by Paul Doherty
‘And yet, little friar,’ Cranston sat on the edge of the bed, ‘we cannot keep this abbey under siege for weeks. What do you suggest?’
‘Tomorrow,’ Athelstan replied flatly, ‘bring your archers into the abbey. I want the library cleared. Prior Alexander and Richer must be detained and their chambers searched. Of course,’ he added despairingly, ‘they may well have anticipated that and be prepared. I suspect they already have, so, for the moment, let us eat and retire early.’
Athelstan rose long before dawn. He felt refreshed and resolute. He was determined on what he must do and, if he had to face the wrath of the Benedictine order, the bishop of London, not to mention the displeasure of his superiors at Blackfriars, then he would accept that. The church in London might scream in protest at the ransacking of an abbey by royal troops and the questioning of its community in the cold chambers of the Tower. Nevertheless, what more could he do? Richer had to be seized. Athelstan waited until dawn then went down to celebrate his own Mass. He was drawing this to a close, about to pronounce the ‘Ite Missa’ when the bells began to toll the tocsin, a harsh discordant clanging which shattered the sleeping silence. Athelstan hastily divested and hurried down the aisle. Others were doing the same; even the anchorite left his cell to join the few brothers who’d been busy in the church. Outside the greying murk was broken by the dancing glow of torches and bobbing lantern horns. Monks clamoured about the reason for the tocsin until Brother Simon, face and hands all muddied, screamed something about a dreadful scene down near the hog pen. Athelstan seized the lay brother. Simon was frantic, his robe, face and hands caked with blood-encrusted mud.
‘Two of them,’ Simon gasped, ‘horrible to see! The hogs have mauled them!’
‘Who?’ Athelstan pleaded.
‘Richer,’ Simon gasped, ‘Richer and one of the Wyvern Company. Prior Alexander is sobbing like a child. You must come, you must come!’
Athelstan reached the hog pen on the farm to the north of the abbey. Others were also gathering. Abbot Walter, swathed in a great woollen cloak, face all stricken, rested for support on the arm of a young novice. Prior Alexander was kneeling between two rolled deerskin shrouds soaked in blood. The prior was distraught. He knelt on the hard cobbles, keening like a distraught mother over her child. Other monks, booted and armed with iron-tipped staves, were driving the hogs back to their sties. Wenlock appeared resting on the arm of Brother Odo, the old soldier was dressed only in his night shirt, stout sandals on his feet, a cloak about his shoulders. He looked as pale as a ghost. He approached the shrouded corpses then turned away to vomit and retch violently. A brother whispered how Wenlock had been sick all night. Once he’d been taken away, Athelstan asked for the deerskin shrouds to be opened. He took one glimpse at the mangled corpses and walked away fighting to control his own stomach. Cranston also arrived and, accustomed to such horrors, he knelt and examined the remains of both cadavers.
‘The hogs feasted well,’ the coroner murmured. ‘They ate the soft fat first, face, belly and thighs.’
Athelstan forced himself to look. Both bodies were reduced to a hideous, reddish-black mess, no faces or stomachs, just hunks of meat with the ragged remains of clothing and boots. Athelstan glimpsed the bracer around the tattered wrist of one of the corpses, the remains of a boot and war belt.
‘Mahant!’ he whispered. ‘It must be – but why? How?’
Between the corpses glittered the silver knife belonging to Richer. The coroner rose to his feet, clapping his hands for silence.
‘Take the corpses to the death house,’ he ordered. ‘You,’ he pointed to Brother Odo, ‘clean what is left of them then report to me. Father Abbot,’ he turned to Lord Walter, ‘the hogs have eaten human flesh, they are deodandum – they must be given to God and slaughtered. You,’ he pointed at a royal serjeant of archers who’d also arrived, ‘bring your best bowmen, the hogs are to be destroyed, their corpses burnt. No, no,’ Cranston stilled the abbot’s protests, ‘the hogs must be slaughtered.’ The coroner gazed up at the brightening sky. ‘At Nones I, Sir John Cranston, King’s coroner in the City of London, will hold an official Inquisitio Post Mortem in the nave of the abbey church. If you are summoned, you must present yourselves.’
