Faithful Dead (6 page)

‘Expected . . . ? Oh, yes indeed. Sister Euphemia had attended him on his arrival, and she spoke to me in private afterwards and said she was gravely worried about him. Sir Josse, I think we can be fairly sure that there were no suspicious circumstances concerning
that
death.’

‘But what of the young servant?’

Saul’s face clouded again. ‘He vanished. He was there when we retired for the night – indeed, we remarked on the care with which he tended his master – but when we woke and found the old man dead, the boy had gone.’

The four of them stood silently, nobody, apparently, wanting to voice the conclusion to which they had all leapt. Finally Josse said, ‘Brother Saul, Brother Augustus, the two of you saw both the living young man and the dead body. Yes?’ They both nodded. ‘Then can you say whether or not the two were one and the same?’

Saul spoke first, and that only after some moments’ thought. ‘It is possible, aye, Sir Josse. But in the absence of a recognisable face . . .’ He did not finish. Which, Josse thought, was understandable; the face of the corpse, bloated, half-eaten, a mass of purplish flesh and bare white bone where the skull showed through, had not been a sight to dwell on.

‘Augustus?’ he said gently, turning to the boy.

‘I cannot be sure, either,’ Augustus said. ‘All that I would venture is that it is not impossible that the dead man was the old man’s servant.’

‘Very well.’ Josse nodded. There was no point in pursuing the matter; Saul and Augustus had done their best. Instead he now asked, ‘I suppose neither the old man nor the servant gave you their name?’

As one, the three men shook their heads.

Then Brother Erse said, ‘They were foreign. Leastways, the lad was.’

‘Foreign?’ Josse spun round to face him.

‘Aye. He was dark-complexioned. Skin was sort of . . .’ He paused, clearly thinking. ‘Sort of oak-coloured. If you know what I mean. And he had black hair.’

‘But many people have dark colouring without being foreign,’ Josse observed. ‘Are you sure, Brother Erse?’

‘I’m sure,’ the carpenter insisted. ‘He spoke funny.’

‘Ah.’ Would that be Brother Erse’s interpretation of someone speaking English when it was not their mother tongue? It was quite likely; Hawkenlye’s fame had grown to the extent that people from other countries did now make the long trip. ‘And the old man? Did he appear to be foreign too?’

‘Couldn’t say,’ Erse said. ‘He wore a hood mostly, and he didn’t so much as speak but cough.’

‘I see.’ Was the information helpful in any way, Josse wondered? Were they right in concluding that the dead youth was the old man’s servant? But why was he murdered? And, indeed, why had he fled on the night his master died? Or was the whole thing completely irrelevant and serving only to distract them from the true victim and nature of the crime? Either way, it seemed they could go no further now. Josse was about to thank them and release them to return to their duties when Brother Saul spoke up.

‘I was wrong just now,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve been thinking, and it wasn’t right, what I said to Brother Adrian.’

‘I’m sure he didn’t take it amiss,’ Josse reassured him, ‘and, Saul, you spoke quite kindly.’

Saul flashed him a brief smile. ‘No, that’s not what I mean, thank you all the same, Sir Josse. No. I said to him that the poor dead soul was naked because his murderer had stripped him after he’d killed him. But that can’t be right, else how did the knife end up still in the body? I mean, if you stick a knife in someone and then take off his jerkin or his tunic, the knife would be pulled out as the garment was removed. Wouldn’t it?’

‘Aye, in all probability it would,’ Josse said slowly. An unpleasant picture was forming in his mind. ‘Is it possible, then, that the killer made the victim strip before he killed him?’

Brother Erse made a sound of disgust. But Augustus said, ‘That sounds unlikely, since the man was stabbed from behind.’

Josse tried to picture it. Indeed, it did seem unlikely, especially for a professional assassin, to make a man strip and then stand behind him to slip a knife between his ribs. To be stabbed in the back surely suggested an element of surprise – the dark figure creeping up behind his victim, soft-footed, silent. But then why had the victim been naked?

Saul said, ‘Perhaps the assailant struck him down first and stunned him, then stripped him, then stabbed him?’

‘Hmm.’ I did not check his head for injury, Josse reprimanded himself. And, now that he is buried, it is too late.

Then he thought,
I
did not. But I am willing to bet that somebody else did.

He told the others what he was thinking. Then, thanking them for their time and their help, he hurried away to find Sister Euphemia.

‘I was just coming to look for you, sir knight,’ she said.

He had found her in the little curtained-off section of the long infirmary where she kept a bowl and a pitcher of water; she was washing something black and sticky from her hands, and he did not like to ask what it was. Noticing his quick glance, she said, ‘A patient with a suppurating sore on her hip, poor soul. She suffers much, yet does not complain. I have given her some of Sister Tiphaine’s strongest sleeping draught, in order that she may rest awhile. Now then––’ briskly she dried her hands on a spotless linen cloth and rolled down her wide sleeves – ‘you first. What did you come to see me about?’

He told her of the murder scene which he and the three brothers had just conjured up, of the difficulty of how a knife could have been left in a man whose clothes had been removed after death, and of the possible solution that the victim had been knocked on the head and rendered unconscious first.

Before he had finished, she was shaking her head. ‘No, there was no injury to the skull, nor to the neck,’ she said firmly.

‘You are absolutely certain?’

‘That I am. Of course, it’s possible to fell a man without its leaving a dent in the skull.’

‘Aye,’ he sighed. He seemed to be getting nowhere.

Observing his face, she gave him a swift dig in the ribs. ‘Cheer up, Sir Josse. Did I not just say that I was about to come looking for you?’

‘Aye. What––?’

‘I have been studying that knife.’ She lowered her voice, beckoning him further into the little recess. Then she reached under the table on which the bowl and pitcher stood and pulled out a small bundle of cloth. She laid it on the table and unwrapped the cloth.

