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

by Ian Morson

  ‘You’re mad, Dickon.’ Walter Southo could not believe what his fellow apprentice had just told him. ‘Rob a priest, and a Templar into the bargain?’

  Dickon hadn’t told either Walter or Alban of his real intent - ritual slaughter. Just that the three of them would overpower this priest, and steal the keys to the place where the relic was kept.

  ‘He’s a milk-and-water priest, not a proper Templar knight. Besides, it will be what they call a furta sacra - a sacred theft. The skull of Hiram rightly belongs to our guild, anyway.’ As soon as he saw the look in the other boys’ eyes, he knew he had them. And it must have been fate that delivered the priest into his hands that very evening. They had just finished work for the day, and the only other apprentice - John Trewoon - was nowhere to be seen. Dickon had kept his intentions secret from the lumbering giant. Trewoon was too stupid to understand the sacred nature of what he was planning. He sent Walter and Alban to collect his tools, and they obeyed like eager slaves. It was then he saw the priest walking past the building site. He decided to stop him, and ask if he could see the relic. The priest was furious, accusing the apprentice of listening in on conversations that were not for his ears. He began to push the apprentice in the chest. Dickon could have killed him there and then, but some kid threw a stone. The priest was stunned, and fell to his knees. Just then, Walter and Alban came back carrying Dickon’s bag of tools, and the die was cast.

  The priest’s head was still bowed as he brushed the lime dust off his robe. Dickon snatched a wide-blade tooth chisel and hammer from his bag. The chisel was used to begin the rough carving of a stone block. Dickon held it to the back of the priest’s skull and swung his hammer. With a gasp, the priest fell prostrate on the ground. It was as if he was abasing himself before the Cross, and Dickon felt the solemnity of the moment. The only jarring element was the sight of the tooth chisel sticking vertically out of the man’s skull. Aware of the preciseness of the ritual in his mind, Dickon thrust the hammer at Walter.

  ‘You must strike him too. And you, Alban.’

  Waiter’s face was ashen. The priest was still writhing on the ground like some insect. His hands were on the top of his ruined head.

  ‘But that’s enough to kill him, Dickon.’

  Dickon sneered, holding the hammer out for the other boy to take.

  ‘You must complete the ritual.’

  Walter took the hammer, and landed a blow on the priest’s skull, just as he held his hand up to protect himself. He giggled at the crushed fingers beneath his blow, and passed the hammer to Alban. He too swung the hammer hard, breaking open like an egg the already shattered head of Michael le Saux. The air crackled with the excitement of the deed. And the priest finally lay dead. Dickon took the hammer back and dropped it in his bag. As a final deed, he took the priest’s own sword, and hacked his head off with it.

  ‘It is done. Now you must stop calling me Dickon. I am Richard - Richard Thorpe.’

  Feast of St Gregory, September 1271

  ‘I was never little Dickon from that day on. And the mysteries of the mason’s craft were open to me.’

  Thorpe’s eyes were focused somewhere in the far distance.

  Saphira knew he was stark mad. Must have been mad long before the moment when he killed the Templar priest, Michael le Saux, and stuffed his body in the cavity of the wall of the new building. One death had started Thorpe on a trail of murders. He had been forced to kill Walter and Alban, his confederates in that first death, before their wavering devotion collapsed. Then down the years, he had had to kill Waiter’s brother Wilfrid, when he came too close to identifying his brother’s murderer. Anyone, in fact, who stood in his path.

  She was not to know that he had killed that very day too.

  When he had found Peter Pawlyn earlier rummaging in his bags to see if he could find the missing skull, Thorpe had coolly cracked his head open with Pawlyn’s own masonry hammer.

  ‘Do you want to see Hiram’s skull?’

  Saphira suddenly realized that Thorpe was speaking to her.

  ‘The skull? Yes, of course. Where is it?’

  Thorpe laughed, and spread his arms wide, encompassing the Jewish cemetery.

  ‘Why, it’s here, naturally. Come.’

