Unholy Innocence (9 page)

He put the locked casket down and thought for a moment. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘nine years ago in the city of York o
n Shabbat ha-Gadol – that’s the Sabbath eve before Passover - a group of men, indebted to the Jews, and made up of priests, Christian noblemen and Crusaders waiting to follow King Richard to the Holy Land set Jewish houses on fire and stole all their valuables. It was a moment of high emotion and excitement over the impending crusade – murderous emotion.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Anyway, the York Jews fled with their rabbi to the castle for safety. For six days they held out but it was clear they could not escape the wrath of the mob. They were offered the choice of baptism or death. Most chose death the men stabbing their wives first then their children. Finally the rabbi stabbed the men before killing himself. The few who remained alive opened the gate and requested baptism in return for their lives. They were massacred anyway. Over a hundred and fifty Jews died that day and the bonds of debts which were kept for safekeeping in York Minster were burned on the floor of the church.’ He once again pushed the key and casket into my hands and stared me in the eye. ‘Take it.’

I could see there was no arguing with the man in his present emotional state. I did not want this added responsibility but there seemed no alternative. Reluctantly I
accepted the casket.

‘Very well,’ I said pocketing the key. ‘But I think it a mistake. I will keep the casket safe for you or your wife to retrieve whenever you feel the time is right.  In the meantime I still have my duty to the Abbot to perform. So now, sir, I must ask to see around the rest of the house. Starting with the cellar.’

*

The land
in this part of the town sloped down towards the abbey and the river below it, and so to keep the houses level the road was terraced on one side, beneath which were substantial cellars. An innocent-looking door in the hall led down to this cellar, at the shallow end of which was a false cupboard which hid a chute leading to the surface where an outside hatch opened to a side street.

‘What was this house originally?’ I asked, intrigued.

‘I think it was built on what was the old cattle market before it was moved,’ said Moy. ‘My father enlarged it.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘We Jews like to stay close to the abbey for somewhere to run for shelter in times of trouble.’

With the outer hatch closed no light could enter the cellar. But as soon as it was opened daylight flooded in to reveal the subterranean entrails of what must once have been an artisan’s dwelling.

‘Fascinating,’ I said peering up the chute to the world above. I was enjoying myself. ‘I love discovering the history of these old houses, don’t you? I imagine this must have been a delivery hatch of some kind, but for what? Something big and heavy to be sure.’

‘Carcasses?’ suggested Moy.

‘Of course! It’s an abattoir!’ I exclaimed looking around at the layout – but then I caught myself remembering the garden and its dead occupant. ‘It’s an abattoir again today, I fear.’

Jocelin, who had been scrambling around clumsily behind, let out a yelp as he clumped his head on something sticking out of the ceiling.

‘ “And behold, a ladder was set up on the earth and its top reached all the way to Heaven”,’ I grinned at him. ‘That’s what you get for being so tall.’

He was rubbing his head painfully with his right hand but the blank expression on his face told me something else. I followed the line of his other hand and saw that it was holding on to a set of chains that were fastened to the wall. Chains are perfectly reasonable tools to be found in an abattoir where animal carcases have to be secured ready for butchering. But if this building ceased a generation ago to be a slaughterhouse, why were they still here? They could restrain a child of twelve with little difficulty. I seemed to remember something similar had occurred in the case of the boy William in Norwich. Moy saw where my gaze was fixed and lowered his eyes when I looked at him. I realised then that I had already more or less dismissed him as the murderer in my own mind, but that had been a mistake. I had been impressed with his apparent sincerity upstairs, but it could all have been an act.  Was I so gullible? Was the fact that I liked the man colouring my judgment? I could only hope that it did not.

Chapter 9

AN AUTOPSY

I
am sitting alon
e
in my cell staring at Moy’s casket which I’d managed to smuggle unseen from his house amid the confusion of getting the body out. I’d got Moy to wrap the casket in sacking in order to conceal its identity from Jocelin to whom I’d then given the task of organising the removal of the body so that he’d be too preoccupied to notice. I didn’t want anyone knowing about the casket just yet, least of all Abbot Samson who might well think my possession of it compromised my position as investigator. Besides, if I was right and Isaac Moy reconsidered his impetuosity in trusting me with its safe-keeping I wouldn’t have charge of it for long enough for it to matter. That’s where Jocelin is now, with Samson, reporting on the day’s events. He’d scuttled over there just as soon as he’d finished here. This unbridled sycophancy towards our faultless Father Abbot is the one thing about Jocelin that still irritates me, but at least his absence gives me time to reflect on what had happened and to decide what I need to do next in order to solve this riddle.

