House of Shadows (9 page)

‘When I was going to my bed, I found this was missing. The only place I could have lost it was when we all went to that damned cellar.'

‘Couldn't you have left it until morning?' grunted Gwyn as they entered the dormitory.

‘It's valuable – and a certain lady gave it to me many years ago,' growled John. ‘With God knows who coming to fetch the body tomorrow, I wanted to make sure of it. With my candle out when I came to, I had to crawl and grope on my hands and knees to find it in that bloody cellar.'

Thomas shuddered to think of being in the dark with a dripping corpse-box for company and decided that John de Wolfe must have stronger nerves than anyone
he knew. After their master gingerly lowered himself on to his mattress, Thomas went off to the far side of the priory and roused the old infirmarian, who hobbled across with bandages and salve to clean up the coroner's scrapes and bruises. They told him that de Wolfe had fallen downstairs, but omitted to mention which ones.

‘Shall I rouse the prior as well?' enquired Gwyn, who was still simmering with anger at this outrage on his master, but John wearily forbade him.

‘No point in hauling him from his bed. I just want to rest now. I'll see him in the morning.'

‘Perhaps he was the sod who pushed you down the steps,' muttered Gwyn under his breath.

 

The day of the funeral dawned with a pale clear sky and an iron-hard frost in place of the snow flurries of previous days. Every drop of water was frozen, even in the jugs in the guest dormitory. Stiff and aching, but otherwise none the worse for his fall, John de Wolfe rose shivering from his pallet and joined Gwyn and Thomas in the refectory downstairs, where hot gruel and warm bread, combined with ale mulled in the kitchen with a red-hot poker, helped them to thaw out.

‘What are we going to do about it, Crowner?' demanded Gwyn. ‘I reckon it was that bastard Beaumont, trying to put you out of action!'

Thomas nodded excitedly. ‘Perhaps he had been fiddling his share of the estate profits and was scared you would find out. Maybe that was why he killed his ward, to keep his embezzlement secret by hanging on to the lands?'

John paused in his attack on a slab of boiled salt ham and three eggs fried in beef dripping, for his injuries had not blunted his appetite.

‘Don't get carried away. We've not a shred of proof to accuse anyone. I'm off to see the prior after this, Gwyn, but you had better get down to see what's happening to that corpse.'

Thomas was thankful that this order seemed to exclude him, and he hurried away to yet another service in the church, where he could gossip and question the monks again. When de Wolfe accosted Robert Northam as he returned from Prime, the prior was aghast at being told of the attack during the night.

‘That vault is accursed!' he said with a vehemence that seemed too extreme for the occasion. ‘I should have it bricked up, but the cellarer is adamant that he needs the space for storage. That place has been nothing but trouble for this house since we were founded.' He did not enlarge on this, and John was more concerned with discovering who had tried to kill him.

‘I was lucky to receive nothing more than cuts and bruises, though I was knocked senseless for a time.' He grinned wryly. ‘It proves beyond any doubt that Christina never fell down those stairs, when her lack of injuries are compared with my poor face and legs!'

‘Who could have done such a thing?' expostulated Robert. ‘Surely not one of my flock!'

‘Then that leaves only your guests, prior,' observed de Wolfe.

Brother Ignatius, who lurked like a shadow behind his master, muttered something about the power of the Horned One surviving after death, but he was ignored as the prior and coroner discussed possible motives and culprits. They came to no conclusions and soon Ignatius was tugging at Robert's cloak to remind him that they should prepare for the coffining of Christina.

De Wolfe had other business and limped rather than strode over to the favoured guest-rooms near the inner gate. Here he rapped on the door and confronted Roger Beaumont, who appeared with Jordan de Neville close behind.

‘Were you abroad in the building in the early hours of this morning?' he rasped without any pretence at diplomacy. ‘And if you were, did you attempt to kill me by pushing me down the cellar steps?'

After the first shock, Roger became almost apoplectic with enraged indignation. He raved at the coroner and, if Jordan had not restrained him, would have thrown himself at de Wolfe in his temper.

John sometimes used this ploy of making others so incensed that they dropped incautious words that betrayed them, but this time it failed, even when he voiced his suspicions that Beaumont might have been cheating the Exchequer of some of Christina's revenues.

