Blood Moon

by Stephen Wheeler

  All heads turned to look at me. Now I was being accused too by association. There was no passing this cup from my lips. I had to reply:

  ‘Not his friend, Brother Prior, merely one who wishes to see justice done. The accused man is not here to answer for himself so I must. What you say is mere supposition. There is no evidence that Raoul harmed the girl.’

  ‘You do not deny he behaved aggressively towards her? You told me as much yourself - in the presence of a witness.’ He indicated de Saye.

  ‘What I said was he may have disciplined her,’ I said, ‘as is the right and duty of any good master. And that is a long way from murder.’

  ‘Who can say how far he went?’ returned Herbert. ‘Drunkards are rarely in command of their actions. Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe that’s all of it. If so then he should return here and own to his mistake. If not we can only suppose his reasons for running away.’

  ‘But he wasn’t drunk,’ I countered. ‘At least, not on the night of the murder. He was drugged.’

  Gasps all round at this and Herbert’s eye twinkled. ‘I take it you have proof for this bizarre claim?’

  I was about to say I did, but then I remembered I’d already thrown the vomit away careful this time not leave the poison lying around. I hadn’t thought I’d need it again. No doubt Herbert’s spies had told him all this as well. No wonder he was looking so smug.

  ‘Well?’ prompted Herbert when I didn’t reply.

  ‘A quantity of henbane went missing from my shelves. I believe the thief may have used it to taint Raoul’s drink.’

  ‘You believe,’ snorted Herbert.

  ‘No - more than that: I know his ale couldn’t have incapacitated him,’ I insisted. ‘It was virtually water.’

  Even before my words were fully out I knew the mistake I’d made.

  Herbert paused to allow my gaffe to resonate fully. ‘Was it, indeed? And how could you possibly know that, brother - unless you were drinking it yourself?’

  There was no point denying it. Groans of disapproval now from my brothers, even from those who might have been sympathetic. I’d made a complete hash of it. I glanced at de Saye who was gazing levelly back at me in triumph. Herbert, too, was looking pleased with himself - and why should he not? Like any well-prepared advocate he was only asking the questions to which he already knew the answers. Was there anything his spies had not told him?

  ‘Master Walter,’ he continued in leaden tones, ‘your litany of indiscretions astounds even me. If you’re not visiting young ladies alone in their private rooms you are drinking in taverns with their husbands. We have to wonder what sort of degenerate we been harbouring in our midst.’

  I snorted at the absurdity of that remark. ‘Oh, this is ridiculous. We are getting away from the plain fact which is that Raoul de Gray could not have strangled this maid.’

  ‘Oh? Why?’

  ‘For the simple reason that at the time of the murder he was -’

  I stopped. My brother monks stared silently agog to hear my next revelation. But I didn’t have to. Herbert finished it for me:

  ‘For the simple reason that he was asleep on your floor.’

  I looked round at my brother monks. Not one of them could meet my gaze. This was far worse than visiting Adelle in her chamber or drinking with her husband in The Hanged Man – worse, possibly, even than murder. A drunken man asleep on cloistered ground and in the cell of a senior obedientiary - it was an outrage. Even those who had previously been on my side were now shaking their heads in dismay.

  Herbert was conferring once again with de Saye. ‘If this is true,’ he said rising, ‘it is yet another woeful admission. But even so we have only your word for it. You may simply be inventing more lies.’

  ‘No, this time I have a witness,’ I blustered on.

  Herbert smiled. ‘Then produce him.’

  I’d meant Dominic. He would be able to confirm that we had nursed Raoul on my floor of my cell while the murder was being committed. Indeed, it was he who had done the nursing while I went back to my own cot. And conveniently, here he was seated right next to me. I turned to him now but as I did so I saw the look of horror on his face at being dragged into the fray – and I simply couldn’t do it, not to save Raoul’s neck, not even to salvage my own reputation. It would be the end of his life in the abbey. I stood staring at him unable to go on or to think of a way out. The silence became oppressive. Finally with a dismissive wave of his hand Herbert sat down whereupon the room erupted.

