The False Virgin

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘Because Cole was going to hand them to the bishop, rather than hanging them as they deserved, and they might have escaped to ply their evil trade again.’

  ‘It was you who stole their relic, of course,’ said Gwenllian. ‘You knew they would celebrate their good fortune in a tavern, so you waited until they were too drunk to notice and took it from Reinfrid’s pack. Then you insisted on seeing it the next day, hoping that an empty reliquary would expose them as charlatans.’

  ‘It should have done,’ said Kediour bitterly. ‘But Rupe salvaged the situation. He would have found some excuse for the spring drying up, too, and gullible folk would have accepted his lies. It had to be stopped, Gwenllian. You must see that.’

  Gwenllian saw that Avenel had regained his senses and was listening. Then with a surge of relief she saw that Symon’s eyes were open, too. She stepped towards the spring, ostensibly to dip her hand in the mud, but really so to shield him from Kediour’s sight. She was aware of him and Avenel exchanging a silent signal. They had a plan, although she could not see how they would prevail against a skilled warrior who held a loaded crossbow.

  ‘Stand up, Sheriff,’ said Kediour abruptly. ‘And drag Fitzmartin and Symon to the altar. There is wood enough for a fire, I think.’

  ‘A fire?’ asked Gwenllian in alarm. She straightened quickly, her hand dripping with thick brown muck.

  ‘I shall follow the example set by those false monks, whose wickedness began this miserable affair. They started a blaze to conceal what they had done, and so shall I.’

  ‘Why should I?’ asked Avenel, although he scrambled upright. ‘You will kill me anyway.’

  ‘Because there are many ways to die,’ said Kediour softly. ‘Quickly with a crossbow bolt, or slowly in an inferno. The choice is yours.’

  Avenel moved towards Fitzmartin, regarded him sadly for a moment, and then grabbed his legs. ‘None of your victims were good men,’ he said quietly. ‘Miles lusted after the constable’s wife, Rupe was a thief, Reinfrid and Frossard lived by deceit, and Fitzmartin did some terrible things. But Gwenllian is innocent. Let her go.’

  ‘I wish I could,’ said Kediour sadly. ‘But no one can know what I have done. They will not understand, and might turn against my priory. Now pull Symon to the altar and let us end this miserable business. I have no wish to prolong the agony.’

  Avenel bent, and in one smooth move had snatched the knife Cole passed him and lobbed it at the prior. Unfortunately, his aim was poor and it passed harmlessly over Kediour’s head. The prior’s eyes blazed with fury, and the crossbow started to come up. Gwenllian knew it would not miss. More out of desperation than rational thought, she flung the grainy sludge that clung to her fingers at him.

  Her aim could not have been better, and the crossbow discharged harmlessly into a wall as mud flew into Kediour’s eyes. Avenel lunged towards him, and there followed a furious tussle. Gwenllian tried to pull Symon to his feet, but he was heavy, and she could not do it. Then Avenel knocked Kediour into a row of candles, all of which went flying. They caught the tinder-dry wood of the walls, and she saw the prior was going to have his fire after all.

  The flames took hold quickly, and a shower of sparks sprayed across Kediour’s habit. The wool began to smoulder, then it ignited. Kediour tried to bat out the blaze with his hands.

  ‘Help him,’ gasped Cole, when Avenel came to haul him to his feet. ‘Do not let him die in here.’

  Avenel ignored him, but once they were outside there was no question of anyone going back. The entire chapel was ablaze, sending orange flames leaping high into the night sky.

  ‘You asked me to keep the truth about Rupe’s evil deeds from the King,’ said Avenel softly. ‘Well, let us do the same for this misguided prior. We shall invent a passing outlaw to take the blame for these murders, and we shall say Kediour died trying to save the chapel.’

  III

  The fire burned itself out quickly, and by the time the townsfolk came hurrying to see what was happening, there was nothing left but smouldering planks. Kediour’s body was retrieved and carried back to a priory that would genuinely miss him, and Avenel took the opportunity afforded by the canons’ stunned distress to reclaim Beornwyn’s hand with none of them any the wiser. He offered to return it to Whitby, and left the next morning. By the evening of the same day it had started to rain.

