A Mortal Bane (35 page)

“I have not,” he cried. “I have not. Not a word. Not a look.”

“You are not summoned to answer for past crimes,” Guiscard de Tournai said sharply, “but for present ones.”

The bishop’s eyes shifted briefly to Guiscard, then returned to Knud, and he asked, “Who is the goldsmith who made the copies of the prior’s silver candlesticks?”

Now Knud’s eyes and mouth were both wide open, but more astonishment showed than fear. “The prior’s silver candlesticks?” he echoed when he was able to make his jaw and tongue work. “I do not know of any copies made, but I am only the sacristan’s assistant. Who would tell me if copies were made?” There was a tinge of bitterness in the voice.

“You have cleaned those candlesticks often,” Bell said. “Look at the one on the table. Is that the candlestick that you have cleaned every week?”

Brother Elwin helped the man up and he went and looked at the candlestick. “It looks like it,” he said, glancing nervously at the bishop. Then he saw the crack showing the base metal. “I thought it was solid silver,” he said.

“It was, which is how we know this is a copy,” the bishop remarked.

‘To whom did you give my keys?” the sacristan shouted. “Or did you have the safe-box key copied for your own use?”

Knud’s face, to which the color had mostly returned, paled again. “I never gave your keys to anyone,” he cried. “And I have no copy of the safe-box key. You can search me, search all my things. I am no thief!”

Bell thought there was honest indignation in the last four words. No thief. Yet the man was utterly terrified of the bishop’s discovery of some crime. That certainly made him vulnerable to anyone who knew his secret. The sacristan?

The bishop sighed. “Unfortunately, in a place like this there are enough hiding places for an object the size of a key. We could prove nothing with a search, and we have a more immediate, more important, task for the lay brothers and monks. There has been another murder, and this time in the church itself. The whole church must be purified, washed and cleansed of blood and the desecrating presence of the act.”

“Murder?” Knud was plainly horrified, but Bell thought he did not associate the murder with himself at all.

“Look at the mark on the base of the candlestick. Can you tell me whose that is?” Bell asked.

Knud took the candlestick and after a moment, shook his head. “I do not see any mark. The mark I know was in the center and boldly raised. I believe Brother Paulinus once told me it was the mark of Master Jacob the Alderman.”

Wordlessly, Bell pointed out the small craftmark in the corner of the base and Knud stared at it, then shrugged. “I do not know whose mark that is, but I think it possible that there are two or three other pieces made by the same hand.”

“God have mercy on us,” the prior sighed.

Before Winchester could speak, the prior’s secretary appeared in the open doorway. “It is time for Matins,” he said, his eyes round, his face pale with distress. “We cannot pray in the church. Where….”

“Until the church is reconsecrated, in my chapel,” Winchester said, rising. “Brother Elwin, do you and Brother Patric or others you trust completely keep close watch on Knud, even when he goes to the privy. I will have more questions for him some other time. Tomorrow, after Prime, we will begin to purify the church so that it can be reconsecrated before Sunday.” He started for the door but stopped when he came abreast of Magdalene and Bell. “You may return to your house, Magdalene. I believe you have nothing to do with this crime.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Magdalene said. “May my women and I help with the purification? I know that Dulcie will wish to clean, and Sabina—she regrets her state so bitterly—she is blind, but—

“Yes, of course you may. That you are excommunicate is no hindrance, and good works are good works. God and His Mother are merciful; perhaps the good work will lead to the redemption and the saving of a soul.” A quiver moved his lips, and was repressed. “I am sure Brother Paulinus, who is going to pray for your souls, will be glad of a good work that would help make the church ready for reconsecration.”

Magdalene had a little struggle with her mouth, too, but subdued the urge to grin, bowed, and turned away. Bell started to follow, but the bishop laid a hand on his arm. Magdalene, who had many causes to be grateful to Winchester, now had one more. She had been wondering how to conceal from Bell the fact that she was sending news of this second murder and the need to purify the church to William of Ypres. Fearing that Winchester would not keep Bell very long, Magdalene hurried down the path to the back gate.

