The Innocent (23 page)

It was June 24, the Feast of Saint John the Baptist, and the sluggish, iron dawn spoke of a storm before nightfall.

The market sellers, heading for the space outside the Convent Garden of the Poor Clares where they would set their stalls, walked quietly past Blessing House, not even calling out what they had to sell.

No one inside would hear them; all the windows that faced the street were shuttered fast.

“Must be dark inside there,” said John from Spittalfields to his mate as they trudged past, each with a barrow of green worts to sell. His friend agreed and crossed himself as he passed the brooding front door. They might be common, unimportant men in comparison to Mathew Cuttifer, but at least they didn’t have daughters-in-law who went and murdered their sons.

Inside the house, the stink of decaying flesh made it a trial to be in the chapel. Piers lay in an open coffin set on trestles before the altar, and the last three days had been hot, so the body was rotting fast.

Also, the heat from the fat, wax candles surrounding the bier—each the height of a man—was adding to the speed of decay.

Apart from finding the stink offensive, Father Bartolph was frightened. No matter what Lady Margaret and he said to Mathew Cuttifer, the master would not allow them to bury his son and he would not allow the coffin to be closed. For three long days and nights he had kept watch by his son’s body, praying constantly, refusing all food and drink.

Father Bartolph had seen a lot during his rather long life—he was somewhere over fifty that he knew—

and yet what had lately happened in this house seemed to eclipse even the rape, fire, and slaughter he’d seen during the civil wars between Margaret the Angevin she-wolf and the House of York. It was blasphemy to think it, he knew that, but he detected the hand of God working here. There was something biblical in the vengeance that Aveline had wreaked on the body of her husband for all he had done to her.

Aveline had not denied it when he’d asked her if she’d stabbed Piers, but perhaps this could not be taken as confession, because she’d not spoken since she had stumbled into the kitchen clutching one of Piers’s hunting knives, slick with his blood.

There had been a terrible scene when Mathew Cuttifer found his son’s body lying among the rushes in his own congealing blood. Oblivious to all else, Mathew had knelt beside the body and tenderly cradled it, as if the corpse had been a sleeping child. Rigor mortis had set in, however, and it was almost ludicrous, if it had not been so sad, to see the old man trying to cuddle the stiffening cadaver.

Privately, the priest thought Mathew was well rid of his son, especially now there was a grandson to take his place. Perhaps this new child could be better shaped for life by his grandmother’s teaching.

After all, when Lady Margaret and he had tried to prise Mathew away from the corpse, it had been the wife who had made her husband understand reason. Margaret had also convinced Mathew that the corpse had to be laid out and properly attended to while the household was organized, and made calm, now that everyone had been awakened by the tumult.

The problem had remained of what to do about Aveline. Margaret had again taken charge. She’d instructed Anne to take Aveline to the solar and then to burn the stained clothes she was wearing.

Passive, Aveline had allowed Anne to peel off her shift, stiff with dried blood, and had stood naked, in complete silence, as Anne washed her. The younger girl found herself choking back tears of pity, for it was clear that the gash on Aveline’s face would close in a terrible scar that would distort and destroy her beauty forever, though Anne did what she could, binding a poultice of woundwort and honey over the wound.

Then Anne had covered Aveline with one of her own calico shifts and put her to bed in the same tiny, airless room in the tower they had briefly shared before the older girl’s marriage. At Margaret’s suggestion, Anne had slept across the doorway, but Aveline had not stirred for what remained of the short night.

The next day had begun in muted chaos. Mathew had insisted his son’s body be dressed in the finest clothes that could be found and placed in the chapel on a bier covered with a new black velvet pall. He had personally ordered delivery of the candles that now burned day and night in all corners of that gloomy space. Personally, too, Mathew had led the mourners who arrived in a steady stream to pay their respects.

The lavish display around Piers’s coffin caused comment. He’d not been an aristocrat or even a gentleman, but the candles, the roses from the heber, and the rich vestments that Mathew made the sweating Bartolph wear were marks of honor, as if Piers had died a great man after a long and magnificent life.