The murdered boy’s body lies next door in my workshop on a trestle bench having been brought there on a trundle and wrapped in sheeting to protect it from prying eyes. Even so, a small gathering of neighbours had stood in unnerving silence and watched as the soldiers, under Jocelin’s fussy direction, man-handled the body onto the cart and pushed it down the hill, followed by those damn Knieler women processing behind us like a funeral
cortège. At least if they were following us they were leaving the Moys alone. I had managed to persuade the captain to station another two of his men outside the house. There hadn’t been any more trouble but the report of what had happened had spread with the wind and there is nothing more calculated to inflame emotion than the sight of a bereaved mother grieving over the body of her dead child. Not that there had been any sign of the mother since her invasion of the Moys’ garden, which was a little odd considering her earlier devotion. I decided, however, to leave her for the moment. She must be given time to come to terms with her loss and to seek comfort from her priest and family. I knew where she lived and planned in any case to interview her once I’d completed my examination of the boy’s body. That was going to be a messy business and not something a mother should have to witness.

In light of this and conscious of the need to preserve evidence I had directed my assistant, Gilbert, to watch over the corpse while two abbey servants washed it clean of the filth in which it had lain for nearly two days. I had been reading again the account of the death of Saint William of Norwich in 1144 which had been almost farcical in its incompetence. Between the killing on Maundy Thursday of that year and the eventual burial in the monks’ cemetery
thirty-two days later
the body had been buried, dug up and re-buried no less than three times. Any evidence that might have told of how he met his fate, let alone the identity of the killers, had been well and truly destroyed by then. I was determined nothing so negligent was going to happen in this case. I told Gilbert that once the body had been washed he was to fetch me and I would begin immediately the unpleasant task of dissection. Never having witnessed an autopsy before, Gilbert was keen to watch. I never will understand the fascination youth has with gore.

In the meantime I still had the casket. In truth it fascinated me. It was a beautiful thing in itself quite unlike any I had seen before, exquisitely tooled and with that strange square Hebrew lettering of the Jews on the sides. I’m sure Joseph would have known instantly its place of manufacture and been able to read the inscription, too. What did it contain, I wondered? A lot of gold, for sure, but also that intriguing sealed document. If anything, Moy seemed to regard the document as being of more value than the gold which means it must be very valuable indeed. What could possibly be written on it that was that precious? I was sorely tempted to take another look. I’d toyed with the key in my fingers for a good ten minutes before finally summoning the courage to open it which I did with a quick flick of the wrist.

It was exactly as I had seen it in Moy’s house, a fortune in gold and silver which made a pleasing silvery tinkle as I ran my hand through it. And lying on top the single document which after a moment’s hesitation I snatched from its place and slammed the casket shut again.

I turned the document over in my hands. A testament Isaac had called it. It was like no testament I had ever seen. The parchment was of good quality and the wax deeply embossed with the Moy seal. The paper was so thick that try as I might I could not read around or through it even when held up to the light. The little I could make out of the writing inside reminded me more of columns of account rather than a written will. Maybe, I thought, it was a list of all Isaac’s beneficiaries set alongside the amounts they were to receive upon his death. But there was no way I could know, short of breaking the seal, which I was reluctant to do. It was very frustrating.

The sound of shuffling outside my door told me someone was coming. No time to return the testament to the casket I quickly secreted it inside the cover of Jocelin’s treatise on the miracles of Saint Robert. The casket, too, I had to hide but it was too big to fit on the shelf. I frantically hunted around for somewhere to conceal it and in desperation hid it beneath a pile of my soiled laundry just as Gilbert’s head appeared round the door.

‘Master, you said to call you when the body was washed.’

‘And?’ I said trying to conceal my breathlessness.

The boy shrugged. ‘It is washed.’

‘Good,’ I said swinging my legs over the edge of my cot and guiding him out the room. ‘Now go and fetch Brother Jocelin and tell him we are ready.’

*

‘What is the purpose of the lavender?’ asked Gilbert keen to learn all he could of the mysterious art of dissection.

‘Have you no sense of smell, boy?’

‘What? Oh yes, I see,’ he said stepping back from the table and covering his nose.

I nodded sagely. To be truthful, I had never carried out an autopsy before either. I had witnessed a few done by others when I was a student in Montpellier. It is still a very controversial practice frowned upon by the Church Fathers as a desecration, but the master of the school there was a keen advocate and could never get hold of enough executed criminals and suicides to satisfy his lust for such butchery. When the city authorities eventually banned the practice on humans the master used animals in their stead, in particular Barbary Apes from North Africa which he said were like humans in all aspects anatomical. That notion, too, was scoffed at by the Church authorities for how could a mere animal be compared to the miracle of God’s ultimate perfection, the human body? Yet Galen himself, the greatest anatomist of all, had used the same ape and had drawn similar conclusions. Even I in my ignorance could see these similarities once they were pointed out to me.

Anatomy has long been a source of wonderment to me. What was the purpose of all those myriad parts inside a human body? The functions of some are obvious enough: The lungs aerate the body while the liver heats it; the bones give the body rigidity while the muscles in their turn afford movement to the bones. The heart, of course, is where the emotions are stored and the brain the repository of the spirit. But what of the lesser organs, the spleen and the kidneys, the pancreas and the gall bladder? If, as the Bible tells us, we are made in the image of God, then what need had God of these oddities? And if, indeed, apes and goats are like us anatomically then surely that meant that they, too, are made in the image of God. It was a perplexing and yet tremendously exciting enigma and one which I was sure would one day give up its secrets. But for now, apart from a superficial geography exercise, most of it would have to remain a mystery.