  But I needed one last chance:

  ‘The cap!’ I yelled above the rumpus.

  Herbert looked up wearily. ‘What about it?’

  ‘That is my witness, the cap,’ I said pointing to the thing on the table. ‘When it was found there was a hand holding it.’

  ‘Indeed,’ nodded Herbert. ‘The maid’s hand – lost in the struggle with her murderer.’

  ‘No, it was a man’s hand.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was the one who found it. I can attest to it being a man’s hand.’

  Herbert snorted. ‘How can you attest it?’

  ‘Witnessed by at least a dozen people,’ I persisted remembering the crowd in the marketplace.

  I seemed at last to have caught Herbert unprepared. He looked fleetingly at de Saye who gave the slightest shrug of his shoulders.

  ‘You’ll need more than that.’

  ‘I have more,’ I said confidently. ‘I can produce the owner…’

  Here I felt a slight tug on my sleeve.

  ‘…a vagabond preacher…’

  ‘Master -‘

  ‘…who can be brought here before this house…’

  ‘Master please -’

  ‘…where I have no doubt he will confirm…’

  ‘Master!’

  ‘What Dominic?’ I said turning irritably to the boy and pulling my sleeve from his grasp.

  ‘Hervey died last night.’

  At that moment a cock crowed somewhere in the far distance cutting through the silence in the room. I looked round at my brother monks many of whom were shaking their heads in dismay while others were smiling with satisfaction. I noticed in the pause that having stepped forward from my seat to deliver my peroration like a Roman senator of old, I had inadvertently stepped onto Abbot Samson’s recently-interred grave. In my mind’s eye I could see him now beneath my foot, shaking his head and tutting.

  However, the thought of him lying there gave me renewed strength of purpose and what I did next broke ever more of Herbert’s precious rules. I marched boldly down to the front of the chapterhouse and threw back the linen cloth that was covering poor Effie exposing her bloated and naked body for all to see. Cries of shock and outrage rang out as my brother monks covered their eyes or looked away. But I didn’t care. I knew I was about to vindicated.

  Except that I wasn’t. Geoffrey de Saye was one step ahead of me again. I’d expected to see lying beneath the cloth what I had seen in the beadle’s office – Effie’s body with both hands attached. Of course they weren’t. Only one hand was attached. The right had been sawn off – and I mean sawn not chewed by any pig. To make it clear to everyone that the hand was detached from the body, it had been placed deliberately the wrong way up next to the stump of poor Effie’s mutilated arm. I gasped at the outrage and glared at Geoffrey de Saye whose smug face told me everything I needed to know. I had fallen headlong into his trap. Not that my pointing this out would have helped. Was there now a soul left in that room that did not believe Raoul de Gray to be the murderer of his wife’s maid and that I was his accomplice? It was clear now why de Saye had not arrested me the previous day – it was in order to inflict this crushing blow. But it was not too late. He could arrest me now before the entire assembled monastery and make my humiliation complete – and who would have blamed him if he had?

  The Chapter broke up in disarray and without the customary Verba mea, although I muttered it under my breath with a deeper conviction than I have felt it be
fore: Dear Lord, hear my prayer and let my cry come unto thee!

  *

  I felt utterly deflated. I could not believe what had just occurred. A dreadful, dreadful distortion of truth. Manipulating evidence was one thing, but de Saye had gone one stage further to actually manufacture false evidence. It was a low I would not have anticipated even he would stoop to. It begged the question of why he should wish to do such a thing? Surely there could be only one answer to that: He had to be the murderer.

  As the brethren dispersed I sought out Dominic. The boy was full of apology:

  ‘I’m sorry, master, I could not -’

  ‘Yes yes, never mind,’ I waved him down. ‘It’s not your fault. Just tell me, where did you hear that about Hervey?’

  ‘His friend came to the almonry this morning with the news.’

  ‘He sought you out? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, master. I was to tell the news to you personally – he was quite specific about that. But you had already gone in to Chapter.’

  ‘Yes I see, yes,’ I said thoughtfully.

