by Ian Morson
In Oxford, a certain Brother Thomas preached from the pulpit in St Frideswide’s Church that in the last half-century many prodigies and astonishing novelties had taken place.
‘The Tartars left their places of retreat, and ravaged, with the cruelty of beasts, the countries of the East. When Master Oliver preached in Germany the figure of Christ appeared in the sky, and was plainly visible to everyone.’
Though he was merely passing on what rumours he himself had been fed, still it perturbed his congregation, who were Used to hearing truths not falsehoods from the pulpit. They became restless as the fires of Hell seemed to stoke up the temperature of the church itself, and stirred uneasily in their seats. Brother Thomas sensed the mood, and pressed on, eager to bring the fear of God into everyone’s heart.
‘The brethren of the Temple and the Hospitallers of the Teutonic Order of St Mary were twice taken prisoners, dispersed and put to death. The holy city of Jerusalem, with its.sacred churches and holy places, was twice destroyed, and cruelly levelled by the Sultan of Babylon. An eclipse of the sun occurred twice in three years. Stars were seen to fall from the heavens. Remember Christ’s words - "There shall be signs in the sun..." - and repent before it is too late.’ It truly seemed as though the End Times were coming.
Not far from where Brother Thomas was preaching, another more exclusive congregation was gathering. Templar churches were circular in imitation of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
The church at Cowley was no different, and the interior was crowned by a large domed ceiling that was supported by squat pillars around its circumference. Although many torches blazed in braziers high up on the wall, these pillars cast deep shadows around the perimeter of the Temple. And the flickering flames caused the darkness to move as if it were alive. A stone seat ran around the whole outer edge of the edifice, and the Templar knights were sat on it, fight-lipped and gloomy. For in the centre of the Temple stood a stark and forbidding altar at which the chaplain of Temple Cowley stood. He was quoting from Judges, a text that Templars held dear to their hearts.
Though most were illiterate, they had been inculcated with the idea that the deeds of the Israelites as described in Judges and the deeds of the Templars were parallel stories. The chaplain’s warning was chilling.
‘As the Israelites turned from battling other nations to fighting each other, so an incident of rape and murder led to a civil war that nearly destroyed the Tribes of Benjamin. So be warned about internal strife. The recapture of the holy places in the East is part of the End Times, but still the Antichrist must be defeated. King Louis must be ransomed, and the monies raised. Be of good heart, undertake boldly to do good, and God will help you. Amen.’
As the murmured response echoed through the Temple, the young knight next to Brother Michael le Saux leaned over, and whispered in his ear.
‘Tell me, Brother, is it true what they say that as we are fighting for God, if we die in battle we go straight to Heaven?’ The older man, a priest of the Order not a warrior, responded with a tight smile. He had other things on his mind than a direct route to Paradise.
Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist, August 1271
Bullock pushed himself up from the wooden crate where he had been sitting.
‘A twenty-year-old murder on a man we cannot identify. I am sorry, masters, but I cannot afford to waste my time on this.’
Falconer was surprised at the constable’s reluctance to follow up the matter. Usually Bullock was a tenacious fellow, who niggled away at mysteries like a stray mongrel dog at a discarded bone. He wondered if the signs of ageing he felt in his own body were more deeply felt by his old friend. Maybe Bullock just didn’t care any more. Recalling his thoughts about his own arrival in Oxford in 1250, he asked Peter about his predecessor as constable.
‘You were not constable twenty years ago, were you, Peter?’ Bullock pulled a face.
‘No. That was Matt Stokys. He was a brutal piece of work.’ It appeared that that was all Peter was going to say on the matter. He turned away from the two regent masters. ‘I have duties to carry out that will be of benefit to the living. You will excuse me.’
As he watched Bullock’s bent back disappear up the cellar steps, Falconer resolved to find out what was bothering his friend. He could not leave the matter of the constable’s abrupt behaviour there. Nor could he abandon the unidentified body to a pauper’s grave.
