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

by Ian Morson

  ‘Hmm. There have been too many unfortunate accidents here of late, Peter.’

  Falconer’s attitude to the tortuous affair of the ancient death, and that of the mason he was trying to tie in with it, was beginning to exasperate Bullock. If now he thought the death by fire of this odious little regent master who delighted in carving up bodies was connected, then to Bullock’s mind he was very much mistaken. There seemed no connection whatsoever, and if his determination to put an end to all this speculation resulted in the loss of his friendship with Falconer, then so be it. There were greater matters in this world than obsession with mere detail and an assemblage of facts. For Bullock, logic was an aberrant pursuit, and faith in a higher power more significant. But he couldn’t tell Falconer that throughout their friendship the regent master’s dubious hold on faith had often troubled him. He merely shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Well, you must do what you think fit, William. But don’t cross me, or I will have to apply the law as impartially to you as to anyone.’

  Falconer frowned, shocked by his old friend’s intransigence.

  ‘I can ask no more of you than honesty and impartiality, old friend.’

  Both men then climbed the steps back up to the street, and went their separate ways, as far apart as they ever had been.

  Seventeen

  The streets of Oxford were a sea of mud as the rain clouds piled up over the town. The River Thames was swollen and ran fast and deep under the arches of Grandpont, the causeway bridge that spanned the marshy land to the south of the walls. If it rose much higher it would burst its banks, and inundate the Dominican friary that sat precariously astride the water meadow between the river and the town walls. The River Cherwell to the east had already risen to the level of the bridge that arched over its normally placid stream. The Jews’ cemetery outside the walls was already partially under water, and St John’s Hospital on the opposite side of the road was close to being abandoned.

  Falconer was ignorant of all this impending disaster as he wrestled with his latest unfortunate encounter with Peter Bullock.

  He had never known the constable so uncooperative. Difficult to convince, and intransigent, yes. He had been all those things in the past. But he had always been willing to listen to his friend.

  Now, it was as though some other loyalty had tossed his friendship abruptly aside, just when William had his most puzzling set of murders yet to solve. Aristotelian doctrine suggested that a set of truths, when put together, would lead to a single greater truth. Falconer had used this method many times to discover motive and identity in murder cases. This time collecting sufficient truths in the matter of the killing of the man immured in the walls of Little Jewry was hard enough. Twenty years was a long time, and the trail was as cold as a winter’s morning on Port Meadow. But if the death of the mason Wilfrid Southo was linked, then he could at least hope that it would provide a clue to the earlier murder. And as for the horrible death of Richard Bonham, that seemed to be the most puzzling of the lot. Why would anyone wish to kill a harmless scholar? Unless he had uncovered something from the skeletal remains.

  Suddenly, Falconer slapped his forehead in annoyance. What with Deudone’s story of childhood deeds and the deadly blaze, he had simply forgotten the vinegar-soaked bundle he had picked up from the doorway of Bonham’s house. Had Bonham left him a message? He hurried through the muddy streets to Aristotle’s Hall to find out.

  The inclement weather was irritating Richard Thorpe beyond measure. The site for Bassett’s College was cleared, but the rain meant no progress was being made on the rebuilding.

  And Dame Elia refused to understand that laying foundations in the rain was impossible. She was badgering him to get going, so that was why he was squatting under the cover of his lodge on the site chipping away at some stonework. Around him, a few glum workmen were trudging through the drizzle desultorily preparing the ground. He laid his chisel down, and looked around the site. Since the untimely death of his foreman, he had been forced to supervise the day-to-day work himself, and it was beginning to pall. He called over to the giant Trewoon, a man he had encountered on various sites for at least twenty years, and who would never progress beyond the stage of apprentice in his journey towards being a mason. But his strength was of value, even if his brain wasn’t.

  ‘John, where is Pawlyn? I asked him ages ago to prepare me some more stone blocks.’

  Trewoon stood up from his task of shifting timbers from the growing puddle at the lower end of the site to a drier spot.

