House of Shadows (18 page)

‘And? Brother? What happened to them?'

Lawrence shook his head sadly. ‘They died. Both of them. But it is said that no one ever found their bodies. You see, some say that they decided to flee the priory, where they were honour bound to live out their lives in the service of God as their oaths demanded, and while trying to cross the marshes in the night they sank into a bog and perished. Some say that they were so miserable with their sins that they went to the river and threw themselves in. But the truth is concealed in the prior's books. Did you know that there is a chronicle of the earliest times of our foundation? In there, I have heard tell—' and he dropped his voice and looked about him as the novice leaned closer, his eyes grown round with thrilled horror ‘—it says that a great devilish beast came and bore them away, John. So terrifying was it that all who saw it fell to the ground, and some were never right in their minds again after that.'

He withdrew, nodding with solemn sagacity, eyeing the novice. ‘And ever since that day, men have said that they have seen their ghosts – especially in the undercroft just here. See that? There is where the two are supposed to have been captured in flagrante delicto. You understand that?'

The boy did. No one at the convent could deny that they had more thoughts about such indecent acts than about anything else.

‘Well, let that be a lesson to you. A man who commits a mortal sin of that nature is accursed, but a
monk
! He is damned for ever, as is the whore with whom he consorts. Never forget that, John, or you, too, will see the ghosts, and they'll beckon you to join them. Great, tall ghosts, enormous, with grasping hands to pull you down to hell!'

A tolling bell caught his attention.

‘Hurry, lad. It's time to wash your hands for vespers.'

‘But…'

‘What?'

‘Would a crime like that be more evil than any other?'

‘Perhaps not. The king ordering Prior Walter to be arrested and held in the Tower: that, too, is a great crime against God; He will punish the guilty.'

Lawrence watched as the lad nodded seriously. Dear heaven, but he must try to moderate his tone. He had let the boy see his own pain, and that was a dangerous thing, now that the prior had been arrested and marched away. Prior Walter was ever a strong defender of the rights and liberties of Bermondsey – for all the good it had done him. Accused of aiding the escape of King Edward's most detested traitor, Lord Mortimer, who had managed to get out of the Tower of London and make his way, so they said, to France, there was nothing he could say or do in his own defence. When a man was accused by the king, no defence was adequate.

That was the state of the kingdom now. No man was secure if once accused. The king's deplorable adviser, confidant and, so it was rumoured, lover, Sir Hugh Le Despenser, held sway. After the last civil war, the king and Despenser had emerged victorious, and both had sought all who had stood against them. Knights, bannerets and even lords were arrested and barbarically executed. Even priors had to tread warily.

Because the prior was thought ‘unsound' by the king's special advisers, he was taken away and replaced with this…this affected, primping coxcomb. A vain, foolish courtier, John de Cusance, whose interest in the priory extended only so far as the quality of the food. He had neither interest in nor understanding of the holy mission of the priory, which existed solely to fight for the souls of the men of this world by the careful round of prayers and services. This new prior was no protection to them. Prior John had his position because his brother was close to the king's especial adviser, Sir Hugh Le Despenser.

Brother Lawrence watched the boy scuttle off in the direction of the laver to wash his hands. He could remember how enthusiastic he had been at John's age.

His face hardened. That was a long time ago. A long, long time ago.

Feast of St George the Martyr
³
,
Bermondsey Marsh

Old Elena could scarcely see it sticking up from the mud and filth, her eyes were so tightly narrowed against the rain that slanted down that morning.

Foul weather, this, especially since it was so unexpected. In the past they had grown used to the swyving
rains that fell incessantly through the summer and into autumn, but for the last couple of years the weather had been better, and through the summer there had been food to eat and fewer deaths. This year, though, she wasn't sure that the houses wouldn't all be flooded again. She'd have to get her belongings up into the eaves again, just in case.

She had been to the market this morning, and when she left her home here by the Thames in Surrey the sun had been shining. There were no clouds, and if it was windy – well, when wasn't it up here?

