On the other hand, not all crime was committed for material gain. Sometimes, as in crimes of passion or any other high emotion, the spleen directed matters and then it became a guessing game to find a credible motive.
Who gained? she asked herself again. Osmund might be said to gain in this more esoteric sense. He had never hidden the fact that he felt Mark’s attitude to his work fell far short of the standards Osmund set himself.
His standards? His master’s standards. The same. How high and holy were they? Guild members, with their vows and rituals and alleged holy purpose lived in a strange world, often somewhat removed from ordinary concerns. A Guild Grand Master had once told Hildegard that they saw themselves as fiercely fraternal as any Templar.
“We use our craft skills and secret knowledge instead of swords and trebushets in order to further God’s work here on earth. That’s the only difference between us.”
Osmund was holding the vellum with his designs on it as if studying them. He could easily have done the drawings earlier. Then rid the Guild of one who was not on the level.
‘And you, Friar?’ The Beverley Coroner, slow to leave, threw on his cloak and strode over to where Friar John was still muttering in Latin. He glanced up with a start when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
‘Question time, friar,’ said the Beverley man, ‘sorry to disturb your prayers.’
‘By all means – yes – of course – yes – I’ll come now – whatever you want to ask...’
He was flustered as if the switch from one language to another confused him.
‘And again,’ said the Coroner in a genial fashion, ‘the same question. I’m sure you’re aware of it?’
‘Where was I?’ He mirrored the way the Beverley man cocked his head. ‘At what time would that be, Coroner?’
‘As you must have heard, between Sext and Nones.’
Friar John frowned – as the Coroner had done – as if trying to remember his movements not long past. ‘I believe I was here in the abbey.’ He bit his lip in thought. ‘Yes...I remember now, I slipped inside the church to pray along with the monks for St Hereswitha.’
‘Stay there long?’
‘Only until the commemoration –’ he broke off to sing a phrase. ‘Ave Hereswitha sorella, gratia plena–’ then continued in a speaking voice, ‘I feel it’s particularly apt that her day should be celebrated today.’
‘Haven’t I seen you at Beverley Cross?’ the Coroner asked abruptly.
‘Perchance. I spend much time along the Holderness coast.’
‘Your licence?’
‘I have it here.’ Friar John fumbled about in his pouch and for a moment Hildegard thought he was going to come up with some smiling excuse about having misplaced it but he nevertheless produced a much handled document. The Coroner scanned it and gave it back. ‘And what brings you to Meaux?’
Now the Friar dropped his glance for a moment. ‘A beautiful and most holy place.’ He lifted his head. ‘Who would not wish to be here as often as possible?’
‘And you arrived when?’
‘I arrived a few days ago seeking respite from the worldliness of the towns.’
The Coroner followed the others out.
Hildegard gaped at the friar as he bent his head and began to pray again.
Not a word about inheritance.
27
The two officials, their clerk, and a bailiff followed by a lad to fetch and carry and the one who had found the body were seen striding out, cloaks billowing in the wind, towards the narrow wooden foot bridge that led across a water ditch and linked with the path to the wool house, bakehouse and brewhouse, a single building separated into three according to purpose.
The mill was was set further up river in the section that had not been straightened and built up with steep sides in the way it was further downstream towards the abbey quay.
From past ramblings Hildegard knew that it was marshy upstream and anyone wishing to enter the water would have to wade through thick mud to attain any depth. Wild irises grew there and rushes useful for covering the nunnery floors and in summer it was idyllic, sweet with bird song and rife with meadow flowers.
She could have told the Sheriff and his Coroner friend that anyone wanting to drown themselves would have more wisely chosen another spot with easier access to deep water. As would someone planning a drowning.
The Sheriff and the Coroner obviously intended to do a thorough job, however, and were reported to have gone inside the buildings on the way and according to further reports they emerged after only a short time, heads close together, discussing something with much nodding in agreement. They then went off towards the mill further upstream by the river path only to return almost at once and cross back to join the tow path below the abbey wall.
They were seen heading down towards the quay but the group of onlookers straggling after them were told to get off back to where they belonged and from then on the inspection of the water-side was carried out unobserved.
Back in the refectory Hildegard and her nuns were still stationed round the body of the apprentice and, Friar John concluding his prayers for the time being, went to stand beside Hildegard.
‘So what is your view, domina?’
‘My view? On what subject, pray?’
‘On this subject,’ he gestured towards the body on the makeshift bier. ‘Did you know the poor young fellow?’
‘Not really. Know of him, more like, just a little. And you?’
‘When he turned up yesterday it was the first time I’d clapped eyes on him, the first time I ever knew of him, and the first time I ever heard of my niece being betrothed to him.’ He turned surprised eyes on her. ‘Whoever heard of such a thing? What made him blurt all that out this morning?’
‘I can’t say. What do you think?’ She turned the tables on his questioning and he merely mirrored her own perplexity and she could not see what was in his soul in any way.
She waited as he considered his next words. ’I think...To tell you the truth, domina, I don’t know what to think. An apprentice? Well, we all know about them. But he’s wearing velvet! Was he well-born or merely given to grandeur?’
