Paul Doherty - The House of Shadows

‘I now realise,’ Cranston tapped the table, ‘why we were not summoned when Broomhill was first found. You, Sir Maurice, delayed, you didn’t want us to hear the dangerous babbling of a dying man who might ask Athelstan to shrive him.’

‘You are truly evil men,’ Athelstan accused. ‘You didn’t give a fig for Broomhill’s soul or Chandler’s reputation. If matters were pressed, Chandler could be blamed for the deaths in the hay barn, the result of too much wine and hot lust. After all, he’d touched the corpses and bloodied his hands. You claimed Chandler’s crossbow was missing, I doubt very much if he had one. You were more concerned about your chaplain being your nemesis.’

‘And you accuse me of Davenport’s death?’ Malachi asked.

‘I do!’ Sir Maurice seemed to have recovered his wits. He tried to shake Branson from his reverie, but Sir Reginald turned away like a frightened child. ‘I do!’ Clinton repeated, pushing back his long grey hair. ‘Whatever he says.’ He pointed at Athelstan.

‘Are you confessing, Sir Maurice?’ Cranston asked.

‘I’ll confess to nothing until I have a meeting with His Grace.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you will,’ Athelstan retorted. ‘Yet no one killed Sir Thomas Davenport. He committed suicide. You, Sir Maurice, lied about him, you tried to depict Davenport as a jovial, merry man, eager for a goblet of wine and the sweet embraces of the fair Rosamund. It was you or Master Rolles who sent for her to divert Sir Thomas. He had lived with his sin for twenty years; every time he came here was a sharp reminder. Indeed, it was the real reason you gathered here every year. Under the pretext of celebrating a past triumph, the conspirators met to reaffirm their loyalty to each other. That’s why Chandler brought his chancery coffer with him. I don’t think any of you feared God or man. Sir Thomas may have been different. He realised that one sin begets another. The murders of Beatrice and Clarice, the Misericord, the Judas Man, and of course when you sent Master Rolles to dispose of Brother Malachi. . Sir Thomas realised that the conspiracy was crumbling away. The Beast of Sin no longer lurked by the door; it was hunting him. Davenport went out in the garden and, like Sir Stephen Chandler, begged God to forgive him. He asked for pardon but, like Judas Iscariot, guilt consumed him. He sat in that garden and thought of the corpses mouldering there, the other victims, their blood shrieking for God’s vengeance. He could take no more. He returned to his chamber, locked himself in and died in the Roman fashion. He took the candle pricket and thrust it up into his own heart.’

‘How did you know that?’ the Benedictine intervened. ‘I thought you’d lay his death at my door.’

‘No, no, Malachi. You knew what had happened. The knights, Master Rolles and Mother Veritable had taken careful counsel over the murders of Chandler and Broomhill. If one of them was not responsible, and the Judas Man was elsewhere hunting the Misericord, it must have been another of their number. The logical conclusion was the pious Brother Malachi, so devoted to the memory of his brother. Rolles tried to kill you in St Erconwald’s. You realised that, so you fled this tavern and sheltered with me. Your departure so frightened Davenport, terrifying him out of his wits, that he took his own life.’

‘I danced when I heard the news,’ Malachi jibed.

‘Undoubtedly,’ Athelstan retorted. ‘But suicide is the only logical solution. Sir Thomas was sealed in that chamber. He ate the sweetmeats, drank some wine, then drove the pricket in whilst seated in the chair, which is why the blood splashed out on to his lap. Rolles and Clinton didn’t want me to discover the truth, so they confused matters to make it look like murder. Why not? We hadn’t resolved the killings of Chandler or Broomhill; Davenport’s supposed murder not only removed the suspicion of suicide but tangled matters further. Naturally they could only go so far, as the chamber had been visited by the fair Rosamund, whom I later questioned. You made one mistake, Sir Maurice. When Davenport drove that pricket into his heart, he must have kept his hands clenched on it. His fingers, sticky from the sweetmeat, would have been drenched in blood. You or Rolles wiped both the blood and the sugar off. Sir Thomas went to God with clean hands but a stained soul.’

‘If it had been suicide,’ Cranston spoke up, ‘if we had established that immediately, we would have wondered what could have frightened Sir Thomas Davenport so much that he took his own life.’

‘How did you,’ Athelstan pointed at Malachi, ‘eventually realise what truly happened twenty years ago?’

‘How did I realise?’ the Benedictine mimicked. ‘How does anyone know? Oh, it was the passing of the years, a crumb here, a crumb there. My brother would never have disappeared, not like that.’ He shook his head. ‘Not like smoke on a spring day, and the same goes for Mortimer. He truly loved his sister. I heard reports about Guinevere being seen here or there, but I dismissed them as lies. Then these,’ he gestured around, ‘these reunions, every year. Why were five knights of Kent, powerful Lords of the Soil, so eager to meet up with the likes of Master Rolles and Mother Veritable? Every year they came together, and I began to wonder. It was like the weather, little signs, but you know there’s a change. I used to wander this tavern, that’s how I discovered the mantrap. Like you, Brother Athelstan, I noticed the high-backed cart, the tavern’s many entrances, then the ring was found.’ He smiled dreamily at Athelstan. ‘I showed it to them and they didn’t even recognise it. The only thing I had from my brother; that’s why I gave it to you, in fulfilment of a vow. I wanted it to be kept in a sacred place.’

He leaned over and pulled the small coffer closer to him, gently caressing the top.

‘On the night of the Great Ratting, when those two whores were killed and the Misericord was being hunted, I made my decision. Oh yes, I had been to see His Grace the Regent. I wanted to clarify something. He knew who I was. Perhaps he suspected what I planned. He didn’t call me by my monkish name, but “Master Culpepper”. What passed between us is a matter for you and Sir John to find out. Yes, I did what I did, because I was compelled to. Innocent blood demands justice.’ He scraped back his chair. ‘No, Sir John, I’m not leaving. I want to view my dead.’

Cranston and Athelstan followed him out of the solar. The coroner ordered the two knights to be guarded and shouted at the throng of servants and maids to stay in the tap room. They all retreated fearfully, stepping around the gruesome remains of their former master wrapped in their blood-stained cloth. Followed by Brother Malachi, Cranston and Athelstan went out into the garden, now ruined by the digging of the bailiffs: mounds of hard clay where the lawn had been ripped apart, flower beds and herb patches roughly dug up. To the left of the arbour stretched a long, deep pit. Flaxwith went over and pointed into it. Athelstan gazed down and closed his eyes at the pitiful scene.

‘The corpses must have been stripped,’ Cranston whispered. ‘Not even a burial shroud.’

The skeletons lay like a collection of bones in a charnel house, one tossed on another, all flesh and hair rotted away. Athelstan could see no trace of clothing belt or boot, nothing to distinguish these five people sent to their deaths in such a hideous fashion.

‘I’ll make a full confession.’ Brother Malachi knelt down beside the pit, hands clasped. ‘I know my brother; whatever they have done, I’ll still know my brother.’

He lifted his head, tears spilling down his cheeks, an old man stricken to the heart by what he had seen and heard, no longer any smiles or taunting, just the heart-stopping pain of loss and grief.