‘Tomelinus?’
He pulled his hood back just enough to reveal his grinning features. ‘How did thee know it were me brotherliness, pip-pip-tirrip?’
‘Divine inspiration.’ I took him to one side. ‘Tom, why are you still here? I thought we agreed, as soon as you were fit enough you would leave Acre. It’s not safe for you here, especially after yesterday. Anyone abroad is fair game for every knife-wielding monster-slayer in the town, even dressed as a monk - especially dressed as a monk.’ I looked at him. ‘Why are you dressed as a monk, by the way?’
‘My clothes were rags.’
‘So I saw,’ I said remembering the spectre rising up from the grave.
‘Do ye like it?’ He did a twirl. ‘Wifrey gave it me. He’s taken quite a shine to me. He doesn’t mind my ticks. Says he has a cousin similarly afflicted - what does thee think on that, pip-pip?’
‘I think it’s admirable, but robes are for monks not their servants.’
‘That’s just it, brother. I’ve decided to convert.’
‘Convert?’
‘Aye. I’m going to retake my vows, pip-pip-tirrip-pip.’
‘Oh, my dear fellow, that’s marvellous!’ I said throwing my arms around him. But then I held him away: ‘This isn’t another trick, is it?’
‘No trick brother. Wifrey is helping me with my vows - or he will once priory is free of its present strife.’
‘Yes, well you’re as much to blame for that as anyone.’ I lowered my voice. ‘You know, don’t you, that you caused great distress by your antics yesterday?’
He looked disappointed. ‘You knew it were me?’
‘Of course I knew it was you. Fortunately nobody else seems to have done - yet. They all thought you were the monster. You scattered them in terror. And do you wonder, staggering about like that?’
‘That weren’t my fault. I were groggy. That whack on the head.’ He touched the bandage on his brow.
‘You need a brain for that not a head stuffed with straw. Let me see.’ I delicately lifted the bandage. There was an encrustation of blood sealing the wound and the angry red puffiness had turned a healthy pink. ‘You’re lucky they didn’t try to take your head off. Next time they might. You do know what’s been occurring here don’t you?’
‘I know that yon baggage has succumbed to her nature.’
‘Jane you mean. Yes well, she’s past suffering now. Perhaps she can at last join her Ralf in a better place. We can only pray it is so.’
‘Or join him in his new career, pip-pip?’ he grinned.
‘You don’t believe that any more than I do.’
‘I’ve seen stranger things.’
‘Oh yes, I was forgetting: the Dogmen of the Black Forest.’
‘Closer than that, brotherliness. I mean here in yon spindly covert, pip-pip-pip.’ He nodded in the direction of the vineyard, the same direction that the grave-digger had indicated Ralf’s body had been taken.
I felt a frisson of excitement. ‘Why, what have you seen?’
‘A mystery, brotherliness.’ He started walking backwards and twirling his hands like the sails of a windmill. ‘Follow me and prepare to be amazed!’
We left the precinct via a small wicket gate and climbed the slope above the priory, Tomelinus leading the way. He skirted up past the vineyard and on through the orchard, barren of fruit at this time of the year and looking like a tangle of witches’ fingers. At the top of the slope we paused to catch breath.
‘Well?’
With another elaborate gesture he indicated a small stone building at the edge of the priory grounds next to the road. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen it. I’d noticed it before on my way to and from the castle without knowing what it was.
‘It’s the old chapel,’ he said. ‘And for the present old Tom’s home, pip-pip.’
‘I was wondering where you’d been sleeping.’
At least here he was off the street and in some kind of shelter - a daily challenge for any vagrant I should imagine, especially at this time of the year. But nowhere can be totally safe, and as if to prove it a sudden crack of a twig sent Tomelinus instantly dropping to the ground and pulling me down with him.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Ssh!’ He put a finger on my lips. ‘Wait here.’
Before I could stop him he disappeared. Someone - or some thing - was out there. Some vigilante Revenant-hunter perhaps? Or the fiend itself, perhaps? I shuddered at the thought. Suddenly I felt very cold and alone. Maybe I wasn’t as immune to the tales as I thought I was. I listened but all I could hear was the thump of my own heart in my chest.
