The Tainted Relic

by The Medieval Murderers

  It was another hour, and by candlelight as night closed in, before he found the final suspicious incident. Brother John Paston had gone into the church during a violent thunderstorm one night a year earlier, and had been discovered only the following morning, with a chewed-up scroll blocking his mouth. He had choked. It had been supposed that Paston, a deeply devout if rather difficult individual, had been emulating the command of the mighty angel in Revelation, who, to the accompaniment of seven thunders, adjured John in the following way. ‘Take the scroll, and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, though in your mouth it tastes as sweet as honey.’

  Falconer doubted that the soggy paper wedge had tasted so to Paston in his last moments. By the guttering flame of the candle stub, he scratched down the names on a scrap of parchment, left by the monk whose desk he sat at.

  Mason–brained by a stone

  Durward–poisoned by a plant

  Hasilbech–trampled by a horse

  Dyss–stabbed by a robber

  Paston–suffocated on a scroll

  Barley–throat cut by a sickle

  Six monks, all dying in suspicious circumstances, when viewed from this new perspective. But didn’t these things always come in sevens?

  ‘Don’t forget La Souch, flying from the tower, and dying like Hiram Abiff.’

  Falconer stiffened as the disembodied voice whispered an answer from the darkness. He hadn’t known he had uttered his final thought out loud. Maybe he hadn’t. He sat perfectly still, listening and trying to work out from where the voice had come. Whoever it was, was referring to the ancient mason of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. Hiram Abiff had been killed by three apprentices, and tossed down from the Temple rather than betray the masonic secrets he was entrusted with. Could the person in the darkness be a Jew? Deudone, perhaps? Not to be outdone in esoteric knowledge, Falconer offered another similarity to test the hidden man.

  ‘Just as James, brother of Jesus, was struck on the head and cast down from the Temple rather than reveal the secret that the two pillars Jachin and Boaz were the gates of salvation.’

  The lurker in the darkness gave a little grunt of satisfaction.

  ‘I knew you would understand. So, now you have possession of a secret of your own. What do you think should be done about it?’

  The voice was cold, and dispassionate, and it sent a shiver down Falconer’s spine.

  Bullock was in some difficulty. He had searched high and low but he could not find Richard Yaxley. The feretarius had seen to his duties as normal up until the closing of the church to pilgrims. After that, no-one was quite sure whether they had seen him. The chaplain servicing the tapers was certain Yaxley had gone to take the pilgrims’ offerings to the priory chest. But only because that was what he did at this time every day. The bursar thought he had seen him, but then couldn’t be certain, as he may have been thinking of yesterday. Or the day before. The upshot was that Yaxley had disappeared, and the night was drawing in. Deeply concerned that a potential murderer might be on the loose, Peter Bullock hurried towards his lodgings in the castle. He had the curfew, and the locking of the town gates, to see to. But at the same time, he would use the crew of the night watch to scour the streets for the missing monk. They were a bunch of old men, but Yaxley was hardly a desperate criminal who would seek to fight his way out of a corner, if found. He was more a lurker in the dark, and a back-stabber.

  Crossing Carfax, he was hailed by Matthew Syward, who kept watch at the North Gate for him. In truth, the man was lazy and unreliable, more inclined to ogle the women who frequented the stews of Broken Hays than attend to his task. But the job was poorly paid, and required attendance when others would prefer to be at home, or in the tavern with comrades. It was well nigh impossible to get someone who could be relied on. Syward was the best Bullock could hope for. So, when the gatekeeper tried to tell him of the swarthy man with the soldierly mien who had once again sneaked out through the North Gate just before curfew, Bullock didn’t pay much attention to him. Syward was always taking against someone he thought had slighted him, and making up stories. It was Yaxley Bullock needed to find, before another murder was committed.

  The figure glided silently out of the darkness, and rested his hands on Falconer’s tense shoulders. He looked down at the list scratched on the parchment before the Regent Master.

  ‘Hmmm. They are all dead, then.’

