[William Falconer 06] - Falconer and the Ritual of Death (22 page)

‘Yes, I was once as handsome as you, my dear. But my husband’s business has not been going well lately, and my son is no help.’

‘Your husband’s business? I thought he had...’

‘Died? Yes, he did. More than ten years ago now. But I still see it as his business. I was only keeping it going to pass on to Deudone. But he is more interested in causing trouble than earning a living.’

Saphira realized how similar their two fates were, and yet how different: Both had taken over a business after the death of their husbands, with a view to passing it on to their respective sons. But where Saphira had taken over with joy and relish, Belaset had shouldered it as a burden. And it, and the attitude of her son, had aged her. She silently gave thanks for the nature of her own son, Menahem.

‘Do you know where Deudone might be? He has no reason to be hiding, the very opposite in fact. He may have information that could help solve both an old murder and a new.’ Saphira did not have the faintest idea if what was locked in Deudone’s head could do that, but she needed something to encourage Belaset to divulge what she knew. She wondered how William went about his work uncovering the identity of murderers. According to him, it was all logic and assembly of facts. But her own experience of him led her to believe he also relied on guesswork, and flights of fancy. He just didn’t want to admit it. Well, she would beat him to it with womanly intuition, and downright deception if necessary. Her blandishments worked with Belaset at least. The woman stared trustingly into Saphira’s emerald eyes, and spoke out.

‘He was lying low in that old house in Pennyfarthing Street that used to belong to Lumbard. As the constable had searched it already, he thought it was safe. And he thought Covele might return there.’

Covele. This was a name Saphira had heard before.

‘Do you think Covele did go back there?’

‘Oh, yes. Because I know my son is no longer in the house. I went there this morning to take him some food.’ She indicated the basket of bread Saphira had seen on the table when she had arrived. ‘So you should look for that renegade Covele. He was always leading Deudone astray with his wild beliefs. He did it when he was a boy, and he has done it again.’ Saphira frowned.

‘How?’

When Belaset told her, she was very excited, and not a little scared.

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After leaving Bullock to stable the jaded palfreys, which had carried the two men all the way to Tubney Manor and back in one day, Falconer came to a decision. He had to speak to Saphira Le Veske about the ritual slaughter that Covele might have carried out. He was confused in his own mind about what Jehozadok had meant about it, and he thought he had offended Saphira deeply by suggesting that there might have been some substance in the tales of murder such as had been suggested by the death of Little Sir Hugh. He recalled in Bonham’s notes something about rituals. Was this a message from the grave that Bonham wished to be communicated? Was a ritual, and its discovery, part of the reason for the Templar’s death? He hurried along Great Bailey and down Fish Street. Though it was already quite late, and the denizens of the night - rats and vagabonds - were beginning to emerge, he was determined to speak to Saphira before another night had passed.

He rapped on her door, and waited. No sound came from behind the heavy oak, which bore a pale scar from the axe that had been aimed at Falconer’s head during the riot. He knocked again, and ran his finger down the scar thinking of how she had rescued him from the mob that night. And how they had spent the rest of the night together. He had ruined it all by doubting the truth of the Jews’ deepest protestations of innocence concerning the Hugh of Lincoln calumny. His third set of knocks once again echoed emptily inside the unoccupied house, and he wondered for the first time if Saphira had not indeed left Oxford and returned to Canterbury. The very thought was devastating, and he was left with no choice but to return to the no doubt chilly and unwelcoming rooms of Aristotle’s Hall.

