Faithful Dead

by Alys Clare

  ‘Goodnight, Sir Josse,’ came the Abbess’s soft voice out of the darkness. ‘May God bless your sleep.’

  On such a night, with the memory of a skilled assassin’s ruthless work fresh in his mind, the blessing was very welcome.

  3

  The burial rites for the dead man took up a large proportion of the morning.

  Father Gilbert, the priest of the community, was in sombre mood, and he spoke at length of the sinful state of a world in which a man could lie dead and unclaimed – unnoticed, was the silent accusation – for weeks. Watching the Abbess, on her knees at the front of the church, Josse felt a stab of sympathy. She will take the blame on those shoulders of hers, he thought, and she will embark on some private and surely unnecessary penance until she finds it in her heart to forgive herself for something that wasn’t her fault.

  How could he help?

  Trying to ignore the effects on his own knees of the hard, cold floor of the church – his joints, he was quite sure, were no longer smooth and unworn like those of the dead man – he put Father Gilbert’s stern voice out of his mind and concentrated on the problem in hand. Then, remembering where he was, he sent up a swift prayer of apology for having ignored such an obvious opportunity, and humbly asked God to help him help the Abbess.

  The answer came – at least, an answer of sorts – as they rose to walk with the coffin out to the burial ground.

  I must find out who he was, Josse told himself, staring at the coffin. And, with the good Lord’s help, who killed him. I will set off down to the Vale as soon as this business is over, and find out everything I can about visitors to the Holy Water shrine over the past couple of months.

  That, it seemed to him, was the best starting point.

  The fact that it might also be a great help in proceeding with his own little puzzle – who was Galbertius Sidonius, and why was Prince John searching for him? – was something that Josse tried not to dwell on.

  It was not difficult to encourage the monks and the lay brothers down in the Vale to talk; it was, in fact difficult to make them stop.

  Although violent death was, sadly, no rarer an occurrence in the sacred environs of the Vale than anywhere else in late twelfth-century England, it was still sufficiently exceptional to get the monks all squawking and clucking away like hens round a split grain sack. Josse wasted quite a lot of time on the likes of Brother Micah, who claimed to have heard a saturnine figure dressed all in black creeping about the Vale (‘And just how did you know he was dressed in black if you only heard him?’ Brother Erse, the carpenter, astutely asked him), and Brother Adrian, who said anybody who went around naked was an affront and just asking for trouble. This time it was Brother Saul who quashed him, quietly telling him that it was far more likely that the murderer had stripped his victim after having killed him, so as to help disguise the dead man’s identity.

  After some time, Josse was able to corner Brother Saul, Brother Erse and young Brother Augustus. Leaving the other monks to their thrilled gossiping, he indicated with a nod of his head that he would like a quiet word, and the three brothers followed him off along the path to the pond.

  He studied them as they walked.

  Brother Saul he knew well; his opinion of the lay brother accorded with that of the Abbess. Brother Augustus he had met but briefly; the lad had borrowed Josse’s horse in order to act as one half of Abbess Helewise’s escort on a trip she had made earlier in the year, and Josse had been impressed with the young man’s sense and quiet confidence. He was the son of travelling folk, and had heard the Lord’s call when his sick mother had been cured by Hawkenlye’s Holy Waters.

  Brother Erse, now, Josse hardly knew at all. The carpenter was a silent man, broad-built with strong, well-shaped hands. His workmanship had been pointed out to Josse, who was impressed with the craft of a man who could turn his hand to the practical and the beautiful with equal flair and competence. The community, he thought, was lucky to have Brother Erse. And, just now, hadn’t he spoken with the voice of cool logic in the face of Brother Micah’s wild and woolly speculation?

  Yes. These three, Josse decided, were the best of the bunch.

  ‘The Abbess is troubled,’ he began when, some distance out of earshot of the community of monks, they stopped. ‘I know we’ll all do what we can to help, and it seems to me that, as for myself, I can best serve her by trying to find out the dead man’s identity and have a try at discovering who killed him.’ The three brothers nodded their agreement. ‘So, first of all, I need you to tell me about everyone who has been here over, shall we say, the last two months? Say, since the start of August.’

