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

by Ian Morson

  Falconer lit a precious candle, and sat at his work table.

  Balthazar the owl blinked solemnly in the unaccustomed light, hopped across to the window and on silent wings swooped into the darkness. The regent master had decided Bonham’s method of meticulously recording everything he observed while dissecting a body was a sound and useful technique.

  He found a reasonably clean parchment - one that had only been used and cleaned off a couple of times - and hunted through the litter on his table to find a precious quill and pot of black ink. Once ready, he began to think again about what he did and didn’t know about the deaths, twenty years apart, of the Templar priest and Wilfrid Southo.

  The information about le Saux had come slowly, but it had accumulated. The priest had arrived in Oxford from Temple Cowley with the sole purpose of imposing a tallage on the Jews. He had pursued his task eagerly and vindictively, in the meantime egging on the Prior of St Frideswide’s in his attempt to create a martyr out of Jed Stokys. If it had not been for Falconer’s own chance intervention, that would have succeeded. And perhaps with it le Saux’s own scheme of getting the money out of the Jews of Oxford, who would have feared for their very lives. He had obtained a moiety of the money just before his murder. And according to Bullock that money had disappeared at his death, causing the suspicion that le Saux had taken it and fled.

  But that had collapsed with the discovery twenty years later of his body. And besides, the sort of man Bullock had described was not the type to break his Templar vows and steal from his own Order. Firstly, Falconer all but discounted Deudone’s fear that the stone he threw when a child was the cause of le Saux’s death. It would have been a very unlucky strike to do that. No, le Saux would probably have been at worst momentarily stunned, failing into the arms of the mason he was conversing with. The fact that the child had seen someone else present at his act of vandalism, someone who encouraged it, and that had turned out to be Covele, gave a curious twist to the story. After that, Covele would have known that le Saux had a chest full of coins, and that the boy was fearful he had killed. Did he play on that fear to cover his own tracks? And what else had Covele been up to in Oxford on that day that needed concealment? Matt Stokys had never been seen again, so it could be that Falconer had been wrong. The father might not have killed his son. It was a possibility that Falconer did not relish pursuing.

  And where did Sir Gilbert de Bois fit into the puzzle? He was the owner of the houses being constructed after buying them cheaply from Lumbard of Cricklade. He needed money, having borrowed heavily to pay for his purchase, and knew also that le Saux had got some money from the Jews. How tempting would it have been to steal from the Templar Jewish money that he could then use to pay off his debts to the very same Jews? The problem with that was de Bois had not paid off the debt, and was now penniless. Of course, he might have squandered the money after committing the murder. He did not seem to be the sort of man to plan wisely for the future.

  And there was still the matter of the dead servant girl to resolve in his case.

  But it was the other recent death that puzzled Falconer that of Wilfrid Southo. On the surface, they were completely unconnected. Wilfrid would have been a child when the Templar was murdered, and apparently this had been his first visit to Oxford. His first and last, unfortunately. Perhaps Bullock was correct in thinking the death was just an unhappy incident connected to the riot after all. It was only Falconer’s assumption that the death of the man who discovered le Saux’s body was more than suspicious. But what did Wilfrid know that had got him killed? Falconer neither knew, nor could see how he would now find out. He stared at the parchment in front of him. It was still clean of any mark, and he realized he had recorded nothing of his racing thoughts. Sighing, he slowly put the pen down, and stood to stare broodingly out of the window. Bonham’s method had suited the little grey man, but not the overactive mind of regent master William Falconer. He needed to give his thoughts free rein, and writing them down would only slow them intolerably. Falconer just hoped that his worrying episodes of forgetfulness would not mean that he would lose the thread even as he wove it.

  Twenty-Two

  The ground of the cemetery was so sodden that Saphira decided to slip off her good leather shoes and walk barefoot. The mud squelched up between her toes, and the soles of her feet were soon frozen. But her pretty shoes were saved.

  Peering into the darkness around her, she was uncertain where to look. Then suddenly she fancied she could see an eerie light in the farthest south-west corner of the gloomy cemetery. It was a little like the strange will-o’-the-wisp glow seen rising from marshy land. But this was steady, yellowish, more reminiscent of a shrouded lantern. She began to move towards it. The grave slabs were little islands in the watery mud, but respect for the dead prevented her stepping on them. However, that was something that clearly hadn’t bothered Covele. Soon, she could see a greyish shape inside which glowed the light she had spotted. It was set on top of a large and prominent grave slab. Stepping closer, her skirts held out of the mud, she saw the shape resolve into a small tent-like structure. The whole edifice had the appearance of an island refuge set in a watery sea. It could only be the man she was seeking. She called out.

  ‘Covele, is that you in there?’

  A muttering sound came from inside the tent, followed by a head thrust out of the opening. It was a bald head with long dark locks hanging down and mingling with a ferocious beard.

  In the centre of the face, the man’s black eyes glowed like coals.

  ‘And who is it that wishes to know?’

  ‘My name is Saphira Le Veske and I am seeking Deudone. Is he with you?’

