[William Falconer 06] - Falconer and the Ritual of Death (11 page)

Jehozadok put a friendly arm around the child. He knew that despite his bravado, Deudone was frightened by what he had seen.

‘And what did this traveller say that so changed all their minds?’

‘That the marks weren’t Hebrew because he could read the language. That they were marks of punishment.’

‘He was a scholar, then, this traveller. You have done well, Deudone, to warn me of this change in affairs. But you were wrong to go into the church when you had been specifically told to stay indoors. I will decide on your punishment on Saturday.’

Deudone was about to protest, but for once in his short life realized it made more sense to keep his mouth shut. He bowed his head, and hurried home.

30 August, 1271

‘And the traveller was you, of course, William. Though I did not know it at the time. Not many of your fellow masters know Hebrew even now.’

‘More’s the pity. If they did, they would be able to understand the works of Maimonides in the original. I am still entertained by his Guide for the Perplexed, especially as I often find myself in that position.’

Jehozadok chuckled.

‘I think less so than most in this world, William. But we digress. You wanted to know if I could recall any mysterious disappearances around the time of your arrival in Oxford.’

‘I know it is foolish of me to even ask. Twenty years is a long time, and it may have not even been anything noteworthy then. The man who has now turned up interred in those buildings then owned by Lumbard may have disappeared without anyone noting it.’

‘Maybe that is not so. It is a quirk of extreme old age that events of long ago are more vivid than those of yesterday. I even remember that it was in that year a rather undesirable individual was preying on our community.’

‘Someone was persecuting you?’

Jehozadok sighed, and his body seemed to settle lower in his chair, as if his very frame was shrinking.

‘No. One of our own kind, but a renegade. Who carried out certain.., rituals, despite them being proscribed. I remember him because it was when we were accused of the ritual murder that never was. And it was then that we were being bothered about paying a tallage to rescue the French king from the hands of the Muslims.’ He slapped his bony skull in frustration. ‘In fact, that was what I was bringing to mind before the incident with young Deudone pushed it away. My meeting all those years ago with Hayim and Aaron, Cresselin’s son.

They were angry that they had been asked to find their share of the sixty thousand marks that Henry wanted us to contribute.’ Jehozadok chuckled again at the recollection. ‘I told them my favourite story of the teeth-pulling that convinced one of my co-religionists to comply with a similar demand way back in 1210. That soon shut them up. I was but a lad then, and it convinced me that there was no standing up against the inevitable. Though some youngsters today, who have not suffered what I have, would think otherwise.’

He sighed and seemed to sink into himself again. Falconer was painfully aware that his old friend’s days were running short. When he was gone, he would miss his wisdom and restraint in a world that bore down hard still on his people.

But Jehozadok’s reference to a Jew carrying out proscribed rituals in 1250 was alarming in the context of his own insistence at the time of Jewish innocence concerning the dead boy.

Falconer felt his confidence ebbing. Still, he needed to press the rabbi for more information.

‘But what has all this to do with a missing person?’ Jehozadok sucked a great breath into his body, as though reviving himself for one last effort. He turned his blind eyes on Falconer.

‘I think I might know who your dead man is.’

Twelve

The two towers of Oseney Abbey’s church rose imposingly over the water meadows that surrounded them. They were a potent symbol of the abbey’s power. To Wilfrid Southo they were something infinitely greater. The culmination of a master mason’s achievements, and a permanent mark on the landscape. More permanent than any mortal’s fleeting life could be, anyway. He tore his gaze from them and hurried back across the meadows towards Oxford. He wanted to be within its walls before the gates were closed for the night. Let the workmen under him languish and carouse outside the walls in Beaumont and Broken Hays, he still had business to attend to, and it was already getting late. The darkness would hide his movements, and he still needed to be secretive. Until he had everything straight in his mind, and then he would be ready to act. He crossed the last wooden bridge over one of the many streams that criss-crossed the land west of the town, and made for North Gate.

