[William Falconer 06] - Falconer and the Ritual of Death

by Ian Morson

  Once he had done that meticulously to his own satisfaction, and despite the worsening of the cold that had dogged him for days, he also took another look at the body of the girl. As a suicide, she was shortly to be consigned to the oblivion of a potter’s field burial. This second examination proved significant. What he found made him resolve to seek out William Falconer immediately. He wrapped himself in a heavy, hooded cloak and plunged into the light drizzle of the Oxford afternoon.

  Meanwhile, the man he was seeking had been learning a great deal from his friend, Jehozadok. Falconer’s arrival at the rabbi’s home had occasioned a great deal of fuss on the part of Jehozadok. The blind man’s senses told him that his visitor’s clothes were soaked from the continuing downpour. So, despite Falconer’s protests, the rabbi had caused his fire to be built up, and warmed wine to be served. This achieved and the pleasantries of two old friends meeting after a gap of a few weeks being over, Falconer came to the point.

  ‘You will no doubt have heard, rabbi, of the discovery of a body in the walls of one of the buildings in Little Jewry Lane.’ Falconer knew little escaped the rabbi even though he was largely confined to his room. Many of his flock would call in to ensure Jehozadok was well, and in passing convey all the news they had of the goings-on in Oxford.

  Acknowledging the statement, Jehozadok nodded his bald and liver-spotted head.

  ‘Indeed I have, and it is obviously preying on your mind. There is something I need to tell you. But it can wait for the moment. Please, go on.’

  ‘It will come as no surprise to you that the body has lain there for twenty years. That is, since the buildings were constructed.’

  ‘Yes. I cannot believe the profligacy that has caused them to be pulled down so soon. Lumbard will be turning in his grave at the thought.’

  ‘Lumbard?’

  ‘Of Cricklade. He owned several tracts in this part of town many years ago. His son still does, though we see precious little of him now. It was Lumbard who caused the old wooden tenements to be pulled down, and the houses in Little Jewry to be built in stone. It was a wise precaution in those days when persecutions could result in houses being set on fire.

  Jehozadok’s head sank briefly into his chest as he recalled the bad times of yesteryear. ‘Mercifully, those times are gone, by and large.’

  Falconer, sitting close to the crackling fire, and feeling his robes warming as the heat drove the damp out of them, took the opportunity to ask about those times while they were still on Jehozadok’s mind.

  ‘What can you recall of the time Lumbard had the houses built? Do you remember stories of anyone going missing without trace? I had only just arrived in Oxford, and was unaware of such matters at the time.’ Falconer looked over at the old man, who once again had his head bowed. William was not even sure if the rabbi had fallen asleep or not. He gently prompted his memory. ‘It was the thirty-fourth year of Henry of Winchester’s reign.’

  Jehozadok breathed a heavy sigh, and turned his face towards the warmth of the fire. It looked as if his blind old eyes were stating deeply into the past.

  ‘Yes, it was shortly after Shavuot, that you call Pentecost.’

  May: two days after Shavuot, 1250

  Hayim, and Aaron, son of Cresselin, came to Jehozadok early in the afternoon. They were distraught, and to them it seemed like one punishment after another had been burdened on them. Jehozadok, already well beyond his fiftieth year, had known them both since their births. He didn’t want to disparage their sense of fear and persecution. But let them live through what he had, and they would know about real suffering.

  His father had brought him to England as a baby in 1192 to escape the massacres that were sweeping France and Germany after the Third Holy War. Crusaders had all debts to Jews cancelled, who were then driven out of France as being of no worth. In March of that year a massacre took place at Bray, which was too close for comfort for Jehozadok’s father. His wife died giving birth to the boy who was to grow up in England. Alone together, the father and baby fled. In Bristol, the Jews formed a small community, whose sole means of support was dealing in moneylending. The port of Bristol was a centre for trade, and the Jews thrived. Following in his father’s footsteps, Jehozadok became a rabbi and eventually moved to Oxford where the community had need of his calling.