Athelstan nodded in agreement, whispering his own advice, which Cranston quietly promised to act on. Athelstan then plucked at Sir John’s cloak. ‘Now, my Lord Coroner,’ he urged. ‘Let us waste no time. We must search Richer’s chamber and that of Mahant – there’s nothing further to be done here.’ Athelstan acted swiftly. Nobody objected. The monks of St Fulcher were no better than a flock of sheep terrorized by some mad dog. The divine office and the dawn Masses were forgotten as the nastiness of what had occurred seeped like a filthy mist through their community. Abbot Walter seemed frozen in shock. Prior Alexander, distraught and frantic, was taken to the infirmary. Athelstan, murmuring a prayer of apology, seized the opportunity. He and Cranston found Richer’s chamber and conducted their search. Athelstan soon realized his earlier suspicions were justified. Richer had anticipated their arrival. One of the braziers in the corner was caked with the feathery remnants of burnt parchment.
‘He destroyed what he had to,’ Athelstan commented. ‘He was preparing to flee. Nothing remarkable here, just possessions you would expect of a Benedictine monk: psalter, Ave beads, triptychs and personal items. Except . . .’ Athelstan, who was on his knees, drew a leather pannier from beneath the bed. He unbuckled the straps and took out the two small but thick books; one was obviously of great age but the other, bound in fresh calfskin, was recently done, its pages soft and creamy white, the ink black and red, each section beginning with a title, the first letter of which was framed in an exquisitely jewelled miniature. Athelstan put this down and picked up the old book; its cover was of hardened plates covered in leather and embossed with fading Celtic designs. The pages were stiff and greying with age though held fast by tight binding of strengthened twine. The ink was a faded black. Although the letters were beautifully formed and clear, the Latin was almost classical in its construction and composition. Athelstan turned to the first page and the ‘Prologua – the Introduction’ and swiftly translated the author’s description: ‘A true narration of the origin, history, powers and miracles of that most sacred bloodstone, the Passio Christi, as drawn up on the instruction of Pontifex Damasus in the second year of his Pontificate . . .’
‘Friar?’
Athelstan stared up at Cranston.
‘God has sent his angel, Sir John, one of the dread lords of heaven. He wants justice to be done.’ Athelstan put both books back into the pannier. He and Cranston then went to the guest house. A sleepy-eyed servant showed them Mahant’s chamber, its latch off the clasp. Inside the room looked as if Mahant had left in a hurry. Chests and coffers lay opened, clothes spilling out, weapons thrown on the bed, its sheets and coverlets disturbed. Cranston and Athelstan made a thorough search but only found remnants, relics, mementoes of the past, nothing Athelstan could place as part of this mystery. Mahant’s chamber, despite its apparent disorder, seemed as if it had already been cleared of anything untoward but by whom? Wenlock was in the infirmary so was it someone else? Or Mahant himself? He voiced his suspicions to Cranston.
‘So you think someone came here before us?’ Cranston asked. ‘I suspect Mahant himself did this – he was preparing to leave,’ he grinned, ‘which is understandable.’
Later that morning the abbey became more settled. Athelstan through a now very subdued Abbot Walter, ordered divine office to be suspended until the Inquisitio was finished. Cranston set up his court before the lofty rood screen of the church. A table was brought with the abbot’s throne-like chair for Sir John. Athelstan borrowed a stool and laid out his writing tray with freshly sharpened quills, brimming ink pots, sander, pumice stone, wax and freshly scrubbed sheets of vellum. Brother Simon, who’d called those summoned at Cranston’s behest, was given the duty of sacramentarius. He would proffer the Book of the Gospels for witnesses
to take their oath before they sat on the stool on the other side of the table facing the coroner. Candles were brought and lit, braziers fired to full glow and wheeled close. Athelstan intoned the ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’. Cranston delivered a short barbed speech declaring how he was ‘the King’s officer in these parts with full power to hear, judge and terminate’. He then had to deal with an objection from one of the senior monks who, on behalf of the abbot, delivered the ritual protest that royal power could not be exercised on church land. Cranston politely heard him out and replied that such matters of law were not for him or his court; the abbot would have to appeal direct to the royal council.