  He looked a little embarrassed, and mumbled something Thorpe couldn’t catch.

  ‘Speak up, man.’

  ‘He’s answering a call of nature, Master Thorpe.’ Thorpe grunted in exasperation, smacking his hands on his leather apron to knock the stone dust off them. He doubted that Pawlyn was merely taking a piss somewhere behind a wall. The runty little man was up to something, he was sure of it.

  ‘Well, send him to me when he turns up.’

  Trewoon nodded, and picking up a massive baulk of timber, staggered away across the site. Once he was out of the master mason’s sight, he dropped the timber and scurried off down Little Jewry Lane. He knew where Pawlyn was, and needed to warn him that Thorpe was aware of his absence. In the shelter of the overhanging buildings at the end of Schitebarne Lane, just a few yards away, he could see the missing Peter Pawlyn.

  He was listening to some instructions from a hooded foreigner, and was hopping nervously from one foot to the other. Trewoon supposed it was where Peter had got his full purse the other day. Now it seemed the bearded man wanted more from him.

  He jabbed at Pawlyn with his finger until Trewoon saw his friend reluctantly nod. The foreigner smiled, passed him a coin, then disappeared down Schitebame Lane. Head bowed, Pawlyn crossed the street, almost walking into Trewoon before he saw him. Which was no small feat considering Trewoon’s bulk.

  ‘John. What the hell are you doing here?’

  John Trewoon put on an apologetic look. ‘Master Thorpe knows you have been off-site, Peter. I thought I’d best warn you.’

  ‘Damn Thorpe. He’s the least of my worries right now.’ Pawlyn plunged past Trewoon, and hurried back down Little Jewry Lane. Trewoon followed him at a loping pace.

  ‘What’s troubling you, Peter? Is that man you were talking to causing you problems? If so, I could...’ He clenched his fist to suggest how he might help.

  Pawlyn stopped abruptly, and suddenly stuck his face into Trewoon’s.

  ‘You can’t do anything, John. In fact you never saw that man. Understand?’

  Trewoon stammered an apology for his inadvertent error.

  He didn’t know why he had so angered his friend, but he would do as he said.

  ‘Y-yes, of course, Peter. I never saw him.’

  Falconer sat at his cluttered table, and picked up the bundle left him by Bonham. It was wrapped in white cloth stained with a dark fluid. He smelled vinegar, and suddenly remembered that he had smelled the same odour, only more strongly, when he had first picked it up. Why would Bonham have steeped the cloth in vinegar? He untied the knot and unfolded the cloth. Inside were a number of folded parchment pages, and on opening them, he could tell they were old sheets scraped clean of writing and reused. On each page was Bonham’s handwriting, small and concise with many abbreviations to ensure the fullest notes were kept on the smallest possible space. Bonham had always been economical if nothing else. The top sheet held a message to Falconer, and the rest appeared to simply be notes made by Bonham to himself.

  Falconer carelessly swept his arm across the table to clear a space to lay the notes out fiat. The parchment was inclined to fold itself up again, so he clamped the top down with the large stone that revealed a curious shape on its surface. He held the bottom down with his fingers, and started reading the cramped and feverish text.

  Master Falconer,

  Someone just reminded me that ritual plays a great part in our lives. And so it does in death. When you
are reading this I will be dead, or at least I hope so. It’s hopeless for me, and I can only hope to save you and others. I pray that you are safe, but you must look out for symptoms of severe headaches, fever, muscle pains and sensitivity to light. The later symptoms are stupor and delirium, and I fear the latter is upon me. So I cannot forget the thoughts of the ritual of death. I must not pass the affliction on, so I will cleanse my house. The disease was first described nearly two hundred years ago in a convent in Salerno, and you will know it as the stupor disease. In Greek, τυφος

