Michael Jecks: The Chapel of Bones

‘I can’t bring him back,’ Thomas said sadly, and he could feel the tickling of tears behind his lids. Matthew shouted for linen bandages as he said quietly, ‘I would if I could.’

‘No, you can’t, can you? Cretin ! Where am I going to find another decent mason like him? God’s Ballocks! What a fucking mess!’

‘He was married,’ Matthew said, his voice hushed. He put a comforting arm about Thomas. ‘We should tell his wife.’

‘His widow !’ Robert rasped. ‘That prickle can do it. He took her husband from her, let him be the one who explains it to her. I’m damned if I can understand a word he’s said about how he managed to lose the block, myself.’

Thomas looked back up at the pulley at the top of the crane. Still lashed to the hook was the metal wedge that should have remained inside the block, while whips of rope were tossed from side to side in the wind, their ends frayed where they’d broken. That was the first crack he had heard, when those ropes snapped under the weight of the rock. One, he saw, was still blackened with his own blood where he’d tried to hold it. His hands were raw, the flesh stripped from the palms, and he’d covered both with pieces of linen he’d hacked from his own shirt. They’d be dreadfully painful for days, he knew.

His rope and the others weren’t supposed to support all that ponderous mass. It should have been the iron wedge that took the weight. How could it have slipped out? He couldn’t have thrust the wedge in properly. That was the only explanation. Robert was right: his negligence had killed Saul.

Poor Saul. Thomas had known him slightly. There were so many men working here on the rebuilding of the Cathedral that it was hard to get to know even all the stone-workers, let alone the members of the other crafts. Saul was a foreigner, Thomas remembered hearing. One of those who’d been working on some other project with Robert de Cantebrigge and had been brought here with him. That was how Master Masons made sure that their work was up to scratch. They kept a stable of good workers with them, taking them from one job to another, so that hopefully when the Master Mason had to go to another site, he could leave his men working together, knowing what he would expect them to do.

It was a hard life, building churches and cathedrals. Saul had been too young to know the misery associated with growing older in the trade: the bones that ached in the mornings on a winter’s day, the sudden cramps in the legs, the back that locked and wouldn’t move, the weariness at the end of a summer’s day when every moment of daylight had to be used to the full; no matter that your fingers were scratched and bruised, the nails ripped out from the last falling rock you tried to lift onto the wall, nor that your arms refused to lift another pebble, they were so exhausted. The work was the thing. Any man here on the site must work as quickly as possible to bring to fruition the creation that men would look on for evermore, thinking, That, that is God’s House.

But a Master Mason didn’t only have one project on the go at a time. He was a skilled engineer, hence much of a man like Robert de Cantebrigge’s life was spent on horseback travelling from one city to another, monitoring each of his building projects and making sure that they remained on target.

Saul had been with him longer than Thomas. That was the thing. It was why Robert would probably never forgive Thomas. He had taken away one of Robert’s best, youngest, strongest men, and finding a suitable willing replacement would prove a considerable headache.

And now Thomas had come to see the Almoner at St Nicholas’s Priory, to trace the whereabouts of Saul’s wife.

‘You wished to know where a certain woman lives?’

The Almoner was an austere-looking man who listened gravely as Thomas explained his mission.

‘What a tragic event,’ he said when Thomas was finished. ‘I knew Saul slightly. A good man — he often gave to the poor. And his woman seems good, too. They have two children. Little boys, both of them. This will be grave news for her, poor Sara.’

‘I would do anything I could to escape telling her,’ Thomas muttered. ‘Even if it meant taking his place. It’s not right for a boy to grow without a father.’

‘It’s not right for a man to consider self-murder, either,’ the Almoner said sharply. ‘I hope you are not speaking in earnest. Saul is dead because God thought this was his time; when it is your time, God will call you too.’

‘I wouldn’t kill myself,’ Thomas declared. ‘But I wish he wasn’t dead.’

‘That is good. You shouldn’t hanker after the death of another, no matter who he might be,’ the Almoner said approvingly.

He began to give directions. Apparently Saul and his wife had lived in the easternmost corner of the city, in the area vacated by the Franciscans when they moved to their new six-acre site down outside the southern wall.

‘As soon as the friars were gone, a small army of the poorer elements of the city took it over, building their own sheds from dung and straw and roofing them with thatch. Now they live there in their own little vill, made by themselves for themselves.’

‘I have never been there,’ Thomas admitted. ‘I live at the Cathedral while the works go on.’

‘You have a local man’s accent, though,’ the Almoner noted.

‘I used to live near here, but I left when I took up my trade,’ Thomas said quickly. He still feared being discovered. For all he knew, he could still be taken and hanged.

The Almoner was too rushed with other work to notice his defensiveness. ‘Well, go back to Fore Street, take the first street on the right, and follow that all the way to the end. That will bring you to the friars’ old compound, and you’ll find all the huts there. I think that Saul and Sara’s was the third on the left as you bear round to the right, just before the left-hand turn in the road. She used to have a door of limed oak — but I don’t know if she still has. A door like that is expensive, and many up there would be keen to filch it, I don’t doubt. So remember to count.’

‘I thank you, Master Almoner,’ Thomas said, respectfully ducking his head low as he set off.

As the man had said, it was easy to find the place. Where the Friary had been, the workers had removed all the building material, razing the old house and leaving nothing but a wasteland. It was here that the poorest of the city had taken up residence, throwing up a series of hovels, each one room and no more. The stench was overwhelming, for although there was a drainage channel cut into the lane leading up, the area itself was relatively flat and, rather than walk to the gutter, people threw their wastes into a huge malodorous midden that lay just to the left of the entrance to the place.

There were two dogs fighting over a bone as Thomas arrived, with four men idly watching them and gambling on the winner. He didn’t wish to speak to them. Instead he walked along the road, hoping that the Almoner was right about the location of the woman’s home.

The third house on the left was a sturdy enough looking place, and the door was whitened timber. Thomas closed his eyes a moment, then took a deep breath and crossed the yard, past the scanty little vegetable plot with its yellowing cabbages and stunted leeks. He rapped hard on the door.

‘Sir?’

The voice came from behind him, and he almost sprang into the air with alarm. Turning, he found himself staring into the laughing green eyes of a woman who was almost as tall as himself. She had hair the colour of burnished copper, and skin that was pale and freckled, with almond-shaped eyes and a tip-tilted nose. She smiled, showing regular teeth that shone. ‘My apologies, master. I didn’t mean to terrify you. Do you want me?’