‘Master Richard, is there nothing about the body that will tell us who he might have been?’
Bonham shrugged his grey-clad shoulders in a gesture that suggested to Falconer he might have a trick or two up his sleeve. He loved the mystery of his investigation of bodies, almost as though it were a form of necromancy.
‘Leave it with me for a while. I will examine what is left of his clothes, and see if there are any items such as crosses or rings on his person. They may tell us more about the man.’ Falconer nodded his agreement. He had sifted the rubble in-fill of the broken wall, but he had not found anything close to the body. Then he recalled the ring that he had returned to the bucket earlier.
‘You should find a ring in amongst the finger bones. That may help: I will see if I can awaken any memories of missing people, in the minds of those who were in Oxford then. By the way, where did you hide the girl’s remains so that Bullock would not see them?’
Bonham smiled weakly, and pointed at the upturned crate.
‘I am afraid the poor girl was stuffed unceremoniously under that. I nearly died when the constable sat down on top of it.’
Eight
Simon, the curate of St Aldate’s Church, was late quenching all the candles after the solemn Festival of the Beheading of John the Baptist. An old woman had spent hours praying, and despite his deliberately noisy clearing of the impedimenta of the earlier service, she had not been disturbed enough to cut short her devotions. This annoyed Simon greatly, as he had rushed the prayers of the Mass with a purpose. He wished to retire to the stews of Beaumont to enjoy the fleshly pleasures of a whore he had a regular arrangement with. If he was much later, Annie would give up on the chance of his arrival, and take her penny fee from someone else. He knew he had garbled the Latin words of the Mass, but as they were meaningless to him anyway, it was difficult to make complete sense at the best of times. Like a lot of curates, he had lied about his ordination as subdeacon and subsequently as priest by Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln four years earlier, in order to get a living here in Oxford, poor as it was. If someone had asked him to construe the opening of the first prayer of the Canon of the Mass - Te igitur, clementissime Pater - he might have offered that Pater governed the case of Te, because the Lord governeth all things.
So it was long after nones when the annoying woman decided to ease herself from her knees and hobble out of the church. Simon hurriedly locked the sacristy, and left by the outer door that led him to the rear yard. It was dark, threatening rain, and uncannily quiet. So when Simon heard a piercing shriek from the other side of the wall that backed on to the neighbouring property his heart nearly stopped in his chest. He had a great desire to flee, but curiosity overcame his fear, and he peered cautiously over the wall into the next-door yard. He was just in time to see a small body being dragged into the rear of the building, a line of dark blood marking the ground. Illiterate and uneducated as he was, Simon knew when he had witnessed an unchristian ritual of the most horrible sort. He slumped down on his arse on the church’s side of the wall, his legs weak and trembling, wondering what to do next.
Apprentice mason Peter Pawlyn was well content with his afternoon’s work. While his dumb ox of a fellow-worker, John Trewoon, had slumbered on the street corner looking after their sacks of tools, Pawlyn had hurried down the narrow lane that cut through Oxford’s Jewry, over the main north-south road that defined one of the four ways through the town, and to a house close by St Aldate’s Church. He knocked on the door, and slid quickly inside when it was opened. Standing in the shadows of the unlit room was a tall, rangy man wh
ose face was concealed by a hooded cloak. Pawlyn wondered for a moment if the stranger ever saw the light. Did he live in darkness all his days? Then, as the man turned towards an open window, he glimpsed a dark tan on his aquiline features and a thick black beard. He had clearly been born or had travelled in hotter climes and under a stronger sun than that of England. Was he a knight who had travelled to the Holy Land, or a native of those regions? It actually mattered little to Pawlyn, even though he was mildly curious about the origins of his employer. What did matter was he had said he would pay well for information about the goings on at the building site in Little Jewry Lane.
‘You have information for me?’
The dark man’s accent was foreign, probably French, though he spoke passably well in English. Pawlyn’s own brogue identified him as a man of Devon, and the locals in Oxford sometimes could not understand what he said. He spoke as clearly as he could to the man in the shadows.