‘The best person to ask would be Osmund. They were employed in the same workshop.’
‘That’s another one,’ he shrugged. ‘I can’t make him out. Usually I’m good at seeing into a person’s heart. It’s my job, it’s what keeps me safe when I’m on the road or facing a heckling crowd of ruffians. But those two? They’re not what I expected.’
‘Did you expect anything? Given that you did not know they would be here...’ she watched him carefully.
‘I get your drift.’ For once he gave her a wide-open look, eye to eye, a look of complicit innocence as it seemed and she felt herself being invited to trust him. More coolly, she recalled how easily he had parried the Coroner’s questions over the reason for his visit to Meaux, and the glaring omission in his reply.
‘They tell me,’ she said deciding to plunge in where she should probably have retreated, ‘that you have expectations regarding your niece’s inheritance?’
‘It would be an aid, certainly.’
‘Aid?’
‘For certain aspects of...’ he spread his arms as if the situation was too complex to describe.
‘Problems caused by the harsh rules of the money-lenders, perhaps?’ She was aware of the common reputation of some friars.
‘Ha! No, no, dear lady, not me! Nothing like that!’ He chuckled, not offended, as he might well have been, but amused as if in contemplation of a way of life beyond his comprehension. ‘My needs are simple,’ he went on. ‘I am given from the bounty of the good Lord himself according to my needs. And long may it be so. No, what I meant was that sometimes a cause can be found which would benefit by matching gold with gold.’ He gave her a considering look and unexpectedly asked, ‘Tell me about the lord abbot’s prisoner. His presence is causing quite a stir. I gather he is steward to Lord de Hutton?’
‘Yes. I’ve known him since I was a child. I was brought up at Castle Hutton. I know Ulf as well as I know anyone and I know he would not commit murder. The very idea is unthinkable.’
‘He was handy enough when he was attacked by –’ he glanced at the body on the bier.
‘Wouldn’t you defend yourself if someone came at you with a knife?’
‘Indeed. And I am in awe of his speed and strength.’ He sighed. ‘We are fencing with shadows, you and I, domina. Why should that be? Can’t you trust me?’
‘Why should I not trust you, brother?’
‘Why not? I’ve no idea. But trust me you certainly do not.’
He was about to leave.
She put out a hand. ’Think on it, brother. I found you searching for something in the scriptorium with no adequate explanation and I heard you just now make no mention to the Coroner of your reason for being here at Meaux. What is there to trust?’
He made no reply but put his hands together as if in prayer and bent his head over them.
He moved off.
But he did not leave. Nor did he try to beguile her with an answer.
As she went out her uppermost thought was why he had mentioned Roger – he had done so in a smooth, roundabout way but it could have been enough to elicit some unguarded remark from her if she had been less cautious.
The threat that came from the vast network of Lancastrian spies, augmented by the draconian measures brought in by one of King Richard’s arch-enemies, the duke of Gloucester, present chief, in all but name, of the King’s Council, had recently been increased by the appointment of yet another enemy of the king to the position of Archbishop of York in place of the exiled Alexander Neville. Even here at Meaux, she thought, a spy will have been placed.
Sir Bernard, too, would maintain his own informant, perhaps someone in his own household, and as vassal to John of Gaunt anything seen as subversive would get straight back to him – or, at present, to his son, young Bolingbroke, appointed in his father’s stead while Gaunt himself was in Acquitaine.
Friar John was standing in the shadows now with a guileless expression as if nothing other than the contemplation of God’s design concerned him. Still pondering his oblique interest in Roger, a known sympathiser of the king, she wondered if Roger himself was in danger. Could the imprisonment of Ulf and the unremitting determination to have him hanged be part of a much bigger plot to bring Roger down? He himself had hinted at something like that when he had greeted her in York on that first day home. What was it he had said to her? There is some force behind it I cannot reach.
The pattern for such cunning had been set during the recent Lent parliament when eight of the young king’s close advisors had been exterminated like rats by Gloucester, his ally Arundel and the so-called Appellants, one of whom had been King Richard’s cousin, Bolingbroke himself.
It was a pattern too similar for comfort.
As a major landholder in the north of the county Roger was trapped between the earl of Northumberland, who ran things much as he wanted as self-styled King of the North, and John of Gaunt – the vassals of the latter holding land as far down as Lincolnshire where Gaunt’s mistress, the avaricious though charming Katharine Swynford, held sway.
Meaux itself, however, under its abbot, was one of the largest estates on the north bank of the Humber and the abbot, with the interests of the Cistercian Order to uphold, could not be seen to be partisan. If it came to it could Roger actually rely on the abbot to support him?
She considered the situation as coolly as she could. With Roger out of the way and his land confiscated on some trumped-up charge of treason, a place-man could be put in at Castle Hutton as had been done at Scarborough after the Great Revolt and any hint of a Yorkshire alliance in support of King Richard would be broken.
It was not too far back in the past to remember how, after the riots in London, the knight who had stabbed Wat Tyler in front of the king and the peasant army at Smithfield, was immediately rewarded with the constableship of Scarborough Castle – which happened to be yet another of Gaunt’s possessions.
