A Psalm for Falconer

by Ian Morson

  But Falconer was looking for something that would not be obvious or on display. The idea had come to him when he had recalled what he had seen the first morning he had been at the priory. In church Lutt had pushed his way to one particular monk's side and made a strange hand signal, which had brought fear to the other's eyes. That the signal was more appropriate to the frater and mealtimes, as he now knew, made it all the more significant to Falconer. Especially as something had changed hands. A request to pass the salt could have been a blackmailer's way of demanding his offering. If Lutt had been blackmailing the sacrist, John Whitehed, what hold did he have over him? Knowledge of a fifteen-year-old murder perhaps? If he could solve the first murder, then he felt sure he would have the solution to the second. Was Whitehed guilty, or did the finger of suspicion point at Henry Ussher? Falconer recalled that Ralph had thought the prior had called Lutt to the ironworks. But then Ussher had immediately denied doing so. As he might have done if he also was a victim of Lutt's coercion. Had Lutt been blackmailing others at the priory? And if so, was there a record of it in this room? Where did the theft of the library books fit in all this? There were so many questions, and so little time to come up with solutions. Falconer scanned the room, trying to imagine where he might hide incriminating documents himself. Suddenly the room appeared bare and incapable of providing a hiding place. His eyes finally lit upon the cluttered table – perhaps the safest place was in full sight. With a sigh he began to leaf carefully through the heaps of documents.

  Chapter Ten

  When Ralph Westerdale returned to the chapel, he was a little surprised to find the Oxford master still there. He had imagined that his insatiable curiosity would have driven him to sneak a look at Brother Adam's room. But here he was, sitting quietly by the side of the body as though maintaining a vigil. Fortunately a cloth had been drawn over the battered head, or Ralph would not have been able to approach. When he told Falconer that the prior had given permission for him to enter the camerarius's room, he was once again surprised by the master's response.

  ‘What? Oh, never mind that now. We have a much older mystery to solve, and I am convinced it has to do with the losses from your library.’ He took Ralph Westerdale by the shoulder, and propelled him out of the church. ‘Come, let's see what's missing from your catalogue.’

  The monk, who had thought Falconer distracted from this task, reluctantly allowed himself to be guided round the perimeter of the cloister to his room. Falconer did not even give Lutt's chamber a glance as they passed the dorter stairs. Ralph fumbled with the key to his room, and dropped it on the floor. Falconer merely furnished him with an amused look, stooped and, inserting the key in the lock himself, turned it. The room still stood as it had done when they left it to attend Mass. So much had happened in the short interval that the monk could almost have convinced himself that the return of all the books had never taken place. But the piles of musty leather-bound texts on his table were all too real. It now remained to tally the books here and in the book presses with the catalogue to see what was missing.

  Falconer sat at the table and pulled the big ledger towards him. He motioned the monk, who still hovered in the doorway, to go to the books. ‘If you read off the title and its catalogue number, I will find it and mark it down as not missing. Is that all right?’

  Ralph nodded dumbly and watched as Falconer drew a fresh quill from the pot on the desk. Then, with trepidation, he picked up the first book and read out its title. ‘The Life of St Milburga. Item number seventy-three.’

  Ann Segrim was finding it extremely difficult to talk to the rest of the nuns who made up Sister Eleanor's small household on the north range of the cloister. Besides the fearful Gilda, there were five others. But whenever Ann tried to talk to them as they went about their daily tasks, her footsteps were dogged by the persistent and ancient Sister Hildegard. Her sour, wrinkled face silently reprimanded each sister as she opened her mouth to speak to Ann. With Sister Mary, it was near the fishponds. Ann had just asked the young nun if she knew Eleanor's family when Hildegard popped up out of nowhere and shook her head in censure. Mary scowled, but lowered her eyes, and tightened her lips. She turned her back on Ann and continued feeding the fishes. Sister Joan had been on her knees scrubbing the tiled entrance to Rosamund's chapel. Hardly had Ann spoken when Hildegard poked her sour face round the heavy oak door, and complained that Sister Joan had not got the red and blue patterned floor sufficiently clean. She must do it again. Joan flushed as red as the tiles she was scrubbing and averted her eyes from the exasperated Ann Segrim. Hildegard's look was of pure triumph. And so it was all day. Every time Ann broached the subject of their dead sister with the residents of the north house, Hildegard was close by to put a stop to Ann's questions.

