Falconer's Trial (10 page)

‘Why, is she worse?’

Falconer was filled with dread. If Ann’s illness had progressed during his neglect of her, he would never forgive himself. Margery sneered, not wishing to give into the sort of fear she had felt last time Falconer had appeared. This time she would not resort to him for help.

‘Not that it is any of your business, but the mistress is revived by the welcome return of our master.’

‘Sir Humphrey is back?’

Falconer had not heard this and wondered how Segrim had turned up without announcing his arrival from his crusading duties to all and sundry. And why.

‘Yes, he is. He arrived this very day. So you are not needed here.’

Margery turned on her heels and scuttled off towards the kitchens. Deflated, Falconer walked back out the door. He was still determined to deliver the pot of medicine to Ann, but didn’t know where to find her. Then he recalled the monkey-faced Margery’s first words to him. She had said she had been attending to Ann. If she had come in from outside, he knew where Ann was likely to be. He strode off towards the walled garden that was Ann’s haven whenever she was troubled. She tended lovingly to the plants and trees and revelled in the protective warmth of the red-brick walls. It was her own world far away from Sir Humphrey, her husband. If he had indeed returned, then it was likely she would have already sought refuge in her garden.

Unfortunately, the darkness of his cell in Bocardo once again seemed to encroach, obscuring his recollection of the sequence of events. He squeezed his eyes with forefinger and thumb until red firecrackers sparked inside his eyes. The next image he had was of a blue bundle lying at his feet. He could see Ann’s long blonde hair spread across the gravel – it must have broken free of her snood as she fell down. He collapsed to his knees.

She was lying face down and a bloody flux of vomit spread from her mouth. The pot of medicine lay close by. It had shattered on the path, spilling its contents. He was feeling for the pulse of life in her wrist, getting her blood all over his hands. He could feel none. In fact, her hand was quite limp and cold. He knew then that Ann Segrim was dead, and yet he spoke to her as if she were alive, begging forgiveness for his neglect. He was too late. It was as he was talking to her cold corpse that old Sekston happened upon him and called for help.

In his prison cell he remembered now. Ann was dead. The oblongs of light on the floor of the cell disappeared, obscured by a face that appeared at the grille. A voice called out to him. A familiar voice.

‘Master Falconer… William… what has happened here? Will you tell me?’

He recalled the source of that voice. It was young Thomas Symon, one of his students. Why was he here? He tried to figure it all out, but couldn’t. Then Thomas spoke again; this time to someone else outside the door.

‘Who is it he is supposed to have killed anyway? You did not say.’

Killed? Why did they think he had killed someone?

Then he heard the sad, gravelly voice of Peter Bullock.

‘It’s… Mistress Segrim. Ann.’

The shock of what the constable said roused him from his stupor for a moment. Why did they think he had killed Ann? By neglecting to take the potion Saphira had prepared? That thought led to another and dark ideas filled his head. He called out distractedly, his voice cracked with emotion.

‘Thomas? Is that you? For God’s sake, take care of Saphira.’

NINE

T
homas Bek, chancellor of the University of Oxford these past three years, was a nondescript sort of man in appearance. For a start, he was short and skinny. His sandy hair was receding rapidly towards the back of his head, and his eyes were small and pig-like. True, he had a sharp beak of a nose that cleft his features in twain. But it was an item more for derision than admiration, and some called him Chancellor Beak behind his back. And in the same way that his appearance failed to make him stand out from the crowd, his tenure as chancellor had not been spectacular either. He craved the fame of many of his predecessors, such as Henry de Cicestre and Nicholas Ewelme. But chiefly he wished for the notoriety and power of Thomas de Cantilupe. Cantilupe, while Chancellor of the University, had picked the wrong side in the Barons War, choosing to support the barons against King Henry. He had won and then lost his place as Chancellor of England because of that. But the word was, from Bek’s own younger brother who was close to Prince Edward, that Cantilupe would soon rise to a high estate again. Thomas Bek felt a need to make his mark, and the opportunity had just presented itself.

