House of Shadows (4 page)

‘We'll have to get her out, Crowner. We can't look at her properly like this,' grunted the Cornishman. ‘Shall I lift her on to the floor?'

They spread the linen sheet on the ground and Gwyn lifted the girl with surprising gentleness and laid her on it, her arms by her sides.

The four men stood and looked down on the mortal remains of the young woman. In the dim light she looked as if she was asleep. The effect of the ice had been to blanch her features, so that her cheeks, forehead and chin looked parchment-white, especially by contrast with her dark hair. The eyes were closed, and for some reason she did not look pathetic in spite of the tragedy of a young life snuffed out a day before her wedding. There was even the hint of a smile on her pallid lips, as if she was amused at the havoc she was causing to the monastic community at Bermondsey.

Brother Ignatius was holding his candle in front of his chest, and when John happened to glance at him the light threw his face into sharp relief. The coroner was momentarily startled to see what looked almost like the mask of a devil, with an expression of loathing amounting to hatred as the monk stared down at the girl on the floor. De Wolfe blinked in surprise and a moment later the image had passed, leaving him to wonder if he had imagined it.

‘Are we going to take a look at her, Crowner?'

Gwyn's down-to-earth voice brought John back to
reality as he heard the doubt in his officer's tone. This was a high-born young lady, and it was unseemly to make any extensive examination, especially with no woman available to act as a chaperone. At home in Exeter, if any intimate examination was required, especially in suspected rape or miscarriage, he usually called on the services of Dame Madge, a formidable nun from Polsloe Priory, who specialized in the ailments of women.

‘We'll confine it to her head and hands for now. If necessary, we can find a woman to help us later.' De Wolfe squatted on one side of the corpse, with Gwyn on the other, a routine they had carried out innumerable times in the past eighteen months since he had been appointed coroner. He gently lifted her eyelids and looked at the whites of the flaccid globes, now collapsed so long after death. ‘No blood spots there, no marks on her neck, so she's not been throttled. The windows of her eyes are clouded over after ten days, ice or no ice.'

His long, bony fingers then explored her hair, feeling the scalp underneath.

‘Lift her a little, Gwyn,' he commanded, and his hands slid under the back of her head. ‘Ha, what have we here?' he exclaimed. ‘Pull the lady right up, will you?'

His officer lifted Christina by the shoulders until she was in a sitting position, her head lolling loosely to one side. The coroner steadied it and let her chin sink to her chest as he felt around the top of her head and then down to the nape of her neck, all covered in the wet, dark hair.

‘A boggy swelling, almost on top of her skull,' he announced in a low voice. ‘I can feel the bone cracked beneath it.'

Gwyn repeated the palpation, to confirm what his
master had said. ‘And her neck must have gone, too, Crowner. Her head wobbles like a bladder on a stick!' He was likening it to the child's toy, an inflated pig's bladder tied to the end of a twig.

John felt it for himself, flopping the head back and forth in his hands, then motioned to Gwyn to set the cadaver back on the ground. He looked at her hands and arms, visible up to the elbows when he pushed up the wide sleeves of her gown. There was nothing to be seen, and he risked a look at her legs, lifting the skirts as far as her knees, again confirming that there were no visible injuries.

As Gwyn carefully rearranged her clothing, de Wolfe stood up and contemplated the dead girl lying on the floor in the flickering candlelight. It was Brother Ignatius who first broke the strained silence.

‘From what you said, sir, I understand that she has suffered an injury to her head. This is what our infirmarian suspected.' His tone suggested that he thought it a long and unnecessary journey from distant Devon to confirm what they already knew.

‘She has indeed, brother. And her neck is broken.'

‘But this is surely what would be expected in a fall down those treacherous stairs?' persisted the monk.

‘We shall see,' replied de Wolfe enigmatically. ‘Meanwhile, we must place her back in the ice. I will suggest to your prior that arrangements for burial be begun without delay. In spite of the cold, my nose tells me that we cannot arrest the normal course of events much longer.'

