Unholy Innocence (16 page)

I felt like being mischievous. ‘Have you ever witnessed a trial by ordeal?’ I casually asked him.

‘No,’ he replied suspiciously. ‘Why?’

I sucked my teeth. ‘Not a pleasant sight. I had to attend one once in a professional capacity in order to dress the hand. Ordeal by fire this one was.’

‘And d-did you?’ he asked hesitantly. ‘D-dress the hand, I mean.’

I shook my head. ‘There wasn’t much of the hand left to dress.’

Jocelin cringed and I smiled slyly. I could tell from the look on his face that he wanted me to say more but was hesitant in case he didn’t like what he heard. Like most people, his natural thrill at hearing the gruesome details vied with his fear of being revolted by what he heard. But having warmed the pot of his curiosity, so to speak, I continued to stir the contents:

‘You see, what happens in the case of ordeal by fire is this: A piece of iron – say a horseshoe or something of similar size and weight - is heated in a furnace. I don’t just mean warmed up, I mean really heated, hotter than that bath water you tried to scald me with just now. So hot it glows white and you really do have to shut your eyes or they will burn out of your head just to look at it. Imagine that,’ I said holding out my hand to demonstrate. ‘Holding a white hot poker in your bare, naked hand.’

Jocelin flinched pleasingly. I licked my lips and continued:

‘But then you have to walk with it – not run, mind you,
walk
- five paces, and slowly. After the first step you can already see the smoke coming off the hand. At the second the flesh begins to sizzle and fall away. At the third the hand is barely recognisable as such anymore.’ I nodded at the memory. ‘It’s actually quite a pleasant smell you know, burning human flesh. Rather like pork.’ I chuckled. ‘Now there’s an amusing irony, fried Jewish flesh smelling of pork. That should cause a stir on Monday morning, don’t you think, when Isaac’s flesh starts to sizzle and fry and fall off? And then, of course, the bone beneath the skin starts to crack and splinter and -’

‘Oh stop!’ said Jocelin who was starting to turn green. ‘You’ve m-made your point. There’s no n-need to be quite s-s-so g-graphic.’

‘Isn’t there?’ I frowned. ‘Anyone who has seen a horse branded knows what hot metal does to flesh. Only this is not animal hide but human skin, and in Isaac’s case the very softest white skin of a man accustomed to living not by his hands but by his wits, with few calluses to cushion the pain.’

‘If he is innocent, God w-will provide,’ insisted Jocelin wiping some beads of sweat from his forehead.

I nodded. ‘Maybe so. And I will remind you of those words as Isaac takes hold of the poker’s end – if, that is, you can still hear my voice above his screams.’

‘What d-do you want of me, Master?’ he asked sitting down heavily and putting his head in his hands.

‘For us to do the job we were engaged to do.’

‘I th-thought we had done. We examined the b-body. We know how the boy was k-killed and we have a credible suspect.’

‘You forget, we concluded that it took two people to kill the boy - one to hold him while the other slit his throat. Even if Isaac was one, who was the other?’

‘Perhaps he will tell us b-before the – the –’

‘Disfigurement?’ I supplied. ‘And how reliable would that be? He could name anyone under that amount of duress, just for a moment’s relief. We need to investigate in order to find out for certain.’

And in the process, I thought, we might just discover who the real murderers are.

‘There’s something else,’ I said seriously. ‘I don’t believe the boy was as innocent as we have been led to believe.’

I could see my words did not find favour with Jocelin. ‘N-now you go t-too far, brother. Everyone attests to
his saintliness. His m-mother, those Knieler women.’

‘Ah yes,’
I interjected. ‘The Knieler women. I’m sorry to disillusion you but they are fakes. They’re not religionists at all.’

He slumped deflated. ‘H-how can you know that?’

I told him about my conversation with Mother Han, how the women were from Scotland, not Holland, hired by someone to whip up sentiment against the Moys. I also told him what Mother Han had said about Matthew’s character.

He clearly didn’t hold much store by Mother Han’s word. ‘It is easy to s-say such things now he is d-dead and cannot defend himself,’ said Jocelin morosely. ‘You complain we don’t f-follow the evidence. Well in this case the evidence is clear. He took care of his mother and provided for his siblings. He was even about to t-take holy orders. What more evidence of saintliness could there be?’

‘His murderer clearly didn’t think so,’ I said. ‘He must have done something, or known something that was so dangerous that it was worth taking away his young life for.’

‘But h-how much harm could a twelve-year-old boy do?’ scoffed Jocelin incredulously.