  It was one more tactic of de Saye’s and I could not help a wry smile for it was nicely choreographed. I was to be told of Hervey’s death but only when it was too late to prevent me making a fool of myself. The timing had been perfect.

  ‘How did he die?’

  The boy shrugged. ‘I don’t know, master. But I believe he was half way to God’s bosom already.’

  I nodded. ‘He was indeed very ill, poor man. Thank God that his suffering now is over at last.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Dominic, and smiled wanly. ‘At least he went in the company of his angel.’

  I took hold of his arm. ‘What did you just say?’

  He shrugged. ‘That’s what his friend said to tell you: That Hervey’s angel came for him. He said you would understand. I thought it a charming conceit.’

  More of a conceit than he could know. ‘Thank you, Dominic.’

  Perhaps it was Hervey’s time to go to God – or perhaps someone had hastened him there prematurely. This mysterious angel again. What did it mean? I should have liked to see Hervey’s body and perhaps brought it to the chapterhouse to prove I was right about his missing hand. But even if I could have found it, was there any point now? My brother monks already considered my exposure of Effie’s body a profanity. Two corpses would be more than they could tolerate. I would have to find another way.

  Chapter 14

  A PLAN HATCHES

  I spent the rest of the day expecting guards to burst in at any moment and haul me off either to the gaol-room or, more likely, to join my two friends in the pillory. In the event neither happened for far weightier matters were afoot about which as yet I knew nothing. But I am getting ahead of myself. For now I was free to pursue my normal duties and to observe the offices of the day, albeit keeping as low a profile as I could. After the fiasco in the chapterhouse I was shunned by a good many of my brothers although others did offer me their sympathy - most notably my dear old friend Jocelin. Perhaps he was remembering the last time something like this happened in the long distant past when we were both caught up in a similar struggle against a similar adversary. Fortunately the liturgical day was becoming progressively shorter the nearer we approached the year’s end which left me more time to ponder the fate of the little de Gray family.

  They appeared to have vanished into thin air. Edmundstown is no mean vill having as it does some four thousand or so souls within its walls, but even here it should not be possible for a family of three to disappear completely, especially with a warrant out for their arrest and everybody looking for them. They were strangers in the town and as far as I was aware knew nobody. So where had they gone? The only place I could think might hold a clue was their former lodgings in the abbot’s palace and so that was where I decided to look first.

  I waited until the sun had started its descent below the western horizon before making my move. It is a quiet period of the day when most of my brother monks are busy with work or study and hopefully would not notice me slip into the guest lodgings in the twilight. I took with me an oil lamp whose wick I had trimmed so that it did not burn too brightly. In this I was too successful for I stubbed my toe twice trying to negotiate the unfamiliar surroundings in the little light that I had left myself. I thought I heard someone breathing in the shadows, but when I looked it was just a grey rat that scuttled away at my approach. At last I managed to find the right staircase, the one where I’d had my last encounter with Effie, and climbed to the level the family had occupied twelve hours earlier.

  In the bedchamber the shutters were closed and I opened one of them to let in some of the light of the moon that was already rising - the Hunter’s Moon. I looked round. I didn’t really know what I was looking for – anything that might indicate where the family may have gone. There was very little to be seen. All appeared to be as it had the last time I was here although there were signs of a hasty departure: The bed where the Lady Adelle had lain nursing her baby was still there; the two settle beds, one for the husband and the other, the murdered girl’s bed.

  I was wasting my time. There was nothing here for me. I turned to leave. But as I did so something caught my eye. The breeze coming in from the open shutter had fanned the embers in the brazier and they started to glow, very slightly, red. I put my hand over the top of the frame and felt heat coming up. Someone had been here recently, certainly more recently than twelve hours ago. And even as I had the thought, I heard them – or rather the baby, just the tiniest whimper. I turned and the little hairs on the back of my neck tingled as I saw the outline of the family silhouetted against the far wall where they had been all along silently watching me: Raoul, Adelle and nestling in Adelle’s arms, little baby Alix.

  ‘We tried to leave the town, brother, but could not find a way through,’ replied Raoul to my query.

