A Psalm for Falconer

by Ian Morson

  ‘What's the matter?’ he yelled, against the driving rain.

  Jack Shokburn's eyes were bright and feverish. A wolfish grimace contorted his lips, and he hopped from one foot to the other, almost dancing round the prior. He yelled back at the shivering cleric.

  ‘Recognize the spot?’

  Ussher was puzzled. What did the lad mean? Shokburn pushed his angry face close to the prior's ear, and yelled again.

  ‘Recognize the spot?’

  ‘Why should I?’ This was crazy – arguing about God knows what in the middle of a storm in Lancaster Bay. The youth, still jumping around as though he were on strings, answered his question.

  ‘It's where you killed my father.’

  ‘Killed? I've killed no one … Your father?’

  ‘My father. John de Langetoft.’

  The name hung in the air between them, and Henry Ussher's mind raced as he tried to understand what the boy was saying. His father was John de Langetoft? And I am alone with his son in the middle of Lancaster Bay, accused of murdering him. The full import struck him like a blow. He means to kill me, and there is no help for miles. I could disappear here, and my body would never be found. Except as a bag of bones in fifteen years' time, just like de Langetoft's.

  He struggled to lift his feet from the clinging mud – to run to safety – but he was held fast. That was why the youth had been shifting from one foot to the other as he spoke. Shokburn had led him into quicksand. Ussher squealed and fell forwards, knocking the lamp from Shokburn's grasp. It fell to the sand, flickered, but remained alight. Ussher scrabbled at Shokburn's sleeves, refusing to let go. The youth, for his part, flailed his arms wildly to try to get them free. The cloth tore on his right sleeve, and he yanked his arm above his head. With the prior staring up at him, squealing like a stuck pig, he rained blows down on the man's face. This was not how he had planned it. He had intended to leave the man sinking in the quicksand, with the tide soon to rip in across the mud. But if he had to kill his father's murderer with his own hands, he would.

  He grasped the terrified man by the throat, and squeezed. Though he was only a youth his labouring life had given him more strength than the soft-living prior possessed, and the monk's face turned a mottled red. Jack was aware of a bird-like cry carried on the wind. Then it became a voice – his mother's voice. Was he dreaming? No, he saw her splashing through the shallows towards him. The tide was running faster than he had gauged, and they were all in danger. Behind his mother stumbled another figure, large and powerful. The water splashed up from his heavy boots, which were cracked around the seam.

  Ellen clawed at her son's arm, and begged him to stop.

  ‘But he killed my father – he killed John. And now I'm going to kill him.’

  The woman's face screwed up in anguish, and her voice carried on the gale. ‘No he didn't. The prior didn't kill him. I did.’

  Jack Shokburn looked with disbelief at his mother, his grip on Ussher's throat slackening for a moment.

  ‘I killed him because he was going to abandon me … us. I was carrying you, and about to tell him so. All he could think about was his preferment. He wanted to be prior, and I stood in his way. I had become a sin of which he found it all too easy to repent.’

  Jack released his grip on Ussher, and the prior fell to his knees, gasping and retching.

  ‘But why did you kill him?’

  Ellen's face set in hard lines. ‘I killed him because he had used me and was ready to discard me like a worn-out tool, and that made me angry.’

  Salt tears started on the boy's face, mingling with the salt spray that threatened to engulf them. Still he stood unmoving and disbelieving. It was a low moan from the prostrate Ussher that brought them all to their senses. The tide was rising around their legs, and there was still the Keer and yards of sand to cross before they were safe.

  Falconer grabbed the prior's arms, and, with a sucking sound, drew him out of the quicksand. With Ellen and Falconer supporting him between them and the boy stumbling behind, they forded the Keer. The water now came up to their waists, and they were buffeted first one way and then the next as tide and wind ripped the waters back and forth. With a fearful eye, Falconer looked out to sea. All he could see were the white caps of waves as the tide rose higher and higher. Even on the sandbank the salt water had reached their thighs, and it was becoming more and more difficult to take each step.

  ‘We're nearly there.’

