A Psalm for Falconer

by Ian Morson

  Back at the priory, Falconer hung his still damp robe over the sill of his window, and donned his only other robe: a shabby garment, with frayed cuffs. However, he was glad that Peter Bullock had persuaded him to add it to his saddlebags instead of Ali ibnel- Abbas's Liber regalis, and the magical work De pentagono Salomonis. It was a good trade in the present circumstances. He tried to smooth his grizzled hair into place, and winced when he accidentally knocked the large lump on the back of his head. It reminded him that he needed to work out who had attacked him.

  If he assumed that cloud-ships existed only in his imagination (which was their rightful place), he knew he would have to look to the priory for the perpetrator of the murderous assault. It had hardly been planned much in advance, but it had been opportunist, and could only have been carried out by someone who knew where he had gone yesterday. That included the prior, the ironmaster, Ellen Shokburn, he supposed, and whoever had been the spy in the adjacent carrel the night before last. Unfortunately, this last could have been anyone.

  He presumed the reason for the attack had been because he had uncovered, or was close to uncovering, something that was best kept quiet. He mentally retraced his conversations of the last two days. The prior had seemed quite at ease about the silver cross, but did that hide his true anxiety? He had asked Falconer to keep quiet about it – perhaps he had decided to seal his lips permanently. As he may have done with John de Langetoft fifteen years ago. The mysterious occupant of the carrel had heard him discussing the death of de Langetoft with Ralph. Was he the murderer, and did he decide to kill Falconer before he found out too much? And then it occurred to him there was Ralph himself.

  Almost as though prompted, the door of his room burst open, and a harried Westerdale stumbled in. His face was red, he was out of breath, and he looked startled at Falconer's presence. At first he was unable to frame his words, then they flooded forth. ‘Forgive my precipitate entrance, but I am so relieved to see that you have returned to the priory. I would not have forgiven myself if something had happened to you.’

  Falconer feigned puzzlement.

  ‘What could have happened to me?’

  ‘Well … when you didn't return last night, I feared that something might have been amiss. The tides are treacherous and visitors unfamiliar with the area are inclined to underestimate its dangers.’

  Falconer's temples were beginning to throb, and he winced as a dagger of pain stabbed into his head at the site of the swelling. Maybe his judgement was clouded, but he found Ralph's protestations unconvincing. Had Westerdale not expected to see him alive? He closed his eyes to organize his thoughts, then realized the monk was still talking.

  ‘Whoever it was left sandy footprints and the Psalterium Hebraicumis missing.’

  ‘Forgive my inattention. Are you saying there is a thief in the priory?’ Falconer was reminded of de Schipedham's opinion of the odour of Conishead. Wide-eyed with disbelief, the monk nodded. ‘How many other books are missing?’

  ‘It's difficult to tell. In order to know that, I would have to check the presses, the catalogue and the loan records.’

  ‘And even then, you could not be certain that those which had been borrowed were still in the priory.’ Falconer knew from experience that some students at Oxford supplemented their meagre income by selling books, arranging for them not to be missed by the master who owned them by ensuring they were permanently ‘on loan'. Brother Ralph paled at this thought, and made to suggest that the monastic community was an honest one when it came to what it had borrowed.

  ‘No.’ Falconer was insistent. ‘If there is a thief in our midst, you can make no such assumptions. You must arrange to have all the books returned. Then we will check the catalogue.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘If these thefts go back long enough, it may even be that John de Langetoft's death and the missing books are somehow linked.’ He mentally added the attack on himself to the chain of events, but said nothing to Ralph.

  The announcement was made at Rules in the chapter house, and soon the monks were returning to the cloister with the books they had borrowed. Because there was no separate room used as a library, the books were returned to Brother Ralph's office. A procession of monks made their way to the passage shared by his room and the kitchens, and queued up to enter. Inside, Falconer stood behind Ralph as he received each of the works, and marked them off in the ledger. The precentor had relieved the austerity of his cell by bringing in two chairs – it would be a long day.

