appearing to retrace his path. Gradually, though, he moved from the periphery of the nave towards a central point. There was a look of fierce concentration on his face. At the centre of his ramblings he stopped, and turned slowly round in a complete circle. His face, coloured by the broken light from the window, now looked ecstatic, and was quite unheeding of Falconer observing him. The Regent Master began to feel a little embarrassed at spying on the monk’s devotions, but was drawn towards him. He wandered into the church, and stood in the shadow of a pillar. From there, he could see the pattern on the floor of the nave which the monk had been following. It looked like a maze. Or more strictly speaking a labyrinth. A maze had dead ends, whereas the labyrinth ran circuitously but inexorably in one direction.

  ‘It describes a contemplative journey. A pilgrimage.’

  The gentle voice was that of the tall monk, addressing Falconer from the core of the labyrinth. His face was radiant in the coloured light, his smile one of peace.

  ‘You start at the western end. There.’

  He pointed at the entrance to the labyrinth, clearly inviting Falconer to walk it. The Regent Master complied. He could do with a little contemplation on his existence. The twists and turns meant the journey could not be hurried, and Falconer slipped into a steady rhythm. His pacing brought him tantalizingly closer and closer to the centre, while still circling round it. Round and round the monk, who turned slowly to observe his new tyro. Finally, the two men stood in the centre, and the monk grasped both of Falconer’s shoulders in approval.

  ‘There. That part of the journey is a purging, a letting go. Do you feel it?’

  Falconer was not sure what he felt. He was not a man accustomed to feeling the mystical. But somehow he did experience a relief from the pressures of his normal life. Students and their diet. The monk offered his name.

  ‘Robert Anselm.’

  ‘William Falconer.’

  ‘Ah, yes. I have heard of you.’

  Falconer guessed the monk was thinking of the previous murder that had brought him to Oseney. Now a second one had occurred, and here he was again. Albeit reluctantly.

  ‘Here in the centre is an opportunity for insight, and illumination.’

  Falconer reckoned he also needed that right now. Not least to sort out his doubts about his continuing vocation. Anselm went on to describe the symbolism of the six petals around the central core of the labyrinth. Mineral, plant, animal and so on–all the elements of the world were there represented.

  ‘And the very centre is the seventh symbol. In the person of the Trinity. Here, beneath this stone.’

  He pointed a reverential finger at the carved stone in the centre. Falconer could not see it clearly without using his eye-lenses. Too embarrassed to take them out before a stranger, he bent down to examine the carving. It was of God as a master mason, or architect, wielding a giant set of compasses.

  ‘Does it provide you with any insight, Master Falconer?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The death of Brother John, of course. Do you see it?’

  Falconer shook his head.

  ‘I am afraid I rely on facts, Brother Robert, and there are precious few of those at present.’

  ‘You will see it, if you only look. I am sure.’

  Falconer was not as confident as Anselm seemed of his ability to see the killer. It was time for him to go, and to pay better attention to John Hanny’s needs. He thanked the monk, and left. Anselm winced as Falconer ignored the twisting outward labyrinth, and crossed the floor in a direct line to the doorway.

  The Templar, once refreshed by the morning bread and ale, ventured out into the throng of pilgrims making their way to St Frideswide’s Church. The skinny, dark-haired maid who had served him his food both days was also the maid who had plumped up his straw mattress for him on arrival. When he left the Golden Ball Inn, she was hovering by the door, a sly look on her pinched face. He admired her persistence, which flew in the face of her lack of comely charms, but it was wasted on him. His order demanded chastity, as well as obedience and poverty. And he had never had any difficulty obeying the rule of chastity. Nor that of poverty–the order provided him with all he wanted. It was obedience which was most irksome to the Templar, and which provided him with the greatest struggle. If he had chosen to obey the Grand Master strictly, he would probably have given up his quest by now. But he hadn’t. He had not come this far to give up so easily. Last night’s little setback needed to be overcome, and he could not do that by scuttling back to Occitania. He would have to return to Oseney Abbey and the mason.