  In the end, Ann decided to approach the problem head on. She knew that after vespers the ancient sister stayed on her knees in the church, while the others repaired to the frater for a simple supper. An old woman, no more than parchment skin stretched over bone, she seemed to need less sustenance than her fellow nuns. Perhaps she fed on her interference in others' lives. This evening was no different. As the plumes of incense drifted into the gloom of the rafters above them, and the other nuns shuffled out, Hildegard stayed on her knees before her God. A few rows back, Ann too buried her face in her hands, and prayed. She, though, was asking for some success in her encounter with the old crone. Peter Bullock's words had given her the idea – now it was time to try it out.

  After a few moments, Ann rose, walked up the aisle of the church, and slid her worldly, well-rounded form on to the bench behind the spot where Hildegard still knelt. She knew by the slight stiffening of the old woman's shoulders that Hildegard had heard her quiet arrival. As she suspected, the woman wasn't deaf at all.

  She leaned forward and breathed her words into Hildegard's ear. ‘Don't pretend to be startled. I know you can hear me.’

  Reluctant to give up the subterfuge that had served her well, Hildegard swung sharply round, and cupped a claw of a hand around her ear. ‘What did you say?’

  Her eyes were bright with animal cunning, and her disdain for the younger woman clearly showed. Ann smiled coolly.

  ‘If you want me to shout out loud for all the world to hear, I will. But when you hear what I have to say, I think you might wish we had kept our conversation confidential.’

  Hildegard's toothless mouth crumpled into a sneer, but the hand fell away from her ear. For Ann it was a minor triumph – she wondered if she would win the battle of wits entirely.

  ‘The abbess said you washed and prepared Eleanor's body for burial?’

  Hildegard looked puzzled by the question, and a curt nod was all Ann got. She realized this was going to be as painful as a tooth-puller at a fair, but pressed on.

  ‘Were there any marks on the body?’

  ‘Marks?’ If Hildegard was going to answer her every question with a query of her own, this was going to be a long interview. But Ann could be patient, and persistent when she wished.

  ‘Were there any bruises or cuts on her body?’

  Again the old woman sneered, and Ann was reminded of the gargoyles that squatted open-mouthed at the corners of the new tower of St Mary's Church in Oxford. She only wished the words might flow from Hildegard as swiftly as rainwater through the gargoyles' lips during a downpour.

  ‘Of course there were bruises, her head was held under the water until she drowned. There were fresh bruises on her neck, here and here.’ Her knobbly claw of a finger pointed at the spot either side of Ann's neck where a murderer might grasp someone if they sought to hold them face down. Ann shivered at the old woman's touch, and framed her next question. But Hildegard continued without prompting. There were also bruises on her back, as though whoever murdered her had knelt on her as she committed the deed in order to hold her down.’

  Ann noted that the old woman did not share the abbess's dislike of the idea of murder, nor her refusal to accept that a sister nun might be involved.


  ‘Of course, the old marks you will not need to know about.’

  ‘Old marks?’

  Hildegard's lined face broke into a malicious grin. ‘The marks left by the discipline meted out to Eleanor in times past by Sister Gwladys.’

  It took Ralph Westerdale and Master Falconer until vespers, but finally they had marked off in the catalogue all those books which were physically present. Ralph was shocked – there were fourteen missing. Falconer went through them to see if there were any connections.

  ‘The Treatise on the Magnet, a Topographica Hibernica, Aristotle's De Anima, Ad inclusionem spiritus in speculo – that's a book on magic – Cicero's De senectute. The Hebrew Psalter, of course. No less than seven medical texts. And a copy of Vacarius's Commentary on Justinian.’

  Despite himself Ralph was gripped by the mystery. ‘That last one is very rare.’