That suddenly reminded me. ‘Speaking of which,’ I said as casually as I could. ‘I never had time to finish your fascinating study of the life of Saint Robert of Bury.’ It was a tenuous connection but I could think of no other way to raise the subject.

If Jocelin noticed the incongruity he gave no sign. He attempted a smile. ‘Hang on to it for a while l-longer, of you like. Give it back to me when you’ve f-finished it.’

‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘I’ll do that.’

Well, that settled one question at least. Jocelin didn’t retrieve his treatise from my cell,
ergo
he didn’t have Isaac’s testament either. Nor from our earlier conversation did Samson. I realised despondently that there was only one person left who could possibly have it: De Saye. My chances therefore of getting it back were probably nil.

‘So w-what next?’ Jocelin asked.

‘Hm?’ I said coming out of my revelry. ‘We continue to dig of course. We have very little time so I suggest we split up. You go and talk to Ranulf, the boy’s tutor. I think he will speak more openly to you than to me. See if he can shed some light on Matthew’s private life. He must have spent many hours getting to know the boy. Find out anything you can about him that might be of use.’

‘What will you be doing?’

‘I’ll tackle Isaac again. It may be my last opportunity to do so before the trial.’

*

As I suspected, Isaac had already been arrested and was being held in my erstwhile abode, the gatehouse gaol. In a way I was relieved. At least up there he was out of harm’s way. My friend the dumb gaoler would be equal to anyone trying to harm him, even more so than the captain who, unlike the gaoler, would have to leave his post at some time. Yes, probably the tower was the safest place for him.

I was in such a hurry to get up there when I left Jocelin that I nearly collided with someone coming out
of the abbey church. I recognised him as Sir Richard de Tayfen, a wealthy local cloth merchant whose daughter I had been treating recently for the cholera. Sir Richard was a widower whose wife had died in childbirth some years before. A local man of humble birth, he had done well in the new prosperity that came with peace after the Anarchy. When it came to his family’s health I am happy to say he did not stint on the most up-to-date and expensive remedies. Although I was reluctant to delay my interview with Isaac, Sir Richard was not the sort of man I would wish, or could afford, to brush aside lightly.

‘Master Walter,’ he said with some surprise stepping back and bowing.

I bobbed too. ‘Sir Richard. My apologies. I was preoccupied and didn’t see you.’

‘You were just in my thoughts,’ he said pointing to the church door. ‘I had been doing as you suggested, giving thanks for my daughter’s recovery. I had been meaning to come before and to thank you personally but I have just been too busy.’

‘Never too busy for God, I trust,’ I beamed at him. ‘How fares my young patient? Well, I take it, since you are offering thanks.’

‘Every day she grows a little stronger, brother – all thanks to you.’

‘I am delighted to hear it. Now, if you will excuse me.’ I bowed and turned to leave.

‘I had the well stopped up as you suggested,’ he persisted stepping in front of me. ‘And the cesspit moved according to your instructions, although I could not see how that would help. I also had a pipe laid to bring fresh water in from the little brook above the house. That has been a popular move. My other daughters find the cooling spring water refreshing in this heat.’

I nodded politely. ‘Good, though I shouldn’t let them drink too much of it. The female sex is particularly susceptible to too much water. Salad rather than raw water, perhaps. And now, Sir Richard, by your leave.’ I tried to move off again, but he put a hand lightly on my arm.

‘There is not much you could teach me about the needs of the female sex, brother. With five daughters mine is a household of females. Oh, I am not complaining for they are a delight to their father in his old age. But a business like mine really needs a son.’ He leaned over and lowered his voice catching hold of my sleeve further preventing me from leaving. ‘Confidentially, Master Walter, they are a worry to me. They will all need husbands in time and no would-be husband wants damaged goods - pardoning your cowl, brother.’

‘Damaged goods?’ I frowned at the hand gripping my robe. ‘Oh yes, I see, damaged goods. Yes - quite.’ I could see the entrance to the tower frustratingly just a few feet ahead of me though it might as well have been half a mile for all the chance I had of reaching it.

Sir Richard nodded knowingly as one man of the world to another. ‘But what am I to do? I can’t lock them up for twenty-four hours a day. Their mother is dead, God rest her sainted soul, and I have only my dwarf servant, Ruddlefairdam, to look to their honour and he cannot be everywhere at once.’
             

‘I trust your daughters have not been compromised, Sir Richard,’ I muttered absently while peering anxiously up at the tower.

He shook his head vigorously. ‘No no no, as far as any man can be certain of anything I am certain of that. But it’s not for the want of trying. A houseful of fillies always has some young colt sniffing around. That young vagabond who got himself killed for one.’