  There were some amused remarks about the early arrival of Lent this year, when Ralph normally carried out this task. And one young monk entered on the verge of tears to announce that he could not find the book he had borrowed. Falconer leaned over Ralph's shoulder to see what rare text it was that was missing, and smiled when he saw the monk's finger pointing at the record. The young monk had borrowed a copy of Priscian's Grammar – a common text that every student at Oxford possessed. Hardly the target of a discerning thief. Still Ralph made the unfortunate young man stand trembling, as he sternly penned out ‘perditur’ against the record. Then the return of books continued, piling up on the table at which Ralph sat, until no more monks came and nothing but a shaft of sunlight filtering through the empty doorway.

  ‘Has everything been returned?’ Falconer's anxious enquiry was met by silence. Ralph was still scanning the list of books that had been loaned out the previous Lent. At last he spoke.

  ‘There are the two works the prior has. But I did not imagine that he would stand in line with the other brothers. I will go and collect them myself. So the only other person not to return his book is the camerarius.’

  ‘Adam Lutt?’

  ‘Yes. In fact I don't think I've seen him today at all.’ He smiled. ‘Now I remember – Brother Adam is on some errand for the prior, at the ironworks, and missed Rules. He will be unaware that I have asked for the return of all the books.’

  The prior's voice came from the doorway. ‘Adam is on no errand for me. And I shall want to know why he failed to attend the chapter house meeting this morning. In the meantime, here are my books.’

  He stood in the doorway with two leather-bound works held out in front of him. He clearly expected Ralph to come and take them from him, as though his humility in returning the books himself only brought him as far as the threshold. Before the precentor could rise from his seat, Falconer stepped forward and took the books from the prior's hands, eager to see what the man read. He was disappointed. They were two religious works – the Lives of St Dunstan and St Milburga. It was as though the prior was deliberately displaying his piety to Falconer, and the master wondered if the books had truly been in his possession since the previous Lent. Or had he obtained them recently to impress his visitor? The mocking smile on Henry Ussher's lips as he left suggested to Falconer he had guessed correctly. He turned back to Ralph as he noted the books' return in the ledger. The record was at the bottom of the list, and could have been placed there at any time. Perhaps this knowledge would be meaningful later – for now he would just store it away.

  Falconer was now anxious to begin comparing all the records to see if there were discrepancies and lost items. Would there even be someone who consistently lost his borrowed book? But then the terce bell rang out, calling the monks to Mass, and Ralph slammed the ledger shut. He pushed the protesting Falconer out of the room, insisting that he was responsible for the safety of the books contained therein, and that he was not even going to allow the Oxford master to remain inside while he was at Mass. Thereupon, he locked the door and scuttled off to the church, leaving Falconer fuming, but impotent. He could do nothing but pace up and down the cloister as the strains of the Mass came steadily from behind the massive church doors.

  Ellen Shokburn trudged down the open slopes of Cartmel Head from Headless Cross, her shoulders hunched against the grey drizzle. The day had started dull and had got worse as the morning progressed. Jack, her son, had told her not to go to the priory, that he could support them both. His y
outhful face and pleading eyes had almost swayed her. She knew he was mutely begging her to allow him to become the provider. To be the man his missing father had never been. Whenever Jack had asked his mother about his father – why he wasn't with them, and never had been – she told him the man was a wastrel. She had been duped into his bed, and he had fled soon after. He didn't even know he had a son, who, she assured Jack, was worth ten of his father. But she knew the time had now come to tell him the truth, and that was going to be very difficult for her. Still, she was proud of Jack – what he had become. But he did not yet earn enough from guiding people across the bay to put sufficient food on their table. She needed the work at the priory, and so she had wearily wrapped some old sacking around her shoulders, and set off for Conishead.

