House of Shadows (12 page)

‘Who is it feels so damned insecure that he locks himself up inside the walls of a priory?'

Defying the rain that was already soaking him a second time, he stepped out into the yard. Putting his eye-glasses on, he stared up at the window where he had first seen signs of occupation. At that moment, like a providential stroke, a flash of lightning lit up the yard followed hard by a clap of thunder. Almost on the thunder's heels and in the returning darkness, a yellowish light once more appeared at the window. Falconer swiped his fingers across the lenses before his eyes to clear the blurred image and perceived the pale,
anxious visage of a woman. She was staring up at the maelstrom that was the storm. And the moon that was half-disappeared from the sky.

‘A woman. And locked away too.'

‘She is a Jewess seeking her son. What else could I do, short of casting her out? And that I could not do.'

Falconer hadn't known he had spoken his own observations out loud, and turned to look over his shoulder at who had replied. There stood a black-clad figure who had appeared out of nowhere, his footsteps masked by the sounds of the thunderstorm. Though his hood was pulled over his features to protect him from the rain, Falconer could see it was John de Chartres. The prior was looking at him quizzically, and Falconer realized he still wore the heavy glasses that helped his vision. Embarrassed, he pulled them off, folding them up and returning them to his pouch.

‘She…What is a Jewess doing looking for her son in a priory?'

De Chartres grimaced. ‘That is simple. He is here…or he was. Until the day before yesterday, to be exact.' He took Falconer by his arm and guided him towards the archway of his guest-room. ‘Let me explain somewhere more salubrious.'

 

Saphira Le Veske gazed down on the two men as they scurried back into the shelter of the doorway at the other end of the building where she had been incarcerated. Once they were out of her sight, she looked up at the sky again, to where the moon was experiencing a rare eclipse. As the curved shadow of the earth crossed the moon's sunlit surface, it appeared as though a greater and greater arc was being eroded from the orb. Superstitious folk might imagine that the moon was being eaten away. Saphira, an educated woman who had run her dead husband's businesses
for more years than she cared to recall, knew better. But she still sighed at the phenomenon. It was so much more alluring to imagine the moon being consumed by a great invisible monster than to conceive of orbs in the vastness of the sky. She looked back down at the empty courtyard, now nearly pitch black as the moonlight was eroded. The big, raw-boned man with the strange eye-lenses had piqued her curiosity. Before he had put on his glasses, she had looked into his piercing-blue eyes and seen intensity and a wild intelligence. Maybe he was the man she needed to restart her stalled affairs at Bermondsey Priory.

She crossed her upper chamber and pressed her ear to the wall that separated her room from his. If she concentrated, she thought she could just hear the murmur of two voices.

 

‘Though I have no obligation to do so, I wish to explain the circumstances to you.'

The prior was beginning his conversation with William Falconer rather too sternly, and he knew it. Still, he could not help himself, as he preferred to surround himself with an aura of infallibility. He was moreover a man who relied on his dignity to carry him through difficult situations and was unused to confiding in others. But somehow he felt the present circumstances would be served by sharing them with this erudite stranger. Especially as Master Falconer was someone whom the prior was unlikely to see ever again after the night was over. Falconer was seated on the edge of his pallet, legs spread wide, his hands planted firmly on each knee. He angled his head at the prior's comment, as if indicating his understanding of the monk's difficult position. The man seemed to have something to hide. But William knew the value of silence in eliciting further information from a reluctant witness and kept quiet. Prior John
de Chartres paced the creaky floor, pulling on his lower lip with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. He paused for a moment, looking out at the darkling sky outside the narrow window. Then he swung around to face Falconer again.

‘The blight of Brother Peter's madness is not the only problem to strike this priory recently. In the last few days two of his fellow brothers, both his sort of age, have disappeared without trace.'