Gwyn lifted the body as if it were a feather and placed it back in the icy slush, which was dripping ever faster through the poor seams of the box. He gently covered her with the linen sheet and stepped back, as Thomas murmured a funereal litany in Latin.

‘Where will she be buried?' asked Gwyn. ‘Will they
put her here in that graveyard we saw when we arrived or take her home to this Derby place?'

There was a low mumble from the chaplain, which John could not catch, but Thomas's sharp ears picked it up, much to his surprise.

‘What did you say?' asked John sharply.

Ignatius shook his head. ‘I do not know where, Crowner. I expect the prior will have to consult her guardian before a decision can be made.'

‘Well, you had better hurry up about it,' advised de Wolfe. ‘And keep using that ice for as long as she's here.'

They left the crypt-like basement with a feeling of relief, Thomas looking almost fearfully over his shoulder as they made their way back through the barrels and boxes stacked in the rest of the cellar. It seemed warmer – or, rather, less cold – in that area than in the further chamber, where the oppressive atmosphere seemed to bite at the skin and lungs.

On the way out, John stopped to look again at the area around the foot of the stairs. He tapped the earth with his foot, then scraped at the moist soil with the toe of his riding boot. Looking up, the steep staircase was dimly lit by the tallow dip at the top, revealing the narrow passage between the walls of grey stone and the regular blocks of the same granite that formed the treads.

He made no comment and led the way up to the door that opened into the courtyard. The snow was now coming down more thickly, though none had yet settled on the ground, and again Thomas shivered, this time from the undoubted cold that permeated his thin body to his very bones.

As the chaplain closed the door, he noticed the clerk shudder and took pity on him. ‘There is a warming room at the side of the dorter, where a fire is kept
going between November and Good Friday. You are welcome to sit there at any time in this inclement weather.'

Thankfully, they took up the invitation and found the room sandwiched between the frater and the dorter, which joined at right-angles. Other than the prior's quarters and the kitchens, it was the only place in the priory that was ever heated. There was a chimneyed hearth with a large log fire and a charcoal brazier sitting on a stone slab at the other side of the chamber. There were a number of benches around the walls and several hooded settles, whose wooden sides kept off some of the draught. Two older monks were fast asleep in a couple of these and several more were reading or dozing on the benches.

‘If you wait here for a while until the chill leaves you, I will send down when the prior is able to receive you again, Sir John,' promised Ignatius before he glided silently away.

‘I can't take to that fellow, somehow,' rumbled Gwyn, as they found themselves a bench to one side of the hearth, out of earshot of the nearest Cluniacs. ‘Not that I'm all that partial to anyone in holy orders!' he added with a meaningful dig in Thomas's ribs.

For once, the clerk failed to rise to the bait, as he leaned nearer to de Wolfe to whisper in a conspiratorial undertone. ‘Crowner, did you catch what he said in the crypt, when you asked where the girl was to be buried?'

‘I know he muttered something, but I couldn't make it out,' said John.

‘He said, “It should be at a crossroads, with a stake through her heart”!'

‘I said he was a nasty bastard!' growled Gwyn, as de Wolfe digested this peculiar piece of information.

‘I saw his face at that moment too,' he said slowly.
‘There is something very wrong in this place, so keep your eyes and ears open and your mouths shut!'

 

‘I trust you are refreshed after your long journey, Sir John,' said Robert Northam courteously, rising from behind his table to greet the coroner. ‘I also understand that you have visited the scene of this tragedy and…' He hesitated, at a loss how to phrase his question.

De Wolfe helped him out without any finesse. ‘Yes, prior, I have also examined the corpse.'

The priest sank on to his chair. ‘I see you have not brought your two assistants with you?'

‘No, I must speak to you alone.' He looked meaningfully at Ignatius, who was standing in his usual protective position alongside Northam.

‘You may speak freely in front of my secretary, Crowner. He is also my chaplain and my confessor.'

John shook his head firmly. ‘Some things must be held in total confidence,' he said. ‘I have strict instructions from the chief justiciar to that effect.'

