House of Shadows

by The Medieval Murderers

  Captivated, Falconer sat down on the edge of the bed, and in the encroaching darkness the Jewess began to illuminate him.

  Brother Thomas, meanwhile, was given the unenviable task of searching the outer court of the priory. This involved the prior staying warm and dry under the cover of the porch leading to the cloister, while the herbalist trudged across the open marshy wastes towards the working buildings on the south of the site. He was soaked by the time he entered the yard that was enclosed on two sides by the granary and brew-house. His feet were frozen and covered in filth, and he left muddy footprints as he poked around the brew-house and its neighbouring bake-house. He knew that the task was hopeless. Everyone had looked here before, and there had been no signs of Brothers Martin and Eudo then. He reckoned they had run away, tiring of the discipline instilled by Prior John. After all, if the old stories were true, it wouldn’t be the first time a monk and those in their care had fled. His search revealed that neither youth was here now, nor were they in the kiln-house or granary. But as the latter was warm and dry, Thomas lingered over his search until he thought the prior would begin to wonder where he was. Reluctantly, he forced himself out again into the heavy rain, getting soaked once again. It was therefore doubly annoying that the prior had not even had the courtesy to wait for Thomas to report the results of his search. John de Chartres was nowhere to be seen.

  Falconer was deeply disturbed after listening to Saphira. It seemed the gibberish that had emanated from Brother Peter’s mouth was more than it appeared.

  ‘The Kabbalah? Though I know many Jews in Oxford, and call them my friends, I have not heard of this.’

  ‘If they are traditional Jews, then you are unlikely to have done. Its roots are deep in our faith, but not everyone approves of it, nor its recent new flowering. But my late husband was seduced by it, and by the philosophy of Rabbi Azariel. He was obsessed with the idea that, given the knowledge of the right sequence of letters naming God, man could emulate His role as creator. To make a living man, which we call a golem. There are stories that someone succeeded. I suppose it only natural that my son, Menahem, also picked up some of the doctrines.’

  ‘Unfortunately, it seems it is a case of a little knowledge being dangerous.’

  Saphira Le Veske grimaced and nodded her head. Her unrestrained tresses were drying and recovering their startling copper colour. And their natural waviness. She swept the thick hair back through the fingers of her left hand. Then she returned to clasping her knees with both arms like some young girl hugging herself for security in a dark world. The pose was in contrast to her mature command of the situation, however, and her understanding of its dangers.

  ‘Menahem, Martin – call him what you will – was always a boy who sought others’ approval. If he thought these other boys would cleave to him because of him imparting secrets to them, he would revel in the adulation. I think that is why, when his father died, he was drawn into the seductive promises of the local Christian priest. And I was too engrossed in my own grief to see it until it was too late.’

  ‘Tell me. Peter talked of the Crown, Wisdom and Intelligence, and called me Adam. What does that signify?’

  ‘They are the first three of the ten Sephiroth – the mediums between God and the real world. They are the head of Adam Kadmon, the archetypal man.’ She sighed. ‘Forgive me if I cannot explain this properly. I never subscribed to my husband’s mystical beliefs, which some say grew out of a spiritual reaction against the rational world we are surrounded by. The world I am perhaps a little too attached to.’

  A smile formed on Falconer’s face. ‘I myself am seduced by the logical. Too much so, some people say. And yet it seems we both have to let a little of the mystical into our hearts, if we are to solve this riddle and find your son.’

  ‘But not the darkness. We should not let that in.’ Saphira shuddered and looked out of the narrow slit of a window in the cubicle. As if in mockery of her words, it was pitch black outside. The moon had all but disappeared, and with it any light. ‘Our faith warns of the dangers of esoteric doctrines, which no one ought to delve into, unless he is a scholar who has his own store of knowledge to protect him.’

  Falconer leaned forward and touched her lightly on the bare arm. She did not recoil, and he felt a spark of common feeling pass between them.

  ‘I can say that I am not exactly ignorant of the philosophies of life. Nor are you yourself, I think.’

