Paul Doherty - The Darkening Glass

‘Mistress what is wrong?’ Rosselin, blond-haired and ruddy-faced, his thickset body swathed in a cloak, stepped forward. The others had their cloaks thrown back. They were all harnessed and armed, wearing leather breastplates, war-belts strapped on as if ready for combat. ‘Mistress,’ Rosselin walked up the steps, spurs clinking, ‘we came to see where Lanercost died. What is the matter? We have not been in the church.’ He pointed back at Middleton, whose head was completely shaven. ‘Nicholas believed he heard the bell chime.’ I stared at Rosselin’s companion, the strangest of the Aquilae. Middleton’s jerkin was festooned with medals and amulets, a pair of Ave beads twined round his war-belt.

‘Nothing, nothing.’ I leaned against the stone pillar of the church door and glanced up at the babewyn glaring down at me; it had the face of a monkey, with pointed ears, protuberant eyes and popping tongue.

‘Come away,’ I murmured. I turned and walked back into the church. The Aquilae followed in a jingle of spurs, a creak of leather and a slither of steel as two of them unsheathed their swords and daggers. I sat at the foot of a squat, drum-like pillar. Further up the church I heard a door open and the patter of sandalled feet as the sacristan and his assistants pruned the candles in the sanctuary. I gestured at the squires to join me. Despite their wariness and war-like appearance, they squatted down. Gaveston must have told them about the king’s commission to me under the secret seal.

I made myself comfortable. It was so strange to discuss such matters like farmers gathering in the nave of a church to do business, but the order, harmony and etiquette of the English court had been violently shattered. The king and his favourite were like fugitives fleeing from one sanctuary to another. Fortune had turned her wheel yet again. The Aquilae also sensed such a change, a sense of loss that their days of power, of strutting around the throne, were over. They too were marked men, hotly pursued by the forces of the earls, and now one of their coven had been mysteriously killed. They were both curious and highly nervous.

‘How did Lanercost die?’ Rosselin voiced their thoughts. He spoke louder than he intended, his words echoing through that cavernous place.

‘I don’t know,’ I replied wearily. ‘He may, God forbid, have taken his own life.’ My words were greeted with shakes of the head and loud objections.

‘Or he may have been murdered.’

They fell silent.

‘If so,’ I continued, ‘why, how and by whom? Did someone invite him into that belfry? If so, why did he go? Whom was he meeting? In addition, was it one attacker or more? Yet,’ I shrugged, ‘I have examined the belfry; it is narrow and close, a place where more than one assailant would find it difficult to hide. You see the problem, sirs: why, how, who?’ My voice trailed away. I was tired, and could make little sense of what I’d seen and heard.

‘He carried no arms,’ Kennington murmured. Small and wiry, Kennington reminded me of a fighting dog, with his pugnacious jaw and close-set eyes. His black hair was cropped short, and he had a scar on his right cheek. He was nervous and ill at ease, fingers never far from the hilt of his dagger.

‘And?’ I asked.

‘So, if he met someone, it must have been someone he trusted. I mean, to take off his war-belt. .’

‘And whom would he trust?’ I asked. ‘Whom do you trust?’

Kennington didn’t answer.

‘Lord Gaveston?’ I offered. ‘His grace the king?’ I paused. ‘And, of course, you, his brothers in arms?’

Again silence. I stared beyond the Aquilae at a faded wall panel ridiculing the idiocy of life. From the neck of a white lily sprouted the head of a crane with a fish between its teeth; from its feathers protruded a monkey’s face sporting horns and spitting fire. Murder, I suppose, is life’s supreme idiocy, especially murder of a friend by a soul turned Judas.

‘Well?’ I asked.

‘We know nothing!’ Philip Leygrave, his girlish pink face framed by wispy blond hair, grasped his war-belt and clambered to his feet. ‘Remember, mistress, we were in the rose garden when you brought news of poor John Lanercost’s death. After that. .’ He shrugged and buckled on his war-belt, making a sign for his companions to do likewise.

‘After that what?’ I snapped.

‘Geoffrey withdrew from our company, mouthing threats against Alexander of Lisbon. He kept to himself. He came here to pray. Well,’ he pulled a face, ‘what does it matter?’

The rest also rose, those who’d taken off their sword belts strapping them on.

‘Do you fear an attack?’ I asked. ‘Here in this friary that has become the king’s own chamber? What do you really fear, masters?’

‘Nothing,’ Leygrave replied over his shoulder.

‘I am trying to help,’ I pleaded. ‘Sirs, I am not your enemy!’

‘You’re a woman.’ Kennington’s foppish remark provoked a few sniggers.

I recalled the gossip that the Aquilae Petri were homosexuals, imitating David in scripture, whose love for Jonathan ‘surpassed that of any love for a woman’.

‘A woman?’ I conceded. ‘Like your mothers, your sisters, her grace the queen? What does that matter? My heart is good and my will is sound. Woman or not, I offer you this advice. If Lanercost was murdered, could not one of you be next? Is that why you are all harnessed for war like bully-boys in Cheapside?’

Rosselin swaggered across and stood over me. The others called him back. I shaded my eyes against the light pouring in through the coloured pane window on the opposite wall. I was determined to show no fear. I expected Rosselin to be aggressive but his face was full of fear. The others kept calling him away. He took a small scroll from his wallet and handed it to me. I unrolled it.

‘Aquilae Petri,’ I mouthed the words, ‘fly not so bold, for Gaveston your master has been both bought and sold.’

The letters were perfectly formed. I did not recognise the script, nor, when I asked, did Rosselin or the others.

‘When was this delivered?’

‘We share chambers in the friary guest house.’ Rosselin crouched down. ‘Lanercost, as was his custom, rose early and left long before dawn. We were still in bed when the Jesus mass bell sounded.’ He glanced away, embarrassed. ‘We are more concerned, mistress, about our bodies than our souls. Anyway,’ he gestured at the parchment, ‘that was pinned to our chamber door. God knows who sent it. Ah well, you may keep it.’ He rose, bowed and sauntered out with the rest.

I stayed to collect myself. The morning was drawing on. Eventually I felt calmer, more resilient. I left the church and crossed the yard to the buttery to collect some milk and bread. Brother Eusebius was there, face almost hidden in a huge bowl of oatmeal. He quickly finished, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, assured me that the church and bell tower were deserted when he left, then volunteered to show me to the corpse house, where Lanercost’s body had been taken. I forgot the food and gladly accepted. Eusebius chattered all the way as he led me along grey flagstoned passageways, around the great cloisters and the small, through the apple yards and baking yards, past the scriptorium and library, the prior’s chancery and the almoner’s chambers, then through a small orchard ripe with sweet-smelling white blossom to the corpse house, a one-storey, red-tiled, barn-like building with a rough-hewn crucifix nailed to its door. Inside, the whitewashed walls were decorated with herbal sprays pushed into crevices. The beaten-earth floor was clean and sprinkled with flower petals. In the centre stood a huge table, with smaller ones around the walls. On some of these lay corpses under their shrouds, from which feet and arms dangled. Eusebius handed me over to the corpse dresser, Brother Malachi, a burly Franciscan, head bald as an egg, his face almost hidden by a thick white moustache and beard. A jovial soul, Malachi, with a wave of his hand, proudly introduced me to his ‘visitors’, as he called them. At my request he took me over to the centre table and removed the shroud to reveal Lanercost’s naked body beneath. Brother Malachi had done his best to clean and anoint the corpse, but a mass of ugly wounds and bruises marked both the head and body, eloquent witness to Lanercost’s horrific fall.