[William Falconer 06] - Falconer and the Ritual of Death (29 page)

The day after Pentecost, May 1250

Dickon was furious. He had been at prayer in St Frideswide’s Church when he had overheard the Templar priest’s boast.

The dead boy had just been brought in, and laid out in the side chapel by the prior. The large and overbearing man had spoken precipitately of the power and influence a child martyr would bring to his church. Those around him had agreed, almost rubbing their hands together at the thought of the revenue from the pilgrims who would flock to Oxford. The green-clad Templar priest had sneered at their venality. It was then he had openly boasted of the ancient relic he held under lock and key at Temple Cowley. A relic he had brought himself from the Holy Land, indeed from the vicinity of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.

Dickon wanted to hear no more, and had hurried from the church, passing a tall dust-covered traveller on his way. He had heard of the skull that the Templars were rumoured to worship, and in his mind, he knew it must be the very skull of Hiram, the builder of Solomon’s Temple. He had watched the mystery play performed by his guild only a few months earlier, and knew how Hiram had been slain for his knowledge. It was then that he conceived the idea that if he possessed the skull himself, he would wield a powerful influence in the guild. He recruited his co-conspirators the very next day.

‘You’re mad, Dickon.’ Walter Southo could not believe what his fellow apprentice had just told him. ‘Rob a priest, and a Templar into the bargain?’

Dickon hadn’t told either Walter or Alban of his real intent - ritual slaughter. Just that the three of them would overpower this priest, and steal the keys to the place where the relic was kept.

‘He’s a milk-and-water priest, not a proper Templar knight. Besides, it will be what they call a
furta sacra
- a sacred theft. The skull of Hiram rightly belongs to our guild, anyway.’ As soon as he saw the look in the other boys’ eyes, he knew he had them. And it must have been fate that delivered the priest into his hands that very evening. They had just finished work for the day, and the only other apprentice - John Trewoon - was nowhere to be seen. Dickon had kept his intentions secret from the lumbering giant. Trewoon was too stupid to understand the sacred nature of what he was planning. He sent Walter and Alban to collect his tools, and they obeyed like eager slaves. It was then he saw the priest walking past the building site. He decided to stop him, and ask if he could see the relic. The priest was furious, accusing the apprentice of listening in on conversations that were not for his ears. He began to push the apprentice in the chest. Dickon could have killed him there and then, but some kid threw a stone. The priest was stunned, and fell to his knees. Just then, Walter and Alban came back carrying Dickon’s bag of tools, and the die was cast.

The priest’s head was still bowed as he brushed the lime dust off his robe. Dickon snatched a wide-blade tooth chisel and hammer from his bag. The chisel was used to begin the rough carving of a stone block. Dickon held it to the back of the priest’s skull and swung his hammer. With a gasp, the priest fell prostrate on the ground. It was as if he was abasing himself before the Cross, and Dickon felt the solemnity of the moment. The only jarring element was the sight of the tooth chisel sticking vertically out of the man’s skull. Aware of the preciseness of the ritual in his mind, Dickon thrust the hammer at Walter.

‘You must strike him too. And you, Alban.’

Waiter’s face was ashen. The priest was still writhing on the ground like some insect. His hands were on the top of his ruined head.

‘But that’s enough to kill him, Dickon.’

Dickon sneered, holding the hammer out for the other boy to take.

‘You must complete the ritual.’

Walter took the hammer, and landed a blow on the priest’s skull, just as he held his hand up to protect himself. He giggled at the crushed fingers beneath his blow, and passed the hammer to Alban. He too swung the hammer hard, breaking open like an egg the already shattered head of Michael le Saux. The air crackled with the excitement of the deed. And the priest finally lay dead. Dickon took the hammer back and dropped it in his bag. As a final deed, he took the priest’s own sword, and hacked his head off with it.

‘It is done. Now you must stop calling me Dickon. I am Richard - Richard Thorpe.’