  As he drew his arm back, she grasped it firmly, preventing him from moving away. Her hand was warm and her look encouraging.

  ‘I trust you, which is more than I can say for the prior. He gives me the creeps. But do take care. There is an old story that warns of the risks of meddling in dangerous knowledge.’

  ‘Tell me. It may help us avoid disaster.’

  Saphira took a deep breath and began. ‘Four sages enter an orchard – which stands for dangerous knowledge – and have a mystical experience. The first gazed on it and died, the second gazed on it and was stricken mad, the third gazed on it and destroyed their creation, turning heretic.’

  ‘Eudo and Peter are the first two. Martin perhaps the third. And the fourth?’

  Saphira turned her startling green eyes on Falconer, a questioning look in them.

  ‘You said there were four sages. What happened to the fourth?’

  ‘He escaped with his mind intact, because he was wise and anchored to the here and now.’

  ‘Then let me hope the last is I.’ Falconer uttered the words confidently enough, but he felt a twinge of fear due to his errant memory. Was wisdom draining from his mind? If he pursued this quest, would he fail also, through not being wise enough? But it was only a momentary lapse, and a flush of euphoria abruptly filled his mind with confidence. He laughed.

  ‘Is there something troubling you?’ Saphira asked.

  He looked at the Jewess sitting beside him on the bed. She had a look of concern in her beautiful eyes.

  ‘Nothing. What makes you think there is?’

  ‘You looked so…distant for a while. As though you were no longer present.’

  A tendril of worry crept up Falconer’s spine. Was he lapsing into blank reverie as well as being forgetful? He laughed again, trying to make light of his fears, but this time it sounded forced. ‘It’s nothing, really. I have just been a little…ah…forgetful lately.’

  Saphira looked hard at him but decided to make no more of the moment. They had more urgent matters to attend to now. Falconer pulled off his old greyish cloak and draped it over Saphira’s shoulders. She began to protest – after all, he would get as wet as her in the teeming rain – but he insisted.

  ‘It’s more sensible this way. If I pull the hood up—’ he did so as he spoke, enveloping her head of luxuriant red hair and obscuring her finely chiselled features ‘—then no one will tell who you are. Look. You could pass for a monk in that garb. A small, very shapely monk, but…’

  She giggled, despite the situation, and pulled the cloak close around her. It was true – dressed like this she and the Regent Master could search the priory for her son without arousing too much suspicion. He gently took her arm.

  ‘But we will have to hurry or the priory will be rising for prime, and then it will be impossible to move freely around.’

  Falconer picked up a stub of candle and cradled it in his hand. They would be in the dark outside where a strong wind was blowing, but maybe he would be able to relight it inside the priory buildings. As they left the hospital, he glanced back at the tableau of a recumbent Brother Peter, chained to his bed and lit by the glow of two candles on either side of him. He resembled some saintly icon glowing in the surrounding darkness. The woman pulled at his sleeve, and they went out into the stormy blackness of the priory grounds. The sky was invisible, the moon completely obscured. It gave Falconer the feeling of an oppressive weight bearing down on him, and he hurried along the eastern wall of the dorter and towards one of the doors.

  ‘Wait! Look!’

&
nbsp; Saphira Le Veske’s call was shrill and peremptory, her clutching at Falconer’s sleeve urgent and demanding. He turned around and saw the woman staring into the Stygian gloom.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘There. By the stream that runs below the building. There’s someone there.’

  ‘The latrine block? Hold on…’

  There were times when Falconer regretted his poor eyesight, and this was one of those moments. He fumbled in his pouch and withdrew his eye-glasses. Fitting them to his head, he peered in the direction Saphira was pointing in.

  ‘There. Can you see him? It’s Menahem, I’m sure it is.’

