Not even Oswin had been able to think of a convincing explanation for the two bodies. But in truth it scarcely mattered, for the sergeant-at-arms, though well used to seeing the worst depravities that a sinful city could conspire to produce, was so shocked by the sight of those two corpses, one fresh, the other rotting, that if St Michael himself had appeared with flaming sword and attempted to defend the three clerics, the sergeant would have arrested him as well.
Before they could even open their mouths to protest, all three Black Crows found their arms bound behind them so tightly they were in danger of losing both limbs, and they were being marched, at sword point, back to the city gate. Once inside the walls, they were taken at once to the Bishop’s Palace, opposite the Cathedral, for clergy could neither be detained nor punished by the civil courts. Which, the sergeant muttered beneath his breath, was a gross injustice, for he’d have willingly hanged them from the castle walls himself, for what he had witnessed was surely more foul and depraved than any crime a layman could commit.
There was nothing to be done that night, so all three men were marched to separate cells and ushered, none too gently, inside. Oswin found himself alone in a tiny cell below ground, with nowhere to sleep save in the straw on the floor. There was a single narrow window so high up on the wall, that its only real function was to add to the prisoner’s misery by admitting freezing winds, rain and snow, and the occasional piss of passing dogs or choir boys, the latter finding it highly entertaining to compete as to which boy could most accurately drench the incumbent below.
Oswin sat huddled against the wall, his fingers pressed to his forehead, trying to make sense of all that had happened. If only he could work out how or why the second corpse had come to be in the chapel, he might be able to come up with some sort of defence. But he couldn’t. Only the fact that he was sitting in the cell convinced him that what he’d seen hadn’t been some ghastly nightmare or vision. He was still trying in vain to reason it out when he heard a jangle of keys outside the stout oak door. He clambered stiffly to his feet as the door opened.
The gaoler, a grizzled man with a belly as round as a farrowing sow and tunic that bore testimony to every meal he’d ever eaten, regarded his prisoner in silence for several long minutes, as if Oswin was some unknown creature he’d never before encountered.
Finally, he jerked his head towards the passage. ‘Sent for you, so they have.’
Without warning, the gaoler reached in and grabbed Oswin’s arm, gripping it so tightly that Oswin was sure he was going to snap the bone.
As he dragged Oswin up the stairs at the end of the passage and out under the grey skies, the gaoler added cheerfully, ‘You’re the first. Means you can get your story in afore the others. Mind you, that’s not always a good thing. If the others gainsay you, you’ll look like a liar, so you will. If they think you’re lying, they’re bound to think you’re guilty. So what you been up to, then?’
‘Nothing!’ Oswin said hotly. ‘And there’s no need to break my arm. I can’t exactly run off, can I?’
The courtyard was closed in on all four sides by high-walled buildings and all the doors were firmly shut.
‘If I was you, I’d admit to whatever they say you’ve done. Throw yourself on their mercy. Swear you repent. Go at lot easier on you, they will, if they think you’re contrite. You deny it and they’ll come down as hard as an axe on wood, ’cause that’s the sin of pride, so it is, refusing to admit you’re a miserable worm.’
They’d reached a narrow archway in one wall, which opened onto a spiral staircase. Here, the gaoler was finally forced to let go of Oswin’s arm, since they couldn’t climb the stairs side by side. He flung Oswin in front of him with such force, he fell onto the steps, banging his knees. The gaoler prodded him to his feet and he limped up the stairs, rubbing his bruised arm, his stomach knotting tighter with each step.
At the top, the gaoler reached around him and rapped on the door at the head of the stairs. The mumble from inside might have been, ‘Come in’ or ‘Go away,’ but the gaoler evidently took it for the former. He twisted the iron ring and, once more gripping Oswin’s arm as tightly as if it was a live eel, propelled him into the room.
Oswin found himself in a richly decorated chamber. The plaster above the wainscoting was painted with colourful scenes from the life of the blond and bearded Edward the Confessor. Gold leaf glinted on his crown and on the ring he was holding out to a beggar.