I waited. Another snap. Then something came a crashing through the bushes like a boar. I yelped and jumped backwards just as something landed a foot away from me.
‘Holy Mother of God! Tomelinus, what in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing?’
‘Goat,’ he said. ‘It’s all right, it’s gone. They can be dangerous creatures, goats. Give you a nasty bump up the backside.’ He grinned toothily at me. ‘Did you think I were the monster, brotherliness - pip-pip-tirrip?’
‘No of course not! I was fearful for your safety, that’s all. Damn smelly things goats.’ I shivered. ‘Come on, show me this home of yours before I freeze to death.’
The old chapel was a simple, oblong-shaped room sitting on the corner of the priory grounds and the road to South Acre. I have no idea what its original purpose was. If I had to guess I’d say it was somewhere for the monks to pray while the church was being constructed. Or perhaps it was a hermitage. Whatever its original function it was now being used as a storeroom mostly for the tools needed to tend in the orchard and vineyard. There were pruning knives, wicker baskets, water butts, bales of straw, lengths of cord as well as a pile of discarded monks’ habits which, I couldn’t help noticing, were not dissimilar to the one Tomelinus was wearing.
He had wisely avoided using the main door from the road so that from the outside the place appeared undisturbed. We got in through a hole in the south east corner. It looked as though the goat had got in the same way and made a bit of a mess. Peat moss was strewn all over the floor which Tomelinus hastily swept up like a proud housewife. Otherwise he had made the place reasonably comfortable with a bed of sacking and some of the monks’ habits as blankets.
‘Quite a little home from home.’
‘At least it’s dry,’ he said still scooping up moss.
‘Once you’re fully adopted by the Cluniacs you won’t need places like this. You’ll sleep in the dormitory with the other monks.’
‘That blessed day cannot come soon enough, brother, pip-pip-pip.’
‘So,’ I said looking around, ‘what is it I have come to see? Something amazing you said.’
He did that thing that conjurers do with their hands to make eggs disappear before your eyes. He blew on his fingers: ‘Something…puff…and nothing.’
I frowned. ‘Look Tom, I’m weary. No tricks now. Remember your promise.’
‘That’s just it, brother, a trick is what it is - but not one of mine this time. A disappearing act worthy of a conjurer in Michaelmas fair.’
I frowned shaking my head. ‘You’re not making any sense.’
He clasped his hands behind his back to indicate he was being serious. ‘Two nights since two men came here carrying a parcel.’
I felt my stomach lurch but kept my voice steady. ‘This is a storeroom. I imagine people bring parcels here all the time.’
‘At midnight?’
‘All right. What sort of parcel?’
He shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Couldn’t see.’
‘Well, who were the men?’
‘Don’t know that either.’
‘Tomelinus, you’re not being very coherent.’
‘I don’t know, brotherliness, because I were a mouse.’ He crouched small to demonstrate. ‘When thee lives as I do thee learns invisibility. Thee hides in corners, under bushes, up trees - and thee does not move, not e
ven to scratch thee-sen, ’til danger is passed. It were also black as pitch - and they had no lights. But I heard two voices, and two sets of feet. Whatever it were they brought it were big and it were heavy for two of them. They fought wi’ it. They struggled to get it in through yon goat hole. They huffed and they puffed. They fiddled and they faddled. They ripped and cut and swore. It sounded like they were moving the great stones at Stonehenge. Then after a few minutes all went quiet and they left.’
I waited. ‘For heaven’s sake, Tomelinus, what did they bring?’
He put up his hand for patience. ‘I waited a good long while to make sure they’d really gone, then I crept out to have a look, pip-pip.’
I was almost beside myself by now. ‘And?’
He shrugged. ‘Nowt.’
I felt utterly deflated. ‘What, nothing at all?’
‘Whatever it were it left no trace.’
‘But it can’t just disappear - if it was as big as you say.’