  He took her arm and dragged her to a slab in the far comer, a dark, flat marker on the ground, still above the rising waters.

  Saphira recognized it as the very slab that Covele had pitched his tent on. Thorpe went to one comer, where the slab was cracked. He bent down to move the broken comer.

  ‘I hid it here when I came back to Oxford. Sharing lodgings with the other men made me worry about someone stealing it. I looked for ages for a safe place to hide it. Then I saw this graveyard.’

  Saphira looked down at the carving on the grave slab, and realized just how appropriate the hiding place was. The carving was of a deer, symbol of the tribe of Naphtali. She thought again of Hiram’s ancestry as described in Biblical texts. Hiram, a widow’s son of the tribe of Naphtali. If the skull was that of Hiram, he had come back to his own. Thorpe lifted the broken stone away and plunged his hand into the dark crevice.

  He pulled out a blackened skull.

  ‘Look.’

  Saphira peered at the cause of all the misery over the years.

  It was an unadorned skull with a massive fissure across its dome. She was unimpressed in a way she hadn’t thought she would be. Thorpe seemed to sense her disbelief that this truly was the skull of Hiram, and he pulled it away from her gaze. He glared at her through the rain and the darkness, and then turned to slide the skull back into its hiding place. He spoke calmly as he did so, causing a shiver to run down her back.

  ‘Now you will have to die too.’

  She grabbed the broken triangle of stone that Thorpe had shifted to get to the skull, and swung it down on the back of his head. Something must have alerted him to her action. He twisted instinctively as the stone came down, and it caught him a glancing blow on his scalp, ripping a flap of flesh from his brow. The torn skin hung over his left eye and blood streamed down his face, washed into rivulets by the driving rain. His hand reached out like a claw, and his reddened, bloody eyes bore into Saphira. She brought the jagged edge of the stone down on his skull again. It took two more blows before he slumped into the turbid waters of the overflowing river.

  Saphira shivered, soaked to the bone and weak from the exertion. She began to fall down a deep, dark tunnel. Then out of the blue she felt someone supporting her trembling limbs. She opened her eyes, and saw it was William. By his side, hopping anxiously from one leg to the other, was the boy Jose. She smiled.

  ‘Thank goodness you found him, Jose. I was beginning to get a little worried.’

  ‘Master Falconer found me, madam. He was already looking for you. I told him I had followed you, as you said to. And when I knew where you were being taken, I went looking for him.’

  She touched his cheek.

  ‘You did very well, Jose. And you brought him just in time.’ Falconer coughed, gently releasing Saphira from his grasp.

  ‘It looks as though you reached the same conclusion as I did about Thorpe.’

  She gave him a pert smile.

  ‘Yes, but a little sooner, you will have to admit.’

  ‘We can argue about that later. What I will acknowledge is that you didn’t need me in the end.’

  They both looked down at the body slumped by the grave, its head shattered, the blood from the wounds staining the muddy waters red. Saphira stepped between the ugly sight and Jose, turning the boy’s wide-eyed stare away from it.

  ‘We can also argue that point later. But now, I would like to get somewhere warm and dry.’

  Falconer laughed.

  ‘That may be an impossibility. Twenty years ago we all thought it was the End Times. Now I fear it is the Flood.’

  Epilogue

  Though the rain had stopped by the morning, the streets of Oxford were awash, and the town resembled a moated castle. Shopkee
pers were attempting to salvage what they could, and trying to sweep water from their premises. Falconer had returned to Aristotle’s Hall to make sure the students under his care were safe, despite not wishing to leave Saphira on her own. But she had insisted he do so, and she had gone back to the relative tranquillity of Abraham’s house to seek out yet another dry gown. Bullock had spent what was left of the night dealing with the corpse of the master mason, Richard Thorpe. He then had to break the news of his death not only to his workers, but to Dame Elia Bassett, his employer. She had taken the information badly, flying into a rage over the delay this would cause to her collegium project. In fact, she almost decided there and then to cease the labour, and look for a more suitable memorial to her husband, who had been illiterate anyway. Perhaps a small chapel or chantry would be more appropriate, where monks could pray for his salvation for years to come.

