[William Falconer 06] - Falconer and the Ritual of Death (2 page)

Very hard. His bright buttons of eyes surveyed the instructions before him, and then lifted to examine the site. He moved from massaging his head to kneading his jowly jaw line. This wasn’t like York, where he had made his home since serving the long apprenticeship that had taken him far and wide. This was like some hellish scene invented by a mad priest. The alleyway before him was already cluttered with rubble, from which rose a column of dust like smoke from the Fiery Fumace.

Snotty kids were already delving through the remains of the first tenement his workmen had pulled down. They reminded him of imps tormenting those about to be consigned to the fires of Hell. He yelled at them to clear off.

‘Wilfrid! Get those kids off the site before they get killed.’ His foreman, covered in filth and white powdery dust, poked his head up above the shattered parapet of the ruined building, and nodded.

‘Not that I care if they break their necks,’ muttered Thorpe.

He watched the lugubrious and slow-moving Wilfrid being given the run-around by the urchin children. Then he retumed to the cover of his simple lodge, erected in the comer of the site, and consulted his notes for the college. There was to be a mighty archway at the entrance, wrought from local yellow stone, and facing the street. He thought it a shame that its majesty would not be fully appreciated. You would need to stand far back to see its proportions properly, and the street was too narrow for that.

His head began to fill with the beauty of the geometry that was the basis of all pleasing proportions. When he had first started learning the esoteric secrets of his trade - his mystery as he called it - he was awed by their simplicity. The ratio of a space obtained by taking the diagonal of a square and dropping it to the base line to create a rectangle was blinding in its beauty. Though creating that dimension was second nature to him, he was still dazzled by it. Engrossed, he set to working out the proportions of the church that was to stand in the college’s grounds. He thus failed to see the shadowy figure which lurked in the narrow passage opposite the building site, intent on observing every wall that fell to the workmen’s hammers.

William Falconer also missed seeing the lurking presence.

Returning from Master Richard Bonham’s lodgings near St Michael’s at North Gate, he might have turned down Shidyerd Street. It was the most direct route into the back lanes where his own lodgings stood. He had himself named the long, narrow hall he rented as Aristotle’s Hall, in honour of the philosopher whose works had first seduced him to study logic.

In fact, his obsession with translating Aristotle’s original Greek texts and discovering the pure clarity of his thinking had also brought him to the other obsession that sometimes threatened to envelop his spare time. Murder deduction.

It was Falconer’s conviction that logical thought could cut through the morass that surrounded cases of murder. He had long ago begun to poke his nose into mysterious deaths that took place in the town, and had proved his contention about the value of applying logic to the cases many times over. So he was perhaps a little disappointed that Sarah’s death was not going to offer him another chance. He was reluctant to admit it even to himself, but an untimely death usually quickened his mood when maybe it had slumped into the darkness of dull routine. But it was not to be this time. Self-murder was, by definition, a closed case, with victim and perpetrator housed in one body. Such a pity. He had been feeling quite low of late, and felt a need for something to stimulate his mind.

Which is why it was a shame that, aware of the shambles that was being caused by the demolition of houses along Little Jewry. Falconer chose to walk the length of the High Street before turning down Logic Lane to complete a circuitous return to Aristotle’s Hall. Taking his usual route might have pitched him immediately into the mystery that was about to shock Oxford. As it was, his sullen mood caused him to dally around the stalls along the broad expanse of the High Street.

Each shop was a bare six feet wide with a shutter that opened to double as a counter, so that the traders’ wares spilled out willy-nilly on to the street. Walking east from Bonham’s quarters first took Falconer past the goldsmiths, where the tinkling sound of craftsmen beating on metal emanated from inside the shops. Each stall offered its own carillon of bell-like sounds in a splendid cacophony of gilded noise. Further along sat the cross-legged tailors, mostly fashioning gowns and robes for those whose fancy, Falconer reckoned, ran to the gaudy. He had no urge for such display, contenting himself with one drab black gown that over the years had inclined to green around the edges. He also lingered little over the stalls of the purveyors of earthenware, gloves, white bread and dairy products. Instinctively, he sought out the little row of spicers that adorned the market like jewels. He loved this stretch of exotic stalls, where the mingling odours and bright colours evoked for him the years he had spent travelling the world.