  The cry came from Ellen Shokburn, and she pointed to the murky loom of a grassy bank. A few straggly trees tossed back and forth in the gale, but to Falconer it looked like sanctuary. Then Ellen gasped in dismay. They had been pushed off course by the onrushing tide, and instead of walking up a shelving beach they were faced with clambering up a steep and muddy bank.

  ‘You climb up first, and I'll push the prior after you from here,’ commanded Falconer. But Ellen shook her head.

  ‘I'll never be able to pull him out. I haven't the strength. No, you go first.’

  Reluctantly, Falconer had to agree, and grabbed hold of some slippery roots that stuck out from the bank. He heaved, and at first the roots gave way, scattering earth on his upturned face. Coughing, he wiped the muck from his lips and tried again. Finally he got one knee on the grassy top of the bank and hoisted himself to safety. He allowed himself a moment to get his breath then shouted for the prior to give him his hand. Ellen was standing behind the shocked Ussher, supporting him. As the monk numbly offered an arm to Falconer, Ellen looked anxiously over her shoulder. She couldn't see her son, and turned back into the heaving water. Falconer's concentration was on getting Ussher on to the bank, and it was a while before he realized what she was going to do. As he struggled with the sodden body of the prior, he cried out.

  ‘Stay here. Jack can look after himself.’

  But she was gone.

  When he had the prior safely on the shore, he leaned his head close to the man's lips. Though they were a frightening shade of blue, Falconer could feel the warmth of a shallow breath on his cheek. He was alive, for the moment. Now he had to decide whether to re-enter the water himself in search of Ellen and her son. The idea chilled his soul, but he knew he had to try.

  He sat on the bank and lowered his legs into the choppy tide. Just as he was about to launch himself, he spotted two heads bobbing in the waves. It had to be them, though his poor eyes could not be sure. They came closer, and he could see that Ellen was dragging her exhausted son. The water was so deep now, they were swimming rather than wading. They were above where Falconer sat on the bank, and momentarily he thought they would be swept past him. But he managed to lean forward and grab Jack's leather jerkin. His fist closed over the cracked and worn garment, and between them he and Ellen repeated the exercise of pushing and pulling an almost dead weight up to safety.

  With the last of his reserves of energy, Falconer now stuck out his hand towards Ellen. She looked at it briefly, then her eyes rose to meet the Oxford master's. He knew what she was about to do, and could see the joy spark in those formerly hard, cold eyes.

  ‘No,’ he cried. ‘Don't. There is no need to tell anyone it was you.’

  She shook her head, knowing Falconer did not really mean what he had said, smiled and let her body go limp. His mouth formed words to cry out, but nothing came. Then her head slid under the waves, and it was too late.

  VESPERS

  Thou Lord dost make my lamp burn bright,

  And my God will lighten my darkness.

  Psalm 18

  Chapter Seventeen

  The fishermen found her the following morning in the middle of the bay. She had been captured by one of their fishing traps set to catch flukes, two long baulks of woven hazel pinned in a v-shape by ash stakes with a cage of netting set over it. The lower end remained just below water level, and the upper end was open to the sky. But it did not seem as though she had truly been snared. On the contrary, the fisherfolk who found her said it looked more as if she was in the act of f
lying the trap. Her arms were spread wide as though embracing the expanse of earth and sky that surrounded her. Her smiling face was as pale and unlined as a child's. Her empty eyes stared up at the sky, and the sun sparkled on the pool in which she lay.

  They brought her to the hovel on Hest Bank, where the previous night Jack Shokburn, Henry Ussher and William Falconer had sought refuge. Henry Ussher's saddlebag full of finery had gone, and he looked no more than he really was – a tired, ageing priest with grey hair whom ambition had passed by. He intoned a prayer over the body, and slumped back on the straw mattress where he had lain all night. He was drained of all of his energy, and his chance of meeting the Papal Legate was gone. Jack Shokburn was dry-eyed, having shed all his tears for his mother during the night over William Falconer's revelations. With nothing else to do but talk, the Oxford master had retold to Jack what Ellen had told him while they had been giving chase the previous night.