I stopped. ‘Matthew? You mean Matthew the fuller’s son? The murdered boy?’

‘Aye, the same.’

‘But surely you are mistaken,’ I grinned nervously. ‘The boy was barely twelve years of age. He could not – with young ladies - could he?’

He shook his head. ‘There’s no mistake. He used to come to the house to sell his earth – for the cloth, you understand. But he was a sly one. Far too familiar with my eldest. In the end I had to confine him to the yard outside. Twelve years old you say he was?’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘It’s a sad sign of the times. Lads are starting earlier and earlier these days.’

‘Erm, forgive me Sir Richard, but you are sure we are talking abut the same boy: Matthew the son of William the fuller, on the Haberdon. Not some other boy?’

He was starting to look irritated, unused, no doubt, to having his word questioned. ‘I know the boy well enough, brother. As does that poor wretch up there,’ he said nodding to the tower. ‘He’s up there, am I right? The Jew?’

‘Yes yes,’ I said, squinting up through the sunshine at the tower. ‘He’s there.’

‘Then ask him. He knows the truth of it.’

I looked at him steadily. ‘Let me understand you, Sir Richard. You’re telling me that Isaac ben Moy knew the boy who was murdered?’

He looked at me as though I were a simpleton. ‘Of course he knew him. It stands to reason, doesn’t it? He killed him, so he must have known him.’

‘But you know this for a fact. You don’t just surmise? You are sure they knew each other before the murder?’

‘Brother, I know what I saw. I’ve seen them together.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry Sir Richard,
I didn’t mean to doubt your word. I just needed to be sure.’ I smiled and bowed. ‘And now please forgive me but I really must go.’

Bad form or not, I could delay no longer nor hold in my excitement at his words and tugged violently on my sleeve at last releasing his grip. He let out a startled noise of protest but I did not wait to see if I’d offended him, I just had to get away.

‘I am pleased that your daughter is on the mend,’ I called over my shoulder as an afterthought. ‘Give her my blessing.’

But how unpredictable was the goddess Fortuna. If I had not bumped into Sir Richard by chance at the bottom of the tower I would have had little to say to
the man at the top. This new piece of information changed everything. Before I was unsure what I was going to say to Isaac. Now I knew exactly what to say to him. With a lighter step than of late I bounded up the tower steps two at a time to the gaol room above.

Chapter 15

AN APOLOGY AND REVELATION

I
felt a slight shiver of apprehension as I rounded the stairwell and stepped out onto the gaol level. I hadn’t expected to be back here quite so soon. Mother Han’s ‘husband’, the dumb gaoler, was sitting in his usual cubby-hole by the window. He looked a little confused at seeing me, not being quite sure if he was supposed to be locking me up again. But a silver penny unscrambled his mind enough to let me approach the cage while he went back to killing cockroaches with his thumbnail.

Isaac was kneeling in prayer in just about the same position that I had been doing a similar thing twelve hours earlier. Odd to think that we had both been addressing the same God. I coughed lightly and waited. He finished his prayer and came over to the side of the cage.

‘Master Walter. It is good to see a friendly face.’

‘Is that what I am? I thought I was gathering the means to hang you.’

He smiled. ‘I know you will gather it with an even hand. That is a godly thing to do.’

‘Hm. Well, let me take care of your earthly needs first. I expect you’re hungry.’ I held out the basket of bread and eggs I had purloined from the pittancer’s range. Slightly more wholesome than Mother Han’s mutton and cabbage I might hope, and certainly easier on the gut, but evidently not wholesome enough for Isaac.

‘Abbey food?’ He smiled and shook his head. ‘I cannot eat it.’

‘I thought eggs and bread were permitted under your dietary laws?’

‘It is not just the type of food but how it is prepared. It is complicated.’

‘Even in your hour of extremis? Is your God so heartless?’

‘It is at such times that we are tested most, brother.’ He frowned. ‘Forgive me, I do not mean to lecture.’

‘Well,’ I said holding out a flask of water. ‘Adam’s Ale is the same in any faith. Will you drink?’

‘Thank you, yes,’ he said taking the bottle. He took a long draught before offering the flask back. I told him to keep it. It seemed the gaoler was no more considerate of Isaac’s physical comforts than he had been of mine.

‘Now,’ I said, ‘there is little time and much to discuss.’

