The Tainted Relic (14 page)

William Falconer smiled wryly at his friend’s perplexing announcement. Bullock, for his part, pursed his lips and outstared the big, raw-boned man who stood before him. Falconer was a Regent Master at the university, teaching the seven liberal arts to a motley band of clerks who formed part of the student body. His only acknowledgement of his status was the threadbare black gown he wore. Eschewing any tonsure or master’s biretta, he went about bare headed, letting his thinning, grizzled hair grow naturally until it was time to hack the tangled length short again. His coarse, ruddy face and hands were those of a labourer, and misled an observer into thinking the man before him was uneducated. Until they saw the sharp, piercing intelligence behind Falconer’s pale blue eyes. It was a look that had scared many a recalcitrant student into submission.

The two men were standing in Falconer’s private solar in Aristotle’s Hall, the student lodgings that Falconer ran to supplement his meagre teaching income. It had been two days since Bullock’s disturbing sighting. He had spent the previous day trying to convince himself that he was being ridiculous. After all, the traveller had been just one more arrival among many in the town for the festival. And nothing untoward had occurred yesterday. But in the end he trusted his instincts, and on this third morning of the festival he had hurried over to Aristotle’s Hall to test his fears on his friend.

The two men stood because, though the room was of sufficient size to accommodate them, it also contained the books and experiments that occupied Falconer’s enquiring mind. They afforded little space for any of the comforts of living. To the left of the chimney breast was a toppling stack of his most cherished books and papers, including the prized works of al-Khowarizmi, the Arab mathematician. To the right of the fireplace were several jars of various sizes, containing potions and pastes exuding strange and exotic odours. Falconer no longer noticed the smells, and had in fact mostly forgotten the reason for some of the concoctions lurking in the pots. A truckle bed was hidden in one corner, for the bulk of the room was taken up by a massive oak table that was both eating surface and workbench. On it there were animal bones, human skulls, carved wooden figures, stones that glittered, and lumps of rock sheared off to reveal strange shapes in their depths. Peter Bullock was used to the chaos.

‘I tell you who he reminded me of. That Templar, Guillaume de Beaujeu.’

Falconer considered this for a moment, then shook his head.

‘No, that cannot be. The last I heard of him, he was in France, and well on the way to becoming the next Grand Master of the Order. His responsibilities would not allow him to travel incognito to Oxford just at the onset of winter. You must be mistaken, Peter.’

Peter’s grunt carried a clear indication of his lack of conviction as to Falconer’s estimate of the man. He hadn’t seen him, and the air of authority and calm that enveloped him more certainly than the warm cloak he had draped around him. True, it was over a year since either man had seen the Templar. And everyone had been preoccupied by the presence of the heathen Tartars in England at the time. He had then been a great help to Falconer in solving a murder. But Bullock wasn’t convinced that this meant they would always be on the same side. The Templars were a secretive bunch, who followed their own devious course through Christendom. On the surface, their duty was to escort pilgrims safely to the Holy Land. In the process they also acted as reliable bankers, ensuring money entrusted to them in the West could be drawn in the East. But everyone reckoned there were deeper currents beneath the surface. So, in Bullock’s mind, if your journey was along a similar route to the Templars, then you could profit from an alliance. But if your paths crossed, you needed to take care. Especially if there was something of value to the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple in the offing.

‘Well, you may think what you wish, William. But I am prepared to wager that something unpleasant is about to happen.’

As if in response to Bullock’s prophecy, the door of Falconer’s sanctuary was flung open to reveal the dishevelled figure of Miles Bikerdike, one of Falconer’s newest students. He had obviously run some distance, as he stood in the doorway gasping to catch his breath. His face shone with excitement.

‘Master…’

‘Take a deep breath, Miles Bikerdike, and tell me what’s afoot,’ rebuked Falconer. With each passing year, his students seemed to get younger, and more prone to childish behaviour. Falconer could not fathom why. Miles, with his round, fat face and wispy, blond hair, could be taken for a babe in arms. The babe managed at last to blurt out his message, however.

‘Master Falconer. There has been a murder. They say his head has been struck quite off his body.’