  If he could find the man in charge of the building work there, he might succeed where he had failed with the monk. Not knowing the short cut that had taken Falconer, Bullock and the boy Hanny out on to the water meadows, the Templar exited the North Gate and followed the well-trodden northern track to the abbey. So it was that he missed Falconer, who was returning to Oxford by the postern gate in the castle wall.

  On his way to the abbey, the Templar talked to the ragged peregrini, who were seeking to double their fortunes by adding the power of the relics at the abbey to that of St Frideswide. He asked casually whether anyone had heard of a portion of the True Cross in the vicinity. Suddenly he was surrounded by shining faces, eagerly demanding that, if he knew of such a relic, he tell them of its location. It was of inestimable importance to them. One man with a boil-ravaged face would not let go of his sleeve. He was convinced that the Templar knew more than he was admitting to, and begged to be let into the secret. He was desperate for a cure. The Templar broke free of his clutches only with some difficulty. Thereafter, he refrained from revealing his intentions to his fellow travellers.

  At the abbey, the Templar cast around until he saw a man carving a diamond pattern on the surface of a cylindrical piece of stone. Each piece, piled on its companion, would make up one of the pillars to the entrance to the nearly completed church. The Templar stood and marvelled at the man’s skill as he worked on in silence. Every blow was precise and controlled, leading to a groove that spiralled up the pillar section. Could this be the mason he sought? He had supposed him to be older. He tested the ground with a question.

  ‘Did you know that a pillar, being the synthesis of a circle and a square, represents the marrying of the spiritual and the material worlds?’

  The man smiled coolly, and chose his reply carefully.

  ‘Yes. And that the pillars named Jachin and Boaz stood either side of the entrance to Solomon’s Temple.’ La Souch stopped chipping at the stone, and squinted into the sun, studying the dark-skinned stranger.

  ‘You are a Templar?’

  The man briefly inclined his head. It was barely an acknowledgement, but enough. The mason set his tools carefully on the floor of the lodge where he sat.

  ‘Some people say you lot have more secrets to hide than we poor masons. Have you been to the Holy Land? The darkness of your skin suggests you have, and recently.’

  The Templar grimaced.

  ‘Alas, I got no farther than our fortress near Famagusta on the island of Cyprus. I leave the honour of having once freed Jerusalem from its yoke to one of my ancestors, Miles de Clermont. I have to be content with the Heavenly Jerusalem embodied in the structure of churches such as this one you have constructed.’

  ‘Me and my predecessor, God rest his soul. I have only been working here for two years, myself.’

  That was not what the Templar wanted to hear. He had come all this way because of a story concerning the mason working on Oseney Abbey in England. Certain knowledge had been conveyed to the Templar Grand Master. Knowledge of a particular relic that the Order had been seeking for years. At one time they had traced it to Tewkesbury Abbey, but it was no longer there, and th
e trail had gone cold. Then a story about a mason working in Oxford had reached the Grand Master. It now appeared that story had been too long in surfacing. The old mason was dead. There perhaps remained a slight chance that the knowledge had been passed on, though.

  ‘But you work to plans laid down by the master mason who came before you?’

  Eudo La Souch produced a snorting laugh that had his labourers working on the site looking in his direction. They were curious as to what had amused their normally sour taskmaster. But he waved his hand at them, and they hastily returned to what they were doing. La Souch examined the Templar, lounging in the shade of the lodge roof. Despite the man’s relaxed posture, he could see that his muscular legs held his body in perfect balance. His arms, crossed nonchalantly over his chest, were actually tensed and ready for an assault from any quarter. He wondered whether the man ever truly relaxed.

  ‘If you think there were any plans, then you do not understand how we work.’ By ‘we’, he meant the secretive guild of master masons. ‘We have no need for drawings. It’s all in here.’ He tapped his head. ‘The closest you would come to plans are those.’