  ‘De Beaujeu–it is you. I could not be sure. In fact, when the constable reckoned he had seen you, I did not believe him. After all, nothing could be so important as to bring a future Grand Master of the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple all the way to Oxford. But when I went back to John Hanny’s description of the…apparition he had seen hovering over the body of John Barley, it did set me to thinking. Before I came here today, I spoke to Hanny once more.’ He didn’t admit that the real reason he had returned to Aristotle’s Hall was to ensure Hanny’s welfare. That he was getting his fair share of food. His conscience had pricked him hard. ‘This time, his story did make me wonder if the dark-skinned man could yet have been young Deudone the Jew. But he said the lurker in the shadows was cool and calm. Such self-assurance shown by taking the time to search the body eliminated the hotheaded youth. He is boastful and would have panicked, whereas you, a Templar…’ Falconer let the idea hang in the chill air for a moment, remembering too the fleeting glimpse of a familiar face he had seen in the crowd around the dead mason’s body. ‘If it was you, this relic must be something very special.’

  He could still feel the steely grip of Guillaume de Beaujeu on his shoulders. Close to his neck. So close that he was unsure of the man he had once thought of as his friend. He recalled Bullock saying that you couldn’t trust the Templars, if your motives did not coincide with theirs. Maybe the constable had been right. One way or the other, he had to know the truth.

  ‘Was it you my young student saw standing over the body of John Barley?’

  De Beaujeu’s fingers dug into Falconer’s flesh. Then relaxed.

  ‘Surely, William, you cannot think I killed him? I thought you knew me better than that.’

  ‘Truthfully, I think I hardly know you at all. You are a very…inscrutable sort of man.’

  ‘While you wear your heart on your sleeve for all to see. Talking of hearts, how is the beautiful Anne, by the way?’

  Falconer did not respond to the Templar’s enquiry about Mistress Anne Segrim. She was and always had been another man’s wife. That was the end of the matter.

  ‘I see.’ De Beaujeu took his hands from Falconer’s shoulders, and slid down on to the stool next to him. ‘Well, you were right about the apparition this boy saw searching the body. It was me, and I was looking for the relic. I was also aware the boy had seen me. That’s why I left before I could be dragged into the whole sorry mess. I was following a rumour about this particular relic when I heard of the monk John Barley offering just such a one in the town, and arranged for him to bring it to me. But I was too late. The murderer got to him first, and there was no sign of the relic on the body. All I could do for poor Barley was to arrange his body more sympathetically than the killer had left it.’

  Falconer recalled remarking to Bullock, when they had found the body, about the piety of the arrangement of its limbs. That had been De Beaujeu, then, and not the murderer. He believed the Templar when he averred he was not the killer. For if he had been, then Hanny would have been dead too by now. The Templar would not have left a witness alive.

  ‘This relic must mean a lot to you.’

  The Templar lowered his gaze, and his voice became slightly muffled and tremulous.

  ‘You are right. I came here to find the relic on behalf of the Order. But I have a personal reason for tracking it down also. Let me explain.’

  In the gathering darkness, De Beaujeu related to Falconer a story of death and despair appropriate to the gloomy surroundings in which they sat. He told a tale of a fragment of the True Cross, stained with Christ’s blood, which had pa
ssed from hand to hand for one hundred and fifty years, leaving mayhem in its wake. He told of the curse that tainted the relic, causing the death of anyone who touched it. How the Muslim guardian of the relic had laid the curse before being slain by a Crusader simply for being an Arab in Jerusalem.

  ‘That Crusader was Miles de Clermont. And he was my ancestor.’

  Falconer could hear in de Beaujeu’s tone of voice the burden this placed on the Templar. His Order wished to hide the tainted relic from the world. But it seemed de Beaujeu felt personally responsible, not only for the action of his ancestor, but for every death caused by the tainted relic ever since. Falconer, however, still refused to accept the sorcery.

  ‘I don’t believe in such nonsense as curses. Why, if I did, I would be shrivelled to nothing by now from all the curses laid upon me by my students down the years. They have cursed me a-plenty for the work I have set them.’

  De Beaujeu shook his head sadly.

  ‘This is too deadly to be taken so lightly, William. If you could only hear the tales that down the years have accompanied this relic…’

  Falconer abruptly interrupted.

  ‘Exactly. That is what they are. Just tales, recited to please a gawking audience of fools.’