Brother Robert Anselm liked to walk the labyrinth. The symmetry pleased him, comforted him, when his mind was in turmoil. It was in turmoil now, and he shuffled round the serpentine route of the labyrinth, striving to concentrate his mind on the four elements of the mass as he moved from one quarter to another.

Entrance into Evangelium. Three turns and into Offertory. A turn back on himself and it was Evangelium again. Then three loops and back into Offertory. Two loops and he was walking Consecration. Like devotion, the route was never straightforward. Two more and he was in the final quarter–Communion. The dizzying, looping walk inward represented the first step of the threefold path.

Purgation.

It was not true to say that the monk’s head had been removed from his body. Rumour, after all, was always a precursor to exaggeration. When Peter Bullock and William Falconer saw the body, however, they realized that in this case the rumour had not much outstripped the reality. But first, they had had to be brought to where the body lay. Miles Bikerdike had taken them to John Hanny, another of Falconer’s students, who was sitting in the cold, cavernous hall on the ground floor of Aristotle’s. Hanny was pale faced and shivering. It was he who had found the body. Still more than a little scared, he agreed to lead the two men to where he had seen the supposedly decapitated corpse. They set off down the High Street, and at Carfax, Hanny was about to turn up to North Gate when Bullock stopped him.

‘Where did you say the body was, boy?’

‘Beyond Broken Hays stews in the lower water meadows.’

‘Then we shall go through the castle, and take the postern gate into the Hamel.’

Bullock was referring to the thoroughfare that the canons of Oseney Abbey used to get to the Chapel of St George inside the castle walls. It would be quicker that way than skirting round the town walls. He led the other two down Great Bailey and into the castle precinct, to which he held the keys. Once through the postern gate, they were out into the water meadows close by Oseney Abbey faster than by taking the normal route. Bullock questioned the boy as they walked over a bridge and along Oseney Lane.

‘And what were you doing here, when you should have been preparing for your lessons?’

The boy blushed, and began to bluster. Before he could say anything foolish though, Falconer stopped him with a raised palm. Bullock’s questioning was pertinent, because anyone in the vicinity of a murder could be a suspect. And at the very least should have started a hue and cry on discovering a body. If the boy was caught out lying, he would be in even deeper trouble. Falconer had an inkling what he had been about, and prompted Hanny to tell the truth.

‘I am sure Peter Bullock will forgive you a small sin, if you tell us the truth.’

Dumbly, the boy looked at his feet, bound warmly in a thick layer of sacking.

‘Master, I was up before dawn to fish for eels. I have been so hungry of late, and have no money for food.’

The eels were the property of the abbey, and to take them was tantamount to poaching. Falconer silently cursed his own oversight concerning the welfare of those in his charge. Why had he not seen that John Hanny was going hungry? Not all the students at the university were from rich families. Many were poor and allowed licences to beg in order to remain at the university. For such as they, an education was their only hope for a future, and a means of advancement. Hanny earned his keep by serving meals to the richer students, and feeding afterwards on the leftovers. Obviously not enough had been left for him. For the first time, Falconer also noted how patched the boy’s outer tabard was. He would not have missed such signs of distress a few years ago.

‘Go on,’ he said gruffly, to conceal his own sense of guilt.

‘I stayed outside the gates last night, and slept in an empty hut on the edge of Broken Hays. It was cold, but dry enough. I was intending to wake up in the night to fish, but I slept on.’ Suddenly his face lit up. ‘I suppose, then, I didn’t really break the law, did I? As I overslept.’

‘Your intention is crime enough for me, John Hanny. Continue.’

Hanny’s face fell again, as he saw the steeliness in Falconer’s eyes. He might have known the master would not allow him to escape so easily. It was going to be a case of memorizing vast swathes of Priscian’s
Grammar
for the foreseeable future. He sighed.

‘In the end, something woke me up. It was like the howl of a dog. At first, I thought it had been part of my dream. But then I heard it again. I thought maybe a fox had been caught in a snare, so I went out on the meadow to see.’ His voice began to tremble. ‘That’s when I saw him.’

Falconer put a large, firm hand on the boy’s shoulder, and squeezed hard.

‘Is it far from here?’