  Once she knew that Falconer had deduced she was the murderer, the normally taciturn Ellen had filled in for him all the details that he could not have worked out for himself. It was as if he was hearing her confession, though he had no way of knowing then it was a dying confession.

  ‘What finally convinced you I had killed John?’ she had asked as they plodded over the mud, having crossed the first watercourse.

  Falconer looked embarrassed. ‘I have to confess that it was more a process of elimination. At first it seemed everyone had a reason to kill de Langetoft, except you. He knew something about every member of the community at Conishead, and all of them stood to lose if he gave up his secrets in return for preferment. And Henry Ussher would have lost most of all – the prior's position he so coveted. I suspected each in turn, especially when none could prove where he was when Adam Lutt was killed. But there was always one stumbling block.’

  ‘What was that?’ Ellen's eyes were strangely jaundiced in the yellow light cast by the lantern she carried. Falconer raised his voice against the growing buffeting of the wind.

  ‘No one knew de Langetoft was abroad that night. No one knew he was in Lancaster Bay. Except whoever guided him across. And then I knew there was another secret hidden within the walls of Conishead Priory. A secret that no one but John de Langetoft knew, because it was his own.’

  A steady drizzle had begun, and Ellen and Falconer bowed their heads against its attack.

  ‘It was when I was standing in the camerarius's office that I realized. The office that had been both Adam Lutt's and John de Langetoft's. I saw you through the window arch working in the fishponds pretty much as John must have done. You reminded me of someone, and I knew then that John could not have resisted the temptation you represented. Next I saw your son go over to you, and you embraced him. Suddenly he looked younger than I had imagined he was. He is only fifteen, isn't he?’

  Ellen nodded grimly. ‘And about to make a terrible mistake, unless we catch them up.’

  For a moment, Ellen fell silent, but Falconer was determined to draw the full story from her.

  ‘You couldn't have planned to kill him.’

  ‘Of course not. I knew I was carrying our child when he came to me that night to guide him over the bay. He wanted to cross in secret, and didn't want my father to be the guide, so I agreed to take him over. He was boasting about how he was going to ruin Henry Ussher. Showed me some books he said were blasphemous that he had taken from him. Henry was the only one who stood in the way of John's becoming prior. Except for me and the baby. Before I could tell him about little Jack, he was telling me how he would have to cease visiting me. How his preferment was more important. He was so matter-of-fact, I felt like a piece of dirt picked off the hem of his gilded robe, to be flung away. That made me almost angry enough to want to kill him. But then I thought of something much more important than my anger.

  ‘Once he knew I was bearing a child, he might have thought the risk of disclosure was too great. That I might have blackmailed him for the sake of the infant. As I would have done. That was a chance he would not have taken. I reckoned my life, and the life of my baby, were both in danger. So I killed him.’

  The hardness had returned to Ellen's voice, and Falconer felt a chill run down his spine.

  ‘And Adam Lutt?’

  ‘I feared that he knew my secret and was going to tell the prior. And that my son would lose his job as guide, if it came out he was de Langetoft's bastard. That job means everything to Jack – it's his life and his future. I carry messages for the priory, so it was easy to convince one of the lay brothers that the prior had asked me to pass on a message.’

  ‘A message summoning Brother Adam to the ironworks?’

  Ellen nodded, the wind whipping her hair across her face like a veil.

  ‘So the prior really was just going to fetch his gloves that night,’ muttered Falconer to himself.

  ‘What? I can't hear you for the wind.’

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing. But … the trip-hammers?’ Falconer shuddered at the thought of crossing this determined woman.

  ‘I hit him with a log, but he was only stunned. So I dragged him over to the crushing bench and …’

  Mercifully, she didn't finish the sentence. But, fingering the bruise on the back of his head, Falconer suddenly remembered the attack on himself that same night. It couldn't have been Ellen who attacked him, for she had been at the ironworks. So who else, other than the murderer, wanted him dead? And had the ‘accident' with the molten iron been aimed at him also? Those puzzles remained unresolved because Ellen suddenly cried out and pointed.

  ‘There they are – I see them.’

