Michael Jecks - The Chapel of Bones

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Mabilla responded testily. She looked at her daughter again and gave her a weak smile. ‘I am sorry — I know you are as sad as I am today, but it is so hard …’ She could feel the tears welling again on seeing her daughter: so tall, so elegant, and so terribly distraught, her eyes red from weeping. It was a testament to her beauty that the desperation and grief which so ravaged her features did not devour her attractiveness. In many eyes her terrible anguish only added to her appeal.

They had both sat up late discussing their plight since the sudden shock of Henry’s murder. Their situation was doleful. Mabilla had gone through the ledgers with an experienced clerk whom Henry had oftentimes used before, and the result was not reassuring. Henry was owed a considerable sum from other members of the Freedom of Exeter, and Mabilla knew that she’d have to start implementing court proceedings to gather even a small part from most of these fellows.

In the meantime, the house was their sole real asset, and the two women must shift for themselves in any way they might.

‘It’s the only way, Mother.’

Mabilla closed her eyes. The shock of Henry’s death, followed so soon afterwards by the veiled threat in Will’s words, was almost more than she could bear. Will had been so malevolent in his manner and speech: that alone had convinced her that she and her daughter both urgently needed a protector.

Seeing William had forced her to face the truth about the man. Will had been her lover many years ago, and even as she had accused him she had been aware of his masculinity — not because she wanted a lover straightaway, but because old attractions died hard. If she was honest, her accusation was not intended to provoke a confession — it was an invitation for him to deny his guilt.

But his manner, his coarseness and brutal disinterest, revealed his true character. He was more than capable of murder; he had very likely killed her Henry.

Julia saw the need for protection as clearly as she, and it only served to make her determined to win Udo as a husband before it was too late and he found another woman to his liking.

When her daughter was born, Mabilla had dreamed of the day when Julia would marry. She had thought of the dress, the gathering crowds at the church door, the admiring faces, the jealous mothers and daughters who bitterly saw that they had missed out on this splendid match because their daughters were not so beautiful as Julia. She had expected Henry to be there, with his wealth exhibited on every side; and now, here she was, plotting with her child to install Julia in the first available man’s house, in a financial arrangement to guarantee both of their futures. And such a short time, such a very short time, after poor Henry’s death, too. It was enough to start the tears springing again.

‘I am sure he will make me happy,’ Julia said confidently. At least Udo would save the two of them from ruination. ‘We must find a husband for me so that we can be safe.’

Aye, her mother thought, and so that I can be safe from the man who said he used to love me and now threatens to murder me. And again her mind turned to Will, and to wondering whether he really had murdered her husband.

‘Oh, God! My poor Henry!’ she wailed suddenly, and fell to her knees, her face hidden in her hands.

What should she do? What else could she do, other than sell her daughter?

Sara was getting over it. She must: she had another son to think of. The bodies had been taken away to the church, and all waited there now for the Coroner’s arrival so that he could comment on the deaths, and when that had been done, her Elias could be buried.

It was only three days ago, and yet it felt like a year of suffering. She’d hardly got used to the idea that she would never see Saul again, and now she must wait for the Coroner once more. Her poor Elias! Her darling little boy! All he did was try to find some food from the Priory, and he had paid for it with his life.

She might have died too, had it not been for the kind mason. The man Thomas had appeared as though from nowhere again, and grabbed her from the dark sea which was gradually carrying her out on the tide towards death. At that moment, it had been a welcome journey, and his intervention unwelcome, but as soon as she began to breathe and could think, and realised that her son was in there somewhere too, needing to be rescued, the will to live had flooded her body. Then she had seen her little Elias’s ruined frame being picked from the mound of corpses, his eyes open but unfocused, his mouth slack, head dangling, his body crushed. It took one glance to see that he was dead.

She had sunk to the ground with Elias in her lap, weeping and wailing, pulling her hair, mixing dust and ash from the ground in her long tresses, utterly bereft. It was only the feel of the hand on her shoulder that helped her to come to her senses. That and the words Thomas muttered: ‘Be strong, girl. It’s terrible, but you must be strong for your other boy. Think of him.’

That gruff, sad voice had hauled her back from the edge of despair like a rope. She still had Dan. And he deserved to have her alive and whole to protect him as best she might. It would avail nothing, were she to die of misery and leave him alone in this cruel world.

And so she had remained sitting there while the men about her, Thomas included, pulled bodies from the pile, gave them a cursory glance, and then either set them gently at the wall’s side to rest until they could be helped, or joined the larger pile ready for the Coroner to view before they might be interred.

Like many of the men there, Thomas was crying as he joined in this terrible task. Those who were helped to the wall to sit upright were all in the topmost layers of bodies. As the men released them from the press, they began to find fewer and fewer who were still breathing. So many were dead, that they had to start a second pile for all the corpses. The crowd had shoved forwards on a wide front, and when people began to fall, they collapsed from the front, up to six deep in places, where those behind had tried to clamber over the bodies in front in order to escape the terror, only to fall and be smothered in their turn by others. Now this long line of three-and-forty people was being broken into a series of smaller piles.

Thomas couldn’t remain until the finish. When he was sure that there were no more people living in that hideous mound, he walked to Sara and helped her up. They took Elias back along the roadway which she had entered all those hours before, buoyed with the hope of a filled belly at last, and Thomas led the way to the Church of St John Bow, where he asked the shocked-looking priest whether they could carry her child into the church. The priest nodded his head, his own eyes full of tears. They carried Elias into the church and set him down gently before the altar. Elias was the first body there.

Recalling those moments, Sara wiped her eyes. He had been a rock to her, this Thomas. She was sure that he must be a kind man. Since the disaster, he had appeared with food and drink for her each day, and she had forced herself to eat under his sternly compassionate eye, reminding herself that she had to remain strong to protect Dan.

The older boy had taken the news of his brother’s death badly. He had sworn aloud to hear that Elias was dead, and his anger had not been assuaged when Thomas tried to calm him. His words were directed at Thomas, but Sara knew that his true rage was targeted at himself. He was the master of the family, and he had failed his brother; it should have been him, Danny, in that queue, not his mother and his feeble sibling.

She was expecting the tentative knock when the light was starting to fade. The masons and labourers worked longer hours in the summer, but when the sun dipped earlier, they were allowed to have a shorter day, although the Cathedral reduced their pay accordingly. Thomas always came here as soon as he stopped work, and usually brought either food he had saved from the Cathedral’s contribution — because all the workers were entitled to their own supply of ale and bread at the Cathedral’s expense — or, if that wasn’t available, he’d buy more food for her and Dan on his way to them.