Kate Sedley - The Wicked Winter

Martha, the girls, Fulk Disney, Maurice Cederwell all know that I've come to meet you here. You yourself foolishly saw to that. A fourth death, even if you could make it seem like yet another accident, would be too suspicious to be accepted by Sir Hugh'.

I had made a mistake, however, in addressing him by his proper name, for he had listened to nothing I had said after that. The eyes had clouded over, the face gone blank.

'I am Brother Simeon,' he answered coldly, drawing himself up to his full, imposing height. 'A friar of the Dominican Order'.

'No,' I replied, keeping my voice as quiet and as reasonable as possible.'Brother Simeon was the man you met up with while you were running away after raping your master's daughter; a man of much the same age and build as yourself. You killed him, dressed him in your clothes, mutilated the body and crushed the head until it was uurecognisable, making his death look like the work of outlaws. You then donned his habit, shaved the crown of your head and took his place. But you took more than that. Over the years you began to assume his character. You came to believe that you were indeed Brother Simeon from Northumbria, although you must have been careful never to return to your parent House. But there was no need. You were doing good work here, in the south. You were bringing souls back into a state of grace and you loved your work. You must have discovered, almost from the first, that you had a talent for preaching, something you had never suspected in yourself until circumstances forced you to it. A simple shepherd, of no account for all of his life until then, was suddenly transformed into a person who was listened to and looked up to with awe and reverence. But one unlucky day you were summoned to Cederwell Manor by Lady Cederwell.. who turned out to be that unfortunate Jeanette Empryngham despoiled by you all those years before. If she hadn't recognised you, it would have been all right. But she did recognise you, as did her half-brother, Gerard. They had to be silenced or you would lose everything.'

Brother Simeon — for in spite of all I had said, I could not, and cannot to this day, think of him by any other name curled his lip. He had listened to me with surprising patience, but now made an angry gesture which commanded my attention: it was his turn to speak. His mood had changed yet again and he was for the moment calm, his eyes as blank as pebbles, soulless, without feeling, showing not even the faintest glimmer of remorse. His grip on the knife was as relentless as ever.

'I did not kill the friar;' he said. 'He died in his sleep, that night we spent together in the barn between Campden and Mickleton. God sent him to me in the last stages of exhaustion, to be my salvation. God had need of me. It was all a part of His plan.'

'What about the rape of Jeanette Empryngham?' I asked, trying to keep my voice as level and emotionless as his.

'That, too,' Simeon answered. 'Over the years, I have come to realise that it was also a part of God's plan.'

'How —?' I was beginning hotly, but at my change of tone his head reared up and I hurriedly lowered my voice. 'How can you say that?'

'She was a harlot. She deserved what she got, roaming around her father's fields with never a maid to accompany her, often barefoot, her skirts tucked into her girdle, and all the time pretending to be so pious. She was a whited sepulchre,' he hissed, 'and when God put it into my head to defile her in order to free me from my lowly position, He chose an unworthy vessel for His purpose.'

I wondered how long this madness had lain dormant within him. Probably for many years. A steadily increasing belief in his mission to save souls had demanded self-justification for what had happened. So when he thought of the past at all, when, with greater and greater infrequency, he remembered that he was really Raymond Shepherd and not Brother Simeon, he had created his own version of events to cover all the facts, and then buried it deep inside his mind.

And now, when at last it was needed, he was able to dredge it up into the light of day. But the rankness of its smell had turned his brain.

Trying to imbue him with a sense of guilt was useless. I was wasting my breath. Nor was he any longer possessed by a sense of self-preservation. He believed that he could kill me with impunity and still walk free; free of suspicion and of the consequences of his crimes, because he was incapable of reason. Any moment now his present, precarious calm would desert him and he would return to the attack.

Hard upon the thought, I saw his expression alter; the spark of insanity was rekindled in his eyes, and his docile, almost friendly smile was replaced by a wolfish grin. Neither the crucifix nor my candlestick cross could offer me any further protection. His fingers tightened around the handle of the knife and he seemed to grow in stature until I had the oddest impression that his head was touching the ceiling.

He was between me and the final short flight of stairs which led to the tower's look-out platform, and I could not have reached them even had I wished to try. But my feet seemed to be rooted to the spot where I was standing. My arms felt as heavy as lead and the silver candlesticks had doubled in weight, dragging my hands down to hang at my sides.

I have never, either before or since, felt the presence of pure evil as potently as I did that day, nor have I ever been so transfixed with terror. I was young, I was very tall and strong. I should have been able to overpower Simeon, even armed as he was, without too much difficulty. But I watched him advance towards me and could do nothing to protect myself.

Far away, as in a dream, I heard a door open and shut, the slap of leather-shod feet against the stone treads of the stairs, the sound of raised voices. But the noises meant little to me; they did not whisper the word 'salvation'. I watched the knife rise higher and higher above my head, gleaming in a shaft of light from one of the window slits, and then begin its slow descent. Behind it, Simeon's face spread wide to fill my vision, and all the while, the constriction in my chest grew ever tighter until I could scarcely breathe…

And then, suddenly, Simeon was not there any more. He was on the floor, a sorry heap of emaciated flesh and bones clad in a rusty black habit, while Fulk Disney and Maurice Cederwell sat on him, pinning him to the ground, encouraged from the top of the stairs by Sir Hugh himself. The knife had fallen from his grasp a few inches from me, and a horrible whimpering, like a wounded animal, issued from his bloodied mouth.

'Chapman, are you all right? Are you injured?' demanded Sir Hugh, and a moment later his arm was supporting my waist, urging me away from the wall and lowering me as best he could to sit on the unpadded rail of Lady Cederwell's prie-dieu.

For a second or two, the attention of Maurice and Fulk was distracted from their prisoner, and the former had half risen from his knees to help his father. It was enough for the friar who, with more than human strength, rolled clear of their restraining hands, heaved himself to his feet and made for the stairs which led to the look-out platform. There was a brief, stupefied silence before we all went scrambling after him in a concerted rush which hampered our ascent, as we all tried to squeeze past one another, becoming wedged together in the process. And when we finally emerged on to the roof of the tower, we were just in time to see Brother Simeon climb on to the snowy parapet.

He gave one last desperate glance over his shoulder and then, with a scream which would have opened graves, hurled himself over the edge, to his death.

'Now then, Chapman, let's have the rights and wrongs of what's been happening here over the past three days.' Sir Hugh settled himself in one of the carved armchairs beside the fire, Mistress Lynom ensconced opposite him in another, which had been brought down from the solar.