Eventually the incandescent language of the baron persuaded de Wolfe that he was getting nowhere, and with ill grace and no apology to Roger he backed off and went down to seek Gwyn. In the lower corridor, he found him helping a couple of lay brothers, fussily overseen by a trio of monks, to manhandle a new coffin into the alcove and down the now notorious stairs. Made in the priory workshops, the sarcophagus was of fine elm, but the corners were already suffering because of the narrowness of the walls on each side of the granite steps.

With much grunting and not a little sacrilegious cursing, the men managed to navigate it into the vault below and then carry it into the forbidding end bay. John followed them, the place now being better lit by a dozen candles and several horn lanterns. The coffin was placed on the earthen floor, now soggy with meltwater from the cold box.

Daniel the cellarer, Brother Ferdinand and Maglo the gatekeeper were restlessly milling around the servants, all giving competing advice on how best to get the corpse from the ice into the coffin. Gwyn solved the problem by casually dipping his brawny arms into the slush and lifting Christina bodily out of the crate and laying her gently in her last resting place.

‘Is she not to be dressed in finery or at least a new shroud?' asked Daniel.

‘The ladies' attendants will see to her in the church,' replied Ferdinand, crossing himself as he gazed down sadly at the girl's remains.

At that moment a melancholy procession came into the vault. Brother Ignatius was in front, swinging a censer that wafted perfumed incense into the chamber. John was not sure whether this was for ceremonial purposes or to dispel any noxious vapours from the corpse. Whichever it was, the chaplain appeared deeply unhappy, as an angry scowl disfigured his face. Behind him, Prior Robert held up an ebony staff topped by a silver cross, a brocade stole around his neck. Martin, the old archivist, came next bearing a tray covered with a lacy white cloth, and inevitably he was followed by Thomas de Peyne carrying a silver cruet in his gloved hands. Lastly, Roger Beaumont and Jordan de Neville formed a reluctant audience as the group moved in to fill the space around the coffin and stood with bowed heads while the prior began chanting in Latin, the monks responding appropriately, especially the devout coroner's clerk.

Robert Northam took a small wafer from a pyx on the archivist's tray and, with slight hesitation, placed this consecrated Host on the tongue of the dead girl, her mouth now sagging open as the death stiffness had at last passed away. With more Latin prayers and crosses
made in the air, he took the cruet from Thomas and dribbled a few drops of wine saved from the last Mass on to her swollen lips.

At this, there was a sudden crash, which made even the phlegmatic John jump with surprise. His first thought was that perhaps God had intervened at this most solemn moment, but it was Ignatius who had dropped the censer, which rolled along the floor shedding dull sparks.

‘This is not right, prior!' he hissed. ‘You should be exorcizing her, not blessing her!'

Northam glared fiercely at his secretary. ‘Behave yourself, brother! If you cannot, then leave this place at once!' he thundered.

Cowed by years of obedience, the lean monk's short-lived rebellion subsided into silence and he retrieved the fallen censer from the floor. The prior completed his valedictory ceremony by sprinkling a little holy water over the already soaking cadaver, while the surrounding monks intoned the final responses. Now the cellarer and Brother Maglo lifted the heavy lid from where it had been leaned against the far wall and put it in place temporarily with four nails driven in halfway. As he straightened up, the Breton monk slipped on the muddy floor and fell heavily against the back wall. There was a rumble from above and a lump of granite the size of his head fell in a shower of old mortar and crashed on to the coffin. Everyone ducked, half-expecting the arched roof to cave in as a trickle of rubble followed the stone. There was a momentary silence, while a cloud of dust slowly drifted down from the top of the wall. It was broken by a shout of agonized triumph from Ignatius.

‘A sign! A sign! Beelzebub is among us! See what the witch can still do, brothers, long after her black heart has stopped! I was right, I was right!'

At a sign from the prior, the chaplain was seized by
Daniel and Maglo and hustled off to the stairway, where he vanished, still yelling about this vindication of Christina's black arts. As the prior stood apologizing to Roger and Jordan for the behaviour of his unstable secretary, the lay brothers, who had waited unobtrusively in the main vault, came forward and began carrying the coffin down the crypt towards the exit.

