Ritual Murder (5 page)

“The bastards!”

“Effective way, though, to get rid of the opposition. Except that it wasn't as easy as all that. Haim had friends in high places. The Sheriff, for one, wasn't keen to lose the only pill-pusher who didn't make him feel worse than he'd been feeling already. So what he did was say that since the Jews were, legally speaking, the King's chattels, the King himself would have to try the case. Haim HaLevi's trial would have to be held over till the next time the King came to Angleby on one of his royal progresses, which could be years away. In the meantime, for security purposes, he moved Haim into the Castle, where he treated him very well, on the principle that it pays to be nice to your doctor.”

“Do you know what he did?” asked the Rabbi, with a touching pride. “Haim HaLevi, while he was waiting? He planted a herb garden in the Castle grounds, the first one to be recorded in England; and it became so famous, doctors from all over Europe travelled to Angleby just to get cuttings of his plants, and learn from him their curative properties. And he wrote a treatise on herbal remedies—in Aramaic first, and then he made his own translation into Latin—that was still in use as late as the seventeenth century. You know that famous essay of Francis Bacon's which begins, ‘God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures'? Word for word, it's a literal translation of Haim HaLevi!” Leo Schnellman chuckled. “Bacon!”

Jurnet observed, “I bet the Angleby doctors weren't best pleased.”

“What do you think?” The archaeology student shrugged. “It turned out to be nearly five years before the King came to Angleby—and during that time something very peculiar began to happen.”

“Take note, Ben,” admonished the Rabbi, leaning back in his chair. “How to be a saint in ten easy lessons.”

“Lesson one,” said Mosh Epperstein. “The grave. Godefric buried his son outside his parish church, St Luke's Parmenter-gate. A month later he came into the churchyard to find the raw hump of earth ablaze with flowers like something out of Constance Spry.”

“Not very convincing.”

“To Godefric it was. He hared it to the cathedral and told the monks, who told the Prior, who told the Bishop. The upshot was that they dug the boy up and reburied him in the cathedral Chapter House.”

“Sounds a bit simple-minded to me,” said Jurnet. “Even for those days.”

“Not at all. It was a consummate stroke of public relations. Martyrs were big business in medieval England. The monks were on to a good thing and they knew it. Especially with a child. Especially with a child who could work miracles.”

Leo Schnellman burst out laughing.

“Children and animals! The infallible English combination!” To Jurnet, “They kept a cat in the Chapter House to catch rats. Pretty fierce rats they must have been too, because one of them, just about that time, bit one of the cat's paws off. After that, the cat's fate was sealed, as not being up to the job any longer, and one of the monks went into the Chapter House with a sack, intending to catch it and take it down to the river for drowning.

“The poor old moggy, probably guessing what was in store for it, ran off as fast as it could, its disability permitting, and as it ran it happened that it ran across Ulf's new grave. Instantly, it stopped limping, and, with all four paws back in their proper place, promptly caught another rat and laid it at the astounded monk's feet. There's a miracle for you!”

“Hard on the rat,” Jurnet remarked.

“But that's the essence of a miracle! Somebody always suffers. Who knows, when the trumpets sounded, and the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, how many innocent bystanders were buried under the rubble? Even in the utmost revelation of His power, the Almighty reminds us that unmitigated good is not of this world.”

Epperstein took over again. “There was this woman who'd heard about the cat, and she had a sick pig. She had a sick child too, as it happened, but that was by the way. Her capital was tied up in the pig, so it was to pray for that, not her child, that she went to Ulf's grave. It was a ruddy great sow, too big for her to fetch with her, but she
was
carrying the sick child in her arms.

“Well, what happened was that the child suddenly got better, though the mother hadn't so much as mentioned its name in her prayers, and when she got home again she not only found the pig in the pink, but the proud mum of twenty-four piglets. That‘s why pictures of Little St Ulf always show him surrounded with little piggies. A really kosher saint.”

