Holy Blood

by Kim Fleet

  ‘Hello, Gabor,’ she said. ‘I was only talking about Hungary the other day. And talking about that café we were discussing, the one in Budapest.’

  ‘Ah yes, the café, with the best coffee in the world!’

  ‘And the best honey pastries,’ she said. ‘The one in Oktogon Square.’

  Gabor kissed his fingertips. ‘The thing that makes me sick for home. Those honey pastries from Oktogon Square.’

  ‘Good to see you, Gabor. Maybe I’ll see if that café will do international orders.’

  She trotted up the stairs and headed to room 204. Blue and white police tape was strung across the doorway. Checking the corridor was empty, she pulled out her library card, slotted it between the door and the frame, tugged the door towards her sharply, and it swung open. She ducked under the tape and went inside, closing the door swiftly behind her.

  The curtains were open but the room was gloomy. She switched on the light and took a good look. A large brownish stain on the carpet, with a blackish stain next to it. The bed had been stripped: no doubt the police were swabbing it for bodily fluids. Splodges of fingerprint dust coated every surface. Eden pulled on a pair of latex gloves and set about re-examining the room where Lewis Jordan met his death.

  She started by the door, sliding open the drawers of the bedside table and stirring the contents before moving on to the wardrobe, the bathroom and the minibar. The teabag in the bin had dried and hardened into a lump, stuck to the empty sweet packet. The heavy stone lamp she’d noticed when she discovered Lewis’s body was missing. Bagged by the police, she assumed, along with Lewis’s belongings. Was the lamp the murder weapon?

  Crawling on her hands and knees, Eden scoured every inch of carpet. There were indentations in the pile beneath the small table, slightly to the left. She lifted it and fitted the table’s legs into the dents. It matched exactly: the table had been moved.

  Carefully she checked the rest of the room. No other pieces of furniture had been shifted out of position. Casting a last look around the room, she snapped off her latex gloves, peeped out into the corridor to make sure the coast was clear, and made her escape.

  ‘Hardly any crashing around after he put in his drops,’ Eden told Aidan once back at her flat. ‘Only one thing had been moved, and that’s a little table.’

  ‘So the killer poisoned the drops and then hit him over the head?’ Aidan said.

  ‘Why would you bother doing both?’ Eden said. ‘My guess is he was hit with the lamp, which suggests it wasn’t premeditated. Poisoning the drops was definitely planned, and it could only have been done by someone who knew him. If they meant to kill him, they could have put cyanide in the drops.’

  ‘I’ve found something odd on the CCTV,’ Aidan said. ‘Someone who went in through the front door at eight, and left through the staff door at ten thirty.’

  ‘Show me.’

  He flicked through the DVD until he got to the right part and pressed play. A man entered the hotel just before eight, smartly dressed in a suit and overcoat, and carrying a leather briefcase. He didn’t leave the hotel again, and Eden had assumed he was a guest in the hotel. But when they switched to view the CCTV that covered the staff entrance, there he was, leaving in a hurry and clutching his briefcase to his chest.

  ‘Is he anywhere else on the CCTV?’

  ‘Not that I can see.’

  ‘Play it again, Sam,’ Eden said, grabbing a handful of crisps and flopping back against the sofa cushions. ‘Gabor said someone with a briefcase waited in the bar for a date to turn up. He could have sneaked out the side entrance if he was embarrassed about bumping into her.’

  ‘A blind date he didn’t like the look of?’ Aidan suggested.

  He started the CCTV coverage right at the beginning, and they watched the comings and goings at the Imperial from 10 a.m. the day Lewis was murdered, flicking through it frame by frame.

  ‘I’ve seen better movies,’ Aidan said.

  ‘Hold it!’ Eden sat forwards on the settee. ‘Go back a bit. Now play. Stop!’

  The picture was grainy but she could make out the person going into the staff entrance of the Imperial Hotel at five past five on the evening Lewis Jordan was killed. The pale stripes in her hair were distinctive.

  ‘What the hell is she doing there?’ Eden breathed.

