House of Shadows

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘Is that place down there your province?’ asked Geoffrey, indicating the steps they’d just climbed. ‘I thought the revestiarius dealt only in linen and hangings.’

  ‘You are right, Master Chaucer,’ said Brother Ralph. ‘This whole area is the cellarer’s and the sub-cellarer’s, but I could not find them so I took the keys from their office. I must return them now.’

  ‘My thanks, Brother Ralph. You saved me from an unpleasant stretch in the dark. I am well rebuked for my curiosity.’

  What next?

  For the second time that day Geoffrey passed through the outer court of the priory. The hulking gatekeeper was back in position. That is, he was leaning against the wall and picking at his teeth with a twig. Geoffrey wondered if it was the same fragment of wood as before. He halted opposite the man as though a thought had just occurred to him.

  ‘Did you find it, Osbert?’

  ‘Find what?’

  ‘Whatever it was that you had mislaid in Brother Michael’s chamber.’

  As on the previous occasion, when he’d warned Osbert of the murderous fugitive, Chaucer was speaking more to discomfit the gatekeeper than anything else. Something about the man set his teeth on edge. But Osbert was ready to give as good as he got. Removing the twig from his mouth, he said: ‘Where are you off to, sir?’

  ‘To visit a grieving house.’

  ‘Prior Dunton gave orders that no one was to leave this place.’

  ‘That was when there was a murderer on the loose. Now he has done away with himself there is no more danger.’

  ‘Done away with himself! Believe that and you’ll believe anything.’

  This chimed with Chaucer’s own opinion. He approached Osbert. The deputy gatekeeper was almost a head taller. Yet Geoffrey was accustomed to dealing with people like this, people with a little authority who turned into jacks-in-office.

  ‘What do you know, Osbert?’

  ‘I know what I know.’

  ‘I expect you do,’ said Geoffrey, turning away. He hadn’t gone more than a few feet before the other said: ‘Don’t you want to know what I know?’

  ‘If you wish to tell me, man, then do so. Do not waste my time with riddling utterances.’

  ‘You are going to visit a grieving house, you say. It is the Morton house you mean, isn’t it? But the grief will not be that of a living brother for a dead one. Simon will not be so sorry at the death of John. The only sorrow there will be Mistress Susanna Morton’s. Her you’ve seen?’

  Again Osbert made the cupping gesture with his hands at chest height. Geoffrey nodded. The deputy gatekeeper licked his lips.

  ‘I’ve seen ’em too, all unbuttoned and loose.’

  ‘If I want dirty talk, Osbert, I can find better sources than you, more inventive ones.’

  ‘Wait, sir. Listen. I’ve seen Mistress Morton down by the river. I came across her and him one morning lately, going at it hammer and tongs behind some bushes. That woman and her husband’s brother, the one that’s dead and gone. She saw I saw too. He didn’t, he was too busy. But she saw me with her great goggle eyes over his heaving shoulder.’

  ‘Did her husband know?’

  The gatekeeper shrugged. ‘He could smell it on her, I expect. She’s loose in the hilts, that one. For all that she gives herself airs. That’s on account of her parentage.’

  Parentage? Chaucer recalled that Mistress Morton was supposed to be the daughter of a priest. But he wasn’t going to indulge Osbert by joining in the slurs on the woman, especially over something for which she bore no responsibility. Instead he said: ‘You’ve tried it on, too, haven’t you, Osbert? You’ve chanced your arm with Mistress Morton.’

  And not succeeded, he thought. Otherwise you would not be talking about the woman in quite these terms.

  ‘So what if I have?’ said the other.

  ‘What has this to do with anything, though?’ said Geoffrey. Then an idea occurred to him. ‘Are you saying that Simon Morton wanted to harm his brother because of his wife’s infidelity?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have the guts to do anything himself,’ said Osbert. ‘Little shrimp of a man who could only sire a half-wit. Could’ve been her, couldn’t it?’

  ‘Why would Mistress Morton want to get rid of her brother-in-law?’