  ‘And the deaths of these six monks?’ De Beaujeu tapped the scrap of parchment with the six names on it. ‘Did they not appropriate the relic, and in so doing tarnish their souls, so that their deaths were inevitable? Is it not the way they died which has led you to assuming these six names are those of the monks who have touched the relic?’

  Falconer was trapped by his own logic. That indeed had been his thinking, he had to admit to the Templar.

  ‘But they were killed by a human agency, not by the relic in some mystical way.’

  ‘Does it matter how they died? The fact is they touched the relic, and now they are dead. As is the mason, La Souch.’ De Beaujeu paused. ‘And with them dies the only hope I had of tracing the relic’s location.’

  Falconer couldn’t help but smile. Something else had just fallen into place for him.

  ‘Not exactly. Unless La Souch was felled by avenging angels, or the ghost of this murdered Arab…’ He held his hand up to ward off De Beaujeu’s incipient protest at his flippant remark. ‘Unless some supernatural power is at work here, La Souch was killed by someone other than the six errant monks, who by then were all dead themselves. So someone else knows about the tainted relic, and thought that the master mason had uncovered its whereabouts. That was a secret this person thought worth keeping. And I have an idea how to find out who it is.’

  Bullock hurried through the night, hoping he might be in time. His failure to find Yaxley had driven him to seeking out Will Plome. It had occurred to him that the simpleton may have been aware of the feretarius’s absence when he made his late night visit to the shrine. Even Will could have assumed that Brother Richard would stop him climbing down the Holy Hole to gain such close proximity to the saint. The boy had lodgings in Sleying Lane outside the town walls, charitably provided by no less a person than the Jewess Belaset. It was no more than a simple room, but Belaset charged nothing for it. Getting Will’s eager, if unreliable, services in return. Businesslike she might be, and better at it than her husband or son, but she was also a mother. And she could not bear to see somebody’s son reduced to begging in the street. Few were aware of her kindness to the simpleton, as she cared for none to know. But Peter Bullock knew, and though it was late, he called on Belaset. He wanted her help when he confronted Will.

  Belaset agreed to accompany him, though she was herself worried about her absent son, Deudone. He had gone off into the night about some mission of his own. Belaset was afraid he would get himself into trouble, and hoped he had merely gone to press his suit with Hannah. But in the meantime, she couldn’t refuse to help the constable coax the truth out of Will. So, having roused the sleeping guardian of South Gate, and berated him for his laxity, Bullock, along with Belaset, slipped quietly through the wicket gate set within the massive town gates proper.

  It did not take long to rouse the bewildered Will Plome, and soon he was lighting a cheap tallow lamp to illuminate his quarters. The yellow glow revealed a little room that was surprisingly neat, though spartan. The furniture amounted to no more than a low bed, a stool and a table. On the table lay some gaming boards, one a circular tablet with holes bored in it in a sort of pattern. Most of the holes were filled with pegs. Bullock recognized it as a board to play the Solitary Game on. The other board he couldn’t figure out. It looked like two chessboards linked together, and on it were arrayed gaming pieces, some of which were circular, some triangular and some square. Bullock took it for a child’s toy, to pleasure Will’s simple mind. The boy saw him looking, and explained.

  ‘It is a game I was taught by Master Falconer. He calls it the Philosopher’s Game. He gets angry when I beat him at it.’

  Bullock smiled, imagining his friend allowing the simpleton to win, and feigning annoyance as part of the game. But Belaset put him right.

  ‘Will is very good at the game. And I suppose William Falconer is annoyed at Will’s skill because it requires a high understanding of mathematics, such as the Regent Master fancies is only reserved for himself. Will has the beating of me at it too.’

  Bullock coughed in embarrassment, not understanding how a simpleton could have a greater mind than both this clever Jewess and his best friend. It didn’t make sense, unless the woman was having fun at his expense. He would have to ask Falconer later. But first he needed to know all about Yaxley, and his nocturnal activities.

  ‘Will Plome, you must tell all you know about what Brother Richard at St Frideswide’s has been doing these last few nights. You do know something, don’t you?’

  Will looked anxiously at his friend, Belaset. ‘Brother Richard committed a mortal sin…’ He faltered. The olive-skinned woman looked deeply into the boy’s soul with her big brown eyes.