  The drizzle turned into a pounding rain as she reached the shores of the Leven. The island at the head of the river, with its wraith of a hermit, was barely visible in the greyness. She trudged across the cloying mud, and gathered her skirts about her slim brown legs as she prepared to wade into the stream. The water in the Leven was running fast with all the rainwater from the fells. She had to step carefully to prevent the insistent tug from sweeping her feet away from under her. She dug her toes into the muddy bottom and pressed on. Something swept out of the greyness and bumped against her thigh. She put a hand down to push whatever it was away from her, and her arm became entangled in a clinging mass. Not sure if it was the branch of a tree with a shred of sodden cloth attached, she pulled hard to free herself from its grip. The trunk rolled over and a bare, bluish arm emerged from the cloth. She opened her mouth wide in a silent scream as the fingers at the end of the arm slid down the quivering skin of her uncovered leg.

  It took four monks to carry the waterlogged body into the church, where it was placed in the same side chapel as the bones brought in only a few days earlier. This person had died altogether more recently, however. The skin was puffed out due to its immersion in water, but there was no sign of the telltale stomach bloat showing rot of the internal organs. No, Adam Lutt had always been a large man, and the distended stomach was rather from self-indulgence in life.

  Falconer made sure he and Brother Ralph were left alone with the body before he conducted any further examination of the remains. It was lucky he did so, because when he peeled the monkish robes away from the head they had enfolded Ralph recoiled in horror. Not so much on seeing that it really was the camerarius, but more from the ghastly distortion of his features. His eyes had both popped out of their sockets and hung on his cheeks. His tongue also protruded from between his lips, half severed by his own teeth. The face, so rounded in life, was crushed flat, side to side, and the grey mass of his brains oozed from the broken shell that was his skull. The impression given was that someone of enormous strength had taken Lutt's cheeks in either hand and simply squashed them together.

  ‘What happened to him?’ Brother Ralph gazed in disbelief first at the corpse, and then at Falconer.

  ‘Can't you see?’ Falconer bent over the grisly sight and poked at the shattered side of Lutt's head. The skin was broken and bloody, and shards of stone were embedded in what was left of his ear. He shuddered as he recalled the ominous thudding he had heard the previous night. ‘Someone put his head under a trip-hammer at the ironworks and let slip the mechanism. I dare say if you examine the ore bench underneath each hammer, you might be able to specify the very device which crushed his skull.’

  A shiver ran down Ralph's spine at the gruesome thought of what he might find on the bench, and the face of the hammer concerned. ‘I don't think I wish to take my curiosity that far. But who would have done it, then?’

  ‘Ah. That's a more difficult question to answer.’ Falconer's eyes lit up at the thought of the hunt. ‘I would first have to know something about the dead man's life. Tell me – what does this signify?’ He rubbed his fingers and thumb together in a certain way, and touched his tongue with his forefinger. At first Ralph looked confused, not sure what this had to do with Adam Lutt's life – or his death. He did recognize the sign the regent master was reproducing, however.

  ‘Oh, that. As we cannot talk while we eat, but merely listen to the readings at table, we have some practical signals. You know, silent signals for requesting more bread and so on.’

  ‘And this one?’ Falconer repeated the movement with his fingers as best he remembered it.

  ‘That means pass the salt.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Falconer's face clouded over as he pondered on this. Ralph opened his mouth to speak, but the master suddenly brightened up. ‘As camerarius, Lutt must have kept his records somewhere.’

  ‘Of course – he has … had a room at the end of the quire dorter above the warming house.’

  ‘May I see it?’

  Ralph looked a little worried at this bold action. ‘I think we should consult the prior before doing so, don't you?’

  Falconer thought not – he would rather conduct his investigation without the constrictions of the prior's wishes. But he didn't want to lose the cooperation of the little precentor. After all, they still had the books to check, and Ralph had the only keys to his room and the book presses. He put on a solemn visage. ‘Of course. It would be best if you see the prior on your own, though. I wish to examine the body further.’