Not so much the great cities of the northern waterways that he was familiar with such as Paris, Bruges, Prague, Augsburg and Cracow. Through these had passed beeswax, tallow, furs and skins, and other such practical goods. No, the spices reminded him of the great southern ports he once knew like the back of his hand. Ports such as Naples, Barcelona and Marseilles, from which flowed cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and pepper. And here, in a few rare stalls in Oxford, he could once more imbibe the sweet and sharp aromas of these spices. They were prohibitively expensive, and so only available to the high and mighty of the district, and the upper echelons of the university hierarchy. But the scent of the exotics was free, and Falconer loved to raise his spirits with a trip past the spicers’ shops.

Today, though, as he approached his goal with eager anticipation, he saw that even this pleasure was to be denied him.

Standing at one of the spice stalls was a tall, elegant lady whose long blonde tresses glowed like spun gold in the early evening sun. Her long blue gown was draped over a figure at once slender and well rounded. She was to Falconer’s eyes both virgin and voluptuary, and he knew her well. But he dare not approach her, especially when her little familiar, of dimensions and appearance like a Barbary monkey, hovered so close.

Ann Segrim had paused at the spicer’s stall on purpose to annoy Margery. Her husband had provided her with a new female servant when she had protested that Sekston was growing too old to keep up with her. To all intents and purposes, Sekston had been her jailer for the last ten years now, reporting back to her husband, Humphrey, all that she did outside of the confines of their manor at Botley. And sometimes her supposed deviant ways in the grounds of the manor too.

Humphrey perceived that his wife, being much younger than he was, was likely to have lovers under every bush and rhubarb leaf that she cultivated in the walled garden that was her sanctuary. And though he could not forbid her from travelling the few miles to Oxford market, he had made sure that Sekston was hung round her neck like an ugly talisman at all times.

Recently, the servant had become too infirm to travel far, and Ann had thought for one brief day that perhaps her time of being spied upon was over. However, the very morning after Sekston had been pensioned off to a less onerous duty in the kitchen, Margery had appeared, summoned from the fields by Humphrey Segrim. She had been dressed in an illfitting robe and pinafore that did little to hide the fact she was small and very hairy, with long arms that never found stillness, and set to Sekston’s old task.

Ann thought uncharitably that she looked like one of those apes Crusaders had brought back from their sojourn in Outremer. She had seen one dressed as a man, and wondered if Margery had perhaps been the offspring of an unnatural union. It was unfair, and very cruel of her to weave such fantasies, she knew, but Margery was an even worse bargain than Sekston. At least her former jailer had been a man, and she could escape him occasionally pleading the privy needs of a woman. Margery clung to her like.., well.., like a trained monkey. But Ann soon discovered what irritated Margery most was dallying over stalls in Oxford market. The servant girl was all hustle and bustle. Not for her, the idleness Of picking up an object that served no purpose, and that she had no intention of buying. So Ann had become an even more languid shopper than before.

Now, she sifted a handful of cloves and lifted them to her nose to absorb the scent. Behind her, Margery sighed explosively. Ann grinned, and trailed her fingers languidly over the sack of reddish cinnamon powder. She would buy some spices, and persuade the cook at Botley to include them in a rabbit stew. Turning to the girl, she requested the purse, that at Humphrey’s command, Margery carried for her mistress.

As she turned, she saw him.

Three

The boy ran along the back lanes as fast as he could. He had overheard the men talking, and though he could not make full sense of it, he knew that what he had heard was important. He held his flapping jerkin closed as he ran, crushing the two tablet-shaped strips of yellow cloth that were sewn on to it. Jose was a Jew, and this symbol identified him to all as one of that despised race. He scuttled down Schitebam Lane, and out into St Edward Street. There he dodged in and out of the townsfolk who were passing about their business.

Until he almost collided with one in particular who was making her way down to St Aldate’s Church. She was going there to observe the festival of the Beheading of St John the Baptist.