‘Look around, brotherliness. I have not touched a thing.’
I looked but there was nothing that I could see either. Where would you hide a body?
He giggled. ‘Told thee it wor a mystery.’
‘Trunk!’ I said. ‘Maybe they put him…it…in a trunk. Is there one?’
He made a low sweeping gesture. ‘Be my guest.’
I walked around the chapel - it didn’t take me long - looking for a cupboard, a chest, anywhere that might conceal a body. But there was nowhere.
I clicked my fingers. ‘Cellar?’
He shook his head. ‘Ground’s solid as a rock. There isn’t one or I’d be in it.’
‘A hidden door, maybe?’
‘In a chapel?’
I looked up at the rafters ‘And you say there’s nothing here? Nothing new?’
‘Nowt but the smell of that old goat - and this.’
He went over to an old bale of straw. Neatly folded on top was a linen cloth. I recognized it immediately. It was the shroud that Ralf’s body had been wrapped in, the one embroidered so elaborately and beautifully by Sister Angelina at Saint George’s and in which we had transported Ralf across two counties from Thetford to Tottington to Acre on Clytemnestra’s long-suffering back.
But of the body it contained there was no sign.
Everything Tomelinus told me seemed to tie in with what the grave-digger had said: two men - monks according to the grave-digger, although Tomelinus couldn’t confirm it - exhumed Ralf’s corpse from the cemetery, carried it up through the vineyard and deposited it in the old chapel. But there the trail ended. The monks could have taken him away again, but why would they go to all that trouble just to unwrap him? Even accepting the unlikely possibility that Ralf was indeed able to get up and walk of his own accord surely Tom would have heard him leave. And why bring him there in the first place? Try as I might I could see no logical explanation. Maybe that monk at the graveside was right after all and Ralf did indeed “fly on Satan’s breath”. I was beginning to wonder.
I decided to take the shroud back with me to the prior’s lodge and confront Samson with it convinced he must know what was going on. But when I got there I found the place in uproar with servants rushing about packing everything up. At the heart of the tumult was Samson barking out his orders.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked as I walked in.
‘We’re leaving.’
I stepped aside for a man carrying Samson’s vestments. ‘This is a bit sudden isn’t it?’
‘I’ve discussed it with Maynus,’ said Samson. ‘There’s nothing more we can do here. Our continued presence is becoming an embarrassment. And Lord William wants us gone. We’ve outstayed our welcome. It’s best for all that we go as soon as possible.’
‘But father, how can we leave when Ralf’s body is still missing?’
He stopped. ‘Oh, haven’t you heard? It’s been found.’
I nearly fell forward. ‘Ralf’s body has been found? Where? When?’
Samson gestured to Maynus to answer while he continued packing.
‘Brother Lambert found it,’ said the prior clearing his throat. ‘As to where…’ He gave one of his exaggerated Gallic shrugs.
‘I can guess. In the old chapel.’
Samson stopped what he was doing. ‘What do you know about the old chapel?’
I recounted what the grave-digger and Tomelinus had told me - without mentioning names.
‘I thought we agreed you were not to leave the priory grounds?’
‘The chapel is in the priory grounds - just.’
Samson shook his head disconsolately at me. ‘This vagrant - I take it he’s your friend Tomelinus again?’
‘Possibly,’ I conceded.
‘And you say he heard the body being deposited? How exactly does one hear a body?’
‘He heard them struggling with it.’
‘I see. And when these monks had left, he crept out of his hidey-hole, this charlatan gong-scourer who tricks people with magic stones in soup and frogs in boxes, to discover the body lying there?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Oh? Why not?’
‘It had gone.’
Samson snorted. ‘How convenient. I doubt the body was ever in the old chapel.’
‘This was found there.’ I held up the shroud letting it unfold dramatically to the floor.
Samson fingered the material. ‘Very nice. It looks valuable. I expect your charlatan friend stole it. Still, it will come in handy when we leave.’
It took me a moment to follow what he was saying. ‘You mean you want us to move the body - again?’