‘Tell me again, Roger, the case against Master Falconer.’

Roger Plumpton was large and fat where Bek was short and lean. His face was round and reddened, outlined by a loop of black hair round his bald pate, which was finished off with a trim black beard around one of his many chins. He was the proctor for the northern nation at the university and as such wielded great power. His counterpart, Henry de Godfree, proctor of the southern nation, was not present at the moment. Between them they supervised the conduct of the two groups at the university, which had grown up from internal strife within the ranks of the students in the past. The
boreales
, or northerners, came from north of the River Nene, and the
australes
, or southerners, from below it. Though this faction included so many Irishmen that sometimes they were all called Irish. Roger eased his not inconsiderable frame forward in one of the uncomfortable chairs that adorned the chancellor’s rooms.

‘Well, as you know, Chancellor, Falconer has long been a thorn in our flesh. Prone to free-thinking, and challenging the authorized viewpoints that we all teach.’ The proctors were masters as well as keepers of the peace. ‘And he has all too often poked his nose into cases of murder that do not concern the university. Moreover he does not set a good example to the students. There was that matter of the firecracker thrown at Master Ralph Cornish recently. And he is known to associate quite freely with the Jews in the town.’

Bek leaned forward, waving a dismissive hand.

‘Yes, yes. I know all this. Cornish has spoken to me
ad nauseam
about his behaviour. But it is this most recent event I wish to know more about. The wife of Sir Humphrey Segrim.’

Plumpton pursed his fat lips and shook his head.

‘It has long been known that Falconer spends… spent… too much time in her company. And so it has been surmised, quite reasonably in my opinion, that he has broken his vows of celibacy with her. And she a married woman too. When he was found in the presence of her body with a tincture of opium in his possession, it was no great leap of imagination to assume he was responsible for her death.’

Bek smiled coldly.

‘That is what I wanted to know. You think there is a clear case against him?’

Plumpton nodded eagerly, wishing to please the chancellor, who was rubbing his hands with glee.

‘So the facts prove his guilt. Quite an irony, bearing in mind his own application of Aristotelean logic to murder cases. We shall use that to rid ourselves of this nuisance of a master, and soon.’

‘How come so soon? The king’s justices are not due in the county for a long while. It must be not until—’

Plumpton was not allowed to finish calculating the month in which the king’s own justices were due to come to Oxford to dispense the law of the land. Bek’s eyes sparkled and he spoke out firmly.

‘I want you to call a meeting of the Black Congregation. We will try Falconer ourselves.’

Plumpton squirmed in his seat and stared at the chancellor in horror. It was true that over the last twenty years the office of chancellor had been granted greater and greater powers by the king. And almost fifteen years had passed since a vice-chancellor had successfully wrested from the custody of the town constable three scholars who had seriously injured a couple of local traders. Since then, the chancellor had concerned himself with most cases involving scholars of the university. But murder and mayhem had always remained an exception to the rule. Now Thomas Bek sought to challenge that and thereby exercise even greater power over the town.

‘We will set a precedent that will not be overturned.’

The chancellor continued to stare Plumpton in the eye. The proctor gave in first.

‘Yes, Chancellor. I will summon the Black Congregation.’

‘Who is Saphira?’

Peter Bullock responded to Thomas Symon’s question with a look of surprise. He knew that Falconer had been very careful about preserving the woman’s reputation, but not to the extent that his ablest student was oblivious to the relationship. Falconer had not worried about his own reputation – many masters at the university paid only lip-service to the vow of celibacy. They were simply bound never to marry. But Falconer did care about Saphira Le Veske’s situation, as a Jew in a Christian society and because of her own standing in Jewry. She was a widow with a son, who carried out the family business for her still in Canterbury, and she relied on her good name to preserve that business. Moreover, Bullock had heard she was learning medicinal skills from old Samson. People would not want to call on the curative skills of a woman with a bad reputation. It was a pity that Falconer hadn’t had the same sensitivities concerning Ann Segrim. He could have preserved her reputation. Now it was too late.