  They buried Ellen Shokburn at Hest Bank, her grave overlooking the bay she so loved. A local priest performed the ceremony, as Henry Ussher had fallen sick after his soaking. No bells tolled at her departure, but the mournful calls of the sea-pie and the curlew seemed more fitting anyway. Only Jack and Falconer stood at her graveside, the Oxford master wondering wistfully about Grosseteste's books. Were they still lodged somewhere in the shifting sands of Lancaster Bay? Would they have survived all this time? Perhaps he would have to wait another fifteen years for another storm to reveal them.

  At the next low tide, a silent Jack Shokburn fetched over Falconer's saddlebags from Conishead. There was nothing left at the priory for him, and suddenly he was anxious to see his friends back in Oxford. And one in particular, whom he was tutoring in the Aristotelian sciences. He hoped she had finished reading Metaphysics, because he planned a most searching examination for her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The last rays of the dying sun traversed the wall of Falconer's room, high under the eaves of Aristotle's Hall. As darkness settled in the corners of the room, Balthazar opened his eyes and contemplated the night's hunting ahead. The blonde-haired woman glanced up at the owl's perch as he ruffled his feathers, then returned her gaze to Falconer.

  Humphrey Segrim had come back from his travels no pleasanter than when he left. Indeed, he seemed even more surly. He had refused to tell his wife where he was going when he left, and was equally adamant on his return that there was nothing for her to know. Used to Humphrey's perpetually abortive plots and schemes, Ann had given it no more thought, and had arranged a visit to the market in Oxford. At the bottom of her basket hidden under a cloth lay Falconer's copy of Metaphysics.

  Now she sat before its owner, bursting to reveal her own deductive abilities. Unfortunately, her polite enquiry about what she presumed had been his quiet sojourn in Conishead Priory had resulted in the lengthy tale of his own prowess. She listened with increasing impatience as he told the story in full. He had to admit that even he had been misled at the beginning, when he strove to fit the missing books into the picture. The thefts that had taken place over fifteen years or more had only led him to the unfortunate sacrist. And Grosseteste's lost books had eventually pointed at the prior, whose only sin had been that of scientific ignorance. Lutt was about to blackmail him about his meddling, but it was obvious Ussher didn't kill hi
m because of that. After all, why would he have set up the faked embezzlement if he meant to do away with Lutt all along? No, the loss of Grosseteste's books had been due to de Langetoft's taking them with him as evidence when he crossed the bay. Their removal was probably the reason why Brother Thady had followed him, and had witnessed his murder.

  ‘So I suppose in a way the missing books did contribute to my solving the killing. They led me to Brother Thady, who told me from the start that de Langetoft was a sinner. I should have taken him seriously, especially as on my first day he preached on the subject of celibacy. I think he never revealed that Ellen was the murderer because he saw the act as just retribution. My vision of Fridaye de Schipedham just brought all that to the fore of my mind finally. He reminded me of the temptations of the flesh, and I saw an image of de Langetoft and Ellen.’

  Ann asked him if he believed that Fridaye de Schipedham had actually been present, or if it had been an apparition. He smiled. ‘I shall never know. Did he project his body across the bay to put me on the right track? Or did I conjure him up in my own imagination from facts that were already hidden there? My vanity says the latter, but …’ He shook his head. ‘I am used to dealing with truths, and logic. Everyone up there seemed contaminated with a sense of the unreal. I mean, how could Ellen kill someone she loved so easily?’

  Ann gritted her teeth, stared at her exasperating companion, and muttered that she would find it quite simple. If Falconer heard and understood, he feigned not to have done so. She began to raise the question of her own logical powers, but William cut her off again.

  ‘I hear that Nicholas de Ewelme has been appointed chancellor of the university. I am not surprised that Henry de Cicestre did not last long – de Cantilupe ran rings round him over that business at Christmas.’

  Falconer was referring to Thomas de Cantilupe's recent subterfuge in sending the then chancellor on a wild goose chase after a sick relative. A ruse which left the former chancellor de Cantilupe in a position to benefit personally from the arrival of the King in Oxford for the Christmas festivities. De Cantilupe had engineered his own advancement, despite being tangled up in a murder that had taken place before the very eyes of the King.