  So by the time Peter Bullock got back to Oxford Castle, he was not best pleased to see Ralph, the steward from Tubney Manor, on his doorstep. The news he brought was, however, oddly satisfying. Despite his fatigue, he hurried round to Aristotle’s Hall to let William know. He found the regent master drying himself off next to the fire in the main hall.

  His dowdy black robe, already green with age at the edges, was steaming gently.

  ‘Peter. I had not expected to see you so soon. What brings you here?’

  ‘News that, if not good, is at least satisfactory.’ Falconer moved from the fire as he felt the back of his robe grow hot.

  ‘It is not like you to speak in riddles, Peter. I thought that was my prerogative.’

  ‘Then I shall make myself clear. Gilbert de Bois is dead.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He was fouhd hanging from the Tubney Tree this very morning by one of his labourers. Apparently, de Bois was in the habit of drinking late into the night, especially when, as occurred last night, he had experienced his latest marital rebuff. Ralph went to his chamber very late to make sure his master was safely in bed. But de Bois was nowhere to be seen. A quick search of the house brought no result, so Ralph roused some of the farm workers. They scoured the neighbourhood, but it was only by the light of dawn that he was seen hanging from the tree. By then it was too late, he was dead. When the body had been brought back to the house, Ralph examined it and found a message in de Bois’s pouch. It was written on a comer of one of Ralph’s accounts. De Bois confessed to raping his servant girl, and when she came to him bearing his child, he strangled her. You were right, William.’

  Falconer nodded sadly. But it had not been him but poor Richard Bonham who had been right. He had found the child in Sarah’s womb, and had interpreted the marks on her neck as strangulation made to look like self-harm by hanging. He would miss the precision and attention to detail of the little grey master. Bullock had still one more task to perform.

  ‘The skull. Have you come to any conclusions?’ After getting Falconer to check that Richard Thorpe was truly dead last night, Saphira had pointed out the hiding place of the skull stolen twenty years earlier. Falconer had shoved his large fist in the crack in the grave slab, and could feel the skull. But he could not grasp it and get his fist out of the gap.

  Saphira had inserted her more slender hand, and come up with an old damaged skull. They had all three peered at it in wonder.

  The boy Jose had been prevented from seeing the gruesome item, much to his annoyance. But there was not much to tell from such a cursory examination of the skull in the dark. So Falconer had suggested he take it back to Aristotle’s, and have a look at it in the light of day. This he had eagerly done no more than a few hours ago. Disappointingly, the skull had little to tell him, and its age was impossible to determine. Was it truly Hiram’s skull? Even those who had found it originally could not have told for sure. The only certain fact was that it belonged to the Templars, and needed to be returned to Laurence de Bernère. Falconer gave Bullock the only answer he could.

  ‘It is an old skull, but we knew that anyway. We were told it was in the Templars’ possession long before le Saux brought it from the Holy Land. That it was venerated by them for some reason. But if it was Hiram’s skull, as Thorpe believed, or not, I suspect even the Templars do not know for sure. I suggest we hand it back, and be finished with it.’ He shivered, perhaps from the cold of his damp clothes. Perhaps from other thoughts that flitted across his mind. ‘It has not been lucky for those who have it in their possession. So the sooner it is gone from mine the better.’

  ‘I could not agree more.’

  It was Saphira’s voice. She was hovering in the doorway of Aristotle’s, unsure about entering this male sanctuary.

  Falconer strode to the door, and took her by the arm.

  ‘You may enter, though I cannot vouch for the cleanliness of the quarters, nor of the young men who live here. I try to teach them about washing each day, but it does not often sink in. Fortunately, they are all out taking their lectures this morning. Thomas Symon will put them through their paces in my stead. We were just about to return the skull to the Templars. Would you care to come?’