  Falconer, cursing the rain, tried to make out what she was indicating. Then he saw a movement, but it was no more than a grey shape in a blacker world, until the figure turned to look towards them, alarmed perhaps by the woman’s cry. Falconer discerned pale features beneath a monastic cowl, and he was about to ask how Saphira knew it was her son on such little evidence when she broke away from him. The cloak he had lent her flapped in the strong wind as she chased after the disappearing shape. Falconer pulled off his eye-glasses and sprinted after her. When they got to where the figure had been, there was nothing. There was no door he could have entered, no window he could even have clambered through. His escape was blocked to the south by the churning, muddy stream that ran in spate below the latrine block of the reredorter. And he could not have passed them to the north, as there were blank walls to either side. He had simply vanished.

  ‘Are you sure it was your son?’

  ‘A mother knows her son, Master Falconer. It was Menahem, or Martin as they call him here. But where could he have gone?’

  She looked distraught at having been so close to the goal of her hunt and yet having missed him. Falconer wondered if her overriding desire to find her son had seduced her into superimposing his image on the fleeting apparition. He grasped her shoulder and turned her back the way they had come.

  ‘Come. Let us stick to our task of scouring the priory. If it was him—’ she looked hard at him, angry at his lack of confidence in her opinion on the ghostly figure. ‘—then we will find him. We at least now know he is here somewhere.’

  The trouble was that their search was as fruitless as the earlier one. They combed all the buildings they could gain access to but found no crumb of evidence that either Martin or his companion Eudo were anywhere on the premises. Nor was there any sign of a body. Finally, bodily soaked, with their spirits drowned too, they took shelter under the porch that led into the cellarer’s building. The long, low, rib-vaulted chamber was illuminated by a couple of sputtering candles and punctuated by gloomy corners where lurked dusty barrels and anonymous heaps. Used for storage, it was a convenient and dry means of reaching the covered way of the cloister. Neither Falconer nor Saphira wished to remain in the rain any longer. As they crossed the cellarium, Saphira grabbed Falconer’s arm and hissed a warning.

  ‘There’s someone down at the far end.’

  Falconer screwed up his eyes, making out a tall, angular figure that did not resemble the boy that Saphira had claimed to have seen earlier. He was rummaging around in a pile of crates, one of which toppled over on to his sandalled foot. A brief curse was followed by an expostulation to God for forgiveness. The monk turned towards them, and Falconer could tell it was Brother Thomas. Saphira slipped discreetly behind one of the columns as Falconer approached the monk.

  ‘Have you found something, Thomas?’

  The monk looked startled. ‘What? Oh, it’s you, Master Faulkner.’

  Falconer silently excused the monk his mangling of his name and enquired if he had discovered something of significance.

  ‘No, I doubt it. I was just wondering about the old cellar below here. It’s somewhere in this corner behind all these boxes. No one’s used it for years, but Brother Eustace was saying a few days ago that he had heard noises in the night coming from this region.’

  ‘Noises?’

  ‘It’s probably nothing, really. Eustace is getting on in years, and his hearing isn’t what it used to be, but…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Others claim to have heard strange noises too. But that was only after Brother Eustace mentioned it, and you know how hysterical people can get about ghosts and such. Personally, I don’t believe a word of it.’

  Falconer was now getting confused and asked the monk what he was talking about. The skinny fellow waved his arms in embarrassment.

  ‘Oh, just old tales of the founding of the priory, and missing chaplains and disappearing ladies of noble birth. Old wives’ tales, if you ask me.’ He hesitated and gave Falconer a shifty look that suggested he was not as dismissive of the tales as he claimed. He leaned close to the Master and whispered in his ear. ‘Some say there are ghosts down in the lower cellar there.’

  Suddenly a peremptory voice rang out down the vaulted chamber.

  ‘What are you doing there, Brother Thomas?’

  The herbalist, looking abashed, scurried over to John de Chartres as he strode out of the darkness.

  ‘Just searching, as you commanded, prior. When I came back to the porch, you were no longer there, and I suddenly thought of the old cellar room. Then I couldn’t find the door, and—’

  The prior cut off his minion’s meandering story abruptly. ‘It is not necessary to look in there. And I was not where you expected me because I had other business to attend to. Important business.’

  Falconer stepped between the two monks. ‘Not necessary to look in this room? Why?’