  The land recovered quickly once the weather reverted to the cool, wet, grey days its people knew and loved. The river ran full and fat, trees and hedgerows regained their colour, farmers reported that some of the harvest might be saved, and livestock began to fatten.

  ‘Miles was mistaken,’ said Gwenllian one evening. Cole’s wound was taking too long to heal, and she was concerned by his continued pallor. ‘There is no underground stream in Rupe’s wood, and the water that bubbled from the ground was just a result of that unusual storm. There is a lot of water around now, yet there is no sign of it.’

  ‘Good,’ said Cole. ‘I am sure shrines are good things, generally speaking, but they do bring out the worst in people. In the Holy Land . . .’ He trailed off when she shot him a warning glance. ‘Well, suffice to say they are not always sites of peace and serenity.’

  ‘We were wrong about Avenel,’ said Gwenllian. ‘He had nothing to do with despoiling churches or holding people to ransom – that was all Fitzmartin.’

  ‘And Cousin Philip found the truth,’ added Cole. ‘Odo said we were lucky to have him as a chaplain, and he was right. I do not know why we had to send him to Brecon.’

  ‘He deserved a promotion after all he did,’ said Gwenllian. Then she grimaced. ‘He might have been on the right side in the end, but he is still a very slippery character, and I was glad to see him go. Much of what he discovered was with the help of Odo and Hilde, yet he never acknowledged the role they played. He kept the credit for himself.’

  Cole smiled his understanding. ‘So that is what they were doing with their muttered discussions and secret glances! But why did they go to Merlin’s Hill on the night of the fire?’

  ‘To talk without being overheard. It was a sensible precaution. Fitzmartin had intimidated a number of people into spying for him. He would have killed them if he had found out what they had discovered and were passing to Avenel.’

  ‘Avenel was horrified by their revelations. He is a decent man. Incidentally, I advised him to hide his goodness when he visits the King. John does not want honourable, intelligent men in his service.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Gwenllian, ‘although it was unwise of you to say so. However, I trust Avenel to be diplomatic. He might even persuade the King to leave us alone.’

  ‘It was good of him to take Beornwyn’s hand to Whitby,’ said Cole, more gloomily than was his wont. ‘It might be some time before I would have been able to do it.’

  ‘It would indeed,’ she said with mock indignation. ‘You have been gone far too much of late, and I intend to keep you here with me for several months at least.’ Then she became serious. ‘Yet I am glad Beornwyn has gone. She did no good here.’

  ‘Perhaps she objected to her limbs being toted around the country and exploited by unscrupulous men. When I am well, I shall light a candle for her in the church. She was a real person, whether a saint or not, and does not deserve to be treated so.’

  Gwenllian made no reply, and they sat in companionable silence, listening to rain patter in the bailey below and the other familiar sounds of castle life – the clatter of pans from the kitchens, the rumble of soldiers’ voices from the barracks and the contented cluck of hens scratching in the mud. Then a butterfly flitted through the window, dancing haphazardly until it landed on Cole. He let it stay, studying its pretty blue markings and the way it flexed its wings. Then it took to the air again and was gone.

  ‘I hope that was not the same one that danced over the wound in Miles’s neck,’ said Gwenllian in distaste. ‘Or kin to the dead one I saw on Rupe’s conical hat.’

  Cole laughed, the first time he had done s
o since the fire. ‘I would not think so. But do you know, Gwen, I am feeling much better. Perhaps we can light Beornwyn’s candle tomorrow.’

  Whitby, Winter 1200

  Abbot Peter was appalled when Sheriff Avenel brought him the sorry tale of Reinfrid and Frossard. The hand’s theft had been noticed, of course, and had caused even further friction between Lythe and the abbey. Now, a year after the original affair, Peter had had more than enough of Beornwyn and everything connected to her.

  ‘She has been a bane to me ever since I came here,’ he said irritably to his brother, William. He rubbed his temples. His headaches had grown worse since the trouble, although the medicine William had brought would ease them. He had somehow mislaid the last box, and had had to manage twelve months without it. William had been too busy to bring a replacement batch sooner, because he had been busy founding his own priory. It was to be near their family home at Broomhill in the Malvern Hills.