‘I am used to the errant ways of young men, who give in to the lure of the fleshpots for a few days. But they nearly always come back repentant.' Falconer paused to look up at the prior, who clearly didn't take too kindly to his suggestion that the Cluniac order resembled in any way the rowdy hordes of Oxford clerks. He quickly softened his observation. ‘On the other hand, there are those uncertain souls who often take flight back home to their families, having decided that learning is not for them.'

The prior shook his head. ‘Neither case can appertain here, Master Falconer. Brother Eudo is an orphan, and Brother Martin…' His face crumpled, and he cast a glance sideways at the blank wall that separated Falconer's solar from the other guest-chamber. William wondered if he thought the mysterious woman was listening in to their conversation for some reason. ‘Perhaps you will understand if I tell you that Brother Martin is called Le Convers.'

‘He is a Jew.'

‘Was a Jew, Master. Now a convert from La Réole near Bordeaux, and I am paid eight pence a week to instruct him in the Catholic faith. But now I am not so sure I should have taken such a viper into my nest of innocents.'

Falconer sensed there was some deeper matter here, and that it involved the woman locked away next door.
He could feel the prickle of a megrim beginning, but he thrust it aside. ‘Tell me all the circumstances.'

 

The Jewess knew she could save her son if only she could escape the durance that had been imposed on her. It had been her misfortune to trust the prior of Bermondsey Abbey when she approached him openly the previous day and said she sought out the youth known as Martin the Convert. John de Chartres had obfuscated, from the outset appearing embarrassed by the Jewess's request.

‘Why do you seek out this person?'

‘Because he is my son, Menahem. And his conversion was an ill-considered and rash act hard on the death of his father. If he is here, as I believe he is, please let me speak to him. I have travelled long and far to find him, neglecting the businesses that my husband built up in his lifetime. And which Menahem – Martin – will in time inherit.'

‘Not if he is a Christian, I dare say.'

‘True. After all, it is the business of lending at an interest, which is forbidden those of the Christian faith. But it is equally only that which we—' she swept open her arms to encompass all of her own faith ‘—which is all we Jews are allowed to pursue.'

‘Be that as it may, madam…' The prior pursed his lips in distaste at the tenor of the conversation. ‘What makes you think Mena…your son is here?'

‘Because I have followed his tracks across France and into this realm. I thought to have lost any trace of him then. But, having lodged in Jewry at Canterbury in the small parish of St Mary Bredman, I learned of a French convert lodged close by St Thomas Hospital there. I was too late to catch him there, though. He was said to have been moved here to Bermondsey Priory. Can you deny he is here?'

‘I can in truth say that no one called Martin Le Convers is presently in this priory, woman. So your journey is in vain, and you must return empty-handed. However, as the hour is late, and the weather worsening, please accept my Christian hospitality for the night.'

Saphira Le Veske thought his words accurate only in their strictest sense. Perhaps her son was not presently in the priory, but she was sure he resided here normally. She sensed something uneasy in the manner of the prior, something she could not put down to his being confronted by a Christ-killer, and a mere woman. What had her son done that made the man so unwilling to admit to his existence? She was determined to find out, and after taking up her lodgings in the priory guest quarters she resolved to wait until darkness fell and then scour the priory in secret. It had come as some shock to her to find she had been locked in. She had been standing at the window puzzling over her predicament when the tall stranger with the peculiar eye-glasses had turned up.

Saphira Le Veske was a good-looking woman with a thick head of red hair and green eyes that were unusual in her race. And she had turned many a man's head with her looks, which even though she was now forty-one she flattered herself to imagine were still alluring. The stranger was somehow going to be her saviour, whether he was aware of it or not. But before she could properly attract his attention, the creepy old prior had materialized from the stubborn darkness cast by the eclipsed moon. Now she was back relying on her own resources and would have to think again how she could escape her chamber. She wished she had paid more attention to the esoteric faith that had so seduced her husband and son prior to the older man's death. The Kabbalah might have given her some mystical release
from her prison, but in the absence of magic she would have to rely on something more mundane. She poked her head out of the solar window.