What was the man’s name? Standish. He was the knight who had drawn his sword on the unarmed leader of the Great Revolt. Only two years later he himself had died suddenly – of the ague, it was rumoured, although some suspected he was poisoned by partisans of the rebels.
Tit for tat? Quid pro quo? Who would ever know the truth now?
Her glance turned back to Friar John.
Since his arrival he had made a point of appearing to ally himself with both Roger and Sir Bernard. No-one could serve both men at once without compromise. It could not be done.
At last the Sheriff and the Beverley Coroner returned, organised the removal of the body into the mortuary, thanked the nuns for their spiritual care regarding the flight of Mark’s soul at the beginning of its journey to judgement and, in answer to Hildegard’s query, announced that everyone would be informed as soon as the abbot announced his intention to restart the hearing.
‘Just as soon as the celebration for St Hereswitha’s Day is over,’ the Sheriff added.
He was smart, even dapper if a man so physically imposing could be described as dapper, with a neatly clipped black beard skimming the line of his jaw and arching over his top lip. His two bailiffs, having sprung to their feet as soon as he appeared did not match his authority.
His glance seemed to flicker over them with a tightening of his lips as he noticed them push a couple of ale stoups to one side. The Beverley man watched them leave with his head on one side, turned to the Sheriff with a speaking glance and followed them outside.
‘We shall leave too,’ Hildegard murmured.
‘Back to our spinning,’ agreed Sister Ann.
28
They had been in the house hardly any time when the bell rang to announce a visitor. Sister Emma, with a longing for the outside world which she could not curb, hurried to answer it. Hildegard heard her speak through the grille and a few inaudible words followed.
The nun returned.
‘It’s one of the brothers for you, domina. He thought I was you!’
’In that case I know who it is. Usher him into the parlour will you?’
As she guessed when she peered through the grille as the monk entered it was the Circator.
He came right up to it and peered in at her. ‘Ah, yes, now I see my mistake. Well, domina, having found you I have a little puzzle for you.’
‘Please go ahead, brother.’
‘This morning – being the feast day of our beloved sister of St Hild, the lady Hereswitha – at the usual feet-washings I took the opportunity to scrutinise the footwear of my dear brothers. I can tell you at once that there were no sandals like the ones I saw on the feet of the monk leaving the scriptorium on the night Anselm died.’
He peered more closely in as if to make sure she was the nun he thought she was.
‘I’m astonished,’ she replied. ‘This is a puzzle. Are you sure you managed to inspect the sandals of everyone in the abbey?’
‘A great pile of them, yes, domina. I had time to look at every single pair, monks and novices alike.’
‘What about the conversi, the lay-brothers, do they not wear sandals?’
‘Never. The lay-brothers wear ankle boots or pattens and only rarely don sandals and then only in the summer months as they are less practical for the work they do.’
‘So how would you solve this puzzle?’
‘I would solve it by suggesting something you may find outrageous.’
‘Which is?’
‘That the man I saw was no monk at all but someone who had purloined a white habit and was passing himself off as one of us.’ He sighed with impatience. ‘If only I was not afflicted by this face-blindness I might after all, have noticed something that would have shown him to be a stranger.’
‘Don’t blame yourself, brother. As you said, it was dark and he had his hood pulled half over his face.’ She had a sudden idea. ‘Will you do
me the favour of demanding a boon from one of the guests?’
‘Anything.’
‘Go to Osmund the journeyman with all discretion and ask him to draw something like the sandals you remember. Describe them to him. I shall make it my task and that of my nuns to compare it with the footwear of everyone in the guest house.’
‘Do you mean you believe the murderer is still here on the loose?’
‘It’s only an idea.’ She went on to question him about visitors to the abbey at the time when Anselm was murdered and he admitted that there had been one or two travelling up from Ravenser who stayed overnight.
‘There was the agent for a wool merchant, overseeing the dispatch of his master’s goods and a fellow from off the ship on his way inland.’ He wrinkled his brow, ‘Oh yes,’ he added, ‘and there were a couple of pilgrims coming to visit St John’s shrine in the Minster after they’d had a look at our Talking Crucifix.’
‘Do you know the names of any of them?’
‘No, but the porters will have them on record.’
‘You’ve been most helpful, brother.’
‘It’s terrible to think that I may have walked past the murderer on the steps and failed to suspect him of wrong-doing. You’d imagine such evil would give off a warning glare. And strange, also, that it was the light shining through the keyhole that put me off. I thought it meant Anselm was simply hard at work. If I’d suspected anything I might have got to him in time to save him.’
‘How could you have suspected such a thing? No-one could have known at that point.’
‘I still can’t see how anyone could get inside with the door barred. That’s another puzzle, domina.’
The Circator, shouldering the blame for Anselm’s fate, went off to find Osmund and do as Hildegard requested. On his way through the gatehouse he would get a list of the travellers who were staying here that night too, he told her. It was hope of a strange kind, he added, to think that now they might be able to show that at least one of their own monks was not the perpetrator of such a heinous and pointless crime.
Murder at Meaux Page 21