  ‘I know. Vacarius lectured on Roman law at Oxford over a hundred years ago. The story is that King Stephen himself forced him to desist, and all his works that they could lay hands on were destroyed.’

  ‘What about the others? I know the text on the magnet is difficult to obtain, and the Topographica, but what about the medical texts? They are not particularly rare.’

  Falconer smiled at the monk's lack of knowledge of the world outside the priory. ‘They may not be rare of themselves, but they fetch a ready price from the right scholar. Many people are interested in medical science at present.’

  The monk shuddered at the thought of looking too closely at how the human body worked. It was enough for him that it was God's own creation. Too much curiosity verged on blasphemy and only served to create difficulties, as he well knew. Besides, the mess that lay inside the bag that is the body was best left there – he did not relish the sight of the bag once it was burst open. This morbid line of thought brought the image of Brother Adam's squashed visage back to him, and he shivered.

  Falconer's brows were still furrowed. ‘There is the difficulty of the missing page, of course. We don't know what was recorded there beyond the four books in the west press that do not now appear in the catalogue. We know from their numbers – 343, and 354 to 356 – that they must have been on the missing page. And as we cannot find any of the books that formerly belonged to Bishop Grosseteste in the presses, we can assume that they were catalogued as works 344 to 353. But what they were, and whether they are truly missing, is impossible to tell.’

  ‘It is a shame indeed. Especially as this part of our library was what you particularly sought, I understand.’

  Falconer thought the monk's expression of sympathy sounded hollow, but agreed. ‘Yes. There were a couple of titles that I was hoping were in your collection. Now I will never know. Unless …’ A smile crossed the master's lips, and he shot up from the table, almost knocking the chair over in his excitement. He crossed to the door, and wrenched at its latch. ‘I must speak to the prior.’

  With that he was gone. Ralph was left to rush after the disappearing figure, whose worn, black robe flapped at his heels.

  ‘Why?’

  The answer was flung over Falconer's shoulder as he sped round the cloister. ‘I need to know where Brother Thady is.’

  The prior was adamant.

  ‘I cannot tell you the whereabouts of Brother Thady. He is on retreat for the good of his soul – solitary retreat.’

  Falconer didn't doubt that Thady Lamport's banishment had more to do with the good of the prior's position than with the deranged cellarer's own salvation. But the triumphant face of Henry Ussher told him that it was useless pursuing the location of Lamport's lonely cell with him. He would have to discover it another way. And speak to the monk he would, for he was sure that the former precentor would recall what texts from Grosseteste's collection had found their way to the priory. They would have been catalogued by him, after all. At the same time he could ask about the interesting little decoration he had found in the ledger. It may have been pure coincidence that Lamport had drawn the stabbing of a monk. But it had been done just at the time John de Langetoft disappeared, and no one had known until recently how he had met his death. No one, that is, except the killer, and anyone who had observed the killing.

  Much had happened around the time of de Langetoft's disappearance. The old prior had died, and Henry Ussher had become his successor – his passage eased by the disappearance of his rival de Langetoft. Thady Lamport had become deranged and been removed from the office of precentor. Oddly, the new prior had merely appointed him cellarer, as though he owed Brother Thady a debt. Adam Lutt too had benefited from de Langetoft's departure, succeeding him as camerarius in his continued absence. Ralph Westerdale had been favoured by Henry Ussher, and appointed precentor in Lamport's stead. Only John Whitehed, the sacrist, had not prospered, probably because he had failed to ally himself with Henry Ussher at the proper time. An error he was making every effort to rectify now. It all spoke eloquently of rival factions and cliques as convoluted as any Roman intrigue around the appointment of a Pope. Just who killed de Langetoft and now Lutt, and had made an attempt on his own life, eluded Falconer for the moment. But he was certain that the lost books also fitted in the tapestry somewhere, and Brother Thady could be the key to it all.

  ‘Forgive me, prior, for being so insensitive.’ Falconer's tone was as obsequious as he could make it, which was not much. ‘I had thought Brother Thady could enlighten me over some missing books. You must be more concerned with the sad demise of Brother Adam than my petty problems. Will Brother Martin Albon be back to carry out a post-mortem?’