  ‘Has she?’ asked William sympathetically.

  ‘She was a nuisance when she was in Lythe, because pilgrims would insist on going there instead of here,’ the abbot continued waspishly. ‘And now she is here, the villagers accuse us of theft on a weekly basis. I have a good mind to send her packing.’

  ‘Really?’ asked William, regarding him intently. ‘Because if you are serious, I have a new monastery that is sadly bereft of relics. Beornwyn would make a big difference to us – perhaps even the difference between survival and ignominious dissolution.’

  ‘I wish you could take her,’ said Peter fervently. ‘But relations with Lythe would never recover if I were to dispatch their beloved saint to a place that none of them have heard of. I fear I am stuck with the wretched woman – and will be until the end of my days.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said William, settling more comfortably in front of the fire. ‘You are right in that you cannot give her away, but what if she were stolen? Lythe cannot blame you for that – it is how they lost her themselves.’

  Peter laughed without humour. ‘I think they would guess what happened if Beornwyn suddenly appeared in the priory founded by my own brother!’

  ‘Would they?’ asked William seriously. ‘How? Broomhill and Lythe are many miles apart, and both are remote. How would your villagers find out?’

  Peter stared at him. ‘Do you think it would work?’

  ‘Why not? Relics are always being filched by unscrupulous thieves, and this will be just one more instance of it.’

  Peter considered the matter, but then shook his head. ‘No,’ he said with real regret. ‘It would make me no better than the young men I banished.’

  ‘It is not the same at all,’ argued William. ‘They took her for mischief, whereas you are trying to heal a rift that is damaging both the abbey and Lythe. Your monks gloat and the villagers hate them for it – such sentiments will see them all in Hell. Removing her will eliminate a source of discord and thus save their immortal souls.’

  ‘Well, if you put it like that . . .’

  ‘Good,’ said William briskly. ‘However, it will have to be done properly, so there can be no question of skulduggery on your part. Leave it to me, brother.’

  He was as good as his word, and the following day, the monks reported with dismay that burglars had smashed a window in the chancel and made off with a number of relics, Beornwyn’s among them. A week later, most were found abandoned in a church in Scarborough, but Beornwyn was believed to have been tossed into the sea.

  When William presented the relics to Broomhill, he told the new prior that he had bought them in France. No one ever questioned him, and the shrine thrived, especially after a wealthy Venetian merchant named Marco Giuliani was cured of deafness. Giuliani promptly made the abbey a handsome donation, then offered to double it if they would sell him one of Beornwyn’s fingers. The prior demurred, but William opened the reliquary one night and saw the hand lying on top, almost as if it were begging to be removed. Thus Giuliani had his relic, and the priory received funds for a beautiful new Lady Chapel.

  But Lythe’s distress tore at Peter’s heart, and nothing he did relieved the ache of guilt every time he saw a villager kneeling at the altar where Beornwyn had rested. He lay awake at night wondering how he could make reparation, and then an idea came. He would write her story. He would set his best scribes to illuminate it, and he would present the finished manuscript to Lythe as an acknowledgement of the part Beornwyn had played in all their lives.

  Filled with vigour, he snatched up his pen and began at once, transferring all he knew of her to parchment, and even inventing a few details, intended to make her sound more saintly. He wrote in the vernacular, thinking the villagers would prefer it to Latin. He laboured for days, watched wryly by his good friend Prior Richard, head of the Cluniacs in Bermondsey, who happened to be visiting.

  Eventually, the manuscript was finished, and Abbot Peter summoned the villagers to receive his gift. They stared at it in bemusement, before informing him that it was very pretty, but not something that was much use in a place where no one could read.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Richard kindly, when they had gone. ‘God will appreciate what you have done, and that is the most important thing.’

  ‘Will He?’ asked Peter bitterly. ‘Then why do I feel as though Heaven is frowning on me? My headaches are worse than ever and I am very tired.’

  Richard regarded him in concern, then became practical. ‘Beornwyn has caused you far too much trouble, and it is time for it to stop. We shall expunge all trace of her from your abbey, and the monks will be forbidden to speak her name. We shall use her shrine for other relics, and the people of Lythe will have to go elsewhere to petition her.’