  It was a tall order. He knew it, even before it was confirmed by the men’s dubious expressions. Then Brother Saul spoke.

  ‘We keep records of numbers all right, Sir Josse,’ he said. ‘We have to do that, since everything we order and use has to be accounted for.’

  ‘Aye.’ Josse was aware of it. Once he had taken a peek at the endless books of accounts that the Abbess used to keep, before she had been persuaded that that was one particular duty which could safely be delegated to another nun whose scholarly qualifications were, if anything, even better than those of the Abbess.

  ‘But,’ Saul was saying, ‘as to who everyone is, well, that’s a problem. We don’t always ask, you see, sir, not when folks come in dire need of help. Asking a man to tell us his name and where he comes from doesn’t always seem the most important thing, when he’s come seeking the cure for his son crippled in the legs, his wife in the throes of a fever, or his mother wrong in her head.’

  ‘I do see, Saul,’ Josse said gently. ‘But of those whom you do know about, will you tell me what you can?’

  ‘Aye, and gladly.’ Saul sounded relieved. ‘Shall I start, brothers, and you put in when I forget?’ He looked intently at Erse and Augustus, face anxious. They both nodded their agreement.

  It was surprising, in fact, just how much the three of them did remember, between them, of the comings and goings of the past two months. Their different recollections had a similarity about them: sometimes it was a well-to-do merchant and his wife seeking a cure for her barrenness, sometimes it was some worthy of the town with a sick baby, sometimes it was a nobleman who could not rid himself of a troublesome bellyache.

  But, in the main, it was the lowly, ordinary folk of England who came. Peasants who gathered up their few precious possessions in a pack and set off on the long road to Hawkenlye, not knowing how long they would be away from home and not trusting that they would find their goods untouched on their eventual return. They usually came on foot so that, as Saul remarked ruefully, often the first duty of the loving brothers in the Vale was to bed them down and feed them up to counter their exhaustion.

  None of the brothers remembered a young man on his own who might have arrived some time in early August.

  ‘Folks rarely come all by themselves,’ Brother Erse said. ‘Well, stands to reason. Who would travel the roads and byways alone when they could have company? Safer, that way. Somebody to watch your back.’

  ‘Aye, you’re right, Brother Erse,’ Josse agreed glumly.

  Perhaps noticing the defeatist tone in his voice and wishing to offer some encouragement, Augustus said suddenly, ‘There was that old feller who died. Remember, Saul? He was thin, dressed poorly, and he had a nasty cough. Died in his sleep one night, and then in the morning––’

  ‘In the morning, his young servant had gone!’ Brother Saul interrupted. ‘Oh, well remembered, Gus! Why did we not think of him before?’ But, as quickly as it had come, the happy smile left his face. Looking aghast, he said, ‘Oh, no. Not the young man in the bracken?’

  Josse, trying to follow the rapid exchange, said, ‘What old man was this? And what’s this about the servant?’

  Brother Saul turned to him. ‘I am sorry, Sir Josse. Let me explain. An old man came to us in . . . yes, in August. Round about the middle of August. There had been a hot spell followed by a storm, and he had
a bad chest, which was greatly troubled by the sudden drop in temperature and the damp after the storm. We made him as comfortable as we could and he was due to take the waters in the morning, but he died in the night.’

  ‘And was that an expected death?’ Josse asked.

  ‘Expected . . . ? Oh, yes indeed. Sister Euphemia had attended him on his arrival, and she spoke to me in private afterwards and said she was gravely worried about him. Sir Josse, I think we can be fairly sure that there were no suspicious circumstances concerning that death.’

  ‘But what of the young servant?’

  Saul’s face clouded again. ‘He vanished. He was there when we retired for the night – indeed, we remarked on the care with which he tended his master – but when we woke and found the old man dead, the boy had gone.’

  The four of them stood silently, nobody, apparently, wanting to voice the conclusion to which they had all leapt. Finally Josse said, ‘Brother Saul, Brother Augustus, the two of you saw both the living young man and the dead body. Yes?’ They both nodded. ‘Then can you say whether or not the two were one and the same?’