  He pointed at a large area of plaster on the ground in the centre of the cloister. It was criss-crossed with faint marks–lines scored in the surface of the plaster.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a pattern floor, where I can draw up full-size templates for the construction.’

  ‘Then you have no records of work carried out by your predecessor?’

  La Souch shook his head. The Templar was dejected. His search for the relic had come to a dead end again.

  ‘And when you started you didn’t hear of any rumours of a relic that might have had a special place constructed for it?’

  ‘Relic? What sort of relic?’

  ‘A piece of the True Cross.’

  La Souch tried to keep calm, and not to show this Templar he knew anything about such a relic. He was afraid to speak in case his voice quavered. He shook his head, and picked up his stoneworking tools again. He began chipping at the stone, though he knew he was ruining the block with shaking hands. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the Templar sigh, push himself away from the wooden post he had been leaning against, and walk away. La Souch made sure he was well out of sight before he downed his tools. He hurried over to the fabric rolls that held the accounts of the building work for the last twenty years. He would need to redouble the effort of his search now he knew for certain. Previously, the existence of the relic had only been a story hinted at by the workmen he had inherited from his predecessor. The Templar had now confirmed its reality.

  ‘Have you seen John Hanny? I told him to come back here, and wait for my return.’

  The three students who sat companionably at the table in the communal hall of Aristotle’s shook their heads in unison. It was late afternoon, so they were about their supper, a pan of bean potage, which sat steaming in the centre of the plain trestle table. Edward Bygrave, a wealthy student dressed in fashionable parti-coloured tabard and scarlet hose, spoke up for them all.

  ‘Please, Master Falconer. He fetched the potage for us, and we invited him to eat also. But he said he could not. And truthfully, he did look ill. Sort of pale.’

  Falconer didn’t like the boy’s truculent tones, nor the way Miles Bikerdike grinned at Bygrave’s report. He doubted they had so readily offered poor Hanny his share of the food. Despite the fact he had earned it by serving his wealthier fellows. Hanny would have fetched the potage from the bakery oven, where those who lacked the where-withal for cooking had hot meals prepared for them. It should have entitled him to his share. Even at the expense of his pride.

  ‘Very well. But no-one thought to ask him where he was going, I suppose?’

  Again the little group shook their heads solemnly. Falconer sighed heavily, wondering whether he was still up to teaching his students. The Seven Liberal Arts were all very well. He could still pound those into their skulls. But it seemed that common decency was an increasingly difficult attribute to impart.

  Though he wanted to talk to Bullock to see whether the man had any further news on the monk’s death, he knew he would have to ensure that John Hanny was found first. That would be his penance for ignoring the boy’s plight until now. In fact, some deep concern was beginning to gnaw at his stomach. He had unquestioningly accepted Hanny’s version of why he had been outside the walls that night. What if he had not been eeling, but was somehow embroiled in the death of the monk, after all? Falconer shuddered at the thought that he might have completely misread the boy. He turned back towards the front door of Aristotle’s and the darkening streets. The three students were already beginning to reach for the ale jug, and joking with each other. Hanny’s plight was already forgotten as far as they were concerned. Angry that they did not share his worries, Falconer decided to leave them with a severe command.

  ‘You are to speak Latin, and only Latin, to each other. These are the rules of the university, after all.’

  Their groans cheered him up somewhat.

  Outside, the narrow lanes were dark and silent. Almost everyone would be at supper, but still the quiet was unusual. Oppressive even. Suddenly he was on the alert, his senses sharpened as if on the eve of battle. He had been a soldier in his youth, and his awareness of danger had never left him. If something was afoot, then it was doubly important to find John Hanny, and keep him safe. He decided to avoid the open thoroughfare of the High Street, choosing instead to go down Kibald Street, and into Grope Lane. He didn’t think Hanny would be in one of the bawdy houses there. Though the girls cost only a few pennies, that was more than the boy possessed. But there were also some low taverns in the street, feeding Grope Lane’s customers’ other appetite. He poked his head in a few doors, but here too there were few people. And those there were had fallen into a drunken stupor. At the bottom of the lane, he turned into St John’s Street, then up Shidyerd Street into Little Jewry Lane. He was now approaching the back of Jewry, and could hear a dull rumbling sound. At first it puzzled him, as he could not make out what was causing such a noise. Then he distinguished the sound of splintering wood, followed by a surge in the noise. He could now hear individual voices calling out in triumph. It was the sound of a mob.