  ‘Perhaps she got tired of his great hands wandering all over her—’

  At that moment a monk came out of the gatehouse door. It was Brother Philip, who had official charge of the outer gatehouse. He dipped his cowled head on seeing Chaucer. Osbert had the grace to look uncomfortable. He said to Geoffrey: ‘And a good day to you, too, sir.’

  Chaucer went through the shadow of the gate and turned right towards the artisans’ dwellings. He pondered over what he’d heard from the gossipy, lascivious porter. He wondered whether Osbert was telling the truth about what he’d witnessed behind a bush on the river bank. Chaucer recalled something revealing that Mistress Morton had said when he had brought the news of John Morton’s death. She’d referred to ‘my John’. So was this whole business to be explained by domestic jealousy? Was that what Osbert was hinting at? Had Simon Morton discovered that his wife was carrying on with his brother (‘He could smell it on her’) and, lacking the nerve to take action himself, did he persuade…suborn…bribe someone else to do the job for him? Adam of the crooked hand? How would a poor mason have paid for such a desperate task? With a valuable ring, perhaps? Or was it Mistress Morton, trying to get rid of an importunate lover? She’d find it easier to pay Adam, and not with a gold ring either.

  Geoffrey tried to get the sequence of events clear in his mind and almost straightaway dismissed the hypothesis. Because Adam had not been taken on at the priory until after Simon fell sick.

  But wait: hadn’t Michael the cellarer said that Adam had earlier approached him in the quest for work and been turned away? Was it possible that at some point before he fell ill Simon had gone to Adam and urged him to assail his brother, perhaps even to kill him? Andrew the mason had claimed that Adam seemed to be looking for an opportunity to go for John Morton. But if Simon – or even his wife – had hired Adam, then the murder had been carried out in a strangely public manner. Perhaps Adam had intended to provoke an attack, to pass the whole thing off as a brawl with unintended, if fatal, consequences.

  This string of hypotheses seemed too vague. And anyway, they would never know the truth of it now that Adam was dead.

  Geoffrey had mentioned to the insolent gatekeeper that he was planning to visit a grieving house. The idea hadn’t entered his head until he’d spoken the words. But now he found himself re-passing the lay cemetery on the far side of the priory church. The somnolence of an afternoon in mid-summer extended itself across the scene. The far shore of the river was obscured in the heat haze. There were no boats visible nor was anyone there to observe his progress towards the door of the Morton dwelling. He knocked but did so gently, mindful of the sick man within. The door was unfastened and gave slightly under his hand.

  Chaucer peered around the corner. The fire smouldered in the centre, a thread of smoke twining up towards the hole in the roof. The interior was hot and airless. It smelled of the sickroom, and of something else besides. The large bed contained the diminished figure of Simon Morton. Of Mistress Morton and Will there was no sign.

  Geoffrey pushed the door further inwards. He called out, but in a muted way. There was no word or movement from the bed. But then Simon was a sick man, a feverous one. He must be asleep, still. Yet Geoffrey feared the worst. He advanced across the uneven floor of the chamber. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could see Simon Morton lying on his back, outstretched beneath a thin, patched blanket. Whether he looked peaceful and at ease, as the dead are sometimes said to look, Geoffrey would have been unable to say. For the great bolster that he’d noticed earlier was now lying crosswise over Morton’s face. That someone had deliberately placed it there and then held it down was shown by the deep indentations on either side. Chaucer wondered how long it woul
d take a man to die under such circumstances. Not long, probably, given Morton’s feeble state.

  Geoffrey lifted the bolster off Simon Morton’s face. It was heavy enough almost to stifle a man by its own weight. Morton’s mouth gaped, but otherwise he did look as though he might have died in relative peace. Geoffrey was glad at that. He’d never seen Simon at close quarters, but he would have known him for John’s brother by the prominent stripe of his eyebrows. The man had been murdered. There could be no question of suicide here.