  Saphira nodded her head, where a snood once again covered her flame-red locks. Falconer hoped he might soon see them once again unshackled and loose. He blushed a little at the errant thought, and withdrew his hand from Saphira’s arm where it had rested overlong. But as he did so, she took hold of his elbow, and indicated he should lead the way. He cast an embarrassed glance at Bullock, who merely winked and picked up the skull. The constable relished the vision of his friend being led by a woman. Perhaps he would take the hint of Saphira taking his arm like a wife, and behave as any normal man would. Falconer had failed to see Ann Segrim’s subtle advances for a number of years now. Either that, or he had respected her married status too much. Perhaps with a widow, he would be less cautious. In fact there did seem to be a spark between them already.

  As if in response to Bullock’s wishes, Falconer smiled at Saphira, and patted her hand as it lay on his forearm. They walked together out of Aristotle’s and along St John Street.

  Bullock followed behind, at a respectful distance, so he might not hinder any small talk. Their heads were together, and they were laughing; so it was Bullock who saw Ann Segrim first.

  He also saw the dark cloud that rapidly brewed on her face as soon as she saw William with the widow on his arm.

  ‘Hello, William.’

  Her voice was cold and sharp, in a manner Bullock had never heard before. Apparently neither had Falconer. He stopped abruptly in his tracks, and blinked at the vision of Ann Segrim that had appeared like magic before him. Behind her, like an homunculus, stood her diminutive servant, Margery.

  Her monkey face was split with a broad grin. She saw she would have much good news to report to Ann’s husband and her master, Humphrey, this afternoon. Falconer’s jaw hung open, and it was Ann who filled the ominous silence.

  ‘I was looking for you, as I was minded to apologize for my abrupt comments the last time we met. It seems, however, that I have no need to.’ She turned her steely gaze on Saphira.

  ‘You have clearly found yourself some.., female companionship more worthy of your status than I could ever be.’

  Saphira arched her dark eyebrow at the barbed comment, and looked at Falconer. Her expression clearly conveyed the question, who is this mad woman? She had no doubt that the attractive woman before her was suggesting Saphira was no more than a whore. It amused her that this was the second time she had been taken for one in Oxford. Perhaps it would be a more interesting place to live than Canterbury after all.

  She smiled at Ann Segrim.

  ‘Madam is too kind. Now don’t let me keep you from your husband.’

  She had taken note of the ring on the other woman’s hand.

  Ann hissed, and turned away before Falconer could say anything. She stormed off, with Margery scuttling at her heels.

  Saphira turned her innocent smile on William, who looked down at his feet in embarrassment. He might have wished to
hurry after Ann, but appeared to be struck dumb. Bullock coughed, and tapped the skull under his arm.

  ‘De Bernère will be anxious to see this returned, William.’ Coming out of his daze, Falconer nodded.

  ‘Yes, of course. The skull.’

  But he still stood transfixed, until the triumphant Saphira gently eased him forward with her arm linked in his. An awkward moment had passed, and the past had given way to the future.

  Once back at Temple Cowley, Laurence de Bernère slipped into the back of the round chapel. He withdrew a key from his purse, and unlocked a dark and chilly room to the rear of the altar. One of the niches to the back of the room was empty.

  It had not been so until recently, when the Templar had taken the small oak chest from its place. He had conveyed it to Oxford in anticipation of replacing the contents of the chest with what it should have contained. To have found, as de Bernère had done twenty years ago, the bloody severed head of Michael le Saux in its place had been an abomination. To have rendered the head down to its bare bone and used it as a substitute for the real thing had made him sick to the heart.

  Now he could return the skull to its rightful place. He could not resist opening the lid one more time. The old skull nestled comfortably in the padded velvet interior.

  ‘Welcome back, Hugh de Payens. You will never be lost again.’

  The Templar knight closed the lid, and slid the chest into the recesses of the niche.

  Historical Note

  Baphomet. The rumour of the Templars worshipping a head or an image abounded when the Order was being persecuted by Pope Clement. It was a persistent rumour, and may have had some foundation in fact, in that the Order may have possessed a relic. Some connection has even been made with the Shroud of Turin, but given the dubious nature of that item, this should be taken as fanciful.