  ‘Tell him the truth now, Will.’

  The truth, when it came out, did not surprise the constable one morsel.

  Falconer stood at the edge, contemplating the pilgrimage before him. He knew he would find enlightenment in the labyrinth. The path was tortuous, twisting back on itself, taking him through the four stages of the mass. He stepped forward and entered into Evangelium. Three turns and he was in the segment representing Offertory. A turn back on himself and it was Evangelium again. Then three loops and back into Offertory. Two loops and he was walking Consecration. Like any pilgrimage, any seeking for purgation, the route was never straightforward. Two more turns and he was in the final segment. Communion. He stood right in the centre of the labyrinth, surveying the six petals at its core. And the seventh point under his feet at the centre of the labyrinth. He knew that here lay Illumination. Under a slab with a carving of God represented as a master mason. The perfect hiding place for a cursed relic. The slab under him rocked slightly.

  ‘Has it been vouchsafed to you yet?’

  The voice was quiet, and deliberately held low. But Falconer could detect the tremulous undercurrent in it.

  ‘Illumination? Yes, it has.’

  He looked across the void that was the labyrinth to where the figure stood, tall and angular, between the pillars at the back of the nave. The rose window hung over his hooded head, lit only by the cold rays of the full moon. The colours were dulled and leaden.

  ‘We all touched it, you know. The relic. And so our fates were sealed on that day so long ago.’

  ‘There was nothing inevitable about the deaths of your fellow monks, Brother Robert.’ Falconer was still clinging to the idea of his rational world. ‘That was in your hands, not fate.’

  ‘In one sense you are right, Regent Master. But there was some inevitability about how they died, don’t you think?’

  ‘No, Brother Robert. You arranged that yourself to fit into your little world of the labyrinth.’ Falconer slowly circled the central core of the maze, listing each of the contemplativ
e elements around its edge. ‘Mineral–Brother Benedict Mason killed by masonry. Plant–Brother Ralph Durward poisoned by a herb. Animal–Brother William Hasilbech trampled by a horse. Human–Brother Thomas Dyss killed, apparently by a robber, though that was you too, wasn’t it?’ Falconer stared through the gloom at the hooded figure. Robert Anselm did not move a muscle, so Falconer continued his litany. ‘Angelic–Brother John Paston suffocated by a scroll as in Revelation. And finally, the Unnameable–Brother John Barley reaped by a sickle, just like the actions of our Lord in Revelation.’

  Anselm nodded with apparent satisfaction at the symmetry of the deaths. But Falconer had not yet finished. He began to wind his way out of the labyrinth, walking first directly towards the monk, but then turning left into Communion. A complete about-turn then brought him back on his outward track, only for him to turn left again around the rim of the labyrinth. He talked as he circumnavigated the course to Union. Action in the world.

  ‘What I don’t understand is how you fitted into this group. They were all old men, and had brought the relic here a very long time ago. You could only have been a boy at the time.’

  ‘I was seven. I worked in the kitchens here, and the canons were so used to seeing me around that they didn’t see me any more. If you know what I mean. When the six canons–Mason, Durward, Hasilbech, Dyss, Paston and Barley–came back with a piece of the True Cross, I overheard their conversation. I crept into the chapter house where Hasilbech was showing Abbot Leech their furta sacra. It seemed nothing at first sight. Just a small wooden box. Then Brother Thomas Dyss opened it up, and removed something. It seemed to shine of its own accord, though no doubt it was just a reflection of the light shining on it through the windows. It was a glass bottle. For some reason Brother Thomas opened it, and slid the contents out on to his palm. The canons passed it around. Only the abbot refrained from touching it. It was only later I knew how lucky he had been. He was reading a small strip of parchment that had lain at the bottom of the box. When he finished reading, his face drained of blood, and he urged Ralph Durward, who was holding the contents of the bottle in his hand to return it to the vial immediately. Then he commanded the canon to put the bottle back in the box, which lay on the seat of his chair. Finally, in the face of all the protests from his six canons, he ushered them from the chapter house. It was only when they had gone that I realized they had left the box behind. I could not resist it.