‘By which time,’ Cranston whispered, sitting down on his chair, ‘Gabriel will have blown his horn for the end of days.’ Cranston shouted for all to withdraw except those summoned and the proceedings began. The coroner moved swiftly, Athelstan carefully noting what was said. The two lay brothers in charge of the hog pen were summoned first. They described how they had come out at first light to find the hogs highly agitated, snorting and casting about as if, in the words of one of their keepers, they were possessed by a legion of demons. The massive sty where they were usually confined for the night was barred by a great half-door. Cranston nodded and said he’d seen this. The brothers thought some fox or other night predator had climbed over this into the sty so they unbarred and opened the half-door. The hogs, now being slaughtered, one of brothers added mournfully, were so frenzied they had to drive them off with staves. Eventually, after the entire herd had spilled out into the great pen, they noticed blood on the snouts, flanks and legs of some of the hogs so they took lanterns and went back into the sty.
‘At first,’ one of the brothers shook his head, ‘we didn’t believe it. Two corpses horribly mauled. We dragged them out but even then the hogs tried to attack. We drove them off, placed the mangled remains outside the pen and raised the alarm. We then examined the dead and realized one was a monk from the remains of his clothing: robe, cord and sandals. The other was an outsider, Sir John. Most of his clothing, except for his belt and shoes, had been shredded.’
‘And the knife?’
‘We found it in the straw glistening in the light of the lantern.’ Athelstan stooped down and picked up the elegant, silver-hilted knife still encrusted with blood.
‘And you cannot say,’ Athelstan asked, ‘whether this knife was used on one or both of the victims or was it just stained when the hogs tore their corpses apart?’
‘Brother Athelstan, both men must have been dead, or nearly so when they were cast into the sty.’
‘Why?’
‘Hogs will attack children, even a man, but they can be driven off. It’s only when they become frenzied and their victims are helpless that they will feast.’
The monks who worked in the scriptorium and library then presented themselves. They could say little about Richer or what he was working on. Athelstan recalled the great table in the scriptorium which the Frenchman deliberately covered up; now he knew the reason why. Cranston questioned the brothers regarding the previous evening. They all reported that Richer had Prior Alexander’s permission not to attend divine office. Instead he stayed working in the scriptorium long after dark. They’d glimpsed the glow of candle and lantern horn through the window but more than that they couldn’t say.
‘Richer was working on copying the “Liber”,’ Athelstan murmured once the monks had left. ‘And when he finished, he placed that and the original in a pannier, returned to hastily hide them in his chamber, then left to meet whom?’
Cranston just pulled a face. Master Crispin was called next. The secretarius was sullen, openly resentful at being kept in the abbey. Once he’d taken the oath on the Book of the Gospels he admitted he was shocked at the horrid deaths.
‘And where did you spend your sleeping hours?’
‘In my bed, Sir John. I wish to be free of this place. I never liked it. I know nothing of these deaths.’
‘Murders,’ Athelstan broke. ‘Murders, Master Crispin, heinous slayings for which someone will undoubtedly hang. You’re on oath – do you have anything else you can tell us?’
‘No.’
‘Then, sir, go back to your chamber and wait.’
Prior Alexander came next. He looked woebegone and exhausted, face unshaven, eyes red-rimmed with weeping. He mumbled the oath and slouched like a broken man on the stool.
‘He’s gone.’ The prior lifted his head. ‘Beautiful Richer.’ He heaved a deep sigh. ‘My friend, oh . . .’ Prior Alexander seemed unaware of his surroundings or to whom he was talking. ‘He was a butterfly in many ways. I knew his only task here was to secure the return of everything plundered from St Calliste, including that bloodstone. God knows,’ Prior Alexander screwed his face up, ‘the curse that ruby carries, now he and one of the Wyvern are dead, murdered.’