‘I found a ring in the rubble in-fill before Wilfrid, the foreman, climbed up to see the body we uncovered.: He didn’t know why he lied. For some reason, he did not want the man to know he had stolen the ring from the bucket of bones left in the mason’s lodge by his foreman.
‘You have it with you?’
Pawlyn fancied he saw the man’s eyes sparkle from the depths of his cavernous hood. He would have to handle this carefully. Clearly, the ring was worth more to this man than if he sold it for its face value. He reckoned he could get the equivalent of a week’s wages or more off a dealer who cared not whether the ring had been obtained legitimately or not.
Should he double the figure? Whoever the man was, he sensed Pawlyn’s prevarication, and the cause of it.
‘I will give you two weeks’ wages for it. But you must give it to me now.’
Pawlyn was about to dicker with him, but felt the power of the man’s presence filling the room. It would be so easy for the man to spit him with a knife and take the ring anyway.
He cursed silently his lack of forethought. He should have hidden the ring rather than bring it with him. The man had obviously seen him squeezing the bottom of the purse that hung at his waist, and had guessed Pawlyn was reassuring himself of the existence of the heavy ring. He grunted, and dug into his purse. Soon, though, he could anticipate the few coins left there being joined by a merry band of golden companions. Then he would celebrate in style.
‘Here, take it. But let’s see the money first.’
From under his cloak the man produced a heavy-looking bag that clinked pleasingly when he hefted it in his hand. It seems he had guessed Pawlyn’s price from the start. The builder held out the signet ring, a not inconsiderable chunk of gold, with a seal carved in stone on its flat surface. It had been dull when Pawlyn had dug it from the bucket, but he had rubbed the seal clean with his broad thumb. It now shone in the moonlight filtering through the window. He was now able to make out the symbol on its surface. It was worn, but looked like a horse with two riders on it, though it meant nothing to him.
But it obviously meant a lot to his employer. He eagerly grasped the ring, and dropped the bag of coins simultaneously into Pawlyn’s upturned hand.
‘Ahhh. So, it is you. After all these years.’
‘Pardon me, sir?’
‘Nothing, Pawlyn. You may go. You have served me well.’ The man was distracted by the ring, which he was examining closely.
‘And if I find anything else out, sir?’
‘What? Oh yes, any further news will be of interest. You know how to contact me.’
The man turned his back on Pawlyn, and held the ring and its strange seal up to the moonlight. Peter Pawlyn left as surreptitiously as he had come, his newly heavy purse bumping satisfyingly on his hip. As he closed the door, he almost bumped into a priest, who was hurrying out of the precincts of the church on the corner as if the Devil were after him.
Not wishing to be seen in the vicinity of his paymaster, Pawlyn hung back in the shadows until the whey-faced cleric had disappeared.
Brother Simon did not see him. If he had, he might have died of fright. In his present frame of mind, affected by the evil he thought he had witnessed, he was imagining horrors on every side. Especially as his route took him through Jewry.
Though the doors were prudently closed, it being now after dark, he could not be certain that he would not be abducted from the street himself. He had forgotten the quiet nature of most of the Jews he encountered every day on the same streets.
Now every door seemed to hide a demon. He picked up his pace and almost ran towards the sanctuary of St Frideswide’s.
There he would share his discovery with the prior, Thomas Brassyngton.
Falconer had the nasty taste of death in his mouth, and needed to be rid of it. Besides, he needed to ponder Peter Bullock’s unusual behaviour. So he did not return immediately to the solemn surroundings of Aristotle’s Hall. One of the quieter taverns attracted him, and he stepped inside. But, having lingered over a small beer, and come to no sensible conclusions as to that matter, or the identity of the body, Falconer finally turned for home. He knew the oldest man in Oxford was his friend Rabbi Jehozadok, and if anyone could remember what happened twenty years ago, then it would be the rabbi.
