House of Shadows

by The Medieval Murderers

  Her home was east of the priory, and she averted her head as she passed it, trying not to shiver. Here, in the gloom of the late afternoon there was an unwholesome aspect to the place. Made her feel chilled to see it. When she was a mere bratchett she had been prone to wander, and her parents had told her tales of the ghost there to control her. It had been enough to stop her wandering about the countryside. The stories of a foul, grey figure calling to travellers and drowning them had been used by parents for generations to quiet noisy and froward children.

  But she’d seen it. A pale, grey figure out on the mudflats. Others told her that she’d just been taking too much of her ale and that she’d caught sight of one of the monks out on the marshlands, but she knew what she’d seen. A ghost.

  That was her view, and no one would change it. Especially not some pissy priest. The fellow’d heard her talking about the figure on the marshes, and he’d gone to her to tell her not to be so ‘foolish’.

  She paused, squinting ahead with a surly cast to her mouth. ‘Foolish,’ he’d said, like she was some superstitious chit with chaff in her brains. He could go to the devil. Wasn’t as though the priory was a bastion of honour and integrity. That idea had been discarded in the last year. It was only a short while ago that the prior himself had been taken away. Walter de Luiz, aye, because he’d helped rescue that traitor Mortimer from the Tower.

  Elena made her way around the outer wall, casting a glance about her at the grey, stirred waters of the river as she went. There were always bits and pieces which a careful woman might collect and sell if she kept an eye on the shoreline.

  There was little enough love in the world. That was Elena’s view, and no one would persuade her otherwise. She was a God-fearing woman, none more so, and it made her anxious that God had forsaken them. He’d taken away the Holy Land, hadn’t he, and that showed how He had turned His face from His flock.

  She saw something in among the low, tussocky grasses and hesitated. With the rain slashing down, she really wanted to be indoors, not picking her way through the boggy wetlands to see whether this was a worthwhile item, but in the end poverty dictated her actions. She grunted to herself, threw a look of resentment at the heavens and began to make her way to it. It could be a spar of wood, from the look of it. Every item had some value to the poor, and few were poorer than she.

  Once, when she was only a chit, she had heard a preacher foretell disaster. It was a little after the Holy Land had been wrested from the Crusaders, and his words often came back to her. Famine, aye, and war and plague. Well, there was no plague of men, God be praised, but murrains attacked the sheep and cattle, and that was bad enough. Then the famine came. Christ Jesus! In the summer nine years ago, one in every ten folk about here had starved. There had been times a body couldn’t walk along the road without seeing another poor soul tottering, only to fall and lie still at last in the mud. So many dead. So many starving and desperate.

  For a moment she remembered her Thomas. His smile, his cheery hugs, his lovemaking…

  Pointless. That was two years ago, nearly. She’d found him the morning of the feast of St Peter ad Vincula, the day after she’d first seen the ghost on the marshes. That was what the ghost did for her: it showed Elena that her man was about to die.

  Last night she thought she’d seen the ghost again. A tall, grey figure out on the marshes, clad in hood and cloak.

  ‘You can’t take my man again,’ she rasped to herself.

  Since his death, life had been hard. Always more people about trying to scrape a living. The weak, the hungry, the halt and lame, all came through here to reach London, the great city that drew in all: the rich, the poor, the hopeful, the desperate. It took them in and spat out their bones when the life had been sucked from them.

  In this weather the city was almost entirely concealed, she thought, glancing over the pocked river’s surface. The bridge was a faint smudge from here, all of half a mile or more away in the murkiness caused by the rain. Opposite, on the far bank of the river, was the great Tower of the king where the traitor had been held until his escape. He’d have had to take a boat to here. Not that Elena had seen him, of course. He was over the river and on a horse early in the night. The night her man died.

  The Tower was a glimmering white vision even in this dull light. When she had been young, not a worn old wench in her late forties, she had been used to staring over at that fortress in admiration, imagining all the rich lords and ladies who visited the place. Now she knew it was a place of terror, a prison for those who had fallen out of favour with the king, like Prior Walter de Luiz. He was in there even now.