  Bonham

  Horror tightened Falconer’s throat. Typhus. Bonham had contracted typhus, no doubt from his careless behaviour when dissecting his cadavers. He could not work out what Bonham meant by his reference to the ‘ritual of death’, but assumed that the delirium of typhus had gripped him. He joined Bonham’s prayers in wishing he too had not caught the disease. No wonder Bonham had wrapped the notes Falconer now held in vinegar-soaked cloth. No one was sure how it communicated itself, but typhus was deadly. He wondered if it came from the skeleton or the girl. But he could not imagine the old bones carrying such a disease over all that time. Nor could the girl have passed it on so swiftly, as it was said typhus took at least two weeks to develop in the victim’s body. Bonham must have been singularly unfortunate to have found a body to dissect some weeks ago, which itself had not had chance to pass on its evil to others, until he broached the integrity of its flesh. No outbreak of the disease was recorded locally.

  Falconer reread the lines about Bonham cleansing his house.

  It was then he saw that Bonham had taken his own life in order not to pass the disease on. So his death need not be attributed to someone obscuring the death of the Templar priest twenty years ago. On the other hand, Bonham had deemed his notes significant enough to leave them for Falconer. He scanned the next few pages carefully.

  The top two sheets described the meticulous process of examining the skeletal remains. As Falconer had learned, Bonham had worked out that the bones were those of a Templar priest, who had suffered a violent death. The damaged arm and hand bones demonstrated that he had tried to protect himself from several heavy blows, but the absence of the skull meant it was difficult to confirm the cause of death. Bonham wrote in his notes that no cut marks were evident on the ribs, nor in the adipose flesh left on the undisturbed body. So he surmised that he had not died due to a blow to the heart or due to blood loss from a cut. The rest of the notes were a detailed description of the state of the body, but offered no more insights. Falconer turned with interest to the final two pages. They were not about the skeleton, but about Sarah Blakiston. At first the notes recalled what Bonham had already told Falconer concerning the girl and her condition. There was a graphic and very accurate sketch of her womb and its contents. But when Falconer turned to the last page, he saw Bonham had added something new at the end, and marked it with quick scrawled lines in the margin which were in complete contrast to the rest of his neat, cramped style.

  I was completely wrong about the girl killing herself, Falconer. After you and Bullock had left I looked again at her. Your interest in assembling truths, no matter how trivial, until a greater truth is revealed, made me think again about how I might dissect a victim of suspicious death and make discoveries. I found something on the girl’s body. Though I was told she had been found hanging from a beam in the barn on Sir Gilbert’s estate, the marks on her neck were horizontal. She had been strangled with the rope found round her neck, but not hanged. The way she was found was to mask the real cause of her death. She was murdered.

  Eighteen

  Peter Bullock could tell the Templar knight was feeling constricted by his temporary incarceration in the house in Pennyfarthing Lane. He was a powerfully built man of around forty with broad shoulders, and a full beard like most Templars.

  His lined face suggested he had been in the Holy Land, where he would no doubt have patrolled along dusty roads protecting pilgrims from marauding tribesmen. His calling meant he was more used to violent action in the field. Now he was older, and mastering the task of getting what he wanted by negotiation, not force of arms. He was finding it difficult, hence his restless pacing. Bullock stood quietly in the doorway, awaiting the response to his request to inform Falconer what was happening here. The Templar stopped his pacing, and glared at Bullock.

  ‘Very well, Sergeant. You can tell him who it was he found in the walls of that building. Explain to him that there was a lot of money in his possession, which was lost twenty years ago, and is not now to be found. Tell him that the Jews were responsible, and if he is looking anywhere he should look in their direction.’

  Bullock grimaced. ‘He will not like that. He has many friends amongst the Jews, and he believes in their honesty.’

  The Templar snorted, and recommenced his pacing. ‘Then it is about time he learned the truth. And if he finds the money, you can tell me. And I will deal with it. Now you may go, Sergeant Bullock.’

  The constable nodded dutifully, acknowledging his one-time allegiance to the Templar Order, and left the room. As he descended the stairs, he could hear the creak of timbers as the knight continued his restless walking to and fro. In the street, he looked at the house next door, where Prior Thomas had sworn the slaughter of an innocent child had taken place.