  The head disappeared back inside and a further muffled conversation took place. By now, Saphira, though amused that Covele could even pretend the young man might not be present, was feeling chilled. The icy mud was striking through her feet and up her legs. She shivered, and wished she had worn warmer clothes. She was about to call out again, when Covele’s head reappeared.

  ‘Why do yon seek Deudone?’

  Saphira considered replying politely, but feeling drops of rain falling from the sky, she lost patience with this game of question and answer. She simply called.

  ‘Deudone. You have nothing to fear from me. It is this fool who is leading you astray, as he has done before. Or so your mother has told me. If he has convinced you that a forbidden ritual is the way to go about freeing yourself of a sense of guilt, then he is wrong. To tell the truth is a far better way to achieve that. Leave this maniac to his tent and come back home with me.’

  Covele sprang from his tent, and splashed into the muddy waters surrounding his tombstone island. His drab black robe dragged in the filth as he strode over to Saphira. She was not a little frightened by this madman, but stood her ground, planting her feet firmly into the earth in case he should attack her. He didn’t, but merely poked his swarthy face into hers.

  ‘Soon it is the Day of Atonement. Do you not think it appropriate that we should be quartered in a tent as the Feast of the Tabernacles approaches? It is a small discomfort compared to forty years in the wilderness.’

  He pointed wildly at his shabby hovel, as he reminded Saphira of the Sukkot tradition of commemorating the ancient Israelites’ time in the desert. But he would not leave it there.

  ‘And which will you make Deudone? The goat slaughtered for the Lord, or the scapegoat sent into the wilderness carrying the sins of the entire people of Israel?’

  Saphira felt the anger rising in her breast. Once again, this renegade was playing free with ancient rituals that belonged to the lost Temple, amongst which was the lottery of the goats.

  She could see how he might scare Deudone into obeying his every whim. But she was not intimidated. She slapped his face, and he reeled back in shock, falling to his knees.

  ‘Let there be no more talk of slaughter or seeking scapegoats. Do you not know that whatever you did the night of the riot, a boy was seen at your house, an
d afterwards the kitchen was steeped in blood.’

  Covele got to his feet, and snorted in derision at Saphira’s accusations. He turned towards his tent, where the candle flame still flickered, throwing shadows on the tent walls.

  ‘Come out, Deudone. And bring the boy.’

  The tent flap rose, and a young man stepped through it to stand upright on the grave slab. Then the flap twitched again, and a small, plump boy moved to Deudone’s side. He smiled shyly at Saphira, and clutched Deudone’s hand.

  ‘This is Aaron, my own son. As you can see, I have not carved him up and eaten him in some fearsome ritual. What I do confess to, however, is expiating sins with the burnt offering of a goat.’

  He didn’t know why he did it, but when Falconer saw from his solar window Peter Bullock hastening along St John Street, he decided to follow him. Despite their newly restored friendship, there was something furtive about the constable as he sneaked along the lane in the dead of night. Falconer knew Bullock often checked on the gatekeepers of the town, ensuring they had not fallen asleep at their posts. And the shortest distance from East Gate to South Gate was by the back lanes of Oxford. Aristotle’s Hall was on this route, and more often than not, Bullock would call in on Falconer, especially if he saw a light in the window. He knew the regent master often kept late hours, and a small reserve of good red wine. Tonight the constable had slunk past, keeping to the shadows as if not wishing to be seen by his friend.

  Falconer pushed aside the parchment on which he had intended to enter his notes and slipped silently down the stairs.

  He followed Bullock until he paused at the end of St Frideswide’s Lane where it met Fish Street. If he was going to walk to South Gate, he should have turned left, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned right. Falconer hurried down the lane, but even so he almost lost his friend. He saw the familiar lurch disappearing down the side of the dark shape of St Aldate’s Church. Falconer was puzzled. Was Bullock going to the house Covele had used for his ritual? If so, why? He made haste to cross Fish Street and peered round the corner of the church. But Bullock was nowhere in sight.

  He sidled up to the door of the first house, behind which Covele had carried out whatever ceremony he had perpetrated.

  He leaned against the door, tentatively turning the iron loop handle. The door was firmly shut, probably once more bolted from the inside. Falconer didn’t think that Bullock could have opened the door and bolted it in the time he had been out of his sight. He must have gone somewhere else. He stepped into the middle of the lane, and looked around. All the doors were closed, and the lower windows shuttered. He suddenly heard a distant cry, followed by the sound of boots pounding on hard ground. The cry rang out again, this time followed by a peal of laughter. Clearly some students had already drunk too much, and were having fun. They would probably all have sore heads in the morning, and he wondered if any were his lodgers. Aristotle’s had been suspiciously quiet when he had slipped out, suggesting the boys had already abandoned their studies and found a cheap tavern close by. He returned to his search of Pennyfarthing Lane, and where Bullock had gone.

  It was possible he had simply used the lane as a way back to the castle and his quarters inside the keep. But it would have been a circuitous route, and besides, Falconer had not seen him in the lane: it was straight and he would have seen the constable at the far end. He must be in one of the houses.

  But which one?

