The Lost Prophecies (5 page)

Tonight he saw no one and was past the great West Front of the cathedral and halfway to the Bear Gate when he heard a cry from somewhere on his left. Immediately, his dog gave a sharp bark, then a deep growl. John was familiar with every nuance of Brutus’s voice and knew that something was seriously amiss.

Then he saw a faint flicker of yellow light from the direction of the South Tower and a crash as if something had flung a door back against a wall. He began walking as fast as he could in the darkness, being careful of obstacles as this was not one of his usual paths. Brutus had no such problem and bounded ahead, still growling. Suddenly, the growl turned into a yelp, and, somewhere in the gloom ahead, pounding footsteps hammered on the flagstones. They rapidly receded towards the far exit into Southgate Street, and all John could see was a momentary glimpse of a figure as it passed beneath the flaming torch and vanished from sight. Pursuit was pointless and instead he hurried as fast as he could towards the light, using it as a marker. With only a few stumbles, he reached it to find a horn lantern on its side, but the candle still lit within. Picking it up, he found himself at the door of the Chapter House, which was wide open.

‘Brutus, where the hell are you?’ he called, and almost immediately the old dog appeared at his knee, giving a whine that sounded almost apologetic. Holding the light closer, John saw that there was a bloody graze on the hound’s flank, though it did not appear to be serious.

‘The bastard kicked you, did he?’ he asked, fondling the dog’s ears. ‘I’ll make him pay for that when I find him!’

Brutus whined again, with a different note this time, and pointed his lean muzzle towards the door. John took the hint and, pulling his dagger from his sheath on his belt, held up the lantern with the other hand and advanced cautiously into the building. His feeble light failed to reveal all of the large room, where the canons and their vicars met each day, but as he moved towards the centre of the flagstoned floor Brutus whined again and moved ahead of him towards the far corner, where steep wooden stairs led up to the library.

As he approached, he saw that a crumpled shape lay at their foot, a man dressed in a black cloak over a plain clerical cassock. His legs were spread-eagled and his trunk was half-turned as if he was asleep. As John knelt by the inert body, he saw that the head had been shaved into a tonsure, but by the stout staff lying alongside the man it was clear that this was one of the proctor’s men, a night guard who had been patrolling the precinct. On his bald patch, a deep gash ran from side to side, dark blood still welling slowly from the wound.

The coroner feared that the man was already dead, but when he gently turned him on to his back he heard shallow breathing, though he was deeply unconscious.

‘He probably fell down the stairs,’ he muttered to his hound, but Brutus made no comment. ‘So who was that bloody fellow who kicked you and ran, eh?’

There was nothing de Wolfe could do other than go for help. Using the lantern, he loped off as fast as he could to find someone.

Unfortunately, this was the quietest time in the cathedral, being the hours between afternoon Vespers and the midnight Matins, when most priests and their acolytes were either eating, drinking or sleeping.

John went into the nave of the cathedral through the small door in the West Front, but he could see no one up in the dimly lit presbytery beyond the choir screen. He hurried out again and decided to go to the proctor’s hut in the Close, between two of the small churches that stood in the cluttered precinct. Here he found another proctor’s man, huddled over a small fire, and within minutes they had both returned to the Chapter House, the proctor ringing a brass handbell vigorously to summon help.

Within minutes, two vicars-choral and a pair of secondaries, who were young men aspiring to be priests, appeared from somewhere in the recesses of the buildings and began fussing over the injured guard.

‘Better take him to the archdeacon’s house,’ suggested the coroner, who knew that his friend John de Alençon, one of the four archdeacons, was a calm, sensible man who would procure the best aid for the stricken man. Using one of the benches, the four younger men carried the wounded man away, the other proctor lighting their path with a pair of lanterns.

‘I’ll come after you very shortly,’ promised John. ‘I need to look around here first.’ Left alone, de Wolfe told Brutus to lie down while he cautiously climbed the stairs, the lantern and dagger still in his hands. There was no sound from the scriptorium above, but he wanted to make sure that no second intruder was lurking there. He made a slow circuit of the upper chamber, holding the small lantern high in the air, but he soon satisfied himself that the place was empty. He noticed that a number of books had been pulled from the shelves on to the reading boards and that some wooden boxes had been dragged into the outer aisle, their lids open and the contents in disorder.