I laid out the case against him: The similarities between Matthew’s death and those of Saints Robert of Bury and William of Norwich both of whom had been accepted as martyrs and both thought to have been murdered by Jews; the crucifixion-like wounds found on the body albeit that some of the wounds had been placed there
post mortem
; the universal presumption that no Christian could have made such wounds in mockery of Christ; the miracles performed by the boy and the mother’s oath corroborating early holiness and thereby confirming God’s special purpose for him; the chains discovered in Moy’s cellar that could have been used to restrain and torture the boy; the Knieler women being drawn apparently through divine revelation to Isaac’s house as the place of his martyrdom; and finally the fact that Matthew’s mutilated body had been discovered in Isaac’s garden.

When I’d finished I looked up. Isaac’s face bore the expression of stoic resignation.

‘I notice you do not challenge any of this,’ I said.

He splayed his hands. ‘To what purpose? The evidence is overwhelming. On the basis of your indictment I am already convicted.’

‘God in Heaven, man,’ I spurted angrily. ‘Won’t you even fight?’

‘God in Heaven knows the truth of it,’ he countered. ‘If He wills it, I will be saved; if not, then who am I to disagree?’

‘I see,’ I nodded. ‘You’re going to play their game too, are you?’

‘If this is how people are thinking, brother, how can I gainsay it? A mere Jew.’

‘Do you deny the charges?’

His eyes filled with sudden anger and frustration. ‘Certainly I deny them. There is not a scrap of evidence for any of it. The list is entirely circumstantial.’

‘Of course there is no evidence,’ I agreed. ‘But as the Abbot says, your case will not turn on evidence.’

He gave a sick smile. ‘Ah yes, trial by ordeal. Tell me, how do you rate my chances of surviving that?’

‘None. You will be agonisingly mutilated and then hanged.’

‘Oh please brother, don’t spare me with soft words.’ His body shook as though he had been suddenly thrust naked into a world of ice. ‘You know,’ he shuddered, ‘I have never understood the Christian hatred for members of my faith. We honour the same God as you; we cause no wars; we keep the King’s peace. We harm no-one. It baffles me what we are that makes you despise us so.’

‘I do not see why it should baffle you,’ I dismissed blandly. ‘To me the answer is obvious. You are guilty of being different. You represent the unknown. Every man fears the unknown. It may herald good or it may herald evil, but why take the risk? Safer to strike it out before it has a chance to do damage. And most unforgivable of all, not only are you different but you choose to remain different. That is why you are despised.’ I leaned forward close to the bars of the cage. ‘And, Isaac ben Moy, you are also a
liar
.’

He looked at me in shocked disbelief. ‘How so?’

‘You told me you did not know the murdered boy,’ I said quickly. ‘I have a witness who says you did. That you knew him –
intimately
.’

‘That is a lie!’

‘My witness is unimpeachable. He has no reason to lie.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘Indeed you do. Any association between you and the boy implicates you in his murder. You knew that when I first interviewed you and you chose to hide it. You placed your hand on the Old Testament, the Tanakh, and you deliberately dissembled.’ I grabbed his hand through the bars. ‘This same hand that will justly burn on Monday if you do not tell me the truth now.’ The gaoler stirred behind me wondering whether to interfere.

‘I did not lie,’ Isaac insisted panicking to retrieve his hand, but I held on tight. ‘I did not know him. Not in the way you mean.’

‘What way do I mean? Isaac, tell me now while you can, what was this boy to you?’

He managed to free his hand from my grip and cradled it like an injured puppy, whimpering.

I slammed the bars of the cage. ‘Tell me, God damn you!’

I heard the gaoler again shuffle behind me but he did not intervene.  There was a long pause while Isaac rocked in despair. I thought for a moment he would tell me, but in the end he just lowered his eyes and shook his head.

‘Then you are lost,’ I said.

*

‘You were pretty h-harsh with him,’ said Jocelin later when I told him. We were sitting in the north range of the cloister enjoying the warmth of the midday sun. The sunshine was making me quite drowsy, my interview with Isaac having exhausted me more than I realised and the lack of sleep was beginning to catch up with me. Jocelin had his inevitable knapsack propped between his knees.

‘Shock tactics,’ I defended casually, watching the comings and goings of the other monks. ‘I was hoping to frighten him into telling me the truth.’

‘And what is the t-truth?’

‘I don’t know. Something is stopping him from telling me. I think he’s already given up. He spoke like a man resigned to his fate. Before I left the gaol he made me promise again to give the casket to his wife when he’s gone. But I don’t know how I will be able to do that now. Samson has it in his study but he may not release it to me. He certainly won’t if the King gets to hear what’s in it.’

‘And Lord de Saye, no doubt, will be h-happy to tell him,’ nodded Jocelin.

‘To be sure,’ I agreed bitterly, ‘if only to ingratiate himself further with King John. One thing I’m pretty certain of, though, is that he won’t have told him about the testament.’