  It was in between her and the Tower, rising from behind a hillock on the very edge of the water. Grunting with the effort, she made her way to it, slipping and cursing on the fine, watery mud that made up so much of this landscape. Once she almost toppled headlong, but then she reached the hillock and recognized it.

  No spar. Nothing but a long, slim, elegant arm sticking up from behind a hillock of muddy sand.

  John the novice was studying in the cloister as she stumbled towards it, frowning as he tried to make sense of the words on the page.

  A novice’s life was harsh by some standards, but he had been happy here, and would have remained so if he’d be left to do God’s work. There was a genuine delight in his work, a feeling that all was right while he was in here. Of course, he hadn’t taken the final vows yet – he was too young still – but he would. So long as the new prior permitted him, of course.

  Prior John de Cusance was an unknown figure. Walter de Luiz was the master of the priory when the novice first arrived, and all had loved him. Lawrence always said that Prior Walter was one of those rare men who would get on in the world even though he was invariably kind and generous. It made him unique. He was a man to emulate…as was Lawrence himself, of course. There were rumours that Lawrence had himself gone out to the muddy flats to help the notorious traitor and rebel Mortimer escape from the Tower. Not that Lawrence ever took any credit for such matters, of course. He was far too self-effacing.

  No, John’s friends had never understood his impatience about joining the monastery. They all wanted women, money, ale, or the chance to win renown and glory. There were plenty of them who’d be happy to throw their lives away in a tournament, or in some battle whose only purpose was to win a leader greater prestige, or his soldiers some profit at the point of a sword. What was the use of that?

  John had always aimed higher. Yes, if he’d wished he could have joined the warrior monks, the Knights Hospitaller – but he couldn’t in all conscience. No, if he were to do that, he’d be living in the secular world, and there was nothing in that for him. He had decided to renounce that life while a lad, and at the first opportunity he presented himself to the bishop and asked to be allowed to devote his life to God and His works.

  Never had he been tempted to reconsider his choice. However, when he heard the shivering scream that burst from Elena up near the river, he was aware of a presentiment of terror that would grow to shake even his iron belief.

  There was a fixed procedure here in Surrey when a body was discovered, and there were so often bodies washed up on the banks that all knew it. The First Finder had to go quickly to the four nearest neighbours. There were some folk who lived at the edge of the priory’s lands, and Elena hurried there before sending for a coroner.

  Brother Lawrence was quickly on the scene, splashing through the filthy puddles of this benighted land. When he saw her, he crossed himself hurriedly, his face twisted with sadness. ‘This is indeed terrible!’

  The vill’s constable, a taciturn veteran from the old king’s Welsh wars, glanced across at him. ‘She was a pretty little thing.’

  Lawrence nodded. ‘Do you not know her?’

  Constable Hob peered down at her and shook his head. ‘I hadn’t looked at her – why? Should I? There are often bodies down here. Folk are killed in London and the river brings their bodies down this way. She could h
ave been from anywhere.’

  ‘She was from London,’ Lawrence said. ‘I know her. She was called Juliet, daughter of Henry Capun.’

  ‘Shite!’ Hob reached down and turned the girl’s head, staring at her features. ‘Oh, God’s ballocks!’

  ‘Yes. Her father is a paid banneret in the household of Sir Hugh Le Despenser,’ Lawrence said mournfully.

  The constable gripped his heavy staff and leaned on it. ‘That will make for a pretty fine.’

  Lawrence could not help but agree. It was bad enough to discover a body in the vill, but to have a wealthy and important man’s daughter found dead was doubly so. And any man who could call on the aid of my lord Despenser was a very important man indeed.

  Constable Hob looked at the monk with a speculative air, and Lawrence submitted to the question. He beckoned the man to walk with him, and they meandered over the damp marshlands away from the body and eavesdroppers.

  ‘You know something of this?’ the constable asked.

  ‘I do not know…How did she die?’

  ‘She was stabbed.’

  ‘And then thrown in the water?’