Below the painting and behind a long, heavy oak table sat three men, who Oswin recognised as the Subdean William de Rouen, Precentor Paul de Monte Florum and, to his dismay, the Treasurer of the Cathedral, Thomas of Louth. Ranged along the table were platters of mutton olives, roasted quail, and spiced pork meatballs set amid flagons and goblets. At the sight of the meats, Oswin’s stomach began to growl. Supper the night before was now but a distant memory.
The only other occupant of the chamber was a pallid man who was hunched over a small table set in front of the casement, angled so that the light from the window might best illuminate a stack of parchments on it. He had the wary look of an ill-used hound.
‘Here he is, Fathers,’ the gaoler announced cheerfully. ‘This ’un’s Father Oswin.’
‘We know who he is.’ The subdean impatiently flapped his hand at the gaoler, his florid jowls wobbling, like the wattle of a chicken. ‘You may go. I’ll toll the bell when Father Oswin’s to be taken back to his cell.’
Oswin had thought his spirits could sink no lower, but they did. It seemed his superiors had already made up their minds, before a single question had even been asked, that he was not simply going to be released.
‘That,’ Father William continued, indicating the man at the writing table, ‘is my clerk. I will conduct this interview in English, but he will take note of your answers and later translate them into good Latin, so that they may be entered into the record books.’
Subdean William had become even more punctilious since the death of the dean, Henry Mansfield, a week earlier. It was widely rumoured that he was expecting to be appointed dean himself now that the post was vacant, and he was determined that nothing should prevent that. Oswin knew he would be far from pleased that his nephew had got entangled with one corpse, never mind two. Even a whiff of scandal would not reflect well on Father William if it was thought he couldn’t keep his own family in order.
Father Paul selected a mutton olive from the platter and delicately bit into it. He had one eye that wandered off at a slight angle so that it was hard to tell where he was looking. Strictly speaking, as precentor he was the senior in rank after the dean and should have temporarily assumed the dean’s duties following his death, but everyone knew Father Paul had little interest or aptitude for anything other than his music and was quite content to let Father William take over the role until a new man should be appointed.
But it was the treasurer, Thomas of Louth, whose presence most worried Oswin. The disciplining of clerics was not normally something he needed to involve himself in. Was he here because he’d discovered the cross was missing? He was a man who, it was whispered, had never heard of the concept of forgiveness or mercy, and to add to his fearsome reputation he had a puckered white scar that ran from his temple to his chin, twisting his mouth into a perpetual snarl. There were as many stories circulating in Cathedral Close as to how he’d come by that as there were tongues to whisper them, and each of the tales was more chilling than the last.
‘So, Father Oswin,’ Father William said, ‘suppose you begin by explaining to us what the three of you were doing in the disused chapel after the curfew bell.’
Oswin, though he knew the question was coming, still hesitated. No better explanation had come to him than the one he had tried to give the sergeant-at-arms the night before.
‘We’d gone there to say Mass as an act of piety to pray for the souls of the dead family. We heard, from your nephew,’ he added pointedly, ‘that the family who had endowed the chapel had died out and there was no one
left to pray for their souls in purgatory.’
‘Did someone offer you money for these prayers, a family friend, perhaps?’ the precentor enquired.
Oswin shook his head.
‘You were giving up a night’s sleep and putting yourself to this trouble for no payment?’ The precentor’s eyebrows shot up so high, they vanished beneath the fringe of hair around his tonsure.
‘It was a penance,’ Oswin said hastily.
‘And which of your confessors imposed such a penance on you?’ Father William asked.
‘We imposed it on ourselves, as an act of piety. We had feasted and drunk too well a few nights before and wanted to make amends with some act of charity.’
‘Thereby committing a greater sin,’ William said, ‘by thinking yourselves wise enough to act as your own confessors and determine the penance for a sin that you were too proud to confess before others.’