Saphira, meanwhile, had resolved to carry out her mission to its conclusion. Belaset had told her that she would find Deudone in the company of the renegade Covele, but not in the house in Pennyfarthing Lane. She told Saphira where Covele liked to sojourn when he was in Oxford. Tracking him entailed leaving the town by East Gate, and it was close to curfew hour. But Saphira would be delayed no longer. The watchman at the gate winked at her as she stepped through the small wicket in the main portal, which had already been pulled to. She had hurried along with the skirts of her green gown gathered up to avoid dirtying the hem on the sea of mud that once had been one of the main thoroughfares into the town, so she was showing something of her slender ankles above the low-cut tops of her shoes. She was unaware that some of the prostitutes who frequented the town used this gate to discreetly get outside the town walls before dark to ply their trade in the houses built along the road towards East Bridge. The watchman reckoned she was one of the prettiest whores he had seen in some time, though a little beyond the prime age for such ladies. He would enquire about her price when she returned.

Oblivious of the lascivious dreams she had engendered, Saphira stepped carefully through the mud, and made for the Jewish cemetery. She had been told by Belaset it was on Paris Meadow to the south of the road, and just opposite St John’s Hospital. She could see the forbidding walls of the little infirmary ahead, its windows illuminated by yellowish light that spoke of infirm souls unable to face the prospect of the darkness that might all too soon become eternal night. Across the road there was an area bounded by a low wall. Saphira peered over it, and could make out in the gathering gloom the shape of grave slabs. On the nearest one was the stark but worn image - carved despite the second commandment - of the seven-branched candelabra. She had found the Jewish cemetery, and shivered a little. It may have been the coldness of the darkening evening, or perhaps the prospect of hunting for Deudone in the cemetery’s gloomy and depressing environs.

Pushing open the gate and stepping inside, she realized the ground was boggy, and almost submerged. At the lower end of the cemetery the grave slabs looked as though they were floating on water. Somewhere an owl hooted, and she cast around for Covele. The man must be more than a little mad to camp out as he did amidst the graves of the dead. Saphira would not have believed it true, but Belaset had insisted it was his habit. The dead were after all not in a position to reject him like the living. The branches of ancient elms hung low over the cemetery, obscuring parts of the grounds, and Saphira realized she would have to penetrate deep into the assemblage of slabs and tombs to be sure of finding the renegade. She cautiously stepped into the darkness, feeling the soft clay tugging at her shoes. They would be ruined by the end of this search, and she hoped it would be worth it.

Falconer lit a precious candle, and sat at his work table.

Balthazar the owl blinked solemnly in the unaccustomed light, hopped across to the window and on silent wings swooped into the darkness. The regent master had decided Bonham’s method of meticulously recording everything he observed while dissecting a body was a sound and useful technique.

He found a reasonably clean parchment - one that had only been used and cleaned off a couple of times - and hunted through the litter on his table to find a precious quill and pot of black ink. Once ready, he began to think again about what he did and didn’t know about the deaths, twenty years apart, of the Templar priest and Wilfrid Southo.

The information about le Saux had come slowly, but it had accumulated. The priest had arrived in Oxford from Temple Cowley with the sole purpose of imposing a tallage on the Jews. He had pursued his task eagerly and vindictively, in the meantime egging on the Prior of St Frideswide’s in his attempt to create a martyr out of Jed Stokys. If it had not been for Falconer’s own chance intervention, that would have succeeded. And perhaps with it le Saux’s own scheme of getting the money out of the Jews of Oxford, who would have feared for their very lives. He had obtained a moiety of the money just before his murder. And according to Bullock that money had disappeared at his death, causing the suspicion that le Saux had taken it and fled.

But that had collapsed with the discovery twenty years later of his body. And besides, the sort of man Bullock had described was not the type to break his Templar vows and steal from his own Order. Firstly, Falconer all but discounted Deudone’s fear that the stone he threw when a child was the cause of le Saux’s death. It would have been a very unlucky strike to do that. No, le Saux would probably have been at worst momentarily stunned, failing into the arms of the mason he was conversing with. The fact that the child had seen someone else present at his act of vandalism, someone who encouraged it, and that had turned out to be Covele, gave a curious twist to the story. After that, Covele would have known that le Saux had a chest full of coins, and that the boy was fearful he had killed. Did he play on that fear to cover his own tracks? And what else had Covele been up to in Oxford on that day that needed concealment? Matt Stokys had never been seen again, so it could be that Falconer had been wrong. The father might not have killed his son. It was a possibility that Falconer did not relish pursuing.