‘Saphira Le Veske. She lives in Jewry just up from St Aldates Church. A good-looking woman in her forties. Red hair.’

Thomas suddenly pictured the woman who had followed Ann Segrim out of the spicer’s shop the other week. She had red hair under her head-dress of a snood, and a comely face. No wonder Master Falconer had avoided both women at the time. It seems as if his new conquest must have met his former one. He wondered if this Saphira was as proud and fierce as he had found Ann Segrim. Well, he would find out soon enough. He looked the constable in the eye.

‘Could you take me to her? Master Falconer wishes me to take care of her.’

Bullock eyed up the slightly built young man, who was clearly more used to delving in books than handling a woman. He grinned wryly in anticipation of what Saphira might say about a boy taking care of her.

‘Come on then. It’s not far.’

As they walked down Northgate Street and across the bustle of Carfax, Thomas began to question the constable about the facts relating to Ann Segrim’s death. He was trying hard to emulate his mentor, whose guiding maxim as a
deductive
– for that was the very word Falconer used about himself – was taken from Aristotle himself. He even remembered the first time he had heard Falconer utter the word. The imposing master with the piercing blue eyes had been standing on a raised platform in front of a new intake of eager students, one of whom had been Symon himself. He scanned the faces before him as he wandered off on a favourite digression of his concerning a murder in the town. His voice was clear and strong.

‘It is the
Prior Analytics
of Aristotle that clearly show the theory of deduction. Two general truths, not open to doubt, often imply a third truth of more limited scope which was not previously known.’

This was the world of the deductive – a world redolent with truths and reason and logic. Thomas would now embark on such a course himself. He would collect as many known truths as he could, analyse them, compare them, list them, and hope to find the greater truth hidden amidst the others. Breathlessly, because Bullock’s bandy legs seemed to eat up the ground, Thomas drew out from him what was known about the death. He listened carefully to Bullock’s words.

‘Mistress Segrim was found lying on the path between her garden and the manor house, as though she was returning. She had a bloody flux coming out of her nose and mouth, which could not have been caused by her simply falling.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because there was apparently no damage to her face and nose. The sort that might have been sustained if she had tripped. It was more like she had just… slipped to the ground and expired.’

Bullock shook his head sadly at the thought.

‘Who told you this?’

Thomas was desperately trying to think of all the questions Falconer would have asked at this stage. He knew he would forget something and it might prove crucial. But his teacher had no one else to represent him, other than Peter Bullock himself. And he was constrained by his duties as constable.

‘Who told me? Well, I think it was old Sekston, when they brought William to Bocardo. As I told you, it was Sekston who found William kneeling over the body… over Ann.’

Bullock still could not bring himself to think of sweet Ann Segrim as a dead body. Unlike his usual pragmatic approach to a suspicious death, he wanted to keep referring to her by her name and not as some inanimate object. Not the body, the corpse, the victim, but Ann. Thomas snorted in derision.

‘So, we only have the word of a half-blind old man, who disliked William intensely, that Mistress Segrim did not trip and bang her head. Indeed there could have been many other causes not attributable to William. And his presence could merely have been a coincidence. No, it
was
a coincidence, as he is obviously innocent.’

Bullock stopped in his tracks, grabbed Thomas’s arm and pushed his weather-beaten face into that of the fresh-faced master.

‘Is that the sort of help you are going to give William. He must be innocent so we won’t bother collecting all the facts that prove it? If that’s what you are going to do, then you might as well give up now and let me get on with it. Because, when the royal justices arrive, they will want more than a kid, who owes William everything, crying out his innocence.’

Thomas was about to protest at being called a kid, about having his efforts so derided, but Bullock held up a warning hand.

‘No. You will let me finish. William deserves more than protestations of innocence. He needs proof. Moreover he needs us to find out who it was that killed Ann Segrim.’ Bullock’s face was puffy and bright red with anger, his brows beetling over his washed out, old man’s eyes. He paused in his rant. ‘And I can’t do it by myself. I never could. William was… is cleverer than me, and so are you. So help me, and between us we will find out who did this foul deed.’