Alice de Burgh’s brother was a Hospitaller Knight of St John of Jerusalem, and she fervently prayed for his safety on the same date every year in August. Her devotion meant that the little urchin who nearly trod on her toes earned a hard cuff on his ear. The wretch was a Jew, and she gave vent to her feelings.

‘Get off, you little pest. Christ-killer!’

Jose was used to the creel jibes, and they slid off him like water off a fish’s back. Besides, he had more important business than to trade insults with the woman. He dived to his right down the narrow confines of Jewry Lane. Here, he slowed a little as he was back on home turf. The little enclave of Oxford Jews was tucked securely in an oblong island of stone houses at the heart of Oxford. It was actually pure coincidence that it had a Christian church set at each comer. But it seemed to some to be the purpose of St Martin’s, All Saints, St Aldate’s and St Frideswide’s to protect the rest of Oxford from the evils of this small community. In truth, they mostly lived on amicable terms with their neighbours, although a sense of apartness guaranteed caution in their behaviour. The

Jews of England were effectively the King’s property, and existed for one reason. To be milked for money when Henry needed it. They, for their part, mainly carried out the only trade they were permitted - usury. Christians were forbidden by the Bible to loan for profit, and so the Jews came into their own as lenders of money. Particularly to the lords and barons, whose gross financial needs seemed mostly to outstrip their often slender resources. Within the restrictions of their trade, the close-knit community of Jews in Oxford was pretty much self-reliant. They lived according to their own laws, and appointed their own dominies. Jose was making for the Oxford Jews’ revered leader, whose home was also their Scola Jud~eorum - both school and temple. He was their rabbi, and his name was Jehozadok.

The rabbi sat in his upper chamber contemplating the changing world around him. Blind and frail, the rabbi nevertheless wielded great influence over his fellow Jews. He was even able to control the hot-headed gangs, which to his regret lured more and more young men to their ranks. Though he was not sure how much longer he could continue to do so.

Young men seemed these days to have less and less respect for their elders. He feared his boys learned bad habits from the Christian students who now thronged the streets of the burgeoning university town. Suddenly, his peaceful reflection was disturbed by the thunderous sound of the inner door of his sanctuary being flung open. He smiled.

‘Jose, boy. Nothing can be so urgent that you would risk giving an old man a heart attack with your noisy entry.’ The young Jew was stopped in his tracks, marvelling at the blind old man’s ability to identify any visitor by their tread.

‘Forgive me, Rabbi Jehozadok, but the news I bring is urgent. It...’

Jehozadok raised his claw of a hand, the back of which was spotted with age, and prevented the boy uttering another word.

‘Go and fetch me a mug of watered wine for my thirst. Then you may tell me what it is that you have so cleverly discovered.’ He stifled another incipient protest, and listened in satisfaction as the chastened Jose slunk out of the room on his errand. Muttering into his long white beard, he ruefully concluded his reflection on his waning powers.

‘At least you can still master the children, old man. Perhaps because in your dotage you feel at one with them.’ The boy soon returned with his beverage, and began, a little less breathlessly, to tell him an interesting tale.

She had stepped inside the spicer’s shop on purpose to avoid an embarrassing encounter with William, and had ended up buying sixpenny worth of cinnamon. For some that was a week’s wage, and she felt stricken by her act, although she could well afford it. Ann Segrim had a view of the world that was not shared by her husband. Where she practised modesty in all affairs, Humphrey took pleasure in ostentation and excess. Theirs was a marriage of convenience, but that did not make Ann any the less a dutiful wife. Despite her beauty, and perhaps because of her ill-concealed sharp mind, she had long been unable to be married off by her parents. Until Sir Humphrey Segrim, twenty years her senior, had agreed to a marriage. He was a widower, whose first wife had died giving birth to a stillborn child. He had desired a new wife for the purpose of procreation, and Ann was still in her prime. The new marriage had been initially stormy. Humphrey had only read one book in his life, and that only in part. It was a theological treatise by Friar Nicolas Byard on domestic life.