  As if on cue, a bell began to toll wildly. It was the unmistakable note of St Martin’s Church. The bell that called the town to arms. Falconer had heard it tolling before, often to be matched by the resonant sound of St Mary’s. That was the warning bell for the university. He wondered whether something–the death of the monk perhaps–had sparked off a riot between town and gown. But the bell of St Mary’s Church remained silent, and the sound of the mob appeared to be restricted to Fish Street, along which were ranged the homes of the Jews of Oxford. Falconer hoped that his old friend, Jehozadok, was safely indoors. The old rabbi was too frail to stand up to the mob, and he knew it. But some of the younger Jewish men would probably not be so circumspect.

  Only the other day, Falconer had seen one youth who he knew as Deudone accosting the pilgrims making for St Frideswide’s. He was pretending to limp, then uttering an oath and suddenly walking freely. Then he had thrust out his hand, saying the pilgrims should give him alms as his miracles were just as genuine as the saint’s. Fortunately the pilgrims had turned away in disgust. On another day, his contemptuous behaviour could have got him into trouble. A riot such as was boiling up now would be an admirable opportunity for Deudone to think of showing his mettle. The boy was an ardent suitor of Hannah, daughter to the apothecary Samson. Her raven-haired beauty had turned his head, and he would do anything to earn her admiration. It was too much to hope that he would hide away from the mob. Moreover, he was the ringleader of a larger group of hotheads.

  All thoughts of John Hanny temporarily shelved, Falconer hurried down Jewry Lane, hoping to reach the home of Deudone’s mother, Belaset, before the mob did. Belaset was a widow who had taken over her late husband’s business very successfully. Her fina
ncial acumen was the equal of, if not greater than, her husband’s. Sadly, the skill seemed not to have passed on to the son. Deudone was impetuous, with little aptitude for hard work. If Falconer knew Hannah’s mind as he thought he did, she would not be impressed by any of the boy’s wild behaviour. But he still needed to be prevented from confronting a mob of angry people intent on causing mischief.

  As he emerged from the end of Jewry Lane on to Fish Street, Falconer could see that the mob was busy at the top end of the street, where it joined La Boucherie. The houses of some of the more prominent members of Jewry were located there. But then they could withstand the efforts of the mob. They were built of stone, and had sturdy oak front doors. With one eye on the milling crowd, lit by flaming torches and resembling a scene from Hell, Falconer eased along the shop frontages at the lower end of Fish Street. Jehozadok, Hannah and Samson lived in neighbouring houses close by. And Belaset lived below them next to the cloisters of St Frideswide’s Church, just beyond the synagogue. Sometimes the songs of the Talmudic scholars would mingle strangely with the sounds of a religious procession on its way to the shrine of the saint. Tonight, the only sound was the unpleasant and dissonant roar of angry people intent on causing damage. And the racket was getting nearer.

  He knocked quietly on Belaset’s door, hoping the woman would realize it was not the mob outside yet. A panel slid back, and Falconer could see a pair of brown eyes behind the grille set in the opening.

  ‘Belaset. It’s me, William Falconer. You need not let me in. I only wish to know that everyone is safe. Have you seen Jehozadok?’

  The woman’s deep, dark eyes stared out through the grille calmly.

  ‘You need have no fear for him, Master Falconer. He is here with me. And so is my son. I have told Deudone that he is to stay inside and protect us.’

 

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