  He could not wipe from his mind the thought that the dark and crumbling exterior had an ominous appearance. The drab windows on the upper floor were like two dull, blank eyes staring out of a yellowing skull. For a moment he imagined he heard an eerie noise, as if the child was moaning over his fate. But .when he stopped to listen, standing silently in the lane, he hrard nothing. The house was dumb.

  He shrugged his shoulders, and walked off towards the castle, where his position as constable gave him lodging. He pondered how he was going to approach William Falconer with his new information without further estranging him. As his bowed form turned the comer into Fish Street, a nervous pair of eyes followed him from behind the windows of the accursed house.

  Jehozadok was preparing himself for the ritual duties on the Day of Atonement. Duties he might be performing for the last time as Oxford’s rabbi. So he did not welcome an interruption. However, Falconer had been insistent, so he had conceded defeat, and now welcomed the regent master into his chamber.

  If truth were told, his preparations had tired him more than he imagined, and he was glad to rest. As he leaned back in his chair to ease his back, he was aware, despite his blindness, that William was rather agitated. He could hear him squirming in his chair. Still a little annoyed with Falconer for disturbing him, he let the master suffer in silence for a while before speaking.

  ‘William, what is it that brings you here that is so urgent?’ More squirming. ‘Do you know where Deudone is hiding? Or where Covele has gone? I will understand if you do not wish to tell me. After all, in the present circumstances why would you trust any... Christian?’

  Jehozadok maintained a solemn face, though he was smiling inwardly. Falconer was so oversensitive concerning the feelings of his Jewish friends. Did he not realize that years - centuries - of Jews living in the midst of Christians gave them a protective skin the toughness of cowhide? The contumely still rankled but it was a bearable burden. And the idea that Falconer was worried Jehozadok could not trust him was plainly ridiculous.

  Unfortunately, he knew where neither man was, and told Falconer so.

  ‘Has he been up to his usual tricks? Covele, I mean, not Deudone.’

  ‘What sort of tricks are those?’

  Jehozadok paused.

  ‘Let me explain. We believe that the only place where it is possible to carry out sacrifices is the Temple in Jerusalem.

  It would be a sin anywhere else. The last place appointed by… Ha Shem -’ the traditionalist in Jehozadok meant he avoided uttering the word God, using the expression The Name instead - ‘was the Temple, and that was destroyed more than a thousand years ago.’

  Falconer felt cold at Jeh
ozadok’s talk of sacrifice. He had not heard his friend mention the practice before, and it brought to mind the images described by Thomas Brassyngton and the priest Simon. He wondered where Jehozadok was taking him, if sacrifice was not practised any more.

  ‘And Covele?’

  ‘He is one of those who believes that in the absence of the proper place, anywhere will suffice. That is why he is an outcast.’

  ‘So he could have been making a... sacrifice the other night.’

  Jehozadok frowned, acutely aware of the hesitation in Falconer’s voice.

  ‘Is this to do with the lies spread around that caused the riot? Surely you do not believe them after all this time, William?’

  Falconer was nonplussed, and not a little embarrassed.

  But if Covele the Jew was an outcast with his own people, might he not do things which would horrify others? And he had been present twenty years ago when the Templar priest was murdered. If he had been seen by the priest committing some outlandish act, might he not have killed the Templar? According to Deudone, he had condoned the boy’s attack on the priest. Perhaps he had relished the idea of the boy doing his dirty work for him. An innocent getting rid of the very man he wanted dead would probably appeal to his evil nature. But where did the recent killing of Wilfrid fit in? Had he too witnessed something? Was it the very slaughter that Brassyngton accused Covele of? Falconer’s mind was in turmoil. If Covele had killed in order to keep his actions secret, then they must be far worse than some transgression of Jewish law. But Falconer couldn’t believe in the truth of child sacrifice, could he?

  Jehozadok sat quietly as Falconer’s brain spun, his unseeing eyes appearing to gaze off at some distant object of desire.