  Ussher's brow furrowed. ‘He will. And I am sure this time there will be no nonsense about murder spoken. Everyone else believes his death was an accident, so I would be grateful if you kept your own counsel also.’

  Henry Ussher sat in his high-backed chair, relaxed and confident that he had the better of this Oxford academic. He was a master of intrigue, and was sure his powers could block Falconer wherever he poked his nose. How could someone who had his head in a book all day, and taught an unruly rabble of children, outwit the prior of Conishead, who was soon to move on to greater things? Henry Ussher nodded his satisfaction as Falconer bowed in apparent defeat and left the room.

  The following morning dawned dull and grey, much like the previous one. The leafless trees poked their twisted branches into the mist that swirled around their trunks, making Falconer feel as though he truly was a drowned man trapped at the bottom of the sea. It was as if the evil lurking inside the priory's walls was beginning to infect the outside world. He looked up and gulped for breath as the doleful bell on Harlesyde Island clanged in the ancient grip of Fridaye de Schipedham. But it was air after all, not seawater that he sucked into his lungs. Living on the edge of the world played tricks with the mind, even the rational one of an Aristotelian Oxford master. He laughed nervously.

  ‘You're always laughing when we meet. I cannot understand why.’

  She had done it again, creeping up on him without his noticing. Falconer was annoyed that his normally sharp senses had now twice let him down, but he did not show it. He needed Ellen Shokburn's help today. He turned and smiled. She wore the same threadbare dress she had had on the day before, when he saw her at the fishponds, and the same frayed sack over her shoulders to protect her from the damp that hung in the air. She seemed to be able to read his mind.

  ‘There are many days like this, when the rain can't decide to fall and just hangs there. You'll get used to it, if you stay much longer. Now if you'll excuse me.’

  The top of her head barely came to the level of Falconer's chest, but she surveyed him coolly. Thrusting her hard, but not unpleasing, face up to his, she stared into his eyes. He noticed hers were as blue as his own, and once again imagined her, younger and softer, turning the heads of the local youths. As for himself, he liked a woman who could hold her own – he would have to be careful not to be attracted to her.

  ‘I need your help.’

  ‘I have work to do.’ She made
as if to push Falconer's bulk out of her way, not caring that he was twice her size. He stepped back, but still blocked the narrow path through the trees.

  ‘I need you as a guide – I will pay.’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ Her eyes narrowed at the thought of a few extra coins, but she wondered how much this threadbare scholar could afford.

  Falconer smiled. ‘Only you can tell me that.’

  Ellen was annoyed – she was not in the mood for riddles, now or ever. She pulled the sacking tighter over her shoulders, and took a step away from him.

  Falconer hastened to explain before she decided the money wasn't worth the trouble.

  ‘Where would the prior send a monk who had incurred his wrath? A solitary cell somewhere where the culprit is out of harm's way, but not so far away that he cannot be controlled.’

  ‘That's simple. There's a cave above Thurston Water on Bethecar Moor. Whoever you are seeking will be there.’

  ‘How far is it?’

  Ellen cocked her head to one side as she estimated the journey. ‘It will take us all day to get there and back.’

  Falconer produced a coin from his pouch. ‘Will you take me?’

  As they climbed higher the weather improved, and they emerged from the mist that had hung in the river valley. At first Ellen had taken Falconer along the bank of the River Craik, travelling due north. The grey mist, hardly distinguishable from the turbid stream that ran at their side, still reminded Falconer of his near-drowning. Images of struggling to walk at the bottom of the ocean flitted through his mind, especially when they passed the location of the ironworks on the opposite bank. The murderous thump of the trip-hammers echoed dully through the mist, like some dying man's heartbeat. The thought of one of them descending on poor Lutt's head made Falconer shudder. He saw the sound had had the same effect on the woman, whose shoulders tightened until they were out of earshot of the unnatural noise. He literally breathed a sigh of relief as they came out of the mist, like a lost sailor pushing his head above the waves and gasping for air.