[William Falconer 06] - Falconer and the Ritual of Death (26 page)

‘Is there something you wanted? Only I am very busy at the moment.’

Falconer at last managed to move his jaw.

‘Then I will not detain you long. I come seeking your opinion on a matter related to the discovery of the skeleton in Little Jewry Lane.’

‘Not a question about ritual slaughter of children, I suppose?’

Falconer’s face got hotter, and his usual self-control was shattered,

‘No, no. You mistook me earlier, I assure you. I...’ Saphira sat down and lifting up one of her grubby feet began wiping it clean with the damp cloth she had used on her hair. Her air of natural grace once more stopped Falconer’s flow and Bullock came to his dumbfounded friend’s assistance.

‘Hmm, Madam, what we want to know is, do you know of the legend of Hiram?’

Saphira, apparently unconcerned by the men’s embarrassment, switched to her other foot. Her dress rode up to show a tantalizing expanse of pale leg.

‘The master mason who it is said built the Temple of Solomon? Yes indeed I know of his story. Though it is mostly apocryphal.’

Falconer found his tongue at last, and recalled what Bullock had said earlier about belief in old wives’ tales.

‘I have heard plenty of wild stories lately, so another one will not make any difference. Tell me this apocryphal story.’

Twenty-Five

Saphira watched through the slats of the shuttered window as the two men hurried off along Fish Street. The crowds of people thronging the thoroughfare were so dense, despite the drizzle, that once Falconer and the constable had crossed the street to the other side they were lost from her view. She smiled quietly to herself, wondering if she had done the right thing in not divulging the knowledge she had gained from the boy, Jose. In fact, she had done more than keep information from Falconer. She had even deliberately misled him somewhat with her tale of Hiram, even though it had pleased her more than a little that he had come to her for information.

She had told them what she knew at first.

‘You will know that what little evidence there is in your Bible is contradictory. In the Books of Chronicles, Solomon sends messengers to Hiram, King of Tyre, saying he is contemplating building a temple. He wishes to be supplied with gifted craftsmen, more specifically a man cunning to work in gold, silver, brass and iron. The King of Tyre sends him the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, whose father was a man of Tyre. But in the First Book of Kings, Hiram is said to be a widow’s son of the tribe of Naphtali. This book says he worked only in brass, and made the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz. But Chronicles reports that he superintended all the work of the Temple. That he was its architect.’

‘And of his death?’

Falconer’s question made her pause in her ablutions. She laid the damp and dirty cloth on the floor, and put her bare feet on it. She was suddenly more cautious about divulging any further information. If she was to solve this mystery by herself, she could not give William the chance to work it all out. She knew how quick his brain was, even though he had this irrational fear that his mind was somehow failing him.

When they had first met in Bermondsey Abbey, he had confessed a memory loss that had caused him to seek remedy.

She had jokingly referred him to the restorative powers of the herb sage. She could recall his attempt at making light of his fears.

He had said, ‘I will remember that.., if I can remember it without taking some sage first.’

But she knew his flippancy masked a deep fear of losing his mind. Perhaps he was over that fear now, though. She looked at him, and could only see in his eyes the brightness of a mind weaving random threads into a tapestry of bright truths. She resolved to say nothing about Jose’s description of a large and powerful apprentice mason who was seen by the boy arguing with the Templar priest just before his disappearance. That was a nugget of truth she intended to mine for herself. Meanwhile she would distract William, and his friend the constable.

‘The Bible says no more about him. But there are many later tales of him being murdered. And there must be those who would covet some relic of him.’

Falconer’s blue eyes gleamed. ‘Would there indeed? And if, say, his skull were to be found in England, who do you think would seek to own it?’

Saphira covered her feet with the grubby hem of her gown, and chose to give him a lead she knew would go nowhere.

‘Wild men such as Covele. You can ask him yourself. He is camped in the Jewish cemetery.’

Now, as she watched Falconer disappear in the bustling crowd in Fish Street, she was aghast at her own duplicity. She cared not for any trouble she might bring Covele. He was well able to stand up for himself. But she had just lied to a man she had come all the way from Canterbury to seek out, and to whom she ‘had given herself. And the deceit was just to achieve a childish sense of triumph over him. She almost rushed out to find William and tell him the truth, but she realized she still had on her muddied gown, and her feet were bare. Besides, he deserved a little mortification for his foolishness over the ritual-slaughter slur. He would soon see his error, and come chasing back to her. In the meantime she would have solved not one but two murders. She went over to her chest, and pulled out a fresh gown.

*
 
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*

Large, pregnant raindrops began to plop menacingly on the streets of Oxford, and everywhere people suddenly scurried for cover. Falconer peered up. Heavy, dark grey clouds crowded together, jostling for space and packing the sky until they absorbed all the daylight, and a gloomy dullness prevailed.

The slow, heavy drops of rain multiplied, and became a curtain of water. Peter Bullock had his cloak to wrap around him, but Falconer had no such protection. He hurried down the High Street, the rain plastering his grizzled hair to his head, until he reached the relative comfort of East Gate. There he sheltered until the constable had caught him up. Together, they looked anxiously eastwards towards the bridge over the Cherwell. Already the river was muddy and swollen, swirling round the arches. It was creeping over the sodden banks and across the road like a secretive and insidious assailant. Falconer wondered how long it would be before Oxford itself would be inundated. As he and Bullock hurried towards the Jews’ cemetery, he could already see that it was half under water.

Each grave slab was standing out like a little oblong island in the flood, but none was the refuge for the renegade Jew.

Covele’s tent, as described by Saphira, was nowhere to be seen. He must have fled before the road eastward had become impassable. Bullock was inclined to think that only served to settle the man’s guilt.