It was on the way back that the weather had set in suddenly, a low, dark squall rushing up the river, and all she could do was lower her head and try to hurry homewards before she was drenched. Too late to worry now. A chilly trickle at the back of her neck told her that the bastard rain had already penetrated. Even if she hung up all her clothing in her hovel before her fire, it would still be clammy and dank in the morning. One day's rain spelled two days' misery.

Her home was east of the priory, and she averted her head as she passed it, trying not to shiver. Here, in the gloom of the late afternoon there was an unwholesome aspect to the place. Made her feel chilled to see it. When she was a mere bratchett she had been prone to wander, and her parents had told her tales of the ghost there to control her. It had been enough to stop her wandering about the countryside. The stories of a foul, grey figure calling to travellers and drowning them had been used by parents for generations to quiet noisy and froward children.

But she'd seen it. A pale, grey figure out on the mudflats. Others told her that she'd just been taking too much of her ale and that she'd caught sight of one of the monks out on the marshlands, but she knew what she'd seen. A ghost.

That was her view, and no one would change it. Especially not some pissy priest. The fellow'd heard her talking about the figure on the marshes, and he'd gone to her to tell her not to be so ‘foolish'.

She paused, squinting ahead with a surly cast to her mouth. ‘Foolish,' he'd said, like she was some superstitious chit with chaff in her brains. He could go to the devil. Wasn't as though the priory was a bastion of honour and integrity. That idea had been discarded in the last year. It was only a short while ago that the prior himself had been taken away. Walter de Luiz, aye, because he'd helped rescue that traitor Mortimer from the Tower.

Elena made her way around the outer wall, casting a glance about her at the grey, stirred waters of the river as she went. There were always bits and pieces which a careful woman might collect and sell if she kept an eye on the shoreline.

There was little enough love in the world. That was Elena's view, and no one would persuade her otherwise. She was a God-fearing woman, none more so, and it made her anxious that God had forsaken them. He'd taken away the Holy Land, hadn't he, and that showed how He had turned His face from His flock.

She saw something in among the low, tussocky grasses and hesitated. With the rain slashing down, she really wanted to be indoors, not picking her way through the boggy wetlands to see whether this was a worthwhile item, but in the end poverty dictated her actions. She grunted to herself, threw a look of resentment at the heavens and began to make her way to it. It could be a spar of wood, from the look of it. Every item had some value to the poor, and few were poorer than she.

Once, when she was only a chit, she had heard a preacher foretell disaster. It was a little after the Holy
Land had been wrested from the Crusaders, and his words often came back to her. Famine, aye, and war and plague. Well, there was no plague of men, God be praised, but murrains attacked the sheep and cattle, and that was bad enough. Then the famine came. Christ Jesus! In the summer nine years ago, one in every ten folk about here had starved. There had been times a body couldn't walk along the road without seeing another poor soul tottering, only to fall and lie still at last in the mud. So many dead. So many starving and desperate.

For a moment she remembered her Thomas. His smile, his cheery hugs, his lovemaking…

Pointless. That was two years ago, nearly. She'd found him the morning of the feast of St Peter ad Vincula, the day after she'd first seen the ghost on the marshes. That was what the ghost did for her: it showed Elena that her man was about to die.

Last night she thought she'd seen the ghost again. A tall, grey figure out on the marshes, clad in hood and cloak.

‘You can't take my man again,' she rasped to herself.

Since his death, life had been hard. Always more people about trying to scrape a living. The weak, the hungry, the halt and lame, all came through here to reach London, the great city that drew in all: the rich, the poor, the hopeful, the desperate. It took them in and spat out their bones when the life had been sucked from them.

In this weather the city was almost entirely concealed, she thought, glancing over the pocked river's surface. The bridge was a faint smudge from here, all of half a mile or more away in the murkiness caused by the rain. Opposite, on the far bank of the river, was the great Tower of the king where the traitor had been held until his escape. He'd have had to take a boat to
here. Not that Elena had seen him, of course. He was over the river and on a horse early in the night. The night her man died.