  He was about to give up when a shaft of light spilled into the lane at his feet. He looked up, and saw its source. Someone had brought a candle into the upper room of the house next to where Covele had been. It had an ill-fitting shutter, and as Falconer watched, the light moved around, until it dimmed.

  Shielded by the body of the person who was carrying it, perhaps. Falconer moved to the door and tried the latch. The door swung easily open.

  Standing at the foot of the stairs, he could hear voices from above. One of them was clearly Peter Bullock’s, raised in protestation. He eased his way up the staircase.

  ‘The time has come to tell the truth, sir. Master Falconer is too clever a man to believe that what has happened is merely a fight over money. Twenty years have passed, and another murder has been caused by the unsavoury matter.’ A clear and authoritative voice answered Bullock. One with a distinct French accent.

  ‘You may be right. We are getting no nearer our goal this I had hoped that you could resolve the matter for me. Sadly, it would seem we require a greater mind than yours, or we are lost.’

  Falconer grinned at hearing this, and could guess how this would irritate Bullock beyond endurance. No doubt his friend’s face would be bright red, and his anger boiling over at such a rebuke. So he was surprised when the constable wholeheartedly agreed.

  ‘You are tight, sir. This is beyond me, and we need William to puzzle it out.’

  From the respectful address, Falconer assumed that the mysterious Frenchman must be a Templar. Particularly as he named Bullock as a sergeant in the Order. He wanted to know exactly what secret it was that the two men had kept from him which had driven the murderer to kill the priest and hide his body, and then kill again twenty years later to prevent the truth emerging. He was so eager that he decided to reveal his presence to them. Pushing on the door that stood between him and the Templar pair, he strode boldly into the room.

  The Templar, a tall and heavily built man with sallow skin and a thick black beard, made a move towards his sword, which lay across the chair below the badly shuttered window.

  Bullock was there at the same time, however, and laid a restraining hand on the grasping fist.

  ‘There is no need for that. This is the man of whom I have been speaking. Master William Falconer.’

  The Templar slid his hand away from the sheathed sword, and stood uptight again. His steady gaze fixed on Falconer, whose frame filled the doorway. Each man assessed the other.

  The Templar spoke finally.

  ‘Hmm. It would seem you are certainly a clever man, to have found me here. I had thought I had kept my presence hidden. You might then indeed be the man to get us out of our little quandary.’

  ‘Perhaps I am.’

  Falconer was not going to embarrass his old friend more by saying he had traced the Templar by the simple and chance expedient of following the constable. Let the Templar think he had guessed his presence in Oxford, and had some idea of the reason why. Beyond his being a fellow member of the Order along with the dead Michael le Saux, he had no idea at all what connection he had with the murder. A scholarly silence was often a way of extracting truths unknown to him, and he employed the technique now. Though in fact the Templar seemed keen to explain.

  ‘My name is Laurence de Bernère, and I knew Michael le Saux many years ago. I was a young knight when he arrived at Temple Cowley, a trusted priest in the Order whose devotion had bebn forged in the heat of the debacle that was the Holy War led by Saint Louis. He had a double charge made of him.’

  1250, Temple Cowley

  The gloom surrounding the failures of the Seventh Crusade hung like a heavy pall of choking smoke over the simple chapel of the Templar Order at Cowley. Prophecies of the End Times and the reports of hundreds of deaths of fellow knights in the Holy Land made for a grim mood. Laurence was a young and relatively untried knight who yearned to prove himself in the Order. At the service assembled that day, he found himself seated next to the priest who had just arrived in their midst. A tall, angular man with a prominent nose, he still had the sun-reddened skin of one who had until recently been in Outremer. The greyness of England had not yet peeled it from his skin. But it had seeped into his bones. The priest shivered as he sat next to Laurence in the chilly, grey stone building that was supposed to copy the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The chaplain of Temple Cowley was preaching from the stark and forbidding altar set in the centre of the circular edifice.

  ‘The Book of Judges tells us that Israel’s relationship to God goes in a cycle. The people worship the gods of other
nations, so God allows other nations to oppress Israel. Finally the people turn to God for help, and God raises up a leader to deliver them. Louis of France is just such a leader.’ The preacher expounded further on his interpretation of the Book of Judges, which the Templars held as a guide to their work in Outremer. Laurence, eager to act not think, soon lost the thread. But gradually the priest drew to his conclusion. ‘The recapture of the holy places in the East is part of the End Times, but still the Antichrist must be defeated. The ransoming of King Louis must be achieved, and the monies raised. We have in our midst one who will carry out that onerous task.’ He waved a gloved hand in the direction of le Saux. ‘Be of good heart and undertake boldly to do good, and God will help you. Amen,’

  As the murmured response echoed through the Temple, Laurence leaned towards Brother Michael le Saux, 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?’ Brother Michael smiled in that mysterious way he had, and the young knight took it as confirmation of the rumour.

  1271

  Falconer leaned eagerly towards the Templar. They were seated close around the candle that by now was burned low, and would soon die. Its guttering yellow light illuminated only the Templar’s face as he recalled the earlier times and his first encounter with the man who had been murdered shortly afterwards.