Near the top of the stairs he saw a larger lantern lying on its side, the candle extinguished. Picking it up, he opened the small door that formed one of the sides of thinly shaved horn that allowed the light to escape. John sniffed at it and smelled the pungent odour of recently burned wax, guessing that the lamp had been used by whoever had run away from the building. As he came back down the stairs, the feeble rays of his own lantern showed a pool of drying blood where the head of the proctor had lain, but now he noticed something lying on the flagstones nearby. It must have been concealed by the injured man’s body when he lay there, but now de Wolfe bent and picked it up. It was a thin but heavy book, almost the length of two of his hands and about an inch thick. He brought the lantern close to it and saw that it was covered in worn black leather, with a dozen or so parchment pages inside.

As he could not read any of it, he put it under his arm and, having satisfied himself that there was nothing else to be seen or done until daylight, he pulled the outer door shut and with a rather subdued Brutus at his heels made his way to Canons’ Row on the north side of the Close, where the houses of a dozen of the most senior clergy stood.

In one of them lived his friend the Archdeacon of Exeter, one of four archdeacons that served the diocese of Devon and Cornwall under Bishop Henry Marshal. A wiry, grey-haired man, John de Alençon lived a simple, ascetic life, unlike some of his portly fellow canons, and John found that the injured proctor had been laid in the priest’s spartan sleeping room, which contained nothing but a hard cot, a stool and a large wooden cross on the wall.

‘How is he?’ asked the coroner as soon as he entered.

The archdeacon and one of the vicars who had come to the Chapter House were there, standing over the bed with worried expressions on their faces.

‘He is very poorly, John. I have sent the other proctor up to St John’s Priory to ask Brother Saulf if he will come down at once,’ replied de Alençon. The nearest thing Exeter had to a hospital was the small priory of St John near the East Gate, which had a sickroom that offered help to the poorer people who could not afford to visit an apothecary. One of the Benedictine monks, a Saxon named Saulf, was skilled in physic and was often called upon in emergencies.

There was nothing the two Johns could do to help, so they went into another small room, where the archdeacon did his reading and writing. They sat at a table, and de Alençon’s servant brought them a jug of wine and some pewter cups. As they sat and drank while waiting for the monk, John told his friend what had happened and showed him the book that he had found.

‘I’m sure this is to do with this accursed treasure fever,’ he said. ‘It looks as if someone was rifling the library and was disturbed by the proctor. Whether he was assaulted or fell downstairs in a scuffle remains to be seen, but either way there is a dangerous man loose somewhere in the city.’

The archdeacon took the book and looked at it with curiosity. ‘This is very ancient, John. I’ve never seen the like of it.’

‘What’s it all about?’ asked the coroner, curious to know what was so important that it may have cost a man his life.

De Alençon slowly turned the pages, shaking his head slowly in bewilderment. ‘It seems to be a collection of quatrains of some kind. Written in excellent Latin and beautifully penned.’

‘What the hell’s a quatrain?’ demanded the coroner. He sometimes tended to act the bluff soldier, partly to cover up his lack of learning.

‘It’s a short verse containing four lines, which rhyme alternately. As these are in Latin, they wouldn’t rhyme in our Norman-French, John – but the meaning is still just about understandable.’

‘But what’s the subject they concern?’ persisted de Wolfe. ‘Is it a religious tract of some kind? Gospels or prayers?’

The archdeacon looked wryly at his friend. ‘They seem far removed from prayers – almost the opposite! From the couple I’ve glanced at, they seem like forebodings of catastrophe. God knows what they mean, and I say that most reverently.’

He turned the yellowed pages over again, shaking his head in wonderment. ‘It reminds me most of the Book of Revelation of St John – and few clerics understand that, though many pretend to.’

‘But why would anyone wish to steal this most obscure book – and maybe even kill for it?’ asked de Wolfe.

