Michael Jecks - The Chapel of Bones

Saul died because of the ghost.

It was a clear morning, with only a few wisps of cloud passing overhead, and Thomas had been whistling happily, stripped to his waist, his long hair bedraggled with sweat.

As a mason, he preferred building work to demolition, but in order to erect the new Cathedral, first they must throw down this old one. Starting at the south-eastern corner of the wall of the nave, Thomas and his men had climbed up the scaffolding and were gradually levering loose the old rocks, attaching iron bolts to them so that they could be lifted out by the cranes. It was backbreaking work, with the Warden of the Fabric, Vicar Matthew, often peering over their shoulders to ensure that the stones were damaged as little as possible. He wanted them reused.

Thomas was terrified that at any moment Matthew would see through his thick, salt and pepper beard, his long hair, and know him, but so far there had been no flicker of recognition. Perhaps after forty years Matthew had forgotten him; perhaps he paid little attention to a mere labourer.

To avoid meeting Matthew’s eye, Thomas turned to face the Bishop’s Palace gate. That was when he spotted the brown-clad figure of a friar, stooped and obviously weary, entering the Close. From his high position, Thomas saw the ghost immediately. He felt as though he might totter and fall, so great was the shock.

There was a leather bag and rolled blanket on the ghost’s back; a thin, clawlike hand gripping the thong that bound them together at his shoulder. Thomas recognised him immediately. He had seen those features in his mares, especially at nights, so often in the last forty years. Forty years — and in all that time he hadn’t forgotten the man whom he had once been happy to call his friend — his best friend.

Thomas was an experienced mason, and he should have been concentrating. Afterwards, he knew that Saul’s death was his fault, but at that moment he couldn’t drag his eyes from the man down there in the Cathedral’s Close.

The poor, misshapen figure, clad in the garb of a Grey Friar, looked as if he had been tortured and discarded, a living warning to others. He dragged his left foot, his left arm was obviously all but useless, and he walked bent low, like a man who carried a heavy load. Only when he reached the little chapel did he halt suddenly and look up in wonder. As well he might, for the Charnel Chapel was quite new, built at the instigation of Dean John before he was exiled from the Cathedral. Thomas himself had been surprised to see it there, built where the Chaunter’s house had stood.

The ghost stared at the chapel, his tonsured head set to one side as though to hide the dreadful scars, and Thomas gave a moan, retreating, trying to hide from that terrible gaze. Without thinking, he released his rope, covering his face with his hands, shutting out that hideous view, when he should have been watching the crane.

Yes. It was the ghost. If it hadn’t been for the friar, Saul wouldn’t have died.

Long afterwards, Thomas would still be struck with that appalling guilt as he recalled the terrible event that followed. At that moment, when the massive block shifted, he was incapable of thinking. The rock was like a vast creature, its movements thrilling through the twisted planking of the scaffold, tremors clutching at his feet. When he glanced at it, he saw the great lump start to slip, ponderous and terrible; and although he grabbed the thick hempen rope, he knew he could do nothing. His rope was positioned to pull the rock from side to side, not keep it up. He sprang back, eyes fixed on it.

‘Wait! ’Ware the stone!’ he cried, but it was too late. As he opened his mouth, there was a sudden snap like a whip cracking, then a roar, as though God Himself had torn apart the ground beneath their feet. The rock plunged down, crashing through the planking and tearing four-inch spars apart, ripping them to splinters; and then the rope snaked through his hands before he could release it, scouring the flesh from his palms, and there was a gravelly noise like leather being torn as the rock slid down the wall to the ground, striking it with an earth-shaking roar. For a moment Thomas felt relief that no one was hurt as he stared down at the billowing clouds of rock dust.

‘Christ Jesus!’ he moaned, his breath sobbing from his breast as though he had run a mile carrying that rock on his back. The damn thing was so huge, it was astonishing to think that it had ever been lifted up here.

They were enormously high up. From here, he could see over the houses that encircled the Close, over the new walls erected in the last twenty years, over the High Street and beyond, up the hill to the red stone castle directly north, west to the great Priory of St Nicholas and south to the new Friary of the Franciscans, opened only fifteen-odd years ago.

Some men looked terrified when they clambered up the lashed poles to this giddy height. Thomas could remember the first few times he’d been up scaffolding like this; he’d been petrified too, but the view was the compensation. And men didn’t often fall from here. It was too far up for people to forget when they were new to the job, and when they were experienced enough to forget the height, they were able to walk around with balance and without fear. Thomas had only seen one lad fall from a scaffold in the last forty years since he started out as a mason.

Today, though, the view couldn’t keep his attention. He stared down at the lump of masonry crumbled at the foot of the Cathedral’s wall, but his eyes wouldn’t stay there. Gradually, unwillingly, he felt himself forced to turn back until he was gazing down again upon the Charnel Chapel, hoping against hope that the ghost had gone.

It had. The brownish-grey-clad friar was nowhere to be seen. Thomas thought, just for a moment, that he caught a flash of grey up at the Fissand Gate, but it was gone in an instant, and he could breathe more easily.

Relief flooded into his veins, and he rested a hand unconsciously on a scaffold-pole at his side to support himself, flinching from the pain in his raw palm. A group of men had gathered about the rock below. Workmen would always gawp at a fallen piece of masonry, he thought. No matter.

Vicar Matthew, the Chapter’s Warden of the Fabric who spent so much time up here trying to save money, was only a matter of feet away, and he stared at Thomas for a long moment — so long that Thomas wondered whether he too had seen the ghost of that novice, or still worse, recognised him from that other time, that other life.

‘You let the stone fall,’ Matthew whispered.

Thomas shrugged. ‘Sometimes it’ll happen.’ There was a lot of noise from below, and he wondered at that for the briefest of seconds before a leaden feeling of dread entered his belly.

Down below he could see the Master Mason staring up at him, his mouth wide in alarm. There was a semi-circle of workers about the stone, and something else.

‘Look what you’ve done!’ Matthew hissed. ‘You have killed him, Tom!’

And Thomas could only stare at him uncomprehendingly, then down at the rock, with the fat red stain that now marked the dirty ground beside it.

Friar Nicholas felt his right cheek. The tingling was there again. It often came on like this when the weather was cooler or damper, and here in Exeter in October it was rarely otherwise. He left the new chapel and shouldered the small leather sack containing all his possessions: a small bowl, a cup, some material to wrap about his throat when the weather was at its most inclement, and a spoon.

Here there was always noise, he supposed, standing at the Fissand Gate and casting about him. The Cathedral might be in the process of being rebuilt, but that didn’t stop men meeting and discussing their business. There was more money spent and snatched by greedy businessmen in that yard than in the marketplace, he thought with contempt. Men all about, shouting and calling, and the unchanging clamour of the damned workmen. Fine, they needed the workers there to get the Cathedral expanded, but he hated it. It hurt his ears. The din was deafening, especially since he suffered from his affliction; his hearing was unreliable, and when there were too many noises at the same time, his head began to ache.