Samson held out his hands. ‘Well he can’t stay here, can he? Not after what’s happened.’
I pursed my lips. ‘Where is it now?’
Samson indicated Maynus again.
‘We thought it best to place them in the priory church before the high altar,’ said the prior, ‘where they can come to little harm - and where they can do little harm.’
‘They? We’re taking both bodies? Jane and Ralf?’
‘It’s what they would have wanted,’ said Samson. ‘Don’t worry. The prior has offered us the loan of a cart. We won’t have to struggle with mules this time.’
‘This is madness!’
‘Not at all, it makes perfect sense. We’re removing ourselves and the cause of the distress at one and the same time. I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss, Walter. You were right all along. Ralf should never have been brought in the first place. And I don’t blame you entirely for Jane’s death -’
‘Blame me for her death?’
‘Of course. If you hadn’t been messing around with the grave and got the poor woman fired up she might still be alive. So now we will return with them both and leave the poor folk of Acre to get on with their lives. Maynus is going to hold a public service in the priory church this afternoon. As soon as that’s over we will be off.’
‘You mean us to travel today?’
‘No point in delaying. I’m sure everyone will be glad to see the back of us.’
Too fast, it was all happening too fast again. I felt I was being catapulted along as I was before. This time I was going to make a stand.
‘No father.’
‘What?’
‘We are not leaving today - at least, I’m not.’
Samson’s eyes narrowed. ‘Must I remind you yet again of your oath of obedience?’
I was beyond oaths. All I knew was that I couldn’t go along with this. I was quite determined. He must have seen it in my face. I was digging in my heels. It was up to him to make the next move. For a moment no-one said anything while the servants got on quietly with their work tiptoeing around us.
Maynus coughed lightly from his corner. ‘Maybe Frère Walter is right, Sam. It’s getting late. The weather looks…inclement to say the least. There is no sense in risking life and limb for the sake of a few more hours. It will take a while to drag out our old wagon and make it properly road-worthy in any case. L
et us all get a good night’s sleep. God willing in the morning we will wake refreshed with clearer heads - and a whole day to get to Thetford.’ He beamed at each of us in turn.
Samson continued to glare at me but eventually he nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said slowly. ‘But we leave tomorrow morning at first light. Agreed?’
Of course I understand now fully why he was so anxious for us to leave that day and had I known the whole truth I might even have agreed with him. He really had only himself to blame. But what neither of us could have known was that those few extra hours would have consequences far beyond our petty little squabble - and very nearly cost us both our lives.
Chapter 23
IN DEADLY PERSUIT
Word of the service spread quickly in a town anxious for answers, and well before the appointed hour the nave of the priory church was packed with townsfolk coughing, shuffling and snuffling nervously. I had expected the Warennes to send a representative flunky just to keep an eye on their interests. What I hadn’t anticipated was for them all to turn up in force. Lord William led the way with all three sisters escorted this time by their husbands.
And what a curious bunch they were: Maud’s husband, Henri d’Estouteville, a decade her junior and something of a dandy. Isabel’s Gilbert de l’Aigle, considerably older than Isabel and looking every bit the old campaigner. Finally Adela’s cuckolded husband William Fitz William seemed barely out of the nursery. Standing dutifully to one side and looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth was young Richard. I glared at him across the width of the nave but if he noticed he gave no indication. Nicholas was nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t surprise me. Given his propensity to embarrass I doubted whether he was often seen in public. No sign either of the countess who presumably remained in the castle with the bed-ridden earl.
Taking centre stage in this little drama and lying on trestle tables in front of the altar were its two chief players: Jane, whose thawed-out remains had been cleaned up and wrapped in a plain linen shroud, and next to her the newly-recovered body of Ralf enveloped once again in Sister Angelina’s beautifully embroidered shroud. You could be forgiven for thinking they might at any moment sit up and take a bow. Given Ralf’s recent history I was slightly nervous that he might do just that. Nearby and overseeing all with inscrutable passivity sat Brother Lambert. I should dearly have liked to know what was going on behind those impenetrable grey eyes of his.
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