The Tower was a glimmering white vision even in this dull light. When she had been young, not a worn old wench in her late forties, she had been used to staring over at that fortress in admiration, imagining all the rich lords and ladies who visited the place. Now she knew it was a place of terror, a prison for those who had fallen out of favour with the king, like Prior Walter de Luiz. He was in there even now.

It was in between her and the Tower, rising from behind a hillock on the very edge of the water. Grunting with the effort, she made her way to it, slipping and cursing on the fine, watery mud that made up so much of this landscape. Once she almost toppled headlong, but then she reached the hillock and recognized it.

No spar. Nothing but a long, slim, elegant arm sticking up from behind a hillock of muddy sand.

 

John the novice was studying in the cloister as she stumbled towards it, frowning as he tried to make sense of the words on the page.

A novice's life was harsh by some standards, but he had been happy here, and would have remained so if he'd be left to do God's work. There was a genuine delight in his work, a feeling that all was right while he was in here. Of course, he hadn't taken the final vows yet – he was too young still – but he would. So long as the new prior permitted him, of course.

Prior John de Cusance was an unknown figure. Walter de Luiz was the master of the priory when the novice first arrived, and all had loved him. Lawrence always said that Prior Walter was one of those rare men who would get on in the world even though he
was invariably kind and generous. It made him unique. He was a man to emulate…as was Lawrence himself, of course. There were rumours that Lawrence had himself gone out to the muddy flats to help the notorious traitor and rebel Mortimer escape from the Tower. Not that Lawrence ever took any credit for such matters, of course. He was far too self-effacing.

No, John's friends had never understood his impatience about joining the monastery. They all wanted women, money, ale, or the chance to win renown and glory. There were plenty of them who'd be happy to throw their lives away in a tournament, or in some battle whose only purpose was to win a leader greater prestige, or his soldiers some profit at the point of a sword. What was the use of that?

John had always aimed higher. Yes, if he'd wished he could have joined the warrior monks, the Knights Hospitaller – but he couldn't in all conscience. No, if he were to do that, he'd be living in the secular world, and there was nothing in that for him. He had decided to renounce that life while a lad, and at the first opportunity he presented himself to the bishop and asked to be allowed to devote his life to God and His works.

Never had he been tempted to reconsider his choice. However, when he heard the shivering scream that burst from Elena up near the river, he was aware of a presentiment of terror that would grow to shake even his iron belief.

 

There was a fixed procedure here in Surrey when a body was discovered, and there were so often bodies washed up on the banks that all knew it. The First Finder had to go quickly to the four nearest neighbours. There were some folk who lived at the edge of
the priory's lands, and Elena hurried there before sending for a coroner.

Brother Lawrence was quickly on the scene, splashing through the filthy puddles of this benighted land. When he saw her, he crossed himself hurriedly, his face twisted with sadness. ‘This is indeed terrible!'

The vill's constable, a taciturn veteran from the old king's Welsh wars, glanced across at him. ‘She was a pretty little thing.'

Lawrence nodded. ‘Do you not know her?'

Constable Hob peered down at her and shook his head. ‘I hadn't looked at her – why? Should I? There are often bodies down here. Folk are killed in London and the river brings their bodies down this way. She could have been from anywhere.'

‘She was from London,' Lawrence said. ‘I know her. She was called Juliet, daughter of Henry Capun.'

‘Shite!' Hob reached down and turned the girl's head, staring at her features. ‘Oh, God's ballocks!'

‘Yes. Her father is a paid banneret in the household of Sir Hugh Le Despenser,' Lawrence said mournfully.

The constable gripped his heavy staff and leaned on it. ‘That will make for a pretty fine.'

Lawrence could not help but agree. It was bad enough to discover a body in the vill, but to have a wealthy and important man's daughter found dead was doubly so. And any man who could call on the aid of my lord Despenser was a very important man indeed.