  Though he had a respected position in his own community, Jehozadog was not a stranger to the riots that sometimes threatened his life and those of his people. Indeed, in this strange year of 1250, one such incident apparently had been brewing only a day earlier.

  He had heard rumours of a boy found murdered near Broken Hays, and as usual Jews had been accused. It was once again the nonsense of ritual slaughter, which would make him laugh if it was not so serious in its implications. He had quickly warned everyone in Jewry to keep indoors, only risking his own neck on the street to discover the truth. He had hurried from house to house, finally finding out that the accusation rested on information provided by poor half-witted Hak, now called John. The fool had submitted himself to the tender mercies of the Grey Friars because he thought he would get free meals in the House of Converts. And so he had, at the risk of losing his immortal soul. Now apparently on pain of death, Hak had read the Hebrew words inscribed on the boy’s body for the Christians. Which in itself was a miracle, as Hak was too dim-witted to read any form of words. It did not look good for the Jews of Oxford, so when Jehozadok saw young Deudone come skipping up to him in the street, he was angry with the boy.

  ‘Deudone, child, what are you doing out of doors? Have you not been told that it is dangerous to be on the streets just now? We are accused of evil deeds.’

  The boy, aged nine, and beginning to show the rebelliousness that would plague him later in life, curled his lower lip and sneered at the rabbi.

  ‘Don’t you know that they’ve changed their tune? They say it was the father killed him now.’

  ‘Who are they? And how do you know?’

  Deudone’s face suddenly betrayed a sense of guilt. For him to tell what he knew, he would have to admit being where he shouldn’t have been. But he brazened it out, knowing he had important news. It made him feel grown-up.

  ‘I wanted to see.., the boy.’ He almost said body, but thought better of it. The rabbi was too old to understand Deudone’s desire to see a real, dead body. So he made up a reason. ‘I wanted to see who it was, and if I knew him. I went into the church when no one was looking. It’s easy because it’s so big.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Jehozadok knew the boy was comparing the Christian church with the tiny synagogue on the upper floor of the very house where Jehozadok lived. It was clearly nothing compared to the magnificence of St Frideswide’s, which might have encompassed the Jews’ house of religion in any one of its many small side chapels. ‘Go on, boy.’

  ‘The black priests were all standing in one of the rooms off the southern side of the church. The... boy must have been there, because they sounded all excited. Then some other people came in. There was Master Bodin and Master Inges, but I didn’t know the others. They were all going to blame us for the death.’ Deudone paused, not wishing to tell Jehozadok that at that point he had felt afraid for his life, and wanted to run off. He had begun to sidle back down the far side of the church. ‘Then this man came in. A traveller, he was, all covered in dust. He uncovered the body, just like that.’ There, he had said the word at last and felt very grownup about it. The body. He didn’t say that he had been too scared to look, in case the dead boy laid a curse on him. He shivered involuntarily.

  Jehozadok put a friendly arm around the child. He knew that despite his bravado, Deudone was frightened by what he had seen.

  ‘And what did this traveller say that so changed all their minds?’

  ‘That the marks weren’t Hebrew because he could read the language. That they were marks of punishment.’

  ‘He was a scholar, then, this traveller. You have done well, Deudone, to warn me of this change in affairs. But you were wrong to
go into the church when you had been specifically told to stay indoors. I will decide on your punishment on Saturday.’

  Deudone was about to protest, but for once in his short life realized it made more sense to keep his mouth shut. He bowed his head, and hurried home.

  30 August, 1271

  ‘And the traveller was you, of course, William. Though I did not know it at the time. Not many of your fellow masters know Hebrew even now.’

  ‘More’s the pity. If they did, they would be able to understand the works of Maimonides in the original. I am still entertained by his Guide for the Perplexed, especially as I often find myself in that position.’

  Jehozadok chuckled.

  ‘I think less so than most in this world, William. But we digress. You wanted to know if I could recall any mysterious disappearances around the time of your arrival in Oxford.’

  ‘I know it is foolish of me to even ask. Twenty years is a long time, and it may have not even been anything noteworthy then. The man who has now turned up interred in those buildings then owned by Lumbard may have disappeared without anyone noting it.’