  Chaucer’s first thought was that this deed might have been carried out by Susanna Morton. Easy enough to kill a weakened man, and with the nearest weapon to hand, the great bolster. Somehow this seemed too obvious an explanation, like the self-killing of Adam. Yet, if it had not been Mistress Morton (or her simple son), then it must have been an outsider. And if a stranger had come through the door, he surely ran the risk of being observed by someone from the other dwellings. There was no other way in.

  But, Geoffrey suddenly noticed, there was another means of access to the Mortons’. In the back wall was a low entrance, covered by a piece of sacking that shivered slightly in the afternoon air. He had to stoop to make his way outside. At the back of the house lay a strip of land, planted with a few vegetables wilting in the heat. Each dwelling in the row had a similar patch of ground, no doubt tended by the women while their menfolk were off working.

  On Geoffrey’s right hovered the bulk of the priory church. As he was gazing at the central tower, the bell rang. He had lost track of the canonical hours. There was no one in sight on the patches of land, which were roughly delineated from their neighbours by rows of sticks or a few rags of washing.

  A raised path ran along the back, parallel to the line of dwellings. It would not have been difficult for someone who knew which house they were searching for to gain access from this side, once they’d checked that the coast was clear. The Morton house was easiest to find since it stood alone.

  Chaucer was reluctant to enter the dead man’s house again. He did not need to gaze on Simon’s gaping mouth for a second time. Nor did he want to emerge by the front door like a regular visitor. Instead he walked past the flattened stems of leeks and battered cabbages and turned eastwards on to the path, with the priory at his back. He was gripped by the desire to get away from this place. He regretted that he’d ever come here. For peace and quiet, ha! There had been two – no, three – suspicious deaths in the course of a few hours. An air of gloom and menace seemed to hang over all.

  The area beyond the houses was flat and empty, save for a few clumps of trees and the odd, even more ramshackle hut or hovel. The tide was coming in, and the river seemed to be on the verge of spilling over on to the adjoining land. Geoffrey wondered who had taken the decision to site the Cluniac house here all those hundreds of years before. And why. Because of the remoteness of the spot? For its closeness to the river? Or was it for the great expanse of sky, which might inspire pious thoughts?

  He saw two figures walking along the river foreshore. They were hand in hand. A young couple, he thought at first, but as they drew closer he recognized Mistress Morton and Will. The mother was leading the lad. They must have been out fishing, for the boy was carrying a kind of net attached to a pole, which he toted on his shoulder. In her other hand the mother was grasping a bucket, perhaps to hold whatever they’d caught or scavenged on the foreshore. Cockles or winkles perhaps. Tuneless sounds were borne through the air. The boy was singing.

  They had not noticed Geoffrey Chaucer and he turned inland off the track, putting the rise of the ground between himself and the mother and son. He felt a pang at the thought of what they’d discover when they returned to the house. He debated for a moment warning them, but the fear of being the bearer of bad news for a second time that day – and the stronger fear that he might be implicated in Simon Morton’s death (hadn’t he been first on the scene following the murderer?) – held him back.

  If he’d had the suspicion that the wife could have disposed of her husband by pressing the bolster over his face, then it was dispelled by what he’d just seen, mother and son returning innocently from a fishing expedition.

  No woman could murder her husband and then go for a walk with her son, surely? He had thought Mistress Morton impatient with her Will, but here she was escorting him by the hand and he was singing.

  Geoffrey felt guilty even for suspecting her. And with the guilt came anger. He determined he would get to the bottom of whatever it was that was happening at Bermondsey Priory. He owed that to the woman who’d lost both husband and brother-in-law within the space of a few hours. He hastened back in the direction of the priory. He would squeeze the truth out of the one man he’d talked to who seemed to know more than he’d let on.

  ‘You have one last chance to tell me what you know, Osbert. After that, I shall go to the justice.’

  Chaucer spoke more in regret than with menace. He’d already hinted at his position at court and implied that he had the power to have Osbert summarily dealt with. He even gestured vaguely towards the other side of the river and dropped a reference to the white-towered castle which stood there, as if he had the authority to whisk Osbert across the water. He hadn’t, of course, but how useful those connections with the Savoy Palace could be!