De Alençon shrugged. ‘In desperation, perhaps? If you are right and this is part of the treasure-hunt fever, then having broken into our Chapter House and discovered nothing definite to aid his search, these obscure verses must have been the best he could manage to find that might speak of hidden treasure.’ The coroner mulled this over for a moment. ‘Is there anyone who can tell us more about this book? Perhaps knowing something of its origins might lead us to whoever wanted to steal it?’

The archdeacon handed the book back to de Wolfe and made the sign of the cross on himself, as if to ward off any evil influences from having handled it. ‘The obvious person is Jordan le Brent, our worthy archivist,’ he suggested. ‘Perhaps he knows where the book came from, though the disorder in that library is shameful. I hope that my nephew Thomas is able to improve matters with his labours there.’

John nodded as he rose to take his leave. ‘My clerk is another who may have some ideas about this volume – he is a fount of information on almost every subject under the sun.’

It was the next morning before the coroner could show the book to Thomas de Peyne, and by that time he had had the news that the injured proctor had died, so he now had a killing to investigate, whether deliberate or by misadventure remained to be seen. Together with Gwyn, they sat in his chilly room above the gatehouse, huddled over a small brazier that Sergeant Gabriel had sent up to them. After de Wolfe had related the story, he handed the book to his clerk, who took it almost reverently.

‘This is very ancient indeed, Crowner!’ he said, carefully studying the covers and the contents. ‘The style of binding suggests that it must be centuries old, and the manner of the penmanship is also archaic. It somehow reminds me of several Gospels that I have seen which came from Irish monasteries.’

‘But what the hell is it all about?’ demanded Gwyn gruffly.

Thomas turned the pages of thin animal skin and read a few of the verses, his lips moving soundlessly as he traced the words written in ink that was still jet-black after all this time. ‘Latin quatrains, about a score of them. But no preface or dedication, nor any hint as to who the author may have been,’ he mused. ‘But I can see why my uncle suggested that the thief may have thought that treasure was involved . . . listen to this!’

Thomas cleared his throat and read out two lines from the middle of the book:

There was a silence, broken by Gwyn belching and announcing that it meant nothing to him.

‘You great Cornish barbarian!’ complained the clerk. ‘I merely quoted it to show that someone feverishly searching in the light of a candle for clues to treasure might grab this as the best chance he was likely to get.’

‘We need another opinion on this,’ said John. ‘Your uncle suggested that Canon Jordan might have some ideas.’

Thomas nodded vigorously. He was greatly beholden to his uncle for getting him the post as coroner’s clerk after his disgrace in Winchester and more recently as a part-time archivist under Jordan le Brent.

‘Perhaps we could have a meeting with him this morning, master. And perhaps I could suggest that Brother Rufus could be included, as he served for some years in Ireland and is very knowledgeable about religious matters over there.’

The monk he mentioned was the amiable Benedictine who was the chaplain to Rougemont’s garrison, possessed of insatiable curiosity but also with a wide experience of the world. The coroner agreed, and Thomas went out into the icy streets to arrange the meeting for an hour before noon, after the morning devotions in the cathedral had finished. De Wolfe and Gwyn made their way to St John’s Priory, not far from the bottom of Castle Hill, to see if Brother Saulf could throw any more light on the nature of the dead proctor’s injuries.

The body was lying on the floor of a small room off the single ward, awaiting removal to the cathedral.

‘As he is in holy orders, albeit minor ones, they want him back there to lie before the altar in a side chapel until he is buried,’ explained the monk. He pulled back the sheet that covered the corpse of the proctor to reveal the injured scalp.

John and Gwyn, well used to wounds, peered at the laceration running across the shaven tonsure.

‘Right on top of his head,’ grunted Gwyn. ‘Difficult to land right there and not bruise himself elsewhere, if he fell down the steps.’

John felt the edges of the wound, which were reddish-black and turned inwards against the shattered bone underneath, which moved ominously against his probing fingers.

‘Cracked like an eggshell,’ he muttered. ‘I’d say he was hit on the head first and fell afterwards.’

Saulf, the gaunt Saxon monk, had also seen plenty of violence and agreed with the coroner. ‘Could be an iron bar or somesuch.’