Feast of St Gregory, September 1271

‘I was never little Dickon from that day on. And the mysteries of the mason’s craft were open to me.’

Thorpe’s eyes were focused somewhere in the far distance.

Saphira knew he was stark mad. Must have been mad long before the moment when he killed the Templar priest, Michael le Saux, and stuffed his body in the cavity of the wall of the new building. One death had started Thorpe on a trail of murders. He had been forced to kill Walter and Alban, his confederates in that first death, before their wavering devotion collapsed. Then down the years, he had had to kill Waiter’s brother Wilfrid, when he came too close to identifying his brother’s murderer. Anyone, in fact, who stood in his path.

She was not to know that he had killed that very day too.

When he had found Peter Pawlyn earlier rummaging in his bags to see if he could find the missing skull, Thorpe had coolly cracked his head open with Pawlyn’s own masonry hammer.

‘Do you want to see Hiram’s skull?’

Saphira suddenly realized that Thorpe was speaking to her.

‘The skull? Yes, of course. Where is it?’

Thorpe laughed, and spread his arms wide, encompassing the Jewish cemetery.

‘Why, it’s here, naturally. Come.’

He took her arm and dragged her to a slab in the far comer, a dark, flat marker on the ground, still above the rising waters.

Saphira recognized it as the very slab that Covele had pitched his tent on. Thorpe went to one comer, where the slab was cracked. He bent down to move the broken comer.

‘I hid it here when I came back to Oxford. Sharing lodgings with the other men made me worry about someone stealing it. I looked for ages for a safe place to hide it. Then I saw this graveyard.’

Saphira looked down at the carving on the grave slab, and realized just how appropriate the hiding place was. The carving was of a deer, symbol of the tribe of Naphtali. She thought again of Hiram’s ancestry as described in Biblical texts. Hiram, a widow’s son of the tribe of Naphtali. If the skull was that of Hiram, he had come back to his own. Thorpe lifted the broken stone away and plunged his hand into the dark crevice.

He pulled out a blackened skull.

‘Look.’

Saphira peered at the cause of all the misery over the years.

It was an unadorned skull with a massive fissure across its dome. She was unimpressed in a way she hadn’t thought she would be. Thorpe seemed to sense her disbelief that this truly was the skull of Hiram, and he pulled it away from her gaze. He glared at her through the rain and the darkness, and then turned to slide the skull back into its hiding place. He spoke calmly as he did so, causing a shiver to run down her back.

‘Now you will have to die too.’

She grabbed the broken triangle of stone that Thorpe had shifted to get to the skull, and swung it down on the back of his head. Something must have alerted him to her action. He twisted instinctively as the stone came down, and it caught him a glancing blow on his scalp, ripping a flap of flesh from his brow. The torn skin hung over his left eye and blood streamed down his face, washed into rivulets by the driving rain. His hand reached out like a claw, and his reddened, bloody eyes bore into Saphira. She brought the jagged edge of the stone down on his skull again. It took two more blows before he slumped into the turbid waters of the overflowing river.

Saphira shivered, soaked to the bone and weak from the exertion. She began to fall down a deep, dark tunnel. Then out of the blue she felt someone supporting her trembling limbs. She opened her eyes, and saw it was William. By his side, hopping anxiously from one leg to the other, was the boy Jose. She smiled.

‘Thank goodness you found him, Jose. I was beginning to get a little worried.’

‘Master Falconer found me, madam. He was already looking for you. I told him I had followed you, as you said to. And when I knew where you were being taken, I went looking for him.’

She touched his cheek.

‘You did very well, Jose. And you brought him just in time.’ Falconer coughed, gently releasing Saphira from his grasp.

‘It looks as though you reached the same conclusion as I did about Thorpe.’

She gave him a pert smile.

‘Yes, but a little sooner, you will have to admit.’

‘We can argue about that later. What I will acknowledge is that you didn’t need me in the end.’