“The miracles multiplied—” Leo Schnellman took up the narrative. “Everything from epilepsy to wooden leg, cured while you wait. Pilgrims came pouring in and their money with them, and after a while it was decided to use some of the profits to provide the little saint—for he'd become St Ulf by then: in those days saints didn't have to pass exams before getting their haloes, the way they do today—with a shrine inside the cathedral itself. And there he remained, until the Reformation swept away all such objects of veneration—”

Jurnet cut in, “And until our friend here took it into his head to go digging him up again.”

“For Christ's sake!” the student broke in. “The floor fell in! You didn't expect them to put it back without trying to find out what it was all about?”

“What they do in the cathedral's their business. What I can't understand is how a Mosh Epperstein comes to get into the act.”

“Pargeter asked me.” Then, stung at being put in a posture of defence, “What the hell business is it of yours anyway?”

“Shut up, Mosh!” The Rabbi's smile belied his words. “I'm working hard to make it his business.” To Jurnet, “But Mosh is right, Ben. People with as much past to carry around with them as the Jews can't afford to be afraid of it. Anything that clarifies what actually happened has to be OK.”

“Me,” said Jurnet, “I've got my hands full trying to clarify the present. Like, for instance, why, in the cathedral this morning, I ran into a wide boy name of Joe Fisher. Far as I know he hasn't got a sick sow back home, so what d'you reckon
he
was up to, asking the way to Little St Ulf?”

“You've obviously got an idea,” the archaeological student said coldly.

“Call it a glimmering. Ever heard of the English Men?”

Leo Schnellman leaned forward in his chair, suddenly alert.

“What are they up to, Ben, this time?”

“Don't know as they're up to anything. Except I know Fisher hangs out with them, and something like this is right up their alley.”

“How did he get to know?” Mosh Epperstein demanded. “Only thing in the papers so far was about it probably being the pit where they cast the cathedral bells. That's what we thought it was ourselves, at first.” He flushed, and muttered, more to himself than the others, “Stan Brent.”

“And who's Stan Brent when he's at home?”

The young man flushed again. Following a sudden intuition, Jurnet asked, “Lady Aste's fancy man, you mean?”

“Liz isn't a Lady.”

“You can say that again.”

“Look here, you! Not a Ladyship's, what I meant.”

Very, very young.

For the first time that evening, Jurnet felt compassion. The man was a lover, like himself. Not the poor bugger's fault there was, however unjustly, something faintly risible in the thought of anyone named Moses Epperstein making it with the daughter of Lord Sydringham.

“What does this Stan character do for a living?” Jurnet asked, with a friendliness of tone that obviously took the other by surprise.

“Mugs old ladies, I shouldn't wonder. Says he dropped out of the University. Doubt it. All he can do to write his name.”

“That's proof?” The detective queried, determinedly jovial. “And is he digging up Little St Ulf along with the rest of you?”

“Him? Pargeter's already warned him off more than once. He keeps hanging about, on the chance, I shouldn't be surprised, we'll turn up something worth nicking. Several of the old chroniclers seem to think a lot of the pilgrims' offerings of gold and silver and precious stones were actually buried in the kid's tomb. Myself, I can't see the monks putting all that lovely lolly out of circulation, but that's what they say. You can even read it in the booklet about Little St Ulf they sell at the cathedral bookstall. For all I know, Stan Brent may have got wind of the possibility, and is living in hopes of making a killing.”

“In the meantime putting the bite on Miss Aste?”

“He doesn't have to,” Epperstein returned bitterly. “She has it all hanging out for him.” He looked about the room in a lost kind of way, and Leo Schnellman said gently, “You left your jacket under the Ping-Pong table.”

“Ah! Well. Thanks for the game, then. I'll have to give you your revenge.”

“You won't!” the Rabbi declared robustly. “Not till I see you here on
Shabbat
. It's time to balance the books a little.”

“I'll try.”

“Do that. I have a particularly brilliant sermon planned.”

“For next Saturday, you mean?”

“For every Saturday. All my sermons are the same sermon. Only the words differ. All of them demonstrations that, despite appearances to the contrary, the universe makes sense.”