‘I should raise a hue and cry. But who will come out in this weather? And how far would we get?’

He swept his arm around the depressing vista of the sodden meadows to the south and east of Oxford. Glistening with sheets of water, it was as if the town had become a moated fortress without a drawbridge.

‘It is said in the Book of Judges that the prophetess Deborah helped the Israelites defeat the Canaanites by luring the army to a valley when the rainy season was to begin. The rains came and bogged down the Canaanite chariots, and the Israelite army slaughtered them.’

Falconer raised an enquiring eyebrow at the constable’s unusual expression of Biblical erudition, as he knew he could not have read it in Latin. Bullock’s face turned red, and he blurted out an explanation.

‘The Book of Judges was one of the texts put in the vernacular for the Order. It was intended to teach us Templars something of the battle techniques suitable for the Holy Land. But that is by the way. What is now to be done?’
 

Bullock’s sense of defeat was not shared by Falconer. He had an inkling that Saphira had not told him the entire truth.

Indeed he began to realize that she had diverted him from a blatant lie with her lascivious exposure of her bare feet and legs. And he had fallen for it. He perched on a grave slab to keep his feet out of the encroaching waters, and swept the rain out of his eyes with a cold-reddened fist. Bullock’s reference to the Templars had sparked another thought in his head.

‘Peter, tell me. What else was Laurence de Bernère up to in the last few days?’

‘What do you mean? As far as I know, he only asked me to look into the discovery of the skeleton after we had verified the remains were those of le Saux. He was in Oxford by chance, I believe.’

Falconer gave a short, guttural laugh.

‘Forgive me, Peter. But nothing the Templars do is by chance. He must have known something was afoot, perhaps as soon as the buildings in Little Jewry Lane were being demolished. Besides, he obviously used someone other than you to help him to meddle in the matter.’

‘How do you know that?’

Falconer tapped the middle finger of his left hand.

‘Did you not see the gold ring he was wearing? Unless my poor eyes deceived me, it was very ring that I found on the skeleton. That went missing soon after. It could have told us a lot much sooner, perhaps. When I looked at it, it was clogged with mud and the symbol on the ring was obscured. When he wore it, it had been cleaned. The symbol was that of two knights astride the same horse. The ...’

Bullock gasped.

‘The sign of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon. The Order. But could it not have been his own ring?’

‘I think not. It looked loose on his finger, and he kept twisting it as though unused to its presence. No, I think someone on the building site stole it, and passed it on to de Bernère as evidence of the identity of the body.’

‘Could it have been the foreman, Wilfrid? And then was later killed for his pains?’

‘It’s possible. Though what I saw of him on site leads me to believe he was an honest man. And he was perhaps too busy taking charge of the workmen to plunder the remains. Still, we must not discard it as a possibility.’

‘Which may lead us to de Bernère as his killer. To keep his involvement with the man quiet.’

‘The only flaw in that theory, Peter, is that you are involved with the Templar too. And he has not killed you because of what you know.’

Bullock poked the rough granite surface of the Jewish tomb with the end of his scabbard.

‘Then where does all of this get us? We are no further forward than when we first found the body. Either body.’

Falconer pushed himself up from his perch on the tomb, and stepped down into the waters. He contemplated his new boots for a moment, as the mud eddied round them. He could feel the cold seeping in already. He shivered and rubbed his raw hands together.

‘That is not entirely true, Peter. We have a lot of truths laid out before us, and I think the Temple is the key. We just need to find the lock it fits in.’

Bullock once again silently bemoaned the need for his friend to talk in riddles, and pulling his heavy cloak around him, bent his head into the driving rain.

Saphira knew she would only have a short head’s start on William, and resolved to make the most of it. If she could speak to the master mason working on this new collegium building, she might find out something about the original houses. Who knows? He might even have been given the old fabric rolls recording the cost of the original work, what materials were purchased, and more importantly, who worked there.

She pulled up the hood of her cloak, and ducked out into the rain that was beginning to fall. The fish market was unusually quiet, and some stallholders were already packing up their wares. The persistent rain had dampened everyone’s mood, making them uneasy about the rising waters surrounding the town. She saw a huddle of Grey Friars close by South Gate clearly concemed that their own humble dwellings, which were reached by a small, private gate in the southem walls, were already under threat. She crossed Fish Street, and site of the building work by cutting down the narrow Jewry Lane. When she reached the site, she thought at first that there was no one on it. Work had clearly stopped due to the weather, and large puddles were forming right across the site, especially where trenches had been dug for foundations. Stone and other materials were lying around on the ground, apparently left where they were when work was called off for the day. She thought she would somehow have to find out where the master mason had his lodgings. Then she saw him.

The tall, well-built man with a head of thick, curly hair was standing under the cover of a temporary structure on the edge of the building site. It was a square pavilion built of hefty wooden poles, and was solidly thatched with a neat, sloping roof. Despite the heavy rain, the man looked safe and dry underneath. He was leaning over a bench, calmly making notes with a quill pen. This had to be the master mason, as he could obviously read and write. Saphira lifted her skirts and picked her way cross the site, avoiding the worst of the puddles and debris.

The man was engrossed in his work, and did not notice her until she was almost under the shelter. When he did, and turned to face her, he appeared a little angry at the unexpected presence. But then he saw it was an attractive woman and his eyes widened. She noticed they were the same blue as William’s. He smiled charmingly.

‘Madam. What may I do for you?’

‘It is rather a curious request I have, sir. But it does relate to the unfortunate death of your man recently.’ Richard Thorpe frowned at the unpleasant reminder of Wilfrid Southo’s killing.