  Hob shot a look over his shoulder to see that no one could hear. ‘No. That’s what we always say because sometimes the coroner will give us a lower penalty if it’s clear that the body’s nothing to do with anyone in the vill. This girl was stabbed right here, from the look of her. There’s a dagger in her hand, so perhaps she killed herself?’

  Lawrence looked back. ‘She had everything to live for. I cannot believe that.’

  ‘You knew her?’

  Lawrence looked at him steadily. He knew Hob well. Quietly, he said, ‘I saw her married. I was witness to it. It was a match of love. Which is why it was not declared: they did not wish for her father to grow angry and harm them.’

  ‘It was a concealed marriage?’

  ‘They gave their vows in front of me and two witnesses. It was a legal match.’

  Hob puffed out his cheeks. ‘This will be a…’

  But before he could say more, there was a harsh bellow from a man nearer the river.

  ‘There’s another body here!’

  Morrow of the Feast of St George the Martyr 4,

  Bishop Stapledon’s Hall, Temple

  There was a roiling in Sir Baldwin’s belly when he first saw the bishop’s London home – not because of the house itself but because just south and east of it, like a giant peering over a smaller man’s shoulder, he could see his order’s chief preceptory in England. It made him want to bow and pray for his comrades who had once inhabited the place. As it was, he was glad of the thin rain that fell so steadily. It persuaded him to keep his head down, so he caught only fleeting glimpses.

  ‘That’s a huge place,’ Simon said, seeing where his eyes were gazing.

  ‘A good size,’ Baldwin agreed, but then realized his friend was looking at Bishop Stapledon’s home.

  Marching up to the gatehouse, Simon told the porter who they were and asked for the bishop. Seeing how Baldwin’s eyes remained fixed on the building between them and the river, the man said: ‘It’s the old Templar estate.’ He spat into the street. ‘God damn the evil bastards.’

  Simon knew Baldwin’s background and hurriedly led him away. The knight’s jaw was working, and he had a sour look on his face, like a man who had bitten into a sloe.

  ‘He knows nothing,’ Simon said.

  ‘No.’

  It was a flat statement, but it was clear that Sir Baldwin found no comfort in the knowledge. The sight of the preceptory was enough to bring back to his mind all the injustice of his friends’ deaths. Baldwin was aware that many people here and abroad knew that the Templars were innocent of the obscene crimes of which they had been accused, but that scarcely helped in the face of such blind contempt. It made him aware of a quick loathing for the man. He could have swept out his sword and taken the fool’s head off without a second thought.

  ‘Come, Baldwin.’

  ‘Yes. I am all right. He is just a cretin. He has no understanding of the truth.’

  ‘No,’ Simon agreed soothingly. He could never confess it to Baldwin, but he found it hard to believe Baldwin’s often-repeated assertions of his order’s innocence. There was no smoke without a spark, was his view.

  The bishop’s main hall was an imposing chamber. On all the walls were pictures of saints, while in one corner stood a small row of bookshelves. Richly decorated books stood there, while on the opposite wall were more shelves, this time displaying a series of the bishop’s best plate. Pewter and silver shone in the light from the enormous window in the south wall, and tiny motes danced as the two entered, ushered in by an obsequious clerk.

  Bishop Stapledon, Walter II of Exeter, was sitting on a leather-covered stool at the far end of the room where the light was best. He was reading a parchment, spectacles held near his nose as he peered down, and when he looked up there was a peevish look about him, as though he had been reading disagreeable news.

  Even as he stood and smiled in welcome, Baldwin found himself trying to remember when the bishop had last seemed truly happy. It was a long time ago – perhaps before he had been given the post of Lord High Treasurer to the king. So much had happened since, with the depredations of the appalling Despensers.

  No man was safe from the intolerable greed of Sir Hugh Le Despenser. Once, it was said, he had confessed that he cared for nothing so long as he became rich. That he had achieved. Since he had launched his acquisitive campaign, he had become the richest man in the kingdom, save only for the king himself. In this cruel environment even the widows of men killed in the king’s service were deprived of lands and money. One woman, Madam Baret, had been tortured with such irrational ferocity that she had been driven mad, all in order that Despenser could steal her property. Stapledon had once been a moderating influence, but now he could surely see that he had achieved little.