And where did Sir Gilbert de Bois fit into the puzzle? He was the owner of the houses being constructed after buying them cheaply from Lumbard of Cricklade. He needed money, having borrowed heavily to pay for his purchase, and knew also that le Saux had got some money from the Jews. How tempting would it have been to steal from the Templar Jewish money that he could then use to pay off his debts to the very same Jews? The problem with that was de Bois had not paid off the debt, and was now penniless. Of course, he might have squandered the money after committing the murder. He did not seem to be the sort of man to plan wisely for the future.

And there was still the matter of the dead servant girl to resolve in his case.

But it was the other recent death that puzzled Falconer that of Wilfrid Southo. On the surface, they were completely unconnected. Wilfrid would have been a child when the Templar was murdered, and apparently this had been his first visit to Oxford. His first and last, unfortunately. Perhaps Bullock was correct in thinking the death was just an unhappy incident connected to the riot after all. It was only Falconer’s assumption that the death of the man who discovered le Saux’s body was more than suspicious. But what did Wilfrid know that had got him killed? Falconer neither knew, nor could see how he would now find out. He stared at the parchment in front of him. It was still clean of any mark, and he realized he had recorded nothing of his racing thoughts. Sighing, he slowly put the pen down, and stood to stare broodingly out of the window. Bonham’s method had suited the little grey man, but not the overactive mind of regent master William Falconer. He needed to give his thoughts free rein, and writing them down would only slow them intolerably. Falconer just hoped that his worrying episodes of forgetfulness would not mean that he would lose the thread even as he wove it.

Twenty-Two

The ground of the cemetery was so sodden that Saphira decided to slip off her good leather shoes and walk barefoot. The mud squelched up between her toes, and the soles of her feet were soon frozen. But her pretty shoes were saved.

Peering into the darkness around her, she was uncertain where to look. Then suddenly she fancied she could see an eerie light in the farthest south-west corner of the gloomy cemetery. It was a little like the strange will-o’-the-wisp glow seen rising from marshy land. But this was steady, yellowish, more reminiscent of a shrouded lantern. She began to move towards it. The grave slabs were little islands in the watery mud, but respect for the dead prevented her stepping on them. However, that was something that clearly hadn’t bothered Covele. Soon, she could see a greyish shape inside which glowed the light she had spotted. It was set on top of a large and prominent grave slab. Stepping closer, her skirts held out of the mud, she saw the shape resolve into a small tent-like structure. The whole edifice had the appearance of an island refuge set in a watery sea. It could only be the man she was seeking. She called out.

‘Covele, is that you in there?’

A muttering sound came from inside the tent, followed by a head thrust out of the opening. It was a bald head with long dark locks hanging down and mingling with a ferocious beard.

In the centre of the face, the man’s black eyes glowed like coals.

‘And who is it that wishes to know?’

‘My name is Saphira Le Veske and I am seeking Deudone. Is he with you?’

The head disappeared back inside and a further muffled conversation took place. By now, Saphira, though amused that Covele could even pretend the young man might not be present,
was feeling chilled. The icy mud was striking through her feet and up her legs. She shivered, and wished she had worn warmer clothes. She was about to call out again, when Covele’s head reappeared.

‘Why do yon seek Deudone?’

Saphira considered replying politely, but feeling drops of rain falling from the sky, she lost patience with this game of question and answer. She simply called.

‘Deudone. You have nothing to fear from me. It is this fool who is leading you astray, as he has done before. Or so your mother has told me. If he has convinced you that a forbidden ritual is the way to go about freeing yourself of a sense of guilt, then he is wrong. To tell the truth is a far better way to achieve that. Leave this maniac to his tent and come back home with me.’