Those who chose to visit and keep the father company knew well the disappointment Piers had been to Mathew, but in death people are mostly kind and so, many decent lies were spoken over the dead man as he lay among the candles and the flowers and slowly turned a pale waxy green, filling the chapel with the cloying sweet smell of putrefying meat.

However, nothing could assuage Mathew’s anguished grief for his son; this murder had created a burning, jagged stone in his gut, a stone he knew he had made for himself. The heat and the bile around his heart were feeding the fires of guilt, and they were his rightful and welcomed burden to carry; for he had never loved his son enough to face the evil that had been bred in Piers. For that dereliction, God required payment.

As dawn seeped into the chapel on the brooding fourth day after the murder, Bartolph, rocking on his feet with exhaustion, suddenly saw the mural of Mathew and his family at Mary’s feet with new eyes.

Somehow the painter had divined the truth that no one else had seen. He’d insinuated a curled whip into the picture beside Piers, a whip that looked like a snake. Yes, the painter had known. Piers’s brutality was the work of the Devil—the serpent in the garden. Now it had killed him.

Finishing the prayers, Bartolph bowed to the Host concealed in the pyx and turned to face his patron.

Mathew was gazing at the glistening face of his son as if to imprint each feature eternally on his mind.

Twice the priest cleared his throat to speak but Mathew heard nothing; he was wrestling with God, asking him to take his soul in exchange for the life of his son—surely it was not too late for the God who had raised Lazarus to act, even now?

Bartolph found his voice. “Sir…” There was no response. “Master Mathew…Sir!” The strangled tone cut through and Mathew left off his feverish pleading with God.

“Yes, Father?”

“Master Mathew, today is the Feast of Saint John the Baptist. The cousin of Christ.”

“Well?”

“In the spirit of the sacrifice made by the blessed John, I believe that God has spoken to me. About Piers.”

“And what has he said, Father?” Mathew sounded calm but his tone was flat, remote.

It was daunting for the priest but he continued. “Sir, He has said that today should be the day that your son is laid to rest, for you have suffered enough—even as John did.”

“No!”

Lady Margaret heard the anger in her husband’s voice as she entered the chapel and saw the helpless look on the priest’s face. Holding one finger to her lips, she beckoned for Bartolph to leave them alone.

The priest took the hint and left, and Lady Margaret joined her husband, kneeling, in front of the coffin.

“Have you come to instruct me in God’s will also, wife?” Mathew’s tone was bleak, but Margaret, while compassionate, was practical. She had the whole household to consider and the presence of a three-day-old corpse in the warm weather was her chief concern.

“No, husband,” she said briskly, “but I have come to remind you of your duty. It is time to be done with prayers beside your son—he must be buried. He stinks, Mathew.”

Cold water thrown into his face could not have been more shocking. Before he could say anything she took his hand. “Ah, my dear, if I could spare you this I would, but we have no more time. Decisions must be taken and you are the head of this house.”

Abruptly, Mathew began to cry, as if an invisible animal had him in its grip and was shaking his body to and fro. Margaret put her arms around him and held him as tightly as she could with all her strength, pressing him against her breasts, kissing his face, kissing his tears.

Eventually he leaned away from her, wiping his face with the cuff of his sleeve. He smelled very rank, for he had not changed his clothes—the heavy velvet houppelande, the thick hose—since the day of the churching.

The good wife in Margaret knew what was needed. Gently she helped him rise to his feet and walked beside him to the door of the chapel, saying nothing. Together they moved on toward the great receiving hall, and once there, Margaret found Jassy.

“Jassy, would you see that Master Mathew is bathed, please, and that he is supplied with clean, fresh clothes and a good breakfast in his workroom as soon as you can arrange that. And then I want you to send me Wynken and Alain from the stable—and also Dermot from the forge. I shall be in the chapel.”

Consigning her husband to Jassy’s care, Margaret went back to the chapel where she found the priest in his robing room. “Father, I have decided that you and I shall pick a resting place for Piers under the floor of the chapel that I shall then submit to my husband for his approval. The grave shall be dug this forenoon. Meanwhile, the coffin must be closed. We shall fumigate as best we can and tonight you will conduct the funeral Mass. Do I have your approval?”