  The two men were in a kind of cubbyhole off the outer gatehouse. There was an unglazed slit of a window, which did nothing to dispel the stale, sour air. This was where Osbert lived, as was shown not only by the smell but by the palliasse in one corner and a small chest in the other, doubtless containing a spare shirt and leggings. For a deputy gatekeeper in a religious house must look presentable. Not that Osbert would be entrusted with the task of ushering in important visitors. That would be left to Brother Philip, who’d welcomed Chaucer the previous day. But Osbert would do to receive – or turn away – the flotsam who always wash up at the doors of a great institution like the priory.

  Now Chaucer was attempting to put the fear of God or of the law and the royal court into Osbert. It seemed to be working. He’d said nothing about the latest death, that of Simon Morton.

  ‘Come on, man. Your story about Simon Morton wishing to do away with his brother was balderdash, wasn’t it? There was no such plot.’

  ‘I said only what I thought.’

  ‘You said what you’d like to think, maybe. But the truth is that you wanted Mistress Morton for yourself. You claimed you’d seen her and her husband’s brother together—’

  ‘Oh, I did, sir. See them, see them going at it hammer and tongs.’

  ‘You told her what you’d witnessed, didn’t you? You said she’d seen you. You probably said that if she didn’t, ah, do what you wanted, then you’d expose her.’

  Osbert’s grudging silence showed Geoffrey that he was on the right lines. He pressed home his advantage. ‘So what was her reply?’

  ‘She laughed in my face. That woman has the dirtiest laugh this side of Gravesend, sir. Laughed and said that no one would believe me.’

  ‘So to get revenge on Mistress Morton or just to cause mischief, you insinuated that her husband had cooked up some plot to hire a killer for his brother. And then for good measure you said she might have done it.’

  ‘Insinuated, sir? I don’t understand the word.’

  ‘But you get my drift. You invented a plot where none existed.’

  ‘There is a plot, all right. I admit I made up what I said about Simon Morton. Fellow wouldn’t hurt a fly. But there are funny goings-on here in the priory.’

  ‘There are funny goings-on everywhere. You’re telling me nothing.’

  ‘Ask Brother Michael.’

  ‘The cellarer?’

  ‘That’s the one. He knows what’s going on. All I know is that a few days ago I was in here and heard the Morton brothers as they were passing through the gateway. They were arguing. Not about Mistress Morton but about something they’d found during their work. They stopped right outside that window there. I was lying on my bed an
d I heard it all.’

  ‘What had they found?’

  ‘A parchment with writing on. And something else of value. I couldn’t tell what from their words. It might have been a brooch or a ring.’

  Despite the stuffy air inside Osbert’s room Geoffrey felt a chill. A ring? Like the one that still nestled in his pocket?

  ‘What would a parchment mean to the masons? They wouldn’t be able to read it.’

  ‘No, sir. But they knew it was important because it had a seal attached and it was old.’

  ‘So why were they arguing?’

  ‘Over what to do with the items they’d dug up.’

  ‘Dug up? You’re sure of that?’

  ‘They had been working in a cellar somewhere. They were having words about whether to keep what they’d found or to hand them over to one of the monks. Perhaps there’d be a reward, one of them said. It was John’s voice, I think.’

  ‘How does Brother Michael come into this?’

  ‘You’d better ask him.’

  ‘That’s what you were doing in his chamber today, wasn’t it? You were going to see what you could get out of him.’

  Osbert shrugged. ‘He won’t talk to me but he’ll talk to a gentleman like you. All I know is that I saw Brother Michael talking to John and Simon Morton. Saw them talking in a quiet and private place one evening.’

  ‘Quiet and private.’

  ‘As the grave. They were in the graveyard.’

  Osbert nodded his head in the direction of the cemetery that accommodated the lay folk, the one beyond the main gate.