  Saul spoke first, and that only after some moments’ thought. ‘It is possible, aye, Sir Josse. But in the absence of a recognisable face . . .’ He did not finish. Which, Josse thought, was understandable; the face of the corpse, bloated, half-eaten, a mass of purplish flesh and bare white bone where the skull showed through, had not been a sight to dwell on.

  ‘Augustus?’ he said gently, turning to the boy.

  ‘I cannot be sure, either,’ Augustus said. ‘All that I would venture is that it is not impossible that the dead man was the old man’s servant.’

  ‘Very well.’ Josse nodded. There was no point in pursuing the matter; Saul and Augustus had done their best. Instead he now asked, ‘I suppose neither the old man nor the servant gave you their name?’

  As one, the three men shook their heads.

  Then Brother Erse said, ‘They were foreign. Leastways, the lad was.’

  ‘Foreign?’ Josse spun round to face him.

  ‘Aye. He was dark-complexioned. Skin was sort of . . .’ He paused, clearly thinking. ‘Sort of oak-coloured. If you know what I mean. And he had black hair.’

  ‘But many people have dark colouring without being foreign,’ Josse observed. ‘Are you sure, Brother Erse?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ the carpenter insisted. ‘He spoke funny.’

  ‘Ah.’ Would that be Brother Erse’s interpretation of someone speaking English when it was not their mother tongue? It was quite likely; Hawkenlye’s fame had grown to the extent that people from other countries did now make the long trip. ‘And the old man? Did he appear to be foreign too?’

  ‘Couldn’t say,’ Erse said. ‘He wore a hood mostly, and he didn’t so much as speak but cough.’

  ‘I see.’ Was the information helpful in any way, Josse wondered? Were they right in concluding that the dead youth was the old man’s servant? But why was he murdered? And, indeed, why had he fled on the night his master died? Or was the whole thing completely irrelevant and serving only to distract them from the true victim and nature of the crime? Either way, it seemed they could go no further now. Josse was about to thank them and release them to return to their duties when Brother Saul spoke up.

  ‘I was wrong just now,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve been thinking, and it wasn’t right, what I said to Brother Adrian.’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t take it amiss,’ Josse reassured him, ‘and, Saul, you spoke quite kindly.’

  Saul flashed him a brief smile. ‘No, that’s not what I mean, thank you all the same, Sir Josse. No. I said to him that the poor dead soul was naked because his murderer had stripped him after he’d killed him. But that can’t be right, else how did the knife end up still in the body? I mean, if you stick a knife in someone and then take off his jerkin or his tunic, the knife would be pulled out as the garment was removed. Wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Aye, in all probability it would,’ Josse said slowly. An unpleasant picture was forming in his mind. ‘Is it possible, then, that the killer made the victim strip before he killed him?’

  Brother Erse made a sound of disgust. But Augustus said, ‘That sounds unlikely, since the man was stabbed from behind.’

  Josse tried to picture it. Indeed, it did seem unlikely, especially for a professional assassin, to make a man strip and then stand behind him to slip a knife between his ribs. To be stabbed in the back surely suggested an element of surprise – the dark figure creeping up behind his victim, soft-footed, silent. But then why had the victim been naked?

  Saul said, ‘Perhaps the assailant struck him down first and stunned him, then stripped him, then stabbed him?’

  ‘Hmm.’ I did not check his head for injury, Josse reprimanded himself. And, now that he is buried, it is too late.

  Then he thought, I did not. But I am willing to bet that somebody else did.

  He told the others what he was thinking. Then, thanking them for their time and their help, he hurried away to find Sister Euphemia.

  ‘I was just coming to look for you, sir knight,’ she said.

  He had found her in the little curtained-off section of the long infirmary where she kept a bowl and a pitcher of water; she was washing something black and sticky from her hands, and he did not like to ask what it was. Noticing his quick glance, she said, ‘A patient with a suppurating sore on her hip, poor soul. She suffers much, yet does not complain. I have given her some of Sister Tiphaine’s strongest sleeping draught, in order that she may rest awhile. Now then––’ briskly she dried her hands on a spotless linen cloth and rolled down her wide sleeves – ‘you first. What did you come to see me about?’