Oswin felt his face grow hot, but he could hardly deny it without refuting his own explanation.
The treasurer impatiently shuffled in his feet. ‘Whether or not he should have confessed the sin of gluttony, Subdean, is hardly worthy of discussion, given the far more serious matter of these young men being discovered with two dead bodies. That, surely, is what we should be investigating here.’ Before Father William could answer, he turned to Oswin. ‘Do you have an explanation for that, Father Oswin?’
‘I . . . was just as shocked as the men-at-arms. I swear we didn’t know they were in the Easter Sepulchre until the door fell off. The men-at-arms slammed the chapel door as they came in. It must have shaken the wood loose. We were horrified by what was revealed.’
The precentor made a studied selection of a roasted quail and, ripping one of the legs off, dragged the flesh through his teeth before waving the bone at Oswin. ‘Surely, you saw the door was on the sepulchre when you entered. You had, after all, been there two nights running. Didn’t you think it strange the Easter Sepulchre should be sealed? From Easter Sunday until Good Friday, it is left open to proclaim the joyful news that Christ has risen. Why didn’t you remove it straight away?’
‘It was dark in the chapel, Father Precentor. We didn’t notice. We came in and immediately kneeled to pray and, naturally, we didn’t look around as we prayed.’
‘Naturally,’ the treasurer repeated with heavy sarcasm. ‘And I suppose you were so immersed in prayer you didn’t notice the stench either.’ He turned to address his colleagues. ‘I’ve inspected the body of the woman personally and I could hardly hold onto my breakfast, the smell was so bad.’ He picked up a pomander of spices from the table in front of him and wafted it under his long nose, sniffing hard as if the stench of death still lingered in his nostrils.
‘It wasn’t nearly as strong when the door was in place, and the smell of damp in the chapel masked . . .’ Oswin trailed off. It was plain from his expression, Father Thomas believed not one word of it.
‘Did you recognise either of the corpses?’
Oswin had prepared himself for that one. ‘As the sergeant-at-arms will tell you, Father Thomas, we never got close enough even to glimpse them. He had his men drag us from the chapel straight away. The sergeant was the only one who actually saw them.’
‘I think that explains everything satisfactorily,’ Father William announced, ignoring the expressions of incredulity on his brothers’ faces. ‘There is just one tiny detail that still puzzles me,’ he continued blithely. ‘Do you normally take spades and a handcart when you go to say Mass for someone’s soul? I must confess it is a new refinement to me. But then perhaps the archbishop has issued a decree that you, as an eager young student, have read, but I, as a dullard, have not. Have you been privy to some synod council meeting perhaps, to which us lesser men were not invited?’
Oswin’s mind raced. ‘They were already in the chapel when we arrived, Father William. Labourers making repairs probably left them there for safekeeping overnight.’
Father William glanced along the table. ‘Have you given any workman a key, Father Thomas? Given orders for any repairs?’
‘None,’ Thomas said. ‘As our young brother reminded us himself, the family has died out and the money they left for the maintenance of the chapel has run out.’
The subdean leaned his elbows on the table, his fingers pressed together as he gazed at Oswin. ‘You see, that is something else that troubles me, Father Oswin. You say that the cart and spades belonged to some labourers, yet when the chapel was searched, my nephew’s cloak was found under the spades in the cart. I can understand that if he found the cart and spades already in the chapel, he might have tossed his cloak on top of them. But why would he go to the trouble of lifting the spades and placing his cloak underneath such dirty tools. Were you perhaps expecting to be translated from the chapel into heaven in a whirlwind for this act of piety of yours, and my nephew, fearful that such a wind would also carry his heavy fur-lined cloak away with it, felt compelled to anchor it down?’