  It was Gwen, the receptionist at Simon Hughes’ office. The woman who told her Lewis Jordan should have been drowned at birth.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Winchcombe, September 1571

  Whatever the physic was that Brother John gave him, it sent him to sleep as certainly as if he’d dropped magic dust into his eyes. For once his sleep was dreamless: no creeping childish hands or merry dark eyes to haunt him that night, and he awoke refreshed. Lazarus shuffled out of bed and tested his gammy leg. A groan from the wound, but not the scream of pain that had accompanied every step for the past weeks.

  Hobbling downstairs, he found the innkeeper awake and busy: the glare he treated him to yesterday had obviously hit its mark, and the fellow was brisk and efficient enough. He ate in the parlour at the front of the inn, overlooking the main street. The tradespeople were stirring, throwing back shutters and dragging baskets of goods outside. While he watched, a dark figure rode past on a chestnut mare. Lazarus stared after the figure, saw it turn to call greetings, and recognised the profile with a jolt. Brother John.

  He stuffed the bread and meat inside his shirt and swilled back the pot of ale in two gulps, then hurried from the inn and fetched his horse. The animal was sluggish with age, but the main street was long and straight, and he easily kept the figure in sight. Beyond Winchcombe, Brother John urged his horse to a canter and headed north, Lazarus in pursuit. After about eight miles, he turned to enter through a pillared gateway and trotted up to a fine manor house built in the old style.

  Lazarus lurked by the pillars and watched as Brother John dismounted and handed his reins to a boy of about twelve, pale and skinny as a sapling. Then Brother John went into the house through the main door. Not the kitchen, he noted with interest. And the boy coming to meet him suggested he was expected. A wealthy patron in need of physic? But surely there was physic to be had closer than this?

  He clambered down from his horse and walked up to the house and went round the back to the stables. The boy he’d seen take Brother John’s horse was there, brushing the sweat from the animal.

  ‘Boy!’

  The lad jumped and balked when he saw Lazarus’s face, but soon twitched his features into a blank mask.

  ‘Master?’

  ‘Boy, I am ashamed that I am lost. What place is this?’

  ‘Ashford Grange.’ He looked astonished that anyone could fail to know this place. ‘Where are you heading?’

  ‘I am servant to Master John. My horse took a stone and he went on ahead.’ He looked at the mare as if for the first time. ‘Ah! God favours me, that’s his horse! I have found him!’

  ‘He is inside.’

  ‘Who is it that is sick in this house?’

  ‘Sick? None is sick.’

  ‘I beg pardon, I assumed that Master John was here to tend someone who ails.’

  The boy frowned. ‘John Ashford? He is with his family inside.’

  It took a moment for the words to sink in. John Ashford. He had never thought of him as anything other than Brother John, but all men hail from somewhere. Even him. He looked again at the manor house and recalled Brother John’s learning. A younger son, farmed out to the Church, it was a familiar story.

  ‘And you, boy, what do they call you?’

  ‘Edgar.’ The boy’s eyes darted to his face and away again, as if he couldn’t believe the wounds there and had to keep checking his eyes didn’t deceive him.

  ‘Can I get a drink, boy?’

  Edgar showed him to the kitchen door, and told the cook there that he was Master John’s servant. The cook went to the buttery to fetch ale for him. He gulped it thirstily, watching her, and
when she busied away into the herb garden, he slipped out of the room and into a corridor. It skirted the great hall and led to a staircase to the upper chambers. The house was unnaturally quiet. Apart from Edgar and the cook he had seen no other servants. There should have been maids scurrying along with piles of bedlinen and pails, boys fetching in firewood, and men stationed at the main door. Lazarus’s senses prickled.

  He loped up the stairs and headed along the passageway. A small door opened onto a minstrels’ gallery, the screens to the great hall closed but rackety enough to allow the sound of voices to drift through. Lazarus insinuated himself into a dark corner and pressed his eye to a crack in the screen. Below, he could make out a large rectangular room hung with tapestries.

