House of Shadows (5 page)

John turned this over in his mind for a moment. ‘The bridegroom-to-be, this Jordan de Neville – was he here at any stage?'

‘Certainly. He visited almost every day for the week that the party was here. He spent several nights in the guest dormitory, where you yourself are lodged, but did not stay for the few nights before the wedding, as I gather it is unseemly for a groom to be with his bride immediately before the ceremony.'

He hesitated, as if doubtful whether to continue, then plunged on. ‘However, he was here the night that Christina was last seen. Then he rode back with his squire to Southwark late at night, where he was lodged at an inn.'

John rose to his feet and thanked the prior for his time and patience. ‘I will have to see everyone concerned before I can hold an inquest. In the circumstances of the long delay that was inevitable for me to get here from Devon, I will not demand the usual
requirement that the corpse be viewed during the inquest. In fact, I do not know if the Coroner of the Verge is obliged to adhere to all the usual rules of procedure for common cases.'

Robert Northam stood to see de Wolfe to the door, and as John reached it he turned before Northam could lift the latch. ‘One matter occurs to me, prior. Is there anything I should know about your chaplain?'

The priest stared at him, not understanding his meaning. ‘Brother Ignatius? In what regard?'

‘Does he have any strong opinions about certain matters? Any obsessions, for instance?' John felt awkward about asking such questions, but he felt it had to be done.

Robert Northam cleared his throat self-consciously. ‘He tends to take a very literal view of the Scriptures. One might say that he holds a rather extreme view of certain religious precepts.' The prior's tone indicated that he was not going to be more forthcoming than this about his secretary.

‘Do you know what his relations with the dead girl might have been?'

The prior looked somewhat offended. ‘Relations? There were no relations. She was a guest in the priory, as there have been very many others.'

De Wolfe recognized that Northam was being deliberately evasive, but he felt that this was not the time to pursue the issue. After speaking to other witnesses he might return to it, but for now he was content to take his leave. Outside, Ignatius was ostentatiously standing in the entrance to the small chapel, well away from the door. As he escorted the coroner back to the warming room, John took the opportunity to probe his attitude to the dead girl.

‘What did you think of Christina de Glanville?' he asked.

‘I had very little to do with her, sir. The guests are housed in the outer part of the priory and my duties are with the prior and in the church.'

‘But you must have met the young lady a number of times! She presumably attended services at least once a day?'

The chaplain shook his head. ‘No females attend the Holy Offices in our church. It would be against all the tenets of our order.'

‘But surely she must have gone to Mass with her friends and guardians?

Brother Ignatius grudgingly admitted that the prior had offered his private chapel for that purpose. ‘I administered the Sacrament to her several times, as part of my duties to the group that she was with. But I knew nothing about her personally and have no opinion about her character.'

John's long experience of interrogating witnesses told him that the secretary was holding something back, but the stubborn set of his mouth told him that, like the prior, he would get no further today.

That evening they ate well in the guest refectory, being joined by half a score of pilgrims from the Welsh marches. A large proportion of Bermondsey's casual lodgers were pilgrims, either going to or returning from the new shrine to St Thomas at Canterbury, though some were going further afield, a few even to Rome or Santiago de Compostella. They were a cheerful lot and in spite of the cold turned an otherwise sombre meal into a pleasant evening, as they had some wineskins of their own to supplement the ale and cider supplied by the priory.

When the drinks had been consumed, everyone clambered up to the dormitory and wrapped themselves in every garment they possessed, as well as in the one blanket provided to each of them by Brother
Ferdinand, then curled up on their palliasses and tried to ignore the east wind that moaned through the shutters, carrying in an occasional flake of snow.

 

The next day de Wolfe found the confinement of the priory oppressive. Though Thomas insisted on attending most of the frequent offices in the church, John borrowed a pair of horses from the stables and took Gwyn for a ride into the surrounding countryside, such as it was, being so close to London. They rode towards the city and reached Southwark to look again at London Bridge, which they had crossed less than a couple of months ago, when they came from Exeter to visit Hubert Walter. This time they stayed on the south bank and visited a nearby tavern for some food and ale, before turning back into the flat heathland, dotted with a few manors with their strip-fields, barren at this time of year.