Who had opened it, she wondered. Who had a duplicate set of keys to every lock in the priory? Brother Fareman had. No, ridiculous. The sacristan, of course, but…could it be that Brother Paulinus
was
mad and truly did not remember what he had done? At least this murder cleared Richard de Beaumeis…unless Brother Godwine had let him in and no one else knew. But he could not have escaped after the murder. The front gate was still locked. So who had opened the gate? And when had it been opened?

Magdalene lifted the latch of the back door and went in, only realizing after she entered that Bell had fortunately not relocked the door. She drew a sharp, anxious breath, then let it out when she saw the key to the front gate hanging on its usual hook; Ella had seen Buchuinte out and had locked the gate after him.

By then, the women had heard her. Dulcie rushed into the corridor, her pan at the ready. Letice was right behind her, carrying the longest and most vicious-looking knife Magdalene had ever seen. Sabina followed, clutching her staff, and Ella cowered last, peering nervously around the corner.

“What happened?” they all cried, almost with one voice.

Magdalene sighed. “Unfortunately, Brother Paulinus did not suffer a mad fit. Brother Godwine
was
murdered. It was dreadful, but the bishop came back with Bell. He listened and said we were innocent. He even gave permission for us to help clean the church, which was desecrated—”

There were various exclamations at this piece of news, but Magdalene gestured for silence and for a return to the common room. There she said, “I will tell you about it tomorrow morning. The cleansing is to begin at Prime, so we must all be up early. It will be best if you go to bed now and try not to think about this horror.”

“Are you going to bed, too?” Ella asked. “Should not someone watch for the murderer? He could get in if the gate and the house are open.”

“The murderer will not come here, love. He is not interested in us—you can go to sleep without worrying about it. I will douse the lights in here, but I will be awake in my own room awhile longer. I must write to William about the murder and hint to him that if Baldassare took the pouch with him and the murderer did not get it, then he must have hidden it in the church. And if the church is thoroughly cleaned, someone is going to find the pouch.”

“How will William get the message?” Sabina asked. “You cannot go out in the middle of the night.”

“Tom the Watchman will take it. He should be on his way home right now.” She caught Dulcie’s arm and said loudly, “You must catch Tom the Watchman before he gets to bed and bring him here—bring him to the stable. I will go there to give him a letter and explain what he must do.”

‘Tom the Watchman,” Dulcie repeated. ‘To the stable.”

“Take the key to the gate,” Magdalene reminded her. “Lock the front gate behind you when you go out.”

Dulcie nodded and left. Magdalene shooed the other women into their chambers, snuffed all the lights but the torchette over the front door, and hurried to her own room where she took a fair-sized piece of parchment from her drawer. At the top of the sheet she wrote.

“From Magdalene la Bâtarde of the Old Priory Guesthouse to Lord William of Ypres. It is after Matins on the tenth day following Easter Sunday. If you are well, I am well also, but all is not well in the priory of St. Mary Overy.” She followed the warning with as succinct a description of the murder as possible—William would not be much interested in that or in the theft of church plate—and then moved on to the need for a purification of the church before it could be reconsecrated.

“Because Baldassare had been found on the porch,” she wrote, “it has been assumed that he never entered the church, and I do not believe the monks ever searched there for the pouch. Also, they did not know until Sir Bellamy recognized the dead man that he was a papal messenger, and did not know they should look for a pouch. However, Baldassare did leave this house when the bells rang for the Compline service. If he entered the church quietly and slipped back into the darkness of the nave, he could have hidden the pouch during the service and no one the wiser.”

She sat for a moment staring at the parchment. Perhaps she should not concentrate solely on the pouch. She frowned, passed the feather of the quill she was using between her lips, dipped it again, and then added, “I do not know whether you are interested in this murder or whether it would be worth your while to watch or join the cleansing of St. Mary Overy, but I felt you should know what was happening so you could decide for yourself out of knowledge rather than let matters slide, out of ignorance.”