The priest bowed speechlessly to the lady and followed her into the body of the chapel. Not for the first time he thought this house would be in a sad state without her wise counsel—she was as the Bible said, a wife whose price was above rubies, and she had the brain of a man. A rare combination, one to be prized.

Margaret stood very still as she looked around the space before her. In a real sense, this place was a monument to her husband’s success, but now it would have another function too. It would be the resting place of a good part of his hopes. They must build a great tomb for those hopes.

Margaret sighed in deep sadness as the priest coughed gently, trying to attract her attention. “Yes, Father?”

“Lady Margaret, do you suppose the master would like his son to be buried before the altar?”

Margaret considered the proposal for a moment, thinking where the morning sun shone into this gloomy place. It was important that Piers be buried with his head toward the dawn, the east, so that he would be ready for Judgment Day, but for that to happen he would need to be buried away from the altar, which faced north.

“A noble thought, Father. And a comforting one. We should bury Piers there—do you see where the sun strikes the flags?” A pool of light had fallen to the right of the altar under the figures of the Cuttifer family group. It would give Mathew comfort when the sun shone onto his son’s grave.

There was a discreet knock on the chapel door and Margaret turned to see two strongly made youths and a large redheaded man. Wynken and Alain worked under Perkin Wye in the stables and were ideal for the hard digging to come. But first they needed to seal the coffin to stop the stench and for that she had summoned Dermot, the wild-haired Irish smith.

Dermot had never liked Piers; once, he’d even told him so and it was only his great size and strength that saved him from a beating, plus the strange reputation he carried. Smiths and wizards were still interchangeable in many people’s minds, and despite his nearly impenetrable accent and strange clothes, he inspired a lot of respect in the house because he said odd things—things that came true too often for comfort. And in his little lean-to behind the forge there were wooden carvings, black, primitive-looking things with small eyes and long heads. Dermot was known to pour wine and cocks’

blood over these “friends” on a full moon—something Father Bartolph was well apprised of. He’d never confronted the smith with his knowledge, however. The deep black eyes of the man stopped him.

But Margaret liked Dermot for his honesty, her patronage kept him safe at Blessing House, and now she carefully explained what she wanted done. First, the lid of the coffin was to be nailed down as tightly as possible and then hot lead poured over the nail holes. Further, sheets of lead were to be wrapped around the coffin and their edges sealed to form an outer casing for the elm box inside. This was especially important since the body was to be buried under the chapel floor and she was anxious to avoid noxious humors seeping up through the flags.

As Margaret left the chapel, Mathew, newly shaved and bathed and wearing clean clothes, slowly walked over to the little window above the prie-dieu in his workroom, a window that he’d had installed into the thickness of the wall so that he could look down into the chapel below and contemplate God’s Son on his cross above the altar table whenever he had need of guidance in his business. Below, he could see the lid was on the coffin; Dermot and his assistant were filling the last few nail holes with lead. Mathew was too late—too late to see his son’s face for one last time on this earth.

Too late. He’d always been too late for Piers.

For Anne, it had been a morning fraught with worry. After the dreadful events of June 20, Lady Margaret had decreed that Anne was to be Aveline’s constant companion and guardian. Margaret had dissuaded Mathew from locking his daughter-in-law in one of the cellars under the kitchen, but as an alternative, a bolt was attached to the outside of the tower room where Aveline had been confined these last three days.

Now the day was turning thunderous and Anne had been asked to take Aveline walking outside in the garden for an hour or so before the storm descended. Lady Margaret felt pity for Aveline—let her breathe fresh air while she still could, for it might be some of the last she ever tasted.

Aveline was in a shocking state. She had refused to eat since the night of the murder and her clothes hung on her as if made for a much larger woman. Despite Anne’s treatment, the knife slash was proud and hot on her face and she was clearly running a high fever, but she’d refused to let Anne touch her face again or tend further to the gash. At least she was clean—Anne had seen to that—but something had snapped in the girl’s mind. Aveline was talking again but not to anyone living. Her conversations were with God and the Devil—and Piers.