Company of Liars (31 page)

‘No, let him drink. Wash the meat out of his stomach. I don't want him vomiting all the way. It puts me off my breakfast. Besides, I want to bring him in alive. I don't want him dying on the road, depriving the populace of their sport.
Good for morale, a burning, let's them know the Church has got everything under control.’

The soldiers finally released Rodrigo and turned to mount their horses. Rodrigo ran across to the pardoner who was already in his saddle. He grabbed the pardoner's arm.

‘This man has done nothing. You must give him a chance to defend himself. You are a man of God and you know in all conscience that was no fair test. Let him answer properly.’

‘Have no fear, good fellow, he will be heard. They will hear him all over the Bishop's palace before we've finished with him. We do not burn men until they have confessed and by the time we have finished with him, he will be begging to confess.’

‘You would torture a man in the name of a merciful God?’ Rodrigo asked bitterly.

The pardoner's eyes glittered in the torchlight. ‘Just a moment, do I detect the same accent as Master Michael's? Another Venetian? Could it be we have two Jews for the price of one? Well, well. It is my lucky night.’

Michelotto looked up. ‘This man, a Venetian? He is a bastard Genoese. It is bad enough you call me a Jew, now you accuse me of being countryman to this whoremonger. Take me if you are going to; I'd rather burn than have to spend another minute in the company of a Genoese.’

Michelotto spat at Rodrigo, and a glob of purple wine-stained spittle landed on his cheek and rolled slowly down his face.

The soldiers laughed and turned their horses in the direction of the track.

The pardoner swept his gaze round the clearing. ‘You may spread the word. We shall root out all Jews wherever we find them and believe me, we shall find them.’

Within minutes they had gone, dragging Michelotto behind them on a long rope. We all stood, listening to the hoofbeats fade into the distance. One of the apprentices silently and mechanically began to straighten the overturned benches. One by one the others joined him as if they didn't know what else to do.

It had begun to rain again. I walked over to Rodrigo, who still stood staring down the track, though there was nothing to be seen or heard except the wind in the branches and the pattering of the raindrops.

‘He denied you to save your life, Rodrigo.’

Rodrigo did not answer. There were tears in his eyes.

Hugh stumbled across to us, his face wretched. ‘It is all my fault. If I hadn't thrown the pardoner out, he'd not have come back here with the soldiers.’ He pounded his fist into the nearest tree trunk. ‘I am such a fool, a stupid, hot-headed fool.’

‘He'd have come back anyway,’ I assured him. ‘However much they cream off the sale of indulgences, pardoners are always greedy for more. They're always on the lookout for something they can report to their masters for an extra purse and the Church makes good use of them as spies. As you said yourself, the prayers and masses haven't stopped the pestilence. Catching a few Jews reassures the people that something is being done to keep them safe. But God help Michelotto, it will be better for him if he does die on the road.’

We finished clearing up as best we could, then I lay down once again in the warmth of the workshop and closed my eyes. I was dimly aware of others stepping round me to find their own sleeping places, but I was too tired to open my eyes to see who they were.

∗

For the second time that night I woke with a start. I thought I heard the distant howl of a wolf. Around me I could see Rodrigo, Jofre, Osmond and Adela all sitting up. The howl had woken them too. One of the apprentice boys whimpered in his sleep, but they slept on, huddled together in the corner of the workshop, too exhausted by the night's events to be woken by anything. I heard Osmond murmuring to comfort Adela. I lay still and listened for a few moments, but heard nothing more. One by one the others lay down again. But I couldn't settle.

I got up as quietly as I could and slipped outside to relieve myself. It was still dark. The wind roared in the branches overhead and it was cold after the warmth of the workshop. In the clearing, fires glowed ruby-red under the iron pots, but the flames had died down. I was just slipping back to the workshop when a movement caught my eye. Narigorm sat near one of the potash fires, her runes scattered in front of her.

