Alys Clare - Dark Night Hidden

He and Augustus saw the family safely back to their little dwelling and asked for directions to the building that housed the gaol. Then, bidding them farewell, they rode on.

The presence of a mule and a couple of horses indicated that the representatives of law and order were still inside the gaol building. Tethering their own mounts and going inside, Josse and Augustus heard raised voices. Two men were arguing, another plaintively interrupting.

Josse called out. ‘Hallo there!’ The dissenting voices abruptly ceased. Then, from some hidden place at the end of a passage, there came the sound of footsteps.

‘I’m coming!’ a man’s voice panted. ‘These cursed steps will be the death of me!’ And into view came a short and very fat man in a leather tunic over saggy, soiled hose. ‘Yes?’

Josse introduced Augustus and himself, saying where they were from and how they came to be there. ‘I was informed,’ he went on regally, ‘that there was a dead man and some mystery as to how he met his death. I have some experience in these things and have come to offer my services.’

The fat man seemed to be amazed that anyone should bother. ‘He weren’t a well-liked fellow,’ he said, face creasing in puzzlement. ‘Reckon there ain’t no more mystery than that one of his prisoners thumped him in the face and the pair of ’em — him and the other one — legged it.’ He grinned.

‘They were locked up?’ Josse asked.

‘Aye, course they were. This here’s a gaol .’ The faint sarcasm was evident.

‘And the sheriff ’s officer would have entered the cell to take in food?’

‘Nah, not him! There’s a trap door in the wall, see, and he opens the flap, shoves the food in then locks it up again.’

‘I see. Then how, do you imagine, did the prisoner manage to achieve the blow to the guard’s face?’

‘Oh. Er. Hm.’ The fat man lifted the front of his jerkin and began an enthusiastic scratching of his crotch. ‘Hm.’

‘I should like to see the body.’ Josse stood over the fat man, trying to awe him into obedience.

‘Oh. Suppose you can if you want. Come with me.’

The fat man led the way along the passage and down a short flight of steep stone steps. Below, three small cells opened off a corridor. The doors to all three were open and the foul stench from within each cell made Josse want to retch.

The fat man went ahead of him into the end cell. ‘Here.’ He pointed. ‘Here he is. Tab, Seth, out of the way.’ He kicked at the two men crouching by the body and they leapt aside. The presence of a hurdle beside them on the wet and soiled floor suggested they had been about to put the dead man on to it and bear him away.

Josse looked down at the guard. He lay on his back and, as Josse had been told, had clearly suffered a fist in the face. The top lip was split and the nose squashed. Quite a sizeable fist, Josse thought, or else the assailant hit him more than once.

But he had to agree that the blow did not at first glance look as if it had been fatal. Perhaps the man had fallen and cracked his skull on the hard stone floor. Lifting the head, Josse felt all over it for the presence of a wound. There was nothing.

But something had killed him.

Leaving aside the vague and unlikely possibility that the man had been sick and just happened to die at the very moment that he was punched and two prisoners broke out of his gaol, Josse proceeded to examine the rest of the body.

There was not a mark on it.

He sat back on his heels, thinking.

Then, spotting something, he said, ‘Augustus?’

‘Here,’ came the lad’s instant reply.

‘Gus, can you get me a light?’

‘Aye.’ Augustus ran off, along the passage and up the stairs, quickly coming back again bearing a flaming torch. Good lad, that one, Josse thought. Keeps his eyes open. He must have noticed the torch when we were in the room upstairs.

By the light of the flame, Josse leaned forward and studied the dead man’s throat. Yes. He had been right.

‘Gus?’

In an instant the boy was crouching beside him. ‘Sir Josse?’

‘Look.’ Josse pointed. To the left of the throat, up under the ear, where there was a faint, dark bruise. And to the right, in the same place, where there were four more.

He heard Augustus’s sudden sharp gasp. And the boy said, ‘Someone throttled him.’

‘Aye,’ Josse agreed. ‘Gus, let’s have your hand. .’

Comprehending instantly, Augustus put his hand around the dead man’s neck. His thumb and fingers, even at full stretch, came nowhere near the bruises. Josse then did the same. Although his hands were larger than Augustus’s, he could not have made the marks either.

‘He was a big man, this killer,’ Augustus breathed into Josse’s ear. ‘Uncommon big.’

‘Aye,’ Josse muttered back. ‘And there’s something else, Augustus.’ He waited, almost believing that he could hear the lad’s quick, intelligent brain at work.

Suddenly Augustus gave a sharp exclamation and swapped his hands over. Now his thumb was over the single bruise and his fingers a few inches short of the group of marks.

‘Aye,’ Josse whispered. ‘When I asked you to stretch out your hand, instinctively you put out the right, because you’re right-handed. But, as you have just realised, the killer used his left hand. Unless some circumstance prevented him from using his dominant hand — it was injured, or perhaps bound — then I think we can say we’re looking for a left-hander.’

Augustus whistled softly. ‘Aye,’ he added, his awe-filled eyes meeting Josse’s, ‘and a bloody great big one.’

While Josse was away, Helewise received another visit from Father Micah. The priest informed her that he was dissatisfied with standards within the Abbey and Helewise, controlling with some difficulty her instinctive, outraged reaction, asked him meekly to elaborate.

‘We will take a turn around the Abbey’s various departments,’ he said grandly. ‘I shall point out those areas which are of most concern.’ Rebellion seething under her quiet demeanour, Helewise fell into step beside him.

Within quite a short time, she had a good idea of what it was that formed the foundation of his complaint. In the small room behind the refectory where the cook nuns spent most of their working hours monotonously preparing large amounts of virtually the same few foods, Father Micah objected to the little songs some of the sisters sung and the occasional laughter-inducing pleasantry that helped to pass the long hours. In the infirmary anteroom, he objected to a weary young sister sitting down to roll bandages. The pain in her legs, which were swollen because she had spent much of the night on her feet caring for a very sick patient, should be, in Father Micah’s opinion, offered to God in penance for her sins. She must henceforth stand to do her work.

Out in the chilly cloister, the priest stood for some time over Sister Phillipa, seated at her desk and engaged in illuminating a capital letter A. The work was beautiful, Helewise thought, but Father Micah complained that over-use of blue and gold smacked of luxury, not seemly in an order vowed to poverty. About to tell him that the Queen herself had bestowed the wherewithal for the purchase of those very pigments, Helewise changed her mind. She would not explain herself to this man.

He passed through Sister Bernadine’s room without comment. Sister Bernadine was in charge of the Abbey’s small collection of precious manuscripts. Something about her austere manner and her air of detachment, as if she silently communed with the angels, earned Father Micah’s approval; with an all but imperceptible nod, he beckoned to the Abbess and left Sister Bernadine to her scripts.