Today there was a dank mist rather than a dense fog, and when they reached Bermondsey the priory loomed eerily though the haze, like a grey fortress perched on the edge of the bog that stretched down to the river. As the porter let them in, even the unimaginative de Wolfe gave a shiver that was not altogether due to the biting cold. At noon they ate again in the guests' refectory, now empty of the boisterous pilgrims who had gone on their way to Canterbury. In the warming room afterwards, Thomas timidly asked his master how they were going to proceed with the investigation.

‘The prior says that today all these people who were with Christina will be here to attend the funeral tomorrow,' replied John.

That morning he had asked Robert Northam about the disposal of the body and had been told that the Beaumonts had already requested that Christina be
interred in the priory cemetery, as ten days after death it was already impracticable to take the remains back to Derbyshire.

‘I will question them all in turn and try to get some sense of their feelings for the victim and where they were the night on which she was killed,' he grimly told his clerk. ‘And today I'm going to twist a few arms in this place, see if I can squeeze some information from the Cluniacs.'

Knowing of Gwyn's fondness for kitchens, he told the big Cornishman to haunt the servants' domain and see if any useful gossip could be gleaned. The more menial tasks in a religious house like Bermondsey were carried out both by lay brothers, who, though they had taken no vows, wore the habit and the tonsure, as well as by ordinary servants, who either lived in the priory or came in daily from nearby cottages. Gwyn, an amiable but cunning fellow, was adept at befriending these lower ranks of society and could be trusted to ferret out any local scandals.

Thomas de Peyne had a similar gift, but one that worked best on clerks and priests like himself. Though now restored to grace as a priest, he had spent three years in the purgatory of being unfrocked, after a false accusation of indecent behaviour with a girl pupil in the cathedral school at Winchester. Before being reinstated, he had on a number of occasions helped the coroner by masquerading as a priest to worm his way into the confidence of various ecclesiastics. John now sent him on a similar expedition around the priory, a task in which Thomas revelled, as it allowed him to steep himself in the atmosphere and rituals of a religious house. He made first for the church, to attend vespers, then paraded around the cloister, talking to some of the monks as they perambulated around the garth.

Meanwhile, de Wolfe went to the dormitory and sought out Brother Ferdinand and made several requests, the first of which was a room in which to interview witnesses, and the second a view of the chambers in which Christina de Glanville had been lodged. The olive-complexioned monk took him along from the cubicle where John slept, to the head of the stairs and, with a key selected from a large ring hanging on his girdle, opened a door on the other side of the upper landing.

‘This is where she resided, together with her friend Margaret and their two maids,' he said in Norman-French that carried a tinge of an accent that John guessed was the Langue d'Oc of southern France. He stood aside to let the coroner into a short corridor with two doors. Each opened into a vestibule that had a mattress, which opened into a larger room with better furnishings, the palliasses being raised on low plinths, with several tables and some leather-backed folding chairs, as well as tall cupboards for clothing.

‘This first one was where Lady Christina stayed and in the next was her friend, Mistress Courtenay. Their tirewomen slept in the outer part,' added Ferdinand somewhat needlessly. ‘All the more important guests ate in a separate dining room near the inner gate, where further accommodation is situated.'

De Wolfe looked around the rooms and saw no signs of occupation. ‘What happened to her possessions, her clothing and personal effects?'

‘Her guardians, the Beaumonts, took everything last week. They are lodged near Bishopsgate, I understand, but I had a message from the prior's secretary this morning to say that they are returning here tonight, ready for the funeral tomorrow.'

Ferdinand ushered de Wolfe out and locked up, then took him down to the ground floor of the cellarer's building, where one of the small offices next to the
guests' refectory was given to him for an interview room. A bare cell with a shuttered window-opening, it had a table, a bench and two hard chairs.