It had been a lucky chance that resulted in him seeing Pawlyn palm the ring out of the bucket of bones the other day. He had just happened to be desperate for a piss, and stepped behind the pile of stones that was accumulating in the yard near where the master mason’s lodge stood. Before he could get his cock out of his breeches, he saw Pawlyn bringing the bucket over. There was something suspicious about the man’s behaviour as he looked first into the bucket, then round about him. Wilfrid had forgotten his pressing.need to empty his bladder, and spied on the workman. Pawlyn plunged his hand into the bucket, and came out with something that glowed dully in the evening light. Wilfrid could tell it was a heavy ring that Pawlyn held up like a trophy before it was secreted in his rough clothes. He watched from his hiding place as the workman walked back to where the constable and that other fellow were directing Thorpe in the careful removal of the skeleton. He had resolved there and then to see what Pawlyn did when he left the site, rather than accuse him of theft straight out. It might tell him something about the business that had occupied his mind for some time now. But first, he had relieved himself, his piss splattering on the chiselled stone, leaving a dark stain on the yellow surface.

Now, slipping inside North Gate just as it was closing, and mumbling an apology to the watchman, Wilfrid Southo decided it was time to take a look at the house where he had seen Pawlyn go the night of his theft, and then emerge with a fatter purse than when he went in. He had discovered it was in Pennyfarthing Street, tucked down the side of St Aldate’s Church. He would think of an excuse to knock on the door and see who lived there.

Crossing Carfax at the heart of the town, he was so engrossed in his own affairs that he did not notice that the normally busy crossroads was unusually quiet. He did not know if Pawlyn’s activities had anything to do with the patchwork of events he had uncovered over the years. But he hoped that maybe this one would provide the key to his dark suspicions. Then he would be in a position to make his accusations openly, and bring down the man who he had long hated.

He hastened down Fish Street that some called Great Jewry.

The air felt oppressive as though threatening a thunderstorm, and he tilted his head against the spatters of rain that were beginning to fall again. He bumped into someone coming abruptly out of a narrow side lane, and cursed him when he looked up and saw the yellow badge that betrayed the man as a Jew.

Deudone tossed back his own curse, ready to stand up to the muscular man in rough builder’s clothes. But he seemed preoccupied, and was off striding over the sewage gully down the middle of the street before any blows were offered.

‘A coward too, eh,’ muttered Deudone, clenching his fists.

He sighed, and pulled the hood of his cloak over his curly locks. The rain was beginning to fall heavily again, and he wished he was safely indoors and paying court to the voluptuous Hannah. But he had other business in hand tonight concerning Covele, the renegade Jew who had performed the ritual in Lumbard’s house. The forbidden ritual of
qorbanot
that Deudone had taken part in. He had hoped the ritual might have eased the burden of guilt that had weighed on his mind for some years now. But it had not, merely leaving him with an unpleasant taste in his mouth. A taste of something terribly, awfully wrong. He stood uncertainly for a moment under the eaves of Aaron’s house before dashing off in the same direction as th6.builder. He needed to find Covele, who was still holed up in that derelict house behind St Aldate’s.

Peter Pawlyn emerged from Agnes’s whorehouse in Grope Lane a wide grin on his face. John Trewoon, as ever, had waited for his diminutive friend outside in the street. When it had begun to rain, he almost wished he had gone inside. But the girls in a place like that scared him. They mocked him due to his size, and made suggestions that embarrassed him. Then, when his face grew red, they mocked him for his shyness. So he avoided brothels like the plague, which is what his mother had told him he would get anyway if he ever went in one. So he was huddled under the eaves of the dingy, ill-kept house when Pawlyn came out, his hair plastered flat over his brow. Pawlyn looked both sated and excited. He grabbed the giant’s arm.

‘Come on, John, there’s games afoot.’

‘What’s that, Peter? I’m tired and I’m cold. Can’t we go to bed?’

