Jeri Westerson - Troubled Bones

There! He turned his head, straining to listen, to see. A shadow swept past his peripheral vision, and he crouched and raised the dagger. His sweaty grip tightened on the handle, and he trotted forward until he reached the south aisle. Slamming into a crevice between a cluster of pillars, he waited, listening, his own musky sweat rising to his nostrils.

A step. Then a sharp noise sounded somewhere in the gated quire. Crispin hesitated. The sound wasn’t right. Not a step. More like the sound of a tossed pebble, trying to send him in the wrong direction.

Cat and mouse, is it? His fingers adjusted their grip on the dagger. Where would the killer try to go? The west door was barred as were the transepts. The cloister door was open, but that was near Saint Benet’s chapel, the scene of the nun’s awful slaying. If the killer wished to escape after the murder he had already been at the nearest exit. Why then did he need to skulk in the church? What else did he want?

Crispin whipped his head eastward toward Becket’s shrine, but he couldn’t see it for the surrounding scaffolding, a maze-work of shade and silky shadows cross-hatching the walls and floors.

A loud bang startled him and then the sound of a door closing.

He raced up the south aisle toward the Chapel of Saint Thomas, dodging webs of scaffolding, before he stumbled going up the chapel stairs. Breathless, he stopped before Prince Edward’s tomb, his shoulders rising in silent gasps. The figure of the prince lay undisturbed and staring up at the dark arched ceiling. His brassy skin gleamed dully in the aura of candlelight. In contrast, Becket’s shrine, planted in the middle of the chapel, gleamed from four bold candles burning brightly at each corner of the rectangular sepulcher.

All at once, one of the candles, hidden by a corner of the shrine, snuffed out. A black thread of smoke wound upward toward the canopy.

Crispin crouched low and tiptoed to the shrine’s plinth. He shouldered the wooden base and eased along it toward the edge of the shrine.

He felt it at the back of his neck. Whirling, he thrust his dagger, but in mid-turn something heavy struck his wrist and the knife hit the floor, skidding a few paces. A hooded figure swung a fist upward and caught Crispin’s jaw, and then the ground came up to meet him.

Crispin raised himself up on all fours, only vaguely aware that he shouldn’t be in this position. Hands took hold of him and he flailed his arms to fend them off. His elbow struck a face, and then he heard a grunt of pain.

“Peace, Master Crispin!” said Dom Thomas, voice muffled by his hand. Crispin stopped and looked up at the monk. Blood ran down the monk’s face under his hand.

“Forgive me, Brother. I thought it was my assailant.” He regained his feet and leaned against the shrine, rubbing his jaw.

Dom Thomas wiped his nose and chin and looked at the blood on his fingers with a grimace. “You make a good, solid strike, Master Crispin.” It wasn’t a compliment.

“What happened? Did you catch him?”

The monk looked up at the shrine with a sorrowful expression. “No.”

Crispin turned. The angle made him dizzy but what he beheld made his heart seize. The canopy had been pulled away from the casket and the casket’s lid shoved aside. “Gone?”

The monk nodded.

“What of the Prioress?”

“I’ve only just been told. Others are coming. Brother Wilfrid took the young nun to the inn.”

“The archbishop-”

“He is on his way.”

Against the treasurer’s protests, Crispin stumbled back toward Saint Benet’s chapel. A monk knelt beside the body of the Prioress, now covered with a sheet blotched with red stains. He touched his sore jaw. The pain did nothing to assuage his growing remorse. “You did not disturb anything?” he said to the monk.

The monk reached forward to catch Crispin as he swayed. “No, Master.”

“I am well,” he said, not quite believing it himself. He reached down and slipped the sheet away. “Could you bring a candle, Brother?”

“For the love of Christ, leave her in peace!”

“She is at peace. An examination is necessary to discover her slayer.” He took the candle from the monk and held it above the body, studying her slashed robes. He tread carefully, trying not to step in her blood, but too many feet had already moved around her. The faint hope of finding telltale bloody footprints leading to the murderer was dashed. In the dark, and because of her heavy black robes, it was impossible to see the extent of her wounds, but he could see that she had been struck many times from behind and probably never saw her assailant. Perhaps that was a mercy. He shook his head and smote his thigh with a fist. This never should have happened. None of it.

He took a deep breath and continued his scrutiny of the dark tiles. There were spatters on the floor behind the spot where she had been kneeling and also in front. Each line of blood represented a strike. As the assailant lifted the sword, a line of blood would have splattered before the nun. He wished the light was better, but he didn’t suppose it would help.

All along the tiled floor lay the scattered beads of a rosary. A glance at the Prioress told him that hers was still intact on her belt. Then it must belong to the other nun. He gestured for a monk to gather up the beads.

The murder weapon, the sword, lay on the ground, and he picked it up. Drying blood covered the blade as he expected, but the edges were nicked. The fuller bore diagonal slashes in several deep lines. He recognized the look of such a blade. His own sword had received the same kind of blows while fending off an ax. But it was rust and not blood embedded in these marks, and that told him they were aged scars. The sword itself was old and well used, but not cared for as he had cared for his own long-lost blade. No knight would ever have left his sword in such a state. Whose sword was it? He lifted it, feeling that old pang of loss in his chest. But the feeling was quickly replaced by an equally sore ache of guilt; guilt that he enjoyed handling the weapon so much, the weapon that had killed an innocent.

He examined the round pommel that sported enameled arms-red with a muzzled bear head. He didn’t recognize them.

The murderer dispatched the Prioress swiftly, so then why didn’t he kill her young chaplain?

Or me? Crispin couldn’t help but turn again toward Saint Thomas’s chapel in the murky distance. Perhaps the assailant did not want to do others harm. The Prioress alone seemed to be the focus of the attack. And soon after, the bones were stolen. Was this all the work of the Lollards? Up until now, the Lollards had used rhetoric to make their case. Had that changed? But if they really only wanted the bones, then why kill the Prioress? She was nowhere near the shrine, whereas Crispin …

He rubbed his sore jaw again and hefted the sword before leaning it against the wall, point down. Curious, that the murderer should leave the weapon behind . Perhaps he meant it as a warning of some kind. Or was it stolen and left to point blame at another?

A monk stood beside him and held up his cupped hands. They were filled with wooden beads. Crispin opened his nearly empty money pouch and the monk poured them in. The monk bowed, retreating.

Two sets of hurried footsteps approached. Crispin propped himself against the wall and awaited the archbishop.

Courtenay’s face was white. He knelt by the Prioress and looked up at no one in particular. “Has she been shriven?”

“There was no time for any confessions,” said Crispin. “She was dead when I got to her.”

Courtenay rose. “Are you well, Master Guest? My monk tells me you were hurt-”

He grimaced. “Mostly my pride, Excellency. I fear I have failed you. The relics were stolen.”