  There were five people in the room: Brother John, a man a few years older than him and sharing the same large nose and protuberant blue eyes, a young man of thirty, an old woman in her sixties, and a priest. Lazarus caught his breath when he saw the priest. While he watched, the priest opened a leather bag and pulled out an altar stone, which he set down on a table, resting on it the communion vessels, the bread and wine. When he held up the bread and declared it transformed into Christ’s body, Lazarus shrank back, afraid.

  Here was treason. All the ways of the old religion were outlawed, and there were many tripping over themselves to turn in neighbours and cast doubt on honourable men. The hangman and the fires were kept busy scouring the land free of the pestilence of popery. Should anyone betray them, everyone in the house would be hanged, from Edgar the stable lad to him, peeping at heresy. The priest would be torn to pieces on the rack to reveal his fellow Jesuits. Cold fear sluiced his back. He could face a man with a sword in his hand and murder in his eyes, but secret dealings in empty houses clotted his blood with terror.

  When the Mass concluded, the priest packed up his vestments and plate and the group moved to sit together at the far end of the room.

  ‘We must act swiftly,’ the older man said, ‘the roads will be impassable soon. We must strike while the sea is in our favour.’

  ‘We can only act when everything is in place,’ Brother John said. ‘Our supporters in the north?’

  ‘Ready to march on London,’ the youth said.

  ‘And our Spanish friends?’

  ‘Eager for the fight.’

  ‘And our friends at home?’

  A silence fell. Brother John glanced from one to the other, his brow creasing. ‘Our friends hesitate?’

  ‘They are afraid,’ the woman said.

  ‘But to do God’s will!’

  She shrugged and looked to the older man. ‘Husband?’

  ‘I have made certain promises to ensure their loyalty,’ he said. He pulled a paper out and handed it to Brother John. ‘They require the certainty of eternal salvation,’ he added.

  Lazarus shuffled closer to the screen, trying to glimpse the paper. He could make out only close writing on a scrap.

  Brother John studied the scrap. ‘The Blood,’ he said, quietly.

  The woman nodded.

  ‘How am I to gain entry to their houses?’

  ‘You will take physic to them, uncle,’ the youth said. ‘We’ve agreed the ailments that require your skill. They’re already acting the part, and await your visit.’

  Brother John pressed his fingertips together. ‘And this will guarantee their support?’

  ‘Yes, uncle.’

  ‘And the Queen herself, has word been sent to her?’

  ‘There’s a servant there who can get letters to her lady-in-waiting. She knows she will soon be free and in her rightful place.’

  Brother John was silent for a moment. ‘Then there is no time to lose.’

  Lazarus slid back from the screen and crept back down the stairs and outside. Walking round towards the stables, he saw Edgar lurking beneath the window of the great hall, peering in. He drew back to watch. The boy spied for a few more minutes then slipped away, keeping his head well down so he would not betray his presence. Edgar did not return to the stables but scuttled off across the field behind the house. Going to meet a sweetheart, or on a more sinister mission, Lazarus wondered, following the boy at a distance.

  The lad kept clear of the paths around the house, taking for his route the bank beside a stream. Lazarus shadowed him, keeping sufficient distance that he would not be betrayed by creaking twigs or restless grass. After a distance, the boy plunged into a thicket, dark with overhanging branches. Further on, the trees thinned to a clearing, and here he stopped and loitered next to a tree. Lazarus lurked behind a thick oak and waited. After a few moments, another man revealed himself, peeling himself away from a tree where he had stood disguised as shadow play. A man who knew his trade, Lazarus thought.

  ‘What have you for me?’ he asked the boy.

  ‘A priest in the house, and they heard Mass.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘James Ashford and his wife, his brother John Ashford, and his son Joseph.’

  ‘Who is the priest?’

  ‘Anthony Newbury.’

  ‘They heard Mass?’

  ‘And talked of freeing the Queen.’

  ‘Of Scots?’

  ‘They didn’t mention her by name, but said she would soon be free. They have friends in the north and in Spain who are ready to act.’

  The man dug out a purse and handed it to the youth. ‘Keep watching, boy,’ he said, and melted away into the trees.

  Lazarus shrank back against the oak as the boy passed, but he was too pleased with the purse of coins to look about him. He gave the lad several minutes then headed back to Ashford Grange himself.