  ‘Maybe that is not so. It is a quirk of extreme old age that events of long ago are more vivid than those of yesterday. I even remember that it was in that year a rather undesirable individual was preying on our community.’

  ‘Someone was persecuting you?’

  Jehozadok sighed, and his body seemed to settle lower in his chair, as if his very frame was shrinking.

  ‘No. One of our own kind, but a renegade. Who carried out certain.., rituals, despite them being proscribed. I remember him because it was when we were accused of the ritual murder that never was. And it was then that we were being bothered about paying a tallage to rescue the French king from the hands of the Muslims.’ He slapped his bony skull in frustration. ‘In fact, that was what I was bringing to mind before the incident with young Deudone pushed it away. My meeting all those years ago with Hayim and Aaron, Cresselin’s son.

  They were angry that they had been asked to find their share of the sixty thousand marks that Henry wanted us to contribute.’ Jehozadok chuckled again at the recollection. ‘I told them my favourite story of the teeth-pulling that convinced one of my co-religionists to comply with a similar demand way back in 1210. That soon shut them up. I was but a lad then, and it convinced me that there was no standing up against the inevitable. Though some youngsters today, who have not suffered what I have, would think otherwise.’

  He sighed and seemed to sink into himself again. Falconer was painfully aware that his old friend’s days were running short. When he was gone, he would miss his wisdom and restraint in a world that bore down hard still on his people.

  But Jehozadok’s reference to a Jew carrying out proscribed rituals in 1250 was alarming in the context of his own insistence at the time of Jewish innocence concerning the dead boy.

  Falconer felt his confidence ebbing. Still, he needed to press the rabbi for more information.

  ‘But what has all this to do with a missing person?’ Jehozadok sucked a great breath into his body, as though reviving himself for one last effort. He turned his blind eyes on Falconer.

  ‘I think I might know who your dead man is.’

  Twelve

  The two towers of Oseney Abbey’s church rose imposingly over the water meadows that surrounded them. They were a potent symbol of the abbey’s power. To Wilfrid Southo they were something infinitely greater. The culmination of a master mason’s achievements, and a permanent mark on the landscape. More permanent than any mortal’s fleeting life could be, anyway. He tore his gaze from them and hurried back across the meadows towards Oxford. He wanted to be within its walls before the gates were closed for the night. Let the workmen under him languish and carouse outside the walls in Beaumont and Broken Hays, he still had business to attend to, and it was already getting late. The darkness would hide his movements, and he still needed to be secretive. Until he had everything straight in his mind, and then he would be ready to act. He crossed the last wooden bridge over one of the many streams that criss-crossed the land west of the town, and made for North Gate.

  It had been a lucky chance that resulted in him seeing Pawlyn palm the ring out of the bucket of bones the other day. He had just happened to be desperate for a piss, and stepped behind the pile of stones that was accumulating in the yard near where the master mason’s lodge stood. Before he could get his cock out of his breeches, he saw Pawlyn bringing the bucket over. There was something suspicious about the man’s behaviour as he looked first into the bucket, then round about him. Wilfrid had forgotten his pressing.need to empty his bladder, and spied on the workman. Pawlyn plunged his hand into the bucket, and came out with something that glowed dully in the evening light. Wilfrid could tell it was a heavy ring that Pawlyn held up like a trophy before it was secreted in his rough clothes. He watched from his hiding place as the workman walked back to where the constable and that other fellow were directing Thorpe in the careful removal of the skeleton. He had resolved there and then to see what Pawlyn did when he left the site, rather than accuse him of theft straight out. It might tell him something about the business that had occupied his mind for some time now. But first, he had relieved himself, his piss splattering on the chiselled stone, leaving a dark stain on the yellow surface.

  Now, slipping inside North Gate just as it was closing, and mumbling an apology to the watchman, Wilfrid Southo decided it was time to take a look at the house where he had seen Pawlyn go the night of his theft, and then emerge with a fatter purse than when he went in. He had discovered it was in Pennyfarthing Street, tucked down the side of St Aldate’s Church. He would think of an excuse to knock on the door and see who lived there.