They both looked down at the body slumped by the grave, its head shattered, the blood from the wounds staining the muddy waters red. Saphira stepped between the ugly sight and Jose, turning the boy’s wide-eyed stare away from it.

‘We can also argue that point later. But now, I would like to get somewhere warm and dry.’

Falconer
 
laughed.

‘That may be an impossibility. Twenty years ago we all thought it was the End Times. Now I fear it is the Flood.’

Epilogue

Though the rain had stopped by the morning, the streets of Oxford were awash, and the town resembled a moated castle. Shopkeepers were attempting to salvage what they could, and trying to sweep water from their premises. Falconer had returned to Aristotle’s Hall to make sure the students under his care were safe, despite not wishing to leave Saphira on her own. But she had insisted he do so, and she had gone back to the relative tranquillity of Abraham’s house to seek out yet another dry gown. Bullock had spent what was left of the night dealing with the corpse of the master mason, Richard Thorpe. He then had to break the news of his death not only to his workers, but to Dame Elia Bassett, his employer. She had taken the information badly, flying into a rage over the delay this would cause to her
collegium
project. In fact, she almost decided there and then to cease the labour, and look for a more suitable memorial to her husband, who had been illiterate anyway. Perhaps a small chapel or chantry would be more appropriate, where monks could pray for his salvation for years to come.

So by the time Peter Bullock got back to Oxford Castle, he was not best pleased to see Ralph, the steward from Tubney Manor, on his doorstep. The news he brought was, however, oddly satisfying. Despite his fatigue, he hurried round to Aristotle’s Hall to let William know. He found the regent master drying himself off next to the fire in the main hall.

His dowdy black robe, already green with age at the edges, was steaming gently.

‘Peter. I had not expected to see you so soon. What brings you here?’

‘News that, if not good, is at least satisfactory.’ Falconer moved from the fire as he felt the back of his robe grow hot.

‘It is not like you to speak in riddles, Peter. I thought that was my prerogative.’

‘Then I shall make myself clear. Gilbert de Bois is dead.’

‘How?’

‘He was fouhd hanging from the Tubney Tree this very morning by one of his labourers. Apparently, de Bois was in the habit of drinking late into the night, especially when, as occurred last night, he had experienced his latest marital rebuff. Ralph went to his chamber very late to make sure his master was safely in bed. But de Bois was nowhere to be seen. A quick search of the house brought no result, so Ralph roused some of the farm workers. They scoured the neighbourhood, but it was only by the light of dawn that he was seen hanging from the tree. By then it was too late, he was dead. When the body had been brought back to the house, Ralph examined it and found a message in de Bois’s pouch. It was written on a comer of one of Ralph’s accounts. De Bois confessed to raping his servant girl, and when she came to him bearing his child, he strangled her. You were right, William.’

Falconer nodded sadly. But it had not been him but poor Richard Bonham who had been right. He had found the child in Sarah’s womb, and had interpreted the marks on her neck as strangulation made to look like self-harm by hanging. He would miss the precision and attention to detail of the little grey master. Bullock had still one more task to perform.

‘The skull. Have you come to any conclusions?’ After getting Falconer to check that Richard Thorpe was truly dead last night, Saphira had pointed out the hiding place of the skull stolen twenty years earlier. Falconer had shoved his large fist in the crack in the grave slab, and could feel the skull. But he could not grasp it and get his fist out of the gap.

Saphira had inserted her more slender hand, and come up with an old damaged skull. They had all three peered at it in wonder.

The boy Jose had been prevented from seeing the gruesome item, much to his annoyance. But there was not much to tell from such a cursory examination of the skull in the dark. So Falconer had suggested he take it back to Aristotle’s, and have a look at it in the light of day. This he had eagerly done no more than a few hours ago. Disappointingly, the skull had little to tell him, and its age was impossible to determine. Was it truly Hiram’s skull? Even those who had found it originally could not have told for sure. The only certain fact was that it belonged to the Templars, and needed to be returned to Laurence de Bernère. Falconer gave Bullock the only answer he could.