After the study period was over, and Jurnet and the Rabbi sat over cups of tea, Jurnet remembered. “You never said what happened to the doctor, Haim HaLevi.”

“Oh, the King came to Angleby, eventually. Not a bad man, in the context of his time. What he did was remind the citizens yet again that, as a Jew, the man was royal property. He warned them that if anyone touched so much as a hair of his head, he'd punish the whole city collectively.”

“That was something, at least.”

“Nothing at all. Three months later, a mob broke into Haim HaLevi's home—he'd gone back to his house in Cobblegate on the strength of the King's promise—castrated him, broke his arms and legs, and hung him upside down on a cross. Next day, by which time he may or may not have been dead, they took his body down, dismembered it, and threw the pieces down a well. His last words were said to be, ‘Water my plants.'”

Suddenly it did not seem like something that had happened 840 years ago.

“And did the King carry out his threat?” Jurnet asked at last.

“You must be joking. Kings have more important things to think about. It was, after all, just another Jew.”

On his way home Jurnet made a detour so as to pass the Institute. It was shut up for the night, as he had known it would be; no Miriam on the steps waiting to be picked up, the only light an illuminated notice-board advertising a forthcoming course in obedience-training for dogs. He made a mental note to tell Taleh.

Another detour took him to the Close, knowing that the gates, which had once been shut promptly at sunset, would be open however late the hour. Not long before, there had been a fire in the early hours in one of the houses near the river, and the fire engine, arriving at Bridge Gate, had been kept waiting. The chain at the gate rang a bell in the lodge where one of the vergers lived, and the verger, who had been under the weather, had taken some tablets without knowing they were sedative. By the time the clanging had awakened him, and the gate been opened for the engine to pass through, a child had died in the burning house.

Since that night the cathedral precinct was no longer a little world which shut itself off from the city when darkness fell. With its dim lighting and shadowy byways it had become, indeed, a favorite place of resort for courting couples.

Jurnet found a parking space in the Upper Close, and sat in the car feeling envious of the activity he pictured was going on all round him in the vehicles that edged the central lawn. He wished he smoked, or that he had a cassette player in the car. Anything to put off the moment of going home.

Home! That was a laugh. In the flat, he knew, there would be nothing to remind him of Miriam's presence. Always when she left him, even for a night, she took with her all her possessions, down to the last hairpin. Not so much an absence as a desertion. It was almost as if she wished to convince him that she had never existed rosy in his bed, repaying passion with passion, other than as the figment of his overheated imagination.

A car started up somewhere ahead. Then another, and another. In the one immediately in front of him, two heads rose into view through the back window; a dishevelled man got hurriedly out of the back and into the driving seat. In a moment the car moved off, following the others back to the FitzAlain Gate.

Jurnet waited until the man with the lighted torch who had been working his way along the line of vehicles reached him. Then he wound down the window, and said, “Evening, Mr Harbridge. Can't win 'em all, can we?”

“You, Inspector! What you doing here, this late?”

Ignoring the question, Jurnet observed, “I don't have to ask the same of you. Do this every night, do you?”

“No. Mr Quest's off tonight.”

“Don't think I know Mr Quest.”

“Head verger. His daughter's been took sick in Northampton.”

“Oh ah. Keep you at it pretty late, don't they, the Dean and Chapter?”

“I'm not complaining.”

“Good for you. What I don't get, though,” Jurnet went on evenly, “is why you don't stand at the gate and stop 'em coming in in the first place.” No explanation was forthcoming, and the detective finished, “Not half the fun, of course, of catching them actually at it.”

Even in the dark Jurnet could see the red that overspread the man's face. Then the anger faded and Harbridge laughed. A straightforward laugh, uncomplicated.

“Bit of a misunderstanding, sir. I'm not one of those. Been on the gate since nightfall, and just nipped back home for a sip of something hot. This lot's what built up while I was gone. Usually me and one of the other vergers does it turn and turn about, see, but wi' Mr Quest called away unexpected—”