Jocelin raised his eyebrows. ‘Testament?’

Oops. That was a mistake. I must be more tired than I thought. I still hadn’t told Jocelin about the testament fearing he would reveal its existence to Samson. Even now, I realised, I was suspicious of Samson’s motives in assigning Jocelin to be my assistant. If there was a question of divided loyalties I couldn’t be certain which way he would lean. Too late now, the genie was out of the bottle. There was nothing for it but to come clean and tell Jocelin how Isaac had given me the testament the day we recovered Matthew’s body and how it went missing at the same time as the casket - omitting the one small detail about my hiding it inside his treatise on Saint Robert of Bury thereby losing that too.

‘What was in this t-testament?’ he asked when I’d finished squirming my excuses.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It was sealed.’

‘S-so it could be anything – a confession even. Have you m-mentioned it to Father Abbot yet?’

‘No, not yet,’ I grimaced. I was sure now Jocelin would want to tell him.

He thought for a moment. ‘Then don’t. Samson will be the officiating judge at the trial. If he, too, suspects it might be a confession it could colour his j-judgement. That would be unf-fortunate to say the least.’

‘Oh quite – well yes. I couldn’t agree more,’ I said, relieved. I looked at him sheepishly. ‘Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the casket and the testament. The truth is, until today I really didn’t know if they had any bearing on the murder. And you have to understand that Isaac took me into his confidence.’

‘Oh, I understand p-perfectly,’ said Jocelin.

‘Good,’ I smiled.

‘I understand that you didn’t t-trust me – that you still don’t trust me – to be impartial in this investigation. You think I am spying for Father Abbot.’

‘No, really I -’

‘I b-believe he thinks that too as a m-matter of fact,’ he continued as though delivering an academic treatise to a class of students. ‘Although he has not asked me in s-so many words. As for this other matter - I don’t b-blame you for having sympathy with Isaac ben Moy - we would not be human if we did not pity him. But it was extremely stupid of you to have allowed yourself to become his confidant, and even more stupid to have kept the fact to yourself. Had you told me about the testament I would almost certainly have advised you to read it. You had the authority to do so. Now that opportunity is lost. S-similarly, if you had told me about the casket you would almost certainly not have spent last night in the tower for I would have been able to vouch for you. That was a failure of duty on your part for it helped no-one having the chief investigator locked up, least of all Isaac ben Moy. You have squandered a whole day with your secretiveness and suspicions when we have precious little time left and we will now have to work twice as hard to make it up. But worst of all I thought that you might have r-realised by now that whatever my own personal beliefs about the boy Matthew I am as keen on finding the truth of what happened to him as you are. Oh, and while I am putting matters straight, it was not I who betrayed your comment to Father Abbot about the state of Saint Edmund’s body the day of the King’s banquet. I am saddened that you should have thought me capable of such a thing. B-but we did not know each other so well then. I had harboured the hope that our work together these past few days might have engendered a better understanding between us, and m-might even have extended as far as…friendship.’

I was speechless. He was right in what he said, every word of it – again delivered, I noticed, barely without a stutter. The catalogue of my transgressions and idiocies would have filled several pages of his tight script. I was guilty of arrogance, conceit, stupidity, suspicion, vanity, deception, contempt for others – most especially for Jocelin. My confessor, Brother Ronald, will be weary of my litany of self-complaint before I am finished. What could I say to this man who I had treated so abysmally? I vowed there and then that I would never again treat him so contemptuously.

For a few minutes all I could do was stare at the wall opposite the silence hanging heavily between us. Monks came and went along the cloister wall without my seeing them. Finally I was able to find my voice again:

‘What, erm, did you manage to glean from Matthew’s tutor?’

He shook his head. ‘Ranulf would hear n-nothing against the boy. He claims he was a model pupil. In his eyes Matthew is already a saint. However,’ he smiled, ‘there is one interesting fact I m-managed to find out about him. It has to do with his age. He wasn’t as young as we’ve been led to believe. I got the p-parish p-priest of Saint Botolph’s Haberdon, Father Paul, to show me his baptismal records. I was puzzled at first because I could not f-find Matthew’s name in the rolls for eleven-eighty-seven. So I looked at the rolls for the years either side. Matthew was named for his saint’s day in the thirtieth of Henry. Now, King Henry,’ he said rummaging in his knapsack, ‘came to the throne on December the nineteenth
anno domini
eleven-fifty-four, s-so his thirtieth would have been - let me see -’ He pulled out a scrap of paper. ‘Eleven-eighty-five making Matthew fourteen when he died, not twelve as we p-previously thought.’