  Crossing Carfax at the heart of the town, he was so engrossed in his own affairs that he did not notice that the normally busy crossroads was unusually quiet. He did not know if Pawlyn’s activities had anything to do with the patchwork of events he had uncovered over the years. But he hoped that maybe this one would provide the key to his dark suspicions. Then he would be in a position to make his accusations openly, and bring down the man who he had long hated.

  He hastened down Fish Street that some called Great Jewry.

  The air felt oppressive as though threatening a thunderstorm, and he tilted his head against the spatters of rain that were beginning to fall again. He bumped into someone coming abruptly out of a narrow side lane, and cursed him when he looked up and saw the yellow badge that betrayed the man as a Jew.

  Deudone tossed back his own curse, ready to stand up to the muscular man in rough builder’s clothes. But he seemed preoccupied, and was off striding over the sewage gully down the middle of the street before any blows were offered.

  ‘A coward too, eh,’ muttered Deudone, clenching his fists.

  He sighed, and pulled the hood of his cloak over his curly locks. The rain was beginning to fall heavily again, and he wished he was safely indoors and paying court to the voluptuous Hannah. But he had other business in hand tonight concerning Covele, the renegade Jew who had performed the ritual in Lumbard’s house. The forbidden ritual of qorbanot that Deudone had taken part in. He had hoped the ritual might have eased the burden of guilt that had weighed on his mind for some years now. But it had not, merely leaving him with an unpleasant taste in his mouth. A taste of something terribly, awfully wrong. He stood uncertainly for a moment under the eaves of Aaron’s house before dashing off in the same direction as th6.builder. He needed to find Covele, who was still holed up in that derelict house behind St Aldate’s.

  Peter Pawlyn emerged from Agnes’s whorehouse in Grope Lane a wide grin on his face. John Trewoon, as ever, had waited for his diminutive friend outside in the street. When it had begun to rain, he almost wished he had gone inside. But the girls in a place like that scared him. They mocked him due to his size, and made suggestions that embarrassed him. Then, when his face grew red, they mocked him for his shyness. So he avoided brothels like the plag
ue, which is what his mother had told him he would get anyway if he ever went in one. So he was huddled under the eaves of the dingy, ill-kept house when Pawlyn came out, his hair plastered flat over his brow. Pawlyn looked both sated and excited. He grabbed the giant’s arm.

  ‘Come on, John, there’s games afoot.’

  ‘What’s that, Peter? I’m tired and I’m cold. Can’t we go to bed?’

  ‘No, we can’t. What I’ve heard about will soon warm you up. There’s a rumour about bloody murder of children. And the Jews are guilty again. The girls were talking about it, and how it’s a shame that good Christians have to live so close to them.’

  John frowned, thinking it was a shame that good people, Jews or not, had to live so close to a whorehouse. But he knew Peter would only laugh at him, so he kept the thought in his own head. ‘What’s that to do with us, Peter?’ Pawlyn let out a whoop. ‘We’re going to help the townsfolk break a few heads.’

  ‘A Templar priest?’

  Jehozadok nodded in response to Falconer’s question.

  ‘Yes. I cannot recall his name after all these years. But I do remember it was a Templar who was collecting the tallage imposed on us. It was the time that Louis of France was ransomed. A million besants was required, I believe.’

  ‘But why were the Templars involved?’

  ‘The story goes that Louis was thirty thousand livres short, and asked the Templars for a loan. The commander in Outremer refused it as his rules forbade him releasing the money to anyone other than the depositor. There was a stand-off, until the marshal of the Temple proposed a solution. The Templars could not break their vows, but there was nothing to prevent the King’s representatives taking the money by force. The Templars stood back, and the strongbox was broken into. The money was taken, to be returned later. When it had been collected from us. Of course England’s share of the whole ransom was being collected at the same time anyway. But it was definitely a Templar priest who was responsible for the work. And he disappeared soon after collecting from everyone in the town. Along with a large amount of money.’