  ‘After your violent escape from gaol, you mean?’ I said pointedly. ‘And the pain and injury you caused the gaoler and the gatekeeper. Not to mention the poor fellows’ punishment in the stocks. My humiliation. Any moral advantage you might have had thrown away.’

  ‘I’m sorry about all that. Please don’t blame Adelle. She was only acting in my defence.’ He looked like a cornered creature at the end of his tether.

  ‘Yes, well,’ I said somewhat mollified. ‘In the light of what happened today you were probably right to run. You would have received no quarter from the prior or my lord de Saye. They are determined to have you. But why are you still here? You should be miles away by now.’

  ‘Every road out of Bury is being watched. It is impossible to get further than a mile or two. In the end we had no choice but to come back here.’

  ‘What every road?’ I asked in astonishment.

  He nodded, the weariness evident on his face even in the gloom. ‘Besides, we had to return because of Alix,’ he said indicating baby.

  ‘Why?’ I asked, stepping forward. ‘Is she ill?’

  ‘No, just hungry,’ said Raoul. ‘You have to understand, Effie…’ he flinched slightly at the mention of her name, ‘…was suckling her.’

  ‘Effie?’ This was an astonishing revelation. ‘Effie was to be the baby’s wet-nurse?’

  While I would be the first to admit that I knew little of the art of child rearing, one thing I did know was that a wet-nurse was just that: A sow brim-full of milk and usually a mother herself with a child of her own recently weaned. Effie had been none of these things. Indeed, she was little more than a child herself. Hardly a fitting choice.

  ‘What have you been feeding her on since…?’

  ‘Since Effie was murdered?’ said Raoul defiantly. He shook his head. ‘All we had was a little cow’s milk. But that has run out now. I will have to steal some from the abbey kitchen.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ I warned him. ‘Don’t add theft to your other crimes - alleged crimes.’

  He looked at me shyly. ‘Does that mean you do not believe I killed Effie?’

>   Did I? I still wasn’t certain. I brushed the question aside. ‘What I think hardly matters now. You have powerful enemies in the prior and Geoffrey de Saye. If they catch you, you will be returned to Norfolk to stand trial.’

  ‘No,’ he said backing away from me. ‘That must not happen.’

  I could see he was in genuinely distress. ‘Calm yourself, my son. We are a long way from that yet. But you must be careful.’

  I described the scene in the chapterhouse that morning and how between them the prior and Geoffrey de Saye had managed to damn him. He listened in silence. When I got to the bit about his cap he nodded.

  ‘I wondered what happened to that. I knew I had it when I went to the tavern. Whose hand did you say had hold of it?’

  ‘A vagabond called Hervey.’

  Raoul frowned thinking hard. ‘No, I’m sure I know nothing of him. But to be truthful there’s not much I do remember after I stepped into the tavern until I left your cell the following morning. I know I got very drunk - but I don’t know how. I had very little ale.’ He rubbed his brow as though trying to uncover some hidden secret lodged there. ‘Did I…kill this vagabond?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. He died in God’s good time not man’s. Nor did you mutilate him – unless you managed to sneak out of the lockup and back again without being seen. Once again the timing is all wrong.’

  ‘Once again,’ repeated Raoul.

  ‘Yes, once again. But that won’t help you, I’m afraid. No-one is listening to logic anymore. They only hear the message - which is that you murdered Effie. And since there is no other candidate -’

  Raoul shook his head in exasperation. ‘My head is thick. All is confusion.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ I said. ‘I’m pretty sure someone drugged your ale.’

  He looked genuinely shocked at that. ‘Who?’

  I shrugged. ‘The girl in the tavern?’

  But Raoul just shook his head. ‘No, not Netta.’

  ‘Oh, you remember her all right,’ I said glancing pointedly at Adelle. But the lady didn’t seem to notice. She was too concerned with the baby who, right on cue, woke up and began wailing. Adelle did her best to quieten the tiny thing but with little success. I was concerned someone might hear her and closed the shutters again. The cry of a baby would surely give them away instantly.