‘By whom?’
‘God knows, Sir John. I would suspect the Wyverns but one of them died with him, perhaps they fought . . .’
‘Richer hated them, yes?’
‘Of course.’
‘Enough to meet one of them at the dead of night and attempt to kill him? After all, Richer was armed with a dagger?’
‘Why there?’ Prior Alexander pleaded. ‘Why in the hog pen?’
‘Why indeed,’ Athelstan answered. ‘Prior Alexander, you loved Richer.’ Athelstan put his pen down. ‘I do not wish to know to what extent or in what way but he came here to reclaim plundered property. Richer arrived at St Fulcher’s once his uncle at St Calliste knew the Wyverns were here. He turned the minds of Master Chalk and Sir Robert to the truth about the Passio Christi?’
‘Yes.’
‘He persuaded Sir Robert to bribe your Lord Abbot for the secret return of those items.’
‘Of course. You know our Lord Walter, he and Judas would have been true blood brothers.’
‘You hate your abbot?’ Athelstan insisted. ‘You regard him as venal, pampered and corrupt.’
Prior Alexander did not answer.
‘He made it clear that Richer would soon leave, after all, there was little else for him to take back to France except the “Liber”. Is that why you killed the abbot’s pet swan Leda and hanged it on the abbey gallows? You wrote that threatening message which is nothing more than a translation of a quotation inscribed along the edge of an altar in one of your chantry chapels. You made it appear that the threat came from the Upright Men because you sympathize with them, hence your anger against Lord Walter for stopping payments to them.’
‘The swan – true I strung the bird from the gallows,’ Prior Alexander shook his head, ‘but I never killed it. Richer found it dead in the abbot’s garden. The swan died, Brother Athelstan, like all his pets do, from overeating. You saw how he constantly fed it morsels from his table, sweetmeats, sops of wine, cream, and fragments of marzipan. The arrogant fool was more concerned at appearing to be the swan’s lord and master than the man who should protect it. For God’s sake,’ the prior scoffed, ‘do you think I would kill some hapless bird out of spite? Don’t you know anything about Mother Nature? Swans are not to be fed such a surfeit of richness. I hanged the corpse as revenge but I did not kill it.’
Athelstan sensed the prior was telling the truth.
‘Do you know what passed between Richer and Sir Robert?’ he asked. ‘What really turned the minds of a ruthless city merchant, not to mention a professional killer like Chalk, to repentance and reparation?’
‘I know nothing about Richer’s conversations with Master Chalk or Master Crispin.’
‘He talked with the latter?’
‘Of course, when Sir Robert sent him here.’
‘Did you treat Crispin for his eye sight?’
‘Yes, I used to be the infirmarian here. I’m skilled in dealing with infections of the eyes but there was little I could do. Years of straining over memoranda books had taken their toll.’
‘Do you think Richer killed the Wyverns?’ Cranston asked.
‘I heard you found Osborne’s corpse, or at least the Fisher of Men did,’ Prior Alexander murmured. ‘It’s possible,’ he confessed bleakly. ‘Richer did hate them. He was young, vigorous and, by his own admission, skilled in arms. He performed military service before he entered the novitiate.’ Prior Alexander became more composed.
‘And you know nothing about the murders amongst the Wyverns?’
‘Nothing. My only concern was that Richer stayed. Sir Robert paid the monies. The abbot released the items plundered from St Calliste. I allowed Richer to go into the city to arrange those meetings with envoys from foreign ships. Does it really matter if precious objects were returned to their rightful owner? Abbot Walter was happy and Richer was content, whilst I was only too pleased to help.’
‘The “Liber Passionis Christi”, which we now have – you should have told us the truth.’
Prior Alexander just glanced away.
‘Well?’
‘Abbot Walter, and on this I agreed with him, declared that we must have a copy so that if a royal inquisition ever took place on the goods from St Calliste, we could produce like for like, at least show we had a copy of that valuable manuscript. Richer seemed very pleased with that. He personally supervised the copying both in the scriptorium and his own chamber.’