‘No, we can’t. What I’ve heard about will soon warm you up. There’s a rumour about bloody murder of children. And the Jews are guilty again. The girls were talking about it, and how it’s a shame that good Christians have to live so close to them.’

John frowned, thinking it was a shame that good people, Jews or not, had to live so close to a whorehouse. But he knew Peter would only laugh at him, so he kept the thought in his own head. ‘What’s that to do with us, Peter?’ Pawlyn let out a whoop. ‘We’re going to help the townsfolk break a few heads.’

‘A Templar priest?’

Jehozadok nodded in response to Falconer’s question.

‘Yes. I cannot recall his name after all these years. But I do remember it was a Templar who was collecting the tallage imposed on us. It was the time that Louis of France was ransomed. A million besants was required, I believe.’

‘But why were the Templars involved?’

‘The story goes that Louis was thirty thousand livres short, and asked the Templars for a loan. The commander in Outremer refused it as his rules forbade him releasing the money to anyone other than the depositor. There was a stand-off, until the marshal of the Temple proposed a solution. The Templars could not break their vows, but there was nothing to prevent the King’s representatives taking the money by force. The Templars stood back, and the strongbox was broken into. The money was taken, to be returned later. When it had been collected from us. Of course England’s share of the whole ransom was being collected at the same time anyway. But it was definitely a Templar priest who was responsible for the work. And he disappeared soon after collecting from everyone in the town. Along with a large amount of money.’

‘So people assumed he had fled with the coins, and not that he had been murdered.’

‘That is so.’

Falconer ran his fingers through his thinning, grizzled hair.

At least he now had some idea where to seek further. The dead man could be this Templar priest, though it was still possible that the man had fled with the money. On the other hand, the funds provided a motive for his murder. But he was still following the coldest of cold trails twenty years after the event. The murderer might even be dead by now. He began to wonder if Peter Bullock had not been fight all along. Why not let it rest? He was brought back to the present by the rabbi stamping his foot on the ground.

‘I have completely forgotten what I intended to tell you when you first arrived. Our reminiscences quite put it out of my mind. There is someone who wishes to see you, who has come all the way from Canterbury, indeed.’

Falconer had indeed recently been in the city, in part to find a remedy for his headaches and memory lapses. But he could not guess who in Canterbury had got to know him well enough to travel so far just to see him.

‘Who is he, rabbi?’

Jehozadok smiled.

‘Not he, but she, my friend. She goes by the name of Saphira Le Veske.’

Before Falconer could react to this startling news, there was a commotion outside the door of Jehozadok’s little room.

Hannah burst in, followed by a very tall, thin man who Falconer had not seen before. He was middle-aged, and sturdy despite his thin frame. His hair was long and black, and was complemented by a similarly long beard. His fierce brown eyes, set either side. of a sharp beak of a nose, scrutinized Falconer suspiciously.

‘Rabbi, who is this?’

‘Ahhh, Rabbi Jacob, this is a friend of ours, Master William Falconer. William, this is Rabbi Jacob, who arrived last week in order to assist me. Alas my decrepitude prevents me carrying out my religious duties properly. Now, what is all the fuss about that you have to interrupt us so roughly.’ Jehozadok’s measured tones slowed down the wild rabbi a little, and he respectfully bowed his head.

‘Forgive me, I was a little hasty. But I have bad news. Someone is spreading rumours about a murder. A child-murder.’ The old man groaned, placing his head in his hands.

‘Not again. Were we not only just talking about it, William?’ Jacob was puzzled.

‘You mean you already knew about it?’

It was William who spoke next, alarmed that the events of the past were obtruding into the present in such an unpleasant way. Did it mean he had been wrong to exonerate the Jews then? He tried to put the thought out of his mind.

‘No. We were recalling an incident of twenty years ago. It seems no one has learned anything in the meantime.’ He stared hard at the new rabbi. ‘Have you alerted all your people?’ Jacob snorted.