‘Too late for that now, Narigorm,’ I said. ‘We could have done with the warning before the soldiers came.’

‘Nine for knowledge. Nine for nine nights on the tree. Nine for the mothers of Heimdal. And so Morrigan begins it.’

‘Begins what?’ I asked her.

She looked up and opened her eyes wide as if she had only just realized I was there. ‘One has gone. Now we are eight.’

‘What do you mean, one of us has gone?’ I was tired and irritable. ‘Zophiel? He'll be back, I can promise you that. He'd not go anywhere without his precious boxes and he can't carry those on foot.’

‘Not Zophiel.’

Another thought struck me. Cygnus. I didn't remember seeing him at all after the soldiers came. The sight of them
must have frightened him out of his wits. It was hardly surprising if he had run off and if he had, there was no reason for him to come back.

‘You mean Cygnus?’

She shook her head. I knew she wanted me to guess again, but I was in no mood to play childish games. I was cold and weary. I wanted to lie down again. I turned to go.

‘Pleasance.’

I turned back to her. ‘Did you say Pleasance? Don't talk nonsense. She was standing with you all the time the soldiers were here, why should she have run off now?’

By way of an answer Narigorm pointed to a rune lying half-way across the line of one of the circles. The figure etched on to it was a straight line with two short lines coming down at an angle as if a child had drawn half a pine tree.

‘Ansuz
, the ash tree, Odin's sign. He hung on the tree for nine days to learn the meaning of the runes.’

‘What does this have to do with Pleasance?’ I asked, but Narigorm only looked down at the runes again.

I searched the runes, trying to see if I was missing something. There was no shell or feather among them, but then I saw there was something else lying on the bare earth. In the dim light cast by the fires I had almost missed it, a little sprig of some plant. I picked it up and peered at it closely. The long spike of tiny yellow flowers, though dried, was unmistakable. It was the herb agrimony and it had been bound with a coarse red thread, the same thread that midwives use to bind agrimony to the mother's thighs to help ease the passage of the baby.

I crouched down and looked into Narigorm's ice-blue eyes.

‘Narigorm, stop playing games, tell me where Pleasance has gone.’

She looked at me for a long time, without blinking, before she finally spoke.

‘Pleasance is dead.’

15. The First Death

We found Pleasance early the following morning. Hugh had ordered the apprentices to help us search and in the end it was one of them who came back, white and trembling, to say he had found her body. He delivered his message in faltering tones and promptly vomited, but after a mug of ale was finally persuaded to lead us back to where she was.

Hugh, Rodrigo, Osmond and I followed the boy through the trees, leaving Jofre at the glassworks to look after Adela and Narigorm. We walked for about a quarter of an hour, and I was beginning to think the boy had lost his way or imagined the whole thing when he suddenly stopped in his tracks and pointed. A body was dangling from the high branch of an ancient oak tree. Even though her back was towards us, I recognized her immediately. Her long skirts clung wetly to her legs. Her limp arms dangled uselessly by her sides, the hands purple where the blood had pooled. The thick veil she always wore to cover her hair was missing and her dark hair was loose. Long wet strands of it snaked down over her shoulders. Her head was lolling at a strange angle.

She was hanging by a length of rope to which a leather
noose had been tied. As the body rocked back and forth in the wind, the wet rope made a mewling sound, like a newborn infant, as it rubbed against the branch of the tree. As we stared aghast, there was a sudden gust of wind and the body twisted round as if to greet us. Her eyes were wide open and seemed to be staring straight at us. The apprentice boy behind me gave a high-pitched yelp and fled.

Osmond was the first to pull himself together. He climbed up the tree and, legs astride the branch, inched forward until he could reach far enough to saw at the rope with his knife. He worked carefully; there was no point in hurrying for we could see from the angle of the head that her neck was broken. Rodrigo and Hugh caught the body as it dropped and eased it down on to the fallen leaves. Her sightless eyes stared up at us. I passed my hand over them to try to close them, but the rigor of death was already beginning to set in and her face was stiff. She had been dead for some hours.