  He told her of the murder scene which he and the three brothers had just conjured up, of the difficulty of how a knife could have been left in a man whose clothes had been removed after death, and of the possible solution that the victim had been knocked on the head and rendered unconscious first.

  Before he had finished, she was shaking her head. ‘No, there was no injury to the skull, nor to the neck,’ she said firmly.

  ‘You are absolutely certain?’

  ‘That I am. Of course, it’s possible to fell a man without its leaving a dent in the skull.’

  ‘Aye,’ he sighed. He seemed to be getting nowhere.

  Observing his face, she gave him a swift dig in the ribs. ‘Cheer up, Sir Josse. Did I not just say that I was about to come looking for you?’

  ‘Aye. What––?’

  ‘I have been studying that knife.’ She lowered her voice, beckoning him further into the little recess. Then she reached under the table on which the bowl and pitcher stood and pulled out a small bundle of cloth. She laid it on the table and unwrapped the cloth.

  The knife lay on the scrap of linen. Clean now, Josse noticed the sheen on the thin blade – no doubt razor-sharp – and the faint carved design on the short, stubby handle.

  But he did not study the knife for long; there was something else in the bundle.

  He picked it up.

  It was a piece of cloth, almost circular in shape, with a clean slit in the middle. Its outer edges were frayed, as if it had been torn.

  Sister Euphemia said softly in his ear, ‘When I cleaned the blood and the dirt from the knife, I found this piece of cloth around the point where blade meets handle. It was so soaked in blood that it had stuck tight to the knife.’

  ‘And it was ripped from the dead man’s garment when the murderer stripped the body?’ Josse whispered. ‘Is it possible, Sister?’

  She took the small piece of cloth from him. ‘It is possible, I reckon,’ she replied. ‘The knife was stuck fast in the body, and it could be that the garment gave way before the blade. The fabric is soft and fine – I think it is wool, perhaps from an undershirt.’ She glanced up at Josse. ‘A costly undershirt, mind – not many of the folks who go to the Holy Shrine would wear such a garment.’

  Josse was picturing a well-dressed man, the sort
who could afford a fine wool undershirt. In his mind’s eye he saw the man’s tunic, heavy, costly, perhaps padded and lined, open at the sides and held together at the waist by a decorative belt.

  Aye. It was possible that a clever assailant, familiar with the dress of men of means, would know how to slide the knife inside the tunic and stab the man through his shirt.

  Thoughtfully he wrapped both knife and wool fragment up in the cloth. He said, ‘Sister Euphemia, I am truly grateful, as ever, for your all-seeing eyes and your delicate, skilful, capable hands.’

  Again, she dug him in the ribs, rather more forcibly this time. ‘Go on with you,’ she said. ‘You old flatterer!’

  He returned her grin. ‘May I keep this?’ He held up the bundle.

  ‘Of course.’ Nudging him out of the way, she stepped past him and back out into the infirmary. Looking at him over her shoulder, she said softly, ‘Good luck with your enquiries, Sir Josse. I will pray for you.’

  Then she was off, walking quickly but quietly up the long room to where, at the far end, an elderly woman lay tossing and turning. The woman with the ulcerated hip? It was possible. Whoever she was, her chances of getting better had just gone up quite considerably, now that the infirmarer of Hawkenlye Abbey was fighting on her side.

  4

  Helewise had returned to the Abbey church after the formalities concerning the interment of the dead man had finally been concluded. She had taken Father Gilbert’s reprimand to heart. He was right, she thought desperately; what sort of an example does it set for an abbey, of all places, to be so lacking in vigilance that a visitor can be murdered and lie dead and unattended for weeks?

  People come to us for help and for loving care, she told herself mercilessly, and it is our entire life’s purpose here to succour the needy and, when all else comes to naught and God calls, to comfort the dying and pray for the dead. Oh, how I have failed! That poor young man, stabbed and thrown aside, and there he has lain ever since, ignored, unburied, nobody to offer up the shortest, smallest prayer on his behalf !