Michael Jecks - The Chapel of Bones

In the end it took Thomas and two other men from the street to pull the young woman away from her trampled child, Thomas himself carrying Elias’s slack form off to the Cathedral.

They were most kind in there. Janekyn Beyvyn; the porter at the gate, directed them to a priestly-looking canon, and Thomas recognised the Almoner. This fellow took Sara to a house nearby, in which a midwife lived, and she drew Sara indoors immediately, to give her comfort and a soothing draught. That was last afternoon, and now Thomas was taking her home again after the funeral.

‘You have no family here?’

‘None,’ she whispered. Her voice was rough and raw from weeping, and Thomas found his own breast spasm as though he was about to weep at any moment. He felt appalling guilt that she should have been reduced to this.

When he first saw her, only a fortnight ago, she had been a beautiful young woman. And then came the miserable accident that took her man away from her, reducing her status to that of a widow, and depriving her two sons of a father. The fact that there was no money in Saul’s purse when he died meant she had to rely on the alms given by the Priory. Her son’s death was a direct consequence of Thomas’s negligence in killing her husband. This woman’s misery was entirely his responsibility.

They reached the house and he kicked the door wide. Sara moved hardly at all in his arms, and he set her down on a stool while he unrolled her palliasse and spread blankets over it to make her bed. Then he took her up and placed her gently upon it.

‘Where is my son?’ she asked pathetically. ‘Where is Dan?’

‘He’s down the way,’ Thomas said, putting his sore palms under his armpits. ‘I sent a man here last evening to find him and see to his safety. He should be all right. Now, I am going to leave you a while and find a little food for you. All you need do is wait here.’

She looked at him. Her eyes were red, her mouth a vivid gash, and her whole manner that of a woman who had lost everything. ‘Just send me my son … my only boy.’

Thomas nodded, then fled.

First he went to the woman’s hut where Dan had been installed. He saw that the boy was well and fed, then hurried to the market, buying pies and wine with the few pennies he possessed. When he arrived back, the same woman who had last thrown him from the place was there again, but this time she was less severe, telling him her name was Jen and even smiling once or twice.

‘Thank you for helping her,’ she said in a low tone when Sara seemed to have fallen asleep with the exhaustion of despair. ‘Sara will need all the help she can get after the last two weeks.’

‘I’ll do anything I can,’ Thomas said. ‘But … I don’t know what I can do to help. I can try to bring food and drink …’

‘That’ll do for a start.’

‘She told me she has no family here. I thought her accent was strange. Is there no one?’

‘No. You know what it’s like for these workers on great buildings. Saul was a good mason, and he followed his master from one church or cathedral to another. This was the latest of the great buildings he’d worked on. Their families are somewhere else. I don’t know where.’

‘So she has no one she can rely on?’

‘No one.’

Thomas nodded, staring at the woman on the bed for a long moment. He would do anything to bring the smile back to her face. That lovely, radiant smile: the one he had erased for ever, just as his rock had wiped away her husband’s face.

William stood in the entranceway of the tavern, leaning on his old staff.

The room reeked of sour ale and wine and shit from the privy too, the stench only partly tempered by the little fire in the hearth at the middle of the room. Its smoke removed the worst of the smell, but the acrid fumes attacked the nostrils and throat.

He checked the place. It seemed safe enough. He stepped down from the doorway onto the six-inch block of wood that served as a step, and then strolled over to a bench. A grizzled man, probably only in his thirties, although he looked more like fifty with his pallid complexion and bloodshot eyes, was sweeping up some rushes. The stained and filthy towel tied about his waist showed he was the master of the place, just as the sagging flesh of his face spoke of his fondness for the ales sold there.

‘Ale,’ William said.

The man turned and surveyed him, nodded, and ambled unhurriedly to the back of the room where a pair of barrels were racked against the wall. He drew off a large jugful and brought it to William, together with a green-painted drinking horn made of pottery.

William watched him as the innkeeper moved about the place. His slowness was a studied insult to a man like him who was used to the swift service of esquires and heralds in the King’s host.

It was a long time since he had been free of the trappings of the King’s service. Starting out from Exeter with King Edward I in 1285, he had thought that he might, if he was fortunate, manage to eke out some sort of existence within the royal household.

Of course, that was the present King Edward II’s father, Edward I, and life was different in those days. The old man was alarming back then — in his mid-forties, tall, imposing and severe; you were well-advised to keep to the right side of his temper. When the mood took him, he was a vicious bastard. He even ripped the hair out of his son’s head in handfuls, so it was said, when they had one of their rows — probably over that vacuous bolster-head Piers Gaveston. Most of their later quarrels were over him.

The old King was a real man. Strong, quick to take offence, slow to forgive or forget, and he could scare any of the barons in the land. He was utterly ruthless, and the devil with any man who stood in his way. Still, for William he had been a good master.

He had noticed William when the latter had explained about the South Gate to the city and how it had been left open. That was during the trial of the Chaunter’s murderers, and the implication was obvious to the meanest intelligence: the city was complicit in the assassination. Only with the connivance of the city’s oligarchs could the killers have had the gate opened in order to guarantee their escape after curfew.

Standing up like that in his own city to denounce his neighbours, that had taken courage, and the King had seen it. He admired it, too. A man who’d stand against all his past friends to help the King, that was a man of loyalty … or greed. Either way, it was enough to make him useful to the King.

Soon after the ending of the trial, when the King left Exeter, he took Will with him. He joined the King’s host, and climbed the ladder of opportunity whenever he could. Under King Edward I he became an infantry constable, a post with which he was well-satisfied, and when King Edward II took the throne in 1307, within two years Will found himself a Royal Yeoman. He never was too sure what had led to that, because he hadn’t got on very well with the new monarch, but he supposed it was something to do with Edward’s needing allies. Everyone seemed to dislike him. He had begun his reign in a promising way, taking over the realm to general acclaim and delight, because he was a tall handsome lad, and people were sick of the austerity of his father’s rule. All military clothes and no style — if it wasn’t practical, Edward I wasn’t interested. The young Edward, however, wanted fun !

Actors, jugglers, singers, troubadours … all came to see and entertain him, and when he was particularly enamoured, he’d join in and perform with them. At first, this pleased some of his subjects but then a sourness started to settle. His frivolity angered the churchmen, who muttered about his excesses, and his barons looked on him disrespectfully, comparing him unfavourably with his father.