All the while she had been writing, she had had an ear cocked for the sound of Bell returning. Breathing a short prayer of thanksgiving because he had not, she folded and sealed her parchment. Her seal was unique; she used a small, very ancient brooch William had given her, engraved in low relief with a naked woman reclining on an odd-looking bed.

Letter complete, she snuffed her candles and stepped out of her chamber, barely opening the door and closing it softly behind her. She could only hope that Bell would not come back before she did. If he saw the house all dark, he would likely lock the door and she would be locked out. Magdalene sighed. It would not be the first time in her life that she slept in a stable loft.

That last sacrifice was not necessary, however. When Dulcie returned, the door was still open and the older woman slipped quietly inside after giving Magdalene the key to the front gate. At the stable, Magdalene gave her letter to Tom the Watchman, walked him back to the gate, and bade him deliver the missive to William of Ypres’s lodging in the Tower of London. She also gave Tom a silver penny, which made his eyes widen.

“The quicker Lord William has this message, the better,” Magdalene said. “You know his colors?” The man nodded; he had delivered messages to William of Ypres before. “Be sure the letter goes into the hands of a man wearing William’s colors and that you tell him quietly his master needs to know what is therein before this morning’s Prime. You need not come back to say he has the letter. I expect to see Lord William himself or one of his men soon after Prime.”

Chapter Eighteen

27 April 1139

St. Mary Overy Church

It was William himself who came, striding through the main door into the church as if it were another of his own keeps. He was dressed in mail, his spurs making a soft metallic scraping against the stone floor. Magdalene, attracted by the sound, gave him one glance and then turned angrily away. To Sabina, who was kneeling about midway down the chancel near the wall opposite to that on which the St. Christopher high relief was carved, she said, “Can you feel the edge of the lowest course of the stonework? Just wash along it down to the nave. I will then ask the prior whether he wants us to continue down the nave or do the other side of the chancel.”

“I feel it. I will not miss any places, I promise.”

“I know you will not, love. Do you have your pillow to kneel on?”

Sabina answered—Magdalene hoped in the affirmative, but she did not really hear her. She was furious with William. She had feared her letter would convince him that she had hidden the pouch in the church, but she had not expected he would appear dressed and ready to ride to the king as soon as it was found. Did he think she was going to fish it out and hand it to him?

Without a second glance, Magdalene wrung a cloth out in a bucket of water, stepped up on a stool, and began to wash the wall as high as she could reach. Behind her, a young novice was perched on a ladder scrubbing even higher, to where the arches curved inward to support the roof.

“Hey, chick!” William bellowed across the church. “Nother kind of good works, eh?”

Magdalene turned her head and bowed it. “Lord William,” she murmured, but she did not step off the stool to move toward him.

To her intense relief, he did not veer toward her either, or address her again. He continued straight through the nave, passing her without another glance, heading for the dais, where the bishop was watching the prior carefully scrubbing at the bloodstains on the floor and the altar, from which the cloth had been removed. The safe box, Magdalene had noticed earlier, was also gone.

When William called out, the bishop abruptly stopped assuring Father Benin, for the fourth or fifth time, that no amount of scrubbing would completely remove the stains from the stone and that they no longer constituted a defilement. He looked out at the noisy newcomer blankly.

“Ho, Winchester,” William shouted. “I was on my way to speak to Hugh le Poer in Montfichet and I heard about the trouble Father Benin had here. It was only across the bridge, so I thought I would ride over and ask if he needed any help. I could send men over from the Tower.”

Magdalene stepped off the stool and bent to wash the chosen strip of wall down to where Sabina had already cleaned the stone course that met the floor. She bit her lip, feeling a fool, as she so often did when dealing with William. Almost everyone in Southwark knew he frequented her house and was her protector. Naturally, he could not ignore her. It was necessary for him to greet her and then for him to pass her by as if she were just one more of the large number of men and women from the surrounding area who were cleaning as she was. And how could she believe he would not have a good and sufficient reason for being in full armor? Likely he had a full troop with him, too. That would be only natural if he was going to speak to Waleran de Meulan’s brother.