The knife lay on the scrap of linen. Clean now, Josse noticed the sheen on the thin blade – no doubt razor-sharp – and the faint carved design on the short, stubby handle.

But he did not study the knife for long; there was something else in the bundle.

He picked it up.

It was a piece of cloth, almost circular in shape, with a clean slit in the middle. Its outer edges were frayed, as if it had been torn.

Sister Euphemia said softly in his ear, ‘When I cleaned the blood and the dirt from the knife, I found this piece of cloth around the point where blade meets handle. It was so soaked in blood that it had stuck tight to the knife.’

‘And it was ripped from the dead man’s garment when the murderer stripped the body?’ Josse whispered. ‘Is it possible, Sister?’

She took the small piece of cloth from him. ‘It is possible, I reckon,’ she replied. ‘The knife was stuck fast in the body, and it could be that the garment gave way before the blade. The fabric is soft and fine – I think it is wool, perhaps from an undershirt.’ She glanced up at Josse. ‘A costly undershirt, mind – not many of the folks who go to the Holy Shrine would wear such a garment.’

Josse was picturing a well-dressed man, the sort who could afford a fine wool undershirt. In his mind’s eye he saw the man’s tunic, heavy, costly, perhaps padded and lined, open at the sides and held together at the waist by a decorative belt.

Aye. It was possible that a clever assailant, familiar with the dress of men of means, would know how to slide the knife inside the tunic and stab the man through his shirt.

Thoughtfully he wrapped both knife and wool fragment up in the cloth. He said, ‘Sister Euphemia, I am truly grateful, as ever, for your all-seeing eyes and your delicate, skilful, capable hands.’

Again, she dug him in the ribs, rather more forcibly this time. ‘Go on with you,’ she said. ‘You old flatterer!’

He returned her grin. ‘May I keep this?’ He held up the bundle.

‘Of course.’ Nudging him out of the way, she stepped past him and back out into the infirmary. Looking at him over her shoulder, she said softly, ‘Good luck with your enquiries, Sir Josse. I will pray for you.’

Then she was off, walking quickly but quietly up the long room to where, at the far end, an elderly woman lay tossing and turning. The woman with the ulcerated hip? It was possible. Whoever she was, her chances of getting better had just gone up quite considerably, now that the infirmarer of Hawkenlye Abbey was fighting on her side.

Helewise had returned to the Abbey church after the formalities concerning the interment of the dead man had finally been concluded. She had taken Father Gilbert’s reprimand to heart. He was
right
, she thought desperately; what sort of an example does it set for an abbey, of all places, to be so lacking in vigilance that a visitor can be murdered and lie dead and unattended for
weeks
?

People come to us for help and for loving care, she told herself mercilessly, and it is our entire life’s purpose here to succour the needy and, when all else comes to naught and God calls, to comfort the dying and pray for the dead. Oh, how I have failed! That poor young man, stabbed and thrown aside, and there he has lain ever since, ignored, unburied, nobody to offer up the shortest, smallest prayer on his behalf !

On her knees, she dropped her face on to her clasped hands and wept.

So wrapped up was she in her guilt and her misery that she did not hear the great door of the church open and quietly close, nor the soft whisper of steps as someone crossed the floor on light feet and knelt down by her side.

But then the slim figure beside her whispered, ‘Abbess Helewise, it is not right that you suffer alone for something that is the fault of all of us. Will you permit me to pray with you?’

Raising her face, brushing away the tears with a hasty gesture, Helewise saw Sister Caliste at her side.

Caliste. The little foster child of a woodland family, she had entered Hawkenlye as one of the youngest ever postulants. Now – and not without a trauma or two of her own along the way – she was a professed nun, a loving, optimistic, blithe soul who nursed even the contagious sick with devotion and courage, putting their wants and needs above her own. Just as her master, Christ, would have wished.

Of all of Hawkenlye, Caliste was the one person with whom Helewise could bear to share her torment.

As she nodded and the two of them closed their eyes in silent prayer, Helewise wondered tentatively if this – Sister Caliste’s unexpected, unasked but totally welcome presence – was a small sign that God might be seeing His way to forgiving her.

Back in the privacy of her little room that evening – she had foregone supper, just as she had foregone the midday meal – she heard, once again, the jingle of spurs and the heavy tread of Josse’s boots as he came along the cloister.

She called out ‘Come in’ before he had even knocked on the door.

He advanced into her room, stopped on the far side of the wide table that she used as a desk, and stared down at her. There was compassion in his face; she hoped fervently that he could not detect she had been weeping.

It was possible, though, that he did. For, in a situation where the most natural thing would have been to speak of the day’s events, instead he said, ‘Fine lad, that Augustus. And I like the carpenter, Brother Erse, as well. Augustus’s background I already know, but what of Brother Erse? How did he come to Hawkenlye?’

Dear Josse, she thought as she told him briefly of Brother Erse’s circumstances. Of the childhood sweetheart he had wed when both were fifteen, of the child born to them, of the plague that had swept through the village and taken away so many of the young and the weak. Including Erse’s wife and baby. Desperate, wishing only to join them in death, Erse had been succoured by an exceptional parish priest and, finally, had come to understand that the Lord had a plan for everyone. Erse’s road had been a particularly tough one, but, finding solace in Christ, he had presented himself at Hawkenlye in his capacity as a carpenter and, in time, taken his vows as a monk.

Josse was nodding sagely as she told the tale. When she finished, he said, ‘It is to Hawkenlye’s advantage that the latter role does not make him abandon the former.’

There was a short and, she thought, rather awkward silence. They had surely exhausted the subject of Brother Erse; would Josse now, she wondered, bring himself to say what he had come to say?