But he decided it was not possible to call on him now as the hour was too late. He would save his enquiries for the morrow.
As he would another meeting with the constable, Peter Bullock.
He had been surprised at Peter’s reluctance to pursue the matter of the old murder, and was curious as to its cause. But he would contain his curiosity until later.
The narrow shop frontages along the two main streets that divided the town into four quarters were all shuttered now.
The fishmongers and firewood-sellers, the glovers and the silversmiths were all secure in their own homes. Lower down, in the byways and narrow side lanes, Falconer could hear the raucous noise of young men at play, free from their daytime mental gymnastics in the university schools. It was the turn of the tapsters and brewers to ply their trade. Later it would be the pimps and prostitutes who took over. Falconer was passed by the night-watch - four elderly men who would be able to do little if the students became violent, but who seemed nevertheless to keep the lid on most bad behaviour. One of the men, bald-headed and florid of face, gave him a glance and smiled.
‘God give you a good night, master.’
Falconer mumbled a reply, and went on his way. He cut down St John’s Lane to avoid the noisiest of the revels that tumbled out of the drinking rooms and taverns close by St Frideswide’s Church. Still the strains of a bunch of drunken students echoed down the lane behind him.
‘Bacchus saepe visitans
Mulierum genus
Facit eas subditas
Tibi, O tu Venus!’
He contented himself with the thought that at least they were singing their profane songs in Latin. Crossing Grope Lane, he almost bumped into a couple of workmen, one tall and burly, the other short and wiry. The stench of ale pervaded their clothes and their breaths when they remonstrated with Falconer over interrupting their erratic course up the lane. The wiry one was the more belligerent.
‘Watch out, you old sodomite. Go and swive one of your students, and leave the whores to real men.’
He staggered off before the startled Falconer could think of a smart retort. The burly one shrugged his shoulders, and apologized for his friend.
‘Sorry, master. Only Peter has come into some money tonight, and he means to enjoy himself. He did not mean to offend you.’
Falconer smiled ruefully.
‘That is fine. Though I must say that I have many sins on my conscience, but buggery is not one of them. Watch out
for your friend. I see he is intent on visiting Agnes’ brothel.
There are light fingers at work in there.’
The man called Peter was leaning on the doorway of a whorel!ouse, and beckoning to his friend to come. Every time he waved his arm, he swayed and almost fell over. Fi
nally he clutched at the door frame, and vomited into the mud at his feet. ‘ "
‘I suggest you take him home. He will regret this tomorrow when he rises for work.’
The big man grinned sheepishly, and slung the two sacks he was carrying over his shoulder. The metallic clank as he did so suggested he and his friend were carpenters or masons.
Falconer hoped that the sonorous note of a well-swung hammer hitting a chisel would teach Peter a lesson the next day about drinking too much.
‘Yes, master. I will get him home safely, never fear. Good night, and sorry again.’
Falconer nodded, and watched as the burly workman lumbered up the lane towards his drunken companion, who was now on his knees retching. He sighed, and carried on towards Aristotle’s Hall.
‘This is grave news you bring me, Simon.’
Thomas Brassyngton, Prior of St Frideswide’s, was a fussy man with an inflated sense of his own importance. Truth to tell, he held a significant post in the town of Oxford. St Frideswide’s Priory was a major ecclesiastical foundation, but it was still outmatched by Oseney Abbey outside the town walls to the west, and struggled to draw in as many pilgrims to see its various reliquaries. Brassyngton smarted under the shadow cast by Oseney, and in consequence did everything possible to outdo his bigger rival whenever he’could. When the curate of St Aldate’s had come to his door with tales of blood sacrifice, he had swallowed his annoyance at being importuned so late at night. Normally, after the large meal he had already consumed, he would have retired to sleep off the copious amounts of good red wine he had drunk along with the heavy repast. He had almost refused to see Simon. But the urgency of his pleas had struck a chord, and he had finally agreed.