The leather thong had bitten deep into her neck. As Rodrigo cut it loose and pulled it away, her pierced amber wolfstone slid into view. It had been hidden by her hair. It was only then that I realized the noose had been fashioned from her own necklace.

‘She was fortunate,’ Rodrigo said. ‘The wolfstone, it jerked against her neck and broke it. She died instantly. That is a blessing. I have seen men die by hanging and it is an agonizingly slow death.’

‘But to break the neck in that manner means she was not hauled up by the rope. She must have been pushed off from something high,’ I said.

Osmond crouched down beside the body. ‘Like a horse? If the soldiers set her on a horse, then pulled it away?’

Rodrigo shook his head. ‘That would not break her neck, not if she swung back at an angle. It has to be a sharp
drop downwards.’ He looked up at the high branch. ‘If she jumped from that branch, that would have done it.’

‘You think she killed herself then?’ I asked.

Hugh, at my elbow, took a deep breath and crossed himself. ‘God's blood, don't say that. Better she was murdered than that she took her own life.’

‘They could have broken her neck and then hanged her,’ Osmond said.

‘I hardly think so.’ I jumped as I heard Zophiel's unmistakable drawl behind me. ‘Why go to the trouble of hanging her if she was already dead? It's plain the woman killed herself. She was the sort of hysterical female who would be given to such fits of melancholia.’

Rodrigo rose and glared at Zophiel. ‘Where have you been hiding all night? Do you know anything of this?’

‘I really don't see that I have to account to you for my whereabouts, Rodrigo. I'm not your pupil. But since you ask, I was not, as you put it,
hiding
, I was in the wagon guarding our provisions. Someone had to, with those louts rampaging through the camp.’

‘It is a pity you did not stay and meet the pardoner, Zophiel. You would have got on well.’

Hugh looked from one to the other, evidently puzzled by the antagonism between them. ‘Maybe whoever did it hanged her to make it look like suicide, instead of murder.’

‘The journeyman makes a good point.’ Zophiel raised his voice slightly. ‘Has anyone thought to enquire where our young friend Cygnus spent the night?’

We looked at one another.

Osmond said hesitatingly, ‘He's right. It could be…’

I shook my head. ‘I don't dispute that a man who has used only one arm for his whole life has the strength and dexterity to break a woman's neck. There are many ways
that might be accomplished. But to hang a dead body from a tree at that height, that requires two hands. The rope end was not tied off at ground level, which means someone would have had to climb that tree to haul her up, just as you had to climb it to cut her down. And how would he lift a dead body up? The rope did not reach from the branch to ground.’

‘But if the body was lying on a horse under the tree,’ Osmond said, ‘that might lift it high enough. Xanthus will stand like a lamb for Cygnus.’

Hugh shook his head. ‘From what I've seen of him that Cygnus is a soft lad. I doubt he's got it in him to wring a chicken's neck. If she was murdered it is more likely it was by a passing stranger. Could have been one of the charcoal burners in the forest. They're a strange lot, living by themselves for months at a time. No womenfolk with them, most of them. They say even the pigs are nervous of them and it's not for fear of being made into bacon.’

‘Or,’ Rodrigo said quietly, ‘she may simply have taken her own life.’

Hugh looked down at the bedraggled figure at his feet. ‘Aye, well, that too,’ he said soberly. ‘By rights we ought to raise the hue and cry and send for the coroner. It is up to him to decide how she died, but… look, we've had enough trouble here. If the pardoner is brought in to testify, it's us that'll get the blame whatever. He's got it in for us. And I've the lads to think about. With their master gone and their families more than likely dead, I'm all that stands between them and starvation. We're the only ones who know about the woman. I'm guessing she's no relatives to come looking for her, so…’ He trailed off, a pleading expression on his face.