Oswin tried to speak, but Father Thomas interrupted: ‘I’ve no doubt you can invent an explanation for that, too, but let’s stop wasting time. Father Robert’s cloak was found in the cart covered with short hairs, which at first I thought might belong to the male corpse, but in fact they match the strangely cropped hair on the woman’s skull. The cloak was also smeared with . . .’ He wrinkled his face as if he was going to vomit. ‘Let us just describe it as other of her bodily remains. Not to put to finer point on it, the cloak stank of the woman’s corpse. So, the only conclusion we may draw is that you three covered the woman’s corpse in the cloak and used the cart to carry it to the chapel, where you concealed it in the sepulchre, for what diabolic purpose I cannot yet tell.’
The treasurer leaned forward and continued. ‘As for the dead man, he has been identified as a young cleric in minor orders from the Church of St Rumbold, who has not been seen since vespers two nights ago. I only had to take one look his body to see he’d been stabbed to death. So what exactly were you planning to do with these corpses, Father Oswin? Use them to raise demons or conjure the spirits of the dead? Then what were you going to do? Bury them together in whichever grave you stole the girl’s body from, so that the murder of this poor young man should go undetected?’
Subdean William sucked his breath in through his teeth. ‘I warned the dean that allowing a priest as young and arrogant as Father Oswin to study the arts of necromancy and the conjuring of spirits was a mistake. And I regret to say, I’ve been proved entirely right. The Devil will turn these Holy Mysteries to his own wicked purposes in those who are too inexperienced to handle such dangerous knowledge. And it seems Father Oswin has dragged other innocent young men, including my nephew, into this foul pit with him.’
The gaoler flung Oswin back in the cell and backed out.
‘Am I to get any food?’ Oswin called out, as the key grated in the lock. But the only answer was the sound of footsteps walking away.
He slid down the wall and onto the straw. At least they hadn’t put him in irons, not yet anyway. And none of the three interrogators had mentioned the cross, so that must mean that they hadn’t yet discovered it was missing or they hadn’t connected its disappearance to Giles’s murder, which was at least something. And with luck, they never would. There was no reason for them to suspect a link, unless the treasurer really did believe Robert a thief. Then he’d only too readily believe him a murderer, too, and Oswin and John at the very least his accomplices.
Although Father William and Father Thomas had made a lot of nasty accusations, they’d as good as admitted they didn’t actually know what he’d been planning to do with the corpses, nor could they prove he’d killed either one of them. Oswin was trying desperately to convince himself that things weren’t really that bad, but he knew they were.
He banged his head against the wall, trying to think. Nothing . . . nothing made sense. And the situation could only get worse when Robert and John were questioned. They’d surely have the wit to go along with the story that the
three of them had gone to the chapel to say Mass, since they’d heard him tell the sergeant-at-arms that tale. But what would they say about the handcart? Oswin realised that he’d no idea which of them had had the foresight to bring it to the chapel. John probably; it was the kind of practical thing he’d think of, and he could far more easily lay his hands on a cart than Robert. But would he have the wit to lie about it?
Father Thomas had said Robert’s cloak was soiled with the remains of the girl. So had the traces got there because they were in the cart, which John had used to carry her to the chapel, or had they stained the cloak because Robert had been the one who’d dragged her corpse there?
But why would either Robert or John do such a thing? It was in all of their interests to bury Giles’s body where no one could find it and quietly return to their duties. Unless . . . unless Eustace was the one behind it. Had he been the person who’d reported seeing someone in the chapel to the watchmen? That chapel was so remote from houses or the city walls, who else would have noticed the light? Was that why he hadn’t come, because he knew the men-at-arms were on their way? If he’d stolen the cross and murdered Giles, he might well have alerted the authorities, so the three of them were caught red-handed to divert suspicion from himself.
Had Eustace planted the body of the girl, so that it would appear the corpses were being used in the dark arts, knowing that Oswin would be sure to be accused, given his training? Oswin swore violently, thumping his fists against his head. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? The vicious little weasel was certainly clever enough to come up with that as a plan, and spiteful enough to carry it out. But how on earth was he going to prove it?
The Deadliest Sin Page 40