This was untrue, but he was quite prepared to lie when he considered it justified. The prior looked surprised but waved at Ignatius, who reluctantly left the chamber and closed the door. John wondered if he was outside, pressing his ear to the panels.

‘You have something to tell me?' asked Northam anxiously as de Wolfe sat in the chair he had occupied previously.

‘Christina de Glanville was murdered,' he said bluntly. ‘Your own instincts were correct. She did not fall down those stairs, alive or dead!'

Robert's fingers played agitatedly with the bronze crucifix hanging from a chain around his neck. ‘I suspected as much. But how can you be so certain?'

‘As you told me, the fact that her head was near the
bottom step and that she was face down makes it a near impossibility for a fall downstairs. If she had pitched forwards, the likelihood would be for her feet to be nearest the step. It would be just possible for her to land on her head and somersault over, but then she would almost certainly land face up.'

The prior frowned. ‘Is “almost certainly” enough?' he asked.

‘There is more,' growled de Wolfe. ‘She had a severe injury to the top of the back of her head, which had fractured her skull. Again, it is just possible, though unlikely, that she could land on the back of her head from a fall, but she would have had to twist in mid-air to achieve that. The stairway was so narrow that was almost impossible, and she would have struck the floor with her face first.'

The prior was following this with quick nods of his head.

‘Furthermore, her neck was broken,' went on de Wolfe. ‘But it was snapped in a backward direction, which is impossible from a heavy fall on the back of the head, which would have forced the chin downwards. The break occurred in the opposite direction, by the head being pulled backwards.'

There was a pregnant silence. ‘You are absolutely sure of this?' asked Northam, almost in a whisper.

‘She had not a single bruise nor scrape on her legs and arms,' persisted John. ‘For someone to fall down twenty unyielding granite steps with sufficient force to crack the skull and break the neck, without striking their limbs on the edges, is beyond belief!'

The prior gave a deep sigh of resignation. ‘So what do you surmise happened, Crowner?'

‘Someone struck her a heavy blow on the back of the head with some object. It must have been flat not to rip the skin, but heavy enough to shatter the bone.
She would have lost her wits instantly, then the assailant gave her the
coup de grâce
by breaking her neck.'

‘How is that possible?' wailed Robert Northam.

John shrugged. ‘Quite easily. I have seen it done in the mêlée of combat. One hand cupped under the chin, the other on the nape of the neck – then a quick jerk backwards.'

The prior shuddered. ‘We must be looking for a brute with great strength, surely?'

The coroner shook his head, his jet-black hair bouncing over the collar of his grey tunic. ‘Not at all. Any determined man could do it – or woman, for that matter!'

The prior crossed himself in horror, reminding John of his clerk's habit. ‘God preserve us from that! There were several ladies about the poor girl, but none of them could possibly be involved.'

‘Who exactly were those ladies?' demanded the coroner.

‘There was Margaret de Courtenay, who was to be the maid of honour at the wedding. She was a friend of Lady Christina, from the time they were in Sempringham together, so I understand.'

John could feel that Robert Northam was trying to distance himself as much as possible from any close acquaintance with the dramatis personae in this tragic drama.

‘Then there was Lady Avisa, who was virtually the mother of Christina, being the wife of her guardian, Roger Beaumont, together with their daughter, Eleanor. And, of course, there were various handmaidens and tirewomen who attended the three ladies,' he added dismissively.

‘Were they all staying here at the priory?'

‘They were indeed, as we have ample accommoda
tion since we became so popular with the king and his ministers as a place to safely house their guests in London.' The prior sounded a little cynical at this demotion of his monastic retreat to an aristocratic lodging-house.

‘Where would they stay exactly?' asked de Wolfe.

‘Sir Roger Beaumont and his wife had a parlour and bedroom next to the inner gate, while Christina de Glanville and her bridesmaid Margaret de Courtenay were lodged in a pair of guest-rooms near where you are placed, Crowner. It is at the top of the stairs, but opposite the dormitory, through a locked door.'

‘What about their personal servants?'

‘They slept on pallets either in a corner of the same room or in an antechamber, in the case of the Beaumonts.'