  The prior seemed calm, though Falconer thought he detected a fleeting look of alarm crossing his features. He took the Regent Master’s arm, as though trying to guide him away from the room in question.

  ‘It is a…storeroom that is rarely used and mostly kept locked.’

  ‘And in your search for the two missing monks, you didn’t look there?’

  John de Chartres now looked more than a little uncomfortable.

  ‘As I said, it’s normally kept locked by the cellarer. There is nothing much stored in it, as it’s below ground level and it’s rather…’ He hesitated, trying to find the right words. ‘It’s rather cold and damp. Uninviting, shall we say?’

  ‘Then let’s find the key to it and see if there’s a body down there.’

  John de Chartres looked taken aback by Falconer’s suggestion, as if unwilling to divulge the secrets that this chilling chamber might house. But then he shrugged his shoulders and turned away. ‘Follow me, then. It is not convenient, however. We shall have to rouse the cellarer from his sleep.’

  Falconer grimaced. ‘Murder is a very inconvenient matter, prior. And it needs a full investigation.’

  The cellarer, an impossibly obese monk whose robe strained at the task of covering his stomach, had not taken too kindly at being aroused from his bed in the dormitory, though Falconer imagined the other monks sharing the communal sleeping area might have been glad of his awakening. His snores had been audible from the bottom of the night stairs leading up to the first floor of the dorter. They had first been met by the elderly monk called Ranulf, who slept by the entrance. It appeared he was a light sleeper and had been stationed close to the door by the prior to ensure that none of his fellows roamed in the night. He had led them to the cellarer’s bed. It had taken them much longer to waken Brother Michael than it had done Ranulf. Now, as the cellarer donned his heavy black robe, Falconer’s gaze drifted over the long room. The darkness of the sleeping quarters was profound, deepened by the total eclipse of the moon outside the window arches. Then he saw the faint light of a taper moving between the beds, and he followed the grey shape of someone slipping out through the furthest doorway. Knowing the layout of such places and that the latrine block lay in the reredorter to the south, he guessed that someone who had been disturbed by them had taken the opportunity to rise and take a piss.

  That was another symptom of advancing years that Falconer himself had become only too aware of. It also remind
ed him of his unsuccessful attempt to find a specific for his memory problem and nudged his niggling megrim to the level of sharp pain. He popped another leaf into his mouth and chewed, waiting for the euphoria it would soon bring. By the time the little procession was wending its way down the staircase towards the storerooms of the priory, he felt a lift in his spirits. He thought of the Jewess, Saphira, and hoped she was still undiscovered in the cellarium building.

  Waddling ahead, the cellarer led them inside his storage area and thence to the corner where Brother Thomas still stood. He moved a few boxes and revealed a heavy studded door that showed all the signs of little use. Cobwebs were draped across the top of the stone arch, and the metal of the lock was badly rusted. The cellarer complained as he fumbled for the right key among the bunch he held in his chubby fingers.

  ‘I don’t know why you should want this place unlocked. I have not used it in my time as cellarer, which amounts to some dozen years. I was told by my predecessor that the cellar – which is below ground – is useless for storage purposes. It’s cold and damp due to the level of the river and prone to flooding.’

  The prior turned to Falconer and explained. ‘In the early days of this priory, the monks diverted the River Neckinger to serve the water mill. But the stream will find its own way still. Given that, and the fact that occasionally the Thames itself sometimes breaks through its embankment if the locals do not maintain it properly, we are prone to flooding here. This room is kept locked, as you can see, and there is no possibility that anyone can enter it without Brother Michael here knowing. We are wasting our time.’

  It was then that they all heard a strange, muffled keening sound coming from the other side of the door. Brother Thomas and the cellarer gasped, and the colour drained from their faces. John de Chartres merely looked grim, then, dropping his gaze away from Falconer’s, he sighed.

  ‘Open the door,’ he ordered peremptorily.

  The cellarer pushed the key into the lock, where it stuck until he forced it round. Together, he and Thomas pushed against the rusted hinges until the door opened. A wet, musty sort of darkness flowed out of the entrance. Falconer was the first to step forward.