  ‘Sir Baldwin, I am glad to see you again. And you, bailiff. I hope your journey was not too arduous?’

  ‘It was almost relaxing,’ Baldwin said shortly. He did not want to be here. If he were to look over his shoulder through the great window, he knew he would see the preceptory again. It was a constant reminder of hideous injustice. He could almost hear again the burning pyres as the Templars were roasted to death.

  ‘I wish my own had been,’ the bishop said heavily.

  ‘Your journey?’ Simon enquired.

  ‘The news at every stage,’ Stapledon said. He shook his head, glancing down at the papers again, then set them on the table. ‘We are still so near to war with France…the queen has gone to Paris to deal with her brother, but no one can say how successful she may be.’

  ‘Which is why you asked me to come here to London as a member of the Parliament,’ Baldwin stated.

  ‘Yes.’ The bishop grunted to himself, then looked up through the window. ‘You know what has happened to that site?’

  Simon quickly interrupted. ‘That was the Templars’, wasn’t it? The porter told us just now.’

  ‘Yes, it was. And it was to have been handed to the Hospitallers,’ the bishop agreed. He dropped his gaze to his lap and fiddled with a loose strand of wool. ‘But now the king has given it all over to Hugh Le Despenser. He will enjoy it, I am sure.’

  Baldwin did not need to listen carefully to hear the bitterness in the bishop’s voice. He would have liked to have believed that its cause was the blatant nature of the theft of a religious order’s property and not merely jealousy that it had not come to him. ‘Despenser is most fortunate,’ he observed.

  Stapledon shot him a look. ‘Perhaps. But now he has asked me to help him. Yesterday the daughter of one of his servants was found dead. Out on the marshes between the Rosary and Bermondsey Priory.’

  ‘The coroner has been informed?’

  ‘A coroner will be there today, I believe.’

  ‘Then surely there is little I can do to help.’

  ‘You are here as a Member of Parliament, Sir
Baldwin, but I would be grateful if you could help enquire into the matter. My Lord Despenser has requested an enquiry, and as an unbiased witness I would ask you to go and see what you may learn.’

  Henry Capun hurled his drinking horn across the room. It struck the wall and shattered, throwing shards of green pottery in every direction. Two servants ducked, expecting his intolerable burden of rage to be expended on them, but as soon as it erupted it was gone, and all he knew was the return of that terrible emptiness.

  She had been his little princess. He could still recall her birth. At the time he’d wanted a lad, of course. What man didn’t? He was a knight banneret, a man of standing, and a boy child was worth more in his world. A boy could be trained to be a warrior; he could earn a father some rewards for being brought up in a good warrior’s household. He might win new allies, hopefully gain a wealthy wife, and should always be a delight to his old father. A daughter? Nothing but a damned drain on a man’s resources.

  He had gone to see her soon after the midwives allowed him into his wife’s chamber. God, he could remember that time. He had been slightly drunk. Well, fairly gone, truth be known. He’d not meant to do it, but when he got in there he’d looked at her, and when he heard he had a daughter he’d shouted with anger. His moods were always quick when he was that bit younger.

  ‘My lord, be silent!’ the midwife snapped, drawing his daughter away as though fearing that he might kill her.

  ‘Don’t command me, bitch! I wanted a boy, and she’s given me that!’

  ‘Your child was in God’s hands.’

  ‘In His hands, eh?’

  ‘Yes, and He sent you this babe in His mercy, perhaps to show you the error of your ways and give you a happier life.’

  ‘Leave your moralizing, gossip. I have no need of it,’ he spat, and lurched from the room. But not before he’d seen his wife’s face. She’d been very upset. Indeed, later that night, as he sat in his hall drinking morosely, he’d heard her weeping. That noise stabbed at him – in truth, he had always loved her, ever since he first clapped eyes on her in the company of his best friend.