The boy shook his head, and pointed mutely across a small stream at a raised bank on the other side. At first, the scene looked peaceful enough. Cattle were grazing on the land below the bank, steam forming around their nostrils, as their hot breath plumed out into the cold air of the morning. On the edge of the bank lay a huddled shape resembling a pile of rags.

‘Stay here, John.’ Falconer reinforced his command by squeezing Hanny’s shoulder again. He beckoned Bullock to follow him. The two men continued on along the raised causeway that was the lane until they were close by the shape on the edge of the dyke. They had to scramble down from the lane into the field, where the cattle grazed on, unconcerned by the human activity. The ground was thankfully firm under foot. Falconer’s boots were old and cracked, and inclined to leak. Closer to, the bundle revealed itself as the body of an Augustinian monk. The robes were those of a canon, not a lay brother. He had to be from the nearby abbey. And he had to have been murdered. For the monk’s throat had been slit, and blood soaked the top half of his robe, and the ground around his shoulders. But what was truly strange was the attitude of the body.

‘What do you make of that, William?’

‘A pious murderer?’

The monk lay on his back, his legs stretched out, as though he had lain on the ground to sleep. His hands were arranged one over the other on his chest, and a rosary was linked round the fingers. He resembled a recumbent statue from the top of a tomb. Moving round the body, they could clearly see the man’s face. From his features, now soft and flaccid in death, they could still discern that the man was old. The face was lined, and his sparse, white hair was restricted to a tuft over each ear. His empty eyes were staring blankly up at the pale, blue winter sky.

From a pouch at his own waist, Falconer drew a V-shaped metal device. At the end of each arm was a circular ring in which was set a convex glass lens. He held the point of the ‘V’ to his forehead, and looked at the body through the two lenses. Falconer’s eyes were not as piercing as he liked his students to think, and the eye-lenses, especially crafted for him, allowed him to see more clearly close up. Particularly useful when clarity of vision was of the greatest importance.

It did not matter to the constable what his friend could see through his eye-lenses, though. Bullock had recognized the monk immediately. It was the man with whom Brother Richard Yaxley had been arguing the previous night. What was it Falconer had said in reply to his question just now? A pious murderer. Maybe he had been jesting, but Yaxley fitted the bill exactly.

‘Look here, Peter.’

‘What’s that?’

Falconer pointed at something under the monk’s clasped hands, half hidden in the folds of his robe. He delicately lifted one cuff.

‘It’s a blade. A curved blade.’

Falconer drew the implement from its hiding place. Immediately, he knew what it was. Weren’t they surrounded by the abbey fields where the lay brothers toiled to put provender on the canons’ table? It was the wrong time of year now for any reaping to be in progress. But the curved blade would have found a use some weeks earlier. It was a hand sickle. Now it had been used to reap the harvest of this unfortunate monk’s life.

His sun-burned face stood out like a sore thumb amidst the pale-faced tradesmen setting out their wares in the streets of Oxford. When the man chose to, however, he could blend with shadows, and disappear into the background. He had the uncanny ability to seemingly appear out of nowhere. A skill he had learned from his deadly enemies, the Hashishin, or hashish-eaters, of the East. The more popular term for them nowadays, under their current leader, the Old Man, was Assassins. But today there was no need for him to hide away, and sneak down alleys. Today he could be his more natural self, upright soldier and Poor Knight of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. As he entered the North Gate of the town, Matthew Syward, the watchman, having only just opened the gate, observed the tall man of military bearing with interest. Syward’s wife was a termagant, and he often dreamed of living the life of a soldier. He imagined that this one was probably returning from a night roistering in the stews of Broken Hays. He tipped a knowing wink at the soldier as he passed. But the man ignored him, and began to weave his way through the growing press of people. Oxford was always busy at the time of St Frideswide’s Festival, the normal bustle of the town being swollen by the presence of the blind, the lame and the scrofulous come for a cure. And by the unwelcome presence of beggars and pick-pockets. The watchman cursed the haughty soldier for his high-and-mighty attitude, hoping he would lose his money to a cutpurse. Matthew Syward didn’t like people who thought they were a cut above him, even if in truth they were. He would remember the man.