‘I will see that a charcoal brazier is brought in when you need to use this, Sir John,' offered the monk and made as if to leave the coroner to his own devices.

‘Wait a moment,' commanded de Wolfe. ‘I need to speak to everyone who was in contact with the dead girl, and that includes you.'

Ferdinand stopped and slowly returned to the centre of the room. ‘There is little I can tell you, sir,' he said quietly, the dark eyes in his almond-shaped face searching the forbidding features of the coroner.

‘Did she seem happy and excited at the prospect of her wedding? To most young women, this would be the most important day of her life.'

The monk remained impassive. ‘I really cannot say, coroner. She did not appear to be effusive over it, but I had little chance to observe her.'

‘When did you last see her?'

‘At the evening meal on that day. I usually look in on the small dining room set aside for special guests to check that all is well. The whole party was there, eating and drinking, including Lady Christina.'

‘Was Jordan de Neville there?'

‘He was. He ate his supper and later went back to Southwark with his squire.'

De Wolfe was hard put to think of any more questions for this silent man, but he tried a new tack. ‘Tell me, does Brother Ignatius have any peculiarities, so to speak? An unwelcome comment fell from his lips in the basement when we were examining the corpse.'

John expected another stonewall denial, but surprisingly Ferdinand's impassive face creased into a smile.

‘Ah, you mean his strange obsession?' he asked. ‘My fellow monk is something of a mystic. He regularly
sees devils, angels and witches, though he is harmless enough and is an excellent support for our good prior.'

The coroner scowled at this rather dismissive opinion about a weird streak in the chaplain. ‘What does that have to do with the dead lady?' he demanded.

Ferdinand spread out his hands, palms upwards. ‘He was convinced that she was a witch, sir! He claimed that she was left-handed, had a fondness for the storeroom cats and had long lobes to her ears or some such nonsense. He often made strange claims about visitors – and even our own inmates. He was convinced that our lay brother who used to tend the pigs was a reincarnation of Pontius Pilate!'

‘What happened to him?' growled de Wolfe.

‘He drowned in the marshes outside last year,' replied Ferdinand blandly.

Further questions produced nothing of use and the monk departed, leaving John sitting in irritable frustration at his table. A servant brought in an iron brazier in which charcoal glowed dully, sending a moderate heat into the room, together with some acrid fumes. In spite of the warmth, John felt chilled and, though of an unimaginative nature, he realized that where he sat was just above where the corpse of Christina de Glanville lay in her box of ice. Eventually he rose and, with an illogical feeling of relief, left the room and went across the cloister to the prior's house, where he found Ignatius in his little office, busy writing on a scroll of parchment. He stood over the secretary and spoke without any preamble.

‘I understand that you had certain convictions about Lady Christina. Is that true?'

The lean monk stared up at him, a sullen expression on his face. ‘I don't know what you mean, Sir John,' he answered gruffly.

‘You thought she was a witch,' snapped the coroner. ‘Did you do her any harm?'

Ignatius jumped up, his sallow cheeks suddenly flushed. ‘She was an acolyte of He with the Cloven Hooves!' he brayed. ‘But I did nothing to her; it was not my place. God will settle all such matters on the Day of Judgement!'

‘Are you sure that you didn't give Him a helping hand?' suggested John, thrusting his menacing face closer to the monk's. ‘Where were you late on the night when she went missing?'

Ignatius looked around him wildly, as if hoping the prior would appear to save him from this avenging angel, though de Wolfe looked more like a clovenhoofed acolyte at the moment.

‘My opinions about certain persons go no further than speculation and prayer, Crowner! I had no hand in her death. Why should I?'

De Wolfe recalled a situation in Exeter some months earlier and a phrase from the Scriptures came to his mind. ‘Does not the Vulgate say “thou shall not suffer a witch to live”?' he snarled.

Ignatius paled and stuttered a reply: ‘The Book of Exodus does, yes – but I had no authority to intervene. I have detected a number of imps and devils and witches over the years, but it is not my place to banish them.'