  The squeamish Ralph shuddered at the idea of being present as Falconer worked on the flaccid corpse. He hurried off, just as Falconer had hoped he would. Once he was sure Ralph was out of the cloister, the master hurriedly covered the grotesque head that lay before him and exited the church by the side-chapel door. With everyone else at their labours, there was no one to see him dash down the west side of the cloister; and climb the day stairs to the quire dorter. The long room was silent, its orderly rows of beds defining the structured regimen the monks lived under. In one corner was an area screened by two walls of plain panelling with a small door set in one of them. Falconer guessed this must be Lutt's office. He quickly crossed the dormitory, dust rising with each step, and stood before the door. He tried the handle – the door was unlocked.

  ‘Let him see Lutt's office. What could he find amiss?’

  Westerdale was surprised at Henry Ussher's response. He had expected the prior to resent Falconer's nosiness. Had he not tried to divert him from prying into the dark nooks and crannies of John de Langetoft's death? Now he seemed to care not a bit that the Oxford master wished to turn over any stones surrounding Adam Lutt's. Ralph himself worried that the search might not stop with Lutt. There was still the matter of some missing books. He voiced his hidden fears to Henry Ussher, fears he had hoarded for so long now that he saw them as pale worms growing bloated in the darkness.

  ‘He will soon find out that the very books he has come to read are not there. I cannot delay him much longer.’

  ‘That was your fault for encouraging him to come.’ If the prior was angry, he hid it well under a mien of urbane calmness.

  ‘I didn't know then that he would want to see Grosseteste's books specifically. And yes, I was flattered that a scholar from Oxford should wish to see our collection. I should not have been – I know pride could be my downfall now. But you must tell me what we can do about it.’

  ‘We?’ Ussher's calm slipped a little as he snapped out the word. Then he recovered, and smiled coldly at Ralph. ‘You are the one who appears to have something to hide. Your salvation is in your own hands. I have nothing to fear at all.’

  Especially now that Lutt was dead and Lamport was safely rid of.

  Falconer closed the door and looked about him. It was dark – the window was covered by shutters – so he had to stand a while before he could make out what was in the room. As his eyes adjusted he could see it was larger than the one occupied by Ralph Westerdale, but at the same time appeared more cramped. It was cluttered with possessions. A long bench fully took up one side, and its surface was scattered with ledgers and papers. Where Ralph's room had originally been devoid of chairs, this one offered the luxury of an upright
stool at the bench, and two high-backed chairs pulled together in one corner.

  Falconer guessed that Brother Adam had not been in the room since yesterday. The closed shutters confirmed that – shut at dusk the previous day, and not reopened this morning. The times all fitted with Falconer's half-heard sound of the trip-hammers last evening. Nearly drowned he might have been, but he was more convinced than ever that he had heard them thumping. And therefore had heard the means of Lutt's death at a moment that had almost brought his own.

  He pulled open the shutters at the window arch above the bench to give himself some light. The view was of the open fields where the lay brothers no doubt toiled in the summer. Now the earth looked sodden and uncooperative. Falconer imagined it was a perfect spot to keep an eye on much that happened around the priory. A lone figure worked at the sluice that controlled the water levels in the fishponds which stretched off to one side of the vista. Rainwater dripped off the ragged edges of the sacking that covered the person's shoulders. The figure was slight, and when the brown face turned up to look towards the priory even Falconer's weak eyes saw that it was Ellen Shokburn. Her discovery of the gruesome remains of Adam Lutt had clearly not exempted her from her daily routine. He did not think she could see him, and he stood idly watching. As he did so, the wiry figure of her son came into view from under the priory wall. The youth stopped to speak to her, and the conversation became animated. Jack turned his back on his mother at one point, and she put a tentative hand on his arm. Falconer was a little embarrassed when they suddenly hugged each other, and he cast his eyes down. When he looked again, the youth had gone and Ellen had returned to her labours.

  Falconer too returned to the task that had brought him to this room. At first he leafed through the strew of papers that cluttered the desk, not knowing what he might be looking for. They were all documents relating to the financial administration of the priory – records of tithes received, and debts owed. Most conspicuous was a letter in the name of the King demanding money. All quite normal in the office of a camerarius.