Gwyn stood with de Wolfe, looking up at the roof, apprehensive that more was waiting up there to come down on their heads. Dimly visible, there was a ragged cavity where the roof joined the wall.

‘I think the roof is sound, except the courses of stones that meet the top of the wall,' said Gwyn. ‘It's that which is so badly built.'

John, still aching in every limb from his bruises, had little interest in the art of masonry. ‘Let's get out of here. I can't stand this bloody tomb! We've been here for two days, and I've learned absolutely nothing about who killed her.'

An hour later the tirewomen, together with two laundresses, the only other females allowed in the priory precincts, had completed their dressing of Christina's body. The coffin lid was nailed down permanently before being taken into the church, where the funeral service was held at what John suspected was a much faster pace than usual. The prior had banned Brother Ignatius from attending, and Thomas wondered what massive penance he would be given for his unseemly behaviour.

When the prayers and chanting were completed in the church, the congregation, swollen now by the ladies and their maids, together with the lay brothers and monks of Bermondsey, followed the coffin out of the west door of St Saviour's. Pacing across the outer courtyard, to the accompaniment of more doleful chanting,
they turned right into the lay cemetery, the monks having their own burial ground south of the church. Carried by Roger Beaumont, Jordan de Neville and two monks, the coffin was laid in a pit dug the previous day and the final prayers were spoken over it by the prior.

Given the age of the young victim, it was a moving ceremony and even the hard-bitten coroner, so used to sudden and violent death, felt touched. He was standing next to Margaret Courtenay as they all gathered closely around the grave to watch the earth being shovelled in by the sexton and his labourer.

‘What a waste of a young life!' John murmured to Christina's friend. ‘Done to death, a virgin not yet sixteen years of age!'

Margaret looked up at him, tears in her eyes. ‘It is so very sad, Sir John. Though perhaps not a virgin: there was a handsome squire at Wirksworth who at least spared her that.'

The young woman said this with such affection that John smiled at her, not offended by her indiscretion, but there was a sudden howl from behind him. Turning, he found Brother Ferdinand close by, obviously eavesdropping. Before John could protest, the monk spoke, hissing almost like a snake.

‘Not a virgin? No, it cannot be! Tell me it is false, woman!' He made to grab at Margaret, but John smacked his hands away. By now the others close by were staring at yet another confrontation with a crazed Cluniac.

‘What's it to you, brother?' demanded John, grabbing Ferdinand by the front of his habit. ‘Why should a celibate monk be concerned with such things? Are you perverted?'

The people around the grave now began to hurry towards them, the overwrought prior in the lead, but
Ferdinand twisted from de Wolfe's grasp and backed away.

‘It was all for nothing! Oh God, how grievously have I sinned!' he howled like a starving dog. Staring at John with an expression of sheer terror, he dropped his voice to whisper so softly that the coroner could only just catch the words.

‘I offered up my sacrifice to you, Oh Lord! But it was all in vain, you rejected me!'

Turning, he hauled up the skirts of his robe and ran rapidly towards the gate into the outer courtyard. Everyone watched him, bemused by the behaviour of yet another apparently demented monk. John caught Gwyn's eye, but the big Cornishman shrugged. ‘They're all bloody mad in this place,' he growled.

As the prior was anxiously conferring with the cellarer, who was also sub-prior, Thomas sidled up to his master. ‘Crowner, I think we ought to follow him. I have a bad feeling about Brother Ferdinand.'

John always respected his clerk's intuition, and with a jerk of his head to Gwyn they started for the main buildings, the coroner hurrying as fast as his aching legs would allow. Thomas pattered ahead and was in time to see the fleeing monk vanish through the inner gate. As he passed through, he saw the courtyard door to the underground vault still swinging. He hastened to it but hesitated to enter the utter darkness of the stairs. Gwyn was close behind and, while they waited a moment for de Wolfe to limp up to them, Thomas lit a few candle stumps ready for the descent. As they went down, they heard the rest of the burial party approaching but pressed on in their pursuit of Ferdinand.