  Peter nodded wearily. ‘Very well. And I shall burn the manuscript.’

  ‘No, I shall take it to the library in Bermondsey,’ said Richard, loath to see such a beautiful thing reduced to ashes. ‘Then she will be truly gone, and you must forget her.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Peter, nodding. ‘I shall. It is for the best.’

  He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Then he started in alarm when something spiralled past his face to land on the table in front of him. It was a dead butterfly.

  Historical Note

  Nicholas Avenel was Sheriff of Pembroke in 1202, and he, along with William Fitzmartin, was accused of despoiling churches belonging to Gerald de Barri, Archdeacon of Brecon (more famously known as Gerald of Wales). They were also said to have harried parishioners by kidnapping them and holding them to ransom.

  Symon Cole was Constable of Carmarthen in the 1190s, and Lord Rhys of Deheubarth had several daughters named Gwenllian.

  In the last quarter of the twelfth century, one Adam de Rupe left provision for masses for his soul. He had a tenant named Gunbald, son of Ernebald. Witnesses to the deed included Philip de Barri and Odo of Carrau. A similar grant was made for the soul of Miles de Coggan.

  There was an Augustinian priory in Carmarthen in 1200, but the name of its then prior is unknown, although Kediour is mentioned in deeds dating to the 1180s.

  Finally, the first head of the Benedictine abbey at Whitby was Reinfrid, and Frossard was lord of the manor at Lythe. The abbot in 1200 was probably Peter, and Richard was Prior of Bermondsey from 1189 until about 1201.

  Act Two

  It wasn’t my idea of paradise – a godforsaken lump of rock thrust up in a sea full of similar outcrops, where the population was outnumbered by the goats – but Katie loved it. As we got off the galley at Kamares, she looked up at the mountains that surrounded the harbour, and cried out with joy.

  ‘Oh, Grandpa, it’s beautiful . . . magical!’

  I cringed at her calling me her grandfather, even though it was true. It made me feel old, though that was also true. You see, I gave up counting my years when I passed seventy. And I didn’t want to be reminded of the fact every time Katie opened her mouth. I pulled a face.

  ‘I told you to call me Nick.’

  Katie frowned and tugged at th
e golden hair that cascaded down over her shoulders. It was a mixture of her grandmother’s ash-blond hair and my red locks. Though my hair was more salt and pepper now.

  ‘I’m sorry, Grand— Nick. But I haven’t known you all that long, and I love having a real grandfather.’

  Maybe I should explain why she hasn’t known me all her life. My name is Niccolo Zuliani of Venice, though my friends call me Nick, a name my English mother gave me. And I have spent most of my life on the furthest edge of the world. The Mongol Empire of Kublai Khan had drawn me like a magnet from the earliest time I heard stories of its fabled wealth. I had travelled there and made some good friends, even becoming a high official at the Khan’s court. But I had always yearned for home, as all Venetians do. And finally I had returned to discover that my long-lost love, Caterina Dolfin – the lithe and sexy Cat of my younger days – was still alive and kicking, with a granddaughter called Katie Valier. It had turned out that the pretty girl, who now stood before me on the quay at Kamares, was my grandchild by the son I had never known. That son had been a seed that I had left spawning in Cat’s belly when I went to seek my fortune on the other side of the world. Now, having discovered my granddaughter, I was striving to make up for lost time. I sighed, knowing that I was already giving in to her every whim.

  ‘Then you may call me that, but only in private. Every other time it must be Nick, or Messer Zuliani. Now, where is Querini? I was told he would be here to meet us.’

  We had been standing on the quay for some time by now. Our baggage was already piled there too, and the oarsmen of our speedy Venetian galley were beginning to file off the boat. But there was no one to greet us. Each oarsman – who was a free Venetian, not a slave, as in other galleys – saluted us as he passed. The men were chosen by lot from each parish, and their families were supported by the remainder of the parish while the rowers were away carrying out their duties. We had been on our travels so long that I had got to know them individually, at least enough to recognise their faces. I saw the cocky one called Stefano, who was working off his debts. Debtors often paid off their obligations by rowing in the galleys along with oarsmen chosen by lot. He grinned at me as he passed.