 

‘Can I speak to Brother Peter?'

Falconer had a notion that, if only he could understand the boy, he would be able to decipher what had happened in this accursed priory over the last few days. John de Chartres had spun him a yarn about three young monks who had forged a bond in the months since the young former Jew's arrival at the priory, a bond that with hindsight the prior now deemed unholy and unhealthy. De Chartres now saw Martin Le Convers as the fount of all the evil that had occurred. Falconer was not so sure but would keep an open mind until he got to the truth. His experience of the Jews of Oxford told him that people of that race avoided conflict where they could. Naturally, there were just as many hotheads among the young Jewish men as there were in the Christian community. But they were by and large more circumspect, and more than aware of their equivocal position in England. Still, this youth was a convert and might not be in the same mould. Falconer had only Peter to tell him what had really been going on.

The prior pointed out the problem of questioning Brother Peter. ‘But he is mad. All he utters is gibberish.'

Falconer smiled. ‘And many would say I utter gibberish every day of my teaching life. Especially my new students. But soon they learn there is a logic in my catechism. Sometimes it just takes a pedantic and logical mind to make sense of the apparent madness in the world. After all, once you have discarded the impossible, then even the improbable that remains must somehow be the truth.'

John de Chartres grunted, clearly not prepared to accept the veracity of Falconer's rather unusual state
ment. But he saw no other way out of his dilemma than to allow the Regent Master access to Brother Peter.

‘Come, he is in the hospital close by.'

As the rain still beat down steadily, William took a cloak from his travel baggage and wrapped it around his still-damp robe. He followed the prior down the staircase and out into the yard. The men paused briefly at the archway, hesitant about diving back into the storm. Falconer instinctively looked right and left before stepping into the darkness. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of something pale halfway down the junction of the wall to the guest quarters and that of the monastic dormitory, something pale, topped by a flapping bundle of material. He smiled to himself and, taking the prior's arm, steered John de Chartres across the streaming courtyard – away from the shapely vision of a slim woman's bare leg topped by her rumpled, dark gown, which had apparently snagged on the leaden downpipe that she was attempting to shin down.

‘This way to the infirmary, you said?'

Behind them, Saphira untangled her gown and slid down the pipe to the ground. She crouched in the shadows, the rain turning her fiery red hair a deep brown, until the two men turned the corner of the building opposite. Then she hurried to follow them, sure that the errand they were on would throw some light on the whereabouts of her son. The tall visitor to the priory – the one who had clearly seen her stuck halfway down the drainpipe – had mentioned an infirmary. Maybe her son was the one they were about to visit there. From one point of view, she hoped not – often such hospitals were used as lazar houses. She did not want to imagine her son as struck down with leprosy, though this might explain the prior's reluctance to acknowledge his existence. Barefoot, she
crossed the courtyard and cautiously peered around the corner of the adjacent building to see the men duck under an archway to her right. Silently, she followed them.

Falconer cast a quick glance behind him as he and the prior approached the hospital. He was able to spot a shadowy figure sidling around the corner of the building. Despite his poor vision and the growing darkness as the moon was cast further into shadow, he was satisfied that the figure's slight stature was that of the mystery woman who had been locked away. His instincts told him she would help him unlock the puzzle surrounding the two missing monks and Brother Peter's madness. To have her on hand and free of the constraints of John de Chartres suited him perfectly. He ushered the prior ahead of him and deliberately left the hospital entrance door open behind him.

 

Saphira Le Veske padded barefoot behind the two men, oblivious to the freezing rain that steepled down from the heavens. She was getting closer to finding her son, and all her concentration was on the task ahead. After they had passed under the arched entrance to the building on the opposite side of the courtyard, she hovered for a while in the deep shadow of one of the buttresses to its outer wall. Then, certain that the men must by now have proceeded further into the building, she slipped across the cobbled yard and stood under the same arch. The door was slightly ajar, and she was able to slip through the gap without moving it any further on its hinges.