  When he turned into the stable yard, the boy was brushing his own bowed nag.

  ‘You tend a horse well, boy,’ he said.

  The boy nodded and flushed, unused to compliments.

  ‘I will take my horse now,’ Lazarus said, seizing the reins.

  ‘You’re not waiting for Master John?’

  Lazarus climbed into the saddle, his wounds screaming. The ride here and hunkering down in the minstrels’ gallery had taken their toll. ‘He has sent me ahead with a message,’ he said, kicking the horse’s flank and cantering out of the yard. He kept up the pace until he was away from Ashford Grange and back on the highway, then brought the horse to a walk. The animal’s sides heaved in and out, exhausted by the day’s ride. They ambled back to Winchcombe and had just reached the inn when Brother John rode past on his chestnut mare, his face set and his eyes staring straight ahead.

  ‘You play a dangerous game, my friend,’ Lazarus muttered to himself, and turned away.

  The next morning, Lazarus was awake and up before anyone was stirring in the inn. He unbolted the door and crept out into the dark street and made his way out of Winchcombe and towards Hailes Abbey. He slipped through the ruined gatehouse like a shadow and headed towards the church. The stones had been torn down, like the stripped carcass of a slaughtered bull – reduced to bare ribs and nubs of gristle. He stood now amongst the bones.

  The walls were smudged with paint here and there, a ghost of its former self. The altar that had held the Holy Blood remained as a solid lump of stone, but the screens and curtains and gilding were all gone. As he stood there, he felt the press of pilgrims at his back, smelt the sweat and dust of garments that had journeyed long to be here, heard the cries of grief and awe as the Blood was revealed.

  When he opened his eyes, he was shocked for a moment to be confronted by the jagged broken walls of the church, and a shard of anguish penetrated his heart. He circled the ruins and came to stand in the spot the trunk had occupied, the trunk that held the Holy Blood. There was nothing there now to show it had sheltered so sacred a relic, just a square of muddy grass in a pile of broken stones.

  Lazarus ducked out of the back of the church and crept towards Brother John’s cottage. A thin light shone through the cracks in the shutters. He squatted down behind a pile of shattered masonry and settled himself to watch.

  He didn’t hav
e long to wait. The light was extinguished and the door opened. Brother John slung a pack across his shoulders and went to the field, whistling softly. The chestnut mare came to him, nuzzling at his hands. He saddled her up and was away, galloping across the fields towards the highway.

  Lazarus eased open the door of the cottage and stepped inside. Dawn was chasing away the night and he opened the shutters wide to let in the light. He set to work, fanning the pages of books and Bibles, taking down every bottle and jar from the shelves, stripping the bedlinen and lifting the mattress and running his fingers between the ropes of the bed.

  The Holy Blood was nowhere to be found. In the pack that bounced on Brother John’s back, no doubt. But hidden at the bottom of a jar of dried rosemary was a scrap of paper folded many times into a tiny square. Lazarus smoothed it out and took it to the door to examine it. Squinting in the weak light, he read a list of names, houses, and illnesses. The paper that John’s brother had handed him the day before, the names of supporters, fellow traitors.

  He refolded the paper and slipped it into his glove, poking it deep inside one of the empty fingers. Then he returned the cottage to rights, using the circles of dust to replace the jars and bottles exactly so Brother John would suspect nothing amiss. Finally, he fastened the shutters and pulled the door closed behind him. Armed with information that could send Brother John to the scaffold, he went back to the inn.

  He was no stranger to killing for love.

  He met Theresa in the Holy Land. She was every man’s and no man’s and he loved her instantly for her dusky skin and dark, mischievous eyes.

  He was stumbling from a tavern one black night when he heard muffled screams, and followed the sound through a maze of tiny alleyways to a stinking yard. A man built of muscle and bone had a woman, fragile as a bird, pressed up against the wall, his thick forearm against her neck. She had a knife to his throat.

  Lazarus sobered in a trice and ducked back into the alley for a weapon. A length of wood, not sturdy enough to kill, but sufficient to stun. He hefted it in his hands and ran back into the alleyway, striking the man on the back of his head.