I stood on one side of the trestle table while Jocelin stood on the other and Gilbert at Matthew’s feet with the body lying naked between the three of us. Though meticulously washed it was not a pretty sight to behold, being grossly discoloured and somewhat bloated from having lain in the open for so long, particularly the face which had swelled up to resemble one of the pigs-bladder footballs our young men had been kicking around only a day ago. Two of the toes had been gnawed off by rats, I noticed, and both eyes pecked out by crows, but otherwise all seemed intact - all, that is, except for the glaring gash across the boy’s throat which ran from ear to ear.

‘Now,’ I said dressed in a leather apron to protect my robe and giving my blade one last strap, ‘as far as I remember, this is how we begin,’ and in one sweeping movement I sliced through the boy’s skin from groin to throat peeling it apart as I went, like an over-ripe pomegranate. Gilbert instantly passed out on the floor.

*

After half an hour of cutting and slicing we had several bowls filled with the boy’s innards.

‘Well,’ I said to Jocelin wiping my hands of the worst of the gore, ‘apart from knowing his last meal was of pease porridge and that he had a full bladder I don’t think we learned very much from that, do you? Except to confirm what we already knew, that he had his throat cut. That is undoubtedly what killed him.’

‘I’m m-more interested in the external signs,’ said Jocelin pushing back the boy’s matted fair hair. ‘Look here at the scalp below the hair-line.’

‘Good Lord, yes,’ I said bringing a candle closer. ‘Well spotted.’

‘T-two marks, see? One above each eye on either t-temple. Saint Robert, I remember, was thought to have been crowned with a c-crown of thorns. Could this be the same?’

I studied the two marks, pressing down on them and trying to stretch the skin apart. ‘These are not puncture wounds as we might expect from thorns,’ I said. ‘They look more like pressure points to me. Do you see?’

I put a finger and thumb on each mark. They fitted perfectly.

‘Let’s think about this,’ I said stepping back. ‘If you wanted to restrain someone from behind, isn’t that where your hand would go?’ I put my hand against my own forehead in the same position as the marks on the boy’s head to demonstrate, pushing back my head.

‘The assailant w-would have to be taller than the victim,’ said Jocelin thoughtfully. ‘H-how tall is the boy?’

I measured him. ‘About fourteen hands. I’m nearly sixteen so I could have done it,’ I grinned.

Jocelin was now frowning at the boy’s hands. ‘I’ve j-just noticed something else. Look at his wrists. More p-pressure marks do you think?’

I looked closely. There was a circular red mark around each. ‘Possibly,’ I agreed. ‘Or ropes could have made the marks.’

‘Or chains,’ suggested Jocelin.

I nodded curtly knowing what he was alluding to: The chains in the Moys’ cellar. ‘Could it have been achieved without those restraints?’ I asked.

Jocelin shrugged. ‘I suppose so. B-but it would surely need at least two people. One to hold the boy and the other to administer the knife.’

‘Let’s try it,’ I said. ‘You’re taller than me. You be the murderer, I’ll be the victim. Here, take the knife and come at me from behind.’

We took up our positions with Jocelin placing his left hand on my forehead pulling my head back as I had demonstrated and his right holding the knife against my throat. I brought my hands up to try to prevent the knife from cutting me. Just at that moment Gilbert began coming round from his faint. Seeing Jocelin standing behind me with the blood-soaked autopsy knife at my throat and my equally bloodied hands flailing to stop him, he gasped and passed out again.

‘I think if there had been just one attacker the b-boy would have more wounds on his hands from trying to fight off the knife,’ said Jocelin letting go of me. ‘A-and there are none.’

‘Unless he had been surprised and not had time to respond.’

‘I-in which case, why the restraining m-marks on the wrist?’ said Jocelin. ‘No, I think this was a deliberate act. The boy was cornered, his hands held down and then brutally s-slain.’

‘So we are agreed, yes? Two people murdered him.’ I thought for a moment studying the eviscerated corpse and addressed it directly: ‘In which case, why didn’t you cry out?’

‘Perhaps he did and no-one h-heard him,’ suggested Jocelin. ‘O-or perhaps he knew his attackers.’

Perhaps he did. But Moy insisted he did not know the boy. More than that, he swore on oath he did not. Lying to me was one thing, but would he lie to his God? It was very frustrating. I wondered if Jocelin was as conscious as I that we were complete amateurs at this. Judging by his bewildered countenance I guessed he was. Not for the first time I wished Samson had engaged someone with a more analytical mind than mine. But for his own reasons he had chosen to yoke me to book-wormy Jocelin as my assistant, God help us both. So I guessed we were stuck with each other – or more accurately, poor Matthew was stuck with us both.